Getting in Tune

by Roger L. Trott

“You’d better be.”

  He grinned and squinted at me through the thick lenses of his glasses. “Trust me, Mother Hen. Trust me.”

  A LARGE CHUNK of a Big Mac disappeared into Mick’s mouth. “Ooh, baby I love your way, ” he gurgled along to Peter Frampton.

  Sam slurped a milkshake and shook his head.

  The big hand of my Timex told me that we had another half hour to kill before leaving for the party at Sam’s friend’s house. Rob and Yogi had taken off soon after we’d finished loading the equipment, leaving the three of us to entertain each other, and we weren’t doing a good job of it. Even so, we made it through the last side of Frampton Comes Alive before finally heading out the door into the starless night.

  After dropping Mick’s Pinto off at his parents’ house, he joined me in the Blue Bomb, and we followed Sam’s black Camaro through town. With no idea of where Sam’s buddy lived, we stayed close on his bumper. Creedly was a sprawling, messy town, often thick with traffic headed nowhere. Tonight was no different. We slowly wound our way past dozens of strip malls and weary subdivisions, crossed over the river that neatly divided Creedly into two parts, and picked our way through the syrupy cruise circling the dying downtown area before finally leaving the Saturday-night congestion behind. As I drove, Mick fiddled with the radio, switching back and forth between Creedly’s two pop-rock stations, first landing on Disco Duck, then over to Let Your Love Flow, back to the first station for You Should Be Dancing, and finally to Silly Little Love Songs. When McCartney merged into Manilow’s I Write the Songs, Mick gave up and switched off the radio.

  “Bugger-all, Daniel,” he yelled above the constant rattle of the van and its load of equipment. “You should really get an eight-track in this thing. You could get some Roxy or Bowie going, right?”

  “I’m just glad it’s running O.K..”

  We finally chugged up into an area of cheap housing west of downtown and pulled up across from a ranch-style house whose peeling exterior paint and overgrown front yard distinguished it from its neighbors as a rental. ZZ Top’s Tush blared from the opened front door.

  Sam led us into the house and was immediately greeted by three buffed-up guys drinking beer in the darkened living room. Mick and I scanned the room for familiar faces before wandering into the glare of a kitchen jammed with people leaning against the counters, plastic beer cups in hand. I recognized a few of the guys standing around the kitchen table, former football players from high school, dudes whom Sam used to hang out with. One of the girls in the group had been a cheerleader. The kitchen dwellers glanced at us before returning to their conversations.

  “The keg must be in the back,” I guessed.

  We pushed our way through to a sliding glass door leading to a patio. Sure enough, a keg of beer, iced down in a small plastic garbage can, had been set up on the covered patio. Clusters of girls and guys, mostly guys, some smoking cigarettes, some pushing wads of chewing tobacco between cheeks and gums, stood around the keg. We shuffled over to the garbage can, dropped a couple of bucks into a Folger’s donation can, pumped the keg a few times, and drew a couple of beers.

  “You want to stick around for a while or take off?” I asked Mick. “It looks like jocks and rah-rahs.”

  “Not so fast, mate.” Mick slowly gazed around the patio. He was without his glasses, but that didn’t keep him from locating and ogling a long-legged brunette, cold but fetching in short shorts, standing near the keg. “The lager may be cold,” he said, “but the birds are hot.”

  “How do you know? You’re blind.”

  “Ah, Daniel, me lad. I see what I wants to see.”

  I quickly drained my cup in an attempt to smooth out the jittery high and the cotton-mouth dryness of the uppers. “Don’t forget that we’ve gotta get up early tomorrow.” Even as I said it, I knew the mix of intoxicants wouldn’t let me sleep for hours.

  While we sized up the situation, I noticed a big blockheaded guy, one of Sam’s high school friends, walking toward us. He clapped a meaty hand on Mick’s shoulder, causing Mick to slop beer on his favorite blue Adidases.

  “Hey, I know you,” the guy said loudly, looking down at Mick with a blotchy face that seemed to lump and stretch like a ball of Play-Doh. “You’re with Sam in the Killjoys, right? You’re that freaky singer.”

  Mick disgustedly shook the beer off his shoes and looked up at him. “Yeah, that’s me, ya big yob,” he said with a snarl.

  I started to edge away, but the guy apparently missed the insult. “Right,” he said with a loud laugh, “Big Bob. Ya know me.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief and tried to drink from my empty cup. Someday Mick was going to get me killed.

  “I saw you guys play at Alley’s Lounge last month,” Big Bob bellowed. “Man, you guys rocked. And you were fuckin’ outrageous, like Jagger or somethin’.”

  Mick’s face brightened a bit. Not only did he enjoy being recognized, but he also had a soft spot for anyone who acknowledged his brilliance and noticed the traits he shared with the Stones’ singer. “Aye, you’re Sam’s friend, right? How’re you doin’?”

  “I’m right on, man.” Big Bob slapped Mick’s shoulder again. “Where’re you guys playin’ next?”

  I left Mick and Bob together to continue their backslapping and walked over to the keg to get another beer, certain that one more would help the opposing drugs reach a tolerable balance in my nervous system. It was a science that I practiced nightly. By the time I wandered back across the patio, Mick was in the middle of telling Bob about our trip to Puente Harbor, which he was now calling “our tour of the Pacific Northwest.”

  While Mick and Bob talked, a group of three girls and two guys joined us. One of the girls, a sleek redhead in a tan down vest, gaucho pants, and Dingo boots, put her arm around Bob’s waist, barely eliciting a glance from him. The taller of the two guys, a stringy dude with a spotty mustache, took a swig from a pint bottle of Southern Comfort and passed it over to Mick, who was now telling Big Bob stories of life on the road. I couldn’t help but smile. Up to this point, the band’s road life had consisted of overnight stays in small nowhere-and-gone towns in the mountains surrounding Creedly.

  The girl who ended up next to me glanced my way a couple of times while Mick yapped on. I casually sipped my second beer and watched her out of the corner of my eye. She didn’t fit the scene and definitely didn’t fit the group she was with. Tall and thin, she was dressed all in black. She wore a black T-shirt that blended into a short-waisted black leather jacket hanging too long at the sleeves and dark straight-legged jeans ending at pointy-toed boots. Something was written on the T-shirt, but I couldn’t read it. She wasn’t from Creedly. No doubt.

  I took another sip and stole a look at her face. Her short, straight blonde hair was cut sharply at the jaw the same length all the way around, and she wore little makeup except for black mascara beneath pencil-thin eyebrows. Her pale face was contoured by sharp, high cheekbones, a cute upturned nose, and a rounded chin. I shivered for some reason.

  She caught me looking at her.

  “Hi,” she said, tucking her chin and rolling her brown eyes upward like a child who had just been scolded.

  I tried to smile. “Enjoying the party?”

  “It’s O.K..” I waited for her to say something else, but she paused and then finally motioned with her head toward Mick. “I gather that you two, um, play in a band around here.”

  “Yeah, four years now.” I watched her long fingers tug at the sleeves of her leather jacket. She seemed painfully shy.

  “What ... what do you play?”

  “Me? I’m the guitarist.” I took a step sideways away from Mick and the others. She edged away with me.

  “No,” she said. “I mean, what kind of music do you play?” She continued to watch me with tucked chin and upturned eyes. My heartbeat ticked up. I knew it wasn’t the drugs.

  “Uh”—I tried to unravel my tongue—“oh, you know, we basically do covers. Bad Company, Aerosmith, the Ston
es, Zeppelin.” I took a gulp of beer. “Stuff like that.”

  She nodded, slowly shaking her bluntly-cut hair. “Hmm, traditional guy stuff.”

  “Guy stuff?” With a few words and barely a rise in her voice, she had put me on the defensive. Worse, she was right.

  “You know, Jagger, Tyler, Plant.” She smiled, but only slightly. “A bit, um, misogynistic, wouldn’t you say?”

  What the hell? Maybe she wasn’t so shy. I took another gulp of beer, rolled misogynistic around in my head for a moment, and then looked sideways at her eyes. “Maybe so. But we also do some Roxy Music, T-Rex, Bowie, newer stuff, you know? And we’re working on a few of our own songs, too.”

  “Does he sing them?” she asked with another tilt of her head toward Mick.

  “Yeah, Mick’s our lead singer. How’d you know?”

  Her shy smile grew, but she kept her chin tucked. “Oh, I don’t know. The attitude, maybe. He’s from England?”

  I grinned, and her smile faded.

  “What’d I say?” she asked.

  “Sorry. I couldn’t help it. Mick’s accent is fake. He grew up around here.”

  Her eyes widened. “Really? I did think he sounded a bit, um, fraudulent. But what’s the point of that?”

  “There’s no point. He thinks he’s Jagger.”

  She stared at me.

  “I’m not kidding. He started faking the accent in high school after seeing Gimme Shelter about ten times, and he hasn’t stopped since. And he’s got those big lips, so Mick fits him. He just wandered into the garage one night when we were practicing, grabbed a mike, and said his name was Mick. His real name’s Jack, but nobody calls him that anymore.”

  “Well. I see. He sounds ... unusual.”

  I kept grinning. “That’s one way to describe him. But he’s good onstage, so we put up with him.” By now we had almost edged off the patio and were standing by ourselves. “Speaking of which, you’re a little different yourself, if you don’t mind me saying.”

  To my surprise, she reached out and gave my arm a shy poke. “Thanks for noticing. You’re not so average yourself, with all that hair. At least not around here. By the way, a lot of women would kill for your hair. Maybe not me, but a lot of them would.”

  I had to ponder that one for a moment, especially since I had been thinking of cutting my hair. Suddenly I was very interested in this curious girl who wasn’t anything close to anyone I’d ever dated, not that there had been many. I realized that I hadn’t stopped smiling, an unusual sensation that wasn’t altogether pleasurable. “Where are you from? You can’t be from Creedly.”

  “My,” she said, batting her eyelashes at me, “you know how to make a girl feel special, don’t you? You’re right. I grew up in San Francisco, but I’m living in Berkeley now. I’m taking classes at Cal.”

  “Ah,” I murmured. That explained a lot. Berkeley was only two hundred miles south of Creedly, but culturally it was worlds away.

  “Betty’s my cousin,” she said, tilting her chin toward the chubby girl standing next to the Southern Comfort man. “I came up for the weekend to visit her. Betty’s boyfriend is a friend of Bob’s, and he invited us over.”

  “Welcome to Creedly. By the way, my name’s Daniel.”

  “I’m Nita.”

  “Nita,” I repeated. She extended her hand and I took it. My heart started beating erratically, the uppers kicked higher by a surge of adrenaline. I looked over Nita’s shoulder at Mick, who had the pint of Southern Comfort up to his mouth, his face lit up like a pink house. Returning my eyes to Nita’s face, I tried to think of something more to say. Any second she would fall back into the group with her cousin, and all would be lost. Maybe that wouldn’t be a bad thing. Still, my heart continued inching its way up my throat. Breathe, I told myself. Keep breathing.

  “Daniel,” Nita said softy, interrupting my thoughts. She tucked her chin and looked up at me, her eyes swimming in the light from the porch. Forgetting my mantra, I held my breath and looked into those eyes. Uh-oh. I was in deep shit. She moved closer and whispered, “Would you like to, um, smoke a joint? I brought some good stuff with me from Berkeley.”

  I released my breath and laughed so loudly that I briefly caught the attention of Mick, Big Bob, and the others. Mick squinted at me and waved, but I turned away from him.

  “Now what’d I say?” Nita asked, shrinking back a step. “Was I too forward?”

  “No, no.” I stifled my laugh. “That’s not what I expected you to say.”

  “What, then?”

  “I don’t know, but that wasn’t it.”

  “Well, do you?”

  “I’d love to.”

  “O.K. then.” Her chin came up. “Is it, um, cool to light up here?”

  My grin faded. I looked around the patio. A friend had gotten busted at a party like this a few weeks earlier. Why take the risk? Plus, I wanted to get her away from this crowd. “My van’s parked out front. It might be safer there.”

  She retucked her chin and tugged at her sleeves. “O.K. You’re the local.”

  I led her in an arc around Mick’s group, attempting to disappear into the crowded patio, but he saw me when we stopped to refill my beer.

  “Daniel, where ya goin’, mate?” he yelled across the patio with a stumbling step in our direction. “You need some help with her?”

  I hooked Nita’s arm and guided her quickly toward the sliding glass door into the house, blinking as we stepped inside the brightly lit kitchen. Sam sat on the other side of the kitchen table engaged in mouth-to-ear conversation with the former cheerleader I had seen earlier. He caught my eye, smiled, and raised his eyebrows while he watched me steer Nita through the kitchen and into the living room.

  An Aerosmith album was playing in the darkened room. A muted TV was on, and a silent Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert was beaming across the room. With Nita beside me, I stopped and watched Toni Tennille bounce along on-screen to Aerosmith’s Walk This Way, and all notions of reality slid sideways through my brain. The balance of drugs was wrong; science had failed me. Was Nita even real? Was I? I glanced at this girl beside me, and she again tucked her chin and smiled back at me. Toni Tennille took a bow, and the world righted itself again.

  IN THE VAN, I turned on the overhead light and Nita pulled a thinly rolled joint, roach clip, and Zippo lighter from a small, black leather purse that I hadn’t noticed before.

  “You were ready, weren’t you?”

  She smiled in a way that made my chest hurt. “You never know what opportunities life will present.” She glanced over her shoulder at the equipment jammed behind us. “So you really are in a band. I thought, maybe, it was just a line to get me into the back of your van. I know about you macho rock-star types.”

  I absorbed her remark without comment, figuring silence was the safest response, and turned off the overhead light. “We’re taking off tomorrow morning for a club date in Washington.”

  “Really? You’re serious, then. I like that.”

  “Well, I’m serious. I don’t know about the others.” I took the lighter and, shielding it with my hand, lit the joint for her. She took a couple of quick puffs to get it going and then took a long drag and handed it to me. I took a deep hit and almost coughed.

  “This stuff’s strong.” I handed the joint back to her.

  “I should’ve warned you. It’s Hawaiian. You don’t need much of it.” She was right. I already felt a buzz coming on. Most of the pot we got in Creedly was cheap stuff from Mexico. Hawaiian weed was pretty exotic, at least by local standards.

  “By the way,” she said, “where are you guys going in Washington?”

  “Puente Harbor. It’s west of Seattle somewhere.”

  “Puente Harbor,” she repeated. “I know where it is. My father lives in Seattle. He keeps sending me plane tickets to come up to visit, but I’ve only gone a few times. We drove over toward Puente Harbor once when I was up there.”

  “Then you know more about it than I do.”r />
  “So why do you do it?” she asked, handing the joint back to me.

  “Do what?”

  “Play music.” Her chin dropped again in that way she had, and she looked sideways at me with a sly smile. “Tell me, is it really just a ploy to get girls?”

  I took a smaller hit and exhaled. I was having trouble figuring Nita out, and the combination of the pills, beer, and now the marijuana wasn’t helping. My personal science project definitely needed more work. I glanced at her and decided that a flip answer wasn’t safe.

  “I play in the band for a lot of reasons,” I finally answered, hearing Rob’s evasive, equivocating tone in my voice.

  Her eyes stayed fastened on my face. “I’m curious why. I love the art of creating, of translating something that’s inside you, but rock music seems so ... exploitative.” She paused. “That’s not the word I was looking for.”

  “It’s close enough,” I said, but I wasn’t entirely sure I knew what she meant. Exploitive of the musicians or the fans?

  “So why, then?”

  I tried to give her the obvious answer first. “The band’s something that might get me out of this town.” I handed the joint to her. “If we’re good and lucky.”

  “But why’s that so important to you?”

  I stared at her as she took a hit. “Would you want to live here?” I raised my eyebrows. “You’re in Berkeley. Nothing happens here. At least, nothing good.”

  She exhaled. “That’s not a real answer. Your family must be here.”

  “My family? I have no fucking family.” My hand searched for the outline of the dog tag beneath the fabric of my shirt as I absorbed the upward surge of adrenaline. I tried to push down the harshness but couldn’t. “My dad’s in L.A. My so-called mother’s still here, but that’s another reason to leave this bloody place.”

  I’d startled her. “Oh,” she said, pulling in a breath.

  Mick’s voice had become mine, and I heard Pete Townshend whisper, Can she see the real you? God, what was the real me? What did he mean by that? I stared out through the dirty windshield and ground my teeth. The night momentarily lost its focus, and I felt myself slipping away again....