Sweeter Life

by Tim Wynveen

  “Sounds like you’ve got yourself another Jim.”

  “In a way, Nigel, in a way. A remarkable young guitarist named Cyrus Owen. And what I was wondering, old fellow, is if you still have the same set-up north of London.”

  “Hidey-Hole.”

  “Yes, exactly. You see, the more I think on it, the more I’m convinced that the route I took with Jim is the one I should follow again. Which means I will make an end around Hollywood and, if you are amenable, bring my boy over to make a record with you at the helm as soon as we can. Is that anywhere within the realm of the possible?”

  “Not only possible,” Nigel replied, “it’s guaranteed. When do we start?”

  They made plans to begin in May, and Ronnie hung up the receiver feeling light-headed. He had only meant to sound Nigel out, not make a firm commitment. He still hadn’t figured out how he would finance a project like this. Even with the discounts Nigel was sure to offer, a first-class recording would easily cost him the equivalent of a quarter of a million dollars.

  He decided to mention none of this to Cyrus and the others. He would speak to his accountant and banker first. He’d been burning through his savings at an astonishing rate, but he had an idea up his sleeve. It was time, perhaps, for another release from the Jimmy Waters vault of live recordings. If Ronnie played his cards right, he might rob Peter to pay Paul.

  A LAWYER, AN ACCOUNTANT AND A BANKER all sit in an office in New York one wintry afternoon, waiting for their client to arrive. When he walks in from his transcontinental flight looking pale and rumpled, he says, “I’ll get right to the point and tell you what I need.”

  And the lawyer, roughly the same age as his client (though appearing much younger, thanks to a loving wife, regular sleep and healthy diet), looks up and says, “I think I’d better tell you what you need.” He then proceeds to describe the court injunction that has just arrived and the pending lawsuit brought against RonCon Productions and Future Records by the Worldwide Church of Jim (hereinafter referred to as “The Church”), claiming damages and all past, present and future royalties deriving from the sale and airplay of LP, tape cassettes and any future sound reproduction devices hitherto unknown, on the unlawful and unlicensed musical compilation known as “The JimJams” (hereinafter referred to as “The Album”).

  And the client, this bleached-blond Scot (hereinafter referred to as “Ronnie”), looks left then right and laughs, a single bark of disbelief. “This must be some kind of a joke,” he says.

  No joke, the lawyer continues. The Church claims that the rights to The Album lie outside the existing agreement, and further, that The Album has been injurious to the reputation and effectiveness of The Church and its chief spokesman, one James Waters (hereinafter referred to as “Jim”), resulting in both emotional and financial hardship. As of noon tomorrow, Future Records must remove all copies of The Album from stores, retrieve all copies from radio stations and, failing that, inform such stations that they will be in contempt of court if they play The Album, in whole or in part, until the suit has been brought before the court and judgment rendered. Further to that, The Church is seeking damages of $10 million, above and beyond the royalties already collected and disbursed.

  Ronnie slumps into the nearest chair. “Can they do that?”

  “They have a case, but not a strong one. I would suggest they’re unlikely to win. But it could take years to sort out.”

  The accountant’s turn. “I have those figures you asked for, but in light of what I’ve just heard, I have to tell you they’re no longer worth much. A considerable part of this figure has the current earnings stream factored in, a large part of which, as you know, is driven by The ‘JimJams.’ ”

  “Meaning …”

  “That prior to this court injunction, RonCon had approximately one hundred thousand dollars in investable assets through a combination of short-term deposits and regular cash flow. Until this legal matter is settled, I would suggest a ballpark figure of sixty thousand might be achievable without seriously curtailing current operations.”

  “Sixty.”

  “Give or take.”

  Ronnie turns to the banker then. “Looks like it’s your lucky day.”

  The banker, another fine-looking young man, smiles thinly and says, “According to the proposal Brent brought me this morning, you are looking at a project of a quarter million dollars that you had planned to fund 60 percent, while the bank would extend a line of credit up to 40 percent of the amount. If I read you correctly, you now propose to fund a little more than 20 percent and are asking my bank to carry the remainder.”

  “That is pretty much the size of it, my estimable friend. I am offering you twice the business I had originally anticipated.”

  Again the banker smiles, and his smile is even thinner. “I believe, Mr. Conger, that that is more risk than my bank is willing to assume.”

  Ronnie looks down at his small freckled hands. “How many times have I borrowed money from your bank? A hundred? A thousand?”

  “That’s not the issue here.”

  “No? Then perhaps you could explain just what the issue is. I’ve worked with your bank since you were still in diapers and there has never yet been an issue.”

  The banker opens the folder in front of him, scans his papers a few moments and then closes the folder. He looks squarely at Ronnie and says, “All your previous loans, even the one in 1976 for two hundred thousand dollars—” he consults the folder one more time “—as I say, all of your loans have been secured, dollar for dollar, by accounts receivable, royalties owing but not yet collected.” He coughs softly into his hand and says, “To be perfectly honest, Mr. Conger, given the current situation and the possibility of a curtailment in revenue stream, not to mention a dramatic increase in expected legal costs, I would find it hard to extend any further credit and—let me be frank—may have to go to bat for you to prevent my supervisor from calling in your current loans with us.”

  EURA HAD ALWAYS CONSIDERED CYRUS her crystal ball. She had only to look into his eyes to catch a glimpse of her future. She had seen, for instance, long before it might be possible, how he would one day climb into her bed, just as she could now see the end of their time together, approaching as surely as summer rain across open fields.

  She was afraid to think what sort of twisted mess Cyrus might see in her eyes. Guilt, certainly, that she had bent him to her purposes, reshaping him little by little to the template of her former love. Perhaps her crimes were not so big: teaching him to cook and enjoy certain foods; instructing him in the evening stroll and the long breakfast and the lazy afternoon of kisses and Bach; turning his attention to a broader notion of culture and society, to favourite poets and philosophers and masters of cinema. You could easily make the case that she did nothing worse than show a young man where to find meaning in the world. But she would never make that case herself because she knew the truth. Her relationship with Cyrus was essentially pornographic, she felt, a bitter clash of dream and reality that could excite but never fulfill her desires.

  When he returned from Hollywood, they argued. She knew that certain types of women found him appealing and that he might easily lose his head. And although she knew she could never make room for him at the centre of her life, she panicked at the thought she would not be the centre of his. If she did not exist there, she would not exist anywhere. She had no home, no family, no network of friends. She was lost in this petty North American culture. Without a foothold at the centre of Cyrus’s world, she would drift away.

  So she sneered at his stories of excitement, found ulterior motives in everything these Hollywood people said and did. “They are polite like this to everyone,” she countered when he told her how enthusiastic the audience had been. “They came out, I suppose, as a favour to Ronnie,” she said when he expressed his amazement at the turnout. “Free drinks are free drinks.”

  Within a few minutes of his arrival she had ruined everything. He walked out of the apartment and spen
t the next few hours wandering the snow-covered streets, only returning to sleep on the couch. But here was the irony: she had been shopping the day before to buy ingredients for his favourite dish. All that morning as she waited for him to arrive she had been daydreaming about his kisses, his soft skin and boyish hungers. And why? Because she genuinely liked him. She had wanted to help him celebrate a special accomplishment in his life. Yet the moment he walked through the door, he brought with him all the radiance of the California sun and made the rest of their life together seem so dark and drab that she felt immediately afraid, as though she had already fallen into the past.

  After Hollywood they never did get back on track. They slept in the same bed but didn’t touch. They ate together and chatted listlessly, but nothing important was ever said. They were happiest when distracted by movies or the drift of scenery on late-night strolls. When Ronnie called to say, “Nigel Cranston, studio time north of London, twelve weeks to start,” Eura quietly caved in, weeping softly for days on end.

  AFTER HIS MEETING with the accountant, the banker and the lawyer, Ronnie called Sonia Herscovitz, the agent who had sold him his apartment at the Canyons on the upper west side of Manhattan. He told her he wanted to lease his place, furnished if possible. She mentioned three grand a month. And just like that he had boosted his revenue. The banker, slightly relieved, fashioned a loan for sixty thousand. That meant, with another sixty already in hand, that Ronnie could pay Nigel half the cost of the record up front, with the rest due whenever.

  Mid-April, Ronnie called Cyrus and invited him to England to get acquainted with Hidey-Hole. They met at JFK a few days later and, after an hour layover, set off together for London. Ronnie bought them each a one-ounce bottle of Scotch, then lifted his plastic cup in a toast. “To our grand adventure.” When Cyrus lifted his glass half-heartedly, Ronnie said, “You’re not nervous, are you? Because I can tell you, Nigel Cranston is the salt of the earth.”

  For the next hour or so, Cyrus tried to explain his troubles with Eura, how they hadn’t stopped bickering in the time he’d been home, and how in the days leading up to his departure, the tension brought an icy stillness to the apartment. For forty-eight hours they hadn’t said a word to each other. She wouldn’t even look at him when he said goodbye.

  Ronnie sipped his drink and pondered what to do. Finally he said, “Women have always seemed to me a rather complicated puzzle, and that woman of yours more complicated than most. It may be a tired analogy to say they are like a flower, but I refer not to their beauty or their perfume, not even to their procreative function. Rather, I speak of their intricate connections to the world. They have deep roots in the soil, where they draw in the rain, and who can say how many nutrients. They absorb the sunlight. They take in carbon dioxide and return life-giving oxygen. Women are not like us, Cyrus. They draw strength from relationships you and I do not even know exist. By comparison, we enjoy a simple and often destructive freedom. We are like bees, buzzing blindly about the garden, drawn by the colour and smell to take what we want, with no understanding of the intricate arrangements that underpin our entire existence. But women know these things. They bring worlds together in a fashion we cannot even imagine. I believe we must make allowances for them.”

  Cyrus stared out the window at the limitless blue, so focused on his own grievances he scarcely paid attention to what was being said. When Ronnie at last stopped talking, Cyrus turned to him, drained his Scotch in a gulp, and said, “The hell with it.”

  Ronnie had booked rooms at the Gore Hotel, which was around the corner from Kensington Palace. The Gore was the kind of place that appealed to Ronnie but held no charm for Cyrus: lumpy beds, a little breakfast room with white lace curtains and centuries-old woodwork, and a cozy bar that would have seemed crowded with ten people in it. To Cyrus it was the kind of place where grey-haired grannies would feel at home, which, with a rather different inflection, was much what Ronnie might have said.

  They had dinner at a Persian restaurant around the corner, and next morning Ronnie drove Cyrus northwest of the city to Hidey-Hole, ten acres of land that housed a Cistercian monastery that Nigel had purchased and turned into a state-of-the-art recording studio.

  They met Nigel near the front gates where he had been taking his morning walk. To Cyrus he seemed more farmer than hotshot producer and, despite the Irish setter by his side, not a gentleman farmer, either, but someone with dirt under his nails and manure on his heels, someone who even in a tuxedo would look a bit rough around the edges. He was not one of the beautiful people.

  Before Ronnie could begin introductions, Nigel approached the passenger side and opened the net bag he had clasped to his jacket. “Here’s lunch,” he said excitedly.

  Cyrus peered into the bag and immediately recoiled. It appeared to be a bag of brains, or something equally grisly, all honeycombed and delicate and the colour of manure.

  “Morchella esculenta,” Nigel prompted, as though Cyrus had merely forgotten the name of the grotesque objects. “Found these lovelies fruiting under the apple trees along the road farther on.” He unhooked the bag from his jacket and handed it to Cyrus. “Go ahead and get settled. Patrick will show you to your rooms. Oh, and tell him to take these to the kitchen so that Sophie can do her magic. Red and I need to stretch our legs a bit more.” Then man and dog headed across the meadow.

  Ronnie and Cyrus did as instructed and were soon settled in rooms that were larger and more luxurious than the Gore, which pleased Cyrus greatly. After all, he’d be spending months at Hidey-Hole.

  An hour later the phone rang. Patrick said, “Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Owen, but Nigel asked me to tell you lunch will be ready in thirty minutes. Drinks are being served in the lounge, if you’d care to join the others.”

  He went down immediately to find Ronnie sitting in a leather armchair, admiring the view out the big bay window—a patchwork of fields and hedges and stone walls, a church spire in the distance. Nigel had changed from his walking gear and was dressed in a rugby shirt and track pants. He stood behind a long oak bar. “I’m drawing your man here a pint of Guinness. Can I offer you one as well, or do you fancy something else?”

  “A Guinness, sure. Never had one.”

  “Ah, well then, you’re in for a treat, aren’t you?”

  A few minutes later, Nigel came out from behind the bar with three pints of the famous black brew on a tray. As is so often the case with that heralded Irish concoction, Cyrus’s first sip was a revelation, that anything could be bitter and sweet and cool and thick and smooth as silk all in one brilliant gulp. “Wow,” he said.

  Ronnie laughed and raised his glass in a toast. “Yes, here’s to wow. To a perfect pint, a champion of the electric guitar, the world’s finest producer and, above all, to a glorious new undertaking.”

  For the next half hour, Nigel related the history of Hidey-Hole. Then he led them into the dining room where lunch, as promised, featured the mushrooms he had found in the orchard. Sophie, frail-looking and elfin and almost frighteningly pale, not only prepared the meal but served it, and told them in a whispered voice that she had sautéd the morels with yellow peppers, shallots and prosciutto, and moistened it all with a white-wine and nutmeg sauce. The mixture was served on triangles of toast, accompanied by a salad of mixed greens. To wash it down, Nigel offered them “a pesky little Montepulciano.”

  Cyrus tried to enjoy the meal and the conversation, but his thoughts were elsewhere. After a dessert of raspberry sorbet, Ronnie wiped his lips and said, “My friend and I did not come all this way to sample your hospitality. Rather, I wanted you to meet young Cyrus here, and for him to get acquainted with you, so that we can all feel—as I do already, I confess—that we are on the verge of something extraordinary.”

  Ronnie then spoke of his vision of Jangle, and the overall philosophy behind “The Bridge,” music that had been turned inside out. As he often did, he went on at great length, and Nigel listened more or less patiently until Ronnie mentioned the su
spension bridge that was planned for the stage. At that point Nigel’s eyes widened. He threw down his napkin and said, “I have something to show you.”

  He led them to a big workshop attached to the main house. There on a wooden bench sat a twenty-foot I-beam. Welded to each end were cross-pieces about five feet in length. Stretched taut between the two end pieces were eight cables of varying dimensions, arranged in order of size. The largest would have been suitable for a wrecking ball.

  “I’ve been wondering when I might use this,” he said. And with that he whacked the thickest cable with a rubber mallet, setting up a deep, soul-shaking rumble as though the earth itself were humming.

  Cyrus couldn’t restrain himself. He ran his hands along the entire length of the thing. “This is so cool,” he said. “Can I try?”

  Nigel handed him the mallet. “Pentatonic scale in C.”

  Cyrus, after some deliberation, hit the C and the G, and while the notes resonated, he laid his hand on the crosspiece. The vibrations, like an electric shock, ran up his arm to the shoulder. “What is it?” he asked.

  “I don’t know exactly. I made it myself from the frame of an old farm wagon. Maybe it’s a bridge.”

  Cyrus fooled with the contraption for the better part of an hour while Ronnie and Nigel chatted about the early days. Cyrus soon discovered that the less he played on it, the better. The strings were so long and thick, and the sound waves they set up so rich and sustained, that single notes or simple chords worked best—but they were more than enough. He could have soloed over that geological drone forever.

  For the rest of the afternoon, Nigel gave them a tour of the grounds and outbuildings, saving the studio for last. Although Cyrus had recorded two albums with Jim, he had never been in a place of such reverent stillness. To stand there even a moment was to feel sound willed into being. Again, he ached for the feel of his guitar, the monumental roar of his amplifier.