Baker's Blues

by Judith Ryan Hendricks

  “I was looking for you. I was hoping to speak with you for a minute. About Mac.”

  “Yes?”

  “Wynter, I want you to know I’m as sorry as I can be about…this situation. It’s just, I saw you going up the stairs last Sunday and I thought to myself, well, maybe they’re getting together. Maybe this is the initial, you know, rapproachment to…but then I haven’t seen you again and I just wondered…that is, I hoped…”

  “I was just there to talk to him about some financial stuff and he couldn’t come here because his car was in the shop—”

  “HA!” It’s more an expletive than a laugh. “That’s rich. His car is in the shop. Is that what he told you? His car is in the junkyard. His car is totaled. His car is a metal pancake. It’s only by the grace of God he wasn’t impaled on the steering column.”

  My heart stops. “He had an accident?”

  “I’m sorry, Wynter, I thought—I got a call. Two in the morning. Right after I got back from New York. The highway patrol. Mac rolled the Beemer somewhere over in Topanga Canyon. I had to go to the emergency room at North County. My God, I’m thinking all the way over there, my God. What if he’s dead? Or, God forbid, a vegetable? He wasn’t even wearing his goddamn seatbelt—excuse me, Wynter. And he walks away with a couple scratches and a stiff neck.”

  “Was he drinking?”

  “No, thank God. For a change. He’s drinking way too much. It’s just a miracle he wasn’t—they tested him for every controlled substance known to man. He says he was tired. That he dozed off…I don’t know…”

  The breeze cools my wet body and goosebumps break out on my arms. With the total recall of guilt, I hear myself blithely saying to Sarah, Why can’t he just drive off a cliff? Never imagining that’s exactly what he was doing.

  “I’m at my wit’s end with him, Wynter. I don’t want to lose Mac as a client. He’s got a lot of talent, but he’s gotten so—careless or distracted or something. He seems to not care about deadlines or meetings or—he’s been saying some very strange things. I think he needs help. I was thinking maybe you could—”

  I say, “Alan, I appreciate your trying to help, but there’s really nothing I can do. I’m going back to Orcas tomorrow. Give Sylvia my love.”

  I wrap a towel around my shoulders and sit down at the table, shaking now, still holding the phone. For the longest time I think about calling him. I want to scream at him. I want to tell him I’m furious and hurt that he won’t talk to me, that I’m worried sick about him…Why did you, how did you drive off the road? I want to tell him I love him, I want to help him.

  I rub my thumb aimlessly over the number keys. Sure, I could call him and say all those things. But I just did that last week.

  It didn’t turn out well.

  fifteen

  Mac

  The party is at some new club off La Brea and the evening has begun with a disagreement about valet parking. In the end he drops her off and drives around for half an hour trying to find a parking place. By the time he walks back to the club she’s gone inside, presumably to find her client du jour, a singer who’s just released her first CD.

  Outside, the place swarms with guys who look like body builders, dressed in black T-shirts and black jeans, milling around with clipboards and walkie-talkies, checking imaginary names off blank pieces of paper. There are radio and TV crews, glaring lights, stoned musicians, a guy in a Hawaiian shirt and blue fake fur top hat. There are people in khakis and polo shirts, evening clothes, sport coats, jeans and Doc Martens, sundresses and spike heels, shorts and flipflops. They’re all kissing, hugging, talking on cell phones, sometimes all three at once.

  No one says anything to him as he pushes past the black shirts, through the doorway, which resembles the entrance to a cave.

  The interior looks like something out of Arabian Nights—a series of cavernous rooms that seem to go on for miles, huge overstuffed furniture, lots of cushions and draperies. Somewhere an invisible band is playing loudly—unrecognizable noise, so heavy on base that his bones vibrate. The lamps are small and their light limited, leaving plenty of dark corners for sex or drugs or naps.

  He lifts a drink off a passing tray and takes sip. Ugh. sweet, slightly warm. He leaves it in a corner and locates the bar, but before he reaches it, Liv is clutching his arm.

  She kisses his cheek and smiles warmly, as if she hadn’t just called him a shit-head thirty minutes earlier.

  “Before you start drinking, I want you to meet Denise. She loved December Light and she’s dying to meet you.”

  Resistance is futile. She leads him to a couch where a vacuous looking young woman with long scarlet hair is surrounded by equally vacuous looking admirers.

  “Denise, this is my friend, Mac McLeod. The writer? And a very big fan of your music.”

  She extends a pale hand. “Which of my songs do you like best?”

  “The last one,” he says.

  “Locked up in Your Heart,” Liv says quickly. “We both love that one.”

  Denise seems disappointed. “That’s actually a cover …You’re a writer…What magazine are you with?”

  Liv laughs delightedly. “He’s not a journalist, darling, he’s a novelist. He’s the one who wrote December Light.”

  “Oh. Is that that book you gave me?”

  “Looks like you’re about as impressed with my work as I am with yours.”

  Liv laughs again. “Honestly! You two…Frick and Frack… What a pair!”

  Bodies are stacked three deep at the bar but he manages to insert himself at the very end. Eventually the lone bartender makes his way down.

  “Red wine, white wine, beer or campari & soda?”

  “Scotch. On the rocks.”

  “Sorry. It’s a host bar. You got some vouchers when you—”

  Mac takes out his wallet, lays a hundred-dollar bill on the zinc bar top.

  The guys smiles and pockets the bill. “J & B okay?”

  “If that’s all you’ve got.”

  The first swallow burns going down.

  He sits on the stool, oblivious to the noise and motion, the flickering lights. When he finishes his drink, he reaches over the bar and takes the scotch from under the counter, pours his glass full to the brim. Each time the level of scotch falls below an inch from the top, he refills it. The alcohol begins to work its peculiar magic.

  Suddenly Liv is there, clutching his arm again. “We need to leave soon.” She smiles and pulls the hair back from her face. “We’re meeting Denise and her manager at Fail Safe in about thirty minutes.” She leans close to kiss his cheek and see how much he’s had to drink. “I’ll drive,” she says. “Where did you park?”

  “Around the corner,” he lies.

  “I’m going to just say goodbye to some people. I’ll be right back.”

  Right back means at least fifteen minutes. A meeting in thirty minutes means an hour. Fail Safe means lots of noise, table hopping, air kissing and bullshit.

  The man standing next to him leans over and shouts, “How do you know George?”

  Mac stares at him, his leathery tan, his too white teeth. He pretends not to hear, picks up his glass and the bottle and heads into the next room where he finishes the scotch. Then to the men’s room, where two guys are snorting coke off a drink coaster. They offer him a line. He locks himself in a stall and stands with his forehead pressed against the cool metal door, wondering briefly who George is, if he knows him, and why.

  When he leaves the men’s room, he’s weaving a little. Some fresh air is called for. He pushes through the crowd out to the sidewalk where people clump together, chatting and laughing. Laughing nonstop. What can they possibly find so funny?

  And where did he leave the fucking car?

  While he’s standing there trying to remember, a Metro bus pulls up and he boards it without thinking, without caring, and is instantly enveloped in scents of sweat, tobacco, garlic, hairspray, men’s cologne—always stronger than the women’s counterpart—th
e familiar smells of public transit. He stuffs money into the fare box and makes his way down the aisle past a young black girl with ear buds in, eyes closed, swaying to her own private music. All the way to the last row of seats.

  For a long time he didn’t drive.

  One of the terms of his probation was no driver’s license till he turned twenty-one. As if he wanted to get behind the wheel of a car. At times he thought he never would again. Learning to drive, getting his permit, his license, his own car had changed overnight from an obsession to a sweaty, shaky dreaded thing, finally fading over the years into disinterest.

  He walked, hitchhiked, bummed rides, rode buses and trains—easy when he lived in Manhattan, less easy the farther west he traveled. Finally in Colorado when he was working construction he fell in with a group of rock climbers. Fanatics who lived to climb and worked jobs that were measured in days or weeks only to finance their habit. Three or four vehicles circulated among the group of eight. Sold by the current owner for whatever he could get, bought by whoever had money, each knowing he could sell it back to the original owner or to one of the others when their monetary positions were reversed.

  It was there that he acquired the Elky.

  He has no idea which bus this is, where it goes, and it doesn’t make any difference. He sits by the window, watching the lights. Flashing neon, changing traffic lights, blinking turn signals, streaks of headlights and taillights. Someone on a street corner smoking, the glowing circle of fire. And what’s left of the day, a razor thin band of pink on the horizon.

  He used to love the night. Huddled under the blanket, his old transistor radio pressed to his ear, listening to the music beamed out from stations in New York and New Jersey, playing Bo Diddley and Jerry Lee Lewis, Garnett Mimms and LaVerne Baker, Jackie Wilson, Elvis, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Chuck Berry. He would close his eyes, finally turning off the radio, or sometimes falling asleep with it still playing, sending the music deep into his unconscious until the batteries died and the music stilled.

  He leans his face against the cool glass and lets himself shut down.

  The memories release their power slowly, like glowing coals. They are the story. The story that is the accident; it’s what his life is about, a book he’s read too many times.

  He thought he’d died, too. Even though they told him he’d survived, that it was a miracle, something to be grateful for. That’s when writing became a way—for a long time, the only way—to prove he was alive even though he felt dead.

  The sensation was like floating. Skimming over the surface of hours and days. He must have talked to someone, but the memory is blank. There was no talking at home. There seemed to be a tacit agreement that he and Suzanne would not speak to each other unless absolutely necessary. In case of fire or flood. At some point he realized that she’d stopped fixing dinner. He ate hotdogs punctured with a fork so they wouldn’t explode in the microwave, dry buns slathered with yellow mustard, burnt popcorn, frozen pizza, lots of apples.

  Some days she got up and went to work. At home she stayed in her room and when they met by accident in the hall, he could read the expressions that chased each other across her face…surprise. Then disbelief. Then disappointment. That he was still there and Kevin was gone.

  These things are coming out now, out through his skin, his joints, his mouth, the palms of his hands. The way, it was said, that shrapnel could come out of a body years after the wound had supposedly healed.

  “Hey, Buddy. End of the line. You gotta get off.”

  He half-walks, half-stumbles to the front. “Where are we?”

  The driver eyes him curiously. “Santa Monica Pier. Ocean and Colorado.”

  Through the bus windshield the huge Pacific Wheel arcs slowly over the beach, its five thousand red, white and blue lights flashing nine stories high above the pier.

  “You okay?”

  “Sure.” He raises one hand as he steps down onto the crowded sidewalk. A lighted beer sign draws him into a liquor store where he wanders the aisles aimlessly till the nervous-looking clerk asks what he’s looking for.

  “Scotch.”

  “Right behind you.”

  He takes a fifth without looking at the brand, pays for it, and stuffs the change into a charity box on the counter. He clutches the paper bag against his side and tries to concentrate on picking up each foot, setting it down. Careful. Careful.

  He remembers the action comics Kevin loved. The heroes were always gritting their teeth and saying things like must not let go. Must. Not. Fall. Now it strikes him as hilarious and he grits his teeth. Must not laugh. Little bursts of laughter explode from his mouth anyway and he has a sense of people turning to look at him.

  He veers off the sidewalk, crosses the street to the accompaniment of car horns, and heads towards the pier. When his steps sink into the sand he loses balance, drops to a crouch, then rocks back into a sit. Behind him is a flower bed with a few large boulders. He scoots back to lean against one of them and fumbles with the bottle till he gets the cap off.

  Hmm. No glass, no ice, no twist. What to do…The first long drink from the bottle goes down his throat like a comet. God, yes. Let the evening begin.

  He’s not sure how long he sits there, drinking. He finds a couple of pills in his shirt pocket. No idea what they are. Dex? Aspirin? Vitamin C? What the hell. He swallows them anyway. People walk by. He can see them, but they can’t see him. The beauty of darkness. The bottle is becoming emptier, but heavier. A couple of times it slips from his mouth, dribbles down his chin, the front of his shirt.

  A guy walks by, pulled by a golden retriever on a leash, and he suddenly remembers Brownie. He remembers running here with her. Maybe this exact place. The sound of her panting beside him, the way the wind rippled through her fur, how her ears flopped as she ran. How she smiled, showing her pink and black gums and sharp white teeth.

  He feels like a runaway truck on a mountain road…where was the ramp packed with sand where you could bury your wheels up to the axle and it would slow you down till you could catch your breath?

  An odd, whirring noise draws his attention to small black disks like mushrooms rising from the ground and it begins to rain. By the time he understands that the watering system has come on, he’s wet. No point in moving now, even if he could. He turns his face up to the sky and sits, watching the slow unchanging arc of the Pacific Wheel through a spray of water. The ground softens under him, the mud soaking through his Stefano Ricci slacks. The cycle only lasts a few minutes and then shuts off abruptly. The black mushrooms disappear as if sucked into some underground bunker.

  The wind off the ocean is cold now, and he begins to shiver.

  The bottle falls from his hand and he pulls his knees up like shield, rests his forehead there. His grief has now passed beyond the loss of Kevin, Amanda, of Dennis, of Suzanne. Beyond the fact that his career is in the crapper. Beyond the knowledge that Wyn is surely gone by now and Brownie has died, and that he’s going to die, too. Just not soon enough.

  Water drips out of his hair, down his face, and he begins to weep, thin cold tears.

  Vaguely aware of voices, movement, he raises his head just enough to see a group of men coming towards him, now several yards away. Talking, laughing, abruptly going silent as they notice him. Their voices drop to whispers. Then,

  “Hey…are you okay?”

  Why does everyone keep asking him that? Stupid fucking question. He’s drunk, wet, muddy, just on the verge of getting sick. Sure, he’s great.

  “Yeah.”

  “Can we call anyone for you? A cab?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Matthew?”

  He squints at the group of unfamiliar faces till one comes into focus. Gabe Cleveland. Shit.

  “I’m fine.”

  “The hell you say.” He steps closer. “Come on, I’ll give you a ride back to Alan’s.”

  “No. I just…”

  Just what? Lost his car? Ran out of pills? Drank too much? F
orgot how to write? Killed two people? Fucked up his life? All of the above?

  “Damnation, you’re soaked, Matthew. Are you sick?”

  As if in answer, he turns his head just in time to keep from vomiting on himself.

  “I’m not leaving you here.” Gabe hands something to one of the others. “Rick, could you go get my car please?”

  At some point he’s lifted from behind by several pairs of hands. He tries to fight, swinging one arm loosely, but his limbs seem to be rubberized and don’t respond to directions from his brain. He can’t talk. His tongue has grown too big for his mouth.

  He can’t see the Ferris wheel any more.

  He slept folded in thirds. He’s on a couch covered in something slick. Plastic. He pushes himself into a sit. Both shoes, caked in mud, sit on a pile of newspapers on the floral patterned rug. He’s wearing one sock, still a little damp. His mouth feels like a beach at low tide.

  “Mornin’, Matthew.”

  He stares at the blindingly white smile. He sighs. “Gabe.”

  “Don’t worry I still respect you.”

  He looks up sharply and Cleveland laughs. “Reckon I shouldn’t joke before caffeine.”

  The coffee is hot and strong, cut with steaming milk. It’s about the best thing in his short-term memory. Gabe sits in a delicate looking chair across the coffee table.

  “Where’s your vehicle?”

  “Somewhere off La Brea.”

  Raised eyebrows. “La Brea?” How’d you get over to the pier?”

  “La Metro.”

  “Sounds like an interesting evening.”

  “Any chance of getting some more coffee?”

  In a few minutes Gabe returns with the pot and refills both their cups.

  “Thanks.” He takes a slow, breathy sip. “And thanks for last night. Although I’ve slept in bathtubs that were more comfortable.”

  Gabe looks smug. “It’s a Queen Anne chesterfield. Horsehair cushions. Not really designed for passing out.”

  “Why didn’t you just leave me at Alan’s?”

  “You were dead weight, son. I didn’t think I could get you up the stairs. And I didn’t want to wake everyone up at 2 AM. They frown on that sort of thing in his neighborhood. You should really speak to Alan about installing an elevator.” Cleveland sips his coffee. “How about some breakfast?”