It got way more complicated when Chey showed up. I mean, the song was about her. Of course it was about her. I didn’t realize that when I was writing it. Sometimes the words and music just pour out and you have no idea what they mean until much later.
In the case of “Pleasant Sounds,” I understood the meaning as soon as I started playing the guitar riff for Johnny. But once I’d started picking the notes, I was trapped.
I kind of hiccupped when I sang the first line—Phones ring—my voice catching like it was tripping over the edge of a carpet. And I mumbled. But it didn’t matter.
Johnny, who is smarter than me most of the time, is kind of dumb in a couple of very specific ways. It would never occur to him that I would write a song about Cheyenne. Whether that’s because he and I are best friends and he and Chey are together, or whether it’s because he thinks someone like me has no business fantasizing about someone like Cheyenne, I have no idea.
So I finished the song, and Johnny was just beaming. I could tell that he really loved it, and that put me at ease.
“We have to add this to our set right away. Play it again.”
So I did, and he started messing around with some piano parts.
Then the doorbell rang.
In the two minutes Johnny was gone answering the door, my nerves started jangling. I was pretty sure it was Chey. It’s like the universe suddenly notices that I’m doing kind of okay and then it rings the doorbell to set things straight.
When Chey walked into the room trailing Johnny, I felt an overwhelming need to get the hell out of there. I tried, but Johnny kind of forced me to play the song.
Again, I was trapped.
I know what you’re thinking. How can he force you, Harry?
There was too much history between Johnny and me for it to work any other way. It’s hard to explain.
I played the song with my eyes shut the entire time. When I finished, Cheyenne just started bawling. She knew right away that the song was about her. Johnny looked confused.
I grabbed my guitar and left, feeling pretty shell-shocked. I figured Chey was crying over the guilt of her and me having kissed in Georgia and that she was going to tell Johnny everything.
Yes, we kissed. It was one time, it lasted all of five seconds, and it never happened again. It was right after Johnny had quit the tour and gone home, and we were all a bit confused. In the end, it didn’t mean anything. But I knew Johnny wouldn’t see it that way. He would see it as a betrayal, and I couldn’t blame him.
I sat in my car, waiting for them to come storming out of the house. I had this mental image of Johnny hopping over to my window and bludgeoning me with his prosthetic leg. When that didn’t happen, I thought about going back inside and confronting them, but who was I kidding? There was no way that was going to happen.
All the good stuff in my life that had started to take root was about to be wiped away, again. It was like getting your favorite cassette tape too close to a magnet, all your favorite tracks jumbled and gone.
I started on one of my lists. It’s a trick Dr. Kenny taught me when I was a kid. I memorize and recite boring lists of things; it’s supposed to help calm me down. Anything from naming all the presidents or Oscar winners to memorizing recipe ingredients or children’s books, whatever will force my mind in a different direction.
It works every time.
I was up to the forty-ninth digit of pi—five, in case you’re wondering—and it was starting to have an effect. I was settling down, and I knew it was time to leave.
I had my hand on the gearshift, getting ready to back out of Johnny’s driveway, when Chey stepped out of the front door. She had stopped crying, but she looked bewildered and more than a little bit freaked out.
“You want a ride?” I asked through the open window.
She didn’t say anything or even look at me as she opened the door and took a seat. Not knowing what else to do, I pulled out of the driveway and rolled on down the hill.
We cruised streets in Yonkers, Tuckahoe, and Eastchester for at least ten minutes in total silence. At first I was nervous as hell. I was pretty sure that whatever had happened between Johnny and Cheyenne was my fault, you know, because of the song. But after a while, with neither one of us talking, I kind of disappeared into the car radio. It was playing some New Wave crap—Culture Club, I think—I would never admit to liking in public, but in my head I was singing along.
“He asked me to leave.” Chey’s voice startled me. My nervous system was pulled right back to a state of high alert. Launch the bombers, flood the tubes, that sort of thing.
“Why?” It came out more as a croak than an actual word.
“He didn’t say. But I think it was his leg?”
“His leg?”
“Yeah, when he got up to hug me, he lost his balance and pulled us both down onto the bed.”
“Smooth move.”
“It wasn’t like that!” Chey snapped.
“Sorry,” I muttered, and kept my eyes on the road.
“That’s what he was afraid of, that I was thinking he was trying to get us to, you know. It never even crossed my mind. I could tell that he’d lost his balance and had just fallen.”