The Debt 7 (Club Alpha) (9 page)

***

The next morning, Raven was up
early.
 
She vaguely recalled waking
up as Jake stumbled into bed, smelling of pizza and beer and mumbling to
himself that
“Fredo didn’t deserve it.”

She’d had no idea what he was talking
about, and didn’t care.
 
She’d
fallen back asleep moment later.

Now, she got to her normal routine of an
early morning swim, had some yogurt, went for a run on the beach, came back and
took a shower, got ready for the rest of the day.

Only this time, as she was doing her
makeup and drying her hair, Raven started to find herself getting angrier and
angrier as she pictured Jake eating his greasy pizza and turning the volume up
on the television.

Her hand clutched her brush and then
suddenly she threw it across the bathroom, where it smashed the wall, leaving a
slight gray mark on the tile.

She was breathing fast, and her hands
felt numb, and Raven realized it was time to take action.

Leaving the bathroom, she saw that Jake
was still sound asleep—of course.

She went downstairs, walking with a
purpose now.
 
Then she opened the
door to the studio, went inside, and got what she needed to get, turning around
and immediately marching back upstairs with it.

When she re-entered the bedroom, Raven
was glaring at Jake with an intensity she’d rarely felt.

He’s
probably going to kick you out of his house—and his life—after you
pull this stunt.

But Raven was past caring.
 
Something needed to change, and it was
going to change.
 

She was holding one of Jake’s expensive
acoustic guitars, and she put the strap over her shoulders so it hung across
her chest.
 
And then, not knowing
how to play anything, she simply strummed the strings as loud as she could,
causing a cacophony of sound that was so loud it even surprised her.

Jake sat up in bed, wide-eyed.
 
“What the hell?” he yelled.

She stopped playing and stared back at
him.
 
“You don’t like the way I
play?” she asked.

“Where’d you get that, Raven?” he said,
his eyes hardening.
 
“Why are you
holding my goddamn guitar right now?”

“Fine, I’ll stop holding it,” she said, ripping
the strap off her shoulders and then throwing the guitar directly at Jake.

He caught it deftly, but it shocked him,
from the look on his face.
 
“Raven,
you’ve lost your mind.”

“No, Jake,” she replied, pointing an
accusing finger at him, “you’re the one who’s lost your mind.
 
And I’m fed up.”

He blinked at her.
 
“So this is how you communicate your
frustration?
 
By snooping through my
shit and stealing my instruments?”

Raven had to laugh.
 
“I hardly stole anything.
 
Stop whining for one second and look at
yourself.”

Jake put the guitar gently to the side on
the bed and stood up.
 
“Listen, I
don’t know who you think you are, but this is my house and my life.
 
If you don’t approve, I really don’t
give a shit.”

“Yes you do,” she said, folding her arms.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, yes. You.
 
Do.”

Jake shook his head.
 
“Let me explain a few things to you…”

“No, I’m done listening to you.
 
For the last five days I’ve waited for
you to get over this mood you’ve been in, waited for the amazing trip that you promised
me, to finally start to happen.
 
But
then I realized
,
it’s not going to happen.
 
You’re just going to sit around in your
boxers and eat pizza and drink beer and watch shitty old movies.”

“The Godfather is not some shitty old
movie—it’s a classic of modern cinema, and if you’d given it half a
chance…”

“Jake, just stop,” she said, wearily.

He seemed to finally catch himself,
running a hand through his unkempt hair and looking down, noticing the pizza
stains on his t-shirt.
 
“Shit,” he
said, sounding suddenly tired and lost.

“What’s going on with you, Jake?” she
asked, her voice softening.
 
“What
was that phone call about, the one you took the night we first got here?
 
Ever since then, you’ve been different.”

Jake couldn’t meet her gaze.
 
“My label—they dropped me, but
they’re also suing me for breach of contract.
 
It’s a fifteen million dollar law suit
and they’re going to win.”

“Maybe there’s something you can
do—“

“There’s nothing to do.
 
I’ve committed career suicide,
Raven.
 
I’m finished.”
 
He finally made eye contact with her,
and she could see the pain there in all of its rawness.

“You said this was what you wanted.”

“I know what I said,” he replied.
 

“So you’ve changed your mind?
 
You wish you’d gone on tour?”

“No, I don’t,” he answered, looking
around the room.
 
“But that life was
the only way I knew how to live, it turns out.
 
I guess maybe I don’t actually remember
how to be any other way anymore.
 
I’m broken.”
 
He met her eyes
again, daring her to say differently.

“You’re not broken,” she told him.
 
“You just need to start searching for
the new way, the new path.”

“I don’t even know where to start.”

She nodded toward the guitar on the
bed.
 
“Maybe you should start
there.”

“What—play my old acoustic guitar
by the fire?
 
I don’t think that’s
going to solve anything for me.”

She walked over to the bed and picked the
guitar up again.
 
“You told me that
you pursued music because it was your dream—and then you let the label
convince you to become a type of artist that wasn’t true to yourself.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, since you committed career
suicide, you have nothing to lose now.
 
You can make whatever kind of music you want, Jake.
 
Nobody’s going to stop you.”

She handed Jake the guitar and this time,
as he took it, he seemed to consider it thoughtfully.
 
“I guess you have a point,” he
sighed.
 
“But I don’t know if I can
change back to what I was.”

“It’s not about changing back to what you
were,” she told him.
 
“It’s about
finding out who you’re going to become.”

***

Raven couldn’t believe how much had changed
since yesterday morning’s big blow out.

Jake had taken her suggestion very much
to heart, and he’d spent the rest of the day and night digging up copies of
some of the old songs he’d been working on in the beginning of his career.
 

And then he’d practiced those songs, hour
after hour.

Raven had sat transfixed, as Jake had
sang and played a kind of music she’d never realized he was capable of or
interested in playing.
 

At just after midnight, he’d asked her
what she thought of his new material.

“I love it,” she’d told him, and it was
true.

Jake had immediately gotten in touch with
some musicians and a producer that he knew in the area, and they’d come to the
house to help him record some demos.

Now, Raven was sitting on the black
leather couch, watching as Jake and his fellow musicians set up to play his new
material for the first time.
 
In the
control booth, the producer and his assistant were poised to begin recording.

She felt nervous for Jake, because he’d
confided to her that playing this new stuff was much more nerve wracking for
him then his popular material.
  
It was much more personal—his lyrics were obviously more
autobiographical and raw, and the songs themselves were vulnerable and emotional.

You
can do this
, she
thought, willing Jake to hear her mental prayer for him.
 
You
have the heart and soul to make this transformation, Jake.
 
I know you can do it.

Jake was standing at the microphone, the
acoustic slung over his shoulder, strumming a few chords while the bass player
tuned and the keyboardist ran his fingers over the keys.

Meanwhile, the drummer, in his separate
walled-off room, rolled his drumsticks aggressively across the snare drum and
pounded the bass drum a few times.

“We ready?” the producer asked into the
intercom.
 
He was young, brash, with
a thick curly head of hair and a big beard that somehow made him look younger instead
of older.
 
His name was Hector
Power, and apparently he was a big shot producer amongst some of the new,
trendy young artists.

“Ready,” Jake said, nodding.

“Okay, then—let’s make some magic.”

Jake took a deep breath, as Raven leaned
forward, her hands entwined, almost like she was praying, her chin resting on
her knuckles as she willed him to feel the confidence that he deserved to have
in his own songs.

He started to play, and the band kicked
in aggressively behind him.
 
As he
sang, he looked uncomfortable, almost ill at ease in his skin—which she’d
never seen before.

His acoustic guitar was overwhelmed by
the other instruments
,
and his voice sounded somehow small, too.

Hector, whom everyone called “Hec,” was
shaking his head, and he interrupted them about halfway through the song.
 
“Jake, let’s start from the top,
brother.
 
We need more intensity,
man.
 
Let’s try and kick the energy
up a notch.”

Jake nodded, but Raven could tell that he
was losing confidence fast.
 
His eyes were shifty
,
his body language
was slumping
.
 
They started
the song again, and then Hec interrupted them again, asking for more energy.

They ran through the song another five or
six times, with Hec cajoling, asking for different sounds, different
feels.
 
Finally, Hec turned to his
assistant in frustration.
 
“This
aint working,” he sighed.
 

His assistant, a skinny guy that looked
even younger, was named Rory.
 
He
shrugged.
 
“I dunno,” he said.
 
“I think there’s something here—“

“No,” Hec said, impatiently.
 
“We need to move on.”
 
He leaned forward and hit the intercom
again, speaking into his microphone.
 
“Yo, Jake.
 
Let’s try the
next song, see what we got.
 
Okay?”

Jake nodded once more.

But as they began running through Jake’s
other material, Hec became increasingly impatient, shaking his head and
muttering to himself.

Raven was getting upset too.
 
She knew that the songs weren’t sounding
very good, but she also knew that when he’d played them for her the previous
night, she’d been amazed and moved by how incredible he’d sounded.

Finally, they decided to take a break.

Hector started rolling a joint, as Jake
and the rest of the musicians came into the control room.
 
Jake sat down in one of the chairs
across from Raven, while the others sat on the couch or stood around.
 
They were drinking beer, joking around
lightly, but Jake was tense and hadn’t cracked a smile.

“What do you think, Hec?” Jake asked.

Hec licked the rolling paper, sniffed,
raised
his eyebrows.
 
“Honestly?”

“Yeah, honestly.”

“I think the new stuff is garbage,
man.”
 
He continued rolling the
joint.
 
“I mean, it’s not grooving,
it’s not alive—it’s just…” he shrugged.
 
“It’s not hot.”

Raven clenched her jaw.
 
She wanted to say something, but knew it
wouldn’t look good to step on anybody’s toes.

Jake nodded, sighing, as if he’d been
expecting this result.
 
“I guess it
was worth a try.”

“Look, bro, you need to come out hard,
come out swinging—the new tunes are soft.”

Raven glanced at Hec’s assistant, Rory,
and saw that he also looked annoyed at what Hec was saying.