Chapter Thirty-Seven The Piano Guy
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The Piano Guy
Griffin
I’m stuck in the studio despite knowing Beverly is somewhere in LA. It’s a unique type of torture because even if she were one block away, there isn’t a damn thing I can do to see her.
Today is her pitch day. The very few short texts say everything she isn’t. I received a blurry picture of Bernie Bird, followed by: It’s go time.
She did it.
She finished all the scripts.
But there’s also no way she isn’t freaking out this morning.
“Hey, Griff?” a voice scratches from the speaker above us. Through the wide glass separating the sound board from the recording booth, Jimmy leans over the shoulder of a bored sound engineer. “It’s a bit…”
“Intense,” Poe answers for him. “Griff, you gotta chill, man.”
I follow his gaze down to my fingertips.
Christ.
I’m gripping the neck of my guitar like it’s the only thing grounding me to this earth. Maybe it is.
“Let’s try that again,” Dom says from the drum set behind me.
The intercom cuts in once more. Jimmy grumbles, “We’ve tried it twenty-six times. But sure, what’s twenty-seven?”
Royce strums a stiff chord on his bass.
“One more,” he adds in.
Jimmy doesn’t press the button again, so we can’t hear his frustrated groan, but he’s visibly clawing at his hair.
It’s the second week of recording, and we’ve been at this one song all morning.
My notebook lies open on the floor in an array of tabbed pages, ripped tendrils of notebook scraps, and scribbled lines.
The song has been giving us trouble because the composition is all wrong.
The notes I wrote aren’t meant for guitars or drums. It’s written for piano.
And on-the-spot translation has been aggressively stressful.
Dom rises from his drum set. “You know what? I could use a break.” His sticks rattle when he sets them on the snare, making his way to the booth door without asking permission.
Behind the glass, Jimmy throws his hands in the air with an open-mouthed but inaudible noise that I can only imagine sounds like a werewolf transforming under a full moon. Jimmy slams his finger back down on the intercom button. “Sure thing, guys,” he says, with faux sweetness. “Take five.”
Dom opens the door and leaves.
I exchange a look with Poe, then Royce.
Royce sets down his bass with a shrug.
“We’ll get this, buddy,” he says.
“One day,” Poe says, unstrapping his guitar and then placing it on the stand. It wobbles a bit, and he steadies it. One look at my pinched face and he laughs. “Kidding! We will. I believe in you.”
They believe in me as much as they believe the world is flat—actually, the jury is out on Poe with that one—but they won’t say anything.
The door shuts behind Poe, and the dulled white noise that remains swallows me whole. I sit on the stool with my guitar resting on my knee, staring down at the sprawled-open notebook on the floor.
The lyrics taunt me. Words about wispy hair and green eyes. Smiles and gentle laughs. Memories of soft feathers waving in my face and syrupy pancakes under my nose.
Damn it, this can’t hold me back. Jimmy and the guys are counting on me to pull through. Technically, I have the songs written and ready to go. They aren’t how I imagined them, but who cares? That’s not the point.
The booth door swings open again, and Dom strolls in with a coffee. He sits on the stool beside me and hands me the cup. I take it, even though I’m on my third. Beverly’s habit must have rubbed off on me, I guess. It’s her unique version of being a bad influence. It almost makes me smile.
Dom kicks out one leg, then rests the other on the rung below. Dom and I have been working together since our days in Nashville, and with how he’s shifting uncomfortably in his chair, I know he’s about to be serious with me.
“I’m fine,” I say, cutting him off before he can ask.
“I was gonna say you look like shit, actually.” It’s gruff, rumbling in his throat like the tar of cigarettes once smoked remains part of him.
I run my palm over my beard. I haven’t trimmed it in days. “I’m just a little out of it.”
“We can tell.”
“Great. Thanks.”
“So. What’s going on?”
There’s a knock on the glass. I look up to see Poe bouncing Ava on his hip. She waves at me. I wave back as she shoves her face against the glass, leaving streaks of drool. Poe cackles at the same time the sound engineer tenses in his chair.
“Griffin,” Dom says, bringing me back. “Talk to me.”
“Man, I can’t think of anything else but Ava right now.”
I’ve got that girl to look out for. She’s in the public eye now.
This media train is barreling down the tracks with no end in sight.
She needs to be with me and having a good time—not worrying about the world.
That’s my burden. And creating reliable music is what will get us through.
Going on tour with her, trying every day to keep her laughing, will be what keeps us alive.
“I’m getting back to something normal,” I say. “The usual.”
“The usual,” Dom echoes.
I grunt out in affirmation. But the usual admittedly feels like something different now.
The usual is coats and snow. Quilts and cartoons.
Too much coffee and endless pancakes. I’ve tried to make us some, but they’re not as good as the Larks’.
Even Poe can’t master a recipe. Ava is discerning now.
She scrunches her nose and pushes the plate away, like she’s some flapjack connoisseur.
“The usual,” I repeat. “Music. Recording. Touring. That’s it.”
He adjusts in his seat and shrugs. “Well, you can’t have that. Not anymore. Not now that people know about Ava.”
“Yeah,” I say through an exhale. “I know.” I set my guitar to the side, stand, and begin pacing to who knows where.
“She’s in the spotlight, and now she always will be,” I say. “I’ll bring her on tours, and hopefully that’s normal enough. Hopefully she grows up with some semblance of what Robin wanted for her, but…God, who knows?”
“Well, Ava seems to be fine with everything,” Dom says.
“Robin didn’t want Ava to live like this,” I confess.
“She is, though. And that’s how it’ll be now.”
Robin wanted one thing. One thing.
I swallow back the tightness in my jaw. “Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever get this parenting thing right.”
“You won’t.”
I jerk my head to him, but Dom smiles.
“It’s not easy,” he says. “It’ll never be exactly how you imagine.
We promised we wouldn’t be a sports household, but my girl wanted softball, so now our house smells like damp socks during the spring.
She’s still figuring out how to do her laundry—also something we said she’d do on her own—but we do it for her anyway because she’s busy.
My youngest stays up too late even though we set a bedtime, and don’t get me started on those screens. ”
That might be the most I’ve ever heard Dom monologue about his family. It has my lips twitching at the corner.
“You should talk about them more, Dom.”
“You’re her dad,” he continues. “You’re not perfect.
You never will be. But you get to choose what happens now and how you react to the shit that comes next.
You choose the life that fits both of you.
I liked Robin. She was a good woman and a good mom.
But you can’t live your life hoping to raise the kid how she would, because you’re not her.
That just ain’t how life is. Be honest with yourself: Was hiding Ava ever going to work long term? ”
That unease twists my gut more than peering over the side of Elk Grove’s lookout.
He’s right.
I hate that he’s right.
We were always going to cross this bridge at some point, even if Robin were still here. We couldn’t hide Ava forever.
I glance up at the glass window, watching her giggle with Poe as he mouths a song to her. Royce taps his foot to the silent beat. Even though I can’t hear them on this side of the glass, I see that laugh explode out of her.
Maybe this is the happiness she needs.
An open life with her dad. Not being cooped up in the house. I can’t shelter her forever, and even if I could, would she think she’s a shameful secret? Ava is anything but shameful.
I glance down at my notebook on the floor.
The lyrics. The notes meant for piano.
I’m not ashamed of anything.
I pace over to the piano, running my tongue over my teeth.
I plunk down a key. It’s crisp and clear, like I imagined it was when I wrote it.
I tap a key again, then add another. I press down both hands with twitching fingers that find their notes like muscle memory.
It all flows easily, just like it’s meant to.
The intercom scratches to life, and I hear Jimmy’s voice say, “What, uh, whatcha doin’, Griff?”
I cut a glance to the window. Jimmy wears a steely expression. But behind him, Poe and Royce have curious looks. Not disappointed. Interested.
I press down on the keys again. The notes that follow feel right. The chords reflect the magic in the lyrics. The magic of Beverly Lark.
The intercom scratches.
“I kinda like that, man,” Poe says.
“This is good,” Dom says from behind me.
I pull my hands back.
“It’s not what I’m known for,” I murmur.
Dom scoffs. “Who gives a shit? We just want to play good music, don’t we?”
“It’s not me.”
“It is. Stop living in the past. It’s time to move on.”
There’s thumping on the recording-booth glass. I turn around on the piano bench and see Ava leaning forward in Poe’s arms. I can’t hear her, but I see her lips clearly form the words Daddy, play!
My smile twitches at the corner.
I want to be the man she believes in. I want to play the songs that make her dance and press the keys that make her smile.
Jimmy reaches over the engineer and presses his thumb on the intercom button.
“Guitar guy, Griffin. Let’s stick with the script.”
But just before he removes his thumb, I hear the tail of Ava’s “E!”
The E song.
It’s not something practical.
Neither is the piano.
But Ava never seems to care much, as long as I’m playing for her.
“I’m whoever I want to be, Jimmy,” I say, reaching out to plunk notes again.
“Whoever she needs me to be. Maybe it’s the guitar guy.
Maybe it’s the piano guy. And you know what?
If it’s good, people will like it, regardless of what damn instrument I play.
Jimmy, I love you like a brother, but back off a second and just let me work. ”
So I do. I press the keys, and Dom hands me the notebook, and one by one, my bandmates come back into the studio and find accompanying rhythms. The song transforms into something different but something far better than I imagined. Definitely better than what we were playing before the break.
This is who I am.
You’re not special, Harv, Robin said once. You just work hard. But that’s better, I think.
I’m the man working hard to make the music I want. I always pour everything I have into my life. I’m being a good role model for my daughter, even if that isn’t living the quiet life. Because that isn’t us. And I’m not perfect. I’m just the man I am.
I’m the man Ava can depend on. A dad who tries. Who pivots when things get tough. Who loves her while we endure. And as the notes fall from my fingers, as the lyrics permeate my brain, I know that ultimately, I’m Beverly’s man too.
Beverly is the most driven person I know.
She’s the type of woman to build an impossible pitch in under two months.
To endure, regardless of anxiety and lack of sleep.
She has dreams that are so much bigger than both of us, and I wouldn’t have it any other way, because that’s what makes Beverly not just good at what she does but the best.
Rock Star Griffin Harvey is the piano guy. The guitar guy. The guy who writes children’s songs. And whoever else I want to be. He’s the type of man to support his woman’s dreams, even if it means he’s not always in the picture.
I freeze my fingers over the keys.
“Hey, Jimmy?” I ask.
The fuzzy dead air of the intercom comes to life, and after a moment, Jimmy asks, “Yes, Satan?”
“Get Finch’s number for me.”