“Can I meet you later? At one? For another coffee?” he shouted, already moving across the street, pointing to the restaurant they had just left.
“Okay,” Christa said. She waved her hand. “Goodbye.”
CHAPTER 35
Wednesday, November 28, 1984
Syd was around the corner by the time he caught up with her.
“What’s going on?” he asked, running up behind her, out of breath.
“Like you give a shit!” she shouted without slowing down.
“Where are you going?”
“Away—away from this fucking bullshit!” she yelled, turning to look at Ethan but still not slowing down.
“Can you wait a second?” he said. “What the hell happened? I step out for a few minutes—”
“A few minutes! You’ve been gone for a fucking hour! Greg’s all cranked up, sayin’ we sound like shit! Raj is fucking furious.”
“Fuck. You know what?” He stopped. Syd kept walking. Ethan looked at his watch in disbelief. Their session was over—and maybe more. He’d let her go. Nothing was getting fixed. They were supposed to be recording a couple of songs but instead seemed intent on destroying themselves.
His head was swimming, his emotions reeling, and it was all his fault. Less than an hour ago, his world had seemed to be coming around. Now it had flipped upside down. Syd was enraged. Christa was confused. Raj had likely quit. God only knew about Greg and Gus. Chaos had suddenly taken over his world.
As he turned the corner to the street side of the studio, he saw Gus crouched down on the sidewalk, picking up pieces of the smashed Martin.
“I don’t know, Ethan,” Gus said, shaking his head. “Syd loves guitars, but she’s out of control.”
Ethan didn’t say anything as he picked up a few pieces of splintered wood. Even to his eyes, the demolished guitar was a sorry sight.
“Greg treats everyone like shit, but Syd gets the worst of it, especially when you’re not around. He’s got a real hate on for her, like he’s jealous or something.”
“Jealous?” Ethan said. “Of what?”
“You and Syd.”
“I thought we put that behind us,” Ethan said, knowing that what Greg had walked in on wasn’t something easily put behind them.
“Yeah, right, you fucking fixed everything with your magic wand. Are you shittin’ me?”
Ethan could feel a sudden rage coming on. He wound up and threw the pieces of wood in his hands onto the sidewalk.
“Fuck. I don’t need this shit either,” he said, seething. He glared at Gus, indignant that things had gotten out of hand so quickly.
Gus shrugged and looked at the pieces of guitar Ethan had thrown down.
“We’ve got two fucking days to get our shit together, or we’re fucking through,” Ethan said.
“No kidding,” Gus said, brushing hair from his eyes.
“Listen,” Ethan said, picking up the wood pieces he’d thrown onto the sidewalk. He stood up and pushed open the front door of the studio. “I’ll talk to Greg. If he’s got to go, so be it, but it’s too late to find another drummer. We gotta fucking get through the next two days.”
Ethan held the door for Gus, whose hands were full of the broken guitar pieces. Ethan shook his head. Money was tight. Replacing a $500 guitar wouldn’t help.
“Where’s Raj?” he asked, closing the door behind them.
“He left when Greg laid into Syd.”
Gus took the remnants of the guitar out the back door of the studio. A jazz ensemble was squeezing into the recording room, lost in tuning their instruments. Ethan didn’t recognize anyone from the day before. He waved at the recording engineer and followed Gus out back.
“Where did Greg go?”
“Who knows? I don’t really care,” Gus said, opening the van.
They loaded Greg’s remaining drums and Syd’s amp and left for the house. They were halfway there when Ethan realized what he’d done.
“Holy shit!” he shouted. “Turn around. I’m a fucking asshole!”
If he could have, he would have cried.
CHAPTER 36
Wednesday, November 28, 1984
It took twenty minutes to get back to Focus Sound. Ethan ran across the street to Nancy’s Restaurant but knew before he got there he wouldn’t find her.
“Fuck, I’m a jerk!” he said, climbing back into the van.
“Hard to disagree,” Gus replied, half a smile on his face.
“I’m serious, man,” Ethan replied, more gut-wrenchingly disappointed than angry. He didn’t know how he would find her; he was sure he’d thrown her number away. “There’s this girl—”
“Yeah, I know,” Gus said. “There’s a lot of them but one you gotta deal with now.”
Ethan turned and looked at Gus. Gus didn’t say any more. He didn’t need to.
Ethan rethought what he was about to say. “Yeah, I know.”
“She’s hurtin’ bad, dude. You messed her up. Ya gotta fix it.”
Ethan didn’t know what he was going to do or what to think. He had to fix things with Syd, but Christa was the one on his mind. He’d let her down too. The last thing in the world he wanted to do was jeopardize what they had started—or restarted—yet he’d already done so.
Gus drove them back to the house. Neither said much on the way. Ethan was exhausted and figured Gus was too. There was no sign of Syd or Greg when they reached the house. Ethan couldn’t think much beyond Christa. The Release had another show to do at Tormo that night.
Gus was first to break the silence while they unloaded.
“Why don’t we go through ‘You Don’t Know What You’re Saying’ and ‘Don’t Tell Me’?”
Ethan smiled. He knew Gus wanted the Release to happen as much as any of them. It was all he had too. Being older, he’d brought perspective to what they were doing and how impossible it was. But that didn’t seem to deter him. His alternative was working in a factory alongside his father. He’d told Ethan when they first met, “Anybody can do the possible, but the impossible is extraordinary.” Ethan wondered if he still felt that way.
“I can show you what Syd and I worked on. I think I can manage most of her parts.”
Ethan wondered what look he had on his face, as Gus stopped and quickly rephrased what he’d said.
“I can’t play it like she can,” he said, “but it’ll be good enough to sing to. Raj seemed to like it, even though it took a while.”
Gus picked up Syd’s acoustic in the living room. Ethan had seen him play a few times. He was good and knew what he was doing, but he wasn’t Syd.
Ethan started to sing and was soon lost in “You Don’t Know What You’re Saying.” It seemed but a moment before he opened his eyes. Gus was staring at him.
“I’ll be pissed if you don’t sing like that tomorrow,” he said as Ethan blinked. “That was unbelievable. Raj’ll hate missing that one.”
“Yeah, if he’s even there.”
“He’ll be there,” Gus said, nodding. “I don’t know where you go when you close your eyes, but the way you can portray a song can change the world. You, my friend, have a gift.”
Gus then set the guitar in its stand and opened the case to his bass. The black Fender Jazz was his baby, as the white Gibson was Syd’s.
“Seeing as that went well, let’s try something a little different.”
“A little different?” Ethan said, smiling as he stood in front of his mike. “You directing is a lot different.”
Gus laughed. “We’ve got two fucking days. We gotta do something different.”
Gus wanted Ethan to sing to his bass line for “Don’t Tell Me.” Ethan took a bit to find the melody, but once he had it, he was off. At first, it was as if they were trying to play two different songs at the same time, but gradually, his singing seemed to coupl
e with Gus’s bass notes. Midway through the song, he closed his eyes. He could feel Christa’s hand in his and see her cheeks wet with tears. His words were kind and gentle:
You can’t know what I’m feeling.
You can’t know who I am.
You can think that you know me,
but don’t tell me again.
When they’d finished, Gus screamed, “Ethan! That was crazy!”
Ethan’s eyes flashed open when he heard his name. He knew crazy. His hand was on the side of his leg—empty.
“Raj would be dying right now,” Gus said, adjusting the volume knob on his bass.
As if Gus’s voice were the prompt, their front door suddenly banged open. The sound startled Ethan as he tried to figure out where he was coming back from. He looked at his watch. It was almost six. The afternoon had disappeared.
Greg walked into the living room with a girl Ethan had never seen before.
“Where the fuck is Syd?” Greg asked without saying hello to either of them. He looked like the walking dead.
“Who wants to know?” Gus answered.
“What the fuck does that mean?” Greg said, moving past the girl, who looked as strung out as he did. “I don’t need your fucking attitude.”
“Feeling’s mutual, stud man,” Gus retorted, undoing his guitar strap. “A little early to come down, don’t you think?”
“What the fuck?” Greg snarled, holding his hands out in front of him as if to show he had nothing to hide. “Is it gang-up-on-Greg time?”
“I need to take a shit,” Gus said, placing his bass in its case and then brushing past Greg and the girl.
“What’ve you been doing?” Ethan asked as Greg came into their rehearsal living room space.
Greg ignored his question. The unknown girl stood behind him.
“Where’s Syd?” Greg said.
“Dunno. We’ve been practicing,” Ethan said, his eyes moving from Greg to the girl and back again. “And this is?”
“A friend,” Greg answered.
“Hi, friend,” Ethan said.
The girl nodded, her big, frizzy brown hair floating forward and back like a duster. She didn’t say anything.
“My room’s the first door back on the left,” Greg said to the girl, speaking just above a whisper.
“What’s goin’ on?” Ethan asked as the girl left.
“Nothing,” Greg said, rubbing his forehead with his fingers. “Needed a break s’all.”
“I heard something like that. What gives? Why are you hating on Syd?”
“Ah, come on, Eth. You were fucking right here!” Greg exclaimed, extending his hands to imitate Ethan holding Syd in front of him. His hips gyrated forward, simulating the act. “What’s goin’ on? Fuck, I should be askin’ you.”
Ethan rubbed his hands together as if he were trying to wring his disgust away. Greg was really high. Ethan wondered if he even knew what he was saying. He didn’t know which bothered him more—Greg or his own actions.
“I said I was sorry.”
“Yeah, fuck, that makes it all right, Eth,” Greg said, flipping his left arm in the air as if he were shooing a fly. “You and your fucking high-and-mighty shit.”
Greg’s words sent a bolt of fury straight to Ethan’s head. He didn’t think. His left foot came forward as he swung his right arm, and his fist caught Greg unaware and hard across the left side of his face. Greg dropped as if the floor had disappeared beneath him. He looked up, stunned.
“Don’t you ever fucking say that again!” Ethan hissed, his lips tight against his teeth. Rage engulfed him. He knew how people could kill; he’d never used his fists to solve anything.
As if on cue, the front door opened again, and in walked Syd. She looked horrified. It was all Ethan needed to see. His rage began to dissipate. Greg was on the floor, still in apparent awe of how he’d come to be there.
“What the fuck?” She gasped.
Ethan didn’t say anything, looking from Syd back to Greg.
“So it’s fucking come to this?” Greg said, rubbing the side of his face.
“Of course it’s come to this,” Ethan said with fight still in him but his anger fading. “We’re either all together or all apart—there is no middle.”
Gus came back into the living room.
“Interesting timing,” Ethan said, looking at Syd and putting his hand out to Greg to help him up.
“Fuck, that hurt,” Greg whined, rubbing his jaw.
“Better get some ice on that,” Syd said, surprising Ethan and staring at Greg with what looked like genuine compassion.
Ethan figured it was more guilt than care, as she likely felt partly responsible for what she could only surmise had taken place. Either way, Ethan was glad to see her reaction.
“You’re gonna look like fucking Frankenstein tomorrow,” she added, taking the pizza box she’d come in with to the kitchen. “I thought we could use a bite before we got started.”
She returned with a bag of ice. Nothing more was said. They each grabbed a slice of the pepperoni pizza. After one slice, Gus slung the strap of his bass over his shoulder.
“I want to start with ‘Don’t Tell Me,’” he said, flicking his amp’s power switch. “Ethan did his thing—it’s hard to call it just singing—while I played. It was stunning.”
He plucked his strings a couple of times as his amp came on. “I’d like to work out something different with the guitar,” he said, looking at Syd. “I’m telling you—it was fuckin’ cool.”
He played the opening riff with a flourish at the end. Ethan started.
“You can’t know what I’m feeling,” he sang.
“Hey, can I not finish my pizza?” Greg complained. He was nursing his injured face with the ice in one hand. A slice of pizza was in his other.
Ethan stopped. He looked at Greg’s swollen face. He’d wronged his friend.
“Sorry about the punch.”
“Fucking deserved it,” Greg replied. Ethan saw Syd raise her eyebrows.
“Prob’ly,” Syd said, standing up. It was obvious she was itching to get at Gus’s proposal.
As Greg stood up, Gus started to play, pressing the thick strings precisely against the fret board of his bass. Ethan looked on with envy. It was like watching how a sculptor molded clay into an imagined shape—inspiring to watch.
As he played, Syd stepped in, shaping sounds that accented Gus’s bass line. Ethan realized that was what completed Syd as a musician—she had the uncanny ability not only to step up and lead with aplomb and style but also to make other players sound even better.
Ethan knelt down on their worn gray carpet to listen.
They were coming together after another eruption to create something new, as if they were discovering a place they’d never been before. Creating wasn’t a process. It was about being together, coming in sync and doing, and then changing and doing again. Emotions of anger, joy, rage, and love mixed in a batter of frustration, beauty, and wonder, determined to find something and maybe nothing—but maybe truth. Creativity involved feeling it and doing it over and over again, intuitively knowing something was there yet not knowing what it was or wasn’t until it was. It was having the courage to keep going, close to the edge, an instant or eons away from paradise or doom. It was surviving to discover new and better places. If it didn’t die, it lived. There was a power in seeing belief come to fruition, creating a thing from nothing. Living together, sticking to what they believed in their hearts, made it possible. If they could only get through the other stuff, the stuff that separated the great from the mediocre, they could do things that were unachievable any other way.
To Ethan’s amazement, Greg picked up his drumsticks and started what sounded like a click-track on the rim of his snare. He wasn’t just a metronome. It was part of the music. Syd was smiling as her fing
ers eased across the neck of her Gibson. Gus was leading the song with his bass line. Syd played slowly and then, for an instant, ferociously fast, her musical instinct breathtaking. It was just enough to bring brilliance to Gus’s playing. All the while, Greg kept tapping—once on, a triple, once off, once on—in rhythmic unison.
Enthralled in the privilege and magnitude of the moment, listening to three totally synced musicians, Ethan suddenly realized the need to record what he was witnessing. Raj would have been coming apart. Gus had a small cassette recorder in his room.
Moments later, Ethan had a new cassette recording the music blossoming around them.
Gus winked at Ethan, cuing him to sing.
Ethan grabbed his microphone and closed his eyes.
You can’t know what I’m feeling.
You can’t know who I am.
Christa was in the window. Light from the streetlamp reflected off her gold hoop earrings.
CHAPTER 37
Friday, November 30, 1984
“I haven’t a clue where to find her,” Ethan said.
They’d finished recording their last song at Focus Sound. Ethan was sitting with Syd at Nancy’s Restaurant, in the same seats where he’d talked to Christa. He was questioning whether their meeting had even taken place. Had it all been an episode? In truth, he knew it hadn’t been, because he couldn’t remember what happened when he went away, except for the space left in his memory. He remembered everything with Christa. His discovery of who she was, the tears, and his aching heart were evidence enough. She dominated both his conscious and unconscious thoughts. Their meeting had been as real as the conversation he was having with Syd.
Christa was real.
“Did you try the hospital?”
“Syd,” Ethan said, sighing in exasperation, “that’s where I started. They don’t give that kind of information away, especially to past patients.”
“You know the saying ‘If she’s to be with you, she’ll come back’?” Syd said after a sip of coffee.
“No, I don’t know that saying,” he said, his lips curved tightly with smugness.
Syd rolled her eyes. “I’m trying.”
The Musician Page 18