Chapter 9

The day was warming up, and Charlie woke up from his sleep to see his bedroom filled with bright sunlight. He left the room, took a shower in the bathroom, and went downstairs to go over the notes and tunes he had worked on until 2 am that same morning. It was now 10 o’clock.

Jean Marie was already up and about, picking up after their dinner last night of chicken and mashed potatoes – a comforting meal to help Charlie relax after working so hard on his new songs. He had now written nearly ten songs – some were complete works, with lyrics and arrangements for other instruments, while others were melodies without lyrics, and some were just outlined lyrically that he had only one riff in mind for. She noticed his presence when she heard him singing out some lyrics to one of these songs.

You can heal the pain in my heart
By just lookin’ in my eyes
But you break it all over again
When you tell me your lies…

“Sounds really nice, Charlie,” she said.

“I think it’s too – I don’t know, cheesy,” he responded, still plunking his fingers on the piano keys. “I am trying to write this song about a guy who has spent all of his time chasing this one gal, and every time they see each other he falls in love with her. But she can’t be straight with him.”

“Does she love him, too?”

“I think so,” he looked up from the piano to make eye contact with Jean Marie.

“So she doesn’t know what she wants, then?”

“That’s a good line…” Charlie returned to the piano.

When you gonna know what you want
Can’t I make you understand
My mind is made up
You’ve gotta join me in the land

“Oh, that’s crap!” He slammed his hand on the piano keys.

“Well, you’ll come up with something,” Jean Marie knew when Charlie was having creatively challenges moments, and also to let him be alone during these times.
Charlie had started to call up several of the musicians that he had played with in the last several months. They had set up gigs together at different clubs, playing with a blues band one night and then a rock band the next. Charlie would ask to rehearse some nights with the bands so he could sit in and play with them for more than one song. He would only, on rare occasions, play an Accelerator hit from the past. When he did so, he would dedicate the song to Jean Marie.

Now that he had a camaraderie with musicians other than the boys from Accelerator, he had been asked to write and work on songs for some other bands. J.B. Parker had worked with Charlie on a recent track, called Tear Jerker for J.B.’s latest album, Heart-Stompin’ Shoes. The single started at #5 on the Rhythm and Blues billboard sales, and jumped to sit at the #1 spot for the next six weeks. There was talk about awards, and it was permanently added to J.B.’s play list and rights were being issued for various endorsements – from car commercials to television shows. Peter Smith, of B.E.B. – a rock band that started out ten years from when Accelerator was created, and had zoomed into stardom after their first album, No One Knows You, hit platinum and was reaching diamond status – had called Charlie up on to their stage at a recent show to play with them on their song Listen. Charlie played guitar and sang some of the vocals, and the band riffed out of the song into the lyrics of Accelerator’s song Broken Ear. After the show, Peter Smith had talked with the rest of B.E.B. and asked Charlie to work on their next album with them. Charlie then wrote three songs for the album with Peter; My Highway, Pony, and Paper Life. Charlie sang a duet with Peter on Paper Life, which was released as the first single from the album (called Veneer) and gave the band another #1 hit.

Working with the other bands was not only exposing Charlie’s music to other audiences, but was also giving Charlie a taste of other genres and ways of working with sound. The bands that used Charlie’s songs did so because of his characteristic way of working with the rhythm section to create punchy lyrics to play on the beat and back beats, as opposed to sing-songy lyrics which can make singers sound “too sugary,” as he put it. Charlie was also learning from the musicians how to take this sound and apply it to blues rhythms and pop/rock, dance rhythms.

The credit always lied with Jean Marie, since it was her influence that lead him out to the clubs to begin with. Her reward was the excitement and happiness that it brought to Charlie. He was so sullen before, feeling robbed by Terry and Frank, and swindled by Sheila. To have these relationships, that were built on over two decades of living and working closer together than any kind of family, suddenly dissolve into nothing more than bitter memories and physical scars on his body was shocking and nearly debilitating to him. Jean Marie had seen the light come into Charlie’s eyes when he heard the old Accelerator songs being played on the radio, and knew how much those years of work and fun meant to him when he told her all of his stories in the gym while they tried to repair his body together.

He was still hammering out chords and working on lyrics when she slid in next to him on the piano bench.

“Still working on this one?”

“Yeah, how long has it been anyways?”

“It’s been,” she looked up at the clock on the fireplace mantle, “3 hours. Are you tired?”

“I could use a break.”

“Let’s go sit on the patio and have a drink,” she said as she got up from the bench. She reached out her arm to him and playfully helped to pull him up from the bench.

“Look at that!” she said, pointing to the indentations on the leather cushion on the bench.

“A perfect fit!” he said, laughing at the sight of his two butt cheeks on the cushion.

They went out to the patio bar, and Charlie made himself a soda and poured Jean Marie some water with a lemon wedge.

“Charlie, I have been thinking about something for a while now, and I want to hear what you think about it too.”

“Oh god, you’re not getting a tattoo are you? I have enough for both of us,” he said, gesturing with a head nod to his arms.

“No, no thanks. No tattoos for me. It has to do with the gym.”

He placed the drinks on the table and sat down next to her. “Do tell.”

“Well, you’re really getting back into your music now, and I don’t know why you don’t have one already but I think that you should scrap the gym and build a recording studio in there.”

“Really? Wow, I hadn’t thought about that,” he said, scratching his head. “That would be a better use of the space. But you still use the gym – what about you?”

“I could move all that stuff into one of the bedrooms. We don’t need everything in there, but I think it would all fit into the guest room upstairs.”

Charlie gave it some more thought, and got up from his seat and walked into the gym. He pushed the doors open and looked around at the room. He tried to imagine the room empty of all the equipment, and pictured where he would put a sound booth, a keyboard, which wall he could hang his guitars on. It was exciting to him to think of this transformation.

Jean Marie walked in behind him, after watching him examine the room for a few moments. “What do you think? Would it work?”

“Oh yeah – there’s plenty of space for a studio in here. I think it would look really cool. Would you want to help with it?”

“What? Why would I want to help? I don’t know the first thing about recording studios!”

Charlie turned around in the room, and stopped, facing Jean Marie. “You know, Sheila
would have never told me about this, if she had this idea. I would just come in one day and * poof * there would be a recording studio.”

“Well, first of all I am not Sheila,” she crossed her arms at her chest. “And secondly, I don’t want to surprise you with something that I have no business doing in the first place. But you love working on your music, and you’re always complaining about having to rent space somewhere to lay down a track. So it just seems to me, use this room for a studio and you can work whenever you want.”

Charlie walked right up to her, and pulled her arms apart. “I know you’re not Sheila,” he said, kissing her right hand. “And secondly,” he held up her left hand, “you can surprise me anytime you want, whether you have any business doing so or not,” and with that he kissed the back of her left hand.

“Do you love me, Charlie?”

“You know I love you, I love every bit of you.”

“Are you going to divorce Sheila?”

“I am going to divorce her, yes.”

“When?”

Charlie rolled his eyes and stepped back from Jean Marie. “Well, darling, when do you want me to do it? It’s something I am really dreading, because I know she’s going to turn it into an ordeal.”

“I’m sorry, but I think it’s got to be done fairly soon.”

“Well, I guess I need to call up my lawyer and make an appointment to draw up the papers…”

Jean Marie interrupted him, “Because I’m not going to have a baby with someone who won’t marry me.”

“…and figure out what exactly she’ll get from me. Wait. What? What did you say?” His eyes were large and his body froze in place.

“I said, ‘I’m not going to have a baby with someone who won’t marry me.’ Ok?”

“Does that mean that you are planning to have a baby with me, or does that mean that you are having a baby with me?”

“Hmm, well…” she rubbed her belly with her hands, “I think the latter statement is more fitting.”

“You’re – you are pregnant? With my… I mean, our…”

“I am pregnant with our baby, Charlie,” she said, holding his face in her hands.

“Holy shit! I mean, oh my god! Jean Marie!” He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her in close to his body. “Maybe we need to make this into a nursery then!”

Jean Marie laughed and cried, saying “No, we can use the room next to ours for that. I’ve been thinking about that, too.”

“Well, you’re just a little decorator now. Come here my designer, I think we need to celebrate.” He kissed her face and neck and belly, and walked in to the house giving her a piggy-back ride. He plopped her on to the sofa, and sat there with her. “I don’t know who to call. My parents are both dead and gone. Should we call your folks up?”

“That can wait,” she said, pulling him closer to her and kissing his head.