by Don Lee
“I don’t understand you guys. You don’t need me. You don’t want me. You want someone with stage presence, a performer, a looker. That’s not me by a long shot. By any shot.”
“It’s the music that counts,” Ross said.
“You know that’s bullshit,” Yadin said.
“I’ll take care of you, bud,” Charlie said. “You won’t feel a thing.”
For their next open mic, Charlie gave him—in addition to pot and coke and several shots of Jack—a triple benzo cocktail of Klonopin, Ativan, and Valium. Yadin didn’t feel a thing. Midway through a song, he lost his place on the guitar and, after a bar and a half, picked up with the chords to a different song, but overall he was able to deliver, to his surprise, a decent vocal performance. Better than that. He didn’t quaver. He didn’t bleat or croak. His voice was crystalline and resonant and emotive.
“You killed it,” Mallory said. “I knew you would. Wasn’t that such a rush?”
More than anyone else in the band, Mallory was thrilled to be performing live. She stepped to the front of the stage, spunky and loose, and swayed and danced and gestured theatrically with her hands—corny little flutter birds she’d never unleashed before. She was different up there, into it, and she was becoming different off the stage as well, Yadin noticed. Something was happening to her. She wore more revealing clothes all of a sudden, shirts with deep V’s and denim shorts that were cut almost up to her butt cheeks. She talked louder and laughed hyenically. She preened in the center of rooms, inviting everyone’s attention, particularly the attention of men. The changes were disturbing to him. He realized that Mallory had discovered something about herself. She had discovered that she liked people looking at her.
“What’s with you and Thorton?” he asked her one day.
“What are you talking about?”
Yadin had seen her huddling with Thorton on numerous occasions, whispering to him. The previous night at a party, they had stood in a corner, and she’d touched his arm repeatedly, and at one point she’d thrown her head back and guffawed at something he’d said. Had it been about Yadin?
“You two have become very buddy-buddy,” Yadin told her. “You like him, don’t you? You think he’s pretty.”
“You are a whack job,” Mallory said.
Graduating from open mics, Whisper Creek began to work small clubs—routinely for as little as twenty-five dollars a night and all the popcorn they could eat. The spotlights onstage hurt Yadin’s eyes, so he bought a pair of oversized sunglasses with the darkest lenses he could find—made for glaucoma patients. They allowed Yadin to fool himself a little into thinking that he wasn’t being observed. He still needed to pop the pharms, though, to get anywhere near a stage, and sometimes he accessorized the benzos with too much booze or weed or blow. Their sets, depending on what Yadin had ingested, vacillated from chaotic to hypnotic. People would sometimes say it was the worst show they’d ever seen, sometimes the best—and often it was the same show.
He’d be floating. Between songs, he’d light a cigarette, then would discover that there was already one smoldering between the strings and headstock of his guitar, which would make him giggle. He’d fuss with his microphone stand, unceasingly adjusting the angle and height of it. He’d sip from cups and bottles, smack his lips, clear his throat, cough, need another sip. He’d tune and retune. Through his blackout sunglasses, he could see only small prismatic starbursts of the stage lights—so pretty—the follow spots, pins, and fresnels. Such funny names. A lighting technician had once told him the terms (Yadin always talked to the lighting technicians at clubs before gigs, requesting they keep him largely in the dark, or at least not position lights at sharp angles to his face), and he would tee-hee, thinking about the names.
Since Whisper Creek was featuring mostly Yadin’s songs now, the band would have to wait for him to quit stalling and fetishizing before they could proceed. Occasionally they’d just begin playing and hope Yadin would jump in at the appropriate moment. Yet in those instances they might be doing a ballad and he’d launch into a fast shuffle, or they’d be in one key in standard four-four time and he’d start sing ing in a different key in three-quarter time. Now and then, he’d change a song’s arrangements onstage without warning, altering the tempo or adding a pre-chorus or a bridge that the band had never heard before, even rewriting lyrics on the fly.
The morning after another disastrous show, Yadin was making coffee in the kitchen, terribly hungover, when Mallory came out of the shower in her bathrobe and said, “You need to cut that crap out.”
“Huh?” he asked, thinking she meant coffee.
“You need to get your shit together,” she told him. “Do you realize what a gift your voice is? You have any idea how blessed you are, that you can dash off all these songs on napkins and paper bags? It’s nothing to you, and they’re beautiful. The rest of us, we have to work at it. We might have technique, we might have craft, but no one ever feels anything listening to our music—not like yours. Honestly, Yadin, what do you want to happen with your career?”
“I’ve never really thought about it,” Yadin said.
“Yes, you have. Don’t lie to me. I know underneath you’re ambitious. I’m not ashamed to say I want to be famous. I want to be a star. What do you want? How do you want to be remembered? Tell me.”
“I want to be remembered as one of the greatest songwriters who ever lived,” he admitted.
“Well, it’s there for the taking, lying right before you,” she told him. “You got it, that intangible thing. If you wanted to, you could hold a room by yourself with just your voice and guitar and your songs. You’re a terrible performer, abomina ble, but you’ve got an innate feel for where you’re going musically, a vision, even though you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing half the time, writing these songs. It’s ridiculous. You’re junked out of your gourd, you can’t even look at the audience, and people are mesmerized. It’s so unfair. Could you at least show me and the rest of the band some respect and not get so fucked up all the time? Could you try not to be such a jackass?”
He tempered the amount and combinations of drugs he took, and he began paying more attention to the details, giving charts to the band and rehearsing new songs with them, putting some thought into organizing set lists and sticking to them, becoming meticulous at sound checks and trying to perfect the acoustics in various nightclubs with their PA systems. His stage fright didn’t dissipate, but he took ownership of his songs. He was proud of them, and he wanted them to come out right.
As he cleaned up, however, Thorton, Ross, and Charlie started making a hash of things, getting heavier into partying. At rehearsals, they would be sauced, glazed. They never seemed able to work through an entire song anymore. They’d attempt parts, but were incapable of playing anything from beginning to end.
“Come on, guys, this is important,” Yadin would say. “Can we run through this once?”
“Dude, don’t be so tense,” Ross said.
“It ain’t that complicated, Yad,” Charlie said. “We could play it blindfolded.”
“Here’s what I want to know,” Thorton said. “What’s with the band-aids on your face all the time? You cut yourself shaving that much?”
“You do when you use a pizza slicer,” Charlie said.
Onstage, they were lit and fried, barely able to stand, much less play with any competence. Ross fingered his bass with geriatric sonority, dragging every song into a coma. Thorton rushed willy-nilly into guitar solos. Charlie, in particular, was pitiful on the drums.
“Hold the beat, man,” Yadin yelled to him.
“Fuck you!” Charlie yelled back.
“No, fuck you!” Yadin shouted.
“You’re all useless!” Mallory screamed.
“Fuck you!” Ross and Thorton and Charlie screamed back.
Thus began a period when the band would heckle themselves during every performance.
Driving home from a show one night, Mallory said to Yadin, “
We need to get rid of those bozos. They’re deadweight.”
“You think I’m deadweight, too?” he asked.
“What? No, of course not.”
“Feels like it sometimes.”
Often now, she would extend what should have been a little fill on her fiddle into a long solo. She wasn’t satisfied with just harmonizing background anymore, singing almost every verse with him, sometimes taking over, nudging him aside from the center mic. Between songs, she would banter freely with the audience, enjoying all the eyes on her.
“You’re talking nonsense,” Mallory said. “What is with you lately? If anyone should feel like deadweight, it’s me. You never listen to any of my ideas anymore. You want everything your way or no way. It’s like we’re just a backing band to you. You might as well go solo.”
“But that’s the last thing I want,” Yadin said. “I love you, Mallory. I want to play music with you forever.”
“I do, too,” she said. “You don’t realize how much.”
Their next gig turned out to be the end of Whisper Creek as a full band. Two songs in, they were screaming at each other, almost coming to blows. Thorton walked over to his amp and turned up his guitar and let it screech in feedback. It went on and on. People booed. They threw things. They left. Thorton turned it up louder, the amp in a continuous piercing squeal. Then he, Ross, and Charlie walked off the stage, leaving Yadin and Mallory alone up there with thirty minutes to fill, albeit there were only seven people remaining in the audience.
“What do you want to do?” he asked Mallory after shutting off Thorton’s amp.
“Let’s play on,” she said.
Yadin grabbed his guitar, sat down in his chair, and he and Mallory did the rest of the set acoustic, slowing things way down, just the two of them. It was the best show Whisper Creek ever gave.
As they were packing up, an older man approached them. “Those your songs? You wrote them?” he asked Yadin. He handed him a business card. “You ever get to Nashville, give me a call. We could use staff writers like you.”
The card read Acuff-Rose Music.
“What’s Acuff-Rose?” Yadin asked Mallory.
“It’s the biggest publishing house on Music Row. He just basically offered you a publishing deal.”
Yadin flung the card to the floor.
“What are you doing? Don’t throw that away,” Mallory said, and lunged after the card, dropping to her knees, sweeping her hand under an amp until she was able to dig it out. “Don’t be an idiot. This is a lottery ticket. Keep it. You could make some real money. I bet you could write a hit song in your sleep.”
“Screw that,” Yadin told her.
The Nashville formula was verse-chorus, verse-chorus, bridge, verse-chorus. Only, for a song to be commercially viable on the radio, it couldn’t be longer than three minutes thirty, so you often had to throw out the bridge. You could forget making anything interesting. You had to keep it dumbed-down and cookie-cutter. There was no room for nuance. Everything had to be obvious and tawdry.
He was too high-minded to ever compose that kind of drivel, and he would never sell the rights to his own songs to a company like Acuff-Rose. God only knew what those industry assholes would do to them. The only way to preserve the integrity of his music, he realized, was to record it himself.
“We need to cut a demo,” he told Mallory.
It took them a while—months, during which they continued playing acoustic sets as a duo—but eventually the two of them cobbled together enough money to go to Sonic Wave, a studio in Five Points, and record four songs. Then Yadin duplicated and mailed out cassettes to two dozen independent labels, concentrating on the handful in the area. He also sent packages to the Triangle’s college radio stations: WKNC at NC State, WXDU at Duke, and WXYC at UNC. All three were known to include local music in their programming.
It was through the radio that they attracted the owner of Lost Saloon Records, a new label headquartered (in the guy’s house) in Cary, just outside the Beltline from Raleigh. He drove into town for one of their shows at the Comet Lounge, and afterward, at the bar, he said, “Let’s do this.” Just like that.
On the eve of signing the record deal, Yadin and Mallory went to Sadlack’s for dinner, ordering Big Mikes, just as they had on their first date.
“Can you believe it?” Mallory said. “We’re going to have an album. We’re going to be recording artists, Yadin!”
He had worked so hard for this moment, but now that it was upon him, he found himself strangely rent with terror, not excitement. What was he getting himself into? he thought. Was this what he really wanted?
He looked across the table at Mallory. She was very pretty in this light, freckled and roseate, unburdened by any hesitations. Ineffable meant indescribable, unutterable. She had an ineffable quality about her. She was at once approachable and elusive—a polarity that drew eyes to her. He could easily see her becoming famous someday.
She chomped into her Big Mike. Juices ran from the sandwich, and she wiped her chin with a clump of napkins, giggling. She was so happy. Yet Yadin wondered: How long would she remain happy?
How long would she stay with Yadin before something or someone else came along, before she awoke to the realization that she was with someone who would only hold her back, who would, by his mere presence by her side, preclude her from becoming a star? How long would it be before she cast Yadin aside, like so much deadweight?
It was his last night with Mallory. The next morning, while she attended a class, he moved out of her apartment, taking his two guitars and duffel bag with him, leaving the recording contract behind, unsigned.
10. A Single Sheet over Two Lovers 4:38
At the housekeepers’ forum in the basement on Tuesday morning, Mary Wilkerson had a speech prepared for them.
“I know most of you are aware of the hearings in Sacramento,” she said in the hallway. “I’d like to discuss the Centurion Group’s position on this.”
“Finally,” Anna said to Jeanette.
This week, a group of union housekeepers were testifying in front of the state senate, trying to persuade the labor committee to forward the bill requiring hotels to use only fitted elastic sheets.
“Corporate’s foremost concern is worker safety,” Mary said. “We want to do everything we can to prevent injuries. We want all our employees to have long, healthy careers with the Centurion. But there’s no evidence that making beds with fitted elastic sheets would put any less strain on our housekeepers than flat bottom sheets. You’d still have to lift the mattresses to tuck in fitted sheets.”
“That is such bullshit,” Anna whispered.
“The big difference would be with our folding and pressing machines,” Mary said. “They’re not designed to accommodate elasticized sheets, and modifying them would cost millions. Even when they’re pressed and folded, fitted sheets are bulky. They’d take up much more space than flat sheets, and that would be an added expense because we’d have to create more storage.”
“How inconvenient,” Anna said.
“It’d also diminish our green initiatives,” Mary said. “Fitted sheets would be much more demanding on our laundry services, producing more soap waste and using more water and electricity. All these additional costs might cut into staff wages and benefits, and no one would want that to happen. I hope you see the logic in this. All right, let’s talk about what’s going on today,” she said, and began highlighting the new VINPs.
“We should unionize,” Anna told Jeanette as the girls lined up for their room assignments. “We should get UNITE HERE to come in here.”
UNITE HERE was the largest hospitality union in the country. “I heard that’s been tried already,” Jeanette said.
“And?”
“Not enough people were interested in signing up.”
“I don’t understand how people can just let themselves be exploited,” Anna said. “It’s a travesty. A disgrace. Why won’t they stand up for themselves?”
&nb
sp; “For God’s sake,” Jeanette said. “There are wars happening out there right now—atrocities and genocide. There’s famine and mass poverty. There’s real injustice and evil and heartache in the world. People are dying. People are suffering. People are being eaten away by cancer. And all you can talk about is sheets? You want to unionize over sheets? Who gives a fuck about sheets in the larger scheme of things?”
“Okay, okay,” Anna said. “Jesus. What got up your craw this morning?”
It was the talk with Joe the night before. It had made Jeanette think about all the years she’d wasted, the missed opportunities and bad luck and grief and fear that had rendered her inert, immobilizing her in this humdrum town. She had tried to be a good person. Why hadn’t good things happened to her?
She reached the head of the line in the hallway. After she collected her assignments, Mary took Jeanette aside and told her, “Clarisa has a family emergency, so I gave you one of her VINPs.”
Jeanette looked down at the top assignment sheet. “I thought Mallory Wicks left yesterday,” she said.
“She never checked out. She’s staying two extra nights in the Miramar Suite. You’ll give her room extra attention?”
“Of course,” Jeanette said.
“Good. I know I can count on you,” Mary said.
Jeanette attended to several standard rooms before going to the Miramar Suite a little after ten, when Ms. Wicks was scheduled to be on the golf course. Still, she was more assiduous than usual about announcing herself at the door. Satisfied that Ms. Wicks was out, Jeanette entered the suite and followed the cleaning sequence prescribed by the Policies & Procedures manual.
First she turned on all the lights (checking for burned-out bulbs), shut off the HVAC system, opened the drapes (checking for damaged cords and hooks), and cracked open the windows to ventilate the room with fresh air. Then she gathered a few used glasses and leftover room service items and placed them in the hallway and dialed *69 for pickup.