Tempo Change Page 15

  I saw it all. I just didn’t care.

  Beer Garden

  COACHELLA JAIL ISN’T REALLY A JAIL. IT’S THE BACK ROOM OF A security office toward the end of the field, behind the tents and the barbecue and the performance art and all. You can’t really see it from your blanket when you’re enjoying the festivities. I guess that’s because they don’t want you thinking about malfeasance while you’re eating your frozen lemonade. It’s a festival, after all, and even though people like to think of themselves as outlaws and renegades, they don’t necessarily want to be reminded of the experience.

  I was sitting in the back room of the Coachella Jail drinking a bottle of water and rubbing my head and wishing the real drunks in the room could tone it down a notch or two. I hadn’t really tied one on. I was such a lightweight that the two beers I downed in a minute after I’d snuck into the beer garden had gone right to my head. Then someone passed around a joint and I took a hit of that, even though I had no idea what I was doing and coughed more than I inhaled. But I started feeling like I had gone to all that trouble to sneak into the beer garden and I had gotten some guy I barely knew to buy me a beer and I had consumed most of it in one enthusiastic swallow, so I was obligated to act a little cheerful about it.

  I was getting a lot of attention in the beer garden because I had a guitar with me, in a gig bag, on my back, which made me look completely professional and legit, and the crying I’d done all the way off the stage and to the beer garden had made my makeup run and I was Courtney Love heroin chic.

  The saddest thing was that nobody noticed me leaving after the performance, particularly my father. When I drifted from the backstage area, I could still hear everyone talking about how great the performance was. Redmond Dwayne had come up and was saying nonsense to my dad about what a genius he was, what a seminal artist. Gigi was giggling and telling Redmond how blown away she was by the whole thing and even Ella kept saying, “Awesome.” Mr. and Mrs. Stone joined in and then some reporters swarmed over. I grabbed my guitar and quietly took off.

  I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t know there was anything called a beer garden until I got right up to it. I noticed that people were showing wristbands to get in and I just piled in behind them and they never thought to ask me because I had the heroin eyes and the guitar.

  I figured it wouldn’t be long till my friends or my father started looking for me so I should probably hammer back the first beer. I made friends with a bunch of people from Orange County and they started talking about all the head-liners they were excited about seeing and this was their third year at Coachella and every time it got better and so on.

  “You guys just see the Unsigned thing?” somebody in the group asked.

  The others said no.

  “I didn’t, either, but I hear this guy Duncan Kelly showed up,” said this dude in a backward baseball cap and a white T-shirt.

  “Wasn’t he from the nineties? Some big guy from back then?” asked a girl in tight, short animal print.

  “Yeah,” said Baseball Cap. “He was seminal.”

  I started laughing and the baseball cap guy bought me another beer for no reason and finally it occurred to someone to ask me why I had a guitar. I told them I was an artist and that I was playing later and they tried to get me to tell them which big band I was part of but I wouldn’t. From that point on they just kept buying me beer. But like I said, after the second one I was pretty cooked so I kept spilling them or pouring them out.

  I wasn’t disappointed when the security guards pulled up. I guess the guitar and the costume were the dead giveaway in terms of who I was.

  I was already standing before the bald guy in the blue uniform started over and barked, “Blanche Kelly?”

  “That’s me.”

  He repeated my name and said, “Do you realize you are breaking the law by being in here?”

  “I guess.”

  “Your party tells us you’re not over the age of twenty-one. Therefore it’s illegal for you to be in the beer garden.”

  “Which party? This party?” I said, gesturing to my new friends. “They would never say that about me.”

  “Have you been consuming alcohol?”

  “You know what, Brad,” I said, randomly naming him, “why don’t we just skip this part and you take me wherever you’re going to take me?”

  He took the handcuffs out and turned me around but the other security guard said, “Hey, no, don’t do that. She’s a kid.”

  “She’s a drunken kid.”

  “Come on. Let’s just take her in and they’ll come get her.”

  “It’s protocol,” Brad said.

  “Look,” said the other guy, lowering his voice, “it’s Duncan Kelly’s kid.”

  Amazing how that name, even when said at the lowest volume, caused people to perk up.

  I offered my hands defiantly. “Cuff me.”

  “Just get in the cart.”

  “No, I insist. Cuff me. It’s protocol!”

  Once I started yelling he kind of had to cuff me, so I let them lead me off to the security cart, and behind me I heard the Orange County people say, “Did you hear that? It’s Duncan Kelly’s kid.”

  “No way,” another said.

  As we were riding slowly through the open field, moving in and out of clumps of festivalgoers, one of the security guards, not Brad, said, “How does that feel?”

  “How does what feel?” I asked.

  “Being famous.”

  “I’m not famous. He is.”

  “It always looked awful to me, being famous,” he said. “That’s why I avoided it.”

  The worst thing that happened to me in Coachella Jail was that even though there were only about six of us in there, the person nearest to me threw up. It was a girl and she looked about my age. What was her problem?

  I looked across the room and saw a guy somewhere in his twenties with nothing obvious wrong with him staring at me as if he was wondering what my problem was. He seemed completely sober and there wasn’t a mark on him so I figured he must have been a drug dealer or something. Then I saw that his hand was taped up.

  “Hit somebody?” I asked.

  He laughed, an embarrassed laugh. “Yeah.”

  “Somebody important?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t know him.”

  “Was it worth it?”

  He thought about it, pulling at his lip. “So far.”

  I laughed.

  “What happened to you?” he asked.

  “I drank some beer. I’m underage.”

  “Kinda harsh, keeping you in here.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s the ax for?”

  I realized he meant my guitar.

  “I didn’t know anybody had an ax since Jimi Hendrix.”

  “No, it’s back now. The terminology. You play?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You in the show?”

  “Me? I’m just a kid.”

  He slowly pointed a finger at me. “Wait, I saw you. You were in the Fringers.”

  I looked away. Something about him saying that made me want to cry. He even knew the band’s real name.

  “Yeah, I guess I was.”

  “I saw your act. You guys were great. Are you the singer?”

  “Singer, guitar player, that’s me.”

  “It’s great, it’s kind of punk Beatles but with some Replacements or something?”

  “The Replacements are punk Beatles.”

  “Yeah, but different still. And the girl thing completely works. I don’t mean to insult you but it’s a great twist.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Were those your songs?”

  “Yeah, I wrote them.”

  “Cool. I’m Jeremy.”

  “Hi, Jeremy. I’m Blanche.”

  “Blanche, you have an awesome voice, too.”

  “Right.”

  “No, seriously. I wasn’t even drinking when I saw you guys. I mean, I don’t drink, to be
honest. I probably should, it would keep me from getting in fights with guys who drink too much at festivals.”

  “Yeah. That’s funny.”

  “And then, who was that dude who got up there with you? Everyone was going nuts.”

  I didn’t answer. I just stared at the ground.

  He nudged me. “I’m just teasing. I know who he is.”

  “Great.”

  He said, “You guys were just awesome even before he got up there.”

  “Jeremy, if you are trying to cheer me up, you’re doing a hell of a job.”

  “A lot of respectable musicians have famous fathers. And mothers.”

  “That’ll do. You can go back to being quiet now.”

  “Can I get on your mailing list?”

  “I don’t think there’s going to be a mailing list. I think that was our first and last performance.”

  “No, don’t say that. Here.”

  He stood up and reached into his back pocket with his good hand and gave me a card. It said MIGHTY MIGHTY MUSIC PRODUCTIONS. JEREMY WILKINS, PRESIDENT.

  “What is this?” I said. “Something you have made up to impress girls at parties?”

  “No, I’m in college. That kind of thing doesn’t work in college.”

  “Where do you go?”

  “UC Santa Barbara.”

  “What do you produce at Mighty Mighty Music Productions?”

  “Nothing yet. I mean, my own stuff. But I’m looking to branch out. Hey, can’t hurt to stay in touch.”

  “Wouldn’t that be a great story. How did you get your start, Blanche? Well, we met in Coachella Jail.”

  He laughed. “Sounds good to me.”

  I knew I was never going to see Jeremy Wilkins again because he was that much older than me and he had a tweed cap on and I couldn’t imagine myself knowing a guy like that. But there was something warm and sincere in his eyes, like someone I remembered from a long time ago. Something about his eyes made me believe in connection. I saw that people on the same course in life somehow managed to find each other, if only for a moment.

  He smiled at me.

  And then it sounded like fifteen people were storming Coachella Jail when Gigi, Ella and the parents came in wanting to know where I was and if I was all right.

  “Your fan club is here,” Jeremy said.

  “Actually,” I said, “I think you’re it.”

  The Rodney Stones drove Gigi and Ella back to the hotel and my father and I followed in his rented car. He drove it quietly, one hand on the wheel, staring intently at the road. Except to figure out that I was all right and to assure me that no charges were going to be pressed, the adults didn’t have anything to say to me.

  Gigi and Ella both gave me questioning glances before heading upstairs. I wanted to tell them what was going on but I didn’t know.

  “I guess we’re going to call it a night, then,” Rodney Stone said.

  “Yes, we’re all exhausted,” Erica added.

  They were the kind of parents who thought things automatically got better if you didn’t talk about them or if you just kept putting a cheerful spin on them.

  “Are you going to stay with us or your father?” Erica asked.

  I looked at my father for the answer.

  He said, “I think Blanche should stay here. But we’re going to hang out and talk for a while.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Rodney said cheerfully, as if this were all some big summer camp. “You have your key, Blanche?”

  I showed it to him.

  “Okay, then, good night. And congratulations, girls.”

  “On what?” I asked.

  Ella and Gigi looked at each other, then at me.

  “We got third place. There was a little ceremony. We accepted it on your behalf.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “It’s a check and a certificate,” Gigi said.

  “Five hundred bucks,” Ella said. “Split three ways. That ought to pay for the gas.”

  “Now, don’t be ridiculous, we’re paying for the gas,” said Erica. “You girls earned that prize.”

  “Who got first?” I asked.

  “The Clauses, of course,” Ella said.

  “Well, they were good,” Gigi said, her eyes full of Redmond Dwayne.

  “And I guess they couldn’t really give it to us,” I said. “I mean, it wasn’t really a fair competition.”

  “Of course it was,” Erica said.

  “No. It’s supposed to be an amateur competition. And not everyone up there was an amateur.”

  Everyone got quiet and then the elevator dinged and Rodney said, “Well, I guess it’s good night, then.”

  The others disappeared into the elevator and the chrome doors closed and were a mirror to me and my long-lost father standing there in the lobby of some hotel in a desert.

  “Let’s go out by the pool,” he said.

  Out by the Pool

  SINCE IT WAS LATE THERE WAS NO ONE AROUND. THE LIGHTS in the water made rippling shadows on the walls and on our faces. My father sat on the edge of a lounge chair and clasped his hands and stared at them as if he had the mysteries and the answers inside them and to open them was to let them go.

  There was a couple in the Jacuzzi at the far end, away from us, and they were drinking. They laughed sporadically and the man would say, “This is living. Now this is living.” I’m not sure what he’d been doing up to the point that he got in the Jacuzzi but apparently it wasn’t living.

  My father. Legend. Seminal artist. He sat there in front of me staring at his all-important hands. On a lounge chair in Palm Desert. This was the moment I’d been dreaming of, the two of us sitting together, about to talk about it all. But I hadn’t understood what the all was and I’d had no idea that it would end up like this.

  When he finally spoke he said, “Blanche, there are two kinds of musicians in the world. Generous and ungenerous. If you are an ungenerous musician, no one will want to have anything to do with you.”

  “Except maybe other ungenerous musicians?”

  He looked up from his hands.

  “Now you’re going to throw sarcasm into your bag of tricks?”

  “It’s always been in there and it’s not tricks. I think psychologists call it a defense or a coping mechanism.”

  He ignored that.

  He said, “My point is that you obviously didn’t want to share the stage with me tonight and because you didn’t know how to tell me that, you had to act out. You had to show instead of telling me how you felt.”

  “That was my first move. But I’ll tell you if you want me to.”

  “You invited me,” he said.

  “I invited you to hear me play up there,” I said.

  “Let me finish. If you can’t share the stage with someone, particularly your father, then you have to accept that you’re not a generous musician.”

  “And that’s devastating because?”

  He stared at me. “Who convinced you that this kind of thing is attractive?”

  “Nobody. I don’t have anyone around to convince me. See, my father left when I was six and my mother never really bounced back so I end up making a lot of my own rules.”

  “Oh, is that what this is about?”

  “Dad, seriously?” My voice was shaking but I had nothing holding me back now. “I was prepared to let you off the hook for all that. You have no idea how much I put you on a pedestal. How willing I was to do anything to see you and have a relationship with you. I was willing to overlook anything for that. I created this band and I put the whole thing together and dragged it up a million hills because I thought it was the thing that would bring you back. We’d have something in common. Something to hold your interest. I didn’t know that for sure until I saw you. But guess what? You made this whole thing about you! All I wanted was for you to stand there and look at me onstage and be proud of me for something. Then you could go back to Paradise and I could kind of breathe again. You are Duncan Kelly. You didn’t need me
to get you out of hiding. You could have done it anytime. Any day. Anyplace. Don’t you know that?”

  The dark pool eyes. The ones you might fall into. He seemed to understand their power. I hadn’t gotten them from him. I had my mother’s mischievous quizzical green. I used to mourn that. I used to turn my face every which way in the mirror trying to see him in it. It was there but it had never been enough there for me.

  He said, “I am hearing these thoughts for the first time. How could I know?”

  “Because you’re a father. You’re a prophet and a poet. You’re supposed to know things without being told, aren’t you?”

  “Why couldn’t you have had that dream by playing with me onstage? Why wasn’t that part of the picture?”

  “Because I wanted it to be mine. I wanted to create something of my own and show it to you. Is that real hard for you to understand?”

  “Somewhat.”

  “Because it’s hard for you to imagine any kind of scenario where you aren’t at the center?”

  He smiled. “I’ve left you alone too long with your mother.”

  “I can get mad at you all by myself. I don’t need help.”

  He stood and said, “I think we’ve gone as far as we can with this.”

  “I’d like it if you’d sit down.”

  “Blanche, I’ve seen as much as I want to.”

  “I didn’t ask you a question. I told you what I’d like.”

  He kept standing. But he didn’t walk away.

  I said, “You can’t imagine what I had to overcome to get to Coachella.”

  “Yes, the million hills, so you’ve said.”

  “I had to pay for everything and keep everybody from fighting and learn how to sing because my singer started getting visits from angels.”

  He ignored the angels.

  He simply interrupted.

  “I know what an ordeal it is to keep a band together, Blanche.”

  “Is that why you dropped out? It was too much trouble playing well with others?”

  “An artist is not like other people.”

  “A plumber is not like other people. Everybody has a calling.”

  “Yes, that’s right. And an artist sometimes functions best away from the calamity of ordinary life. It’s oppressive having to look at the little ways and the big ways and all the ugly ways that people settle and compromise and let themselves down.”