“Here,” she said, “finish it.”
Jake heard the metallic clink of the cap being screwed back onto the flask.
“Whatever else you and your friend had between you, there was chemistry. You should honor that.”
“We were just stupid, horny kids when we wrote it. Now it just reminds me that I miss him.”
“How did he die?”
“The house I used to live in with him and the rest of my old friends burned down. Three people died, and he was one of them.”
“Oh my God.”
“It was right after my first record came out, not long after the band broke up. We were on bad terms. Never had a chance to reconcile. How am I supposed to sing a sex lyric when it just makes me feel guilty?”
“Sex and death go together like peanut butter and chocolate, Billy. Guilt, too.”
At that, he uttered a dark laugh.
“Seriously,” she said, “the song would suck without that kind of tension. You must know that. The lyrics might make it a sex song, but the music is darker.”
“I guess.”
“Trust me. I can help you find your way on this one.”
Billy made no reply to that.
Jake rinsed his hands and went back downstairs. Rail was clapping his hands slowly. He said, “The lovely Rachel talks our star back into the studio for the second time today. Bravo.”
“I can do more than that,” she said, in a low voice, sidling up to the producer.
“What might that be?” Rail asked.
“I think I can provide some much needed inspiration.”
“I wouldn’t get carried away, love. Why don’t you have a seat?”
“Why don’t you blindfold him?” she said.
Rail seemed to reappraise the girl. A dimple appeared at the corner of his mouth. He said, “Why should I?”
“The lyric is, I can’t see it, right? So why don’t you have him sing it with a blindfold on?”
“Because despite what you may fancy you know about producing music, it’s not about role playing. I have a deadline, and I just need him to sing the damn song and move on. I don’t have time to indulge your bondage fantasies.”
“Oh, okay. I guess I thought the problem was that he sounds uninspired.”
Rail snapped his knife shut.
Rachel said, “Let me inspire him.”
“You know what? Fine. I’ll sit this one out. But if we don’t have a track in half an hour, Ron is going to drive you to the bus station.
“Jake, record this amazing bit of inspired singing, would you? It’ll be a novel experience for you to take direction from a groupie.”
Jake rested his chin on his folded hands, his elbows planted on the console. He fixed his eyes on Rachel. Beyond her he could see Billy fidgeting in the vocal booth, swaying a little on his feet.
She said, “Hey, Jake, nice to meet you. Can you lower that mic stand so he can sing sitting on the floor?”
“Yeah, I can do that.”
Ten minutes later Jake swiped the PLAY and RECORD keys with two fingers. Red lights came on, the tape machine engaged, needles jumping across the softly backlit VU meters. An explosive drum fill cracked the air followed by the psychedelic crescendo of a backward piano chord before the pumping pelvic rhythm of distorted minor key guitars launched into full swing.
Beyond the glass doors and through the dusty window of the vocal booth, Jake could see Rachel gyrating by the light of a candle, eyes closed, one hand pressing the headphone into her ear, the other hidden from view below the window’s edge, below the hem of her skirt judging by the way her shoulder was moving.
The boom stand was angled downward, the pole passing between her legs. Her black thong dangled from the weighted end of the stand that pointed toward the ceiling. Jake couldn’t see Billy, but he knew he was sitting on the floor behind her, blindfolded with a purple silk scarf, unable to see the microphone or the flesh that framed it when she bent forward, keeping her balance by pressing one hand against the glass, fingers splayed.
Gribbens floated away from his post at the patch bay, drawn to the glass doors like a bee to an orchid. Rail lay on the leather couch, eyes closed, hands locked behind his head, listening to the take. Jake tried to focus on the meter for the vocal channel, but couldn’t keep himself from getting hard imagining what was going on out there below the window. The fact that he couldn’t see it made it excruciatingly hot.
Billy couldn’t see it either, but that was the whole point, right? And if the microphone was level with Billy’s mouth, then Jake knew what had to be inches from Billy’s nose. His eyes kept drifting away from the controls and up to the black thong draped over the boom arm. He imagined Rachel’s glistening fingers just inches from Billy’s nose, just inches from the mic. He was afraid she would inadvertently tap the microphone grille with a fingernail while gyrating and mar the track with the noise. Just as easily, she could bump the stand with her inner thigh if she wasn’t careful. The tension raised the hairs on his arm.
It only got more intense when Billy started singing. Immediately, the quality of the performance surpassed anything he had heard from Billy in weeks. He nudged the fader up to hear more of the detail in the vocal. Was there another texture blending into the track? It occurred to him that Billy’s lips and Rachel’s were equidistant from the microphone in a salacious duet.
You try to conceal it, but girl I can feel it
I can’t see it but I know it’s there
I can’t see it but I know it’s there
I can’t see it but I know it’s there
The rosebud in your jet black hair
It was perfection in one take. When Jake hit the STOP key at the end and the drum reverb trailed away, Rail opened his eyes and proclaimed, “That’s a keeper. Put a star on the track sheet.”
They tracked vocals for three more songs before midnight, with the mic back in its normal position and Rachel sitting like an attentive schoolgirl at the back of the control room, listening to every syllable. For tonight, at least, Billy Moon was back in the groove.
When Rail called the end of the session at twelve thirty, Rachel followed Billy upstairs without a word.
Sixteen
Jake bought his first pack of cigarettes while Ally was away. He chose American Spirits, probably because they were what Billy smoked—they were heaped in every ashtray in the studio, like the collapsed remains of little log cabins burned to ash. Everywhere he went he saw them atop guitar amps, pianos, and road cases. It was a tobacco tycoon’s dream: ubiquitous advertising in a closed environment.
The first time he drew the pack from the pocket of his denim shirt and lit one up with the awkwardness of a neophyte trying not to look self-conscious, Rachel wrinkled her forehead.
“Jake, honey?” she said.
“Hmm?”
“The fuck’re you doing?”
“Smokin’ a butt, what’s it look like?”
“Uh, it looks totally asinine.”
Now everyone was looking at him. Heat rose in his face, and not from the cigarette. He said, “Look, just sitting in this room, I’m doing what, about a half a pack a day? If I’m going to be taking up smoking anyway, I’d at least like to be an active participant.”
The answer satisfied everyone because it was so obviously true. Confined to the smoky control room a minimum of twelve hours a day, seven days a week, Jake had probably been hooked long before he put the first one to his lips. Gribbens set an ashtray down on Jake’s side of the console and the session resumed.
It was the second week of December, and Trevor Rail was in the throes of a creative frenzy. Time was running out, and he was piling on overdubs, the album sounding more menacing and seductive, more eerie and epic with each new layer. Only one primary element was still needed to bring the tragic drama to a climax: orchestra.
Rail arranged for a string section to come up from the city on Monday morning to track backgrounds in Studio A, the big room up the hill. On Sunday night, h
e called an early end to Billy's vocal session and sent Jake and Ron up to the main building to get a head start on preparing the room. “These are real musicians,” he warned them, “not rock sidemen. That means they make union wages. I get them for cheap in the morning but when overtime kicks in for a room full of the bastards, it’s insufferable. There will be no time to spare for things like dead headphones and faulty cables. Gather everything you need tonight and test it.”
The pair nodded solemnly.
“If I have to stop for technical wanking, heads will roll,” Rail said. Then turning to Rachel, “You need to sit this one out tomorrow. Billy won’t be singing anyway. Stay at your hotel or go sightseeing.”
“You think I’m still paying for a room I’m not even staying in? I’ve been living upstairs with Billy. If you’re recording your orchestra up the road, I’ll just stay here in the church.”
“No offense, love, but I don’t think the studio manager would care for a groupie hanging around unsupervised.”
“Don’t call me that. And what do you think, I’m gonna steal some mics and pawn them? I would never do that to Billy.”
“Your words, not mine. And I’ll call you whatever I like while you’re shacking up here on my tab. Just make yourself scarce for a day.”
“Whatever.”
Rail looked her over more seriously, as if he knew very well that from this type of creature “whatever” most certainly meant more mischief than a flat refusal. He reached into his blazer. Jake held his breath and waited for the gun to come out, not at all sure what he would do if he saw Rail pull it on her. But Rail drew his wallet instead and held out a crisp bill folded between two fingers.
“What’s this for?” she asked.
“Go and have your hair done tomorrow. Tell them to dye it black, like Billy’s.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because bright scarlet is distracting. And Billy likes girls with dark hair. Have them cut it to the same length as his, and he may even find you attractive without a blindfold.”
“Fuck you,” she said with true contempt, but she took the money.
“Do what you like,” Rail said, “but I’ve seen Billy go through a lot of girls. He may not be aware of it, but the ones who resemble him tend to last a bit longer.”
“And you want to keep me around?”
“Who knows? You may yet have a part to play.”
“You’re a strange bird, Rail.”
* * *
In the morning, the thirty-piece string section arrived at Studio A. They poured out of a small fleet of white Econoline vans and milled around the big room, drinking bitter coffee in paper cups with powdered creamer and generally getting in the way while Jake and Ron hastily arranged the placement of microphone stands and headphone mixers among the folding chairs. Jake had even ordered Ron to spray the chairs’ joints with WD-40 the previous night to prevent creaking from getting into a mic when a cellist leaned forward.
By ten o’clock, when Michael Lambert—the arranger and conductor for the session—walked in with his portfolio under his arm, the musicians were settled in and tuning up. Lambert requested a less wobbly music stand , and Jake sent Gribbens hunting for one in another studio, which left him short-handed and personally catering to thirty musicians, each of them with a different opinion about how comfortable the headphones, chairs, and room temperature were.
Jake didn’t realize how tense he was until Gribbens returned with the music stand, entering the room with Trevor Rail on his heels. Jake found himself breathing a little deeper when Lambert approved of the stand. He took his place behind the big, less-familiar console, and triple checked his setup, while Rail briefed the conductor on which songs were the highest priority.
Billy dropped in to listen from the back of the room, smoking in silence. But he only got to hear one take before a headphone amplifier blew out, leaving the players to taper off into chaos with no reference to the song they were accompanying. At first, Jake didn’t know it was the amp that had failed. This was a problem he hadn’t encountered before, so it took him a few minutes to test other areas of the signal chain and narrow it down. Time spent with Rail literally breathing down his neck while he tapped buttons, asked Gribbens questions, and broke a sweat.
Jake was stretched over the console, reaching for a button in the routing matrix when Rail seized his left wrist and twisted it. He pinched the winding knob on Jake's watch between the long, tapered nails of his thumb and forefinger. The watch, a stainless steel Timex with a second hand, stopped ticking. Overcome with revulsion at the man's touch, Jake pulled his arm back and felt a flare of bright pain, like a bee sting. A bead of blood welled up in the scratch left by Rail's fingernail. Rail made a tsk sound and pointed that same fingernail at the clock on the wall. The message was clear: keep checking that one, and your watch will show you what you've cost me.
Out in the big room, the musicians were laying violins in cases and stretching their legs when Jake burst out of the control room with a screwdriver and a flashlight. He slid to his knees like a baseball player coming home, frantically unscrewed the faceplate of the power amp and slid it from its housing in the wall. Realizing that he was moving too fast without thinking, he paused to unplug the amp from the wall outlet, uttering a nervous laugh at how close he'd just come to poking a screwdriver into live circuitry. Truth was, he had never seen the inside of one of these babies before, and his abilities as a maintenance tech were slim to none. Either there would be a fuse in there with a broken filament, or not.
When he pulled the chassis open, his heart dropped. You didn’t need to be a tech to see that the power transformer was melted. The acrid odor of burning plastic wafted up at him. Not a quick problem to rectify. Out of habit, he glanced at his dead watch.
He hustled back into the control room, and without looking at Rail or Moon, went straight to the phone and dialed the shop extension. No one picked up—probably at lunch—but as he listened to it ringing, he saw a red light pulsing on the base station of the phone. Was the shop calling him on the other line? Before he could switch over, Gribbens picked up the call with the other phone in the room, a cordless. “Yeah, he’s right here,” Gribbens said, and held the second phone out to Jake. “It’s Allison.”
Jake turned his back on Rail, holding one phone to each ear. “Hello.”
Ally’s voice sounded choked and strangely unlike her. It was unsettling, and for a second, he wondered if it was really her. “Hey, Jake,” she said, “I'm sorry to bother you at work. Is it a bad time?”
He risked a quick glance at Rail, who was swirling the ice in a glass of Scotch while whispering in Billy's ear. Rail’s eyes were fixed on Jake.
“A bad time?” Jake said. “Yes, it is. Can I call you later?”
“I’m home,” she said. “At the apartment, I mean.”
“Okay, I’ll call you there.”
“Jake?” Was her voice breaking with emotion?
“Yeah?” His mind was cloven in two by the sound of her strained voice. Half of it detached from the escalating tension in the studio. He could feel this part of himself breaking away as a wave of concern and compassion, moving toward the despondent voice of the one person in the state of New York he loved, drawn into her world, her worries, wanting to know what these were. But the other half retreated into the other phone, listening to the desolate unanswered ringing, counting the rings, icing over with anger at the shop crew for not being there, anger at Ally for choosing this moment to need him.
“I need to see you. I know you’re busy, but you will be no matter when I call, and I don’t know when I’m going to see you. If they take a lunch break, could you come home for just a half hour? I really need to see you.”
“I don’t know. Things are a little out of control right now.” Jake noticed a bead of blood running down his arm toward his elbow from the scratch on his wrist. He wondered if Gribbens could find him a Band-Aid.
“I did a lot of thinking this past week.
Jake, I don’t want to do this on the phone. I just… don’t want to try to write it to you in the damned book. I need to see you. I just really need to see you today.”
Jake hung up the unanswered shop phone and whispered, “Are you leaving me?”
“I don’t know.” She sobbed. “I don’t know if I can keep living here. I’m sorry. I know you’re busy. Please try to come home later?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Jake hung up the phone, looked Rail in the eye and said, “It’s the headphone amp. It’s toast. I have to go see about swapping a replacement in from one of the other studios.”
“Make it happen,” Rail said. He tossed back his scotch and crushed the ice with his molars.
Jake found the shop crew in the kitchen amid the remains of Chinese takeout. They pulled an amp from Studio B, and tape was rolling again by one o’clock. The session wrapped by five, narrowly avoiding overtime.
Jake felt jittery from too much caffeine and no lunch. He also found himself in the unusual position of having a night off. Strings had been the only item on the agenda for the day.
He stood in the parking lot watching the vans roll down the dirt road that would soon join the pavement and carry the little orchestra back to the city, crushed his cigarette in the icy gravel underfoot, and fished his car keys out of his pocket. “Okay,” he said aloud to the first cold stars, “I’ll fix this. I just haven’t been able to talk to her lately, but maybe this happened for a reason. A night off. A minor miracle.”
* * *
Ally was standing at the top of the stairs when Jake pulled his key from the door and closed it behind him. He couldn’t read her face in the gloom. Night had fully settled, but she hadn’t turned on any lights yet. Even in the dark, something about the set of her shoulders told him she was depressed. He thought of asking her why she was standing in the dark, but when he opened his mouth, he only sighed gently and said, “My girl.”
The Devil of Echo Lake Page 18
