Killer Heart

Killer Heart

Yeah, I’m in this band. Wilde at Heart. It’s this whole David Lynch / Oscar Wilde thing. Either you get it or you don’t.

The name is mine; in the sense that I made it up. More than that: I dreamed it. I fashioned it out of my creative consciousness. I’m a bass player. I play the bass.

* * *

Bass players are always the creative ones. We’re the ones who actually do the thinking. They used to put these little catch-lines on the backs of albums in the soi-disant sixties. Soi-disant means so-called. I call them that, the soi-disant sixties, because everybody talks about the sixties like they were actually the sixties, but they weren’t; they were the seventies. Communication Breakdown is 1969. Look it up.

Anyway.

They used to put these little catch-lines on the backs of albums. Next to Ritchie Blackmoor and Alvin Lee and Robin Trower it would say, “A veteran of multiple ground-breaking rock/fusion projects, he carves out a bold new space for sonic expression with his fretboard versatility.” Then next to the bassist it would say, “He hails from Fresno.”

I mean, every now and then it might say he’s the backbone of the band or some shit. But it never comes out and says: he’s the creative thinker. He puts the deep in purple. He’s the only guy in the whole damned outfit who actually knows about art.

* * *

Here’s a question: Who was the greatest bass player ever?

It’s a test. If you’re uncool, you say Entwhistle. You can redeem yourself, maybe, by choosing The Real Me over My Generation. But if you try and back up your claim by citing My Generation you suck, you know nothing about rock, you are very much an A-sider, my friend. I sit down on the dressing room floor and start to cry.

What the hell’s the matter, the drummer says. Actually he’s a second drummer; he does this percussion thing while standing next to the first drummer with weird-looking African instruments that still have animal hair on them. She met him in a zoo in New Haven. He’s a good guy. He snorts so much coke that he’s going to die.

What the hell, he says, rubbing his nose-bone up and down like Dan Ackroyd in the old days. Is it her again?

The floor where I’m sitting is sticky and it smells like fake popcorn spray. Up front I can hear the crowd starting to chant her name.

Fuck her, he says. Fuck her. Fuck her fuck her fuck her. Then he starts saying it really loudly into the mirrors and then he runs onstage shouting fuckerfukerfuker! I actually think it’s Ecstasy this time.

* * *

She’s sixteen. It only says she’s eighteen on the records to keep things easy with the law. She’s sixteen. She has more talent than ten or eleven bands I’ve worked with. When she goes out on stage they scream at her; they f-ing scream at her. It’s like they can’t believe their fucking brains, it’s like every inch of them is just overloading with impossible fantasies. Like every fiber of their bodies is saying this moment right now is better than Jesus. I’m standing here, they are saying, and she is right over there—not on a CD liner, not on some kiddie-porn VH1 special, but right there, behind that fat-ass bassist. You can almost hear their souls.

Her fingers are so small she puts two of them inside the slide and just uses her pinky for seventh chords. When she walks between microphones she lets the telecaster hang down like she doesn’t even care if it lives or dies. Guys in the front row know how that guitar feels. They hope their girlfriends aren’t watching them sidelong as she goes past. At that moment they would give anything. Absolutely anything.

* * *

You’re an emotional cripple, Cory, she says to me in the hotel room. You’re like, an emotional cripple.

I am trying to educate you on your chosen discipline, I say, but she puts her middle finger up her nose and walks out. Am I pissed? Sure I am. Keith Moon broke his wife’s nose three times. Rock stars have history with their girlfriends’ noses.

I go for some Cheetos from the hallway vending machine and when I get back she is gone. Really gone, like Elvis has left the building gone. I look around, sure it’s going to be the guitar guy again. But it isn’t the guitar guy this time. He is spread out on the couch watching pay-per-view and trying to play it tough, like he doesn’t care where she went either, but I can see it in his face. That night he drinks a lot and throws up but he doesn’t look like he means it. A couple days later she comes back.

You’re a cripple, emotionally, she says, as if our conversation has just had a three day hiatus. Hiatus means long wait. There’s her toy-boy waiting for her in the hallway, all dippy-doo and earrings up around the part of the ear that’s hard to pierce. He isn’t just the cat who ate the mouse, he ate the entire fucking cat. Like laying her gives him a right to look at us as if we’re equals. Like it makes him rock.

* * *

The seventies were about integrity of expression. What did the best Yes albums have in common? Roger Dean covers. Why does Tormato suck so bad? No Roger Dean cover. You have to think in terms of total expression.

Bulls’ balls, she says. She says that kind of thing a lot; you’d be surprised. I have to rewrite the lyrics for her.

Who played bass for Peter Gabriel?

That guy, she says. African guy.

You’re thinking of Paul Simon, I say, spitting a piece of tobacco off my tongue. That’s what you know.

Bulls’ Balls.

You don’t know. You love Sledgehammer and you don’t know.

I do know. I just can’t think of his name.

Who plays bass on The Doors’ first album?

It’s a frickin trick question. They used the keyboard.

You sure?

Don’t you call me an A-sider, Cory, she says. Just because you’re a few decades older than I am.

She goes out on the balcony and looks at the desert. We’re in Arizona, playing at a blues fest for white people who want to be black people. Later there’s a chant thing for white people who want to be Indians. Out of the corner of my eye I see the guitar guy still looking at her like he’s a puppy who lost his Kibbles ‘n Bits, but she isn’t looking back.

Nobody gets me, Cory, she says, when I come out behind her. Nobody gets my thing.

I know it, I say, after a minute.

She puts her little arm around my side. The feeling of her hand on my skin even that much is obscene.

I’m sorry about the groupie, she says.

I strike a posture.

I’m all alone out there, she says. You know I’m all alone.

Nobody has what you have on stage, I say to her. Not that I’ve seen. Not since the soi-disant sixties.

I’m not talking about that, she says, and her hand goes a little deeper. I’m all alone, always, everywhere I go.

I know.

I’m sorry about the things I do sometimes, Cory, she says. You know it’s just me. It’s just how I am.

We look at the darkness until it gives us some stars. I think of John Lodge on the back of In Search of the Lost Chord, his head turned musingly skyward.

Some day we’re going to die, I say.

Don’t give me any rock and roll bullshit, she says.

* * *

We play Graceland and it’s a good show. The second drummer guy is dead and a friend of the first drummer sits in. I’m on top of my game and it feels great, it feels real, it feels like metal rockets coming through my fingers. The guitar guy remembers the break and we all get it together; at the encore she turns and gives us a smile and it’s like springtime has leaned down and brushed your cheek.

Give it up for my band, she says, and they roar. They don’t care. She could tell them to drop to the ground and talk out of their asses, they’d do it. Hell, I’d do it too. She is like Circe, she can transform us. That night we make love and it’s like the first times. Afterward she falls asleep and I’m so happy I do a bong with nothing in it, just to hear the bubbling.

* * *

I have a nightmare that I’m having sex with Debbie Harry young again in her spandex thing, beautiful and dangerous the way she was in Videodrome, only when I’m about to climax I look in her face and she’s Ziggy Stardust. It is the most horrible moment of my dreaming life.

I jump awake sure she is going to be gone but she is still next to me in the motel bed. The guitar guy has his foot on the mattress like he wants us to maybe consider a threesome but he’s full of shit. In his dreams.

* * *

For a while it’s good again.

Wilde at Heart is selling shows, the money is there and the music is real. We eat chips on an open-out sofa in Des Moines and she says she likes the name because she always liked Barracuda. She says when she was eleven she wanted to be cool more than anything in the world but she couldn’t remember that Heart did Little Queen and Queen did Killer Queen but nobody did Killer Heart. It scared her so bad she thought she’d never fit in.

I tell her Wilde at Heart isn’t about Heart, it’s about Oscar Wilde, either they get it or they don’t. I tell her Barracuda was just Immigrant Song on training wheels. I say if you ever understood all the words to In the Evening you would die. We argue over which is the coolest ending ever, A Day in the Life or Who Are You?.

Ka-bam, I say, hitting the cushions and making the springs shake. Who . . . who . . . who . . . aaare . . . ka-BAM! She tells me her dad used to slap her mother’s forehead when he was pissed. He always said ka-bam just before he did it. I hate myself.

Later she tells me kind of offhand that the best thing Frank Zappa ever did was to get mentioned in Smoke on the Water. We laugh. It’s good again.

* * *

We make love repeatedly; we are happy and foolish. We are like two frolicking puppies in a meadow of love. We are all things free and unencumbered. She shows me the trick you can do with Altoids.

Name bands that sing about other bands, I say.

I asked Bobby Dylan, she sings. I asked the Beatles. I asked Timothy Leary, but he couldn’t help me either.

I sold my soul to mister Jimmy, I counter. And he said one word to me, and that was Dead.

Stone me just like Jelly Roll.

I heard old Neil put ‘er down.

Those Klan fucks, she says. They don’t count.

We’re lying naked in a hotel room in El Paso. I tell her my theory that all musicians who die in planes are crashing into one another in a higher dimension. It all happens at once.

Patsy Cline, I say, flew into Ritchie Valens.

I dig . . . the Mommas and the Poppas, she sings. She is still playing the first game.

Randy Rhodes crashed into John Denver.

Coo-coo-kechoo, Mrs. Robinson, she sings. Jesus loves you more than you will know.

And everyone crashed into Skynnard.

Those Klan fucks, she says. They don’t count.

* * *

We make love tripping and for a second I think she’s become a garage with an automatic door opener.

The shows are unbelievable, the guy who books us looks like he’s going to bust out of his tie. She is open and receptive now and I try to teach her everything I know about rock. I tell her that’s The Beach Boys on side four of The Wall. And that’s Mick Jagger singing backup on You’re So Vain. And Stevie Ray Vaughan playing rhythm on China Girl.

Why the hell would you put Stevie on rhythm? She asks. She is still pretty high but when she looks at me there is something in her eyes, something real and young and unbelievably fragile. The night before she has told me that without me she would never laugh, and if she never laughed she would stop singing forever. It is the single most moving thing anyone has ever said.

* * *

I step into the men’s room five minutes before concert time and there’s the guitar guy in the next stall. He’s just sitting there on the toilet, kind of staring ahead of himself as if trying to think of a word. He’s so burnt on inhalants he looks like a fish in a tank.

I say, You sellin’ what you’re smokin’? Just, you know, to break the ice. He comes staggering over with the baseball pants still down at his ankles. He hugs me and he tells me about the first time he knew he was destined to play lead. He says for everybody else it was Eruption but for him it was Hats Off to Roy Harper. He’s pawing my chest a little between words as if seeking a nipple.

Do you love her, man, he asks. Because if you love her, fuck.

I say I do, but he doesn’t seem to process it.

Cause if you love her, fuck, he says. I’ll get out of the way. If it’s love.

It is, I say, but he still doesn’t seem to have heard. In fact, he doesn’t seem entirely clear on the whole “conversation” idea. He pulls up his pants and ties the little string.

Might as well jump! he shouts, leaping back and doing an air-guitar thing with his hands even though he has an actual guitar hanging upside-down on his back.

* * *

Then it’s Tulsa. Tulsa sucks. The audience actually boos. The guitar guy gives them the devil sign and someone throws a cup of beer at him. You suck, they shout. You suck, Frampton. They always rag on him for the hair. I’m actually laughing a little bit inside but then she walks off stage right there, those super-high boots making the only clapping sound in the place. We have to fill out the rest of the set with something so we play Happy Jack. The audience boos.

* * *

The guitar guy doesn’t die but she gives him a broken cheekbone with a beer bottle she’d been learning to use like a slide. He’s out of the band after that, and we see him following us around for a while, showing up at gigs and drinking from the bottle she hit him with. He stands in the back with all that hair like he’s Roger Daltrey walking across giant pinballs. He gets in a couple fights just so she’ll notice him. Then he’s gone.

She gets on the cover of Rolling Stone just because it was booked six months earlier. She does it naked and then they digitize the image so you can’t see. I think she has sex with the photographer.

* * *

I know what’s coming. It’s every bass player’s bad dream: it follows us around. You can pretend you matter, you can talk about how the bassist is the deep thinker, the soul of the music and the only one who understands art. But it’s just talk. Nobody’s asking Band of Gypsies if they’re free to cover a Bar Mitzvah this weekend.

You’re fired, Cory, she says.

I scratch my crotch. I wish I hadn’t done it; it’s an awful thing to have been doing just then. But there it is, as Greg Lake said.

Am I? I say, trying to sound laid back.

Yeah, she says. Fuck yeah. You’re out.

You think you’re ready for that? I say. One is the loneliest number.

Jesus fuck, Cory, she says. Just get out. You’re old and your music is old and everything you say is old. The bands you talk about never even fucking existed. They didn’t have rock back in the fucking, back in the bronze age. Nobody is going to boo me ever again. You make me sick.

I stand up, but my legs are shaking. The leather pants go creak-creak.

You talk and talk about old shit no one knows or gives a shit about, and your bass sounds old and your dick is old and everything about you is old. Goodbye.

Somehow that seems like an album title. Everything About You Is Old. I can’t stop my mind from thinking it. Your Dick Is Old.

We’ve both been under a lot . . . I begin, and she hammers me with a piece of wood. It was just sitting there on the kitchen table in the Monterey Come-On Inn. She really swings it, too; it’s like she’s going for my brain. I run from the room. It’s got no dignity, but it’s the truth. I run from her. She chases me onto the balcony and down the stairs and over the lower balcony, which is only a foot above the ground but still, I’m falling, and she’s still swinging hard with the wood against my pointed-up legs, turning it around to try and get the nail end going toward me to give me tetanus.

* * *

Here’s the answer: the greatest bassist ever was Jaco Pastorius, and yes he did play rock. He did a cover of Hendrix’ cover of The Star Spangled Banner. You know who Hendrix was and you know who Francis Scott Key was but you don’t know who Pastorius was or if you did know that you didn’t know he did a cover of Hendrix’ cover of The Start Spangled Banner. That’s my point.

The bassist is always expendable. The bassist is always the quiet one.

* * *

I walk the streets a lot. It rains. She puts out a CD. The lyrics are bad. She uses the phrase bull’s balls twice, once in the line, All the bull’s balls you’re handing me is so whatever, and then more obviously in a song title, Bull’s Balls. I look for references to me but there aren’t any. She changes the name of the band to Killer Heart and I refuse to go to any of her shows. I look for a new act.

I played with Leon Redbone once, when I was a kid. Now I don’t even remember if he was any good. I don’t think so, but I can’t be sure. I call his agent and she puts me on hold.

* * *

After a while I go to her show. She’s playing at another blues festival in Portland. There’s an announcer and Johnny Lang is first. Next is Shannon someone and then she’s up. She comes out on stage and the crowd just ignites; it’s like the old days, all of them are surging for her, they become a mad wave made of hope and expectation. Everyone hears in her voice and sees in her body the shape and outline of his own personal ambition. You know?

And this part stings: she looks really, really happy.

At the intermission there’s a tap on my shoulder. It’s the guitar guy. He doesn’t look so good. I ask him if he’s been following her for an entire year now. He nods yeah.

He asks me if I want to start a new band. I say no. Then he asks me f I want to have sex with him. I say no again. He’s hurt.

After her, I say, trying to come up with a reason. After her . . . what could compare?

His face lights up. He nods like this is profound. He’s finally seen the wisdom of me and the things I say, as if in this one statement he has witnessed what he’d always been seeking. We bond. I have sex with him just for the hell of it. It’s weird. In the morning he’s dead.

William Orem writes in multiple genres. His first collection of stories, Zombi, You My Love, won the GLCA New Writers Award, previously given to Sherman Alexie, Alice Munro, Louise Erdrich, and Richard Ford. His second collection, Across the River, won the Texas Review Novella Prize and will being published soon. Currently he is Writer-in-Residence at Emerson College. We do have to put in the bit about the previous publication of the story.