Nine Volt Heart (7 page)

JASON

W
HILE I WAS IN
mid-conversation with Chas, Susi returned, dressed in running shorts and a
long-sleeved athletic shirt. Though she had cooled down enough that she wasn’t
breathing hard, her legs were blotched red from exertion in the cold morning
air, and her skin glistened with perspiration. In a damp t-shirt, more than
just her erect posture showed through. She had the build of a swimmer, strong
shoulders and great lung capacity. Fortunately, she didn’t have breasts to
speak of, and she was small, which has never been a type I’m attracted to.
Otherwise, the pure physicality of her strong body and that
pert—impertinent—way she had of staring deep into a person’s eyes almost had me
crawling on the floor and begging.

I crumpled up the note that said
thanks
for the laundry, see you around
and jammed it into my pocket.

“Oh good, you found everything I left for you.” She smiled. Dammit.
I can’t take much of that. “I’ll make breakfast after I shower. Then I want to
show you the notes and we can talk.”

The woman had an agenda, with an assumption that I shared
it.

OK, I should have split the moment she went to shower. That
made two lost chances to just grab my bag and scoot. I did make the effort. I unplugged
my laptop and wrapped up the cord, then I finished making the last set of notes
from the CD and DVD labels, and I stuck it all in my pack. Except there was a
sheet of handwritten music on the piano, and it distracted me for several
heartbeats. I couldn’t stop myself from playing it several times, struck by
both the melody and the golden tone of the piano. She was by my side, taking
away the music, hiding it, and saying, “I’m embarrassed that you saw this.” Her
voice had the same timbre as the piano.

“It was rude to leave you here alone, but I needed exercise,”
she said. “After meetings all day yesterday, I needed to take a run before
everything we have to do today.”

Dressed for business, she wore a suit jacket that accented
her erect posture and the tidy, efficient movement of her hands, showing off a
sophisticated, Katharine Hepburn-beating-up-Spencer Tracey charm. That
stiffness where she covered up the injury to her face reinforced the impression
that she was a serious woman, not to be trifled with.

“Susi, I don’t know if I can help you.”

She looked up from where she was manufacturing a breakfast
sandwich in a tidy flurry, her brow raised in faint consternation. “You know
about the plans for the Troubadours Institute, right? You received the advance
draft of the proposal?”

“No, I don’t know anything about it.”

She sighed as she slipped the sandwich into a pan on the
stove. “I knew we shouldn’t have trusted email, but she insisted. I just want
you to look at the money. Our fundraiser Randolph keeps assuring me, but I
don’t trust him to tend to business correctly. I will relax when you tell me
the pro forma looks like what you’d expect to see if you were giving us money.”

The sun went behind an April cloud. It was disappointing to
hear, I do admit. She didn’t want my body, she wanted my money.

I said, “I’d like to help, but like Bruce said, ‘I left my
wallet back home in my working pants.’”

She laughed as if I were joking, and then asked, “Who’s
Bruce?”

“How about later?”

“She said you would keep putting it off. You have to help
us.” She was busy scrubbing pots while shaking me down. “We are looking for a
great deal more money than either of us knows how to manage. We need you to
prove that we have a team member who knows this business.”

“Susi, I don’t think I’m your man.” However, I was still
seeking to explore the territory and see what I could say yes to, before I had
to say no.

“You committed, Jason. When we called, your partner or your
attorney friend, whatever he is, promised he’d get the information to you and
get it on your schedule.”

“Oh, yeah.” Damn if I could remember what Karl said the day
before. Something about a foundation? I remember saying yes, but thought then
that I still had a chance to dodge it.

“I’m asking for a half a day today and tomorrow, Jason. It’s
only a few hours of your time, but it’s my whole life.”

“That is a bit dramatic. I’m not used to being the rescuing
hero.”

Susi said, “She warned me that you’d be like this—putting it
off, as if you were lazy and got where you are through family privilege. Which
we both know isn’t true.”

She put a folder in my hands, and I began leafing through
it.

“I got where I am through my own hard work, thank you.” I
tried not to sound too tetchy, but failed.

“So did I. Now I want to get further. This isn’t just for
summer fun—play with some kids, put on a show, and then forget it. This summer
is my chance to prove we can do it. I want to turn this into a permanent
project. I know I’m good at teaching, but I don’t want to stay at that school
where I’m working now. I can’t find work in the public schools, because there’s
no money left for performance arts. If we can do this, then we’ll create a
place to nourish kids who love music but aren’t wealthy enough to go to a school
like Prescott. I know how to work with those kids, and I think I can get others
to contribute.”

“You did your research well, Susi.”

“You haven’t finished reading the proposal yet.”

“I mean your research into my background. This is a perfect
concept if you are trying to make me fall in love with you.”

She flushed and came close to stammering, but then she
focused on the sandwich she was toasting and didn’t look at me. Spencer Tracey
1, Katharine Hepburn 0.

“I’m teasing, Susi.”

“The numbers start on page thirty.”

“Let me finish reading the curriculum part.”

“All right. We wanted you to tell us whether the numbers
look right, from a funder’s perspective. She said to make you look at it
closely, because otherwise you will avoid it just to tease.”

Since Susi insisted, I stared at the lists of numbers, which
I more-or-less understood, but I suspect that Karl wouldn’t trust me to have an
actual “funder’s perspective.” She set the grilled sandwich before me. As I
read, I ate tomato, cheese, and avocado on what looked like homemade bread,
dipped in egg like French toast and then grilled.

“It looks great.” I can check the math fine, but I don’t
know pro forma from Prokofiev.

“You approve?”

“Yes.” I shrugged. I approve the fax of the credit-card
bills that Karl’s admin forwards every month and that is about as deep as my
financial wisdom extends. Bought five CDs in Soho, stayed ten nights in a hotel
near Chelsea, tickets to three shows at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, one hundred
pounds from an ATM near Charing Cross Station, sixty-five pounds worth of books
at the Tate Britain gift shop. Approved for payment.

She sighed, which I would have liked to have provoked in a
different way. “What a relief. I worry that Randolph is sleazing on something.”

“The part I don’t understand is why you are fundraising in
Seattle for a roots music project. Why aren’t you hitting people in Nashville
and Memphis? Or the Carolinas and Texas. Or even Chicago. Places where they
care more about roots music.”

“The program will be here, and we don’t know people there,”
she said.

“I should introduce you. That’s how I could best contribute.”

“Great, then let’s go.”

“Today? Right now?”

“I need to get these people to commit today. The trustees of
the school are looking forward to meeting you. The grant has to be submitted by
April 15, or we are out of the running for this year’s money. If we don’t get
our funding this year—”

“Then you will have to spend the summer at the beach instead
of teaching boys with zits how to play twelve-bar blues.”

“No, it’s—look, you admired my father’s collection last
night. Dad hasn’t many years left. He’s still eager to keep teaching. I want to
create the opportunity for him to have at least one more season of lectures. I
know he is not a genius. He spent his life teaching music in little schools,
too, but he has something to offer.”

I was just about to open her curriculum vitae when she took
the folder away from me.

“Look at the schools you went to, Susi. All your training is
in classical music. What are you doing down in the dirt with the hillbillies?”

“My father is a fan of roots music and he made me listen
too, starting with the first wax cylinder recordings of the early twentieth
century, up through the great bluesmen in Memphis and Mississippi. I came to be
intrigued with American mountain music and the folk traditions of the British
Isles.”

“Then you were magically transported from 1955 to this brave
new world, where you adopted a disguise as a gentle school teacher with the
business style of a killer shark.”

“So you will help us?” She smiled.

I was doomed.

“Let me call my friends and tell them I won’t be around this
afternoon.”

I couldn’t calculate yet how much I was willing to have this
adventure cost me, or how I would explain it to Karl when he saw the size of
the check I’d be asking him to cut. I sat at the counter to eat the sandwich
(oh god, it was indeed homemade bread from an alternate universe), hungriest of
all to hear her speak, but not looking at her because I was afraid she would
smile.

“You can use my phone,” she said. “It’s in the bedroom.”

“I’ll use my cell,” I said, and ducked onto the deck to call
Ian while I finished the sandwich. I retained access to enough of my native
intelligence to know that this woman’s bedroom was the last place on earth I
should dare to enter.

~

“Speak.”

“That drummer won’t work, Ian. We need a rhythm master, and
he doesn’t have it.”

“Jason, buddy, where are you? Your bags showed up here last
night without you. Had to tip the driver big time for wrangling all four
guitars. What is in the box that weighs a ton?”

“Books. I went to the museums after you and Cynthia left.”

“So where are you? You didn’t stay at a hotel, did you? You
get introspective and weird when you hole up alone. You need to be home with
family. I’m stuck here by myself, since Cynthia is out of town.”

“I met this woman.”

“Oh crap. Where are you? I’ll be right there.”

“No, I don’t mean like that.”

“What other way is there when you don’t come home at night?”

“We’re just talking. I met her at Neumo’s last night.”

“Just what are you two talking about?”

“I don’t know exactly. She has this unusual voice—”

“Shit, man. Shit. Shit. Step out on the street. What
neighborhood are you in? I can be there in a minute.”

“Madrona, I think. Or maybe Leschi. You don’t need to get
me. She’ll drop me off later. We have business to take care of.”

“Oh shit, man. She doesn’t want to sing with you, does she?
I don’t like the sound of this.”

“I don’t know if she sings at all. She didn’t say. It’s just
how she talks that gets me.”

“Are you jetlagged, man? You don’t sound right.”

“I’m fine. You can read about it on my blog. It’s no big
deal. I’ll talk to you at dinner.”

I hung up, realizing as I did that I hadn’t put Susi in my
blog.

SUSI

I
SHALL NOW CREATE a separate
record of my sins of both omission and commission and of the embarrassing
moments from the first full day of my acquaintance with Jason.

To begin with the first sin, I did his laundry.

It was a considerate, humane action that I would have done
for any houseguest stranded without luggage. It takes only a minute to iron a shirt.
There shouldn’t be social stigma attached to friendly actions between people,
just because one is a man and the other is a woman, and the subject is the
man’s laundry. It is true that I used to do Logan’s laundry, but only because
he’d let it sit longer than I could stand. So I washed Logan’s for my own sake,
and I stopped when we could afford household help. This later occurrence was a
one-time event for a guest.

(The belt buckle is silver-plated nickel with the figure of
an old-fashioned motorcycle. He doesn’t keep anything in his pockets other than
his wallet, and I did
not
look in it.)

Next, I tried hard to show that I have a sense of humor. I
wanted Jason to think that helping us would be fun. This attempt was not a sin
on my part. It’s merely embarrassing, because I’m so bad at it. I’m far better
at giving him the opportunity to laugh at me than I am at rendering true humor.
As we got into my car to go to the meeting, he started teasing. Now, after a
few mistakes, I can tell when he is teasing from the first two notes of his
voice as he speaks.

He said, “I intend to force a confession from you. All the
evidence indicates that you are a time traveler from—what? 1955? Or farther
back? 1935? What do you like best in your collection, Susi? Hank Williams and
his friends on the Lost Highway, or Leadbelly and his field-holler friends?”

“I would prefer whatever Hank Williams’ mother sang to him.
I can appreciate the significance of the works of Huddie Ledbetter and the
others that the Lomaxes recorded. Only a few of them strike an emotional
response in me—that’s why others appreciate the blues, right? Because of the
emotions aroused?”

“Yes. It’s also why lots of other people do not like it.
What strikes a note for you, Susi?”

“Skip James. Every note he sings makes me want to weep. Little
Milton. The others are too masculine for my tastes.”

“Too much testosterone for your dainty sensibilities?”

It is clear in retrospect how I get myself into these
situations, but I can never see it at the time.

After Jason had entertained himself by making me
uncomfortable, he turned serious again and began what would be a theme for the
day: asking questions that either exposed a raw nerve or drove straight to my
heart.

“And Billie Holiday? Big Mama Thornton? Or Mabel Mercer?
Which of them makes you weep, Susi?”

I couldn’t answer. As he said Billie Holiday’s name, a ball
of emotion choked up in my throat so that the most graceful sound I could make
was a false “Hmm.” How could he understand? I spent hours listening, trying to
understand where that sound came from, how she could live with that organ of
feeling in her body. I have tried imitating her, may the forces of the universe
save me from anyone ever knowing. I will never achieve what Billie Holiday did,
and thinking about it plunges me into a personal abyss where I cannot confront
my failures.

“I can’t see you and Patsy Cline together,” he said. “Or Wanda
Jackson. Oh, wait, Wanda is later than when you traveled to our own century.”

“I know Patsy Cline’s music. However, I simply don’t
understand the Slave-to-Romance theme.”

He didn’t bother to hide that he was laughing at me.

“All right, Susi. We will move closer to the time you came
from in the last century. The Carter Family? Do you like a good mountain hymn?”

“I appreciate their achievement, but I prefer the women from
the Appalachian hills. Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard, Wilma Lee Cooper. Patsy
Montana for cowboy music.”

“Because you like pure natural religion?” He was teasing.

“Just the pure and natural part.”

Because I can sing it—though I couldn’t tell him that. That
had been the most exciting discovery in the past winter, changing the entire
color of my life. It was more than the intellectual excitement of plunging into
my father’s old research that brought me to invent this musical curriculum.

When we parked at the school, Jason stood in the parking
lot, his hands jammed in his jeans pockets, staring up at the ivy-covered
building.

“Why did I let you walk me down memory lane?” he said.

“The trustees are especially interested in your helping us,
since you went to school here.”

He laughed, as if in disbelief. When we entered, he held the
door for me, wrinkling his nose in distaste.

“I hate the smell of this place. It hasn’t changed in a
dozen years. Creeps me out. Tell me, Susi, is old Hector Henderson still
teaching here?”

“Yes.”

“He is such a character-disorder guy. It’s a wonder he’s
allowed among children—even his own biological offspring. Still, I suppose
everyone has their level. His is just below sea level.”

“Don’t be mean.”

“Me? I’m the nicest guy you will ever meet.”