The bank vault was as close to a hermetic environment as I'd ever seen. Metal walls divided into little locked rectangles -- the doors of the safe deposit boxes. A mausoleum for money and documents. No view of the outside. Odorless, except for that faint tang in the air that might have been ozone. Artificial light. The opposite of everything my father liked, with his claustrophobia and his love of the outdoors. I pictured him hurrying, to get in and out of the place as fast as he could.

Mom was with me. She wanted to see what he'd left me. This was a safe deposit box she'd never heard of, in a bank she'd had no dealings with. She had complained to his lawyer about the will, saying that she should have been left the key. She'd been upset, too, that he'd left individual letters for everyone but me.

"Are you sure this is the right box?" I asked the bank officer. The box was five feet high. I didn't know they made them that big.

The woman glanced at the card in her hand, and at the box. "The numbers match," she said. "This is it."

She turned the key, and I turned mine, and we pulled it open. Inside was a stack of three-ring binders, with only a foot or so of space empty at the top. A white envelope with my name on it lay on the top binder.

"I'll be upstairs," the woman said. "If you need anything, or you finish, just use the phone." She gestured to a white phone on a table in the middle of the room. She left, and we were locked in.

The table had four chairs around it. I picked up the envelope and sat in one of them. Mom sat next to me.

Inside the envelope was a letter.

Goodbye.

I passed the letter to mom and waited for her to read it.

"I'd like a copy," she said, and I nodded. "This is exactly the way your father wrote. It's his voice." After a while she asked, "Aren't you going to look at the songs?"

"Not yet." She was there, and she couldn't read music, and she would get bored, waiting. I didn't want her looking over my shoulder, and maybe asking questions. Most of all, going through the music looked like a massive job. There must have been hundreds of songs, maybe thousands. What the hell was I going to do with that many? Just reading through them would take months.

"I'll drive you home," I said. "I'll come back later." I picked up the white phone and called to be let out.

Curiosity brought me back, and my mother's questions. She was continually asking me what the songs were like. I think she felt guilty, as if she'd robbed him of a career by tying him to domestic life, forcing him to pursue his songwriting in secret, unable to take the final step of actually recording. This wasn't true, but it was the kind of thing she was likely to think. She felt as if she'd robbed him. Another woman might have wanted the songs not to be good, the dynamic being: I won't have to feel guilty if the songs are bad. His happy illusion that they were good never had to be shattered, and I can take credit for that. Mom was just curious. She had no desire to absolve herself.

The binders were in chronological order, with the oldest on the bottom. They were all black, three and a half inches, each of them labeled on the spine with a slip of paper that gave the month and year of the oldest and newest songs: "June 1975 -- December 1979", and such. Inside, each song was preceded by a handwritten page or two of notes: the beginning and ending dates of its composition, its origin, its proper mood, alternative treatments, singing style -- anything at all that applied to it. These notations were all over the map, some of them cryptic. They said things like, "ping-pong balls and mousetraps". I didn't try to decode these. The music would have to speak for itself.

I lay all the binders on the table, and started flipping through them. I intended to read the first and last song in each book, and this worked at first. There was a certain consistency to them. They were well crafted. Nothing was brilliant, but most of them were good, some quite good.

Then it changed. The year was 1985. The first song in the binder was better than anything I'd heard of his, even "Weightless". I couldn't understand why he'd kept this secret. I looked at all the others in that book, and several of them astounded me.

I had to leave when the bank closed. I took two binders home with me. Julia and I had given up our Lawrence apartment to move to the city, so she could be closer to her job, but we still had a couple of weeks to go on the lease, and a mattress and keyboard still at the place. I called her on my cell phone to let her know where I'd be.

I was up until dawn. Some of the songs didn't work for me, and I skipped them after one try. Others I had to play a few times before I decided I didn't like them, or they weren't right for me. There was a deep strangeness about a few that I wanted nothing to do with. But there was a handful of others that I knew I could get obsessed with perfecting, at least in the way I played them.

I didn't have any music paper, so I pencilled in changes on the originals. I didn't touch the rhythms; my music was usually quarter notes or eighth notes, and dad always had catchy, unexpected hooks. I envied that. His sense of timing was remarkable. In the end, I changed some of the bridges and added some short instrumental breaks, and tinkered with the wording, though he was usually a better wordsmith, and changed a note or two of the melodies here and there. At seven thirty I took a shower and went to work at the hardware store. My day was long and sleepy, and I was glad that business was slow.

That was a Tuesday, and I had to work all week. I couldn't get back to the bank until Monday. I spent the evenings practising the songs with Rake and Verne. Julia was so annoyed she came down and tried to drag me home. I wouldn't go. We were like an old married couple already. She ended up staying the night with me, falling asleep on the mattress while I played her the songs. I shouldn't have done that. Only play for another musician's opinion. A non-musician will either tell you something vague and useless, or they'll lie to make you feel good.

We had a gig Saturday night, at the old movie theater on Mass. street. Since we hadn't practiced the songs I played solo. The reaction from the crowd was less than I'd expected -- polite applause and a few whistles. I thought maybe I was biased in favor of my dad's music.

Sunday was a practice day, and then we didn't have another gig for a couple of weeks. We rehearsed four or five more times, until we'd mastered three of the songs. Verne's voice was best for them -- best, in general -- but I insisted on singing.

Our next date was a strange little place in the old part of Wichita, and the reaction was more favorable than it had been in Lawrence, but still disappointing.

We were driving back in the van, somewhere around Matfield Green, when "L.A. Woman" came on the radio.

"I love this song," I said. I turned it up. I was sitting in front, with Don.

"Maybe we should cover this instead of those songs of yours," he said. I hadn't told them yet that they were really my dad's songs. I wouldn't do that until we were committed to cutting a CD.

"They're good songs," I said.

"They're the wrong kind of songs."

"They're better than anything else we do, including covers."

"No, I mean -- "

Verne was listening and spoke up. "You mean they aren't the kind of songs you play in bars."

"Yeah," he said. "That's it."

I knew they were right. I'd picked songwriter's songs, not entertainment. It was like playing "Werewolves of London" to a flock of sheep. If we ever cut an album, the songs could go on it, but people didn't want to hear these when they were drinking beer and partying, or trying to pick up a girl. They didn't want to listen to the words and think. They didn't want to appreciate the melody. They wanted thump-thump. They wanted party sounds. They wanted boogie. All right, that's what I'd give them.

But there weren't a lot of songs like that in dad's books. I had to look through three of the books to come up with three songs. All five of us worked hard on them, separately and together, to make them into real party music. From the first time we played those tunes, we got requests to play them again. We started hearing about bootleg tapes soon after that.

We cut our own CD and started selling it from the stage. We sold out in three weeks, so we cut more. We started a web site, and sold them from there. College radio started giving us airplay around the midwest, so we mailed the CDs to college radios all around the country. The sleeves had our web page printed on the insert, and our hit count jumped. We had to pay our internet provider more money when our traffic exceeded the limit, but we didn't care -- we were making enough on sales to more than cover the cost. We posted our tour dates. We did online chats. We put bits and pieces of the best music on the web page.

The CD didn't hit the charts, but the big record companies heard about it and started calling. We turned them down. They always fuck the musicians over. We arranged for distribution with an independent label, just to get the disc in the stores. Then we hit the charts at last. The whole thing was like a fairy tale. None of us could believe it. We were finally making it. We were gone on tour most of the time.

Then I started repeating my father's life. The band was starting to fracture under the strain. Everyone was getting big egos, and Don and I were having a hard time holding everyone together. I think the only thing that did keep us together was that they all knew they owed their success to someone else, not themselves. I tried not to remind them directly, and we always dodged the question of authorship. In fact, dad's songs were uncredited on the album -- no songwriter given. This became part of the band's mystique, and soon we were stuck with it. We got more publicity because of our refusal to talk about the authorship.

While the band's fortunes were improving, my life with Julia was going down the tubes. She didn't want me gone all the time. She was regularly going into her rages, and I was beginning to think seriously about leaving her. I was making a living at my craft, I was bringing in money (and wondering whether part of the problem wasn't that I had finally started earning more than her and her lucrative systems analyst job). Why did she want to deny me what I'd always wanted to do? There were plenty of women who would understand. They were always throwing themselves at me. The only reason I didn't sample them was Julia. But I'd been with her for more than ten years, and she still wouldn't marry me. What was I getting from her?

I missed coming home to tell Julia what I'd done that day, or waiting at home for her so I could rub her neck and listen to her complain about her job. I missed her spaghetti and meatballs. I missed her stubby toes, and her uncontrollable hair. And one day, at the end of a tour, instead of driving home with everyone from Florida, I caught a flight in Tampa and got home two days early. I waited all afternoon and evening. I heard her key in the door about ten thirty at night.

"You're home early," she said.

"You're home late." I wondered: was this how we greeted each other, now? After a six-week absence?

"What a romantic homecoming. No flowers, no kiss. Just 'You're home late'."

"What a romantic homecoming. No flowers, no kiss. Just 'You're home early'."

"Do you want to know why I'm so late?"

If she asked me that, I didn't, but I couldn't safely say 'No', so I said nothing.

"I had a date," she said anyway.

"How was it?"

She laughed. "You don't mind?"

Of course I minded. "Mind or not, I lose either way," I said. "No point in giving you the satisfaction."

"Satisfaction isn't what this is about."

"Apparently not."

She looked puzzled for a second, then went ahead: "This is about people not meeting each other's needs."

" 'People'? Don't you mean you? Or are you speaking for both of us? Or some wider group?"

"Whatever." She waved her hand. "I'm tired of your tricks, always trying to confuse me."

"I'm not trying to confuse you. I just want you to know what's bothering you."

"What's bothering me," she said, "Is that you're never home. You're a parasite. You take, and I give, and I'm tired of it."

"I'm playing, I'm touring, I'm making money -- "

"Don't give me that sad old line that you're doing this for me."

"I'm not. I'm doing it because I have to."

"Well I'm tired of it. Where's my support? I go to bed alone and I wake up alone. When you're here, I go to bed alone and I wake up and you're still asleep when I leave for work. You haven't touched me in weeks."

How could I? I'd been gone. I tried to put my arms around her, but she stepped back from me.

"Stay away."

"Julia -- "

"You prick. You don't care. I'm just an emotional refueling station to you."

"You slept with him, didn't you?"

"Who?"

"Your date."

"No."

"Yes you did. Don't lie to me."

"Who made you psychic?"

"It's easy, when I've spent almost half my life with you."

She squinted and turned to look out the window.

I walked over and put an arm around her waist and looked out, too. There was nothing to see but the parking lot behind the apartment building, and the roofs of the sheds for the cars, and beyond that the next apartment building. We stood a while, and then I said, "Want to tell me about it?"

She broke away. "I didn't sleep with him. Really."

"Something happened. What was it?"

"I don't know." She shrugged. "I don't know. I'm confused."

"Are you in love with him?"

She looked at my face as if she would find the answer there.

"Are you in love with him." A song started up in my brain, a weird minor-key country fiddle lick, over and over, played one way, then inverted, then with a diminution, then repeated all over again, repeatedly. I wanted to hit myself in the head until it stopped.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Maybe I should move out."

"Why?"

"I'm just so confused. I don't know what I feel any more."

"What do you feel?"

"I was angry at you, so angry. You're always gone. I went out with him because I was lonely and mad, and I spent the entire time complaining about you, and he was so nice, he just listened, and I kept drinking, and I -- I let him bring me home, and he had to carry me upstairs because I kept falling, and when I woke up in the morning he was in bed with me. He said nothing happened, but I think it did."

I sat down on the carpet.

"Oh, God, I'm sorry," she said. "I'm not mad at you. I'm mad at me. I wanted to find a way to blame you." She knelt next to me. "Can you forgive me?" When I didn't answer, she went on, "I just saw him tonight to explain I can't see him again, and find out what happened. He wouldn't say. Then I drove around for a long time, trying to remember. I didn't think you'd be home yet." She waited. "I don't know why I was -- why I acted that way, why I said those things. I wasn't ready to see you."

I lay back and looked at the ceiling. The news didn't hurt yet, but it would, soon. I wondered how long the suffering would last, and how bad it would be. The only thing I knew besides the approaching pain was that I had to reassure Julia, that she had to believe I didn't blame her. She had to believe I forgave her, even if it was a lie. It would be best to do this now, before it became too difficult. Otherwise, I risked losing her, because of my own failure to convince her to stay. I could fix the lie later. Forgiveness would come with time, and then I would tell her at breakfast some day that I'd lied, that I was over it, but I'd had to wait until our trust was rebuilt and she could believe me without hurt. Then we would smile at each other, and hold hands, and plan our day.

She was touching my chest, my shoulders, my arms, as if she was trying to find where it hurt, or as if she didn't dare keep her hands in one place, for fear I'd brush them off.

"I should kick his balls up into his throat," I said, and groaned. Wrong way to start.

"Oh, Gabe, I'm sorry, so sorry."

"It's okay," I said. "It's okay. You made a mistake, that's all. Anybody can make a mistake. You were drunk. You didn't know what you were doing."

"Please tell me what to do. Tell me how to make it right. I wouldn't hurt you, ever, for anything."

"I know. I know."

"Are you going to leave? Please don't. Are you going to leave?"

"What?" I drew her down to me and wrapped my arms around her. "Why would I leave? It never occurred to me. I thought you were leaving me. I'm glad you're not."

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry."

"Always beating yourself up. Stop saying that. Start dragging guilt into this and we'll really get screwed up."

"I'm sorry."

"Cut that shit out!"

"Sor -- " Finally, she stopped.

I went to the bathroom and reached up under the sink, in the crook of the pipe, and pulled out the dope I had there. I rolled a two- paper joint and lit it and took it back to the living room.

We had white carpet and I hadn't brought anything to put the ash in, and we ended up flicking it into her shoe. Neither of us had smoked in months -- we saved it for special occasions -- and she got so stoned she fell asleep on the floor, and I lay there looking at the ceiling, which now seemed very far away and impossible to reach, as the moon came out and silvered the room. When Julia woke up we went to bed and fucked, still stoned, for an hour, while I told her not to worry, that this wasn't going to come between us, I wouldn't let it, and kissed her and looked in her eyes. We both slept through the alarm in the morning and she was late to work. I called and had a dozen yellow roses sent to her desk, as soon as she was out the door.