This job was taking decades off my life. And for what? My salary was a joke. My colleagues were psychotic. I’d never even wanted to work in TV. Certainly not this kind of TV. If it hadn’t been for that random call from Len, with this “dazzling opportunity,” I would never have come all the way out here to LA. And, who knows, maybe I’d have found another way to write my novel, like I promised Dad I would.
Great: Now I was thinking about Dad. Or rather, I was thinking about our final conversation in that greasy-walled diner he used to like, the one so close to the Long Island Expressway, everything would rattle when an eighteen-wheeler drove past.
“I’m not gonna be around forever, Sash,” he’d announced, halfway through his standard midafternoon breakfast of coffee and buttered toast. Dad was skinny as hell. It was nerves, he said. Toast was the heaviest thing he could get into his stomach before a show—and he played two shows a night, every night of the week. That’s what it takes to make a living when you’re splitting the money among a fourteenpiece wedding band.
I’m pretty sure Dad knew about the cancer by then. No one else did, though. Not even Mom. I mean, how could she have? Dad was away most of the time, and he didn’t want her to worry. It took her months to find out that his “tour of Louisiana” was nothing of the kind. He’d booked himself in a hospice on Staten Island.
“I’m sorry I never had much money to give you,” he said, between gulps of weak, sugary coffee. “But at least your old man did what he loved, right? I mean, look at Stevie, Jimbo… Fitz. You think those guys wake up every morning, happy to put on their shirts and ties and get in their goddamn cars and drive to an office? No way. They’re always calling me up, wanting to know how it’s going on the road. They want me to tell ’em how hard it is, that I’ve grown out of it. But I haven’t, Sash. I still love this life. It’s who I am. I made my choice, and I’ve never regretted it.”
“Jesus, Dad,” I said. “Enough with the obituary already. You’re only forty-three.”
“I just wanna prepare you, Sash. You’ve got some big choices ahead. You finish college this year. And I know you wanna write that novel of yours, whatever it ends up being about. But that’s not gonna be easy. There’ll be bills to pay. Mom’s gonna want you to get a real job. You might even want to take a real job yourself, when you see your friends buying apartments and cars and clothes and all that bullshit they think they need. But write your book, Sash. Find a way—’cause if you don’t, you’ll never forgive yourself. Trust me. Do what you love.”
Back then, of course, I hadn’t written a word. The knobbled, weary old man of my imagination had yet to set off on his unwise journey across the Black Lake of Sorrow on a night when the shutters of the Old House were closed.
Next time I saw Dad, it was in Mom’s living room. They’d put him in his favorite tux, trumpet by his side. Open casket. The cancer had been genetic, apparently—no avoiding it. Everyone got drunk, then the band played him out: A Taste of Honey, of all things. The Herb Alpert version. I was a mess. Angry, too: why hadn’t he gone to a doctor earlier? Why hadn’t he told any of us? Stevie, Jimbo, and Fitz were there, all in shirts and ties, all still very much alive. My God, the stories they told.
Of course, if I’d known that Dad was giving me his last words in the diner, I would have stayed for dessert. Or at least some coffee. I would also have taken the opportunity to ask for some clarification: Like, how can you do what you love if the thing you love isn’t a job that anyone will pay you to do? What then, Dad? What then?
I tried calling Len a second time.
Stabbing at the digits on the screen, I noticed three unplayed voicemails from a number with a Honolulu area code. Brock. What with the chaos of the press conference, I still hadn’t gotten around to calling him back. I hadn’t spoken to him since… wow, last week. But he’d understand. He always did. I liked that about Brock: His