Nine Volt Heart (41 page)

JASON

M
ARTHA CALLED MY CELL phone to
say the police asked me to come recover my lost property. It would take a poet
instead of a songwriter to come up with such a twisted metaphor.

When we got there, Dominique had already paid bail and left.
Ian arrived when we did, and we found Arlo, wanting to tell us what happened.

“What the hell were you doing there, Arlo?” I hadn’t had my
fill of pounding Arlo or satisfied myself that he wasn’t the source of all havoc
in my life.

“Peace, man. I love you like my own brother, if I had one.”

“Screw that. What were you doing there?”

“I was eating breakfast with Cynthia when she read a post on
your fan site, saying Dominique would kill Susi when she found out Stoneway had
replaced her in the band.”

“Good lord.”

“Then a guy called the house to say Dominique was looking
for Susi and he worried for Susi’s well-being.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t talk to him. Cynthia said it had to
be your stalker guy. So we went to go find Susi to help—”

“Oh shit, man, just don’t. There’s no fucking way in the
world you could do anything that would help.”

“Fuckin’ A, man. You don’t have to act like I’m some
asshole.”

He was right. For the next catastrophe of the day, I had to
admit it.

Karl helped Ian free Cynthia, but Susi would have nothing to
do with his offer to help her. Ian took both Cynthia and Arlo home, which kept
me from wringing his cousin’s neck for lack of anyone better to attack. While
Karl and I tried to figure how to help Susi, Zak came down the hall with his
mother and a guy whose suit and briefcase screamed “attorney.” Zak stopped to
shake my hand, though I was quaking too much to get a grip.

“Sorry we missed work this afternoon. We’re playing tomorrow
morning, right? Eight o’clock?” he asked, as if nothing had happened and we
weren’t standing in the hallway of the effing city jail.

“Not till Monday, man. Everyone needs a break.”

Gwyneth had adopted the most hostile posture possible for a
woman of her station in life. Her long nails clawed at the sleeves of her
sweater as she folded her arms and tapped her foot, which showed the great
restraint that her manners taught her, for she wanted to scratch my eyes out.

“Let’s go, Zak.”

“You can go, Mother. I’ll get a ride to Toby’s.”

“You should come home.”

“Thanks, but I’m living at Toby’s now.”

“I blame you.” Gwyneth turned on me, tapping a nail on my
chest. “You are the jerk who caused all this.”

“It’s all a misunderstanding,” I said.

“Zak isn’t going to college because he wants to play music
with drug addicts and wife beaters. You call that a misunderstanding? It’s your
fault.”

“Mom, forget it. I wouldn’t have gone, even if I hadn’t met
Jason.”

“You asshole.” She got me on the sternum with a stabbing
nail.

“Stop. You’re just embarrassing yourself, Mom.” Zak jammed
his hands in his pockets and walked down the hall and out the door.

Her attorney hustled her away, and my own attorney shrugged
and allowed as to how he ought to go home, too, since there wasn’t squat he
could do here, while at home he could at least fight with his wife.

That left me alone in the hallway with an older man who
leaned on his cane, having had the opportunity to enjoy the floor show we
offered. Glasses thick as the proverbial cola bottles and a Karl Marx beard
that any old lefty would be proud of, he regarded me with more than idle
curiosity, until it struck me who he was.

“You must be Chas Neville,” I offered my hand, hoping
against hope he would take it, relieved as hell when he did. “I’m the one who
caused this. My name is—”

“Jason Taylor. I thought that might be you.”

“I’m so sorry for this.”

“From what I heard, you didn’t cause it and couldn’t have
prevented it. Except maybe she wouldn’t have to deal with that crew out there
if it weren’t for you.” He motioned to where the press waited to pounce.

“I told her last night that we were more than a bar band. We
got sidetracked when I learned what she’d been hiding from me.”

“She doesn’t ever talk about what happened.”

“It was excruciating to learn. I’ve been harassing her to
sing in public. I confess, I thought her reticence was a kind of cowardice that
she should overcome. What a self-righteous fool I was.”

“It’s good you got her out. Steven told me about it. I’d
like to have heard her that night, though I suppose I’ll get a lot more
chances. When are you playing live again?”

“I don’t think she’ll speak to me after this.”

“She might need to be righteous for a little while. She’s
just like her mother that way. You can’t blame me for that.”

“I want to marry her. I’ve been begging her since we met,
but she wouldn’t consider it seriously because she thought I was a broke
guitarist from a bar band. Now she thinks—oh lord.”

“She’ll come around. Did you sleep with her?”

“I—yes, sir. I did. I—”

“Spare me the details. But if she slept with you, she’ll
marry you. She’s like her mother that way, too. I always said it limits her
options and reduces new chances for self-knowledge, but she won’t listen to
me.”

“I don’t know how I’m going to explain myself to her.”

“When I looked for you on the Google, to see what Susi had
gotten herself into, I found that you’ve had quite a mess on your hands for a considerable
while now.”

“I’m mortified, sir.”

“No reason to be. Reading all of your history in one sitting
gives me a different perspective than you had while living through it. Pretty
brave of you, leaving your old blogs up after your wife had pretty much done
you in. The only part I don’t understand is how a guy as smart as you could be
so naïve about a woman. Of course, I’m assuming that the part about
wife-beating isn’t true.”

“It isn’t.”

“Didn’t think it could be after I listened to your music.”

“I’m having a rather odd moment with this, sir. I’ve lived
the last few years of my life on the Internet, but I didn’t expect my
girlfriend’s father to browse my archives.”

“This arthritis keeps me from moving around, but the
Internet keeps me from being shut out from the world. That’s how I found you
before Susi did. I listened to several of the bootleg recordings. I didn’t care
much for that one CD, but I got Silver Platters to send me your albums from
before you met that woman. I liked those fine.”

“Thank you.”

“You sound so much like Jesse Rufus. Only better practiced.
More disciplined. Shoot, I must have I upset you with that question last night.”

“As I said, I hadn’t considered it until you asked, but I’ve
been thinking about it every spare moment since. It’s Jesse. I’m sure of it. I
have replayed in my mind every gesture between my mother and Beau Rufus, every
word they ever said to me. I’m sure it’s Jesse.”

“I can’t find anything in those papers to indicate Jesse
ever knew.”

“It doesn’t matter. Beau did more for me than Jesse ever
could have.”

“That new boot that’s all over the Internet, with all that
wailing grief. That song is about Beau Rufus?”

“Yes. It’s Susi’s voice.”

He stopped at that and stared at the floor, and in that
fleeting moment, I tried to imagine how he and Steven would hear the echoes of Liù
wailing in the new music. Then Chas shook his head and came back from his brief
reverie, wiping one eye.

“I read all your lyrics and the guitar tabs on your fan
sites. I’m betting you correct people when they get the tabs wrong.”

“I feel rather exposed.”

“Can’t say I drew any conclusions that others wouldn’t. I
see a self-made man who overcame considerable obstacles. I see a man who spent
years teaching himself what he couldn’t learn in school. I hear a great
musician who has a lot to offer the world.”

“Thank you. It means a great deal that you would say that.”

“And I think I see a good boy who’s been in a lot of pain.”

Chas curved his hand around mine, like you do when you’re
trying to show a certain fingering on a guitar.

“Lots of men have been through worse, and done better than I
managed.” I was choking on the lump in my throat.

“From what I’ve read you have plenty to complain
about—watched your last relative die in pain, that woman has humiliated you in
public for months, people you’ve never met hate you for things you didn’t do.
That are morally repugnant to you.” Chas sucked at his moustache, thinking. “Then
there’s the fact that I can read all about your pain on the Internet.”

“I’m past feeling sorry for myself,” I said, gritting my
teeth so hard that my jaw ached. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

“You already did. I want to hear more of the music you made
from it.”

For the first time in the whole nightmare, I lost it. Chas
was polite enough not to say anything when his hand got wet or when it took me
several minutes to quit shaking. He put his hand on my shoulder when it was too
obvious that I couldn’t choke it back enough to speak.

He said, “Steven will take Susi home and stay with her
tonight. Why don’t you help me get back to my place and stick around for a
while? I don’t get about so good, and I could use some company.”

“I don’t drive. I don’t have a car.”

“You’ve got that there cell phone. Call us a cab.”

SUSI

W
HEN YOU DON’T SLEEP, the best
thing is a run, the week’s long run, not some three-mile jog.

It was going to be a sunny day—it had started with fog over
Lake Washington—and since it would be the first day of the rest of my life, it
needed to start in the garden. There needed to be some other hard physical work
that required a great deal of concentration.

Waiting for the sun to break through and find my garden, I
set to screening rocks out of that patch I wanted to reclaim for flowers. Or
maybe trailing-vines like pumpkins. Or cucumbers. I think there might be
sufficient sunshine through the season to allow cucumbers to ripen.

Or melons. Melons would be a fine fruit to harvest.

“You forgot gloves, SusiQ.”

Sonny sat on the deck, swinging his legs over the edge,
watching me. He was right about the gloves, but I wasn’t in the mood for
advice.

“Blisters are good for you,” I said.

“Yeah, especially when you wipe good old dirt in them. Best
balm for the soul in the world.” He wasn’t smoking.

I didn’t answer, just heaved another shovel full of glacial
till into the screen I used to sift out the rocks.

“Takes your mind off the pain in your soul,” he said.

I stuck the shovel into the ground, and stomped it in with
my boot heel so that it would stand on its own.

“Do not,” I said evenly, “give me another lecture about
Jason and true love. It infringes on the bounds of friendship.”

“I got nothing to say about Jason,” Sonny said.

“Good.”

I screened rocks, stopping for gloves because shoveling is
one kind of blister, but mechanically rubbing rocks through a screen really
requires a leather second skin. Sonny whistled “Angel Band” while I worked.

“What if—”

“I’m done with existential questions,” I said, not looking
up. “What if people minded their own business, and left me out of their
dramas?”

The sun had peeked through the clouds at last, so Sonny now
cast a shadow. He nodded his head at my last question.

I screened soil in blessed silence, and then fetched my
shovel again.

Stomp, hoist soil, drop into the screen. Begin freeing soil
from scree.

“What if you never sang in public again?”

“That’s been the plan for two years,” I said.

“No lovers?”

“I have a family. And friends.”

“What if you shrank your world so there was only you?” he
asked. “No directors. No collaborators. No audience. Nothing greater than what
you do yourself. Alone. Like I was before Jason brought me back.”

I didn’t answer.

“No band?” he said. “You didn’t have a band before, did you,
SusiQ? In your other life? You didn’t even know what being in a band meant
then, did you? Back when you were a diva.”

I didn’t look up for several minutes. When I did, Sonny was
gone.