Nine Volt Heart (9 page)

“I can if you can.” He stood up. “I’m hungry. Can we get
food before we go to this concert?”

And that is the story of my sinful beach fling at the end of
spring break.

JASON

“S
TOP AT FRED MEYERS, SUSI, so
I can get clothes for tonight. I can’t wear these everywhere. Your rich friends
will think I’m a loser.”

“I’m going to wait in the car.”

The cashier and three young women in the store recognized
me, but this was Fremont, and everyone was nice about it. I signed for one of
the women who wanted my autograph—it was a receipt for a Fleet Foxes CD, so I’m
not sure what she will tell her kids twenty years from now.

When I joined Susi again, Shostakovich played on the car
radio for spring time cheer, and she didn’t have anything to say on the ride
back to her house, where she made yakisoba with tofu, snowpeas, and shiitake
mushrooms while I changed. Then she left me to eat my noodles alone while she
changed.

I went to the trouble of getting a tie when I was in Fred’s,
ripping black jeans and a black shirt off the hangers and sprinting for the
cashier, thinking I would look respectable enough for Seattle, though I wasn’t
sure what would make me look respectable enough to be seen with Susi. I had met
the two versions of the Brooks Brothers girl, the one in jeans and the one
dressed for success, and I had seen the compact athlete in damp t-shirt. Now I met
the artist that her classical training had created, wearing a long black sheath
with a high turtleneck. The sole ornament she affected was a wide cinch belt,
so it looked like I was escorting the second violinist or the harpist.

By this time, I was getting used to Susi taking me wherever
she wanted me to go—to Benaroya Hall for Mozart’s
Requiem
in this case, where we swapped roles and I could forget all the paranoia I have
about being recognized. When we came into the hall, everyone knew Susi, starting
with the gentlemen taking tickets at the door. The woman selling annual
subscriptions called Susi’s name and came over to speak with her. Same story
with the ponytailed guy tending the wine bar beneath the giant Rauschenberg
mural. Susi refused my offer to buy her a glass of wine, and I don’t drink, so
we both had seltzer water and walked up to the second-tier gallery to wait for
Randolph. An older woman dressed in dark green linen came over, giving Susi a
hug and kissing her cheek.

“I saw your father just the other day, Susi. He said you
were doing so much better. It’s so nice to see you out and about again.”

Susi had the knack some people do of turning a conversation
around on the spot, and in a flash she had the woman talking about her dog and
her grandchildren. When the woman drifted away, Susi said, “I have something in
my eye. Wait for me here,” and she handed me her drink and departed down the
hall.

“Cute girl,” a voice breathed in my ear. “Does she sing?”

“Ephraim.”

He looks like Bruno Ganz as the angel in
Wings
of Desire
, in black silk and leather trench coat, his hair pulled into a
tight ponytail. He’s ten years older than me and likes to lord the extra years
as being meaningful.

“The same. This gives us a great opportunity to chat,
Jason.”

“No, it just proves my luck still sucks. Every time I turn
around I run into you or hear from you.”

“It’s because our fates are bound together.”

“Is Dominique here?”

“She’s in the women’s room with your girlfriend.”

“Oh geez. Say what you want, Ephraim. You will, no matter
how I try to dodge it. It can’t be good, or Karl would have already told me.”

“All I want from you, Jason, is a small set of
reassurances.”

“I can offer a profound assurance that I’m still pissed off
about what you did to my music.”

“I won’t forget that. The situation will not occur again if
you stay and complete the work yourself this time. You were supposed to deliver
last month. I pulled every trick I could to delay and still get a new album in
stores this summer.”

“Thank you. You are such a great friend.”

“Jason, reassure me that you are professionally committed.
Otherwise, there is no use holding an expensive charade. I will just work in a
friendly way with Karl on how you pay your way out of the contract. And I will
make sure no major label ever gambles on you again.”

“I’m here to do the work, and I’m committed to deliver what
I owe, as quickly as possible.”

“Beautiful. And you will do all the work necessary to make
this next album as successful as the last.”

I wanted to curl into a ball and rock like a child until I
felt safe.

“Jason, you need to do the interviews, make the videos, and
appear in public. Sixty or eighty minutes of tracks aren’t much better than
dead air if you won’t promote it.”

“You have the beautiful Dominique to do that. She loves it.
Point a camera or a microphone in her direction, and she’ll get you all the
publicity you could want from an artist.”

“For true success, you need to do the same, Jason.”

“Her last video was quite popular.”

“That isn’t the video that first sold people on
Woman at the Well
. It was the earlier concert videos that
you did—both your soulful acoustic number and that rocking piece with the whole
band. Best live-action video of the year.”

“Second place only.”

“You’re quite photogenic, Jason. The camera loves you, and
women of all ages appreciate it. At least women over seventeen. Younger girls
find you too masculine, but our market studies show that men aren’t put off by
your brand of masculinity. Albion Records couldn’t hope for a product that
tests better in both markets.”

“You did a market study on my effing face? I’m a product?”

“You’ve been in the business too long to be naïve about
this.”

“OK. Your request for small assurances is proving to be a
real bundle. Let’s see if I have it: turn in a marketable album.”

“On time. Finished tracks no later than the second of June.”

“I can do that.”

“You are one of the few in the industry who could turn
tracks around that fast, Jason. I’ve got production and distribution lined up
to get to market in support of your effort.”

“Do radio, TV, and video, with my best side turned toward
the camera.”

“With your face, you don’t have to worry about the best
side.”

“I can tell where the rest of this is headed. Tour. I have
to play on stage with Dominique.”

“Even you have to admit that logic is inescapable. The first
date is June twenty-seventh in L.A. I gave Karl a list of all dates yesterday.”

“Escaping Dominique is all I care about, Ephraim. You can’t
force me back into everyday life with her.”

“After you finish rehearsing for the road, you’ll see her
only a couple of hours every second or third day. The monitors and rest of the
stage gear should help you keep a distance.”

“What else, Ephraim? If you’re going to wrap your hands
around my balls and squeeze, let’s get done with it.”

“Sign another contract to record with me.”

“Are you insane? After I get Dominique to let go of me, I
won’t come near either of you.”

“Not with Dominique. She needs to find her own band. It is
too hard to adapt your material to her voice. Just you. I want you and whatever
musicians are working with you. Ian, I assume, will never go away. I hope Toby
will stay. Who else have you gathered?”

“I can’t believe your effing gall, Ephraim. I spent the
winter approving more than a million dollars in charge-backs from your
recording company. I had to pay for half of Dominique’s tits-and-ass video and
all the publicist’s fees. What was that about? I could have Cynthia and her
cousin do publicity and booking, like we always did before, and not pay a
quarter of a million bucks for it.”

“You never sold three million CDs with Cynthia doing your
publicity.”

“So you want the rights to all my future work, in addition
to walking off with my wife.”

“You didn’t want her by the time she went walking with me.”

“I don’t know what you see in her. It makes me think less of
you.”

“Because you were glad to see her go, you believe that she’s
worthless to others?”

“She interviewed three replacements before she chose you,
Ephraim. They were all richer and more famous than either of us. Whatever else
you think, you have to acknowledge that Dominique is an accomplished liar. You
saw for yourself how ugly she could be in the studio before you got involved
with her.”

“She’s beautiful. I like her voice.”

“You are joking.”

“Different people have different tastes. Perhaps my tastes
are more plebian than yours.”

“But the lies, Ephraim, the lies.”

“It’s a way she covers for weakness. I like to think she
feels safer with me, less threatened. She has less need to lie to me.”

“I never threatened her.”

“There are many ways to make people feel unsafe, Jason.”

“I promise to wish you luck when I don’t feel so threatened
myself.”

“You know, Stanley Donan and Gene Kelly worked together for
years after Kelly took Donan’s wife. Tell me, if you’re so unhappy with her
now, what did you once see in her?”

“She came after me like I was God’s own child. It wasn’t
until later that I realized I was God’s own foot stool.”

“Dominique is young—what was she when you first found her,
Jason? Twenty-two?”

“She found me, Ephraim. I didn’t go looking for her.”

“No one ever taught her how to behave. She was a spoiled
rich girl at the start, and not much better when you left. But she’s learning.
I like to think that she needs an older, steadying influence. I rather enjoy
the job.”

The two women came up the hallway on a parallel path,
unaware of each other. One tall, in a long red leather coat and high-heeled
boots, attracting everyone’s attention, the other as anonymous as lilies in the
field, her pale face luminous in the hall’s dim light.

“Keep her away from me, Ephraim. And watch your phone bills.
Check your back every now and again, to be sure she hasn’t knifed you.”

I turned away, toward the light.

JASON

S
USI TOUCHED MY ARM and said
my name as she came up. Lord help me, when I turned around I wanted to just put
my arms around her and run from the building, to have her to myself, to finish
what we had started in the afternoon, to flee from the world. She led me as if
I were half-blind to join the playboy vice-principal from our earlier meeting
where he stood with an older couple, a stooped giant of a gentleman and a tiny
grand dame with immense dignity.

God alone knows how I made it through that part of the
evening, shaking hands with people I had never met and would never see again.
Feeling that I needed to protect Susi from something, but not seeing what.
Wanting to poke Randolph in the nose, just for the pleasure of it. Smiling the
whole while, charming the grandmother who seemed to be my assigned seat
partner. Randolph worked out the arrangements, so Susi sat as far from me as
possible. While I conquered the adrenalin rush from not being close enough to
protect her, the grandmother chatted about Schubert and dying young being such
a tragedy.

Then, just as the lights dimmed and we applauded the concert
master, everyone stirred and Susi took the seat beside me because, the
grandmother said, Susi couldn’t sit by someone wearing too much perfume.

I had almost calmed down by the time the orchestra made it
through the Schubert piece, knowing I was sublimating the residue of feelings
from speaking with Ephraim, and projecting all my flight-of-fear emotions onto
Susi, who was about as safe as a person could be, with the grandfather chatting
in her ear as soon as the lights came up. The sole threat to her well-being was
the overchilled air from the HVAC system. I saw the tiny frisson of a shiver
shimmying up her spine and, without even considering another alternative, I
draped my jacket around her shoulders as Randolph and his kin huddled beside
her during the break, longing for her attention. Everyone is in love with Susi.

When the lights dimmed again and the chorale took their
seats for the
Requiem
, she murmured a thank-you to me
as she drew the jacket close and fixed her gaze on the stage.

Thirty seconds into the Kyrie, I glanced over and found her subvocalizing
the words.

I missed the entire rest of the program, seeing the
director’s hands occasionally while trying to understand what Susi saw from her
seat, finally realizing—like an effing fool—that this was the career she had
been forced to leave behind. Yet from her speaking voice, she could never have
had the proper range for it. A poor teacher had led her down a garden path,
telling her she was capable when it wasn’t right for her.

During the applause, I had to stand up, for we were sitting
so close to the stage that it would be rude not to stand while everyone
applauded the performers. Susi stood beside me, gently swaying. I put my hand
at the small of her back to steady her. The grandfather noticed too.

“My goodness, child, are you well?”

“I’m fine,” she said. Tears glistened in her eyes. “The
music is just so very beautiful.”

Then Randolph was at her side, having aced out his
grandfather in the role of solicitous Randolph kin.

“Susi, I never should have brought you here.”

“You didn’t bring me, Randolph. I came on my own.”

“This was a poor choice. Let me take you home.”

“I’m fine. I have my own car here and a guest to take care
of.”

“Susi, I should insist.”

“Please don’t, Randolph. I’m fine. However, I must decline
your kind offer of a late dinner.”

The admonishments continued, until I could get her out of
there.

On the street, I was steaming. “Didn’t his mother teach him
how to act right? Why wouldn’t he leave you alone when you asked him to?”

As we walked to the parking lot, musicians fleeing the
building called out to her, and she greeted them in return, her voice sounding
warm and golden, but her expression strained. At the car, she handed me the
keys.

“Could you drive, please?” she asked.

“No, actually.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know how.” For the first time, it felt like
admitting a weakness.

She managed the thinnest smile, shaking her head.

On the ride home, I commandeered the radio, finding the Blues
Time Machine on KPLU, thinking we had endured enough classical depression for
the night. Susi was silent, and Alice Stuart soothed us on the trip up Yesler
Way and across the neighborhoods to her house. In her carport, Susi grabbed the
keys out of the ignition and ran into the house, closing herself into her
bedroom, so I had to satisfy myself with washing my hands and brushing my teeth
in the kitchen sink, though I wanted another shower.

I sat up late into the night writing and listening to her
music through headphones. My friend Chas launched an instant-messaging
conversation about guitar steels, which diverted me from brooding.

 
Chas1933: You play music, right? I’m researching the equipment the old blues
guys used, especially the rural musicians who first developed the bottleneck
sound.

Sebastian: How many of them used real bottlenecks?

Chas1933: Don’t know. The notes I’ve found say some of the old
guys often used a comb or a pocket knife. What do you think?

Sebastian: I’m clueless. I’m also spoiled. I use commercial
steels.

Chas1933: Look, I’m old as shoe leather and I can’t play
anymore. Can you tell me what it’s like, playing with a comb or a pocket knife?
In those days, it would have been a steel comb.

Sebastian: Yeah, you made me curious. I’ll try it. Can’t do it
tonight though.

Chas1933: I’m in no rush. At my age, I’m going nowhere fast.

Sebastian: You sure have talked me into some weird experiments
in the past year. Do you suppose that they used the pocket knife with the blade
open or closed?

Chas1933: You’re pulling my ancient leg now. You plan to
experiment both ways? You don’t want to use guitar strings for the tourniquet.
 

Late in the night I uploaded the last of my notes from London
onto a couple of different blogs on the Internet, but I still couldn’t tell
what to do with the last two days’ notes, so I mailed those to myself again.
When that was done, I began pillaging Susi’s library. For most of the time, she
sobbed her heart out behind the closed bedroom door.

It was like being married again, but without the guilt and
remorse.