How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets

by Garth Stein

  All the while this busy work is going on, and Lars is prattling on about drum mikes and phase cancellation, Evan’s mind begins to wander. He tries to keep everything tight on the music, but his thoughts are scattered. It’s kind of a big deal to make a demo, diminished only slightly by the fact that they’re paying for it themselves instead of having a record company foot the bill. But that’s okay. There’s still plenty of excitement around making music on tape, or on computer, as the case may be. He remembers back in the day, years ago, when Dog Run recorded their album. A month of nonstop work in a cabin up on Dabob Bay, mornings spent scouring the beach for oysters, afternoons spent napping, nights spent working out their songs. And then two weeks of nonstop work in the studio. He was good then, but not as good. He had the energy without the technique. Now he has the technique without the energy. And he didn’t have a reputation back then. He was just himself. Now he’s a hired gun. They brought him in, a ringer, someone with a record, both figuratively and literally. They wanted what he brought them, an instant upgrade at a recording studio, for instance. Maybe someone takes a longer listen to their demo because “that Dog Run guy is on it.”They fired their friend, the guy they grew up with, and brought in Evan, and Evan was expected to produce. And Evan would produce. Pressure? Nah. Pressure is growing up without a father. Pressure is having your mother crushed to death in a high-speed wreck when you’re fourteen years old. What does Evan know of pressure?

  He shakes his head quickly from side to side to get himself back into the room. The room. The studio. The session. Now is not the time to get lost in yourself.

  Lars stops fiddling with his set and looks up.

  “You okay?” he asks from his stool. He’s gnawing at his thumbnail again. It’s best when you let it heal for a few days and then go at it just as it’s scabbing over.

  “Yeah.”

  “You zoned, man. Where’re Tony and Rod?”

  “Dunno.”

  What’s the matter? Feeling a little detached, are we?

  That mind-body thing again. Dualism again. Evan doesn’t like the concept of dualism. He wants monism. He doesn’t want to feel that his body is just a vehicle for his mind. Because that’s sometimes the first step. That feeling followed by the realization that the world could end tomorrow—doom—and the next thing you know you’re standing in the middle of a big fat seizure with nowhere to go.

  He has to have some pot before things go down the wrong road. A few hits should even things out, calm him down, make him forget about the possibilities. He glances around the room. Marijuana and sound studios go hand in hand. All musicians smoke and drink and screw and do all kinds of other illicit shit in a sound studio. Normally, Evan would just whip out his pipe and light it up. But Dean is here. Evan is Dean’s father. Evan has to set some kind of an example. He has to find another place.

  “I gotta take a leak, ” Evan says.

  “Bleed the lizard, ” Lars says.

  “Spank the monkey, ” Dean says.

  Lars looks at him crookedly. “‘Spank the monkey?’” he asks. “That’s whacking off. He’s not gonna whack off. You’re not gonna whack off, are you?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “He’s gonna take a piss. Get your vulgarity straight.”

  “Sorry, ” Dean says.

  “Hand me my ride cymbal.”

  “Which one?”

  “Which one?”

  “The big one, ” Lars groans. “It says ‘ride’ on it.”

  “Sorry.”

  “And quit apologizing. You’re gonna make people think you’re a pussy. The proper response is ‘Shut your face.’”

  “Shut your face, ” Dean says, handing Lars the cymbal.

  “You’re a good kid, ” Lars says. He turns to Evan with a wink. “He’s a good kid. You should be proud.”

  “I am, ” Evan says, and quickly leaves the room.

  He wanders the labyrinthine halls, venturing deep into the icy bowels of The Sound Factory. Most doors are locked, and the ones that aren’t locked open into empty studios or mechanical rooms. That’s the magic of The Sound Factory. There are no utility closets. Apparently, there is no need. The Sound Factory keeps itself clean by using high-tech ionizing defragmentors which vaporize all dust and dirt instantly. Crazy.

  There’s a men’s room, but that’s too public. There’s somebody’s office, probably a day-worker, but what if Evan gets caught? He tries one more door, his last attempt. It opens. It’s dark inside. He flips on the light. Ah. The long awaited utility closet. Spacious and roomy. A ladder, a shelf full of light bulbs and paper towels, and the obligatory mop and pail. Perfect. He steps inside.

  “Can I help you find something?” a woman calls out from the end of the hall. Evan hopes she isn’t calling him. He looks around. She is calling him.

  “I’m okay, ” Evan responds cheerfully.

  The woman approaches. Evan’s heart stops.

  It’s her.

  The girl. Billy’s girl. She smiles at him and waves. She remembers him.

  He finds himself short of breath. She’s wearing jeans, sneakers, and a tiny cardigan buttoned only once, revealing her navel, her taut stomach, a pleasant amount of cleavage, and a black lace bra.

  “If you’re looking for a light bulb, you probably should let me call Maintenance. They get kind of bent out of shape when a client tries to lift a finger around here. It’s a union thing. You know.”

  She reaches Evan. She’s shorter than he is. Her eyes are a deep chocolate brown that seem so calm and optimistic. Her smile offers only uncontainable joy, joy that works for her, and that she can give out as she sees fit. All in all, she’s the kind of girl Evan could fall in love with. Instantly.

  “Um, ” he hesitates, one foot in the closet and one foot out. “Listen, can I be honest?”

  She nods, still smiling.

  “I kind of wanted to find a place to smoke a little pot. Just a little bit.”

  “Ah. You can smoke in the studios. There are signs that say no smoking, but you can smoke. No one will say anything.”

  “But my son is in there and I don’t really want to smoke around him. No one will mind if I just duck in here, will they?”

  She shrugs. Evan smiles. “Thanks, ” he says. He steps into the closet and closes the door. But before he can get it closed, she slips in with him.

  “You want some?” he asks. Why else would she join him in a utility closet?

  “No thanks. That stuff makes me paranoid.”

  Evan locks the door and quickly loads his pipe. He lights the lighter and inhales the smoke. Relief. Relaxation. He can feel the tightness in his brain releasing.

  “You were really great the other night, ” she says.

  She remembers? Why would she remember?

  “Theo was really into you. We went out after, and he kept on talking about you and laughing. He thought it was the greatest thing that a rock and roller would just get up and jam with them. He said you had to be pretty confident to get up at someone else’s gig.”

  “Yeah, well. Confident? Maybe more like stupid.”

  “No.”

  She watches him as he reloads the one-hitter and lights up again.

  “Smoking helps your music?” she asks. She’s sitting on the stepladder, hunched forward, looking at Evan. There’s something about her, about the way she looks and the way she sits on a stepladder. And it isn’t just the thin gold chain with the small gold medallion that’s tight around her neck. (Evan has always found chokers sexy.) There’s something else that gives Evan’s heart a little lift.

  Evan shakes his head no.

  “You have a session and you’re nervous?”

  “Well, yes. But that’s not why I’m smoking, ” Evan answers.

  “Why, then? Just out of curiosity.”

  Does that count? Is that enough of a reason to justify being told the truth? That Evan has epilepsy?

  “I smoke for medical reasons, ” Evan says. The same half-an
swer he gave to Dean, which, thankfully, Dean never pursued.

  “Cancer?”

  “No.”

  “Glaucoma? I’ve heard of people smoking pot for glaucoma.”

  “No.”

  Her shoulders drop, her face turns glum.

  “AIDS?” she asks sadly.

  Evan shakes his head, more to himself than to her. He’s spent his entire life denying his condition to anyone who asks. When he was a kid at summer camp, if another kid saw him taking pills and asked why, Evan would make up a quick lie: allergy pills, for instance. In school, if a teacher punished him because he didn’t answer her question in class, Evan wouldn’t tell her he was having a seizure and was unable to speak, he would stand behind his behavior as an act of defiance. It was part of Evan’s fabric. It was condoned by the officials of his life, his parents, the ones who made the rules. One time, way, way back, Evan was fourteen or so, and there was a family reunion at their house, everyone was there, cousins and aunts and uncles, people who hadn’t been heard from or seen for decades, and Evan had a seizure. A full-blown status grand mal. The ambulance came. They took him to the hospital where he stayed for three days. The whole thing. Did Evan’s mother take the opportunity to tell her family that Evan had epilepsy? Did she explain it all to them at that moment? Heavens, no. She told them that Evan was dehydrated. He was trying to lose weight for the wrestling team, she said. He’d been fasting. Sweating himself. That’s why he had the seizure. All of which wouldn’t have been so freaking pathetic if Evan had actually been on the wrestling team. He’d quit months earlier when Johnny Kruger tried to rip his arm out of its socket and Evan cried and the coach slapped him and called him a baby. Evan’s entire life, since he was twelve, has been spent denying one of the main things that defines him. His epilepsy. So why would he tell this girl now?

  “Fuck it, ” he says suddenly.

  “Fuck what?”

  “I have epilepsy, ” he says.“Sometimes pot lets me stop a seizure I feel coming on.”

  “Wow, ” she perks up.“I’ve never heard of that. Really?”

  “Yeah. It’s a relaxation thing. Like asthma. When you get an asthma attack, your fear and anxiety over the attack constricts your capillaries and actually makes the attack worse. For me, sometimes the stress of worrying about a seizure can bring on a seizure. So smoking pot relieves the anxiety. That’s the theory, at least.”

  “Interesting.”

  “There are other theories.”

  “Really?”

  “But no clinical studies. You can imagine the issues . . .”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “I wasn’t even having an aura, ” Evan continues, enjoying his newfound liberation. As long as he doesn’t start explaining to her what status epilepticus means. That’ll make her bolt. Epilepsy is sensitive and quaint in a potential partner only if the seizures are exceedingly mild. If every seizure is a near-death experience, the idea of a long-term relationship dissolves pretty quickly.“I was just afraid that maybe I would have an aura soon.” He thinks about that statement a moment, and realizes how it sounds.“All right, ” he says, “it’s a crutch sometimes. But it’s better than a grand mal seizure, I can tell you that.”

  “I’ll bet, ” she says.

  They stare at each other for a few moments, locking eyes. It worked. He’d said enough but not too much. He could feel more electricity circulating in the room than just the bare bulb overhead and whatever excess was skittering around in his brain.

  “What?” he asks.

  “You have pretty eyes.”

  “You, too, ” Evan says.

  “Not like you.”

  Again, the stare. The heated I-like-you stare.

  “I should get to my studio. The guys must all be there waiting.”

  She nods.“The guys.”

  Evan unlocks the door. He opens it and they step out into the hallway.

  “I have no idea where I am, ” Evan admits.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Studio B.”

  “This way.”

  He follows her down the hall. The pot is having its effect. Not its seizure-defusing effect. That’s already taken care of. But in the closet with this girl, Evan probably smoked more than he usually did and now he’s stoned. He tries to focus on the hallway in front of him, but his eyes keep drifting down to this girl’s ass, small and round, and the way her Levi’s fit nicely around the curves, gapping a little at the small of her back to remind everyone that there’s a naked girl underneath.

  “What are you looking at?”

  Evan looks up. They’ve stopped in front of a door.

  Evan starts to answer, he tries to answer, but he really doesn’t know what to say.

  “Your studio, ” she says.

  “You’re working tonight?” Evan asks, realizing that she’ll be leaving him soon.

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe we could get a cup of coffee during break or something?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I mean, I’d like to see more of you—that’s not what I mean.”

  She laughs.

  “You’ll see more of me, ” she says. She opens the door to the studio and goes in. Evan is confused. He follows her into the room.

  “How’s everything going in here?” she calls out. Lars and Dean are there. So are Rod and Tony.“You guys find everything you need?”

  Lars shoots up from behind his drum set. He rushes around his ride cymbal and heads toward the girl.

  “Ms. Morrison, ” he stammers, his right hand outthrust. “I own every album you’ve ever engineered, and it’s a real honor to be able to work with you.”

  “Just call me Mica, ” the girl says.

  “This is Tony and this is Rod, ” Lars says, pointing them out. “This is my assistant, Dean. And this is our gem, our shining star, our brilliant guitarist, Evan.”

  Mica smiles at Evan.

  “We’ve already met, ” she says.

  MICA ASKS QUESTIONS about the band, their sound, how they want to handle the vocals, and so on. They all agree that they like a live sound, so they’ll play together, in one room, without headphones. Keeping it real. The questions turn to more sophisticated sound issues: overdubbing, reverb, layering of tracks, filtering, boosting. Things that a novice band doesn’t really know about because they haven’t had the exposure. But Evan has had the exposure, having done all of this before, and Lars knows the lingo, so the two of them answer most of the questions.

  She frowns when they tell her they don’t have a producer, because that thrusts her into the role of producer pro tem, and she doesn’t like producing, she mutters loud enough for everyone to hear. If she liked producing, she would be a producer. Evan looks at his bandmates and knows that they’re feeling intimidated, which is what Billy warned against. He’s feeling intimidated, too, but not by her rapid-fire questions. He’s intimidated because whenever she glances at him his stomach flies into his mouth like he’s on a roller coaster.

  “Well, I guess we’ll plow our way through it, ” she says hopefully, heading off to the control room door. “Let me get my panel set while you guys get warmed up.”

  She opens the door that leads to the dark room behind the glass wall and steps inside. The door sucks shut behind her.

  “I’d like to plow my way through her sometime, ” Rod says when she’s gone.

  “Dude, ” Lars says, “don’t be an idiot. She can hear you.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  Lars shakes his head in disgust.“You guys are a bunch of freaking amateurs. She fucking engineers The Rolling Stones. If you can’t act professionally, at least keep your mouths shut.”

  “Fuck you, ” Rod snaps.

  “Get in line behind your mother, ” Lars fires back.

  Dean laughs.

  “And what’s with the midget?” Rod asks.“Who invited him?”

  “He’s not a midget, he’s a kid, ” Lars says, standing quickly enough to knock over his throne.“And
I invited him. And if you don’t like it, you can fucking come over here and talk to me about it.”

  “Guys, guys, ”Tony says quickly, trying to stop the fight before it starts. “Relax. We’re all a little freaked out. Let’s just relax, let her do her thing, and we’ll do our thing.”

  Calmed, everyone resumes fidgeting with their equipment.

  Evan tries to peer into the control room, but Mica has the lights off inside so the glass wall is nothing but a mirror, reflecting the image of the band back at him.

  He sees Lars, of course. Who could miss him? With his silvery crew cut and the dent in his skull he is, somehow, immensely likeable. He and Evan forged a bond the moment they met, and have been good friends from the beginning. The same can’t be said for his relationship with Tony and Rod.

  Tony is a good guy deep down, Evan is sure, though he usually walks in the shadow of Rod, the bass player. Tony is the band’s front man, and he looks the part. He’s of average height, but that’s the only thing about him that’s average. He sports a shaved head and a goatee and intense Charles-Mansonesque eyes. He is relatively conservative in terms of piercing—considering the vogue of the time—with only his ears and one eyebrow pierced by modest silver hoops. He’s built like a rock, with massive tattooed arm muscles that are always on display since he never wears a shirt with sleeves, no matter what the weather. He wears tight leather pants and steel-toed boots and his fingers are covered with chunky silver rings that have been cast from the molds of small rodent skulls. He has thick lips and broad, flat cheekbones, and is brutally handsome in a way that attracts teenage girls.

  He’s a strange counterpart to Rod, the bass player and puppet master, who is definitely not attractive. If anything, he’s the anti-Tony. He’s a big guy, but Evan thinks he carries himself like a small guy. His face is marked with a permanent scowl that seems carved into his forehead. He wears black horn-rim glasses, plaid fifties shirts and Doc Martens. But it’s Rod’s hair that catches people’s attention the most. It’s dark brown, shoulder length, and matted into long, clumpy fingers—white man’s dreadlocks—that dangle in his face, cover his eyes, and swing to and fro when he shakes his head, which he does often. This combination of styles gives people the impression that Rod is a kind of cross-cultural iconoclast, a Rasta Buddy Holly, and actually makes him seem more fearsome than Lars with his dented forehead, more fearsome than Tony with his bulging arms, and certainly more fearsome than Evan, who’s pretty much the wimp of the group.