Buckminster boldly advances to the front of the church and squeezes into the second row, behind Cleo Rio and the former Slut Puppies. Danny Gitt rises and threads his way to the podium, where he makes a weak joke about why the band needed two bass players instead of one—something about alternating time-shares at a rehab clinic. The line draws a polite chuckle. Danny Gitt goes on to tell a few stories about Jimmy Stoma’s wacky sense of humor, his unsung generosity, his passion for performing live onstage. I jot down a couple of quotes in order to maintain credibility with Ajax and Maria, who shoot me a look every so often. I’m waiting for a lull so I can quiz them about Jimmy’s last project—undoubtedly the secret, unfinished album his sister mentioned…
A murmur rolls like a soft breaker through the crowd, and I look up to see Cleo Rio, dagger-straight in front of the altar. She’s wearing a diaphanous, ankle-length black dress and a Madonna-style headset microphone. The bald, bomber-jacketed goon I saw at the apartment hops the rail and hands her an acoustic guitar. Cleo waits while the TV crews jostle into place.
“Lord Jesus,” Ajax says to Maria.
And Jimmy’s widow begins to strum and sing:
Who do you have at the end of the day,
Who do you touch in the deep of the night?
Me, you’ve got me.
Who do you reach for when the clouds go gray,
Who do you hold when no end’s in sight?
Me, you need me.
Cleo’s voice is weak and watery, but she affects a hard raspy edge on the last beat of each line. As best as I can tell, she’s playing only three chords—an A minor, a barred F and a G—and struggling mightily. On the refrain the chords are identical but the sequence is reversed, Cleo now half-snarling:
Me, me, what about me?
You got yours but what about me?
Look in the mirror, what do I see?
Pretty little number, used to be me.
I hear Maria saying: “You believe this unholy shit?”
It is astoundingly tacky—Jimmy Stoma’s widow has turned his funeral into a promotional gig. The guys from her record label must be turning cartwheels.
“Bitch,” Ajax mutters.
“Whore,” Maria says.
Cleo’s style is grating—thank God she’s only got the one hit. When she finally warbles the last note of “Me,” a jittery silence grips the church. Eventually Tito Negraponte starts to clap, followed tentatively by the other ex-Slut Puppies. Pretty soon the place fills with applause that I interpret as unanimous relief that Cleo’s solo is over.
Except she’s still holding the guitar.
She clears her throat and sips from a glass of water ferried to her honey-skinned hand by the neckless bouncer. She says, “Here’s a number—”
“Lord help us,” groans Ajax, under her breath.
“Here’s a number,” Cleo says, “that me and Jimmy wrote just a few months ago. It’s the title cut on my new CD and, well, I’m just bummed because it turned out so awesome and he’s not around to hear me do it.”
“Lucky him,” says Maria to her friend. “Let’s roll.”
Ajax shakes her head. “Hang on a minute, girl.”
I consider bolting for some fresh air myself, but I’m perversely curious about “Shipwrecked Heart.” The widow Stomarti commences to sing:
You took me like a storm, tossed me out of reach,
Left me like the tide, lost and broken on a beach.
Shipwrecked heart, my shipwrecked heart…
The tune is pretty and pleasing to the ear, and I could probably learn to like it once I heard the whole song, but apparently that won’t happen today. Cleo Rio is singing the same verse over and over, meaning she’s either forgotten the rest of the lyrics or the lyrics don’t exist—that is, the song isn’t finished.
Ajax pokes me in the ribs. “You gettin’ all this down? Ain’t it unfuckinbelievable?”
“Maybe she’s just nervous,” I say.
“Ha!”
Afterwards, waiting to pay condolences to Jimmy’s widow, I’m standing in the line between Ziggy Marley and the guitarist Mike Campbell, one of the original Heartbreakers. I believe Ziggy has taken notice of the notebook sticking out of my back pocket—in any event, nobody’s chatting much.