I stopped listening. My eyes were still teary. I was overwhelmed by a sudden urge to rush back to Brooklyn and hug Emma as tightly as I could. She didn’t have to write that letter. It would have been a lot easier for her to play Yoko Without Benefits until I did get kicked out of Dawson’s Freak again. But Emma didn’t operate that way. I was her friend. She was looking out for me, even if her plan was a little convoluted and hurtful. But that didn’t even matter. The hurt was only for the good. My good. Besides, if she made a mistake, she copped to it. And she hadn’t complimented Petra or the band or the show because she thought it would somehow get back to me, either. There were no ulterior motives, other than being nice.
Amazing. I’d forgotten people like that existed in real life. If only the world were populated with clones of Emma Wood…Jesus. I’m normally not a walking cheese factory, but I couldn’t help myself. “The Age of Aquarius” started blasting through my head. I finally understood what the song was about. If everyone were more like Emma, we’d all be jigging around together in blissful harmony, and the planet would be a sunny, Technicolor wonderland described in a thousand corny Grateful Dead songs. (Was “The Age of Aquarius” by the Grateful Dead? Whatever.) All would be paradise.
“…the thing is, you’re not gonna get signed,” Petra’s dad was saying. He smiled, his eyes red slits. “I’m not saying that you’re never gonna get signed, like in some different band down the road. But with your current lineup, things just aren’t gonna happen. And it’s not just that Petra needs to go solo. The era of the power trio is over….”
I nodded. I knew I should be offended, but he’d lost me. I couldn’t get my mind off Emma. Once in a great while—when I was lonely or desperate or depressed (and, yes, I happened to be all three at the moment)—I would convince myself that we should have been a couple. Just like all the troglodytes wanted. Had I made some kind of egregious, catastrophic mistake by never making a move? We could have been hooking up ever since I’d “discovered girls.” Practically married. I could have made out with her at the dog run. I could have made eye contact during the second song tonight. Yet somehow, somewhere, we’d slipped into permanent friends mode. Had that been a conscious decision on my part? It didn’t seem likely. As far as I knew, Gabriel was absolutely right: I was always thinking about hooking up with any female, at any time.
“I should probably go,” Petra’s dad said.
“Huh?”
He giggled loudly. “Damn, chief, what have you been smoking?”
I shook my head and blinked, then folded the letter and clutched it tightly. “Sorry, I’m just…” I didn’t finish.
“Make sure Petra gets that, all right? I think it’s important.” He stood and dumped the ashes on the floor, then tried to brush them aside with his Birkenstocks. “It’s funny. I was just talking about power trios with some of the guys from Phish. You remember that band? Great live show.”
I shook my head.
“Yeah, I know. Your thing is nineties rap rock, right?” He tucked the pipe back into his pocket. “Too bad. I mean, I get the joke, but Petra can do better than that.”
“She probably can,” I agreed quietly.
“Don’t worry.” Petra’s dad patted me on the shoulder and shuffled to the door, leaving a trail of ash footprints. “When I was in high school, I was just like you. I wanted to be a rock star, too. But then I realized I had to practice.” He burst out laughing, as if he were a rabid fan at his own stand-up comedy show. “Once you see how hard it is to make it, something else will pop up. It always does.”
I shrugged and nodded.
“Yo, chief, I didn’t mean to bum you out. I’m just talking out my ass. It’s the jet lag. I was in London the day before yesterday. What’s your name again? Ben?”
“Hen,” I said.
“My fault, Hen. Take care, all right? And keep an eye on Petra. She’s a crazy one.” He paused. “Y’all aren’t doing the nasty, are you?”
“Every night,” I heard myself answer.
He burst out laughing again. “Heh-heh-heh! My man. Just be safe. Peace.”
“Hey, wait! Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.”
I bit my lip. “Are you really friends with a friend of the guy who made the Steal Your Parents’ Money stickers?”
His bloodshot eyes narrowed. “Probably. I know a lot of cats.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well. Just curious.”
He nodded, looking vaguely concerned. “Get some rest, chief.”
I watched as the front door slammed behind him.
For a moment, I just stood there. Whoa. The warm, snuggly Emma-is-a-goddess feeling quickly evaporated into thin air, like the pot smoke.
That bizarre little encounter had seriously unnerved me. On the one hand, I was certain that Petra’s dad was a stoned, stuck-up idiot. Did he really believe that I was doing “the nasty” with his daughter? Did he really not care? And what was he even talking about? The era of the power trio was over? Then why did half the bands on MTV fit that description? Without thinking, I could probably name five: Green Day, and…hmm. All right, one. And they’d peaked in the nineties. But still. There hadn’t been as many power trios gigging around New York since the days of Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. If anything, I’d always assumed there were too many power trios.
On the other hand…what? He wasn’t trying to be a jerk. Actually, he was a supermellow guy—considering that I’d probably come off as a racist.
Suddenly I realized what bothered me about him. He reminded me of Emma’s dad. Seriously. He was the black stoner version. He handled himself with the same stupid jocularity. And he came at you with the same rude, nonstop, volume-on-eleven broadcast: Look at me! Dig it! I’m a success and you’re just a dumb teenager!
But that was my problem, not his. He’d earned the right. He deserved to be a dick. I was just jealous. I may have been an “adult,” but he was a grown-up brat, and he could get away with it. I wanted what he had, times a million. And like he said, I didn’t want to have to practice bass a lot to get there, either.
Boy, was I insightful. Yes. Kudos for me.
That’s the wonderful thing about being so miserable: It allows you to see your faults with perfect clarity and still feel detached enough to be okay with them.
I dropped Emma’s letter on the coffee table. Then I picked up my bass and left.
You want to know what’s really funny? Even after all that, I still wished that my dad were more like him and Emma’s dad. I really did.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Rumpelstiltskins, All of Them
“Dude!”
Somebody was pounding on my bedroom door.
“Dude!”
I blinked several times. Petra?
“Wake up, already!”
It was Petra. But she never showed up at my place unannounced. And she never used the word “dude” unless something wonderful or miraculous had happened.
“HEN!”
“Coming,” I croaked. My skull was pounding. Sometime since I’d last been conscious, Petra’s voice had acquired the destructive force of a jackhammer. I lurched out of bed, squinting in the sunlight. The blinds were drawn, but they didn’t help. I really needed some curtains in here. Heavy, black, velvet curtains. That, and a vat of industrial-strength aspirin.
“You’re not gonna believe this,” she said as I threw open the door.
“I…what?”
She scurried past me and hit the eject button on my stereo, then dug into her bag and yanked out a loose CD. “We were up until four, tweaking it,” she murmured excitedly. “I haven’t even slept…” She dropped in the CD and pressed play. Nothing happened. She stomped her foot on the floor. My brain vibrated in painful sympathy. Ouch. I should have worn earplugs last night. If we played any more gigs, I’d be deaf before I was twenty-one. Either that or have a permanent migraine.
“Listen,” she whispered.
The next instant, my walls were shaking wit
h what sounded like a Parliament Funkadelic outtake. My head spun. I grabbed the doorframe to steady myself. She turned the volume all the way up. It was loud enough to drown out my creaking joints, my rumbling empty belly—even the traffic outside.
“What are you doing?” I shouted.
She raised a finger to her lips. I glared at her. She smiled back. Her eyes were puffy. Suddenly I realized she was wearing the same black cocktail dress she had worn at the gig. In the glare of the sunrays, her outfit had a shimmering, hallucinatory quality. I wouldn’t be surprised if her dad had secretly drugged me when he’d patted my shoulder last night and sent me off on a very, very bad time-delayed trip. Didn’t a famous Beat Generation novelist once compare a bad headache to the more sinister effects of psychedelics? I thought I remembered reading that in a book Sarah had once lent me…
“He’s gonna tu-r-r-rn his mu-tha out,” a silky female falsetto sang. “He’s gonna turn his mutha…OUT.”
My mouth fell open.
“Oedipus Wrecks.” It wasn’t Parliament Funkadelic. It was us.
We were unrecognizable. Petra sounded like Mary J. Blige. The bass had a crisp bite. I could hear every note. The instruments were all distinct, but the different layers blended perfectly—the fuzz of the guitar, the click of the hi-hat, the pounding bottom…. This couldn’t have been recorded last night. No way. I shook my head as the song bounced to its climax. There was a measure of tight, razor-sharp quarter notes: chink, chink, chink, chink—then crash!—it was over, followed by applause.
More than three people were clapping. A lot more.
She turned down the volume knob. “I pasted in a sample of some crowd noise,” she said with a proud grin.
I shook my head in awe. “I don’t get it,” I whispered. “How did you do it?”
“Bartholomew has a special effects sampler. It’s part of the ACID Pro package. It’s got a laugh track and boos and a bunch of other—”
“No, no,” I interrupted. “How did you fix the recording? How did you make us sound so good?”
Petra couldn’t stop smiling. “It’s that software Bartholomew has, that stuff he’s been telling you about! He showed me how it works last night. But we played much better than I thought, anyway. Rehearsing every day helps. The gig was really tight. Your bass playing killed, too, sweetie.” She smirked. “Well, up until your string broke.”
“I had no idea,” I said. My headache evaporated. I’d never loved Bartholomew Savage more than at that moment. I wanted to plant a sloppy kiss right smack on his handsome face. He was a genius. No wonder horrible live bands sounded so good in the studio. There was nothing a gifted sound engineer couldn’t do. Absolutely nothing. They were Rumpelstiltskins, all of them. They could take straw and spin it into gold.
My cell phone started ringing. It was still in my pants’ pocket, in a pile on the floor. I fished the phone out with one hand and yanked the corduroys over my boxers with the other, eyeing the caller ID. Sweet. It was Bartholomew Savage.
“Hey!” I said excitedly. “What’s up? This is karma! Petra is playing me our demo right now. Thank you so much! You gotta come over and—”
“Hen?” He sounded annoyed.
“Yeah?”
“I can’t play with you guys anymore.”
The words floated right by me. I must not have heard him correctly. I was too giddy. “What was that?” I said.
“I quit.”
My grip tightened around the phone. I glanced over at Petra. She furrowed her brow.
“I’m sorry, you what?”
“You really made me look like an asshole last night,” Bartholomew Savage said.
I swallowed. “Wait. I don’t—”
“Sid just called. I can’t believe you told him to screw himself. He did us a favor. I have to go back there and pay him myself. You owe me sixty bucks, by the way. Sid is really pissed at my brother. Irene is pissed, too, with all the wackness you talked. Victor might lose his job. I hope you’re happy.”
My stomach twisted. Good God. I had no idea what to say. Had I behaved that badly? What “wackness” had I talked? And who was Irene?
“What’s going on?” Petra hissed.
I waved her off. “Look, I’m really sorry,” I murmured urgently. “Why don’t you give me Sid’s number and let me call him to explain—”
“Forget it,” Bartholomew Savage interrupted. “Just come over and bring sixty bucks. Or give it to Petra. She can give it to me.”
There was a loud click. I flinched.
“Hello? Hello?”
“Is that Bartholomew?” Petra demanded.
I stared at the phone. My jaw hung slack. The line was dead. He’d hung up.
“Well?” she pressed.
“It was,” I muttered. I shoved the phone back into my pocket.
“What did he want? What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I sat down on the edge of the bed and ran a hand through my hair. “I think he just quit the band.”
“He just quit the band,” she repeated.
I nodded. I felt sick.
“Why would he do that?” she asked. Her voice was oddly colorless.
“I…uh, I think it has something to do with Sid, the guy who made the recording. And somebody named Irene.”
“Somebody named Irene,” she said.
Our gazes locked. Her face darkened. “Loser” played softly on the stereo. Luckily, the song had just begun. My D string wouldn’t break for several minutes. I opened my mouth to apologize—but the door swung open and Dad walked in.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he said. “I wanted to see what all the ruckus was about.”
Petra and I kept staring at each other. Both of us were breathing heavily. The song had reached the guitar solo: the best part, maybe even the highlight of our set. Petra copied the melody of the chorus in Biggie Smalls’ “Hypnotize,” the part where the female voices sing “Biggie, Biggie, Biggie, can’t you see?” She played the riff note for note, only with heavy delay, so it sounded as if three guitarists were playing together in the back of a cathedral. The effect was incredible, very trippy. My expression softened.
Petra reached over and snapped the power off.
“What music is that?” Dad asked.
“It’s…um, our band,” I muttered.
“Really?” He sounded surprised. “Your band?”
“Yeah. We made a recording of our gig last night.”
He smiled. “Well. I’m very impressed. I’d love to hear the whole thing at some point. Please don’t blast it so loudly, though. I’m working at home today. I’m sure the Wood family got a sampling of it. The whole block did.”
My mood abruptly screeched around in a 180-degree turn. Ha! I flashed Petra a triumphant smile. The situation wasn’t so dire, after all. If Dad said he liked it, then it was probably worthy of immediate release on a major label. It was the first time he’d ever complimented anything musical I’d ever done.
“What are you doing here, anyway, Hen?” Dad asked.
I laughed. “I live here, remember?”
“So you really liked it?” Petra asked him, ignoring his bizarre question. Her tone was suspicious.
The phone rang again before he could answer. My heart jumped. I didn’t recognize the number. Maybe Bartholomew Savage was calling from a different line and had changed his mind.
“Hello?” I answered breathlessly.
“Is that Hen?”
I blinked. It was Mrs. Abrahmson. She’d never called me before.
“Hi,” I said.
“Do you plan on walking the dogs today? Or can’t you be bothered?”
Uh-oh. I glanced around the room. My eyes zeroed in on the digital clock on the stereo. 11:51. My heart thumped. I should have been at her place over three hours ago. I was already late for the second walk. I’d forgotten it was Thursday. I had just assumed it was a Sunday, because last night felt like a Saturday.
“Wow, I’m really sorry—”
> “If I were smart, I’d say that you should look for another job,” she remarked, “but I rather like you, Hen Birnbaum. I assume you had a gig last night?”
Okay. Maybe Petra’s father had drugged me. Nothing made sense. Dad was being kind about my music, and Mrs. Abrahmson suddenly knew I was in a band. I’d never once mentioned Dawson’s Freak to her. At least I thought I hadn’t. We hardly ever spoke. She was usually on her iPhone for those three seconds when she opened her door and handed me the leashes.
“You are a musician, right?” she asked.
“Well, yeah. But I—”
“I can spot them a mile away, you know. My husband tries to be a musician when he isn’t practicing law. I play a little tambourine, myself. We’re obsessed with the classics. Why do you think we named our dogs after John Bonham and John Entwistle?”
Bonzo and Ox.
The names suddenly clicked. Bonzo: the nickname John Bonham’s friends and band mates gave him. “The Ox”: the moniker the Who’s bassist, John Entwistle, had given himself (why, I don’t know).
My God. I never would have made that connection. Glenda Abrahmson wasn’t supposed to know the aliases of classic rock icons. She wasn’t supposed to be cool. She was supposed to be an eccentric, overpampered nightmare. But now…
Incredible. The Unseen Hand was poised for a high-five.
All at once, anything seemed possible. Emma’s father could get us a recording contract. Why the hell not? And so what if I’d talked “wackness” in front of Sid and Irene, whoever she was? (Aha: the sour bartender.) That was my prerogative. I’d happily pay the sixty bucks I owed Sid now, too. Besides, I bet Bartholomew Savage would come crawling back to Dawson’s Freak once Emma’s father was on board. Even if he didn’t, we’d find another drummer in no time. The label could find us a drummer, for God’s sake.
“Ah, the price of age,” Glenda Abrahmson said with a wistful sigh. “I suppose you’re too young to remember Zeppelin or the Who. Or I’m too old to talk about them. Bloody hell. Better not get me started. Are you coming over, then?”
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