Nine Volt Heart (21 page)

SUSI

H
E DIDN’T ASK PERMISSION. He
just went into my bathroom, shut the door, and turned on the shower. I had to
assume that he stripped, because first he shrieked and then began singing in
the shower. No, he was yodeling.

I was no more comfortable now with him naked in my house
than I had been the first time. Also, he was mad at me, even though he denied
it. Yet he came out smiling, dressed again, rolling up the cuffs on his shirt,
exposing the fine dark hair above his wrists.

I tried to articulate my excuses, so he would understand and
not be mad.

“Jason, I explained when we first got to know each other.
Teaching and my work to establish the institute matter to me more than
anything. I can’t let myself by seduced into an inappropriate relationship.”

He filled the kettle and began making tea.

“You like Jasmine this late at night, don’t you?” he said.

When the water boiled, he measured the correct spoonsful
into the teapot, poured the water, and set it to steep. He took two teacups
down from the shelf and put my favorite in front of me, dripping the
half-teaspoon of honey that I like into the cup before pouring tea over it.

He stroked my hand with his little finger when I reached for
the cup.

“If I meet your ex, I’m going to wipe his effing face across
the pavement, Susi. I don’t need to know what he did, but I’m now
over-qualified to punish him for it.”

“You’re angry with me.”

“No, I swear I’m not. Listen, starting tomorrow we’re
rehearsing at Ian’s at night, so we won’t be invading your life.”

He set down his teacup and picked up his pack.

“I hope like hell you’ll still sing with us, Susi. We start
at eight every night. Call Ian if you’re unsure about coming.”

~

I went to sing at Pete’s church on Sunday night, alone, which
must have sent me off the deep end instead of saving me. Because after that, I
went out of the house every night to sing.

JASON

“S
ONNY, IT’S JASON TAYLOR. How
you doing?”

“Far freaking out, man. Good to hear from you.”

“What are you up to?”

“Going to meetings. Working a gig at a motor hotel out on
Aurora. The owner pays me to keep the property clean at night, if you know what
I mean. Sweep away the solicitors and all that follows in their wake.”

“Are you playing music?”

“At home. At church on Sundays. Me and a couple of friends
do some weddings here and there.”

“I heard you’ve been playing Luther’s part for a Johnny Cash
tribute, doing the casino circuit.”

“I’m not doing any more club work. There’s too much
temptation for a fucker like me.”

“Have you done session work?”

“Who’s going to invite me to a fucking tea party?”

“Are you morally opposed to the idea? Can you work with me
afternoons for a few weeks?”

“Sure. What you have that needs cleaning up?”

“I mean that I want you to play bass. We’re working at
Temple Bell. You know the place?”

“Far freaking out. What do you need? Blues? Nashville
boogie? That cowboy shit you were doing a couple of years ago?”

“Yeah, all that. Sonny, I have to ask you another favor.”

“What you need, man?”

“There’s a creep who’s been messing with me on the Internet
for a while, but he’s started to put himself in my real life.”

“Me and my friends can take care of him, Jason.”

“I haven’t ever seen him to know who it is. It was just
annoying, but things have gone missing that I care about.”

“You want twenty-four hours of protection?”

“The record company is paying for security inside the
studio—though they’ll charge me for it later. I want someone to watch for a creep
by Ian’s house. Nothing outside the law. It’s just that your usual rent-a-cop
can’t watch for this kind of weirdo.”

“I can call a few friends.”

“Great. When can you start playing music?”

“This afternoon? I can come right now if you want.”

~

It’s going to be like
The Little Prince
from
high school French class. At least, it will not be
Huis Clos
—I
will not be sitting in hell with Jean-Paul Sartre, smoking cigarettes and
longing for a mirror to reveal my true self. My true self has resolved to give
up self-loathing in favor of true love. Since I’m a quick study, I’ll just have
to practice patience while waiting for her to catch up with me. I can’t force
divine revelation. Though it seemed to be at my fingertips to command that one
morning, just before she discovered I was the wrong Jason.

However, I am actually the correct Jason.

To prove it, the new music is coming along outrageously
well.

Maybe the music will prove it to Susi too.

I tried reasoning through the situation while waiting for
everyone to show up at Ian’s on Monday night.

“I’m a good guy. I don’t drink out of the carton. I put the
seat down, even if I’m alone.”

“Pussy,” Toby said. “You’ll never get any if you act like
one.”

“Toby is right. Maybe you’re too nice,” Cynthia said. She
had spiked her hair again, which she hadn’t done for years, but it was a sign
that she wasn’t in a mood to be trifled with. “Lots of women have a problem
with that. I know I would.”

“Fortunately, I’m good enough that I don’t have to be nice,”
Ian said.

“Oh please.” Cynthia scratched her nail across the stubble
on his head, and he responded by Frenching her so deeply one had to look away.

We’d spent five hours getting the living room set up for
Monday night’s work. Ian still calls it the living room, though Cynthia shakes
her head every time. We soundproofed it and prepared it for rehearsal and
recording space when they inherited the house from his parents seven years ago.
So getting ready meant positioning mics, hanging futons over the windows, and
setting up Zak’s muffled trap at the far end of the long room. Cynthia had
removed anything breakable or reflective.

Even better, Karl had finally sprung my recording equipment
free from the condo. All we needed was a vocalist. Angelia came over on Sunday,
when we played music without taping. I guess the choir of bluegrass angels kept
Susi in church on Sunday. I hoped that was it.

Hope. What an effing stupid, fragile word. It was more like
a canker sore than an abstract ideal. Might as well believe in fate.

“I’d forgotten what nice microphones you have,” Toby said.

“Yeah, I think I want a couple like these,” Ian said.

“I think not,” Cynthia said. “You blew the budget on
guitars. You need to restrain your impulses.”

“There’s plenty of money,” Ian said, grousing.

“If you continue working in the studio, then yes. If not,
then not,” she said. “You need to go back on the road.”

“We’re doing that anyway,” Ian said. “We’re playing
twenty-two cities this summer.”

“That’s not what Jason said.” Cynthia’s words turned both
Ian and Toby around to stare at me.

“Actually—” I hadn’t explained that part yet. “Stoneway has
twenty-two cities to play if we want to play with Dominique. Otherwise, she’ll
play those towns with other musicians dressed in our clothes.”

Toby softly picked out the melody to “Wild Horses” on his
mandolin. “There are hundreds of cities in America. Not every house is booked
up. Some might still need a second act.”

“Cynthia has been researching those possibilities. We won’t
be playing as Stoneway—not unless we play with Dominique.”

“There’s ten thousand band names that no one thought of
yet,” Ian said.

“You made your decision.” I wasn’t asking, since I knew the
answer.

Toby nodded. “I won’t go on stage with her.”

Ian hesitated. “Buddy, I’ll go where you do. But shoot, how
can we play with Dominique after Susi?”

“How can another singer change the band’s direction?”
Cynthia said. “Except that Dominique bent your music sideways until it hurt. I
thought Jason swore to give up writing songs for a specific woman to sing.
Didn’t you swear it, Jason?”

Susi was at the door, with Angelia at her side. Toby and Ian
both leaped up to unlatch the screen. I almost dropped the mic I was dinking
with.

“Oh god,” Cynthia breathed beside me. “You fell in the deep
end, and you still can’t swim.”

“It’s different this time.”

~

I had sworn that it would be different this time. However, as
soon as we started recording, I slipped and started telling Susi what to do,
repeating the very action that had destroyed any ability to work with
Dominique.

But Susi did it. Everything I asked, without complaints,
without sulking. She asked questions back, but only for the sake of ensuring
that she performed as I wanted.

She also brought great food for the break.

SUSI

I
AN’S WIFE CYNTHIA IS tall and
gangly, and she has long, thin, big-knuckled hands that seem to be battered
from gardening or similar rough work, though she covers the damage with
brightly colored acrylic nails. She is pretty in an ordinary sort of way, but
wears full-battle eyeliner as if she made up for the stage, and her hair has
been bleached and tortured within an inch of its life.

She scares me.

My first encounter with Cynthia had the same flavor of my
first day in high school, when a gang girl caught me in the women’s restroom
and threatened to cut me with a razor for kissing her boyfriend. After school
her gang caught me and pushed me into the dirt, and she stood over me saying,
“Sorry, baby doll. Wrong chick,” since she realized I was the wrong person. My
mother put me in a private school after that. However, in this case, I’ll have
to learn how to be friends with Cynthia with no outside help.

Cynthia caught me alone in the kitchen.

“So you’re a teacher, huh? What do you teach? Where did you
go to school?”

“I teach vocal music at Prescott. I went to Oberlin and
Juilliard.”

“Pretty classy for just a high school teaching certificate.”

“I don’t have a certificate. Not every teacher needs one at
a private school. What do you do?”

“I’m a teacher too. But I only went to the UW. I haven’t got
kennel papers. Just a teaching certificate.”

“Where do you teach?”

“I’m just subbing this year, since things are so crazy in
the family. Ian’s schedule got all screwed up and our grandparents were ill, so
I had to find care for them. And I helped my kid brother transition to decent
care. He has cerebral palsy.”

“What do you teach?”

“Special Ed. The basket cases and worse, like my brother. I
haven’t been in the classroom much this year. I mostly tutor. It’s been kind of
nice to be free. For years I had to be the one to go to work every day so we
could pay the bills and have health insurance.”

“So you aren’t worried about that now?”

She stared at me like I was dog meat.

“Ian won the lottery.”

“I didn’t know. In fact, I didn’t know real people won.”

“Me either. It let us we move my brother out of low-rent
care and move our grandparents into assisted living. How about you? Did you win
the lottery after Juilliard so you can slum at Prescott?”

“I live on my salary. I don’t play the lottery, and my
brother pays for my father’s care. Cynthia, why hate me? You don’t even know
me.”

“It’s nothing personal. I just don’t like the effect you
have on Jason.” She poured herself a cup of coffee, though maybe she should
consider cutting back on caffeine. “Ian says you fish. We’re hiking in the
Olympics over Memorial weekend. Want to come along and look for fish to kill? Be
warned, we don’t do that equality shit in the wild. I don’t chop wood, and I don’t
eat burned pancakes.”

“I know how to cook over a campfire.”

“Then you should come. If you’re still hanging around. What
happened to your face?”

“A burn accident.”

“If Ian hadn’t warned me, I wouldn’t have noticed. He didn’t
see it the first couple of days. You cover it well. That must have been some
tough shit to handle.”

“There’s worse in the world. I like Ian. How long have you two
been together?”

“Eight years. Just after I finished school.”

“Do you travel with them on the road?”

“Lots. It gets boring though.”

“You don’t have kids, is that right?”

“Can’t. I turned up broken in that department.”

“I’m sorry.”

“There’s worse in the world. Listen, Ian asked me to put in
a good word for Jason. Woman to woman.”

“I don’t know—”

“You must have noticed by now that Jason is no more of an
asshole than any other guy. You should give him a chance.”

Toby came in for coffee just then, and I felt rescued for a
moment.

“Toby says you’re a cock tease,” Cynthia said.

I looked at Toby, who blushed deep red.

“That wasn’t nice of Toby to say.”

“I never did. Honest, Susi. I would never even think it.”
Toby fled, coffee in hand.

Cynthia said, “I figured it out for myself. If you wanted a
desperate, crawl-on-his-knees lover, what would you do different?”

“I’m not doing anything.”

Cynthia stared at me through her spiky bangs. “You seem
nice, but I can tell you have secrets. The kinds of secrets that hurt people.
I’m psychic that way.”

“I’m sorry? What are you saying to me?”

“Jason has enough hurt to write songs for the next decade.
Don’t make it worse.”

~

At midnight, when we took another break, Angelia followed me
to the upstairs bathroom, the only private place in Cynthia’s house.

“Did the foundation find you today, Susi? I spent an hour on
the phone at noon.”

“Yes. I spent two hours. They seem interested.”

“Don’t you think I should marry Toby? He’s cute. He’s smart.
He’s good in bed.”

“Oh god, Angelia. You’ve only known him for a week.”

“Didn’t Jason decide to marry you after two days?”

“He isn’t serious.”

“Fooled me. How did he ask you? On his knees?”

“Just lying in bed. He said, ‘Let’s stay together.’”

“That isn’t asking you to marry him, Susi.”

“He keeps talking about having children together—by
Christmas.”

“Oh god, guys never joke about babies. How does that make
you feel?”

“Honestly, Angelia? My first reaction is that I want to take
off all my clothes and do whatever he wants. It requires every ounce of
self-restraint to keep from behaving foolishly.”

“What’s foolish? He’s whacked for you, Susi, and he’s a nice
guy. Much nicer than my crumb-bum cousin.”

“Me with a guitarist from a bar band? It’s too comical to
consider. Pheromones cannot lead me into another unsuitable entanglement. I don’t
need it, and I won’t let it happen.”

“This will be fun to watch.”