Last of the Independents. Sam Wiebe

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СКАЧАТЬ started up again and we were forced to endure the entire two minutes and fifteen seconds. When it finished, she said, “How’s it sound?”

      “Fine,” Katherine said with exceeding politeness, or at least her version of it.

      “I’m sure The Man will feel it’s been suitably stuck to him,” I said.

      “Punk’s not my thing either,” she said, “but you have to admit those drums sound lethal.”

      She was unnervingly beautiful. To give a laundry list of her attributes with a poetic rendering of measurements and hues would miss the quality that made her that way — brown hair, brown eyes, brown skin, purple slacks, and an oversized Joan Jett tee exposing one perfect shoulder. Mussed hair swept back from her face. She was the kind of impossible thin that we decry in polite company, before retreating to privacy to think about lithe hips and small high firmly sculpted breasts. She didn’t look fragile, though, or arrogant. Just preoccupied.

      The tray on her computer ejected a disk. Amelia Yates handed the disk to Katherine. “Could you run this over to them?”

      Katherine balked but took the disk and left the room, shooting me a what-a-bitch roll of her eyes.

      “Ms. Yates,” I said. “First, is it Yates as in Rowdy or Yeats as in ‘Rough Beast?’”

      “Either or,” she said. “It’s a made-up name. My dad always spelled it A-T-E-S because it seemed more American. But he was born in the West Indies, spent most of his childhood in London, and the last thing he wanted was to be reminded of anything or anyone British.”

      “Irish,” I said.

      “Same difference. So pick a spelling.”

      “I like E-A,” I said. “My name’s Mike Drayton, I’m a private investigator.”

      “Cliff hired you.”

      “Right,” I said.

      “He told me this morning you might be coming by.” She pointed to a large grey box in the corner of the room, its empty reels like owlish metal eyes. “That’s the reel-to-reel. I asked him if he had a source for new two-inch tape. He’s working on it. He’s a good guy to know. I’m so sorry about Django.”

      “Could you take me through that Friday?”

      She nodded, uncapped her soda. “He got here about ten with the Ampex. I had the money for him. We dickered for a little bit.” She shrugged, exposing more of that shoulder. “And then he left.”

      “Django was with him the whole time?”

      “Pretty much. He likes to bang on the drums, so he did that while Cliff and I discussed price.”

      “He seemed okay?”

      “Django?” She smiled. “He’s a great kid. I gave him a CD of his namesake, which he seemed to appreciate. He didn’t seem like he got many gifts.”

      “You think the relationship with his father was ...” I let her finish the sentence.

      “I don’t know. Cliff seems like a good dad. Just strict. But then Cliff could’ve been worried he’d break something expensive. I told Cliff it’s fine, let him play the drums. It’s just stuff, right?”

      I asked her more questions just to ask her questions. When Katherine came back to tell me we had to go, Amelia Yeats was telling me about the studio.

      “I named it after a band I started in grade ten with a girlfriend of mine. We’d do Heart and Zep covers, as well as our awful originals. We were playing up that are-they-lovers angle. Got us an opening slot on a Bif Naked tour. We were never as good live as we were in the studio, since Alison was always nervous singing in front of an audience. But it was the first time I did something musical that didn’t have anything to do with my dad.”

      “We really have to go,” Katherine said over my shoulder.

      “Your dad was who?” I asked, standing up but keeping my back to the door.

      “He still is,” she said. “Chet Yates. The producer.”

      “Wow,” I said, not recognizing the name.

      “Yeah. When your dad’s photo album has pics of Hendrix and Syd Barrett, you’re kind of in the music biz whether you want to be or not.” She gestured at the room, the studio, the building. “But I’ve done all right for myself.”

      “Who’ve you worked with?” I asked, but Katherine insisted and I let myself be dragged from the room. Amelia Yeats waved and walked us out, trailing behind to lock the door.

      “Any other questions, call,” she said.

      In the confines of the van, Katherine said to me, “It’s ten past one.”

      “Yeah.”

      “I’m late getting the car back, Mike.”

      “Yeah.”

      “What a self-centred ass.”

      “Her or me?”

      “Both.”

      “I thought she was all right.”

      “No kidding,” Katherine said.

      V

      Puritans and True Believers

      Eyeball three parts Canada Dry club soda, add one part President’s Choice red grape juice, a thimble’s worth of lemon juice and the same of lime. It’s important to add the ingredients in that order, as the grape juice is heavier and won’t mix properly if added first. My grandmother took these tonics medicinally at two in the afternoon and again at seven, claiming they levelled off her blood sugar and took the place of a diuretic. When she called down to ask if I wanted one, I was as dead to the world as one of the Kroons’ customers. I mumbled a yes instead of asking for tea.

      I’d spent Saturday night back in the funeral home, and had the same to look forward to tonight. I’d lasted about thirty hours tweaked on caffeine and a disappearing-reappearing Yeats-inspired erection. I took a shower in the basement stall, then dressed and headed upstairs.

      My grandmother had set up one of her TV trays on the back porch. We sat and looked at the carnage wrought by last night’s windstorm. That morning, when I’d delivered my dog from the throes of constipation, the laurel bushes that served as a fence between us and our neighbour had been rocking ferociously. Now, as I ate half the tuna sandwich my grandmother made, I watched the dog inspect the fallen branches and root beneath the laurel leaves that carpeted our backyard.

      “You sure you don’t mind doing the yard?” My grandmother’s way of introducing a chore she wanted done.

      “No big deal, Gran.”

      “And the doorframe, you’ll take care of that?”

      “I’ll get it done.”

      “I СКАЧАТЬ