She didn’t call Daniel because she had a bad feeling about what he might say. He confirmed her fears that evening when he arrived home to see Flora’s elbow wrapped in blue bandaging. It was sprained. Joe had thought it was broken because he didn’t really do shapes. Daniel said they couldn’t go on letting a retard care for their child. He stopped himself and added, “He’s not retarded. Of course not. I just mean—”
“What did he do differently from anybody else?” Pam demanded to know. “Do you really think there’s any babysitter in the world that wouldn’t have happened to? She rolled over. There’s a first time for everything. And he was flawless. He charmed his way into pediatric orthopedic surgery before I could even get down there. She was fixed before I even caught up with them. She’s fine!”
“She has a monster bandage,” Daniel said. “What if she’d been bleeding?”
“What do we have to do, hire a registered nurse? I know Joe couldn’t splint a broken arm to save his life, and the box he put her in was way too big. But he knew something was wrong, and he got her to the hospital. That’s one of the reasons to live in Manhattan. It’s never far to the best medical care in the world.”
“He put her in a box?”
“I told him to. I don’t know. When an animal’s hurt, the most important thing is to get them to the vet without moving their spine, so you slide them onto something stiff like cardboard.”
“Oh, my God,” Daniel said. “She could have had a spinal injury, and you told him to pick her up and put her in a box!”
“Well, he couldn’t just leave her there and call an ambulance. That would take forever.”
“She might have been—I can’t even say it—”
“What?” Pam protested. She knew what he was getting at. Her throat seized up. “I didn’t think of that,” she said. “I can’t even think about it if I try.” It was true. No amount of effort could make her imagine Flora with a broken neck or back. It seemed like a sin, and tempting a lifetime’s bad luck, to think about it, much less say it.
“We’re getting rid of that table,” Daniel said. “We don’t need her airborne. There are no changing tables in nature.” She whimpered in her crib, and he picked her up. “Baby Flora, the floor baby. Born to be in contact with the earth.”
HE RESERVED THE HOBOKEN STUDIO AGAIN, THIS TIME FOR A FULL DAY, INCLUDING grudging supervision from a grouchy engineer, and recorded two Joe Harris tracks: an original entitled “Hold the Key” and a cover of “American Woman” by the Guess Who.
“Hold the Key” was taken straight from life. “Hold the key, kill the light, lock the door, lock it twice, and go down …” It had originated as a mnemonic device for leaving his own apartment, but in Daniel’s opinion it could become a stoner anthem. He imagined crowds at festivals singing it, swaying, holding hands.
Joe said “American Woman” was easy to play and fun to sing, and he wasn’t wrong. No one, hearing that recording, could have denied that he could warble like Mariah Carey and wail like Bono. Only the oddness of his ambitions marked him as an indie eccentric rather than a mainstream poseur.
Daniel didn’t waste money on a printed sleeve for the seven-inch, knowing it was the glued-on label that mattered. He used xeroxed clip art and a free vector graphics program (CorelDraw) to make the Lion’s Den logo. It showed a stylized lioness holding a large flower, something like a zinnia, in its crossed forelegs, with “Lion’s Den” in sixties-style art nouveau script. He put the preponderance of his investment into sound quality, paying double for heavy vinyl mastered at forty-five revolutions per minute to be shipped from England. He ordered one thousand of the singles, an insanely optimistic number, but Joe had committed to playing as many shows as it took to unload them, even if it took him the rest of his life. Daniel estimated twenty years.
JOE WAS IN THE LOFT ON CHRYSTIE STREET WITH FLORA WHEN THE UPS MAN ARRIVED with the fourteen stunningly heavy boxes. Victor helped him carry them up the stairs. Joe put one on the stereo, cranked it, and danced. It was immediately clear to him what he needed to do. He fed and changed Flora, strapped her to his chest, tucked twenty-five singles into his messenger bag, and marched off to the Abyssinian Coffee Shop.
He bestowed singles on all those who currently had shifts and stacked five more by the register for the remaining employees to pick up. With one exception, a pothead prep cook whose shift was ending, the staff added their gifts to the stack, from which two customers removed six singles before a homeless hoarder absconded with the rest.
His next stop was Tower Records. He asked to speak to a manager and explained that he was Joe Harris, seeking distribution for his new single, out now on Lion’s Den. He introduced Flora, turning and lifting a corner of her blanket to show the manager her sleeping face. He talked too much and too loudly. He continued talking after the manager turned away. He was allowed to leave two singles. He left the store against traffic, through the entrance, turning around to wave goodbye.
He headed westward toward NYU’s radio station. Failing to get past the security guard, he was told to try the U.S. Mail. At select bars and nightclubs, he pressed the single on whoever answered the door—in one case, a custodian holding a mop.
SHORTLY AFTER HE LEFT TOWER RECORDS, A JUNIOR EMPLOYEE WHO HAD WITNESSED the proceedings asked the manager if she could please, please have the singles before he threw them away. He said of course not; he would never throw them away, much less give them to her. They were the property of Tower Records, to be listened to in due time by the staff member responsible for selecting indie records for distribution.
She knew how many supplicants he had—dozens every day. She said, “At least let me listen to it. You have to!” She clasped her hands and bounced to indicate pleading.
“Fine,” he said, holding out both seven-inches. “Take them.”
“I don’t want to keep them,” she said. “I want us to distribute it, if it’s any good. I want to hear it!”
“Why?”
“Because that guy was so cute, like an angel. Did you see his eyes? They were like stars!”
“Take them,” the manager said, disgusted.
She put one in her messenger bag and brought one to the frat boy working the customer service desk.
Forty-five minutes later, after his ironic Anita Baker compilation tape was done playing, the store filled with a fresh and compelling sound. Joe had recorded all the A side’s instrumental tracks on bass. Open strings played the part of Neil Young and Crazy Horse bass. High fretting was Phil Lesh meets the Congos bass. Fuzzy bass, courtesy of Pam’s distortion pedal, stepped in after the bridge to play a solo. All the tracks were doubled, because he liked playing them so much. The sound was low fidelity, but the tune rocked like a cradle rocking, like someone casually pitching a melody from hand to hand, and he sang in a tormented voice about something it was hard not to take for loneliness. The chorus was a three-part harmonic cadence on the repeated word “down,” careful and precise as a madrigal.
Annoyed by the challenge to his preconceptions, the customer service frat boy flipped it to hear the B side. Massive riffage blasted from the store’s speakers while the same voice cried out, “American woman!” The vocals were lower in the mix than on “Hold the Key” and conveyed a note of pain definitely lacking in the original. It sounded as if the American woman really had the singer cornered this time. It was less a succession of throwaway insults than a cry for help. The bass recalled live Yes or King Crimson, with the kind of distortion that peels paint off distant walls.
“I’m in love,” the stock girl said. “Do you think that was his baby?”
“It definitely wasn’t his single,” the frat boy replied. “That guy was a retard. That’s who the breeders are. Not smart people. That’s why we’re devolving.”
DANIEL