Tempo Change (17 page)

“Numbers are mystical, too,” he said. “Somebody was once crazy enough to envision geometry and algebra and calculus. They ran out of words and started talking in
numbers and theories. Think of Einstein and the guys who created the computer. In a lot of ways, they stopped making sense to the people around them.”

“This is different. This place where I live doesn’t even make sense to me. Don’t try to walk next to me. Trust me, just be where you are.”

“Is this you telling me to leave you alone?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I’d rather not but I will.”

“No, just don’t envy me. Or admire me. Or pity me. Or whatever that is in your eyes.” I looked at him.

“I like you, Blanche. I really do.”

“Well, you might want to reconsider that, too.”

He leaned in and kissed me like we’d been doing it all our lives.

“Too late,” he said.

A
NYTIME YOU GET MORE THAN THIRTY MILES OUTSIDE OF
L
OS
Angeles County, the landscape turns post-Apocalypse. It’s Mad Max territory; the hills have eyes. Mostly because the world around us is a desert. L.A. is a desert, too, but they’ve drained the rest of the state, making it looking like a regular city. Going to Coachella, we drove past barren landscapes with scraggly brush and literal tumbleweeds and trailers parked at the foot of dry red and yellow rocky hills. We drove past outlet conglomerates and car dealerships and In-N-Out Burgers. It was all so ugly.

Gigi’s parents had rented a van and loaded all our equipment in the back. Ella and Gigi and I stared out the windows and we all indulged in our own thoughts while the Stones rattled on.

“Some pretty big acts are playing here,” Rodney said.
“Some people I remember from my day. I’m looking forward to checking out the scene.”

Gigi rolled her eyes at me and I smiled.

The plan was to play at the Unsigned Competition that day and spend the night and check out the regular festival the next day. Ordinarily I would have been excited about all the bands I’d get to see, but I couldn’t think past our own performance. I didn’t let myself. Because the first stop I’d have had to make was meeting my father again for the first time in almost ten years. When I started thinking about that, my brain started falling apart. The Rodney Stones had us staying in the Royal Desert Inn and Spa. This was not, as you might imagine, where the other unsigned bands were staying. The minute we walked into the lobby I realized why rich people were the way they were. My limited experiences with hotels were not like that. A clerk handed you the key and told you where the vending machines were.

Once in the room, which was practically as big as our house, Gigi started looking at all the amenities the spa had to offer and asked if we could get massages after the gig. She was more like her parents than I’d figured.

I stood at the window and looked at the cloud-shaped pool with all the beautiful tanned bodies in it and I realized there was a whole world I’d never even thought about.

“What’s wrong?” Gigi said, joining me at the window. “Are you afraid of heights or something?”

“No. Why?”

“You don’t have any color in your face. Are you going to faint?”

“It’s all a lot,” I said to her.

“But you know what you’re doing. I mean, this is your thing.”

I struggled to smile. Now was not the time to tell her that I didn’t feel I had a thing.

Her parents came into our room and clapped their hands together like excited children.

Her mother said, “Girls, we should head over. Only an hour until sound check.”

I put my hand to my heart to see if there was any chance of my dropping dead right that moment.

No such luck.

I
T WAS ORDINARY AND IT WAS MAGICAL
. I
T WAS EVERYTHING
and it was nothing. It was the energy of all those people coming together, throwing up their tents and lugging in food and toys and sneaking in drugs and alcohol. It felt like the most important place I’d ever been and it felt like a big dusty field in the middle of nowhere for no reason.

These were my mixed emotions as we walked into the wide-open space in the desert that was Coachella. I didn’t want to think of my mother not being with me. I just wanted to think about seeing my father, at last.

There were stages everywhere, but so far from each other that you could hardly see them all at once. There were a main stage for the headliners, two slightly smaller stages for the midlevel bands and half a dozen tents for the smaller acts.

The Unsigned Competition was taking place on the main stage, where people like Rage Against the Machine and the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Arcade Fire and Bj?rk had played. We were going to be up there. The Fringers. Up there.

We walked past all the performance artists and the huge sculptures of abstract things and the smattering of amusement park rides and the technicians still putting the finishing touches on everything. People had already arrived and were milling around, or sitting on blankets and eating. It was only about half as full as it was going to be. That was too much to think about.

When we got to the main stage, we were greeted by concert organizers and some techs and a sound guy, and before I had time to be nervous, we were being asked all these questions about our instruments and suddenly I had to think about music. I was grateful for that.

The Clauses were just finishing up their sound check when we went in to start ours. Redmond Dwayne, who had buzzed his hair for no discernible reason, was coming off the stage with his guitar slung over his shoulder. He pretended not to know us, just gave us a kind of rock star chin wave, and that was fine with me. I was focused on getting my gear set up. Then he circled back around because, I suspected, he didn’t like my nonreaction.

“Hey, Blanche, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Good luck up there.”

“You too.”

“There are some good bands here. The dudes from Kentucky, of all places. Watch out for them.”

“I will.”

He looked around as if something was missing. Which, of course, it was.

“Where’s the singer?” he asked.

“You’re looking at her.”

“Oh,” he said. “Creative differences?”

“More like spiritual ones.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ve done the right thing.”

He said that like he wasn’t at all sure. Which made him happy.

He said good luck again and left.

We got through sound check without anything terrible happening. At first I was so nervous, looking at all that open space and all those people staring at the stage, I could barely make a sound come out of my guitar or my mouth. But the rest of the band had a lot of energy and I just fell into the rhythm and then I was doing all the stuff I knew how to do. In the back of my mind, the whole time, was the wonder if one of those people staring at the stage was my father.

We only got to do one song for sound check so after that we went to get something to eat. I looked compulsively at my watch. I still had another hour before I was supposed to meet him. And I still hadn’t told anyone what was happening. I didn’t know what I was going to do in the moment, if I was going to introduce him to people or keep him a secret. The whole thing was so unimaginable. In fact, I was starting to believe I’d dreamed the whole scheme.

Ella and Gigi wanted corn on the cob, so I followed them.

We were feeling a little conspicuous since our school uniforms were still our “costumes.” We’d added touches to them, scarves and chains and belts, and I’d chosen studied bed head for my hairstyle, so you could tell we were going for something, not just schoolgirls gotten lost. But the problem with going for an image was that it didn’t entirely make sense out of context. Standing at the corn on the cob stand, I could feel festivalgoers staring at us.

Ella said, “I can’t decide if I like it or not.”

“I do,” Gigi responded. “Any kind of attention is good attention, right?”

“To a neurotic personality,” I said.

But it was kind of cool. The stares made you feel as if you were doing something other people couldn’t do. Or wouldn’t do. Willingness, again. Just getting up there.

While I was holding that thought in my head, I surveyed the crowd, the people who were watchers, not yet willing to get up there, and I connected with them. I remembered when I was that person. I wondered if there was any such thing as going back, being satisfied to be someone who watched. I realized that I listened to music differently and I was looking forward to seeing all the professional acts now that I knew what it felt like to stand on a stage. I could get ideas about moves and arrangements. The universe felt like a classroom to me now, in a school where I was interested in all the subjects and I wouldn’t get a grade.

When my eyes landed on him it was so sudden, I couldn’t look away.

I was sure I was conjuring my father. This wasn’t the moment, after all. The moment was still a half an hour away, by the stage.

But he was standing there, a few feet away from the veggie wraps stand. My famous father eating one and looking at nothing in particular.

He was skinnier than I remembered and older. But other than that, it was as if I’d just seen him the day before. I suddenly recalled everything about him. His stance, the way he bent one knee and kept one hand in a back pocket and he tilted his head and moved it around when he looked at the world, as if guarding against an attack or expecting some delightful surprise. Either one would be material for him.

I could hardly breathe. The sounds of the festival retreated. I was aware of Ella and Gigi chattering but I had stopped hearing the words. I wanted to run away because this was not how it was supposed to happen. It was supposed to be a slow-motion walk toward each other and a soulful embrace and some tears. My tears, I guess. Sometimes I saw him picking me up and twirling me around like when I was little. But it wasn’t supposed to happen with him eating a veggie wrap and me holding an ear of corn.

I was seriously considering walking away when his eyes landed on me.

His mouth drew a straight line. And then he waved. Just that. A wave.

I dropped my ear of corn into a barrel and walked toward him.

As I got closer his smile got bigger and he turned his
head from side to side as if deciding whether or not all my parts were there, whether he wanted to purchase me and take me home.

Maybe. It’s possible that was just me.

“Well,” he said. “Here you are.”

“It’s me.”

He shook his head. “I’m taking it all in.”

He was so much smaller than I remembered. Only a few inches taller than me. To be fair, I was tall for my age, but all I could ever remember was looking up at him. Knowing that if he was going to pick me up or meet my gaze directly, he’d have to bend. Watching him lower himself to be on equal terms, feeling him elevate me, that was the whole idea of having a father. And now it felt as if we were standing practically nose to nose, and I didn’t know what to make of it. I felt like crying and then I pushed that feeling back and searched for another one. I settled on relief. He was here. He hadn’t let me down.

His eyes were still a shocking black. That was how my mother described them. It was a shock to stare into them; it was almost a worry. They were so dark you were afraid you were going to fall in or see your own reflection.

But the truth, she said, was you weren’t even going to see half of what was there.

He took another bite of veggie wrap and threw it away. Then he continued to stare at me.

His dark hair was a lot grayer and a little spiky. His skin was tanned and starting to leather. He still had all his earrings—you stopped counting at seven. His lips were as
red as if he were wearing lipstick. I could see how handsome he used to be. I could see that man still in him but I wasn’t sure anyone else ever could.

He opened his arms and I fell into them and my knees buckled a little. I yelled at them in my mind and then I was standing a little too straight, feeling like a rock against his James Dean-style Windbreaker.

“How … how is it?” I asked when he finally let go.

“How’s what?”

“Being back in the world.”

He laughed. “Oh, I recognized it right away. I fell right into its customs. It’s not so bad.” He gestured around him. “This is something. We never had anything like it in my day. Nobody went to see festivals back then. Arena shows. That was it.”

“I guess it’s a throwback to the sixties.”

“Sure. All this camaraderie in the open air. Someone could start a revolution.”

He smiled and rubbed a knuckle across my cheek. “I can’t believe you.”

“Why?”

“You’re grown. You look like your mother. You got the red hair.”

“Well, it’s dyed a little. It’s less red on its own.”

He just smiled, staring at me.

Then he said, “Is she here?”

“No. She couldn’t … she was busy … she had to work.”

He nodded. “I didn’t figure she’d want to see me.”

“Oh, she wanted to.”

He gave me a one-armed hug. “You don’t have to make things better than they are. That’s not your job. Not anybody’s job. Besides, I’m happy to have this time with you.”