Baja Zuma

Chapter 10

DANI'S P.O.V.

I'd been through a relatively carefree February day. Few chores around the house, no band-related activities. But I had ridden my bike all the way down to the beach, done some swimming, and made the hard chug back up to our house, and was physically exhausted by ten o'clock when I turned off the television in the great room. I went in the bedroom I shared with Lauren, who was lying in the top bunk, the room's light already off. I wasn't sure if she was asleep, so I remained quiet as I slumped on a chair by our window.

Our immediate neighborhood at the dead end of a quiet street is pretty dark at night. A slit of yellowy light suddenly appeared in the lot immediately downhill from ours, the one I had the clearest view of from our bedroom window. The glow expanded vertically into a rectangle. Our neighbor's garage door was opening. Seconds later headlights painted our street, and steered into that house's driveway. A fuchsia Bentley entered the garage. I watched two people exit the car and embrace one another, lit cigarettes in their mouths. As their garage door closed and hid them from me, I heard Lauren cough, so I knew she was awake.

I told Lauren, "Now normally I'm not one to gossip..." which got a derisive giggle out of her, "but there's some man loaded down with bling who rode home with Nicki tonight. A rapper probably. Or, you know, he kind of looks like a bank robber. I wonder if he's going to spend the whole night." Singer Nicki Minaj was renting that house, which was a blessing in that someone in the music business was inclined to be understanding of the racket we could raise with our amplifiers and Lisa's drum kit when we held our practice sessions.

Lauren and I talked a bit about Nicki's career arc. Then in a quieter voice Lauren asked, "Do you think Sugar and Spice will be able to afford a car like Nicki's?"

"You better believe it! We are going straight to the top of the music charts, you and I. Our talent is a handle that will turn the money crank." For all my bravado, I considered the idea of Lauren and I splitting off from the other four sisters as more of a fantasy than a goal to aim for, and I'm pretty sure Lauren did as well. It was fun when we were out of earshot of the rest of the family to suppose we were the creative core of the band and the youthful energy that kicked the band into high gear, and to plot our career as a renegade duo. When I was in full swagger, I'd say things to Lauren like, "We might bring one of them to our recording session now and then in the role of a session musician," or, "You can take care of the high vocal range and I can handle the low range, so we've got it covered." But I meant it in the same spirit of fun as I did a few years earlier when I spoke of becoming a world-famous fashion designer. "Donatella Versace is shaking," I liked to say.

My fleeting thought of my old fantasy of moving to New York City to become a designer reminded me of something I had heard from my uncle who spends time in Pennsylvania and New York.  "I heard about this pizza place called Bleecker Street Pizza. It's in the Greenwich Village part of New York City. When Sugar and Spice tour up the East Coast we have got to go there and try that pizza."

Lauren said, "That's where Bob Dylan got his start singing professionally. He made a bare-subsistence living singing in the coffeehouses at night there until he signed a record deal. Imagine him hanging out during the day in Washington Square Park, listening to people singing along with their guitars and banjos."

That reminded me of a new instrument I wanted to acquire and teach myself to play. "I want to learn banjo so bad. The next time we're at Westwood Music, gotta look for a banjo." 

"Yeah, and then stop at that taco stand on Westwood Boulevard," Lauren said. "Those carne asado nachos, I can taste them right now."

"I always get the horchata for my drink there. Perfect amount of vanilla and cinnamon. Yum."

With that enticing thought I got into the lower bunk and lay on my back, interlacing my fingers under my head. I recalled reading the chapter on conversation chains in one of Christina's old behavioral psychology textbooks. One topic leads to a related topic, and so on, until only a few links of the chain later you are talking about something that doesn't have any obvious connection to the original topic. How did Lauren and I wind up talking about horchata? Let's see... I saw Nicki Minaj out my window, and that somehow snaked its way to the topic of horchata. Hmmm. Can't remember in detail, but I know Bob Dylan was one of the links in the chain. And banjos. 

My brother  Christian had told me about something called the Butterfly Effect. If one small detail in a causal chain had been different, the outcome at the end of the chain of events could be—probably would be—dramatically different. "Deterministic nonlinear system" was the phrase Christian used, and I wondered if tonight's chat with Lauren counted as such a thing. If my mention of Bleecker Street had made Lauren think of the television show 'Girl Meets World,' which was set there, then who knows, maybe we would have ended up talking about... I don't know, veganism, rather than horchata.

The Butterfly Effect, yeah. Like, suppose Lauren is out walking and a microscopic rhinovirus is floating in the air. If that virus goes into her nostril, she gets sick. Her voice is too hoarse for her to go with us to our studio recording session. She stays home. She writes a song about being left out of things. She decides it would be perfect for a Sugar and Spice duet. The two of us record it and everybody loves it. We announce we are splitting off from the family band. The music biz is forever changed, as compared to if that virus wafted harmlessly past Lauren's face.

 Human history is steered by trillions of seemingly trivial moments like that floating virus which make today's world the way it is rather than something so different that it would seem bizarre to me if I could miraculously be given a vision of it. And on that sobering thought I fell asleep.