Her Wild Oats (4 page)

The Shadow of a Doubt

3

Arizona was startled by a glimpse of herself in the rearview mirror. Her large green eyes looked tired and sad, but the woman in the mirror didn’t seem like the kind of person who would take all the money out of the cigar box and leave her husband in the middle of the night. Her brain was swirling with questions—about the checks, and the weirdly biblical threat, but also about Jerry’s behavior over the last few months and her own intense reaction. Who was this man she thought she knew so well? When had the lies begun? She remembered a few odd phone calls, unexplained absences, Jerry’s discomfort the day she’d dropped in unannounced at his office and discovered him, flustered and disheveled, “in conference” with a client. She had dismissed these events as coincidental or unimportant, though Jerry became increasingly evasive. Maybe if she’d tried harder, insisted on counseling, consulted a psychic…

She couldn’t help thinking about the wedding photo and their simple, adoring happiness that day. When had it all gone sour, to the point where she felt compelled to run for her life?

They had met on Arizona’s twenty-third birthday in a tapas restaurant near Venice Beach. She was being toasted by her three best girlfriends; he was at the next table with a group from the law firm where he worked. They were all sleek, good-looking men, but Jerry stood out with his fit, toned physique, thick black curls, olive complexion, and startling blue eyes. One of the guys started flirting with one of the girls, and after the second pitcher of sangria someone else moved the two tables together and they became one noisy gang. After the third pitcher, Jerry stood up and tapped on his glass with a spoon.

“I would like to propose a toast to a most beautiful birthday girl,” he said.

“Hear, hear,” everyone shouted. Some of them wolf-whistled, while others loudly told their friends to shut up. Jerry finally had to tell them to shut up.

“Right on, man; awesome.”

“Here’s to the astounding birthday-ness of this lovely lady,” he said at last. “Happy birthday to you, Miss Albuquerque!”

“Um, her name’s Arizona,” said Ginger, a literate sort.

“Whatever,” Jerry slurred as he sat down with a thud, and Arizona smiled her thanks across the table.

After the party broke up, he proposed a stroll on the beach. They walked barefoot, holding their shoes while chilly ocean waves rolled over their toes. Jerry told her about his work at an entertainment law firm that specialized in intellectual property rights, his devotion to NBA basketball and his Lakers season tickets, his eccentric and very Jewish (but not religious) family. She told him about her equally eccentric and non-religious Jewish family, the amusing story of how she got the name “Arizona” (her eccentric parents were moving from New York to California, and she was born on a Greyhound bus that had just rolled over the state line), and how frustrating it was to be a college graduate looking for a job—any job—in the entertainment industry. He thought he might be able to help her get a foot in the door at a major studio, and she gave him her cell phone number. They parted with a friendly kiss and the promise to keep in touch.

He called the very next day with a lead—a friend who owed him a favor—and Arizona nailed her Hollywood dream job as executive assistant to Grayson Lathrop, head of Gargantuan Entertainment. The studio was riding high on the unprecedented success of its summer blockbuster,
Fang!
Arizona was catapulted into the crazy, glamorous world of corporate entertainment. She worked eighteen hours a day, handled the work load of three people, and loved every minute of it.

A couple of weeks after starting her job, Arizona had a rare evening free and invited Jerry out for a thank-you dinner. She went all out: bought a new dress, had her hair and makeup done, the works. He was smart and funny, he got her name right all night long, and this time their goodnight kiss was a lot more than friendly. That was when his courtship really began. Flowers and cards, singing telegrams and chocolate; endless emails popped into her inbox, professing endless love. They got married the following year, an elaborate affair with both eccentric Jewish families well represented. The Rabbi was a lifelong friend of Arizona’s parents: a barefoot hippie who played the guitar.

*

Three years rushed by in a flash. Then Jerry got an invitation to his high-school reunion, and Arizona couldn’t go because of her professional obligations to Grayson Lathrop—
Fang II: Dental Revenge
was in pre-production and there was just no way. Jerry went; she didn’t; he came back all glowing and gooey. Of all the friends he’d reconnected with, the one he mentioned the most was a woman named Stephanie, who by amazing coincidence also lived in the LA area. He talked about her an awful lot—until (and who would have thought this would be worse?) he stopped talking about her at all.

Stephanie started sending Jews for Jesus literature to Jerry’s office, along with who knew what else, and he brought the pamphlets home and patiently lectured Arizona about the Messiahship of Jesus being an unavoidable issue to Jews worldwide. When she answered, “OK, but a more pressing unavoidable issue at this moment is when you’re going to fix that broken step you’ve been promising to deal with for the last six months but you haven’t gotten around to it, and I almost killed myself on it the other day,” he got deeply insulted, saying she wasn’t taking his spirituality seriously. She said she thought there was a difference between spirituality and hitting someone over the head with evangelical fervor, which pissed him off. From her point of view, they used to laugh about stuff like this, but suddenly he had no sense of humor about anything anymore.

It got to be more than a little much when the bumper stickers appeared on the fender of her Volvo: Jesus Made Me Kosher; Be More Jewish—Believe in Jesus; Jesus Was Raised in a Kosher Home; you’d think they could come up with something clever, they were
Jewish
, for crying out loud.

Now there were huge checks written on her account, a gun in the house, a threatening note with her name on it. It was obvious that Jerry hadn’t just gotten religion; he’d gotten crazy. She had to believe she had done the right thing by leaving, that it was the only thing she could do.

She kept on driving.

Just One of the Guys

4

Once they hit the highway and were far enough away from the Pixlie-Carsons’ naked butts for Oats to stop blushing, Bobby Lee offered to show him around.

“Here’s your bunk—hope you don’t mind the upper. I see Pete already gave you a label.”

Sure enough, a piece of gray gaffer’s tape with “Oats” scrawled on it in magic marker had been fastened, at a haphazard angle, to the little shelf above an upper bunk. Oats noticed that other bunks had similar labels: Dickie, Roscoe, Billy, and so on. The only name he didn’t see attached to a bunk was “Bobby Lee.”

“Where do you sleep?” he asked, feeling amazingly stupid to even notice himself imagining Bobby Lee smiling and saying “with you, of course” as he touched his arm—Eddie and Hank Wilson had gotten him going on that one. Thanks a lot, assholes.

“One of my few perks as band leader is the luxurious private bedroom suite.” Bobby Lee smiled as he pointed to a closed door at the back of the bus. “Luxurious by comparison, that is. I mean, let’s face it. It’s still a bus.”

“It’s a pretty nice one if you ask me.” Oats tossed his duffel bag and harps on his bunk. “The Lollipopalooza bus isn’t anywhere near this cool.”

“I’ll show you the rest. Come on…”

A large, red-faced man with a full head of luxurious gray hair heaved himself up out of the shotgun seat and made his way down the center aisle.

“Care to introduce me to your friend?” he asked, winking at Otis Ray.

“Why, sure. Pete Rawley, this is our new blues harp player, Otis Ray Pixlie-Carson. Oats, this here is Pete, the tour manager. He can tell you everything you need to know about the logistics and so on.”

Pete made an elaborate display of shaking Oats’ hand and making his acquaintance. Then they both grinned and hugged. In real life, Oats couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t known Pete, a lifelong friend of his parents. He also remembered, mostly due to eavesdropping, that Pete Rawley was the only reason he’d been allowed to come on this tour at all.

“How about we meet up over by your bunk in, say, ten minutes? I’ll give you all your paperwork and laminates and answer any questions. Meanwhile, Bobby Lee can show you around while I hit the head.”

Pete disappeared behind a narrow door that shut with a metallic clank. Oats didn’t have to be told that was the vehicle’s portable toilet.

“Come on,” said Bobby Lee. “Let’s go meet Dave.” Oats was not an especially tall thirteen-year-old, but he was at least an inch taller than the guy everyone called “Bus Driver Dave.” Everything about him was round: his face, his belly, and even the fringe of hair around his mostly-bald head—the reason he always wore a Chicago White Sox baseball cap. Dave always wore T-shirts and shorts, no matter what the temperature outside the bus.

Next came Gary G., the sound man. Although his official title was sound engineer, Gary did a little bit of all the roadie tasks and was truly indispensable. Oats’ parents had taught him that it was just as important to be nice to the roadies and tech guys as the stars. Roadies are the ones who make or break how a performer looks and sounds on stage—and crew members are also often nicer and more fun to hang out with than the performers. Once he’d greeted Gary G. with proper Pixlie-Carson respect, it was time to meet the band.

“Take a look at that motley crew,” Bobby Lee said as he pointed toward the men on the bus, “and tell me which one is the drummer.”

“Hmm.” Oats thought a minute before pointing to Willie Jones, a large man with long brown hair and a beard. Long ago, Oats had learned that there’s a little bit of crazy in every drummer’s eyes, and that guy had it. Once on the road his mom had pointed out how when you see bikers roaming around, like Hells Angels, there was always a big huge guy teamed up with a little wiry mean-looking one. It seemed to Oats that drummers were also either wiry or huge. They were also either exceptionally considerate or bad-ass mean.

“Right. That’s Willie Jones. It’s a certain kind of person who wants to bang on things all day long,” Bobby Lee replied. “Willie’s all right. His bark is worse than his bite.”

Clarence “Rascal” Roscoe was the bass player. He had straight brown hair and a handlebar mustache; as Rascal grabbed onto the edge of one of the bunks to keep his balance, his face twisted in a rubbery grimace. Bass players often have the best sense of humor in the band and this one appeared to be no exception.

“I’m just hanging around till they figure out how to replace me with a computer,” Rascal said. “But lucky for me they’re having trouble inventing a gadget that can chew gum and look bored at the same time. Welcome aboard, kid.”

A man who looked an awful lot like Bobby Lee poked his head out of a lower bunk. Oats had heard about Bobby Lee’s brother, Billy Crenshaw; he was one of those multi-instrumentalist wonder guys who could play everything. He covered a few bases in this band, mostly keyboard and accordion. But Bobby Lee explained he was sometimes known to pick up a fiddle or mandolin, and that Oats should be ready for anything. Billy was also the only one who seemed interested in the harmonica, asking Oats a lot of questions about his harps—bending and overblow techniques and such.

“You better hold on to that suitcase, kid,” Bobby Lee advised, “or pretty soon Billy will be the harp player, too. And here’s the rest of the band.”

A couple of guys sat around the little fold-out table behind the driver’s seat, cracking open a brand-new deck of playing cards.

Jeremy Farren was the pedal-steel player. Oats had always thought of them as being a slightly different species from other musicians; there was this guy Lloyd Sanders back home, for example. He was really tall and thin and almost never said anything, but his playing went right to your heart without spending any time near your head. Oats believed that Lloyd put so much expressiveness into his playing that he didn’t feel a need to communicate the rest of the time. Anyway, Jeremy seemed true to form. He was a short guy with longish brown hair, and to make conversation Oats asked him if he knew Lloyd.

“Yup,” he answered.

“Uh, he’s a nice guy and a good picker, don’t you think?” Oats continued.

“Yup,” said Jeremy. Oats soldiered on.

“Have you ever heard him play at the Dewdrop Inn?”

“Yup.”

Talking to Jeremy was turning out to be kind of like talking to a shower curtain (or for that matter Lloyd Sanders), so Oats gave up. But the others hit him with high-fives and the kind of musician small talk that makes a guy feel welcome.

Last of all was Dickie Jaspers, the lead guitar player. Dickie had long blond hair pulled back in a scrunchie and a scratchy little goatee and mustache, and he scowled instead of offering a warm hello. His face was thin, with piercing blue eyes and a red scar across the left side of his forehead. Even with the scar he looked like the kind of guy women go nuts over, a guy with one of those lucky handsome-without-trying cheekboney faces. Oats noticed that he had exceptionally white, straight teeth, too. Plus he was known to be a great player.

“Dickie’s been with me a long time, since we were kids back in Memphis,” Bobby Lee said, trying to make conversation. “He knows where all the bodies are buried, don’t you, Dickie?”

Dickie turned his head away and Oats heard him mutter to Jeremy that he didn’t sign up for no kiddiegarten, right before he grabbed a DVD labeled
Snakes on Elaine
and popped it into the entertainment console with unnecessary fanfare. Bobby Lee rolled his eyes and led the boy to the small kitchenette up front.

“Hey, don’t mind him,” he said. “You know what lead guitar players use for birth control, right?”

“Um, no…” Oats could feel himself blushing again, because hearing the words “birth control” reminded him of Eddie’s paper sack, which now contained three condoms and an empty candy-bar wrapper.