Nine Volt Heart (43 page)

JASON

W
HEN YOU HAVE BEEN as scared
as you’ve ever been in your life without time to feel the jolt of adrenalin
until it’s all over, when you have had to acknowledge that you inadvertently
but irreversibly altered the life of the person you love most, and when you
have spent forty-eight hours discovering that nothing in your life is as it
seems, then there isn’t a possible transition into eroticism. It is true that
when both of you find your fingers still tingling from fear, you want to touch
each other. Yet arousal and sexual response aren’t as important, or even
noticeable, as other things.

Not as important, for example, as discovering that in the
daylight, her grey eyes have tiny gold flecks that seem to shine light from
inside her soul. Or that the side of her lips with the tiny scars is so
sensitive and has to be touched in a special way. After a month of idiotic
blindness, when you realize that the athletic body you admire is shaped by
nature and discipline to be one of the finest vocal instruments in the world,
you want to touch it differently. It requires more than a few moments of
devotion to acknowledge how the divine can manifest itself in human form.

When you lay your hand over another person’s beating heart,
and when you know that the human being in your arms loves you passionately, and
that person isn’t going away, doesn’t want to be anywhere else but right there
in your arms, then it isn’t eroticism that causes you to cry out or sigh.
Replete isn’t how you feel at the end, but rather through every moment, with
every breath. There is no actual point of climax for either of you, when the
moment you first touch is the culmination and it carries on, unconnected to any
ascending intensity or need for release.

It carries you both into a shared world where touch forges
bonds that nothing can break, until you are both strong enough again to move
more than inches away from each other, sure your heart will keep beating if you
can’t feel her heart under your hand.

After biological necessity drove me from our shared bed,
being the only power that could overcome such powerful spiritual and emotional
bonding, I returned from the bathroom with the complete, divine understanding
that the rhythms of our lives had merged. Susi only nodded when I explained,
but then to prove my point, she went to the kitchen to make food before I could
say I was starving.

~

“Don’t start, Jason.”

“I didn’t. I said a week ago I wouldn’t. Anyway, I don’t
need to say anything. You have believed in your heart that our souls are
already married, ever since you first went to bed with me. Your father said you
were that way.”

“How do you know my father?”

“We have been corresponding by email for a few years. What
is that smell? I’m so famished.”

“This is an unbelievable coincidence—about my father, I
mean. You, however, with amazing consistency, are always hungry.”

“You have to believe in coincidence, Susi, even if you don’t
believe in fate. Otherwise, what were you doing in Neumo’s looking for a Jason
at the exact same moment that I needed to fall in love with you?”

“The idea of you and my father discussing me is too
nerve-wracking. I can’t ponder any other existential questions.”

“We didn’t start talking about you until yesterday. Before
then, music was all we had in common. Though he figured out a couple of weeks
ago that you were sleeping with me. If you can call it sleeping. I don’t think
I’ve a good night’s sleep since I met you. It’s cornbread, isn’t it?”

“My father knows? Oh lord, how embarrassing. He must think—”

“That’s how he tricked your mother into marrying him, by
getting her to go to bed with him. If I had known you were that way from the
beginning, it would have saved me a lot of worry.”

“I’m what way?”

“You have to marry every man you go to bed with.”

“That is not true.”

“I’m just going by what you said and what your father
confirmed. If you slept with people you didn’t marry but your father doesn’t
know about it, I suppose you could tell him. For my part, I don’t want to know.
I want to believe that I have the long-term exclusive rights to your heart.”

“Please just shut up.” She seemed to be about ready to serve
the food, because she slammed a couple of pots on the stovetop and then banged
plates down on the counter.

“But, Susi, he bet me the first hundred dollars he earns
that you would marry me. Personally, I think it is offensive to bet on women.
However, I’m betting that I’ll lose and he is betting that I’ll win, so it
seems morally OK. Or at least, it’s not too much in the grey area of relative
values.”

“What hundred dollars?”

“The first money that comes from the record company advance.
Chas bought the catalog of Lost Sons music. Huevos rancheros? Did you put
jalapeños in mine?”

“Yes, and
queso añejo
. Is Dad
buying old music over the Internet?”

“Sort of. Anyway, I’m thinking that we could get his
lectures out in several alternate forms faster than the advance will pay out.
So he’ll make money off his own work, rather than just off his investment. Do
we get butter with the cornbread?”

“You know the butter is in the refrigerator, and you can
stop eating for thirty seconds to get it yourself. Dad will lose the bet
because there is still an enormous chance that I’ll murder you before I ever
marry you. Please slow down and tell me what you’re talking about.”

“Martha has found a transcriber and an archivist who’ll
begin working with Chas on Monday, so we can capture his lectures and notes.
Martha is great. She can find anything. I’m surprised she didn’t find my guitar
before you did. Anyway, Arlo will drive him anywhere he wants to go for his research.”

“Arlo? It is not like you to talk with your mouth full.”

“I have a lot to say and I’m starving. Arlo came back after
he took Ian and Cynthia home last night to give us a ride to your father’s
place. It turns out Arlo has a chauffeur’s license and, amazingly, an
immaculate driving record. Plus, Arlo can do all the taping of Chas’s lectures,
since he has so much experience illegally recording concerts. Arlo has it in
his head that he can make videos, and we can publish them online and as DVDs.
Why do you keep putting your hands in my hair, Susi?”

“Because it’s so beautiful now that it’s short. I can’t help
myself.”

“If I’d known, I would have cut it a month ago. I can’t pay
attention to my food if you keep doing that.”

“Sorry.”

“Anyway, Chas isn’t sure about video, because he thinks he’d
have to get spiffed up too much. But your dad is pretty charismatic. I think
the camera might like him. Whatever he and Arlo decide, I voted for moving the
transcripts to the Internet as quickly as possible. I think they should publish
weekly, whether it’s video or transcription.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Can you just say yes to touring with us, and we can talk
about the other stuff later? Ian and Toby and everyone else—they can’t take the
suspense much longer. Come with me now—I have to do a radio interview this
evening. You can sing with me.”

“On the radio?”

“Is that compromising? Is it because of the microphones? I
swear I won’t make you use one live unless you want to, but on the radio, you
need electricity.”

“After what happened yesterday, they’ll ask embarrassing
questions.”

“Nope. My old pal Quentin is doing the interview, and he
knows questions about you are off limits. Come on, it’ll be fun. Afterward, you
can have a late supper with me at Chas’s place. He and I have more business to
discuss. Of course, you and I will have to bring the food.”

“Why don’t I call my brother Steven, and he can join us?”

“Um, I don’t know if I’m comfortable with that yet.”

“I don’t know if I’m comfortable with you and Dad becoming
best buddies. Oh god, you already are, aren’t you? You should wipe that butter
off your lips.”

“Come help me, Susi.”

“No. Your tongue and lips burn from jalapeños.”

“It’s not jalapeños.”

JASON

A
RLO GOT A SECOND SUMMER job,
living in Karl’s house as caretaker while Karl sells it and waits for his own
divorce to be final. We are buying it, because the first floor is perfect for
low-mobility individuals like Chas, and the basement is just waiting to become
a studio, though Cynthia argues that I’m paying for the house a second time.

Hiring Arlo was the first sign that Karl decided to take
risks again. He vowed as to how it wasn’t a serious risk when he sold his
practice to a friend and signed on to learn the music business from Ephraim.
That change is just an adventure, he said, not a risk. He kept Martha as his
only employee, though she’s working out of her own apartment with just a phone,
high-speed Internet, and fax (for contracts) until we all get back to town.
Whenever Karl joins us on the road, I get a great deal of pleasure from
watching him struggle with the opportunities for casual sex that he’s offered
just because he’s with the band. He’s still saying no, but he doesn’t think
it’s humorous now. To sublimate, he too got a chauffeur’s license so he can
drive the bus like in the old days—he says it gives him time to think about
things.

Zak moved his stuff into Ian’s basement when I moved out,
although I don’t know how Cynthia can complain about me and then take on a
teen-age drummer. On the road, Sonny watches out for Zak, since everyone voted
me the World’s Worst Mentor, which I don’t think is fair, and I don’t think
Cynthia should get to vote if she’s only with the band half the time. It works
out well though, because Sonny doesn’t want to be places that
eighteen-year-olds can’t go. Zak still isn’t returning to school in the
fall—but hey, this isn’t an old-school MGM musical where everyone makes the
proper choices for the bourgeois status quo in the end.

In fact, what they don’t tell you in the rom-coms is that
for every day of casual deceit, it takes ten days of protesting innocence and
promising faithfulness and positing a probable future to gain the trust that
you need for a genuine relationship. Not that I minded talking all night, every
night. Or biting my lip to keep from saying, ‘You deceived me, too.’ I’ll never
say it, because I got a happy ending that I didn’t deserve.

On the other hand, Angelia and Toby are pregnant, which
leaves me insanely jealous, since Susi and I are still working on that plan. We
reached consensus with each other. Now we are just negotiating with fate, if
you believe in that as a force in the universe. I’m not willing to trust
anything more to fate, even though it’s taken me this far.

We are going back to the studio in October—I want to do an acoustical
set of just Susi and me singing Beau’s songs—and then to Europe for most of the
winter, which Susi says is good because she prefers Europe in the rain. Before
we left town for the summer, Zak and I passed the GED test, so I proved that
I’m as good as any high school graduate. However, Susi pretended like she
didn’t find that amusing. She insists now that the only schooling I need is a
vocal coach, to make sure I don’t hurt my voice.

For her own education, Susi has undertaken a summer-school
remedial course in the history of rock-and-roll, and she accepted me as a
tutor. She’s one of the rare women in the world who first met Bruce’s music
through
Nebraska
. It provided a context to help her
understand what happened to music between the Great Depression and when the
time-travel machine dropped her in my lap. She jumped straight from
intellectually comparing Hank Williams and Bruce Springsteen songs—“Mansion on
the Hill”—into a seemingly physical fondness for
Darkness at
the Edge of Town
. Sonny tried to introduce her to Black Flag, The Clash,
and related influences, but she turned scholarly.

“How can a band be the progenitor of anarchical,
non-commercial rock and then have a retrospective compilation that’s a best
seller?” she asked. “I don’t understand.”

Which baffled Sonny. He continued with his historical
review, only to have her ask the same questions about grunge. Lest we forget
that she’s a different sort of girl, she announced early in her new adventure
that she prefers Steve Earle to Bruce. “Because I identify more with Mr.
Earle’s lyrics,” she said. Which leaves me uncomfortable. If I don’t stop her,
we have to listen to
El Corazón
over and over on the
bus.

It would drive me to drink, except I tried getting drunk
again at our wedding in August, and I pretty much didn’t enjoy the last part of
it, even if I didn’t throw up. Also, I haven’t finished learning to drive yet.
Zak got his license back when he turned eighteen, and he’s teaching me, but we
need Ian to rent the car in each town when we want to practice driving, since
Ian is the only one among the three of us that has both a credit card and a
driver’s license. Then Ian has to drive the car off the rental lot and around
the corner, where he gets out and waits until we come back for him. He says
there’s a limit to which elements of his life he’s willing to trust to my
hands.

The part I like best is when we roll down the windows, turn
the radio up loud, and let the wind blow through while the white lines zip by
and Zak beats a rhythm on the dash board.

It reminds me of a song.