Chapter 1-Formation

Chapter 1-Formation

I stare at the open notebook page, its words mocking me. The first time I saw them they filled me with relief, but as I look at them now, I feel no happiness. I know that after tonight the brilliance of this writing will never be part of my life again.

I stand in the dressing room of the Ruby Skye in San Francisco. Carrie has left for a few minutes to talk to Lauren, and I don’t know where Robbie or Nathan are. Milla’s the only one here and she won’t say a word to me.

I know I didn’t do everything right. In fact, I didn’t do most things right. But I didn’t want it to end this way.

I sit down, wondering where Nathan is. Wondering if when this is all over he’ll side with Carrie or me. Remembering how he had introduced me to her in the first place.

That day had been longer and hotter than any yet that summer, but as evening fell I could feel myself relaxing. I no longer needed to squint out the window as I drove, and I no longer needed to avoid the glare of the sun on the cars below me.

I groaned as I pulled into Bel Aire plaza and saw the other cars crowding around looking for parking spaces. Damn it. Tonight’s probably one of those nights when they’ve got some sappy singer, I thought.

Singers at Peet’s were annoying for two reasons: firstly, they were doing something musical when I wasn’t; and secondly, they hardly ever played the kind of music I liked. My old band was rock in the vein of Nirvana; these singers played more like John Mayer or someone. Just guitar and voice and mellow words. Maybe it was supposed to be more atmospheric for a quiet coffee shop, and I could see why this might work, but it still wasn’t my chosen music for any time of day.

I eventually found a parking spot, was nearly run over by an ugly gold minivan on my way to the door, and walked into the coffee shop, where I was instantly hit with a wave of warm air from the bodies pressed together in a line stretching around the tables. Damn it. Hope Nathan’s already here, I thought, surveying the hardwood tables in front of the slightly-raised platform of a stage, scanning the faces for him.

“Why is it so crowded?” a woman asked. Her voice sounded far too old to want to be in a crowded coffee shop at night.

“Singer’s some girl from San Francisco,” a younger guy replied. “I guess some people have heard of her.”

Oh lovely. Notonly is it crowded and notonly is there crappy music, but the crowd is a bunch of city people who aren’t going to have a clue how to get around here.Trancas street was notorious for its many inlets and outlets which constantly confused out-of-towners trying to get around, and I felt contempt for every illegal turn.

“Hey! Yo! Dude!” I turned to see Nathan standing on a chair waving his arms wildly over his head. I laughed. Nathan was always the loudest guy in the room. It made up for him being short. I went over to him.

“So, who’s going to actually stand in line for drinks?” I asked, motioning towards the ever-growing line of people in front of the cash register and the glass display case of baked goods.

“Dude,” Nathan said, pushing a white ceramic cup towards me. “Do you reallythink I’d’ve gotten here early and waited to order? I got your weird tea and my latte, relax.”

I took a sip and sighed. Still warm.

“By the way, dude, I must’ve been told ten times that there’s no smoking allowed in here while waiting for you. Why do you order that damn tea?”

I laughed, having forgotten Nathan’s aversion to the fiery scent of Lapsang Souchong. As I was about to take a sip, my chair was jostled from the back by an overweight man wearing a neon-green fanny pack. Weirdo, I thought, glaring at him. The man didn’t seem to notice, though. I looked over at the stage, where a girl about my age was singing softly about preventing cruelty against horses and strumming an acoustic guitar. Her face was a little bit long, but so were her legs so she wasn’t totally ugly.

“So, who’s on the bill tonight?” I asked Nathan.

“Carrie Ravinsky,” Nathan replied, not looking up from his latte. I stared at him.

“Any relation?” I asked. There was no way Nathan hadn’t noticed that he shared a last name with someone. He was too observant.

“Nope. Never heard of her,” he said, but couldn’t keep a straight face. “Yeah, dude, she’s my cousin. That’s really the whole reason I suggested we come here.”

“Dude, you are unbelievable,” I said. “Is this part of your plan for getting the band back together or something?”

“Kind of,” Nathan admitted. “I liked being part of that. I liked calling all the shitty bars and seeing if they’d actually let a bunch of underage kids in to play a show. I liked being authoritative and saying which songs sucked and which ones didn’t even though I didn’t write any of them. It was fun.”

I laughed. “Well, we aren’t underage anymore,” I said. “Not like it matters since this place doesn’t even serve alcohol.”

“Yeah, which is why it sucks that we aren’t part of a band anymore. It would be so much easier now.”

“So what would your cousin be doing anyway?”

“She’d be the singer, of course. And the rhythm guitarist.”

“You really think she could sing our songs? They were all about wanting sex and not wanting to be told what to do. She’s singing about the ASPCA or whatever.”

“Yeah…I know. I’ve known Carrie since we were babies, and she’s always loved anything with fur. Or scales, for that matter. The last I heard her plan in life was to open up some big animal-rehabilitation collective in Sonoma.”

“And what does that have to do with being a rock star?” I shouted. The song had ended and people were clapping, which made the noise in the coffeehouse even louder.

“Nothing!” he called back. “Actually I’d say it’s one more hurdle. But what choice have we got? You and me both know that there’s no way Archie’s going to want back in. We’ll audition people for the other parts.”

I nodded, sat back, sipped my tea, listened to Carrie Ravinsky sing about a rescued litter of kittens, and imagined how a voice that soft could possibly do my songs justice. It didn’t make sense, and I felt slightly ambushed by Nathan’s plan, but maybe it would work, if only as a way to keep my mind off of the annoyances of my jobs at Kinko’s and the winery.

After she was done playing (the last song had been about German Shepherds), Nathan hurried me back to the hallway which served as a backstage for performers at Peet’s. It wasn’t as well-appointed as the rest of the café, and smelled a bit of old coffee grounds, but I supposed that it worked well enough for a place to put your guitar case down in a busy coffee shop. I had seen worse. On our way back there, some people gave us strange looks. “The last performer was my cousin, I’m going to say hi to her,” Nathan barked at anyone who did.

I hadn’t been able to tell while she was sitting on her stool onstage, but in person Carrie was quite tall. Her eyes were brown and her short hair was dark and shiny. She latched her guitar case shut and stood up to face Nathan and I.

“Hey,” Nathan said to her.

“Bonjour mon cousin,” she replied.

“Still on with the French I see.”

“It’s Lauren’s bad influence,” she replied.

Nathan raised his eyebrows. “Well, Carrie,” he said, “I’d like to introduce you to someone.”

“New boyfriend?”

“Ha-ha. Still as funny as you always were. No, this is Alex Marino, he’s been my best friend since I was five.”

Carrie looked me over. “Alex Marino,” she said. “You were in that band my cousin managed, right? ‘Big Raunch,’ I believe, was the name?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That was me. Did you like our music?”

“I went to a show. So no, not really.”

“So…” Nathan said. “…what’s with the animal rights songs? Gone vegan on me?”

Carrie sneered. “I ‘went vegan’ three years ago, dude. And Lauren works at an animal shelter, so I see some of the shit people do to their pets.”

“Very interesting. Ever thought about getting back to your roots?”

“What are my roots?”

“Alt rock.”

Carrie laughed. “Look, I heard about your band breaking up,” she said. “I knew it was inevitable even before it happened. But if you really think I’m just going to hook myself up to your boy’s falling star, you’re very delusional. I don’t want to be part of that environment again. This is nothing but a hobby for me now and I intend to keep it that way.” She walked away then, guitar case in hand.

It was a bit surprising when she did end up called me the next day—on the winery’s business line, of course--and quietly confessing that there was nothing more she wanted than to be part of that environment again. When I told Nathan about this, he gloated that he’d finally have something to hold over his cousin—that she had taken one of his suggestions, for once.

Privately, I still had a few reservations. Carrie had expressed the need to have her friend Milla in the band as our bassist—apparently she had been very good at it in their old band.

“So who else was in your old band?” I asked her.

“Well, I was the singer and guitarist. Then Milla was the bassist and Lauren played drums.”

“So are you going to want Lauren in this, too?” I was still mildly pissed at not being able to vet our bassist.

“No, she’s committed to the shelter. Although she was the best drummer ever. We’ll have to audition some people.”

“I don’t like this guy,” Carrie whispered to me immediately as the sixth guy, with spiky blond hair and a lip piercing, sat down on the drum stool.

“Why not?” I asked.

“He gives off bad vibes.”

“Carrie, that’s the same thing you’ve said about the last five guys.”

“It’s not my fault if every wannabe drummer in the Napa Valley is a bad person, Alex.”

“Maybe you’re wrong.”

“I’m never wrong.”

I shook my head. “Okay, dude, what’s your name?” I asked.

“Robbie,” he said as he glared at me.

Carrie gave me a look as if to say, See, I told you so.

“Okay, Robbie, show us what you got.”

He began hitting the drums—there was a definite rhythm there, a definite talent that he possessed, and thinking of what Nathan had said the other day I knew he would compliment our aesthetic—long-haired guitarist, folksy singer, punk drummer—but was he just a little bit too aggressive? Or was aggressive something we needed?

“He plays well,” I said.

“Hmm,” replied Carrie. “Where’s Nathan?”

“I don’t know, he said he’d be late, though.”

“We only have one more person left waiting to try out, Alex, he’s a little bit more than late. And he doesn’t know that much about music anyway.”

Carrie was beginning to irritate me. Despite what her hippie, save-the-animals songs suggested, her personality was biting and often very judgmental. She had dismissed six drummers today without even listening to them play. The first guy, Paul, looked like he wouldn’t take anything seriously. “This guy never thinks about the consequences of his actions,” she had said. “He’s going to say he’s in the band and then quit because he decided he’ll have more fun flying hang-gliders or something.” The second guy, Bob, apparently looked as though he would strangle people in their sleep. She dismissed Bill as an idiot, as well as a homophobe.

“How do you know he’s homophobic?” I had asked her.

“Look at his mustache, Alex. It’s a complete giveaway.”

Then guy number four, Jon, took the stage—or rather the stool. “We can’t have him,” she said. “He’s a complete control freak and will want to make all the decisions himself. We can’t have that.”

I wanted to say, “Well, isn’t that what you’re doing?” but I held my tongue.

Guy number five was Jack, who was wearing a suit and tie: grounds for dismissal in Carrie’s book.

And now, Robbie, who seemed like a far better drummer than either of the other five guys had been, but Carrie’s reasons for not liking him were vague and undefined: just that he “gave off bad vibes,” which I supposed meant he was mean.

Robbie finished playing.

“Thank you,” Carrie called. “Next!”

“Next” was Doug, a guy with curly, frizzy light brown hair and a doughy physique. He was wearing a t-shirt that said, “Pwner of n00bs.” I raised an eyebrow at Carrie. “I think I’m finally understanding this ‘bad vibes’ thing,” I whispered. She nodded.

Doug’s playing was awful, and he often stopped to “redo” some part he had already played, calling out: “Do-over!” every time. Each time he pressed down on the pedal for the bass drum, he winced, as if it were far more complicated and painful than simply tapping his foot. This guy will be a concert nightmare, I thought.

Carrie glared at me. “I’m stopping him,” she said.

“Go for it.”

“Hey Doug!” she called out.

He stopped. “Yeah?” he asked. “Am I in?”

“No,” she said. “You’re not.”

He looked at her, confused. “But I was playing just fine…you just don’t know good when you hear it,” he whined. “I was better than any of these guys.”

“Doug, no you weren’t. Go away. How many times do I have to say it?” She sounded exasperated, as though she had dealt with this guy many times before.

He sulked off, past our table and out the door. I looked at her, one eyebrow raised. “You know that dude?”

She sighed. “Last year when I was trying to put a band together in San Francisco he wanted to be our bassist. But it was supposed to be an all-girl band anyway, and he didn’t have any more talent on the bass than he does on the drums. I told him he wasn’t what we were looking for and that he either needed more practice or to play a different instrument. I guess he picked the different instrument.”

“What happened to your last band, then?”

“We never really got started. It sort of freaks me out to see Doug here, because after he made such a fuss at his bass tryout and that band didn’t work, I’m worried that today’s argument will mean bad luck for this band too.”

“It doesn’t have to. How about we just take a chance on Robbie?”

She nodded, slowly, tentatively. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s see how this works.”