Nine Volt Heart (19 page)

SUSI

B
Y DRIVING ACROSS TOWN as soon
as class ended on Friday, I managed to pick up sheet music on Stone Way by
three-thirty. Then I thought I’d take a quick run around Green Lake, even if it
is crowded most afternoons. The Wallingford-Green Lake neighborhood is a former
working-class mélange of bungalows and post-Victorian farm houses snuggled up
hip to shoulder, remodeled to accommodate small families and urban
professionals, the parking strips now plowed into drought-free gardens full of
lavender and santolina, oregano, and Pampas grass. Green Lake has been a
destination site for the last twenty years for runners, moms teaching their
five-year-olds how to ride bikes, and rollerbladers who enjoy skating backwards
in a crowd. In spite of how busy the path around the lake can get on the
weekend and just after work, it’s still a pathway that allows you to see wildlife
in the winter and a host of urban life in the spring and summer. If you can
find a place to park.

Jason was standing near one corner of that complex, five-way
stop on Green Lake Way, kissing a woman.

A tall, gorgeous woman in a long red leather coat looked
over his shoulder while he kissed her, as if to see who saw them. She caught me
watching. When she broke away from him, he turned and handed something to a man
standing with them and then loped up the street. I had no choice but to take my
turn to drive through the intersection, just as the beautiful woman pushed away
the other man’s arm from around her shoulder and stalked into Starbuck’s.

The run around Green Lake was relaxing in spite of the
people, or perhaps because of them. It was a rare but glorious spring
afternoons—we get beautiful weather in February, and then March is schizoid,
neither here nor there, and April breaks your heart because the cloud cover
descends depressingly, with rain falling like tears, washing away the cherry
blossoms before you have a chance to enjoy them. However, on that Friday
afternoon the sun glinted on the water so that you had to squint against the
glare. The mallards and Canada geese had hatched their babies for this year,
and they all thought it a great afternoon to paddle in the lake. The
mean-spirited farm geese at the north end of the lake felt too lazy in the sun
to chase anyone. It was warm enough to dampen the skin during exercise, and
everyone seemed delighted to be wearing t-shirts and sunglasses again and to
walk around the lake with their dogs and their children and their boyfriends.

We only play music together. We aren’t—going together. I
don’t have any feelings. I know how to prevent that.

~

Trying to find Ian’s house, I got lost between the North and
the Northwest street names, and ended up driving the lower Wallingford back
streets, looking for the collection of low-rise warehouses that Ian said
surrounded his house. There was Jason on the corner of a street again, in one
of the four-corner business districts, a remnant of old Wallingford, with
a dental office and what had once been a greengrocer and now sold liquor
and espresso. Jason was giving money to a thin, severe-looking woman in
jeans, who walked away with her arm around a rail-thin waif in a black
leather jacket, who resembled a drop-out from the heroin-chic clothing ads of
the early Nineties. The waif ran back and kissed Jason, wrapping her arms
around his neck and raking her fingers through his hair.

She had a cross tattooed on her cheek. I myself would never
think of doing that to attract men.

I am also much better at governing my impulses.

The disturbing sensation came when I turned my head away so
that I wouldn’t see. It felt like every time I’d turned away to avoid seeing
what Logan was doing.

JASON

O
N THE WALK TO IAN’S house, I
remembered a guy I met the first time I went to jail, and began to wonder if he
knew anything about creep management. It wasn’t a guy I could ask Martha to
call for me.

Susi was already waiting for me at Ian’s, and there was just
enough time to shower and put on a clean shirt. So I forgot about creeps for a while.

She sat primly on Ian’s sofa, looking at a trout-fishing
book from the table, not even taking the opportunity to prowl the three hundred
CDs on the north and east walls of the living room. She always has more
self-control than I could ever aspire to.

“Where shall we go?” I sat down beside her and felt her move
away, holding herself aloof.

“Did you make a reservation? It’s Friday. All the cafés will
be full.”

Like, did I know not to cross the street against the light?
I had not assigned my love life to Martha to take care of as I had everything
else, so of course it hadn’t occurred to me to make a reservation.

“It’s early and I know a place in Belltown,” I said, making
myself sound like Mr. Savoir-faire, when in fact I’m the guy who has to look
around and find his ass in order to save it. Then I couldn’t figure how to
start a conversation on the trip downtown, and Susi pretended that she was too
busy navigating traffic to help out.

She likes me. I know she does, even though I don’t know how
to get her to admit it and I don’t have any evidence to offer as proof, except
she sang with us all week. We walked into a hip restaurant in Belltown, so
awkward with each other that people couldn’t tell we were fated to be together
and had already enjoyed the bliss of consummation. We just didn’t know how to
talk to each other at the moment.

Johnnie, an acquaintance who played in a nouveau bash&stun
band that owed more to John Doe than Dave Grohl, was waiting tables. I stepped
back to ask him to seat us where we wouldn’t be observed and to keep people
away. I gave him a bill for it, which we both knew I didn’t need to do, but he plays
in a band, and I couldn’t ask a favor without returning what I had that he
didn’t.

“I can put you in my section, Jason. Sit on the north side
by the window so the boss lady can’t see you. Nadine came down on Dominique’s
side. I don’t know if she’d serve you.”

“You know that’s all a lie.”

“Yeah, but I can’t say that to my boss, can I? Nadine is a
piranha and swims in the same pool as your wife.”

“Ex.”

“Are they ever really ex?”

“God only knows. Johnnie, do you have a standing gig?”

“We folded last month. My brother’s girlfriend made him get
a job, and Michael quit to work in a cover band. I’m auditioning all over.”

“Can I borrow you on drums for a couple of weeks for session
work?”

“Sure. Where?”

“Temple Bell. Mornings.”

He was gracious with Susi, though for such a modest person,
she seemed to accept that treatment as natural. When Johnnie left, she leaned
over the table.

“Are you independently wealthy? I know it’s rude to ask, but
I can’t help myself. I’m curious.”

“No. I’ve worked for every dollar I ever had. Why?”

“You gave the waiter a hundred-dollar bill. That’s not the
kind of tipping that I thought bar musicians did.”

Busted. I scrambled, trying to make my brain work, because I
still wanted to be just Jason Taylor, ordinary guy, in her eyes. “I owed him.”

“What for?”

I reached for a lame excuse. “From a card game.”

“You gamble?”

“No. Just when we need to kill time on the road.” Lying
wasn’t where I wanted to go and, if I was forced to persist, I would have to end
the pleasant interlude of being me without the hype. A crowd of people entered
the restaurant, including Quentin Henderson with yet another incarnation of
Dating Woman dressed in basic black. Then the hostess seated Ephraim and
Dominique behind Susi.

I put on my Yankees hat and sun glasses and hunkered over
the menu.

“The polenta sounds good,” Susi said.

“Can’t be as good as yours. You’ve ruined me for second
best.” As I spoke, she looked up at me and I couldn’t read her expression, so I
took a flying leap. “In more ways than one.”

She studied her menu. “Please stop. I don’t enjoy being
pursued.”

Nadine came over to kiss Dominique hello, and I twisted away
to study the menu while looking out the window. After Nadine disappeared, the
background music switched to
Woman at the Well
, I suppose
in Dominique’s honor (though the two words form an oxymoron).

Johnnie passed by, and Susi reached out to stop him.

“Can you please turn down the volume on this music?”

He made a helpless gesture with his hands, while avowing
that he’d check. By this time Ephraim had seen me and dipped his head into his
menu, laughing. Within a moment the volume of the music dropped, then rose even
higher. Johnnie was arguing with Nadine at the front.

Susi stood up. “Let’s go.”

Quentin wanted to grab my attention in mid-departure. I had
to put him off in order to catch up with Susi. “I’ll call you this week, man.”

Outside, Susi hurried down the street, so I had to scramble
after her.

“What was that about?”

“Someone sitting by us was wearing too much perfume. And I
just can’t stand that pop diva trivia that passes for singing. It’s like
fingernails on a blackboard. In fact, I prefer the blackboard.”

“You little snob.”

“I am not a snob, Jason.” She must have missed the smug
satisfaction that settled over me as I listened to her savage my former wife.
She protested in earnest. “It’s just irritating. You get irritated when anyone
fails to keep the beat you want. Can’t I be irritated when I have to be
subjected in a public place to bad phrasing and poor breath control? Or a
wobble that tries to pass itself off as vibrato? What are these women thinking?
What kind of exhibitionist would stand up in public and subject the world to
that inefficient sound production?”

“Different people have different tastes,” I said,
thrill-chills running down my spine. I wanted to kiss her, but that was still
off limits.

“Even a child could tell they used pitch correction in the
recording.”

I stopped. “How do you know?”

“Anyone with half an ear can hear it. Oh, don’t look at me
like that, Jason. I may not know anything about pop music, but I know about
vocal recording techniques. They went in with a computer to erase that singer’s
flubs and paste in corrections, for which they should all be ashamed.”

“I wish they were.”

“Don’t try to appease me when I’m angry. At least my
students voted down that song.”

“What’s wrong with that song?”

“The lyrics are fine, I suppose, though I can’t stand to
listen closely enough to be sure. I let my students nominate songs to analyze for
influences. One student brought that song, but only one other person voted for
it. Thank heavens. If it had won, I would have had to listen to that woman’s
computer-corrected vocal habits a dozen times while we analyzed the influences
on the song.”

“Hank Williams, the Maddox Brothers and Rose, the White
Album.”

“Oh, you’re good. My father would admire your abilities. One
of the kids in my class said one other name. What was it?”

“I’m sure that’s all.”

“No, it was the vocals. They said the male voice was
imitating the Lost Sons, but I don’t know their music, and I can’t stand
listening to that woman enough to hear the other voices. That woman’s voice is
so cold. It reminds me of
Turandot
.”

Beautiful analogy. I wanted to fall at her feet in worship.
The opera of the little slave girl whose love saved the secret prince from the
cruel death that the ice-princess Turandot consigned him to. Like most
listeners, I especially love the solo by the slave girl Liù.

“You’re a delightful snob, Susi.”

“I am not. However, I wish you wouldn’t wear a hat indoors.
I know it’s what men do now, but I just haven’t been able to adapt to the
idea.” She stopped and turned around. “I’m sorry, Jason, I never should have
said that. I let my irritations run wild. Do whatever you want.”

~

She didn’t mean that, when she said, “Do whatever I want.”

We found dinner at The Agora Shop on Fifteenth Avenue East.
Nikos poured white wine for Susi and mineral water for me, and chatted while we
chose food, which made up for the difficulties Susi and I had starting a
conversation. While we ate fried halloumi and salads, we managed to converse
about music—what we’d been singing the past week and where that music was
headed. Gradually our exchange was warm and almost intimate. At one point I
tricked her into talking about teaching. For a while she dropped her guard and
enjoyed herself, but then she touched my hand as she gestured in the middle of
a story, and it was if she’d taken a full hit from a stun gun. She stopped
talking and folded in on herself—I’d seen her do that before—and no topic would
draw her out again.

So we learned that talk is good and touch is bad. If she had
only one other experience with a man, and since I knew for a fact that what she
enjoyed with me had been good, then the enemy of our mutual happiness was her
ex-husband.

She left me at Ian’s and went home alone. However, she
kissed me on the cheek. A guy can keep hoping.