How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets (10 page)

I
T’S JUST PAST midnight and a bit cold in the control room. Dean has given up and is napping on the couch. The band is hashing over the songs, thinking and rethinking the mix. Mica rolls her eyes whenever someone suggests punching up the bass or pulling back the vocals or some other tweak. She doesn’t believe in tweaking. She’s instinctive, and she believes that if you get it right the first time, leave it be. You can only go downhill from there.

Evan’s a little frustrated. He’s tired, and tired is bad. He’s hungry. He wants to eat, sleep, and dream.

“Why don’t you guys let it sit, ”Mica suggests.“It needs to cure. Let it sit and come back if you want to play with it some more. It’s all in ProTools, it’s easy enough to pull up.”

They make faces at each other.

“I’m with her, ” Lars says.

“Me, too, ” Evan votes.

Rod and Tony shrug. They’d like to stick around, but they sense the energy is down.

“Can we get some copies for reference?”Tony asks.

“Of course.”

She picks up the phone and tells the machine room to run some dubs. Lars rousts Dean and they all file back into the studio and dismantle their equipment; Mica stows the microphones in a locker. Soon, Billy enters the room.

“You guys were sounding pretty good, ” he says. “Tight.”

“Thanks, man, ”Tony says.

“If you want to hit me with a couple of copies, I could do you guys a turn and slide them to some heads I know.”

Slide them to some heads? Give them out to record labels? Is he crazy?

“Hell, yes, ” Lars says.“Give the man some CDs.”

“The mix isn’t done yet, ” Rod says.“We just roughed it in. We have to tweak it.”

Billy laughs.“Mica doesn’t rough shit in, kid. And Mica doesn’t tweak. And Mica doesn’t stop until a job is done, so if she’s putting equipment away, that means it’s done.”

“Then there it is, ” Lars says, cheerfully.

“I could of sworn the band has a say in how their music sounds, ” Rod grumbles.

“Hey, ” Billy says, “whatever you want. It’s your sound. I’m just saying, I’m willing to put it in some hands for you. And when I put something in a guy’s hand, he gives it a listen.”

“You really think it’s good enough to go out?” Tony asks.

“I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t think so.”

“Then let’s do it. We can always fuck with it later.”

“Yeah, let’s do it, ” Lars agrees.

BILLY LEAVES. TONY and Rod pack up quickly and take off. Mica’s doing something in the control room. And Evan sits on an amp and waits for Lars and his assistant, Dean, to finish loading his van.

“Are you still hungry?” Mica asks Evan, coming into the studio.

Evan nods.“You?”

“It’s late.”

“Where are we going?” Lars asks. Evan looks at him. Dean is by his side. Each of them is holding a cymbal like a strange new kind of discus.

“I’m
starved
, ” Dean says.

“How about
Dick’s
Drive-in?” Lars snickers.

“I can’t have two
Dick’s
in a week, ” Dean chimes in. “Let’s go get a
Whopper
.”

“Gemme somodat
special
saw-uce.”

The two juvenile delinquents burst into laughter. Lars punches Dean on the arm. Dean punches Lars back. What a team. That brain damage of Lars’s probably arrested his emotional and intellectual development at the eighth-grade level. That’s why nobody really noticed. Most people only operate on the eighth-grade level anyway. But Lars’s true colors emerge when he’s around a real eighth-grader. It’s like going home after years spent in a space station orbiting the earth.

“Seriously, though, ” Lars says, “let’s go somewhere in the U-District so I can pick up a freshman and take her home to play Spin the Bottle.”

“I know an all-night sushi joint in Chinatown, ” Mica offers.

Evan straightens up.“Sounds great. Let’s go.”

“I’m not eating any of that raw fish stuff, ” Lars warns.

“Sushi?”

“Yeah, none of that, ” Lars says. “But I do fancy a nice chicken teriyaki, I’ll tell you that. And I like the big fried shrimp and the fried sweet potatoes.”

“Tempura?”

“Yeah. I like that.”

“Me, too, ” Dean agrees. “Big fried shrimp.”

“All right, then, ” Mica says with a smile. “Big fried shrimp all around.”

“IT DOESN’T LOOK like a restaurant, ” Evan says to Mica as they walk up to the unmarked door on King Street.

“It is. Look, they don’t speak a lot of English here.”

Lars balks.“I want to go to an English restaurant.”

“It’s okay, just let me do the talking, that’s all.”

She knocks on the door and a little hatch opens. She says a few words in Japanese, and the door opens from the inside. They enter.

Inside is a dark hallway filled with Japanese people smoking cigarettes. It’s very loud and hot. Beyond the entryway is a crowded, well-lit sushi bar. The room appears to extend farther beyond that, but Evan can’t make it out through the smoke.

A woman approaches them. She’s wearing a slinky blue dress. She bows to Mica. They speak a moment in Japanese. Then the woman opens a door and leads the four of them through an empty hallway and up a flight of stairs. They emerge in a white corridor with sliding paper doors lining both sides. The woman opens one of the doors and motions for them to enter.

“Take off your shoes, ”Mica says.

They leave their shoes at the doorway and step into a tatami room, a small private dining room with a table sunken into the floor. They sit rather awkwardly at the table.

“Anything to drink?” Mica asks.

“Beer?” Lars asks.

“Coke, ” Dean says.

“Want some sake?” Mica asks Evan.

“No, thanks. Just water.”

Mica speaks in Japanese to the hostess, who is kneeling at the doorway. The woman listens attentively, then rises and disappears.

“Are you Japanese?” Dean asks Mica.

“I’m half, ” Mica says.“My mother is Japanese.”

“So you can speak Japanese?”

“Yeah. My mother made me learn it when I was a kid. My father was a jazz musician who died when I was little. He was black. That’s not really a good combination in America. I’m pretty much the epitome of a minority: a black Japanese woman.”

Evan laughs.

“After my father died, my mother remarried a rich Japanese man who owns this place. I would call it a restaurant, but it’s more than that. It’s an entertainment center, I guess. Anyway, ” she says, “free food.”

“I like
that
part, ” Lars whispers to Dean.

A slight woman in a kimono appears with their drinks. She serves everyone and kneels down between Evan and Mica.

“You guys don’t mind if I order for you, do you?”Mica asks.

They all look at each other and shrug. Mica speaks to the waitress who’s waiting quietly at her side, and the woman leaves.

They chat about the recording session while they wait for their food. Mica tells them what she thinks Billy sees in them: the songs are pretty good, but it’s the clean execution, she believes, that Billy likes. Songs and sound can be fixed; sloppiness never goes away.

“What about you?” Lars asks.“Working on anything big?”

“I have to go down to Jamaica soon to engineer a single for a movie soundtrack.”

“Whose?”

“I can’t say. It’s part of the deal. They’re kind of paranoid about publicity. You know.”

“The Stones?”

Mica smiles and shakes her head.“There’s a nondisclosure clause in my contract that says that if I leak a word about anything, even just a
hint
about anything, then I’m fired,
and
they’ll sue me for damages. It’s not that I don’t want to tell you, Lars, it’s that I can’t.”

“It’s the Stones, isn’t it?”

“No, Lars, it’s not the Stones.”

The food arrives. For Dean, a big plate of tempura. For Lars, chicken teriyaki. For Mica and Evan, a huge platter covered with countless pieces of sushi of every imaginable color, shape, and size. Mica directs Evan though the meal—try this, taste that, you’ll like this one—and Lars and Dean look very contented with what they’re eating, until everyone is stuffed.

“More?” Mica asks.

Lars laughs. “I have to pee, ” he says.

“That way, ” Mica points.

“So do you, ” Lars says as he stands, sticking his sweat-socked toe in Dean’s ribs.

“No I don’t.”

“Pee with me, Dean.”

“I don’t have to.”

Lars places a large hand on Dean’s shoulder.

“Pee with me, or die.”

Dean looks up at Lars the Hulk and realizes that it’s not an invitation, it’s a command, so he follows Lars out of the room.

Evan and Mica drift about in the wake of their departure. Evan knows they’ll be gone a while; this is Lars’s way of giving Evan and Mica a moment to get things started . . . or not. Where to begin? Or to begin at all? Evan is too nervous to speak. He looks up at Mica. She’s watching him, smiling at him. She picks up a piece of pickled ginger with her fingers and eats it silently.

“I don’t get it, ” she says.

“Get what?”

“Just about every guy who walks into The Sound Factory hits on me. And the one guy I might actually be interested in, apparently has no interest in me.”

“Who’s that?” Evan asks reflexively, before he thinks about what she’s said. Before he realizes that she’s talking about him.

She shrugs and sighs, almost melodramatically. “I guess I read it all wrong. My mistake.”

“No—” Evan starts.

“No?”

“But . . . aren’t you and Billy? . . .”

She waits for more.

“Aren’t Billy and I . . . what?” she asks.

“You know. Dating.”

“Dating?”

“You know, going out. Boyfriend and girlfriend?”

Mica blushes and laughs. She has a sweet laugh. It starts with her mouth, then moves up to her eyes, and then takes over her whole face.

“No, Evan. Billy and I aren’t dating. Billy’s like my brother.”

“But . . . the Lucky Strike show.”

“We go to shows together all the time. That doesn’t mean we’re dating.”

“So, you’re single?” Evan asks.

“Yes, I’m single.”

“Well, in
that
case . . .”

He takes a deep breath and touches her hand, so soft and warm; he picks it up and holds it. He looks into her eyes.

“Will you marry me?” he asks.

Mica laughs again.

“I hate you, ” she says.

“Why?”

“You’re skipping all the fun stuff.”

“Like what?”

“Like this, ” she says, leaning forward and kissing Evan. Warm bubbles of flesh pressing against his lips, soft slippery tongue, a hand on the back of his neck, another on his arm. She tastes like ginger. Like thin strips of ginger, shaved and piled on a plate, sweet but with a bite. She pulls away.

“Wow, ” he says.

“What are you doing tonight?” she asks.

Tonight? Well, if he stays up any later, tonight he’ll be having a seizure.

“I have to get Dean home and put him to bed, ” he says.

“And then?”

“And then
I
have to go to bed.”

“You’re not going to invite me over for a nightcap?”

“Oh, I’d love to, ” Evan says. “But . . . I’m not sure it’s a good example to set. You know. For Dean.”

Which is a lie. But Mica takes him at face value. She nods and pinches her lips together.

“I wasn’t even thinking. I’m sorry.”

“No, I didn’t mean to imply—”

“But you’re absolutely right, ” Mica says. “I was thinking about myself, and you were thinking about you, and ‘you’ is you and Dean. That just shows what a good father you are, and what a horrible, horrible wench I am.”

“Please, ” he says, and it’s his turn to kiss her, so he does, and for a minute they stay like that, making out in a tatami room in a strange Japanese restaurant where the staff doesn’t speak English.

“What are you doing tomorrow, then?” Mica asks through their lip clench.

“I was going to take Dean to the Center and let him spin his brains around all day on the brain-spinning rides.”

“Sounds like fun. Can I come?”

“I wish you would.”

And then several deliberate footsteps and a throat clearing signal the imminent arrival of Dean and Lars. Evan and Mica quickly pull away from each other and try to compose themselves, but it doesn’t work. When Dean and Lars enter, they are smiling broadly—Evan’s sure they’ve been lurking just outside the door for a while—and when Lars sits back down next to Evan, he leans over and whispers into Evan’s ear.

“You dog, ” he says.“You dog, run.”

Evan blushes, and Mica laughs, and Dean says, “Can I go to sleep now?”

EVAN SITS ON his bed and waits for Dean to finish brushing his teeth. He picks up his acoustic guitar and plucks at the strings. A good father. Ha. He sure has her fooled. Like he’s ever thought of Dean first in his entire life. Little does she know the real reason he put her off: that he was afraid that if she came over they might get naked together, and if they got naked together, they might feel some kind of compulsion to have sex, and if they decided to have sex—and he somehow survived the minefield of exhaustion-induced seizures along the way—she would discover the true depths of his problems: the sun also rises, but Evan and Jake Barnes don’t, if you catch my drift.

His fingers move on their own, it seems. They play things while he’s thinking of something else entirely. And soon he is lightly strumming a melancholy Led Zeppelin song—you know, the one that starts off slow and then gets faster. Har, har. (Sometimes he cracks himself up!)

It may not be too late for him to be a good father, even though he was never a good son. Does that matter? Do you have to be a good son to become a good father? Or can you suck as a son and turn it all around when it’s showtime? It wasn’t like his own father was any good. He never set a good example, at least. To this day, he doesn’t try to hide his true feelings. His father can’t be in the same room with Evan without expressing his profound disappointment in him. He’s allergic to Evan; he can barely look Evan in the eye. He can hardly sit at a dinner table alone with Evan. But is his father really a rotten father, or did Evan make him turn rotten? Maybe everything is Evan’s fault. He’s managed to ruin his father’s life and his son’s life in a couple of pretty effortless steps. (First, step in front of a car. Second, step away from your child.) Almost amusing. Here comes the fast part.
And a pocketful of soul.