“It’s probably sitting upstairs in a pile of mail,” Sidra suspected. “I’ll go check tomorrow.” She yawned, stretched. “You going to bed soon?”
“In a few more minutes. Just wanted to check . . . her.” He nodded to the screen. “Wouldn’t that be great? The tour bus pulls up in Vancouver, and we all roll out, decked out like rockers. Chicks standing outside yelling for autographs. And there she is,” he enthused, rubbing his hand in the air between them, as if conjuring up the girl of his dreams. “And she’s been waiting for me to arrive. She flirts with me all night from the crowd. And when the show ends, she’s boarding the bus to the next town with me.”
Sidra admired his optimism. She just wished he didn’t have to hitch himself to Charlie to make things happen. And she hoped, for his sake, life on the road in a tour bus really had all the romance and excitement he longed for.
Rick
Jumping Ship
“Bring out yer dead . . .”
Rick stretched the full length of his bunk as the voice drew closer.
“Bring out yer dead . . .” Martin had a love for Monty Python, a droll sense of humor, and the command to run a very tight ship. “Gentleman, it’s half seven. We are approximately five minutes away from the Guilderland Travel Plaza.” Their tour manager’s Scottish burr trilled again. “If you’re in need of a real loo, ’tis your last one till Boston. Bring out yer dead!” His big hands brushed life into the nubby gray bunk curtains as he passed.
Rick rubbed each gritty eye, then the bridge of his nose and yawned. He hated the bunks on the bus, roughly the size of your average coffin. But he didn’t mind waking up miles from where he had fallen asleep.
“Riff Rotten! Shift your arse, man!”
Two fingers hooked around the curtain. Rick peeked through the gap and was greeted nose to the button-fly jeans of Digger Graves. Not his ideal wake-up call.
“We’re almost there.” Adrian’s fingers moved to fasten his trousers’ top button before pulling Rick’s entire curtain asunder, leaving him blinking in the canned light of the Prevost coach. “Look alive, mate.” He popped a toothbrush into his mouth and grinned before making his way down the aisle.
At least you have a reason for being so bright-eyed and minty-fresh at this hour, Rick thought dully.
If I were this close to home and to my ladylove, I would go AWOL from tour, too.
Home. Love.
Yeah. There were reasons why Rick kept the show itinerary full.
The last two weeks had passed in a blur. California, Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, now a two-night stand coming up in Boston . . .
He yanked the curtain half-mast once more, closing his eyes. Ah, Simone. Sometimes on the road, I find myself looking at the clock and wondering what time it is back home in Hawaii. Not that it matters. You’re not there to answer the phone. Or open my letters. Still. If you cannot be my confessional . . .
Across the aisle, Sam swung massive feet clad in cheap flip-flops out of the top bunk. “Ah, finally a real flusher, thank Christ!” Anyone who harbored illusions that the rock and roll road life was twenty-four-hour glamour had obviously never encountered a musician wandering the streets of some small town early in the morning, waiting for the local McDonald’s to open so he could empty his bowels. The tour bus toilet accommodated bladder relief only.
“There’re my girls!” Adrian exclaimed as the bus careened up the exit ramp. “I can see the Smurf from here—over there, see? The blue-and-white Mini Cooper.”
The door gave a hiss and burped open.
“Morning, Kat!” Sam boomed, as if it were perfectly natural for them to run into each other here in the middle of the New York State Thruway. No one beat Sam off the bus when he was in need of a bog.
One by one, the awake and the barely awake filtered off and greeted Adrian’s instant American family in a hard rock receiving line. Rick lingered, enjoying the obscurity of the tinted bus windows for a few moments longer. He watched his best friend fall into Kat’s embrace. Her lips spoke silent words over Adrian’s shoulder, ones that only he could hear. Little Abbey wormed her way into the hug, too, as Adrian hiked a thumb backward and Kat turned her eyes up toward the darkened glass.
No doubt telling her about the barmy git on the bus, Rick mused. How the poor sod had discovered his late wife had saved every postcard he’d ever written her, preserved in a hatbox, before he left on tour. And now he can’t stop talking about her.
Correction: Now he can’t stop talking to her.
The hollows of his own dark eyes reflected back, startling Rick into real-time.
“Riff, stop fannying about up there!” Adrian’s voice drifted back onto the coach. Small footfalls followed; Abbey loved any excuse to explore the interior of the band’s home on wheels, nosing behind the curtains of the bunks and snacking on whatever chips and goodies the crew left lying about.
“Hiya, Bee.”
“You’re coming with us to the lake.”
Rick dropped a pair of sunglasses on. “Says who?”
“Adrian,” Abbey stated, her nasally American vowels slightly grating. In the four years Rick had known her and her mother, he had never once heard either refer to his bandmate as Digger. Evidently, stage personas never made it past their front door. “And he said to stop fannying about.”
“Is that so?” Rick enjoyed the eight-year-old’s mastery of British lingo, even if she flattened it with her accent. He also admired her quest for anything chocolate-flavored. It reminded him of his twin boys at that age, always nipping Cadbury Buttons from the secret stash Simone had kept in the butler’s pantry back home.
“Yes. Is this your bunk?”
“The middle one. On the right.” Rick watched as she inspected the row.
“Underwear!” she squealed.
“That’s what you get for peeking in Sam’s bunk,” Rick said with a laugh. “I bet Adrian has a treat for you in his. Third one down, take a look.”
Her legs, long and stork-like, stretched as she stood on tiptoe. “Ooh, Cadbury!” She held up a Flake bar as her pilfered bounty.
“The real kind, too.” Rick informed her. “Imported.” He reached into his bunk, quickly glancing the length of it. Like a man about to jump from a sinking ship, he grabbed what mattered most: his rucksack and his notebook.
“We’re busting you out of this rock and roll circus!” Kat shaded her eyes with her hand, smiling at Rick as he emerged with Abbey in tow. She turned to the others. “I hope you guys don’t mind; I’m stealing your guitarists for a couple of days.” Digger—No, make that Adrian, Rick mentally corrected himself—slid his arm around her waist as she added, “Two days off in a row, and so close to the lake house. I couldn’t resist.”
“Nor could I refuse,” Adrian murmured, rubbing his neat goatee of gray and gold against her cheek, eyes closed.
Jim lit a cigarette and mashed his free hand into his jeans pocket. “Cool.” The drummer exhaled. “Wish Maryland was a bit closer for me. Soon enough, I guess.”
Sam had returned from his lavatory excursion and sputtered in mock outrage. “Riff? At least choose someone worth his salt, Kat!”
“Sam, sometimes the freak show needs a break from the clowns,” Rick stated, as slow and dramatic as his descent down the bus stairs.
“Meaning . . . meaning?” Sam echoed like an empty canyon. Everyone else just grinned and looked elsewhere.
“Ah, Kat.” Rick leaned to kiss her cheek. “You are the only reason I’d get up at”—he lifted his shades to examine his watch—“stupid o’clock in the morning.”
He wasn’t sure whether she would consider his compliment a backhanded one. But the way she lobbed a kiss back onto his scruffy cheek told him she didn’t—or she didn’t care.
“Wait until you see our lake. You may just have one more reason.”
* * *
“Now this,” Adrian remarked as the screen door slammed behind them, “this I missed.” He inhaled deeply, and Rick did, too. A mi
x of odd odors hit him: acrid metallic rust from the old porch screens, earthy clay from the jumble of discarded shoes by the door, and the sharp dewy scent of fresh mowed grass filtering down from a neighboring lawn. Not unpleasant, just different from the last time he had visited the couple. Their summer place by the lake felt light-years away from the Upper West Side apartment they called home, even though the aging chalet bungalow was just under an hour’s drive from Manhattan.
“Those are our lake shoes,” Kat explained, prodding at a sneaker, caked gray and stiff, with her freshly pedicured toes. “The pile seems to grow larger every summer.”
“So this is your old homestead, then?” Rick bent to run his hand down the cat’s back as she weaved between his shoes. Even Chelsea, who probably lived a charmed life walking along the huge windows above Central Park most of the year, seemed to welcome the change of scenery. Her tail vibrated with happiness from his attention.
“Born and raised! We try to spend every summer and holiday here now. Just wait until you see your room. The Corroded Corpse time capsule.” Kat laughed. “If my brother, Kevin, finds out you’re staying here, he’ll want to hang an engraved plaque.”
“Riff Rotten slept here,” Adrian joked.
“Oh, bollocks. Please.” Rick scoffed. He had heard all about the attic bedroom, a shrine circa 1984, plastered with posters of Kat’s brother’s favorite bands.
“Come on in and sit. Coffee? Lemonade?” Kat gestured.
“I’ll have a beer, if you’ve got a proper English one.” A myriad of clocks in the living room began their slightly unsynchronized peal, as if to admonish Rick for wanting a beer at eleven o’clock in the morning. “Do I hear the Winchester chimes?”
“Oh, yes. Kat’s dad collected clocks in his antique business. Next you’ll hear Westminster, and the Whittington. Maddening, isn’t it?” Adrian winked at Kat as he uncapped a Newcastle with a vaporous pop and handed it to his friend. “I’ll take a glass of your lemonade, my dear.”
Kat brought two frosty glasses to the dining room table before settling into a chair with a canary-eating smile. Rick noticed Adrian’s pinky immediately curled around hers. Tattooed on his knuckle was a bold, black exclamation point: the punctuation to Kat’s very eager response when he proposed to her four years ago. Some people immediately get on the phone to share such happy news, Rick supposed. Others, like Adrian, go to the tattoo parlor so they can fist-pump Y E S !
They both smiled expectantly at him. Suddenly it was clear to Rick just why they had brought him here. Detouring him off the road, away from the rest of the band, forcing rest and relaxation down his throat.
They wanted his blessing.
“So. The wedding.” A fluid haul off the beer steeled Rick enough to broach the subject. “You’ve picked a date, I assume?”
“Look, he’s already got his ‘side project’ face on,” Adrian sputtered in disbelief.
“I do not,” Rick said indignantly, but he could feel his top lip curling in disgust while his thick dark brow receded in exasperation. It was the same face he pulled any time Adrian decided to take a break from all the sold-their-soul-for-rock-and-roll stuff and play for the under-ten crowd. When they had first reconciled their friendship, Rick had been amused by Digger Graves’s new alter ego: the kid-friendly musician Kat had mistakenly hired for a local library program, all because he wrote a stupid-catchy TV theme song about a cartoon cat. But now that their Corroded Corpse legacy had been resurrected as the Rotten Graves Project, Rick no longer regarded Adrian’s other pursuits as harmless fancy. Anything that took away from Corpse time was a threat.
“It’s my wedding, mate. Our wedding.” Adrian clutched Kat’s hand. “It’s not some pesky one-off gig that would be better left unplayed! Oh, but you’d rather walk away from the gigs without big guarantees, right?”
Rick had drained the last of his Newcastle and was picking at the bottle label. “All right,” he said, setting it aside and looking at them straight on. “Who am I to deny your happiness? Tell me when and I’ll be there.”
“As my best man?” Adrian pressed.
“Of course. I always have your back.”
“We’ve got it pretty much planned; small and simple. Ceremony in the park near the Cloisters, reception at New Leaf Café right on the grounds.”
“Tell me when,” Rick repeated.
“Halloween.”
Rick was gripping the bottle once again, so tight he feared it would pop to shards in his hand. “Do you not look at the itineraries I send you? Halloween, mate. We’ve got second hold on Madison Square Garden, and I just had our agent challenge the date. For fuck’s sake!”
Kat turned to Adrian. “In English, please.”
“Another band is thinking about playing the Garden for Halloween and put in for it first. If we come along and challenge them, they have twenty-four hours to decide if they really want it.” Adrian frowned. “Otherwise, it’s ours.”
Rick was already up and pacing, dialing the band’s booking agent on his mobile. “Ach, West Coast. Oliver’s not going to answer.”
“Look, Rick. Even if it wasn’t the wedding date . . . I haven’t once trick-or-treated with Abbey, not once in these four years. I just missed her fourth grade play. I don’t want to watch her grow up through a video lens.”
“Madison Square Garden,” Rick repeated, those three words the only bargaining chip he had at the moment.
“Enough,” Kat broke in. “You have two days off, then two shows left on this tour.”
Adrian’s goatee jutted stubbornly as he set his jaw and managed through gritted teeth, “I’ll show you your room.”
They both clomped up the steep attic stairs in silence. The scene was set most ironically for their comically tragic little play, Rick observed: Two men in their midlife, arguing under a scrapbook ceiling lined with tattered pictures of their much-younger selves.
“I’m on your side, Dig. Just trying to stay one step ahead. You remember the last time the music industry machine left us behind.”
“I don’t care. I will take a sledgehammer to that machine.”
Rick listened to the heavy tread of his bandmate’s motorcycle boots on the stairs, followed by Kat’s murmur, “You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“And Rick?”
“Rick needs to get laid,” came Adrian’s gruff reply, and the angry roar of the shower could be heard moments later.
Rick
I Never Promised You the Garden
“Hey, let me show you the lake.”
Rick rose slowly to Kat’s request. He and Adrian were out by the grill, having another beer as Adrian painstakingly built a pyre out of twigs and stick matches inside a huge pyramid of charcoal briquettes and Abbey serenaded them with the little pink ukulele Rick had sent from Hawaii for her birthday last year.
“Want to join us?” mother asked daughter.
“Nope.” Abbey handed Adrian her instrument. “Your turn.”
Rick looked to his best friend for backup. Surely Adrian wasn’t going to allow him to be subjected to some sort of heart-to-heart alone with Kat?
“Sorry, mate. It doesn’t matter how metal you are. If an eight-year-old hands you a pink ukulele, you sure as hell better play it.” Adrian smiled and began to strum as Abbey made hula motions with her hands to wave Rick and her mother out of the yard.
Bugger.
Kat led the way toward the road. Neighbors were just ending their day’s commute, coming home from work in town or from the city. A car rolled past, giving a beep before crunching into the gravel driveway a few doors down. As Kat lifted a hand in greeting, Rick wondered what most people would think about their odd little commute this morning. Nine to five had no meaning in the music world.
“So,” he grunted, “you’ve enough food for an army.” Small talk. “Who’s coming?”
“Oh, Marissa and her family.”
“The chesty one?”
Kat laughed. “She’ll love that! And you, for noti
cing. Yep, that’s her.”
“How about the ginger? Your brother’s girl?”
“Liz?” She shook her head. “First time she’s missed spending the holiday up here in years. She’s taking inventory in her bagel shop over the long weekend. So it’ll just be us. Oh, and my neighbor, Karen, with her family. They won’t eat much, though. They’ve recently gone macrobiotic.”
“Sounds painful.”
“It’s not too crazy. Mostly raw veggies, grains, and—”
“I was kidding, Kat. I know what it is. We tried it with Simone, after her diagnosis.”
Rick hoped his grim and halting tone would stick a pin in any widow-to-widower heart-to-heart Kat was considering. Yes, they had both lost spouses. When Kat rang him up out of the blue four years ago, they had instantly bonded over their heartbreak. And over Adrian, of course. But the parallels ended there.
“This.” Kat allowed Rick to punctuate her pause with a gasp upon sight of the lake. “This is my Polihale, where I come to ponder things.”
In that first phone conversation, Rick had mentioned the vast beach near his house back in Hawaii, and how it had been a savior to him. Obviously Kat had not forgotten.
“Superb, Kat . . . really.” Rick stood at the shore, hips jutted slightly forward in his cargo shorts. The far horizon hovering over the watery expanse had his undivided attention. Who would’ve thought there would be such a vista hidden at the end of a sleepy suburban block?
“I can’t believe we’ve never gotten you up here before now.”
Rick shrugged. “Ah, you know. Touring, recording. Now, if you were to build a midsize venue back here . . .” His laugh dwindled. “Listen, Kat. I’m sorry for ranting earlier. I really like you, and cripes, Adrian is the happiest I’ve ever seen him. It’s just . . . well. Marriage can be a shock on the rock and roll system. And vice versa.”
Kat cringed at his stress on the word vice. Adrian had obviously confessed Digger’s every sin to her, long before any talk of marriage had taken place. It was a cheap shot, Rick silently admitted. He was fairly confident, even though the Digger persona was present and accounted for these days, that Adrian was the person in control.
Softer Than Steel (A Love & Steel Novel) Page 6
