The Musician

by Douglas Gardham

  “I don’t know why I ask you,” Ethan replied. He was holding the new Shure mike his folks had given him for Christmas, pressing the phone between his ear and his shoulder. He loved the clarity the new mike gave his voice. Carlyn had brought it by the house on a surprise visit a few days into the new year. She’d said it was sitting around the house, collecting dust. Their parents weren’t returning it. He might as well use it.

  Jonah let him go with instructions to call Jamie. Ethan put the mike back in its hard-shell case.

  Jamie was Jonah’s assistant and chief organizer. Ethan had Jamie’s number tucked in his wallet. He didn’t really know her but had a feeling he would see more of her than he did Jonah. There was nothing Jonah did that Jamie didn’t know about or arrange. When Ethan called, she had his flight booked to get him to their next show on time. There would be a car waiting. His tickets would be with the driver picking him up from the shoot. She assured him everything would be fine.

  Ethan only knew the working title of the movie—Block One—and that it would be filmed mostly in Toronto. He’d been told that Sigourney Weaver had been cast in the lead role with a new star not much older than he was, Meg Tilly. He was supposed to pick up an updated copy of the script that evening. But when he got to the rented space on Shuter Street—an hour of public transit from the house—the script hadn’t arrived. They’d have the updated script delivered to him. He didn’t want it delivered. He’d come back. They couldn’t give him a time. He’d go with the script he had.

  Low on patience, having not eaten all day, he decided to grab a couple of pizza slices and headed to Pizza Pizza on the corner of Church and Dundas. He carried the two slices and a can of Coke to an empty table. He sat down in one of the plastic swivel chairs and reread the lines from the script he’d auditioned with while he ate. It was strange not to remember what he’d done in the last audition. The words felt familiar; acting was like singing when the Release performed. After he’d gone through the lines a couple of times, he decided to head back to the house.

  When he got back, he went to the living room, which looked empty with their gear gone. He started to read through the lines while sitting on the couch. About half of the scene was his. He’d gone over them again and again on the bus ride back. He pictured everything in his head in becoming someone else. He was getting nervous.

  “Hi,” said Syd. She was standing at the end of the hallway, looking into the living room.

  Ethan all but leaped from the couch. There was no way he could hide his alarm at seeing Syd standing there.

  “Hi yourself,” he replied, his face already feeling hot and dark. He might have been an actor, but he doubted he could have looked guiltier of trying to hide something. He felt like a teen caught in the bathroom with his pants around his ankles.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  He thought she was trying to sound surprised. He couldn’t help but think she knew his secret.

  “I’m rehearsing. What are you doing?” he asked, answering her question with his own to give himself time to think of what next to say. He wasn’t about to reveal what he was up to or ready for her reaction, which he was sure wouldn’t be good.

  “Rehearsing for what?” she asked, her voice flat and unexcited. “It doesn’t sound like any of our songs.”

  “It’s not,” he said. It was a charade—his clues and her guesses. “Why are you here?”

  “I didn’t go,” she said, her face showing no emotion. He knew she wasn’t about to let him off the hook. “So what is it?”

  She was trying to sound innocent and unknowing, ignoring his question. Maybe she was the real actor.

  He was certain she knew. Based on what she’d told him in the car that night, she was the only one who would have suspected or put anything of the sort together. She was there to confront him with whatever it was he was up to, not that she ever would have told him that. He’d walked right into her trap, unsuspecting, like Batman into Poison Ivy’s lair.

  “So how are your parents?” she asked.

  “They’re okay,” he said.

  “Everything all right?” she asked, her intention beginning to seep into her questions.

  “Not really, they want to move,” he lied.

  “I thought you stayed for their will.”

  That was what he’d said. She knew.

  “The will led to moving,” he said.

  Syd forced a smile that looked more like a wince and went on, all but ignoring his answer.

  “So what are you working on?” She moved closer to him.

  “I’m putting some words together.”

  “Can I hear?” she asked, but she wasn’t asking permission. She moved toward the folding bridge chair she often sat in to play.

  “Sure,” he replied, wishing he had more strength to say no. “Why are you here? You were on your way to Windsor.”

  “I was.” She sat down. “But Greg was being his usual shitty self. I thought you could use some company on the long drive in your folks’ car. Thought I could save you a favor with them by taking you in mine. By the way, where’s their car?”

  “I have to pick it up,” he lied again.

  He was out of rungs on his ladder and knew it. Syd’s story made more sense than his. He was caught. She had stayed back to check up on him. The Release was her future. More than any of them, she had everything invested in the band. But in her words, he was the Release; he was her way out, and she was suspect of anything getting in the way of that outcome. Jonah was a big dot on her radar. She hadn’t trusted him from the start.

  “How’s Christa?” she asked. It was another check on her list of observations.

  “She’s fine,” he said, which was the truth, though he hadn’t talked to Christa in two days. They’d only managed a couple of real dates between his schedule and hers, but she never seemed to leave his thoughts. She had been to Ottawa over the holiday but hadn’t wanted to talk about it. He’d given her the copy of Browning Station he’d bought her for Christmas. She’d seemed amazed by the gift; a funny smile had crossed her face as she’d held the novel in her hands. After he’d told her about the audition and getting the part, she’d held up Browning Station and said this would be the part for him. “She might come over later.” It was another lie.

  “Yeah?” Syd gave a forced smile, and he knew she wasn’t finished. “So can I hear what you’re working on?”

  Ethan was about to make up some words and create a whole story around a new song he was working out, but he didn’t have it in him. He couldn’t keep lying. Syd deserved better. They’d had an honest relationship up until Greg had caught them there in the living room. That had changed things. Now alone, he was in the same predicament they’d been in then. He couldn’t mess with her again, not after what he’d said that night. The house was supposed to bring them to the truth, which was exactly what was happening, as emotional and hurtful as that might have been—real art, genuine and honest. Building another facade would take him even further away from that goal. He wasn’t just lying to Syd, though; he was lying to himself. There was more between them than he’d understood until that night. Christa had changed things, but the situation was complicated. The truth was, his acting was the beginning of the end for the Release. Another lie would only make it worse.

  “I am putting words together,” he said, looking at the floor. When he looked up, Syd was staring at him. “But it’s not for a new song.”

  Syd’s eyes didn’t waver.

  “I’ve a part in a movie.”

  Syd didn’t move or say anything. She stared through him as if he’d ceased to exist.

  Ethan couldn’t stand the silence. “There’s something you don’t know about me,” he said, but before he could go on, Syd exploded.

  “Fuck!” she screamed, and she stood up. “I knew it! Fuck, I knew it!”

  “Syd,
it’s—”

  “Don’t say another fucking word!” she cried.

  She turned and walked out of the living room. He heard her door slam. Ethan slid to the floor, his back against the couch.

  He picked up the script. His heart hurt. He’d known what was going to happen. Acting would end the Release. He knew it, Jonah knew it, and Syd knew it. Acting seemed to bring an end to everything else he loved.

  CHAPTER 56

  Wednesday, January 16, 1985

  Ethan knew there was a possibility he’d never see Syd again, and he certainly wouldn’t that night, but in less than five minutes, he got a surprise. The words in the script were just becoming visible again to his misty eyesight when she reappeared at the entrance to the living room.

  “Are you planning to quit us?” she asked.

  He stood up, holding the script in his hand. “No,” he said, ignoring what he’d come to realize would inevitably take place.

  “Why all the secrecy then?”

  “It’s not a secret,” he said, finding honesty a difficult place to be. “Acting’s something I’m interested in. Like reading or hockey.”

  “Then why not just say that?”

  Ethan hesitated. He knew the answer but wasn’t ready to admit it. “Because I need to tell you how I came to be at your family’s restaurant that day.”

  Syd went back to her folding bridge chair. She was wearing her faded jean jacket and tight jeans. The sleeve of her jacket was torn at the shoulder. Bright red socks had replaced her Converse running shoes. She pulled her legs up so her feet were on the seat, her arms wrapped around her shins.

  Ethan sat down on the couch.

  “I’ve hinted at it,” he said, setting the script on the cushion beside him. He needed more time with his lines, but he owed Syd an explanation. “I was heading home from six months in an Ottawa hospital.”

  “I know that, Ethan. You’ve told me a few times.”

  “But I haven’t told you why.”

  “Okay.” Syd’s eyebrows rose in concert with her shoulders. “Why? You have my fucking undivided.”

  Syd would tolerate him for a while, but he’d learned that any interference with what she wanted to do pissed her off and became an obstacle to get past.

  “I met a girl.” Ethan paused, unable to say her name.

  “Christa,” Syd said, filling in the blank. “I know this part too.”

  “No,” he said. The mention of Christa’s name caused him to wonder what she was doing. He couldn’t let it interrupt his explanation. “Not Christa. Her name was Mila.”

  Syd didn’t say a word. Her right leg slid off the chair.

  “Mila was the love of my life,” he said. He looked away, feeling his throat tighten. He couldn’t break down. Tears would only misdirect what he was trying to explain. “She was murdered by my roommate.”

  He waited. The tears held on. Syd didn’t move.

  “I went away,” he said, realizing after he said it that it wasn’t enough to explain what he’d gone through. “I withdrew. I created a world inside my head. I can’t remember any of it, only feelings.”

  He stopped. He was doing okay.

  “When we met at the restaurant, I’d been living in my head for half a year. I’d only been back for a few weeks.”

  Again, he stopped and looked at her. Syd was looking at the floor, one red-socked foot sweeping back and forth.

  “Okay, but why are you telling me this?”

  He was going to tell her more about the hospital and his recovery but decided it was more self-serving than purposeful to what he was trying to explain about acting and what it meant to him.

  “It was Mila,” he said before fully thinking out what he was saying, “who brought me to acting. My ability—”

  He hesitated again but went on before Syd could say anything more.

  “I’ve been scared for a long time—scared that I will go away again and not come back next time. I don’t know why I came back.”

  Syd didn’t say anything, but her eyes didn’t move from his.

  “I go there now. And come back. That’s what you see when I’m performing.”

  Ethan listened to what he was saying. In telling her, it was as if he were explaining what he was experiencing to himself.

  “It bothers me how I don’t remember anything after I go away. It freaked me out at first. I don’t know why I come back. But I do. I get more used to it all the time. I shunned acting because of it.”

  He stopped, but he wasn’t finished. “I don’t want to stop performing with the Release, but I can’t ignore acting anymore.”

  He held up the script. “I don’t know why it’s happened this way,” he said, looking from the script to Syd. “Jonah threw gasoline on an ember in my gut. It didn’t just light up; it exploded. I feel helpless to do anything but accept it. It’s like I can’t not do it. My first audition was before Christmas. We start shooting tomorrow.”

  A long pause followed his explanation. Syd sat quietly, seeming to take it all in.

  “What about us, Ethan?” she said finally, her passion growing with each word. “What about the Release? What about what we’ve fucking created?”

  “I’m not leaving the Release, Syd,” he said, trying to convince himself as much as Syd. “I don’t want to.”

  “But you fucking do!” she shouted. “You can’t help yourself!”

  She was standing and shaking her head. Her fists were clenched at her sides. Her thin arms shook, as if she wanted to strike something—anything.

  “Once this acting shit gets going, it’s over. Fuck the Release!”

  Ethan could see the rage in her face, as he had the day she’d destroyed the guitar outside Focus Sound.

  “Syd,” he said, holding the script out as if he were offering it to her, “I can’t change how I feel. It’s nobody’s fault. I’m trying to do the right thing.”

  Syd stood still, as if ice had suddenly filled her body.

  “The right thing?” she screamed, pointing her finger at him. If a mere look could have ripped a person apart, Ethan would have been shredded. She grabbed the chair she’d been sitting in and flung it across the living room. “If I hadn’t been here, nothing would have happened! I fucking caught you!”

  Ethan didn’t say a word. He had nothing left.

  “You should have fuckin’ told me—told us,” she said, walking toward the hallway. “This is a shitty way to find out.” She stopped and turned. “Do Greg and Gus know?”

  Ethan shook his head.

  Syd brushed her hair from her forehead. “I hope they hate you, you fucking coward!” she yelled, and she disappeared down the hallway.

  Ethan cringed, more inside than out. Maybe he didn’t know what he wanted, but he didn’t want this. Acting was everything. Acting gave the Release their edge. Their original songs and new arrangements of cover tunes were good, but his acting made them come alive. Syd knew that better than anyone—even better than he did.

  The door to her room slammed. This wouldn’t be the end. Syd was a fighter. Minutes later, she reappeared with her jean jacket in hand and stood at the entrance to the living room. She looked at him for a second and then turned and left, slamming the front door on her way out.

  Ethan didn’t know what to do. He went back to the couch and picked up the script. As hard as it was, he started to read through his lines again, committing them to memory. It would take some time before his head was back to the person he was to portray. He could feel the person in the words. It wasn’t long before they weren’t words in a script. The feeling he got from acting again was like the balance that came back when riding a bike—a familiar comfort that was difficult to understand and even harder to explain but nevertheless real. His emotions with Syd were real but became part of his art; his hurt became his character’s hurt.

 
; He didn’t want to imagine, nor could he imagine, doing anything else.

  CHAPTER 57

  Thursday, January 17, 1985

  Where his lines went, he didn’t know. They were his words, but not what his character was supposed to be saying.

  “Cut! Cut!” shouted Jake, directing the scene. “That was your line.” He glared at Ethan. “Stick to the script, please.”

  “I know,” Ethan replied, frustrated, shaking his head, at odds with himself for not producing his line.

  “Do you need more time?” Jake asked, rubbing his bicep and then shoving the sleeve of his shirt up his forearm. His unshaven face accentuated his bloodshot eyes.

  “No, I’m good,” Ethan said, feeling the exact opposite.

  “Okay then, let’s go again,” Jake said. “On script. When you’re ready.”

  A guy in black jeans who looked about Carlyn’s age raised the slate and banged the clapper.

  “Action.”

  Ethan started. He paused before he spoke, only this time it was his character’s intention to do so.

  The solemnness of the church where they were shooting struck him; the hardwood pews were rigid against his thighs, and the worn wood rails were smooth in his hands. There was a musty dampness in the air.

  “Cut! Great!” were the next words he heard. He saw Jake stand up from his cloth chair. “The pause works. Rewrite!”

  When he came back from wherever he’d gone, Ethan couldn’t remember what he’d said. He’d become the person he was portraying. It was a good feeling yet unsettling, as if his conscious mind were trying to pull together the pieces of a pleasant dream as they faded. It didn’t matter. Jake seemed happy.

  His mind might have been displaced with who he’d become temporarily during that first morning shoot, but his itinerary to get to the Release’s show in Windsor now filled his thoughts.

  The taxi was waiting at the gate when he came out of Lakeshore Studios. It took him almost an hour to get to Pearson from downtown. The night’s set was going through his head as they drove up to the front of the terminal building. Cheap Trick’s “If You Want My Love” was playing on the radio and struck him as another tune the Release could cover.