There was a bad-tasting silence as Dan looked at him quizzically, cocking his head sideways, like a dog that’s perplexed.
The awkwardness was reaching toxic levels.
“. . . I don’t know what you’re asking . . .” Dan finally answered.
“Ya, me neither, man, sorry about that . . .” Finn replied quickly, sweating some more, eyes shifting back and forth.
Thank God! Gorgeous Isobel with her honey-brown skin and Lake Louise green eyes was back at the table with a baggie full of those little sugary doughnuts that no one is immune to—seductive golden nuggets of deep-fried lardy dough sprinkled with sweet crystals.
Finn and Dan looked at her like she was an angel. Finn announced, “This is my colleague, Isobel Sparks. She’s our doughnut supplier . . .”
“That was very rude of me. We need to keep Annie’s blood sugar up, and I thought I could get back in time, but I got waylaid by the crowds headed to the bathing pool.” Isobel laughed.
“I sure hate it when I get waylaid.” Dan laughed back. He looked sexy. It was a bit painful for me (the flirty winds not blowing in my direction but hers), but the vibe seemed to have instantly gotten better—flirting more potent than beer, I scribbled in my notebook.
Stuffing a couple doughnuts in my mouth, I glimpsed the Coordinator Girl checking us out with a look on her face that could mean we were busted.
“So what were we talking about?” Isobel asked.
“You know, folk music thriving in an increasingly electronic age,” Finn said.
“Oh, that’s tedious. Let’s get to the more interesting stuff, like . . . I don’t know . . . what kind of underwear do you prefer wearing?” Isobel said, laughing at her own humour.
“Well that depends. Mostly boxers, cotton ones. But I hate to say it, lately I’ve been going through a commando phase, particularly in the warmer months. But then . . .”
“Right, right, that’s great. But uh, Isobel, we do have to give Tilt what they want, it’s a mag for techies after all.” Finn was a little red in the face.
“Yes, yes, sorry. Finn can’t write a story about underwear. Mind you, I think somebody should write something about thongs, they are truly absurd.” Isobel laughed some more. I was in awe of her boldness. “Why don’t you tell us some stories about being on the road. What’s it like being a rock star? What kind of gossip do you got?” she asked in a mock Barbara Walters tone.
Dan smiled coyly at Isobel. She always knew how to play it right.
“I don’t got a lot of gossip. I’m a guy, for freakin’ sakes. We don’t talk about shit. We grunt. We watch sports. We talk sports. Sometimes we talk about chicks, but it’s kind of like talking about cars. I hate to tell y’all, but the stereotypes are true.”
“There’s no myth more appealing to girls than a bad-ass with a golden heart. I don’t believe what they say about musicians—you can’t tell me they’re all cheating, lying sons-o-bitches. How could they sing all those love songs then?” This was a subject so close to my heart, it was practically sitting on it. Finn, Isobel, and Dan Bern looked at me like I was on drugs.
“Look, I just started playing music so I could score some chicks! I’m sorry—it’s true, and almost every other guy musician I know is the same,” Dan said.
It was a good time to get more beer. Even if I wasn’t doing so well as an interviewer, the most important thing was that our Subject was warming up, loosening. I walked over to the beer pourers. From the lineup, I could see the back of the Coordinator Girl’s purple tie-dyed T-shirt. She was talking to one of those crew people with the shirts that read: SECURITY. He turned around to look at our gang. I steered myself and the beer quickly back to the table. Surely they wouldn’t interrupt us mid-interview.
When I got back to the table, I topped up everyone’s beer and then circled the table, pretending to take some arty pictures. At one point, I squatted and realized I was actually aiming the camera at Dan’s thighs, which looked pretty luscious at that angle. I snapped the picture quickly, feeling a little self-loathing over objectifying the guy.
I got up to take some less demeaning shots. As I clicked away, it seemed like the rapport at the table was growing.
But the Coordinator Girl was holding her position.
“How do you make that eeenn eeen waaah noise?” Finn asked while air-guitaring.
“Funny you should notice that, that’s a new technique I’m working on. It’s kind of like a combo slide/hammer pluck,” Dan said, demonstrating with his fingers on his own air guitar.
Isobel took hold of the conversation again: “How long have you been playing?”
“I’ve been playing since . . . I play all the time, since I was a little kid, thank God I didn’t forget how. Do you play?” Dan asked Isobel.
She shook her head no. Dan continued, “Not at all? You never play?”
“Music?” Isobel asked, arching an eyebrow coquettishly.
Oh God help us. This was nauseating. I looked over at Finn, he winked. He was squirming too. I looked over to where I’d last seen the Coordinator Girl. She’d moved. She could be anywhere.
“Oh ya, I play,” Isobel replied.
“Well okay then, gotta play!” Dan smirked and took a gulp of beer.
Disgusting—they were raunchy flirters.
Being a journalist is a cinch, I thought for a fleeting second, but then the Coordinator Girl came back into my range of vision. But she was smooching the security guy! Like full-on power necking. Maybe we were off the hook. I stopped holding my breath.
“Enough of all this heavy talk. Now, seriously, tell me what level of hedonism are we talking about on tour?” Finn asked.
“How hard do I party, is that what you are asking?” Dan laughed.
“Like on a scale of one to ten, one being Cliff Richard and ten being Keith Richards, who I heard gets his whole blood supply replaced every now and then so he can survive his debauchery,” Finn explained.
“I . . . well . . . I guess I’d be around a five . . . maybe seven. You know it’s hard work, touring, you gotta be healthy. You can’t just be a drunken bum like people think. Not at my humble level of success anyway. When you get to be mega big, then maybe you can have people schlepp you around. Fly you in and out of cities. You can be wasted if you’re flying first class and staying at like the Schmilton or whatever. But me, I gotta get myself places. So that means mostly being straight,” Dan said, helping himself to the beer.
“Well, I think the formal part of our interview is done. Do you want to hang out and have beers? I could get another pitcher,” Finn offered.
“That’d be thoughtful,” Dan accepted.
Finn went on a beer run, and I took some photos of Dan by himself and then some with Isobel, who took advantage of the situation by posing with her arm thrown casually around his neck.
“Hey, let me wear some of those goofy sunglasses you’ve all got. What’s up with them anyway, makes y’all look like you’re in a cult,” Dan said.
I gave him my glasses even though they were holding my hair in place. He slid them on. They didn’t look too bad on him.
“These glasses smell like beer. What did you do, stick your head in a keg?” Dan and Isobel laughed. I tried to imagine I was delightful like Annie Hall: sexy goofy. Finn came back from the booze run with beer and armfuls of green onion cakes.
I loved green onion cakes. They were like pancakes with onions. Greasy dough with a savoury flavour. My teeth sank in to the sticky dough, oil seeped into my mouth. All of it triggering the happy chemicals in my brain.
Then Finn launched one of his classic Finnisms: “So when you’re touring in foreign countries, is it a truer you that you present to people, or just another mythology . . . I mean, that’s what everyone does, we create myths around ourselves and then when we go travelling . . . we can totally reinvent ourselves, make up new myths, d’ya know what I mean?”
“I don’t think those myths are wrong though . . .” Dan somehow clicked with Finn’s b
abbling.
“No, man, they’re not wrong, you gotta have ’em, you gotta live, you gotta get through the day.”
In my mind I screamed to Finn, “NOW’S NOT THE TIME TO REVEAL OUR JOURNALISM MYTH, DON’T DO IT, HE’S NOT READY!”
“Even beyond getting through the day, I mean, I think . . . I think those myths are real,” Dan repeated.
“They have to be . . .” Finn agreed with beery passion. I think Finn clung to a lot of personal myths. Like he was destined to be Canada’s Hunter S. Thompson; Isobel was sure to fall in love with him once she understood his true genius; he would become a hugely sought-after singer-songwriter, and foreign correspondent. We had often talked dreams/myths after work at the restaurant, unwinding over a few Heinekens or Gin Talkings, as we liked to call them.
I think we had reached our goal. The mood was great, or at least relaxed. We were palling around with Dan Bern and he was flirting with Isobel.
6:05 PM: The tape recorder clicked off. I was a little tipsy. We babbled some more about everything. I think we covered Woody Guthrie, High School, Tennis, Why Canada Is Fabulous, Bad Journalists’ Questions, his defence of Henry Miller, both Elvises, New York Pedestrians, Jaywalking in Alberta, Sunglasses, Dogs, and all of our astrological signs. Blue Rodeo had long finished playing, and Gillian Welch was starting up when Dan finally said, “I gotta get back ’cause I’m drunk.”
7:30 PM: After expending all that nervous energy, I was tired but feeling relatively normal about the whole thing.
“Guys, maybe we should take on Costello! Or Bowie, I think he’s on tour somewhere. We could go on the road!” Finn enthused. “It’s like that Woody Allen line about the world opening up for us like one big vagina!!!”
“Easy there, chief . . . A road trip, ya, that would be dreamy. I could use a holiday . . .” I said.
Isobel kept mumbling to both of our annoyances how charmant Bern was. He had scribbled his email address on her arm in Jiffy blue permanent ink. We’d have to see it for a while yet.
We climbed the hill later and sacked out on the tarp, ready for the candle-lit portion of the evening. Everyone brought candles to light at twilight. There was even a procession of kids walking down the hill with flickering paper lanterns held aloft. Festivals are so much better than stadium concerts; there’s just no contest. As we lay back and listened to the tunes, a feeling of widespread goodwill swept the hill and I revelled in Edmonton at its most magical. Isobel was letting Finn rub her feet. Even though I saw Sullivan sitting farther down the hill with his freaky tall new girlfriend wrapped around him, I sang along to “Four Strong Winds,” thinking this day had turned into the kind you knew you would never forget. A real Top 10 day.
The rest of the festival was a perfect lost weekend of booze, more green onion cakes with atomically hot sauce, doughnuts, smiles to cute boys, flirtations in the porta-potty lineup, and great tunes. After the weekend we were left ravaged, exhausted, and gastrointestinally challenged but happified. Mostly though we were very proud of our stunt. Finn especially felt like the King of the World. And I began to think of another quest being possible: maybe Hawksley and I could meet sooner than I thought. It might be time to meet him, in the flesh. What flesh. Mmmm.
side a, track 2
“Too much love is like too much dope
First you laugh then you choke
We were a tug of war with too much rope
We got covered in mud, then the rope just broke
But ooh wah baby I’ll think of you
I’m sure to laugh, and cry a little too
Boo hoo hoo”
“Ooh Wah Baby,” Ben Sures
A week later I was sitting in the window seat at the Sugar Bowl coffee shop on the south side of the river, savouring a buttery sweet cinnamon bun, layer by layer, drinking a black cup of coffee, and looking at a road atlas when I noticed Finn, looking a bit apocalyptic, crossing the room toward me through the late afternoon sunshine haze. Jazzy ska horns trumpeted from the speakers as he jostled with the palm tree and chairs in his path. I examined him, wondering yet again how Isobel managed to hook-line-and-sink so many good-quality guys. Since the festival stunt he had thought he’d impressed Isobel so much she’d go out with him for ages. He didn’t know of the long history of stuntmen in her past, and it didn’t serve him that he was one of the sweetest.
When he got up close to my table, I could see he had a large wet stain covering the outside of his left leg. It looked like he had stepped into a puddle up to his knee.
“Hi, how are you doing? What’s that you’re reading? Are you planning a trip?” Compared to his normal sound level, he was practically whispering. I handed him the atlas that I was marking up with possible routes.
“We’re thinking of going to Montreal next week.”
“Right. So, uh, listen, have you seen her lately?”
“We met up for a late breakfast.”
“Oh, did she . . . ?”
“Look, Finn, what can I tell ya—”
“Oh don’t worry, I’m totally fine. Totally. I just . . . well, you know. I just really think she’s great.” He smiled helplessly, and I wondered why he thought she was so great if she had just given him the boot.
Something didn’t smell so good, a bit like parmesan cheese. I looked around at the food on people’s tables wondering which one it was coming from. From the speakers Tom Waits growled some cacophony about a guy named Frank and some raining dogs and steaming gutters.
“You know you really shouldn’t take it too personally. It’s truly not about you. She’s fickle, flirty, capricious, whatever you want to call it.”
“Ya she’s like the wind . . . ‘Wild is the Wind,’ you know that Bowie song?”
“I love Nina Simone’s version too.”
“So I probably shouldn’t call her, should I? I mean, I would just like to tell her I’m fine and maybe we could go for lunch.”
“I don’t think—”
He got up quickly, his springy curls bouncing as he walked over to the payphone on the wall beside the condiments counter. I watched him plug in his quarter and prod the numbers enthusiastically. He tilted his head to the left and sandwiched the phone between his neck and shoulder. With his left hand he lit a cigarette. He had one hand free to gesticulate; he was one of those people who really talked with his hands. The call lasted about one single minute. He looked at the phone for a moment before hanging up. He slouched back over to the table, dragging his feet, defeat in his eyes. My stomach spasmed, the cinnamon roll sat uncomfortably in my guts. I remembered how it was when Sullivan left. That pure disbelief that he could actually just go. Be gone from me. All my privileges taken away.
“You know what . . . I . . . I’m fine. I’m glad I did that.”
There was no escaping this: he needed help. “Finn, what happened?”
“D’ya really wanna know?”
“Tell me everything.” I sighed quietly, knowing he needed to talk it out. “Let me get a beer first, do you want one?”
“Sure, whatever—”
I went to the counter and got two Heinekens from the cute bartender.
“So I’m sitting at Pizza Hut wondering what I’m doing there. They play boy-band music there, for Chrissakes. It’s like a hockey-jock hangout. All these guys are there stuffing their faces with pepperoni and cheese pizzas. Chins everywhere glistening with grease, it’s gross, know what I mean? Cheering for the Oilers, mooning the Flames. I can’t figure out why Bella wants to meet here. It’s part of her charm though, you know, mystery. So anyway, eventually she shows up looking ridiculously foxy, right?”
“Yes.”
“I mean, really hot. She’s wearing this black dress with twelve buttons down the front. I counted them while she was standing at the salad bar, spooning out croutons and bacon bits. And go-go boots.”
“What?”
“She was wearing go-go dancer boots up to her thighs.”
“Right,” I said. I really would’ve preferred to go
home, but Finn was definitely too messy to be left untended.
“So she sits down and asks me first if I remember that this was just supposed to be a casual fling, no strings. And I say yes. And she says, ‘So why are you calling me five times a night?’ I didn’t quite know what to say. It’s just that so many things make me think of her, like I was watching TV and I saw this show on penguins and she likes penguins so I had to call her. And then I was making a cup of tea and I noticed that we both like the same kind of peppermint tea and that’s cosmic so I called her . . . I know, in retrospect it was ridiculous. I was in way in over my head and I didn’t even know it.”
I went up to the counter and got us each another beer. The bartender winked at me.
“You’re a peach. Thanks for the beer . . . So the funny thing is I was thinkin’ I was all casual like, just calling her a few times, but otherwise restraining myself, not getting too heavy, too intense. I limited myself to only two telephone calls a day. And I kept saying to myself: I’m fine. I can handle this. I’m cool. And so today after she told me that we had to stop hanging out I thought again: I’m fine. All the way out the door, I kept thinking how fine I was, I said goodbye, I paid the bill, I left Pizza Hut. I got in my car and I’m driving home down 99th Street, past Barb and Ernie’s—you know the German restaurant where the guy wears lederhosen? And just then I vomited down the side of my leg. I vomited! I was surprised as hell because hey: I’m fine. I’m great. What am I doing puking on my leg? So I manage to pull into a bus stop and open the door, and I puke some more in the gutter! And so . . .”
My stomach heaved. “Oh God, it’s not parmesan, it’s you! I think maybe you should go put some more soap on that.”
Finn went to the men’s room armed with Lysol from the bartender. I could feel my eyes starting to tear up, but I had no idea why.
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