Nine Volt Heart (36 page)

JASON

Y
ES, I WANTED TO CRY like Lear
in the wilderness when Martha gave me the note.

Couldn’t wait to hear my brother’s work. Don’t worry. I’ll be discrete.

I rocked like an over-wound metronome for long minutes, not
wanting to open the box to see what wasn’t in there.

The security guys Karl hired took the finished tapes from
last week’s work to a vault on Friday. When I called to have the tapes
delivered—Dominique needed to start work this week, and she’d finally agreed to
come on Friday—Karl’s security brought the box back to me.

Then Martha found the note at the top of the box.

“They aren’t all gone,” Martha said, and I had just enough
self-control to keep from deprecating her weak assurances. She was near to
tears herself.

We counted the tapes and then did an inventory in the same
methodical way we’d done with the older material the first day Martha came back
to work with me.

Twelve tapes were missing, including the essentials. The
first acoustic mind-bender that we recorded with Susi. The reworking of that
song we discarded in Bergen, which I’d written for Ian, calling him brother and
thanking Apollo and the goddess of music for his loyalty. Ten finished tracks
that awaited only Dominique’s vocals for the new album, representing over two
hundred hours of studio time for Ian, Toby, Sonny, Zak, and Angelia.

No, that was a hysterical over-estimation on my part. I had
tapes from earlier rehearsals. We knew how we wanted each of these songs to
sound. It wouldn’t take two hundred hours to find it again, but we couldn’t
finish by Friday when Dominique was to start recording.

“I’m calling the police,” Martha said.

“Don’t call Karl,” I said. “There isn’t anything he can do.”

“Yes, he can. Karl can negotiate with the record company.
It’s not your fault that you’ll miss the deadline.”

Karl wanted to sue whoever caused it, but as Martha read the
chain of custody back to me, we couldn’t pin it down. The tapes sat alone with
me in the studio for two hours on Friday before anyone showed to take them
away. The tapes sat waiting for four hours before being signed into the vault,
and sat for thirty minutes waiting for security to bring them back to the
studio. Then the box sat for an hour in the studio this morning with people
coming and going. Neither Martha nor I could confirm that we hadn’t let the box
out of our sight. By this time, Martha was crying, and only my efforts to
comfort her kept me from crying myself.

The weather had started out nice that morning, but when I
went for a run at noon, it turned cold as a witch’s brass—heart. While I’m
looking behind every bush for my stalker, five people stopped me on the street
to say something about my personal life and my music. One woman thought I’d
changed her life forever and another thought there ought to be a law to keep me
off the public airways. So I stopped at a barber shop on Fremont Avenue and
made the guy cut off all my hair. It left me looking nothing like either the
concert shots on the Internet or the victim of
dementia
praecox
that appeared in the
Seattle Buzz
.

Quentin, my own favorite Seattle buzzard, showed up to watch
afternoon rehearsals, though I’d forgotten that I’d invited him. Ever faithful,
mind-reading Martha tried to keep him diverted and out of our way. At every
pause in the music, he was at me with questions about influences, up close and
in my face, even if he never could manage to look me in the eye.

When it felt like the day had gone to the dogs and taken me
with it, Susi came in.

SUSI

I
HAD TO DRIVE all over the
city during rush hour, leaving my brother his car, getting mine back from the
repair shop, and then hunting down Jason. No one was home at Ian’s house,
except Arlo, who gave me confusing and frustrating directions that caused me to
sit through multiple lights on Stone Way and Forty-fifth. I was not calm when I
arrived.

“Arlo said I would find you here.”

Jason, surrounded by computers and banks of electronics,
looked up in surprise from a task he seemed engrossed in with the thin, severe
woman he’d been with that day he was kissing women all over north Seattle. He
had cut off his hair, which made him even more dangerously handsome, which
further infuriated me.

“Susi, what a surprise. Are you rehearsing with us tonight?”

“Did you advise Zak to quit school?”

“I asked him to play for me during the morning sessions. I
didn’t give him advice. Susi, this is Martha Cooper. She’s the genie who keeps
our work in order.”

“He quit school because of you, Jason. I spent the afternoon
arguing my way out of getting fired. I had to swear that Zak is working in a
drug-free environment and that we aren’t all violent drug offenders.”

The Martha person said, “I’m leaving for the day, Jason.
Unless you have anything else.”

“No, wait, please. Look, Susi. Zak is an effing genius.
Anything that gets in his way, he’ll ride over it. Right now school is in his
way.”

“He quit school. Do you know what this means? How could you
even presume to give him advice?”

“What difference does it make? His family can buy his way
into any school he wants if he changes his mind. It’s not as if he’s boxed in,
like some ghetto kid. How have I harmed him?”

“It wasn’t your place to interfere.”

“Susi, this isn’t important right now. I have other
problems. Please, could you maybe—”

“He’s a gifted musician. He could have a career as a real
musician.”

“We’re not real musicians?”

“You have talent. But a pop musician has a career span of
weeks, minutes, and then it’s forgotten.”

“Not when they’re as good as Zak. He needs to be playing
here.”

“I’m talking about a young man’s future, and you are talking
about needing a morning playmate.”

“I’m talking about Zak’s future, Susi. And Ian’s and Toby’s
and Sonny’s. Zak wants to be a professional musician, and he needs experience
to do that. I’ve given him more experience in a month than Berklee could in a
year.”

“You also destroyed any opportunity for me to get funding
this year.”

Martha said, “Jason, I’ll just lock these tapes in the local
vault and go.”

“Wait, Martha. Susi, what do you mean?”

“Gwyneth and Freeman Lukas promised to match my grant if I
kept Zak in school and talked him into going to college. She pulled her money
from the matching grant today.”

“Susi, you had a mercenary concern in whether he graduates.
That disqualifies you from arguing whether you know what’s best for him.”

“You meddled where you had no right.”

“I didn’t meddle. When Zak asked me what to do, I told him
to talk to you or his parents. You told him never to decide the future because
of what someone else wants you to do.”

“That was completely out of context. Where is he? I need to
talk him out of quitting school. I called Berklee to ask them to ignore his
refusal.”

“He’s staying at Toby’s, but he’ll be at Ian’s tonight. He
won’t stop what he’s doing. Even to save your funding.”

“It’s too late. You added your name to the grant as faculty,
though I told you not to. Then you failed the background check with the state
police. My grant is done for. There is no hope.”

“Susi, if this is about money, I’ll find funding for you.
Leave Zak out of it. He wants to play with the band. It’s his life.”

“It’s only pop music.”

“That’s not how Zak sees it. I’ve seen what happens to you,
the more you sing. I saw how much you loved the applause, Susi. Your Juilliard
crowd can’t give you those thrills, can they? So why dismiss what we do because
it’s pop music? Do you think we don’t have standards as high as your symphony
buddies? Do you think we don’t work as hard as your Juilliard and Berklee
friends?”

“Who do you mean by ‘we’?”

“I mean me. Do you think my work is inferior to what you
consider good music? How about you, Susi? How hard did you work to earn the
crowd’s applause?”

“Are you implying that I haven’t been working hard?”

“You’ve been enjoying yourself, but you aren’t willing to go
to the next level. You won’t stand in front of people night after night. You
want only your own pleasure. You allowed yourself one little short, sharp shock
in public, and now you want to hide again.”

“You think I’m lazy and cowardly?”

“I think you have great potential, and I wish you’d reach
for it, like Zak is reaching for his. Can you choose the harder path in spite
of how you feel about me? Or are you afraid to stand in front of an audience?”

“All this time, while saying you love me, you judged me this
harshly?”

“No, not you as the person I love, Susi. But you aren’t
committed to the band. I have to watch out for everyone else, because I made a
mistake before and got us involved with a singer we couldn’t trust. Right now,
we can’t rely on you. We love what’s happening to our music, but it looks like
you decided to quit.”

“Like you did with the jazz ensemble.”

“I decided to perform as a professional instead of playing
with amateurs. You seem to want to preserve your amateur standing, while we
need to advance our professional lives.”

“I want to teach. I want my father to have one more season
teaching.”

“Are you sure you aren’t teaching because you’re afraid of
failing as a performer? I knew those kinds of teachers when I went to school,
Susi, and they were the worst. Your father doesn’t want you to compromise your
life that way.”

“What do you know about my father?”

“Apparently more than you do.”

“You arrogant—
artiste!
”

As I started to close the door, I heard Martha’s voice
again. “Jason, you’re a nice person, but you hurt people’s feelings when you get
mad.”

I stopped to look back. “He hasn’t hurt my feelings at all.
It’s not as if he could.”

However falsely I spoke, it allowed me to see him looking as
if he’d lost his last friend, which was a small, sinful pleasure that I confess
to having enjoyed for a brief moment.

That friend of Arlo’s from the market, Quentin, stood in the
foyer and didn’t have sufficient motherwit to get out of my way. He’d cut his
hair too, though the result wasn’t as attractive. Perhaps it was a communicable
disease attacking men in their late twenties in Seattle, causing them to chop
their hair to nothing. Quentin snapped a picture as I opened the door to let
him join Jason, and Jason roared in rage as the flash discharged.

JASON

T
HURSDAY MORNING’S WEATHER
COULD have descended on the city any season of the year—indiscriminately cold
and rainy—and I didn’t wear a warm enough shirt or bring a jacket for the bus
ride downtown. I’d been shivering and shaking before I left Ian’s house, after
being up most of the night. Once I got to Karl’s office, I found the coffee had
cooked to the consistency and flavor of shellac, and there was nothing to eat.

It wouldn’t be a good morning, and it held no promise of
transmuting to a better day. While waiting for the tardy Lady D and Ephraim,
Karl sat in the conference room reading aloud from Quentin’s review in the
Seattle Buzz
, the one with the picture from before I cut my
hair.

“‘The new singer’s control of phrasing and her big, big
voice perfectly match Taylor’s guitar and song-writing skills, helping one to
forget his detour into ordinariness on
Woman at the Well
.’”

“Quentin never was a fan of Dominique’s,” I said.

In fact, Quentin’s incisiveness cheered me momentarily, but
the afore-referenced Lady D appeared in the doorway, so we managed to infuriate
her even before the meeting began. Fine. It was National Whip Jason for What He
Didn’t Do Week. So I let Dominique lay on the cat-o-nine-tails.

“What crap did you bring me here for?” she fumed.

“Hello, Dominique. You’re looking well. I’m glad you could
make it back to Seattle for this meeting.”

“This had better not be a waste of my time, Jason. I’m tired
of playing games with you.”

Karl said, “We have a final proposal here. If we can all
agree, I’ll file the papers today, and then you are both done with this process.”

“I’m not giving up—” Dominique began.

“Anything at all,” I finished for her, “since compromise is
not in your vocabulary. I believe the final issues have to do with Stoneway.
Here is what I suggest. We tour together, but as separate acts. Dominique can
sing under the band name for this tour. After that, no one uses the Stoneway
name anymore.”

Dominique’s eyes brightened, but right away she turned
greedy again. “Then you have to open, Jason. I’m the top bill. Ephraim, tell
him that I’m top bill.”

Ephraim, poker-faced, didn’t look at her. In fact, when I
observed closely, the two of them moved as if in separate glass bubbles, not
like two people who cohabited and traveled everywhere together. “Jason, I’m
happy you’ve come around. Are you going to be difficult about the billing? What
if you swap in each city?”

“Ephraim, don’t agree to that.”

“Jason, does the billing matter to you?” Ephraim asked.

“No, but she has to do at least half of her set as covers.
My own band plays originals. Only originals.”

“That might work. Her voice is better suited to other
writers’ songs than yours. She still needs you, Jason.”

“Ephraim, why are you telling him that? I don’t need him.”

“No, it’s the other way, Dominique. He doesn’t need you. I
think we can agree to all of this, except for one thing, Jason.”

“Damn it, Ephraim!” she said at the same moment that I did.

“Damn it, Ephraim. I have to give on everything. You already
have total surrender from me.”

“Just one more thing, Jason. You have to play the Stoneway
set, too. Ian and Toby can opt out, but you have to play. We still have time to
find good musicians, but not enough time to recreate the Stoneway sound without
you. Oh, take your head out of your hands, Jason. We agreed that it’s time to
get past the drama.”

“I have to think about it.”

“And I have to take care of business, Jason.”

We stared at each other for about as long as it took God to
separate the light from the dark.

Ephraim said, “Whatever you decide, we’ll announce the
opening act on Saturday when tickets go on sale. I think we can create enough
buzz about the Jason Taylor Band to raise ticket prices a notch. Dominique, I
believe you have something to say to Jason.”

“I don’t like it.”

“That doesn’t matter this time. Please tell Jason what you
have to say.”

“I’m sorry—I mean, I apologize for letting those rumors
start and for what happened with Beau.”

“Thanks a lot, Dominique. I feel so much better now.”

“So, aren’t you going to say it, Jason?”

“Say what?”

“That you’re sorry too?”

“Dominique, I don’t believe I have anything to apologize
for.”

“You are still a self-righteous asshole, aren’t you?”

“I admit to that, Dominique. I don’t see a need to apologize
for it.”

Karl cleared his throat. “So we’re done here? Have we sorted
out the difference between being in Stoneway and being married? Will you both
sign these papers now, so I can file them today?”

“I don’t want to be married to this fucker any longer.”
Dominique stabbed at the paper with her pen.

“Sweeter words you never spoke,” I said. The judge would be
able to read my handwriting, because I signed so carefully.

“Sixty days,” Karl said. “Counting from today.”