CHAPTER FOUR
I get back home, pick up my guitar on a whim, and find my fingers plucking a brand-new melody. Something that, unlike what I create in my late-night fugues, I think might be worth keeping. Part of me must think it’d be a jinx to write the notes down, so I don’t bother. Usually, melodies will rattle around in my head for a while if they’re worth anything, and I’ll commit them to paper later if so. Or at least, that’s how it used to work.
But it progresses quickly. As I go about my midday business, the hook starts to form. I’m thinking of lyrics, but they suck. Still, they’re there. I remind myself not to get my hopes up. I sometimes come up with hooks, and I sometimes come up with snippets of lyrics, and I sometimes come up with pieces of disconnected verses. They never want to work together.
It’s like I’m looking at a drawer full of singleton socks, but no matter how many singles I find, none of them match. Trying to Frankenstein my scraps of different songs together is always a mistake. Some songwriters and lyricists can pull that off, and it’ll either make sense as a whole or come off as a mash-up (or, on the outside, a medley), but not me. My sampler platter songs always sound like the shit that they are.
I take a shower, my mind reviewing the day. I got up late, so lunch at the Nosh Pit was really my breakfast. I may have lunch at the Overlook before my set or before anyone’s sets, at or after most people’s dinnertimes. If I have dinner, it’ll be after my part of the night is behind me. I don’t always. Sometimes (and this is totally unpredictable), I get a nervous stomach. Even free food doesn’t sound good when that happens.
For some reason, my mind keeps detouring from the song to the waitress.
I don’t know why she’s stuck in my head. Probably because she’s so unique an experience to me, as a guy who never goes out — let alone for lunch. When’s the last time I hit a restaurant in the middle of the day? When’s the last time I hit a restaurant alone? I can’t remember. I may never have done it before.
As my thoughts roll, I’m hit with a strange wave of melancholy. It blindsides me, and I have no idea where it’s come from. I’m sure it has something to do with Grace because that’s where my thoughts turn, but I don’t know why. I think about her (and Charlie) at least some every day, but at this point it’s mostly background. That particular blade has mostly lost its edge, and now what I feel is a distant sense of pulling. But today it’s more immediate, almost like alarm.
Maybe Grace and I used to eat at diners.
I don’t want to search my memory, but I do anyway, eager to discover why I’m suddenly feeling so crushed right before my big Friday night set. And no, I don’t remember going to diners with Grace. I did go a few times with Charlie because he and I were always looking for places to sit for long periods of time and drink coffee into the wee hours. Maybe that’s what this is: another symptom of loss.
I head to the club early because I have nothing better to do and my apartment feels suddenly oppressive. I’m a bit skeeved out, and want to be around other people. I want to be around activity. I want to be around noise. It’s too damn quiet in here. I’d turn on the TV if I’d ever bought one, but I don’t want to turn on the radio or dock my iPod and listen to that. Listening to music, for me, is a bit like walking through a minefield. I attach location to songs, and almost always remember where I was when I heard my favorite songs last.
Some of those places, if I dwell on them and the company I had, is bound to make me feel worse about being alone, not better.
Once I’m on the street, making the short walk down to the club, I feel a bit better. I’m still alone, but alone isn’t the problem. Alone with my thoughts, with nothing better to do — that’s the trick. Maybe I should get a TV to occupy me, and damn the expense. But I usually opt for more organic solutions. I go outside and walk around. I switch on while engaged in conversation, and when that happens I become someone else. This moody, sallow Gavin vanishes so the performer can rise to the surface. It’s a Sybil situation; the two Gavins, if they met, might annihilate each other like matter and antimatter. But it works, and I prefer the company of public Gavin. He doesn’t have a care in the world or mind being alone because by definition, he never is. Public Gavin is strong, confident, magnetic, with a winning smile — the kind of guy who’d chat up a pretty waitress just because she’s there.
But thinking of the waitress threatens to return my edge of sadness, so I focus on the nearing club. I don’t know what the problem is, seeing as I liked that girl a lot — enough, maybe, to go out to lunch again. I get a lot of female attention while I’m onstage and after I get off. I try my best not to wake up alone, at least on weekends. So why finding someone whom I enjoy in a different way would cause me to feel bad rather than good? It’s a mystery, and not one I care to solve right now, or maybe ever.
I reach the door, which is on the club’s corner, and knock. I think Dimebag or Danny will answer, but of course they don’t. Instead, I get a face full of Richard — all glasses and his little porno mustache.
“Gavin, good,” he says, ushering me aside and reclosing the door, his manner as if he’d expected something dire. Richard moves like an insect. If you asked him about it, he’d tell you it’s because he needs to be fast and observant for his job, but then he’ll refuse to tell you what his job is. It’s not as the Overlook’s doorman, that’s for sure. He just hangs out here, and I’m increasingly certain it’s because Richard, like me, enjoys an audience. Rumor says he’s an undercover cop dropped into Inferno Falls for reasons unknown. Everyone assumes he started this rumor himself.
“Richard,” I say, walking past.
But Richard grabs me. One palm is flat on my chest. The other is on my back. My guitar case, hanging in my left hand, is wedged between us. Stopping me with a soft pincher move is probably supposed to look clandestine and conspiratorial. Instead, it feels awkward.
“Hang on. Gavin, when are you on tonight?”
“Ten, I think.”
“Is that normal?”
“I’ve done ten before, if that’s what you mean.”
“No, no. Is it normal by music industry standards?”
“This isn’t exactly the music industry, Richard.”
“Club standards then.”
“Danny doesn’t do standards. Show him the usual club playbook, and he’ll throw it away. This place isn’t like any club I’ve ever performed in.” Which is why we all like it so much, I add mentally.
“Okay. I’m just trying to take the evening’s pulse.”
“Thanks, Richard,” I say, breaking his embrace. I’m pretty sure I was supposed to ask questions and find out why Richard was taking the pulse, but that would only encourage him. Richard always seems like a man who wants to say something but won’t unless someone begs him. I don’t like to play along.
The main room is arranged semi-concert style. This isn’t an “industry standard” or “club standard” term and would probably throw off Ricard’s pulse taking too. We’ve had to figure out our own ways to describe what Danny does because it’s as if he was never at a concert hall or bar before he owned a combination of the two. He’s been in plenty of both, of course, as patron and performer, but Danny likes to make his own rules.
The way things normally are, when the Overlook serves lunch and spills customers into the patio wrapping the corner, we call that “bar style.” Inside, “bar style” fills the floor with smaller tables, and the kitchen prepares pub food to go with its award-winning drinks. When the night’s performers are loud and fast enough to draw larger, more energetic crowds — Friday and Saturday nights only, though only some of either — the place moves into “concert style,” with the tables and chairs moved to storage and the floor converted to standing room only. A few tables are left upright in a ring around the room’s most central area, but the floor is left for dancing — and, usually, a mosh pit.
The way it is now — the way it usually is on weekends, and just about the only way I’ll play — is a combination of both. The stage has a clear halo around it in case anyone wants to dance and thrash, but people can sit and chill farther back.
I run into a bunch of loose flesh as I’m about to start threading between tables. As with Richard, this interloper has taken me by surprise. But with Dimebag, I’m never truly surprised. You expect Dimebag after a few weeks hanging around the Overlook. You just feel bad for him, and that’s worse.
“Hey, Gavin,” he says, backing up. “You eating?”
I almost want to make a joke about how I’m eating as long as it’s free, but Dimebag might take it too literally. Not only does Dimebag eat too much; the whole if it’s free thing is truer and (again) a bit sadder for him. This kid used to be rich, and by the laws of fairness should be rich today. But somehow, his parents got most of what he made. His parents and lawyers.
“Maybe. I ate earlier, so I’m not that hungry.”
Dimebag resumes talking, but it takes me a few seconds to catch up. Thinking of having already eaten recalls the earlier half of my day, when I couldn’t manage to write as usual. I don’t know why that’s so interesting, but thinking of eating feels important. I consider telling Dimebag that I finally tried the Nosh Pit and that it was great — amazing and definitely worth returning to, really — but that’s not quite what I mean, and Dimebag is already passing over it to move on.
“Okay, maybe I’ll eat with you. When are you on? I checked the schedule. It’s ten. You’re on at ten. Chloe is at nine or something. Did you see Richard at the door? Remind me to tell you something about him later. Hey, will you talk to Danny for me about slipping into some of the squeeze room? Just like fifteen minutes, even.”
Dimebag is smiling, but I sort of feel that everything he just said is window dressing for that final question, and the final question is more of a plea than his voice lets on. I don’t want to answer because I don’t want to promise something I have no intention of trying to deliver. Danny has a soft spot for Dimebag, but there’s no way he’ll let his horrible white rapper act take the stage on Friday night.
“I’m not sure where Danny is.” It’s not an answer. Maybe I can weasel by.
“Oh, he’s in back.”
Dimebag gives me another smile. This one is strange. Fifteen years ago, Dimebag was a cute prepubescent kid who had the world’s attention. He was in a weekly sitcom, and silly films about all sorts of unlikely capers. Everyone knew his real name: Will Cusk. As Will, he had a winning look and a charming smile. But then Will’s time in the spotlight ended, and his show was cancelled. First, he got awkward, and then he got fat. Now, what used to be charming seems pinched and strange. Child actors rarely turn out normal-looking, and Dimebag’s no exception.
“I’ll see him in a bit.” I head for the stage, as if sitting in the lone chair near the edge is somehow different from any of these chairs out here, beyond the semi-dance pit, in the pre-opening lull. It’s not a lie. I will see Danny in a bit. Whether or not I honor Dimebag’s request is another story.
Dimebag shuffles away as I near the stage then detours to one of the normal chairs once he’s out of the way. I sit in the shadows, wandering at my mood.
Here, at the club, I’m supposed to feel more outgoing, and I do. The numbness I’d felt at home is gone. But even so, I’m usually brooding and quiet until my set, then a rock star after. I’ve earned quite a cult following in Inferno lately, and that’s good because Danny’s unconventional style gives performers a nice cut of the door. He’s even been known to pass out comment cards and surveys after the night is over. The people not too drunk to fill them out often do. The crowds expect it here. The lack of normality is what draws customers to the Overlook, too. But today, I’m somewhere between happy and confused. If I’m not careful, it’ll spill into mania, where I like stuff but don’t know which stuff I like.
Maybe I should have lunch more often. Maybe my blood sugar is usually low, and this is what normal feels like. I bury the thought. Yes, I feel better today than I usually do, and I’m pretty sure I spent a lot of my time talking to Richard and Dimebag with a dumb smile on my face.
I wish proper food infusions didn’t damage my budget so badly. It wasn’t just the meal. I tipped my waitress way too well.
Sometime later, I hear activity and know the club must be opening for the evening. I consider staying where I am, but don’t know that I want to eat so there’s little reason to be out here. My odd mood has turned to uncharacteristic nerves, and I don’t feel like greeting guests early.
I head into the back, thinking about my ill-spent tip, visions of a random chat with a lovely waitress running circles behind my eyelids with every blink.