You Don't Love Me Yet Page 10

  For the band, this first public rendition of what’s instantly become their hit song is the moment when time stops its hectic flow and earth’s atmosphere expands, just a little, to make room for something new, embodied by themselves. It’s the moment when they realize that rather than being as good as they’d always hoped, or even better than they hoped, they’re simply as good as they are, no hope required. Enshrined behind the even newer songs—“Dirty Yellow Chair,” “Secret from Yourself,” and the others resulting from the sheaf of titles Lucinda presented in Bedwin’s apartment—“Monster Eyes” no longer seems, to the band, in any important sense new. It’s a fixture in their lives, a given. They can’t remember where it came from because the truth is that the song was there all along, waiting to be given the air, allowed to breathe. The song represents the band’s nature impatiently asserting itself: here’s what we sound like, already!

  The rest of the set is gravy. The audience rolls over for the grinding, staticky “Hell Is for Buildings,” which the guitarist furls right into the cheers for “Monster Eyes,” as though to urge the band past any possible complacency. “Secret from Yourself ” goes over too, the singer animating the lyrics with Kabuki theatricality, making them a remonstration of the audience’s own failings, then forgiving them, barely, in the final verse. “Canary in a Coke Machine” makes light relief, gets a little sloppy and lets everyone off the hook. Then “Shitty Citizen” and “Nostalgia Vu,” which build in their way rather nicely to “Actually Quite Funny,” which had become, while nobody was looking, a show closer. Afterward there’s no place to hide during the applause and shouting for more, no curtain to drop, no backstage, though singer and bassist do step to one side while the guitarist sits nodding on his stool and the drummer mumbles “Thank you” several times into her mike. Someone—Jules Harvey? the interns?—locates the light switches again and kills the purple spots, so the band is left represented by the connect-the-dot glow of their equipment’s power indicators, while the vibrating crowd is illuminated only by the answering glows of their cigarette tips and the oceanic moonlit blue leaking through the windows. Into this dark the crowd roars. Then lights come back up, and bassist and singer scoot back to their places.

  What’s left for an encore? First, “Sarah Valentine,” if only because it would have broken their hearts not to play it. The other three members suspect the song of being prehistoric, some acoustic ballad the guitarist penned in high school and smuggled into their company. Tonight, who cares? The singer dips his mike stand to where the guitarist sits on his stool and the embarrassed guitarist warbles the last chorus, possibly a future ritual invented on the spot. Then, the song finished, someone in the crowd yells out “Monster Eyes” in the thick of the cheering. Other voices laugh recognition, and the cheering grows louder. The band members meet eyes and accept a plan without speaking, the guitarist mutters “Thank you” now as the familiar chords strike up again. Those two words being the only words the band has spoken from the stage all night, and now it’s too late to adorn them, let alone to banter. Apparently they were to be the taciturn sort of band, who knew?

  They play it again. It’s a victory lap, now that there’s nothing left to prove, no hard sell to put across. Doing so, they tear down the room once more, ensuring the crowd will dissolve into the night buzzing with the intoxication of this song. The second time, the listeners have begun to parse the lyrics, take them to heart—hey, this song’s about you and me and the dangerous way we feel sometimes! It’s about all of us! But it’s about me most of all, each listener thinks. It’s most particularly about dangerous me.

  Now there’s no clamor for a further encore. The band’s played their perfect song for a second time, leaving nothing to wish for except disappointment, and who wishes for that? So, with no way to celebrate without getting silly, as the unseen hand behind the purple spotlights now shifts a single white spot to the mirror ball and the room is spangled, silly’s what the crowd gets. Old imperatives, seemingly shrugged aside by the tyrannical revelers, are now revived. Those who brought along headphones and tape players don them and begin dancing asynchronously in the zone before the stage, one guy with a crew cut and his eyes squeezed closed doing a James Brown strut, a woman with orange bangs and headphones big as earmuffs sliding across the floor as though shuttling on some great invisible loom. The interns move through those on the fringes of the dance offering the shopping bags full of tape players and headsets, making more than a few converts, though massing everywhere are dozens upon dozens of celebrants who’d never understood what was expected of them in the first place. These others fall to babbling, eating and drinking, and mocking the dancers. It’s Falmouth’s Aparty, sort of. No one’s quite so apart as Falmouth might have envisioned, and the artist himself may well have quit the scene in disgust.

  The band’s not forgotten. The gathering seems specially arranged to leave their set ringing in listeners’ ears, nothing intruding on the echo of their chords but laughter and conversation and the mute, foolish dancing. Most feel it would be uncool to throng the band with an overt show of congratulations, so the four are left free to pack instruments and compare impressions, in their attempt to believe what’s occurred, the version of themselves that’s newly sprouted into existence. The band’s hardly oblivious, though, to the awestruck or lustful gazes of nearby audience members. Someone in range of their hearing indulges in a pretentious explication of the band’s influences. Another voice can be heard trying to sing the chorus of their momentous song. And the band will hardly be left to themselves for long. Wending through the mass of ecstatic dancers are several presences, calculating watchers on whom the band has made an impression. An evening like this brings them out of the woodwork.

  they spoke in fragments, giving blundering accounts of what they’d felt onstage.

  “You were so hot on ‘Canary’—”

  “I was just listening to Matthew.”

  “But I’ve never heard you play like that.”

  “Did I skip a verse of ‘Nostalgia’?”

  “Sure, but who cares?”

  “We’ve never played ‘Shitty Citizen’ so fast.”

  “It sounded good.”

  “It sounded great. You finally really played a solo in that break, Bedwin.”

  “I just sort of suddenly knew what to do. I was waiting.”

  “You picked a good time to figure it out.”

  Denise began to twist apart her kit. Matthew and Lucinda, taking her cue, began winding cord. Bedwin sat rubbing his eyes, as though he’d watched too much television or was trying to believe or disbelieve a dream. It dawned on them only gradually that their eggshell of privacy had been pierced. When no one was looking the lip of the stage had been approached by men of guile and influence, unyouthful men in youthful clothes. The impresario in his baseball cap and zipper jacket, Jules Harvey, flanked by two others, one in jeans and a cowboy shirt and a small gold earring, the other wearing an ostentatiously rumpled brown corduroy suit, each with immaculately trimmed sideburns. The newcomers matched Harvey’s rabbity intensity. They pitched forward on the balls of their feet as they waited for an introduction, eyes drilling side to side as if to defend their territories.

  Behind them stood another man, older than the rest, and taller—taller even than Matthew—with a rocket of stone-white hair topping through a wide, scarflike headband. He bore a galactically sad, houndish expression on his eroded-cliff features, patiently waiting his turn. And too, floating through the crowd was yet another figure, one Lucinda would have recognized if she’d sighted him. She hadn’t, yet. The band gave an audience to the phalanx at the stage’s edge.

  “You’re a very hard band to see,” said the man at Harvey’s left, the one in corduroy. He grinned and thrust his hand at Matthew. “Very off the map, in a manner of speaking.”

  Matthew took his hand.

  “It’s always an interesting sign when music people get mixed up with art people. There’s a good track record there. I can th
ink of at least three or four very interesting examples that have made certain people who will go unnamed tremendously useful sums of money.”

  “We’re not really mixed up with art people,” said Matthew. “We just did this one gig as a favor to Falmouth. We’re more our own thing.”

  “That’s the spirit,” said the corduroy man. “Listen, in the next days, even in the next five minutes, a lot of people are going to be trying to shake this hand that I’m shaking, and I just hope you’ll recall I was first. Rhodes Bramlett. Considerable Records.”

  “We should get going,” said Denise, tapping Matthew on the shoulder with a drumstick, offering fake smiles to the men at the edge of the stage. “Nice meeting you.”

  “I’d like to be in touch in the next few days,” said Rhodes Bramlett, in a kindly, seeking tone. “Who would I be getting in touch with if I was?”

  “We’ll find you,” said Denise. “Now we’re leaving.”

  “Of course,” said Jules Harvey. “But let me introduce you to another friend of mine. Mick Felsh, this is Monster Eyes.”

  “That’s not our name,” said Lucinda.

  “No, of course,” said Harvey amiably. “What is your name? As your de facto manager, I ought to know.”

  “We don’t have one,” said Denise. “And you’re not our de facto anything.”

  “Pretty good name for a band, though,” said Bedwin to himself.

  “No name, I like that,” said Mick Felsh, the man in the cowboy shirt. His voice was disarmingly nasal and high, a non sequitur to his garb. He spoke as if Bramlett of Considerable, inches away, were in fact a figment of a distant universe, impossible to perceive. “You people don’t need me to tell you this, but that was a dynamite set.” Felsh offered his hand to Denise, perhaps making a quick calculation of who among the players ought to be solicited, perhaps only hoping to put a brake on their departure. “I was telling Jules I’d love to help you guys demo some of that material. No need to worry about any kind of contract or commitment if it makes you guys uncomfortable. Just get into my studio and see how it feels. Get a document of the set you’re playing these days, sort of Monster Eyes circa now, before anything changes, because you’d be surprised.”

  “Nothing’s going to change,” said Denise. “Except we’re going to get better.”

  “It could be fun to record some demos, though,” said Matthew.

  “I wouldn’t do anything without—” began Bramlett.

  “One copy of the master,” countered Felsh, his hand raised like a Boy Scout’s. “You take it out the door with you.”

  “Doesn’t matter, since we’re not ready,” said Denise. “Lucinda, help Bedwin pack up his stuff.” Bedwin was ground to a halt, sat dope-eyed on his stool in the midst of their mike stands and cable. Lucinda tried to rouse herself but fell slack. She’d succumbed to a tidal exhaustion, the accumulated physical insult of too much joy, too many fish tacos and bass notes and orgasms flying in and out of her boundaries.

  “We could all go sit upstairs,” said Jules Harvey. “Just take a few minutes to talk. These moments don’t come so often.”

  “Nah, we’re in a hurry,” said Denise.

  “Where are we in a hurry to?” asked Matthew.

  “Yes, where are you going?” said Harvey. “This party’s hardly over.”

  “To a place where bands go after gigs,” said Denise. “A secret destination, known only to bands.”

  Now the tall man with the headband full of white hair and the mournful craggy face loomed into view, nudging Mick Felsh aside effortlessly, without seeming to notice the smaller man. He was dressed in a long, battered peacoat, missing buttons. He stood with his hands deep in its pockets as though braced against some arctic wind. He placed himself before the band and smiled and shook his head, mouth parted as if to speak, none of the sorrow banished from his eyes.

  “Okay,” he said finally. His voice rumbled, thrummed.

  “Hey, I know you,” said Matthew. “You’re Fancher Autumnbreast.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve been listening to you since I was a kid,” said Matthew.

  Fancher Autumnbreast closed his eyes, shook his head again, sighed. “Sure, sweetheart.”

  “Nice to meet you,” said Denise, nudging Matthew again. “Let’s go.”

  “No, you don’t understand,” said Matthew. “Fancher Autumnbreast, from KPKD. The Dreaming Jaw.”

  “What’s The Dreaming Jaw?”

  “His midnight radio show, for like the last thousand years.” Matthew didn’t disguise his impatience. “He’s fairly important, if you care anything about the history of music in this town.”

  “Let alone if you want to make some,” added Jules Harvey.

  “When I was a child I pretty much just wanted to be you,” said Bedwin to Autumnbreast, so softly he was barely heard.

  “Look.” Autumnbreast ignored Bedwin, Denise, Harvey, anyone else, removed one gnarled, elegant hand from the peacoat’s pocket and pushed a single finger against Matthew’s chest. “Find me. You’ll play your song. On the Jaw. Live in studio.”

  “Which song?”

  “You know, babykins.”

  Fancher Autumnbreast turned and threaded through the chaotic, musicless dance floor. Jules Harvey and Mick Felsh and Rhodes Bramlett all stared and watched him go, as did the band. Autumnbreast left in his place a conspicuous vacancy, an authority gap.

  Denise spoke first. “Let’s just take the guitars. Jules, if you’re supposed to be our manager now, you can make sure nobody screws with our equipment. Bedwin, guitar to the elevator, now. Matthew too. We’ll break down when the party’s out of the way, tomorrow maybe.”

  “Your equipment is safe,” said Harvey, bowing. Felsh and Bramlett bowed too, not wishing to seem ungracious. Denise had won this round, it appeared. But she’d named Harvey as their manager, in front of the others. Perhaps he’d act as if authorized to speak for them. Word might even spread, by the same osmosis that had launched the evening in the first place.

  Obeying Denise, Matthew seized up Lucinda’s bass as well as his own guitar and started for the elevator. Bedwin too. Perhaps they hoped for another passing encounter with their hero, Fancher Autumnbreast. Denise pushed the cymbals and kicks she’d already partially broken down into some rough order. Lucinda slid off the stage.

  At that moment he moved within the perimeter of lights and revealed himself. The complainer. Carl, Carlton. He stood in his same loose pants and untucked shirt covering the blunt hairy fact of his body, and gazing at her with his droll handsome disheveled look, his gone-to-seed glamour. He’d been there, surely, throughout the show. Had seen them play.

  The band had discovered itself onstage like Helen Keller, connecting at last the idea or name for a thing to the thing itself, a blundering into a new world they’d never dared to name. At the same time another world had uncovered itself to Lucinda when she made herself drunk and naked for the complainer. Now they weren’t two worlds, but one. It was all too much, he was too much for her, standing so patiently at the stage.

  “The way you play that instrument makes me think of the way you fuck, if you don’t mind my saying that.”

  “I don’t mind,” she said. “It’s a bass.”

  “I mean to say very beautifully and forcefully.”

  “Thank you.”

  “With great sincerity and even with what I’d be tempted to call originality, if I didn’t think originality was a word people throw around a lot without knowing what they’re talking about.”

  “Uh, thank you.”

  “Because to really judge the originality of something you’d have to be familiar with all the possible precedents and sources, which very few people are ever likely to be.”

  “I’m not completely sure I understand.”

  “I couldn’t help feeling I was listening to myself.”

  Lucinda examined him for signs of anger, found none. His words had been delivered with perfect cheer, as eloquent and seductive as
if he’d been pouring them into her ear on the telephone in that time so long past, that telephonic life which felt now like a distant journey, recollected in postcards.

  “How did you know to come here?”

  He shrugged. “Someone on the complaint line suggested I come to this unusual dance party they were planning. One of the other receptionists, you weren’t there that day. Then I saw a notice in the paper that the famous complaint guy was putting on a performance piece at this loft. It wasn’t that hard to guess you’d be here, though the show was a surprise.”

  “Falmouth is my friend.” She wanted him to know her life completely now. If he’d recognized the song lyrics and wasn’t angry there might be nothing to hide. She’d let her new worlds be joined. She wanted him to know Falmouth and the others, was impatient that it all even needed explaining. That Falmouth and Matthew were, technically, her exes was a minor note. The complainer, of all people, would understand.

  “I felt like if I squinted I could practically see myself onstage.”

  There might be something mildly autistic in the complainer’s reactions, a flatness to the face with which he addressed the world. His stance toward hotels and automobiles and women’s bodies, his cataloging of her orgasms, his deafness to social pretense, all had a strangely equable quality. It made Lucinda love him more, not less. He crossed the grain of ordinary life, deliriously indifferent.

  “I used your words as lyrics,” she blurted.

  “I noticed.”

  “Bedwin wrote the music. The guitarist.”

  “Does he know?”

  She shook her head, wide-eyed. “Nobody knows.”

  She pushed away from the stage, nearer to him.

  “I usually collect hundreds, if not thousands, per verb or noun.”