For the Featherless Bipeds, the balance tipped the night Zoe was thrust into the band. I never would have imagined that Zoe could sing like she does until I heard her that night at the Twelve Tribes. Since then, our powerchord rock songs have become sparer sounding without Jimmy T’s rhythm guitar playing, but Zoe’s voice fills and overflows the spaces left behind.
She has the power and control of an opera diva, the passion and guts of a blues singer, the casual elegance of a jazz crooner, and a certain extra mystique that I still can’t quite compare to anything else. Her voice has transformed our songs into something more complex, something that still eludes easy categorization. And to think that I’ve loved her for all these years and never realized she had this voice locked away inside her, a voice as complex and evasive and beautiful as Zoe herself.
Akim, Tristan and I play every show as if it’s the last time, struggling to match the mysterious, otherworldly quality of Zoe’s singing. As if someone has waved a magic wand, we have been transformed from a struggling bar band into the Next Big Thing. As we’re shipped from concert hall to radio station to recording studio, I still get this strange feeling that I’m watching it all happen from just outside myself, as if none of this is completely real.
Nothing feels more surreal than the day we all gather in Billy VandenHammer’s plush, oak-panelled office to sign our recording deal with Big Plastic Records.
“By the way,” Billy says as Zoe reaches for the silver pen to sign her name on the contract’s dotted line, “nobody in the band is allowed to have sexual relations with anyone else in the band. Is that clear? It’s all about the music now.”
“How is that any of your business?” I sputter.
“It’s totally my business!” VandenHammer says. “That kind of shit destroys bands. Look at Ike and Tina Turner. Look at Fleetwood Mac, for crying out loud, all screwing each other, all but ruined now. And look what happened when Yoko Ono got her claws into John Lennon. Poof! No more Beatles.”
“Okay,” Akim grins, taking the pen from Zoe and signing the contract, “I promise I won’t hump Tristan anymore.”
He hands the pen to Tristan, who signs like he was in a speed-writing competition.
Zoe and I look at each other, then at VandenHammer.
“Rule Number One, kids,” he says, peering at us over the purple lenses of his glasses. “No sexual relations of any kind amongst band members. I’m not investing in you so you can have jealous fights and break up. No way. It’s all about the music.”
Jimmy T hovers behind us. “Does Rule Number One apply to me, too, Billy, or am I allowed to sleep with Zoe?”
“Dream on!” Zoe scowls at him.
“You can call me Mr. VandenHammer, Mr. Tanner. And it applies double for band managers.”
Zoe looks at me for a moment. Then she sighs, signs her name, and hands me the pen without making eye contact again.
“It’s all about the music,” I tell myself as I add my signature to the page.
Now we are on our first cross-country road trip, in support of our newly released first album, Socrates Kicks Ass! The tour has been organized by Jimmy T, despite Billy VandenHammer’s offer to get someone at the record company to put the tour together. Jimmy T, Tristan and Akim share the job of driving the rented U-Haul equipment van, while Zoe and I take turns behind the wheel of her rust-perforated Toyota.
It is after three am, and we are somewhere between our Friday night gig in Winnipeg and our hotel in Regina, where we will play on Saturday. While Zoe sleeps in the passenger seat, I struggle to keep my heavy eyelids open, and curse Jimmy T for booking such distant gigs on consecutive nights. It’s all I can do to keep the Toyota within visual range of the van’s tail lights, since Jimmy T is driving at his usual homicidal velocity.
Out of nowhere comes a howling prairie blizzard. It takes all of my concentration to keep the featherweight car on the road. Snow blasts through the headlight beams, concealing the road, rendering the world around us dimensionless; it was like flying through a dense field of stars in a spaceship.
It is a miracle that I am able to see the neon glow of a roadside motel. I pull into the driveway.
“What’s going on?” Zoe asks, still groggy from sleep.
“Blizzard. I lost site of the van.”
“Are we in Regina?”
“Not sure exactly. There’s a motel. I think it might be safer for us to stay here for the night.”
Zoe stretches and yawns. “Okay,” she says. In a semi-trance, she follows me through the whistling wind into the motel.
At the front desk, a clerk with basset hound eyes pries himself away from the glow of his twelve-inch TV.
“Yep?” he says.
“We need two rooms.”
“We got one left.”
“Two beds?” I ask.
“One.”
I turn to Zoe. “It’s okay. I’ll sleep on the floor.”
The room is dimly lit and claustrophobic. There are velvet paintings of cowboys and horses hanging on the painted plywood walls. Wind hisses at the windowsills, rattles the siding outside. A neon sign flickers and hums outside the window.
Zoe immediately falls onto her back atop the spongy double bed, arms and legs splayed outward.
“I’m exhausted,” she sighs.
The long, wiry muscles in her arms are stretched tight, like high-voltage wires in the chill of winter. Every line, curve, and shadow of her body appears to quake, to shiver. Each part of her that is not consumed by shadow leaps forth, vibrating, visually crackling from the neon sign buzzing outside the window. The bed and walls of the motel room flicker at the same frequency, sharing the tension.
A volatile emulsion of guilt and desire bubbles inside me.
“It’s freezing in here,” she said. “I’m getting under the covers.”
Zoe arches her back, wriggles out of her jeans, kicks them onto the floor, then, without removing her sweatshirt, twists free of her bra, which lands on the cold floor beside her jeans. Like a swimmer springing feet-first from a diving board, she kicks her feet up in the air, then in one fluid motion her body slips beneath the sheets.
Split-second images whirl though my head: an edge of black pubic hair peeking from the crotch of her panties as she pulls off her jeans, a glimpse of a chill-shriveled nipple as she tugs the bra from beneath her sweatshirt, the O-shape of her lips as she plunges beneath the cold sheets.
Blood throbs inside me like the thunder of ritual drums. I turn around, pretend to look out the window at the swirling snow, so she won’t see the physical effect she is having on me; the effect she’s had on me since we were together in high school.
“I’ll, um, sleep on the floor, then,” I manage to say.
Her eyes peek out from under the blankets.
“Oh, come on Dak, you’ll freeze out there. We can share for tonight.”
“What about Rule Number One?”
“Desperate times cause for desperate measures,” she says. “We’ll just have to behave ourselves.”
So I strip down to my T-shirt and boxer shorts, careful to keep my back to her. Under the sheets, I roll over on my back, careful to turn slightly to one side so I won’t raise the blankets too much.
“God, Dak,” she says, her voice slightly hoarse from singing, “you’re like an oven.” She snuggles up beside me, saying, “You have to share the heat.”
I stare up at the ceiling, which continues to vibrate with the neon glow from outside the window. Zoe is probably already asleep when she slides her hand across my chest and her leg crosses over mine. She nestles her face between my chest and shoulder.
“Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm” she purrs.
When I am sure she is sleeping, I kiss her forehead. I can’t help myself. She pulls herself snugly against me, her soft, warm breasts pressed against my chest, my leg now firmly wedged between her thighs. I close my eyes and breath in deeply, only half aware of my legs muscles flexing gently, rhythmically, against her pubis. She lets out a little moan, and I exhale, very, very slowly. She begins to grind herself against the flexing of my leg. I shudder when I feel the warm, damp contact.
She exhales slowly, her breath condensing on my earlobe.
Then she springs upright, eyes wide open.
“No!” She cries. “No no no no no! We can’t do this!”
“Sorry! Sorry!”
I get out from under the covers and lie down on the cold floor. Zoe curls up at the farthest edge of the bed, with her back to me, the blankets pulled over her head.
I spend the rest of the night watching the neon light flicker against the water-stained ceiling, trying to understand what just happened.
By early morning the storm has passed.
“Sorry about last night,” I say, not quite able to look her in the eyes.
“Not your fault,” she mutters. “Half of me wanted to . . . aw, forget about it. An agreement is an agreement. We both signed the contract.”
“Nobody would have ever known,” I say.
“We would know, Dak,” she says. “I don’t think it’s the sort of thing that either one of us would be able to hide.”
“What do we do now?” I ask her.
“We wait it out, I guess.”
I guess waiting is something I’ve become pretty good at.
What else is there to say? We both signed the deal. Rule Number One. It’s all about the music.
Zoe drives the car the rest of the way to Regina, while I squint into the glare of the snow-covered landscape. We eventually find Jimmy T, Tristan, and Akim eating breakfast in the hotel restaurant.
“Thank God!” Akim cries out when he sees us, “We thought you guys were frozen dead in a ditch somewhere.”
“I told you they were okay,” Jimmy T says. “So, where’d you kids sleep last night? Some romantic hideaway?”
“Hardly,” I say. “We lost you guys. Had to find a motel to escape the storm.”
Jimmy T says, grinning, “Ooh, a motel. How deliciously seedy!”
“Nothing happened,” I say evenly.
“If you say so.”
“Nothing happened, you pig,” Zoe snaps.
“Sure, sure,” Jimmy T says.
“Shut up, Jimmy T,” Tristan says quietly. “Remember you work for us.”
Tristan seldom says anything like this, so his words weigh heavy whenever he does. Jimmy T shuts up momentarily, but continues to grin like a man who has just won a bet. Then he jumps up from the table and says, “Well, up and at ’em, troops! We’ve got a sound check on the other side of town in half an hour.”
Everyone rises except for Akim, who remains seated in front of his half-eaten plate of bacon and eggs. His eyes are watery and bloodshot, and he sniffles and sneezes repeatedly.
“You okay, Akim?” Zoe asks.
“I ran out of my allergy medicine,” he says, “and nothing in this old hotel has seen a dust rag since World War Two. Good choice, Jimmy T.”
“I’ll give you a ride to a drug store,” Zoe says, glancing around at everyone but me. “We’ll meet the rest of you guys at the hall.”
Is she making this offer to avoid riding with me? Is this the way it’s going to be between us from now on?
Jimmy T drives the van. Tristan rides shotgun, and I sit behind them. Ten minutes into the ride, Jimmy T can no longer restrain himself. He glances at me in the rearview mirror and says, “So, come on Dak, it’s just us guys now. How was she?”
“What do you mean?” I say, knowing exactly what he means.
“You expect us to believe that you spent a night in a hotel with Zoe and nothing happened? Gimme a break.”
“Rule Number One, remember?”
“Oh, whatever!” Jimmy T laughs, “that sure as hell wouldn’t have stopped me!”
“I guess I’m not you.”
Jimmy T rolls his eyes. “You mean to tell me that you didn’t sleep with a woman you’re nuts over because Billy VandenHammer told you not to?”
“We all signed the contract,” I say.
“If you two let a friggin’ recording contract stop you from having some fun together, then maybe there isn’t as much going on with you and Zoe as I thought there was.”
“There’s enough going on,” I say, wondering why I’m telling him any of this, “that I’m willing to wait for her until the contract expires.”
“Then you’re an idiot,” Jimmy T says. “If nothing has happened by now, nothing ever will.”
Tristan turns around in his seat and says to me, “Don’t listen to him, Dak. It took a long time before things finally happened between Veronica and I. It’ll be worth the wait.”
“Bullshit!” Jimmy T says, punching the steering wheel. “Don’t waste the rest of your life waiting for one woman to maybe come around to you. Screw that! There are millions of women out there, Dak, and you’re a friggin’ rock star! Step up to the buffet, buddy!”
Maybe there is some truth in what Jimmy T says. If nothing has happened between Zoe and I by now, maybe nothing ever will. As much as it hurts to admit it, perhaps the time has come for me to move on.