Nine Volt Heart (8 page)

SUSI

“J
ASON DOESN’T NEED AN
introduction,” Gwyneth Lukas said when we sat down for the meeting, after I had
introduced him to the three trustees and Randolph. “Your reputation precedes
you. As well as your record here at the school.”

“I’m not as bad as I’m made out to be,” Jason said.

Gwyneth laughed (I try not to let that fluty tone bother me,
but it is difficult), and so Rafe Joseph and Talbot Sheldon chuckled too in
their gentlemanly, business-like way. Randolph, however, had determined that a
competition existed with Jason; guarded hostility was the highest response he
offered throughout the day. Why do men sniff each other and growl? For
Randolph’s part, I knew it was because of me, which made the situation faintly
humorous. If there were a competition, Randolph would not be in the running.

I have to render a confession which, even if no one reads
this but me, remains difficult to reveal. After the first few skirmishes with
the trustees, I let Jason save me, and I was glad of it. I have never had a man
rescue me from anything in my life. (My dad’s help when I was recovering cannot
be considered a rescue.)

It was Gwyneth in her mink vest and limited-edition Italian
jeans that my knight-errant saved me from. The other two trustees had supported
the idea of the music institute when Angelia and I first presented it. The same
men had treated me with kid-gloves when they interviewed me for the teaching
position, each saying that he knew my history and—oh god—felt sorry for me.
Gwyneth just didn’t get the idea of the Lost Troubadours Institute, or even the
basic idea of music education.

“I don’t understand what British and Scottish folk music has
to do with—what do you call it? ‘Music Theory and Popular Song’?”

Before I could begin, Jason used Copland’s
Appalachian Spring
to explain. He held her flighty
attention with a beautiful interpretation of how old hymns and songs are used
in that symphony. She stared into his eyes while he spoke, but she apparently
understood when he segued into a discussion of a collaboration by Yo-Yo Ma,
Edgar Meyer, and Mark O’Connor.

She said, “My husband got me that CD for Christmas last year,
because James Taylor is a favorite of mine.”

I didn’t know what orchestra Mr. James Taylor plays with,
but the name rang a bell for Gwyneth, and she nodded her head as Jason
explained the heroic role the institute would play for music education.

We performed the same give-and-take for every other sortie.
I presented the idea, Gwyneth attacked, and then Jason neutralized her. By the
time we began eating our catered box lunches while completing a line-by-line
review of the grant application, Gwyneth had attached herself to Jason like a
limpet on a rock. He used every opportunity to show his erudition. If she
wasn’t impressed, I was. In spite of what I knew about his background, and his
chosen profession, he had an encyclopedic knowledge of arts and music, and an
uncanny ability to express ideas in a way that even Gwyneth could understand.

For my next sin, as is obvious from how I write about it
here, I was as bad as Randolph, though I hope that I didn’t physically manifest
the scorn I felt for Gwyneth’s flirting with Jason. I forgive people their
foibles. I look the other way and don’t even comment to myself. Still, I wanted
to break her little finger.

At the next stop on the road to hell, I enjoyed it when
Jason pointed out a typo and a math error in Randolph’s pro forma.

“Let’s just fix this as we go,” Jason said, taking his
laptop out of his pack. “Who has the original file?”

Randolph went to fetch the file from his own computer,
hunched in hatred. Since it was only a typo, my inflated sense of triumph
weighed in on the side of sin.

Then right at the doors of Hades, when it was possible to
feel the flickering flames of damnation, I stepped brazenly over the threshold.

I gave Jason my lunch.

There was just one vegetarian box lunch, which Randolph had
ordered for me. I gave it to Jason, so he had roasted peppers and hummus on
Tuscan bread. I tossed out the ham from another box to create a
Swiss-and-lettuce sandwich. Even though I was too keyed up over the grant to
swallow even half a sandwich, the symbolism would be obvious to the most casual
observer: If this were a relationship (which, of course, it isn’t), we had
gotten off to the worst of starts, with me playing subservient wench delivering
laundry, lunch, and self-sacrifice. All human feeling revolts at the thought.

Whatever my sins and weaknesses, we won the day, if not
wholly on the strength of the institute’s grand ideals, then on the basis of
Jason’s easy erudition and great business management. The trustees conferred,
and Gwyneth announced that they were granting us the boon we needed: use of
school facilities for the summer as an in-kind contribution to the institute’s
total costs. Having pronounced this as if it were her personal gift to the
arts, Gwyneth rose, claiming an appointment, though we had worked through the
entire business agenda two hours faster than we planned. “Will we see the two
of you for luncheon tomorrow?”

“Yes,” I said, though watching Jason, I could see him
blanch.

He said, “We will be there with bells on.”

With Gwyneth departing, everyone else rose, even Randolph,
who (I’m guessing) would have preferred to stay behind and stab Jason to death
with his gold Cross pen.

Randolph said, “So will I see you tonight, Susanna?”

Staring at the computer screen, Jason didn’t look up, his
nostrils flaring.

I said, “It will just be me. Jason has other plans. Please
tell your grandparents that I’m looking forward to joining you.”

“I have changed my plans,” Jason said. “I will be joining
you, too, if the invitation is still open.”

The invitation had occurred before Jason flew in from
London, and Randolph would have loved to snatch it back, but he avowed that he
looked forward to the evening.

Once everyone had left, Jason said, “Susi, you can’t put
your fate in that woman’s hands. Where the hell are we going tonight with your
friend Randolph?”

“You don’t have to come. He invited us to a concert with his
grandparents. They are wealthy as Croesus and need one last social exchange to
convince them to support the institute. That is the rest of my work for the
weekend, to reel in the last of the donors for the grant’s matching money.”

“You aren’t going alone. I committed to this, and I’m coming
along.”

“That’s kind of you.”

“It isn’t kindness. You sold me on the idea, and I’m going
to do what you ask, to make sure the business is handled correctly. Look here,
on the page that lists the faculty. You can’t use this guy, Susi.”

“They say he is well known on the West Coast. He did a
seminar for the students one day on the influence of Mississippi blues on
British pop. They loved it.”

“He’s a drunk. You don’t want to risk wasting your time with
him. And kids don’t need to be around that.”

“How do you know?”

“You asked me to give you my professional expertise, and
that’s part of it. I won’t tell stories on the guy, but you don’t want him.”

“Who can I get to replace him this late? He’s one of the
most famous names I had to show on the grant request.”

“Me, since I’m not going anywhere this summer. How much time
will it take?”

“Four hours a day, but—”

“Schedule me in the morning, so I can balance it against
other work.”

“You are insane. You’re going to neglect your work to teach
music?” After hearing his erudition at the meeting, I couldn’t argue that he
wasn’t as good as a trained professional.

“I’m not leaving my other work. I just want to stretch, to
do more.”

“However, I think I should use the name I have for the grant
and make changes later.”

He popped the disk out of his computer and handed it to me.

“Let’s get out of here, Susi, before I have a flashback and
you are forced to place me in a mental institution. I was allergic to this
place years ago, and meeting these people didn’t help at all. This place gives
me hives.”

“Let me put these papers away in the office.”

“Fine. I have to make phone calls.”

The cell phone is his only noticeable vice.

I suppose he can’t help the testosterone part.

JASON

“I
AN, I’LL BE LATE TONIGHT.
I’m going out to hear music.”

“She called here, man.”

“Who?”

“Your witch of an ex-wife. She’s going to be in the studio
with us, isn’t she? You promised—”

“No, she’s not. What did she want?”

“She wanted you, jerk-face,” Ian said, “I didn’t get into a
discourse with her. She wants to come by and see you tonight.”

“I won’t be there.”

“Neither will I. Jason, life is too short to spend time
breathing air with Dominique. I’m headed out to catch a band at the Showbox.”

“Then I guess I’ll see you in the morning.”

When I tapped the End button, the phone rang almost
immediately, so I figured it was Ian calling back. Which makes two bad guesses
that day about Ian calling me.

“Hello, Jason. Ephraim said you were in town. We need to talk,
honey.”

“No, we don’t, Dominique. Talk to Karl.”

“I saw your song list for the new album. Those are songs you
rejected for the last album.”

“I rejected them because they were too mainstream, but
that’s what you want, Dominique.”

“You want to ruin this album just to spite me.”

“The irony in that statement sends me reeling. We’ll be in
the studio on Monday and playing music. As you know, no one in my band is
capable of doing less than his best work.”

“These songs aren’t appropriate for me.” Her voice hurt my
ears.

“Perhaps you’ll have to practice. The sole freedom I
retained in that recording contract you talked me into is that I choose the
music. Perhaps if you bothered to spend time rehearsing, you could sing those
songs.”

“You’re being mean, Jason.”

“Me? How can you accuse me, Dominique? I do not deserve even
half of what you did. You damaged friendships that I cherish. You lied to the
police, and you never helped stop those lies about me on the Internet.”

“You hurt me awfully.”

“Telling you the truth isn’t the same as wife-beating. Why
won’t you answer a straight question in interviews? Do you know what this has
done to me?”

“You got your own meanness back.”

“OK, whatever it is you think I did to you, I got my own
back. Doubled. Now tell the truth. I didn’t hit you or otherwise abuse you. And
I didn’t steal songs from you.”

“Honey, you know I wrote ‘Rhianna’s Song’ with you. ‘How can
a mother bear to witness the death of her dreams’—that was my line.”

“You read it in the paper, which is not like writing a song
together.”

“We will just have to agree to disagree about that, Jason. Listen,
I’m doing a benefit tomorrow for a homeless shelter. Ephraim says you should
sit in with me. Ephraim says we would get good press if we perform together in
public. It didn’t do you any harm to come to the Grammys.”

“Actually, it gave me a nearly fatal pain in the ass. Don’t
call me, Dominique. Talk to Karl.”

SUSI

T
HE NEXT SIN I must record in
this journal, as a prelude to describing my wicked spring-vacation beach fling:
when we stopped at my house so that I could change before we took a walk, I
gave Jason my brother’s sweatshirt, which was again just a kindness, since he
had nothing but that repellent Yankees ball cap and the thin leather jacket he
wore on the flight from London to Seattle.

Except, in addition to that act of consideration, I also
made sure that Jason understood it was
my brother’s
sweatshirt, so he wouldn’t think a man left clothes at my house.

We went north of the Ship Canal to walk at Golden Gardens on
Puget Sound, where golden oaks sprawl up the steep hillside. There’s a sandy
beach for shell hunting, a volleyball court where narcissists can show off
their tattoos and muscles, a long strand for walking out along the Sound, and a
circular drive for cars to cruise in summer.

As we began walking toward the beach, Jason remained silent
for many yards, as he had on the drive over. Then he seemed to rouse himself
and moved over to walk close by me just at the moment when we had the divine
luck to be in the culvert under the railroad tracks as a train passed overhead,
making my bones vibrate from the rumble of steel wheels on the track. It made
me smile with joy, first remembering all the times I had come here with my
brother and father, and then I smiled just because Jason was grinning. He held
my hand against his chest while he matched the tone of the train with his
voice, so I couldn’t distinguish the train from the vibrating tone under my hand.

As the train grumbled away, we jumped through the broken
glass and puddles to ramble down to the beach. As we hit the soft sand, he
stumbled into me, putting his arm lightly around my shoulders to steady
himself.

He glanced sideways at me as we walked.

“‘Who are you really and what were you before, and what did
you do and what did you think?’
Casablanca
is from
your era, isn’t it, Susi? Or did you travel here from before the Second World
War?”

“‘We said no questions.’”

“No fair, Susi. We’ve already known each other for seventeen
hours. By now I should get a free pass to ask questions, and you should entrust
me with honest answers.”

“I was married to the second trombone in the village band.”

“And his name was Nanki Poo? The son of our Mikado?”

“No, Logan Childs. The son of a druggist.”

“You will get uptight if I make jokes about his name, won’t
you?”

“Hmm. I don’t usually laugh when I think about him.”

“He’s a fool and a sinner, and there is nothing you should
blame yourself for, Susi.”

“How can you say that? Did she tell you—”

“I’m just making logical deductions. He is not with you now,
and that proves he’s a fool for letting you get away. Clearly he’s a sinner,
for he appears to have hurt you.”

He touched my face, the problem side, and I had to draw
away.

“Your turn,” I said. “Same questions and honest answers
required.”

“You know the story too well.”

“Tell it from your point of view.”

“My friend Toby says I married the Wicked Witch of the West.
But I just married a woman who wanted me to be someone else. She went where she
wanted to go, leaving me to find where I should go next. I stayed married to
the wrong person too long, because I thought that you’re supposed to stay
married, no matter what.”

“Most people don’t think that anymore.”

“It’s one of the rules carved on the millstone I tied around
my neck, daring myself to be a better man than my father. How about you, Susi?
How long did that fool hang on before he lost you?”

“Seven years.”

“Ouch.”

“Excellent choice of words for the ending, if not the rest
of the time.”

“What would be the word for that, Susi?”

“Boring. Like this conversation. Let’s climb up the bank and
walk on the train tracks.”

It was cold enough on the beach that we couldn’t idle
around. At the end of the sand spit, I led him up through the rocks to the
train tracks. At one point, he slipped and nearly collided with me before
grabbing a branch to stop himself. His knee touched me, however. As we walked
along the railroad tracks, he took a harmonica from his pocket and played, bending
notes like the old blues gentlemen on my father’s recordings.

“You play a song,” he said, handing me the harmonica.

“Oh, I couldn’t.”

“You’re a music teacher. Of course you can. You’re just
lazy.”

I didn’t want to put my mouth where his had been. He thrust
it on me. All I could think of was a cowboy song my father taught me years ago.
Something I could play automatically, while I removed my mind from the wetness
where he had—

Oh damn. I so don’t want to think that way about him.

He followed me up the track, balancing as we walked along
one rail. A quarter-mile along, we could feel the vibration of a north-bound
train.

“Jason, there’s a train coming.”

“We have lots of time.” He grabbed my hand, pulling me
alongside him as he hopped the ties.

“No, we don’t.”

He delayed as much as possible, teasing me. Since I have a
brother, I knew that showing impatience or fear would only make him tease more.
As the train approached, we were far too close for my comfort.

“I will save you,” he said, leaping off the tracks with me
in his arms, dragging us both into a pile of boulders and holding me much too
close while the train thundered past, so close that my ear against his chest
heard the rattle of the train as if it were his heartbeat. He kept us there
while the echo of the train faded as it made its way to Canada or Montana or
wherever it was headed.

When I stirred, pressing against his chest so I could stand
up, he pressed back, holding me down briefly. Then he released me. When I stood
and dusted my jeans, I stumbled on a rock, falling against him. His hands
lingered as he righted me, steadying me with his arms, breathing in my ear, the
sound a rasp that vibrated with the last echoes of the departing train.

We clambered down the boulders to the beach, kicking at the
flotsam along the tide line, picking up limpet shells.

“What used to be important, Susi? What’s important now?”

“Music, as an answer to both. Only then it was classical. Americana
and older influences are new to me.”

“Why does it not surprise me that what’s old is new to you?
What dragged you away from Schubert and Puccini?”

“My dad needed me to help go through his things when he
moved to assisted living—he’s older and has arthritis. While I worked, he
dragged me through graduate-level studies in folk music. He taught me guitar,
though he couldn’t make more of me than a Sixties folkie with a five-chord
repertoire. I used his impromptu lectures while creating the new curriculum for
this year’s classes. And for the Institute.”

However, my father’s greatest success was to apply roots
music as therapy, moving my mental focus away from grief. When I think about
it, I can feel Dad’s hand guiding mine, wrapped around the neck of that old
guitar to show me the fingerings. That’s what I understand about “healing touch.”
I know it must have cost him, as much as arthritis pains him, to have showed me
how to feel music in your fingers, after the old ways of feeling music were
lost.

“Susi absorbs music through her fingers as well as her ears.
That’s a good thing,” Jason said.

We found the sandy beach deserted and, without discussing
it, hunkered down in a driftwood shelter and listened to the water and another
train echoing across the Sound.

“The wind in the sea grass,” he murmured near my ear, making
an inventory of everything we could hear. Surf birds. A murder of crows
descending in late afternoon into the trees in the hills above the beach.

Then he said, “How long, Susi?”

“Since when?”

“Since you sat beside a man like this?”

“More than two years.”

“That’s a long time.”

“I was unhappy. It’s better to finish that kind of business
alone.”

“Are you still unhappy, Susi?”

“No. I didn’t realize it until a little while ago, but no,
I’m not unhappy anymore. I rather like my life now.”

“Still staying alone? Though that’s the same tack I took.
I’ve been trying to get over feeling betrayed—you must know that about me,
Susi.”

“I don’t actually. We agreed that we’re strangers, right?”

He grinned, and we listened to echoes across the Sound until
he began singing that song from
Anchor’s Away
.

“‘If you knew Susie, like I know Susie, oh, oh—’”

“Only my brother can sing that song to me. You must stop
now.”

“I was planning to.” He tossed pebbles toward the water. “I
want to stop doing what I did all last year. I intend to follow my own ideas
about music, wherever it takes me.”

“Give up your current work?”

“I have to. Last year’s work just left me feeling like I had
sold out to the corporations and prostituted myself.”

“How will you live?”

“I can afford to do what I want, if I’m careful about it.”

“That must be nice.” I hoped my voice didn’t hold any
bitterness.

“I have to be immersed in creative work, or I get so
depressed that you have to scrape me off the floor,” he said. “Now I know
exactly what music I want to make.”

“What’s it like?”

“If it were a painting, it would be by Caravaggio.”

“Dark and violent?”

“No. Why is that what everyone thinks? I mean illuminating
common people, so they become like gods. Animated, so you see movement, even in
the shadows.”

As he spoke, his fingers lingered along the lines of my
face, brushing my cheek with his fingertips.

“I wish you would let me kiss you, Susi.”

I don’t believe that my longing carried me out to sea. I’m
certain that I gave him a secret sign of assent when I felt his hand hovering
over mine, as if the energy from his palms would levitate me like a magician’s
assistant. He was so near that I could smell that scent of man caught amid the
web of hairs at his throat. It might be that the irresistible pull of my own
longing is what drew his face closer to mine. Yet it was he who kissed me. So
lightly at first that it felt the same as his breath on my lips, a ghost, an
echo that carried across the water from far away. He traced the edges of my
lips with his own and lingered over my eyelids. Then he nipped at my lower lip,
urging my mouth open and his tongue slipped inside, the hard point of it
pressing against the tip of mine, as he brought me closer, wrapping me in an
embrace. I could feel the heat radiating from his hands, even with my shirt between
his hot palm and my skin.

We kissed for a thousand years, while nations rose,
struggled, and fell again, and we came to live in a more philosophical era,
where sin faded from concern, and we forgot about remorse and caution. With
each new breath, I slid down from the driftwood bench, into the cold sand with
his hip against mine. I had a singular longing, to feel his weight on top of
me, as if it would answer the riddle of why we are here on this earth and what
it all means.

He whispered, and the rasp of his breath fell on my ear like
music, or affection. “Susi, you are the most incredible creature on God’s
earth.”

Then he shifted us both in the sand, settling his weight
against me. Through both his layer of denim and mine, I could feel him
throbbing, leading me to wiggle against him. He moved his hand up under my
shirt, responding to my unspoken wishes, and his hand cupped my breast, gently
pressing.

“This feels like it wants to be more,” he murmured, “but you
have to say so. Tell me you want me to touch you.”

The rational world clattered down around me, like the claxon
of a boat’s horn, shattering across the water. He was asking me to say aloud
what I wanted. However, it was desire like this that led to the destruction of
my old world.

“Please,” I said. I took two breaths, to say what I must. “No.
Please don’t. Please stop.”

He rolled off me and sat back against our driftwood shelter,
shaking his hair, as if to clear his head. I sat up beside him, trying to
breathe, feeling a hideous need to explain myself.

“I got married for the wrong reasons. I still don’t trust my
judgment.”

He didn’t answer. I felt a hideous need to fill the silence.

“Can we pretend this didn’t happen?”

“All right, Susi. We’ll pretend I’m a frog, and whenever
you’re ready, you can kiss me.”

“I’ve heard what you’re like, Jason, and I don’t want that.”

“My reputation is vastly exaggerated.”

“I want your friendship much more than I want—that.”

“My friendship?”

“It will be embarrassing when we see each other later if we
just go on in the way they say you do. We’re having a good time together. Can’t
we continue as friends?”