Imperfect Solo

by Steven Boykey Sidley

  “Grace.”

  “Tell me about your weekend with her.”

  “It was going well until it was truncated by the trip to Florida. So it consisted of the drive up to Berkeley and one dinner.”

  “Go on.”

  “I should never have left Grace. I was hoping to get her to believe that.”

  “I do not understand, Meyer. You have seen little of her since you divorced. Barely mentioned her. And now she is the woman of your dreams? Something doesn’t compute.”

  I pour another shot and ponder what Farzad has just said. A life is made up of an agglomeration of decisions. Billions of them, from the trivial ones, up the chain of impact, to the weighty ones. Our current reality is a branch at the end of a giant decision tree. Walk backward in time and make other choices and you end up elsewhere. Of course, there is the great debate about our ability to make choices at all, but let’s assume for the moment, for reasons of common sense alone, that our free will is just that. Statistics (there I go again) ensure that we will make the wrong choices often. Right choices require perfect information and, as bumbling, impulsive, and imperfect humans, we rarely have that luxury. So I conclude that our lives end up in pretty much a statistical coin toss, with our chances of ending up on the juiciest branches of the tree about the same as ending up on the rotten ones. I am falling in love with Grace again because I took the wrong branch last time. I am correcting errors.

  “I may have missed something the first time around.”

  Farzad is gentle in expressing his opposing viewpoint.

  “Rubbish. Balderdash. Poppycock. Horseshit. Childish nonsense. What’s your point?”

  “I was acting on imperfect information when I left Grace. It was the wrong decision. And if I had made the right decision, she wouldn’t be in a coma, Innocent would not be fucking around with drugs, and I wouldn’t be stuck under dread’s boot.”

  Farzad knocks back another shot.

  “You are a naive and silly man, my little friend. What you need is a good whack upside the head. This is true too of many of my patients, but the code of conduct of the American Psychological Association frowns upon physical violence—a great failing of vision on their part, in my opinion. So let me educate you. Firstly, we have already determined, and agreed, that the universe does not give a fuck about you. Secondly, you have posited that our lives are nothing more than a series of decisions, made largely on imperfect information by imperfect humans. Of course, this leads to the bizarre conclusion that we all stumble through life like a bunch of clowns, in which viscera and impulse are our only guide. This is clearly the reasoning of a man who wishes to escape judgment.”

  “I never said that I wanted to escape—”

  “Shut up, I’m not finished. The entire edifice of humanity across all cultures is based on judgment. That is how we live. That is how we govern. That is how we teach. That is how we learn. That is how we love. The concept of blame is inimical to healthy societies. We do it every day, in greater or smaller ways. And what is this judgment? It is simply a comparison of other people’s behaviors to our own. We scold our children when they don’t live up, reward them when they do. Choose our friends and partners based on values that are measurable against our yardsticks. The whole human endeavor is based on the ability to judge others. So when I hear your little deceit, a faux philosophy based on some pseudo-intellectual premise of blamelessness, I want to hit you upside the head.”

  “I wasn’t really—”

  “Shut up, I’m not finished. Some of these calamities that have beset you are in the realm of the arbitrary, others you must take some blame for. But as I said when you walked in the door all trembly and pathetic, it is our reaction to crisis that defines us, not the self-indulgent application of probability theories to past human events. And so, my little victim, how are you going to react to all of this? What are you going to do?”

  “What should I do?”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  “Because you’re a psychologist. You see this all the time.”

  “A good psychologist assists patients to gain insight, to understand themselves and then to make their own decisions.”

  “Ah. So you are not going to tell me what to do.”

  “No.”

  But he already has. We define ourselves on how we react, wasn’t that what he said? He has told me to man up. He has told me to stare dread in the face and not to blink until she backs down.

  CHAPTER 30

  I ARRIVE HOME a bit drunk. Innocent is asleep in the spare room. I log in to the company servers from my desktop. Within seconds I am rifling through the CEO’s mail, documents, browsing history. Even his personal Gmail, for which he predictably uses the same username and password as his company mail.

  I hit pay dirt immediately:

  • Sexually explicit messages and photos (himself, exhibiting himself, both erect and flaccid) to numerous women, one of whom is fifteen years old, as I uncover after a little additional sleuthing

  • A request to a respondent named Carlos about procuring “Bolivian marching powder”

  • A discussion with another well-known CEO about plans to implement illegal offshore tax-avoidance strategies

  • Spectacularly vitriolic opinions about powerful captains of industry, many of them supposedly his friends

  I print out the incriminating documents and images, put them in a file, and slide them into my briefcase.

  I have no strategy at all, no plan of action, not even an eagerly imagined scenario. I just know that my entire fucking miserable life hinges upon being able to stand up to him, balancing the scales of Farzad’s judgment and reaction. I may never use this stuff. I simply know that on the off chance that you may confront an adversary, you need to be armed. At least in theory. I am happy to allow the CEO to be an imagined foe. Imagined foes are sometimes more powerful. Real ones tend to disappoint with their human foibles.

  I go to Innocent’s room. He is asleep. A soft light from the passage drapes itself across his face. I sit down gently on the bed. As I watch his quiet breathing I catch a glimpse of the tiny baby who used to fall asleep in my arms. That’s the trouble with being a parent. Your child is always, in some small but profound measure, a tiny baby. And now his mommy is in a coma. My heart just breaks.

  And then I am weeping.

  But it hasn’t ended.

  Bunny calls.

  “Isobel’s sick, and I’m worried.”

  “Please don’t tell me that.”

  “She had a very high temperature on Friday. By Sunday she was burning up and delirious. I took her to the doctor this morning. He clearly doesn’t have a clue. Made vague noises about waiting a day or two.”

  “Please don’t tell me that.”

  “The temperature is down a bit now, but it keeps spiking. There don’t seem to be any other symptoms. Her throat and lungs and nose and tummy are fine.”

  “PLEASE DONT TELL ME THAT.”

  “Meyer, is that all you have to say? Are you OK?”

  “Not really, but this is more important. I’m coming over.”

  I call Farzad.

  “Isobel is sick. I need a really, really good doctor. Do you have a recommendation? And I am not making light.”

  “How sick?”

  “High temperature for three days. Spiking.”

  “What else?”

  “Too weak to get out of bed. Occasionally confused. Splitting headaches.”

  “Take her to the hospital—now.”

  “You are not a medical doctor, Farzad. I need a doctor.”

  “I am in the healing business. TAKE HER TO THE HOSPITAL. NOW!”

  As always, I do what he says, especially when he shouts. Which I have never heard him do before. When I arrive at Bunny’s, Isobel is too weak to walk. I carry her to the car. It strikes me that one has a finite set of arrows for coping with stress. My quiver is empty. A part of me, I mean a real and urgently complaining part of me, suggests that I should
drive to Tijuana, get drunk for a week, and then come back, when all will be well.

  Man up. That’s what Farzad said.

  “We are going to run some tests.”

  The doctor at Kaiser, to which Bunny is bound by Byzantine health-care regulations, looks to be about seventeen years old. Isobel is now in the hospital room, asleep, mysterious clear fluid dripping into her arm.

  “Meaning you don’t know what’s wrong.”

  “Well, we can eliminate some things at this point, but no, we don’t know what’s wrong.”

  “What can you eliminate?”

  “Well, there are no swollen glands and she has no respiratory or gastric distress.”

  “So what could it be?”

  “I wouldn’t want to hazard a guess at this point, Mr. Meyer.”

  “MY DAUGHTER HAS A FUCKING TUBE IN HER FUCKING ARM AND I WANT YOU TO HAZARD A FUCKING GUESS.”

  The blood drains from his face. He is about to get beaten up by a half-crazed maniac father. Bunny grabs my arm.

  “MEYER! Let’s walk. Excuse us, doctor.”

  She hustles me down the hall. I feel the fight leave me. Actually, I feel everything leave me. I sink down onto my butt in the hallway. The floor is cool. It feels good.

  “Meyer, get a grip.”

  “Yes, I would like to do that.”

  “She will be fine. She is in professional hands. It is probably just a bug. She’ll be OK, I promise. Now please stand up.”

  “No, I like it here.”

  “Meyer, what’s going on? You’re freaking me out.”

  “Grace is in a coma. Dad is in jail. Innocent is on drugs. Krystal is gone. Isobel has the Ebola virus. I am never going to play sax like Cannonball Adderley.”

  She is suitably speechless.

  CHAPTER 31

  VAN CALLS.

  “They want us to play tonight. The other band canceled.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “The sky has fallen on my head.”

  “How so?”

  “I’ll tell you later. What time?”

  “So you’re in?”

  “Sure, how much worse can it get?”

  “Huh?”

  “Later.” I hang up.

  I call Jim back at the company.

  “Jim, you called.”

  “You didn’t come in today. I thought you were due back.”

  “Yeah, sorry, personal problems. Will be in tomorrow. Why did you call me instead of Bryn?”

  “He quit.”

  “The heck you say. Why?”

  “Told me he didn’t think he was very good at his job. Told me he was going to try to do something that he loved.”

  Hallelujah. Score one for truth and justice.

  “I want to have a chat to you about Bryn’s job. It’s an opportunity.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because then I have to spend more time with the nexus of evil and his fat fuck COO.”

  “Please don’t talk that way, Meyer. It puts me in a conflict situation.”

  “Would you like me to rephrase that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because then I have to spend more time with the nexus of evil and his fat fuck COO.”

  “I like you, Meyer, but this is not a way to get ahead.”

  “What makes you think I want to get ahead? I am already ahead. I like you too, Jim. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I hang up.

  I call Bunny. Isobel’s temperature is still spiking. The blood tests are inconclusive. The doctors have said that she is not in any immediate danger, but they are keeping her for observation.

  I call the lawyer in Florida. Dad is holding firm. He doesn’t want a deal.

  “What do you want me to do, Mr. Meyer?”

  “Nothing. He is a man in full. He is old, but not crazy, notwithstanding guns and bullets. He is going to do what he wants to do. Can you get him to call me?”

  I drop Innocent at the hospital on the way to the gig. I have not told him about Isobel. I don’t see the point.

  It is a warm night in Los Angeles. The Santa Ana winds are scuffing and whining menacingly, giving voice to the seared descriptions tackled by writers and songwriters and playwrights and sidewalk maniacs as they slouch toward Bethlehem. People are up and about, in bars and clubs, wanting to share the otherworldly hot breath of this desert wind with strangers in crowded rooms. Early punters are already here; it feels like a big night is brewing. Women with barely legal exposed skin for the warm air to caress, men looking tough and casual, save for furtive glances at opportunities and threats. A few regulars are already drunk, in that alcoholic one-sip sort of way, where there is a subtle change in the musculature of the eyes, both pupils off-tilt from center.

  One of the minor conveniences of playing sax is the short setup time. There are no multiple items in misshapen containers, no electronics, no plugs. I sit at the bar and order a Coke while the others set up.

  Gordon, the wily young proprietor, who I suspect is getting quietly rich off this little bar, comes over. He is a quintessentially Los Angeles character. He is of indeterminate Midwestern origin, threadbare education, and almost complete lack of charisma other than a certain deadpan handsomeness. He arrived friendless and almost broke a few years ago, searching for his few nuggets of the shiny little things, like so many others. It is a familiar story and most end up with the saddest of conclusions, disappointment etched deep for the rest of their lives, in which nothing they ever aspire to again will compare to the promise of fame in Los Angeles, every day of their broken lives a day of fossilized locusts. But Gordon spotted a tiny window, a run-down bar in a seedy Hollywood side street, scraped together a month’s rent, painted it black, scrounged a few posters, bought a few cheap beers and set out to find unusual bands. We were his first and he named us El Tango Sexuales. Not strictly accurate, but hey.

  “That Coca-Cola?”

  “Yep.”

  “You on the wagon?”

  “Nope.”

  “OK.”

  “Expecting a big night, Gordon?”

  “Santa Anas. You know how it is.”

  “You owe us.”

  “What do I owe you?”

  “Your life.”

  “How so?”

  “If we didn’t come and play here for door money a couple of years ago you would be back in Arkansas smoking meth.”

  “And if I didn’t spot you, you would be playing ‘Hava Nagila’ at bar mitzvahs.”

  “Right. So we’re even, then?”

  “Yup.”

  I smile. He moves on.

  I call Innocent.

  “Dad, it’s fine. I’ll call if there’s any change, I promise.”

  I call Bunny.

  “Meyer, you called an hour ago. I promise I’ll call you if there’s any news. Go play. It will take your mind off things.”

  We tune up. Not too long ago guitarists tuned by ear. They referenced a keyboard or tuning fork for their initial string and then opened their ears and tuned each additional string off the previous one. Those days are gone. Everybody now tunes using an iPhone, which listens to the note and guides the tuning in like a tug boat. As a techno geek this, surprisingly, annoys me. It is slothful. As a bare minimum for entry into the cloistered club of musicianship, one should be able to hear pitch. Of course, cloistered is now a relative term. All one really needs for entry these days are two chords and the balls to stand onstage. Musicianship has little to do with it. Few people realize that there is a standard piece of real-time technology now that keeps a vocalist on key in live performances. You are not hearing the songstress. You are hearing the songstress, corrected. I find myself getting grumpier and grumpier at the intrusion of clever new technologies into the composing and performing of music, turning the whole enterprise over to software engineering. I am in a definite minority here. I am starting to sound like my dad, who insisted that electronic keyboards were the work of the devil. He may well ha
ve been right.

  The thought of my dad creates a stab of anxiety. I am looking for escape and have been courageous enough to lay off the sauce, so give me a fucking break. I need to play.

  By the time we are ready to start, the room is beginning to heave. It is packed. People have escaped their homes where the wind will be whipping through open windows and complaining noisily against obdurate wood. There is little ventilation in this hole in the wall. There is a slightly rancid sweat smell, mixed with deodorant, which will slowly tip toward pungent as the night progresses. People are talking loudly, jockeying for a position at the bar, sitting two to a chair, holding up walls. A sibilance of sex and aggression careens off the walls as odd disembodied words of flirt and challenge float past the stage. People are watching us impatiently, waiting for us to start, as though the beginning of the music will give them a cause, a catalyst for something that they can’t quite articulate.

  We launch into the playlist and I am feeling loose. We start with a couple of gypsy jazz numbers, written by the legendary three-fingered guitarist Django Reinhardt. He was a gypsy from the Manouche region of France so this entire genre is sometimes dubbed Manouche. It is fast-moving swing, all AABA in structure with a sizzling rhythm guitar punching out chords on the second and fourth beat of the bar and the bass walking the scales. Nice chord movements, all well within popular progressions of the time but smart and sassy even within that framework. Scary fast heads and the expectation of even faster solos, over which I sometimes acquit myself with dignity, and others over which I sound like I am running to catch a speeding train—all huff and puff and obvious desperation. Tonight, I am flying, though, on both soprano and alto, swapping solos with Tim on accordion and violin, speaking each other’s language, trading 4-bar phrases, just dovetailing on everything—tone, texture, quotes, playful plagiarism, clever variations, argumentative musical conversations, driving each other into new territory. He is smiling as he plays and he never smiles. We are simply cooking. My mood has lifted. It is all about this, life’s looming misfortunes and responsibilities now just shadows at the edge of my consciousness.

  Usually, there are not a lot of people actually listening that hard. People are at places like these for reasons other than musical fulfillment; this is the sad truth realized by a working bar musician. But occasionally, when circumstances conspire, when there is a serendipitous convergence of mood and generosity and spirit, the claps and cheers will rise above the merely polite and there will be genuine and joyful appreciation. Tonight is turning out to be such a night. It must be the Santa Anas. There is foot stomping and whistling and whooping, and a few people are even moved to jive on the few square feet in front of the stage. It is nights like these that renew the fire that got us to pick up instruments in the first place, a few moments of perfect match between appetite and nourishment, when we are elevated a small step above the average human, dispensers of chimera and wonder.