Tease (Songs of Submission #2)(8)
Author: C.D. Reiss

“I didn’t tell you something about meeting Eddie today,” I said, trying to sound flip.

“He cute?”

“Yes. And he’d heard about us.”

“He was trying to get into your pants.”

“No, he didn’t know it was me singing here when he mentioned it. I mean, he did, but he could have just said something polite like, oh, how nice. But he didn’t. He was all, Oh, that’s you?”

“What did he say, exactly?”

“He’d heard someone was bringing down the house at Frontage.”

“Someone?”

I got defensive. She’d gotten me through high school. I’d never abandon her. “He didn’t phrase it like it was just one person. Could have been a swing ensemble from the way he said it.”

Gabby tossed her sticks and tubes back in her little bag. “I’d better get out there,” she said. “I have to warm them up.”

We hugged like sisters, and I went back to making my face presentable.

When I told Jonathan he was lucky to have sisters, I’d meant it. I hated being an only child. I hated when my mother looked at me as if I’d somehow disappointed her by being her first and last, as if it was my fault they found cancer during the C-section. I hated being the only kid in the house. I hated being responsible for every success and failure of my parents’ children. The attention was great, except when I wanted to die from it.

If anything happens to the only child, there’s no backup. If she’s a drug addict, all the kids are drug addicts. If she dies in a car accident, suddenly the family is dissolved.

In one way, I never felt right around people, and in another, I craved their company. I needed them too much. So I had tons of acquaintances, maybe four hundred people in a loose music-scene around Echo Park and Silver Lake. I could fill a club when I needed to, but outside the guys who wanted to screw me, I inspired no closeness in anyone besides Darren and Gabby, who were orphans and needed me as much as I needed them.

CHAPTER 5

I poked my head out into the restaurant. Darren was at the bar with a huddled group. I recognized them: Theo, Mark, Ursula, Mollie, and Raven. Darren was Mister Popularity. He could bust out an inside joke with anyone he met on the east side. He had an ear for language and a way of listening that gave him a vocal “in” with whoever was in earshot.

I didn’t see a girl I didn’t recognize, so he either came without her or I knew her. I deliberately didn’t look at the table by the warm speaker. I didn’t want to see if they’d shown or if it was a table full of assistants getting drunk on the company dime. I didn’t want to see an empty table with a big “reserved” card on it. I didn’t want to see anything at all; I only needed to feel.

I’d been drawing off the energy from my night with Jonathan for two weeks, and after that afternoon at the Loft Club, I felt renewed and concerned. I couldn’t let myself depend on him getting me all hot and bothered so I could sing to the throb between my legs. I had no idea how much longer he’d drag me around by the panties, but it surely wouldn’t be long enough to make a career.

Rhee stood by the door at the opposite side of the room, hair up, a big smile her default setting. A black woman in her forties, she didn’t look a day over thirty. She winked when she saw me and tilted her head to the table by the warm speaker, which I couldn’t see from where I stood.

It was go time, as my dad would say.

The management always put fifteen minutes at the beginning of the schedule for the talent to walk around doing a meet and greet. My disdain for that type of gig had evaporated when I realized what shrewd businesspeople ran the operation. My job wasn’t to fade into the background as I’d originally thought, but to make the diners feel as though they’d walked into a place where they were known, and special, and wanted. The goal was repeat business, and though new customers were encouraged, the management found people who came back regularly were better tippers, better customers, and better friends than a constant stream of trend followers.

Gabby was already improvising something on the piano in the center of the dining room. Her eyes were closed. She wouldn’t even know it was time to start until I put my hand on her shoulder in twelve minutes. Darren was in the middle of an earnest discussion with Theo and Mark, and I broke in to greet them.

“You guys,” I said to Darren, Theo, and Mark as a group, “please look like I’m cheering you up when I sing, okay? You’re talking like you’re at a funeral.”

Theo, who had Maori tattoos crawling up his neck despite being a skinny Scottish dude, pointed an unlit cigarette at me. “You tell him to get his sorry ass over to Boing Boing Studios. He’s a man without a band. It’s a crime.”

Darren rolled his eyes, and I put my hand on his arm, speaking for him. “He told you he wants to mature as an artist before selling his ass to the man, right? He told you he wants to develop his process before he starts playing for other people’s glory?”

“Oy,” Theo said. “My ears hurt with this.”

Mark cut in. With his narrow-lapel jacket and horn-rimmed black glasses, he couldn’t have been more Theo’s opposite. “You need to get in your ten thousand hours, buddy. That’s the rule. You can’t master an art in under ten thousand hours. Documented. You can’t develop a process in a vacuum. Bank on that.”

Darren looked at me with his big blue eyes. Poor guy. He and Gabby had enough to live on from their inheritance, but they couldn’t do much more than live. The cash flow they enjoyed seemed to keep them from doing the things they needed to do in order to grow.

“Darren, try it,” I said. “Be a studio musician for fifteen minutes. You’re making a big deal over nothing.”

Over Darren’s shoulder, I saw a face I recognized, and though I took a second to put a name to her face, she knew me right away and waved, smiling.

“Thank you,” Theo said. “Nicely done, lassie.”

But my mind was on the woman in the green dress. “I have to go,” I said, making my way to her.

Before I got half a step away, Darren grabbed my arm and whispered in my ear, “Behind you, at a deuce up front. Kevin.”

“Fuck.”

“Bad idea,” he said.

“Can you get rid of him?”

“Nope.” He smiled at me, our faces close enough to kiss. I’d left Darren for Kevin almost two years before, and though he forgave me, he’d never forgotten.