by Tim Wynveen
So many times he had wandered through the dark in just this way, after a fight with Clarence or Izzy, after a night with Janice, or sometimes after nothing at all. It was almost as if, in the darkness and the solitude and the subtly shifting textures of the night, he felt more at ease, more deeply connected to the heart of things.
He got back to the hotel well after midnight. The lights were on in the Airstream, but there were no sounds of music or talk. Upstairs in the hotel, he listened a moment at the door to Adrian and Kerry’s room and, from the quiet, could tell there was nothing happening there, either. But he wasn’t tired; he was wired. So he drifted down the hall to Eura’s room. He could see a line of light from under her door. He knocked softly.
After a moment she said, “Go away.”
“My guitar,” he said. “I need it.”
“We are leaving early tomorrow. You need to sleep.”
“I want my guitar.”
A minute later she opened the door and backed into the room as if she was afraid to stand too close. She was wearing a bathrobe, which she clutched tightly around her.
His guitar case sat on the carpet just inside the door, but he walked past it, looking greedily around. “This is the first time you’ve invited me into your room,” he said.
“You invited yourself.”
On her bedside table she had spread a white cloth and hundreds of silver pins. Beside the cloth sat several glass vials, each one holding a different coloured liquid. A faint smell of rubbing alcohol lingered in the air.
“What are you doing?” he said, nodding toward the pins.
“I am minding my own business. You should do the same.”
He leaned back against the wall and shook his head. “Why won’t you let me get close to you?”
“You are close to me.”
“Not close enough.”
She tightened her grip on her robe. “Close enough for now.”
Without another word he grabbed his guitar and walked to his room. Sonny was snoring inside, so Cyrus sat in the hall beside a room-service tray of dishes and began to noodle on the unamplified instrument. In his head he heard a mid-tempo shuffle in G, very B. B. King. He waited a moment, trying to retrieve that mood from his walk along the dark country road, trying to tap into that bottomless well of emotion. Then he played the seven, the F, and gave it a sweet shiver of vibrato. A few licks followed and they were good; but they owed more to B. B. King than his feelings for Eura or the mysteries of the night, so he stopped and tried again. This time he grabbed the A on the first string and bent it up a semitone to the minor third, letting it shimmer for a bar before wandering erratically through the blues scale. Again, uninspired. He tried starting on the fifth, on the major third; he tried it with the flatted third and the fifth plucked together. And each time he ended up with some awkward combination of notes that said nothing at all about the way he felt, and managed to say nothing in a way that was utterly graceless.
He was all too aware of the kind of music a real player like Sonny would produce under the circumstances, or the solo Eric Clapton would squeeze from his instrument if he felt even half as much for Eura. He launched into the guitar intro to one of his favourite songs, “Waitin’ on You,” by B. B. King.
Ba-doodle-la-doo dal-lee-doop
Ba-doodle-la-doo dal-lee-dah
That was the trouble. He could play nearly every blues solo ever recorded, from Robert Johnson to Johnny Winter. Every lick was memorized, categorized and catalogued, ready for instant recall. But when he tried to come up with a single phrase that summed up how he felt about Eura, there was silence, or worse, noise.
He studied the fretboard of the Les Paul. Clearly, there were only so many notes and, therefore, a limited number of combinations. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe everything that could be played had been played. And with that thought he packed away his guitar again and set it inside the room. Then he went back out to the parking lot. Just the sight of the night sky made him feel better. The Big Dipper and Cassiopeia and the great arc of the Milky Way reminded him that some things were inexpressible. He had nothing to be ashamed of. Perhaps Eura was too big and too distant and too bright to be captured by a few melodies.
Bringing his gaze back down to earth, he noticed Jim out by the Airstream, coaxing the dog to do its duty. Before Cyrus could slip away, Jim turned and said, “It is a magical night out here, my son. The wind sweeps toward us from across the continent, bringin’ us a million stories.” He tucked the dog under his arm, then closed the distance between them. Putting his other hand on Cyrus’s shoulder, he said, “What’s wrong? You look as though your heart is in your throat.”
When Cyrus shrugged, Jim leaned closer to peer into his eyes. After a moment, he smiled and said, “If I’m not mistaken, this is a matter of the heart. You’re in love.”
Cyrus looked away. “Not love,” he said. “More a feeling of—” he dragged a hand through his hair “—I don’t know, of feeling like the whole world is trying to pass through me, only it can’t.”
“What’s stoppin’ it?”
“I don’t know. I was playing my guitar before I came out, and when I closed my eyes I could feel it there as sure as anything, this big, big thing just waiting, but I couldn’t find the right notes, you know?”
“I do. And I’ll tell you this. I don’t want to hear about your guitar right now. This is no time for musical theory. Talk to me about love.” And with that he set the dog on the ground and covered Cyrus’s eyes with his big fleshy hand. “Do you see her? Tell me now, what’s the first thing you think about?”
Cyrus could feel a blush creeping up his neck and cheeks. His skin burned where Jim was touching him. After a bit of squirming, he closed his eyes beneath that massive hand and said, “Her lips, I guess. Her lips are great.” And it was Eura’s lips he pictured, like the graceful wings of a seagull in flight.
“Mmm-hmm, very nice. Her lips. You kiss her then, maybe pull her bottom lip right into your mouth like it’s a section of Christmas tangerine, and your hands, your hands are wild for somethin’, aren’t they? Sure enough have a mind of their own. You reach out and …”
“I touch her hair, her head.”
“Yes, indeed, you muss her hair and tilt her face so you can kiss every nook and cranny. She’s wild for you, too, isn’t she? What’s she doin’, Cyrus? How’s she touch you?”
Cyrus can scarcely breathe. In his mind Eura is rocking against him in that graceful dance of hers. And in a hushed voice, he says, “Her hips.”
“Oh my my, she’s a devil, rubbin’ her sweet thing against you. She wants it bad, and all you gotta do is sing the song, my friend, cozy up and sing the words she wants to hear.”
Jim removed his hand and Cyrus said, “What words does she want to hear?”
“I would ask you the very same thing.”
Cyrus wheeled around and took several steps toward the hotel. Turning there, he said, “I don’t get it. I never know what you’re talking about.”
“I don’t suppose you do. But you were sure enough with me tonight.”
“Onstage, you mean.”
“Yessir, you were right there with me. It was good what you did, playin’ off my words like that. Works both ways, you know.”
Cyrus nodded uncertainly, then walked slowly across the parking lot. At the hotel entrance, he stopped once again to look up at the stars. In just a few hours he had gone from fulfillment to longing. He had taken his playing to a higher place and discovered almost immediately how much farther he had to go.
SIXTEEN
Ronnie knew Wade Resman from the early days, working side by side on that first tour of America with Scot Free. Back then Wade was owner and chief technician of a company called Resman Sound and Light, renting out the appropriate gear for rock-and-roll tours and, for the right price, acting as soundman. Drugs, a bitter divorce and a serious lack of insurance had brought Wade to the brink of bankruptcy. He was now permanently off the road and had invested
his last few dollars in ReSound, a low-end recording studio on a desolate stretch of county road between Buffalo and Rochester.
Wade had set up shop in an old general store—white clapboard, wide wooden veranda, with thick black curtains covering the plate glass window at the front. On one side of his property was Vinnie’s, a big auto-wrecking yard with a high plank fence topped with razor wire; on the other was a scrubby field covered with billboards, none of which had been updated in five years. It was not a busy road. The only noise Wade ever had to contend with was Vinnie’s arc welder, which occasionally set up a high-frequency hum in the studio’s amplifiers and mixing board.
It wasn’t for sentimental reasons that Ronnie chose ReSound for Jim’s next recording. It was the fact that they got four days of unlimited access, the use of all the gear, Wade’s not inconsiderable talents as an engineer, and a sixteen-track tape for the cost of one day in a more established studio. So what if the place had a Hell’s Angels vibe? So what if everything was held together by duct tape? It was good enough for rock and roll—a statement that, to Ronnie’s mind, was less a compromise than a seal of approval.
The night before the sessions began, Ronnie asked Cyrus to drop by his hotel room. “I suppose you have already surmised what I’m about to say, my friend, but frankly, it looks as though this project will have to take wing for now without your fine talents.” The boy stared sullenly at the carpet. Ronnie squeezed his shoulder. “What this means, Cyrus, is that the rest of the week is yours. Perhaps there is something you’ve been meaning to do. Visit the family, see the sights. Eura, too, is at loose ends. I have already offered the use of the Fairlane should she wish to travel somewhere. Possibly you two could work something out in that regard.”
Eura called Cyrus shortly after that and asked him to drop by so they could make plans.
“You’re inviting me in?”
“To talk, yes.”
He noticed immediately how tidy her room was—both beds were made, no clothing anywhere. She’d done something to soften the lighting, too. She wore the same bathrobe he’d seen the other day, her hair still wet from the shower. With a wave of her hand, she indicated he could sit on the bed. She remained standing by the television set.
“What did you have in mind?” he asked.
“Well, Buffalo—this is a fine place to leave us.” She took a deep breath and looked across the room to the door, as if having second thoughts. Finally she said, “It is not such a bad idea, I think, that we could maybe go somewhere, the two of us. We have had some practice already.…”
Her voice trailed off. She pulled her robe more tightly around her. It was his turn to open up. “I think you already know how I feel,” he said. “Why don’t you just tell me what you’re thinking.”
“Because I am afraid of that. Maybe you will think I am crazy. Maybe you will not like me anymore.”
“Maybe I already think you’re crazy. Maybe I don’t like you.”
She stepped forward and laid her palm on the top of his head, as though that might tell her something about him she did not already know. Before he could grab her hand and pull her close, she moved away and disappeared into the bathroom. A moment later she returned, carrying the white cotton cloth he had seen before, and spread it on the empty bed. From her closet she removed a small brocade bag, about the size of a purse; from inside it she took several vials of coloured liquid, a small bottle of rubbing alcohol and a plastic case filled with silver pins. She sat opposite him and said, “I do not know where to begin.”
He looked at the paraphernalia beside her, then back to her face. “Why don’t you just start talking. Maybe that’ll lead you to the beginning.”
She smiled that Cyrus could say something so wise. Summoning her courage, she said, “The first thing I must tell you is that I am married to a man I will love all my life.”
Cyrus lay back on the bed and closed his eyes as she spoke of her husband, of their apartment near the university where he taught botany, of their two cats, and their windowsills thick with cyclamen and African violet. Of the tanks that ended everything.
“He’s still there?”
“I can only hope. I miss him more for every day I have been here.”
“You could go back.”
“No. Not possible.”
“And he can’t come here?”
“No one has seen him for months. They have taken him where they take all enemies of the state.”
“And that is …”
“I don’t want to think.”
The more she talked, the lonelier he felt. Every word moved her another step away from him. All his boyish fantasies melted under the heat of her deep love for her husband. He had thought that he might one day take away her loneliness and pain, but he would be lost in the enormity of her suffering.
When she had stopped talking, he sat up and said, “You’re telling me this so that we can travel together and I won’t act stupid.”
“This is a reason,” she replied. “Also, for me, so I do not act stupid. And maybe because I need help, and fate is saying I should trust you.”
That she would rely on him more than the others lifted his spirits. “Are you in trouble?”
She rocked her head from side to side, weighing the question. “Not in the way that you think. I need to ask a favour, and I need you to not think badly of me. I need you to be as kind and gentle as I know you are and to please not make judgment.” Without another word, she opened her robe just enough to reveal her neck, a bit of breastbone and another portion of the tattoo. The vine rose in a sensuous line from the top of her breasts and circled the base of her throat. From there it spiralled up the left side of her neck and got lost in her hair. It was this last bit he had seen before. He recognized the plant from his years on the farm.
“Nightshade,” he said.
“Belladonna, yes. His name for me, his ‘beautiful lady.’ He knew everything to know about flowers. Same family as potatoes and tomatoes.”
She pulled her robe tightly around her again, then slid beside him, hugging his arm. He looked at the pins, the coloured vials, and said, “You did all that?”
In response she turned and pulled up her hair. The tattoo did not in fact circle her neck but stopped roughly under each ear. The final bits of leaf and flower lacked the definition of the rest. “You see,” she said, “how I cannot reach. I am making a mess.”
He touched one of the berries, a spot on her neck he would have thought impossible for her to reach. He felt an overwhelming desire to kiss each berry and flower and follow that vine wherever it would lead. Instead, he backed away and said, “It must hurt.”
“Some parts are worse than others. I am used to the pain by now. But I am so slow. To look in a mirror and do this makes me want to scream.”
It was then he understood what she was asking. “You want me to stick pins in you?”
She shifted a short distance away, the better to look into his face. “This is what I do. When Sonny and the others are jamming at the hall or shooting their pool or playing cards, I am here. It takes me very long to do even one flower, so I must work at it every day. If we travel, you must see me do this, that is all. And maybe, sometime, if it is not asking too much, you could help with these places I cannot reach. It is not so hard, Cyrus. I can show you. Just ink on a pin.”
He turned to the blank screen of the television, but he already had all the sad news he could handle for one night. Staring at his hands instead, he said, “I guess the big question is why? Why do you do it?”
She rose to her feet as though he had touched a sensitive spot. “Why do you play music? Why do others paint pictures and write novels? It is how we make sense of time.”
THE NEXT MORNING, a Saturday, they set off in the Ford. Eura insisted they go to Wilbury. “If we could go to my home, I would take you there,” she said. “We can’t, so we go to yours.”
Cyrus knew it was the right thing to do—let everyone see he was happy, healthy and alive�
�but he wasn’t sure he had the strength just now to answer their questions. Eura was adamant, however, and by midday they were on the outskirts of Wilbury. He pointed out landmarks. He tuned in the local radio station. And little by little he warmed to the idea of showing Eura his roots. He was amazed, too, how different everything seemed. It wasn’t that the town had changed, but that he could see it more clearly.
He still had a key to the Three Links Hall, so he headed there first, figuring they could flop for a bit while he made a few calls and figured out a plan. To his surprise, the band’s gear was gone, the furniture, too. It had never occurred to him that everyone would pack it in after he left. Eura waited patiently while he worked out the puzzle.
He knew that Isabel worked on Saturdays, so they got back in the car and headed downtown. He pointed out the Vogue Theatre, and the greasy spoon where he and his friends congregated after school or rehearsal. At Demeter Real Estate, he took two steps into the room and stopped: not only was Izzy not at her desk, but her desk was gone. So were her filing cabinets and the framed print of kids skating on a frozen pond.
Larry Bell looked up and said, “Hey, Cyrus, long time no see. How’s the gee-tar comin’?”
“Okay, I guess. Where’s my sister?”
“Come again?”
“Isabel. Where is she? Where’s her stuff?”
Larry scratched his head and laughed awkwardly. “Jesus, Cy, she hasn’t worked here in a while. She’s at Regal now.”
He drove farther down the main street, turned the corner at Woolworth’s and parked in front of Regal Real Estate. He was relieved to see Isabel’s familiar belongings inside. Nellie Griswald was bent over the drawer of a filing cabinet when he walked in. “Hello, Mrs. Griswald.”
“Cyrus? How are you doing? You just missed her. She goes home for lunch these days. How’s the music?”
“It’s good,” he said. “Real good.”
Then he ran back out to the car and flopped in the seat. “Just missed her,” he said, feeling oddly elated, as though it had all become a game, an elaborate chase. “Drive out this way,” he said, pointing to the west. “We’ll catch her at the farm.”