Moody Food (26 page)

MOODY FOOD
WAS STILL the thing. Even after Colin showed up unannounced at the studio one day and heard us working on “A Quality of Loss” and wondered aloud over the talkback about the weird way we were warming up and Thomas fast-tracked us into our first afternoon's worth of automatic-pilot old stuff. Colin said he loved the raw sound we were putting down and was soon insisting that we do all our vocals live to match.

But that day and every day after, before Colin got to the studio and long after he left, Thomas held up the burning hoops of
Moody Food
and we all jumped and leapt as best we could. The couple of hours Colin sat in the booth in the producer's seat working
with us on what he wanted to call
Dream of Pines
were, to Thomas, just a necessary distraction. But there was no way I was going to let him take a two-set-a-night holiday at the Whisky. Not after what I'd seen the Doors do.

My excitement about getting Thomas and Morrison in the same room together and then standing back and watching the sparks fly fizzled out to pretty much nothing. They met all right—once—but it was the big snowstorm the weather forecasts have been predicting for days that never manages to show up. Because of our Whisky commitment we were strictly afternoon visitors to the studio, while the Doors didn't start rolling in until after dark. But one day, just as we were pulling into the parking lot, Paul and the entire band were filing out the front door, having been up all night recording and only now packing it in. Paul introduced us and everybody said hey and Morrison mumbled that he dug our hearse and kept checking out Christine over the top of his shades. I kept trying to get Thomas and Morrison talking about music, but they only exchanged pleasant banalities about the tight fit in the vocal booth and what a great engineer Paul was like a couple of friendly but naturally wary dogs, tails definitely wagging but ready with a raised leg to leave his mark if he had to.

I was disappointed but not about to forget the impression Morrison had left from the Whisky A Go Go stage. My plan was to get Thomas to do a couple of lines of coke right before we hit the boards to get him up and into it, and even during break if necessary. I didn't expect much of a fight and I was right. With enough blow at the Marmont beforehand I even convinced him to dig his Nudie jacket out of mothballs and wash his hair. Christine and everybody else were just relieved there wasn't any talk of playing any of the new songs.

The first night was nice. Vito and his Freaks weren't there, of course, and the place was maybe only half full, but Electric had
commandeered several tables right up front and lured out as many of L.A.'s hip set as possible with the promise of free drinks. Besides Lee and Emily, I even recognized a few faces from the Doors show. Regulars, I guessed.

Between the drugs I fed him and the fact that he had to get some kind of kick over landing back in his old L.A. stomping grounds feet first and front and centre stage at the Whisky, Thomas dusted off “Dundas West” and “Lilies by the Side of the Highway” and all the rest of yesterday's musical news and helped us deliver them in fine fashion. Colin and his friends applauded longest and loudest, but by the end of the first set I could tell by the nodding heads that a few people had started to get it, Slippery's alternately wailing and weeping steel guitar—undoubtedly the first to ever grace the Whisky A Go Go's stage—included.

We closed up the first half of the night with a smoking medley of the Chuck Berry rocker “30 Days,” Buck Owens' country hit “Act Naturally,” and the old blues tune “Love in Vain” and definitely got people wondering what we were up to, not to mention dancing. It was a good place to stop. Thomas told the crowd not to go anywhere because there was a whole lot more where that came from, and we crowded around Colin's table and said hello to everybody from the label. Christine gave me a quick peck and skipped off to where Lee and Emily were sitting.

“Thomas, Slippery, guys,” Colin said, “I want you to meet Rod Crawley of
Open Wound.
Rod writes a music column for the paper.”

Open Wound
, it turned out, was the alternative bible in town, and the kid did look a lot like a music writer for an underground newspaper—all the hippie accoutrements were firmly in place—but with what looked to be the same black plastic-framed glasses and string-bean arms and sunken chest that probably stopped him from getting laid back in high
school and kept him locked up in his room on Saturday nights listening to his treasured collection of 45s.

Everybody shook hands and Colin stood up. “Hey, what can I get you guys?” he said. Heather and I settled on beers, Slippery a Coke, and Thomas nothing.

“Not even a soda?” Colin said. “C'mon, you've earned it.”

“Especially not a soda,” Thomas answered. He looked at Rod across the table. “Thanks to publications like yours, sir, we now know exactly to what extent the government has been lying to us over the years about just how poisonous that stuff is. Right from your lips to your brain cells and—” He cocked his head sideways, rolled his eyes back in their sockets, stuck out his tongue.

All of a sudden Colin didn't look so sure about abandoning the table. But then he saw the amused smile on Rod's face and decided to risk it. He leaned over and whispered something into the ear of the guy who'd greeted us at the Electric office that I could only imagine was of the
keep your eye on this guy
variety and split for the drinks.

Rod pushed his glasses up his nose. “Chuck Berry, Buck Owens, Robert Johnson—that's quite a mix you guys threw together there at the end. What do you call that kind of eclecticism?”

Thomas leaned forward across the table. “We call it goosebump music,” he said. “If it's good, it's
all
goosebump music.”

The kid's glasses kept sliding down his face but he kept pushing them right back up.

“You really think country music and the blues are the same thing?”

“The spades have had their way of getting through and the white man has had his. But we're all singing about the same pain. It's about time we got together and did a little inbreeding.”

“Inbreeding,” Rod repeated. “As in ...”

“As in plucking out our eyes and opening up our ears and getting down to what really matters.”

Rod pulled a pad and pen out of his back pocket. “Do you mind if I write some of this down?”

Thomas leaned back in his seat and absently ran his hand through Heather's hair, eyes scanning the dark room.

“Somebody's going to have to eventually,” he said.

And Rod wrote that one down, too.

UNTIL L.A. I was pretty sure God didn't exist.

But sometimes it seems like there just has to be some kind of Supreme Master of Irony working away behind the scenes and laughing His almighty ass off while pulling all the strings. How else was I supposed to make sense of never once getting asked to the Sadie Hawkins dance during high school and now being encouraged by the soft smiles and long stares and lusty what-not of this or that California girl to take what I wanted from the carnal candy store although, since I'd met Christine, my sweet-sampling days were officially over? The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. And ain't that a bitch.

There was one girl more than the rest. Upstairs from the recording studios, right next door to the bathroom, there was a small lounge where she and a couple of her friends would hang out making coffee for whoever wanted it or running errands if anybody needed anything or just giving somebody a neck massage if that was what was called for. Groupies, I guess, if you had to put a name to them. Not for any band in particular, but for all the different groups that passed through the studio, for anyone who sang or strummed or made soft or loud sounds. They all looked to be in their late teens and one was a blonde, one was a brunette, and one
was a redhead. Paul had dubbed them the Three Graces, and that's what we called them, too.

No one knew any of the Three Graces' real names, and nobody ever bothered to find out. The one that was more than the rest called herself Dew, and that was good enough for me. She was summer sweetness and first morning light and smelled of patchouli sunsets and midnight walks along warm ocean sand. She was short, quiet, boyishly thin, blushed easily, and had long blonde hair. Everything, in total, that Christine wasn't. Not everything that I'd always looked for in a woman, understand; just everything the opposite of what the woman I'd ended up with was. Which, if you've been with the same person long enough, begins to seem like the same thing.

One afternoon on break, while Thomas was on the phone arguing with our dealer and Christine and everybody else were outside having a smoke, I wandered into the lounge, one part of me hoping Dew would be there, another part of me wishing I would quit hoping for things I knew I had absolutely no business hoping for. She wasn't alone—Magnolia was sitting beside her using the shirt on the table between them to make some point of sewing etiquette—but by the time I turned around from the sink with my glass of water there was just me and Dew and the cowboy shirt she was holding up in front of her. It was brown, with white swirling stitching around the collar and over the pockets and shiny silver buttons down the front and at the wrists.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“It's great,” I answered. She kept looking at the floor, and I wouldn't take my eyes off the shirt.

“You really like it?”

“Yeah, it's ... it's great.”

She nodded her lowered head a couple of times and blushed; raised her eyes and caught mine and kept them.

“Why don't you try it on, then?” she said.

“Me? Why?”

“Because it's for you, silly,” she said, getting up and coming over. Still leaning against the sink, I shifted the water glass from one hand to another and crossed and uncrossed and recrossed my boots. No wonder no one ever asked me to a Sadie Hawkins dance.

“You made this for me?” I said.

“Of course.”

She said the two words softly, slowly, stretching out the two syllables forever, so that by the time she was done there was only the shirt between us.

“It didn't seem fair that Thomas gets to wear all kinds of great clothes on stage and you're the best looking one up there and no one's ever made you anything special to show off.”

She placed both of her small feet on top of my size-ten cowboy boots. As far back as high school I'd always gotten off on lanky girls who were at least as tall as me or even bigger, but now all I wanted to do was take Dew's tiny blonde head in my hands and lean down and kiss her little red lips. At least until Thomas stuck his head into the room.

“Hey, Buckskin, let's go. Early supper break. You and me have got a road trip to take over to Watts.”

Dew blushed and stepped down. She folded the shirt in four, kissed me on the cheek, and handed it to me.

“Wear it for me,” she said. “I'm going to watch and see if you do.”

I let her float out of the room, then went downstairs. I stuck the shirt inside the bass drum of my studio kit. I jammed it in just as deep as it would go.

IT WAS ABOUT an hour before we usually left for the Whisky and I was lying in bed trying to decide whether, if I was a castaway like Gilligan, I'd make a play for Ginger or Mary-Ann. Long tall Ginger was definitely more my type, but Mary-Ann looked like the kind of girl who'd stand beside you no matter what, no small virtue whether you were living on a deserted island or not. There was no one else in the room to disturb my contemplation. When I'd woken up that morning, Christine had already left. Something about silk-screening anti-something T-shirts and see you later at the studio. There was a note scribbled on Marmont stationery lying around somewhere.

Gilligan dropped a coconut on the Skipper's foot and the Skipper yelled at Gilligan and the phone exploded and I picked up the receiver on the first ring with a trembling hand. And I'd only done two lines that afternoon. What I heard on the other end didn't settle me down.

“Bill. Please. Come down here.”

“Heather?”

Between the low whisper and panic in her throat, I honestly couldn't tell.

“Bill.
Please
. He's ...”

“Thomas? Thomas is what? Christ, speak up.”

“I can't, he's in the kitchen and ...”

And then the dial tone droned in my ear and I tore off down the hall to Thomas and Heather's room. It was too short a sprint, just six suites down, to imagine what the worst scenario might be, but even if I'd had the time, what I saw when I banged on their door and Thomas shouted “Come on in” wouldn't have been it.

“Afternoon, Buckskin. Excuse our mess here, but we're kind of in the middle of something.” To Heather, “Would you bring me the rest of the tomatoes, darlin'?”

Heather was sitting on the bed by the phone. She looked relieved that I'd come but unsure what to do now that I was there. I saw her put a hand to her freshly purpled eye but warned myself not to jump to conclusions. I nodded toward the little kitchenette and winked and she got up and left Thomas and me alone.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” Thomas said. “And don't forget to wash them good, now.”

He was naked except for his jeans and sunglasses and was sitting on the floor with his bony feet sticking out from underneath the coffee table like it was a miniature desk. Except that instead of books and papers, the table was covered in carrot peelings, the unused ends of tomatoes, loose lettuce leaves, a package of paper plates, and a roll of Saran Wrap. In his hand was the biggest knife I'd ever seen outside of Tarzan movies. He hadn't looked up since I'd come through the door.

“What are you up to, Thomas?”

He whacked the last tomato on the table into six pieces like he was hammering a row of nails. A cigarette with a two-inch ash hung from his lips.

“I'm making salads, Buckskin,” he said. He shook his head like I was either stupid or putting him on and butchered the six slices into six more. I was amazed he still had all ten fingers.

I looked around the room and he sure had been making salads. The unmade bed and both end tables, the couch and easy chair and the desk and its chair, even the top of the TV—every available surface in the room—was covered with what my ballpark figure put at around a hundred of the most pathetic-looking salads in the history of haute cuisine. Seeing as there wasn't anywhere else to put them, the decision had obviously been made long ago to start stacking the damp, limp paper plates loaded with a couple hunks of iceberg lettuce topped off with a few maimed tomatoes and carrots and wrapped tightly underneath a
Saran Wrap lid two and now three deep throughout the suite. Heather was peeking around the entrance to the living room, Thomas's requested tomatoes filling up her hands. I signalled for her to go back inside.

“What's going on?” I said, motioning around the room.

He ripped a clump out of a head of lettuce.

“Thomas, what's going on?”

He didn't look up but did stop tearing at the lettuce; stared out the window at the exclusive Marmont view of everything green and growing that downtown L.A. wasn't.

“All people are good,” he said. “But some people act bad. They act bad not because they are bad but because they're ignorant. And it's the job of those who aren't ignorant to help those who are so they can learn how not to be so they can be good. I'm making as many salads as I can so Heather and I can give them away at tonight's show. At the door. Free of charge.” He looked over at me. “People need to
understand
, Buckskin.”

I saw a good inch of the white ash from his cigarette fall into the salad he'd been working on, but just nodded along with what he said. He nodded too and then packaged up his newest creation with the see-through wrap, ash and all, and stacked it on top of three teetering others. He finally crushed out his cigarette in an overflowing ashtray and bulldozed away the vegetable debris in front of him with the dull end of his knife. Underneath the mess, the table was covered in a thousand tiny scars. He called out to the kitchen.

“Heather, I said I was out of tomatoes, darlin'. Now, I can't make a proper salad if I don't have the proper ingredients, can I?”

I wanted her to stay where she was, but as soon as she heard Thomas's voice out she shot, weighed down with the goods. She carefully unloaded the tomatoes on the tabletop and he started right in chopping away.

“Juan said the kitchen would have those boxes for us any time after five. Would you be a sweetheart and go down and get them?” he said. Heather grabbed the room key and was out the door before I could shoot her an approving look. You don't need to tell a trapped animal to run.

“You won't mind giving us a hand carrying these down to Christopher will you, Buckskin?”

“No. No, no problem.”

“I think I've got enough tomatoes for about ten more salads but that's going to be about it. Can't say I like the idea of showing up down there with not enough to go around for everybody, but we can only do what we can do.” He picked up a carrot and hacked off a quarter-inch on each end.

“How's Heather doing?” I said.

Thomas finished up doing his best imitation of peeling a carrot and carefully laid the end result down on the table; picked up another orange victim, then set it right back down.

“What are you asking me, Buckskin? I don't think I understand exactly what it is you're asking me.”

“I don't know. I guess I'm just thinking that it must be kind of hard on her to have to keep the crazy hours we do and deal with all the stuff we've had to go through. I suppose it must be sort of tough on her, that's all.”

He lifted his sunglasses up on his head and looked at me straight on. His pupils were so dilated his eyes looked too big for his face.

“Heather understands, Buckskin. She might not hear what we hear or see what we see but ... she understands. She understands and is patient. Oh, she is patient. She is so, so patient.”

And I was so, so glad Heather came through the door with the cardboard boxes when she did. Because even if there were tears rolling down Thomas's cheeks, I wasn't going to be the one to coax
him into setting down his knife long enough so I could give him a great big hug. Heather dropped the boxes to the floor, got down on her knees beside him, and did.

Then she started to cry, too, and Thomas began to cry harder and they pulled at each other tighter and tighter and Thomas kissed her hair and her forehead and her wet cheeks and finally her lips. I let myself out and went back to my room.

Where the Skipper was still yelling and Gilligan was still in trouble. And Ginger was nowhere in sight.