The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts(88)

Short E, Cassie, and I are at a fast-food chain. There are burgers and fries in front of us, and drinks, and many weeks left in the season.

“Be careful with fire breathing,” Cassie says. “We don’t wanna hurt anyone’s little faces.”

“It’s not dangerous if you’re careful,” Short E says.

“It’s always dangerous. You’re spitting gas out of your mouth and creating a fireball,” Cassie says.

“If you do it right, it’s not dangerous. Trust me.”

“Are you kidding me? The wind can change in a second, which is totally out of your control, and the fireball will shoot back and eat your face. That, in my definition, is dangerous.”

“Whatever,” Short E says.

“I just wish Elton were here to teach Tess. That’s as un-dangerous as you can possibly make it.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck me?”

“Whatever.”

“I’m not saying you’re a bad teacher, I’m just saying that Elton is the best teacher,” Cassie says. “Don’t be upset.”

“It doesn’t matter, guys,” I say, trying to put a little neutrality into this conversation that is clearly heating up too quickly. “We’ll see when we get there.”

“I’m just trying to help,” Short E says. “I’ve been fire breathing for a long time.”

“Not as long as Elton.”

“These fries are so good,” I say.

“Stay out of this, Tess,” Short E says.

“I’m just worried ’cause—” Cassie starts, but Short E shushes her.

“Just stop,” he says.

“Don’t shush me,” she says, in a very low tone.

“Shhhh,” he says.

“Do. Not. Shush me.”

“Sssshhhhhhhhh,” he says.

Cassie’s hand flies from her lap across the table and knocks Short E’s basket of fries and burger onto his lap. The fries rain down all over him.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Short E picks up the basket, which still has some fries in it, and hurls it across the table into Cassie’s face. It lands right on her forehead, salt and little hard chunks of fries coating her hair, and she is instantly fighting tears and clenching her jaw and balling up fries from the table and throwing them at his face.

Both are moving quickly, and I’m sitting still like a dumb doll, waiting for them to break into hysterics over the ridiculousness of this, but the only breaking is the fries under the shaking, furious fists as they are thrown back and forth. Smashed potato is ground into the table. Clumps are stuck to both their shirts. Arms. Mine, too.

There are only a few other customers in the restaurant. Everything else is quiet, but Cassie’s voice booms.

“All I asked was for you to stop shushing me,” she is yelling. And he is yelling, “You’re such a bitch, you’re a giant bitch,” and their voices are escalating, each of them finding other things on the table to throw at one another’s faces, salt and pepper shakers, napkins, each growing redder and full of tears.

“You’re the fucking worst and everyone hates you,” Short E yells.

“You’re a talentless fuck,” Cassie screams. “You’re not a daredevil at all, you’re just a little piece of shit. The only reason you’re here is because you have no legs.”

All eyes in the restaurant are on our table now, assessing Short E. Cassie gets up and storms outside. I haven’t moved. I sit with Short E for a moment as he slows down his tirade. As our heartbeats slow. The employees resume movement behind the counter. We start cleaning up the fries. Get up, dump our trays, and walk outside. I drive us all back, in a long silence, to the motel.





SOUNDS PAST THE NOISES

Two years and eleven months after the stroke





48 days into The Trip


September 2013


In the audio recording, it’s easy to make out a guitar and keyboard. There’s occasional percussion, too, and two voices, one male and one female, singing in accented English. The first song is a cover of “Stand by Me,” then some originals, some instrumentals, and I eventually pause the recording. It’s twenty-five minutes long.

“This is one of the great things about Mom’s chair,” Davy says when I finally get them on the phone. I’ve asked how the trip was going, and by way of response, he has e-mailed me the file. “I can hide a lot of things on it that people don’t notice. Like a small mic, which I can attach to one of the handles and get real close to the street musicians to record them.”

“Why do you want to record them?” I ask, as if I don’t know this answer.

“So that we can listen to their music whenever we want. So that when people ask what The Trip was like, I can let them hear it.”

Davy was an audio engineer for years, first on tour with musicians and music festivals, then at National Public Radio, and then at THX for Skywalker Sound, George Lucas’s sound company. He loves recording sounds. He loves hearing something, capturing it, manipulating it to make it sound like its best, truest self, and then letting other people hear it. There is no better way to replicate an experience, he thinks.

“So the great thing about street musicians is that you can hear all the other stuff going on around them at the same time, too. The cars honking, the people clapping, the kids chattering, the carts rolling by. There’s this whole world that makes sense when you hear it with the music, and you can hear in the music that whole world, too. The rhythms and moods.”