Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

He preferred his window down, his sniffer working overtime and his ears flapping in the wind.

I preferred the windows up to keep the autumn chill out, although the farther south we drove, the warmer it got, the southern states seemingly defying the seasons, snubbing the natural order of things.

In the end we compromised. I let him point his nose up toward the open window when we drove through the countryside, his little wet nostrils flaring and his snout twitching at the smell of every faraway squirrel and rascally raccoon that had left its scent on the wind. Then when we reached a city, the windows went up, keeping out the fumes of the traffic and the stench of the steelworks in Allentown and the suspicious smell of burnt motor oil that wafted up from under the Dynasty’s hood every now and then.

Somewhere outside Harrisburg the engine started to splutter.

As we passed the sign that read “Welcome to Shippensburg” the car began to rattle.

As we rolled into a mechanic shop in Chambersburg, the Dynasty wheezed and smoke billowed out from under the hood.

“Come on, Joan Collins,” I said, slapping the steering wheel. “You’ve got more fight in you than that.” That’s when the car was officially named.

Joan Collins she was.

I’m sure she would have approved of the handsome young mechanic in Chambersburg who looked under the hood, rattling off words like “radiator fluid” and “fanbelt” and “head gasket.”

Unfortunately for Chet and me though, it meant spending the night in a motel with no Wi-Fi, which at least provided a sense of calm and relief that the choice to cut myself off from the world was not mine at last.

In the morning the mechanic mumbled a few more words that meant nothing to me. Six hundred dollars later, Chet, Joan, and I were back on the road.

Somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia I took a deep breath, mustered my courage and finally pushed the cassette tape into the deck.

Forest trees passed us by.

Birds circled the skies.

And from the tape deck came the voice of a man, his tone low and slow and sort of shy as he formed his words with a deep southern drawl.

“Ah, hey y’all. Not sure who’s listening to this. Or if anyone’s even gonna get this. But for what it’s worth… my name’s Lafayette Valentin, but everyone calls me Lovesong. I don’t really know if I should even be doing this. Reverend Jim says the world outside ain’t exactly a place to take kindly to someone like me. Then again, he don’t even know I’m even doing this. So… here goes. I guess I’ll start with something classier than I’ll ever be. Hope y’all like it.”

There was a pause.

Then the delicate touch of fingers on keyboards.

The keys sounded loose.

But the fingers were confident.

More confident than the man’s voice or his rambling words or the keys that sounded like they might pop out of the piano he was playing, like teeth giving in to the passage of time.

Then suddenly I recognized the piece and caught my breath.

“Oh shit. That’s Rach three.”

Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D M inor .

Notoriously one of the most difficult pieces of music ever written.

It was a piece that not even Joel could conquer flawlessly.

His students stumbled over it so often he discouraged them from playing it at recitals, telling them to focus their talents on something less risky, something they could tame, rather than letting the piece run wild and losing control of it. Yes, he had always wanted his students to be courageous and explore music, even experiment with it, but he never intended his pupils to fall victim to it.

Rach 3 was a sacrificial altar on which he never wanted to see his students perish.

And yet here on this tape, through Joan’s tinny speakers, came the sound of every exquisite note, every complex configuration, every twisted and tangled bar of music being lovingly unraveled into sheer beauty.

I could hear those fingers dance across the keys, twirling and tantalizing every note from whatever old piano this man was playing.

Then suddenly, without a word of warning, Rachmaninoff morphed into Jerry Lee Lewis as those fingers pounded out “ Great Balls of Fire .” The keys thumped like a tribal drum as the song’s irresistible energy and recklessly joyful riffs launched themselves from the cassette deck.

Chet barked playfully at the happy sounds jumping out of the dash—the most animated I’d seen him in months—and even I found myself tapping away on the steering wheel until soon the tune changed again, this time sliding gracefully into Simon and Garfunkel’s “ Bridge Over Troubled Water ,” turning notes into a journey of light and shade, of pure emotion, that built to a stunning crescendo that sent chills through my bones.

“Oh God,” I uttered to myself. “This guy is really something.”

As if he heard me, the man in the tape said, “But wait, y’all. There’s more. Perhaps you’d prefer to hear some strings.”

With barely a second’s pause, the man on the tape switched instruments as a violin danced its way through Rimsky-Korsakov’s frenetic, fanciful “ Flight of the Bumblebee ,” the tune spinning and swirling, the notes seeming to zig and zag so busily through the air, sounding so convincingly like an insect, that Chet’s eyes and nose darted this way and that in search of buzzing bee.

Before the pooch could find the imaginary insect, the track shifted, the dizzying dance of the bee seamlessly transforming into Leonard Cohen’s haunting “ Hallelujah .”

It was one of Joel’s favorite songs, even Chet recognized it with a sad whimper.

It was almost too much, too raw, too emotional.

I reached forward to hit the stop button, but before I could, the tune changed again and the car was filled with the drama, the grandeur, the spine-tingling suspense of Vivaldi’s “ Winter ” from The Four Seasons , masterfully playing to its dazzling conclusion before the man on the tape spoke again. “Or perhaps y’all might prefer strings of a different kind…”

Suddenly an electric guitar began to sing, full of life as it belted out the iconic intro to Guns n’ Roses’ “ Sweet Child of Mine .” Within moments the melody entwined itself with that of Nirvana’s “ Smells Like Teen Spirit ”… followed by “ Walk This Way ” by Run DMC and Aerosmith… followed by a brief comment from the musician himself as he informed us, “And this one’s a personal favorite of mine.”

As he began playing, my mind struggled to identify the track. I knew it, I just hadn’t heard it in forever, until finally I recognized the catchy chords of Ry Cooder’s “ Crossroads ,” a mix of blues, gospel, and a whole lotta southern sass and style.

As the track came to an end with a few soulful twangs of the electric guitar, the man’s voice came back on the tape. “Well, I hope you liked my playing. I guess that’s it for now. This has been Lovesong Valentin, signing off. Hope I hear back. In the meantime, God bless and sweet lullabies to y’all.” Suddenly, distant church bells chimed on the tape, followed by Lovesong saying, “Oh shit! I really gotta go.”

And that was it.

I hit the stop button and realized I was filled with two intense, raw emotions: awe and anger.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

Nothing in between.

There was no denying that the person who had made that tape was some sort of god of the keys, a boy-genius on the strings, a virtuoso of the violin. But there was no forgetting that this prodigy, this freakish musical phenomenon, was still responsible for the death of the man I loved.

I needed a moment to breathe.

I began to brake, pulling the car over to the side of the road, when suddenly a huge Mack truck blared its horn behind me. I jumped in my seat and glanced in the rear-view mirror to see the giant of a vehicle bearing down on us, towering over us, a shadowy monster about to steamroll right over us. I panicked and the car swerved on the road before skidding onto the shoulder. As we slid to a halt in a cloud of dust, the truck blasted its horn again and roared past us like a freight train.

I was rattled, my nerves shredding away the awe and anger I had felt seconds earlier, leaving me nothing but shaken.

I turned to Chet who had dived from the passenger seat onto the floor under the dash, huddled and quivering like a sick pigeon. “You okay, buddy? Come here.”

I reached toward him to lift him off the floor and hold him, tell him he was safe. But he snapped at me, and I backed away. “Okay, okay, I get it. That was a bit scary, huh.” I didn’t know how to ease his fears. Joel was always the one who could calm Chet when the wind was howling, or the thunder was clapping, or smoke alarms blared relentlessly at a single slice of burnt toast.

What would Joel do now?

Why the fuck wasn’t he here to fix this?

What the fuck were we doing here… in the middle of fucking nowhere… all alone?

I pushed the questions out of my head, knowing I was headed fast into a dark chasm with no answers.

Then suddenly I realized—“Wait, I know what’ll calm you down.”

I pressed rewind on the cassette player, listening to the tape whizzing in reverse before stopping it at a random spot on the tape. “Music,” I told Chet. “Daddy’s music always made you feel better. Maybe this will too.”

I hit the play button, and the musical whiz-kid was playing Leonard Cohen’s “ Hallelujah ” on the violin.

I smiled at Chet. “There you go, buddy. How’s that? Better?”

The pooch’s ears went back, and a frightened smile teetered on his doggy face.

I patted the passenger seat. “Come on, boy. I need you riding shotgun with me. I promise I’ll keep an eye out for big mean trucks from now on.”

Chet hesitated a moment longer, then jumped up onto the passenger seat and curled into a defensive little ball.

He let me pat him, gently.

I didn’t push it.

He didn’t wanna look at me, and I didn’t want to frighten him anymore than he already was.

I checked the road, looking back over my shoulder, into the side mirror and over my shoulder again to make sure we weren’t about to become roadkill.

Even the sound of the indicator gave Chet a scare.

“It’s okay, buddy. Just listen to the music. Lose yourself in the music.”

He did just that, and by the time we crossed the border into Kentucky, he was snoring his little head off.

“Why the fuck did you come this way?”

We’d made it to Nashville and the mechanic who owned the repair shop into which we lurched was checking something under the hood. He mentioned words like “faulty spark plugs” and “a failing alternator” and “an issue with the transmission,” but when he asked me to describe the problem all I really wanted to tell him was that poor Joan Collins had smoked one too many cigarettes and was now coughing up a lung.

He asked how far we’d come and I told him from New York.

He asked where we were headed and I told him Louisiana.

That’s when he screwed up his face and said, “Cutting down through Knoxville and Chattanooga would have been much quicker. Why the fuck did you come this way?”

I wanted to tell him it wasn’t my doing.

That’s the thing about grief, you see. The thing that nobody ever sees coming.

It’s a trickster.

It’s a game-player.

It likes to distract you, pointing you in what you think is the right direction, until suddenly… you’re lost.

You’re confused.

And you’re fucking miles from where you’re supposed to be.

But because you wake up every day asking yourself where you are and how you got there, grief gets away with its little tricks.

Every.

Fucking.

Time.

The mechanic was right. We should never have taken the road over the Appalachian Mountains. Even after the Mack truck almost ran us off the road, I still had no idea how we ended up spluttering our way into a repair shop in Nashville.

Yet there we were.

“You’re lucky you got as far as you did. This car looks like it’s powered by thoughts and prayers alone, rather than automotive functionality.”

“Oh, trust me, I gave up on thoughts and prayers long ago. At this moment in time, it’s guts and determination that’s getting this car from A to B. So please, if you can get us to the next letter in the alphabet, that’d be greatly appreciated.”

The mechanic rubbed his hands on an oily rag from the back pocket of his coveralls. “You’re gonna have to leave it here overnight, I’ll see what I can do. There’s a motel next door if you need a place to stay.”

“Thanks, but I know a place or two myself.”

Indeed, I was no stranger to the dive bars and country festivals of Nashville. I’d interviewed countless singers who’d made a name for themselves there, from Dolly Parton to a hopeful young starlet named Taylor Swift. Hell, as a brash young seventeen-year-old with more perseverance than sense—determined to make something of my life after my parents’ passing—I’d even managed to swindle my way backstage to nab one of Johnny Cash’s last interviews before he died.

Yes. I knew Nashville.

After picking up a bottle of bourbon, I carried my suitcase and my dog into an old hotel in the heart of town. I had tucked the urn containing Joel’s ashes safely into my suitcase for fear of dropping it on the sidewalk… not that Joel would have minded. He loved Nashville too. He loved its wild ways, its late nights, its streets paved with the tears and unbridled passion of every young singer determined to make it in the music industry.

If I did drop his urn on the sidewalks here, there were worse places I could lay him down for all eternity. But Nashville’s so-called Honky Tonk Highway wasn’t exactly a peaceful resting place.

And so, I tucked the urn away.

I still hadn’t decided what to do with Joel’s ashes yet…

Other than take them with me wherever I went until he whispered to me exactly where he’d like to call home.

As I stepped into the hotel, Violet, the hotel owner, recognized me almost immediately. “Well, well, well, if it ain’t Scoop Van Owen himself. Where have you been, sweetheart? We’ve missed you, not to mention your ability to piss off every agent, manager, and major promoter in town by weaseling your way into dressing rooms you have no business being in.”

“Violet, you do know ‘Scoop’ is not a thing. You’re the only person who ever called me that.”

“It’s cute. Embrace it.”

“It makes me sound like a Muppet.”

She laughed.

Violet had one of those big, contagious laughs, the kind that would light up a room no matter how dank and seedy it was.

It brought a smile to my face, and the muscles in my cheeks felt stiff and sore from lack of exercise.

“So where have you been, huh?” Violet asked again. She glanced from me to Chet tucked under one arm. “You’re a dog person now?”

The smile faded.

I creased my brow, and wasn’t sure what to say.

And without letting myself think about it a second longer I blurted, “My partner of eight years died. He wrote a letter to somebody, and he died, and now I want to find out who that somebody is. Do you have a room?”

By that stage I was staring at nothing but the check-in desk, my eyes avoiding Violet’s gaze.

She turned, I heard jangling, and she slid a room key across the desk to me. “Just so you know, there are no pets allowed here.”

“Oh,” I said before I could take hold of the key.

Violet pushed it closer to me. “So I hope you and your furry little son have an enjoyable stay.”

The music drifted up from the bars of Nashville like smoke rising from the chimneys of a winter village to a starry night sky.

I was sitting on the balcony of our room.

Through the open doors behind me I could hear Chet snoring on the bed.

I picked up the bourbon and heard the sharp clink of the bottleneck against the rim of my glass as I poured another drink.

Somewhere a jukebox played Olivia Newton-John’s “ Let Me Be The re.”

Somewhere, someone took to the stage and sang a damn fine version of Wilson Pickett’s “ In the Midnight Hour. ”

Yet the one song that kept playing over and over in my head was a violin solo of Leonard Cohen’s “ Hallelujah. ”