Gutter - Part 1: The Rise

by Tiana Laveen

  She looked up into his eyes, then nodded.

  “I’m not asking you to not tell her about the money part. I’m just asking you to call me first.”

  “As much as I want to, I can’t do that, either. My contract is with her. I’m so sorry. I hope you understand.” She tossed on a smile, but he didn’t smile back. He didn’t look exactly angry, either. Gutter wore emotions in a strange sort of way. He dressed in them, then hid them behind a veil of sorts. Some of his songs were so rich and passionate, even the dark and depraved ones, there was no way a songwriter like that could not feel a damn thing at this moment. He and his mother were in that room together, yet it appeared as if they were miles apart. He seemed to be just going through the motions.

  Gutter turned abruptly and walked away toward the urns. He reached out and picked out a cobalt blue one with silver accents. The large vessel looked small in his grasp.

  “Isn’t that pretty, Zake?” his mother said loudly as she stood next to a white and rose gold casket from across the room. “Everything in here is so nice!” She moved about, flittering from display to display like a butterfly, then doubling back before jotting down notes in some little spiral notebook she clutched like a lifeline.

  “Yeah… everything in here is real nice, Jennifer. And I mean everything.” He tossed a dark smile at Promise and placed the urn carefully back into place. The megastar began to whistle the melody of ‘Sitting on the Dock of the Bay.’ That whistling soon turned into a full-fledged concert. The way his voice wrapped around the lyrics stung her right in the heart. Gutter’s voice boomed with no equipment needed. His command over the notes and the way he sounded just like Otis Redding was mind-blowing.

  That musical gift poured out of his mouth like hot butter and chaotic lightning tearing into the atmosphere. His voice carried her away through highs and lows, and moved her spirit. It bustled through the place like invisible planes, trains, and automobiles. Soon, several people had entered the room, co-workers and clients, all curious as to who was singing in such a way. They stared in awe while Gutter sang his heart out like a pro.

  The records don’t do him justice. My God…

  “…Wasting time…” He finished the song with no warning, then picked up another urn. This one was black and white, a marble design. Dropping it to the ground, it shattered into a million pieces. The entire room lit up in shock. Gutter stared down at the mess. That damn urn was one of their most expensive.

  “Oops,” he said with a broad smile, then a chuckle, as he looked around the room.

  “Zake!” his mother exclaimed, looking clearly horrified. Her little notebook shook in her trembling hand.

  “It’s all right, Ms. Cassidy. Accidents happen. We’ll get someone to clean it up.” Promise immediately whipped out her phone to call maintenance. Rebecca was surely going to lose her shit when this got back to her.

  “Looks like I’ll have to pony up some cash. Give me a call so you can tell me how much I owe you, all right? I’ll make sure everything is paid in full.”

  And then, he walked out the room, making a grand exit.

  Oh my goodness. This sneaky son of a bitch…

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Wild Dogs, Wheat Bread and Women

  Gutter stood out on the cracked sidewalk in front of his old childhood house on Linden Avenue. Dad and his siblings had lived in two different homes in the neighborhood when he was a child, and this one, an old light blue attractive house with a sizeable backyard, was the one he missed the most. It was vacant now, but he imagined himself still inside, living there. Then, he imagined himself waiting for a bus that would never come, and from there, he drowned in the reminiscing.

  A car drove past, blasting ‘Pumped up Kicks,’ by Foster the People. He placed the earbuds in his ear, and ‘Walking on a Dream’ by Empire of the Sun played in full blast. He bobbed his head and swayed to the rhythm, black hoodie shielding his eyes from the strong rays of the sun. For just a moment, the two songs fused together and he rather enjoyed the sound. Memories chased him down, caught him by the ankle, and dragged him into the recesses of history…

  The wild dogs raced the streets in the 1990s, howling and terrorizing the dope fiends late into the night while rap and rock music poured from the apartment windows. This was Red Hook. Used needles pressed in the soil left imprints like ancient artifacts, and dusty sneakers hanging over wires were the city’s fruit. Red Hook. The birthplace of Al Capone. It’s a peninsula. No subway can bring ya to the RH… Buses, cabs, and ferries only. It used to be less than three bucks on the ferries coming in from Manhattan, but the price is now five dollars. Still cheap. Gentrification came into Red Hook and is spreading like a fucking disease. The guys in charge want this land – it’s waterfront property.

  Fuckin’ IKEA of all things. They got rid of a lot of history to put that store here and made promises they never kept. Something else blew in however that did far more damage than a furniture store. Hurricane Sandy tore Red Hook up. Ripped her face off her skull and stomped on her bones. Some of the stores and restaurants I used to see as a kid have vanished. Closed. Boarded up, or gone altogether, not even a piece of driftwood left. It’s taken a long time to get things fairly back to normal, but some of that memory is washed away for eternity. The projects still stand though, been here since 1939. Some of my friends lived in them. I grew up in this house behind me, then we moved over to Vassar Drive after my grandfather died and left my dad a modest inheritance. He figured it was time for a bigger house. I had a room on the first floor, easy access in and out. I always wanted to escape. Felt like I was trapped.

  I liked to leave more than I enjoyed coming back. The leaving was addictive. Travel. Going nowhere fast. I remember me and my brother running from those packs of wild dogs all around town after sneaking out of the house many times together. We’d go around in our big coats, braving the icy weather, walking along the Hudson River and Pier 9.

  Live music would play out of some of the clubs, and I remember tellin’ him to slow down when we’d pass one by. I heard blues. Country. Jazz. The sounds got inside of my soul, wrapped around it like a flame and warmed me up. I wanted to sound like those guys singing. If I could catch a glimpse in a window, I’d watch different performers singing their hearts out while people drank themselves to oblivion, tossed money into upturned hats, and partied their cares away. I wanted to do that. To perform in front of crowds and help them forget that they had a shitty day, or were shitty people, or had a shitty life that barely improved with the cruel ticking of time.

  I wanted to be allowed to be ME. My brother would always grow bored when I forced him to stick around and listen to musicians crooning in hole-in-the-wall dives, and so we’d start walking again. Close by was the Upper New York Bay and Gowanus Canal. Every now and again we’d get our jollies from watching some drunk being tossed out of a bar onto his ass. We’d laugh and point, rummage through his pockets for a few dollars, then run off into the night.

  Most of the time we weren’t doing anything crazy. We’d just talk. During those talks, I discovered just how smart my brother was. He knew shit I hadn’t even heard of, and I was two years older than him. Stuff about computers, whiz kid games, information about money and investments. What the hell was a twelve-year-old doing reading about the stock market? But he was. He talked about phones that were smaller than a credit card – how he wanted to invent that kind of device. And he wanted to make books that could be read from a computer, but small enough to carry around. He was into nerdy shit like that—Robots, sci-fi books, and technology—but didn’t look like a nerd. He was before his time.

  He told me years later that it was during those amazing walks that he found out I could really sing. He’d hear me in the house all the time, but said I sounded different when we were out of dad’s house. Maybe it was the natural acoustics? Maybe I was freer? Sometimes, while we were out, I’d just start singing, and it seemed I’d forget he was there. Cold air would escape my mouth, puffs of white fog, as I
crooned the tunes of our youth. Whatever was playing on the radio at that time I learned and sang. I could memorize lyrics fast, and I’d copy the original singer’s intonations, as well as study how they moved if they happened to have a music video on MTV, VHI-1, or BET. Singing, listening to music, talking. That’s what we’d do.

  We’d find shit to steal that was left out for the taking, or break into the dump and scavenge for odds and ends that could be repaired and made into something new. A broken bike. Skates. A guitar. I learned to play the guitar on a broken one covered in bird shit we’d found in that dump. I cleaned it off, fixed it, and made it happen. We’d find other shit, too. Someone’s cigarettes they’d dropped by mistake. Light ’em. Smoke ’em. Choke. Dumb shit. Oh, and last but not least, we were fucking perverts. Hormones raging.

  There was this chunky, middle-aged redhead lady with short curly hair who used to take a shower at the same time every night and if ya got behind some bushes, you could look in her window and see her big pink tits, the flaps of skin along her back, a rose tattoo on her shoulder, and her red pussy hair. When she’d turn around, we’d see her wide, flat ass covered in dimples.

  That was the first time I realized not all women looked like the ones in my father’s porn magazine collection, and yet, I was still turned on. Maybe even more so. I remember being real turned on by her fucking breasts the most. When I think back on it, I can’t help but laugh. What a fuckin’ shitty thing to do, lookin’ at possibly someone’s wife or grandma, but it helped pass the time. One time I stood on a trashcan to get a better look, but I weighed too much so I fell off when the thing caved beneath me, and that caused a loud ass banging noise. My brother was freaking out like some chicken, so we ran off, having no idea whether she heard or saw us.

  Of course, like the true idiots we were, we came back to the scene of the crime a few days later, and this time, the trashcan was gone and her window covered in some type of sheet. The free peek show was over. Dad suspected we’d been sneaking out but could never catch us. Zina, my older sister, was supposed to be watching us, but she hated having to deal with two younger brothers who purposefully made her life a living hell. Between Dad’s long hours, his second divorce from a woman he’d been married to for only a short time—after being single for years after Jenny flew the coop—he had a lot on his plate.

  It was crazy, really. Dad had three kids to raise by himself, and the money wasn’t always coming in right. The police even picked me up a couple of times over the years for some of the bullshit I’d do with my friends. So understandably, he was stressed the hell out…

  He pulled away from his thoughts and started to walk around again, getting reacquainted with his old stomping grounds. When he came back to Red Hook, he was always in his car when visiting Dad, never walking about like he did as a kid. Driving everywhere makes you miss a lot. You don’t see the things you used to see, smell the things you used to smell, and feel the hurt, pain, and love you used to feel. The great thing about being in Red Hook was people rarely bothered him here. They knew who the hell he was and treated him no different than before the fame. He knew these streets, these families since birth. Some people had moved away, but many remained. He wasn’t Gutter here. He was just Zake, Patrick’s boy, the big firefighter’s badass middle kid who could play football and sing his ass off.

  He blinked and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, trying to sort his thoughts that seemed all over the place. He’d left Jenny’s house the day before and had breakfast with his father that morning in a rundown restaurant with no sign. It felt like old times. They didn’t talk much about Jenny, but Dad knew about her situation. The entire family did. The song, ‘Float On,’ by Modest Mouse, he was listening to got interrupted by the vibration of an incoming call. He didn’t recognize the number, so he ignored it.

  After a while, he grew hungry, so he decided to drive back over to his father’s house to get something to eat, toss the shit for a bit, then put a little time into a new song he was working on, hoping to have it released on his next album due out the following spring. He’d also accepted some local interview requests his manager had secured for him, seeking ways to keep him working during the detour. He made his way to his black Ford F-150 that he kept in a local garage when not in town, tossed his phone and headset onto the passenger seat, and started it up. As he made the short jaunt over to his father’s house, he turned up the radio. ‘There She Goes,’ by Josh Fudge, was on the air.

  “Oh shit… They’re playin’ Josh Fudge? That’s what’s up…” Gutter had appreciated the unique artist since before he’d started to blow up.

  When he arrived, he used his key to enter his father’s house. He turned off the alarm, noticing it was a bit warm and stuffy despite the air conditioning running, so he cracked open a couple of windows near the brick fireplace.

  “Pop!” he yelled out as he headed to the dated white refrigerator in the kitchen. “Yo! Ya here old man? Your asshole son is back!” He waited for a reply. Nothing. Grabbing a loaf of bread covered in plastic, he closed the refrigerator door, which was covered in magnets and childhood pictures of him and his brother and sister. As he walked down the hall to his father’s bedroom, the warped wooden floor sighed beneath his weight.

  He entered the room and pushed back the shit brown curtains, exposing the dusty window from which he could see if his father’s van was on the side of the house where he typically parked it. It wasn’t there.

  He went back to the living room, grabbed the auxiliary cord, and plugged it into his phone before getting a portable speaker from his truck. Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ blasted through the house, rattling the damn windows while he made himself a pastrami sandwich on wheat bread that had expired two days prior.

  “ENTERTAIN US!” he belted, getting into the song. He played it over and over again, using it like medicine to cure that itch inside of him. The gloom and shadows within his heart were growing, and he wasn’t certain what to do or say to stop the dark spread. After he’d scarfed down a second sandwich, chased down with milk in a plastic cup, he turned the music down to a low rumble and plopped on the soft green couch, phone in hand. He opened his social media and about shit himself…

  Sorry about your mom! I’m your biggest fan!

  OMG! THAT SUCKS DUDE.

  GUTTER, MY MOM DIED OF CANCER, TOO! WE’RE CONNECTED NOW!

  Cry emoji… sad emoji… mad emoji…that strange purple horny devil emoji…

  He then spotted the inevitable on several gossip celebrity vlogs:

  Grammy Winning Singer Gutter Cancels Sold-Out Tour Due to Mother’s Death

  Of course, they’d gotten it wrong, in a major way.

  TEEN SPIRIT… A DENIAL… A DENIAL… A DENIAL…

  He shook his head. Pissed. Someone had let the dying cat out of the bag. Honestly, it could’ve been anyone. He knew it wasn’t his manager, nor the PR team. Probably someone at the fucking funeral home. Or maybe it was from this morning when I rode with Jenny to her doctor’s appointment. One of the nurses asked for my autograph…

  He’d been seen. A lot. Spotted. Outed. Jenny was sick. Jenny was dying. But unlike Van Halen, her name wasn’t Jamie, and she wasn’t crying. Now, after turning his social media back on earlier that morning, he was flooded with expressions of sympathy and condolences for a woman he barely knew but was very much alive. The cherry on top was the marriage proposal from some celebrity Instagram model he’d fucked the shit out of one time in Germany in the back of the tour bus.

  Jesus…

  He closed his eyes and ran his hand over his forehead. Just as he began to breathe again, his phone rang. The same strange number. Maybe I should get this. It could be someone from the PR Team, or maybe it’s about that club host gig Arthur wants me to do. If it’s some bullshit, I’ll just hang up and block them.

  “Yeah,” he answered. Hoping it wasn’t some telemarketer or a nutjob who’d somehow gotten a hold of his number and wanted to tell him about their special c
ult out in the middle of the woods where they sing to the grass and only eat blueberries dipped in goat blood.

  “Hello, is this Mr. Rayden?” He didn’t respond, just waited for the sales pitch about the timeshare, or something like that. “Uh, well, I’m assuming it is… This is Promise Bradford from—”

  “Oh, the funeral home. Hey, sweetie, what’s up? Are ya having a good day?” He yawned and sat up.

  “Hi.” The woman let out a tinkling laugh. He found it cute. Sexy. “Yes, I am. Thank you for asking.”

  “Yeah, no problem. Oh, you can relax. Just be yourself. I don’t need you to toss on your professional voice or anything like that.” She was quiet for a bit, as if uncertain how to respond. “What do you want?” he asked after the long silence.

  “I am calling you about the shit you pulled at the funeral home. The urn.”

  Smiling, he stroked his beard. “There you go. That’s more like it. You figured it out, huh?”

  “Mr. Rayden, I would—”

  “Call me Gutter… or Zake. So, how much is my mother’s invoice? Her total expenses she’s racked up so far? She told me she was going with you guys. She’s made up her mind. Email me the bill.”

  “I can send you an email, but it will be for the one item. Just pay for the urn. You must have an amazing eye because that was the most expensive one in our collection. Handmade. Italian marble and gold.”

  “I will pay for it, for sure. In more ways than one. I definitely have an amazing eye, too. I don’t miss a fuckin’ beat. You are pretty as hell, you know that? I like your style, too. Your hair and how you dress.”

  “Thank you.” She cleared her throat on the other end.

  “You’re welcome. You’re like the perfect combination of librarian, Morticia, and sex kitten, all rolled into one. I think it’s kinda cool that you hang in a morgue. You’re not easily scared, huh? Good. Neither am I. I tell people the dead aren’t creepy. It’s these motherfuckers walking around breathing amongst us with ulterior motives causing problems that we need to be leery of.”