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Jack awakes on the great white
couch, and decides that the time has come to face the kitchen. Rounding the
corner of the dividing wall, he comes upon an exhibit of bullet-gray steel. It
reminds him of the kitchen in the pizza parlor where he worked during college.
He tugs the huge metal slab of refrigerator door and discovers a sign in
Thompson’s writing: For God’s sake, eat
everything you can. This makes sense; gone for a month, the Floreses
certainly wouldn’t want to return to a fridge full of rotting food. Freed by
logic, Jack rifles the drawers for treasure. He lands upon a drawer that seems
to be operating as a gourmet bagel center: tightly bagged poppyseed bagels,
slices of fresh lox, two tubs of cream cheese (regular and garden herb) and a
small jar of capers. Jack cuts two bagels in half, drops them in an eight-slot
toaster (which Army division lives in this place?), and immediately gets a call
on his cell phone.
“Hi
Ben.”
“Jack!
How you feelin’?”
“I’m…
recovering.”
“You’re
doing beautifully, me lad. I’ve got three assignments for you today.”
“There’s
homework?”
“More
like homeplay. Have you had breakfast?”
“Making
it right now.”
“Ah!
You’ve made it into the kitchen. Excellent. Your first assignment is to eat
that there breakfast on the rooftop – because, if you hadn’t noticed, it’s a
gorgeous, sunny day outside. After that, I want you to report to that delicious
playroom of yours and indulge in two – count ‘em – two recreations of your
choosing. Your third assignment is to walk down the beach and find rocks for
skipping. You must skip these rocks until one of them skips at least ten
times.”
Jack
laughs (actually laughs!). “You are a
taskmaster.”
“I
also want you to meet me at the coffeehouse at seven tonight. I’ve got some
entertainment for you.”
“Okay.”
Jack pauses, trying to assemble a question.
“Jack?
You there?”
“Is
there… I mean, this is all fun, but when do we start on getting me a job?”
Ben
clears his throat. “I’m not a job coach, Jack. I’m a life coach. We need to
find you a job that serves your life, rather than vice-versa. I’m afraid your
last job was a little too all-encompassing. And the first step is to teach you
how to play again.”
Jack
hears a clicking noise; his four half-bagels bounce up in their slots. “I’m not
sure if I…”
“Let’s
get you a life first, Jack. Then we’ll get you a job. Now get up there and eat
your breakfast.”
“Okay.”
Jack
assembles two bagel sandwiches with all the trimmings and finds a can of pear
nectar in the fridge. He’s about to tote his breakfast up the stairs when he
spots a small door built into the wall next to the microwave. Noting a series
of buttons next to it – 2, 3 and R – he thinks he has this one figured out. He
opens the door, places his food inside, presses R and watches as it slides
skyward. When he gets to the roof, he figures the approximate location of the
shaft, finds a small door beside the tiki bar, and discovers his breakfast
inside.
By
seven, a light rain has set in over the coast, turning the slick asphalt of the
parking lot into a field of black diamonds. Jack huddles on a window seat in
the coffeehouse. The Alaskan husky lies on the walk outside, looking terribly
bored. Jack is indulging in another cup of Peruvian, and realizes that, even in
his new life, even in his discovery of fresh-drip coffee, he has quickly
settled into a rut. Luke Bumflasher or not, he does not feel fundamentally
changed.
On
the drive home from Oregon, just south of Crescent City, California, he took a
short hike through a redwood grove. One of the great trees had fallen in a
windstorm, and several smaller trees had sprouted from its side, like teeth in
a comb. He recognizes this memory as yet another metaphor, and wonders at their
recent incursions into his gray matter. Aren’t metaphors the last refuge of
desperate minds? And what the hell was that burning house in the falls at
Multnomah?
“Thank
God I’m here!” bellows Ben, swinging through the door. “Hast thou been chewing
gravel, wild, effeminate boy? Let us hasten from this gloomy countenance. Fie!”
Jack
laughs, as one might laugh at a lunatic uncle. “That’s a good idea,” he says.
He follows Ben’s biker-looking jacket to the white Miata, which is very
impractically topless.
“I know, I know,” says Ben, hopping behind the
wheel. “It’s a removable hard-top, and you have to leave it home when you’re
not using it. I didn’t think it was going to rain tonight. Here – use this.”
He
hands Jack a chocolate brown cowboy hat with feathers along the front, like
something from a ‘70s Southern rock band. Jack puts it on, feeling ridiculous,
feeling the rainwater on the passenger seat soaking into his jeans. He realizes
that a snappy retort has just slipped into his brain. He tries it out in his
head to make sure, then lets it fly just as Ben is opening his mouth to speak.
“So
tell me again why you’re the life
coach?”
The
delivery is delicious. Jack realizes at a single shot why people throw away
perfectly reasonable careers to become comedians. Ben’s face freezes – as if he
doesn’t quite understand that his young companion is making an attempt at
humor. The light turns, and he heads into the intersection, letting out a
whooping laugh like an aging cowboy on a white bronco.
A
minute later they’re tracing the clifftop drive above White Horse’s rock
sculptures. Ben asks for a report on Jack’s afternoon assignments.
“I
bowled a 115,” he answers. “It wasn’t easy – you have to set the pins by hand.
Assuming the golf hole is a par-three, I played nine rounds absolutely even,
but I had to hit a hole-in-one on my last attempt.”
Ben
raises an appreciative eyebrow. “And the rock-skipping?”
“Took
me an hour,” says Jack. “The water was really choppy. I had to throw along the
troughs in front of the waves. But I found a perfect disc near the Concrete
Boat, some kind of red rock, and I threw an eleven-skipper. At least, I think
so – they go sort of fast. There really is an art to it, though. And my arm is
sore, thank you very much.”
“You’ll
recover,” says Ben. He takes a downhill left into the semicircle cutout of
Capitola Village, then cuts right along the ultra-cute storefronts, pulling
into a spot next to a shop of Tolkien figurines and tarot cards. Ben jumps out,
reaches into the Miata’s tiny trunk, and extracts a folded-up tarp.
“Here.
Help me make the bed.” He hands Jack one side and they pull it over the Miata’s
interior. Jack is about to raise the question of attachment when he discovers
magnets sown into the fringe; they click neatly to the side of the car.
“That’s why I’m the life coach,” says
Ben. “Follow me, young lad.”
They
cross the intersection and cruise the storefront displays: beachwear, baby
clothes, a café with sandwiches and ice cream. Across another street, they pass
beneath a mermaid done up in mosaic tiles, the resident goddess of a rowdy
Mexican saloon, then board a long, straight stairwell to a coffeehouse called
Mr. Toots. The place is scattered with odd pieces of furniture: church pews,
sofas, stools, every type of table you could imagine, planted over a floor of
rough green rock. A balcony to the left overlooks the Capitola lagoon, which
will return to riverdom as soon as the winter rains carve an escape hatch
through the beach. A series of windows to the right overlook the street. The
tables host a scala naturae of beach
species: students buried in laptops, retired tourists, bikers wiring up for a
blues club down the street. The chatter dips and swells like a flood tide,
capped by the vanilla chimes of a piano. Jack locates an upright against the
far wall, a blonde-haired woman sitting on the bench in a billowy,
old-fashioned dress, like something the mother would wear in a ‘60s sitcom.
Facing the wall, the woman leans toward a microphone to her left and releases a
voice that catches Jack entirely off-guard. She lands on her notes only long
enough to pull them this way and that, a plane performing a touch-and-go, a
butterfly with sticky feet.
“I’m
getting a chai, Jacko. You want one? I guarantee you’ll like it.”
“Absolute
trust,” says Jack. He likes this phrase; it frees him from the burden of
thinking. His eyes return to the singer.
“She’s
got you already,” says Ben.
“Who?”
“Suzanne.
She’s the reason we’re here.”
Ben
heads for the espresso counter as Jack tries to follow the song, something
about an impulsive road trip. Jack can see the lines of the melody dipping and
dodging, like the roads they took on the way to Salinas. He’s already thinking
of the Monkey party as pictures in a scrapbook; the final image is Mamet,
cutting his wide blue wings as he leads Cigarette into the bright sky.
He
feels a point of heat at his left elbow and finds Ben nudging him with a glass.
He takes the offering – a beige concoction with a white line of foam – and
follows Ben to a window table at the far reach of the room. The table affords a
perfect view of Suzanne: her fingers running the black-and-white field, her
face craning toward them to sing. Her hair is frosted in straw-blonde stripes
over coffee with cream, her bangs cut in a line over round, startling blue
eyes. Her face is round, as well, with plump cheeks and an overbite that gives
her an easy smile. Despite the babe-in-the-woods appearance, she sings with a
wise humor. She’s onto a bouncy jazz tune about a child discovering a feather,
then she segues to an outlandish mazurka about an ice fairy, laced with a
minor-chord spookiness. Jack discovers a thought about her singing: She climbs
all over the gradations between song and speech, giving the words a footloose
tone, like she’s making them up on the spot. The next song is a gently
see-sawing love ballad, the words a little mundane and generic, but the longer
notes give her the chance to show off the easy flow of her singing.
“You
like the chai?” asks Ben.
“Yeah.
She’s great.”
Ben
laughs. “The chai, son. That thing
that you are drinkething.”
Jack
feels the buzz on his lips. “It’s like a spice milkshake. Only… warm.”
“A
beautifully non-committal answer. So you like the singing?”
“I
like the singer.”
Ben
shifts in his seat to give Suzanne a look. “Everybody does. She’s a doll. Why,
if I were… Jesus! Forty years younger. I think she’ll be breaking soon. Maybe
she’ll come over for a chat.”
Jack
feels suddenly anxious, and soothes himself with a sip of chai. Suzanne
finishes a cover of a Radiohead song, receives her applause (mixed with the
neverending chatter) and heads over to greet Ben with a hug and a kiss on the
cheek. Jack notices that her eyes narrow into upside-down crescents when she
smiles, which is ridiculously charming.
“Suzanne,
this is Jack, a very promising pupil of mine.”
Suzanne
smiles again, but loses it to a cloud of shyness.
“Hi,”
she says. “Thanks for coming.”
“I
didn’t have much choice,” says Jack, then realizes what a stupid thing he’s
just said. “I mean… I didn’t… I hadn’t… You’re great.”
Suzanne
manages to compute the intent of his meandering, and smiles again. “Thanks.”
This
is precisely the time for Ben to intercede, but Ben is sitting back like a
Buddha, arms crossed, happy to let the conversation die on the vine. After an
interminable stretch of dead air, he smiles and places his hands flat on the
table.
“And…
scene! Sorry to hang you both out to dry, but I wanted young Jack to see
something. Our Suzanne, she who pours her most intimate thoughts into a room
full of perfect strangers, is actually, when it comes to meeting people
one-on-one, terribly shy. But do tell us, young Suzanne, what is it that you do
for a living?”
Suzanne
ducks her head, focusing on Ben. “I play coffeehouses and clubs all along the
West Coast. I start at a jazz club in San Diego, and work my way up to this
bookstore café in Vancouver, British Columbia. And then I turn around and work
my way back.”
Ben
holds his hands together, pretending he doesn’t already know the answers, and
says, “Do you have a home, young Suzanne?”
“Actually,
no.”
Ben
puts on a look of mock surprise. “Well! How ever
do you manage, then?”
Suzanne
laughs at their little drama (obviously, with Ben she’s comfortable). “I stay
with relatives in Washington. I went to college at UC Santa Cruz, so I have a
lot of friends around here to stay with. And other places, people just kind of…
take me in. It’s amazing what the music brings out in people. Of course, the
music doesn’t always work, so I keep
a sleeping bag and a tent in the car.”
Ben
drums his fingers against the table. “And, may I ask, if it’s not too personal,
what of money?”
Suzanne
flutters her lashes theatrically, giving Jack a brief glance just to let him
know he hasn’t been forgotten. “Tips. A few actual payments from clubs. Mr.
Toots throws me a twenty or two during the summer. And lots of CD sales. I’m
lucky that way. I’ve had some fantastic sound guys, and musicians to record
with, and my listeners just sort of get hooked. They sometimes buy all five at
a shot. Things are still pretty tight, all in all, but it’s not like I’m paying
rent anywhere.”
Ben
takes in this last response thoughtfully, then gives her a gracious smile.
“Thanks, Suzanne.”
“Delighted.
I’d better get back to work. Nice meeting you, Jack.”
“Yes,”
says Jack.
Suzanne
settles at the upright, flips a switch on the mic and says, “This is for Uncle
Ben, because I know it’s his favorite.”
The
song is “Hallelujah,” a lovingly bitter commentary on relationships by Leonard
Cohen. Jack remembers hearing it in a movie, but Suzanne’s version is
different. At the piano she’s fearless, and fashions the song into a small
opera, acting out each line as she sings it, slowing the final verse to an
aching soliloquy. The room falls miraculously quiet. Suzanne lets the final
notes fall from her fingers, and receives her applause like a dreamer waking
from sleep.
“What
do you think?” asks Ben.
“Amazing,”
says Jack.
“She’s
twenty-eight years old. Two years ago she decided she could assemble this odd
career – a ludicrous notion, nothing a normal person would even imagine – and
somehow she makes it work. And, if
you’ll allow me to hammer you over the head with this notion just once more,
you saw how shy and awkward she was when I introduced you, how like one Jack
Teagarden. Don’t think there isn’t a multiplicity of incredible, unexpected
things you can do with your life, Jack.”
Suzanne
flips through a book of jazz standards and settles it against the music holder.
She finds Jack in the corner of her vision and smiles, as if he has discovered
her most embarrassing secret, then presses her fingers into a major chord and
breathes in.
Photo: Suzanne Brewer
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