I’m trying to add it up, and I think I’ve seen Sam Hellerman admit to being surprised by anything precisely three times in my whole life. One was when the end of the world didn’t happen as scheduled on Y2K. Another was when I noted that Deanna Schumacher, the fake fake Fiona (not to be confused with the real fake Fiona, Celeste Fletcher), had the same last name as the coroner in the case of my dad’s death. And the third was when I revealed to him that I was scheduled to attend Clearview High instead of Mission Hills.
It is part of his shtick to act like he knows everything, and to do it in such a way as to leave the impression that he not only knows it all but has somehow had a hand in orchestrating everything down to the tiniest detail. The world is his stage, he wants you to think, and the people merely his puppets. Including me. And you. But as I said, he was shaken by the news about Clearview.
So he hadn’t predicted it, much less orchestrated it. But although he was surprised and shaken, he was not, it seemed, anywhere near as s. and s. as I was. What was to me a devastating, intolerable disaster seemed to him the merest inconvenient blip.
Now, I complain about Sam Hellerman a lot. (Have you noticed?) Even though we’re bandmates and as close to being friends as I could ever imagine being with anybody, I’m not even sure he likes me all that much. Or if I like him, to be honest. But he is a genius, and moreover, he’s all I’ve got, and the thought of facing a whole new high school fully stocked with its own terrifying supply of awful normal people while attempting to find my way through a whole new set of customs and perils without backup was simply too much to contemplate. How would I ever do it? Could I do it? I really didn’t see how.
“Look, Henderson,” he had said, “worst-case scenario, it’ll only last till the summer, and by that time I’m sure we’ll have figured something out.” What that “something” might be he left unsaid. Somehow managing to make Clearview or Mission Hills have to close down, so one of us would have to be transferred to the remaining school? If anyone could manage that, it would be Sam Hellerman, but it seemed a slender reed on which to pin our hopes, if indeed reeds of any width can have things like hopes pinned on them, which seems pretty unlikely.
“Can’t you get your dad to make them transfer you to Clearview instead?” I asked, a tinge of desperation making my little-used voice squeak just a bit more than usual. I figured his dad, in his capacity as a scary German lawyer, would have some chance of achieving something like that, whereas the very thought of my mom or Little Big Tom being competent, let alone willing, to do that sort of thing on my behalf was laughable. One of the two things my family isn’t any good at is official matters. (The other one, of course, is unofficial matters.) Obviously, trying to fight the school district on our own was out of the question. We were up against the entire weight of full-on institutional Normalism: we’d be as likely to prevail in petitioning them, say, to put a stop to the program of the larger people placing the smaller people in garbage cans or gluing their lockers shut or throwing gum in their hair or teasing the fat kid into cutting his arms up or any of the other important programs by means of which the normal establishment tries to keep the world running as it sees fit.
The answer to that question was no, at any rate. Sam Hellerman’s father, Sam Hellerman said, was even less likely than my parents to go to any great lengths to make it easier for him. Our parents were all of one mind in this; they seemed to regard discomfort, apprehension, and even terror as important parts of growing up that they could not in good conscience deny us.
“Also,” Sam Hellerman added, “he won’t be unhappy that we’re going to different schools. He sees you as a bad influence.”
A bad influence on Hillmont’s own scheming-est, manipulating-est, secretive-est and possibly evilest puppet master? Moi? It’s true I usually don’t know what to say, but this took not knowing what to say to a new, as-yet-unmapped and even more silent level. In fact, it’s a wonder I ever spoke again.
Sam Hellerman told me not to worry, which is a bit like telling a dog not to slobber. But he had his mind on more pressing matters, and therefore what he required of me was to shake my mind’s Etch A Sketch to blankness so he could start to use it for his own designs, unimpeded by what had previously been on it. I did my best, like a good, faithful dog with an Etch A Sketch for a head.
We trundled the new records into my room, and Sam Hellerman immediately dived in and snatched up APLPA-016. I’d had a feeling there might be a bit of a squabble over who was going to be the official owner of that one, though it made little practical difference: Sam Hellerman kept most of his records in my room because his father ruled Hellerman Manor with a fist of iron and forbade the playing of music of any kind but classical or jazz, and even then, he himself was the only one allowed to do it. Any record that failed to comply would be ruthlessly taken into custody and eliminated without mercy. Sam Hellerman had lost too many good records over the years to risk APLPA-016, that’s for sure.
So I was expecting him to put forth an argument as to why APLPA-016 should be placed in the Sam Hellerman pile rather than filed into my collection, but what he said instead came as a total surprise.
It was: “Fiona.”
Now, Sam Hellerman had engineered the entire fake Fiona operation from its obscure Dud Chart beginnings (about which, see my previous explanations—I don’t have the energy to go into it now). Despite that, he had no patience for my continued obsession with the imaginary girl and still tended to bristle when I even so much as said the name. He only ever brought up the topic to tell me not to raise it. But evidently, we had entered a new era of Fiona tolerance on Sam Hellerman’s part.
He ignored my puzzled eyes and put the record on, side one, track four: “Live Wire.”
“Think of Fiona,” he said, holding his finger up as though to say “Wait for it” and seeming to mumble to himself internally as the slow-building intro of the song unfolded. I was mystified but I did as I was told, thinking of Fiona, that is, of Celeste Fletcher in character as Fiona, her glasses, her hat, her too-small Who T-shirt, her yarn jacket, her underwear, that one nipple, her heavy breathing.… Though I now knew that the whole thing had been at my expense, an elaborate Make-out/Fake-out designed mostly to humiliate me, the thought of all that still got me going. Is that surprising, or weird? I can’t even tell anymore. But I was lost in a world of glasses and nipples, because it doesn’t take much to get me lost, obviously.
Sam Hellerman’s finger came down at the chorus and he started singing:
“Fiona,
Fiona,
Fiona,
I wanna own ya.”
Oh, that “Fiona”! It was the chorus of one of my old songs from my Fiona Period, during which I had half written dozens of songs about her being hot and me being sad. It wasn’t the right notes, it wasn’t the right chords, and it arguably wasn’t the right “feel,” but it certainly was the right beat.
And of course, I could see where Sam Hellerman was going with this. “Fiona,” though unfinished, wasn’t a bad song. With a little tweaking, the “Live Wire” drumbeat could certainly be made to work with it, and it would be far better than anything Shinefield would come up with on his own. So we get Shinefield to play the “Live Wire” drum parts to “Fiona” was the apparent idea.
“But we’ve tried that before,” I protested. “Since it’s one of our songs, he’ll just gradually mess it up like all the others, won’t he?”
“Not if we don’t tell him,” said Sam Hellerman, with his face as close to a grin as anything ever gets on that thing.
I gave him the look that says: “Won’t he notice?”
“Not if we’re careful,” said Sam Hellerman. “Not,” he added thoughtfully, “if we’re careful.”
Sam Hellerman’s plan was simple: we would tell Shinefield we were playing “Live Wire” as usual, but while we played it, in our heads we’d be rehearsing the “Fiona” chords and singing the “Fiona” words with the “Fiona” melody. And then, if it ever came time to perform it for an audience, we’d pull the old switcheroo and play “Fiona” outright while Shinefield was still playing “Live Wire.” At that point, it would be far too late for Shinefield to come up with any fancy drummer stuff to ruin it. Result: “Fiona” with the “Live Wire” drums, the only way that was ever going to happen.
“And if it works,” added Sam Hellerman, “we can do it for all our songs. We just have to find the right song to tell him we’re playing for each one.”
We spent the rest of the afternoon listening to records with an ear toward finding the appropriate drum parts for each of our songs, with Sam Hellerman taking copious notes. It was not all that long ago that he had refused to participate in any Fiona songs as a matter of principle, but as I said, we had now entered a new era. Because this wasn’t about any particular girl or song. It wasn’t even about us. We were talking about solving the Drummer Problem, for the world, forever. If this worked, rock and roll would never be the same. We were doing it for humanity.
And best of all, it was far easier than kidnapping Shinefield’s family and holding them all hostage in a basement somewhere on the edge of town.
I wasn’t sure we could pull it off. But if we could, well, it was so crazy it just might wind up turning out pretty much all right, as the saying goes. A more Hellermanian plan could not have been imagined.
I stared at Sam Hellerman, genius, with the look that says “I’m sorry I ever doubted you.”