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.I’d discovered music with the Beatles; my dad took me down to the old Coliseum to see them in 1966, sitting patiently while I crouched in the aisle and tried to hear what they were playing above all the screaming girls.After that I’d been lost to rock’n’roll.He never really understood, but he accepted it.He’d grown up in Seattle and seen it grow from a raw place into a modern city.He graduated high school and went off to war, came home and married the girl he’d dated since ninth grade.It sounded like a storybook to me, but it worked, and they were happy together.I always felt closer to him, though.My mom took me shopping until I was old enough to head off to Northgate on the bus alone, but my dad and I did stuff and went places together, just the two of us.There was always an excitement about getting into the front seat of that blue Delta 88 next to him, a sense of adventure.And I admired the way he was always busy.He looked after the yard, kept the grass and the bushes faithfully trimmed, and he fixed things, the way men of his generation did, always with a sure touch that worked the first time.He loved his hometown, he was proud of the place and made me feel the same way about it.And finally, when the cancer came and hollowed him out in his late fifties, all he had left of the house that he’d treasured was the bedroom, until he finished his days in the white emptiness of a hospital, everything around him sterile and as devoid of life as he was becoming.My mom only kept the place for a couple of years after that.It seemed too big for one person after a family had once run through it, every inch full of memories.Instead she moved in with her sister and died not long after.I was an only child, and I’d been orphaned in my twenties.That was the way it felt, anyway.I’d never been close to most of my relatives, happy to keep a distance between us, and I rarely saw any of them.At least my father had lived long enough to see me published and to take his quiet pride in that.I turned into our old street, parked so I could see the house and switched off the engine.What had once seemed so magical, what had been ours, now just looked anonymous, another ranch style place from the 1950s, duplicated on other blocks, other neighborhoods, other cities all around the country.Over the years I’d driven through so many towns and done a double-take because I thought I’d seen my parents’ house.I felt a strange calmness sitting somewhere I knew every bump in the pavement, where I’d skinned my knees falling off bikes, had my first kiss and enjoyed all the milestones that built a life.I’d been happy here.Life had been simple and innocent.All that had changed and I missed its simplicity, a time when everything was black and white, the good guys and the bad, not the shades of gray that filled adulthood.But for all the years I’d spent in it, the house didn’t have a hold on me any longer.Seeing it made me smile inside, but it was the same pleasure I got from looking at a photograph from happier times, the old colors and memories blurred.The rain grew a little heavier, the patterns of drops on the windshield coming together to form wide runnels down the glass.I switched on the engine, started the wipers and drove back to the apartment.ElevenTom Hardy was one of those good souls who gladly put his savings where his heart told him and kept preaching the gospel of local music.He ran a small record label and released the Seattle music he loved; he’d put out the Snakeblood LP and singles.Tom lived in a cramped studio apartment on Capitol Hill, the walls lined with cardboard boxes full of stock, hoping he’d break even some day.His younger brother Andy helped him out, a strange, troubled kid who always looked angry and never seemed to speak.People said Andy had problems, that he’d spent time in a psych ward, and I was willing to believe it; he was a sullen presence who did what his brother told him.I saw Tom at most of the gigs I attended, hunched deep into his beat-up leather jacket, chain-smoking Marlboros, usually with a glass of Michelob in his hand.I knew he’d love to be on the stage himself, but like me, he’d been born with the joy of the music and not the ability to make it.He was large, belly bulging even though he was only in his middle twenties, getting by on a small trust fund his parents had left him.But no one resented him; he was a genuine fan trying to help out those he believed in.About three months before, someone had believed in him enough to put serious money into the label, stopping him from going bust.Twenty-five thousand dollars was the figure people had mentioned.I doubted there’d ever be a return on that investment.When I called he answered on the second ring.“Hey Tom,” I said, “it’s Laura Benton.”“Hi, Laura,” he said.I heard his voice move up a gear into sales mode.“Have you gotten that new single I sent you yet?”“Yeah,” I parried, “but I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet.Listen, I wanted to ask you about Snakeblood.”“Oh, man, that was so bad,” he said, and I could hear the emotion.“Craig was a really good guy.”“Do you know who was handling things for the band at ARP?”“Let me see.Hold on
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