Chapter 3 - Truman
I couldn’t help it. My mood soured once we left the Shorehouse and I wasn’t any more chipper the following morning. It didn’t help that Rodney was even later to work than usual. I stood at the front counter and watched as the clock ticked the minutes away until it was half an hour after his official start time.
I’m sure he could tell by the look on my face how pissed I was and when he finally walked through the front door, he had his excuse at the ready. “Dude, I’m totally sorry. You wouldn’t believe the traffic on the 605.”
I glared at him. “Rod, you have lived in Southern California your entire life. There’s always traffic. Compensate.”
“Oh, please. It’s 9:30 on a Saturday morning. Most normal people are still dead to the world. Have you had one customer in here, yet?”
“Rodney, that is so not the point.”
“Anyway, listen.” He had a habit of sidestepping any conversation not going his way. “I wanna talk about this girl from last night.”
“Elvis is cute.” I nodded. She was a far cry from his usual type. For one thing, she had a brain. And she didn’t have the blonde hair and big tits he generally preferred. It was more than that, though. She seemed somehow classier. But then, that wasn’t saying much.
“Yeah, she totally is, but I meant yours. Dude, I think you got hit by the thunderbolt.” He laughed. I hated it when Rodney quoted The Godfather. Not that I didn’t like the movie, of course. It was just so unoriginal to quote it all the time.
“So what the hell happened?” he asked. His grin mocked me. “You get shot down?”
“She said she’s not available.”
“Elvis said she was.” He said that like I didn’t already know.
At one point on Friday night, Rose had excused herself to “use the facilities” as she put it, and I decided to ask Elvis if she had a boyfriend. It seemed the easiest way to get everything out on the table, apart from asking Rose directly, and that wasn’t going to happen.
I don’t know that I’d ever been struck so immediately, and so strongly, as I was by Rose—or Sinead, as I found out, and which I much preferred. I’d noticed her long, curly hair from across the room, had glimpsed her curves under her baggy clothes and was immediately attracted. When I’d finally gotten a look at her up close, I was almost stunned by the finer details of her features that distance had robbed me of appreciating. She had high cheekbones and soft, pouty lips. What killed me, though, was her eyes. They were big and soulful and surrounded by the longest, darkest lashes I had ever seen. She wasn’t traditionally beautiful — she was short and a bit too thin and when not animated with conversation, her face reflected an almost somber frown — but she had completely captivated me. It was inexplicable.
I’d flirted all night, to no avail. She was unimpressed by my smile, which had traditionally been the most successful weapon in my arsenal. Lines I’d used successfully my entire adult life were met by her with quirked eyebrows or quick and amusing comebacks. Sometimes she all but laughed in my face. She was far too smart for my usual tricks and, after a while, I simply dropped the bullshit and talked to her; I listened. She had a unique and sharp mind, and she was quick to laugh. I was fascinated.
Before I could broach the subject with Elvis, though, Rodney elbowed me in the ribs. “Get up, dude.”
I did as I was told, under the assumption he also had to use the restroom. Instead, he took Rose’s place on the other side of the booth. Elvis looked like a scared little waterfowl staring into the wide jaws of a hungry croc as he scooted in next to her.
“You don’t mind if I sit over here with you, do you?” Rodney asked. He put an arm behind her on the back of the booth and smiled down at her before she even had time to respond. “It’s a tight fit over there. Plus, Truman might be cute, but you’re much cuter.”
Elvis blushed and I grinned, confident that Rodney would make her feel at ease in no time. He was a big guy and could be intimidating, but his humor and laid-back manner made most everyone feel comfortable in his presence. You just didn’t want to piss him off. Not even a little bit.
I cleared my throat. “So Elvis,” I began. “About Rose–”
“She’s single.” Elvis blurted out.
I gaped at her, silent.
“That was what you were going to ask right?”
I fidgeted in my seat. I didn’t like to be so transparent. It was one thing for Rodney and Doug to figure out what I was after. They knew me. This chick met me fifteen minutes earlier and could read me like Cliff’s notes. I couldn’t help but wonder if Rose could see through me as clearly.
“Well, yeah, it was,” I admitted.
“She’s single.” She leaned forward, oblivious to Rodney’s lustful observation of her every movement. “But . . . Well, she’s gonna be a hard nut to crack.”
“Oh?” I wondered why she would say that, even though I was not the least bit surprised.
She nodded, but didn’t explain. “She’s totally worth the effort, though.”
I had no doubt about that either, which baffled me. I’d just met the woman.
The woman in question returned to the table and I rose from my seat to let her slide into the booth next to me. As she passed, I noticed her perfume. It was exotic, like jasmine and some sort of spice I couldn’t define. It was ungodly sexy. She was ungodly sexy, and I doubted she had any idea. As I helped her out of her flannel shirt, my fingers lightly brushed her shoulder, and I felt a little jump in my chest at the slight contact.
That’s when I knew I was really in trouble. This was a whole new level of crazy, even for me. Thunderbolt, indeed.
“That Elvis, though, she’s something,” Rodney said from the other side of the counter. “Did you check out the gams on her? And that back . . .” He whistled and shook his head.
Rodney had a fondness for the Rat Pack, and it often came out in his language. He fancied himself a modern-day Sammy Davis, Jr. Not Frank Sinatra or even Dean Martin, with whom he at least shared an Italian heritage. Sammy Davis.
A customer came in and Rodney turned to help him while I retreated to my office to go over the books until he needed me out front. My mind seemed to have one track only, however, and once I was seated at my desk, I couldn’t concentrate.
When Rose intimated she had a boyfriend, I was shocked at how my heart plummeted. My mouth went dry, and my stomach knotted. I recovered well and tried to shrug the whole thing off, but it left a sour taste in my mouth. I didn’t know if she had lied to me or if Elvis had, but it bummed me out. Part of me hoped she wouldn’t call to set up a guitar lesson and that I’d never see her again. Part of me hoped she’d call immediately, instead of waiting until Monday as she’d said she would.
My intense reaction threw me. As cool as she seemed, it didn’t explain why I’d behaved like a virginal teenager who had never talked to a girl in his life. And she obviously wasn’t interested. I’d changed girls’ minds about me before, but it hardly seemed worth the effort if she had a boyfriend.
I hadn’t had an actual girlfriend in three years. My last effort in that arena — Becca — had been part of my life for nine months. I liked her a lot; at times, I even thought I loved her. She was beautiful and extremely sweet. She always thought of little ways to show me I was on her mind. She’d buy me a bottle of some hard-to-find beer she just happened to see in a little market or an album she knew I would love. She would sometimes leave notes in my guitar case, which I would find before gigs and that told me how much she believed in what I was doing. They were corny as hell, but it was still a sweet gesture. She cooked for me and once she even took care of me when I had the flu for a week. In bed, she was all about giving me what I wanted and what I needed.
Becca never once asked me for anything and, in fact, that may have been our downfall. I wanted her to stand up for herself, even if that meant standing up to me. At the very least, I wanted her to tell me what she wanted from me, sexually. She never did and I often wondered if she enjoyed sex with me at all. I would often push her, just trying to get a reaction; trying to get her to take a stand. Whatever led her to be so selfless, though, she didn’t deserve the way I treated her.
I cheated on her. Not just once, but several times, and with nobody who meant anything to me. I did it because it was offered up, and I could get away with it.
Of course, Becca was not the first girl I’d cheated on. She was just the latest. For most of my life, I’d known I couldn’t be trusted to keep my dick in my pants, so I hadn’t often bothered to try being monogamous. I’d only had a couple of what I considered to be true girlfriends; Becca included. She was so sweet and lovely, and I’d wanted to love her. I’d wanted to be worthy of the worship she poured over me. I just wasn’t.
The first few times I cheated, she didn’t know, but when she found out, we talked it over. I was good at talking. I knew she adored me and I could convince her to stay with me, and I did just that. I always said the right things and I knew precisely where to kiss her to make her forget everything—even her name if it came to that.
She found out about a couple of others over the following months. Each time, she cried, and I apologized and said it would never happen again. I would make her believe it. Hell, I would even believe it when I said it. All the same, I would see in her eyes how it killed her a little, every time it happened. For some reason, though, I just couldn’t keep it from happening again.
When she finally broke up with me, she didn’t even have any tears left. She didn’t yell at me or throw things or scream obscenities and call me ugly names, even though she had every right to do all those things. She had just resigned herself to the fact that I would never change. She sighed, the look in her eyes almost dead.
“I hope that someday you find a woman who makes you want to be a man,” she said, and she walked out of my house. I hadn’t seen nor heard from her since.
I thought about Becca that day, for the first time in a long time. I’m not sure why, exactly, except I was afraid I would never be what one might call ‘boyfriend material.’ Even though I’d only met her the night before, I already knew that Rose deserved nothing less than ‘boyfriend material.’
~*~
I don’t even want to admit how happy I was to get her call that Monday, shortly after noon. I knew it was her when I heard her voice; she didn’t even have to introduce herself, though she did, and charmingly.
“Hi, I’m calling for Truman. Is he available?”
I hesitated; my heart skipped a beat. She sounded so formal. It was hot. Though we hadn’t even discussed what she did for a living, I pictured her at work in an office wearing a tight little skirt, a pencil behind her ear.
“You’ve got him,” I said, aiming for nonchalance. “How may I help you?”
“Hi, Truman; this is Rose. We met the other night, after your gig.”
I wondered if she was being coy or if she really thought I might not recall having met her. I also wondered if she knew she could make a shit load of money as a sex line operator.
“Hello Rose. How are you?”
“I’m well, thanks . . . um . . . I’m calling about guitar lessons.”
I got down to business, which seemed to put her at ease, and our call went on with nary another “um” or an “uh” between us. I was impressed with my acting skills, as I sounded completely casual about the whole thing. I was cool as a cucumber while I talked her into meeting me for her first lesson the next evening, rather than waiting for Saturday, which was the day she preferred. I’d see her again on the weekend and even made an exception to my No Saturday Lessons rule, but I made up some bullshit excuse about the need to assess her present skill level before we started her official lessons, so I could see her sooner. I couldn’t wait the whole week to figure out if that Thunderbolt had been real or just another case of booze and rock and roll making everyone seem beautiful.
It was real. I understood just how real when she arrived for her first lesson.
She was ten minutes early. When she walked through the door wearing blue jeans and a Tom Waits, Rain Dogs T-shirt, I almost achieved wood right there behind the front counter.
I smiled and somehow found my voice. “Do you really have the best taste in music ever or do you just have a cool collection of T-shirts?”
She looked down at her chest, then back at me with a raised eyebrow. “Both, actually.”
Rodney interrupted us with a boisterous, “Hey! Rose!”
She turned his way and gave him a brilliant smile as he walked toward her. He enveloped her little body in a bear hug, and I was immediately jealous.
“How’s the second-most beautiful woman in So Cal?” he asked as he pulled away.
“Elvis is doing really well. I’ll tell her you asked.”
I laughed, thankful for the diversion of humor. Rod’s booming guffaw echoed mine.
“Um, no offense, but I meant you,” he said. “How are you?”
“I’m good, thanks.” She was still smiling.
He bent close to her ear. “So, is she well, really?”
Rose reached up and mussed his hair, as if he were a toddler. It was adorable. She leaned into him, in a conspiratorial whisper. “She is. She wants you to call her.”
“Yeah?” His face lit up as I stared at him in amazement.
She nodded and continued to whisper. “She really likes you.” A triumphant grin came over Rodney’s face, and her voice returned to her normal tone. “But if you tell her I said so, I will deny it. And then I will beat you senseless.”
He grinned and looked at me. “Excuse me, boss. I’m taking a break.” With that, he walked away and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. I shook my head, confused by his love-sick behavior. The Rodney I knew did not act like that.
Rose turned back to me and shrugged. “These kids today. Sometimes they just need a little push.”
I walked around to her side of the counter, still smiling at her humor. “Do you want to get started?” I asked.
She looked around the store. “Actually, we have a few minutes, right? I’m thinking of buying a new guitar. Can you help me?”
“That’s my job.” I nodded, excited to talk guitars with her.
We looked at a number of acoustic six strings. I played several for her, to show her the difference in their sounds, and told her what I knew about the construction of each. She finally settled on two and made me play the Martin and the Gibson Hummingbird repeatedly as she compared them.
She had good taste in guitars, too.
“I don’t know. They’re both so beautiful.” She scratched her head.
I handed her the Gibson. “Here, sit down with it.”
She sat on one of the stools that littered the floor for just this purpose and ran her hand up and down the neck before she strummed a perfect A chord.
“You already know how to play?” I asked her, surprised.
“Hardly.” She made a funny face and handed the instrument back to me. Then she picked up the Martin and strummed the same chord. “This is just one of the few chords I remember.”
“So you used to play.” She essentially ignored me and continued to strum the same chord until I finally dropped the subject. I pointed a toe toward the guitar case she’d left on the floor beside her. “What do you have in there?”
“It’s just a cheap Fender. I’ve had it for years. I like that the neck is a good size for my short fingers.” She held up her left hand and showed me. As she’d inferred, her hands were small, delicate even. I took one in mine, under the pretense of looking at the length of her fingers, and ran my thumb from the bottom of her palm over the underside of her middle finger to its tip. I looked at her eyes as she pulled her hand away slowly and averted hers. I’d obviously made her uncomfortable and while I wanted to kick myself for it, I couldn’t say I regretted it.
Her hand was super soft.
I tried to pretend I was all about business and smiled down at her. “Your hands are small, but it’s nothing we can’t work with.”
She passed the guitar back to me as she stood without looking me in the eye. “I don’t know. I’ll think about it, I guess. Time for my lesson?”
I took my time as I replaced the guitars on their racks, trying to think of a way back into her comfort zone before I led her to a rehearsal room. I banged on the office door as we passed, where I knew Rodney was still on the phone. “Rod, get out here. I’m giving a lesson.”
He mumbled a response.
I opened the door to the space we would use for our lesson and let her walk in ahead of me. As she passed, I could smell her—that divine mixture of jasmine and spices that made my body turn to jelly—and I fell back against the door out of reflex. I knew in my mind it was probably some sort of perfume, but I had never smelled it before. Yet I would crawl on my belly across a red anthill to smell it again.
We sat opposite each other, on the little benches I kept in the room. Three of my own acoustic guitars were already inside, on stands. I picked one up and held it on my lap as she set her guitar case on the floor in front of her and crouched down to open it. Her thick auburn hair fell in front of her face.
“So besides Son Volt, what kind of music do you like?” I asked as she pulled her instrument to her lap.
She appeared to be deep in thought, as if she took the question very seriously.
“That’s a long list,” she finally said. She looked at the ceiling as she spoke. She listed bands and artists, both contemporary and of decades past, and it sounded like a summation of my favorites rather than hers. After I responded enthusiastically to a list of old school punk bands she loved, we launched into a ten-minute conversation about Stiff Little Fingers and the Pogues.
She then surprised me as she slipped into a reverent soliloquy detailing the various reasons she loved Merle Haggard and then listed many country and folk artists she admired, several of whom I wasn’t even familiar with.
“Really, I like a lot of stuff. I like R&B. I like Blues and some Jazz. I even like Disco, of all things.” She grinned.
“Well, I’ll forgive you that one sin.” I returned her grin, and she stuck her tongue out at me. She was trying to kill me, apparently. “Anyway, an open mind is a good thing. Look who you’re talking to, here. Music is my business.”
She smiled and extended her legs in front of her, her feet crossed at the ankles.
I took my guitar in hand, prepared to get down to that business. “So do you want to focus first on learning to read music or should I just teach you chords? Do you want to learn to play specific songs?”
“Hmm . . . I don’t know, really. I guess just learn chords at first and see where that takes us?”
I nodded. “Do you care what songs I teach you?”
“No,” she shrugged. “I mean, please don’t teach me how to play ‘Stairway to Heaven’ but other than that, I’m open.”
“Not a Led Zeppelin fan?”
“Well, they’re okay. Jimmy Page is awesome, of course. But A: it’s—that song.” She shuddered comically. She was being dramatic to make her point, but I also couldn’t keep my mind out of the gutter. I had no idea how I was going to handle having her in that tiny room with me for an hour every week.
“And B–” she continued. I barely remembered what we’d been discussing. “If I want to hear Leadbelly I’d just rather hear Leadbelly. You get me?”
I nodded, impressed by how much she knew about music. “I get you.”
“Plus, I just think Robert Plant wants to be Janis Joplin when he grows up.”
That made me laugh, especially because, when I thought about it, she had a point.
I showed her some basic chords during the lesson. Doing so, I had to touch her hands a few times, to correct the position of her fingers. When I did, she looked at me as if she read my mind.
“You have . . . um . . . really soft hands.” I finally said, stumbling over the words.
She blushed and pulled her hand to her chest. “Oh . . . Thank you.”
“They may not stay that way, you know. I mean, you’re going to get calluses.”
“That’s okay.” She shrugged and grinned at me. “The price we pay for our art, right?”