The sun was just setting when they pulled up to the Troubador. Bonnie had heard of the place, of course, but never had had the time or inclination to venture out to West Hollywood at night. She was usually too tired, and didn't want to spend the money on cab fare anyway. Suddenly, right this minute, she realized that in her year-and-a-half in L.A. she had made no real friends at all.
Mike tooled the Cobra into the parking garage across the street, and left the keys with the attendant. "No big acts tonight, bein' Monday, but there's bound to be somebody worth hearing. And they always keep a set or two free for specials."
"Specials?" Bonnie asked, trotting to keep up with Mike's long stride.
"Anyone who's worth hearing who just happens to show up."
As they got in the entrance, Bonnie was distracted by various photos of performers, recognizing many but not all. "Hey, the Spoonful play here? Wait a minute, Lenny Bruce, yeah, he got busted here!"
Mike stepped up close behind her and leaned down to advise with a smile, "Close your mouth, Morris, you look like a tourist. Been in town for almost two years and you managed to avoid the best music around? Shame on a girl from Greenwich Village!"
She snapped back, "Excuse me, Mr. Rock Star, like you noticed, I don't get out much."
"Well you're out now, c'mon," and he led the way to a doorway topped with the neon letters "Show Room".
A staff member stood by the door, holding a clipboard of names. Bonnie noticed he didn't bother to consult the list as they approached.
"Hey, nice to see you again," the doorman greeted Mike.
"Nice to be seen," Mike returned. He reached back and slipped an arm around Bonnie to pull her up closer. "She's with me. Bonnie, this is Jimmy. He came with the lease."
Jimmy laughed and stepped aside. "Enjoy. Your friends are upstairs."
Mike steered Bonnie through the door and up the stairs, hand resting casually on the small of her back, as if they'd come here a million times.
Well I'll bet he has, she thought to herself. As they topped the stairs she saw they were in the center of a level balcony that overlooked the club and stage below. There were several banquettes against the walls and between them a few smaller tables. This area clearly was intended only for VIPs. Below… that was for the groundlings.
Mike slung his arm around Bonnie again and brought her to stand with him at the edge of the table in front of the nearest banquette. Chip Douglas, their studio and tour sound guy and occasional recording producer was seated at one end and Peter at the other, and between them a songwriter named Carole that had written some hits for the Monkees' albums. Between Carole and Chip, to Bonnie's surprise, was Genie, who she hadn't seen since the less-than-stellar morning of the costume fitting.
Chip greeted them with a smirk. "Hey, I thought they kept the riffraff down below."
Mike nodded to indicate Bonnie. "They tried, but I told 'em nope, she's with me. Morris, you know Chip the Dip."
Peter waved brightly. "I'm Sweet Pete." When the others offered various confused/nauseated looks he added, "Hey, when she's right she's right," and offered no further explanation.
In more adult mode, Mike indicated Carole, "Don't know if you've met Carole King, she's a songwriter trapped in the same mass-produced hell as the rest of us. Plays a mean piano, too."
Carole half stood and reached out a hand to Bonnie. "Hi, we've sort of crossed paths at some meetings I think. Morris… that's an unusual name."
Bonnie shook Carole's hand. "Bonnie Morris, you can call me Bonnie. Nesmith and I have kind of a longstanding name issue. Hey Genie, good to see you again!" Peter stood and everyone else did a slide to the right. Mike pointed to the space next to Genie.
"Go on and work on your social skills, Morris, Pete and I have some stuff to discuss." He turned to the others and offered in a stage whisper, "She doesn't get out much in public." Tipping Bonnie a wink that made her breath hitch, he and Peter retreated down the stairs.
"So like I was saying, it's good to see you again," Bonnie told Genie, who was smiling broadly to see her and Mike together.
"You'll be seeing more of me, Bob's hired me on to head costumes for the show."
Bonnie blinked twice, then announced, "Somebody get this lady a double. No, a triple. She's gonna need it."
As Chip and Carole laughed, Genie leaned closer and whispered to Bonnie, "Glad to see you and Tall Boy sorted things out. He looked a bit knocked down that day when you sent him off."
Small talk led to shop talk about style, sartorial and musical, about the irony of songs retooled and sold as generic plastic widgets by Kirshner, about the pragmatic need to sell them versus the artistic need to keep them free of plastic. There were a couple of short sets played by musicians she'd heard of somewhere or other, and very good too. During an announced break, finally Bonnie was beginning to wonder where Mike and Peter had gotten to.
"I heard Pete say something about doing a tune," Chip explained. "Maybe they're gonna do some together. Pete brought a couple cases, left 'em in the rehearsal room backstage."
There was no proper host on nights like this, so only the feedback from instruments being plugged in announced the beginning of another set.
"Heads up, guys," Chip pointed to the stage below, where Mike and Peter engaged in last-minute fine-tuning.
"Nesmith didn't come armed," Bonnie noted in confusion, looking to the others for explanation.
"He brought his banjo, and went back to Mike's to pick up that new toy of his, the Gibson," Carole said.
Mike stepped up to the lone vocal mic and greeted the middle-sized crowd. "Hey, been a while, it's cool to be back where they only play the good stuff." He checked something with Peter, who nodded and moved closer to the instrument mic.
"I brought a friend of mine here tonight who needs to get out more," he told everyone without looking up at the balcony. "She says I write some groovy songs, but they're mostly about leaving and staying away. So Pete and I we're gonna do a tune by somebody else tonight, somebody you're never gonna meet, whose stuff is too good not to hear for that kind of a reason. It's brand new to us, so try not to judge the art by the mechanics, dig? It came without a name, so for now I'll just call it Long Distance."
Bonnie had been half-listening to his intro, embarrassed by his reference to her criticism even if nobody (except her companions) knew it was hers. But then the room fell silent as the tune began…
...one-handed harmonics... perfect, right-handed harmonics.
Bonnie's breath caught in her throat. She shut her eyes, not wanting to see if Mike was looking up, knowing he wasn't, and neither was Peter, they were too focused on playing. And not just the notes. The voice surrounded her, every bit of the last tune Benny had played to her on the phone, the last tune recorded on the tape Mike brought from New York. And every voice in the room, in the bar, in the balcony, had vanished. The only voice came from Benny's tune, Benny's voice, every grace and flourish delicately woven between guitar and five string gut-strung banjo. She was barely aware she was holding her breath, until Genie asked quietly, "Are you okay luv?" only to be driven back by Bonnie's impatient inhale and hiss… be quiet, there's only room for one voice in this room, she thought as loudly as she could. She didn't want it to end, but knowing every note, she knew exactly when it would. A triplet from the guitar, and another from the banjo, then a final, single, perfect, one-handed harmonic that rang like crystal through the room. And then, for a few magic seconds, silence. To describe the applause that followed as "thunderous" would be an exaggeration. It was enthusiastic, to be sure, especially given the smallish Monday-night crowd. But to Bonnie's ears it was deafening, just because it was there at all. A voice from the bar called out, "Who wrote that, man?"
"A dude named B.J. Morris, used to play at a club in the Village," Mike told them. "Never got to make a record, but someone told me it's not fair for nobody to hear stuff this good, so now you have." He and Peter thanked the club for letting them play, and left the stage.
Bonnie had recovered, sort-of, but found herself unable to speak. She wasn't crying, and she was breathing again, but she just couldn't manage to move from the last echo of the tune back to the real world. Finally Carole broke the silence.
"Bonnie, B.J. Morris, he any relation?"
She nodded, and managed to add, "My brother. Died in a dumbass VW van rollover on the way to a gig. Nesmith heard a tape…" She looked toward the stage again. "I don't know how they did that, I don't know…" She looked questioningly at the others sitting with her. "I need some air."
"That door, back stairs, leads to a courtyard they only use on weekends," Chip directed. "You okay?"
She nodded, and left.
Down the stairs, out the door, to a brick terrace that bordered a miniature park-like arrangement of flowers and a couple of small trees. She sat on a concrete bench and dropped her head in her hands, trying to sort out her thoughts.
He has not put a step false since Chicago, because he knows me, knows exactly who I am. Only somebody who knows exactly who I am could do this.
This was not what she expected to happen when she moved to L.A. She expected distance from everything, something to complement that empty space that remained when Benny had died. So much of her had been gone for so long, she'd thought making the move she'd planned already would remove the contrast between familiar presences and the emptiness in her. Come to L.A., get a job, TV show, lots of noise and demanding work and masses of anonymous people she wouldn't need to know. But there he was among the new faces, someone else who'd gotten what he'd wanted, but not enough not to want more, or better, or… something. And without the good grace and manners to let her ignore him, he casually drew her into something not so casual, and by the time she woke up to it, it was too late. She came here to disconnect, but didn't pay close enough attention. And when she got pissed off at herself for giving up too much, and turned it into being pissed off at him for an imagined betrayal, he'd done the impossible… he'd made it right. He'd found just the way to make her lapse of attention seem safe, and right. Not a step false, and not a word spoken worth doubting... or fearing.
I am making this too hard… why am I making this so hard?
Mike and Peter bounded up the stairs, cases in hand, only to be greeted by a mixture of praise and perplexed faces.
"That was amazing, guys," Chip announced.
Mike didn't say anything, but it was clear he was noticing Bonnie's absence.
"She needed some air," Genie told him and Peter, and the two men exchanged looks.
"Shit, maybe this wasn't such a brilliant idea," Mike muttered. "Couldn't even sit through it."
"No," Genie got up and stood with him and Peter. "She did, she seemed lost in it. She told us her brother wrote it, she told us how she lost him. I think she was just overwhelmed. Whatever it meant to her, I think she didn't know how to share it with people she doesn't know very well."
That kind of lightning doesn't strike twice, Mike thought, remembering Chicago. Then again, we knew each other pretty well even before then.
"I sent her down to the courtyard, man," Chip told him. "Genie's right, she wasn't freaked, just kinda over her head. Go on down and check in, why don't you."
Before he went he turned to Peter. "Thanks, Pete. Short notice and all, you were great."
"Hard to screw up music like that," he said, and everyone looked at him as if he were crazy. "Okay, okay! You're welcome."
Mike sat next to Bonnie, not touching, like they'd done for so long before recent days, and said nothing.
"The day he left for North Carolina," she began as if continuing an old conversation, "we had such a fight. My fight, because I didn't want him to go. I had all sorts of arguments and reasons, but that was it, really, and he knew it. So I knew he'd leave anyway, because someone wanting you not to go just isn't a good enough reason to stay when you're looking for a bigger life and the chance is there for the taking. And the last thing I said to him, I said 'so go but if you do, if you walk away, I don't ever want to see your leaving ass again.' And I could see it in his face that he didn't really believe that, but knew that I did, so there was nothing left to do but go even though he didn't want to leave with things like that. And yeah, of course I got over it, almost an hour after he left, and we patched it all up. But he never did make it back, and even though I know that's nobody's fault, the last look I ever had of him, it wasn't laughter or love or happiness. It was that hurt, resigned look, the one that said 'all is forgiven' even before I knew how badly I'd fucked up. And last Thursday, at the costume fitting, after I'd thrown in your face everything you hadn't done, stuff that didn't matter anyway, that's exactly the look I saw on you just before you turned and walked away, with every good reason to. And just like with Benny an hour later I knew how wrong I was, but you were gone, so I gave myself permission to get flat-ass dead drunk and blame you for that, too, because I was too stupid to know you'd come back, really come back. And Peter, he came and got me and took me home and when we got in the door he looked so good, he was being so nice and standing so close to me, and I thought 'I'll have me some of that, why not', you guys get that not-right-but-right-now action so it must do something for you, right? And Peter was there for the taking, but he wouldn't be taken. And that, Nesmith, is the story of how I grabbed Peter's ass and almost bit his tongue out." She looked sidelong at Mike, who still sat next to her, leaning forward, elbows on knees, shades lowered even though it was nighttime. He was nodding slowly.
"A little more than I expected, but that's okay." Without sitting up, he slid his shades up and turned his head to face her. "I'm just trying to make it easier for you, Morris. You know that, right?"
"I think I'm finally getting it. I'm kind of slow sometimes."
"That's okay, I got time. When we're here, just here, like this, I got all the time I need."
When they got to her door, he showed her his watch. "See, ten-thirty, just like I promised."
She unlocked the door and stepped inside, turning when he didn't follow. "You staying?"
He shook his head. "Not tonight, we both need some sleep. I'll pick you up tomorrow, get you to the beach in time for your meeting." He leaned in to give her a kiss.
"Okay… 'night." She stood there uncertainly for a few seconds to watch him take the first few stairs, then closed the door and locked it. By the time she was halfway to her room, she heard the single knock. When she opened the door again he was leaning heavily against the frame, shades in hand.
"That invitation still good?"
She nodded, smiled, and stood aside, closing the door and locking it behind them.
"In you came," she told him.
"Back at ya, Siobhan."