by Terry Sanville
They’ve been rehearsing in the oven-hot warehouse for three hours, and it still sounds awful. It hadn’t helped that Rick had brought along a case of Corona for the band to suck on – but then the stifling San Fernando heat makes it necessary to guzzle something, and it might as well be beer.
“So, Debbie, tell us more about this gig you’ve lined up,” Austin says. “Who’d you have to seduce to get it?”
“It’s a lot better than those weddings you had us playing last month. Mr. Marsiola at the Flamingo Club is willing to try us out for a Saturday night.”
“Yeah, we could sure use a good gig,” Larry grumbles, scratching his gnomish body. He’s already drunk and is having problems remembering the words to his own songs. Austin pushes his stilt-like body up from the ratty couch.
“Come on guys, we need to practice.” The Purple Rhino groans as it tunes up for more hours of struggling to get it right. The band has been together for only a year, but Larry and Austin have been kicking around since the mid ’70s, performing at coffee houses, bars, clubs, fairs, private parties and weddings, dissolving and rebuilding bands, and during the gaps between bands, auditioning for A&R men, sending out original tunes to music publishers, and pushing their CDs at Southland DJs. During the dark days of disco, they’d even formed a horn band and tried playing disco blue funk. But so far, all of it has been for squat, something Larry’s father reminds him of during weekly visits to the nursing home.
The inside of the Flamingo Club is painted a Pepto-Bismol pink. The club has nobody working the boards, requiring Rick to manage their sound levels. Chuck shows up just a half-hour before they’re scheduled to start and annoys everybody by fussily tuning his drums. By the time they’re ready to play, the club is full of young slickly-dressed couples, waiting to dance.
The first warm-up tune is a slow blues. Larry sucks in a deep breath, crowds the microphone, and opens his Joe Cocker mouth to sing. A blazing blue-green electrical spark jumps from the mic to his lips.
“Ah hell,” comes booming out of waist-high speakers as Larry jerks back and the microphone squeals. The stench from singed lips wafts through the band. Rick clambers down off the risers to fiddle with the soundboard, but it doesn’t get any better as the night passes. Larry is singing flat while Debbie is listening to the guitars and singing on key – creating a subtle vocal dissonance that makes the dancers move like they’re already drunk or suffering from inner ear infections. In two hours, the club is empty. The manager comes out, stuffs fifty bucks down Debbie’s low-cut top and tells them to get lost. In glum silence, Austin and Larry load the guitar equipment into the van and drive down Sepulveda Boulevard.
“Let’s find a place and get plastered,” Austin says.
“Fine with me – just so they don’t have live music. I couldn’t handle more mistakes.”
The following week Debbie calls Larry and tells him that she and Rick have joined up with a new band in Long Beach. They never hear from Chuck. Once again Larry and Austin are alone with their music.
“So are you up for rehearsing?” Austin asks over the phone.
“Ah man, I don’t know,” Larry mutters. “It’s just getting so old and tiring.”
“But I thought you had some new songs for us to arrange.” Austin doesn’t like the way Larry’s voice sounds.
“Yeah, yeah, you’re right. But let’s play acoustic and leave the amplifiers quiet, okay?”
“Sure, man. Listen, it’ll be okay. We just need time to climb back slowly, ya know, one rung at a time.”
“I guess. Pick me up after work and we’ll see how it goes.”
At six o’clock, Austin pulls into the parking lot of a sprawling apartment complex and leans on the horn. Larry ambles out of his shoebox-sized digs and climbs into the van. By his shuffled walk, Austin knows he’s been drinking.
“I need to visit Pop before we go practice,” Larry says without preamble. “I just couldn’t face him earlier. It’ll only take a minute.”
“You sure you want to put yourself through that?”
“Hell no. But I’m the only one who visits him,” Larry says. Austin nods in resignation.
The Vista Del Camino Nursing Home looks like an old converted motel with a central reception area and hallways spider-webbing off in a circular pattern. Austin and Larry take their guitars inside because the van can’t be locked. The duo hiss through the automatic front doors. A middle-aged blond at the reception desk glances up from her Woman’s Day, frowns, and then continues reading.
Taking the corridor to the left, they noisily clomp down the hallway, leather boots striking overly-polished linoleum. At room 87, Larry bangs on the door but gets no response. They push inside and click on the light. The single room is empty, the bed torn apart with pillows scattered across the floor. Larry sets his guitar down and goes to straighten up the covers, pulling the top sheet up, then freezes. There’s feces and blood on the bottom sheet and it’s been smeared on the top blanket.
“Ah, Christ, that can’t be good,” Larry says. The stench hits them. Austin struggles to control his gag reflex and inches toward the bed. “Looks like you’re old man’s cancer is acting up.”
“Yeah, it won’t be long… fuck!” They hustle back to the front desk where the blond is tearing coupons from the back of her magazine.
“My Pop’s bed needs changing pronto,” Larry slurs at the nurse’s aide.
“Just hang on a minute, I’ll get Reynaldo,” she says, punching the wall phone’s buttons with her middle finger and muttering instructions.
“Your dad’s probably in there,” she nods toward the dayroom. “Hospice and Social Services have sent some people out.”
“Great, all I need is a room full of geezers,” Larry says.
The dayroom is large and overheated, with rows of overstuffed chairs and sofas lined up on either side of a central aisle. But instead of a proscenium stage, there’s a big screen TV sitting on a table up front. The TV is dark, because the social workers are giving some sort of presentation. The residents mostly doze, or listen quietly, hands and legs twitching with the palsy of age.
“You’ll all be passing on and need to make sure your affairs are in order. You don’t want to burden your children, do you?” a woman in a three-piece business suit says. Austin hates that term “passing on,” as if it’s supposed to provide hope and comfort and avoid the reality of death and absence.
At the back of the table are two other people with clipboards, and a couple more caseworker types stand sentry duty against a sidewall. One of them leaves her post and comes over.
“They’ll be done shortly. We’re talking about wills and estate planning,” she smiles. “If you have any questions I’d be happy to answer them.”
“Yeah, I have one.” Larry glares. “Why the hell am I here?”
The woman looks startled and retreats to her station. In a few minutes, the presentation is over and the social workers fan out into the crowd to talk with those residents who are strong enough to raise a hand, as instructed, to ask for help. Austin spies Larry’s father sitting in the second row, and they move toward him. He’s dressed only in a bathrobe that barely covers his nakedness. Larry tells him to stand up so he can tie the robe around him better and brush dinner remnants out of his white chest hair. The old guy smells bad and seems really out of it, letting his son order him around without complaint. Larry arranges Harold in his chair where he squints at the dark TV, as if concentrating hard enough will turn the machine back on.
“So, do you two play here often?” a woman asks. Turning, the duo faces off with the babe in the three-piece suit.
“God, no.” Larry frowns at her. “My Pop really hates our music. I’ve tried before, but he just complains.”
“That’s strange. I’ve been to dozens of these places and music seems to be something that brings them excitement or peace. You should try again,” she says. The overstuffed chair hisses as Ms. Three-piece sits next to Harold, leaving Larry and Austin to fend for themselves. The hospice folks have spread out among the residents and are busily taking down information on yellow lined pads and filling in forms.
“So, do ya want to jam for a while, at least until we can take my Pop back to his room?” Larry asks.
“Sure, but let’s make it quick. This place creeps me out.” Austin throttles back the urge to bolt for the doors. They move up front and noisily take a couple of metal folding chairs off the stack in the corner and set them down in front of the television. Larry takes his 12-string Martin guitar out of its case and leans his ear close to the sound hole, checking the tuning. Austin tunes his Gibson to Larry’s guitar, and they sit back and gaze out at the crowd. Faces with no eyebrows or front teeth and perpetually surprised expressions stare back. They all look like stoners with huge dilated pupils. Larry wonders about the high dose of lithium they’ve been feeding his Pop – for depression, the nurses say. But he thinks it’s just to keep old Harold quiet.
Larry eases into a mid-tempo blues number from the 1930’s that he’d discovered on an album in the public library. They’ve been playing it for 20 years and don’t even have to think about the changes or harmony. When they finish, Austin looks onto a crowd still frozen. But a few residents tap their liver-spotted fingers on the arms of their chairs.
Austin picks the next tune, originally a swing number from the 1940’s, fast, with a long guitar break in the middle. When they’re done, there are more bouncing fingers and now a few jouncing pajama legs. The social workers sitting in the back clap loudly, and some of the residents get the idea and join in, as if this basic social grace had been somehow misplaced and now joyously rediscovered.
They play for half an hour, modulating between fast and slow numbers, and finish with one of Larry’s new songs – a fast rock and roll tune. A crooked Chinese woman struggles to her feet and starts to shuffle some kind of jig as the nurses run to grab her before she topples. When the duo sets their guitars down and stands up, a chorus of shouts and hoots bursts from the crowd. Those who can stand do so; others struggle up, with help from the attendants, and bounce their aluminum walkers or metal meal stands against the linoleum. The racket is tremendous.
“If they’d only do that in the clubs,” Austin says, beaming.
“Yeah, maybe we should work the geezer circuit,” Larry says, “and get all the Jell-O we can eat as payment.”
Ms. Three-Piece comes up to shake their hands with a contingent of white-haired admirers trailing behind her. Larry’s dad is there with other old guys, crowding around, asking questions about the guitars, about how long the two have been playing together, about when they will come back to play again. The nurses’ faces are split wide with grins as they hold onto the elbows of the frailest to steady them as they come forward with compliments.
“Yeah, my son writes a lot of that music.” Larry’s pop is holding court with a group of bent figures. “Should have heard him as a kid – could always make a sweet noise.”
It takes half an hour before the crowd settles down and they can take Harold back to his room. The bedding has been changed and they manage to get him into a pullover nightshirt and roll him under the covers. In a few minutes the old guy snores. As they leave the nursing home, the night attendant waves at them and smiles.
“So, ya want to go out drinking?” Austin asks, knowing that the unexpected evening high will keep him up past midnight.
“Naw. Let’s go to the warehouse and practice,” Larry says. “We’ll need new material for next month’s gig at the nursing home.”
Austin muscles the van out of the parking lot and joins the smooth-flowing traffic, heading west into the California sunset. The highway follows the swooping high voltage lines and towers that march past the Encino substation where the electricity is boosted and sent at light speed out the valley to Agoura Hills, Thousand Oaks, and beyond. Austin grins: it’s like the Vista Del Camino Nursing Home has been their booster station, their surprise organic transformer, allowing them to arc outward past the latest gap, to make more sweet noise.
Terry Sanville lives in San Luis Obispo, California with his artist-poet wife (his in-house editor) and two plump cats (his in-house critics). He writes full time, producing short stories, essays, poems, and novels. Since 2005, his short stories have been accepted by more than 280 literary and commercial journals, magazines, and anthologies including The Potomac Review, The Bitter Oleander, Shenandoah, and The Saturday Evening Post. He was nominated twice for Pushcart Prizes for his stories “The Sweeper” and “The Garage.” Terry is a retired urban planner and an accomplished jazz and blues guitarist – who once played with a symphony orchestra backing up jazz legend George Shearing.