Free Sweeter Life by Tim Wynveen

her place. Then they came to get his gear. What else could it be?

FOUR
    R onnie couldn’t sleep. He had tucked the boy into bed, gone to check on the rest of the crew and come tiptoeing back to the room just as the sun was beginning to paint the sky pink. But as exhausted as he felt, he still couldn’t close his eyes. It saddened him to see the boy sleeping there so fitfully. The twisted sheets and the grinding teeth reminded Ronnie of another hotel room in another town, and the night he met Jimmy Waters, one of the world’s anxious sleepers.
    Back then, Ronnie had anxieties of his own. He had walked out on the Aaron Maxx tour in Staghorn, Alberta, and was renting a room in the Queen’s Hotel, a room that smelled of smoke and stale beer, and throbbed all night with the red glow of neon. He was also running desperately low on cash and wondering what to do with the rest of his life now that he had more or less tossed his career down the dumper. Then one morning he flipped on the black-and-white television bolted to the wall and, there amid the snow and flickers, he saw Dick Clark: the sharp suit, the slicked-back hair, the youthful good looks. Just the sight of him—not to mention those fresh-faced Californian kids with the white smiles and crisp clothes and wholesome energy—made the day seem a little brighter. Better still, Dick was talking to Gil Gannon and sharing a good laugh.
    Gil was short, a little heavy and not nearly as handsome as Dick, but he had all the swagger and self-assurance you’d expect of a major star, even though he hadn’t had a hit in years. He had massive gold rings on his fingers. When he laughed, he shook from head to toe.
    Dick waggled the microphone playfully and said, “What say we talk to the animals in the band.” Immediately the musicians began to mug for the camera, cutting up like teenagers, even though they had to be thirty or older. They were dressed in identical black suits with narrow collars, white shirts and skinny ties, way behind the fashion curve for 1968. They had short greasy hair.
    The drummer held his sticks to the top of his head, like Martian antennae, and Dick laughed and said, “I guess we know why they call you Moonman.” That got a rise out of the girls in the audience. Then Dick angled closer to the keyboard player, a pale, slouching giant whose solemn attitude was entirely at odds with the rest of the band. He had a neatly trimmed beard, black hair and beady eyes. Dick sat beside him on the piano bench and said, “James Waters, I presume.”
    “That’s right, Dick. But you can call me Jimmy.”
    “Welcome back to
American Bandstand
, Jimmy. What’s it like being voted the best keyboard player of the decade by
Songmaker Magazine
?”
    “It’s all right, Dick. An honour, I guess.”
    “I bet it is. And well deserved. That solo of yours on ‘Don’t Look Back’? Wow. You’ve been playing how long?”
    “All my life, Dick.”
    Dick was getting frustrated with the mopey one-note answers. He moved in close, really working, and said, “You fellas have been on the road non-stop, what, going on three years now. Japan, Europe, Australia—I don’t imagine there’s anyplace you guys haven’t seen. What’s it been like?”
    A nearly unbearable silence built as everyone waited for Jim to respond. The guys in the band grew watchful. Though Gil was still jiving and posing, his eyes had lost their playful spark. And Jim just sat there shaking his head as if he were in pain.
    Dick, the consummate pro, laughed like it was all some kind of gag. He nudged Jim with his elbow and said, “Seriously, now, how’s it going?”
    And something strange happened then. Jimmy Waters, the man who had brought music into Ronnie’s life, this sad-faced giant with the bad posture, grabbed the microphone, stumbled from behind his keyboard and edged up to the camera, his face nearly pressed to the lens. And in the hushed smoky voice of an all-night DJ, he said, “It’s going