Sweeter Life (55 page)

The highlight, of course, was the surprise reunion of the Jimmy Waters Revival. Even jaded press hounds leapt to their feet as Jim bounded onstage to a loping blues groove. He closed his eyes, threw his head back, threw his arms wide and let the crowd’s energy flow through him. When at last a stillness fell over that vast sea of people, when the only sound was the soft pulse of the bass and drums, a few muted chord spasms from
Sonny’s B-3, Jimmy stepped up to the microphone and said:

The crowd roared in approval, fists punching the air. At the same time, the rest of the musicians began to file onto the back of the stage, twenty, thirty, forty people rocking side to side with the groove, while Jimmy said:

The audience applauded wildly as he strode away, an ovation that built to a resounding climax of hands and voices and stomping feet. When he returned for his encore, he was wiping his face with a white towel, the entire stage cloaked in darkness save for the spotlight trained on his movements. He waited patiently for the cheering to subside. Then, he said, “I’d like to introduce you to a friend of mine. Mr. Gil Gannon.”

The audience roared again, though many remembered the name only dimly. As Gil moved to his microphone, Jim slid quietly to the back of the stage and took his position behind Sonny’s B-3. He adjusted the microphone to accommodate his extra height, and when he was comfortable, when everyone had given him a look of readiness, he leaned forward to the mike and said, “This goes out to Ronnie. We’re all lookin’ forward, friend.” Then he counted in Gil Gannon’s biggest hit.

Gil had gained weight over the years and lost the agility and grace he once had. His voice had dropped an octave. His hair was a comical poof, his face swollen and glistening. He moved about the stage with the heavy deliberate step of an old-time boxer. His suit had the cut and shine of Las Vegas, and not the big-time casinos but the dingy off-the-Strip places that featured washed-up singers and foul-mouthed comics. And yet none of that mattered. He sang as well as he ever had, believing every word.

Jim had been playing some in Waldorf, just enough to show people how the keyboards sounded. Occasionally Billie talked him into a song or two—she loved to hear him do Fats Waller. So he was not without chops. But the solo in “Don’t Look Back” required real technique, an edge he’d lost over his years of refusing to play. So, from the moment Cyrus told him about the concert, Jim had practised that solo, playing it over and over again until he could repeat it perfectly, like a prayer. And when the time came, when the band moved through the second chorus and the setup for the instrumental break, when Gil and the other musicians and all the people in the audience turned to him expectantly, Jim was ready to give them The Solo, that raging, Dionysian howl of the free spirit.

But at the very moment he should have begun, when he should have started his signature two-octave gliss up to the minor third, he paused, not a long time, maybe a beat or two, and then quietly began to weave a simpler, sadder, more thoughtful melody, one that summed up more accurately the feelings of the moment, the lives lived, the opportunities lost, the circumstances that had brought them all together. He hadn’t planned it this way. He had wanted to play The Solo one more time for Ronnie’s sake. But in the end it wasn’t possible. He didn’t have the spirit within him to breathe life into the youthful phrasing of long ago. It meant nothing to him anymore; he could scarcely remember who it was that had once played those notes. You can’t step twice into the same stream. Instead he played the melody that hovered somewhere between his heart and mind. It was a more dissonant line this time, heavy with suspensions, the nines and fours, the non-chordal tones; but it was not difficult. It required more feeling than pizzazz. And when he played his final note on that final chord of the passage, he closed his eyes and kept them closed until the song ended. He hoped that Ronnie, that everyone, would forgive him.

THE PARTY BACKSTAGE WOUND DOWN
after about an hour. The good deed had been done, and everyone had someplace to go. Back to a tour or a recording. Back to lovers and families and friends. The goodbyes were emotional, tinged with a feeling of satisfaction.

Cyrus, too, had somewhere to go. He had an apartment in Toronto and the prospect of surgery. Not surprisingly, he found it hard to work up much enthusiasm. He didn’t mingle or make merry. As soon as he could, he caught a ride back to Hidey-Hole.

After a sleepless night, he asked Sophie for one final fry-up. He had nearly finished eating when Nigel walked into the room with a guitar case. “I was going to have Patrick drive you to Heathrow,” he said, “but then I thought we could visit Ronnie before your flight. I’ve dubbed a cassette of the concert. We could play it for him. Oh, and here. I want you to have this.” He set the guitar case beside him. “The National.”

Cyrus stared at the blackness of his coffee. “I can’t play, remember?”

“You’ll think of something. For now a simple thank-you would do.”

They left Hidey-Hole early in the morning and were at the hospital by ten, carrying a portable cassette recorder, two cassettes and two sets of headphones. The authorities had backed off on their plans to hustle Ronnie into a long-term care facility. He could stay until other plans had been made. When Doreen saw their gear, she wasn’t pleased. “No rock and roll parties in here, I’ll have you know.”

“None,” Nigel promised. “Just wanted our friend here to listen to the concert we put on for his benefit. Thought it might cheer him up.”

She looked warily at the two of them. “I was at your concert, and it was too loud. We can’t be having it loud like that in here.”

Again they promised to behave, then hurried to their friend’s room. Nigel put one pair of headphones over Ronnie’s ears and offered the second pair to Cyrus, who had absolutely no interest in hearing the concert again. It had been painful enough the first time. He had no desire to be at the hospital, either. He’d made his peace with Ronnie. Now that he’d decided to go back to Toronto, he wanted to get on with it.

After a few numbers, Cyrus took off the headphones and walked down
the hall. When he found Doreen, he gave her his address and phone number. “Let me know how he’s doing, will you? I have to go home.” He waved his busted hand. “If it wasn’t for this, I’d stick around.”

She kissed his cheek. “He’s a lucky man to have friends like you.”

As he walked back along the ward, he tried to think of his own life in those terms. Who’d look out for him when he couldn’t look out for himself? Who’d sit by his bedside when he went in for his operations? Time and again, the answer to the question was the one person he couldn’t bring himself to speak to just now: Isabel.

He sat beside Nigel and tried unsuccessfully to solve the crossword puzzle. Nigel got them coffee from the canteen, and they chatted casually about the previous night, exchanging catty remarks about various performers, wondering why it was that every artist, sooner or later, became a caricature. Cyrus suggested it had something to do with getting old.

“Look at Gannon,” he said. “He’s stuck in a time warp. Like parents. When they’re young, they keep up with the trends, and then at some point they just stop caring or something. A switch gets flipped and that’s it. For the rest of their lives it’s the same hair, same weird clothes. A guy like Gannon—it’s like he’s making fun of himself.”

Nigel disagreed. “Gil still cares what people think. He wants to be cool in the worst way. But he knows it will never happen, and it drives him batty. Even if he has a comeback, he won’t be cool, he’ll be nostalgic. But I respect a performer like Gil. He still has his fans. They want to hear him sing the hits the way they remember them. They want him to look the same, act the same, and he obliges. That’s what our friend Jimmy Waters never understood, the fans. For Jim, and I think to some degree even Ronnie, music was more quest than communication.”

Nigel put on the second pair of headphones. “Almost finished,” he said, too loudly. “Jim’s introducing Gil.”

Cyrus had four hours yet until his flight. He went through a mental checklist to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. When he looked up again, he screamed—Ronnie was staring at him. Nigel, who had been listening with his eyes closed, jerked to attention and saw what had upset Cyrus.

For the longest while neither one of them seemed able to move. Then Cyrus jumped to his feet and ran to get help, but when he returned with Doreen, Ronnie’s eyes were closed again. Nigel was trembling. As calm and reassuring as a primary school teacher, Doreen retrieved the phones from Ronnie’s head and handed them to Nigel. “It happens,” she said. “It’s nothing to get excited about. Just nerves firing.”

Some time later Nigel drove Cyrus to Heathrow where they gave each other a hug. Almost as an afterthought, Nigel said, “If the bank ever gives up those master tapes, I’ll finish the mix, no charge.”

Cyrus nodded his appreciation, though he secretly feared his record would be stuck in limbo forever. Then he marched purposefully into the airport and checked his bags. His gear would follow in a few days.

Jim was sitting in the departure lounge, waiting for a flight to Chicago. “My dear boy,” he crowed when he set eyes on him, “my every wish is com-in’ true. I was sorry we didn’t get to chew the fat last night.”

Cyrus embraced him. “I thought you’d stick around London awhile.”

“No,” he said, a ripple sounding in his voice, as though he were enjoying some private joke. “This is no longer my world. I have to get back to my Billie. Got myself a good little thing goin’ there, I can tell you.”

Cyrus shook his head. “You were great last night. Everyone thought so. This could be the start of a big comeback—the Revival’s revival.”

“The truth is, my friend, I have been there already. And I believe I have found, at last, my true callin’.”

“That silence thing of yours?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Then I would hardly be workin’ in a music store, would I?” When Cyrus didn’t respond, Jim folded his hands together, leaned forward and said, “I have known salvation, Cyrus, that is the thing. That is the one thing I have tried to get across to people, but they would not hear me, neither my music nor my words nor my silence, deafened perhaps by my own clang and clamour. Now I am trying a simpler approach. I work in Billie’s store and try to connect people to the instruments they deserve, the instruments that will deliver them. And if they require, I help them get started. I lead them step by step. I am their teacher.” He nodded then at Cyrus’s busted hand. “Perhaps it is somethin’ you, too, might try.”

“You mean, those who can’t, teach.”

“Not at all, my friend. Those who have known salvation are obliged to show others the path.”

Cyrus shrugged, unconvinced. “You could reach more people onstage or with a new record.”

“And for every Cyrus Owen who listens to the record and hears his own future, how many others are silenced? For now I’ll make a little less noise, shed a little less light. See if I can help people find their own music.”

A few moments later, a voice overhead announced that the flight to Chicago would soon board. Jim stood then and shook Cyrus’s hand. He said, “Know any horn players?”

“A few.”

“I’ve been thinkin’ about this fella I knew way back when, Mance Morgan. Told me once that most players, you know, they take a deep breath before they start a solo, like they’re gettin’ ready to dive into deep water. But the good ones know better, he said. They know it’s only after they run out of breath that they start playin’ soulful notes …”

Jim’s voice faded away. He gazed slowly around the waiting room, as though he hoped to remember it forever. Then he hugged Cyrus and walked slowly toward his flight.

HIS FIRST MONTH BACK IN TORONTO
, Cyrus was too busy to feel sorry for himself. With checkups, consultations, interminable hours spent waiting for specialists to show, two separate operations and countless sessions with a physiotherapist, recovering was a full-time job and not one he was especially good at. He couldn’t wait to move on.