35. Seattle
IAN
Sheree’s drop-ins at universities and colleges across the nation had become so popular that we no longer got to attend. The students had figured out that if fifteen unexplained buses showed up in a parking lot near a school, they should swarm the most likely amphitheater or quad, just in case Sheree showed up.
So, bus one decoupled from the group. (In fact, bus one itself would park miles away, and Sheree and her decoy would arrive and leave on motorcycles.)
That gave us more time. Someone at Lyre Records would book us some rehearsal space so we could work with her band on whatever the city-specific song was going to be. Sheree had liked my idea of honoring Pearl Jam in Seattle, so we ran through “Alive” a few times. It went so well that we were left with idle time and a room full of the world’s most skillful musicians. Archer boldly asked them to give us a critique of “Street Dancing.”
We got through the first verse when both Freddy and Gavin waved us down. Sheree’s drummer and percussionist both wanted to consult with Mal about the rhythms, and Mal was over the moon about it.
Freddy, Gavin, and Mal worked together to get the dance rhythms down right. “No listener,” Gavin announced, “is going to be able to sit still with this one. This is a hell of a song, guys.”
God. These guys were so great.
Nicky, at a table in the corner where she could set up our press interviews for Seattle, looked proudly at me, which was as much accolade as I wanted. Charlotte slept on under the table.
“All right,” Freddy said. “Let’s not pick this apart anymore. You know what you’re doing, Mal. Put it together. All three of you. Let’s hear it all the way through.”
Archer and I came to attention, and Mal rattled out the revised thumping tempo.
Yeah. That was it. That was what I’d heard when I wrote the song.
Archer sang:
Sometimes you don’t have a choice.
The tide is going out.
You’re staked to the anthill.
Small before the storm’s shout.
Street dancing
When the drums demand it,
When the guitar’s insisting.
When the vocals pull like magnets,
There’s no use resisting.
Street dancing
She loses herself in the beat
No other world but now
If life is staid and gray,
There’s a struggle just to survive,
One thing shreds the monotony.
Reminds you you’re alive.
Street dancing
“Shit,” Freddy said in the silence at the end. “Fucking dance tune. That’s ready right now. You should play it tomorrow in Seattle.”
“It’s ready?” Archer was grinning. “You think?”
“You play that after the lullaby, you’ll get them on their feet again. Swap out ‘Get a Grip’ for this one.”
Sometimes it’s hard to look cool. When a top musician knows your set list well enough to suggest where a new song should come in, that’s a good day.
On the other hand . . .
We were back on bus eight and they’d gone back to their buses when I made my suggestion to the guys. “Let’s swap out ‘Blood Burn’ instead.”
“What? Why?” Mal was confused. “‘Blood Burn’ is one of our most popular songs.”
Archer was watching me. He swatted Mal’s meaty arm. “Brother Malachi. You know who’s coming to the Seattle concert, don’t you?”
Mal blinked and nodded. “Ah. Magda and Big Pat. Ian doesn’t want to play his father the song his father inspired.”
“Right,” Archer said. “‘You want my love, you get my rage.’ Okay, Ian. We’ll swap ‘Blood Burn’ for ‘Street Dancing.’ It’ll fit there nicely.”
I was grateful Archer and Mal understood. I was itchy just the same, and it felt good to play scales on my Olson. Up to the octave. Back down again. Up two octaves. Back down. Down an octave.
The sound of Nicky’s laptop snapping shut startled me. I looked up to find all three of them staring at me. “What?”
“That’s it,” Nicky said. She stepped over Charlotte (the dog thought she was sleeping under the table, but she was now so long that most of her spilled out into the room) and held her hand out.
“What? What do you want?”
“Give me the guitar. Come with me.”
Perplexed, I let her take the cherished guitar out of my hands. I followed her to the back lounge.
“Thank you, Nicky,” Mal called out.
“All praise to Sister Nicolicious,” Archer added. “May she reign supreme forevermore.”
“Amen!” Mal said.
Nicky pointed to the sofa and I sat, confused and annoyed but obedient, and watched her carefully work the latches that secured the guitar to the case on the wall.
When she turned to me, her hands were on her hips. She looked determined.
“What?” I asked—apparently the only word I could say.
She shook her head and straddled me, sitting on my lap and looping her arms around my neck. I got a pulse of heat to my cock as my hands went to her hips, but her energy didn’t say take me now, you manly man. She was serious and not at all ready to play.
“Ian,” she said, “you’re going to see your dad tomorrow.”
I forced down the flicker of panic at the thought. “I know.”
“Well, you’ve got to calm down.”
“I’m calm. Don’t I look calm?”
She looked at me skeptically. “You haven’t played scales since you were able to sleep through the night.”
“That’s not true. I play scales all the time. Keeps my fingers limber.” Nicky looked at me. She wore no expression, her face was studiously neutral, and yet somehow, her silence challenged my assertion. “Don’t I?”
She shook her head slowly.
Archer called from the front lounge, “No! You haven’t been playing scales, and we are so fucking glad about it!”
I leaned out to look past Nicky. Mal and Archer were both bending out of the banquette to capture every word. “You can hear all this?” I asked, wondering what else they’d overheard.
“You can,” Mal said, “if you really concentrate. Keep going, Nicky. You’re doing great.”
Archer sniggered. They were both settled in to hear the discussion. Dimly, I thought that I was both annoyed and also dismayed.
Nicky was not distracted. “You’re going to have a great visit with them.”
I inhaled and tried to fight my negativity. “The only thing my dad’s going to like is hearing how my union card saved the Independence Festival.”
“False. When your father comes to the concert, we’re going to treat him like a VIP. He’ll see the entire audience come back to their seats by the time you guys are done with ‘Lizabella.’ He’ll see just how good you are onstage. He’ll know you made the right decision when you became a musician.”
Suddenly, my head was too heavy to hold up. I rested it on her shoulder. “I hope that’s true,” I mumbled.
“It’s true.” She stroked my shorn head. “And your mother is going to beg me to bear your children. And your sister will want to be my bestie, and your brothers will think I’m funny. It’s going to be okay, Ian.” She tugged my head up so she could kiss my eyelids, my nose, and finally my mouth. “I promise. Now, no more scales.”
Nicky made me a better person. I sighed. “Okay. No more scales. But I’m going to need something to do with my hands.”
“Good.” She stood, and I missed her warmth immediately. “You need to write a newsletter article. Both of you do too,” she said to Archer and Mal as we returned to the front lounge. They groaned. “Yes, you do. You have over three thousand newsletter subscribers already, and they deserve to hear what you’re doing. Mal, you’re going to write about working with Freddy and Gavin. Archer, you’re going to talk about the Independence Festival. And Ian, your topic is ‘Street Dancing’—how you came up with the idea, how long it took to write, when you’re going to play it live for the first time, when you’re going to record it. Don’t know any of those answers? Figure it out!”
“Man,” Archer grumbled. “This is a lot like high school.”
“You don’t want to do it?” Nicky shot an arched eyebrow at him. “That’s fine. I’ll just write up a post about how you all met in marching band.”
“Dude!” Archer and Mal rounded on me. “You told her?”
Between the three of them and Charlotte, they kept me busy (or sleeping soundly) until we pulled into the stadium’s parking garage the next day. I texted my family, newly arrived in Seattle, and we settled on a place to meet at the stadium. They arrived well before sound check, and when I met them at the door with passes hanging from five lanyards, I had trouble processing what I was seeing.
Finn launched himself at me and attached himself to my rib cage. My mother, laughing, hugged me over him (“Look at your hair!”), and so did my sister, Betsy, and my brother, Dom. But— “Where’s Dad?”
Finn let go and backed up, hanging his head. It was my mother who answered. “He had so much work to do, and you know that a rock concert isn’t really his thing . . .”
“He’s not here?” I wanted to stop time so I could figure out if I was hurt, angry, or relieved.
“Of course he’s not here,” my sister said, slipping her arm through mine. “You knew he wouldn’t come, didn’t you?”
“Now, Betts,” Mom said. “He wanted to come. Of course he did. And he’ll come to the Manhattan concerts, of course.”
“Sure, Ma,” Dom said, rolling his eyes.
I decided I was mostly angry.
“Well, that’s fine,” I said, shoving the lone remaining lanyard into my pocket. “His loss. Come on, we’re about to do sound check, and I want you to meet Nicky.”
“This is so fucking cool!” Dom, at least, was all grins as we made our way through the empty stadium. “Look at all these seats!”
I let them choose where they’d sit to watch our (very short) sound check and Sheree’s (far longer) sound check. “I’ll be back to watch with you when we’re done.”
“And we want to meet Nicky!” my mother added, catching my hand before I could head for the stage. That made me feel better.
“Forget Nicky,” Betts said. “I want to meet the dog!”
“She wants to meet you too. Soon.” I left but hadn’t made it two paces before I remembered something. “Hey.” I stood in the row in front of them and regained their attention. “Want to see something cool?”
“Like this isn’t cool enough?” Betts asked.
I leaned down so my face was across from Finn’s. “Watch this.”
It took him a moment to read my fake smile, but then my grin was real. His reaction was so gratifying.
“Your cheek! Look at your smile! Both sides are working!”
I knew Finn felt guilty about my scar. He’d been the one to suggest our downhill biking, and although it had been no one’s fault but mine that I nearly sliced my face off, it ate at Finn that I’d lost my cheek muscle.
My mother was crying and my siblings were banging on me and dancing. Finn shook his fists in the air. “Yeah! Way to go, Ian!”
Their celebration might have gone on all afternoon, except Archer and Mal rushed up the aisle, grabbed Mom in strangling hugs, banged into my siblings in greeting, and grabbed me under either elbow.
“We’re up! Let’s go, Brother Ianacus! Hi, Magda! Did you bring us shortbread? Gotta go!”
They frog walked me back up the aisle to the stage, leaving my family laughing.
I was laughing too. But the guys missed nothing.
“No Big Pat,” Mal said.
“He coming later? For the show?” Archer asked.
I shook my head. “Said he’d come to the New York gigs.”
Mal chucked me on the shoulder and said, “Fucking fathers” before heading for his drum set. Archer nodded and said nothing more.
Good friends. Nothing beats them.
Our sound check was almost pro forma at this point. The monitor sound was as good as we were going to get, and the front-of-house engineer actually took the time to adjust our levels, which was flattering (even if people like my family didn’t know it).
We were done quickly, and I was going to head for the greenroom to find Nicky when Archer blocked me and nodded toward the audience.
Nicky had found my mother. They were in deep discussion as Betts, Dom, and Finn clustered around a joyous Charlotte, who was almost as tall as they were, as long as they were seated.
“She’s brave, your girl,” Mal said, coming up beside us. “To introduce herself to Magda without even having you as a shield.”
“Magda’s a cream puff,” Archer opined. “It was Big Pat she needed to impress. But that’s a nonstarter, huh?”
“Big Pat,” I said, possibly letting a little more of my contempt out than I should have.
“Want to put ‘Blood Burn’ back in?”
Archer asked it with a smile, but I knew he was serious. He’d change the set list at the last minute for me.
“Fuck no,” I said. “And mess up the world premiere of ‘Street Dancing’? No way.”
“It’s gonna crush,” Mal said with utter confidence.
“Yeah it is. Let’s go rescue Nicky from your family—and your family from Charlotte.”