Hallelujah Ch. 02

"I don't care where the boy's worked, or who he's worked with! D'ya get that, Bennie?! He could be Johnny fucking Cash and it wouldn't excuse this shit. I wouldn't care if he was rookie enough to make this kind of amateur error. I work with your studio because your studio is professional, and...and sonically effective. This...recording is too nice a word...is neither. It's your mess now, Bennie. You can explain to the label why you were unable to provide the producer THEY chose for THEIR artist with someone capable of following the simplest of directions. You can explain why they asked for a song and got this...this...this fucking mess! I simply will not be held accountable for a mistake made by one of YOUR employees!"

Walter Russel's face has invented new shades of crimson. Actually, it's been experimenting with them ever since he heard the playback of the track we'd cut. You might think he's being overly dramatic, or just an asshole, but I get it. No, really. I do. As much as I hate to admit it, I realize that we pretty much snowed the guy. He was brought in, contracted to help work the song, and we shut him out. But fuck if the new version of the song isn't the best thing I've heard in years. It has soul. It knows three different kinds of magic, all of them deadly. It has 'fuck me' eyes. And I'm not backing down on it.

Bennie's been listening to Walter's rant, and nodding apologetically at all the right moments, but his eyes have stayed locked on me the whole time. The right side of his mouth twitches sometimes. He's not raised one word in my defense.

Yup. I'm getting fired.

Finally he turns to Walter. "I apologize for everything, Walt. You know I don't stand for this kind of thing, and I realize that it was one of my employees..." too much emphasis on that word. As in, 'soon to be ex,' I suppose, "...who caused the debacle. I will be notifying the label that they will not be charged for this morning's session, and I intend to cover whatever time you were in with the band as well." He snorts air through his nose. We all know Walter didn't show up until hours after we'd started work. Even for having to juggle sessions, he was way late. "But that aside, this does not have to be a big mess. The room is still set up, the equipment is ready, and I have another engineer who can be here inside of twenty minutes. You can still get your song done today, the way you want it done. At a reduced charge."

"It's not his song," I interject. Nobody acknowledges me.

Walter draws himself up and responds to Bennie instead. "I don't think you realize the full extent of the disaster this..." he fails to come up with a good insult, and just waves his hand at me, "...child has created. Fields was on the phone to his manager as we left to come see you, raving about how happy he is with the track and how he refuses to cut it again. That man is talking about walking out if I so much as ask him to recut it!"

Bennie sighs. We all know just how sad it would make him to have one less Teddy Fields song in the world. "All right," he says, "we'll go down and talk to him together. And forget the manager. He's nobody. We'll speak directly to the label. They're a smart group. Besides, Fields doesn't have the sales clout to make good on a stance like that. If he plays hardball, he might just find himself out on his ass." He stands up, pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. "Jake," he says as an afterthought, "go home."

I stand up with them. "I'd like..."

"Go home!" He shouts at me. "I'll call you tomorrow, but I think we can both agree that today has given plenty of evidence that this studio might not be the best fit for your ideas or methods. Go home."

They walk out, and I'm left standing there. Thirty-three years old and it still feels like I just got done with a trip to the principal's office.

Well, fuck. I guess I'll go home.

Buck Nelson, of shiraz fame, is sitting out on his deck...our deck, really...with a glass of wine in his hand when I get there. He's got a logoless baseball cap on, tilted forward so that the bill is drawn down over his eyes a bit, and a t-shirt with a large hot dog on it that says "Want some?" across the top. He waves at me as I come up the stairs.

"Jake! Buddy! All done with work for the day?"

I shrug, pulling my plastic deck chair over to his table and plopping down. "Probably forever, actually."

"Oh shit," he sits up straight. "What's the word?"

"The word is fired." I squint out at the midday sun, feeling sorry for myself for a moment, then I remember that song and my mood lifts. "But fuck, my friend, did I help make something beautiful today."

"Oh yeah? And how does that manage to get you fired?"

"Well...I guess it wasn't the right kind of beautiful. I heard the ocean, and hearbeats, and entire universes imploding. The producer heard a duck's fart."

He chuckles. "Cheer up. I think I've heard that song before anyway." He toasts to that. "What will you do now?"

"Haven't even thought about it, yet. I guess I could go back to New York, or somewhere else. There are a lot of great records I like being recorded in small niche markets. Omaha had that a few years ago...people like Bright Eyes, M. Ward, Rilo Kiley. I imagine I could go out there, see what's left."

"Never heard of any of them people."

We share a moment of silence. I look over at him. "So why aren't you working on this fine Monday?"

"Had to take a personal day," he winks. "I had no say in the matter."

"Why's that?"

"Because," he lifts his glass, "my malbec is ready, and wine is an impatient lover."

"Never heard of a malbec. Is that a grape, or a place?"

"A grape. Very dark. Pretty tough tannins. Some places in the world make it softer, a little more fruity, but I like my malbec dry."

"It has alcohol in it, right?"

"So I hear."

"Well shit," I grin. "I don't suppose you have any extra?"

"Just ninety bottles or so, all bulk aged and ready," he groans as he stands up to get me some. Three minutes later I'm enjoying a gifted bottle and shooting the shit with him as we watch the sun sink towards the horizon.

"So tell me," I say, helping my third glass vanish, "how do you manage to get all the supplies for something like this? How do you even learn how to do it? It seems like...shit...ninety bottles of wine? Is your apartment inexplicably bigger than mine, because I wouldn't know where to put that kind of volume."

"Actually, I do this with a friend of mine. He's a dentist, has a big house out in the 'burbs. That's where we do all the work and store most of the final product. I just take a few bottles...say a dozen or so...with me at a time. His basement is our laboratory and cellar. We've got hundreds of bottles down there, and more in the works. Ninety bottles just happens to be my half of this particular production."

"And you really drink enough to keep up."

"We try ever so hard to."

I shake my head. "The whole basement. He must not be married."

"Oh, he is. I don't ask what he has to do to get his wife to go along with it. I assume it's something vile and disgusting."

"Maybe she just likes wine."

"Maybe," but he seems disappointed by the idea.

"So how does one go about making their own? I'm curious. You see, I just came into a large amount of free time, so I might be on the lookout for a new hobby."

"Well, how I do it and how you would do it are very different things. I go whole hog, while you'd be working with kits. To some degree it's a 'who you know' kind of a game. I happen to have befriended a guy who can get me grapes from US vineyards, which is a lucky draw. That's hard to come by. So I purchase whatever grapes are out there in the right volume, and my friend and I crush and destem them and go through the whole process together."

"I wouldn't want to do that?"

"Hell, no." He laughs. "What you would want to do is go down the Fermenter's Surprise and get a basic equipment setup. It'd cost you maybe a hundred and fifty bucks, but it'll give you everything you need to make a wine kit. Those...the good ones...can be bought for very reasonable prices, and you can make some very good wine with them. You spend maybe four bucks a bottle when it's all said and done, and the quality is more like twenty or thirty dollar bottles of wine."

"No shit? But that...I dunno. I don't think I'd like that. It's like with music: I like being more actively involved, I guess. Making decisions, not just obeying orders. That kit thing sounds like buying your kid a swing set and following the step-by-step to come up with exactly the picture on the box."

"No, no way. There are a lot of little things you can do to improve your kit. Once you know what you're doing you can start tweaking and ultimately that will lead you to bigger and better things."

"Give me a 'for instance.'"

"For instance, you add extra metabisulfite, and age it longer than recommended. You can end up with incredible results. Or, you can end up with shit."

"Wow. I had no idea."

"It's easy to get lost in this hobby," he pours us each another glass.

"I don't suppose you'd pop down to this Fermenter's Surprise with me right now and help me get what I need? I could use something to get my mind off losing my job."

"Can't," he grunts.

"Why?"

"Drunk."

"Oh. That. I guess I am, too."

"Yup."

A sunny, female voice calls out my name and turns my head. It's my friend the gymrat lady with the cuckold husband. She comes bounding up the stairs, all smiles. Shit.

I like to think I'm a good person, and I like to think that fidelity and honesty are among the things I most cherish in a relationship. So I'd love to say that it's the alcohol, or the need to boost my esteem after getting fired, that results in the two of us being in my living room with my pants around my ankles and her stradling my lap in her underwear and bra. But I don't really know, and I won't pretend to.

Maybe I'm just horny, or maybe I'm just as big a bastard as any other guy out there. Maybe that drive to breed is just all that we are. Probably, it's the bastard thing.

What I do know is that I don't smell any cigarrettes on her breath, and her body is fantastic for approaching forty. It's way better than I remember it. A fit torso, all nice curves and soft warmth without too much added weight. Her hands cup my face as she kisses me. Then she leans back and bites her lower lip as she unhooks her bra. A shiver runs up my pine She pulls my head in, and I take a nipple into my mouth. Some women don't really get much out of that; maybe this one does. She moans and her hips roll softly in my lap. She reaches down with one hand and slips it into her own panties. God, I love older women.

She lifts my head, and we're kissing again. She strokes me through my underwear. Her lips move to my neck, and then down my chest, and I'm thinking I'm in for a real treat. I lift my hips as she pulls my boxerbriefs up and over my erection, and I sigh when she places a pressured, pouty kiss on the shaft, but instead of taking me into her mouth she's back up and straddling me again. Somewhat awkwardly, as though this is something she's new at, she guides me into her body, and then she's rocking atop me. Maybe it's the disappointment brought on by the tease of oral attention, or maybe it's the fact that, now that I'm inside her, the thrill of conquest is suddenly absent. Either way, as soon as I feel her body envelope me the lust and excitement vanishes and suddenly I'm just eager to get this over with. I could kick myself for giving in at all.

This is a married woman. Somewhere out there, faceless though he may be, is a man who thinks that she loves him. He'd probably bet his life that she would never do to him exactly what she's doing to him now.

I think of Jasmine, and I groan.

Mrs. Married thinks it's something she's doing, and she lets out a kind of out-of-breath chuckle as she rolls her hips atop mine. Seeing a way out, I make a little more noise than I otherwise would. Grunts, gasps, moans, whatever. I think about it like making a record...for an audience of one. A collection of sounds designed to appease the listener. What I'm really doing is feeding her ego, and it takes her a lot less time to reach orgasm than it did the other night. Afterwards, she cuddles for a moment, makes some small talk, and leaves. I fall asleep.

The sun is going down when the telephone wakes me up. I jump up to get it and fall over the clothes piled on the floor. I get there by the third ring.

"Hello?"

"Jacob." It's Bennie's voice.

"Oh. Uh...hi."

He still sounds pissed. "You know, you really fucked up kid."

"I guess."

"That was a dumb thing to do. And maybe it's just luck, I dunno, but...shit, maybe this was your plan all along." He sighs into the receiver.

"What was?"

"Teddy Fields's label apparently agrees with him about the song. They sent a clip of the work you did to the producer of the film, and he loved it, too. Wants to play it over the end credits. He's even talking about working it into a scene near the climax." He snorts. "Never will understand those Hollywood types. Terrible taste in music."

"Well," I say, equally bemused and uncertain, "I guess, tell Teddy I said congratulations."

"Tell him yourself. Look, kid, it ain't all roses. You made a mess and then some. Walter Russell walked. He won't have anything to do with that song, and he especially didn't like getting upstaged and shot down in front of me or anybody else. He's off the project. Teddy Fields wants you to help finish the track, and his label seems to agree. If it's a producer's credit you were after, you've got it."

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. I'm speechless. The song is gonna play over the end credits? They want me to produce? I just fucked a married woman AGAIN? What the hell kind of day is this?!

"Well?" he asks.

"I...I guess I..."

"Come produce the track. Be in at tomorrow, before eleven, in studio B. You've got Wednesday morning from nine to noon in C to mix and prep for mastering. And Jake? Once that's over, I don't want to ever see you in my studios again. Understood?"

"Yeah. I do. Look, Bennie, I'm sor..." He hangs up.

Well, doesn't this just beat fucking all.

Teddy Fields's song is going to get heard, and it's a little bit my fault. I dance a little victory dance, which looks terrible, and start to pacing the room. What I really want is to celebrate, but I'm sure Buck is passed out or close to it by now. I don't really know anybody else in the area...I'm not about to call up Fields, even if I knew the number, and I don't think Bennie's as excited about this as I am.

The two people who were my closest friends when I lived here before? I don't think they'd be real thrilled to hear from me, either.

So I decide to take a walk. I just want to be around people, so I head for downtown.

It's a gorgeous night...not nearly so humid as this city usually is. There are tons of people out, many of them young lovers or nuclear families. Smiles and laughter. It's a good crowd to get lost in. Lots of good vibes.

I stop and listen to a guy play acoustic guitar on a corner for a while. He's older, black, and he has fat fingers. He can't play much more than chords, but his voice is enough to make for something special. He's sweating like crazy...I'd hate to see him out here when it really is humid. He practically slaps through and into the soundhole as he plays Sam Cooke's rendition of Summertime. I love it.

Moving on, I'm watching the sky as the sun begins its final descent and I'm damn near skipping. If I get nothing else out of Nashville, I produced a lone song that, as far as I'm concerned, is absolutely spectacular.

My stomach mentions food. Huh. Looking around, I spot a place called Demos'. I chuckle at the serendipity of the name, and walk over to investigate. Peaking in the window, I can see that it's more than a bit spendy for me. But then, I'm celebrating, right? Fucking right.

I start to turn towards the door, but something catches my eye. A familiar face. I turn back too fast, before my brain has a chance to process what I've just seen.

My face goes up to the glass just in time for Jasmine, THE Jasmine, sitting two tables away from me, to turn in my direction.

Our eyes meet.

Time stops.

Her mouth drops open. I can't tell you a thing about my own expression...just the sight of her has turned all my other senses off. My whole body is numb.

She looks incredible. Her hair is done up fancy, the spendy kind of done up like one might get for a wedding or a fancy ass party. She's wearing a nicely fitting, expensive looking dress. She has a neckless on, and make up. She's six years older than the last time I saw her, and perfect.

She mouths my name...hell, maybe she says it aloud.

There, sitting across from her, is AJ Knox.

Fucking AJ.

He's dressed up, too. Still looks fit, and confident, and comfortable. He turns in the direction she's looking and sees me. To his credit, he handles it better than I do. He simply waves, like it's no big deal. Like he doesn't even suspect that I'm praying for his death each night. Like he wouldn't understand why, even if he did know. And then he turns back to her and continues his conversation. I've been dismissed.

I linger too long. I can't help it. I'm feeling lightheaded. The whole world looks like there's vaseline on the lens. Jasmine stands up, as if to come out to me. AJ says something with a patient expression on his face, and she stops. They're talking now, and I take the opportunity to leave.

I don't exactly run. But I get pretty close.

Needless to say, my night has been thoroughly ruined. I feel like such an idiot. What did they think, seeing me staring at them through the window like a lost puppy? Fuck fuck fuck! I mean, Jesus, what were the odds of me running into them at all? Ever?!? Let alone now, just as life has seen fit to finally throw me a little bone.

I don't sleep much that night. I'd like to say the drama at work is part of what keeps me up, but the truth is it's all about Jasmine. Jasmine, AJ, and the new visual of them living in happy, domestic, upper-class bliss.

Probably the hardest thing to deal with when you lose the love of your life is to have to discover that you simply weren't that to them. I know exactly what Jasmine meant to me. I have no idea what I meant to her at all. Sometimes I wonder if I meant anything.

I think about the gymrat, and the faceless cuckold husband, and I feel sick. It seems only fair.

-

The next day's session with Teddy Fields goes by without incident. The truth is I'm just not as focused as I was before. The technical aspects, the overdubbing and mixing, all feel so mechanical to me. The music itself, melancholy and murky, is now weighing down the same soul it helped lift up the day before.

Teddy notices and, after the session is over, he leans on the door frame and asks, "You gonna live?"

I blink at him. "I...yeah, I'm alright."

He shakes his head. "Lemme tell you something, see if it helps: in December of 1811 there was an earthquake in Arkansas that was so powerful it caused the Mississippi to temporarily reverse its flow." I stare at him blankly. He raises his eyebrows at me. "It made the fucking thing move backwards," he smiles. "Know what I'm saying?"

I go with honesty. "I have no idea what you're talking about, Teddy."

He folds his arms and leans forward slightly from the waist. "I've never seen a river flow backwards, personally, so I don't pretend to be an expert on the subject. But I still feel like I can say, with some authority, that it probably looked a lot like you do right now." His smile turns empathetic. "So tell me about the quake."

"It's a long story," I shake my head, "and there isn't a short version."