How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets (8 page)

“How did he do it?”

“What?”

“Kill himself.”

Evan hesitates, but he’s in too deep.“He crashed his motorcycle.”

“Into another car?”

“No, off the Alaska Way Viaduct. He just drove off and died. He was probably on drugs. He usually was.”

“Oh.”

“You want some juice or something?”

“Okay.”

They go downstairs and sit at the kitchen table drinking orange juice. They say nothing, and Evan regrets mentioning the suicide of Jeff Beasley, the ill-fated lead singer of Dog Run. It’s clearly not appropriate conversation for a kid whose mom has just died in a car crash.

After a few silent minutes of sipping and gazing out at the Sound, which sparkles beautifully in the afternoon sun, Ralphy scratches at the back door. Evan lets him in and gives him a dog biscuit. He rinses out his glass and puts it on the dish rack, then meanders over to the telephone desk and pokes around. His mother’s calendar book is there. He pages through it, finds today’s date, looks.
Marty, 1:30–3:00
. Hmm. Marty. Her golf instructor. Until three. Hmm. What time is it now? Three-fifteen.

Holy shit
. Suddenly the magnitude of the stupidity of what he is doing crashes down upon him. His mother is on her way home. What the hell is he thinking? They have to get out of there, and fast!

“We should go, ” he says, scrawling a note:
Stopped by to say hello.
No one home. Call me. E.

He slips the note onto the kitchen table and snatches Dean’s half-filled glass away from him.

“Hey, I’m still thirsty.”

“We’ll stop at the Circle K.”

He quickly rinses the glass and sets it on the rack, then catches himself. That’s a clue for a good detective, which his mother is. He dries one of the glasses with a paper towel and puts it back in the cupboard. He pats Ralphy on the head and grabs Dean. He sets the alarm and hustles Dean outside to the car. She isn’t home yet, thank God. He pulls out of the driveway. At the end of the block he glances into the rearview mirror. Jesus. There she is in her silver Mercedes. What timing. Pulling into one end of the street just as he pulls out of the other. She’ll be able to feel the breeze of their leaving in the hallway. She’ll be able to smell them in the kitchen. It’s like going home and sensing that a burglar was just there, the cord on the window shade still swinging back and forth. Dangerous. What the hell was he thinking?

LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Ellen calls.

“Everything’s fine, ” she says.“You can bring Dean home.”

Home? Evan finds her use of the word slightly amusing. Where is his home? His home is in Yakima, not Walla Walla and not Seattle. So when she says to bring him “home, ” what does she mean?

“You have to understand that Tracy’s death took us both very hard, ” she says in response to his silence.“We were both very upset, Frank and I. He hadn’t slept in days, and the doctor gave him some medication which was supposed to help him sleep but just made him irritable and angry, and then he woke up and saw that Dean wasn’t there. . . .”she trails off.“Everything’s fine, ” she reassures both Evan and herself.“You can bring him back.”

He wants to be snide and tell her to fuck off, but then what would he do with Dean? He needs everything to be fine with Ellen and Frank. So, unfortunately, he has to root for her.

“I can’t bring him back right now, ” Evan says.“I have an important session at the recording studio tomorrow night that’s going to go late, and I can’t drive to Walla Walla and back tomorrow.”

“You could put him on a bus, ” she suggests.

“I could FedEx him, too, but I won’t.”

“Oh. Of course not. I didn’t mean . . . Well, you two can spend some more time together then. Are you enjoying it?”

“Yes.”

“Good. So when
will
you be able to bring him home?”

“Probably Sunday.”

“Oh. Sunday would be fine. You can stay for dinner.”

Evan doesn’t respond.

“We really miss him terribly, Evan, ” Ellen goes on.“Frank’s been painting his room for him. We have an old pool table—oh, it must be thirty years old—that we used to have for the kids, you must remember it.”

“I don’t recall—”

“We got it when the kids were young. It was in the basement.”

“I don’t recall ever being made welcome in your house, Mrs. Smith.”

“It’s in terrible shape now, of course. We’re thinking of having it re-felted. And the garage is a workshop—very nice, Frank did all the work himself—we’ll clean it out and set up the pool table and Dean will have his own rec room so he can invite his friends over. It would bring us a tremendous amount of joy to have him here, especially after Tracy’s death. You understand. And you can visit whenever you like. You can stay with us, or there’s an inn down the street, a bed and breakfast, you know, for the parents of the college kids, when they come for commencement. We have a very festive spring here in Walla Walla, I’m sure you didn’t know.”

“I’m sure.”

“So, what time can we expect you?”

He stews. He doesn’t like Frank and he doesn’t like Ellen. And he doesn’t like how this whole thing went down, how they took Dean away as a baby and excluded Evan. But he has no choice really—
realistically
—he has no alternative.

“Around three, ” he says.

“Wonderful, ” Ellen beams.“We’ll be expecting you.”

T
HEY DRIVE ON a thin strip of pavement that is balanced high in the air between the impassive buildings of downtown and the hustle of the waterfront; past the way-too-cute stadiums—and calling anything that size “cute” has got to be a compliment; past rows and rows of revitalized warehouses; past the old Sears building—the new Starbucks headquarters; past the galleries and espresso shops and cleverly designed logos on neatly painted offices for Information Age technologies already obsolete; into the heart of SoDo, South of Downtown, an area that twenty years ago was a dangerous place to go after dark, where companies preferred razor ribbon over welcome mats, but has since become home of the hipsters and shakers, and home to Billy Marx’s recording studio, which is the ultimate badge of cool.

The Sound Factory. The place where any movie, commercial, music video, or album worth a damn is recorded. It’s a massive, squat three-story building filled to the brim with rehearsal spaces, Foley rooms, and high-tech studios jammed with millions of dollars worth of the latest digital gear that can handle just about anything anyone can think of.

Billy, the consummate nice guy, knows how the balance of power and money works in the recording industry: the labels have all the power and the money, the musicians don’t. So he has a floating rate scale. Hollywood pays a million dollars an hour, anyone who was cool enough to be with The Sound Factory guys when they started, over a dozen years earlier in a little building in Pioneer Square, pays a dollar. A modern-day socialism. To each according to his needs, from each according to his familiarity.

As soon as they enter the building, Evan relaxes. The lobby itself isn’t very inviting. It’s a hollow, stark-white room with high ceilings of exposed I-beams, industrial lighting with a purplish glow, and poured concrete floors. But everything else about the room is welcoming. It’s the perfect temperature. Not too hot, not too cold. The air circulates enough to keep everything fresh, but not so much as to create a breeze. There are no windows, no clocks, no indication of time whatsoever. Once inside, one loses all temporal reference; literally, one loses one’s ability to discern day from night. Like a casino, The Sound Factory is a biorhythmic obfuscation chamber. Time is not the issue at The Sound Factory. It’s never late at The Sound Factory. Work through the night. Work through the next day. Our staff is happy to serve you, and we have comfortable couches for you to nap on. Work forever. And please pay your bill within thirty days. Thank you.

Evan notices Dean’s mouth, which is agape at the spectacle.

“Pretty nice, ” Evan says.

Dean closes his mouth and shrugs like it’s an everyday thing in Yakima.
We’ve got places like this on every corner.
He coolly plants himself in one of the arm chairs and picks up a magazine.

Evan is too high to sit. He’s charged up and ready to go. He’s cleared the weekend out. (Evan, one of the best commissioned salesmen on the floor at Fremont Guitar, always gets the prime hours: Thursday through Sunday afternoons and evenings; times when guitar buyers are at their peak. So Angel, the new kid, was happy to take Evan’s spot in exchange for Evan working Angel’s graveyard days: Monday through Wednesday.) And Dean, who’s turning out to be a pretty cool, self-reliant kid—probably the result of growing up without a father—has been great. Evan told him he needed to practice for the session, and Dean, without so much as an eye roll, hopped a bus and spent the day at some upscale video arcade in a new shopping center downtown. He had a blast, and it only cost Evan forty bucks. Parenting ain’t that hard, but it can be expensive.

A doorbell rings, a pleasant electric chime. The receptionist, a pretty young blonde, glances at a video monitor set into her desk, and then presses a button. The lock clicks, and in comes Lars, toting his stick bag and cymbal case. Right behind Lars is Billy Marx.

Billy notices Evan, stops and smiles.

“Evbee.” He strides over and greets Evan with the obligatory hip-hop embrace. “I ran into Lars in the parking lot. I didn’t know you guys were coming in tonight. Why didn’t you call me?”

“He did the calling, ” Evan says, gesturing to Lars.

“I called, ” Lars says, “but I just talked to whoever was in scheduling.”

“You know better than that, Lars. If you want a first-class upgrade, you gotta talk to me, brother.”

“My bad, ” Lars says with a sheepish grin.“Next time.”

“Lars is all hot to make a demo, ” Evan says.

“Oh, yeah? You guys ready to break out?”

“Looks like.”

“Theo’s still talking about you, man, ” Billy says. “He said he wanted to lift one of your riffs, but he couldn’t figure it out. He said you have thumbs like Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix had the longest motherfucking thumbs!”

They all laugh, including Dean, who’s sitting in his chair paging through a copy of
Billboard
.

Billy points at him with his chin.

“Who’s that?”

“My son, ” Evan says. “Dean, come here and meet the smartest guy I ever met who I wasn’t related to.”

Dean jumps up and comes over, offering his hand, which Billy takes.

“Your son?” Billy shakes his head. “Fucking Evbee.” Then to Dean, “Nice to meet you, ” along with a regular white person’s handshake.

“Hold on.” Billy suddenly breaks off and crosses the lobby to the receptionist.

“Where are they, Sybil?”

“Studio E. All night.”

“Lemme see the schedule.”

Sybil, the receptionist, hands over a large ledger sheet, which Billy studies.

“Who’s free?”

“Mica is.”

“Mica? Why?”

“Pepsi canceled, ” Sybil says.

“Those crackheads. When are they gonna get their shit together?”

Sybil shrugs and smiles, as if to say “I just work here.”

“So Mica’s just sitting around eating carrot sticks and doing sit-ups all night?”

Sybil nods.

“The Van Sant movie’s in C. So put these guys in B, and give them Mica.”

He hands the ledger back to Sybil and looks over to Evan.

“Anybody paying for this, Evbee?”

“Just us, ” Evan says.

Billy turns back to Sybil.

“Straight up, then. No room charge and bill them at rate on Mica, no premium. I’m paying her to sit around all night, she might as well work for it.”

Billy returns to where Evan, Lars, and Dean are standing.

“All right, I hooked you guys up. The studio is on me, you buy the engineer. Cool?”

“Cool, ” Evan says, “thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Did you say Mica?” Lars asks.“Mica Morrison?”

Billy nods.

“Dude, you rock.”

“Don’t be intimidated, ” Billy says.“I’ll drop in on you guys later on.” He grins at Evan. “Evbee with a teenage son. Whack, yo.”

Billy thumps fists with Lars and heads toward one of the doors that leads to some inner sanctum. As he reaches the door, Sybil hits the buzzer and the door miraculously opens for him. Then he is gone.

Lars smiles at Evan.

“Mica Morrison. Shit. She can make anybody sound good.”

“Who’s Mica Morrison?” Evan asks.

“Your studio is ready, ” Sybil says with an appetizing smile, pressing some secret button under her desk and releasing the electric lock on yet another door. Evan, Dean, and Lars step through and head for their first-class upgrade.

S
TUDIO B. RUMOR has it that the Rolling Stones recorded a track off their last album in Studio B. Rumor has it that Kenny G, of all people, records only in Studio B. The studio isn’t any different than Studios A or C, but it is the favored studio of Mica Morrison, the famous engineer. A legend in her own time. A mythical figure in the Seattle music scene. Occasionally she works on an independent album as a favor or because she feels especially charitable, but for the most part, she sticks to the majors. Major labels, major artists. Apparently she’s pretty hot. Apparently she’s a lesbian. All of this information is offered by Lars as he, Evan, and Dean set up in the studio.

Evan appreciates Lars’s banter, and indulges him in his engineering fetish. Lars makes it his mission to know everything he can about engineering records. He memorizes lists of the top engineers, knows all the jargon, understands all the concepts, the mik-ing techniques. It’s his thing.

Lars immediately adopts Dean as his assistant, and they work together setting up the drums, with Dean doing the heavier work—fetching the pieces from Lars’s van. Evan hauls his amp in and places it on a felt-covered wooden box to get it off the ground. He brought his Fender Deluxe tonight, one of the first amps he’d ever gotten and still his favorite. It isn’t very big, but it weighs a ton, and it sounds just how he likes it. He takes his guitar out of its case, a ’68 Stratocaster, and straps it on.

All the while this busy work is going on, and Lars is prattling on about drum mikes and phase cancellation, Evan’s mind begins to wander. He tries to keep everything tight on the music, but his thoughts are scattered. It’s kind of a big deal to make a demo, diminished only slightly by the fact that they’re paying for it themselves instead of having a record company foot the bill. But that’s okay. There’s still plenty of excitement around making music on tape, or on computer, as the case may be. He remembers back in the day, years ago, when Dog Run recorded their album. A month of nonstop work in a cabin up on Dabob Bay, mornings spent scouring the beach for oysters, afternoons spent napping, nights spent working out their songs. And then two weeks of nonstop work in the studio. He was good then, but not
as
good. He had the energy without the technique. Now he has the technique without the energy. And he didn’t have a reputation back then. He was just himself. Now he’s a hired gun. They brought him in, a ringer, someone with a record, both figuratively and literally. They wanted what he brought them, an instant upgrade at a recording studio, for instance. Maybe someone takes a longer listen to their demo because “that Dog Run guy is on it.”They fired their friend, the guy they grew up with, and brought in Evan, and Evan was expected to produce. And Evan
would
produce. Pressure? Nah. Pressure is growing up without a father. Pressure is having your mother crushed to death in a high-speed wreck when you’re fourteen years old. What does Evan know of pressure?

He shakes his head quickly from side to side to get himself back into the room. The room. The studio. The session. Now is not the time to get lost in yourself.

Lars stops fiddling with his set and looks up.

“You okay?” he asks from his stool. He’s gnawing at his thumbnail again. It’s best when you let it heal for a few days and then go at it just as it’s scabbing over.

“Yeah.”

“You zoned, man. Where’re Tony and Rod?”

“Dunno.”

What’s the matter? Feeling a little detached, are we?

That mind-body thing again. Dualism again. Evan doesn’t like the concept of dualism. He wants monism. He doesn’t want to feel that his body is just a vehicle for his mind. Because that’s sometimes the first step. That feeling followed by the realization that the world could end tomorrow—doom—and the next thing you know you’re standing in the middle of a big fat seizure with nowhere to go.

He has to have some pot before things go down the wrong road. A few hits should even things out, calm him down, make him forget about the possibilities. He glances around the room. Marijuana and sound studios go hand in hand. All musicians smoke and drink and screw and do all kinds of other illicit shit in a sound studio. Normally, Evan would just whip out his pipe and light it up. But Dean is here. Evan is Dean’s father. Evan has to set some kind of an example. He has to find another place.

“I gotta take a leak, ” Evan says.

“Bleed the lizard, ” Lars says.

“Spank the monkey, ” Dean says.

Lars looks at him crookedly. “‘Spank the monkey?’” he asks. “That’s whacking off. He’s not gonna whack off. You’re not gonna whack off, are you?”

“Not that I know of.”

“He’s gonna take a piss. Get your vulgarity straight.”

“Sorry, ” Dean says.

“Hand me my ride cymbal.”

“Which one?”

“Which one?”

“The big one, ” Lars groans. “It says ‘ride’ on it.”

“Sorry.”

“And quit apologizing. You’re gonna make people think you’re a pussy. The proper response is ‘Shut your face.’”

“Shut your face, ” Dean says, handing Lars the cymbal.

“You’re a good kid, ” Lars says. He turns to Evan with a wink. “He’s a good kid. You should be proud.”

“I am, ” Evan says, and quickly leaves the room.

He wanders the labyrinthine halls, venturing deep into the icy bowels of The Sound Factory. Most doors are locked, and the ones that aren’t locked open into empty studios or mechanical rooms. That’s the magic of The Sound Factory. There are no utility closets. Apparently, there is no need. The Sound Factory keeps itself clean by using high-tech ionizing defragmentors which vaporize all dust and dirt instantly. Crazy.

There’s a men’s room, but that’s too public. There’s somebody’s office, probably a day-worker, but what if Evan gets caught? He tries one more door, his last attempt. It opens. It’s dark inside. He flips on the light. Ah. The long awaited utility closet. Spacious and roomy. A ladder, a shelf full of light bulbs and paper towels, and the obligatory mop and pail. Perfect. He steps inside.

“Can I help you find something?” a woman calls out from the end of the hall. Evan hopes she isn’t calling him. He looks around. She
is
calling him.

“I’m okay, ” Evan responds cheerfully.

The woman approaches. Evan’s heart stops.

It’s
her.

The girl. Billy’s girl. She smiles at him and waves. She remembers him.

He finds himself short of breath. She’s wearing jeans, sneakers, and a tiny cardigan buttoned only once, revealing her navel, her taut stomach, a pleasant amount of cleavage, and a black lace bra.

“If you’re looking for a light bulb, you probably should let me call Maintenance. They get kind of bent out of shape when a client tries to lift a finger around here. It’s a union thing. You know.”

She reaches Evan. She’s shorter than he is. Her eyes are a deep chocolate brown that seem so calm and optimistic. Her smile offers only uncontainable joy, joy that works for her, and that she can give out as she sees fit. All in all, she’s the kind of girl Evan could fall in love with. Instantly.

“Um, ” he hesitates, one foot in the closet and one foot out. “Listen, can I be honest?”

She nods, still smiling.

“I kind of wanted to find a place to smoke a little pot. Just a little bit.”

“Ah. You can smoke in the studios. There are signs that say no smoking, but you can smoke. No one will say anything.”

“But my son is in there and I don’t really want to smoke around him. No one will mind if I just duck in here, will they?”

She shrugs. Evan smiles. “Thanks, ” he says. He steps into the closet and closes the door. But before he can get it closed, she slips in with him.

“You want some?” he asks. Why else would she join him in a utility closet?

“No thanks. That stuff makes me paranoid.”

Evan locks the door and quickly loads his pipe. He lights the lighter and inhales the smoke. Relief. Relaxation. He can feel the tightness in his brain releasing.

“You were really great the other night, ” she says.

She remembers? Why would she remember?

“Theo was really into you. We went out after, and he kept on talking about you and laughing. He thought it was the greatest thing that a rock and roller would just get up and jam with them. He said you had to be pretty confident to get up at someone else’s gig.”

“Yeah, well. Confident? Maybe more like stupid.”

“No.”

She watches him as he reloads the one-hitter and lights up again.

“Smoking helps your music?” she asks. She’s sitting on the stepladder, hunched forward, looking at Evan. There’s something about her, about the way she looks and the way she sits on a stepladder. And it isn’t just the thin gold chain with the small gold medallion that’s tight around her neck. (Evan has always found chokers sexy.) There’s something else that gives Evan’s heart a little lift.

Evan shakes his head no.

“You have a session and you’re nervous?”

“Well, yes. But that’s not why I’m smoking, ” Evan answers.

“Why, then? Just out of curiosity.”

Does that count? Is that enough of a reason to justify being told the truth? That Evan has epilepsy?

“I smoke for medical reasons, ” Evan says. The same half-answer he gave to Dean, which, thankfully, Dean never pursued.

“Cancer?”

“No.”

“Glaucoma? I’ve heard of people smoking pot for glaucoma.”

“No.”

Her shoulders drop, her face turns glum.

“AIDS?” she asks sadly.

Evan shakes his head, more to himself than to her. He’s spent his entire life denying his condition to anyone who asks. When he was a kid at summer camp, if another kid saw him taking pills and asked why, Evan would make up a quick lie: allergy pills, for instance. In school, if a teacher punished him because he didn’t answer her question in class, Evan wouldn’t tell her he was having a seizure and was unable to speak, he would stand behind his behavior as an act of defiance. It was part of Evan’s
fabric
. It was condoned by the officials of his life, his parents, the ones who made the rules. One time, way, way back, Evan was fourteen or so, and there was a family reunion at their house, everyone was there, cousins and aunts and uncles, people who hadn’t been heard from or seen for decades, and Evan had a seizure. A full-blown status grand mal. The ambulance came. They took him to the hospital where he stayed for three days. The whole thing. Did Evan’s mother take the opportunity to tell her family that Evan had epilepsy? Did she explain it all to them at that moment? Heavens, no. She told them that Evan was dehydrated. He was trying to lose weight for the wrestling team, she said. He’d been fasting. Sweating himself. That’s why he had the seizure. All of which wouldn’t have been so freaking pathetic if Evan had actually been
on
the wrestling team. He’d quit months earlier when Johnny Kruger tried to rip his arm out of its socket and Evan cried and the coach slapped him and called him a baby. Evan’s entire life, since he was twelve, has been spent denying one of the main things that defines him. His epilepsy. So why would he tell this girl now?

“Fuck it, ” he says suddenly.

“Fuck what?”

“I have epilepsy, ” he says.“Sometimes pot lets me stop a seizure I feel coming on.”

“Wow, ” she perks up.“I’ve never heard of that. Really?”

“Yeah. It’s a relaxation thing. Like asthma. When you get an asthma attack, your fear and anxiety over the attack constricts your capillaries and actually makes the attack worse. For me, sometimes the stress of worrying about a seizure can bring on a seizure. So smoking pot relieves the anxiety. That’s the theory, at least.”

“Interesting.”

“There are other theories.”

“Really?”

“But no clinical studies. You can imagine the issues . . .”

“Oh, sure.”

“I wasn’t even having an aura, ” Evan continues, enjoying his newfound liberation. As long as he doesn’t start explaining to her what
status epilepticus
means. That’ll make her bolt. Epilepsy is sensitive and quaint in a potential partner only if the seizures are exceedingly mild. If every seizure is a near-death experience, the idea of a long-term relationship dissolves pretty quickly.“I was just afraid that maybe I would have an aura soon.” He thinks about that statement a moment, and realizes how it sounds.“All right, ” he says, “it’s a crutch sometimes. But it’s better than a grand mal seizure, I can tell you that.”

“I’ll bet, ” she says.

They stare at each other for a few moments, locking eyes. It worked. He’d said enough but not too much. He could feel more electricity circulating in the room than just the bare bulb overhead and whatever excess was skittering around in his brain.

“What?” he asks.

“You have pretty eyes.”

“You, too, ” Evan says.

“Not like you.”

Again, the stare. The heated I-like-you stare.

“I should get to my studio. The guys must all be there waiting.”

She nods.“The guys.”

Evan unlocks the door. He opens it and they step out into the hallway.

“I have no idea where I am, ” Evan admits.

“Where are you going?”

“Studio B.”

“This way.”

He follows her down the hall. The pot is having its effect. Not its seizure-defusing effect. That’s already taken care of. But in the closet with this girl, Evan probably smoked more than he usually did and now he’s stoned. He tries to focus on the hallway in front of him, but his eyes keep drifting down to this girl’s ass, small and round, and the way her Levi’s fit nicely around the curves, gapping a little at the small of her back to remind everyone that there’s a naked girl underneath.

“What are you looking at?”

Evan looks up. They’ve stopped in front of a door.

Evan starts to answer, he tries to answer, but he really doesn’t know what to say.

“Your studio, ” she says.

“You’re working tonight?” Evan asks, realizing that she’ll be leaving him soon.

“Yeah.”

“Maybe we could get a cup of coffee during break or something?”

“Maybe.”

“I mean, I’d like to see more of you—that’s not what I mean.”