I am grimly determined to get through this gig at La Balcone. Squaring my shoulders, I take a deep breath and try to get my Kundalini working—or some sort of mojo, anyway—before rolling my rig into the club. I nod hello to Naj and the others, and try to make small talk with Sand while I set up next to her, but she is as distant and aloof as always. She suddenly dashes off the stage, kicking over my water in her haste.
“Man, what is her problem?” I ask Naj.
She shrugs. “She’s a coldhearted bitch, but she plays a mean set of drums, and she looks good on stage.”
I think of the horrible overuse of her cymbals and silently beg to differ, but keep my mouth shut. I don’t understand this strange loyalty. It occurs to me that if Naj has her heart set on having a female drummer in the band, I know a couple of very talented ones right here in New Orleans. As I open my mouth to suggest a better player, from the corner of my eye I can see Lydia watching us carefully just for a fraction of a second before seemingly vanishing. “She creeps me out.” By this point I have no idea to whom I’m really referring.
Unfortunately, turning my eyes elsewhere proves no more fruitful. I unwittingly lock gazes with a sallow-faced man in drab clothing sitting near me. He raises his Bloody Mary glass at me in a toast from afar. It doesn’t take any sort of fine-tuned skills to sense the desperation and self-loathing oozing out of his every pore. I casually move to the opposite end of the bar.
In a split second, he’s pulled up the stool next to me. “How ya doin’ Birch? Looking forward to hearing ya play. I haven’t seen ya since you was with Slackjaw. You look pretty good … you were skinny the last time I saw you, but now, you look … healthy.”
I instantly hate this man and his appraising eyes. I tense up, and begin to feel a little dizzy. Oh, shit! He’s some sort of shifter, and he is definitely not one of the good guys.
I desperately scroll through my mental notes. Shield of light … I surround myself with an imaginary wall of compassion, a compassion that guards me, gives him a polite gratification of my acknowledgement, then gently pushes him backward. If I push too hard, he’s only going to feed into this. I am the willow tree that bends, but does not break …
He begins to drone on and on about his son’s failed musical career, despite all the God-given talent. Then he starts in on his assessment of my inevitable fading youth and dwindling career potential, and how he somehow holds the keys to salvation. Just like Cal. The burning begins to flare up in my belly. I unfocus my eyes and remember to breathe. In this altered state of consciousness, I gather my thoughts, remember where the office to the bar is, and replenish my energy.
I return, cutting him off midsentence. “Can you astrally project? Then maybe you should get over yourself!” I make a beeline for the restroom and stay there until I calm down, and am pleased to discover that my wits are still about me and my energy level is still high. I did it! I fluff my hair, shake out my limbs, and swagger up to the relative safety of the stage.
Overconfidence now carries me in the wake of this triumphant adrenaline rush. Between numbers, Naj is in the middle of introducing the next song with a little story about her connection to it, when a rude tourist interrupts by bellowing out, “Play it!!!”
I step up to the mic, ready to defend my makeshift tribe. “Easy, big boy—there are some things that last longer than two minutes!”
Dealing with an unsavory audience member can be tricky. The point is to not only set some boundaries, but also get the rest of the room to sympathize with you in the process, and humor is a good way to diffuse the situation. Over the years my heckler lines have usually been appreciated, not only by the audience, but by other folks on the gig as well. But Naj’s brief glower of disapproval sets me straight. Does she think I’m trying to steal her thunder? Likewise, I’m not certain why I seem to be in trouble when later in the night she moves over to the piano and starts a song in the wrong key … so I transpose and match it. The horns eventually figure it out and adapt, but something feels hostile now. What was I supposed to do? Play in the assigned key and sound like a train wreck? I am eager for this night to be over. There’s a reason that the phrase “that’s show biz” is synonymous with “shit happens.”
Naj is not in good form tonight. She keeps tugging at the collar of her long-sleeved shirt, sweating profusely in the summer heat. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out her mood swings or why she’s concealing her arms. I have seen coke and heroin destroy many a great musician, and hope to the powers-that-be that we can soon have the old Naj back; the one who is generous with her smiles, her support for her fellow musicians, and her charisma. She eventually staggers off of the stage and makes a beeline for the ladies’ room. Tim grabs the mic and takes over for the rest of the gig, effortlessly belting out staples like Every Dog Got His Day, I’m Gonna Be a Wheel Someday, and Knock on Wood. The crowd picks up again, gratefully feeding on Tim’s natural drive. Even Sand seems to lock in more efficiently.
Lydia is also another saving grace. Around the rest of the world musicians make trombone jokes, especially about them being unemployable. These jokes don’t apply in New Orleans, where everyone needs a good trombone player. They are the rock stars of the brass world, and now Lydia has suddenly morphed from a team player into a star soloist. She holds her instrument lightly with a slippery grace. The slide darts back and forth like a forked tongue, deadly and precise like a fencing foil. Sexy and authoritative, she commands the crowd to watch her. Her cornrow braids cascade down her shoulders in serpentine rivers. And her eyes are constantly searching and assessing everything: each individual in the audience, the bartenders, and the rest of the band. She sways with the music, but her gaze could turn the casual observer to stone.
I try to text Rowan after the gig, but no response. Then it hits me that he can’t text because he has a session with Aydan. I know that when he’s working he never texts and seldom remains on the phone long when anyone calls the landline. After all, he never does anything half-assed, and his focus and intensity are unmatched. He stalks the perfect sound, the ultimate sonic predator. And that’s a good thing, right?
I wonder if they laugh easily as they work together, or how efficient her playing is. I pray that she isn’t one of those one-take wonders who can nail every part so effortlessly. Trying not to think about it only makes it worse. Have they developed their own private jokes by now? I despise this feeling. I have never before been jealous of his female clients—after all, we all have records to make. But then again, none of them have been so beautiful, talented, or obviously after him. I can no longer endure this thought, nor can I bear the guilt and jealously eating me alive, and I need a painkiller.
So I find Yohan down the street at Molly’s and accept his invitation to for a drink in a poor attempt to distract myself from the nagging misery in the back of my mind. The cloud of smoke from his cigarette makes it hard to see his features in detail, and I don’t know if he’s warding, or if I even care. His eyes are like two cornflowers, impossibly blue and guileless looking, but he keeps his sight trained on me like a stalking jaguar. He drones and on and on about his ex-girlfriend and how he will always love her. He says that I am attractive, even though he prefers Asians and redheads. Don’t overthink, says my inner autopilot. It doesn’t even matter what we discuss. His charm is a little too obsequious and his cologne is a bit too heavy, but all I care about is a distraction. I am what my cousin Bonnie back in Scotland calls “skin-hungry.”
One thing leads to another, and before long I allow him into my bed. There is the matter of succumbing to the pleasures of the flesh to assuage basic human needs. It’s almost like the hunt: something must die, even if it’s only an illusion.
There are no harsh words or punishing blows to remind me of Cal. His skin is pale and freckled like mine, and he does not criticize my physique. He attends my body’s every need like a skilled auto mechanic: thorough, adept, and impersonal. He flips switches, pushes buttons, and the engine comes purring to life. S
kin on skin at last, which I had so desperately craved, a temporary rush. I am finally physically satiated, albeit still empty inside.
Naj has her painkillers and I have mine. Neither of these vices solves a thing.
Once the sound of his breathing slows to that of a sleeping man, I allow the tears to trickle freely down my face. They flow like an open wound, but they barely make a sound when they hit the pillow.
It’s been awhile since I’ve played on Frenchmen Street. Sometimes I know I’ve done my job properly if nobody notices the bass at all. Tonight is very different. I am always encouraged to cut loose with solos and basically be as obtrusive as I want to be.
I enjoy playing with Delta Funk. Salty is on drums, so I know we’ll make a solid, friendly foundation. John Lisi the bandleader always shoots me a “rock and roll horns” gesture and a grin when he especially likes a solo I’ve taken or a groove I’ve locked into. The blues selection is gritty: Little Freddie King, Hound Dog Taylor, and B.B. King. John likes to throw in some rock as well: ZZ Top, Led Zeppelin, and early Rush. But I like his original songs best of all—they are just plain fun to play. Quirky and driving, there are always refreshing changes, modulations, and unison riffs. No room for musical road hypnosis on those.
I’m catching up with John, whom I haven’t seen since The Round Pegs gig, when Gabriel decides to make his presence known, flush-faced and sporting a Slackjaw Harrison t-shirt. Before I can object, he steps right up onto the stage and starts to get in my face. “Hey, man!” John cuts in with his signature polish, “I need you to step off the stage, Daddy-O!” saving me the task of telling Gabriel something less charming. Unabashed, he jumps down but remains right at the edge of the stage, nearly knocking over my mic stand.
“So, Birch! I’ve been messing around with the guitar some, and I really wanna get together and jam with you sometime!”
I play over two hundred gigs a year and I still can’t believe how many people think that I have nothing better to do than to go to their houses—or heaven forbid, have them come to mine—and amuse them. “Gabriel, I would like to help you, but I don’t have time to jam with anyone. I always have charts to learn, songs to arrange, and gigs to play.”
“It’s okay, Miss MacKinlay. I can be patient.” His words cover my nerves like a soft blanket of tarantulas, and his unblinking grin brings to mind something hungry and undead. He parks himself at the bar directly across from me and gazes at me like I’m a TV screen.
John grins. “Looks like you’ve got yourself a boyfriend there!” he teases. I am relieved that John doesn’t call me by my nickname aloud. The last thing I need is for this creep to get any more details about my life.
I shake my head. “The cruelest thing I could ever do is to seduce someone who still believes in miracles,” I muse more to myself than to John. Pretending to examine a tuning machine on his guitar, I lean into him and whisper, “That guy is really starting to scare me. Just keep your eyes open.” We exchange fist bumps of understanding, then it’s time for downbeat.
Over the course of the gig the stage becomes a giant dissecting pan. Gabriel hangs onto my every note, occasionally rocking his head and mumbling something to himself. His eyes never leave my face, not even when one of the other guys takes a solo. I try warding myself, which helps a little, but my solos feel duller and the tips don’t flow as freely. I can’t even let myself go alto because I don’t want to appear more attractive. It’s turning my blood to lava that one obsessed person is ruining the whole gig. Not just for me but also for the rest of the band, and even for the audience to some degree, because my playing is distracted. I want to charge off the stage and break him in two.
At one point Gabriel leaves his post to stand smack-dab in the doorway. He tries to beckon more people into the bar, which only succeeds in creeping them out and scaring them away. Now I am even angrier, for we make our money on this gig according to the bar ring. Finally I see Holly the bartender tell him something. Her eyes widen as he leaves the bar.
I heave a sigh of relief and try to enjoy the last thirty minutes of the gig, free to be myself at last. But I am now officially exhausted. Holly makes a quick beeline for me and informs me that Gabriel told her that he was my boyfriend. He’s now officially banned from the joint, but I am still uneasy. John tries to break the tension as he hands me my money—”Here’s a lil’ somethin’ for your gas tank!” The other guys can see genuine worry in my face as we tear down our equipment, and Salty offers to walk me to my car.
As we make our way toward Royal Street where I am parked, I give Salty a condensed version of the story under my breath. And then as we round the corner, my heart stops for an instant.
Written in the dust on the side of my car is “I LUV U BIRCH.” I rip a banana leaf from a resident’s nearby plant and wipe the offending words off of my beloved Honda. It also appears that my WWOZ sticker has been ripped from my bumper as a souvenir. I feel a fierce need to reclaim my territory, but I don’t think peeing on my car is going to be the answer. Before I load my rig into my car Salty investigates every nearby intersection, and I whip Thumper open and make a point of displaying my police baton. If Gabriel is hiding somewhere watching me, then he’ll at least be observing me carrying a weapon. How in the hell did he know which car was mine in the first place, and for how long has he really been shadowing me? These questions trouble me the most.
How easy it is to forget that even predators become prey when there’s a madman about.
Journal entry, May 18th: Honesty is entirely overrated. One might as well tell it like this: “He said, ‘I’m going to shoot you,’ right before he pulled the trigger. At least he was honest.”
Complete loyalty with a few well-guarded secrets is the way of the wolf.
I have a few hours to kill in the Quarter before my afternoon brewhouse gig, so I stash my bass in the equipment closet there and decide to pay Teddy a visit. I could call or text him on the pack phone to give him specific details, but I decided to try out my warded howl to give him a heads-up instead. Once I get over feeling like a certifiable idiot for howling out loud while walking down Decatur street, I admit to myself that it pretty much rocks to be able to do this while completely unnoticed by passers-by.
A block away from his pad, something odd in the energies hits me, a tiny ripple of an off-kilter wave. This is probably why I have the foresight to look up before knocking, and my brain doesn’t quite process what I’m seeing. A person seldom expects to see a Siberian husky standing on the roof, especially one that smells like a trusted friend.
“Teddy, what the hell?” I blurt out, aware that warding is still not going to completely hide me, and talking to a dog on the roof might certainly attract attention. Taking the name of my favorite bassist in vain, I continue, “How in Ged’s name did you get up there? What have you done to yourself? Rowan is going to kill you for going bass in public!”
He sneezes and contradicts me with a defiant “Nooooo!” before disappearing behind the rooftop. A minute later Teddy the human comes to the front door barefoot and shirtless, and grinning triumphantly at my palpable astonishment.
“It’s a technique I’ve been experimenting with. I got the idea from Raúl’s story about casting an illusion of an altered bass form. I’ve been referring to this doggie trick as contrabass phase, and Rowan has given me his blessing to try it out … more or less.” While Teddy would never outright defy our Alpha, he is sometimes quite good at bending the rules. This makes me intensely uneasy, and I don’t even try to hide this emotion. I sit at the kitchen table, unsure what to say.
He hands me a bottle of water, knowing that I seldom drink alcohol before a gig. Pulling up a chair alongside mine, he stretches to loosen his newly transformed body. “No, seriously. This is something that could help us in the long run. It takes some serious visualization and focus on the subtleties of one’s appearance, such as blue eyes, more defined markings, and whiter fur around the face. Combined with physical exercises in wolf form—like curl
ing of the tail backward, and we could convincingly go out in public posing as docile house pets. Anyone who is out to thwart shifters will be on guard if another human is around, definitely so in the presence of an animal that is traditionally associated with wild places. But no one filters conversation around a harmless old pooch, and with so many dog-friendly bars and restaurants in the Quarter, we may be able to do some spying.”
I am still rattled from all of the weirdness I have already seen and the suspicions I have harbored. I’m not crazy about any of us risking our hides. On the other hand, I’m even less crazy about the notion of some unknown boogey man or preternatural mafia trying to hunt us down. I agree to play the role of the accomplice if need be, making a mental note to ask Rowan about this.
I end up venting about this new stalker Gabriel. This worries him, for any stalker is a menace, and with the added concerns of someone who might be trying to harm us, this could potentially be very bad news. He offers to accompany me to any gigs that don’t conflict with his own schedule in husky guise, not just to offer added protection, but also to sniff out this man’s energies in a way that I cannot as long as I need human hands to play. The knot in my stomach unclenches a bit at the notion, and I tell him that I will consider it.
He tells me about how he visualizes contrabass form, imagining the lowest note in the threshold of hearing, coaxing the tail to curve up and over, and invoking the essence of dog when wolves and man converged. He informs me, “Everything that you see around you began with a thought. Visualizing is the most important element of creation, and then sound follows. Why do you think so many music teachers advise you to sing along with your improvised solos? It gives your music more intention, direction, and focus. It intensifies your energy. You are simultaneously visualizing and creating, and your magic is stronger that way.”
The Wild Harmonic Page 15
