Before (13 page)

There is a question of female judgment, Ghost-Man knows, in everything.
She
decides whether to let a man penetrate her, unless he forces her—and then he should simply die—but otherwise it is her judgment that rocks the universe.
She
is the great judge, the regulator; will her man, will mankind, be civil? Or will he get what he wants with his simple brutality?
She
decides with
her
actions!
She
can make mountains fall, wars begin, children laugh. Alison Tiner gathers: chicken to cook with her rice, green beans in butter sauce that she will microwave, candles to illuminate the face of her lover just minutes before she gives her body to him. Ghost-Man imagines her lighting these, a sweep of match, quick outbreath of flame. Blue fire in her eyes as, protecting the match with a cupped hand, she moves forward to the candlewicks.

SIX

At the Holy Mackerel in Central Square, Monkey's Fist is pounding through “Money,” Jesse's and Elijah's voices doubling, screaming on the vocal. Tika has them in the Leica's frame, shooting from the back of the club, near the bar, and she suddenly lowers the camera and watches the whole scene because it is magnificent—the five members of the band playing tight, sweating under the tracers, twenty minutes into their set. There will be three bands up tonight and Monkey's Fist is on first. The Holy Mackerel is not a big club, but it is very crowded; there is a stage, a bar behind Tika, walls and floors and pole supports washed in heavy gray paint. The walls near the booths are decorated with stills of 1960s television shows, especially
Batman;
and on the wall over the stage, lit by spotlights and framed by gaudy velour curtains, there is a large mural of a buxom blond woman, in lingerie, straddling a mackerel. Over the head of the woman is a shining halo.

Tika estimates that three hundred are here; behind her she hears people shouting for “one Johnnie Walker please and a pitcher, thanks man,” and “Yes, I want a toasted almond and a Scotch,” and Jesse's bass is booming through the Marshall stacks, and Tika braces herself on the floor and feels Jesse and the band through her legs and she raises the Leica and through her wide-angle telephoto lens Jesse is there close with his good face and his eyes squeezed shut behind Buddy Holly glasses, singing with his intensity into the microphone, a lock of hair falling over his forehead and sweat glistening at his temples. Bracing her elbows, she frames the shot. His black T-shirt reads, in bright letters,
No More Land Mines,
and his cherry Spector bass is slung across his waist, his right hand slapping at the heavy strings. Tika fires off three rapid pictures. She is using Kodak 3200 film, pushed to 64; soon she will need more, and there are the two rolls in her case in the dressing room. She thinks of the sumptuous feel of Dennis Stock's photographs of Miles Davis, the energy of the Hendrix series that Baron Wolman shot in San Francisco, in 1968. The strange, stark sense of Elliot Erwitt's work in the late 1950s and 1960s. She has been keeping all of these artists in her mind as, through clubs and beerfests and at radio shows this summer, she has made her portraits of her boyfriend's band.

She lowers the camera to her chest and makes her way to a corner booth, the floor sticky here, leans against the table. The group in the booth, three guys, two girls, college age, glance up and nod and smile, drunk already, and Tika nods and apologizes, though she knows they cannot hear her. She unclips the wide-angle lens and takes from her jacket a leather cylinder, a Leitz Tel 4 T, 200 mm, and fits and clips it into the Leica. She puts the lens cap onto the wide angle and slips the lens into the cylinder and nods to the group again—one of the boys tries to say something to her, looking at her as if he remembers her, to extend a hand, but Tika acts as if she doesn't notice and walks forward to a gray-washed pole. She braces herself against it, and through the Leica, bright and close, Eric Sheff on the raised Tama drum set whacks the skins with controlled, rhythmic fury. Eric wears dark glasses and a black shirt, and his arms are fully tattooed; his mouth is slightly open. Tika catches now, on his wrist, rising and falling in rhythm, the cloth skull-and-crossbones bracelet he wears on his right arm. He is a very sweet, studied guy, finishing a degree at the New England Conservatory. He is a madman on the drums—and the vibration of them goes through Tika's bones.

Jesse swears his throat is always going to tear out on this song, he puts so much into it:
Every note of every song of every performance,
he always says,
we're gonna give it everything, because you never know who's out there in the audience.
Eric and Pug “Mozart” Hines and Kerig Scott, the lead guitarist, sing on the choruses now—Jesse screams,
“Well now give me money!”
and they sing, “
That's what I want!
” Jesse screams, “
I wanna be free!
” and the whole band sings,
“That's what I want!”
Elijah's long brown hair is swept behind him, his Rickenbacker muscling out the chords, and beside him Pug pounds the Yamaha keys, wearing a dark long-sleeved Superman shirt, his teeth showing in his perpetual grin, his own glasses flashing under stage lights; the notes of the Yamaha harmonize with Kerig's distorted lead guitar.

Tika moves in closer as the song hits a crescendo, the lights now an intense white, then yellow, then blue. She braces her legs and watches through the camera her Jesse. Fists are in the air before him, and many naked female arms reach for his shins.
Fine,
she thinks.
He's good-looking, my Jesse, with his wonderful wide shoulders, his long throat—that will sell CDs.
Jesse looks over as Pug pounds into a last solo, and Jesse's beautiful vein runs up his forearm, and sweat is shining on his jaw. Tika shoots four and she is done and walking through the forest of bodies, a tight path smelling of whiskey and marijuana and perfume. She nods to the large security guard, Neil—a man nearly as wide as this battered door—and steps into the back hallway, toward the dressing room, forty-watt bulbs just lighting her way.

In the small dressing room the music is just slightly more subdued: Jesse's bass and Eric's bass drum still thump solidly through the cement-block wall. She sits on the old couch, picks up Jesse's beaten leather coat (
Harley-Davidson Motor Cycles,
says the emblem on the back of the jacket,
Established 1903, Milwaukee, WI
), and smoothes it onto her lap. She smells now of smoke and alcohol, smells this even on the back of her hand, her white rope bracelet, and she loves it, this smoke-filled rock-and-roll world of her boyfriend; she sets the camera, her leather case, beside her. She listens to the end of the song, four whacks of the drums, the band together on the final, sustained note, the applause and whistling like wind. On the wall, in frames, Batman and Robin race to the gleaming Batmobile, the intricate Batcave with its computers all around them. In another still, Adam West stands at Wayne Manor, at a party, wearing trim slacks, a collegiate sweater, holding a glass of wine; above that, Batman strikes hard at a thug, a sweep of fist, with the cartoon caption
Pow!
across the top of the picture.

A tuxedo hangs on the bathroom shower stall: Pug will change into it after showering, and play a late night gig at a private party—Gershwin and Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk. Kerig Scott has invited the rest of them to meet his new girlfriend at the Club Isis in Copley Place—there is an official opening party going on all week, and the place will be open until four. Eric said he was sorry, he already had a date himself, and Jesse whispered to Tika,
We probably should,
and Tika nodded enthusiastically. Some of her friends at Emerson and at Standish's Pub have been buzzing about the new club. It is anybody's guess if Elijah will go, as screwed up as he is over a relationship he lost in July; he's not much for hanging out lately.

She drops in the Kodak roll, leads it onto the sprockets, closes the back of the Leica and turns the thumb lever, spooling the film in; she faintly hears Jesse's voice joking with the crowd, and many voices yelling and hands clapping. Eric hits a couple of notes. The song they are about to do is the one Tika has brought to all the college radio stations. Monkey's Fist will make it, Tika is sure of it: sure that they are on the verge of something big. She has watched her Jesse working, night after night, spread out on the worn Oriental rug of his Jamaica Plain apartment, papers—songs in the making—all around him, his Gibson plugged into the Roland digital recorder that he has borrowed from the music store. Tika helps where she can: She has taken the photographs of the group that have been in the
Boston Phoenix
and
The Noise
and
Stuff at Night
and that get plastered to lampposts throughout Cambridge and Boston, next to flyers for all the other current groups, Mistle Thrust and Doctor Frog and Dragstrip Courage and Eve Was Framed. Tika changes guitar strings, sometimes runs the Roland for Jesse when he wants to put down a final version of a song. A few days ago she helped him replace the S-pipe on the 1994 Chevy van that the group owns, crawling under with him and holding up the pipe while he soldered. They were in the garage the band rents, motorcycles and instrument boxes all around them, everything lit by hanging lightbulbs, an
Elvis
license plate nailed to the inside of the door. Jesse had said,
Honey you're doing too much, you shouldn't be doing all of this,
but secretly Tika knows that he loves having her there by his side, that she is not the kind of girl who is afraid of anything, of any work.

Three months ago Kascha was on
The Late Show with David Letterman;
maybe she'll know someone there who can help launch Monkey's Fist when they get the CD out. And there are all the parties Kascha goes to, all the producers she rubs elbows with. Kascha has already said she wants to help, that there are two producers in Los Angeles she thinks would be interested, and Tika has asked her sister to start looking into it. But Tika won't say anything to Jesse unless she gets some solid leads—she knows from Kascha that few show business people deliver what they promise.

She finishes winding in the film, slips the camera case over her shoulder, and steps into the hallway again, down to the stage door. The overhead bulbs emit an ethereal light; just a little while ago, when the band went on at nine, Tika kissed Jesse in the hallway here and wished him luck, then kissed his throat and held him close, and the others passed by, joking that someone should get a room, and Jesse, grinning, went through the door with them and she heard the audience in rousing applause as the band strapped on their instruments in the darkness.

She goes through the same stage door now, stepping through the shadows, wires on the floor, guitar cases, beaten-up equipment cases with block stenciling,
Monkey's Fist
and
Pug Mozart,
here behind this drawn curtain. She steps to the small slip of opening in the heavy velour and here is the band in profile; Eric hits a time on the sticks, and then the others are with him, and the lights intensify, tracers following the shoulders of Jesse and Elijah, blue, yellow, and red, Eric's head above in a halo, and Tika can see Pug's face, anticipating, looking up at Eric, as they time the intro. The audience is applauding already, recognizing, whistling, and Jesse's bass hits, and Elijah is singing.

I see you in the city street

Late one night where raindrops meet

In water lit by neon like a fire

Woman you are everywhere

And in this endless night we share

Your memory's burnin' through me like a wire

Elijah started writing the song after a late night walk this summer through Boston. Jesse had told Tika about Elijah's breakup, the next night in bed on Trowbridge Street, just after helping Elijah finish the piece; the woman, twenty-nine years old to Elijah's twenty-five, was upset with what she called Elijah's nomadic, Bohemian life. Tika remembered her with Elijah at a party in Brookline, where Monkey's Fist was being courted by a local producer (Jesse later decided the man was a con artist): Tika'd seen a tall, very good-looking woman, blond and with a burgundy silk cardigan and pants, a silk scarf about her neck, holding a wineglass and leaning against a besotted Elijah. The party had been filled with local rock-and-roll musicians and their girlfriends; there was a famous filmmaker there and a broadcaster who had gone from the local Boston market to national celebrity as a game-show host. It was one of those gatherings that was, to Tika's mind, more about people trying to make you jealous, to make your own accomplishments pale next to their supposed greatness. Tika always felt uncomfortable around such egos. But Elijah's lover had seemed in her element, and her eyes were full of play, and she had laughed with her long throat and Elijah had watched her all night. In bed, Tika told Jesse that there were some women who would like the
image
of what the guys were doing—who would enjoy seeing themselves in the midst of that image, for a while—at parties with the unconventional and famous, draped around a man like Elijah; those women, Tika said, wanted their men eventually in a box, and Jesse had nodded.
Balls in a cage,
he'd said. Apparently, the woman realized that Elijah was into music for the long haul—it wasn't just some fashionable phase—and it wasn't long after, on a weekend at some resort, that she dumped him. Elijah hadn't been able to let loose of her, Jesse'd said.
Sometimes,
Jesse said,
he drives up north to Newburyport where she lives and just freaking checks out who's going in and out of her house. He even watches her go in and out of work. He's sort of going nuts. We're still trying to pull him out of it.

Elijah's head is bowed now, his long brown hair falling forward, a few discernible faces of the audience around his figure. Tika wonders if he still thinks of the woman as he plays, of her place up there by the ocean and the way he's stood there, watching her home from the protection of trees.
There are always these ghosts,
she thinks, imagining Jiri's haunted face when she came to the door this evening.
We're always in orbit around a phantom something.
Now Jesse goes forward to the microphone to sing on the chorus, all of these eyes watching him and Elijah together: