Tumblin' Dice (11 page)

He said, “Yeah, but it was still a tech school — auto shop, wood shop — that's what they were getting us ready for.”

Angie poked at her scrambled eggs and took a small bite, and Ritchie figured, okay, she doesn't want to talk about anything. But she did call him up and invite him to lunch so she wanted something, maybe just not to be alone, he could get that, a little company with an old friend, so he said, “Yeah, but
TISS
was okay. That was where we put the High together.”

She said, “Oh yeah,” and Ritchie said, yeah, thinking whatever she really wanted to talk about she'd get to when she was ready, and then he was proud of himself, thinking, yeah, that's mature of me, not like the kid I was when something like this would turn into a huge fight.

“It was a couple years before that when I knew I wanted to be in a band, though, 1969. Barry's sister was already a pot-smoking hippie, already working. She was a hairdresser, which is funny because she looked exactly like you'd think she would, with long, straight hair to her ass.”

Angie said, she probably ironed it, and Ritchie said, what? Angie said, “Like you iron clothes. She probably spent hours on her hair,” and Ritchie said wow. Then he said, “I never realized that.”

Angie kind of smiled at him, playful like she was making fun of him but in a good way, and he thought maybe she was proud of herself for being all mature now, too.

“Yeah, so Emily, Barry's sister, she missed Woodstock that summer. Couldn't cross the border, her boyfriend was a draft dodger or had a warrant out or something, he couldn't go back to the States, so she drove up to Toronto for the Rock'n'Roll Revival, they called it, and we went with her, me and Barry and Cliff.”

“It's hard to picture Cliff as a kid. Was he working deals?”

“He was checking out chicks in kindergarten. We got to the revival: it was at Varsity Stadium, place was packed, Jerry Lee Lewis rocking it out and all these chicks right in front of the stage taking off their shirts. That was it for Cliff — he was a rock star.”

Angie said, what about you, “You didn't want to be the singer?”

Ritchie said, “You've heard all this before,” and Angie said, “No, I haven't,” and Ritchie realized she probably hadn't. Back when they were in their twenties they were always looking ahead, always looking for what was coming next, what they could make happen. They were inventing themselves. They sure didn't have a handle on who they were, either one of them, so, yeah, they didn't talk about where they were from.

Then Ritchie realized he didn't really know anything about Angie, about where she was from or what it was like or anything, but he could tell that was definitely not what she wanted to talk about now. She still looked like she was interested in what he was saying, even if it was just for the distraction, just to spend a little while away from what was going on.

So Ritchie said, “When we got close to the stage I saw a couple of guys standing off to the side. There was a tent over the stage and these guys were standing in the shadow and I realized it was Jim Morrison and Robby Kreiger. Emily had a couple of Doors singles, ‘Hello, I Love You,' and ‘Light My Fire,' and, oh yeah, ‘Touch Me.' I remember we'd be playing Ping-Pong in Barry's basement and she'd be blasting those songs in her bedroom and her mother'd be screaming at her till she came out and they'd scream at each other and Emily would run out of the house slamming the door.”

Angie was nodding, smiling a little and Ritchie said, “Good times,” and Angie said, “‘Abigail, Baby,'” and Ritchie said, yeah, “Not many people remember that one,” and Angie said, “I know all your songs.”

And they looked at each other for a moment and then Ritchie said, “Yeah, so at the revival there were a lot of old-time acts, after Jerry Lee there was Chuck Berry — got the whole place singing along to ‘My Ding-a-Ling,' Bo Diddley, and oh man, Little Richard. I was shocked how good those guys were, how tight the bands were, how they really put on a show.”

“Some of them still come up here,” Angie said. “They still put on a show.”

“I believe it. I watched them that whole day, you know, but what I really noticed was Morrison watching them all. He stood there, off to the side in the shadows all day watching those guys. He was studying them, everything about them.”

Angie said, so? And Ritchie said, well, you know, “We always got these stories about the new young guys, how they had no time for all that old crap. I was just surprised to see Jim Morrison watching Little Richard so close, you know? But then Alice Cooper came onstage.”

Ritchie finished off his coffee and smiled. “I'd never heard of them, I don't think they even had any records out. They were all hair, as long as Emily's. No stage show really, just wild crazy rock, guitar solos, drum solos.”

Angie said, “Didn't they throw a chicken at the crowd?”

“That was a couple years later, and actually it was someone in the crowd who threw a chicken onstage and they threw it back. You're right, though, that was in Toronto, too. At the Revival they did throw a couple bags of chicken feathers into the crowd.” Then Ritchie shook his head and said, “I just realized, that's probably why whoever threw the chicken threw it. I always wondered, who brings a live chicken to a rock concert?”

“Yeah, really.”

“But that was when I wanted to be a guitar player. I was too young to see the Beatles on
Ed Sullivan
and all that, but that Alice Cooper Band, before the rest of the guys quit and Alice became Alice, they were wild. That's the way I wanted to do it, and do it live. I still like playing in front of an audience.”

Angie said, so does Alice. “He came up here last year with Rob Zombie.”

“You can't kill the undead.”

Angie smiled and Ritchie was thinking that she did like sitting and talking like this. He was starting to see how she had a good set-up here and didn't want it to change but she could tell it would. No matter what happened now with Frank and Felix from Philadelphia and these bikers moving in the whole place would change and Angie wasn't ready for it.

Then Ritchie realized no one ever is. Even when the High were just fighting all the time or not even talking to each other, he didn't want the band to break up.

Hell, even when they were sneaking around behind Frank's back, Ritchie just wanted to keep seeing Angie.

Now he was realizing he wanted to keep seeing her now, too.

He said, “So Morrison stood there all day. John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band came on — they were a surprise. Eric Clapton on guitar. They did some old time rock'n'roll, too, Lennon growling it out, ‘Blue Suede Shoes,' ‘Dizzy Miss Lizzie.' Man, Yoko screeched a couple of songs from inside a big bag — it was wild.”

Angie said, “You look like you were there yesterday,” and Ritchie said, well, “Truth is I saw a bunch of it on YouTube on the tour bus coming up here,” and Angie laughed.

“But I remember the Doors like it was yesterday. Morrison put on a great show. The whole band did, they were great. People kept yelling for ‘Light My Fire' and Morrison would say, should we give it to them? And Kreiger would say nah, and start playing something else. When they played ‘The End,' Kreiger, man, what can you say, that guitar, but Morrison, he was possessed, jumping way up in the air, falling down in a heap, rising up, the place going crazy. It was incredible — he really learned from those old guys.”

Then Angie said, “What are we going to do?” and Ritchie said, what?

“What are we going to do? All these gangsters all over the place, people being killed in the parking lot, Frank's into something way over his head going to get himself killed — what are we going to do?”

Ritchie was thinking, we?, and liking it, and he said, “Stay off to the side in the shadows? Watch it all, see how it goes.”

Angie said, “Yeah, okay, that sounds good,” and she reached across the table and held his hand.

• • •

The chick said, “This car is old,” and Frank said, “It's a classic — it's a '72 Barracuda,” and she said, “Well how do you change the radio?”

Frank said, you don't. “This is classic, too.”

She took a drag on her cigarette and blew smoke in his face saying it wasn't classic, it was just old. “It sounds like a
TV
commercial.”

Frank had picked the girl up at her apartment, one of those big concrete slabs in the middle of nowhere, just off the 401 out in Scarborough, and now he was turning north onto the 400 heading out of town.

Trying to stay under 120 clicks, but tense, nervous, that fucking Burroughs calling him last night telling him about the guy shot in the parking lot, saying, “Good thing you were in Toronto: you're not a suspect,” and Frank not even telling him to fuck off. Then Burroughs laughing and saying, don't worry, these hick cops can't find their own dicks, “This'll be cleaned up before you get here,” but Frank wasn't so sure. He hated the idea of getting any attention now.

Especially now, with half a million bucks in cash in the trunk, Jesus, tens and twenties and fifties all tied up in rubber bands, just tossed into a hockey bag. The Police singing about poets, priests, and politicians all having words for their positions, yeah, but for the rest of us it's de do do do de da da da, that's all we've got to say.

The chick (Frank thought her name might be Felice, could that be it?) said, “Oh yeah, this is hot. The Police, that was a blast, that show — they're so sexy,” and Frank said, what show?, thinking this Felice wasn't even born when the Police quit, but she said, “At the ACC, couple years ago now,” and Frank said, oh yeah, right, the reunion.

He liked the Police, maybe the last band to make it into classic rock and still get played on the radio, them and U2, just sneaking in under the wire — like him, this new deal with these new guys, new players, finally getting a chance to step up and be one of them, not just a gofer.

Felice said, “JayBee had a private box for the show. Like the one for Lady Gaga. Great party.” Then she said, “Hey, you used to be in the music business, didn't you?”

Frank said, “Yeah.” He looked at this Felice, maybe twenty years old, working as an in-call escort in Toronto, coming up to the casino to work as an in-call escort in the hotel, special because she could be Arab or India Indian, playing that Desi look. She could be a belly dancer or wear one of those headscarfs. He wasn't sure what she really was, maybe a real Indian, Ojibwa or whatever they were that leased the land to the casino. Marc set up the deal with a woman named Constance, called her Stancie, who was backed up by the Saints of Hell. Another one of the benefits of working with these new guys, they'd be bringing in all kinds of new girls. And this time Frank would get a piece of it. He said, “Yeah, I was in the music business,” thinking, I ran the fucking music business in Canada, I was
the
manager of
the
bands all through the fucking '80s. But then thinking being the biggest manager in Canada was like being the tallest pygmy — who gives a shit?

She took another drag, blew out rings, saying, “So why'd you quit?”

“I didn't quit,” Frank said, “I moved up.” He pushed a button, lowered her window an inch, did the same to his own. She kept looking at him, blowing smoke in his face.

She said, “Up? I thought you worked for the casino now?”

“I run the casino.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

He was going to run the casino, kept telling himself that. Get out from under these American mobsters, take the place over, these new guys helping him out. His plan. Back in the '90s casino gambling was finally legalized in Ontario and the first casino opened in Windsor, right there at the end of the tunnel looking at Detroit. No casinos in Michigan then, nowhere around there, people coming from all over Michigan, Cleveland, Toledo, all over, and Frank started booking bands in right away. Well, what bands he could — they weren't too interested in his post-punk, Seattle alt-rock rip-offs, his chick singer-songwriters all wanting to be Sarah McLachlan, or the boy bands he was trying to get off the ground. Frank remembered one of the guys from Philly, some guy younger than him but wearing a suit and tie, like he was trying to look middle-aged, telling him he needed classier bands, “Singers wearing decent clothes, big bands, shit like that,” and Frank thought he was nuts, thinking, you aren't going to score chicks with some Tony Bennett impersonator, but he had a lot to learn about the casino business.

Felice said, “Are we stopping on the way?” and Frank said, no, “It's not even a two-hour drive,” and she said, “Really? There's nothing you want to stop for?” and Frank looked at her and thought she was coming on to him, and he thought if he wanted any of that he would've got it at her apartment. He'd thought about it, but was too nervous, leaving half a million bucks in the car — shit, thinking about it now making him nervous again, five hundred grand — and if he wanted this Felice he'd wait till they got to the hotel. Then he thought, wait a minute, why was he even thinking it? She was probably a bonus from the Saints, a gift for doing business, like a fruit basket.

Shit, he was getting in his own head.

He said, “No, we're driving right through.”

Frank figured it out, though, when the live music scene dried up, when the boomers were too old for it and their kids weren't interested in it, that's when he sold out and went to work directly for the casino. Little Mr. Suit and Tie from Philadelphia made him Assistant Entertainment Director in Niagara Falls, but then got shot in the head in a parking lot in Atlantic City and never did see the new place in Huron Woods open. Frank had to pretty much start over with the new guy, Felix Alfano, so it was taking him longer to move up. Too long. He watched fucking Felix and the Philly Mob take the money out of Huron Woods in fucking dump trucks, keeping it all to themselves. Not just the casino profits, the Ontario government getting almost squat, but the money laundering, the loan sharking, the drugs, the sports books, the hookers, all the high roller action that never saw the casino floor.