Day after the husband showed up, it was Monday. I played the Local on Roncy, with an old-timey type group that wanted to keep things pure. Pure meant three-chords, nothing fancy. A fiddler from BC sat in that night. Changed the key in the middle of a number, tried to ramp things up a notch. Sent everyone scrambling for their capos. Afterwards I broke his nose. Wasn’t myself really.
Tuesday I played with a singer-songwriter-type girl. Bar on Queen West. The flower sellers come in there. Some of them sell flowers that light up and blink. The hallway to the washrooms is pretty narrow. Her name was Harmony. Pretty sure it was a fake name. Don’t know how she came up with Harmony when she sings by herself. She looked like she had kicked a bad habit and was starting over a little old. But she had talent.
Turns out she wanted to fire me. Told me after the gig I was too intense. It’s true I get nervous. I take calcium supplements for that. Like beta-blockers, only cheaper. When you get nervous, your body eats up calcium, and then the depletion gives you a case of the shakes, which makes you even more nervous. It’s a cycle. I tried to take glucosamine too, for arthritis. But it hurt my stomach too much so I had to stop. Anyway, I don’t have arthritis.
I don’t know where Harmony got this idea I was messed up, but she was pretty intense herself so it was hard to convince her of anything other than what she believed. I asked if she’d give me one more chance and she said come back in two weeks and see if she hadn’t replaced me yet.
That was an early night. I went home and thought about my girl. How she told me when we first met that I made a two-dollar suit look like a million bucks. How she kept me relaxed. I was always getting paranoid. She kept me relaxed. That was her primary virtue. Guess that’s what turned a little thing into love.
Wednesday I played a blues set at the 403 on Roncy. Only pops up from time to time. Singer’s name was Gloria. She’s Ojibway, with a blind and swollen eye and a voice like Stelco. I met her a few years ago. Up north in a tee-pee. Introduced herself while sitting on the can. Made a joke about how it was a throne and the people had to bow down before her. And they did. Then she sang some and I played on a washtub bass that someone dragged out. I hadn’t played since high school. Gloria told me music was going to save my soul. She was right. Called me Plunk Henry, which I guess is who I am.
I’m Plunk Henry. How do you do.
The rest of the time was a bit of a blur.
I was living in a big warehouse building on Niagara Street. Still am, I guess. You really live alone there. You take the freight elevator or you take the stairs. I stayed in my bed, knowing no one would come and bother me. Tried to imagine her but instead I’d see the husband with her. She’d be fulfilling her wifely duty over and over and over again. Made me a bit crazy. I’d lie there in my underwear and jerk off and cry. Or try to cry. I don’t know if I cried. I never thought about anyone else. Even tried to draw a picture of her. Tried to draw her mouth. Looked more like a mustache. Tried to draw her breast. Looked more like a fried egg. Still, my doodles were better than all the porn on the Internet.
After a couple days, I was still trying to get a grip. I tried to imagine our relationship in a year or two. Maybe less than a year. Maybe six months. Not having sex anymore. Me starting to think she talked too much. She telling me what she thought of my playing.
Didn’t work though.
Eleventh day she came up the freight elevator and appeared at my door. Said the husband was gone back to Iowa or Idaho. I was a bit stunned. I’d taken the mushrooms she’d left for me. When she came in, she sat down in the only chair in the room, petting the cat that got in with her, and telling him that he was a bad cat, that he shouldn’t be there. I looked at her. Her skin was paisley and her eyes were burning brighter than a mirror in the sun.
She said it made her feel like a cheap whore, coming from her husband’s bed to mine. I told her it wasn’t her husband’s bed and she wasn’t a cheap whore. I told her she was my precious flower. She told me to shut my mouth. Said she felt like a cheap whore. Said she liked the feeling. Liked putting her mouth around the words.
I should have taken my cue from that, I guess.
She chastized me later. Said I burned her insides. Truth is, it burned me too. Hurt to pee for a couple of days. What comes of a girl making you so you don’t know which end is up.
She seemed flattered though, she could screw me up so bad to get a bona fide chemical reaction. Like I was her little science project. And it calmed me down too. I remember getting up at dawn. Saw the sun coming in through the window. Thought, I’m normal. Wondered if I’d stay that way. Remembered how things had been a few weeks before. When I’d rehearse with fellow musicians.
Musicians are generous people, the same way that language instructors are. They know you want to communicate. Nobody wants to stab you in the back. Been told too that bass players live longer than all the others. Like elephants with their ears that grow large, encouraged by low and gentle music. I’m still waiting for that.
We holed up for a few days. I cancelled all my gigs. Was running out of money but she didn’t seem to mind. Told me when we came up for air we’d figure something out. Said she knew a guy who knew a guy.
She sure knew how to make me relax.
Still, after five or six days, I realized it was the night of my second-chance gig with Harmony. The last thing I wanted to do, this stage of my career, burn my bridges.
I said I was going and she was insulted. Like, really insulted. Like a whole different person came out. I said I just wanted to play and she said I sounded like a broken record. Said her baby sister played better than me. Said if I was going to treat her like trash, she was going to treat me like something worse.
She really didn’t mean it though. She was just feeling sore.
As I rolled out the door she threw an old mandolin at me. Hit the wall beside my head. I heard the crack. Reminded me how I backed the car over that bass. I lived a nightmare for a while after I lost that bass. Felt like I’d had this pact with the devil. Said he’d come to collect his pay. Only I couldn’t remember any of the good parts. The upshot was any instrument I put my hand to was set to break. Even the washtub bass in Wicky. Even the one I had now. Devil promised it would make the sound of a wrecking ball going through old paneling. It was my destiny, he said. Didn’t make any sense. All I did was back over a bass in a driveway. Where’s the unpardonable sin in that?
There was something wrong with the freight elevator. In the end I took the stairs, lugging the rig down two floors. Awkward at the corners of the landings. Then out into the street, rolling up Niagara to Queen. Heading west. Like it was your average night.
It was hot though. Muggy. I was sweating by the time I got to that bar. With the blinking flowers and the narrow bathroom hallway. Like half the bars in Toronto, you’re probably thinking. I’m sure you don’t mind me keeping it vague.