by Dave Daren
“Sounds fishy,” Vicki said. “Those dark web guys, they’re a whole new breed of shady.”
We didn’t have a heavy caseload at the moment, which was helpful. When we were busy, we were swamped. So, when things slowed, like right now, we could bullshit through an afternoon. We had a couple of trusts we managed, and a will Vicki was working on, but that was the thing about being a legal firm in a town of ten thousand people. In a given time, there were only so many lawsuits pending.
I spent the rest of the afternoon writing up the audition application for the upcoming Sedona Idol competition. It was put on by a local recording label call RedRock Studios, and they would start taking applicants at the Independence Day festival.
But the studio wanted the application to be ironclad.
All the finalists would be given a premium publicity package on local media, but they would, however, owe the studio ten percent of all their music royalties for the next five years, unless they paid a buyout fee of five thousand dollars.
The winner would get a three album recording contract with RedRock Studios, and thereafter, RedRock would get a percentage of all their music for ten years, unless they paid a buyout fee of ten thousand dollars, or ten percent of their music’s net worth, whichever was greater.
It was a crappy deal, I thought, but I didn’t make the rules. I just wrote up the contract and put it an eight point font that not a single one of the applicants would ever read, and then I collected a nice check from RedRock Studios. That was one client I didn’t mind invoicing.
We ended the day on time, and I enjoyed the relaxed pace of a nine to five day for once. It had only been a couple of weeks ago that we wrapped a monster case involving a call girl, a state senator, and a kinky madam who was missing a few screws upstairs. We weren’t on the schedule for the film rehearsal tonight, and I was looking forward to a chill night in with my lady.
But she had plans otherwise.
“Did you get the text from your mom?” she asked.
“No,” I said with a frown. “What text?”
“You seriously never keep up with these things,” she laughed. “I swear, if I weren’t here, you would have no personal life. They’re having a big family dinner at your parents’ house.”
I rolled my eyes. “Is everyone going to be there?”
“Sounds like,” she said with a grin. “So, put on your party face.”
I laughed. “I’m glad you enjoy these things.”
“I enjoy them,” she teased, “because you can’t admit it, but secretly you enjoy them.”
“Uh,” I said, “I don’t know about that. I had some serious plans for Netflix and chill.”
She laughed and winked. “They’ll be plenty of time for that later.”
We got in my car and drove the twenty minutes out to my parents house. The Irving manor was a modest building in a subdivision, and today as we drove up, it was …
“Lavender,” I announced as I saw the new color of the house. “That’s a new one.”
“What was it last month, pink?” Vicki asked.
“I think,” I replied, “and blue, the month before.”
“What color was it when we moved out here?” she mused with a tilt of her head.
“Green, I believe,” I said.
“Hmm,” she hummed.
The drive and lawn were packed full of cars, which wasn’t difficult to do these days. My nineteen-year-old brother Phoenix had at one time decided grass was bad for the environment, and so they replaced all the grass on the front lawn with gravel.
His logic escaped me.
Phoenix was currently motorcycling through South America on a one year vision quest to find himself, but so far in three months he’d only found Buddha.
I parked along the curb, and when we got out, it was clear the party had already started. A party at the Irvings was no small affair. We could hear the music outside the driveway, and a handful of twenty year olds and my various distant cousins, hung outside drinking God only knew what from plastic cups.
“Henry,” my cousin Brad yelled.
“Hey, Brad,” I greeted him. “Good to see you.”
My cousin Brad was a couple of years older than me, and we were fairly close, until he moved to Iowa when we were teenagers. I saw him about once every five years now, and I caught him on Facebook now and again, when I ever got on that detestable thing.
But I heard Brad owned a bar and did pretty well for himself. Kudos to him, although it was a far cry from how we grew up. Brad was an artist. He filled books and books with sketches, and they were all really good. Then, as we got a little older, he branched off into graphic design, and I couldn’t keep up with him. He was a genius on PhotoShop, InDesign, or whatever software he was into at the moment. Then he knocked someone up in Iowa, went to bartending school, and worked his way up. Now, his Facebook was all about liquors and wine events.
“How’s it going, man?” I asked as Vicki and I approached the stoop.
The music was pumping from the inside now, and it was difficult to talk. Brad stood outside smoking with a few other cousins.
“I quit drinking,” he replied.
I raised an eyebrow. “Is that right?”
“Yep,” he chuckled, “I’m a real live twelve-step recovery monkey.”
“Congratulations,” I told him, but I wasn’t even aware his drinking had ever been a problem.
“Thanks, man,” he replied before his eyes flickered to the woman beside me.
“Brad, Vicki.” I gestured in a shorthand way of introductions, and the two greeted each other and shook hands.
“What does recovery do to your professional life?” I asked.
He laughed. “That’s why I’m here. I’m giving up bartending, and I’m moving back.”
“You’re moving back to Sedona?” I asked. “Why on earth would you do that?”
The comment came out of my mouth before I could stop it, and I thought I really had no room to talk.
“I’m getting a job with the film festival,” he said with a shrug.
“No kidding?” I chuckled.
“Hell yeah,” he replied.
The Sedona Wine and Film Festival was a massive annual event that took over the entire town for about a week. People came in from all over the country to attend, and every man, woman and child in Sedona participated in the festival in some form or another. It was such a big event, there was a full time board that worked on it all year. This year’s festival had just ended a couple of months ago, and our firm had gotten dragged into a massive legal mess of backstage politics surrounding the event.
“There was a big scandal this year with the festival funding,” I told him.
He smiled. “I heard about that. I also heard you came in and drained the swamp, so to speak.”
He wasn’t wrong, but I wouldn’t have put it that way. A city councilwoman had been embezzling money from the festival accounts for decades, and I helped to uncover it all.
“I’m just glad they got new leadership in there,” I said. “I think it’s got some good fresh blood.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I’ll be doing a lot of work with the media department, they told me.”
“Well, then we’ll see you guys around a lot more, huh?”
“Yep,” he replied. “Me and Ozzie are moving in with my mom for a while until I can get settled.”
Ozzie was his ten year old son, and the fact that Brad and his baby mama named their kid after the infamous bat-eating rockstar says everything there is to know about those two.
There was a loud cheer on the stoop, and Brad and I turned to see another handful of our cousins throwing lit fireworks at each other.
“I don’t even think you can do fireworks out here,” I muttered to Brad.
“Tell that to them,” he chuckled.
“No thanks,” I said. “I’ll just wait for them to get arrested. Shouldn’t be long.”
“Eh,” he shrugged, “I think most of them are on
a first name basis with all the cops in town.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it,” I laughed.
Vicki and I headed inside, and there were people everywhere. My parents, Saffron and Moondust, were fairly popular in town, and when the Irvings had a party, it was a party.
My dad was a pretty kick ass guitarist, and in the 1970’s, his band was offered a recording contract with Columbia Records. They would have toured with Creedence Clearwater Revival and been legit rock stars. But, shortly before the deal was signed, the drummer got offered a job as a backup drummer for Led Zeppelin. The drummer took the job, and long story short, the deal with Columbia was rescinded.
So, the remaining band members took a pilgrimage out to Sedona to cleanse out the negative energy or whatever at the vortexes. They studied under some guru, where my mother also hung around. She read a lot of Jack Kerouac and talked about traveling the country and exploring Zen Buddhism and whatever else. The guru eventually married them in a ceremony on Cathedral Rock, and that is the story of why we’re from Sedona. When I lived in L.A., sometimes I would look at the rock star kids my age, and think about what a different life I almost had.
But now my dad played in bars and bands and knew every musician in and out of town, young and old. When we had dinner parties, they all came out of the woodwork.
Tonight, the festivities were well underway, and right now the song was nothing in particular, just long and involved “jamming,” with distorted electric guitars and a drum set, and someone threw in a keyboard this time.
Kids ran around, some I knew, some I didn’t, and paper plates dotted conversation circles all around the house. There would be no official dinner, although there was likely to be plenty of food in the kitchen.
Vicki and I picked our way through the bodies, when my sister saw us.
“Hey, guys!” Harmony yelled, and she squeezed Vicki so hard, she almost picked my girlfriend off the ground.
Harmony was the only one in my family who I stayed in contact with during the L.A. years. It made sense she would be the one who would bring me back home.
She was an artist, and quite a good one at that. She displayed in a gallery downtown and had so many pieces up, most people assumed she owned the gallery.
She more recently took a job as an art teacher for a progressive school where they had no classes. How that worked has been explained to me multiple times, and somehow I still couldn’t wrap my head around it. It had something to do with learning math through counting pinecones and an educational philosopher named Charlotte Mason.
Beyond that, I get lost.
Tonight, she wore a red and pink floral skirt, a black top with lace and some sort of funky attachments, paired with black tights and brown thigh high riding boots.
“I love this outfit,” Vicki gushed, and Harmony’s face lit up.
The band took a break, so we could hear each other now, but my ears still rang from the noise.
“It’s mine,” Harmony said proudly. “I’m starting a clothing line.”
“A clothing line?” I echoed skeptically.
“It’s still in the early experimental stages,” she qualified, “but I’ve always loved to make clothes for myself.”
I did remember that about her. Growing up, she had a sewing machine, and she collected scraps of fabric and would from time to time make or alter clothes for herself. Sometimes, as a teen, I’d also have her make minor alterations on things I wore. She did a good job.
“Well, how’s it coming then?” I asked with a smile.
“I’ve got a couple of pieces online for custom order,” she replied excitedly. “You should check it out.”
“I will,” Vicki said, “that’s so cool. I can’t believe you have time to do all that.”
“I don’t,” Harmony laughed. “So, I’ve cut back at the gallery a lot and put my creative energies into designing clothes. That helps, you know.”
“How?” Vicki asked.
“It has to do with creativity,” she said, “sometimes you have to switch to another form for a while to get the creative juices moving. Here, let me show you my samples.”
Harmony grabbed Vicki’s arm, and they disappeared into the abyss of the party. Meanwhile, I found my way to the living room around the chatting throngs.
On the way, I got hit in the head with a hacky sack.
“Sorry,” one of the boys blushed at me, and I delivered a quick serve with the bottom of my foot that quite impressed them.
I passed the bathroom crowded with five girls, where it appeared someone was dyeing their hair, and an aspiring young filmmaker was going around recording it all.
“Who’s the new Jerry Steele?” I gestured toward the kid as I saw my mother.
“That’s Ozzie, Brad’s kid,” she said as if I should know that.
I probably should have.
Ozzie perched on an end table and synced the camera to what looked like a brand new MacBook.
“He should fit right in,” I told my mom.
She laughed. “He’s a sweetheart.”
Saffron Irving was tall and slender, with willowy brown hair that reached her waist. She smiled a lot, and tonight she wore a pink and white sundress and brown ankle boots. She loved silver bangles, so several jingled about her wrist, and her brown eyes lit up when she talked to me. Things between she and I had changed a lot in the last few months.
“Good to see you,” she said. “Are you working on anything big?”
“Right now it’s just routine stuff,” I replied with a shrug.
“I saw you on the news not too long ago,” she remarked with a proud smile. “You sounded so distinguished and dignified.”
I’d had to do an impromptu press conference a few weeks ago, when reporters bombarded a client’s arraignment.
“Thanks,” I laughed. “I said a whole lot of nothing, but you should be proud all that theatre training went to good use.”
She laughed. “Now, I heard you’re in Jerry Steele’s new film. Is that true?”
“It is,” I confessed, and I cringed at the thought of her watching the Thomas Jefferson, Martha Washington love scene between me and Vicki, “but it’s probably not going to be a good movie. I’d suggest passing on it.”
“Oh, no!” she gushed. “We are going to be on the front row of the screening at the parade.”
“Ugh,” I groaned and rolled my eyes to the ceiling. “Don’t do that. I’m telling you, this movie really is terrible. I’m only doing because the city council asked me to.”
“Oh, no, you’re not getting off that easy,” she teased. “We’re all going to come, sit on the front row, and we’re going to make up shirts that say, ‘Go Henry Irving,’ with black Sharpie.”
She laughed hysterically, and I shook my head.
“Oh, Jesus,” I muttered. “I think I can probably still get my house back in L.A … ”
She laughed harder at that. Then the band started up again, and someone asked her about a casserole in the kitchen, and she excused herself.
I went into the living room where the band was playing and stepped around wires, guitars, amps, and guys with beers nodding their heads to the music.
My dad was somewhere in the crowd and smiled and nodded as soon as he saw me. Moondust was tall and lanky in his early fifties. When I left home, his hair was a generous helping of salt and pepper. Now, there was considerably less pepper and much more salt. But he showed no signs of slowing down. He was still youthful and virile, and tonight he attacked the guitar with as much gusto and passion as ever.
Someone handed me a beer, and I leaned against the wall and listened to the guys play. I didn’t recognize the song, I guessed it was probably someone’s original. Who knew with this bunch? Everyone writes, and everyone plays everything.
Vicki found me again as I sat on the edge of the couch, and she perched on my lap, and we listened to the music. They were now onto Penny Lane, by the Beatles.
At some point, a trumpet player popped up, and fr
om all the corners of the house and yard, people suddenly found their way into the living room. With beer bottles, plates of food, hair under dye foil, they all showed up and cheered as the trumpet player launched into a showy solo. He went on for the better part of ten minutes, and he was good. Really good.
By the time he was done, everyone was there, and as the band went back into the lyrics, everyone sang along to the catchy feel good chorus. I would say close to sixty people crammed into that living room. There under the timeless magic of the Fab Four, Vicki leaned back and kissed me.
With the music swelling in the background, it felt a bit like a formula resolution to some romantic comedy. Although, I don’t know what our formulaic story would be. I just knew I was happy here with her.
Penny Lane lasted close to half an hour, although I think it morphed into Sargent Pepper for a while there and then came back around. But at some point it finally ended, and my mother announced an improv contest would be starting.
“We’ve got prizes this time,” she said.
This was met with a surprised cheer. But it was getting late for us, and I had a long day of bad acting ahead of me in the morning. I think that was enough.
Vicki and I said our goodbyes and slipped out of the party.
Saturday morning rolled into our cottage slow and lazy, and I blinked as the light came in through the curtains.
“When we build our house,” I mumbled sleepily to Vicki, “the bedroom windows will not face the rising sun.”
She groaned softly and pulled the down comforter closer to her, but I kept talking.
“In fact,” I rambled, “let’s not have bedroom windows. You know what, why stop there? Let’s have no windows at all, so we don’t have to know what time it is. Let’s build the house totally underground and start a new subterranean society. We will be king and queen of the mole people.”
She threw a pillow at me, and I laughed. Then I leaned over and kissed her cheek and she smiled and slowly stirred.
“Wakey, wakey,” I whispered. “Guess what? We’ve got a whole long day of bad acting ahead of us.”
