Outside the Gates of Eden Page 19

  “Do it,” Cole said.

  *

  They loaded out at 8:30. Cole felt anxious walking away without a copy of the record in his hands. What if the studio burned down? What if they wrecked the song when they made the master?

  Alex, on the other hand, was ecstatic. “Man, that sounded incredible,” he said, when he and Cole had assumed their usual positions in the back seat. “That Vince guy, he’s like Phil Spector or something.”

  Gary turned sideways in the front seat and said, “If Phil Spector was stuck in some cheapskate hole in the wall in Arlington, Texas.” Then he relented and said, “It did sound pretty good.”

  “We need more songs,” Cole said.

  “Don’t look at me,” Mike said.

  In fact Cole already had something in mind. It was called “Doesn’t Anybody Know Your Name,” and it was about a girl that nobody noticed at first glance, maybe a little too smart for her own good…

  What was the matter with him? He was in love with Janet, she was perfect, he’d even wondered what it would be like to be married to her and spend the rest of his life with her. And yet he kept thinking about Holly. “She thinks you’re wonderful,” Janet had said. He could still feel the way she’d held his crippled hand in both of hers.

  Stop it, he thought.

  “What’s happening with your old man?” Alex asked. “Is he still pissed off?”

  “I don’t know,” Cole said. “We don’t talk about it. It’s the only way to get through dinner.”

  “If things ever get really bad, like if he gets, you know, violent or something, my dad said you can come stay with us.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “My dad says sometimes when you’re brewing beer the fermentation gets too hot and the pressure keeps building until the tank explodes. He thinks your dad is like that. He thinks he could go off any minute.”

  Cole pictured himself telling his father that he was going to stay at the Montoyas’ for good. The thought chilled him. No going back from that, not ever, not as long as he lived.

  He couldn’t remember another adult ever criticizing his father before. Even as it confirmed his own sense of reality, it also suggested a frightening seriousness, an extremity.

  “Hey,” Gary said from the front seat. “Are we on the radio yet?”

  *

  For two and a half weeks Cole thought of little else. Finally Alex got a call from Johnny Hornet and phoned Cole and the others to pass along the details. The single would debut the next night, Thursday, December 1, at 6:35.

  Cole’s intent was to keep his father from knowing that the record was out for as long as possible. They always ate at 5:30, which left Cole time enough to do the dishes and be sitting in the closet with Janet on the phone in one ear and the earplug from his transistor radio in the other.

  At 6:30 Hornet played “Last Train to Clarksville” and followed it with the Supremes’ “You Keep Me Hangin’ On.” Janet’s radio came over the phone a fraction of a second behind Cole’s.

  As the Supremes wound down, Cole said, “Are you listening?”

  “Shhhhhh! Yes!”

  “The Marvelous Maidens of Motown,” Hornet said, “new at number one this week on your klif Forty Star Survey, available at the Melody Shop and other fine marketers of musical merchandise in the metropolitan area. And speaking of the metropolis, all you klif listeners know that Dallas/Fort Worth is a motherlode of musical talent, and there’s nothing in the world that warms this blue hornet’s heart more than stumbling on a record by a brand new local combo that we think—”

  The next second or two was drowned out by a stifled scream from Janet.

  “—hit, and so, buzz cats and kittens, permit me to introduce you to—”

  Cole’s guitar lick echoed in both his ears.

  “—The Chevelles!”

  The main emotion Cole felt was relief. The record was real, it was a physical object, and it was on the air. As Cole listened, the song mutated from intimately familiar to as distant and strange as if he were hearing it for the first time, and then back again. He tried to hold on to it, to slow it down, to at least, for God’s sake, have some sense of whether it was any good or not. The two minutes and 20 seconds slipped through his hands.

  Over the fade Hornet said, “Great sounds from right here in our town—that was ‘Laura Lee’ by Dallas’s own Chevelles. That’s one we’ll be hearing a lot more of in the coming weeks, I guarantee you. Stay tuned for klif 20/20 News at twenty before the hour, right after these words from your friends at Procter and Gamble.”

  He heard Janet’s radio switch off. “I wish you were here,” she said. She had dropped into the husky voice that drove Cole wild.

  “Yeah? What would you do?”

  “I would whisper something in your ear.”

  “Like what?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

  He did want to know, badly enough to consider begging his father for the car, despite there being no chance of his getting it on a school night.

  “Can you hold that thought until tomorrow?”

  “Maybe. As long as no reasonably attractive males happen to show up in my apartment tonight.”

  “Lock your door,” he said, telling himself that she was only teasing him, only trying for a reaction. “I love you, but I have to go. Russian history test tomorrow.”

  “I love you too,” she whispered. “See you tomorrow.”

  Cole kept the radio on while he studied. He was behind on his reading, he’d been having trouble concentrating in class, and if he didn’t ace the test, he was in danger of losing the B average he’d contracted with his father to keep. The textbook was a fat, oversized paperback, George Vernadsky’s A History of Russia, with tiny type that melted and ran as he tried to take it in.

  Shortly after 8:00, Mike Scott played “Laura Lee” again and Cole was so focused on Vernadsky that he didn’t recognize it at first, the beat making him tap his foot, the music filling him with a vague yet powerful sense of pleasure. Then his brain clicked in, and he was unable to find those stranger’s ears again.

  It was good, he thought. It sounded like a hit.

  It sounded good again at 11:30, when it woke him from a dream that the band was playing for Catherine the Great at her new Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. Catherine, who looked like Holly, wore a low-cut gown and used an ornate fan to hide her smile.

  *

  St. Mark’s seniors were allowed to leave campus during free periods, and though Cole had meant to finish studying for the exam, he ended up going out to lunch with Alex instead, to the pizza joint in Preston Royal by the Safeway. All morning, guys had come up to him, even the jocks that had never talked to him before, and said they’d heard the song on the radio and thought it was cool. Cole felt like he could sprint ten miles, and at the same time he was flooded with an immense contentment with the rightness of the world. Try as he might, he couldn’t feel the urgency of Russian History.

  “What did your folks think about you being on the radio?” Alex asked him.

  “They don’t know.”

  “For real? We had dinner early and then we all sat in the living room and listened together. Shit, man, you should have been there with us. Everybody was yelling so much you could hardly hear the radio.”

  “I was on the phone with Janet. It was pretty cool.”

  Out of nowhere, Alex asked, “What are you doing for Christmas?”

  Cole gave him an inquiring look. “The usual, I suppose. My father will buy the cheapest tree he can find and my mother will hang too much stuff on it, including these embarrassing ornaments I made in kindergarten, and we’ll exchange a few ‘practical’ gifts. Why?”

  “You know we fly down to Guanajuato every year, all five of us, for like ten days or something. Jimmy didn’t want to go this year and my father asked if maybe you wanted his plane ticket.”

  Cole stared.

  “It’s beautiful, man,” Alex said. “It’s in the mountains, in
this natural bowl, hills on all sides, with these pastel stucco houses all over them. You have to go through a tunnel to get in, like a robber’s roost, you know? And there’s tunnels all under the city, and El Jardin de la Union, the central plaza, has this bandstand, and there’s always something going on, dances and mariachis and military bands. We stay with my grandparents in this huge house with servants and everything. And the food… and the women…”

  “Oh, man,” Cole said. “There’s no way in hell.”

  “Because of Janet?”

  “No, she’s going to be in Waco from Christmas to New Year’s. Because of my fucking father.”

  “I was afraid of that. I mean, I don’t get it. If he doesn’t like being around you, why doesn’t he just let go?”

  “Let go? You’ve got to be kidding.” Cole looked at his watch. “Shit. I’m going to be late for the exam.”

  *

  It didn’t go well. Cole remembered Mr. Batchelor reviewing everything that was in the exam. He just couldn’t remember what he’d said. Cole was able to bullshit his way through the essay questions based on what he’d read the night before. He knew that wasn’t enough. As he labored over the short answer questions, his fingers felt cold and stiff. Sweat ran into his left ear. What had he been thinking? Why hadn’t he studied instead of going out to eat? How was he going to get out of this?

  *

  At 7:15 that night Cole heard the lawn-mower sound of Janet’s vw in the driveway and ran to the door to let her in. She was unfailingly polite to Cole’s parents and they were chilly and distant in return. Cole’s mother complained in private about Janet’s tight sweaters and short skirts, and Cole knew that it wasn’t the clothes, it was the aura of sexuality that wafted around her as strongly as her perfume. As for Cole’s father, it clearly disturbed him on a primal level to see his son involved with a girl that he himself found desirable.

  Cole hurried her through a quick hello to both of them and then out to the car. They were headed to the Preston Royal Theater for a double-feature of Our Man Flint and The Silencers. Cole kept the radio tuned to klif, thinking, in vain, that any minute Mike Scott would play “Laura Lee” again. Our Man Flint disappointed him too, with its preposterous acronyms and cartoonish mad scientists and impossibly accomplished hero. He was more interested in Janet’s body, though she moved his hands away when he tried to take a few liberties, and shrugged him off when he nuzzled her neck, saying, “I’m trying to watch the movie.”

  When it was over, Cole said, “Can we split?”

  “There’s another movie.” Janet was big on getting her money’s worth.

  “Yeah, well, the Matt Helm novels are really great, and I don’t think I could stand to watch them get turned into another ‘spoof.’”

  “Listen to you. You sound like your father.”

  A white phosphorus bomb went off inside Cole’s skull. He stood up and squeezed past her to the aisle. Outside the theater, he sat on the curb and stuck his hands in his armpits. The temperature was in the forties, damp, not actively raining. He was only wearing a sport coat and dress shirt and jeans, and the heat was leaching out of his body. He checked his watch. 9:25. He would give her until 9:30, he decided. If she didn’t come out, well, it was only five miles to his parents’ house. A cold walk, but doable.

  It should have been a great night. His song on the radio, their first Fort Worth gig on Saturday, a last-minute opening that Sid had gotten them at the Teen A Go-Go. And yet here he was, shivering on the street. He glanced over his shoulder at the meager line for the second show and thought, Fuck this. He stood up and hunched his shoulders and started down the sidewalk toward Royal Lane.

  “Cole?”

  He turned. Janet walked toward him, an anxious look on her face. He let her come to him. She put her arms around him and buried her head in his chest. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that about your father.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I probably did sound like him.”

  They looked at each other and Cole saw that they both had harder things to say that they were both holding back. Janet kissed him lightly on the lips and said, “Let’s go.”

  Their parking spot was an empty house on Talisman whose long driveway got lost in the shadows of trees. The vw was nearly impossible to make love in—the back seat was too short, and the best they could do was tilt the front passenger seat back as far as it would go.

  Janet left the engine running because of the cold. A faint smell of exhaust came up through the floorboards. She set the parking brake and instead of kissing him she curled into his armpit and huddled there. “It’s so cold,” she said.

  When he tried to kiss her, she turned away.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know. Not in the mood, I guess.”

  “You were in the mood last night on the phone.”

  She didn’t bother to answer. Panic and desire made him reach for her and kiss her repeatedly. She pushed him away. “Stop it!”

  Cole slumped against the passenger door.

  “It’s cold,” she said, “and we’re going to get monoxide poisoning if we keep sitting here.” She backed out and drove the block and a half to his parents’ house in silence. She pulled up to the curb and sat staring straight ahead.

  Cole sighed. “I’ll call you,” he said.

  She nodded without looking at him. He got out and shut the door and watched her drive away.

  *

  He waited until one o’clock Saturday afternoon to call. Her mother told him that she and Holly had gone shopping and wouldn’t be home until after supper.

  He couldn’t think of anything else all afternoon. At the gig, on the high stage looking out at hundreds of dancing couples, he kept searching for her, picturing her suddenly emerging from the shadows to blow him kisses.

  He dragged himself out of bed at ten on Sunday morning to call her and got only endless ringing. She finally answered at 11:30, sounding distant and artificially cheerful. He apologized again for Friday and told her how much he’d missed her Saturday night.

  “Well, you know, I’ve seen you guys so many times now…”

  “Are you tired of me?” Cole asked.

  The pause went on too long. “No. But I think maybe we should try cooling it for a little while.”

  “‘Cooling it’? What does that mean?”

  “Well, I’m going away for Christmas anyway. Maybe we shouldn’t see each other until after that.”

  “That’s an entire month!”

  “It would give us time to think.”

  “I don’t need time to think.”

  “Maybe I do.”

  “Do you want to break up with me?” Cole hated the desperation in his voice.

  “No. I love you. But this has all happened really fast. You’ve got your band, and then you’re going away to college, and I need to think about what I want and what I’m going to do.”

  By the time they hung up, Cole was in tears. He could write her, she said, and she would write him back. No phone calls. Nothing she said made sense to him or explained why she’d changed or gave him a way to win her back.

  He lay in bed for a while, nursing his misery, then bundled up and took a long walk. Weak sunshine, no wind. A good day for tennis, something he would never play again. His attempts to reassure himself—other fish in the sea, record on the radio—carried no weight.

  That night he reread Death of a Citizen, the first Matt Helm book, and managed to lose himself for minutes at a time. Eventually he fell down the long, dark well of sleep.

  Monday morning he told Alex about Janet. “She actually said she wanted to ‘cool it for a while’? Man, where do girls come up with the stupid shit they say? Is there some kind of secret handbook or something?”

  “I was hoping for a little sympathy here,” Cole said.

  “Either she’ll come back in a couple of days wanting to make up, or she’s an idiot. You’re in a hot combo, you can sing, you’re not too
bad looking, you can have any girl you want.”

  “Apparently not,” Cole said.

  Monday afternoon Mr. Batchelor handed back the exams. Cole got a C- - -. A note at the end read, “This should have been a D, but I gave you the benefit of the doubt because I know you’re a smart guy. If something’s bugging you, please come talk to me. Your grade in this course is in serious jeopardy.”

  Monday night Cole listened to klif from 6:30 until close to midnight and they never played “Laura Lee.” The phone rang once and Cole sprinted for it. It was somebody selling life insurance.

  Tuesday, after school, he saw an envelope from St. Mark’s on the dining room table. It was addressed to his parents, and it had been opened. His mother watched him from the kitchen. Trying to hide his panic, Cole said, “What’s the letter from school?”

  His mother said, “We’ll talk about it when your father gets home.”

  He sat in his room and waited. When he heard his father pull into the garage, he began to shake. He heard his mother and father talking, then the sound of his father mixing himself a drink, something he rarely did. He was almost relieved when his mother knocked on his door and said, “Jeff? Come to the living room.”

  His father was in his recliner, the tv, ominously, off. His mother was in her overstuffed chair on the other side of the room. His father held a typed note on school stationery. “Sit down,” he said.

  Cole sat on the edge of the couch, hands clasped between his knees.

  His father said, “This is exactly the kind of letter I was afraid of getting. It’s from a Mr. Batchelor, and he tells me you’re in trouble in Russian History class. He says you’ve been daydreaming in class, not completing your assignments, and that you didn’t study for the exam last week.”

  “I, I wasn’t feeling well last week—”

  “You felt well enough to go on a date Friday night and stay out until three am on Saturday.”

  His father had a faint smile on his face, like he’d had when he’d insulted Alex’s father and gone after Sid at the contract signing. Like he’d had when he administered spankings when Cole was little, using a folded leather belt. Cole knew that it was involuntary and had no humor in it.