by Lewis Shiner
Cole had brought a boom box and some homemade cassettes that Joe had looked through on the first day. Half of them were something called the Anthology of American Folk Music, which Joe found screechy and weird. “It took twenty years to grow on me,” Cole said, “but now I love it.”
“We don’t have twenty years. What’s the rest of this? Doc Watson? Big Bill Broonzy? Leadbelly? Jean Ritchie?”
“They were Madelyn’s dad’s records. She let me have any of them I wanted if I sold the rest.”
“Clearly you are aiming at Casey Kasem’s American Top Forty by filling your head with this stuff.”
“Who should I be listening to? Britney Spears? Ricky Martin? The Backstreet Boys?”
Joe started to sing “Livin’ la Vida Loca.” Cole was not amused.
By the third night, driving back from dinner at a place called The Oasis, Cole said, “Maybe we should pack it in. This was not that good of an idea in the first place.”
“I feel like I let you down,” Joe said.
“It’s not your fault. It’s just me not wanting to let go, when the truth is I haven’t got it anymore. I’m washed up without ever having arrived.”
“I know the feeling,” Joe said. He’d had a couple of margaritas on the deck overlooking the lake and they’d loosened up his tongue. “That’s how I felt when I got my diagnosis.”
“Diagnosis? What the hell?”
“Two years ago,” Joe said. “Prostate cancer. They caught it early, but it was pretty aggressive and I had to have it out.”
“Jesus, man, how come you didn’t tell anybody?”
“It’s not something you want to talk about.” In fact he was already sorry he’d brought it up. “For almost a year after, I was in those adult diapers and I couldn’t get it up half the time. I wasn’t so sure I wanted to go on like that. But little by little it got better and after a year I was pretty much back to normal.”
“Pretty much? I mean, forgive me for prying, but I always wondered what it was like, after.”
“I can still get hard, still have an orgasm. But nothing comes out, you know? Because all that stuff came from the prostate. So you don’t get that swelled-up feeling, like you’re going to explode.” He shrugged. “It’s still pretty nice.”
He couldn’t seem to shut up. “The thing is, I hadn’t been with that many women. I’d always been faithful to Peggy, and I felt ripped off, getting the cancer before I was fifty, not knowing if I was going to be okay after, feeling like it was my last chance. So a month before the operation, I started playing around with this woman I knew, a court reporter, a lot younger than me, not beautiful, not an intellectual, a real flirt, sexy in this obvious kind of way. And Peggy found out, and went to live at her mama’s, and I felt horrible and broke up with that other woman, so in that last couple of weeks before the surgery I was all alone, thinking a lot of pretty terrible thoughts, hoping I wouldn’t wake up from the anesthetic, that kind of thing.
“The day before the operation, I found those songs that you and me did for my wedding. I took the tape to a guy and had him transfer them to cd, and I sent them overnight mail to Peggy and told her how sorry I was, because I was pretty sure that if I didn’t die on the table I’d find another way shortly thereafter, and I didn’t want to leave things the way they were.
“Well, long and short, when I came out of the anesthetic, Peggy was there. So that’s why I agreed to this dumb idea of trying to write songs together, because we did pull it off at least once before, and I owe you for that.”
Nobody said anything for the rest of the drive to the cabin, night coming down fast, so it was full dark by the time Cole pulled into the driveway. Instead of getting out of the truck, though, Cole shut off the engine and just sat there, looking straight ahead through the windshield. “When me and Alex were in San Francisco for the so-called Summer of Love,” he said, “I was talking with this girl. She was telling me about the Human Be-In, which had happened back in January, where it really had been peace and love, and not Methadrine and overcrowding and hunger and cold. She said, ‘We thought it was the beginning, but it was already the end.’”
He looked up. The words, rhythmic and powerful, hung in the air. Joe grinned and Cole grinned back and then they both started to nod and laugh.
“Let’s go write a song,” Joe said.
*
Alex flew into LaGuardia and took a cab to Dave’s apartment, three blocks from the Dakota and Central Park. He called ahead on his new cell phone, an awkward contraption the size of a king-size Snickers bar.
It was Sallie who opened the door of the apartment. Alex had talked to her on the phone but only seen her in photos and the Woodstock movie. She was around Alex’s age, no longer svelte but still nicely curved, wearing jeans and a sweater and bunny slippers, her eyes crinkling when she smiled, and exuding more charisma than anyone Alex had ever seen. She took his hand in both of hers.
Dave came out of the kitchen in a white apron and said, “Alex, this is—”
“I think he figured it out,” Sallie said.
Dave looked at Alex’s face and said, “Beautiful, isn’t she?”
Alex struggled not to stare. “We have to get you on the road,” he said. “Just standing here makes me want to buy every record you ever made.”
Sallie laughed and said, “I do love my flattery. Don’t stop, either of you.”
Sallie poured the wine while Dave brought in stuffed mushrooms from the kitchen. Once they were all settled in the living room, Dave said, “Look, if you don’t mind, I’d like to fast forward to the feature attraction. I want you to hear this one song.”
The basic instrumentation was acoustic guitar, standup bass, piano and drums. The sound was spacious and raw—the snare buzzed in resonance with the low bass notes and Cole’s fingers squeaked on the strings. A lead guitar came and went and at one point a trumpet and sax played two measures low in the mix.
The song itself was medium tempo, the changes moving from major to minor to sevenths, from hope to sadness to resignation, the melody sweet, with an ache to it that came from the timbre of Cole’s voice.
The various elements combined to deliver a set of lyrics that quietly took Alex apart, like a lover’s fingers that knew instinctively where to find the pain. In a succession of vivid moments—huddled in a doorway on Haight Street at three am, caked with mud and stumbling with exhaustion on the road that led from Yasgur’s farm, listening to the evacuation of Saigon in a car that had run out of gas—the song picked apart all the dreams that had failed and yet, somehow, impossibly, it refused to let them go.
Alex couldn’t say anything when it was over, for fear that his voice would break. Eventually Dave said, “It’s not going to be a hit single. Kids these days are sick of hearing about the sixties. And what this is, really, is folk music, like I used to listen to in the Village. But… holy shit.”
Sallie said, “We’ve listened to it about thirty times. It gets better and better. I just love the sound that Dave got. It’s like you’re sitting right there in the room with them.”
“Cole knew exactly what he wanted,” Dave said. “This time I was smart enough not to argue. I think we can make some noise with this. Terry Gross’ll love it, we can get the npr crowd. It should get some great reviews.”
“Is there more?” Alex finally managed to say.
“There’s a whole album,” Dave said. “Three covers, a remake of ‘Laura Lee,’ then eight originals, all written with this T. J. Maynard guy. None of it maybe quite as good as ‘Already the End,’ but close.”
“When can I hear it?”
Dave smiled. “How about now?”
2000
Cole walked out onto the stage of the Wiltern Theater for a look. Four in the afternoon, 2000 empty red velvet seats. The vaulted ceiling barely visible, the ornate light fixtures turned off, the faux columns and filigree and polished wood dance floor in front of the proscenium all in shadow. It had been an Art Deco movie theater in the 1930
s, meticulously restored in the eighties, and now, clean, silent, and expectant, it made Cole feel like he was trespassing.
Sallie came up behind him. “You should see it when the lights are on,” she said. “It’s glorious.” She was whispering, and he could hear her perfectly.
“I’m going to have to step up my game,” Cole said.
He and Sallie were the opening acts on the first leg of a Tracy Chapman tour that would finish up in Anchorage on April 25, a week away. Chapman would then fly on to Europe without them, and Cole would go home to Austin and Sallie would go home to Dave Fisher.
The initial offer from Chapman’s organization had been for Cole to do a solo acoustic opener. Cole had understood that he was getting in the door on Sallie’s coattails, still he wanted to use the dream band from his album. Luke on standup bass. A drummer named Rick, with a snap in his wrist that reminded him of Gary Travis of The Chevelles. A jazz pianist who was into Eddie Palmieri and who hit the keys so hard that Cole called her by Palmieri’s old nickname, Rompetecla, the Breaker of Keyboards.
At the same time that Cole was making his record, Sallie had been cutting her own comeback in New York, Second Bloom, with her old sidemen Bernard Purdie, Chuck Rainey, and Cornell Dupree coming out of retirement as a favor to Dave, and Booker T. Jones filling in for the deceased Richard Tee. She couldn’t take them on the road, so Cole had talked her into using his band and letting him share.
Cole had never forgotten the way she dazzled him at Woodstock, had thought of it every time he heard her on the radio or saw one of her lps in a thrift store. When she walked into the Austin rehearsal studio that February, now more lioness than gazelle, when he saw the easy way she got his band to fall in love with her, when he heard how the years had added poise and wisdom to her voice, he understood that she’d only become more desirable over time. By that point he was in love with her himself.
The first time he’d said it to himself he hadn’t been serious. After three weeks in the close quarters of the tour bus, after thirteen shows where they’d duetted on “Quién será,” her singing the English lyrics and Cole the Spanish, as they transitioned from his part of the show to hers and he sang and played guitar behind her, it was no longer a joke. She laughed easily and listened with her full attention and gave credit to everybody but herself. Her mere presence was electrifying. Walking across the stage, she looked like the caress of her clothes against her skin was giving her pure sensual pleasure. She was two years older than Cole and looked five younger. She’d dropped ten pounds since the start of the tour and lately she’d been running with Cole every day. She was unselfconsciously physical, free with her hugs, touching him on the arm when she talked to him, on the face sometimes before she walked away, until Cole began to believe the attraction was mutual.
He’d overheard her on the phone with Dave and it certainly sounded like she was in love with him. Cole’s desire made its own excuses. Who knew what kind of arrangement they had while she was on the road. If she wanted him to respect her relationship, she had to make that clear. And so on. Especially when he was trying to get back to sleep in his narrow bunk after the bus’s squealing brakes had woken him up on some desolate stretch of Interstate.
So that Tuesday afternoon as they stood together in the Wiltern Theater and Sallie slipped her arm around his waist, he turned to her and very slowly leaned in to kiss her. She saw him coming. Her eyes had started to close. Then, at the last millisecond, she turned her face away.
“Oh, Cole,” she said, “no.”
Cole, restored to his senses, his face hot with shame, took a step back. “I’m so sorry.”
She grabbed for his hands and squeezed. “No, no, this is my fault. I really like you a lot, and admire you, and I’m definitely attracted to you. I’ve been acting like I could have those thoughts and there wouldn’t be any consequences. But the truth is that Dave is the only one for me.”
“He’s a lucky guy.”
“I think I’m the lucky one. But… oh God. This is going to be awkward now, isn’t it?”
“No,” Cole lied. “I’ll be fine. I just need to take a cold shower and recalibrate.”
He started to back away.
“Wait,” she said. “Can we go for a run first? It’ll do us both some good.”
*
In fact it was awkward. Cole’s stomach was fluttery when he moved up to the microphone to introduce her that night. “Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to an amazing singer, a woman who’s written some of the most enduring songs of her generation, the incredible Sallie Rachel…” As always, he swallowed the “Krupheimer” as the audience, at least the female portion of it, burst into applause and cheers. Sallie came out and hugged him as she always did, sweaty as he always was, and kissed him on the cheek. “Jeff Cole, everybody,” she said, her arm extended toward him as the applause for her continued, as if it were meant for him.
Cole was thinking he should step back to the harmony mike on stage left, but Sallie had made room for him at the lead mike that they had always shared before and as she motioned him forward she gave him a wink that no one else could see. He ignored the pang it evoked and stepped up, hit an E minor, and sang, «¿Quién será la que me quiera a mí?» the longing in the words and the melody hitting him hard.
After the first verse he stood aside and Sallie kicked off the English version, “Sway,” a big hit for Dean Martin in 1954, with less poignant lyrics. “When marimba rhythms start to play…”
By the end of the song they were side by side, Sallie’s hand on his shoulder, trading lines instead of verses, and she was so at ease with herself, so joyful in the music, that she brought Cole fully into the moment himself, until there was nothing in the universe except the song and the woman beside him. He was able to sustain the good feeling through the rest of her set, but in the dressing room after, staring out through the metal bars over the window, he felt bleak. He washed his face and armpits and put on fresh deodorant and a clean shirt, then sat with the band, head back and eyes closed, and waited for Tracy to finish her set.
The next night would be Berkeley, and Tracy’s tour manager had passed along an interview request from a dj named Jack Hardesty at San Francisco’s kfog fm. Cole had failed to recognize the name until the tour manager said, “He told me to mention Johnny Hornet and to tell you he loves the new record.”
Cole was pleased that Jack remembered him, though the words “Johnny Hornet” summoned all the pain of that time, all the possibilities that hadn’t worked out. Listening to “Laura Lee” with Janet over the phone. Learning that McLendon had pulled the single the same night that Cole ran away from home.
The memories were still bouncing around in his head as he dragged himself to the meet-and-greet in the basement “green room,” a long narrow space with green patterned wallpaper and black leather couches. He stayed in a close orbit around Sallie, if only because she drew a crowd of age-appropriate women, often beautiful and well-heeled. Cole had been celibate thus far on the tour, and was now prepared to reconsider that position.
He was deep in conversation with a woman named Teresa, fifties, slim, black-haired, with alert eyes and an intriguing mouth, when he looked up and saw Alex walking toward him, accompanied by a decidedly age-inappropriate knockout in a miniskirt and ribbed tank top, looking like an acid flashback to the Haight of 1967.
“Can you excuse me just one second?” he said to Teresa. “Don’t go away.”
He was unexpectedly happy to see Alex, and grabbed him in a bear hug. When he finally let go, Alex said, “You remember Gwyn.”
The last time he’d seen her had been fleetingly, at his father’s funeral, and she’d changed from an awkward teenager to a self-possessed woman. “I thought I did,” Cole said. “It looks like I was mistaken.”
She extended a long, narrow hand and Cole squeezed it gently. Then her cool got away from her and, eyes wide, she said, “Can I meet Sallie Rachel? I’m such a fan.”
He came up beh
ind Sallie as she was signing her umpteenth copy of Krupheimer that night and tapped her shoulder. “Sallie,” he said, “I want you to meet my best friend…”
He was unable to finish because of the look that passed between Sallie and Alex, a knowing smile just short of a wink, lasting a fraction of a second and revealing everything.
“Alex Montoya,” Alex said. “And this is my daughter Gwyn.”
“Hi. I’m Sallie.”
Cole took a step back, unable for the moment to process any of what he’d heard. He understood that Sallie was charming Gwyn as she charmed everyone. When he managed to tune in again, Sallie was saying, “You flew out here just to see Cole?”
“I know that’s hard to believe,” Alex said, ha ha, good old Alex, what a kidder. “You guys didn’t have a stop in Texas and I had some business out here anyway.”
Record company business? Cole wondered. He didn’t say it because the realization was still too new and he hadn’t figured out yet how he was going to deal with it.
“Can you guys get away for a while?” Alex said. “Maybe get something to eat?”
“Bad timing,” Cole said. “We’re in Berkeley tomorrow night and we’re hitting the road in a few minutes.”
Sallie was now looking at him curiously. It was barely midnight, and the bus wouldn’t leave for at least three hours.
Alex looked hurt. “Wow, that’s a tight schedule. It’s been a long time and I was hoping…”
“Next time,” Cole said, unsure how much longer he could keep up a good front. “Maybe in Austin or something.” He smiled with the bottom half of his face and said, “Got to run. See you.”
He walked away from their puzzled looks and found Teresa pouring a glass of cheap Chardonnay from the hospitality table. “Can we take a walk?”
