The Musician

by Douglas Gardham

  CHAPTER 16

  Friday, July 13, 1984

  Sydney and Gus stared at Greg. Ethan didn’t need to say any more.

  “So,” Greg said, his hand on his beer glass, “you’re proposing we live together as a band. Any thoughts on how we might do that? Like where we’re gonna fucking live? Or how we pay rent when only one of us has a fucking job?”

  Ethan felt for Greg. He’d had a peek into Greg’s life over the years, and that was enough. From the outside looking in, he knew Greg’s family was the envy of most. They lived in Queenston Heights, a gated community on the outskirts of Toronto; had a cottage in the Muskokas; had Cadillacs and Mercedes in the driveway; and took cruises to exotic places around the globe. They were rich by most standards, and the stress that the lack of money brought most didn’t really exist for Greg. That was the belief. But what Ethan had seen in being around Greg in high school was the exact opposite. The expectation that accompanied what money represented was crushing. Making money and keeping the family’s fortune intact never seemed to leave Greg’s conscious mind. Ethan figured that pressure likely filled his dreams and nightmares too. Greg’s apparent arrogance was really inverted fear. The guy was scared—freaked out was closer to the truth—most of the time. There was an incredible assumed pressure to be successful. Subsequently, he never made decisions that were really his, and Ethan knew now that the band—Greg’s place of refuge—was forcing his hand. For possibly the first time in his life, he was being asked to decide what he wanted to do and who he wanted to be. Ethan began to suspect why Greg had really quit MIT shortly after meeting him for lunch. People went to MIT with commitment. Greg was smart, top of their graduating class, but he wasn’t committed, no matter what his parents thought. Now Ethan’s proposal was asking for that commitment. For Greg, that commitment had to pay off far beyond the expectations any of the other band members had placed on them—imagined or otherwise. Compared to MIT, the Release was a pipedream that Ethan was asking him to believe in. He didn’t envy Greg.

  “Why the fuck are you so worried about that?” Sydney asked, bringing Ethan out of his thoughts.

  “Somebody has to,” Greg said like a fighter backed into a corner.

  “I don’t,” Sydney retorted, “and I get along just fine.”

  “Let’s sleep on it,” Ethan said, wondering if he really did understand Greg’s concerns. “It’s a big deal, and we’ve just had the night of our lives.”

  He looked at Greg, who stared back at him. The Cars’ “Let’s Go” was playing in the background.

  “I don’t need to sleep on it,” Greg said, looking from Ethan to Sydney and then to Gus. “It’s a moment of truth for the Release, isn’t it? I get it. I’m in.”

  Sydney was first to respond, jabbing her tiny fists back and forth like a boxer in front of her. “I knew it! I fuckin’ knew you’d see the light!” she cried.

  “That’s awesome, man,” Gus said, reaching over and shaking Greg’s hand.

  “It scares the shit outta me,” Greg replied, “’cause I have no fucking idea how it’s all gonna work.”

  “None of us do,” Ethan said.

  “But I’m fucking supposed to,” Greg said as Sydney stood up and gave him a hug. “That’s the Schmidt way.”

  Ethan had his hand on Gus’s shoulder, smiling. “Maybe the Schmidt way isn’t the Greg way,” Ethan said.

  “It’s how I was brought up,” Greg answered, “but if Boston taught me anything, it’s that things don’t always work out as planned.”

  “They fucking never do,” Ethan said, and he raised his hand to the bartender. “Four shots of tequila, please.”

  “We’re supposed to be closed,” the woman answered, turning to the liquor bottles lining the wall behind her. “But I’ll make an exception tonight if I get to join in.” She grinned and pulled down the shot glasses.

  When she’d finished pouring, Ethan took a filled glass, raised it, and moved between Greg and Sydney.

  “To the Release!” he said over Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall.” They simultaneously brought the shot glasses to their lips and gulped down the contents.

  “We’re in this together, like it or not,” Ethan said, and he set the small, heavy-bottomed glass down hard on the bar.

  He looked at Sydney. She was smiling.

  “It’s time to crash this Popsicle stand,” Ethan said, surprised at his use of an old high school expression. Tequila had that effect on him.

  “Okay,” Gus said, giving him the eye. “Whatever.”

  Ethan watched as Sydney picked up his bag and tossed it at him. She picked up her own and headed toward the door they’d come in.

  “Bus is leaving,” she said.

  “You guys good to go?” Ethan asked, looking at Greg, as he was the one with the car.

  “We got it, man,” Gus said, motioning his head in the direction Sydney was headed. “Don’t keep her waiting. It’s a long walk.”

  Ethan shook their hands with the thumb-lock grip of brotherhood and started toward the door.

  “Excuse me,” the bartender called to Ethan. She was holding something in her hand. It looked like their bill.

  “The man with the beard,” Ethan said, trying to be helpful. “He’s got the money.”

  “No,” the woman said, shaking her head. Ethan quickly clued in and readied himself for an awkward moment. He’d returned the woman’s smile each time she looked at him. Had he given her the wrong impression?

  “Sorry. I meant to give you this earlier,” she said, handing him a note. “I put it down and forgot about it. Lucky I saw it now.”

  Ethan took the note and shrugged as though to question its origin.

  “A woman passed it to me earlier,” she said in answer to Ethan’s unasked question. “Asked me to give it to the singer.”

  Ethan nodded. “Thanks,” he said. With note in hand, he headed again to the door, thinking of Sydney’s note in the guitar magazine.

  Sydney was already out the door.

  CHAPTER 17

  Friday, July 13, 1984

  Ethan couldn’t wait to get to Sydney’s car before looking at the note. In the dim cone of light cast by the single lightbulb above Benny’s Bar and Grill’s back exit, he read the neat, tight script:

  To Ethan:

  I’m not supposed to talk to you. But I can’t help myself. I don’t come to these places often, but we all have our moments. I recognized you in the photo posted in the lobby. Call if you want.

  There was a phone number written below the note.

  “Are you coming?” Sydney called through the open driver-side window of her idling Corolla. “I can hardly keep my eyes open.”

  “Yeah,” Ethan said, and he walked around the rear of the car to the passenger-side door and climbed in.

  Sydney backed away from the wall and drove to the parking lot exit. She turned onto the roadway, which was lit only by the car’s headlights.

  “So,” Ethan said before they’d gone far. He held the note out in the sparse light from the dashboard. “What do you make of this?”

  “Make of what?” Sydney asked, returning his question with her own. “I’m driving.”

  “I can drive,” he said, knowing the answer before he said it.

  “Yeah, sure you can, but not my aunt’s car.”

  Ethan didn’t reply, looking at the note. He didn’t want to drive anyway. He wondered who had written the note, guessing it could be but one person. Her abrupt departure still puzzled him. Something in her eyes was familiar. He couldn’t explain it, and it was gone the instant he thought about it, blocked by what felt like a heavy, immovable door inside his head. She was a nurse and had a duty to care for people, but there was something more; of that he was certain.

  “Whatever you’ve got there has you fucking stumped, doesn’t it?” Sydney asked, the red l
ight of the speedometer reflecting in her dark eyes.

  They drove on in silence before Sydney laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  “You. You and that note.”

  “You know?”

  “I saw her talking to the bartender afterward.”

  “You didn’t say anything.”

  “What was I gonna say?” Sydney asked, taking a curve marked by a series of reflective yellow arrows, which pushed him against his door. “Just call her.”

  “You think so?”

  “Worked out pretty good last time,” Sydney said. He could hear the smile behind her words. “She probably just wants a few tips on jumping.”

  “Fuck off,” he said, nodding invisibly in the darkness. “But you’re right. I’ll call her.”

  They were ten minutes from his parents’ home. He could barely keep his eyes open.

  “You really think we can live together?” Sydney asked, breaking their silence. The excitement of the show had dissipated like the calm that followed a tempest.

  Her question brought him back to life.

  “I do,” he said. He turned in his seat. “There’s a lot of talent in this band. You. Gus. Even Greg’s beginning to surprise me. He’s practicing hard. But talent’s not the answer. It’s never enough, no matter what we think. And it’s not enough just to be different. Everybody’s different. Different, in a way, makes us all the same. No, part of it is being different, but the difference has to be original and for the music. I’ll quit when it isn’t.”

  He stopped. Sydney didn’t say anything. She stared at the road in front of them.

  “Look at Kiss, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, or Alice Cooper. Even Rush. Every one of them is original, and their music matters. It’s always about the music; when it goes, it takes everything with it. Maybe bands get lost or distracted, like the Eagles. I don’t know. But we’re climbing the mountain. The music has to come first. Kiss might seem more about the show than the music, but Alice Cooper sure isn’t, and Rush and Tom Petty—they’re all music.” He paused to take a breath and then added, “And guess what—they all live together. Mostly on the road, as they’re always touring, but still—livin’ and workin’ together all the time.”

  For the second time in less than twelve hours, the vehicle Ethan was riding in turned into his parents’ subdivision.

  “We have to do this, Sydney,” Ethan said, staring at her profile through the darkness. “We can be a bar band like everyone else and just dream about it, or we can do something extraordinary.”

  Sydney pulled up in front of the garage doors. She shut off the engine and headlights. Her hands returned to the steering wheel.

  “I’ll be honest, Ethan,” she said, looking through the windshield as if she were still driving. “I think the idea is fucking nuts. I can’t imagine living with the three of you.”

  Her words hung in the air like invisible bombs ready to explode. Ethan didn’t know what to say.

  “But I want this so fucking bad,” she said. Tears glistened in her eyes, reflecting the house lights. “I’ve given up everything to be here.” Her hands left the steering wheel and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Do you understand? Fucking everything!” she cried. “My family doesn’t understand. My aunt can barely stand me. I have no fucking job. You guys and the music are all that’s holding me together.”

  Ethan didn’t say anything. His hand rose to touch her shoulder. Onstage, she transformed into a music mecca behind her white Gibson, but out of the lights, without her guitar, she seemed to shrink into the tiny person he’d first met behind the counter of her parents’ restaurant. Sydney was the most talented one in the band, and although he wouldn’t admit it, treating her like one of the guys made that fact easier to accept. Females weren’t supposed to be better at this male game of rock. He didn’t make the rules, and Sydney made them even harder to accept.

  He was speaking before he’d figured out what to say.

  “Sydney,” he said, turning sideways to face her, “we’re a band. You’re a quarter of it. But it’s not just the four of us playing. Anyone can do that. We’ve got something. You can feel it. I can feel it. We all feel it. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be talking. You know that better than any of us. Music is in your blood. If it weren’t, you wouldn’t be here. It has to come from inside us, and that’s not just about playing and practicing. It comes from living and breathing it. It comes from how we live, where we eat, where we sleep, and what we think about when we’re not playing. You don’t get to the core by polishing the outside. You gotta go deeper. We have to live inside. Live the good and the bad. It’s all gotta come out. However the fuck it wants to.”

  Ethan stopped. Sydney was staring at him. There was something in her eyes, a twinkle maybe. Some might have called it love and mistaken it for something it wasn’t. It could destroy the possibilities of what the union of two minds could create. Ethan had begun to understand how love changed the game. But love between man and woman—between people—could be misleading. Love created. The love between two created the miracle of life. But the love in people created all the rest. Confusing the two devastated lives—maybe that was the court evil liked to play on.

  In the darkness, Ethan felt his face tighten. “Sydney?” he said, trying to figure out whether she understood what he was saying.

  “Yes?” Her lips curved into a smile. The tears were gone.

  “Does it make sense?” He shifted in the seat.

  “Already said I was in, didn’t I?”

  Her mouth hardly opened. Her left hand went back to the steering wheel. Ethan turned and looked through the windshield, wondering whether he’d missed something.

  “I guess I said all that for nothing.”

  “It wasn’t for nothing. I think it’s clearer to you now.” She grabbed the steering wheel with her other hand. “I’m fuckin’ tired and still have to drive to my aunt’s.”

  “You can stay here if you want,” Ethan said. Not wanting to insinuate the wrong idea, he quickly added, “Mom always has the guest room ready.”

  “My aunt needs the car in the morning, but thanks.”

  Ethan opened the passenger door and climbed out. “Great night, Sydney. ‘American Woman’ was fucking amazing.”

  Sydney restarted the car. “Thanks.” She waved her hand.

  Ethan heard the transmission clunk into reverse as he closed the door. The car started to move backward and stopped. Ethan remembered his microphone case and hustled back.

  “You know what fucking scares me the most?” she said as he opened the door.

  Ethan shook his head. He felt his own tiredness coming on but sat back down in the passenger seat.

  “It’s you,” she said, her dark eyes on him like those of a mother warning a child.

  Ethan straightened his shoulders and leaned his head back. “Me?”

  “Yes, you.” She took her right hand off the steering wheel and pointed her index finger at him. “You do something I’ve never seen before. It’s something in the way you perform. Everyone watching feels it. I know. I’ve asked. You’re able to touch something inside people.”

  Sydney opened her hand as if to offer him something he couldn’t see. “I’ve seen a lot of performers, some with even more talent.” She stopped, raising her eyebrows as if what she said might be true. “But they couldn’t touch that inside part. I don’t know what it is. It’s hard to describe. You just know when you feel it. You have a way of reaching people they can’t turn away from. Look at tonight. Sure, ‘American Woman’ and ‘Don’t Look Back’ were spectacular.” She smiled. “But it was how you sang and performed the songs that had everyone responding. You’re like a spectacle we can’t turn away from.”

  “But—”

  Sydney raised her hand. “Let me finish. I have to get this out. It scares the fuck out of me, Ethan.
You can say what you want about our music and playing, but it’s you who connects everything—the audience, the music, us. It’s you people will come to see, ’cause it’s you who makes them feel. You make us fucking feel when we’re playing. You have that thing. I don’t know what to call it. Charisma? It’s that thing beyond us. It makes Robert Plant Led Zeppelin and Mick Jagger the Rolling Stones. Yeah, we love the music and the bands, but it’s the stars performing their art that makes it fucking magical.”

  She stopped for a moment, as if to emphasize her point. “That, Ethan, is what fucking scares me.”

  She turned and appeared to stare at the backs of her hands, which were clutching the steering wheel. “Someone else will see you. I saw it at art school—and in high school. Someone with money and fuck knows what else. They will steal you away from us. And without you, we’re just another band—great musicians, mind you—filling the air with song.”

  She smiled at her last comment but didn’t look at him. “Don’t say anything, Ethan. It’s like attending your own funeral. You can’t see you. It’s a gift—a special gift from God. You can only see your reflection. You can’t feel how you make others feel. It’s such a fucking paradox.”

  Ethan didn’t say a word. Sydney had framed her words so that a reply would only have demonstrated her point further.

  He couldn’t refute what she was saying. Ethan knew there was something special about the way he performed, but instead of trying to figure it out, he just went with it. The words he sang took him away to another place. It was like being back onstage, rehearsing Another Color Blue with Mila, going somewhere else—creating another world—unable to realize what it did to others. Despite feeling alone, he wasn’t alone at all.

  “But,” Sydney added, looking right at him, “I’m in regardless. I’ll start hunting for a place tomorrow—and it’s tomorrow already.”

  “Good,” Ethan said, climbing out of the car for the second time. He was too tired to think of anything else to say. He closed the door and watched Sydney back out of his parents’ driveway.