Nine Volt Heart (31 page)

JASON

“Y
OU ARE DOING INCREDIBLE
work, Jason.”

“Hello, Ephraim. I saw you from the stage.”

He wore a silk tuxedo and he came up to shake my hand,
acting like he was still my friend.

“Tonight was an unexpected pleasure, amigo. I had no idea
this was the direction you were headed.”

“Are you here alone?” I didn’t want his compliments. Ephraim
is the same height as me, but has fifty pounds and ten years over me, and I
hated that avuncular attitude he takes around me.

“Dominique is visiting her sister. Don’t laugh like that.”

“Sorry. She just isn’t very original. I suppose since it
worked once, she has no reason to think it wouldn’t work the next time.”

“I’m trying to decide if I even care.” Ephraim shrugged like
he didn’t care, and then changed the subject. “You aren’t giving Albion Records
any music like that, are you? None of that funky blues, playing bottleneck
guitar with a comb?”

“If you are planning to sue me, we’ll have to talk with Karl
present. You and I both know Dominique can’t sing this.”

“No. What you’re giving the label is commercial and solid.
You and I both know Albion wouldn’t know what to do with this other material.”

“What do you want, Ephraim?”

“Work with me, Jason. It’s not raining in Seattle—wasn’t
that part of your criteria for rapprochement in our artistic relationship?”

“You are partners with my bitter witch of an ex-wife. You
and I have no foundation upon which to build a relationship.”

“This time next year, Dominique might be making twice as
much money as you, whether or not she’s visiting her sister tonight. Twenty
years from now, someone will be packaging retrospectives of your work, and
Dominique will be a minor footnote. I can help you, if you let me.”

“You made the decision last year about who you wanted to
work for, Ephraim. You chose Dominique.”

“Maybe we shared the same opportunity to make faulty
decisions. Maybe that’s a foundation for a new relationship.”

I’m great with quick come-backs on email and the phone, but
not so great when the beast is staring me in the eye, daring me to sympathize.
Or relent. Or sink to new depths with him. I didn’t know which.

Karl came up, laying a hand on each of our shoulders.

I said, “Come to the Showbox later, both of you. There’s
more music that you haven’t heard, Ephraim.”

Karl about swallowed his tongue. “The Showbox? You didn’t
send a contract by me.”

“We’re standing in for another band that can’t show. Just to
close out a benefit they’re doing.”

“Jason, you can’t do this shit without sharing the details
with me. I mean, pulling this together last week was enough of a stretch. Could
we just plan ahead a little, buddy?”

“Can we not talk about it in front of someone who has a
great potential for being an adversary in court, Karl? You’re supposed to be
discrete.”

Ephraim said, “I’m not going to sue you over anything,
Jason. I want to help. Does this Susi person sing with your new band all the
time? I need to sign her, too. Does she have an agent?”

“Call Karl, and we will talk about this Monday.”

“Are you going to make me get in line with every shark
who’ll be calling you after this little debut? It is not a secret that you’ve
about wrapped up your Albion Records obligation.” Ephraim smiled. That superior
smirk of his was bugging me.

Karl’s wife slinked up, slipping her arm through his. She
smiled at Ephraim and treated me, as usual, like a slimy invertebrate that
crawled across her shoe. Me, the bad influence from the other side of the
tracks.

“Karl, honey, it’s a party. You aren’t working,” she purred.

“I’m always working, sweetheart. I just found out that I
need to stay late tonight to take care of more business.”

She said, “You’re sending me home alone?”

“You’re welcome to come along, but you aren’t dressed for
it. And I don’t think you’ll like the music.”

She gave me death looks like Dominique used to cultivate.
Ephraim managed a circumspect expression, as if he were wallpaper. She said,
“But, Karl, what we talked about—”

“When we talked, I said that work came first.” Karl was
smiling, but his face looked like a mask.

Her lip curled with distain. “And last. Always.”

She left us, which didn’t bode well for Karl later that
night.

“You don’t have to come,” I said.

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Karl said.

“I think I’ll come with you,” Ephraim said.

“Oh swell,” I said. “The torts-and-treaties twins are dating
each other.”

Karl looked thoughtful. “Your new music has the decided
effect of making women not want to sleep with me. I don’t remember that from before,
when we were on the road together.”

Ephraim said, “I know what you mean about that particular
effect.”

Karl motioned to someone nearby who turned out to be Warren,
the admin from his office. “Can you please make sure my wife gets home safely? I
can’t take her, and she’s enjoying the wine. Call a limo for her?”

“Right, Mr. Schwann. I’ll take care of it.”

“Hey, man.” I shook Warren’s hand. “It’s nice to see you
again.”

He nodded to me, and then to Karl, and ducked away, leaving
an opening for a ring of women who wanted autographs. I signed and chatted
until Ian signaled that we were going on stage.

Karl walked back with me. “You complain about fans all the
time, Jason, but then you act like the nicest guy in the world when they’re in your
face.”

“Here, it’s part of the job. I like these people when I’m at
work. I just don’t appreciate it when I’m not working.”

Ephraim breathed behind me. “For someone like you, the world
is going to remain a twenty-four-hour stage. You have to get used to it.”

~

The people at the landmines benefit loved Susi. And Angelia.
They didn’t mind that we added a little electricity to the acoustic country set
we’d done earlier at MOHAI. They liked the moody Celtic wails and the newly
fuzzed out version of “Rhianna’s Song” from
Woman at the
Well
, with Susi singing counterpoint against my lead. No one spit on me,
and Sonny proved effective in shepherding people onto and off the stage, so
effective that it felt almost as comforting as when we had Beau with us, making
sure everything was taken care of.

We paid a couple of Sonny’s friends to schlep equipment
between halls, helping out a couple of our usual guys (who are Ian’s cousins,
but bathe and have half a brain each), and Sonny’s friends proved to be
experienced and careful. Nothing got broken or left behind. No fans were
treated rudely. We had time to talk to people some more, instead of having to
schlep everything ourselves. I hadn’t lost my temper even once by the time we
were and several blocks across town at the Showbox.

Sonny had also taken to shepherding Susi. I lost contact
with her between the end of the set at the hotel and the loading dock outside
the Showbox. We had so little time to get ready for the next show, that I couldn’t
tell what I was feeling besides that uneasiness which descended whenever she
wasn’t right by my side.

If nagging doubts didn’t appall me, I spent idle moments
wondering whether my stalker was just around the corner, causing me to watch
that no stranger touched my guitars. Ian accidentally stepped back into me
while guys were wrestling with the equipment. We were standing around like
goons, because we didn’t want to muss our white dinner jackets. I didn’t even
notice he stepped on my foot until he spoke.

“Hey, bro. You doing all right?”

“Just spaced. Have you seen Susi?”

“Toby and Sonny have the girls inside.”

“They are women, not girls,” I said, reflexively.

“Yeah, sure. Hey, Jason. You aren’t going to fuck it up, are
you?”

“I’m trying not to, but which ‘it’ do you mean?”

“Susi. She’s going to sing with us, isn’t she? We can’t lose
her now.”

I just looked at him, because I didn’t know the answer. I
didn’t know how to not fuck up, and I didn’t know how to keep her with us. With
me.

Ian, of course, can read my face like a book, one he has
read over and again. He blanched.

“Crap, Jason. You have to get this right. No one else can do
it for you.”

Right. I couldn’t ask Martha to take care of it, or hire
some of Sonny’s friends, or call Karl for estoppels. Or bitch until Cynthia
gave up and took care of it for me. I didn’t know where to go to buy a clue.

Then I found her again, standing at the side, out of the way
of equipment hassles, with that luminescent lily look that she has when wearing
her black concert clothes. The wide silver belt cinching her waist showed off
the bones of her hips and, even with her swimmer’s shoulders, she looked small
and oh so vulnerable. Then she saw me and turned on that smile she first felled
me with.

So vulnerable. She could crush me with a single word. It
would annihilate any ability to make it through everyday life if she said no.

SUSI

“H
EY, SUSI. CAN YOU handle the
air in here?”

“I think so. We won’t be here long, will we, Jason?”

“Don’t know. If they boo us off the stage, we’ll be gone right
away. If you stand here until it’s time to sing, the ventilation should help.
Here’s the set list.”

“I remember it. I don’t need notes.”

He wanted the set to begin with four songs that the crowd
would recognize (even though I didn’t), followed by two cover songs that, Jason
said, would help people transition to the band’s new work. Then I would join
them.

Jason pushed my hair back, looking at my ears. “It’s going
to be loud. I want you to use my earphones. They don’t fit you, but you won’t
like it without them. You’ll hear what we’re playing without being overwhelmed.”

“If I use yours, what will you use?”

“One short night won’t give me tinnitus. We will get some
made for you—if you are going to keep singing with us.”

His finger lingered on my earlobe after he fitted the
earphones, the first gentle touch we had shared since I left his house the
morning before. What had I been thinking, letting Randolph inject his nastiness
into how I understood Jason?

“Please,” he said, though I had to read his lips with the
earphones in place, and I had forgotten what he was asking in the midst of my
own regret. What I heard through the earphones came from the stage monitors.
The emcee seemed to be negotiating with the crowd, announcing that the band
they expected to see wouldn’t appear, then playing up excitement for the
replacement, and finally calling Jason’s name.

The night before, he whispered, “Who are you and what have
you done with my lover?” I could have said the same, as I watched Jason master
that audience. He’d kept his hair tied back all day, but now it was unbound and
wild. The same person who hesitated during our picnic by the lake, and who
adopted a shy posture at MOHAI in the afternoon, walked out on stage at eleven
o’clock and stood in a suggestive pose before the microphone. In the most
seductive voice I’ve ever heard, he said, “Oh, Seattle, you don’t know how we
missed you.”

He struck a long note on his guitar, pulling it up to his
shoulder and turning his head in the same way he did when—when he was alone
with me, in bed. As he struck a second note, the rest of the band came in with
a clash of sound that sorted itself into a pattern, while the crowd contributed
to the cacophony. Then the melody asserted itself. Jason began to sing, his
voice muted in my earphone monitors, as if he were singing just to me.

Through all that we’d sung together, I had heard only hints
of this. Since I don’t know rock-and-roll, I don’t know how to describe it.
Tuneful rant? Rhythmic exhortation? He danced across the stage, sliding over to
Ian, where they both shouted into the microphone, which was so loud through the
earphones that the sound must have been overwhelming to the people in front of
the stage, where that reporter friend of Arlo’s stood writing notes, lost and
oblivious to the throng around him. When the song finished, those people seemed
to be shouting right back, filtered through the earphones as a distant roar.
Jason and Ian both had huge smiles. Jason stripped off his dinner jacket,
throwing it to the crowd, as he shouted, “Damn, it’s good to be home!”

Then he pulled his bolo tie loose as he counted one, two,
three, four, and they banged their way into another song, followed by two more.
Then Sonny stepped up with Jason and they sang together, something I recognized:
“I Walk the Line,” because my father always played Johnny Cash when he worked
in the garage or in the yard. Sonny’s bass voice wasn’t steady and reliable,
but the wobble offset Jason’s honey-smooth tenor. They followed with a Jimmie
Rodgers yodeling song, different from the modest version Jason had done earlier
at the museum benefit.

While I watched from the side, Jason made love to the crowd,
dancing across the stage, his shirt soaked with sweat, while he moved in ways
that I associated with those two precious nights when we had—

He tore his tuxedo shirt open, stripped it off his wet
torso, and threw it into the crowd, the bolo tie still swinging from his neck.
“We’re going to switch gears now and introduce a new singer. SusiQ, come meet
Seattle.”

We started with “Tio’s Fury,” which we’d practiced for the
past month, but I hadn’t heard the rich layer of texturing, with everyone on
the same stage, instead of Zak down the hall and Sonny half way to the front
porch. Everyone turned up loud. Holding a microphone bothered me—performing
with a microphone always bothers me—and I tried not to think I was competing
with the strings and percussion, just to balance it in the way that Jason had
hounded us to do in rehearsal.

A slow, moody version of “Hymn for a Rusty Angel” calmed the
crowd that had been restless and demanding when I first walked out. Then he
introduced the next song, saying the title—”Mon Oncle, le Troubadour”—so
quietly that the audience fell silent, and he played the first steel guitar
chords to begin the duet with my voice. This time, it wasn’t the acoustic song
we’d first practiced at my house.

I watched his hands, far too conscious of his long fingers
and how confidently he touched the strings. As we reached the instrumental
portion of the song, we watched each other as the rest of the band took turns
with virtuoso solos, with each adding to the tension that built in the course
of the song. He played the single note that brought my voice back into the
knit-together sounds, long bars of grievous, lonesome scat singing before the
final chorus, when we wove his guitar and my voice into the final shriek of
loss and pain. And we both carried the final note long enough to otherwise
silence the room. A deep indigo blue bloomed in my chest and filled my head.

It had been such a long, long time since I saw an audience
swoon.