Believe in Me
*
Jason Warburg
Published in the United States of America by
Wampus Multimedia
4 Weems Lane, #300
Winchester, VA 22601
www.wampus.com
Worldwide eBook edition
©2011 Wampus Multimedia
ISBN: 978-0-9797471-5-1
Wampus Multimedia catalog no.: WM-082
Copyright ©2011 by Jason Warburg
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form whatsoever, without the express, written consent of Wampus Multimedia. Exceptions are made for brief quotations for criticism and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
www.jasonwarburg.com
Acknowledgements
“Mr. Jones” words by Adam Duritz, music by Adam Duritz, and David Bryson, copyright 1993 EMI Blackwood Music Inc. and Jones Falls Music. All rights controlled and administered by EMI Blackwood Music, Inc. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Used by permission.
“This Is Your Life” written by Jonathan Foreman, copyright 2003 Meadowgreen Music Company (ASCAP) / Sugar Pete Songs (ASCAP) (adm. at EMICMGPublishing.com). All rights reserved. Used by permission.
“Already Gone” written by Jack Tempchin and Robb Strandlund, copyright 1974 Jazzbird Music / WB Music Corp. (ASCAP).
“Jet Airliner” words and music by Paul Pena, copyright 1973 Sailor Music and No Thought Music (ASCAP). Copyright renewed. All rights administered by Sailor Music. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
“Stand” written by Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe, copyright 1988 Night Garden Music (BMI).
“Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man” written by Bob Seger, copyright 1968 Gear Publishing Company (ASCAP).
“Lost Horizons” written by Douglas Hopkins, copyright 1992 WB Music Corp. / East Jesus Music (ASCAP).
“When You’re Alone” written by Bruce Springsteen, copyright 1987 Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP). Reprinted by permission. International copyright secured. All rights reserved.
“No Better Place” written by Chris Collingwood and Adam Schlesinger, copyright 2003 Monkey Demon Music (BMI) / Vaguely Familiar Music (ASCAP).
“My Mercurial Nature” written by Mark Doyon, copyright 2010 WMM Songs (ASCAP).
“We Are One Tonight” written by Jonathan Foreman and Tim Foreman, copyright 2005 Meadowgreen Music Company (ASCAP) / Switchfoot Co-Pub Designee (ASCAP) / Sugar Pete Songs (ASCAP) (adm. at EMICMGPublishing.com). All rights reserved. Used by permission.
All lyrics used by permission. All rights reserved.
Thanks to Stewart Copeland for permission to quote from his 2006 documentary film Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out.
Other quotations used by kind permission of the respective copyright holders.
For Karen, always
* * *
and
in memory of
PRG & LTM
Believe in me
Help me believe in anything
I want to be someone who believes
-- Adam Duritz and David Bryson (“Mr. Jones,” by Counting Crows)
Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
-- George Bernard Shaw
OPENER
On the west wall, opposite the circular bar that rises like an altar within the central well of the San Francisco Hard Rock Café, hangs a window into another universe.
The image captures a band onstage mid-song, in full flight, their energy as electric as the spotlights that have torn the night wide open to cast a brilliant glow all around them. The angle is low, as if taken from audience perspective at the very front lip of the stage, but off to one side, so that the entire group is seen in near-profile.
The singer, lithe and dark, bends backward with the note at center stage, mouth open to the microphone he holds in his right hand, eyes closed, face constricted in an intense ecstasy that might be mistaken for either spiritual or sexual if not for the worry lines, the deep trails mapping his forehead.
The other four players are spread out across the scene like a loose assemblage of disciples. The drummer rules the back, long sandy curls flailing along with his muscular arms. The bassist stands close by, small and enigmatic, nearly hidden even in plain sight. The keyboard player holds down the far outpost stage right, only his head visible over the bulk of a grand piano, a scattering of bright curls surrounding a serious face. The guitarist is closest to the camera, bent over his instrument with left foot thrust forward like a runner in the blocks, mouth open in a lopsided grin as long strands of blond hair obscure his eyes.
The five each occupy their own world at this instant, yet their individual orbits are bound together by a fierce intensity, a shared purpose fueled by welling emotion. They’ve traveled far to reach this moment, and seem determined to live within it for as long as they possibly can. As common as this basic tableau might be in rock and roll photography, there is something distinctly uncommon about this particular image, some concentrated hyper-reality lurking beneath its surface that makes the shot itself not just captivating, but iconic.
This, it says, is IT. The top of the mountain. Stop and look around. You might never be here again.
In the farthest visible reaches of the photo, at the very edge of the wash of light that seems almost to radiate from the band itself, stand two small figures rendered faceless by the distance, a man and a woman, watching from the wings. The one on the right has dark, shiny hair and feminine curvature, and is looking up at the one on the left, who is taller and is looking down at her with a suggestion of longing, and perhaps anticipation as well.
The one on the left is me.
* * *
I.
GOING MOBILE
This is your life
Are you who you want to be?
-- Jonathan Foreman (“This Is Your Life,” by Switchfoot)
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to
test a man's character, give power.
-- Abraham Lincoln
1.
I’ve always been that guy at the side of the stage. I like it that way. Let someone else hog the mike and the relentless scrutiny that comes with it; I’ll stay on safer ground. I’d still rather write these words than speak them, as you can plainly see.
One thing has changed, though. In the old days – which consisted of every day of my working life until six months ago – the figure at the mike would have been an attention addict of a different tribe. Genus candidate politicalus rather than genus singer rockandrollicus.
How I survived that unlikely leap into another universe is the tale I’m here to tell. And since he’s so prone to interrupting anyway, it seems only fitting to give the first word to California Attorney General -- and Democratic nominee for the United States Senate -- Frank Cassini.
* * *
“Green!”
“Yessir,” I said, taking the soft leather briefcase Cassini had thrust at me as he vaulted, blinking, up and out of the back of his chauffered Lincoln Town Car. It was July 5th, four months and change before election day, and I was standing at the curb at Los Angeles International Airport with The Candidate himself. His jet-black loafers gleamed beneath a double-breasted light grey suit of Italian wool, which offered flattering cover for the middle-aged spread that was rapidly conquering his five-nine frame.
“Gimme your phone.” His round face was flushed, thick charcoal hair rising stiffly in the breeze, dark eyes darting left and right at the milling herds of common passengers surrounding us. “Mine’s outta juice,” he muttered as I reflexively obeyed, handing over the new iPhone I had just that week vanquished the campaign bureaucracy to procure.
“Go!” he barked at me, waving with his free hand for me to take the lead as our California Highway Patrol escort (today it was the intrepid Robert A. Falconer, a.k.a. Officer Bob) assumed his post at Cassini’s side. Weaving through the unheeding crowd inside the terminal, we cleared security without major incident courtesy of Officer Bob. As we power-walked the length of the terminal toward Gate 87, Cassini finished his call and began barking questions at me.
“What’s new on the Colfax fire?”
“Twenty-four thousand acres burned, thirty percent contained, every air tanker north of Bakersfield deployed. The national guard is enforcing mandatory evacuations east of Interstate 80 and they’ve set up shelters in Grass Valley and Meadow Vista.”
“Meadow Vista? Does that burg even have a traffic light?”
“Their high school gym holds 400 and a hundred volunteers have already showed up to help.”
“A hundred people with nothing better to do. Figures. They know how it started?”
“The working theory from Emergency Services is, lightning strikes from a thunderstorm.”
“In the middle of summer? In the goddamned Sierra foothills?”
“Climate change. More moisture in the air at weird times of year.”
“Yeah, right. More likely some jerkoff didn’t bother dousing his campfire. Alright, why’s Ostrowitz calling me every day?”
“He wants you to endorse the auto mileage standards initiative. They turned in the signatures two weeks ago. Should get the final word on qualifying for the November ballot any day.”
“Dammit, don’t any of these clowns understand you’ve gotta play the middle in the general? I can’t let Kendrick sit there calling me a nanny-state job-killer through the whole fall campaign. They should’ve stuck that crap on the primary ballot where it belongs.”
I nodded silently; to do otherwise bordered on recklessness.
“Alright. Middle East?”
“The talks are still going, but they’re no closer on the holy places in Jerusalem. Both sides are threatening to pull out if there’s more violence.”
“Which just makes the crazies on both sides more likely to start blowing things up. I swear, the damn Jews and Arabs are still gonna to be fighting over those piles of rock when my grandchildren’s grandchildren are dead and buried. They’re nuts, every last one of ’em.”
Maybe, I thought to myself. Or maybe you just hate them because they believe in something.
“What’s the name of the school again?”
“Cesar Chavez Junior High.”
“And we picked it to pimp charter schools because…?”
“Biggest year-to-year jump in their SAT-9 test scores in the history of the test. Verbal rose 39 percent and math 31 percent.”
“Christ. Anybody think to check if maybe they cheated?”
“Uh, no, sir. The school population is 54 percent Hispanic and 18 percent Asian American, mostly Hmong and Vietnamese. Last summer they instituted a mandatory six-week English immersion program for their ESL students.”
“Mandatory summer school. Heh. That’ll keep the little buggers off the streets.”
* * *
My enlistment as deputy press secretary to Francis John “Frank” Cassini’s campaign for the U.S. Senate had come at the urging of Charlie Bond, a hungry-eyed fellow University of California, Davis alum who at the time was the Cassini campaign’s Central Valley field representative. “The guy’s a sure thing,” Charlie had told me in his perpetually urgent way, over watery drinks in a Sacramento bar overrun with navy blue blazers and pleated grey slacks. “U.S. Attorney, Congressman, Attorney General,” continued Charlie, ticking off Cassini’s resume bullets on his fingers. “Five years in the courtroom making his name as a tough-on-crime Democrat, then a run for Congress, eight years there getting cozy with the money guys he needs to run statewide, then six years as state AG, building name i.d. and solidifying his base. Now he’s like a thoroughbred at the gate, waiting for the bell to go off.”
I had spent my first six years out of college in a series of low-level legislative staff positions around Sacramento, nothing involving an actual campaign, but enough experience around the fringes of them to recognize that Charlie’s cocktail-napkin profile was not without merit. Cassini was a strong public speaker, a canny deal-maker, and a persistent advocate for bedrock middle-class Democratic issues in a state where the Republican Party had spent the last two decades nominating one far-right candidate after another for the Senate – the latest being fire-tongued State Controller Darcy Kendrick -- and losing. From a political perspective, Cassini was a consummate pro, one of those guys who seems like he knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life the first time he saw the president on television when he was seven years old.
But leadership – driving positive change, making hard decisions, little things like that -- wasn’t it. What Frank Cassini wanted to do, I had concluded after more than a year of drafting meaningless pieces of news-release puffery in the man’s press office, was to be surrounded at all times by people who needed something from him. Lobbyists, contributors, reporters, staff – it didn’t really matter, as long as he was the center of the circle. Issues were necessary nuisances, to be managed dutifully in the manner of monthly invoices that needed to be paid on time. It was the free-floating cloud of need and deference that Cassini craved.
California Attorney General Francis Cassini was a thoroughbred, alright – a petty, overbearing, thoroughbred egomaniac whose fate my own nascent career in politics was now tethered to in a way that could make me giddy or queasy, depending on the day’s polls and the candidate’s mood. As for the wager-happy Mr. Bond, he had crapped out one chilly morning in Visalia, fired a week before Christmas after booking Cassini into a poorly-attended labor event where the local union president had exhibited an unfortunate fondness for “Godfather” jokes.
* * *
I parried back as we approached the gate. “Do you have the cards?”
Cassini liked his speeches printed out on three-by-five index cards in sixteen-point type so he could slip the entire speech in his pocket and then, if necessary, refer to them without using his glasses. His memory for the essential points was sharp and he didn’t refer to them much, but their presence was a security blanket that helped calm and focus him.
In response to my question, he began fishing through his inside coat pockets without catching anything. Turning with a frustrated glare, he found me waiting with my backup set of cards already out and in my hand. He accepted them with a quiet smirk, about as close as I’d ever come to receiving that rarest of endangered species, the Cassini compliment.
By the time we’d cleared the boarding pass scanner at the gate and started down the ramp to the plane, he had my iPhone out again; by the time we boarded, he was chattering away once more, telling a contributor his previous commitment wasn’t going to cut it any more, not in this race. Officer Bob made sure we found our seats, the first two in first class, and sketched a sardonic goodbye wave as he disappeared back up the gangway. He’s all yours now. One of Bob’s colleagues would meet us at the door in San Francisco.
Cassini had barely sat down, though, when he was halfway out of his seat again, leaning toward the door, nearly shouting into the phone. “Greg? Greg?!” He turned to me accusingly. “What the hell’s wrong with this thing? The minute we stepped on board I got a ton of static.”
“I don’t know, sir, sometimes I have trouble with it on planes –“
“I have to finish that call.” He stood and had taken a step toward the door when our stewardess, a fortyish redhead with long, slender ballerina fingers, intercepted him, touching his arm.
“Sir.” Her expression was measured but severe, her intonation that of a patient schoolteacher calming an unruly student. “You can’t leave the plane.”
He turned and laughed in her face. “Excuse me?”
“Sir, please.” Red’s guarded expression hadn’t changed, but I was amused to note her stance, clenched and ready to pounce. This was clearly not her first time dealing with The Important Passenger Who Declines To Cooperate. She also had terrific legs. “You’re on board. We’re preparing for departure. You can’t leave the plane.”
“The door’s still open.”
“Yes, it is. There are two more passengers just coming through the gate right now.”
Cassini’s tangled expression spoke of his shock and disgust at such treatment. “This flight was supposed to leave five minutes ago!”
Red stared at him and began to speak slowly, carefully. “Yes, but we held it. A hundred and eighty-seven people on board on time for departure, and we held it.” She paused almost a full second before finishing, pointing her line like a stage actress. “For you.”
“Well, I’m on now, aren’t I?”
“Yes,” she said. “And that’s where you need to stay.”
“Is that right?” sneered the Attorney General of California, and began punching numbers into my phone emphatically, as if daring her to grab it out of his hand. Without taking his eyes off her, he then took three long, exaggerated strides backward, through the doorway, across the threshold and back onto the jetway, where he turned and made a display of hitting the “Call” button.
Jabbing his finger at me for emphasis, he growled a directive: “This door does NOT close until I’m back inside.”
Just then two new figures came barreling around the corner and down the last few feet of the jetway behind Frank in a rush of pounding footsteps and out-of-breath gratitude. As Cassini moved back against the wall, they lunged past him and onto the plane like a pair of overgrown teenagers on a joyride. The leader was late thirties, around six-one and instantly magnetic, pale, chiseled cheekbones and laughing blue eyes in a brown leather bomber jacket, well-worn 501s and a navy Seattle Mariners baseball cap. His companion was almost as tall, but broader, thicker, bearded and dark-skinned enough to suggest African royalty. Both wore sunglasses, though Leather Jacket’s were perched casually on the bill of his cap.
“Hey!” said Leather Jacket to Red, making it both a greeting and a punchline. I know him, I thought, trying to puzzle out his familiarity. How do I know him?
“Welcome on board,” she replied, all business again.
“Thanks!” he said with practiced ease, clapping large, supple hands together and flashing her another smile as they ambled past and fell into the empty pair of seats across the way from me in the first row. “Thought we’d missed it. Awesome.”
“No problem,” she said, “You just made it.” With this, she turned and, at last, smiled. At me. A feline smile that broadcast her intent as clearly as if she’d used the airplane’s public address system.
Oh, shit.
I knew what was expected of me now. I was expected to get up and get in Red’s face, explain that she didn’t know who she was dealing with and that if she closed that door she might find herself stewing the Seattle-Anchorage run for the next six months. I had my hands on the armrests, ready to push myself up and into battle, when something shifted inside me, like a heavy piece of luggage coming loose in the back as a car goes around a sharp turn.
Certainly, it had something to do my own increasing inability to reconcile Cassini’s public face of pragmatic, can-do Democrat with the private man I had come to view with a mixture of awe and revulsion. Most likely, it had something to do as well with the contrast of Leather Jacket’s entrance, the jovial grace with which he had handled his own situation. But I honestly believe what finally reached me was something determined and honorable in the face of our anonymous stewardess, who wanted only one thing: to do her job, and maybe hang onto a little dignity in the process.
She paused a moment at the door, glancing down at me again. She’s still expecting me to get up and yell at her, I realized. Because I work for him, she expects me to be like him. Jesus. And that was that. I looked up at Red, raised my eyebrows, pursed my lips and sighed. She flashed me the briefest of grins before pulling the handle on the automatic door.
Politics, I thought as the door began its irrefutable hydraulic swing downward, may not suit me.
* * *
2.
Sometimes in the late summer twilight, when the air under the prolific oaks surrounding our back patio grew soft and feathery as a down quilt, my father would begin in his low, rumbling voice to sketch out his vision of the perfect day. Standing over the brick barbecue he’d built by hand, leaning hard against it in his awkward way, he would pass the time while the burgers sizzled by putting his vision into words, drawing it like a picture puzzle.
“Eggs and bacon for breakfast around eight. The eggs scrambled, bacon just crisp, not crunchy, not soft. Kitchen so full of the smell you want to lick the air. Newspaper’s on the table waiting. Good news about the Giants in the sports section. A big trade, we finally picked up that ace starting pitcher we need to get past the Dodgers.”
Then he’d stir from his thoughts and check on the burgers, thrusting the metal spatula under the patties one by one with a magical-sounding “Shhhing” against the steel grill he carried into the garage and polished every winter like a jeweler.
“Then putter in the back yard for a couple of hours, a little weeding, rake a few leaves, enjoy the breeze in the trees. A smoke or two while I’m at it.”
When the patties had achieved the precise coloration and surface tension desired, he would make the exchange, flipping them with exaggerated care, like plump pancakes. After three to five minutes on side two it would be time to add the buns to the grill, gently, using the spatula to ease them on.
“Then back inside for lunch. A turkey club on a french roll, extra mustard and jalapenos, with Laura Scudders barbecue chips on the side. A little time with a book on the couch, maybe Robert Frost or Robert Parker, depending on the mood. Then a long drive down 101 to the Bay, maybe stop along the shore at Richardson Bay and watch the herons peck away at the mudflats for a few minutes, before dinner on the water in Sausalito, melt-in-your-mouth grilled swordfish on top of the tangiest shrimp cocktail you’ve ever tasted.”
When the time came to lift our black-striped charges off the grill I would man the platter, holding on with both hands to keep it steady.
“Last,” he would say. “Across the bridge – don’t forget to look down at the big cargo ships going under, crashing through the whitecaps in slow motion – and into the city. Down Lombard to Divisadero, then over the hill. Cut over to Fillmore, park in the middle of the block, a little past the dumpster. And then, into Winterland.” (The promised land. Here he would stop, fully engaged in his reverie, the last patty still wavering in midair between the grill and the waiting platter, his voice low and throaty with emotion.) “Front row seats. It’s a double bill, The Who and Led Zeppelin in their prime, Moon and Bonham both alive and wailing away at their drum kits. Jimmy Page wrings the sweat off his hands and throws a towel down to me. Daltrey windmills the mike so close I can hear it cutting through the air, then snatches it with his other hand and bends himself in half with a scream loud enough to shatter my camera lens.”
And then he’d finish, and put the second burger on the second bun, and check the coals to make sure nothing was in danger of catching. And hand me the spatula so that I could carry it back inside, too. And pick up his crutches from where they waited, leaning against the brick counter, and balance on whichever was his good foot that month like the Leaning Tower of Belly before beginning his difficult, stumbling traverse back into the house, and our lonely table for two.
* * *
We were a half hour into the flight and I was two fingers down on my third screwdriver by the time I realized Frank still had my phone. Not only had I ditched the candidate, the campaign wouldn’t even be able to track me down now. The day’s schedule was a shambles, and I was officially AWOL.
I took another long swig and adjusted my seat back farther, imagining Cassini’s volcanic reaction to being left on the gangway at LAX. As the door had moved into place and sealed, there had been one loud thump on the outside and then nothing more. Most likely, security had backed him off and then had to physically herd him up the ramp. No doubt my phone was a lost cause. He’d been known to hurl them into urinals when calls didn’t go his way; under the circumstances I imagined him performing some sort of elaborate ritual execution on mine.
I raised my glass in toast to the locked cabin door. “Francis,” I said.
“What?” My seat-mate across the aisle had glanced up, curious. I realized in a rush that he’d been sitting silent and nearly motionless all through our preflight and takeoff -- ever since the door closed, in fact. No magazines, no earphones, not even idle chit-chat with his voluminous seatmate, who was presently tipped all the way back in his seat, earphones on, thick arms crossed, silent as a Buddha. The only move he’d made in all that time was to take off his cap, revealing a dark, stylish mop of hair. I saw now that he wore a soul patch as well, a triangular tuft of neatly-trimmed beard tucked under his lower lip.
“Ha,” I said, momentarily flailing for a response. “Uh, just saying so long to a friend. Nope, not a friend. Jeez. It’s a long story. A really long, stupid story —“
My raconteur’s eyebrows had raised to half-mast. Thick, assertive things, potentially quite bushy if not tended with care, which they had been. “It’s alright,” he assured me in a calming tone. “I’m just along for the ride like everyone else.”
“What?”
“It’s just –- sometimes people get nervous, talking to me. I’m just saying, chill. Don’t worry about it.”
“Nervous.”
“Yeah.”
I stared at him a minute longer, taking in his firm, symmetrical nose, evenly tanned face and disheveled waves of dark hair that contrasted affectingly with deep-set blue eyes, crow’s feet taking hold at the corners like embellishments that only enhance an already-memorable face. Except I couldn’t remember it. It was tantalizingly familiar, but in my half-drunk and wholly frazzled state, I couldn’t place it.
Whatever. I went back to nursing my drink.
“So, what’s in SF? Business?” He was still watching me, bright-eyed and expectant.
“Uh, not really. Not any more.”
“Change of plans?”
“You could say that.”
“Was the snarly guy on the gangway with you?” He gestured toward the empty seat beyond me.
“Yeah. Yeah, he was.” I couldn’t help it. I grinned.
“No big loss, eh?”
I chuckled and shook my head in agreement. “Nope.”
He leaned closer and sang his next words to me, softly, conspiratorially, but without a hint of self-consciousness: “’Cause I’m aaaaaalready gone…’”
Instinctively, I finished the line: “…and I’m feeeeeelin’ strong.’”
Encouraged, he tried again. “’Big old jet airliner…’”
“’...don’t carry me too far away.’” I was chuckling now, feeling warm and relaxed and strangely at home. “Except, no. Far away is good. Necessary, even.” I finished off my drink and my thought. “That was my boss.”
“’Take this job and shove it,’” responded Blue Eyes in a dead-on country drawl.
I was laughing again, deep into it now. “Oh, what was that Queen song, the one about their ex-manager from the album with ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’?”
“Death on two legs,” he sang back in perfect Freddie Mercury falsetto.
“Doo-doo-doo-DOO-doo-doo,” I followed, singing the guitar chords.
“Yeah, that one’s sweet.” He eased back into his seat with a thoughtful grin as a companionable quiet descended between us.
* * *
“Chill.” “That one’s sweet.” Not phrases you’d normally expect from a man with flecks of gray coming in at the temples and smile lines etched into his cheeks. I mulled this, and my day so far, for some time as I powered through a fourth drink, moving up to a less disingenuous vodka-rocks just in case the stewardess was getting ready to cut me off. I typically stopped at two and the alcohol was starting to make me feel hazy in a way that was both unfamiliar and welcome. For a year and a half – hell, for six -- I had been focused, ordered and obedient. On track. Now I was off, and this brought me a primitive satisfaction.
Eventually, I realized one of the coach stewardesses, a tiny blonde with small, round hipster glasses, had cornered the fierce Red in the galley in front of us, where the two of them were whispering like schoolgirls.
After a moment Red emerged, no longer severe, in fact now somewhat flushed, and handed Blue Eyes a glass of champagne from a small silver tray. “For you,” she said softly, but with a purposeful stare, before retreating back to the galley.
I watched as the frowning Blue Eyes set the glass down on the wide armrest next to him and took a long look at the phone number clearly inscribed on the cocktail napkin underneath.
“That happen to you a lot?”
He glanced up and gave me a curious look, as if calculating how to split a complicated restaurant bill. Then he shook his head wearily. “Too much.”
“Uh.” I overcame my surprise and the accompanying tinge of jealousy as, without warning, the synapses started firing again. “Crash, Dave Matthews Band, song number three.” The –sh in Crash had lasted a little longer than I’d meant it to.
Now it was his turn to grin. “‘Too Much.’ Uh-huh. They really jam on that one. But the best cut on that album is ‘Say Goodbye.’ His vocal range is unreal, and the sax tone is godlike.”
“Well, sure.”
“You know your music.”
“Yeah. S’nothin’. My dad. See, he wrote for Noise magazine for, I dunno, twenny-five years. Photographer, too. We used to do this all the time, like a game.”
“Noise. No kidding. What’s his name?”
“Bernie Green. One of the boys from the Noise, yeah.” I shook my head. “He died in January. Six months ago this week.”
“Bernie Green.” I could feel his eyes on me, but I wasn’t prepared to meet them in that moment. “Wow. I’m sorry.”
I glanced up and damned if he didn’t look sorry. My eyes fell to my hands again. I had unconsciously worked the napkin I had gotten with my last drink – the perfectly blank napkin – into a tightly folded one-by-one square. “Yeah. He was alright. A sweetheart, his editor used to call him. Too many cheeseburgers and cherry pies on the road, not to mention the cigarettes. First diabetes, then a heart attack, then a bigger one. He was 55.”
“Too soon, man. Way too soon.”
There was nothing I could really say to that.
“So, are you a writer, too?”
“Me?” I’d asked myself the question a couple of times in high school and college, but it’d been years since anyone had asked it of me. “Nope.” I finished off the dregs of my drink, the ice clattering as I set the empty cup back down.
“Huh. Well, you look like you could use a ride when we get in. Where you headed?”
I considered this for a minute. “Uh. I don’t know. I mean, there’s this thing I was supposed to go to…” Giggle. “But I don’t think I’m invited anymore.”
“Well, look. I’ve got a session downtown this afternoon. If you’ve got no plans, come along.”
A session. The image of a therapist’s aggressively comforting waiting room, all pastels and puffy pillows, flickered past. “Huh?”
“We’re at Wonder Wheel Studios. Hitch a ride and hang out for a while until you feel better.”
“Yeah? Uh, thanks.” The conversation had taken one too many weird turns. It was time to clear things up. I stuck out my hand. “Tim Green.”
Watching me the whole time, he took it with a careful, sympathetic smile and gave it a quick shake. “Jordan Lee.” He nodded back towards his massive companion. “And that’s Ray.”
Fortunately Ray did not stir, because in the meantime the name Jordan Lee had set my mind churning like an industrial washing machine. It took a few seconds, what with all the driblets of anger and sadness and confusion and alcohol clogging things up. When recognition came, though, it came in a rush.
Lead singer for Stormseye. Four-time Rolling Stone cover boy, with and without the band. A bunch on the front of Noise as well, if I remember right. Frontman for the only act ever to sell out the Oakland Coliseum five nights in a row. A fistful of platinum albums and almost as many Grammy nominations. A bona fide, homegrown California rock star.
Willing myself to stay composed, I stole another glance at my new acquaintance. He was looking away now, expression clouded, as if he’d done something he knew he had to, but regretted all the same.
* * *
3.
Terry Valenzuela was the first girl I ever kissed. No, check that – Terry, the dusky-haired neighborhood tomboy and my best friend since fourth grade, was the first girl who ever kissed me. We were eleven. The thermometer out back hit the upper nineties that late June afternoon, and Terry and I were beating the heat down at the creek that ran along the edge of our neighborhood, a semi-rural cluster of homes on the outskirts of Santa Rosa, an hour north of San Francisco. Squatting on the dirt bank of the creek, ten feet ahead of where it ran into a large concrete culvert that cut under our street, we had whiled away half an afternoon chasing and catching tadpoles. I had just finished pouring our last catch into the big pyrex mixing bowl we had liberated from my kitchen earlier when I looked up to see Terry standing in a sunbeam at the entrance of the pipe, waiting. For what, I’ve never known.
All the same I stood up, wiped my hands on my shorts, and picked my way along the rocky bank, speculating on the way about whether when we were done she’d want to ride bikes down to the Seven-Eleven with me so I could buy some baseball cards. Just as I reached her, expecting to be shown some interesting bug or plant, she reached over, put a hand on either shoulder, and kissed me square on the lips.
Electricity didn’t buzz through me. No clouds parted and angels did not sing on high. But the surprise I felt in the moment gave way almost instantly to a kind of exhilarating Zing! that tingled in my chest and rang in my ears.
Riding north along the muddy shores of San Francisco Bay in the back of a white limo with Jordan and Ray, for the briefest instant, a rippling echo of that Zing! sensation came dancing down my lifeline to the present.
I knew it couldn’t possibly be the perfect day of my father’s imagination, seeing as though by eleven-thirty I’d lost my job and drunk my breakfast. But all things considered, it had felt surprisingly decent, strolling off the plane without the slightest fanfare, no CHP waiting, no clustered greeting party of obsequious staffers. It had been a year and a half since I’d joined the campaign, eighteen months of being shackled to a schedule, my entire life regimented by a constant clamor of demands and obligations. As the open sunroof blended the salty sea-breeze with the rich, spunky scent of fresh leather, I began to feel uncaged, alive in a way I hadn’t been for a long time.
I’m riding in a limo with Jordan Lee. I shook my head to clear it, but nothing changed, not the shadowed opulence of the limo’s interior, nor the wispy fingers of fog being beaten back by the mid-morning sun above, nor the steady murmur of Jordan talking into his cell phone next to me. At one point I glanced at the glass partition that separated us from the driver’s compartment and caught my own reflection, the dark-haired, long-faced kid in the charcoal gray suit sitting next to the rock and roll demi-god like this was all completely normal. A moment later I realized the southern reaches of the city had already flown by and we were exiting at the base of the downtown skyline.
Wonder Wheel Studios stood tall amid the wreckage of San Francisco’s end-of-the-century tech boom. At its apex, a ravening horde of silicon-based business startups had transformed building after building in the formerly rough-and-tumble commercial district south of Market Street, consuming decaying, inexpensive lofts full of starving artists and spitting back out sleek, modern office spaces haunted by twitchy venture capitalists in thousand-dollar suits. Until the miniature boomtown went bust, that is, when the wind of change suddenly died down from a hurricane to a stiff breeze. Today the neighborhood was an eclectic mixture of the new, the old, and the nearly falling-down.
Ray held the door for us at the base of the graying four-story WPA building that housed Wonder Wheel, trailing me into the lobby. There was no need for him to take the point any more, as we were now officially in Jordan’s element. The only threat I detected from the green-haired young receptionist who shot out of her chair to greet us was that she might slump to her knees at any moment, wrap her spidery, tattooed arms around Jordan’s legs and never let go. I was glad I’d at least pulled off my tie and opened my collar.
The interior of the studio reminded me of a movie set, a façade masking mysteries both elaborate and mundane. A high-ceilinged reception area with large plants and modern prints hanging on the walls created the illusion of a marginally stylish business office, the only creative touch the cloudy glass bricks that made up the reception desk’s front wall. Five steps down the hall past reception, though, you crossed into a new dimension. We passed small rooms crammed with banks of indecipherable electronic equipment, panel after shiny panel of knobs and switches and dials and readouts that could have supplied Salvador Dali with fresh new nightmares to paint. At the end of the hall lay three large rooms, one overrun with a maze of keyboards on trestles and stacked amps and a circled drum set surrounded by open guitar cases. The other two lay virtually empty.
Turning left into one of the apparently deserted spaces, we were met by a line of greeters already emerging from a glassed-in control booth behind the left wall of the large room. One after another they approached Jordan, shaking his hand, slapping his shoulder, thanking him for being there with grateful eyes and, in some cases, an undertone of awe.
We were in the bubble, a place I’d inhabited again and again escorting Frank Cassini through the hinterlands of California politics. We were the center of attention, with deference and accommodation the order of the day as soon as people came within range of our celebrity pheromones. Except this was a different kind of bubble. People approached Frank with a wary mixture of hope and fear, like a football team they’d placed a large bet on but didn’t entirely trust to beat the spread. Jordan, by contrast, was the object of out-and-out adulation.
Toward the end of the line he grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me forward to greet a slender, intense man with small rectangular glasses and a shock of straight gray hair falling almost to his shoulders. “Robert, this is my friend Tim. He’s along for the ride today. Tim, Robert Pierson. He put this whole thing together.” After a moment, Jordan observed my slack-jawed state and elaborated. “We’re finishing up a benefit album for the California Conservation Association. It’s called This Land is Our Land, y’know, the old Woody Guthrie song, except Jackson Browne changed the lyrics so it talks about California landmarks, the Sierras and the coastline and all that.”
I nodded and shook Pierson’s long, soft, very pink hand. “Nice to meet you. Uh, wow. I’m a fan.” How many acts has this guy produced platinum albums for? R.E.M., the Pixies, Soundgarden… good God, I think he might have engineered for the Who in the seventies.
One side of Pierson’s mouth angled up into a wry half-grin. “Make yourself at home, then,” he offered in a clipped British accent that felt both alien and comforting in this strange new world, gesturing toward the far end of the room. Following his gaze I found a large table laid out with a heaping buffet of sandwiches, cookies, fruit, water, beer and wine. “If you need anything, ask him.” Pierson nodded toward an equally gangly but decades-younger fellow in ripped jeans and stormtrooper boots who was leaning against the window to what I now recognized as the vocal booth. It was a smallish room tucked into the left wall alongside the control room, empty other than a microphone hanging from the ceiling and a pair of headphones hanging from a rack on the inside wall.
Jordan moved directly into the vocal booth and began warming up, singing a series of scales and nonsense phrases. Trailing him to the door, I stuck my hand out to Pierson’s studio assistant, who I saw now had five loop earrings trailing up the side of his left ear, well into the vast recesses of stringy black hair surrounding his sullen face. He stared at me a moment before giving my offered hand a perfunctory shake. “I’m Tim.”
“Yeah.”
In the booth, Jordan interrupted everyone, holding up a strangely knotted, feathery brown necklace and asking “What’s this?”
“Jewel must’ve left that this morning,” said Pierson. “The pendant kept banging against her shirt-buttons so we had her take it off.”
“Oh, that’s good. For a minute I thought maybe Adam had left one of his dreadlocks in here.”
I whispered, half to myself and half to my voluble companion, “Adam Duritz is on this album?”
He sighed, bored with me already. “He was in last week. He and Bonnie Raitt did a duet.”
With that, I was officially Alice, slipped down the rabbit-hole.
* * *
Through the 1980s and nineties my father aged, but his musical tastes never quite caught up. He was game to try anything, I’ll give him that – I remember catching him unaware in his home office once with his mission control-sized Koss earphones on, jiggering around like an epileptic to Tupac Shakur – but his heart stayed in the seventies. It’s one of the reasons he was so excited when Stormseye emerged from the Bay Area scene in the midst of the grunge era. He had hailed them in a review in the back pages of Noise as “a group talented and audacious enough to transplant the very heart of rock and roll – the furious noise, the fervent belief – into a new body built for a new age.”
The Allman Brothers and Van Morrison were obvious influences in their fluid, heavily melodic approach, and early Springsteen surely informed the raw emotion often poured out in their lyrics. But they were also playful, never taking themselves too seriously. They could blast out a stadium-sized rock song with lyrics purposeful and powerful enough to generate a 50,000-person sing-along, then undercut themselves a moment later with songs like “Green-Eyed Angel,” a mid-tempo track that lulls you into thinking it’s a love song for two verses, until at the chorus the narrator’s girl is revealed as a obsessive nut-job. My dad once compared them to “U2 with less ego and better punchlines.”
They were also prolific. In an era when many record labels had come to view two to three years as perfect spacing between albums, and following a period when major artists like Peter Gabriel and Dire Straights had taken five and six years between releases, Stormseye had issued five albums of new material in nine years. Over the course of their first decade they had built a global audience in the tens of millions.
At the pinnacle of their popularity, they had broken up. Or not. The announcement at the end of the truncated September Serenade tour had indicated they were “taking a break.” But that break had stretched to six months, a year, then two, then five. They had never turned their backs completely on each other; there had been a series of reunion one-off shows at benefits for organizations like the Natural Resources Defense Council and the World Wildlife Fund. They’d done the annual BRIDGE School Benefit in Berkeley twice at the invitation of Neil Young. But until the previous spring, there had been no serious talk in the music press of an actual reformation of the band. Jordan had issued a pair of well-received solo albums during their hiatus, but had remained largely out of the spotlight other than his charity work.
As a result, Stormseye’s current reunion album and tour had snowballed into a major cultural happening. The 21st century media machine had welcomed the band back with open arms, ready to tackle someone with a little more substance than the Hollywood celebutante du jour and the latest crop of American Idol posers. “Storming Back” was the predictable Rolling Stone headline (not that many people cared what RS thought anymore, but it still counted as national press). Similar puns played out across the pages of Spin, Noise, People and even Guitar Player, whose latest issue featured a grinning Nicky Frost on the cover.
There was more, of course, tidbits of industry rumor and party-circuit gossip from the band’s earlier days, but the details were lost in the fog of three hundred artist profiles and three thousand album reviews, my father’s Don Quixote-ish legacy, a virtual critical encyclopedia of a creative genre many still can’t conceive of as art.
* * *
As my initial awe at my surroundings settled into a contented rhythm watching Jordan work, I began to sober up, clarity leeching back in accompanied by the old familiar strains of worry and regret and guilt. ’