Their first child, Alan, died in the hospital after three hard days. He was premature, small as a shoe. Adams stood at the nursery window urging his son to hold on, but the little lungs couldn’t do it, Alan turned blue, the nurses wheeled him away. Adams sat in an old green chair in the waiting room, no longer a father. Leave It to Beaver played on a Magnavox TV on a shelf near the ceiling.
Pamela closed her eyes when Adams told her about the baby. The birth had been difficult and she was still exhausted. The room was yellow, square, pungent with alcohol and talcum. The sun was taking a long time to set and Adams was hot in his long-sleeved shirt, his face felt oily. He kissed Pamela’s fingers, she stroked the soft skin above his lip. “It’s okay,” he whispered into her hand.
Later, once she was asleep, Adams rode the elevator. He paced each floor of the hospital, one after the other. Families waited on their doctors. Nurses came and wheeled people away.
Pavarotti is singing “E lucevan le stelle” from Tosca. The large mole on the left side of his face somehow looks attractive, riding the crook of his beard. In his right hand he holds a white handkerchief; so far he has done nothing with it. When he raises his head, eyes brimming with tears, Adams is moved, but his attention is continually drawn to either the handkerchief or the mole.
Meanwhile, the chicken breasts on Adams’ cutting board are drying out. They’ve been there since five, when he turned on the television. He goes into the kitchen, pulls chili powder and cumin from the spice rack, then spreads parsley in the bottom of a dish to make a bed for the chicken. He butters the chicken and lays the pieces in a pleasant pattern on the parsley.
Pamela seems to have taken the cilantro.
Returning to the living room, he is in time to see Pavarotti bow. The handkerchief swings from his fingers.
Someone taps on Adams’ door. It’s the Reverend Sister Rosa, a fortune-teller from down the block. “Hi,” she says, adjusting a thin black shawl on her shoulders. “I wanted everyone in the neighborhood to know I’m giving a group discount on Tarot readings. Wednesday nights. If you come with a friend, it’s half off for you and free for the friend. I’ll also have complimentary cheese and coffee.”
“Thanks very much,” Adams says. “But I have a standing engagement on Wednesday nights. I play at a little dance club.”
“Oh, well, too bad.” Rosa sniffs. “You’ve just sprayed your house? I need to spray mine.”
“That’s the chicken,” Adams says.
She gives him a curious look. “I miss those little munchkins of yours. Haven’t seen them lately.”
“My wife left a couple of weeks ago. The kids are staying with her.”
“Vacation?”
“No, we separated.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.” She fumbles with her shawl. “You know, I could give you a private reading anytime you’d like. Find out when you’ll be lucky in love.”
“Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”
“See you.”
“Good-bye.”
She walks next door and rings the doorbell.
Adams removes the chicken from the oven, wraps it in foil, and places it in the refrigerator.
Pete and Denny have worked up a new song — Otis Redding’s “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay.” They are teaching Bob the chords when Adams arrives. Adams sets up, fills in a standard beat, then adds a few flourishes as he becomes familiar with the breaks. He is still sore from helping Pamela move.
Denny, their lead vocalist, is no King of Soul but he’s funky, and Bob decides to include the new song in the final set.
Morty’s Place is crowded on Wednesdays because Morty serves beer and wine to minors between ten and midnight. “Only on Wednesdays, and only if you’re as discreet about it as I am,” he tells the teenagers. He’s on good terms with the sheriff and in no danger of losing his license. The band begins at nine. Other bands play throughout the week, so Adams has to store his drums in a back room.
Together he and Kenny wore out three copies of Lloyd Price’s “Lawdy Miss Clawdy,” featuring rockin’ sockin’ Earl Palmer, when they were young. They played along with the record after school almost every day. Kenny had magic in his wrists. He taped their mother’s Kotex to his tom-toms to get the sound he wanted. Adams played for enjoyment.
The songs become routine after a while, guitarists and vocalists get the spotlight — it’s the positioning of the drums on stage, the tightening of the wing nuts, the tuning, the anticipation that gives him the pleasant edge he needs to perform well. He adjusts the ride cymbals, tightens his snare, loosens the head on the floor tom. Temperature variations inevitably cause the drums to slip out of tune, and he spends a solid hour tapping the tight heads, ears close to his fingers, searching for the right sounds with the drum key. He lays three extra pairs of sticks, 9A (thin), beside the bass drum. Brushes and soft mallets he keeps on an old music stand behind his leather stool, known in the trade as a drummer’s throne.
The drums sparkle dark blue. He bought the set two years ago with extra money he earned mapping the sea floor off Japan. It was his last international assignment.
Bob, the bassist, sells Lincoln-Mercuries. He is Adams’ dealer. Through him, Adams met the other members of the band: Pete, a radio newsman who idolizes Les Paul, and Denny, a local jeweler who likes to flash his rings while sawing on rhythm guitar. For a year they practiced in Bob’s basement; then, billing themselves simply as the “Bob Parke Combo,” auditioned for Morty. In those days Adams still had his first set, which he’d put together over a period of years, buying used drums whenever he could afford them: A Ludwig snare, a Slingerland bass drum, a Gretsch tom-tom. With the purchase of his first Zild-jian cymbal, the top of the line, he felt versatile and whole.
Pamela had infinite patience with his music when they first started dating at the University of Nebraska. At the time he was trying to make an Indian tom-tom from aspen wood and cowhide. In studying ancient maps he had run across Chippewa drums, whose heads were painted to represent the world. On his strip of cowhide he drew a pattern in which the edge represented the ocean, the bisecting lines the fields of the earth, the drapery a battery of storm clouds, the jagged lines lightning, and the spots below thunder. It was one of his earliest maps.
For the Chippewa, the drum had the power of both thunder and the heartbeat. For Adams, it held only frustration; he was unable to carve the wood to his liking. Pamela tried to help, but was no more skilled than he. At night he played with a jazz trio at a coffee house near campus. Each weekend Pamela came to listen, ordering cup after cup of cappuccino. The same songs every Saturday, but she never seemed to sour.
They tune for twenty minutes, order drinks, then with a kickbeat Adams propels them into the blues. Soon they are galloping to Merle Haggard — Bob does a “cowboy shift” in the middle of the song, from C to C sharp, signaling Adams he wants to run with this awhile, and they jam for fifteen minutes. By this time the club is packed — middle-aged men, mostly, still in their business suits, though a number of teenaged girls twist around the dance floor.