Sweeter Life

by Tim Wynveen

  After she fell asleep, he tiptoed to the living room and sat with his guitar, trying once again to squeeze some magic from his five found notes. Maybe it was fatigue, maybe it was luck, but as the night wore on, as the city at last grew still, the notes shook off their fixation with the present tense and began to voice a few quiet suggestions about the future. It seemed to him the most exquisite magic to follow that musical line forward, note after note, chord after chord, and feel the past stirring within him.

  Next morning, Cyrus called a keyboard player he knew, Pete Marone, and set up an afternoon get-together to fool around on the new changes he’d discovered. Pete wasn’t the best musician in the world, and he knew it, but that was his saving grace. He kept his playing simple and clean and never got so cozy with anything that you couldn’t talk him out of it. While Pete ran through the pattern, Cyrus improvised—a riff here, a melody there, a couple of breathless solos. After a few minutes, he stopped. At home the chords had seemed so promising, but when it came to playing overtop them, they sounded flat and uninspiring. A drummer and bass player would help, but still …

  Pete suggested they slow the tempo. He played a few bars to demonstrate, not only slower, but longer on each chord, changing not every bar but every two bars, with a soft, pulsing rhythm. Immediately the progression sounded dreamier, the suspensions more pronounced and yet more delicate.

  Cyrus leaned back and closed his eyes, the chords sounding so different and beautiful that he was happy to let them ring out on their own. As he listened, a note became evident, the one note that was missing, so he played it, a single ringing note that carried over two full chord changes and decayed into the third. From there other notes presented themselves: half phrases, recapitulations, then longer and more sinuous melodies that felt to him like a green and growing thing, some kind of organic bloom.

  Pete flashed him a thumbs-up. “Very cool. What do you call it?”

  And Cyrus laughed and said, “ ‘The Bridge,’ I guess. I guess I have to call it ‘The Bridge.’ ”

  For the next few weeks they got together every afternoon. Cyrus recorded every rehearsal, and every night he sat down with his guitar and played along with the tapes, letting his mind and his fingers wander until he found something else to interest him. The ideas came rapidly then, from places deep inside, as though some unreachable part of him had thawed. By the end of a month they had a dozen tunes so promising he could scarcely believe he was responsible for them.

  Ronnie returned to Toronto in mid-June, and Cyrus made him listen to all twelve tracks, which he did without tapping his foot or nodding his head, his concentration so intense he hardly seemed to breathe. As the tape finished, he opened his eyes and said, “An excellent beginning. I see now why you are excited.”

  Just like that, Cyrus’s good mood evaporated. “Beginning? But I’m blown away. This is so me.”

  Ronnie nodded. “Don’t take my comments the wrong way. I, too, am greatly impressed. I had no idea you had come so far. But you know, I believe I have more faith in you than you have in yourself. As good as this is, you have barely scratched the surface.”

  “But I’ve never played like this before. It’s all brand new.”

  “I agree. It is authentic music, my friend.”

  “But …”

  “But one should never mistake a personal triumph for an artistic one.”

  “I wouldn’t know what to change.”

  Ronnie got to his feet and began to pace the room. “With what you have here you could go out tomorrow and play any number of clubs such as our friend Sonny frequents. You might even get a small record contract. It is honest and heartfelt music. But I don’t want you to play to a hundred people a night, Cyrus, I want you to play to thirty thousand. I want you to sell millions of records. And not for the money. I have enough of that to suit my tastes.”

  Ronnie stopped at the window and looked at the traffic streaming by. “We all have a talent of some kind, and mine is a simple one: I can hear the music in people that is waiting to get out. To be honest, I don’t know what I mean when I say that. But it is what I feel. With Jim, and even more with you, I can hear what is waiting to be heard. You will be magnificent.”

  “Sonny’s way better than I’ll ever be.”

  “Do you think so? To me there is always something missing from his playing. He is too much the professional, perhaps, to create truly beautiful music. But when I saw you that evening on the bridge, I knew that you had what it takes.”

  Ronnie turned from the window and folded his arms across his chest. “Most people,” he continued, “are full of dull matter. They are heavy and inert and terribly boring. A few are born lighter than the rest, and it is easy to think they are destined to do the greatest good, the best work. But from my experience, it seldom happens that way. They are not accustomed to the sacrifices required to accomplish the extraordinary. You belong to a third group, my boy, those who have suffered great losses, their insides polished by sorrow. Because Nature abhors a vacuum, each fills up again, some with bitterness, some with fear, and some—like you, like Jim—with music.”

  Cyrus didn’t know where to look. With a shrug of his shoulders, he said, “I still don’t know what I’d change. I like it all so much.” He stared at his knees, worked his jaw.

  Ronnie was tempted to compromise, if only to see him smile again, but that would be a disservice to them both. Instead he carried a chair over and sat facing Cyrus. He said, “I have been thinking recently about the origins of music—a fascinating subject, really—and it is my belief that the whole thing goes back to the voice. Think of women talking in a foreign language, a shepherd calling his sheep, or the sounds of lovers, and it is not such a big jump to Maria Callas or Little Richard. Yes?”

  “I guess.”

  Ronnie leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, and stared at the threadbare carpet. Outside, a car honked maniacally. Across the street a baby wailed. And Ronnie said, “It is too mathematical, what you have done, Cyrus. Talk to me. Make me understand.”

  EURA HAD BEEN IN HER ROOM ALL NIGHT, working a little with ink and pin. She hated what happened to Cyrus when he talked with Ronnie, the look of nervous excitement that came into his eyes, the look of someone who, foolishly, had been encouraged to believe too much in himself. At times like that he reminded her of men she didn’t like, politicians at the podium or, worse, the men at the Red Lantern with their devouring, possessive look.

  She still had nightmares of the Red Lantern and that tiny stage where she moved her hips to the beat—the “fuck music” as the other girls called it—breathing in the sour perfume of cheap champagne and longing, while she looked out on the dull red shadows of the club, the greasy leather booths, the escorts, the drinks, the furtive and predictable choreography of hands and lips, one thing leading to the next with a nearly scientific precision that ended always with the steady parade of silhouettes from booth to private room. It was there at the Red Lantern in downtown Detroit that she first met Ronnie Conger. By then she had already changed her name. She had lost everything else, a new identity seemed a minor concession.

  After Muskegon, she and Alexander had stayed in Chicago long enough to be granted asylum. Then they returned to Detroit where Alexander knew a man who knew a man who would help them get established. Right from the start she thought this was a mistake. She hated the ruins everywhere, the unhappiness. But he was so sure. He had already begun to think like an American that anything was possible.

  The man was named Jan Kovacs. He had a black bottlebrush moustache and a gold tooth that glinted when he laughed, which was often. He owned Rasputin’s, a bar in the suburbs where she was offered work as a waitress. She wore a skimpy costume that made her blush; and when she complained to Alexander about the fat businessmen pawing her and slipping twenty-dollar bills into her cleavage when she bent down with her tray, he asked her to be patient. He would speak to Jan. For now they could use the money. Of his own work he said little, only that he an
d Kovacs had plans.

  One night Alexander didn’t come home to their room above Rasputin’s. The next day Jan knocked on the door with news that Alexander had been found floating in the Detroit River with a bullet through the back of his head. A gangland execution, the police were saying.

  Jan held her while she cried, but said nothing. When her sobs began to abate, he gave her the night off. He would check on her later, he promised. There were things they needed to discuss. Around midnight, he arrived with a bottle of whiskey and some takeout chicken. “I figured you might need something,” he said gruffly.

  She quietly thanked him and fetched two glasses, conscious of the way he was looking at her, the way he had always looked at her, as though she were a sleek and shiny gun in a velvet case. She brought him his drink then backed away, preferring to stand on the other side of the room. She was not hungry.

  “I hate to bring it up at a time like this,” he said, waving a drumstick in the air, “but you and Alex owe me a lot of money. And now that he’s dead, I’m wondering how you figure to pay.”

  She froze. “What is this money? If you ask me I am the one owed money. You have not paid me for last week.”

  “Anna,” he said with a kind of rueful chuckle, “Anna, Anna, Anna. Where have you been?” And with that he explained that Alex had borrowed twenty thousand dollars a week ago and promised to pay thirty thousand in one month’s time.

  She shook her head woozily and put aside her whiskey as if that were to blame. “I do not understand this.”

  He refilled his glass and stood very close to her, backing her into a corner. “Very simple,” he said. “Alexander had plans. He came to me for money, and because I have a big heart, I gave it to him.” He shrugged as if this were self-evident. With his left hand he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “His big plan was a big mistake,” he continued. “I have friends with the police who say it was a drug deal. Something went wrong, someone got double-crossed, and now we have this situation.” He traced her jawline with the edge of his glass.

  “If you have lost money, it has nothing to do with me,” she protested, trying unsuccessfully to move away from him.

  Again that chuckle, the shaking head. “Anna, I do not lose money. Ever.” Then he pinned her to the wall and kissed her roughly on the mouth, squeezing her breasts and bottom until she managed to claw her way free.

  “Get out of here,” she said through gritted teeth. “Leave me alone. Can you not see I need some time to think?”

  In response, he flopped on her bed. In a dark but playful tone, he said, “Let me tell you a bedtime story.”

  “Get out of here or I will call the police.”

  He laughed at that. “Don’t act so high and mighty. You’re not my type.” He slapped the mattress and said, “Sit. I’ll tell you a story.”

  “I am better over here.”

  “Suit yourself.” He focused his gaze on the ceiling, enjoying himself very much. “Poor Alexander. He was going to be a big shot. He had been a fixer all his life with his Little Circus. He made things go right. And this was something he was proud of. He told me so himself. What he didn’t understand was that America is not like home. And the real world is not like the circus. He trusted the wrong people, Anna, and now he is dead. A criminal. The police found drugs in his rented car, not to mention a stolen gun. Such a waste.”

  She slumped against the door and closed her eyes, her fear and sadness rising by equal degrees. Kovacs kept staring at the ceiling, as if the most enjoyable movie were taking place up there. “Now here is the sad part. He left his friend Anna holding the bag. Seems she didn’t know about his big score. And that’s too bad. You know why?”

  Unable to speak, she just shook her head.

  “Because the FBI knows that Alexander wasn’t alone. Their records tell them he defected to this country with a beautiful woman by the name of Anna Cernik. From what I’ve heard, the police are a little upset with these two. Imagine, they throw themselves on the mercy of the USA and then get into this kind of trouble. There is nothing Americans hate more than drug dealers.”

  “I had nothing to do with this.”

  “I believe you, Anna. I do. But between you and me, I don’t think they’ll wait for your explanation. The minute they find you, they’ll throw your exquisite ass in jail and ask questions later. And then what? No one will give two shits whether you rot in prison. People like you, with no one to fight for them, they get lost in the shuffle. I’ve seen it happen.”

  She slid to the floor where she rested her head on her knees. Kovacs stretched luxuriously. “I’m the only friend you’ve got right now, and you owe me thirty grand. So let me tell you how it’s going to be. Rasputin’s? You’re out of here. This place is too legit for the likes of you. You need a place to hide for a while.”

  He helped her pack, then drove her downtown to another of his clubs, the Red Lantern, one of the few buildings that remained standing in the whole desolate block. “You can flop here,” he said.

  She looked at the sign out front, a martini and a naked woman in red neon. The streets were filled with litter and broken glass. The few people on the sidewalk looked like figures from a nightmare.

  “Go talk to Marie,” he said. “She’s expecting you.”

  “I don’t know,” she said wearily.

  And he grabbed her by the hair and twisted her around to face him. “What I fucking know is that you owe me money. Understand? Now I’ve got a few ideas how you can work off a bit of that debt, but for now you can start with a bit of dancing. Got it? Shake that money-maker, girl.”

  So she danced as Ava Muscova from eleven at night until five in the morning, a half-hour on and a half-hour off, seven days a week. During breaks she could rest, or she could mingle and make a little extra cash. Fifty percent went to Kovacs off the top. Even so, she fell further and further behind. “Simple math,” he explained. “What you pay me doesn’t even cover the interest, doll. Time to think of more lucrative employment.”

  She knew what he meant, had known all along it would come to that—working the leather booths, the back rooms, the special situations. She knew there would be violence if she didn’t agree. She knew her life was worth nothing to him or to anyone.

  And then a miracle happened. Ronnie Conger appeared at the Red Lantern, her own personal saviour, and waved her to his table after she had finished dancing. He whispered in her ear about a new life, and with nothing left to lose, she ran out on Kovacs and her debt. Ronnie gave her a new name, Europa Del Conte, and helped her get new papers. It was a leap of faith, of course, but it worked out. Her life became her own again.

  So you would think she’d have only good thoughts about Ronnie. But she did not trust him, really. Just as good men are sometimes tempted to do bad things, bad men sometimes do good, she believed. And perhaps more than anything, she disliked Ronnie because he could, with a look, remind her of everything she most dearly wanted to forget. She often wished that Cyrus was not so impressed by Ronnie. She wished they could just go back to the two of them struggling together. She did not like this new world they were entering.

  NEXT MORNING, RONNIE LEFT his hotel early and brought them fresh croissants and café au lait for breakfast. He’d found fresh-cut flowers. He placed the New York Times on the table with all the significance of the stone tablets of Moses. “I am so happy this morning,” he said. “And so excited.” He made Cyrus and Eura sit while he served them. While they ate, he suggested it was time to put together a proper band, with keyboard, bass, drums and a vocalist.

  Cyrus balked. “I thought we were going to be strictly instrumental.”

  “Is the voice not an instrument? Do we not want music that sings?”

  “But Ronnie …”

  He held his hand up. “On this point I am firm. These beautiful melodies you are creating will only become more beautiful when you have shaped them for the human voice.”

  “But we don’t have lyrics.”

  “Nor wo
uld we want any. Trust me on this, there must be singing. Your guitar will conquer all in its path, my friend, but the human voice must lead the way.”

  After breakfast, Ronnie returned to New York, but not before writing a cheque for ten thousand dollars so they could rent a rehearsal space and begin to pay musicians. “The secret to all good writing,” he said, “is rewriting. What separates the true artist from the amateur is the burning desire to get it exactly right. I don’t want to hear that this is the best you can do, because the best is only the beginning.”

  Later that night Cyrus and Eura went to a shish kebab place for souvlaki and french fries and a few glasses of beer. Shortly after they returned home, the phone rang. It was Isabel and she was crying. “Come quick,” she said. “Please.”

  THREE

  Isabel had observed a number of transformations over the past few years: tatty fixer-uppers had become cozy family homes; scrub farmland had blossomed with subdivision and strip mall; the town of Wilbury had lost its reputation as a rural backwater and had become the community of choice for many upper-income retirees from Hounslow; and there was her own remarkable metamorphosis from downtrodden farmwife to real estate mogul. She had four other agents working under her now. She taught a course at St. Clair College, her alma mater. She was a big wheel on the Chamber of Commerce, her opinion sought on most matters of civic importance.

  Even so, the recent change in Hank surprised her. All it took, seemingly, was a handful of shirts and ties, a few lightweight suits, a regular haircut and a reason to get up in the morning. Six weeks ago she had offered him a job in her office going to the bank and the post office and the printer, sending faxes, keeping on top of all the piddly details that everyone was too frazzled to deal with. The job was nothing to get excited about, but it had worked a kind of magic. Hank was suddenly focused, making some money of his own, off the streets and out of trouble, and he had truly been a help to them all. Isabel wasn’t the only one in town to notice the change in him. People who had previously given him a wide berth were now going out of their way to be sociable. Even his parole officer had been impressed. It seemed a real and true success story, and they all took a bit of the credit.