Nine Volt Heart (29 page)

JASON

O
N FRIDAY NIGHTS THE band
doesn’t rehearse, after being in each other’s armpits the rest of the week.
When I went to Susi’s house Friday night, after closing the studio, I could
feel that she had disappeared again as soon as I kissed her hello. Looking over
her shoulder, I shouldn’t have been surprised to find the entire band, minus
Zak, filling her living room and kitchen. Who better for her to hide behind?

“Who are you and what have you done with the woman I love?”
I whispered into her hair, but everyone crowded around before she could answer.
Just the way she wanted it.

She served up green curry with string beans, lover’s
eggplant with red pepper chips to burn our mouths, a soothing sort of fried
wonton with shiitake mushrooms and water chestnuts, and swimming angel—spinach
and tofu in peanut sauce, though I think Susi uses real angels. Even Ian didn’t
complain about the lack of animal protein, and the food was comforting, turning
most everyone into drowsy, happy beasts.

Except me. I didn’t get to sit by Susi. Susi didn’t talk to
me. Or touch me. Everyone else got to talk to Susi, so that talking and the
tinkling of the table service made another kind of music. Except for me, the
room was full of happy, peaceful people. It wasn’t just the food, either. She had
done just about everything possible in the past weeks to make every last member
of the band fall in love with her. It wasn’t the obvious things that I’d fallen
in love with: her warmth, intelligence, kindness. The rusty angel voice. She
had made some kind of personal connection with each and every one of them: fishing,
teaching, baseball, movies. Cynthia had even shown Susi the effing woodshop
where she spends her time when Ian drives her crazy. No one else gets to go
into her woodshop, only Susi. Susi turned them into happy beasts every night
with whatever she made for us to eat on break, but what brought everyone to
heel was the music. Not just the tone and color and power of her voice, but
that she worked her small, charming ass off with us every night. Without
complaint or distraction or needing to dominate or debate.

Glinda, the good Witch of the North, who made them all
forget how Jason had led them into the wilderness with the Wicked Witch of the
West, was in the kitchen finishing off bowls of crème broulee with Sonny’s help
and a soldering torch. While they worked, Cynthia and Angelia talked about
teaching. The other gentlemen of the band would have contributed to the
conversation if they hadn’t stuffed themselves half way to a coma on Susi’s
food. I listened, wanting Susi to turn and speak to me, look at me, move toward
me. All night, she drifted further and further away.

Angelia said, “Yeah, it’s true, we teach rich kids, plus a
handful of scholarship kids who are fishes out of water like we were at
Juilliard. Where we teach, several of the parents make it clear that we are
servants and they are our masters.”

Cynthia said, “How do you put up with that?”

“We ignore it and pay attention to the kids. It’s Susi who
hit on the idea of teaching ballads as the roots of rock, and it clicked with
the kids. She talked the curriculum committee into letting her teach her
material as double credit: literature and music. She spent hours in meetings,
showing how it works when you start with “Barbry Ellen” as the text, and trace
it from Britain to Appalachia, and trace Cajun zydeco back to Acadia and then
all the way to Bretonne fisher villages in France.”

“I figured that out on my own,” Ian said. “I didn’t need to
go to a fancy high school to do it.”

“You figured it out—almost—some time last year,” Toby said.

“I want to take it further,” Angelia said. “Most kids
playing music don’t see the string that ties them to the crusaders who carried the
oud from the Levant to Europe, so it could evolved into the violin and guitar.”

Susi said from the kitchen, “The folksinger girls in my
class teach themselves to sing from CDs. How many of them will get a chance to
try a range of vocal styles, or learn how to take care of their voices, or how
to project without injury?”

Angelia said, “What if we find the next Mark O’Connor or Doug
Sahm, and expose them to new influences and the ideas and techniques for how to
master skills? Suppose we talk them into staying in school, which I have found
is the biggest challenge with talented kids.

“Yes, it is,” Ian said. “Shoot, what more painful place in
the world is there besides high school? Oh yeah, jail. That’s the other worst
place.”

“No offense, but you and Susi are both kidding yourselves,”
Toby said. “Arts funding has disappeared since 9-11. Because money is
disappearing for music education everywhere, no one will pay you to do this.”

“I disagree,” Susi said gently. “I believe we can get enough
to do one summer, to prove the worth of the idea. Then the funding base will
grow.”

Cynthia said, “You need more than just the rich bitches who
want to fund impoverished violinists at Juilliard. You need to find some rich
rock-and-roll bitches who wanted to help kids be great musicians.”

Sonny and Susi finished setting the dessert aflame and
carried the bowls to people. I got mine from Sonny. As everyone was reduced to
humming and sighing over scorched sweet cream, Cynthia came to the kitchen to
pour coffee, where I sat on a bar stool away from the others. Since Susi didn’t
want to sit by me.

Cynthia leaned on the counter, her head close to mine and
her voice low as she spoke.

“Jason, have you been on the Internet today?”

“I’m trying to stop. I need the Internet surfer’s equivalent
of Antabuse.”

“Your pseudo-brother is getting weird. He’s posting more
frequently, boasting wildly. It’s like he’s challenging you over something.”

“It’s just Arlo. He is ticked at me because I won’t let him
play roadie for us this summer.” I spooned my warm pudding while we talked.

“It’s not Arlo. He can’t spell, and your stalker brother
can.”

“Maybe he uses a spellchecker.”

“Forget Arlo. He’s harmless. Your stalker isn’t. We had the
house wired today with a security alarm. Should have done it long ago.”

“I’m paying friends of Sonny’s to watch the house.”

“You are shitting me. Why didn’t you tell me?” Cynthia
didn’t seem as furious with me as she might have been in other circumstances.

“Does it matter?”

“I should pull the blinds upstairs. The guys in the
warehouses across the alley are used to it, but I don’t like flashing
strangers.” She licked the last of crème broulee from her spoon. “Tell Susi to
get her house wired, too.”

“She already has an alarm.”

Toby’s voice rose above the hum in the room. “I still don’t
get who plays which venues, Jason. Do you want me at all three?”

As I answered, I saw the surprise on Susi’s face and began
to fear that I hadn’t planned this appropriately.

“Zak and Sonny can skip the folk scene at the museum. The
rest of you need to be there. Everyone has to do the landmines benefit. We are
on at seven—and you have to be in dinner jackets. Martha will have them for you
when you get there. Angelia can skip the Showbox, but I hope she’ll want to
play. Everyone else should be there.”

“What are you talking about?” Susi said.

“We’re playing several benefit gigs tomorrow.”

“I’m not invited?” She frowned.

“You said you didn’t want people to know you were singing.
These are public events.”

She took a step toward me, folding her arms, ready for
battle, which warmed my heart in ways you can’t imagine. I’d rather she came at
me straight on than fold her tent and slink off, as she seemed to be doing all evening.

“You didn’t ask me, Jason. Don’t I get a choice?”

“I thought you had already stated your choice.”

“What if I changed my mind?”

“You are scared to be alone with me,” I said, hoping the
others didn’t hear. She stood so close that I could touch her hair. But I
didn’t. “And you’re scared to sing in public with us.”

“That is not true.”

“We don’t know that. You’ll change your mind again and run
away. The same as you keep running away from me.”

“I haven’t run away.”

“Do you deny that you’re avoiding me?”

“I want to perform with everyone else. Let me sing with the
band.”

“OK, but first you have to play a morning gig with me to
prove you won’t fold on the entire band.”

“Where?”

“Busking in the Market. Singing mountain songs. Nine
o’clock.”

“I’ll be there.”

“And I’ll enjoy the pleasure of your company, if you choose
to come.”

I gathered my pack from where I stash it when I’m at her
house.

“Where are you going?”

“Home. Maybe I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Why are you leaving?”

“Susi, you’ve been avoiding me all night. ‘Fear of intimacy’
is your middle name. I’m trying to be nice and not push you, since I hope
you’ll come back again. Let’s worry about your fear of performing for now.”

“I’m not afraid. Don’t you want to—”

“You know what I want, Susi. If I stay any longer, I’ll be
on my knees, begging, in front of the audience you invited to protect you.
Leaving is the only way I can preserve what little dignity I have left.”

I kissed her good-night, the way I’d kiss that cousin I
don’t have.

SUSI

E
VERYONE SNEAKED A LOOK AT me
when Jason left, which caused me to stand more erect. I don’t have anything to
be ashamed of. I went to the kitchen to make more coffee, where Cynthia was
pouring the dregs into her cup.

“‘Many fish’ll bite if you got good bait,’” she said,
quoting from the fishing song Ian had taught me.

“Am I supposed to satisfy your curiosity so everyone can
gossip about it later?”

“You know how much the band gossips, Susi. Close to zero, I
believe.”

“It isn’t anyone’s business whether I sleep with Jason.” I
tried saying it to see how much bravado I had left.

“Most of us don’t care whether you sleep with him—though it
makes it a hell of a lot easier to be around him—as much as we care whether
you’ll stay with the band.”

“As long as I’m invited, I’ll come to rehearsal—at least,
whenever my schedule allows.”

“I believe that Jason’s point was that there’s rehearsal,
and then there’s the real world. You have to make a choice, Susi.”

“I’ve made my choice. I choose to be a teacher. I’m not a
performer.”

“You also seem to believe that your choices only affect you.
Nothing matters outside the little paradise you created in this charming
cottage.”

Cynthia doesn’t know about subtlety. We stopped speaking at
that point in the evening. Angelia and Toby couldn’t be talked into staying
late, which was no surprise, and at midnight Cynthia and Ian went home. Sonny
finished the last of the dishes with me, being almost as meticulous as Jason
is. The result of his efforts removed every trace from my house of what we had
done for the past six hours.

Then Sonny left, and I was alone.

I took a shower, just to relax the tension that had built
since Randolph walked into my office in the morning. Afterward I slipped naked
and alone between the sheets, wanting to pass into oblivion so that I didn’t
need to think any longer.

The sheets touching my breasts made my nipples erect. The
quilt settling down over me felt so insubstantial. It had been just one
night—or a few hours early in the morning—so how could I already miss that
weight pressing me into the bed, or miss that mass of male energy and heat
filling the space beside me?

It had to be wrong to feel this way. I’d complained for
weeks about how distracting all that testosterone was, and now I lay alone in
my bed, missing it. I was alone because I had pushed him away, and not even
done it subtly. Jason noticed and pushed back.

If I closed my eyes, lying in the safest place in the world
(my own bed), dangerous images and sensations flooded in. Jason above me,
aroused and filled with a trepidation that I had created through indecisiveness
(which is more uncharacteristic of me than anything else in the last month).
Jason beneath me, his beautiful face contorted in an agony of pleasure (which
we had created together). Jason’s hands around my wrists, holding my arms above
my head, encouraging me to move against him, and then stopping to play chords
on my wrist and asking if I knew what song it was (“Hymn for a Rusty Angel,”
that first one he wrote for me to sing).

Then I pictured again the folder Randolph laid on my desk,
and how it had roused every fear that my experience with Logan taught me.

I have to stop seeing Jason, which means I have to stop
singing in the band. In the morning, I needed to carry out my obligation to
perform with them for that single day, and then say goodbye to all of them
before I let passion destroy the peace I had eked out for myself in the past
year.

~

Angelia called me at seven
a.m., to ask what I was wearing.

“Black,” I said. “I don’t know the audience. I don’t know
the customs. So, black.”

“What should I wear? I never looked good in black. That was
always reason enough to give up the symphony.”

“Wear the clothes you always wear outside of school. Toby
loves how you dress. Maybe his type of audience does too.”

“I’m not sure.”

“You’ll feel more comfortable if you look like yourself.”

Her second call—I have never had to hold her hand to assuage
nervousness in the fifteen years I’ve known her—delayed my leaving, so I didn’t
arrive in the Market until ten minutes to nine. The clatter of early shoppers
scrambling for parking and delivery trucks rumbling along the cobblestones
orchestrated a cacophony of noise and confusion. That early, the air smelled of
Puget Sound, though walking along the crowded street you can also smell
vegetables and flowers from the truck-farmers’ stalls and, of course, the smell
of coffee wafted over the truck fumes.

Like most Seattle natives, I seldom enter the Market,
especially on sunny weekends, except to sneak in to the Spanish Table and other
specialty shops. I’d never come there to stand on a street corner by the Sanitary
Market (how the language has changed since they named that structure), buffeted
by busy pedestrians, the cool marine air raising goose bumps on my bare knees.

Jason already stood at the designated corner, his guitar
case leaning against his leg. He smiled when I came around the corner, and I
tried to read that smile—happy to see me? surprised?—but I couldn’t tell what
he thought. I didn’t know what my own smile meant, since I hadn’t followed my
own advice for how to dress. Instead, I appeared in costume, because it seemed
a better approach to public performance.

“Where did you get that shirt?” Jason asked. “I’m so
jealous.”

“At the Pendleton Rodeo when I was in high school. It was a
family vacation, and I fell under the spell of the place.” I’d spent half a
year’s allowance on an embroidered rodeo-queen shirt in black and silver, with
matching belt buckle and boots. Who’d guess it survived for years, until I
found it when we cleaned out my father’s attic last summer.

“Will you please be careful in that skirt?”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s perfect. Except something about it makes me want to
take it off you, and I don’t want others thinking the same thing. What shall we
sing first?”

“‘I’m Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes.’”

“OK. But yours are grey. I was thinking about them all last
night.” When it was his turn to choose, Jason named another song for me to sing
while he noodled on the guitar. When I chose something for him to sing, he
said, “You lead. I’ll come in on harmony.”

We made it through six of the songs we first sang
together—and made about four dollars and some cents in change—when Ian’s cousin
Arlo appeared with a friend.

“Oh man, fuckin’ A.”

“Hello, Arlo,” I said. Jason came as close to outright
rudeness I had ever seen in him, not greeting either of the men.

“Man oh man. Has anyone freaking recognized you?” Arlo’s
voice carried across the street and down the way so that people turned to look.

“I hope not,” I said, keeping my voice cool and even, though
I‘d spent half the night worrying about just that.

“Oh shit. My manners. Susi Neville, this is Quentin
Henderson who writes for the
Seattle Buzz
. We’re
thinking about writing a novel together about rock-and-roll.”

“Is it plot driven or character driven?” Jason asked.
Without giving either of them a second to answer, he said, “We have to keep
playing music if we are going to make any money.”

“Fuckin’ crack me up, man. Jason Taylor is playing in the
freaking Pike Place Market and people walk right past. I’m taking pictures.” He
had his camera up and began snapping before I had time to turn my head away.

“Can it, Arlo,” Jason muttered. “Just let us play music.”

“All right. I’m cool. Later, man.”

“‘I Am a Pilgrim,’” Jason said. We began singing as Arlo and
his friend walked away laughing. Arlo caught someone by the arm up the street,
turned him around and pointed at us.

Whether it was Arlo’s noise or that he sent friends to
watch, we soon had a crowd that spread to the street, blocking traffic. A
bicycle policeman came, directing people to move out of the street. Several
people held video cameras or cell phones over the heads of other listeners, and
everyone clapped and cheered, though Jason wouldn’t let them have their fill of
clapping before he called out another song title and strummed through the
lead-in chords.

Then when I most needed a drink and a break, Sonny appeared,
handing me a bottle of water and positioning himself between us and people
pressing too closely. Jason put his guitar away, wrapping the change we earned
into the bandana that had been tied around his wrist.

“That’s it, folks. We have another gig to get to.”

“Will you sign this for me?”

Someone thrust paper and a Sharpie pen under Jason’s nose,
and he smiled. “We’re playing a benefit at MOHAI this afternoon. If you come, I
promise to sign after the show. Sonny?”

Some understanding between the two men caused the crowd to
part, and we headed up the street.

“Where did you park, Susi?”

“Near Virginia and First Avenue. Do you want a ride?”

“Yes, please. May I take you to lunch? Susi, this isn’t your
car.”

I explained that mine was in the shop, and then found that
“taking me to lunch” meant driving him to the Museum of History and Industry—MOHAI—and
walking the Chesiahud trail around Lake Union until we found a picnic table,
where he shared apples, cheese, bread and a bottle of water from his pack. As
he cut the apple into pieces with a pocket knife, he said, “I was mean last
night, and I apologize. You must have recognized it as the adolescent defensive
maneuver that it was.”

“Actually, I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for, Susi. Every time you
allow me close to you, I rush in and demand more. I understand that you need to
proceed at a slower pace. That is, I understand it intellectually. I have a hard
time modifying my behavior.”

“Do you want me to explain myself better?”

“Gosh, no, Susi. Then I’d have to explain myself, which
would be humiliating. Thanks for showing up today. Your being here helps me
feel a lot more confident.”

“Are you nervous, too? Angelia called this morning, very
nervous, and she’s never been nervous before a performance in her life.”

“I’m not nervous about playing. I just wasn’t popular the
last time I played in Seattle.”

“Because of your music?”

He shook his head. “When I was married, my wife called the
police on me when I was shouting at her to unlock the door to my house. She
told them that I had caused her untold suffering. It was a lie, and the police
saw through it.”

“What does that have to do with playing music today?”

“What happened—a lot of people know about it, or think they
know from rumors. She hasn’t taken any opportunity to tell the world it isn’t
true. Some of those people will be sitting in the audience today. Here, this
afternoon, for sure. Perhaps in the later shows too.”

At that moment, I owed telling him how I’d become acquainted
through email with the nature of the woman to whom he’d been married. The
opportunity came and I let it pass. If we had to acknowledge what I knew about
his ex, I’d owe reciprocity. The idea of Jason knowing about Logan remained
intolerable to me. To have lived through that humiliation once had been painful.
To relive it, or to see it again through Jason’s eyes, seemed like more torture
than I should have to bear.

“You know me, Susi. You don’t believe it, do you?”

“Of course, I don’t.”

He sighed. “Then nothing else matters.”

We went back to the museum and watched the other acts from
the wings, since there wasn’t much to be said for walking around Lake Union in
ostrich-skin cowboy boots and a gaudy shirt.

~

Dan, Pete, and my friends from the Sunday bluegrass service
came on stage near the end of the program and played those beautiful hymns we’d
been doing together. Jason slipped out onto the stage with them, standing at
the back to play guitar, half turned away from the crowd. Four songs into their
performance, I found myself longing to be with them and felt no qualms at all
when Dan said, “Our friend Susi Neville is here, and we’re hoping she’ll join
us.”

It was unlikely that anyone there knew me, but the etiquette
of the folk crowd was such that they clapped for my entrance as if they did. We
visited our favorites together, like “I’ll Fly Away” and “Take Me in Your
Lifeboat.” The polite but eager audience applauded and greeted each new song
with increasing enthusiasm.

Then Dan introduced the musicians.

“For our last song, we want to bring up a new friend who is
now like a brother to us, along with our little sister Susi. Jason Taylor, come
show ‘em you can yodel.”

Most of the audience clapped like they were supposed to. A
couple of ululating calls also echoed through the auditorium. When Jason
stepped to the microphone and the noise dropped, some people were hissing.