by Lewis Shiner
She understood that hope and common sense were the green and red lenses of the glasses that would give perspective to her career. She closed first one eye, then the other, as she drove.
Saturday night Summer was cool and distant and Laurie knew she’d seen the Club Lingerie ad. Summer’s hurt and anger and Laurie’s guilt seemed to provide as solid a foundation for the music as the joy they’d started with. If the audience was quieter and more introverted, beer sales nonetheless continued to climb.
Afterward, Summer went to Brad’s office to collect their money. She was gone a long time. Laurie sat at the bar while waitresses stacked inverted chairs on tabletops and herded the last of the customers out the door.
“Here,” Summer said, snapping her out of a fog of exhaustion with a damp stack of tens and twenties.
“Sit down?” Laurie asked.
“I don’t think so.”
Laurie sighed. “I don’t like this. It’s no fun anymore. I don’t want us to be like this.”
“What do you want us to be like? Do you want to split up?” Before Laurie could answer she said, “I know you need the money. I talked to Brad just now and he can give you at least one night a week, solo, a hundred guaranteed, but you’ll probably end up closer to one-fifty. It’s a pay cut, but you’ve got your straight job now, so you don’t have to use that as an excuse to keep playing with me.”
“What if I want to keep playing with you?”
“You just said it was no fun anymore. Make up your mind.”
“It doesn’t matter what I say tonight, does it?”
“You don’t have to decide tonight. Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.” She picked up her guitar and left.
Brad had clearly been watching through the one-way mirror behind the call brands. When he came out he said, “She’s in a lot of pain.”
“Oh, please. Even if it’s true, can’t you find another way to say it?”
“She’s a brilliant songwriter, but she’s not moving to the next level. Everyone takes her for granted. Meanwhile you come in and overnight you’re playing at Club Lingerie.”
It was the very pitfall Jim had pointed out to her on Thursday. Brad should have understood this already, and Laurie saw it was inappropriate for her to tell him so. “Actually it’s been almost a year,” she said, “but who’s counting? Look, Brad, I think Summer’s great, too. She doesn’t need me to carry her. And I’ve worked for this. I can’t remember the last good night’s sleep I got. I’ve missed meals, I’ve worn the same week’s worth of clothes until I’m sick of the sight of them, I’ve driven my car into the ground, I—”
“What if she did?”
“What?”
“What if she did need you to carry her?”
“What are you saying, that I should give up the band to play with Summer?”
“Not give it up, just…put it on hold for a while.”
“This band can’t wait. They may not last until Wednesday. This could be the only shot I get. They’re the greatest band I’ve ever heard, but my guitar player’s psycho, my keyboard player’s afraid to leave his family, and I’m already afraid to tell anybody how old I am because it could hurt my chances with a major label. And you want me to wait?”
She was halfway to the door when Brad said, “See you next Saturday?”
“I’ll be here,” Laurie said.
Skip was drinking rum and belligerent at Sunday night’s practice. Monday he didn’t show up at all.
At eight o’clock Jim said, “Let’s call Mitch. If we’re going to end up with him Wednesday night, we should at least get a couple of rehearsals.”
“No.”
“Laurie—”
“Be reasonable,” Gabe said. “This is, like, really important. We need him.”
“He’s got—”
“Laurie,” Gabe said, “if you say one word about his hair, I swear to God I will strangle you where you stand.”
She looked to Dennis, who shrugged. “At least,” she said, “let’s try a couple of songs without him. Maybe Skip’ll show.”
They went to the garage. Laurie put on her guitar and blew into her curled fingers, which had suddenly gone cold.
“What are we supposed to play?” Gabe said.
“The set,” Laurie said. “Play the set.”
They started “Get Ready,” and instead of chords, Laurie played Skip’s part, a tricky double-stop lead that was supposed to sound like horns and strings combined. She’d been practicing it for days, and she got it close enough to right to see Jim and Gabe trade amazed looks.
Unfortunately it went downhill from there. She fumbled the jazzy solo on “Brighter Day” and ran out of ideas halfway through the lead to “Angel Dust.” After that she tried to regroup, sticking mostly with rhythm and salvaging a nice melodic line on “Neither Are We,” but it was too late.
They put down their instruments in unspoken consensus and trudged into the kitchen. “If Skip isn’t here by seven-thirty tomorrow,” she said glumly, “you can call Melvin.”
“Mitch,” Jim said.
“Whatever.”
“Look, you impressed hell out of me,” Gabe said. “You were great on ‘Get Ready.’ I don’t think any of us realized how good you are. You could play lead guitar in a lot of bands.”
“But not this one.”
“Even in this one,” Jim said. “We could rework the arrangements, practice the hell out of them.”
“Meanwhile,” Gabe said, “the gig is Wednesday. Day after tomorrow.”
“I already gave in,” she said. “You don’t have to rub my nose in it.”
“You’re missing the point,” Gabe said. “You’re a really good guitar player, but this is supposed to be a band. You’re not responsible for every single thing. If Dennis was to accidentally crush his right foot—”
“Which could happen,” Jim said. “He could mistake it for a badger or something.”
“Thanks,” Dennis said. “Thanks a lot.”
“—it wouldn’t be up to you to play his bass drum and still play guitar and sing too. You can’t control everything. Hello? Laurie? Is any of this getting through to you?”
They gave up at 10:00 and Laurie drove straight to Skip’s apartment. She felt much like she had when Jack smashed her guitar; she could hear rushing water in her head and the world looked floodlit and pale.
The entrance to the building was locked, but an open window looked into Skip’s living room from the front porch. As she reached up to slide the screen out of its aluminum frame, Laurie saw that her hands actually seemed blurred due to their slight but violent tremors. A bookshelf blocked the lower part of the window, and she methodically stacked the top row of books onto the concrete slab of the porch and then climbed inside. Let him be in bed with somebody, she thought. I could burn this thing to the ground.
She walked into the bedroom. Skip was naked except for a pair of black-framed reading glasses. He had Mick Fleetwood’s autobiography open in one hand and with the other he was eating Hydrox cookies out of a package that lay next to him on the bed. His head jerked up and for a satisfying second she saw real fear on his face. Then, without her being able to say what specifically had changed, he was staring at her with annoyance.
“What the hell are you doing? You about scared me to death.”
“We were supposed to practice tonight,” she said.
He nodded slightly, as if impatient for her to get to the point.
“You didn’t show up. You didn’t call. And I’m sick of it. We don’t know if you’re going to show up on Wednesday or not, we don’t know if your name’s going on the album, we’re all just sitting around waiting on your fucking pleasure, and I don’t feel like waiting anymore.”
He smiled. “Are you kicking me out?”
“If you want out of this band you’re going to have to quit. Personally I don’t care, go or stay, as long as you make a decision and stick to it.”
“Well,” he said. She seemed to be amus
ing him, and that only made her more furious. “I’ve come this far. I guess I want to see what happens Wednesday night.”
“ ‘I guess’ isn’t good enough.”
“Okay. You have my word. I, Skip Shaw, being of deteriorating body and infantile mind, do solemnly promise to attend, play, and sing with Laurie Moss and the Mossbacks on Wednesday, the 26th of April, Year of Our Lord Nineteen and Ninety-Five.”
“And the rehearsal tomorrow?”
“And the rehearsal tomorrow. Is that good enough, or do you need it in writing?”
“That’s fine,” she said, turning away.
“Hey,” he said.
She stopped but didn’t turn back. “I have a name.”
“Hey, Laurie.”
She faced him. He still had made no effort to cover himself, still had his reading glasses on. She saw that one earpiece was attached with a safety pin. “As long as you’re here,” he said, “and I’m already naked and everything, do you want to fool around?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. She left the screen off his window and the books on his porch and slammed his front door on her way out for good measure.
Sound check
Skip was on time for Tuesday’s practice, as if nothing had happened. Laurie forgot the words to “Carry On,” which she’d been singing in public for seven years, started “Neither Are We” in the wrong key, and hit herself in the upper lip with the microphone on “Say Goodbye.”
“You’re getting it all out of your system,” Jim said kindly. Laurie glared. Skip disappeared as if by magic between the time Jim shut everything off in the garage and the time everyone else arrived in the kitchen.
“How are we supposed to move everything?” It was approximately the fifteenth increasingly desperate question she’d asked in a row.
“I’ve got a van,” Dennis said. “You’ve probably seen it? Parked outside?”
“Go home, Laurie,” Gabe said. “Pretend to chill. Take some Xanax if you got any.”
Skip was parked at the far curb when she pulled into her driveway. She crossed the street to his Mustang, self-consciousness lending an inadvertent sway to her walk, and he rolled his window down. “Hey,” he said.
The streetlight turned his crow’s feet into stark black slashes. The lean fingers of his left hand gripped the chrome that surrounded the window and his right hand held the wheel. He was Skip Shaw, living legend, and he wanted her. A puff of wind brought her the smell of jasmine and caressed her with a lock of her own hair. She gave herself a long moment to catalog the desire in his eyes and then she said, “Why don’t you come inside?”
She opened her eyes at 7:00 on Wednesday morning and knew she was awake for good. While Skip slept, she tiptoed around the apartment, making coffee, reading, playing through the set with an unplugged guitar. At 10:30 he sat up on the edge of the bed and coughed for five minutes or so, a morning ritual. Then he lit a cigarette and padded naked into the bathroom.
When he came out she handed him a cup of coffee and began trying on clothes for the gig. Black seemed her last best hope. Skip quickly tired of being asked his opinion and said, “I’m out of here.”
“Sound check’s at six.”
“Did I promise to do the sound check too?”
“Skip…”
“Kidding. I’m kidding.”
She parked around the corner from Club Lingerie at 5:30. She’d been there three or four times since she’d been in LA and knew a little of the history: it had been the Red Velvet in the 60s, when the Knickerbockers had been the house band, and then it was Souled Out in the 70s. It hadn’t changed its name since 1979, making it a venerable institution by LA standards. Its biggest exposure came when Walter Hill dressed up the interior as a redneck joint in 48 Hours, leaving little to recognize beyond the long red-brick wall behind the bar.
She carried her guitar and amp over to where a friendly-looking white-haired guy was filling a beer cooler. “I’m Laurie Moss,” she said. “I’m early.”
“I’m Dominic,” he said, and shook her hand. “I own the place. Ace’ll be along in a while—he’s the sound man.” He looked at his watch. “You got a bit of a wait, if there’s anything else you need to do. You guys’ll be up last, probably not until eight, eight-thirty.”
She appreciated his not hammering home her naiveté. Of course they would be up last; their amps would go in front of the other bands’ and they would make do with what little of the stage was left. Dominic gave her a Snapple and told her to make herself at home. He looked twice at her amp as she carried it and her guitar to a table near the bar, but he was gentleman enough not to make fun of either her or her equipment.
It had the ancient odors of any nightclub in daylight, old smoke and older beer, with a hint of Lysol from the open doors of the bathrooms. Tonight, she knew, it would instead smell like perfume and sweat, like wine and electricity. There would be moments of highly charged possibility, moments in which spirit would transcend flesh through chemicals artificial or hormonal, and moments when the music, all on its own, would seduce, batter, or sweep someone away from causality and dread for at least one infinite fraction of a second.
It was seven o’clock before Caustic was set up and miked and the slow ritual of sound check began—each instrument, each drum, each vocal mike auditioned in turn, notes and levels scrawled on masking tape on the mixing board, and then only a minute or so of driving, horn-fueled ska before the music passed briefly through chaos on its way to silence again. Laurie loved the process the way she thought a surfer would have to love the distant sound of breaking waves, for the sheer promise it held.
Despite an undercurrent of nerves, she felt honed and ready, alive in the moment. Her senses and emotions were resonating theatrically to everything around her. As Caustic cleared the stage, the front door opened on the last incandescence of the sunset, silhouetting a man with an amp and a guitar. Though she could see it wasn’t Skip, it still felt to her like it should have been. A pang of loneliness played in her head like distant violins.
The man with the guitar was heavyset and vaguely familiar-looking, with straight, shining black hair and copper skin. He stopped at the bar for a beer and then glanced at Laurie, taking in the equipment next to her chair. “You want anything?” he asked.
“I’m fine.”
He brought his beer over to the table and said, “I’m Dan Villanueva, the token boy in Estrogen.”
She offered her hand. “Laurie Moss.”
“Ah, the mysterious opening act.”
She nodded. “I saw you guys at a Monday night at the Whiskey last fall.” Monday was no-cover night on the Strip and the Whiskey would sometimes shoehorn in six or seven bands. “You were really good.”
“Thanks,” he said shyly. “We’re way better now. Are you solo or are you a band?”
“I’m a five-piece,” she said.
“And that’s your amp?”
He took her up on stage and let her plug into his new Fender Blues Deluxe, which sounded so sweet and soulful that she hated not having one just like it, hated her financial condition that forbade the slightest thought of it.
“You might as well use it,” he said. “It’s going to be sitting up here anyway.”
“This is truly kind of you.”
He shrugged. “We’re all struggling, right?”
When she got down off the stage, Jim and Dennis were carrying in Dennis’s drums. Her emotions were still running high and it was all she could do not to tell them how ridiculously glad she was to see them.
Gabe and L’Shondra came in, carrying either end of Gabe’s speaker cabinet, and, unexpectedly, L’Shondra gave Laurie a hug. “I love that dress,” she whispered. “Am I allowed to wish you luck? Or do I have to tell you to break a leg or something?”
“Luck is good,” Laurie said. “Luck is fine.”
She was too restless to sit during Estrogen’s sound check, barely noticed what they sounded like. Jim brought her another Snapple from the bar.
“He’ll be here,” he told her.
“Why does he have to do this?” she said. “This is such bullshit.”
“I’m not arguing with you,” Jim said. “Want me to call Mitch?”
“That is so far from funny,” Laurie said.
Estrogen finished and Laurie introduced Dan to the rest of the table. “Are you the same Jim Pearson that produced that Random Axe EP?” Dan asked.
“Nominally,” Jim said. “They were pretty clear as to what they wanted.”
“That was good work, man. A lot of the buzz around them now is because of the way that record sounds. I wish we could afford you.”
“It’s easier than you think,” Jim said. “Some canned goods, a share of your T-shirt revenue…” He passed Dan a business card from his wallet. “Give me a call.”
Laurie’s attention focused on Ace, the sound guy. He was young and good-looking in his sweat pants, running shoes, leather jacket, and pony tail, and he was positioning mikes around Dennis’s drums. Any minute now he would be finished and ready for the rest of the band. Ready for Skip.
He’s fired, she told herself. Even if he shows up this second, he’s still fired. I can’t take the stress.
“Okay, we got everybody?” Ace asked.
Laurie opened her mouth to make an excuse, but before the words came out she heard Skip say, “Let’s do it.”
She turned around. He was somehow ten feet behind her, the massive Twin Reverb amp in his right hand, his guitar case in the other. “You’re late,” she said.
Skip shrugged and smiled. “Apparently not.”
She plugged in to Dan’s amp again, switched it off standby, and felt the serious amplification bring the guitar to life in her hands. The difference from playing in Jim’s garage was absolute and qualitative. At this volume the guitar seemed to emit light and heat as well as sound. When she turned from side to side she could hear the change in air pressure through the speaker. Trailing one finger lightly up a string sent rasping squeals to the far corners of the big room.
