Nine Volt Heart (35 page)

JASON

“J
ASON, IT’S ONE THING at my
house. Don’t do it at school. Stop it.”

“Hi, Susi. I’m flattered that you called me. This is a
first, talking to you on the phone. What is it I’m doing that I have to stop
now?”

“The roses. I thought it was cute when I found them on my
doorstep, though I confess I thought you did it to make me feel guilty. Do not
put them in my classroom or leave them anywhere at school, however you get them
inside. I can’t believe you sent me more of that stupid love poetry after the
conversation we had this morning. Jason? Will you please say something instead
of just breathing on the phone?”

“Why do you think it’s me?”

“Don’t be coy. The ones on my porch first appeared the day
after we started singing together. The students noticed last week when you
started leaving them outside my office. I do not need the principal to notice.”

“I’ll make sure it stops, Susi. There’s no rehearsal
tonight.”

“Good. I have a late meeting at school.”

“Shall I come by later?”

I hate it when the sound of breathing in a phone means no. I
hate it almost as much as stalkers.

~

I ran the mile to Ian’s house to get him out of bed so we
could drive over to Arlo’s house to find out whether he’d posted MP3s and
photos all over the Internet. That head-shot of Susi in the market had to have
been one of his.

At Ian’s house, effing Arlo was sitting at the breakfast
table, eating oatmeal with Cynthia while she sat at her laptop playing in
email.

“Shalom, bro! Did you see the bitching material I posted on
your fan site? Shit, I have been up all night trying to figure out how—”

I had him against the refrigerator to hurt him the way I’ve
dreamed of doing, while Cynthia shrieked in my ear that I’m an egg-sucking
asshole.

“Hey, what a warm family scene.” Ian stood in the doorway,
rubbing sleep from his eyes and scratching. “Do we choose sides in this game,
or is it every man for himself?”

“Jason is an asshole!” Cynthia shouted in my ear.

“Yeah, but that’s not news. It’s not worth yelling about,”
Ian said. “It’s sure not worth getting out of bed for.”

I couldn’t stop shouting, though I was going hoarse. “Effing
Arlo posted Susi’s name and picture and rehearsal tapes all over the universe.”

“I never!” Arlo croaked, since I had my hands around his
neck.

“He just put up photos from the Saturday shows,” Cynthia
said. “You’re being a jerk, Jason. He couldn’t even post those without my
help.” She slapped my hands away from Arlo. “Aren’t you supposed to be
harassing Martha and the engineer at the studio? Go away. I have to put up with
you pissing and moaning all over the house at night. Can’t we have some peace
during the daytime?”

Ian stretched and yawned. “I’ll come along. There’s nothing
to do here. Does Martha have any food at the studio?”

~

Ian and I listened together to the sound-board recordings
from Saturday. It beats me how my little Internet friend managed to plug into
the board. Our sound tech never would have let him patch in.

Susi’s voice couldn’t be heard on the board tapes.

“She wasn’t using a mic,” Ian said.

“Yes, she was. She had it in her hand. Something happened
technically.”

“I think she switched it off.”

“No one could project that well without a mic. She had my
earphone monitors. She couldn’t have heard herself sing without the mic.”

“You’re always right, Jason. But when we were shopping last
night, Susi said she doesn’t use microphones except when recording.”

JASON

“G
EEZ, KARL, I WAS BEGINNING
to think you gave up returning my calls.”

“OK, buddy, you got me now. You aren’t being the
chicken-shit prima donna I thought you were.”

“Gee, I’m touched.”

“I read every post I could on the Internet. I think your
friend is flipping. Listen: ‘If he hurts this angel, God will strike him dead.
I will serve as God’s right hand myself if it comes to that.’ There are more
like that.”

“Yikes.”

“You need personal security.”

“I won’t go that way. However much
Woman
at the Well
screwed up my life, I intend to still walk down the street
by myself when I want to.”

“Call the police.”

“There is nothing they can do if there hasn’t been a
physical threat against me. They told me that when I filed the report on Beau’s
guitar.”

“Be careful, Jason. I don’t want to spend the next two years
settling your estate. I would feel so bad about calling you chicken-shit.”

“I don’t mind that, but the ‘prima donna’ bit is offensive.”

~

I tried to relax in the music, though I ended up following
wherever Ian wanted to go for the rest of the morning, which is problematic for
us, since he is never comfortable leading. He prefers to react. So it was a
betrayal on my part that I had turned into a squib.

We had descended to such a state by the time Sonny came to
work with Zak that Ian and the engineer were just like the statues in lower Fremont
of people waiting for a bus that will never come, while I sat with my head in
my hands, waiting for my brain to unfreeze.

Zak took up his drumsticks and attacked the Ludwig traps to
warm up, as blissfully unaware of what was happening around him as ever.

“Can you fucking hold off?” I said, sounding far bitchier
than intended.

“What’s up?” Sonny asked, since he is sensitive to variables
in human temperature.

Ian said, “Jason is on the rag because he thinks a bogey man
is going to get his girlfriend. Is she your girlfriend this week, Jason?”

“Someone is bugging Susi?” Sonny looked startled. Then he grinned.
“Besides you, I mean.”

“She says I’ve been sending her flowers everyday—though I’m
not even smart enough to think of it. This creep is coming so close that he
leaves roses at her house and at school. If I call the police, they’ll want to
speak to her, too, and I don’t want her to worry about it.”

“I know where she lives,” Sonny said. “We’ll watch at the
school too.”

“OK, but just have your guys call the police if there’s ever
a problem. Don’t do anything.”

“Can you get cell phones for them?”

“Martha can. She can do anything. Just make sure no one bugs
Susi.”

I stared at my own guitar as if I couldn’t recognize it. I
also had to stop bugging her. It was clear from our Sunday walk in the park,
from Monday breakfast, from the brusque phone call. This Little Prince was
plumb out of fox bait and damn sick of practicing patience. However, there
wasn’t any other alternative.

SUSI

A
T SCHOOL, ROSEMARY HANDED me
four of those pink While-You-Were-Out notes when I passed her office, and I
dropped them in the trash as I entered my own office. Two from Angelia and two
from Cynthia. I had returned Angelia’s call once already—she had called in sick
every day since Monday. She wanted to bug me about rehearsing with the band. I
had about had it with email as a pernicious tool of the devil, since now
Cynthia also pestered me via phone at least four times a day about not showing
up for rehearsal, as if I owed her anything.

Perhaps worse, Jason’s ex-wife had begun forwarding me all
the email he had ever sent her. Some of the same kind of bad poetry I’d been
receiving, but as if it were written backwards in a mirror for hexing, all of
it mean and cruel. After reading the first couple of messages, I couldn’t quite
believe it of him, though I already knew that what his wife had done to him had
been the basest sort of betrayal. I printed some of it, swearing that I’d just
get brave and ask him, if I ever saw him again.

The principal had been explicit: my job was in jeopardy.
Teachers appear at work on time (I’d never been late a day in my life until I
met Jason). Teachers charged with the care of the innocent children of Prescott
Prep do not sing in rock-and-roll bands that include drug users and wife
beaters.

I didn’t need the threat. Susi Neville does not sing in a
rock-and-roll band. She knows nothing about the genre, or the life, or the
people that inhabited that world. It’s not her world, and their cares aren’t
her cares. She doesn’t need to fall into a fugue state and sail off the edge of
the world just because singing and satiation of appetite seem more important
than a sane, rational plan of action.

I kept repeating to the principal (and to myself) that I
only wanted a chance to teach and launch this summer’s institute, to prove the
value of the ideals in my curriculum, to give my father one more season as a
teacher, to help kids who love music have a chance to learn more while playing
with experienced musicians.

At three o’clock, I took the first emotional bath of the
day. As I prepared once more to cajole Chastity Keller into going to Juilliard,
she said breathlessly that she was pregnant and going to live with her aunt in
Phoenix after graduation, but I must not tell a soul, because only the aunt
knows, and it has to stay a secret, even from her parents.

“You have to tell your mother, Chastity. She’ll want to
help.”

She looked at me in surprise. “You don’t know my mother,
Miss Neville. Anyway, I don’t have to do anything she says. I’m eighteen now.”

I have no experience or wisdom to share with her. She had
kicked away all her moorings, and I didn’t have a compass to lend her. What I
wanted to say, I couldn’t. After all, it was her life that she had made a mess
of. I have wanted to shake her for the past few months—perhaps ever since she
got involved with that boy who would depart in a few short weeks for Sarah
Lawrence, deserting her for all time. I thought of how Jason felt about his
talented mother never taking her chance. It was all I could do to keep from
putting my head down on my desk and weeping for this girl.

Chastity saw the clock and grabbed her books.

“I’m rehearsing a song with the jazz band to perform at
graduation. I can’t let them down.”

Nope, can’t let the jazz band down. It’s OK, though, to let
God down for having given you an ocean of talent that you will let run out on
the sands of Phoenix. She left me alone to think terrible thoughts, wondering
if other young women who were afraid of their talents would instead have babies
that tethered them to a make-do sort of life. Or if other talented women who
were afraid to be alone would tether themselves to the wrong sort of man who could—

Randolph stuck his head around the corner of my door. I had
come to loathe the sight of him.

“The principal wants to see you. Gwyneth Lukas is in his
office.”

Whom I wanted to see only a little less than I wanted an
endodontic procedure without anesthesia. When I walked through the door, Gwyneth
slapped me, which I hadn’t experienced since high school.

Then again, this was high school.

“You bitch! You dragged that bastard into Zak’s life, and
now it’s all ruined. After everything we planned for him.”

“I’m sorry, Gwyneth. I don’t understand.”

“It’s Zak’s birthday. He celebrated it by packing all of his
things into a van, to move in with one of those musicians you got him involved
with. He sent a rejection to Berklee weeks ago. It’s your friend who talked him
into quitting.”

“Jason Taylor?”

“Zak said you let him out of class for the past month to
play in that band. He’s out all hours with that man—a wife beater and a drug
user.”

“You didn’t know Zak is playing in a band? How could you not
know?”

The principal interrupted at this point. Up to that moment,
I’d been rather proud that I hadn’t let Gwyneth’s hysteria affect me, and that
I’d stopped myself from slapping that supercilious look from Randolph’s face.

“Miss Neville, is this true—that you excused Zak from
class?”

“No. I stopped reporting absences for all seniors. Most
teachers have. The kids all have their acceptances. Their diplomas are waiting
for them. Missed days have no effect at this point.”

“Zak quit school,” the principal said.

That might have been the point when my reserve weakened.

Gwyneth had gone green with fury under her makeup. “I called
the foundation to inform them that the Lukas family was pulling its financial
support from your little scam. That’s when I learned who your musician friend
is. He failed the foundation’s background check.”

“They were false accusations. Jason Taylor has never been
convicted of anything.” I didn’t mention that his name wasn’t supposed to be on
the application, because when your world falls apart, the details don’t matter.

“He spent a week in jail for hard drugs. He has a convicted
heroin dealer in his band. That is who you sent my child to play with.”

“Miss Neville, we need to have a serious discussion.”

The principal glowered. Gwyneth fumed. Randolph smirked.

I sat down and spoke as calmly as I ever had in my life.

“Let’s begin. But first, that smug bastard and this newly
concerned mother who hasn’t got a clue what her adult son is doing with his
life will not be part of our professional discussion.”