The Bad Decisions Playlist

by Michael Rubens

  “Right. Hi.”

  “And this is Todd.”

  “Oookaaay,” says Ed. He still hasn’t moved. “So . . . ?”

  “They’re with the band. C’mon,” I say to Josephine and Todd, moving them toward the recording-room entrance, catching in my peripheral vision Ed reaching a hand up to massage the bridge of his nose.

  “What is this? No one’s in here,” says Todd when we enter, squinting to peer into the dimly lit space. Then we hear it: a distinct snort, coming from the far end of the room. There’s a pause, somewhat unsettling in its length, and then another snort followed by more regularly paced wood sawing.

  “I think there’s someone sticking out of the drum set,” says Josephine.

  There is. Shane is sticking out of the drum set. He’s lying on the floor, his head inside the bass drum, resting on the pillow that’s inside there to dampen the sound. The snores we hear are his.

  We walk across the room and form a triangle, peering down at him.

  “That’s the famous guy, huh?” says Todd.

  I ignore him. “Shane,” I say. “Shane.” He keeps snoring.

  Before I can move closer to him, Todd does, squatting down a bit to take a better look.

  “He okay?” says Josephine.

  “Famous guy looks drunk,” says Todd.

  “He’s just asleep,” I say, even though I know Todd’s right.

  “Smells drunk too.”

  “He’s been working really hard.”

  Todd looks at me. “Uh-huh. This is what you got me fired for?”

  “Shane,” I say again. “Shane!”

  “Maybe we should go,” says Josephine. “I mean, look at him.”

  I do. It’s not pretty. His mouth is open, his T-shirt riding up enough to reveal a few inches of thirty-seven-year-old belly. I’m burning with shame and embarrassment, both for him and for me.

  I note that there’s a large and disordered pile of papers nearby, many of them crumpled up into balls. It’s the sort of mess I’m very familiar with, the aftermath of an aw, screw it moment. Or many, many such moments.

  Todd, meanwhile, has circled around to the back of the set. He steps lightly on the bass pedal. Muted thud.

  “Mmmrr,” says Shane.

  Todd takes a seat on the drum throne, picking up the drumsticks from atop the snare, and stomps on the pedal again, louder. Thud.

  “Gwuuuh,” says Shane.

  BIDDA-BIDDA BADDA-BADDA BUDDA-BUDDA PISHHHHH!

  “GAAAAH!” says Shane, sitting up abruptly and hitting his head on the inner surface of the top of the drum. “OW!”

  Obscenities issue forth from the finely crafted wooden frame of a Gretsch bass drum.

  “I think he’s awake,” says Todd.

  Shane groans. Then we wait as he laboriously extricates himself, grunting, swearing a few more times, finally rolling to his side and propping himself up on an elbow. He rubs his face, blinks at me.

  “What is going on?” he says.

  “I got us a drummer.”

  Shane manages to sit up. He looks at Todd. Todd looks back at him.

  “Him?” says Shane.

  “Dude,” says Todd, “you’re lying on the floor, messed up, and you’re disappointed in me?”

  Shane looks at Todd again, then back at me. “Well,” he says, “he certainly acts like a drummer.”

  Then he struggles to his feet, a multistage undertaking with pauses for short breaks: first while he’s on his hands and knees, then sitting back on his heels, then up on one knee, then finally straightening. I avoid looking at Todd or Josephine during the process.

  It’s only when he’s on his feet and has finished rubbing his face with both hands that he notices Josephine.

  “Oh, jeez,” he says, embarrassed. “Hey. Hi.”

  “Hi,” she says.

  “You remember Josephine, right?”

  “Of course. Hey.”

  “Are you okay?” she asks.

  “What? Yeah, of course. Great to . . . see you. Jeez.” He awkwardly brushes off the front of his shirt and his jeans. He darts a look at me, part rebuke, part question.

  “You said you needed a girl, too.”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes. For harmony. I got a drummer and a singer, and figured I could play bass and sing, too. So we can do the song.”

  He looks at the three of us in turn, like it has taken this long for the needle on the sobriety meter to reach the point where he actually comprehends what I’m suggesting.

  “Oh,” he says. “Austin, I didn’t think you’d actually . . .”

  “Well, I did.”

  More face rubbing. “Austin,” he says, “I appreciate all this, but . . .”

  “What?” I say. He looks at Todd and Josephine, then motions for me to join him as he takes several steps away from them. I do. He crouches over a bit, hands on his thighs, like a football huddle. I follow suit. He smells like whiskey.

  “Austin, what are you doing.”

  “I’m trying to help you.”

  “Help me.”

  “Yes.”

  “How are you helping me.”

  “With them! A band!”

  He makes a sour, pained sound that almost passes for a chuckle.

  “Austin, this is not some kind of old movie musical,” he says. “‘Hey, kids, my dad’s got a studio, let’s make a band and put on a show.’”

  “You said you needed a girl, a drummer, and a bass player. You have a girl, a drummer, and a bass player.”

  “Kid,” he says, “c’mon . . .”

  “You know Josephine can sing. And you know I can too.”

  “Of course. That’s not what I’m saying.”

  “We could at least try,” I say.

  “I’m not in any shape to try. I don’t want to try.”

  “Shane . . .”

  “Sorry, kid. It’s over.” He straightens up and turns to Todd and Josephine. “Sorry, guys​—​thanks for coming, but I just don’t have it right now.”

  With that he turns to go, and we watch him trudge slowly toward the sound-insulated door on the other side of the studio. None of us says anything. Then,

  “Hey!” says Todd. “Hey!”

  Shane pauses, turns around to face us again.

  “That’s it?” says Todd. “You’re just leaving?”

  Shane sighs. “Listen,” he says, “I appreciate that y’all came out. Josephine, you’ve got a lovely voice, you really do. And Austin . . . But I’ve got about two hours to get this thing done, and what I need right now are experienced professionals.”

  He starts to turn again.

  “Yeah?” says Todd. “Well, guess what. What you have is us. And maybe you don’t know me,” says Todd, “but I don’t know you, either, and I friggin’ quit a job to come here today. So the least you could do is man up and put your skates on!”

  Shane doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then, “Put my skates on?”

  “Hockey player,” I say.

  “What I’m saying is, stop acting like a pussy and let’s do this thing!” Todd clarifies.

  “Yeah, I got that,” says Shane. “Man. You really are a drummer, aren’t you.”

  “Yeah. A good one.”

  A pause.

  “Shane,” I say, “let’s just try.”

  One more big sigh. One more face rub.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” says Shane. Then he walks back toward the drums, crouches by the pile of paper, and sorts impatiently through it, muttering to himself as he picks up, examines, and discards one sheet after the other. Finally he seems to find what he was looking for and straightens up again.

  “Here,” he says, slap-pressing two wrinkled sheets onto my chest as he walks past. “You’ll have to share it. Give me a few minutes.” He exits.

  I look at the sheets. There are lyrics and chord changes and handwritten musical notation scratched on them, without much to indicate which are the verses and chorus.

 
“How do you know this guy?” says Todd.

  “He doesn’t know?” Josephine says.

  “No. He’s . . . my dad,” I say.

  “Huh,” says Todd. He leans over and picks up a half-empty fifth of bourbon that was sitting next to the kick drum. He opens it and gives it a sniff.

  “Your dad’s a drunk,” he says.

  “He’s not a drunk.”

  “Look, it’s fine,” he says. “So is mine.”

  He holds up the bottle in a toast, takes a shot, then shoves the cork back in and tosses the bottle to Josephine. Then he picks up the sticks and absolutely assaults the drums, an ear-crushing blitz of aggression and anger that has Josephine and me clutching our skulls.

  “Man,” says Todd, sweating and panting after about three solid minutes and 120,000 beats. “That feels great.”

  Love you like my dreams / love you like a ghost story /

  love you like the cards looking forward through history

  “No. No. No, no, no!”

  It’s been twenty minutes since we started trying to record, and I now understand why no one will work with Shane.

  After he left the studio, it took him nearly half an hour to return. Todd spent the time beating out different rhythms, adjusting the drums and cymbals, playing some more, doing more tweaking. Josephine and I stood by a music stand, and I played the chords on the guitar while she sight-read the notes, and we went through the song a few times, experimenting with different harmonies and trying to decipher Shane’s hieroglyphics. All the while pretending that this wasn’t all completely bizarre, and that last night didn’t happen.

  Ed came in and started placing and adjusting the microphones, one for me, one for Shane, and one for Josephine, spacing them far enough apart so that they’d only pick up audio from the person they were in front of. He had the deliberately blank expression of a man trying not to reveal the disapproval he’s feeling, but also wanting to signal that, no, he doesn’t approve.

  “How’s that?” he said as he adjusted the height for Josephine.

  “Um . . .” said Josephine uncertainly.

  “Never mind,” said Ed. “It’s good.”

  Then Shane came in and said, “No. We’re doing this old school​—​one mic, one take. Get the EQM double-wide sixty-five thousand,” or something like that, and Ed did his Ed sigh and disappeared and reappeared with another type of microphone, swapping it out for the one in the center.

  Shane said to Todd, “Can you play a train shuffle?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Shucka SHUCKa shucka SHUCKa . . .

  Shane held up a hand to stop him. “Can you play a good train shuffle?”

  And so it went.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  We stop, we start, we do take after take, each time Shane finding something that isn’t quite working​—​let’s change this harmony, don’t come in there, augh, this wording is wrong, let’s do it again. It’s challenging to fit us all around the mic, me inexpertly plucking at the electric bass, Josephine leaning in for the harmonies, Shane with his guitar and his petulance. I don’t look at Todd, but I can feel his frustration growing behind me. Josephine doesn’t meet my eyes, but her expression has evolved from confused to concerned to cross.

  Finally, inevitably, Shane simply stops singing. He stops in the middle of one of the takes, stops singing and stands there. Not angry this time. Just staring off passively like he’s observing clouds forming over distant hills. The rest of us keep on for a few more measures before coming to a disorderly, ragged halt.

  Shane is still contemplating the distant weather system.

  “Shane?” I say. “Shane.”

  “It’s the song,” he says. “The song is no good. None of them are any good. I haven’t written a single worthwhile song since ‘Good Fun.’”

  He takes a deep breath, then sighs it out: haahhhhhh.

  Only then does he shift his attention to us, turning and stepping back so that he can address us all. The old Shane, generous with his warmth, eyes crinkling in the corners. Happy now, relieved, because he has given up once and for all.

  “I’m sorry, everyone. You’re all doing great. It’s my fault, not yours. Thank you all for your time.”

  “You’re giving up?” says Todd.

  “Yep. Taking off my skates. C’mon, why y’all looking so glum?”

  “We still have some time left,” I say.

  “It ain’t time that’s the problem,” says Shane. “I’ve been stuck for ten years​—​it’s not something that I’m going to fix in the next hour.”

  “We wrapped, Shane?”

  Ed’s voice, coming over the studio address system.

  We all look at Shane.

  “Shane, are we wrapped?”

  Shane looks at us.

  “Shane?” says Ed.

  Now Shane looks at me. Then at Josephine. Then back to me. Then a few more repeats: me, Josephine, me, Josephine.

  Uh-oh.

  “No,” says Shane. “No, we’re not wrapped.”

  The reflections and glare make it hard to see through the double-thick glass, but I think I can discern Ed clapping a hand over his eyes.

  “What we’re gonna do​—” says Shane, and I’m already saying “Shane, no . . .”

  “​—​is sing one of Austin’s songs.”

  “No way. There are no Austin songs.”

  “You got that song we were singing together yesterday by the river. We’re gonna take that half song and make it a whole song.”

  “Shane, don’t sing that one. Not now.”

  Shane gives a sly sidelong glance at Josephine, and as I feel the panic rise he starts singing, “Oh, Rosalie, Rosalie, hear my plea / someone has got to love me and it can’t be me . . .”

  Winking at me on the “Rosalie.”

  He keeps going, strumming the chords skeletally, twisting to give a nod to Todd, who starts a tentative rhythm that quickly gets stronger.

  “Shane, come on,” I say, but he keeps going, adding verses: “She calls me on the phone to say / she won’t call me no more / She tells me to come over / just so she can slam the door . . .”

  He comes around again to the chorus, looking at Josephine with raised eyebrows, singing the words to her with the exaggerated emphasis you use when you’re teaching someone, and Josephine is starting to smile, then leans in to the microphone to add her voice, Shane signaling to keep the chorus going so he can add a harmony (me saying, “Shane, I don’t think . . .”), and he responds by giving me a soft kick in the ass and I start singing too.

  We get to the part where the bridge should be, except there’s nothing but river between the first part of the song and the second, and Shane twirls his finger to encourage Todd to keep going and shifts back and forth on his feet, eyes rolled skyward, muttering to himself, running experimentally through different series of chords, then hits one and sings: “I’m tired of all my old mistakes / we can do it wrong but let’s make it new . . .”

  And he trails off, muttering again and thinking, and I surprise myself by singing, “It would be good for me / if you were good to me / I think I might be good for you too . . .”

  And Shane laughs out loud and we all sing, “Rosalie, Rosalie, hear my plea . . .”

  We have a song in about twenty-five minutes, Shane putting out some lyrics, me responding, Shane scribbling them down as we go, and before we can catch our breath or stop to think he says, “Y’all got it? Got it? Yes? All right, let’s go. One take. Let’s do it.”

  So we do it. We stand around that microphone and Todd plays and I play and we all sing and Shane has the happy look he had last night at the party, and so does Josephine, despite herself, and I know I do too, just having fun singing a song together, sloppy and unpolished but true, all our problems and arguments and anger put away for three minutes and ten seconds, and when we finish we don’t all collapse into laughter like it’s a movie musical, but we do take a moment to grin stupidly at each other​—​well, not To
dd, he just sits there blank faced​—​until Ed’s voice comes over the speaker again: “Okay, clear. Can I go home now?”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Shane needs to stay to do some mixing on the song. Todd and Josephine need to go home. I need to figure out how to get them home, get myself home, get my bike home, and (I hope) arrange it so that Josephine rides with me as part of the deal. I mention this in a low voice to Shane and he gets it immediately, and when Josephine steps away to use the bathroom he hands Todd $100 in twenties and says, “Good job today. You can take a cab home, right?”

  Todd blinks at the money, then shrugs.

  “Sure.”

  I walk with him down the hallway toward the exit. You’d think we’d have bonded and we’d be chatting in an animated fashion, saying, What an unusual experience we underwent today, new friend! But no. Todd is hermetically sealed. At the door he gives me a nod without really looking at me, muttering an impersonal thanks as he exits, the sort of thing you say to the driver as you’re getting off the bus. Then he pauses.

  “You ever want me to play again, lemme know.”

  When I get back to the control room, Shane and Josephine are listening to a playback of the song, Josephine looking stricken. When it ends, she says, “I ruined your song.”

  “Nope,” says Shane, “you made it work. And it’s not my song, it’s Austin’s.” Then he stands up and gives her a hug, gives me a hug, and says, “Thank you both.” He puts the big headphones back on. “Go. We’ll catch up later.”

  Walking down the hall again, this time with Josephine.

  “Where’s Todd?”

  “Took a cab home. Which you can totally do. Or I could give you a ride on my bike?”

  A few too many more steps as she considers it.

  “Yeah, okay,” she says.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Her hands are warm on my sides. She’s got them in the I’m-not-sure-where-to-put-them position, tentatively placed on my ribs, her fingers gripping reflexively each time we go over a bump. Which tickles like hell, but I’m not about to say anything.

  I go down Hennipen Avenue to the route that curves us around Lake of the Isles, huge lawns sloping up to giant old mansions to our right, the lake to our left. It’s hard to have any sort of conversation when you’re on a motorcycle, so we don’t. Nor was she especially responsive to my attempts when we were walking to where my bike was parked near the restaurant: