Nine Volt Heart (38 page)

SUSI

“H
ELLO, MISS NEVILLE. DO you
remember me from the other night?”

“Of course, Mr. Vance.”

“Do you know who I am?”

“No, other than your name and that I have seen you with
Jason before. I heard that you said kind things about my work the other night.”

“I’m a business agent for the label Jason records with.”

“Please come in. May I offer you something to drink?”

“Thank you, no. I want to get straight to the point. I want
Jason to continue working with me, and I’m desperate for help to persuade him.
Jason is not making the best business decisions on his own.”

“Are you suggesting that I give Jason advice? I am certain
that would not work well.”

“Miss Neville, I hope that you might encourage him to listen
to me. We both have his best interests at heart.”

“Why choose me? I have only just met him.”

“I know who you are, Miss Neville. Does Jason?”

“He knows who I am in my present life,” I said. That’s
enough.

“You’re rehearsing and recording highly original music with
him.”

“We just call it backporch music, Mr. Vance.”

“What have you learned from working with him?”

“He is a brilliant composer and arranger. He’s perhaps the
most talented director of performing musicians that I’ve ever met.”

“Can you appreciate, then, why I want to see him succeed?”

“Yes, but I don’t know you, except that Jason wasn’t happy when
he spoke of you.”

“I can tell you what Jason would say about me. He’d describe
me as the man guiding his career until I ran off with his wife.”

“Is that true? It sounds melodramatic.”

“The nouns are correct, but the verbs don’t reveal the time
sequence properly. His wife ran off—but not with me. Jason also ran off. Alone.
While I was picking up the pieces, I ended up with his former wife.”

“You must appreciate that I’m not in a position to speak
about Jason when he’s not here. If he feels betrayed—”

“Then you feel compelled to take his side.”

“Both my personal experience and every story I’ve heard have
led me to think that his ex-wife isn’t a nice person.”

“She isn’t.” He seemed thoughtful. “How could you have
personal experience with her?”

“She writes me email every day, explaining how awful Jason
is and how he will betray me.”

“That’s not true about Jason. Miss Neville, I don’t want to
talk about Dominique. Please help me convince Jason to sign with my record
label.”

“That is not any of my business,” I said. “Anyway, I thought
he was already recording.”

“His contract ends with this album. I want to keep him with
me.”

“Even if I were inclined to interfere with his business, I
couldn’t do that, Mr. Vance. I have a little knowledge of your world. Artists can’t
own their own work, even when you don’t want to package and promote it for them
anymore. You want to shape artists into pre-defined molds. Jason could never
fit.”

“Jason is brilliant enough to go against the rules, with the
right guide.”

“That would be you?”

“Can’t you help me, Miss Neville? If I signed you to record,
that would bring him to my label.”

“Sign me? I’m a teacher. I’m no longer a professional
singer. I couldn’t do that just to coerce Jason into anything he might not
want.”

“You aren’t going to sing and record with Jason?”

“We were just playing around. It doesn’t have a future for
me.”

“Then I should say goodnight, Ms. Neville. I can see that
I’ve made you uncomfortable. I’m sorry.”

“It was nice to meet you. May I tell Jason you spoke with
me?”

“Yes. Honesty is the only way to proceed with a person as
incapable of deceit as Jason.”

JASON

I
T WAS PLENTY LATE AT night by
the time I made it to Leschi, even with hopping a bus for part of the way,
which raised my anxiety level. Although it took me across more miles faster
than my feet could manage, I had to sit still while it moved my body through
space and time.

Ephraim’s gun-metal grey BMW turned onto the arterial just
as I stood on the corner opposite the street light, waiting to walk up the
empty alley to her house.

“Susi, it’s Jason.”

I knocked on the door, not knowing why I ever expected that
she’d welcome me in, listen to my grief, tell me what to think. A trodden red
rose lay in the shadows of her front step, indicating that my would-be brother
had again crept too close.

She didn’t answer, though her car sat in the garage. And
Ephraim—damn his eyes—had been to visit just a moment before.

Ephraim. I lost it.

“Come on, Susi. Let me in. Talk to me.”

The lights were on, and the sound of Skip James leaked from
the cracks of the doors and windows.

“Susi! Dammit, let me in. You let that bastard Ephraim in.
Don’t fuck with my mind right now—”

An arm came around my neck, so tight it hurt, and a pair of
hands ripped my arms back at the elbows, immobilizing me. As I sputtered to
speak, my assailant tossed me half way across the alley and then pressed me up
against the neighbor’s retaining wall.

Two figures bounced in the shadows, one tall and the other
small. The small one kept pressing too hard at my throat.

“Get your hands off me,” I croaked.

“Don’t fuck with the lady. Leave her be.”

“What? I’m the guy paying you.”

“Yeah, sure. Joe, check him to make sure he doesn’t have a
weapon.”

“Don’t touch me!” I not only used the bad mother word, I
shouted it. Then I called their mothers worse names.

The smaller man ignored what I was saying, and the volume at
which I was saying it, while he ran his hands down my running shorts, where
nothing could be hidden. “He’s OK, Joe.” So they were both named Joe.

“Yeah, I’m OK. Now leave me the hell alone and let me talk
to her.”

“Whoa, buddy. We’re walking down the alley right now, away
from here. Together.”

“The cell phones in your pockets belong to me. You’re
supposed to call the police if someone comes. Without hassles. Call now. Or
call Sonny.”

“Sonny is working his night job.”

“So we agree that you and I both know Sonny. Call the effing
police if you aren’t calling Sonny. I’m not leaving without talking to her.”

While little Joe #1 was calling, and big Joe #2 was in my
face, keeping me immobilized against the retaining wall, a patrol car rounded
the corner into the alley, its blue lights flashing. I was happy to see them,
because we could end the current détente.

Except I hate it when the one policeman gets out of the
patrol car with his hands on his service revolver, and the other just stands in
his open door, talking into the radio.

“Evening, gentlemen. The neighbors are unhappy with the
noise you have been raising.”

I jerked away from Joe #2, and the cop had his revolver out.

“Please put your hands behind your head.”

I complied, knowing full well that arguing was not in my
best interest. “I was reaching for my ID.”

“Can you do that carefully, using your left hand?”

“It’s in my sock.”

“Who wants to explain the problem here?”

“This guy is bothering our friend,” Joe #1 volunteered. They
offered their ID in a graceful, experienced manner.

“Miss Neville is a friend of mine, and I want to speak with
her.”

“The noise complaint makes all this commotion sound less
innocent, Mister—” He checked my ID. “Mr. Taylor. Is this you?”

“No, it isn’t,” Joe #2 said. “Jason Taylor has long hair.”

“I cut my effing hair. I’m Jason Taylor, dammit.”

The cop said, “I think that’s easy to see, even though the
picture shows long hair.”

Joe #1 said, “Oh shit, man. We are so sorry.”

A second patrol car came down the alley from the other
direction, the blue strobe casting everyone in alternate shadow and skeletal
glow. When this car parked, Officer Page stepped out of the passenger side, his
hand resting on his service revolver.

“Good evening, Officer.” I looked at Office Page as I spoke,
hoping he’d recognize me, fighting the guilty sense that I wanted to glance
away. The two Joes explained themselves again—they just happened to be taking a
short-cut through the alley, but the lady who lived there was a friend, and any
gentleman would want to interfere in such a situation, since I was pounding on
her door and shouting.

“I only raised my voice to be heard. In case she’s listening
to music or on the phone and can’t hear me.”

“If the lady doesn’t want to speak to you, you can’t stand
on the street shouting at her.” It must have been an official script, because
Officer Page argued the same way the year before, when I wanted my voice to
penetrate to Dominique on the third-floor condo. “I’m sure you don’t want the
pain of charges pressed against you, Mr. Taylor.”

“Can’t you just knock on the door and ask her? She doesn’t
want me to go away.”

“Here she is. Sorry for the disturbance, ma’am. Mr. Taylor
says you don’t want him to go away. Is this true?”

She was standing there in a silk shirt and linen trousers,
looking small and delicate, and exhausted.

“Yes. I’m sorry for the bother, officers.”

“Are you sure you’re safe, ma’am?”

“I’m not going to hurt her!” I sputtered. “I wouldn’t. I
couldn’t.”

“Please calm down, Mr. Taylor. If she wants to invite you
inside, we’ll leave you. But if you continue this way, I’ll have to ask you
downtown to discuss the meaning of disturbing the peace.”

She invited me in. I wish she’d sent me downtown with
Officer Page.

JASON

W
HEN I CAME INSIDE, I didn’t
know what to do with myself. Where to sit or how to stand and be comfortable.
After my tantrum on the street, I was too aware of how much larger I am than
she is. I came there to find comfort and found that instead I presented a
threat.

I sat on a bar stool at her kitchen counter while she turned
on water to make tea, a familiar gesture I now recognized as what she does to
calm herself. Under the soft, indirect light in the kitchen, she seemed to be
another source of illumination, faintly glowing. She turned her calm, perfectly
made-up face to me, and I wanted to cry out that I knew how much pain and
passion she masked, and how much I had hoped never to add to that pain. Or
perhaps I just plain wanted to cry.

She said, “Ephraim Vance came by to ask me to persuade you
to do business with him. If you have any idea that his visit meant anything
else, you are very wrong.”

“I’m sorry.”

“He is very complimentary to you. I refused to help him,
because it seemed disloyal. However, I don’t understand what he wants.”

“He wants me to sign with his label.”

“Why does he feel so strongly about it?”

“He likes our music.”

“That’s not enough explanation.”

“My music made his company millions of dollars last year. He
wants me to do that every year.”

I waited for the repercussion, the reactions that would
transform our relationship forever. Shock and anger. Recriminations for hiding
it from her, though it was she who had insisted repeatedly that we keep our
individual secrets. A new-found interest in my wealth.

Nope. Instead, she said, “He’s offering you the opportunity
to excel in your particular world of music, and you choose to do less?”

“I want to excel. But I want to make my own music. I want to
own the music I make. It is not worth money to do less than that, Susi.”

“It must be nice to have the option of achieving your dreams
and the privilege of being able to quibble over compromises at the same time.”

“You jumped onto Ephraim’s team pretty quickly. You don’t
understand how controlling record labels are.”

“No?” She raised her eyebrow in question. “However, I do
know what it means to be denied the opportunity to pursue a dream. I lost mine
once. I begged God. I offered to make a deal with the devil, but neither God
nor the devil chose to intercede. I wish I had your problems.”

“If your dream was to sing, you can still achieve that,
Susi. You heard how people responded last week: they love you. It is just a
matter of you choosing the right material.”

“The right material? You mean just sing your pop songs?”

“Why are you such a snob about the music we play? You put
Zak down for wanting just that. Is it because you think that’s all high-school
drop-outs can achieve?”

“All right, yes, Jason. I think pop music is an idle way to
pass time. A series of lightweight fads. Not anything that serious people do.”

“Yet you want to teach roots music. What do you think that
is, other than the last generation’s pop music fad? If you sing with us, will
you be too déclassé? Compared to what? Billie Holiday? Maybelle Carter?”

“I do not choose to stand up in front of people and perform.
It’s not part of my life. I have become a teacher, and that’s where my future
lies.”

“Susi, however displeased you are with me, you can’t walk
away from your talent. You can’t choose the lower path.”

“Teaching is lower than performing? And you call me a snob?”

“I don’t mean in general. I mean for you. Susi, you are so
powerful a singer, so incredible, you can’t—”

“You can’t presume to decide what’s best for me.”

“Someone has to. You can’t do what my mother did—settle for
less, muddle through life without people knowing what God gave you. That’s what
I came over here to talk to you about tonight. I learned things about my mother
and my uncle that left me confused. I feel worse about that because of all the misunderstandings
between us, Susi.”

“We aren’t going to share secrets tonight. We aren’t going
to talk about what you think I should do with my life based on what your mother
did. Or didn’t do.”

“You say it’s just pop music and you don’t want to perform. But
if you choose to do the work, you could have the same effect on audiences as
any of the great singers. The same as—”

It occurred to me where I had last experienced the same kind
of power as she had, and I flung open her music cabinet searching for it.

“Listen to this. It’s disciplined, brilliant music, the kind
snobs approve of. I swear when you sang Saturday, it had the same effect on
people.”

I slipped the disc in and punched through cuts to get where
I wanted, guessing, trying to remember
Turandot
well
enough to judge where that song would be. Liù the slave girl, singing about her
devoted love to the secret prince, willing to die for him.

“I heard this in Seattle two years ago, and it’s the same
level of intensity that you are capable of.”

Tu che di gel sei cinta.

I had the volume too high, so that Liù’s lament filled the
room, the singer’s notes burning through my chest. I closed my eyes, and the
impact of the singer’s lustrous voice turned the world blue behind my closed
eyes. The singer who rendered Liù’s essence through song had the same breath
control and power as Susi, the same absolute control of phrasing. Each note
filled the holes in my soul in a human voice so familiar—

I opened my eyes to find Susi watching me. I strangled on my
own words.

“Susi, this is you.”

Only the color and timbre had been destroyed. Or altered.
Transformed into the rusty angel’s voice that I knew. She had said that she
didn’t care about the web of scarring on her face, for that destruction was
insignificant compared to what she’d truly lost. I hadn’t listened closely
enough to hear what she was saying.

“It’s the best role I had in the U.S. They liked me much
better in Europe, directors and audiences both. That’s all over now. Still, I
do not want to be condescended to about whether I know how to work hard.”

“Oh god, Susi—”

“Back then, I also thought that hard work alone would take
me to the next level. When I listen now, with all my ambitions removed, I don’t
I hear it—true greatness, I mean. I would have been disappointed when my
ambition couldn’t make up for deficient talent. We will never know now, and
there is no use thinking about it.”

She switched off the music. Because she’s the bravest woman
I’d ever met, she held my gaze as she told the secrets she’d been refusing to
share.

“One night I lost the chance to find out what I could be.
The fire Logan started—he was smoking cocaine when I came home unexpectedly.
The fire ruined any chance of work for me, and destroyed everything else that
he hadn’t already wasted or sold. I’d left our finances to Logan because I was
too busy working. My bills didn’t run out before my health insurance did. My
dad mortgaged this house to—oh, never mind. Everything here is Dad’s, since I
ended up with nothing.”

“I am so sorry. If I had known—”

“I didn’t tell you, because I’m sick to death of pity. I
wanted to get to know you without pity being part of the relationship.”

“All this time, when I have been praising your voice, it
must have felt like I was sticking daggers in you.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does. I said I’d never hurt a woman, and yet I hurt
you out of my own arrogance. I’m humbled by your suffering.”

“I think it would be best if we didn’t see each other. I
need to take care of my own business, and I have let myself drift into your
world far too long, just because I’m physically attracted to you.”

“No, Susi. Please don’t.”

“You already knew I stayed married when I shouldn’t have. I
stayed married for sex, not love. I can’t believe that the strong attraction I feel
now is a healthy impulse. It is just what led me once before to lie to myself,
to make bad choices, to destroy my future.

“You’re letting the past rule your future. I’m not that man.
You can’t say goodbye. You can’t walk away.”

“Yes, I can. I have to. We are unsuited to each other’s
worlds. Because of you, I jeopardized my job and all the work I’ve done to
replace my old dreams. It’s too much to risk just to go to bed with you.”

“I’m begging you, Susi. Separate how you feel about me from
singing with the band. You can’t prefer being alone to singing.”

“You need to go now.”

“But the music—”

“I’m sure you’ll find another woman to sing for you. Please
go.”

All the will power that I use to move through the world
dissipated.

“OK. I won’t force myself on you again. But, Susi, I know
your voice. I understand it, the beautiful way it is now. If you won’t be with
me, I can still write songs that are perfect for you to sing.”

“Please go. Take your shirt and toothbrush away. And take
this. I don’t want this sordid stuff in my life. Tell your ex-wife to leave me
alone, please.”

She thrust an envelope into my hands, piled the other things
in my arms, and pushed me out into the cold night.

Where a Seattle City patrol car cruised down the alley.