four MARGARET part 8
When I returned to work with Melanie on Wednesday I had no idea she uploaded the clip of me and Vincent performing “Owen” the night we got tipsy.
One of Melanie’s friends forwarded the link to her brother, some guy named Eric.
Eric liked the video. He played it over and over at work and his boss saw it. Eric’s the touring guitar tech for Brady Miles from the British boy band Five Ways.
Brady and his bandmates loved our music. Their comeback-tour promoter told Eric to reach out for the name of our representation, and Eric’s sister got in touch with Melanie.
On Monday I’d stayed up ’til my old bedtime of dawn, a cruel exercise meant to pervert my sleep schedule back to the night shift but I hardly slept Tuesday, tumbling from side to side between fifteen-minute slices of almost-rest while Bagheera scratched and drummed at the door. When I went to work I was absolutely useless.
I ate half of my lunch, took a pen and an ancient People Magazine and did the celebrity crossword puzzle on the tiny sofa in the women’s restroom. Nodded off while trying to remember the name of that cowboy Jewel married. I woke up as Melanie dragged me to my feet, shouting.
Check your phone. Check your phone!
I’d left my phone in the breakroom.
Melanie swung the bathroom door open and pushed me into the hallway, aggressively gesturing with stabbing motions of her phone, a lunatic woman with a remote control trying to turn my muted energy up to match her frenzy.
Check your e-mail, check it now, right now!
Melanie ran beside me. Grabbed my wrist and ran faster, dragging me behind her as she passed me. The hammering of our heels brought alarmed faces to the doorway of HR as we dashed to the breakroom at the end of the hall.
She slid to a stop, snatched my phone and thrust it into my hands. Drummed her palms on my back while I read a message from the booking agent in charge of talent for a musical festival touring Europe and the U.K.
I read it four times without understanding anything. I sat down and read it again. One of the opening acts for Five Ways had fallen through. Their lead singer was taking time out for reflection and seeking treatment after he made racist comments online.
Melanie squeezed my shoulders as I braced my elbows against the breakroom table, trembled and pecked out a reply to the booking agent. He replied immediately to ask for the name of my band’s representation and I panicked. Slid to my knees in front of the trash can and threw up my sorrygirl sadlunch of baby carrots and Top Ramen. Begged Melanie for a yes and cried a little when she replied to the booker directly with her contact information.
We shook hands to seal the deal and I threw up again while Melanie ordered a copy of “Talent Management For Dummies” off Prime.
Then we jumped and danced, muffled squeals and screams through gritted teeth. I rinsed the taste of vomit out of my mouth with warm water and a pinch of salt before Melanie and I composed ourselves, shared a final hug and returned to work.
Melanie put her lips beside my ear on the way to her desk. Whispered:
You should quit. You know you want to, you dirty bitch.
I finished my final proof batch. Traded ridiculous sidelong glances with Melanie as we stretched the tension across the aisle between us, drunk with the rush of planning and dreaming, giddy over new secrets.
I looked around the office for the last time. Saw nothing I would miss. Gave several people the finger in my mind. Cleaned out my desk while I ran out the clock and left my sneakers in the bottom drawer, laces tied.
At the end of my shift I dropped by Barb’s office. Submitted a crisp letter of resignation and a separate note authorizing Melanie to pick up my final check. She was my manager now.
Melanie beamed as we drove home.
I won’t take ten percent of that check, she said. Those earnings predate our agreement and I know exactly how low you had to stoop to earn that money.
Her face hardened when I sat down on my borrowed bed and started making calls to locate Vincent. At the apartment he’d left behind a shoebox full of paper scraps, business cards and strange notes. Some of those artifacts bore legible digits.
Melanie went still, stood silent in the doorway, her eyes on anything but me.
Mel. We’re a duo and he’s written nearly all the lyrics. There’s no Citizen Samurai without Vincent.
She lifted Bagheera from my laptop, cradled her close and left the room.
I smoothed the corners of a pocket-origami Post-it and began my descent into the broken-adult couch-surfing community of Benton County, dialing stoners and dimwits, chasing ancient leads to dead ends in an attempt to track down the man I used to picture performing beside me onstage at a stadium venue, standing back-to-back with me in a pompous pose on the cover of a Rolling Stone. A failed American-male prototype raised on 1980s prime-time programming. A charming and alarming ratio of idiot to savant whose ability to fuck and talent for wrestling with the English language were among the few things in this world that made me feel joyous, made me feel grateful for the psycho-chemical burn of real feelings when our music unlocked all the things that mattered, the things without names.
I found a torn flag of paper that had once been in contact with a staple and some fryer grease, loopy bubbles of grade-school penmanship and a number:
JENNY CELL
Jenny had a deep voice. She became guarded when I asked how I could reach Vincent, copped an attitude and asked me:
May I ask who is calling?
A barbed red spike of raw jealousy rose inside me as I groomed, saddled and mounted the perfect tone to tell this Jenny exactly who I was and where the fuck I figured among the prominent celestial mechanics of Vincent’s sad little spinning world.
She came back with a tone of her own:
PapaTaco policy prohibits me from releasing personal information about employees past or present. I am in touch with Vincent and I’d be happy to pass on a message. Is there a number you’d like to-
I hate being old enough to remember the positive feeling of hanging up a real telephone in anger. Modern technology has robbed the world of a very satisfying sense-memory: Allowing negative emotion to boil over into a physical outburst that ends a phone call and cuts the line. An angry hang-up is a powerful and therapeutic experience that now only exists in the theater as a one-sided pantomime.
I imagined a warm vat of acid for Jenny and saved her as a contact. Unpacked a crumpled cocktail napkin and moved on to the next shaky lead.
Half my battery life and a long night of “Cagney and Lacey” detective work led to a couple of sources who gave me the name, then the address for some guy named Carl.
Melanie refused to come help me stake out the house so I went solo, sat in Cheeto with a tall coffee and traded e-mail with the booker’s assistant in London, watching windows until I saw Vincent walk past one.
I stopped for another large coffee on my way to print up the tour promoter’s contract at Kinko’s. Signed and initialed all my paperwork, wrote the day, month and year in all the right places. Picked up a different pen at the counter and forged a second set of documents on Vincent’s behalf. Scanned and uploaded the whole mess to DropBox for the booker, sent them an e-mail and CC’d Melanie.
I put an official-looking black report cover on a third copy of the tour contract for Vincent, a harmless ego placebo dripping with SIGN HERE stickers to make him feel important while indicating his agreement to hold harmless, defend and indemnify Canzano Promotions International for any sleep, sheep or shekels lost directly or indirectly due to War, Social Unrest or Political Instability, Foreign or Domestic Terrorism and Acts of God, or lack of earnings if any performance dates were cancelled due to rain.
Then I printed my contract for Vincent, the one I wrote for him that morning. Shot a staple through the corner and folded it in thirds. Put it in my purse and wondered if he’d be sober enough to read anything by the time I found him.
I met with the building manager to negotiate a return of as much of the deposit as possible. He was impressed by Vincent’s detailed cleaning and the lack of nail holes in the plaster. I looked to the four corners of the front room and considered how few things had happened here that were worth remembering, let alone photographing. Never mind fucking framing.
Vincent stood with my contract rolled tightly behind his back and watched the planes, his silhouette stamped against the glass overlooking the runway. I studied my balding Holden Caufield in a black suit, ready to conquer the world with a public-school education and zero understanding of social media. A crazy-wise heart and a bard’s uncanny instinct for expressing an uncomfortable inventory of emotion. An author of love songs for the angry and lonely also-rans.
That’s where his greatest beauty shone brightest to me, when Vincent attempted to climb something tall but fell and came up short. His gracious acceptance of senseless self-defeat. His knack for popping up again and immediately getting busy with the process of rebuilding. The man was at his best when he was chasing a dream out of reach.
I took two of my favorite pills and checked YouTube.
Half a million hits and counting.
I gasped for air and passed it off as a cough when people looked. Smiled like I was grateful for their unsolicited concern. Paged to the back of the magazine and graded my vagina quiz.
I burned the time until boarding on my phone. Went looking for some pictures of this fucking swamp bitch Jenny and found images of angry women with shaved eyebrows crouched at the base of a chain-link fence throwing up gang signs, wearing Oregon prison blues at Coffee Creek.
I blocked Jenny as a contact and checked my gut. Felt around for feathery signals that the drugs were kicking in and looked up to see Vincent walking across the departure lounge with my contract clutched behind his back, lunging in goofy John Cleese strides and stepping only on the carpet’s blue diamonds.
end chapter four
©2017 J.R. Schaefers — all rights reserved