Fry said, “It’s kinda badass—somebody should release this thing.” Then he flopped out on one of the big couches and I took the opposite—he started rolling a big funky-looking joint on the long glass table.
“I figure,” Fry said, “might as well honor them with a little ritual.”
“Won’t your mom have a heart attack when she comes home and finds us here?”
Fry shook his head. “This is her weed, dog.”
“Your mom’s a stoner?”
“Helps her sciatica.” Fry lit up. “Hey, what happened to the girl—the singer?”
“Endi?” I frowned. “We talked. She’s moving back home.”
“For real? So—no LA, no singing star?”
“She’s marrying her ex in August.”
“Wow, man, I’m…sorry to hear that—I thought she might convert you to actual grown-up. Hope she’s okay.”
He smoked, handed me the joint.
“Yeah, me too.” I shook my head and smoked and did a long shrug—the international male signal for I don’t want to talk about it. Good friend Double Fry took it in. I handed him back the joint and lay back and let the music play, washing over the sunlit, smoky room. The sweet hinky garagey clang of it held something else for me now—time and loss and the farawayness of Endi’s smile. Into the second song, stony Fry sat up and started wagging his hands like a doubting rabbi.
“So this…Jensen, Appelfeld, whatever—he, like, really wanted to replace Emil?”
“Yup.”
“Like, at every level.”
“Totally. The second he got out of the loony bin, he tracked down Charles Elkaim and started playing substitute son, cozying up. Anything to stand in Emil’s shoes.”
“Wow. Talk about holding a grudge.”
I nodded. “It was like, ‘You replace me? Oh no, I replace you.’ ”
“That is fucking sick,” Fry said. Then, out of the blue: “I gotta tell you, Addy, I never liked the guy.”
“Oh. Really? Now you offer me this insight?”
“No, serious, bro. That time we went to the movies? I couldn’t help but notice what a gloomster the guy was. The whole time, after you guys left, all through Yellow Submarine he was cursing under his breath, mumbling about ‘the arrogance.’ I’m all, like, the arrogance? It’s the Beatles, dude, it’s supposed to be fun.”
“Yeah, well, maybe next time share your hunches right away, okay?”
Fry laughed through closed teeth. “One thing I still don’t get. Just how long was that jerk even in The Daily Telegraph?”
“My guess is barely. Sandoz told me they auditioned a lot of guitarists that didn’t stick.”
“But he played actual shows with them, right?”
“One show—an amateur contest they lost. Soon as Cinnamon brought Emil around, they forgot all about Appelfeld.”
“But why’d he single out the drummer?”
“Well…the way I’m picturing it, Rey Durazo would have been especially vocal about kicking Appelfeld out—’cause he’s the one who would’ve most wanted a clean break.”
“Why?”
“The Perskys were just across the street from the rehearsal garage, right? He and Appelfeld had done some gardening work for Mrs. Persky. And she was sleeping with the both of them.”
“What? Not at the same time.”
“Yup, same time. High school boys.” I started singing the theme to Three’s Company—“Come an’ knock on our doooor—”
“No. Way.”
“Yes way. Ya know, early eighties, which came just after the seventies, which was also some kind of strange branch off the sixties—pre-AIDS and all that. Free love was still in the air.”
“Nice pay for gardening services.”
“I don’t think it was an accident these two horny teenagers showed up with their rakes or whatever. They’d probably heard all kinds of rumors about Cinnamon’s mom. I mean, the way Rey’s cousin Professor Durazo painted it, Mrs. Persky was gunning for trouble. She ran with musicians, players—she was a scenemaker and she was crazy sexy—I mean, even her beautiful daughter felt outshined.”
“That and she was married to a gay movie producer.”
“Exactly—so Appelfeld and Rey and Marjorie had their little, uh, after-school special, and nobody got their feathers ruffled. But when Appelfeld got kicked out of the group, Marj knew she had to kick him out of the sack too—”
“Because sleeping with Pete Best is the ultimate groupie fail.”
“So, she quote fired her gardeners unquote, canceled services. But Durazo was still in the band—” I threw a wide arm out. “—he rehearsed across the street. And then he came back for more. Solo.”
