Griffin & the Spurious Correlations

Calvin controlled his tension by tapping out rhythms on a table with his drumsticks. The others looked calmer than they probably felt, listening to the speeching through the double doors. Cameron wiped away a tear as the toast to the bride wrapped up.

“I love weddings,” he said.

“You okay, Griffin?” Calvin asked, spinning his sticks through his fingers.

“Just nervous.” A sudden undulation assailed my innards, and my mouth watered unpleasantly. I hastily handed Calvin my guitar and rushed down the blindingly white service corridor to the bathroom, nearly colliding with one of the servers on my way in. The stall door crashed against the wall, but I got there in time to throw up in the toilet and not all over the floor. I always think it’s important to celebrate these little accomplishments. I rinsed my mouth and splashed water on my face. Bugger the makeup. Priorities, you know.

I ran my fingers through my short hair, begging it to respond anew to the mountains of hair product I had scrunched into it earlier, and patted down my skirt. Along with the sparkly T‑shirt, I looked nice. Professional. At age twenty-seven, I wasn’t interested in looking like a teenager.

When I got back, it was Pep Talk Time. “We’ve gotta be good tonight, you guys.” Words failed me.

“We are good,” Calvin assured me. “We just have to do what we do, and the rest will happen.” I guess I looked doubtful because he stared at me with his brotherly brown eyes. “You’re a good musician, Griffin.” He touched my shoulder. I tried to feel confident.

“Where’s Jason?” Andy said.

I looked around, gripped with a sudden panic. They were beginning the final speech, and I hadn’t even noticed our lead guitarist hadn’t joined us in the back hall. Was he still in the warm-up room? What the heck was he—?

Jason sauntered up, knocking into a cart filled with empty juice jugs, three of which clattered to the floor. “Don’t fret your pretty little head, Andy-baby, I’m right here.”

“Shh!” Cameron told him. “They’re right through there.” He pointed to the flimsy doors.

“What. Ever.” Jason grabbed me around the waist. He swung me into the path of a busboy, who had to dodge with his armload of dirty plates. Jason didn’t even notice. “I’m all set to play some shitty wedding music with my hot girl. Can we rock it up a little, Griff? I’ve gone over the set list, and it’s totally fucked.”

I stopped the twirling and grabbed his roving hands. “Be quiet,” I insisted. “The set list is fine; it’s made up of songs our client wants to hear.”

“The client is fucked,” Jason replied with no attempt at sotto voce. “Where’s the Zep and Acka Dacka? I want to rock out with some hot solos.”

Calvin came closer. “There are lots of nice solos in the set list.”

“Shut the fuck up, Drummer Boy; just worry about keeping a steady tempo for a change.”

An awful thought occurred to me, and I pulled Jason into the well-lit kitchen area. “What have you been doing?” I stared at him, searching for clues.

“Getting in the mood to play some lame-ass shit wedding music with my hot girl.” He ground his hips into me and tried to kiss me with booze-smelling breath. I pushed him away.

“Don’t you ‘hot girl’ me. You’re not just hot, you’re fried!”

His dilated red eyes confirmed it. Not only was he drunk, he was baked on I don’t even know what. I thought I might throw up again.

“Come on, Jason, this is our big break! What are you doing?”

“Knock it off. You’re such a fucking control freak.”

“What? Just because I—”

Then it happened. The MC’s voice said, “And now, Griffin Trowbridge and Dreamline.”

Red haze billowed before my eyes. It was my big moment, and I didn’t think I could walk let alone remember how to play a G chord. Calvin held the door, and as I passed, I took back my guitar.

He put a steadying hand on my arm. “It’ll be fine, Griff.”

I actually believed him.

Teryn and Quinn, the bride and groom, stood just below us on the parquet dance floor. Arms around each other’s waists, they awaited the first glorious strains of You’re My Best Friend. Their eager smiles said they intended to love us. Many cell phones waited to record the moment.

I plugged in, turned on my amp, adjusted my guitar strap on my shoulder, and strummed to make sure I had sound. The others got themselves set too, and I made a final tweak to the position of my microphone. I was about to give the nod to begin when I realised Jason had planted himself directly in front of his amp. Puzzled, I backed up and was about to ask him if there was a problem when he cranked his amp up to eleven, creating a mind-blowing blast of feedback.

Sound hurtled through the air, and I slapped my hands over my ears. Jason clamped his fingertips on the strings and struck the most dissonant chord I’d ever heard. He launched into an insanely obnoxious solo and thrashed at the strings as if they were a swarm of hornets. He stepped up to the microphone and screamed pseudo-melodic obscenities at the crowd.

“What the hell?” I gaped at Jason, who couldn’t hear me over the sound of his tirade. A bunch of people stampeded to the doors of the banquet hall, causing a nasty bottleneck as too many people tried to push through at once, and a modern symphony of shrieking added to the cacophony. Some folks stayed at their tables with hands slapped over their ears, and a couple of die-hards with cell phones braved the noise to post us on social media.

Andy nearly knocked over his keyboard as he tried to get around to Jason. Cameron reached to clamp down on Jason’s strings, but it was tricky while holding a bass, and Jason moved around too much. Calvin had leaped off the back of the stage.

“Shut it, Jason! What do you think you’re doing?” Andy yelled and, having reached him, tried to wrestle his guitar out of his hands. It was as if it were tied to him with duct tape.

“Easy now, easy, come on, hold on,” Cameron said in a lame effort to reason with him.

But there was no breaking through Jason’s new El Screamo style, and he kept on. I could hardly understand a word, but it sounded like, “Fucking shit crap rich people can suck my balls,” and any number of other charming phrases, mixed in with his grocery list.

I stormed across the stage and snatched the microphone away from him, just as Calvin unplugged Jason’s amplifier. The high-pitched guitar squeal was replaced by horrified silence.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I screamed at him.

Jason shot insults at me as if I were a human silhouette at a rifle range. Then he crashed off the stage without a backward glance and bolted out the back door. Clatter upon smash of metal trays on the concrete floor receded down the corridor with him and faded away.

The entire episode had taken no more than about twenty seconds, but it was enough. I rotated on my feet to survey the results. The groom clutched his bride close as if protecting her from flying shrapnel. Her mascara had run so she resembled Alice Cooper.

Her father, high-powered businessman Carl Snifter, who had been comforting his wife, strode toward me shaking his finger, his face red and puckered with rage. I must have been in shock, or else I’d probably have reacted differently. I ignored him. The rest of my band waited for me to do something. I did the only thing I could.

With hands a-tremble, I picked up my acoustic and plugged it in. I strummed a chord and adjusted the tuning, vaguely aware of Snifter barking at me. I played the opening bars of You’re My Best Friend. Calvin switched from sticks to brushes, Cameron plucked the root note on his bass, and Andy changed the setting from rock organ to acoustic piano. My voice was a bit tremulous, but we bluffed our way through an unrehearsed, unplugged version of the first dance.

Snifter’s wife must have called him to attend her at some point because he stalked off. The bride and groom held each other in the middle of the floor. He tried to get her to dance; spoilt brat that she was, she had apparently decided we were pure evil and stamped her feet.

I thought we did okay, but I guess the evening had already been ruined for most people. We kept playing in a futile effort to placate the guests. The only reason we got through three songs was that the host and hostess were mollifying the crowd with free drinks. Teryn turned on the waterworks whenever her dad walked near her, and when he had a break from apologising to the guests, she wept openly in his arms. I heard her wail, “Make them go away, Dad!”

Snifter signalled to the DJ, who pressed Play, thereby ending our set a quarter of the way in. My heart sank. The DJ was supposed to play music just during our breaks. Snifter patted Teryn’s back and turned to me again, exchanging his There There face for a You Are Going to Rue the Day face. He came right up on stage and towered over me. He smiled.

“If you do not have your gear packed up and removed from this stage in ten minutes, I will have my bodyguards remove it and you.” He opened his suit jacket, and for a brief moment, I thought he was drawing a gun. It was a rectangular piece of paper. A cheque. “See this?” He held it up so I could see it was made out in my name. In the amount of $2,000.00. He tore it into tidy, narrow strips. A shredder wouldn’t have done much more damage. “I am going to make damn sure that every person in my circle of acquaintance hears about this.”

Despondent, I looked levelly at the buttons on his vest. “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”

Apparently Carl Snifter did not think better of me for my ability to quote Oscar Wilde. His pressed lips and widened eyes, not to mention the trembling and twitching of his entire torso, indicated a desire to slap me upside the head. “Ten minutes.” He stormed off.

Even that might have been all right if it hadn’t been for Teryn. She came up to me while I coiled microphone cable.

“I hope you’re satisfied. You totally destroyed what was meant to be the happiest day of my life.”

Without looking up—or thinking—I heard words come out of my mouth. “Geez, if we could ruin your wedding day, you’d better rethink your choice of husband.”

She welled up. No shit. I would have too. Hiking up her skirts, she ran off.

An hour later, I said good night on the loading dock to Andy and Cameron, in whose truck we had loaded all the sound equipment for them to return to the rental place. I was taking the bus home, so I took my amp, backpack, and two guitar cases up in the elevator to the hotel lobby and plunked down on a cushy sofa to mope before leaving.

“Could have been worse.” Calvin sat down beside me. It was quiet here, though I felt heartsick to know canned music was playing in the banquet hall upstairs.

“Could it?”

“There’ll be other gigs, Griff.”

“Not if Snifter has anything to say about it.” The man was an arrogant jerk, but he had power in the business community. “I can’t believe I told him off! Him and Teryn.” I buried my face in Calvin’s shoulder. “Why did I do that? Was that even me talking? What is wrong with me?” I pushed myself away from him and stared at the ceiling. “Not a single person asked for our business card. We’re in debt to the eyeballs for sound equipment and rehearsal space.” I held up my cell phone. “There are already a dozen terrifically unflattering shots of us online, with captions like, ‘Band from Hell’ and ‘Wedding Band Banned from Wedding.’ Not exactly what I was hoping for.”

Calvin was silent. He knew when I needed to vent.

“Besides which, Teryn dances with my sister. She’ll make Jillian’s life miserable, even though Jillian’s got nothing to do with this. Teryn’s just that kind of person. And her mom was a regular in my mom’s shop. I think she even bought her mother-of-the-bride dress there.” My mom, in an uncharacteristic display of support for me, had told her about my band, which is how we got the gig. “She’ll never go back to my mom’s shop. She’ll get all her little sheep friends to avoid it too. My mother’s not going to speak to me for weeks.”

Calvin threw his arm over my shoulder. “Give thanks for small mercies,” he said with a crooked smile. I laughed a little at his valiant effort to cheer me up. And after all, I wasn’t mad at him. I don’t think I could be mad at Calvin if I grasped at the tiniest of straws.

“At least the wedding cake is beautiful. My dad’s reputation should remain intact.”

“Well, actually . . .”

“Oh no. What?”

“Jason pulled one more stunt before he left. He, uh, switched the little bride and groom on the top with a pair from the wedding next door.”

“So?”

“It was a gay wedding.”

My head dropped back onto the couch headrest, Calvin’s arm in between. Could things possibly get worse?

“Hey, you’re still coming to my sister’s wedding in Victoria, right?”

“Of course.”

“Good. I was worried you’d be put off weddings forever.”

I couldn’t help but smile. “I’ll be there. I’ve had the May long weekend highlighted on my calendar for weeks.” My spirits lifted a touch just thinking about it. “And it’ll just be you and me playing. Two acoustics and two vocals, it’s gonna sound great. I hope Teresa loves it.”

“She will. No berserk guitar solos?”

“I promise.”

Calvin gave my shoulder a squeeze. “You okay getting home?”

I nodded. “I think I need to just breathe for a few more minutes.”

“Well, good night, Griff.” He drew his black bomber jacket around him. “Don’t hang around here too late now.” I watched him walk away from me, cymbal case in one hand and drumsticks jutting out of his back pocket. He was whistling Some Enchanted Evening and I chuckled. I had never known Calvin to ever let anything get him down. His good cheer faded into the subdued hubbub of the hotel front desk and disappeared as the elevator door closed.

I stared at the carpet in front of me and pushed back tears. I swear if I ever see Jason again, I’ll skewer him. When a pair of black boots at the end of black legs appeared in my vision and blocked the abstract pattern I’d been staring at, I didn’t notice at first.

“Rough night, was it?” The accent was unidentifiably foreign.

I looked up and squinted at the figure silhouetted by the pot light behind him. I wasn’t exactly startled—I was too drained for that—but curious. “Not stellar.”

The figure stepped into my private pool of despair. Tallish, sharply dressed in black trousers and one of those long, full-skirted coats like men used to wear in Dickens’ day. He even wore a top hat. I didn’t recall seeing him among the wedding guests; he stood out too much to have missed him. He had the kind of face romance novels describe as “finely chiselled features,” and might have been of mixed ethnic background, one Indian parent and one, say, Japanese. The guy was breathtakingly beautiful.

“My wedding was dreary beyond belief.”

“You the groom?” I asked, eyeing his getup.

“No, a friend. I felt a need to leave, so I came to observe your ‘stellar’ event.”

I got the sense he was laughing at me, so I declined to say anything.

He smiled apologetically. “Your wedding had thought-provoking entertainment.”

“How much did you see?”

“I at least witnessed the beginning, the middle, and the end of your part in it.” He peeled off his black leather gloves. “What will you do about a lead guitarist?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know, advertise maybe.”

He pocketed his gloves and sat next to me. He sat straight, on the edge of the couch with his feet just so and his hands on his knees.

“Guitarists, I am told, are a dime a dozen.”

Was he trying to reassure me? “The average ones are.” I knew I sounded defeatist. But why should a total stranger be so interested? “The good ones are harder to find.”

“How about the brilliant ones?”

I laughed. “Rarer than diamonds.”

He made an, “Ah,” kind of sound.

“I suppose I don’t even need a new guitarist,” I went on. “Mr. Snifter’ll make sure I never play in this city again.”

“There are other cities.”

He rose and a business card was in my fingers so smoothly, I still can’t recall how it got there. “Come to the address on the back tomorrow night at nine. I’ll have an opportunity waiting for you. I’m rather fond of diamonds.”

He was gone so suddenly, I would have sworn he’d vanished like a soap bubble. I looked down at his card.

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