In Big Trouble

Chapter 8

Primo's, the bar where Crow's band had last played, was a local place, but it was so cheesy and soulless that it might as well have been part of a national chain. Tess's own neighborhood back in Baltimore had more than its share of these desperately zany places, where fun had to be planned and delineated with great care, and where the anti-bacterial cleansers overwhelmed the yeasty beer smell that a bar should have. They even had the same "theme" nights: Ladies' nights, mambo nights, Jamaica nights, Super Bowl night, cigar nights, two-for-one shooters, bottomless maragaritas.

Yet every night was the same. These bars were the cruise ships for Generation Whatever, the sullen young things for whom Tess had babysat when she was in her teens. Now that they had attained their majority-or, in the case of Primo's, attained the fake IDs that claimed they had attained their majority-they didn't know how to do anything but watch, complain, and repeat punch-lines from the sitcom of the moment. Kids today, she thought contemptuously, eyeing the morose happy-hour crowd.

"The manager here?" she asked the bartender, who was whistling as he worked. At least he seemed to be enjoying himself. He winked and gave her a raffish smile as he jerked his head toward a nearby door.

"In there," he said. "And if you want to be his friend, I hope you're packing some raw meat in your bag."

The man wedged behind the desk in the tiny office was startlingly huge, three hundred pounds plus. He didn't get up when Tess entered, a lack of politesse for which she was grateful. She couldn't help thinking the desk functioned as a retaining wall for his girth and that if he stood, his huge stomach would come rolling toward her like a tidal wave.

"Yeah, they played here," he said, barely glancing at the page from Marianna Barrett Conyers's newspaper. A nameplate, a dusty pink lei looped over one end, provided the name he had neglected to give, Don Kleinschmidt. "Now they don't."

"Weren't they any good?"

"They're great, if you want some chick up there singing stuff nobody's ever heard of and nobody can dance to. All the little girls want to be Fiona fucking Apple these days. Which is okay, if you want your own goddamn Lilith Fair every night. But chick music doesn't bring the guys in, and the guys are the ones who drink. If I wanna sell cranberry juice, I'll get me a Snapple franchise."

Kleinschmidt lit a cigarette and looked around for an ashtray. A bright orange oval one sat on some bracketed shelves on the wall to his right. He could have reached it if he stretched. Apparently, Kleinschmidt had decided that a man's reach shouldn't exceed his grasp, for he flicked the ashes into a half-empty glass of Coke instead, then dropped the hand holding the cigarette behind the desk, as if fearful that Tess might demand a puff. Such stinginess seemed instinctive to him, Darwinian even. He hadn't gotten to his current size by sharing.

"I need a band that plays covers, dance tunes," he continued. "Oldies like ‘Wooly-Bully,' ‘Louie, Louie,' and whatever crap is on the radio right now. If the band has a girl singer, she can make like Alannis every now and then, but it's gotta be familiar. People come here to hear music they already know and eat food they already like. The only strange they want is on their pillow, after they leave. Get me? Get me?"

She got him. "And this band, Little Girl in Big Trouble, couldn't do that."

"Wouldn't do it. They said if they were going to play crap, there were people in town who would pay them more money to do it. So they walked. Prima fucking donnas."

"The girl was difficult?"

"No, it was him, mostly." He tapped a ridged, nicotine yellow fingernail on Crow's face. "Fast Eddie here. He didn't like me talking to the girl. He didn't like anyone talking to her. Jealous little schmuck. Almost started something with a customer one night. That was the end of it, you wanna know the truth. We might have worked out our artistic differences, but I draw the line at trying to beat up customers."

Pacifist Crow must be on on a real Sir Galahad trip with his new girlfriend, trying to impress her. "Do you know if they're playing anywhere else in town?"

Kleinschmidt smirked, sucking on his cigarette, then dropping it behind his desk again. His mouth was tiny but full, a child's pink rosebud, incongruously pretty. It made him look as if he had just eaten a small boy, who was now trapped in those mounds of fat. Don't be a fatist, Tess scolded herself. Kleinschmidt would be disgusting at any weight.

"What's the information worth to you?" he asked.

It would have been easy enough to slide a twenty his way, even a fifty. Tess's per diem was based on the understanding that the occasional bribe was one of her operating costs. But she hated the idea of giving this man anything.

"How about if I don't come back here tonight and help the cops pick out all the underage kids at the bar? How much is that worth to you?"

Kleinschmidt shrugged and stole another puff from his cigarette. "I can't be checking IDs too closely. Trinity University is our bread and butter here on St. Mary's Street. I'm flexible with the chronologically challenged. That's why I'm still here after fifteen years, while almost every other place along here has bit the dust."

"I'm waiting," Tess said.

He sucked on his cigarette as if it were a straw in a glass with just a few drops of soda left. "Last I heard, they were playing at the Morgue."

"The Morgue?" First Marianna's house of horrors, now this. Tess was beginning to think San Antonio was one death-obsessed burg.

"Not morgue-morgue. Newspaper morgue. The developer picked up the old San Antonio Sun building cheap, thinking he'd make it into a mini-mall. You know, shops on the bottom, professional offices up above. But he couldn't get the right mix of tenants. So now it's like five music clubs in one. There's a big room downstairs for headliners, then lots of little rooms that can change their personalities to fit whatever nostalgia craze is under way."

"How do you change a room's personality?"

"That's the beauty of it-the decor is totally minimal. All he needs to do is frame a few front pages to change the era. Like, a disco room, with front pages from the seventies-Watergate, Nixon resigns, blah, blah, blah. Eighties? Stock market crash of '87. He's making money hand over fist, the lucky bastard. I heard he based it on someplace up north."

"We had something like that in Baltimore, the Power Plant. But it went bankrupt. Now the Inner Harbor has all the usual theme restaurants-Hard Rock Cafe, ESPN Zone, Planet Hollywood. Anne Tyler was being whimsical when she wrote The Accidental Tourist, but it's come true."

"Yeah, the more people travel, the more they like to stay at home. They got a point. I mean, you ever heard mariachi music? I pay those guys to stop."

They smiled cautiously at each other, pleased they had found something on which they could agree. "So do you think this band is still at the Morgue?"

"Could be. All I know is that Fast Eddie isn't my problem anymore. It's Friday night, go check out the scene yourself. You'd have a better time here, though. You know what we say, ‘Primo's is primo!'" He dropped the butt end of his cigarette into the dregs of his Coke, where it sizzled and sank.

"Maybe some other time."

Kleinschmidt eyed Tess thoughtfully. She couldn't help feeling he was wondering what she would taste like broiled, with a baked potato on the side. "You look like the demographic I really want-out of college, a little more money to spend than some of these kids. What would make you come here?"

A knife at my throat. But Tess, long the sounding board for Kitty's money-making schemes, couldn't help being engaged by the question. "I don't know-something pop culturish, slightly ironic and totally self-referential. They may call us Generation X, but we're more like Generation Self-Obsessed. Which makes us exactly like the boomers, come to think of it. How about…lunchbox night?"

"Lunchbox night?"

"Everyone brings their lunchbox from fifth grade. In this age range, you'll probably get a lot of ALF, The Cosby Show, Family Ties. You could give prizes for people who can sing the theme songs, play TV trivia. What was the name of Cosby's youngest daughter, that kind of stuff."

"Lunchbox night. I like it! And lunchbox sounds kind of dirty, if you say it right."

"I hadn't thought of that."

"Well, that's what separates the true entrepreneur from the rest of the population," Kleinschmidt said, smug as a Cheshire cat. "I know how to take an idea and run with it."

"Without ever getting out of your chair," Tess said.

The Morgue stood at the intersection of Broadway and McCullough, two streets that began their lives parallel, then somehow managed to meet. Tess, who knew Baltimore so well that she could visualize its every joint and connection, had gotten lost for the second time today, and it made her grumpy. What kind of place had parallel streets that met? For that matter, what was with the street names here? Who was Hildebrand, for Christ's sake, or MacAllister? She wanted streets named Paca, Calvert, and Charles. Those were good names. Here, it was Austin, Houston, Milam, and according to her map book, one called Gomer Pyle. Well, Gollll-eeee.

Back in Baltimore, it was eleven o'clock-the perfect time to leave another cryptic message on Tyner's machine. Here, it was ten o'clock, early in clubland, but late enough so the band should be well into its first set. She wanted them to be onstage, wanted a chance to watch and study Crow without him seeing her. Then-well, she hadn't figured that part out yet. Technically, all she had to do was tap him on his shoulder, tell him to call his parents, and start driving back to Baltimore as fast as she could. If she really pushed it, she could be in her own bed by Sunday night.

But there was still the little matter of a dead guy up on the property where Crow had recently stayed. She wasn't buying into Marianna Barrett Conyers's theory of context, coincidence, and elephant-patting, not just yet.

She paid the ten-dollar cover, had her hand stamped, then lingered for a moment in case anyone wanted to see her ID. As someone who had looked twenty-one when she was fifteen then twenty when she was twenty-nine, Tess wasn't used to looking her age. It didn't seem that long ago that she had been scrounging up fake IDs and now she was flicking her braid at convenience store clerks, practically begging them to challenge her right to buy a six-pack.

"Where would I find Little Girl in Big Trouble?" she asked the young man who had taken her money, a broad-shouldered blond who was trying, without much success, to effect a bored, East Coast ennui. "The punk room?"

"I'm afraid I don't know any band by that name." She unfolded the newspaper photo for him. "Oh, our eighties band, the Breakfast Club. They're on the third floor. Pure pop for now people. Not as hot as it was a year ago, but still a good time if you're in the right mood. You know-‘I want my MTV.'"

"Money for nothing," Tess finished for him, pretending to be in on the joke. Truth was, she felt stranded between the Morgue's bipolar sensibilities of nostaglia and irony. She had been an adolescent in the eighties and the memories-Madonna, rubber bracelets and bulimia-could still chafe. It didn't help that two of the three were still going strong, and that rubber bracelets had attempted a small comeback not that long ago.

But although the eighties were twice-over over, the eighties room was enjoying a boom time on this particular night. Couples who looked to be in their late thirties were packed into the small space, dancing gleefully to music they had probably scorned when it was new. The tune was catchy and as familiar as a toothpaste jingle. Tess needed a few seconds to identify it, then hated herself for knowing it at all.

"Wham," she said to herself, her eyes adjusting to the sudden darkness of the room. Goddamn Wham. George Michael and that guy whose name no one could remember. Wake Me Up Before You Go-go. This was Big Trouble indeed, for someone who had fancied himself a cutting edge musician just six months ago.

Her eyes went to the girl first Woman, technically, but she was playing the vulnerable waif for all it was worth, skinny limbs exposed and fragile in her torn party frock. The outfit was a little anachronistic, first-generation Courtney Love, more early nineties than late eighties. No smeared lipstick, though, and no roots-this blond hair was real. Yes, Emmie "Dutch" Sterne was the real thing, all right.

She sang prettily but perfunctorily, as if her mind were somewhere else. A doll, yes, but more the windup variety than the china type. Still, she caught one's eye and held it. Emmie had that ineluctable quality called charisma. No two people remembered her the same way, but everyone remembered her.

A burst of harmony on the chorus, a man's sweet tenor. Head down, Tess let her eyes track to the right and saw the new Crow. With his long hair gone, the sharp, thin planes of his face were revealed. Yet even as his face had narrowed, his shoulders had broadened, his body thickened. He wasn't fat, far from it, but his boyish gangle was gone. He looked good-even in that ridiculous jacket and skinny tie, and with his hair moussed into a ruffled coxcomb.

She raised her head a little higher, feeling slightly voyeuristic, a peeping Tess hidden behind the bouncing dancers. She noticed she wasn't the only one watching in this way. A few partner-less women stood along one wall, eyeing the band's male members with bird-dog intensity. Wake me up before you go-go, yes indeed.

What is it about women and musicians? Over the brief course of her relationship with Crow, Tess had stood in dozens of clubs and watched little girls sigh over him and the other boys in his band as if they were Mick Jagger and John Lennon combined. To tell the truth, she had sighed herself in her time, had found herself nodding and smiling at some semi-attractive stranger just because he had a guitar, stood on a stage, and sang someone else's words. It didn't work the other way, for some reason. Men might lust for a female rock singer as they lusted for anyone, but the music, the performance, was incidental. Sure, there were men here tonight who were staring hungrily at Emmie, but not because she was singing. As Kitty had said, there were men who specialized in damaged goods, and Emmie Sterne was putting out the I-am-screwed-up vibe for all it was worth.

For women, the music was the point. You date a musician and-well, what had Tess thought? That Crow would serenade her from the alley below her Fells Point apartment, that her life would turn into some MGM production number? She still wasn't sure. All she knew was that the reality of dating a musician wasn't the same as the prospect. There was nothing like the feeling you had when you stood in a dark club and watched a man lean close to a microphone and imagined the microphone was your ear. Or your mouth. But the only way to hold on to such anticipation was not to act on it.

New song. Wham segued into Culture Club. "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?" For a brief, paranoid moment, Tess thought Crow had seen her in the crowd. Who wants to hurt anyone? She had thought she was being so honorable last winter, breaking up with Crow when another man had filled her line of vision. She had hoped the small hurt would be better than the large-scale betrayal that seemed to loom. Now she wondered, and not for the first time, how monogamy worked. Did there ever come a time when you were impervious to stirrings for another person, or did you just learn to ignore those feelings? But if you pretended they didn't exist, weren't you a hypocrite?

In the Bible, if you felt it in your heart, you were busted. Might as well do the crime, because you were going to do the time. But in fairy tales, it was the test that mattered-one couldn't avoid temptation, but one could avoid giving in. The heart triumphed, time and again. Only how could the heart hope to make itself heard over the screeching chorus of one's hormones?

"We're going to take a break, folks. See you in fifteen." Emmie's speaking voice was huskier, rougher than her singing voice. The couples in the room didn't applaud, for that would require letting go of each other. It dawned on Tess that the real purpose of the Morgue was providing people with a series of semidark caves in which to grope each other. No wonder it was such a success with conventioneers.

Tess walked to the front, head down, as if Crow might not recognize the top of her head. His back was to her, anyway. He was crouching over a speaker, fiddling with the connection.

"Piece of crap," he said dispassionately. The two other guys in the band had already left the stage and been embraced by their ladies in waiting, the human coolie cups who had the honor of holding their beers throughout the set. Emmie stood where she was, twirling with a lock of hair, appraising Tess with the unabashed stare of a child. She didn't seem particularly surprised, or threatened. Probably lots of ladies tried to approach Crow between sets.

"Hey," Tess said to Crow's back.

"What?" he said, not turning away from the troublesome speaker, his voice irritable and impatient.

"Nice set," she said. "It's not Poe White Trash, but then, what is?"

Not one of the more immortal lines after a silence of almost six months, but it got his attention.