by Robert Ward
“Hey, Dr. Bobby,” Garrett said. “I see that old pal of yours, the Jew boy, Rudy? I hear he’s got his own radio show.”
Bob said nothing.
“Hey, that’s not all he’s got,” Geiger said. “I hear he’s got Bobby’s ex-wife … the gorgeous Miss Meredith.”
Bob glowered at them.
“Ohhh, I think he’s getting mad,” Garrett said.
“I’m getting scared,” Geiger said.
“Fuck you both, officers.”
“No, but Bobby,” Garrett said, “how come you ain’t got a show? I think you should have one. Could be called The Saint. You could dispense advice to the coloreds and the immigrants around here about how to achieve sainthood.”
“First, you gotta lose all your money gambling,” Geiger said. “That way you remain pure as the driven snow.”
That one hit Bob hard. How the fuck did they know about that? Ah Christ, what was he thinking, around here, everybody knew everything.
“Then you gotta live in a shithole house, ‘cause saints can’t have nice pads,” Garrett said.
“And no nookie,” Geiger said. “You gotta get no nookie at all.”
“You guys done with your comedy routine?” Bob said.
“Sure, Dr. Bobby,” Geiger said. “For now. Have a nice jog.”
They headed back to their car, laughing as they shut the doors. Bob turned away from the street and ran slowly across the frozen baseball diamond, into the park. As he ran he began to feel a pain in the pit of his stomach. In the old days, when he was a respected member of the community, the cops wouldn’t have hassled him like that. Why? Because his old pals at Hopkins, and in the radical community, wouldn’t let them get away with it.
But that was another world. Now they knew he was alone, weakened. They could do anything they wanted to him. And who was going to back him? No one. He was an animal cut out of the pack.
It was almost as if he were a criminal, he thought. Some street punk … but in a way it was worse because a criminal, like Ray Wade, for example, had his own crew, his own network. The cops didn’t mess with Ray like they did him. Why? Because they had more respect for a criminal than they did an idealistic loser, like Bob. It was true. After all these years on the job, he had less power than a common street criminal. The idea was perverse, but instead of depressing him it made him laugh.
Maybe, he thought, he’d be better off if he actually were a criminal.
He laughed again and dismissed the idea. When you were desperate, hell, you were likely to think of some very weird shit.
CHAPTER FIVE
Thursday night was the only time he still felt alive. That was the night Bob played with his band, the Rockaholics, at the funky artists’ bar called the Lodge. Up on the small bandstand, Bob wailed away on lead guitar, doing the old blues and rockabilly tunes he’d loved since he was young. The group was made up of a middle-aged black drummer, Curtis Frayne, a fashionably bald, young bass player named Eddie Richardson, and a really good thirty-five-year-old Chinese organist/sculptor named Ling Ha. The Rockaholics played all the old tunes from the rockabilly catalog: “Be Bop a Lula,” “Woman Love,” “Blue Suede Shoes,” and “Honey Don’t.” They usually attracted a decent crowd and while he was up there on the stage at the end of the bar, riffing on his old Les Paul, Bob was transformed. The aches in his knees disappeared. The pain in his neck, which seemed to get sharper every day, didn’t bother him at all. These were the last good times, Bob thought, just about the only thing that pulled him from the depression and bitterness that strangled his mind.
But even this pleasure was imperiled. The problem with the Rockaholics was that nobody in the band really sang that well. A few years back, Bob had done a fair imitation of the old-time stars, Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent, and Eddie Cochran. But he couldn’t hit the high notes anymore and nobody else in the band was even half as good. Lately, there had been some complaints from the hip younger artists, and bikers, who drank and danced at the Lodge that the band’s limited song list had become too predictable. There was even some talk of getting a new and younger group, the Fliptones, as the house band. When Bob heard this mutinous idea, he felt panic rise in his chest. Losing the gig was unthinkable. Something had to be done about finding a real singer. So for the next three weeks the band tried out prospective leads. They were a motley crew, starting with a huge truck driver named Jerry Jim Marx, whose act consisted of screaming streams of obscenities into the mike (“Fuck me, eat me!!”). Next was a skinny little punkette of a woman named Dukey Thorn who was covered in tattoos. She looked cool, like many of the artists themselves, and for a minute Bob was hopeful. But then she sang. Any relationship between Dukey’s caterwauling voice and the song’s melody was purely coincidental. Finally, there was a big black woman, a computer techie who worked at the ESPN Zone, named Dee Dee Wallingham. She claimed to love “old-time” rock, but sang every song like Celine Dion, her chubby fist tightened over her heart. Her voice was a high-pitched wail, and she managed to turn even “Knock on Wood” into a ballad.
Things looked desperate until one rainy night, just an hour before their gig was scheduled to start. Bob was hanging out at the Lodge, doing the sound check with Curtis and the already half-wasted Dave McClane.
“Hey,” Dave said, pouring down his fifth glass of Evan Williams bourbon. “Check it out. I’m the world’s oldest roadie.”
“And the world’s best,” Bob said.
Dave gave Bob his sweet, appreciative smile and Bob gave him a thumbs-up. How old was Dave anyway? A couple of years older than Bob and heading for the barn. Bob wondered if Dave had any money. That was a subject that never came up and sometimes it irritated him. Dave knew all about Bob’s financial ruin but offered little information about his own situation. At one time, maybe eight or nine years ago, Dave seemed to be doing pretty well, even published a couple of magazine pieces in GQ, and there was talk of a book contract for his “working-class” novel. But somehow the book never got finished. And when Bob remembered the little he’d read of it, he figured that maybe it was a good thing. The characters, one of whom was obviously based on Bob, were all idealized caricatures of working stiffs. Noble workers against evil bosses. The old social realism of the lamest and most obvious kind. Yes, Bob decided as he checked his amp, it was probably a good thing that Dave didn’t publish it. The critics would have raked him over the coals. This way he could still harbor the fantasy that he was too sensitive for the cruel world of commercial book publishing.
“Hey Bobby,” Dave said, talking into the mike, his glasses glaring from the house lights on the stage. “This level good for you?”
“Great, Dave. Now if you could only fucking sing.”
Dave laughed and did a little Elvis imitation through the mike.
“Hey, hey, hey, I’m all shook up.”
He shook his belly, which was starting to hang over his thick leather belt. Bob looked up and saw Lou Anne Johnson coming out of the kitchen with a cup of chili in her hand. She looked up at Dave, who smiled nervously at her and suddenly burst into his own little rockabilly song.
“Hey hey, there’s a girl Lou Anne. She’s so good looking she could kill a man. Lou, Lou, Lou, Lou Anne, I need you, baby, doncha unnerstan’!”
Lou Anne’s mouth dropped open as Dave finished up with a little pelvis swivel, and dropped creakily to one knee.
“Whoa, check him out,” Curtis said, bringing a beer from the bar.
Bob laughed as Lou Anne put her chili down on a table, then ran up onstage and gave Dave a hug.
“My own local Elvis,” she said.
“Damn,” Dave said. “If I had known I was gonna get this kind of reaction I woulda started singing a year ago.”
Bob laughed and waved at him. Oh man, he loved the old Lodge, had since the day he first started hanging out here. It was one of the true benefits of not moving out to the burbs. Out there, there weren’t any hangouts. Everybody was home playing computer games. But here at the Lodge, in
good old downtown Baltimore, you had characters. People like the Finnegan Brothers, two bikers who supplied the hood with grass, speed, and coke. (Not that Bob used the stuff himself anymore. He was terrified of a heart attack.) They were scary dudes, even just sitting around half-wasted like they were now. He looked at them sprawled in their back corner seats, dressed in their leathers. They were creepy, yeah, but he needed those kinds of creeps. Besides, they were loyal to the guys in the hood. Once when some dudes from Belair Road had come around the Lodge to mess people up, the Finnegan Brothers had beaten them senseless and driven them back to their own neighborhood. He felt a kind of bond with them, the kind that he would never have experienced out in posh Roland Park. And there were wild artists like Tommy Morello, the steel sculptor, who was showing in New York, as well as Baltimore. And Gabe DeStefano, the poet who only wrote poems about boats in Chesapeake Bay. Sure the poems were bad, but he loved the kid—and his crazy idea that Baltimore was sacred—just the same. The Lodge was his spiritual home, he thought, and if he couldn’t play here anymore, man, he just didn’t know….
As Bob took a long sip of Jack Daniel’s and tried to banish the evil thoughts from his mind, the front door opened and a very wet woman came hustling in out of the rain.
Bob looked up, and felt something happening in his chest. Jesus, she was something … she had thick blonde hair and the most beautiful, sensual lips. And her skin … he hadn’t seen anything like it before. It was soft and white, and her nostrils flared a little, and her eyes … Christ, he’d never seen eyes like those. They were small, almond-shaped, and green. They seemed to hold a secret, or a promise.
She placed the steel tip of her open umbrella on the floor, shook it a little, looked around, and smiled nervously.
“Hi,” she said shyly, looking at Bob, then quickly away. “My name’s Jesse Reardon. I waitress down at Bertha’s and I heard you all need a singer for your band.”
Bob looked at Dave, who did a little Groucho Marx move with his eyebrows.
“I’m Bob Wells,” Bob said. “Do you have any experience?”
“Sure,” Jesse said, smiling at him. “I sang with a band for a little bit in West Virginia. Back in Beckley. Called the Heartaches?”
Bob loved her smoky voice, the way she seemed to be asking him if he’d ever heard of her old band. There was something just so damn lovable about her.
“Rock ‘n’ roll?” Bob said. He feared she was a country singer, which just wouldn’t cut it with the hip artists at the Lodge.
“Sure,” Jesse said. “Some blues, too. If you want I could, you know, sing something?”
Bob nodded, smiled hopefully at Curtis, who nodded.
“Where’s Ling and Eddie?”
“Out in the kitchen,” Curtis said. “Stealing food.”
“Well, go get ‘em,” Bob said. “We want to give Miss Reardon here a chance to sing.”
Bob turned to Dave, who looked at him with a childish excitement on his face. Jesus, she is so damn good looking, Bob thought. If she can only sing …
He helped her off with her soaking raincoat and folded it neatly over a chair. She wore a black sweater and blue jeans and a red ruby ring. Bob looked at her cheekbones, the curve of her lips, her small, perfect breasts. He felt his heart jump into his throat, and he silently told himself to cool down. From the kitchen the other band members filed out. Ling was eating an egg sandwich and drinking a beer. Eddie had a crab cake with saltines. Both of them checked her out, and Bob could feel the electricity in the room.
“What would you like to sing?” Bob said.
She looked around at the holiday lights that were still strung over the bar, smiled at him slyly, and said, “How about ‘Blue Christmas’?”
“Yeah,” Bob said. “That’s a good one.”
“You gonna sing it like Elvis?” Ling said.
“Un-uh,” Jesse said, as she took the steps and grabbed the mike. “Charles Brown.”
Bob looked at Ling and they both laughed. The lady knew Charles Brown….
“All right,” Eddie Richardson said, nodding to her. “Let’s do it.”
Bob waited for Curtis to hit the bass drum for the downbeat, then opened with a short, blistering blues hook. Next to him Jesse Reardon leaned into the microphone but hesitated as though she was too scared to sing. Then she looked at Bob, who nodded and smiled, as if he had total confidence in her. She shut her green eyes, opened her mouth, and began.
The effect was immediate and stunning. Jesse Reardon’s voice was smoky, seemed to be crushed with heartache. Bob felt a jolt of electricity run up his back. He turned to look at Curtis, who had a smile big enough to light the entire club. Jesse sang on, doing the song a second time and Bob noticed Dave and Lou Anne rocking back and forth in perfect time at the front table, a huge smile on Dave’s face.
At the song’s guitar break, Bob ripped out a blistering solo … causing Jesse to smile at him, then look away. She grinded her hips in a subtle but sexy way and sang the last line again.
I’ll have a blue, blue, blue Christmas.
The band worked up into a tight, screaming crescendo and Jesse gave a low, hot moan, “Oh yeeeah,” as the tune ended. The bartender, Jimmy Jackowski, a big Pole who usually didn’t much care for the band, looked up at the stage and said, “Fuckin’ A, now that’s music.”
Jesse Reardon looked a little embarrassed.
“I was a little off in the timing because I haven’t done this for a while. I could do another one, if you want?”
“No need,” Bob said.
Jesse’s face fell as she looked down at the floor.
“Oh well,” she said. “Thanks for the chance.”
Bob looked at the other band members, who all nodded their heads at once.
“You want the gig, you got it,” he said.
“Oh my God,” she said. “Really?”
“Really,” Bob said. “We don’t have to hear any more. That was totally cool. What do you say?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I say oh yeah.”
“Welcome to the Rockaholics,” Ling said.
“Thanks,” Jesse said. “I feel like I just won American Idol.”
There was a cheer from some leather-jacketed art students in the back of the bar, and suddenly Bob was hugging Jesse Reardon and feeling the warmth of her body, her lovely breasts crushing against his chest. “Let’s do another tune,” Curtis said. “You know ‘Tell Mama’?”
Jesse bit her bottom lip, smiled from the corner of her mouth, and said:
“Tell Mama all about it, baby!”
Everyone laughed and Bob screamed into the lead, as the band kicked in behind their new lead singer.
That night the new lineup, ragged and unrehearsed as it was, was a huge hit. And Bob Wells heard himself play better, tougher, tighter than he had in twenty years. The crowd went wild. Old and Young Finnegan grabbed Lizzie Littman, the porn filmmaker, and danced on the bar. Tommy Morello picked up Lou Anne Johnson, twirled her around, and tossed her to Dave, who caught her and crashed to the floor. Gabe DeStefano was so thrilled he wrote five really bad poems about boats and the bay. Even old, drunken Wyatt Ratley, a burn victim from a fire at Larmel Steel, and one of Bob’s patients, got up and did a kind of clog dance with two sexy Maryland Institute girls who’d stopped by. At the end of the night, the band was called back for four encores, and even after three whiskeys and five beers, Bob was barely tired at all. In fact, he hadn’t felt this good since … well, since his old street-fighting days.
The only blight on the evening was that the music was so loud, and so good, that it attracted some street people who were hanging out outside the front door.
After trying and failing to come in the front door, 911 and two of his gutter pals got in through a back window, and started a fight right in the middle of “Money.”
Dave McClane intercepted them as they tried to leap onto the dance floor, and Nine immediately kicked him in the balls. Dave fell back right into Lou Anne’s waiti
ng arms, howling in pain. Old and Young Finnegan quickly restored order, however, by throwing Nine and his smelly buddies bodily out into the street. Other than that, things rocked at the Lodge in a way they hadn’t for a long time.
As they packed up their amps and guitars at 3:00 A.M., Bob thought about the old Dinah Washington song: “What a Difference a Day Makes.” She had it dead right, he thought. His life looked considerably brighter the minute Jesse had walked through the door.
CHAPTER SIX
During the next few weeks, Bob tried hard not to think of Jesse Reardon. He tried not to think of her lips, her breasts. He tried not to think of the way she swayed into the mike, or the smell of her perfume so close to him as he leaned into her, singing harmony on “Rainy Night in Georgia.” He tried to forget her little half smile, and her laugh … so fully alive … so wonderful … God help him.
He tried to forget her because he was sure, absolutely sure, that she must be seeing a guy, though none ever showed up at any of the Lodge gigs. Then Dave told him that he’d heard that Jesse had been married to a redneck house painter named Dwight Reardon who’d gotten hooked on pills and booze and was living in the street.
Which meant she was free, but not for long. Every man at the Lodge was hitting on her. Christ, she’d caused a sensation. He had to do something, make a move….
But he did nothing. Doubt had overtaken him. He was twelve years older than she was, and not in the greatest of shape. What shot did he have?
None.
Who was he kidding?
But still, the way she sang with him onstage, the way she leaned into him. Was it really all just part of the act?
Christ, he had told himself, told everybody, that he was through with women. Been there. Done that.
But from the moment she had walked in out of the rain he was a goner.
As the first days of spring bloomed across the city, Bob Wells alternated between wild hope and total despair. On some nights, after playing with Jesse at the Lodge, he knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that she loved him. Wasn’t it obvious in her every stare, the way she worked with him onstage, pouting her sensual lips at him, touching him as she danced by. And how about afterward, at the late-night party with Dave McClane and Lou Anne, and Ray Wade and his wild mom, Dorsey? All of them drinking shots and laughing until two or three in the morning like they were young again. It was obvious to everyone there that she was crazy about him.
