Then Mick said, "I'm not going to the school with you today. Make sure you tuck in your shirt. And don't swear."
"You okay?" I asked.
"Yeah, Anna's coming in for lunch."
"That sounds great, Mick. Well, I'll go now so I can run up and get the Jeep."
"Take my car. She's going to pick me up. We're going over to Colasante's."
I put my coat on. "Bring me back a stromboli? I'll pay you back."
Mick joked, "With what?"
I told Mick I'd see him this afternoon and to enjoy his lunch and hopped in the Caddy. I stopped at Dairy Mart to get a Mountain Dew. Almost bought a pack of squares, but figured Mick'd kill me if he smelled smoke in his car. Besides, I didn't want Jamie to know I smoked. I couldn't wait to show him my guitar. I reminded myself to get a few extra sets of strings and picks and all that kind of stuff just in case.
The drive over to the middle school gave me too much time to think about Dani. Like who she'd slept with last night. But walking into my old school, and smelling pencil shavings and cafeteria pizza weirded me out enough to push her out of my mind.
The kids weren't really into it this week like they had been other times I'd been with Mick. They wouldn't sing along and they wouldn't listen to their teacher. So I went rogue and taught them "Three Little Birds" and "Stir It Up." We did "I Want to Hold Your Hand" twice. As I left, the teacher thanked me. She looked tired and grateful. I told her I didn't know how she did it. I started thinking of stuff I could do next week. I told her I could type up lyrics and make copies. We could do "Buddy Holly" and "Island in the Sun." "Imagine." "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" had fun lyrics. I could think of all kinds of kid-friendly stuff.
When I got back to the shop Mick still wasn't there. I took out my phone and looked at the call log. Nothing since last night.
I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. The cold kept me from drifting off. I had a key, but Mick didn't want me using it unless it was an emergency. And I didn't want to run the engine in case Mick came back, he'd be like, "Gas isn't a buck fifty a gallon anymore." So I pulled my jacket tight and lifted my collar.
After a few minutes he tapped on the window. "Why didn't you wait inside? Might have sold something."
I said, "Can't win for losing," and followed him.
While we got settled, Mick said, "Heard you went off script today?"
"Yeah." I smiled. "The little kiddies had enough 'Battle Hymn of the Republic' and little houses made of ticky-tacky."
"Mrs. Defazio went on and on about you." Mick crossed his arms and leaned against the counter.
"If I didn't know any better I'd think you were proud of me."
"You represent me well. You want that to be a regular gig? You might have to get clearances from the state and submit a resume for them to keep on file."
"The school? Sure, it was a lot of fun. And I still get to play, so, yeah. That's awesome."
"It's just a way to get that Tele out of my back room a lot faster. Did you take your Martin today?"
"Yeah, sure did. You want to get the Jazzmaster back out?"
"Later."
My next lesson came in with a huff of cold air. He rocked a leather coat and looked a little like Henry Rollins with a normal-sized neck. Part of me thought I should've been a little more like him back in high school. Maybe I looked at him as a version of who I could've been. Either way, Tuesdays with Aaron always went too fast. "You ready? You can go in back and plug in. Warm up a little."
Mick said, "You are in a good mood."
"Despite some girl trouble and some Pauly trouble things are all right. Don't know what that's about."
"I thought you and Pauly made up."
"No, he doesn't get that the shit he does is wrong. He's a hypocrite, acting all uppity for going to AA meetings, but says stuff to rip on me, like 'I saw your dad at a meeting last week. He's a meth freak', and crap like that." I fished for a Dunlop Heavy from the jar by the register.
"The other shoe doesn't always have to fall, you know."
"I know. Usually it kicks me." I followed Aaron into the back. We got settled, I played a few chord variations, putting together a little rhythm for him to play over. As soon as he really got going my phone buzzed. I apologized and we kept playing. Suddenly, what had started out as a fast-moving lesson began to drag. Intuition told me it was Dani.
By the time the clock hit four I was ready to go, but Aaron kept right on playing. He knew I didn't have a lesson after his, and he'd gotten used to just hanging out. With the same smile that helped me get through a lot of shitty nights doing Mötley Crüe covers out in Westover, I gave him ten more minutes.
To wrap up, I said, "Be thinking about some things for next week. Text me or whatever. Maybe more Django?" I flipped open my guitar case and laid the Martin inside.
He shrugged then strummed a few more times, like when you're going too fast on a bike.
Guilt worked too easy on me. "We can hang out some more."
"No, I have to go anyway. There's a game tonight and a bunch of us are going out to the Fishbowl first. And I have a lab report to write up." He put his Les Paul back in his case. He told me it was his dad's, but I knew they'd bought it for him. "We're going to be in the playoffs. You want to come see a game?"
"Sure thing, man. That'd be cool. Haven't been up to the high school in a long time. You got everything?"
"Yeah, thanks." He stepped into the hallway. "Mikey said you guys are playing with him at the Met."
"Probably just me. I'll do some acoustic stuff, I guess."
"What happened to the band?"
"Stu got deployed to Afghanistan and Pauly got a real job."
"You going to start a new band?"
"I'm trying, buddy. I'm trying." I stepped back into my lesson room before he'd even started squaring up with Mick and scrolled through my missed calls. Pauly. I listened to his message.
He said, "Uh, I've been talking to my sponsor a lot from the road, and he thinks..." Pauly coughed and mumbled something before starting over.
"Well, I think it, too, I guess, that our situation with the apartment and all that—he thinks that I should tell you that some things need to change. Like you need to try to get sober or maybe move out." He mumbled again. Like it all wasn't coming out like he'd practiced it. Like he somehow deviated from his cue cards and couldn't figure out how to get back to it.
I could see him, leaning back in the seat, smoking or drinking a Mountain Dew. Maybe even trying to put a look of concern on his face, to really sell it even though I wasn't there. "Yeah, so that's it. You need to make a serious attempt, like me, or move out. Or I have to start looking for a place. I can't live with you anymore if you're still drinking, man. I'm sorry."
End of messages. For saved messages, press one.
I rubbed my temples. Part of me wanted to hear the message again. But I knew better. I knew it'd be the same.
I forced myself back into the store.
Mick watched traffic out on Pleasant Street. Salt-crusted cars rolling along salt-crusted streets. February needed rain like Strummer needed another twenty years. "Everything squared away back there?" he said, still not looking.
"Yeah. Everything okay with you?"
Mick said, "Why do you ask?"
I walked over to the door and leaned against the jamb. "I don't know. You seem a little distant or something."
"Just thinking, that's all. Might have to sell the Jazzmaster."
"You need money?" I asked even though I knew the question sounded pretty stupid.
"It's not a good thing to have around. Makes me think of what I did. You can probably head out if everything's taken care of in back."
"I can stay if you want me to. I don't have anywhere to be."
"It's fine. Go out tonight. Call that girl... Or better yet, find some place to play. Get a band together."
"Maybe want to grab a drink? Cross the street and grab a burrito?"
"Thanks, kid, but no."
; "Okay, Mick. Have a good one." I threw on my coat.
Mick asked, "When's Jamie coming in?"
"Thursday, I think. He hasn't called."
"I'll give him a ring. It's always good to talk to him. You tie up all your loose ends?"
"Rescheduled all my lessons. So, yeah, I guess that's it."
"Okay. Have fun. Spending a few days with Jamie will do you good."
"I hope so. Man, do I hope so. Thanks again for everything this week, Mick. I really mean that." I stepped into the cold and gave Dani a call.
Straight to voicemail. "Hey, Dani, this is Preston. If you want to get together, maybe have some coffee or something, I guess I'll be up Mountaineer Doughnuts. I am sorry about last night. I did tell you I'd be around, so... It is my fault, and I'm sorry. See you later, I hope."
I scurried up Pleasant to High and crossed on DON'T WALK. My breath left me in a cloud. Through big windows I saw a group of students on the stage at the back of the coffee shop. I put my face against the window, using my hand to block the glare to see inside. A banjo, a few guitars and some kind of lap thing. Not a resonator, maybe a dulcimer. A pair of girls playing violins. One of them waved, but I couldn't see her face, so I waved back and went inside.
The transition from daylight to interior made me blind as a bat. I squinted and made my way toward the plucky sounds of the old-timey stuff we played up in Davis. But the group was only a quarter as cohesive as the group I'd been a part of in the back of the fire hall. But I had it all figured out. The rhythm ran straight ahead, like punk, and there was never more than four chords. And like punk, it got better the more you drank.
Katy met me at the counter where the barista handed me my Americano. Caffeine was a pretty good appetite suppressant, and I'd been hungry all afternoon. If I remembered correctly, Katy was also an appetite suppressant.
She said, "Hey, Preston Black. Didn't think I'd ever see you here." She pushed a long strand of brown hair behind her ear. She had this shy, awkward thing going on. It threw me.
"Hey, Katy Stefanic, how's it going?" I tore open a few sugar packets and dumped them into my coffee. I swirled the cup a few times, then added another packet."Aren't you just a beam of sunshine on such a winter's day?"
Her eyes picked up a shade or two of the lavender in the sweater she wore. Everybody else in the place, myself included, wore some shade of black. But she looked like a tiny little flower in an asphalt parking lot.
"Thank you. I don't know if I'm more surprised that you remembered we played tonight or that you actually came down."
I looked to the big stage in the back—not really a stage so much as a riser—and watched the musicians slogging through some slow-tempoed waltz. A big guy with dreads and a Takamine held it all together. Nodding and keeping a sloppy pace. He closed his eyes like he was at Red Rocks halfway through his encore, a sky-full of stars and a crowd-full of cell phone screens coaxing him on.
"What if I told you I forgot you said you played here, and I just kind of randomly showed up?" I said it with such a big smile there was no way she could miss my sarcasm.
"I'd say you really are an asshole." She returned the smile. "You coming, or what?"
She weaved between tables, I followed her to the back.
"Hey, guys." Katy pulled a chair right up where she'd been sitting. "This is Preston Black. He's going to sit in if that's okay."
The circle seemed about as nonplussed as a circle could get. The big guy with the dreads mumbled something to the banjo player on his left with a dickish smirk. "Try to keep up, and just watch me if you get lost. And no Stone Temple Pilots, okay? The Nineties are over."
"Preston, this is Chelsea. The girl I told you about Sunday?" The other fiddle player gave a shy wave, but kept giving Katy a Chasing Amy stare.
The only thing I could really remember from the weekend was "Wildwood Flower," so I didn't even wait for him to start. My strings loved the wide room, hitting with a voice that coated anybody who listened like cigarette smoke. Katy played the vocal line on her fiddle.
On the second time through the clawhammer banjo player played the vocals while Katy plucked out the chords. Her high crisp notes were the jelly to my peanut butter. The rest of the circle felt totally extraneous, as far as I was concerned. If the rest of them suddenly split, I wouldn't have minded.
Katy's playing sent chills right through me—like she channeled gypsies or banshees or both. I considered myself lucky to be sitting right next to her, where I could just watch her fingers work. We made eye contact, and I quickly looked back at her fingers. But she had to see me smiling. That was the last time I remembered telling Dani I'd call her tonight.
When it came back to me I played a few slow, well-placed notes that were a direct contrast to the big guy's attempts to be the ring-leader. Almost anybody could play fast notes over chords. Maybe I wanted to show Katy, really show her, what I had in me. So I layered in something totally different, something that wasn't old time or traditional. I played a vocal phrasing twice, something that would be recognizable even in the context of this song.
On my next pass through Katy picked up on it. I strummed the chords, adding a slight tweak to the chords for "Wildwood Flower." Then I sang, in my hybridized version of "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding" about walking through a wicked world and all that.
Katy looked over her shoulder and mouthed the new chords to her friend as I sang, asking myself if all there was is pain, hatred and misery. I sang it with a big smile on my face.
My voice sounded good, better than it had in a while. Maybe shouting into a mic wasn't my thing. I heard tones in there I hadn't noticed in a really long time. At the chorus Katy stopped, put down her fiddle, and in her best Elvis Costello voice, sang right along with me.
The rest of the stuff we played was mostly G-C-D over and over, so I practiced barre chords, bass lines and picking out melodies. The best part was hearing Katy play, and trying to show her I wasn't the bonehead she thought. I don't know why it mattered—what she thought of me—but it did.
When the party ended, the mandolin player asked if I was coming back. I took it as a compliment. Katy ordered a cheeseburger and ate it back at our chairs instead of at a booth. For the first time in a long time I was hungry, and ordered one too. Her friend Chelsea hung out a little longer, but eventually saw that she was a third wheel and split. I asked Katy if she had to go, too, but she said she still wanted to play a little, if I wanted to.
For the next hour we kicked songs back and forth, trying to stump each other. Some of the people who had been studying in the café even took off their headphones and listened to us instead. Katy went first, throwing out "Norwegian Wood."
"Seriously?" I fired back "Nice Dream." Not only could she play it, but she sang it beautifully right along with me.
She hit me with the one-two punch of "I Will Follow You Into The Dark" followed by some Replacements that stumped me. "'Alex Chilton'," she said.
We went back and forth—White Stripes, Wilco, Arctic Monkeys, Zeppelin. She stumped me again with Beyonce, her version of "Crazy in Love."
The only interruption came when our waitress returned and took our coffee mugs instead of asking if we wanted refills. Then somebody shut the middle row of lights out.
"Time to go?" Katy wiggled her fingers and rubbed her wrist.
"We can go someplace else. You want to go down to Black Bear for a drink? Or we can go back to my apartment and play some more?" I rubbed down my guitar's strings and neck with a chamois.
"I suppose I should get back. I'm meeting Jamie for lunch before he goes back up the mountain. He said there's supposed to be a big blizzard this weekend."
"He didn't call me."
"He will. He forgets sometimes. Drives Aunt Izzy batty. I wanted to go with you guys this weekend. Jamie said no way, José. No girls allowed. Jesse Currence is an amazing fiddler, you know. Jamie said he's going to get him to do a clinic in Elkins this summer, at Augusta, so I'll have to wait
'til then. You should come down this summer. It's a lot of fun. People dancing and hanging out all night." She pulled her coat on and wrapped a scarf around her neck until she no longer had a neck. We headed out toward the street.
After I didn't say anything she said, "You probably don't even know who Jesse Currence is, do you? You definitely don't deserve to go up there."
I said, "I probably don't. It'd be like if you were related to Jimmy Page or something. I'd be jealous. But I'm going up for a much different reason."
Evening had departed a long time ago. Late night, the time between Letterman and last call, had crept up like a stray cat to a Laundromat. Katy shivered.
"You want me to walk with you?"
"Is that a question or an offer? Because an offer comes from someplace nice and fuzzy." She sped up, her little boots skipped along the salted sidewalk.
"Katy Stefanic, it would give me great pleasure to accompany you to your..." I pointed up High, toward campus.
"I'm in an apartment up by the Towers." She pointed in the other direction, to the PRT station. "Would've been nicer without the sarcasm."
"I'll ride up with you then."
"It's not necessary. Really."
I took her fiddle case, which allowed her to fold her mitten-ed hands into the arms of her coat. I would've put my arm around her, if I had been like that. Low clouds covered the city like a blanket. Stoplights, streetlights, headlights, neon lights from bars and places like Mick's, they all got tangled in the clouds, making me feel like we were walking in a giant snow globe. We headed down Walnut. If it wasn't so cold I would've slowed her down a little. But my ankles and toes hurt from the cold, like I was turning to stone from the bottom up. "It's not too often you get the city all to yourself."
She smiled.
The fluorescence of the PRT landing busted the snow globe, leaving us standing there in Morgantown, West Virginia, on a mid-winter night. All the water leaked out, and the only thing left were plastic snowflakes and plastic buildings. Suddenly the stuff I had to say didn't seem so clever, the night, seemed like almost any other.
The Devil and Preston Black (Murder Ballads and Whiskey) Page 15
