Outro: The Serial Novel

Chapter Seven, Part III

Channy Under the Influence

If I were you, I would take the rest of this with a grain of salt, because I am looped. Faced with record numbers of singers, deprived of the assistance of toy locomotives, I have nonetheless managed to slam enough rum and cokes to souse a baseball team. I’m at the bar, trying to snap the lid on my CD case – a project I’ve been working on for some time now. Hamster appears over my shoulder, humming like a disapproving clergyman.

“I have never seen you like this.” I brace myself for the sound that follows: “Tch, tch.”

“Do my singers suck, Hammy? Does my sound system suck? Do I suck?”

He’s trying really hard not to laugh.

“What is your problem?” he says. “Everybody loves you, Channy! Your singers worship you. Your sound system is great! Why are you letting one person’s opinion drive you into a ditch?”

Now I seem to be standing, slapping my hands on the bar.

“Did you hear her? She sings like a fucking angel! She knows, Hamster! She knows I’m a big fucking phony with a… with a Salvation Army PA! God I suck so much!”

I get the feeling I’m being very loud. Hamster is laughing now, big baritone peals of laughter. The fucker.

“S’not funny! S’not funny!”

“Is too!” he squeals. “I just… I just didn’t know you had this in you, Channy.”

“Chanson,” I say. “From now on, the fucking name is fucking Chanson.”

I take a slug from my glass and get nothing but ice. Hamster takes it, and wraps a big hand around my shoulder. “All right, Chanson. Come on, let’s go.”

“Where?”

“My place. You are certainly not driving home.”

“I knew it!” I say. “You’ve been waiting for this chance ever since you hired me, you dirty old lech.”

I’m swatting him on the shoulder. He’s still laughing. God that’s annoying.

“You’re a very attractive woman, Channy – about five drinks ago. Now, come on. I locked your CDs in the office.”

I’m surprised to find myself boarding a small boat. The jiggle of my first step sends a small wave of nausea through my stomach.

“What the hell is this?”

“This,” he says, “is the best damn commute in Washington state.” He revs the engine and backs away from the dock. “This,” he yells, “is Hamster stickin’ it to the man!”

Hamster kicks it forward into the wind, looking like a goddamn cigarette ad.

“You know, Hammie?” I shout. “For a second there, you actually sounded like a black man!”


I wake to a gray light seeping through the windows. I am wearing every stitch from the night before, flat-out on a white quilt. I stumble to the blinds and peer through to see the public dock, directly across the harbor. That means we’re in the white house with the green trim – the one I’ve been lusting after for six months. I feel the need to express this thought out loud.

“Shoulda invited myself over sooner.”

Yikes. I sound like Stevie Nicks with strep throat. I also have a tongue made of shoe leather, an indescribable amount of thirst and an urgent need to pee. I catch a sliver of porcelain through the door and I head in that direction.

Cupping my hands to drink, I find in the mirror a fruit salad of colors, and turn to discover a jumble of plastic pipes soaking in the tub.

“What the hell?” I croak. I follow another door into the hall, where I find neat lines of similar pipes lining either wall, carefully framed around the door jambs. When I put my eye to a section of baby blue, I find a fuzzy, toothy face staring back, and squeal accordingly.

My boss leans into the far end of the hallway, holding a cup of coffee, wearing a red silk bathrobe like a black Hugh Hefner. It hits me all at once.

“Hamster!” I yell. “Hamster! Hamster!”

He lets out a grand and sheepish smile.

“Yes, damn you: Hamster. You want some coffee?”

Next: Heroes

Purchase the book at: http://www.amazon.com/Outro-Michael-J-Vaughn/dp/1440111405/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231020486&sr=8-1


Image by MJV.

Outro: The Serial Novel

Chapter Seven, Part II
The Courteous and the Not So Courteous

Channy’s Karao-Courtesies
(A Karz Publication)

1. Don’t ask the KJ to start the song over. If you miss the first line, just come in on the second. No one will care. Also, if you discover that you have ordered up the wrong song (say, Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On?” when you wanted the 4 Non-Blondes’ “What’s Up?”), you’d better just fake it, because you’re not getting a do-over.

2. Don’t hang out on the back deck until your name’s called. Hey, I’m sure it really is all about you, but could you at least pretend to care about the other singers?

3. Don’t scream into the mic. As you pack your lungs with oxygen for the jungle yell on “Immigrant Song,” back that puppy up a couple inches. You’ll save everyone a lot of pain.

4. Don’t get falling-down drunk. Remember how great you were, singing “Bohemian Rhapsody” after six tequila poppers? Neither does anybody else.

5. Don’t hassle the KJ. It’s hard enough keeping all those raging egos in check without you coming up to bitch about the lack of Neil Diamond selections. KJs are the sacred priests of music – treat them accordingly.

6. Do not horn in. Perhaps your backing vocal to “Sex and Candy” really is God’s gift to harmonics, but you pick up that second mic without prior permission and you will die a terrible death. (This is not to discourage a planned harmony jam, which can be a beautiful thing.)

7. Don’t milk the applause. Even if you deserve it – especially if you deserve it – nothing looks cooler than a humble “thanks” and a quick departure. If you are offered a high-five, however, slap away. Also, if you have just performed an Elvis tune, you are required by law to mumble “Thankyouvermuch.”

8. Do not change your song selection within three singers of your turn, unless you’re willing to add substantially to the tip jar.

9. Try to avoid singing a song that has already been performed that evening. If you sing it badly, your effort will look that much worse in comparison. If you sing it well, you will appear to be showing up your predecessor, who will then be entitled to throw a baseball at your head in the following inning.


When I report to Karz, Hamster is standing at the bar with a songbook, reading my Karao-Courtesies yet again.

“Don’t you ever get tired of that thing?”

“It’s not just that it’s funny,” he says. “It’s that it’s so completely out of character. It’s so…edgy!

I take a stool across from him. “I never would have written it for the customers. I did it for a KJ newsletter out of Spokane. Strictly in-house. Somehow Harry got a hold of it, passed it all around the bar, and they loved it. And do you know why? Because they think it’s about everybody else. And five minutes later, they’re up on stage, saying, ‘Damn! Can I start over?’”

My little monologue earns a chuckle, but I can tell Hamster’s anxious about something. His gaze shifts to the end of the bar, where a squad of gray-haired men are gathered around Mt. Rainier.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

He curls a lip. “My distribution system appears to be on the fritz.”

“Yikes! You may have to deliver drinks by hand.”

“Perish the thought. You think the singers will come to the bar for their drinks?”

“Sure. I’ll make an announcement. I don’t know, Hamster. You sure this thing isn’t an Amtrak?”

“Ouch! Thou doth smacketh me with barbs of truth. If those Union Pacific freights would just give us a right-of-way once in a while. Can’t tell you how much of my soul I sent down the chipper telling some passenger ‘This hardly ever happens.’”

“Seems to me that bored, frustrated passengers might naturally turn to drink.”

“Paid for this restaurant,” he says. “But I still hate lying to people.”

I feel a quiet presence behind me, accompanied by the smell of old-style after-shave. It’s a trio of codgers. One is wearing an engineer cap. I’m trying not to laugh.

“Bad news,” says the tallest. He’s a rangy retired-officer type, owner of a bushy moustache straight out of a horse opera. “It’s definitely the transformer. Now, you know what we told you when we put this in, Ham. Y’got an enormous system here, with an unusually powerful transformer. You need to keep a backup at all times.”

Hamster covers his face. “Oh, God. If I give you another pitcher of beer, could you please not say ‘I told you so’?”

Moustache-man smiles. “I’ll try – but I was really looking forward to that.”

“How long to find another?”

He inevitably rubs his ‘stache as a thinking device. “Tell you what. I got a pretty free weekend. I’d bet I could get you two by Monday.”

“Two? But we only need…”

“Two,” says Moustache.

Hamster laughs and gives a military salute. “Two it is. Thanks, George.”

“No prob, Cap’n.”

That’s enough engineering for me. I’m off to deal with my own equipment. This being Thursday, I’m expecting a humble crowd, but of course I’m entirely wrong. Within the first hour, I’ve got two birthday parties (thirtysomething and fiftysomething, respectively), a small battalion of mom’s-night-outers (one of them dancing rather naughtily for the engineers on an AC/DC song), and a dozen college karaokeans bent on a future with American Idol. The personnel management is like a New York Times crossword. I’ve got forty-eight singers, and I’m running out of business card holders, farming the extras to a windowsill behind my station.

Somewhere in the chaos I notice Kevin the Cop, wearing a tropical shirt that is anything but Octoberish. He’s got the skin for it, though – and, in fact, is looking rather fetching all over. He drops “Suavamente” for “La Bamba” – the first time I’ve heard it sung by someone who actually knows Spanish. Then he flashes a grin and returns to his friends.

It is often at moments like this, when I’m clamped in a non-stop rush, that my thoughts come through with alarming clarity. They have to – murkiness takes too much time. I have precisely two ideas on this renewed attraction. One: a month and a half ago, I asked Kevin to back off – and he did. Two: having tapped into such a torrent of sadness on Sunday, it could be that I have opened up my other emotions as well. Like lust. I am stealing this from Shari’s hypothesis, the emotional tool belt, use ‘em or lose ‘em.

After Kevin, I’ve got yet another singer I’ve never heard of, but the selection stands out: “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” by Roberta Flack. It’s a gorgeous song, but excruciatingly slow. The entrances arrive at long, long intervals. I have yet to see someone make it all the way through without coming in early at least once. I line up track five on the disc, right after “Killing Me Softly,” and then I reach for the mic.

“We have yet another newcomer! Please welcome Jade.”

Jade is quite a sight. She wears a dark, pleated schoolgirl skirt, a blouse of emerald silk with small white specks of Chinese calligraphy, and black pumps with stiletto heels. Her round Caucasian eyes are shadowed in layers of black and green, and her thick jet hair hangs in a long braid down her back. She wears a necklace of black string holding a circle of jade. I seem to remember they call this a blessing disc.

She perches on a stool and crosses her legs, content to wait out the long intro, then closes her eye on the opening phrase and sings almost to herself, tasting the words. This is something I have noticed about performance: if you are involved with the song, the audience will be involved with you. We don’t get Jade’s blue eyes until the third long phrase, and even then she doesn’t seem overly concerned with us. She’s concerned with the first time ever she saw his face. It’s a matter of theater – you can feel the fourth wall sealing her off, making it safe for us to watch.

With “Little Girl Blue,” she had to win us over – the bachelorettes, the horny men. This time, she has us within seconds. Something about the song, the long reaches of quietude. Church. I’m eating her sustenatos, great fields of tone that carry a drive and a shape, without ever seeming forced. I am so envious.

She climbs the last ladder of chromatics and leaves us dangling. Again the bank of silence, broken again by Harry’s happy woof – and again, she’s headed for a slippery exit. I do something I’ve never done. I hit the play button on a Joan Osborne song and let Shari figure it out for herself. I am fixed on my target, following Jade out the door like a teeny-bopper chasing a Beatle.

“Hey! Jade! Amber!”

She stops but doesn’t turn, holding a pose like a figure in film noir. She’s not about to get away – not in those heels – so she turns and faces me with folded arms.

“Yeah?”

I feel breathless, silly.

“You’re so… good! You’re extraordinary.”

She stares at me and blinks her eyes, once.

“You think I need someone like you to tell me that?”

“No… no. But I was just wondering…”

“Why I don’t stay? Why the fuck would I stay? To poison my ears with your so-called singers? Or that pile of shit you call a sound system? I’d be better off with a fucking megaphone.”

I’m absolutely stunned. She turns to go, then comes back for another volley.

“You’re lucky I come at all. You’re lucky that I’m crazy about singing. But one song is all I can take.”

She’s gone, clicking across the lot, calves tightening at each step. I follow my feet into the bar, where Shari is asking if God is one of us. I hold my ribs, feeling all the world like I’ve been punched.

Next: Hangover at Hamster’s

Purchase the book at: http://www.amazon.com/Outro-Michael-J-Vaughn/dp/1440111405/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231020486&sr=8-1

Image: Art by Nina Koepcke. Photo by MJV.

Outro: The Serial Novel

Chapter Seven, Part One

Lunch on the Roof


“So what is this place?”

“The Russell House.”

“Chanson,” says Shari, as Frenchly as possible. “Zees most clearly eez nut a house.”

“More of a building. Private offices.”

Shari scans the general area. “Where?”

I point a thumb at the ground. “Down thar. We’re on the roof. It’s a family foundation eco-thing. Those wooden arches there? With the black iron fittings?”

“Yuh-huh?”

“Nothing but windfall, not a single tree chopped down. The garden out front uses drought-resistant plants. These cement blocks beneath our tootsies have gaps between them – no sand, no mortar – so the rainfall can seep directly into the soil, and not into the drainage system.”

Shari flicks away a strand of hair – more golden than ever in the light of day.

“So how come we get to sit here and eat sammiches on their roof like we own the place?”

“’Cause they want us to. And they want to give back to the community.”

Shari narrows her eyes. “That is suspiciously nice.”

“Hardass.”

“Honey, in case you ain’t looked back there lately, I am anything but…”

“Baby Got Back!” I shout. It’s a peril of KJ’ing: you find yourself talking in song titles. But Shari seems to enjoy it.

I take a big crunchy bite of my sandwich and let the overripe flavor of the meat smoosh onto my taste buds. I forget where I picked up this thing for braunschweiger, but it seems to soothe a rough patch deep in my being. So much that I have missed Shari’s question.

“Honey? Did you hear me?”

“Oh.” Smack-smack. “No. What was that?”

“Where were you born?”

I scour the question for dangers; it comes out clean.

“Anchorage, Alaska. Well, a town just south of there. Tiny, tiny place. When we got a Fred Meyer’s, it was like the high school science club had landed a rocket on the moon. Boh-ring. Boring! Did I mention boring? The only recreation in town was recreational drugs. Heroin, acid. Suicide. Suicide was the favorite. I went to thirty funerals before I graduated. Had three different outfits, just for funerals.”

Shari looks captivated; more tragedy.

“Is that why you left?”

Another fork in the road: fabrication or vagueness. I’m going for vagueness.

“I couldn’t see becoming anything up there. It was leave or stay exactly the same, forever. How ‘bout you?”

“How ‘bout me what?”

“Where ya from?”

She smiles. “Iowa. I was a big ol’ corn-fed jockette – pitcher on the softball squad. Then I went to college to learn how to crunch numbers. Married the college sweetheart, turned out to be a cheatin’ son-of-a-B. We divorced after four years. I figured a financial analyst could work any damn place she wanted, and we didn’t have any kids, so I headed west.”

“Why Washington?”

She waves her cherry red fingernails at the harbor. “Water! Big, fat, oceanic stretches of water. Why do you think I live on Soundview?”

“I’m gonna take a flyer here, but, so you can view the sound?”

“You’re a smart chick, girlfriend.”

Girlfriend. I like the sound of that. Shari runs her gaze along a high stone wall bisecting us from a private garden. The wall is constructed from thousands of thinly hewn stones, like sugar wafers.

“I know I should be happy with this lovely public area, but why do I have such a desire to see what’s on the other side of that wall?”

“I’m gonna take another flyer here, but, because you’re human?”



Next: Karao-Courtesies

Purchase the book at: http://www.amazon.com/Outro-Michael-J-Vaughn/dp/1440111405/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231020486&sr=8-1

Image by MJV

Outro: The Serial Novel

Chapter Six, Part VI
Big Sister

“I’m really sorry, Shari. Really sorry.”

“Nonsense,” she says. “Tell me why we’re here?”

Here is the end of the Jerisich Dock, my waterborne synagogue. The drizzle has returned, and we’re huddled beneath a huge umbrella that I keep in the truck.

“We’re here to smoke really bad cigars,” I say. “And, to forget.”

“Amen, sister,” says Shari. I hand her the first of the new Swisher Sweets. The last of the old is for me. I extract the silver polygon and fire it up with a roll of my thumb. First time, like magic. Shari’s first drag fills the dome of the umbrella.

“Whew! Nasty. Nice lighter, though. Whatcha call that flowery thing?”

“A fleur de lis.” I give myself a light and breathe in the familiar toxins. Raindrops smack the cloth above us.

“So hey,” she says. “I understand if maybe… you don’t want to tell me about…”

“Good,” I say, then I laugh, so I can pretend I’m joking. “Honestly, Shari, it’s just a bunch of little things, piling up all day long.”

“A straw/camel’s back situation?”

“Exactly.” (She has purchased the fabrication.)

“Okay,” she says. “But Channy. Could you tell me something else about yourself? I feel sometimes like I don’t know the least thing about you.”

I consider my options, watching the little spits of water jumping from the harbor surface.

I say this: “Chanson.”

Shari looks puzzled.

“That’s my name.”

“Song,” says Shari. “Wow. That’s beautiful. Can I tell?”

“Ain’t no state secret. But it was the reason I got beat up in third grade.”

“Aren’t kids awful?”

“Yeah. But they got theirs. I grew six inches that summer.”

Shari lets out a raspy Janis cackle, wrapped in tobacco.

Tell me something, Shari. Sometimes when you sing, I feel like you’re just gonna bust. Is there something behind that?”

She cackles again. “Absolutely nothin’. But I get that a lot. ‘Why, that girl musta had a turrible life. Just turrible.”

“Exactly,” I say.

She smiles. “In truth, I have had a mundanely happy existence. I think I seek out weepy, heart-wrenching ballads so I can balance things out. I think our emotions are like our skills. Use ‘em or lose ‘em, right? When I found you back there casting tears all over your parking brake, I was actually a little envious. I mean, ya feel better now, right?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I guess so.”

“I’ve got this friend who gets real bad PMS. And she decided to scour her CDs for sad songs, and listen to them, one after another, till she made herself cry. ‘Cause she knew it would make her feel better. After a while, she went ahead and made a PMS mix tape.”

“That is fucking beautiful,” I say. We laugh at my sudden obscenity, and I’m thinking, It would be so good to have a sister.

But there’s something else in that box. And it might be years before I look at it.


Next: Lunch On the Roof

Purchase the book at: http://www.amazon.com/Outro-Michael-J-Vaughn/dp/1440111405/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231020486&sr=8-1


Image: Kari Mitchell. Photograph by MJV.

Outro: The Serial Novel

Chapter Six, Part V

The Elizabethans Get Drunk

The Ren-Faire folks are drunk but good; probably they’re all drama clubbers like Kai. A willowy damsel, complete with conical hat and dangling veil, does “God Save the Queen” by the Sex Pistols. A bulky, long-haired gentleman in a purple cape and silk doublet does “Paradise By the Dashboard Light” (a buxom serving wench filling in for Karla Bonoff).

Singing is apparently not on Kai’s resume, because the next time I see him he’s sending me a courtly bow before he troops out with the others. We don’t need any more words.

But then there’s the box. It sits beneath my soundboard, a radioactive presence. I try to ignore it as I slip on all my dust covers, but I know if I don’t open it the night will be sleepless.

A half hour later, I wave off Shari, my final regular, as she strolls across the lot. She lives a few blocks up the hill, which gives her the option of getting drunk if she pleases. Hamster has burrowed into his office, conducting his cashing-out before he gets to the cleaning. I’ve never known an owner who scrubs his own floors, but maybe it gives him peace of mind when the inspector comes.

I open the door to my pickup and hoist my CD case inside, wrapping it with the beach towels and bracing it against the back of the passenger seat. Then I open the driver’s side door, center my danger box on the seat and click the metal tab that releases the lid.

The first item feels like a life sentence. It’s a box of Swisher Sweets, sealed in a plastic bag. The second item is a small cloth sack, blue fabric worn at the edges. The object inside is a polygon, solid and smooth. I feel a vague recollection, like the first hint of a familiar cologne, but it takes too long to set down roots. The string comes loose, the polygon hits the seat, and a flash of silver buckles my legs.

The wet asphalt bites into my knees. I grab onto the steering wheel, and cry and cry. I hear footsteps, far away then closer, quicker. Long-nailed fingers rub my shoulders, strands of wheat-colored hair sweep across my forehead. I hear a voice like Etta James after a long night, saying something about everything’s gonna be okay.


Next: Big Sister

Purchase the book at: http://www.amazon.com/Outro-Michael-J-Vaughn/dp/1440111405/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231020486&sr=8-1

Image by MJV

Outro: The Serial Novel

Chapter Six, Part IV

Attack of the Elizabethans

When I return, it’s much too quiet, but perhaps this is a consequence of my ruse. The suicide gang is constructively ignoring me, replaying the cross-gender comedies of their little game. I’m stuck by the vision of Harry, my least adventurous singer, mimicking Shania Twain. What’s gotten into everybody? I load up the Sheryl Crow that I was going to sing before, and I work through it carefully, tiptoeing the higher passages lest they trip a lever.

Singers talk about a “break” in the voice. This is where the point of production, the spot through which the tone resonates, switches from the throat to the sinal cavity (you’ll hear the phrases “chest voice” and “head voice,” but the former is more metaphorical than accurate). The break is a real trouble spot – a choral reef, difficult to navigate. A singer is likely to have a harder time with a melody that hovers along her break than one that operates a third or even a fifth above it.

But there’s a second break point – an emotional break point. This one hovers near the top – the highest note you can sing without feeling undue stress on your throat. This places you in such a free, untethered stratosphere that it leaves you vulnerable, literally sticking your neck out. Given the right lilt, the right set of heartbreaking lyrics (anything by Patsy Cline), the proper minor-chord progression, this note will yank a wire in your lachrymal glands, and there you are, Pagliacci, mid-aria. Singing is either speech emancipated or sobbing controlled.

Fortunately, “Every Day is a Winding Road” is no “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” so I’m safe. Harry follows with “You Make Me So Very Happy,” and we’re back to a normal evening.

Two rounds later, still an hour from closing, we’re joined by a band of 16th century villagers. I am back to my thin grasp on reality until I flash on a poster at Susanne’s Bakery: the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, just over the hill at somebody’s farm. Damsels with bubbly cleavage and raucous hairy men in pantaloons dive into my songbooks. This could be very good for my tip jar.

“Zounds!” I say. It’s the only bit of archaic English I can muster. “What’s going… on here, fellows? What… say you?”

A young man in hunting leathers and a Robin Hood cap is about to produce a snappy Shakespearean reply when he meets my eyes.

“Channy?”

I’m back at the wheel of my pickup. I ease myself to the mic, and when I speak I feel an odd vibration at the back of my throat.

“Hey, um… Since we’ve been fooling around tonight, and the, um, revelers need some time to pick out their songs, I’ve always wanted to try something. I’m going to put on “Miss American Pie,” and I’d like my regulars to do the whole thing, one singer to a verse.

At eight minutes, 37 seconds, Don McLean’s epic tune is the longest selection in the catalog, and I keep it in a special slot in my CD case for just such an occasion. I slip it out, jam it on the changer and hit play. Harry’s already there, ready for the first verse.

I hop off the stage and meet Kai near the entrance. He goes to hug me but I grab his arm, pulling him through the front door and into the parking lot. The first thing I see is the Thunderbird, license plate STRYKER2. I brace myself and turn around.

“Channy!” he says. “God! I heard you went back to Alaska. I was just… well, I guess it’s obvious what I was doing. For God’s sake, don’t tell the guys about this or I’m dead meat. I can’t tell you how much grief I would catch for the tights alone! But I was heavy into theater back in high school and…”

Bunches of Kai are coming back to me as I try to follow his chirpy, mile-a-minute digressions. The burnt brown sheen of his skin, the fierce beauty of his white teeth, cheekbones like Mayan carvings. He’s a Sherpa – the tribe, not the occupation, though I have a hard time not picturing him on a snowy peak somewhere, one hand on a flagpole. He’s second-generation American, and his parents have taken great pains to remove him from the stereotype. In fact, that’s what he’s talking about.

“…and I thought, first thing back in the States, I’m climbing Rainier. That’ll cheese ‘em off. I mean, we’re the greatest climbers in the world, born and raised at ten thousand feet! Is that something to be ashamed of?” He laughs, and then pauses. “God, Channy.”

Uh-oh. He’s giving me that look.

“Are you okay? Are you doing all right?”

At which point, voice control once more becomes an issue.

“Just okay. Nothing special.”

He grips my shoulder, a clumsy attempt at reassurance.

“I understand. I’ve got some things in my head right now that I’d rather… weren’t there.”

He seems to recover, and his eyes flash.

“Channy! My God! I’ve got something for you. I’ve been saving it like, forever. Ya got two minutes?”

I cock an ear toward the bar. They haven’t hit the slow part yet.

“Yes. But hurry.”

He jogs to the T-bird, then reaches in and shuffles a hand under the passenger seat. The car is one of those new retro models, more bulk in front than the back, like a cross-section of a wing. A gift from his parents for graduating college. He paces back and hands me an aluminum box, one of those little cash boxes you might see at a bake sale. I accept it, but I hold it at arm’s length. Kai looks fidgety, un-Sherpa-like.

“I’m thinking you shouldn’t open it… until I’m gone,” he says. “I’m thinking that would be best.”

My voice is a whisper: “Okay.”

“I’m… I’m really sorry, Channy. And I’m sorry if my being here, well, you know…”

He looks inside, where Shari is handling the final verse – naturally, the one about Janis.

“I better let you get back,” says Kai. “But, I’m in the book, okay? Spanaway. Look me up.”

I pat him on the shoulder, one awkward gesture for another.

“You’re a dashing Robin Hood.”

“Thanks!” And the shocking white smile.

We break through the doors just as the choral ending is trailing away. The Elizabethans have littered my tray with song-slips.



Next: The Elizabethans Get Drunk


Purchase the book at: http://www.amazon.com/Outro-Michael-J-Vaughn/dp/1440111405/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231020486&sr=8-1


Image: Ellen Lee Gibson. Photo by MJV.

Outro: The Serial Novel

Chapter Six, Part III

Alphabet Suicide


Punishment number two is low attendance. My only regulars are Harry, Shari and Caroleen, although they’re sitting with a couple, Mark and Sandra, who turn out to be good singers. Harry tells me they’re dedicated karaokephiles, friends from Boise. Mark is partial to sixties rock: Doors, Who, Kinks. Sandra is entrenched in the sub-category of feminist disco: “I Will Survive,” “She Works Hard for the Money,” “Gloria.”

We’re speeding into round three, each of us pulling heavy duty, when I hear these words: “Wanna try some suicide?”

It’s Harry. His meaning escapes me.

“Well, since it’s kinda slow,” he continues, “we thought it would be fun to… You do know suicide, right?”

I’ve got nothing. Harry seems to read my silence as disapproval. He’s fidgeting.

“Everybody puts a song into the hat, and you take one out, and you have to sing whatever you get.”

“Oh,” I say. “Yeah. Sure.”

“Cool! You’ll play too, right?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

Mark’s got a baseball cap, so we dump in the song slips and go by the order we’ve already established. Which means I’m first. I draw “Only the Lonely,” one of my favorite songs and (thanks to Roy’s supernatural pipes) directly in my range. Not very challenging, but amusement is right on my heels, as Harry pulls out “I Feel Like a Woman,” by Shania Twain.

“Caroleen!” he complains. “This has your fingerprints all over it.”

Caroleen confesses her guilt by giggling, but Harry hams it up nonetheless, playing the a capella hook as gayly as possible. Then it’s Caroleen’s turn: “It’s Now or Never,” which comes out more spoken than sung. I help her out by loaning her my Elvis sideburn sunglasses. Sandra pulls out her own song, so she has to put it back. She gets “My Sharona” instead, another guy song in a girl range, and does pretty well, especially with the jungle screams.

Mark seems real hesitant, and I think it’s because he’s done the math. The only slips remaining are his and Sandra’s, so feminist disco it is: “What a Feelin’,” from the movie Flashdance. He gets a little lost picking an octave – trying and failing with a Mickey Mouse falsetto – but for a Boise boy he certainly shakes that booty. Sandra gets up at the instrumental break and threatens him with a glass of water, but the dangers of electrocution hold her back.

“Sha-ree,” I say, tauntingly. “Only one slip leh-eft.”

Shari takes a look at the slip and smiles. “No sweat.”

She hands it to me. “All Along the Watchtower.” My hand tightens up. Mark is leaning over the soundboard, holding a CD.

“I didn’t see it in your book, but I had one in my personal stash. Track seven.”

I take it, praying for Dylan, but the silver surface is etched with a ‘fro and a buccaneer headband. Hendrix. I manage to center it on the changer, and bring up the track, but then I’m stuck. Shari looks up from the lyric screen, puzzled. The pearl-white bumper charges me like a rhino.

I step to the stage, take Shari’s mic and pretend to inspect the battery as I speak sotto voce.

“Feminine difficulties. Need a bathroom break. Could you wait ten seconds, and then press play?”

“Sure, hon. I gotcha.”

I hand her the mic and hurry off, afraid to look up lest I meet someone’s eyes. When I get to the restroom, I head for a stall and start flushing. Jimi’s guitar finds a seam in the rushing water, crackling through like a roadside bomb. So I flush with one hand, clap the other over my left ear, and press my right ear to the side of the tank. The car was a Thunderbird.


Next: Attack of the Elizabethans

Purchase the book at: http://www.amazon.com/Outro-Michael-J-Vaughn/dp/1440111405/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231020486&sr=8-1 Image by MJV