Moonlight Water Read online

  Except one other thing—they played a lot of music. Robbie scrounged up a guitar and a harmonica and created nice backups for Gianni’s lyric tenor—he had a fine voice and an encyclopedic memory for lyrics. They got back to the States ravenous to become big-deal musicians.

  They put together several Bay Area bands. They tried everything they thought might sell, and some of the music sounded pretty good. But Robbie wasn’t comfortable. He started writing songs for his own big voice and acoustic guitar. He drove up the coast highway to Tomales and sat with Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, wanting to learn folk, but that didn’t work for Robbie, either.

  Then the Elegant Demons came into his life. When the lead guitarist and keyboard player of the Demons got sick before a concert, Robbie sat in for him. The gig was simple—play in Golden Gate Park on a midsummer Sunday afternoon and do old Grateful Dead songs, nothing else, just covers of the Dead.

  They only had two days to rehearse, and what they got into surprised them all. The Dead, known for its long jams, hooked into a current and explored it, exploited it. The crowds rode the wave. A Dead concert was a journey into far-flung musical galaxies.

  Robbie and Kell had that kind of rapport from the first chord. The Dead songs were great, but they wanted to try their own stuff. During rehearsal, their lyrical tunes turned into dervishes. They took phrases from each other, transformed them, and shaped them into new verses and choruses.

  Kell was a special performer, slender and pretty, a gravelly tenor who reminded people of a male Janis Joplin in the rawness and pathos of his expression. Onstage he was pure emotion, and a perfect partner. At the end of the last rehearsal, he said to Robbie, “We’re in the center of it!”

  In person Kell was entirely different. He had almost nothing to say to anyone, just packed up his guitar and left after rehearsals and concerts. He came for the music—he lived to sing—and he gave nothing of himself anywhere else. In some odd way Robbie understood, though he couldn’t have explained it. Couldn’t have lived it.

  When they played live that first time, instead of pulling back to the straightforward renditions on Dead albums, Robbie and Kell let it fly, filled their musical sails, and followed wherever the winds blew. The crowd went with them. Wild, crazed, happy, all good things.

  At the end of that concert Gianni said to Robbie, “Hey, I can’t do what you guys do. Haven’t got the juice for it.” Gianni liked to sing music that was written down and stick with it. “You guys are tight, though. Go for it.”

  Robbie had looked at the hastily printed program sheet Gianni had put together. “This calls the band the Elegant Demons and me Rob Roy.” He pursed his mouth. “Are we stuck with those names?”

  Gianni gestured at the crowd, still milling around, no one ready to leave. “I wouldn’t exactly call this being stuck.”

  Soon they had all the Bay Area gigs they wanted. They added songs Robbie or Kell wrote, improvising, dancing with their skewed joint muse in epic jams. Rolling Stone took notice: “Kell sings lead vocals that break your heart wide open, and Rob Roy puts his soul into everything—composing, playing, and madman crash-dancing. The Elegant Demons are riding the edge of something brand-new.”

  A record company amped up the roller coaster, the band made the charts, and the cash registers went ching-a-ching-ching-ching. The musicians took in so much they hired accountants to keep track. The band simply enjoyed themselves and spent the dough buying million-dollar houses, fast cars, classic motorcycles, sleek boats, and leaving twenty-dollar tips for thirty-dollar beer tabs. Kell’s handsome face made the front pages of magazines, and the music world knew Rob Roy was the pulse of the Elegant Demons.

  Through the years, Gianni was there with encouragement and solid sense. He’d long since gone his own way. He went to law school, straight into a posh firm, and then formed his own business handling trusts. In other words, handling a lot of money.

  “How can you give up music?” Robbie had asked him.

  Gianni answered, “I’m good, but I’m not in your league.” Still, he went to almost every one of the band’s concerts within five hundred miles, popped in on studio sessions, stood as best man at both of Robbie’s weddings, and was ready to go for a sail almost any time. Then Gianni would take a trip back home, disappear into the quiet, and get grounded.

  When Robbie asked if he wished things had shaken out differently for him with the music, Gianni said he liked his work, the money, and collecting Navajo art. “Robbie,” he’d said, “I love my life.”

  * * *

  Now Robbie Macgregor sat in Gianni’s cabin and thought, I damn well do not love mine. He shook his head, smiled, and looked at the eye-dazzler weaving on the wall next to him.

  He had relived his dream a hundred times since it had visited him. He pictured the high flight off the bridge, enjoyed the splash, felt the slow drift to the bottom, and saw himself standing buck naked on the shore. He looked again at the wooded hills to the east, rolling in shadow. What was out there?

  He still knew what he knew that night. Because of the divorce, even more so. Time to go. Where to go? He didn’t know.

  Here’s what he knew: It would be hard. Painful. Wrenching. A whole life gone. Money gone. Audiences gone. Thrills gone.

  And what might he find to take their place in his heart? What awaited, far out in the somewhere? Maybe nothing. He had to look that one square in the face.

  Well, he thought there would be music of some kind, anywhere. But maybe music alone. Loneliness, that’s what might be out there. He refused to let himself get away with not looking at the emptiness. But he also refused to linger there.

  Yes, yes, what he sought was there—possibility. A big word with a big reach, it might include anything. Possibility was just that, and that was plenty.

  He got out his pen, pulled paper from Gianni’s printer, and began. The first part was basic. He needed a new name. The surname was clear—he would take Grandfather Angus’s, Stuart, a clan as fine as Macgregor. Robbie had the first name, too, slapping him in the face, and it was a chuckle. The nickname of the infamous Rob Roy Macgregor had been Red. Hi, Red Stuart.

  Suddenly he thought of what he had to do, right off, as Red Stuart. He went to the bathroom, got out his electric razor, and gave himself a buzz cut. Looked at himself. Strange. Hadn’t looked like this since the army. He’d have to grow a beard to keep from looking like a suit.

  He looked at the long, shaggy, frizzy locks in the wastebasket. Good-bye, Rob Macgregor.

  He ran his hands all over his head. Felt strange.

  He slipped off the plastic attachment and shaved his face clean.

  Wow, the mirror said. Odd, very odd.

  Who are you, Red Stuart?

  He sat back down as the new guy and began to list the hundred details that guy needed taken care of.

  Georgia? Nora? The band? He would do nothing. They didn’t exist. They weren’t real. Same for the divorce, the house, the settlement, everything.

  Money? Tricky. A new life wouldn’t be free. Nora handled all his accounts, so he couldn’t filch any funds without her knowing. If he took his half, or if he even took a couple of million, even a few hundred thousand, she would know, and he couldn’t … Do what? He hadn’t worked it out.

  He pondered long and fell asleep without a solution.

  And he woke up with one. Grandfather Angus’s money. Grandpa had willed Robbie the equity in his duplex, less than a hundred grand. Robbie had said nothing about it to Georgia or Nora, having been burned in one divorce already. He’d let Gianni put the money in some Silicon Valley stocks for him, and it had more than doubled over the years. Just enough for a fresh start.

  Robbie was missing one thing. A gesture. He needed a gesture to Georgia, to the band, mostly to himself.

  Back to walking the beach. He was squatting in a tide pool poking an anemone and watching it spout when the idea came to him.

  He spent a day thinking it through. This gesture was right. The next morning he made a ph
one call. Gianni sounded relieved to hear from him, and promised to be at the cabin by seven that evening, this time with cartons of Indian food. Where he was heading, Robbie didn’t expect to find much of that.

  5

  THE LIGHTBULB BLOWS

  “First, here’s my new cell phone number.” Robbie laid a small piece of paper next to Gianni’s plate. “You’re the only person in the world who has it. Keep it that way.”

  “Sure.” Gianni grinned. He tucked the paper into his wallet and looked back at Red’s face. “I’ll never get used to seeing you like that.”

  “Let’s not live in the past.”

  “Whatever you say, Rob.”

  “Another big favor,” he said.

  “No problem. Don’t you love this curry?”

  “You’ve always said that I should come in on one of your big enterprises. That I’m too conservative, yada yada. Now I’m on board. Sell my stocks and give me seventy-five grand. Cash. Put the rest into something good.”

  “This doesn’t sound like you.”

  “Just do it, please.”

  “You sure?”

  Robbie set his chin on his hand, looked at Gianni, and said, “As sure as I can be about anything.”

  Gianni perked up. “Actually, this is perfect timing. I’d like one more person for a joint venture, and it’d be good to have you. Come into the office and I’ll go over the details with you. It’s a sweet deal.”

  “I don’t want to come to the office. I trust you. But, Gianni, make it come together. It’ll be all the money I have in the world.”

  “Wait a minute. Your boring portfolio, music royalties, the house, the money Nora has invested for both you and Georgia?”

  “I kiss it all good-bye.”

  Long pause.

  “I’m keeping enough to live on reasonably for one year.”

  “You? Seventy-five grand? What’s happening here? Really happening?”

  “Let’s walk.” These days Robbie could barely think unless he was walking.

  Gianni left his custom-made Italian shoes behind and hopped barefoot through the weeds. The air was still, thick, salty. Robbie felt like he was breathing an essential transfusion of blood and funky new life. They crossed onto the packed, damp shoreline sand.

  “Gianni, I’m gone. It’s for certain they’ve looked for me at my boat, and that they’ll never look here. Nora and Georgia’s attorneys are probably writing me piles of notices, but they don’t know where to send them. And with your help, they never will.”

  “You’re not…”

  Robbie let a beat pass. “The band will find a way to manufacture money without me.”

  “This isn’t funny, Robbie. We’re talking your life, your career, your money down the toilet. Why are you grinning? I’m worried about you, and probably not as worried as I should be.”

  “Hey, we Scots don’t weep, we battle-cry,” Robbie said.

  “Robbie? Enough.”

  “Here’s the bottom line: Everyone wants something from me, and they’ll look for me. I have a counter-move.” He stopped and took his friend by the shoulders. “I say, ‘Rob Roy, who’s that? Robbie Macgregor, who’s that?’ With one gesture, I slip off the world.”

  “What has possessed you?”

  Robbie let go of Gianni and strode on. “I’m wild with ideas. The first is Start Over.”

  “You’ve lost your marbles.”

  “No, I have a new set of them. Gianni, I had one twenty-year adult life. It was good, it was bad, it was juicy, and then it was … It’s stretched out in front of me now in a casket. I see a bloodless face and eyes that are open but see nothing. But me? I’m alive, and I’m going for it.”

  “Going for what?”

  “That’s the best part. I have no idea.”

  “Maybe if you made this into a song you’d have another big hit.”

  Robbie laughed, shoved his friend a little, and then grabbed his hand before he could fall on the sand. “Enough of the long face and sweaty forehead. It’s going to be okay.”

  They walked on.

  “And, Gianni? No kidding, I’m counting on you.”

  “What do you want?”

  “First say, ‘We’re old pals. I’m with you all the way.’”

  Hesitation. “I’m with you all the way. Jeez, do I have a choice?” He tried out a smile.

  Another bear hug and slap on the back. “So, it’s simple. Keep telling everyone that you have no idea where I am. Sell the stocks and invest the money. Give me a couple of weeks to get new ID, and when I say, ‘Meet me in the dark of night at Point Reyes,’ be there for me.”

  There went Gianni’s small smile. “What the fuck?”

  Robbie sat on a boulder and looked out on the slate-shake sea, moonlight rippling on its surface. After a moment Gianni joined him. Robbie lit a Balkan Sobranie, inhaled deeply, and handed it to his friend. “Gianni, I’m getting rid of Rob Roy. I’m changing Robbie Macgregor’s name. From now on I’m Red Stuart.” He paused. “Truly.”

  Gianni said, “Okay, okay. But what’s this melodrama about the dark of night and Point Reyes?”

  “After business is finished with the fake ID gypsies, I’m going to trade in the Alfa, buy a van, put a bed in the back, and I’m asking you to bring the van to me at Point Reyes. At night.”

  Gianni looked at him quizzically.

  “Right now it doesn’t matter why Point Reyes, okay? Then I’m going to drive into the parts of America I don’t know, which is most of it. Walk woods, look at new night skies. Visit national parks.” Robbie blew smoke toward the ocean. “You think anyone ever gets laid in a national park?”

  “Yeah, bears and other creatures you don’t want to get near.”

  “Gad, you can be a cynical sort. Anyway, I’m going to eat in diners, find the best meat loaf anywhere, and check out whatever folk art is around. Sketch some. I’m hoping every state has something as mind-boggling as Carhenge. Do you know about Carhenge?”

  “No.”

  Didn’t sound like he wanted to know either, but Robbie pitched in. “Gianni, in Alliance, Nebraska—get that, Nebraska!—a guy has built a memorial to his father called Carhenge. It’s thirty-eight vintage automobiles arranged to look like, you know, Stonehenge in England. The circle is a hundred feet across. Some of the cars have been halfway buried with the grill end up, and others are welded onto them to create the arches.

  “Gianni, imagine the dedication, the time, the love, the art.… I want to discover something like that in every state. Art everywhere! Art of the people.”

  “Watts Towers didn’t do it for you?”

  A moment of silence.

  “Gianni, I don’t know who or what I’ll find. But I want to explore. That’s why I’m going.”

  “Will you do music anymore?”

  Robbie shrugged. “Can’t imagine being without it, but can’t imagine what to do with it right now.”

  “What the hell,” said Gianni, shaking his head. Gianni took in Rob with his eyes all the way. Then, suddenly, he said, “I’m calling you out. This is shit. I’m asking you, aren’t you scared? Don’t you know you’re scared?”

  Rob breathed in and out. “Yeah.” Another breath in and out. “Yeah.” A third breath. “I’m real scared. I wake up feeling like I’m stiff as a steel beam in a freezing wind and I can’t move.

  “Maybe there’s nothing out there. Nothing that matters to me. Maybe I’m running away to an empty, miserable life.”

  Gianni nodded at him, a thank-god expression on his face.

  Robbie went on thoughtfully, his eyes reaching far out to the black sea. “But there are two things. I’ve driven my life into a brick wall, and it’s not running anymore. Nothing to do but walk away from the wreck.”

  Now he almost waited too long, and Gianni started to speak.

  “The other thing,” Robbie lurched on, “is a big one. I’m excited. For the first time in probably ten years I’m juiced. I want to know what can be out there for me. I want to
find a life for me, not for my persona, Rob Roy. Me. And the idea makes my blood rush.”

  Gianni waited and then said, “So the bottom line is?”

  “I’m outta here. Like Lazarus, I’m gonna stand up and walk again.”

  Gianni stood up and faced his friend. “All right, I’ll save your ass. When you run out of money in a year, I’ll give you back double what I’m investing for you.”

  “Bravo.”

  “But I want you to do two things for me as a friend. And for yourself.”

  “Name it.”

  “Stay in touch. I’m the only person with your phone number. The only person from your old life.”

  “Done.”

  “I still think it’s crazy, but I also know you. When your mind is set, there’s no changing it.”

  “Damn straight.”

  They sat together companionably and watched the ripples dance, listened to them lap the shore like whispered promises.

  Gianni turned to Robbie. “Done any drawing while you’ve been in the cabin?”

  “A little. The patterns in the Navajo weavings, the handprints … I can feel them in every piece of pottery. Powerful stuff.”

  “You love it.”

  “No, I wouldn’t say that. It’s more like it amazes me. The pieces feel like they’re from a different place altogether, from a different time.”

  “A month after you leave the Bay, why don’t you meet me in Moonlight Water? It’s past time for me to visit family and old friends, been a while, and Moonlight Water is where the artists are. Who knows what you might get out of it?” Gianni looked at the shades of gray, exquisite chunks of real estate, crawling up the hills of Mill Valley, and the amber lights filling those homes. Across the Bay, towers shone with the fluorescent lights of people still at work, but the lower levels, including the houses, were below his line of sight.

  “Moonlight Water is the most beautiful place on the planet,” Gianni told Robbie.