What ensued was a mind-numbing two hours of financial details but at the end of it, I had to admit, I was impressed. He had even made projections based on potential sales and income and had ideas for how that money could be spent. “I want you to start thinking about buying a house,” he said, “to give you collateral and make your assets less liquid. If, of course, these sales figures bear out.”

That put me outside the realm of known reality, alright. Maybe I was aiming low, but the only thing I could imagine was buying the Allston house from our landlord to get him off our backs. Digger laughed when I told him my idea and said we should each buy a house, so hey, why not buy the neighbors’ houses, too? It was looking like, well, like maybe Digger knew his stuff.

That night he took us all out to dinner again, to a fancy, dimly-lit Newbury Street bistro called Masa’s. I’ve never been a very adventurous eater, but they had a way of making things like “raspberry-chipotle slaw” pretty darn tasty. I decided I could get used to it. Our waitress seemed extremely gushy for such an upscale place–I figured out why when she brought the manager over at the end of the meal and they asked us to autograph a menu. In the dim light I hadn’t noticed the framed autographed pictures of Aerosmith and the J. Geils Band on the walls.

I did notice Ziggy giving her something, probably his phone number.

Somehow Digger and I ended up alone in the bar of the hotel, a dark polished wood kind of place, with pseudo-nautical decor. “We’ll celebrate,” Digger said as he motioned for a waiter.

“Celebrate what? Haven’t we already done that?”

“Hey, kiddo,” he cocked his head to the side, “does your thumb hurt?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Great, let’s celebrate that.” He ordered two glasses of a long-named Scotch–one of the ones Remo liked, I think, but the twelve-year, not the eighteen year. “It’s time we started putting some hair on your chest.”

I let that one go by without an answer. But I was thinking, shit, didn’t you start doing that when I was eleven years old? I did not fidget in the armchair.

The waiter brought the booze in elegantly delicate glasses, which seemed contrary to my notions of how hard liquor should be consumed. Digger waved his under his nose and I did the same: the deceptively sweet maple-syrupy smell hit me as it had that evening in LA on Remo’s porch. But tonight I wasn’t working my nerve up for anything. I wasn’t really sure what I was doing here. Digger’s eyes were on me as I took a sip and his eyebrows dipped in disappointment when I didn’t choke or make a face. “The eighteen-year was better,” I said.

“What do you mean,” he said quickly, four words that were often a prelude to an outburst of anger.

I gave a little cough. “Jeez, lighten up, Digger, I’m kidding.” Though I wasn’t. I gave him the reaction he wanted: “This stuff’s vile. A guy I was in a band with in Providence was always drinking it–couldn’t get me near the stuff.”

Half a crooked-smile twisted his face. “Bah, you just haven’t had enough of it, yet.”

“Fine, we can take care of that.” I swirled half the glass into my mouth and swallowed. My throat felt like fire, a feeling that spread across my back and into my fingers and settled in the pit of my stomach.

“That’s my boy,” he said.

If we got drunk together tonight, it wouldn’t be the first time. We sipped a while in silence, and I thought about the ‘old days.’ We always had beer back then, and Jack Daniels or Jim Beam, though they never let me have any of the hard stuff. “Did you and Remo used to drink Scotch?”

“What?” he said, like he was far away.

“In New Jersey, we used to drink with Remo. Were you guys drinking good whiskey?”

He snorted. “Not at Maddie’s we weren’t. Wasn’t anything worth drinking there, you know. Coors or Bud. We kept the good stuff to ourselves, when you weren’t tagging along.”

“Oh.” He made it sound like I was a pain in the ass. Maybe I was, but he’s the one that got me out of bed at night to go out with him. I told myself I had no reason to be angry at him. I sipped my Scotch. But I felt myself getting familiar with that feeling again, that feeling like it was my job to keep us both happy, smiling, veering away from anything that might make him mad.

I swigged the rest of the booze down. I put the glass down with as much of a thunk as I dared, and stood up with a feigned sigh of satisfaction. “Thanks,” I said, before he could say anything. “For the nightcap. See you tomorrow?”

“Uh, yeah…” he leaned forward as if to stand and then sank back down into the armchair. “That’s right.” We exchanged little nods as if they meant something.

I walked into the lobby, not looking back at him drinking alone.

And Ziggy didn’t torture me. The fight seemed to have sobered us up. We pretended nothing was wrong, or that there was nothing to be wrong about. That was fine with me, except for the lonely nights part. Chris and I couldn’t very well get stoned every night. We settled for drunk the next night, drinking Southern Comfort and Rolling Rock. The next day was much the same: coffee, rehearse, come home.

I put off reading the contracts for several days, too, until a very nice-sounding secretary from Digger’s New York office called to ask for them. I crossed out what I didn’t like and wrote in a statement that said we had the right to cancel at any time without penalty. I think I copped the language from a TV commercial.

I felt like the show would never arrive. Funny, when I was a kid I used to be impatient for Christmas. Digger would get me and my sisters all built up trying to guess what Santa was going to bring–or what various relatives were going to bring, for that matter. December always dragged. Now I had to suppress the urge to pace back and forth in front of the window in the loft when we weren’t playing, figuring the hours left until the show. When was the last time I’d gone this long without playing out? Even when we didn’t have a singer I was playing in the park, in the T; in Providence I’d always gotten fill gigs, done the coffeehouse. Here it was, not quite two months since we’d come off the road, and I was stir crazy. And just like Christmases of the past, I was dreading getting what I wanted and being disappointed by it. I Fedexed Mills a tape of the new stuff with a note explaining the reason for the weird instrumentation. I didn’t tell him how I got the sprain. I told him all would be normal by the time of the show and I hoped I was right.

The week before the Jingle Bell shindig the worry that something would go wrong increased as we began to rehearse the full set without breaks. Ziggy seemed as itchy to get back in front of an audience as I was, and he pretended there was one there, screaming at the empty couch, dancing and spinning around as he sang. And while he was singing, his inhibitions seemed to disappear–not that this was a surprise. But it meant he would crawl toward me, rub his back against mine, whisper-sing into my ear, and I found myself unable react to him. Worst of all, I didn’t even realize I’d frozen up at first, until we were at a break and Bart said, “What’s with you, Daron?”

“What do you mean?” I was thinking I was off-tempo from the thumb or something.

“Loosen up, man, does your thumb hurt that much?”

What actually hurt was my jaw from clenching it. But of course thinking about being stiff only made me more self-conscious and more stiff. When we started to play again, Bart looked at me like he didn’t recognize me.

When we were packing up he suggested we get something to eat, the two of us. I followed him to a funky sushi place down the street called Ginza. At 2am the place was filled to capacity with ultra-chic young Asians–the Asian American equivalent of Newbury Street’s Eurotrash, I guess. They looked like they’d walked right out of an ad in GQ or something. But nobody seemed to mind my grubby high tops or Bart’s unfashionable gray wool coat while we shuffled our feet until a table opened up.

As if by some unspoken rule, we waited until after we had ordered to talk about anything serious. “So, how bad is it?” I asked.

“It’s bad,” he said. “You know it is or you wouldn’t ask me.”

“I guess I… lost my groove,” I said.

He was shaking his head. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were intimidated by him.”

Ziggy. “Intimidated?”

“Yeah, you’re like clammed up.”

“It’s the thumb.” I held the splinted hand up as if that proved it. “Makes me nervous.”

“Is that all? I mean, shit, Daron, I’ve never seen you nervous and playing the guitar at the same time. It was like something that could never happen, an either/or thing, and now my whole worldview is shattered.” He did not chuckle. “I mean it. All the time I’ve known you, you’ve been like some kind of … of split personality. Quiet, introverted even, when off stage, but unstoppable, wild, when playing. This is downright spooky, this… crossover.”

“It won’t last,” I said, for myself as much as him. “It just can’t.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Like what?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Is this a you-and-Ziggy thing?”

I shrugged back. “I’m not sure.” I watched as Bart’s eyes defocused and I felt the imminent launch of another Grand Bart Theory.

“Ever since the fight… maybe this comes back to the thumb, Daron, but, let me indulge in some pop psych here. You went from being totally chemical together to you being like freaked or something, and you’re the one with a black eye and a bandage. And,” his voice got quieter, but harsher suddenly, “goddammit, if he hurt you I think…” He jerked upright, like he had surprised himself. “I’m not a violent person, you know that. But I want to know when to, I mean,” he smacked his fist into his open hand.

I’m touched, I wanted to say, but I knew the words would come out sounding sarcastic. “It’s okay,” I said. “I-I’m the one who hit him, anyway.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Or, I tried to hit him, and I think he knocked my hand away with his, and hit me back. It all happened pretty fast. But I started it.”

“But what did he say to get you to do it? I know how he gets.”

“Yeah, you know how he gets. So it doesn’t matter what he said, does it?” I wished we’d gone to a Chinese restaurant where there’d be more interruptions. This place was going to take forever.

“I wish you two’d get over it, anyway,” he said, resting his arms on the table. “I’m tired of the tension.”

“Me, too. But I don’t think there’s anything you can do about it.” The question I had in my mind was, but could I?

I hope everyone enjoyed all the plotty goodness. There’s a lot coming up now, too, with the Christmas show, Daron’s growing “to do” list, what’s going on with Digger, stuff still going on with Ziggy (of course). We’re going back to two posts a week now (Mondays,Thursday), with a third triggered anytime we hit the $25 plateau.

One thing I added in the tip jar is the ability to set up regular donations via Paypal. Want to give $2 per month? $1 per week? There are buttons now that let you “set it and forget it.”

Thanks everyone for your support and all the comments this month! It’s been fun! And thanks to the folks at Epiguide for organizing WeSeWriMo!

As he buckled in I let out a sigh and he said “What? What now?”

“I’m just having that feeling like it’s going to be a long night.”

“Tell me about it,” he said. “You’d think four good lookin’ guys like us, someone besides Bart’d be getting some on a regular basis.”

I didn’t know what to say to that so I settled for “Yeah.”

“You want to go to a bar or something?”

“I’m sure the splint’ll be great for picking up girls.” I found it easy to put genuine sarcasm into my voice, even if Chris wouldn’t understand the source.

He missed my implication anyway. “Sure it will, tell ‘em you got it in a knife fight or something. Well, we’d have to go to a heavy metal bar maybe.” He pulled the van out into traffic and we rolled over pothole patches behind a city bus. “And you have to go to the boonies for one of those, these days.”

I hoped he wasn’t taking us to the burbs. “I could do with getting drunk.”

“Kids’ stuff,” he said. “Besides, you’re not old enough.”

I didn’t point out those were two contradictory statements.

“I’ve got something better,” he sing-songed. “Came in this afternoon. Prime hash.”

“I thought hash was something you ate with eggs.”

“You can eat it with anything you want,” he said with a cackle. “But I prefer to smoke it, myself.”

So that was how I avoided sitting up all night writing angstful songs jonesing for a guitar, or a lover, or anything.

The next morning–afternoon actually– I woke up with my eyeballs feeling like they had been coated in sand. It was three p.m. and I couldn’t sleep any more. I stood in a hot shower for a while, trying to remember whether I had checked the messages yesterday or not. The sky was dark by the time I sat down with the phone and I had the thought that, yes, it might be nice to have someone else do this stuff. Carynne had called and I called her back and left a message saying to get herself down to the Jingle Bell thing. The only other message was from Digger:

“Hey kiddo, had to run, didn’t want to disturb your beauty sleep. Let’s touch base tomorrow, you can fax me your hit list. I’m your Hit Man.” He laughed and hung up. What the fuck did he mean, beauty sleep? I’m being oversensitive, I decided. Hit Man?

I came downstairs to find Chris trying to pry two English muffins out of the toaster with a fork.

“Want one? Get a plate.”

I got two plates out of the cabinet and put them down on the counter. “Do your eyes feel like they’re coated in sand?”

He grunted.

“Just checking,” I said. I pulled an unopened jar of strawberry jam from the fridge. “Score! Where’d this come from?”

We sat at the table. “Gave it to Colin at his temp job, Christmas bonus, I guess.” He stood up, then sat down, and croaked “Coffee?”

“I’ll get it.” Compared to Chris, I was downright chipper. I scooped grounds into the coffee maker and filled the pot with water. “This might not be the best time to bring this up, but, do you remember what time we said we were going to rehearse today?”

He tossed his hair back like it was too much effort to lift his hands from his plate, blinked his eyes and said “You know what time it is?”

“It’s…”

“Time for you to learn how to drive.” He took a bite out of his English muffin. “Especially if we hit the road on our own.”

“I don’t think today’s a good idea.”

“Me neither. But soon, you got me? And we said eight, Bart’s got some thing with Michelle’s parents. Holidays.”

“Right.” I pulled the pot out and poured a mug for Chris then stuck it back under the drip. I could wait for mine. All this time and I still couldn’t stand coffee without milk and sugar. Maybe after I turn twenty one, I thought, I’ll get hair on my chest and start liking my coffee black. Two and a half more months. Seemed unlikely. I was much more concerned with the fact that in a few hours I’d have to rehearse with a sprained thumb and a singer who was not on the same planet as me. Which one of us needed to be brought down to Earth?

Before five o’clock rolled around I had another phone conversation with Mills. This time he came right out and said it. “The sales of Candlelight have really slowed down. The Christmas push isn’t really picking stuff up like we thought it would. I’m a little worried here.”

“Mills, look, we can get you a tape after the holidays. Right now we’re pushing to get ready for this show…”

“Just jam a tape into the board and Fedex it to me, could you do that? It’s important, Daron. Real important.”

“Why? What’s going on there?”

“I don’t want to get into too much detail, but you know BNC’s being bought by a Japanese company.”

“Yeah.” Actually, I hadn’t heard.

“Well, I just want to get as much stuff nailed down before the end of the year as possible. You know I think of you guys as my own pet project in a lot of ways.”

“Yeah.”

“I really want to be the one to shepherd this next deal through. If there is a next deal, I mean.”

The thing was, it was totally obvious to me that he was yanking my chain. The problem was, I didn’t have any idea what to do or say to change that.

I set about setting up his Roland D-50 for myself on the off chance that I might have to play it. I was never a virtuoso at the keys but I could hold my own, especially with the right hand.

Getting the keyboard onto the stand with only one hand to grip with was awkward, but I managed to do it without damaging myself or the equipment. I ran through some scales. The phantom left hand twitched in my head, but I kept on. Now how did that chord progression go? I switched the timbre to a power chord sort of sound and sang a snippet of the song I’d been working on last night. Now I could build that transition from verse to chorus, and I sang a lead line over the backing, what I would have played if I’d had a guitar in my hands. I went back and tried it at the beginning, first verse, transition, second verse, chorus, third verse…

I heard a click then a bass note behind me–Bart picking up the line–and I stopped. I turned around and he was sitting on his practice amp with his Rickenbacker in his lap. “Did I startle you?” he said. “Try that again.”

“No.”

“C’mon, that sounded hot. I wanna try it.”

“No. I’m…” I felt like I was blushing again, second time this afternoon. “I’m not ready for anyone to hear that one yet.”

“Obviously. Shit, you look like I caught you with your hand in your pants.” He was smiling, joking, but I couldn’t manage much of a smile myself. He put down the bass and knitted his fingers together. “Is something wrong?”

“No. Yes. Shit.” I sat down on the floor and felt the draft. “My hand’s messed up. Digger makes me jumpy as hell. We’ve got a show in less than two weeks. I can’t sleep and I can’t think straight.”

Bart nodded his head. “That’s called stress, Daron. It happens to lots of people. It’s why I thought it might be good for you to pass on some of the responsibility, you know?”

“Well, I told him. He’s bringing contracts by later tonight.”

“Well, that’s great!” He beamed at me. “So quit looking so bummed.”

“That still doesn’t solve the hand problem.”

“Nor how it got that way. Did you and Ziggy have a fight?”

“Yes.” What else could I say?

“Jeez, what is it with you two?”

I barked out a short laugh. “‘Creative differences.’”

He laughed, too. “Yeah, like Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend?”

“I guess. Only they got into it worse, I think.”

“Stewart Copeland and Sting.”

“You know Stewart had four words taped onto his toms? Fuck-you-you-cunt.”

“Harsh.”

“Yeah.” I looked at the splint in my lap. They say Stewart broke one of Sting’s ribs, accidentally, the day of the Police Shea Stadium concert. I was at that show and didn’t notice. I couldn’t hope for such a hidable injury. “So why does that make me feel better?”

Bart laughed and walked toward the refrigerator. “Because any similarity between us and The Police makes you feel better.” He popped open a bottle of Yoo Hoo. “Want some?”

“Sure. I ain’t singin’.” Not today anyway.

Christian came in shortly after that and we started working on arrangements. I didn’t want to take any chances with the hand and retuned the low-action Strat to an open tuning. Now I could strum chords with one finger, I could even play some mean slide with the slide on my ring finger. Bart already had a way of making it sound like he had three hands, and now sometimes it sounded like four. Still, if there was ever a day I wished we had another guitarist in the group, this was it.

About four thirty I noticed Ziggy wasn’t there yet and asked if anybody had talked to him.

“He called a little after two and said not to pick him up,” Chris said. “Said he had his own ride.”

We took a break and I pumped myself with aspirin and iced my hand.

“Are you sure he’s going to show?” Chris said to me.

“How should I know?”

He shrugged. “Look, I don’t know what went down between you two, but if it’s something we should know about…”

“I already gave him that speech,” Bart said.

“It’ll be okay,” I said. “We can handle it. No biggie. In fact…” I could hear someone’s boots on the stairs.

Ziggy sauntered in, trailing his scarf and hat in one hand and his coat in the other. He left them on the floor halfway between us and the door. “Sorry I’m late,” he said in a way that made me think he wasn’t.

We decided to go through the set song by song and see if there were any that needed to be cut because of my thumb, or rearranged to make the transitions from one guitar to the other easier. Every time we had to stop to let me figure something out or change something I could feel Ziggy’s eyes on me, blaming me, and honestly I couldn’t say that the predicament was anyone’s fault but my own.

Around seven Digger came upstairs, briefcase in hand, spread some papers out on the couch and waved a pen in our direction. We took a break, and I got the carton of lo mein out and ate noodles with chopsticks while I held a copy of the contract in my injured hand.

“It’s pretty standard,” Digger said, his overcoat still on but unbuttoned. “You know.”

No, I don’t know, I thought. “What’s clause 6a mean?”

“Look, it’s all bare bones, necessary.”

“This seems to be all about what we’re empowering you to do, but this bit here…”

“Power of attorney, I’ll need that to handle legal and financial matters.”

“This seems a little extreme for what I’m asking you to do at this point.”

“I’m just trying to make things easier, you know? I thought you were hiring me so you’d do less, not more. But I mean, how you expect I’m going to get anything done if you’re in Europe for three months or something?”

“Well…”

“Goddammit, Daron, don’t be difficult.”

I looked up from the paper into his face; it was stern and reddish. I stood up and was disconcerted to notice that we were exactly the same height. I made my voice quiet and slow. “I’m going to read this, all the way through, twice, and you’re going to answer any questions I have before I sign it.” What I didn’t say was: Or you can walk right out of here and we can forget I ever saw your face again.

He held up his hands. “Okay. No rush. Like I say, it’s boilerplate, some lawyers made it up, you know how they can be.”

“Yes,” I said as I sat down again. “Yes I do.”

Daron: I wouldn’t let her do it without me.

Cecilia: Like I’m ever without you.

Daron: Whatever. All I really want to do is share guitar porn, like this: New Les Paul Florentine from Gibson USA.

Cecilia: You realize that guitar costs more than I’ve earned so far this year.

Daron: That’s what makes it “porn.” The unattainability. And drooling.

Cecilia: (laughs)

Daron: I have more. But why don’t you do the spiel on blog news first. Which is why you’re here. (yawns)

Cecilia: Tha-a-a-nks. News is minimal. Let’s see:
1) We’re almost done with Web Serial Writing Month, aka WeSeWriMo. Two more posts to go, and then we’ll drop back down to our regular two posts a week, with a third triggered whenever donations hit $25. I hope everyone has enjoyed the extra posts–this was a really action-packed plotty section so it kind of worked out.
2) We put in threaded comments so it’s somewhat easier to tell who Daron is replying to. Hope everyone likes it and hope it doesn’t break the site. So far so good. Dar, that reminds me I wanted to ask you something about comments.

Daron: What?

Cecilia: The story takes place in the past. When you answer comments, are you answering from the present or from then?

Daron: Do I have to choose? I mean, I’m like a time-traveling superhero in fiction.

Cecilia: I guess…

Daron: If people talk to then-me, then-me answers. If they talk to 2010-me, 2010-me answers.

Cecilia: As long as you’re not confused.

Daron: I’m not at all confused, though other people might be. Including you.

Cecilia; Ha. I think it’s always 2010-you who answers, and you just pretend to be then-you so you don’t give away anything about what happens.

Daron: Believe what you want. People can ask me whatever they like, from whenever. You’re right though that I won’t give away what happens. But I like chatting. Can I post more guitar porn, now?

Cecilia: Sure.

Daron: This is what happens when you Google “guitar porn.” You find the totally work safe Flickr group here: Flickr guitar porn. And stuff like these Vimeo and Youtube videos. Also WORK SAFE.

Guitar Porn from Si Allen on Vimeo.

There’s other fun stuff if you Google it. Who ever thought any search involving the word “porn” would yield so many work safe results? See, it’s not about sex at all.

Cecilia: … As Bart would say, denial is not just a river in Egypt.

Daron: Well, it’s true that Vimeo one makes my fingers ache sort of like blue balls.

Cecilia: You are such a geek, you know that?

Daron: But at least I’m not a suicidal maniac. Speaking of which, have you see this?

Cecilia: A Joy Division documentary? Oh, how did we miss that? It debuted in the UK in May 2008. But here it is for sale at Amazon: Joy Division (The Miriam Collection)

Daron: Put it on your wishlist, willya?

Cecilia: Done. Huh, there’s a Metallica documentary here, too. And one on Radiohead. You want those, too? You like those bands more than me.

Daron: I don’t see what there is not to like about Metallica or Radiohead.

Cecilia: You like everything.

Daron: I do not. But I do appreciate a lot of things. I appreciate music the way you appreciate food. I can’t believe half the stuff you eat.

Cecilia: If you’d just try it, you’d probably like it just fine.

Daron: That doesn’t mean I’d buy it, though. You’re the same. You’ll listen if it’s on the radio, even if it isn’t a band whose CD you’d buy. Or even bother to bittorrent.

Cecilia: That reminds me that I need to buy Thom Yorke’s solo album. To put in the mixes with David Sylvian. I wonder if they have it at iTunes?

Daron: Buy the CD and rip it instead. I’m mad at Apple over the Lala shutdown.

Cecilia: All right. That reminds me, I ought to get connected to MixApp again.

Daron: MixApp?

Cecilia: So, some of my techy friends started this thing that essentially allowed you to DJ from your iTunes into a livestream so that anyone you invited to listen could hear it in real time with you.

Daron: Coo-ool.

Cecilia: The software has morphed and morphed to the point where now it’s all in the cloud and you can sign on via Facebook. I have my own “listening room” here: http://mixapp.com/#r=1122ogqezG and all my iTunes tracks are shareable. My friends can create their own rooms and pull stuff from my iTunes library to listen to. And I can pull from theirs to add to my own playlist.

Daron: Can you make a room for me?

Cecilia: Hm. Maybe. But I don’t have half the stuff you like ripped.

Daron: So go and find it in your friends’ playlists. Otherwise all we’ll have is anime soundtracks and David Sylvian, which is all you have, really.

Cecilia: But if I make you a playlist, it’ll play, and once it goes through the list, it goes silent again. You don’t “keep” the tracks, you just borrow them for streaming purposes. Which is why it’s legal and not piracy, I suppose.

Daron: That’s still pretty cool. Some night we should have a listening party. So, when are you going to create a Facebook for me?

Cecilia: I think they’re cracking down on fictional people having Facebooks. You could have a fan page, though.

Daron: And I don’t have one already, why? Should Moondog Three have a fan page, too?

Cecilia: Maybe if we can get someone to create you some album art and the like to post. I’m not arty enough to pull it off.

Daron: Ask your arty friends. That’s where the original album art M3 had came from in the first place, you know. Then we can make T-shirts and cool stuff like that, too.

Cecilia: I suppose so. What do you say, readers? Got any ideas? The Candlelight single needs a cover. And the band could use a logo. We could trade free swag and access to all the premium content past and future!

Daron: By the way, I’m looking through your library and you HAVE the Thom Yorke album already. Thom Yorke. Of Radiohead.

Cecilia: Yeah, yeah. I’ll give Radiohead a try again soon. Them and Coldplay.

Daron: Good. Can I finish with some more videos? Two more.

Cecilia: Go ahead.

Daron: These will totally song virus you, but it’ll be worth it.

“Hey, kiddo.”

“What are you doing out here? You could wait inside.”

“Wanted to be sure I had the right place. Figured I’d see ya if you went walking by.”

A surly waiter in a tuxedo showed us to a table under a wall sculpture of a phoenix that looked like it had seen better days. The paint on its light bulb eyes was scratched and the wings were chipped like an old plate. I remembered there was a carton of uneaten lo mein in the fridge at the loft waiting for me and ordered General Gao’s chicken.

“So, the kids like me, huh?” he said as he poured tea into two cups.

“Yeah, they think you’re alright.” I dumped sugar from paper packets into mine. “But you know, we’ve been doing okay thus far.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t.” He slurped his tea and made a face, too hot.

“You’re right. There are things we need. I need somebody to do our taxes, and I need somebody to set up health insurance and that kind of stuff. I admit I can’t do it myself.” I turned my tea cup in my fingers, around and around, getting ready to lie. I wasn’t going to tell him I’d left Watt a message this morning. “But I’m not ready to give anyone else the power to make decisions. I… I gotta be the one driving the train.”

“But someone else lays the track?”

“Maybe that wasn’t the best analogy.” I felt my heart start to beat faster. “What I’m trying to say is…” I was supposed to tell him what we’d decided last night, to ask him to be our accountant, essentially, on a trial basis. But I couldn’t seem to get the words out.

Food arrived and I sat staring at it, watching it steam, not making a move to scoop any onto my own plate while my throat got tighter and tighter. Digger started putting rice onto his plate and put some onto mine as well.

“What I’m trying to say is…” You kicked me around when I was a kid and I want to make sure that doesn’t happen again.

He started to eat and I followed suit. Digger ate by mixing his rice and food with a fork and then shoveling it onto a spoon. When I had a chunk of chicken in my mouth he said “I’m not asking you to give up any control. Why don’t we do this. You tell me what you need, and I’ll do it. That’s all.”

“Fixed—-” I choked on a piece of rice and had to start again. “Fixed price, no percentages.”

“What, are you going to pay me by the hour?” He put his utensils down when he saw that yes, I was. He cleared his throat. “Okay, that’s fine. I can see that. Why are you looking at me like that? You’ve got that suspicious look on your face.”

I put my utensils down, too. “And why shouldn’t I? You show up on the doorstep, unannounced, after disappearing with no word…”

“Wait, hang on.” His eyes went dark and I noticed how deep the wrinkles around his eyes were. “You ain’t exactly been the most communicative. And I’ve been trying to call you for weeks, months even.”

“Did you leave a message?”

“Hell no. I hate those damn things.” Answering machines, I assumed he meant. “And didn’t I talk to you that one time…?”

“Yeah.” During the last tour, tracked me down in a hotel. “And you wonder why I’m suspicious? You’re like, fucking stalking me, Digger.”

“This business has made you paranoid, kiddo, and it makes me sad to see.”

“Don’t you fucking patronize me…”

“Keep your voice down.” We both looked around to see if anyone was looking at us. No one was.

Digger put his hands on the table cloth, fingers wide. “Look. I know, the ideal parent–I haven’t always been. I understand if you’re pissed at me.”

“Pissed!” I couldn’t get into words the fact that the whole last six months I’d lived in his home he’d treated me with open hostility. Then again, maybe that one word was enough, because he then said,

“I was having a really rough time there for a while. Maybe you were too young to understand.” I had no way to tell if his buddy-buddy voice was genuine. “I wanted out, I knew I had to get out. But I felt trapped. Courtney was only nine, Lilibeth’s tuition skyrocketing, and Claire, picking away at me, every day, like her only pleasure in life was torturing me.” Okay, that seemed accurate enough. “And you, I couldn’t figure out how to fix it with you, Daron. Things had gone wrong somewhere, and I didn’t know what to do. Remo was gone, I was chained to that fucking shoe store, and there you were, about to take off and escape the whole thing. I took out a lot of my frustrations on you, I know it, and I’m sorry.”

I wondered if he’d seen a therapist or something because that all sounded really coherent and believable.

“I would have told you when I skipped town, but I didn’t know how you’d take it. I didn’t want her to find me, and I just had to cut everyone off for a while. Start over. So I did. I’m back on my feet, and I’m trying to make right, okay? All right, it’s obvious you don’t want a manager. The last thing I want to do is push you into something you don’t want. But when I saw the article, I thought, shit, I can help out. I’ve got the skills and the contacts. For once, maybe I can do the right thing. If you don’t want the help, I understand. It’s more important to me that … ah, jeez, this is going to sound corny.”

Man, what a speech. I waited for the punch line.

“I’m asking you to forgive me here, or-—!” He must have seen the look on my face because he quickly added, “Or just to think about forgiving me some day. I know I got a lot to make up for and I don’t expect it to happen all at once. If there’s something I can do for you, I’m just asking you to let me do it.”

I swigged back some tea. “Digger, you have to know that sounds like a load of horse shit.”

“I know,” he said, which surprised me. “But it’s true. I mean, what am I supposed to do, make up a story? Give me a break, kiddo. Apologizing ain’t my strong suit.”

“Yeah, ain’t that a bitch,” I said, but in the back of my mind I was starting to smile. What a piece of work.

“So, what do you say? I’m groveling here.”

“And you’re not pissed that I want to get you to do all the shit work and then dump you as soon as I find a manager I like?”

His face was a little red. “Course I’m pissed. But I gotta take what I can get. Throw me a bone, here, Daron. I mean, I’m begging you to let me do your taxes. How weird is that?”

“Okay, okay. You can do the fucking taxes. We need an accountant, and I guess you’re as good as any.” We shook hands and both of us were smiling. Clearly we both needed our heads examined. We ate for a while without saying anything, and then I said, “I mean, there’s the fact you’re my father.”

“What’s that mean?” His eyes were on the passerby out the window, not on me. He seemed a little goosed that I hadn’t closed the subject completely.

“I mean, no one takes celebrity parents seriously. Look at Brooke Shields, her mother supposedly her manager… what a mess. Or, who was that kid…”

He swirled the tea in his cup and looked into it as if the leaves might tell him something new. “You got a point there. But, hey, I’m not about to change my name.”

I blushed, I know it. Did he think my name was stupid? I pretended I wasn’t blushing and looked into my tea, too. “So it’d be a secret.” Just what I needed.

“If you think it’s best. Now that you point it out, you’re right–I, I shoulda thought of that myself. You know I just want what best for you.”

The sprain throbbed and I wondered how today’s rehearsal would go. I didn’t want to think about the fact that there were, what, twelve days until the concert?

I was distracted by my thoughts and almost didn’t hear him when he said “Let’s get this in writing, what do you say? I’ll have my office in New York fax us some boilerplate. I’ll pick it up at the hotel and meet you later at, what’s the name of the place?”

“Mondo Z Productions. It’s right around the corner. I’ll show you.”

Two waiters, I’d lost track if they were the same ones as before or different, took our plates away and handed him the check. Of course I let him pay it.

(By the way, I swear the parallels between this song’s lyrics and the argument between me and him were not apparent to me until I went looking for a Clash video to paste in here. Jeez. But now that I noticed, I have to keep this one. I was originally thinking ‘Lost in the Supermarket’ was going to be more apropos, but no. Wow.)

Lay down, closed my eyes, recited the circle of fifths, tried to remember as many alternate tunings as I could, stuff that put me to sleep during theory class but which didn’t work now.

I kept flashing on that moment, his hand reaching toward me and me pulling back like he was red hot. At that moment I hadn’t thought,” gee, now I’ve got to keep my distance, I can’t let him just do this…” It wasn’t anything like that. I did not intend anything by it; I jerked away pure, simple reflex: don’t touch me.

But lying there alone I was wishing it could have been another way.

After an hour of not sleeping, I sat up with the germ of a song in my mind, pulled out the Epiphone and then cursed as I tried to close my left hand over the neck. Pain shot up my arm and I had no strength to close my fingers. Ah, jeezusgod, fuck me.

I dragged out a pad of staff paper and a pencil and jotted down the lyric, blackening in notes as I sang softly to myself. So, music school was good for some things. The rough shape of the chords was in my ears and I called out fragments of melody, trying them on for size, trying to match up words… I had to hold the pad down in my lap with the heel of my left hand while the pencil scratched across the paper. One line became such a mess I couldn’t sight read it and I crossed it out and copied it again onto another.

I tapped my right hand on the fret board, trying to get the sound clear, a rhythm part, melody, but it was like drinking with an eyedropper. Putting some notes to some words was the easy part–it’s the stuff between the words, between the verses, that makes a song for me. Another verse started to take shape and I went back and changed the words of the first two to make a parallel. I might have been using an eyedropper but I’d be damned if I was going to let myself lie there thirsty.

Caught in your net of lies
I wait
fluttering, struggling
as your hand reaches for me

Caught in a flash of light
Awake
one moment, frozen
as your hand reaches for me

I’d never wanted to write an instrumental bridge so badly in my life.

–

(below… just another something I found…)

The recital was at the piano teacher’s house, and all her current students had little songs to play while all the parents and siblings like me sat around listening. I remember sitting on Digger’s lap while Courtney sat on my mother’s. I think it was also Christmas time, or maybe I’m getting it mixed up with another party. Afterward there were cookies and cider for the kids, wine and cheese for the parents, as people milled around and talked.

What I remember was at one point after the formal recital, while people were milling around and eating, Digger got up to the piano and started to play and sing. I think the song was “Hound Dog” but maybe it was actually a Jerry Lee Lewis tune. My mother made us leave in a hurry after that. “School night” she’d said, but even as a child it’s hard to miss when your parents don’t speak to each other the whole way home.

I found myself dusting off a lot of old memories in the course of considering Digger’s proposal, why that one in particular I don’t know. A more relevant one might have been they way he used to bum money out of my piggy bank for his poker stake. I suppose that would have irked me a lot more if he hadn’t always, eventually, paid it back, sometimes double. After the first few times, though, I quit keeping most of my money in the piggy bank.

He dropped us off at the house around ten and the rest of us convened in the basement. I brought a bunch of papers down from the milk crate where I’d been keeping them in my room, and held them while I talked. Chris sat in the space where his drum kit usually was, Bart sat on an amp, Ziggy turned a milk crate over and Michelle sat on the stairs. I paced the hideous rug.

“So what did you think of him?” That was as good a way to start as any.

Christian spoke first. “He seems cool, Dar’–I mean, he seems to know what he’s talking about.”

Ziggy shrugged. Bart said “I know you don’t like him, but what did you think?”

I will not say ‘I don’t know.’ “I think he’s right about a lot of things. I know I’ve been holding out as long as possible on the whole manager thing. But even if we make the decision to get a manager, I don’t want him to be the one.”

Chris tapped on his knees with his fingers like he was telegraphing his thoughts to some remote party. “Do we have other options?”

Bart: “Yeah, ask around, look in the Yellow Pages, see who Mills gives us…?”

“Shit,” I said, “we need a manager to find us a manager.” I put the papers on the floor. “So, I’ve been meaning to show you these.”

Bart and Ziggy came over to look.

“These are the sales and financial statements that came from BNC.”

Now, the average logical person would think that a statement like that would tell you 1) how many copies of the product were sold, and 2) how much money you were owed as a result. But if that information was in the columns of numbers we’d received, I couldn’t find it. I said as much to the others.

Bart sat down and looked at the papers more closely. “Did you ask Mills about it?”

I had, and the answer had been less than clear.

“Figures.” Bart handed me back the sheets. “What about Watt?”

“I’m sure he’d know how to read them…” I started.

“No, duh, to be our manager.”

A collective “huh” went through the room. “I don’t think he has the time,” I said. “I mean, CR is his life, twenty four hours a day. And we’re not even his artists anymore.”

“Would it kill you to ask?” Bart glanced at the others as he said it.

No, it wouldn’t. We debated for a little longer though, and decided to put off making any decisions until I after I talked to him.

“What if he says no?” I asked, mostly to myself. “And what am I going to tell Digger?”

“Can I make a suggestion?” Michelle said from the stairs.

“Sure.” I turned to face her. Michelle had taken some entertainment business courses at Emerson and although I hadn’t always followed her advice, she was usually good to listen to.

“Maybe Watt can’t do it, or whatever. There’s things you want taken care of right away, right?”

“Like taxes,” I said.

“Yeah, like taxes. Digger sounds like he’s mostly up on the financial side. Why don’t you ask him to do some specific pieces? Not be the ‘manager’ exactly, but more like… an accountant.”

While we’d been walking off the food, Digger had told us some more details about his current job. He was working for the “new media” arm of WTA, setting up venture capital and this and that–insert executive-sounding jargon here, I don’t remember exactly what his description was. It sounded important and like it had to do with money. And, hey, WTA. Like the old man had made it, and who would have expected that?

“Tell him it’s on a trial basis.” Michelle went on. “Maybe Watt needs to hire an accountant for you anyway. Give him six months or something.”

I looked at the others who were nodding. We were not a democracy, the decision was mine to make, but I felt good knowing consensus had been reached.

We went upstairs, decided to meet at the loft at three, and everyone put on their coats to leave. I went up to my room, still heavy-full from dinner and itching to lie down with my headphones on. I was taking off my sneakers when the bedroom door opened behind me.

Ziggy stood there, his wool hat hiding the blond streak he’d made in his hair. I stood up in my stocking feet and looked at him. His face was blank, neither lust nor apology nor anything showed on it. He took a step forward, one hand reaching toward my bruised face. I took a step back, maintaining the distance between us. His shoulders slumped a little as we stared at each other and he turned and left. I closed the door behind him and locked it, the old heavy Victorian wood door, that didn’t fit tight in the frame and let the light from the hallway in under it.

Nope, not even a goodnight kiss.