Nine Volt Heart (14 page)

SUSI

“W
HAT THE HELL HAPPENED at my
house, Susi? I leave you with my cousin, and it’s destroyed. The neighbors
called the police twice about the noise. I can’t believe this of you.”

“We’ve only been at my house, Angelia, not your apartment.”

“Your crotchless underwear is hanging in my bathroom.”

“We were here every night. Jason is playing my dad’s old
Martin in the living room.”

“No, he’s here, passed out on my bed. Where he committed who
knows what travesties in my absence.”

“Then who’s here with me?”

“Well, it isn’t my jerk of a cousin. I’m throwing cold water
on him and tossing him the hell out of here. You failed to keep him from
wrecking himself again.”

JASON

S
HE CAME BACK SHAKING, looking
pale under her carefully constructed makeup.

“You aren’t Angelia’s cousin.”

“Who is Angelia?”

“Oh my god. You aren’t Jason Ferran.”

“Angelia sounds like someone in a song. Maybe by Dave Alvin
or Marty Robbins? One Raul Malo sings?”

“Sweet lord, I went to bed with a stranger.”

“That is not what happened, Susi. We spent a year together
over the last two days.”

“What else can you call it?”

“Two people found each other, discovered that they were two
flames burning as one, and fell in love as Heaven intended.”

“I picked up a stranger in a bar and slept with him. Lord,
if my father ever finds out—”

“That is not how we are going to explain it. We’ll tell him
the part about singing together and two flames as one, and—”

“You knew I mistook you for someone else.”

“Not until just now. I was about to tell you that I don’t
have a cousin.”

“Then you thought this whole time—oh god—you think I pick up
strangers and go to bed with them.”

“Susi, sweetheart, I mistook you for my friend’s cousin. It
was a long, long time between the bar and bed.”

“This is humiliating. What’s your name?”

“You’re hyperventilating, Susi. Take a deep breath and hold
it.”

“What’s your name?”

“Jason.”

“I mean Jason
what
?”

“Jason Taylor.”

“But you went to Prescott? Paul Harris knew you.”

“Yes, I went to Prescott, though they threw me out when I
went to Europe with my band.”

“Then that nonsense about playing in a bar band? I thought
you were teasing. That’s real? You really are a musician?”

“Yes, and I really am in love with you.”

“I don’t know anything about you. You could be a
psycho-killer or—”

“I’m a good guy, Susi. Guitarists are never psycho-killers.
We could search it on Google, and I’m sure it will show that even bad
guitarists are never dangerous. I’m fairly good.”

“And you don’t have a place to live? Or a car? You weren’t
joking?”

“It’s true about no car. I’ve never owned one because I
can’t drive. Not having a home is temporary. Anyway, what does Jason Ferran
have that I don’t?”

“He’s a private banker in London.”

“So he tells rich old ladies how to make more money? I always
thought that was a cover for high-priced gigolos. Susi, you aren’t marrying
him. I won’t stand for it.”

“I have never met Jason Ferran. Oh god. How did this happen?
You sat in that trustees meeting. I took you to Gwyneth’s house. Randolph’s
family met you, believing that—”

“Come on, Susi. Let’s cuddle up and calm down. This isn’t a
true catastrophe. It’s heaven. Or it was until your friend called. If the phone
rings again, please don’t answer.”

“Don’t touch me. I’m not someone who does that with strangers.”

“If you could let Jason Ferran touch you, why can’t Jason
Taylor? I know you far better than he does. Also, I’m in love with you. He’s
probably a cad who will string you along and then hurt you.”

“Stop teasing.”

“Laughing is the only way through this. Years from now, our
children will ask for the story over and over, so everyone can laugh. ‘Daddy,
tell us about when Mama picked you up at a bar and’—oh Susi, don’t cry.”

“Please let go of me. I can’t remember what I said to you. I
assumed Angelia told you all about me. She said—oh god, you don’t know anything
about me.”

“Let’s just start over, Susi.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s take a walk and get to know each other. Or let’s just
go back to bed. We were fine until we got out of bed.”

“I’m late for work. Most people have jobs, you know. You
have to leave. Right now.”

“You didn’t make me leave on the other days. I’m still the
same Jason. You can’t—”

“I can’t even think about it. And I can’t be late for
school.”

“When is class out at lunchtime? I’ll meet you at school.”

“I have appointments until late tonight. You can’t come to
the school.”

“I’ll be here when you get home tonight.”

“You can’t stay here. I don’t know who you are. You have to
go.”

“OK, Susi, I’ll call you at work.”

“Don’t you dare. Get your pack so I can lock the door.”

“You’re just going to throw me out to the wolves here in the
wilderness? I haven’t even showered. Dogs will follow me around all day, as
funky as I am. Hell, I’ll follow myself around.”

“Get in the car. I’ll leave you at the bus stop on
Thirty-fourth. You can take a bus or call a cab.”

SUSI

A
T THE BUS STOP, he touched
me, which sent shards of fear through me, leaving my fingers tingling, like an
electrical shock. He rubbed the back of his hand against my cheek, letting that
dark hair at his wrist tickle my face.

My heart was racing from an adrenalin surge, my insides so
flooded with flight hormones that I could scarcely think.

He smiled, far too handsome for anyone’s good.

JASON

“L
OOK, SUSI, I THOUGHT Ian and
Cynthia sent you, and you thought I was your friend’s cousin. So let’s invite
them over tonight. Ian will vouch for me being a good guy, and your friend can
protect you if Ian and I turn out to be psycho-killers.
Qu’est-ce
que c’est?
”

“Please get out of the car so I can go to work. I can’t
think right now.”

“OK. But it’ll be St. Patrick’s Day before we have our first
child if you waste time fretting about a simple misunderstanding. I love you.”

My sole regret was that this momentary disturbance in the field
left her flustered. I was so confident she’d be back—since no one in the world
could run away from what had happened in the last two days—that on the bus ride
I took out manuscript paper and wrote music, not lyrics. Just the sounds that
had been haunting me, first since the gamelan shed and then after the twangy
hymns in the Presbyters’ chapel.

~

I
T WAS FIVE HOURS until our
studio time started. I took the bus across town instead of a taxi, switching on
Twenty-third Avenue to take the long ride on the number 48 bus to the U
district, so I could switch buses to get to Ian’s house. I sat writing, blissed
out. If I licked my lips, my skin still tasted salty. If I rubbed my nose while
thinking, my fingers still smelled of her. When the bus went over the grated
bridge at Montlake, where the tires kick up harmonic distortion on the metal
grid so you can feel the vibration in your teeth, I realized she still didn’t
know who I am.

Who’s Frank Zappa? Who’s Bruce? Who’s Eddie Vetter? Who is
Jason effing Taylor?

OK, my name looks pretentious in that context. However, she
didn’t know who I was the whole time we spent together. She still didn’t know
when I told her my name. She thinks I’m a guitarist in a bar band.

Well, I am. Or I was for years. Life would be much simpler
if I still were.

She went out with me, she walked on the beach with me, she
trusted me to hear her sing, she went to bed the night before thinking it was
just me. Not Jason Taylor the infamous indie songwriter who sold-out so he
could run with the big dogs. But who just went to the dogs instead.

Two possibilities presented themselves.

First, she should sing with us. It was as important that she
sing with me again as go to bed with me. Maybe more important, because if she
would sing with me, she would trust me, which was all I wanted. Or needed.

Second, she was in love with me. Me. In the couple of days
it would take her to get over the mix-up, I could enjoy that it was me she
wanted, the real me. While she was getting used to the idea of
musician
instead of
banker
—how
the hell could anyone think I was a banker?—she didn’t have to also be thinking
he’s rich, he’s famous, his fruitcake ex-wife says he—

Shoot. I’d have to tell her that part.

I’d have to tell her things I assumed she already knew, but
I didn’t have to start with the trash that accumulated as a consequence of the
last couple of years’ bad decisions. Susi had already recognized the essentials
about me: music is more important than food or sex. (Although she knew how to
do things in both the kitchen and in bed that would never occur to me.) I can’t
stop myself from spending all my time writing, playing, and thinking about
music. (I pondered what I had written that might impress her, but I’d have to
write a song especially for her.) She won’t be asking about things I don’t want
to talk about, in the same way that I’d never ask her to discuss gruesome
details of her accident or what caused her to spend Saturday night weeping. We
understood the essence of each other. The details were tawdry and irrelevant.

The thrilling, fundamental truth was this: she hadn’t picked
me up in order to sleep by a famous body, and she didn’t drag me through those meetings
because she wanted my money.

“She likes me,” I said when I walked into Ian’s house.

He and his cousin Arlo sat watching a dieselpunk web video
with the sound off while Ian dinked with a Stratocaster. He looked better with
a shaved head than when he pissed Dominique off by cutting a Mohawk just before
we filmed that concert video last year.

“Jason, my man! We gave you up for lost.”

“I am.”

I pitched myself down the stairs to the basement where Ian
had piled my bags from British Airways, and then I showered and changed.
Yodeling sounds good in the shower. Maybe the steam helps. Regrettably, my
hands smelled only of soap afterward.

Ian was sitting on the bed when I came out.

“Let’s go over to the studio now, Ian. I am so stoked and
ready. Wait till you see what I’ve been working on. And Toby’s going to groove
on what we did this winter.”

“You missed curfew, buddy.”

“I was playing last night. I met these bluegrass dudes, and
they let me sit in with them.”

“Then one of them took you home, made hot cocoa, and tucked
you in?”

“Of course not. I was with Susi. She made polenta and goat
cheese.”

Ian closed his eyes. “And the last thing said this morning
was what?”

I thought closely. “‘Please get out of the car so I can go
to work,’ and ‘I love you.’ I’m pretty sure that was it.”

“What the hey? Nobody says ‘I love you’ on a first date.
She’s a lunatic and you should run.”

“What do you know about it, Ian? You’ve been married since
you turned twenty-one. Anyway, she didn’t say it. I did.”

“Shit, man. You haven’t been back in the country forty-eight
hours.”

“Sixty-six. I was with her for sixty-four of them.”

“So a little groupie picks you up right after you step out
of the cab, like some hick come to the big city. She polishes your wanker, and
you fall over the edge.”

“It is not like that. When you meet her, you’ll see. As soon
as you hear her sing—”

“Oh crap. She sings. You found another diva.”

“She is so far from diva-ville. You’ll laugh out loud at the
idea when you meet her, Ian.”