Chapter 8

Through the following weeks, Charlie and Jean Marie would go on numerous dates. Dinners at restaurants, drinks at bars, and once Charlie’s injuries were nearly all but a memory they would go to clubs to listen to musicians and bands.

It was Jean Marie’s suggestion, to get back out into the clubs to hear what people were doing with music. Charlie was reluctant to go, at first.

“Why do I need to hear what other people are doing? I’m tired of hearing all the crap that’s coming out on the radio today,” he had told her.

“Don’t play that game with me,” she said back to him. “I hear you go down to your guitar at night. And the piano.” This is where Charlie would turn his head and try to wave her off. “You know you want to keep playing.”

“Well, playing at home in – what I thought was privacy – is completely different than playing at a club.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, mister. No one’s invited you to come and sit in on a stage.”

Jean Marie had not only noticed his clandestine playing at home, but also caught him watching television programs of artists he loved, and some he’d collaborated with. She wouldn’t say anything, but she took mental notes of how he would stare and watch hour-long programs, when he couldn’t stand to sit still for dinner for more than 30 minutes at a time. If he knew she saw him watching these shows, or listening to records of past shows and recordings of Accelerator, he would quickly switch off the television or the stereo.

“Let’s just go listen, and if they stink we can make fun of them under our breath,” she said.

Finally, he relented, and they were off to a nearby blues bar.

The band was rolling into their set when Jean Marie and Charlie walked in. It was J.B. Parker and his band, and they were getting to the end of their classic song, Lullaby Baby. Charlie was recognized by some of the audience members, and perhaps it was one of them who approached J.B. himself to tell him that Charlie Clark from Accelerator was in the crowd.

J.B. said in the mic after their song, “Charlie Clark, are you out there?” He peered into the audience, while his band mates were caught off guard by J.B.’s question.

Charlie blushed and felt the weight of his legs in the chair. Jean Marie was ecstatic, picked up Charlie’s hand from the table and waved it into the air. Charlie was at first shocked that she was trying to embarrass him, but looked at her face and saw the huge smile that was plastered all over it. He stood up and waved on his own volition at J.B.

“Get yo ass up here, man!” J.B. said. “Ladies and gents – this is Charlie Clark, from that rock band you all know and love, Accelerator.”

Charlie walked up to J.B. and gave him a hug. They exchanged some pleasantries to each other, and Charlie walked over to the guitarist and shook his hand. Then J.B. started to play the beginning chords of Linda’s Eyes, and looked to Charlie to start in with the vocals.

Well I said I’d be around
Until the end of time
But look at us now, kid
Anyone can see the signs

My heart’s made of gold
And your love was made to last
But tell me how I’d know
You just couldn’t shake the past

I’m looking right into
Linda’s eyes
I’m seeing into her soul
You know I could just die
Staring into
Linda’s eyes

Through the song, Charlie kept his eyes closed behind his sunglasses. He didn’t see how the crowd, mainly filled with blues fans and bar hoppers, responded to his heart-felt singing. His voice had so often filled stadiums and amphitheaters, to be broadcast in this small venue made the crowd feel immersed in his voice. People were singing along with him, remembering how young they were when they first heard this song on the radio. It reminded people of their first dates, or their first break up, proms, after school make-out sessions behind the school. People learned to play the guitar with this song. Countless boys and girls had sung along with Charlie and the band in their rooms, singing to their imaginary audiences from their stage in front of the bed.

The band was getting into the song in ways that Accelerator had never been able to. Before, with his band, the song sounded routine. Charlie knew when Terry would come in for a solo, when Twig would slam down on the tom-toms. But with J.B.’s band, it sounded like a different animal. Not completely changed, but mixed up enough to sound magical to Charlie. He could hear his song in the way they were playing it, but the drummer was using the high-hat instead of the symbols, like Twig would have. The chords were played on the rhythm guitar, but J.B. would echo strains from the harmony out from his shiny blue and sliver electric guitar. Charlie was used to hearing Terry compete with the harmony when he played the song. This twist on an old song made Charlie feel spiritually awakened, his ears opened up to new possibilities with his sounds. When Charlie was finished with the last line, he opened up his eyes, and felt tears streaming down his face. His rehabilitation was complete.

He walked off the stage to applause from the audience and the band, and gave J.B. a big hug. Finding his table, he plopped into the chair as if he had just made love and was pleasantly, but completely, exhausted.

“Are you glad we came?” Jean Marie asked.

“Incredible,” was all he could think to say. “That was just – incredible.”

They stayed to hear the end of the set, and afterwards Charlie and Jean Marie walked up to the stage.

“You guys sounded great tonight, J.B.,” Charlie said.

“Hey man! It was great to play around with you, too!” J.B. said, handing his guitar off to an assistant. “Do you come here often?”

“Ah, no,” Charlie looked at Jean Marie. “This gal suggested we go out to listen to some music tonight, and I remembered this little blues club a way from my house. So, here we are.”

“Well, mighty good thinking, miss,” J.B. said to her.

“This is Jean Marie, J.B.” Charlie said, as he put his arm around her shoulders.

“Hi Jean Marie. Parlez vous français?”

“Ah, oui monsieur! Comment sa vas?”

“Ha, ha! Bien! Bien, comme je vois une jolie fille!”

“Ok, that’s enough you two – no fair,” Charlie protested. “I didn’t know you spoke French, Jean Marie.”

“Well, my parents were Canadian, and moved to the states when I was three. So I speak French and English.”

“I’ve met my share of Cajun women,” J.B. offered. “That’s how I know what little French I speak.” His guitarist walked up to J.B. and tapped his shoulder. “Well, looks like we’ve got to hit the road now, folks. Ted just told me we’re supposed to be at the next town before tomorrow morning.”

“Oh, you’re touring?” She asked.

“Yeah, trying to find out where all our fans are hiding at! Listen, Charlie, gimme your number – we need to jam next time I’m in town!”

“Sure thing,” and Charlie wrote down his phone number on a napkin. They shook hands one last time and J.B. gave Jean Marie a kiss on the hand.

They walked out of the club and got back into their car, making their way back to Charlie’s house. “That was great,” he said to her.

“I’m glad they called you up there,” she said back. “And I’m really glad you went up there to sing with them.”

“Me too,” he said.

“How did they know that song?”

“Well, a while back when it was a big hit for us, everyone was covering it. I guess they had probably tinkered with the song, too, when it came out. What really blew me away was how new and fresh it sounded to me up there, playing with them. If you heard what it sounded like when we played it, well, you would know – it was like being on a different planet.”

Charlie went on the whole drive home, getting increasingly excited while he told Jean Marie more stories about the song, the band, and past adventures.

“One time we were playing for these drunks, in some hick town off of highway 49. Real biker-type crowd, certainly not the type to normally pay a quarter to hear an Accelerator song on the jukebox, if you catch my drift.”

She nodded along to the story.

“And we get to the part of the set where we play Linda’s Eyes, and I just knew we were going to get into a heap of trouble if we started playing this love song to these huge, burly guys – in their leather vests and drinking their Jack Daniel’s right out of the bottle. So I tell Terry, “just keep it quick this time, no solos,” and he nods at me – he’s thinking the same thing I am. We start the song, and wouldn’t you know it…”

“They booed you off the stage?” she asked.

“No, no – totally unbelievable. They got up and started to dance with each other. It was a gay biker bar! Can you hear me? A gay biker bar! These guys were waiting for love songs to come on! I nearly stopped singing when I saw them holding hands, I didn’t know what kind of trick Frank had played on us.”

He continued the stories when they got home, and finally when Jean Marie announced that she was going to bed, he walked into his library to play the guitar by himself. He stayed up playing around with his old songs and some new riffs until dawn that morning.

Charlie continued to find himself being invited on to stage after stage of every bar, honky-tonk, juke joint, and dive he walked in to. It wasn’t always the same.

Sometimes, the band would ask the audience to coerce Charlie up on the stage with their applause. Other times, they would send out a member to talk to Charlie during one of their breaks in the session. He wouldn’t always join in as a singer for the bands; if he felt that the crowd wasn’t going to be too happy about their beloved band inserting a different face at the head of the mic, he would grab a tambourine or a guitar and play along as best he could to one of their songs. But on the nights when the bands would do him the honor of playing an Accelerator song for him, he would proudly take to the stage and belt out the tune with all of the gusto and life he could muster.

Jean Marie started to notice that he was getting a little more reluctant, as the weeks went on, to sing songs from his old band. In the beginning, he would saunter up to the stage, wave to the crowd, give a hand shake to the various band members, and would happily sing whatever they suggested. Or, if nothing sprang to their minds, he would suggest any old hit he could think of. But lately, his walks up to the stage seemed more stiffened, almost taking on the demeanor of a pupil being called to the front of the class to demonstrate an algebra problem. Not completely dejected or deflated, but certainly not bounding out of his seat like he used to.

“What’s the matter?” she asked him in bed one night, after one of these shows.

“Hmm?”

“You know – you just seemed, I guess unimpressed with things when Johnny Mac called you up on stage tonight. Are you feeling sick?”

“No, that’s – well, that’s not it exactly.”

“Come on, tell me what’s wrong,” she turned to face him, resting her arm above his head on his pillow.

“It’s just beginning to hit me, you know? I’m not the lead singer of that band anymore. But here I am, Charlie Clark, and all anybody knows me for is the songs I had with Accelerator. I just feel like a monkey on a chain, singing the old tunes for pennies.”

“You’re not a monkey on a chain, Charlie,” she said, poking the tip of his nose with her pinky finger. “You’re my monkey on a chain!”

He laughed, and tickled the inside of her arm. “I know, I know. I’m just being sour I guess.”

“Well, if you really don’t want to sing those old songs anymore, you should just write some new ones.”

“Honey, it ain’t as easy as wanting to write some new songs,” he chided her.

“Why isn’t it that easy? I hear you banging on the piano every day, and it sounds terrific to me. You could hammer out another hit in no time flat, I bet you!”

“Your enthusiasm is very uplifting dear, but who am I going to sell my new ‘hits’ to? The label didn’t stick up for me when Terry and the boys wanted me out. Frank probably wouldn’t touch me for fear of the wrath he’d get from Terry. And I certainly don’t think that Sheila is going to help me out.”

Indeed, Sheila wouldn’t have helped him out of much lately, except perhaps to help him out of a career entirely. Since the separation eight months ago, they had hardly said a word to each other. They had tried to have a conversation over the phone several times, but usually Sheila would be in a hurry to hang up, insisting that she had more pressing matters to deal with, or that she was waiting for another person to call with this or that news. He knew she was giving him the brush off, and at times he liked to make her feel uncomfortable by purposefully not taking the hint. But most of the time, he just wanted to see how she was doing, and wanted her to know that he was doing fine in spite of their separation. If he was feeling particularly filled with piss and vinegar, he would mention something that Jean Marie had done to brighten his day. With Jean Marie in his life, things had obviously improved from the standpoint of his physical health and well being. Mentally, however, things were stellar in comparison to his life with Sheila, and Sheila understood this without having to hear it from Charlie.

“She’s been talking to Frank about me, I heard,” he continued. “He said that she called him up last week, saying that she wanted to ask him about how the tour wrapped up and how album sales were going. Then she dove in and said, ‘What has Charlie been up to.’”

“And did Frank tell her all about how I’m brainwashing you against her, in my plot for world domination?”

“Uh – no, he left that part out.”

“Oh well.”

“Anyway,” he rolled his eyes at her, “he told her that I’d been out singing at some places, and that it seemed that I was doing great and having a good time lately. I think that pissed her off, because after their conversation I only have been getting her answering machine at home.”

“Oh, I see. Is she the jealous type?”

“Are you kidding me? She wrote the book on jealousy. She can make you feel jealous, just as easily as she gets jealous.”

“So hearing that from Frank must have gotten under her skin, I suppose.”

“Yeah, that’s an understatement. So, you see why I can’t use her connections to help me get back in the game again.”

“Charlie, my dear, you severely underestimate yourself. Don’t you think that people worked with you in the past because of your personality and talents – not because of Sheila’s bribes and manipulation?”

“Well I – hmm. When you put it to me like that…”

“And don’t you think that if you got a hold of some of those past producers and label executives, they’d scoop up the chance to work with The Charlie Clark? I think they would.” Charlie was staring out the window, thinking about her logic. “Charlie, obviously people know you for you – they call you up on stage, not because of your band, but simply because it’s you!”

“I believe you.”

“Good. So, does that mean you’re going to write songs and send them to your friends now?”

“Right now? You want me to get up and go write a hit song right now?”

“Oh, stop it!”

They shared some more laughs, and went to sleep.

The next morning, Charlie got up before Jean Marie did and made them both breakfast. Then he sat down at the piano and started to play some chords and find riffs that caught his attention. She woke up at the sound of this music, sat at the table to eat her breakfast, and listened as he worked through his song writing process.

Several hours after breakfast, the phone rang. Jean Marie joked with Charlie that it was his agent calling, “I bet they heard your new songs, and want to book you some gigs right now!” She got up from the couch and picked up the phone. It was Terry.

“Hi, is Charlie there?”

“Can I ask who’s calling, please?”

“This is – well, tell him it’s Terry.”

“Ok…” she was puzzled by the stammer in his voice, thinking that perhaps this was a prank phone call. She set down the phone and went to get Charlie.
“Someone on the phone saying they’re Terry wants to talk to you.”

Charlie set down the pen he was using on the piano’s music rest. “What?”

“Should I just hang up on them? Do you think it’s a prank? Would he be calling you here?”

After a few seconds of thoughts, Charlie got up from the bench and made his way to the phone. Just thinking about Terry made his shoulder ache and stiffened his gait.

He picked up the phone in a swift move, and barked out a “Hello?”

“Hello? Charlie, is that you?”

“Who is this?” he replied.

“This is Terry, man. It’s me.”

There was a pause as Charlie grasped that it really was him, and as Terry waited for some semblance of a salutation from Charlie. Nothing came out of Charlie's end of the line.

“Well, anyways,” Terry continued, “I was just calling because I heard that you had healed up, and I wanted to know how, er, what you were doing lately.”

“Why?” Charlie was not in the mood to fall prey to Terry’s charm, nor to give him fodder for gossip.

“Sheesh, old man – I didn’t think this call was going to be so tough.”

“Well, for you it is. What did you expect me to do? Fall on the ground and kiss it, because Terry Friedland called me!”

“I didn’t think that was going to happen,” Terry’s voice quickly changed from light to serious as he realized what he had gotten himself into. “I thought we would just, I don’t know – catch up. With each other.”

Another pause.

“Listen,” Charlie said, “I don’t need to catch up with you, and I certainly don’t need you to tell me what you’re doing with your god-awful life. Got it?”

“Yeah, I got it.”

“And if you try to call me again, don’t be surprised if no one answers the phone.” Charlie slammed the receiver down, ending the conversation immediately.

“Jean! Jean!” He hollered her name, echoing it through the rafters on the ceiling.

“What?” Jean Marie came running back to him. “What’s the matter?”

“If you ever hear Terry call me again, if he ever tries to talk to me again, hang the fucking phone up and pull the cord out of the wall!”

Jean Marie was surprised to see Charlie’s face so red, and to hear him speaking so loudly at her, she started to feel tears well up in her eyes.

“Ok, Charlie – I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” He was still barking, but sincerely didn’t want to make her feel badly about the situation. “Terry is a slime-ball, and I don’t know why he called me, but I really doubt he wanted to play catch-up with me.”

“Is that what he said?” She was calming down, and reached out to hug Charlie.

“Oh, don’t bother,” he swatted his hands at her gesture. “I’m alright. Just, you know, mildly enraged!” He straightened his hair with the palm of his hand while he rolled his eyes, embarrassed at his reaction. “I can’t believe how mad I got. But as soon as I heard his voice, I felt this red, fiery rage pulsing through my veins.”

“Wow,” was all Jean Marie could think to respond with. “I had no idea he made you that mad.”

“Well, I think I knew I had it in me. It’s been festering for quite a while. But, you know what? Having told him off like that, it’s a relief actually.”

“Getting all steamed up?”

“No. Actually – yes. Getting steamed up, and telling him that I don’t trust him. Before, I was just thinking these things in my head, and I suppose it was sort of lurking in me. Just sitting in my gut like a ball of lead. But now, it’s out there, and he’s got to deal with it, but I’ve let him know where we stand. On my end, anyway.”

“Do you think he was trying to find something out about what you’re doing with your music?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Frank told him I was playing some sets around the town, and he got jealous. Maybe he’s going to try to tell me I can’t play the Accelerator songs anymore, since I’m not in the band. Who knows.”