(Author's note: When the Lights Go Out is about a lot of things. It's about family and the many
shapes it can take. It's about love and loss, and what we'll do to deal with
it. But more than anything, it's about music, our relationship with it and what
we'll do to preserve that relationship. After working in music as a college DJ
and intern, as a bartender at rock clubs, and now as a reporter and novelist, I
still don't fully understand my relationship with music. I don't fully grasp
why The Beatles' "Magical Mystery Tour" grabs me from beginning to
end. I can't explain why the sound of Neko Case's voice on "The Needle Has
Landed" makes me cry; why The Clash's "Stay Free" brings me back to my formative
years in the Southtowns; or why it took until my early 20s to understand the
perfection of every word of Bruce Springsteen's "Thunder Road." But
after existing in a variety of settings, standing or sitting and absorbing
chords and choruses and countless encores, I simply know I could never live
without music. It's not possible, and this novel exists as my love letter to
not only those who feel the same, but to those who need to create to feel
alive. This is for all of you, so please read its first six chapters on this
site, or simply buy the entire book here. Thanks for following along with these
posts, and Happy Holidays to you and yours. -MF)
6
Some see this guitar
And hear a distraction
Others see you, girl
A walking attraction
-“You, Girl” by J. Nolan
I stepped to our
office’s counter and saw her standing there, waiting and smiling.
“Hey, I’m here to
pick up the entertainment license for Cigarettes & Coffee,” she said. “Do
you have it ready?”
Of course it was
ready. Any license for the beautiful and mysterious Samantha was made a
priority. The only reason I knew her three-syllable name was because it was
printed on a yellow Post-it note, stuck to every manila envelope she picked up.
One of the functions of our office was to issue one-time licenses for events at
city bars and restaurants not zoned for everyday live entertainment. Sometimes
we licensed senior dances or college trivia competitions; other times we dealt
with singing contests at a coffee shop named after an Otis Redding song. On the
second Friday of every month, Samantha came strolling through our glass door to
pick up such a license for Cigarettes & Coffee, a soul-themed coffee shop
on Allen Street that, ironically, was a non-smoking establishment. The place
was famous for its Second Saturday Serenade, which featured musicians and
vocalists of varying styles vying for the event’s grand prize: free coffee for
the year. For this event, the shop needed a license.
Dark brown
shoulder-length hair was always slung tightly behind unpierced ears entertained
with white iPod ear buds. Her large blue eyes and mascara-laden eyelashes were
hidden behind tortoise shell-rimmed rectangular frames, balancing her hip
attractiveness with fashionable intelligence. She’d always tap her slim fingers
on our countertop and her canvas sneakers on the linoleum both to grab our
attention and, presumably, satisfy the beats galloping into her ears. If any
other consumer or bar owner tapped that counter, Pete and I purposely ignored
them until we heard their frustrated “hell-o?” ring over our cubicle walls.
With Samantha, we welcomed the rhythm.
Every time we
reached her, she’d remove her earbuds, smile and try to exchange pleasantries, with
comments on the weather or football or hockey or music. We kept our daily
responses to a minimum, with a stammering “hello,” “sounds good” or “goodbye.” Samantha
would occasionally make appearances in my nightly dreams, cameos likely ignited
by my timidity. Remarkably, these dreams weren’t salacious; they merely featured
her amid typical nonsensical dream imagery and conversations. That Friday, I tried
to have real interaction with Samantha, something actual to balance with the
exchanges in my sleep.
“Your license is
right here,” I said, then handed her an envelope with the document inside.
“You know, I’m so
sorry,” she said. “I always come in here and I have no clue what your name is.”
“It’s John,’ I
said, extending my hand. “John Nolan.”
“John Nolan? Um,
okay.” She briefly paused to absorb the answer. “Oh, and I’m Samantha. Sam, actually.
But I guess you already know that since I see it’s written right here on this
envelope. God, I feel stupid.”
“Don’t worry about
it. So, um do you—”
Before I could
continue, the door behind Sam swung open to reveal an angry old man. He
barreled past her and slapped his wrinkled, heavy hands on the counter.
“Where is Pete?”
he said, seemingly unaware of how loud he was talking. “I need to speak with
him right now. Immediately.”
“Sir, if you’ll take
a seat, I can find Pete and get him out here for you.”
“Look,” he said,
“I don’t know who the hell you are, son, but I suggest you get Mr. Konarski out
here before I lose my temper. Northtown Windows and their installation department
are putting the goddamn screws to me, and Konarski’s work on my behalf has been
egregious. Do you know what the word
egregious means?”
“Sir, if you’ll calm
down I can get Pete out here and—”
“Egregious,” he
bellowed. Startled co-workers peered over their cube walls at this disturbance
before he took a seat and yelled again. “Egregious!”
I glanced toward
Sam, standing frightened, albeit still interested. She put the envelope in her
bag and backed out of the office, sure to keep her distance from the old man while
opening the door.
“Well, hey, you
should check out the Serenade sometime. Every now and then, we actually host
real-life, skilled musicians,” she said. “It’s not always just vegan girls crooning
Tori Amos numbers.”
“Cool,” I said, uneasy
with the stewing gentleman in front of me. “Maybe I’ll pop in sometime.”
“All right. Nice,”
she said, nodding her head. “Until then, it was nice to finally get your name,
and I’ll see you around, John.”
“Bye, Samantha.”
“Please,” she
said. “It’s Sam. Just Sam.”
She turned and
exited. My smile joined a hint of déjà vu, momentarily freezing me before
hearing the voice of the day’s visitor.
“Hey, Casanova. My
taxes aren’t paying you to make nice with the broads,” he said. “Now either you
get Konarski out here or I’ll find the mayor’s office and make a goddamn stink
like you’ve never smelt before. You’ll have all kinds of time to chase skirts
after I get your ass tossed out into Niagara Square.”
“One minute, sir,”
I said, then clenched my teeth and walked back to Pete’s office.
“Um, Konarski?
You’ve got a real irritated fellow out here demanding to speak with you. Immediately.”
“Fuck, is he an
elderly guy? Walt Zimmerman?” said Pete. “I heard his gravelly voice from back
here.”
“He didn’t give
his name. Whoever he is, he’s pissed.”
“I guess he never
read the specs on his installation agreement, and Northtown apparently switched
the brand of window to a more expensive one on him. But he signed it, and now
they’re scooping him for an extra eight hundred bucks.”
“The store won’t
fix it?”
“Why should they? They
have a signed contract, and that’ll hold up over this old codger’s he-said
argument. What can you do, right?”
“You have to come
out and talk to him. I don’t know how old he is, but I’d bet he’s not too old
to cause a scene.”
“I got that from
our phone conversations. Is he a big guy?”
“Not really, but
you should see his hands. Looks like they’re made of fucking stone. He slapped
those mitts down on the counter and the thing nearly caved.”
“Oh, that sounds
great. Fucking fantastic.”
He walked out from
behind his desk to follow me through the office and find Walt, still seated and
seething.
“Mr. Zimmerman,
sir,” said Pete, “So, I’ve talked with North—”
“Save it,
Konarski,” said Walt. “I don’t want to hear a single word of your bullshit
excuses. Am I getting a refund from those grifters or not?”
“Well, I—”
“Jesus, what is it
about your generation of college-educated babblers? Can’t you go a second without
filling the air with excuses?” he said, arms folded across his chest. “I want a
simple goddamn answer: yes or no.”
“No,” said Pete.
“They’re not going to budge, so you’ll have to take them to small claims
court.”
“Small claims
court?” Walt stood from his chair. “So let me get this straight: I now have to
go waste my time in a courtroom because your gold-bricking, Polak ass didn’t
lift a finger to handle my case? These crooks pulled a bait-and-switch on me,
dammit!”
“Mr. Zimmerman,” said
Pete before taking a step behind our front counter, “if you can’t calm down,
I’m going to have to ask you leave.”
“Leave? This is my
goddamned building!” He slapped his calcified paws on the counter again. “My
taxes paid for that chair, that desk and your salary. And what do I get when I
need your help? Not an ounce of effort!”
“John, you want to
call security up here to escort Mr. Zimmerman out the door?”
“Sure,” I said,
then jumped back to my desk and dialed behind their showdown.
“Security? Yeah,
bring ‘em up here. Maybe they can escort me up to our mayor and I can ask him
why city dollars are paying for slobs like Konarski here to get fat on my dime.”
Pete took a deep
breath. It failed to calm him.
“You know what,
you old prick?” said Pete, wide-eyed. “I’ve heard enough. If you didn’t want to
get slipped for eight hundred bucks by Northtown, why didn’t you read the
goddamn contract? The specs were written right there, in black and white.
Didn’t have your magnifying glass that day, Magoo?”
“Magoo?” said
Zimmerman, then folded his arms again across his chest. “Oh, that’s sharp. Like
the blind cartoon character, right? Who the hell do you think you’re talking
to, just some cranky old man? What say the two of us head out to Niagara Square
and I kick your fat ass down to the naval yard?”
Pete stood firm
for a moment, staring at the gentleman before he let out a laugh, one of those
you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me laughs that bursts out in one pop. He tried to take
a step out from behind the counter, but I grabbed his shirttail and yanked him
back. Before either party could shout another word, two security guards pushed
through the door to flank both sides of Mr. Zimmerman.
“All right, sir,”
said one of the guards to Zimmerman, “let’s take a nice easy stroll to the
elevator, okay?”
“Sounds good to
me, fellas. Mr. Konarski and I were just talking about taking a little walk
outside, weren’t we Pete?”
“Goodbye, Mr.
Zimmerman,” I said, standing next to Pete as he gnashed his teeth, hands in his
pockets and breathing heavily. “Thanks for stopping in.”
“That’s fine,
sure,” he said. “But God knows where this country would be if men like me were
replaced by cowards like you, Konarski. Coward!”
When the door
closed, Pete stormed back to his office and slammed the door shut. At first, I heard
silence. At second, I heard a loud scream and the sound of a fist repeatedly
smashing the side of a filing cabinet. After another moment of silence, the punching
resumed.
Later that afternoon, well after North
Buffalo resident Walt Zimmerman was ushered out of our office, the encounter
with Sam was still swirling inside my head. Pete, sitting at his desk with a
bandage wrapped around his bloodied right hand, was still teetering on the edge
of rage after being verbally assaulted by a man nearly three times his age.
Holding a fresh Tim Horton’s coffee, I leaned into his office to see him
staring ahead at nothing in particular. He was still breathing heavily.
“You want to take
a stroll out to the monument, have a smoke?” I said. “Might calm you down a
bit.”
“Who the hell does
this happen to? What kind of grown man gets verbally undressed by someone’s
grandfather, then takes out his embarrassment on a filing cabinet?”
“Not sure. Are we
talking drunk or sober?”
“Regrettably sober,”
he said while massaging his knuckles. “Is it wrong that I was scared of that
guy?”
“Absolutely not.”
“I really thought
he might jab a pen into my jugular. Christ, he had to be involved in Korea or
some other conflict, right? I’m scared of him, and I don’t give a shit who
knows it.”
“Let’s take a
stroll, okay?”
“You don’t think
he’s waiting outside the building, do you?”
“My God, let’s
just go.”
The elevator
stopped on the first floor and we exited past the overhead lobby murals of
Indians and buffaloes and steelworkers toiling in front of the American flag. Before
striding past the busts of former Buffalo mayors Frank Schwab and Grover
Cleveland, we stopped and patted their copper scalps before bursting through
the revolving doors and down the steps to Niagara Square. Thankfully, Mr.
Zimmerman was nowhere to be found. We reached an empty bench, sat down and lit
our cigarettes in the shadow of the square’s towering McKinley Monument.
“So,” I said,
“before your scrape with the war vet, you missed an appearance by our
Samantha.”
“Aw, are you
kidding?” he yelled, then took an exasperated drag. “As if things couldn’t get
any worse. What did you say to her? Anything?”
“It wasn’t what I
said to her; it was what she said to me. Kind of freaky.”
“Explain.”
“You know how I
told you that she pops into some of my dreams?”
“Sure.”
“Well,”
I said, “today, she said an exact line from one of the dreams.”
“Something dirty?”
“No, you fucking creep.
In the dream, we were sitting at a table, and I looked at her and said,
‘Samantha, my name is John, John Nolan.’ Then, she leaned across the table,
looked right at me and said, ‘It’s Sam. Just Sam.’”
“So what?”
“Before she left
today, she said the exact same line.”
Pete leaned back
in his bench and took another drag.
“John, for a
married man, you have pretty boring dreams. Maybe after the baby’s born, you’ll
kick it up a notch. I’d be embarrassed to tell you some of the shit I dream
about.”
“So you don’t find
this a tad freaky?”
Pete pondered the
details and exhaled smoke toward the square’s traffic circle.
“What kind of
drink did she order at your dream table? Beer, scotch, gin? What?”
“Seriously? You’re
hauling out your genius drink selection theory on this? It’s a yes or no
answer. Was this odd or not?”
“Okay, it was odd.
Even a tad spooky,” he said. “Now, my turn. What was she drinking?”
Pete had this
theory about how a man could tell everything he wanted to know about a woman
based on her bar drink. Vodka revealed a volatile problem drinker with a torrid
past involving bad break-ups. Rum enabled sloppy drunks to recklessly sing
karaoke. Whiskey was simply a deal-breaker. And according to Pete, imported
beers apparently indicated a heightened level of European traveling experience
he didn’t want to hear about. With these aforementioned choices all cautionary
tales, Pete exclusively gravitated toward ladies drinking the domestic light
beer trio of Miller, Coors and Bud Light. He claimed women sipping these
selections appreciate the simplistic taste and social compatibility of
watered-down American beer. They’re not after an escape via Long Island iced
teas, or an image afforded through a dry, two-olive martini. These women just
want to be; they present themselves as everything every reasonable male has
ever searched for. They love dogs, hate cats. They hold doors for the elderly,
say, “God bless you” to the sneezes of strangers. They like the Beatles, but live
for the scruffy, leather jacket-wearing 1975 version of Bruce Springsteen. When
they cry, something is very wrong. When they laugh, the moment is very right. In
Pete’s estimation, these were the women a man should spend the night and make a
life with. To validate his cherished
theory, he found his eventual wife sipping a Coors Light under “Jungleland” when
he first spotted her across a lakefront barroom. Still, he wanted me to confirm
his theory with the images of my dream.
“She wasn’t
drinking booze or beer. We were sitting in a coffee shop, with coffee,” I said.
“What’s the point of this question, anyway? Are you planning on asking her
out?”
“I’m just curious,
that’s all.”
“She sips coffee.
How does your compatibility meter read on coffee drinkers?”
Leaning his head
to the left, he scratched the back of his neck while contemplating.
“That tells me
nothing. If I had to guess, though, I’d say Samantha’s a beer girl. If you told
me she was drinking a Miller Lite, this little talk of ours would be a lot more
interesting.”
“Noted.”
“Do you remember
that one conversation I had with her?”
“You call the
exchange you had a conversation?”
“What? We talked,
exchanged musical tastes, blessings.”
“First of all,” I
said, “you asked her what she was listening to on her iPod.”
“‘Torn and Frayed’
by the Stones,” he remembered, proudly.
“And then, you
sneezed a mouthful of coffee all over the front of her winter coat.”
He smiled,
reminiscing.
“Which she said
‘God bless you’ to,” he said. “And she was wearing a green raincoat, not a
winter coat. She was protected.”
“Have you noticed
how she now flinches whenever you hand her an envelope? Good for you, but that
wasn’t a conversation. An incredibly embarrassing moment, yes. Not a conversation.”
Still, until my
recent encounter, Pete’s awkward exchange was more communicative than any
moment I’d had with her. I usually smiled, handed her the envelope and watched
her alluring exit before I retreated to my desk. But why? If I thought she was
that cool, that fond of dogs and Springsteen and light beer, why couldn’t I simply
be friendly? Why couldn’t I just ask a question or two to validate Pete’s
theory and confirm her legitimacy? Maybe because it would spoil the illusion.
Whenever we heard
Sam’s low-top Chucks come clicking into our civic confines, we needed to
believe in her perfection. She was a “what if” girl for two married men, an
entity to look to and wonder how our lives would be different if we were dating
her. If we asked her too many questions, her answers might prove our idealistic
assumptions wrong. We wouldn’t admit it to each other, but Pete and I wanted to
know as little as possible. This way, we could fill in the details ourselves
and mold Samantha into exactly who we wanted her to be. We developed all kinds
of scenarios for where she worked and what she did in her free time. The only
thing we knew for sure was that she wasn’t a cashier at Cigarettes &
Coffee. I’d been there on Saturday mornings to read the paper and listen to
whatever saxophone-infused soul the baristas soothed through the shop’s
overhead speakers. If she worked there, she would’ve been there those mornings.
In our favorite
and most detailed fantasy scenario, she works as a cashier at an indie music
shop, like Record Theater over by Canisius College. She spends her mornings
stocking shelves with Canadian imports before helping some elitist audiophile
complete his massive conversion from CDs back to vinyl. When her day is done,
she goes back to her downtown loft to write poetry in spiral Mead notebooks and
slowly sip from a tall pilsner glass full of ice cold domestic beer. Van
Morrison’s “St. Dominic’s Preview” serenades her scribbling and, a minute into
the song, her sublime voice joins the rising percussion, precise guitar picking
and piano tinkering to sing only one line:
“And it’s a long way to Buffalo.”
After filling a
few pages with profound stanzas, she takes her male black lab Duke for a walk
through her neighborhood full of rockers and painters and writers. And maybe
one of her neighbors is the owner of Cigarettes & Coffee. One of the many neighborly
favors she does for him or her is a nice stroll over to City Hall, where she
takes an elevator ride to the fifth floor and picks up the Second Saturday
Serenade entertainment licenses.
This was the kind
of bullshit we invented instead of asking her real questions. Since Pete’s
infamous sneeze, she never got a full sentence from either of us. There was once
a time we weren’t hesitant to engage a woman like Samantha, a time when the
mere chance to talk to any woman like her lured us into pubs and rock clubs. Those
nights reigned in a different life, when each of us held idealistic assumptions
for how our futures were going to erect themselves. When those assumptions
yielded to a different reality, things changed, just as they do in everyone’s
life. People act, react and absorb the aftermath. They get married, take
civilized jobs and try to mature. That’s where Pete and I were standing. We
were now embedded in a life of obligations, not impulses; a life of responsibilities,
not recklessness. Love and commitment had put us on more solid ground. We were
thankful for this. Most of the time.
Was I happy to be
away from the Nighthawk, away from Lynyrd Skynyrd covers, Genesee pints and
insane (yet alluring) pyromaniac jugglers? Sometimes, sure. Was Pete better off
cradling a baby girl in his arms instead of being hog-tied on the 20-yard line
of a nationally televised football game? Definitely. But despite the security this
responsibility afforded, it could never soothe the glaring reality that those old
nights of excitement, those hours spent in the early stages of dizzying attraction,
were gone forever.
And maybe that’s
why Samantha’s appearance every month was so thrilling for the two of us, so
exciting that her voice and image filled the end of my sleep every once in a
while. In her, we could see those old tavern nights and unknown possibilities
we used to bask in, still right at her delicate fingertips. We could see her at
the bar, adhering to some lucky bastard’s expectations before eclipsing every
last desire. We imagined the moment she looked up through those tortoise shell
frames of hers and injected the guy’s chest with that nascent warm surge we
yearned for. Through our silence, these assumptions remained intact.
If we had a real
conversation with her, she might tell us otherwise. She might tell us that her
life sucks, that it’s complicated and empty and unfulfilling. She might tell us
that, on her Friday nights, she drinks chardonnay while watching reality
television with her best friend Bentley, her male housecat. She might reveal
her life to be not nearly as romantic and reckless as Pete and I remember our
own to be. With this remote possibility, we erred on the side of idealism. We
needed to recall that euphoria of romantic possibilities.
Once a month, we
were able to do that through the beautiful existence of a mysterious entity
named Sam.