But it wasn’t stage fright. The rock in his stomach knew what it was.
He’d written the first draft of this song while he was in London, separated from Bo for two months. Written it for Bo, about Bo, about how much he missed her, while she was at home screwing his brother.
“But I know we’re close together
Even when we’re far apart—”
His voice faltered, his throat tightening—no, he was not going to mess this up! A stumble didn’t matter, this was just scratch vocals, getting things started. He could recover. He just had to keep going, work out the kinks.
“I know you walk beside me
Though I can’t see you in the dark
I can feel your hand in my hand—”
For a few seconds he didn’t even realize he’d stopped, that his fingers had gone on without him at the guitar strings. Then they faltered, too, and he realized in horror that he was tearing up.
Because the next line was “There’s no doubt, no question mark.” And there hadn’t been. He’d never doubted Bo, or what they had together, and he really should have.
He could see Luke, Orbit, and Amber muttering behind the glass, exchanging concerned glances.
“You need a minute, my man?” Orbit said through the speaker.
“Yeah,” he said. “Just one minute. I’m okay.”
He took a minute to breathe, and they tried again. And again. He never made it through the chorus.
After the third try, Amber ducked into the room with a bottle of water. Rafi chugged it without looking her in the eye.
“I shouldn’t have pushed you to do this,” she said.
“I’m good.”
“And I’m Princess Grace of Monaco.”
“We’re not here for a therapy session. I can’t just…I have to just pull it together.” He couldn’t bear to look through the glass at Luke and Orbit. He’d always taken pride in being professional at the studio. No messing around, wasting time, keeping people waiting. He was always prepared and ready to roll. Not having a cry about his ex on a hot mic.
“You remember what we talked about,” Amber said, “that night with those awful rum and cokes?”
Rafi huffed a laugh. The night after Bo left, he’d only had flat soda and rum in his condo, and he hated rum. Amber had brought a bottle of wine but broken it in the elevator, so they’d had to make do.
“You remember,” Amber prodded, “about songs existing independently of their origin?”
Rafi rubbed his eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
He’d been worried that he could never sing again, not any of Distant Kingdom’s songs anyway, things he’d written with or for or about Bo and Carlos. But inspiration was just that, inspiration, the first spark. Rafi, like most songwriters, drew inspiration from his life but didn’t always mirror it directly. Much more often than not, the song diverged from real life and became its own thing, sometimes quite early in the writing process. And once it was released, then it was definitely its own beast, living in the hearts of a million listeners, all drawing their own meaning from it, sometimes meanings he’d never intended.
“A painter can paint people who aren’t them,” Amber said now, as she had then. “A novelist can write characters who aren’t them. A song is the same way. You’re telling the story of an emotion. It doesn’t have to be your emotion.”
“You’re right,” Rafi said, and he believed it. This song, though, hadn’t grown from a Rafi-based kernel into its own story. This song had been about himself and Bo from the first word to the last. If he separated it from that, what would be left?
Nothing, as it turned out. They tried again, and he made it through, more than once. They got a decent recording. But he knew, and could see in the eyes of all three of the others that they knew, it wasn’t good enough. It was flat, forced, awkward. If he pinned a solo debut on that track, he would crash and burn.
“We could hang out at your place for a while,” Amber said, after long minutes of silence in the car.
“Thanks,” Rafi sighed, “but I think I’d like to wallow in depressed solitude for a while.”
“Far be it from me to interfere in your coping mechanisms,” Amber said dryly.
When Rafi stopped outside Amber’s place—a tidy townhouse in Chelsea—she stopped to put a hand on his arm before she hopped out of the car.
“It’ll get better. I swear, okay? I’ve been there, you know I have. It’ll get better.”
Rafi managed a smile. “I know.”
And he did know, just like he knew outer space existed. He knew that somewhere out there were millions of stars, some even brighter than Earth’s sun, but he couldn’t see them. He couldn’t see a single one of them from where he stood now.
* * * *
At home in the clean, restful forthrightness of his condo, Rafi paced back and forth across his windows like a caged tiger. He glanced toward the fridge, where there were a couple of bottles of better stuff than rum—but turning to alcohol every time he was upset wasn’t a great groove to get into.
He took out his phone, tossing and catching it as he paced. Who could he call? Amber had dealt with enough of his mess today. He’d already ruled out his dad. Ollie would want to talk about the baby. Julian?
He stopped, opened the phone, looked hard at Julian’s picture in his contacts. Talking to his boyfriend when he was upset about his ex, that was natural enough, wasn’t it? For a real boyfriend. Which Julian wasn’t. No, Jules wouldn’t appreciate being asked to manage his fake boyfriend’s emotions.
Rafi put away his phone, got out his most strident electric guitar, and spent the afternoon screaming angry breakup songs instead.
Chapter 5
IS JULIAN GAULT A RAGE JUNKIE?
Confidential sources say he’s “going off the rails”
It’s no secret to anyone in Hollywood that rising star Julian Gault has a temper, as proved by last month’s obscenity-laden rant at a co-star on the set of hit movie Gunpowder. Now it looks like anger management therapy may be on the horizon if Gault can’t learn to rein it in.
“He’s so unpredictable,” says a confidential source close to the young actor. “You never know what’s going to set him off. Suddenly he’s screaming and breaking things like a psycho. We’re all worried sick about him. He’s going off the rails.”
Gault wouldn’t be the first child actor to grow into a disturbed adult; only two weeks ago former Hollywood darling Leslie Lowen entered rehab yet again for her recurrent drug problem. Are temper tantrums the drug of choice for Julian Gault?
“It’s certainly possible for rage to provide a sort of high,” Dr. Hua Zu, psychologist to the stars, writes in his book Help Me Help You. “An adrenaline rush that helps cover other negative emotions that the person may not want to deal with. Needless to say, it’s not the healthiest coping mechanism.”
Gault himself could not be reached for comment.
—Globe, 8/14/19
* * * *
You know I can’t believe you when you’re putting on a show
It’s a beautiful performance played by someone I don’t know
I’d really like to have a look at what’s behind the mask
You don’t have to take it off—a little peek is all I ask
—“Face Value,” from Epicurious by Distant Kingdom
* * * *
Usually, Rafi had a cook come in once a week, like a cobbler’s elf leaving fresh fruit and frozen casseroles in her wake. It really wasn’t that expensive, and a lot less trouble than trying to learn how to cook for himself. She was on vacation, however, and Rafi, as a full-grown adult human, could look after himself for two weeks. No question. No problem.
How long exactly, he wondered as he loaded his cart with cans of superhero-shaped pasta, did it take to get scurvy? What vitamin was it that prevented scurvy? Was it in tomato sauce? The cans said “vitamin-enriched”…
A young man pushing his own cart down the same aisle gave Rafi a narrow look, but c
ontinued without stopping. Impossible to say if he’d recognized him or was just judging his choices. Rafi didn’t get recognized that often, but more so since all the scandalous breakup stuff had hit, increasing his exposure as an individual distinct from the band as a whole. He’d dressed to avoid recognition—slouchy hoodie, stubble, his signature dark curls hidden under a do-rag—but that meant he would look all the worse to anyone who did notice.
Grumbling to himself, Rafi put back a few cans of the pasta and headed for the produce section. He could make time for real food this week, surely. He did prefer healthy food, both the taste and the effect on his body, he was just lazy about it. But he didn’t have any commitments between now and tomorrow’s keep-music-in-schools thing—wait, which was it tomorrow, VH1 Save the Music or Girls Rock Camp Alliance? He pulled out his phone to check, and continued scrolling through emails as he loaded salad ingredients and fresh peaches into his cart.
In the check-out line, a tabloid headline pulled Rafi’s attention completely away from his phone.
“IS JULIAN GAULT A RAGE JUNKIE?”
He felt his brow furrow more and more as he read the article. He knew as well as anyone that the tabloids would say anything about anyone, and their “confidential source” might be their own imaginations. This dovetailed awfully well, though, with what Uncle Eddie had been saying about Julian’s erratic behavior.
Still one overflowing cart between him and checkout. Rafi had Uncle Eddie’s business card in his wallet; he pulled it out and eyed it uneasily.
Don’t be afraid to call me, Eddie had said. I can’t trust Julian to seek help when he needs it, but I hope you’ll do it on his behalf.
Rafi took a picture of the headline and texted it to Eddie’s number, along with the words, This is Rafi. Is this stuff true?
A typing bubble appeared almost immediately, which was a surprise. Uncle Eddie was surely a very busy man.
How has he been acting around you? came the response, which was…not really an answer.
Not like this, Rafi replied. Julian could be a jerk, but it mostly came out in the form of cutting remarks. Rafi hadn’t seen anything he would describe as a tantrum.
He can be very charming when he puts his mind to it, Uncle Eddie said. His family isn’t always lucky enough to get that side of him.
That…seemed horribly plausible. Rafi’s stepmother, for instance, never screamed at Rafi when his father was around. He felt a hot, betrayed disappointment at the thought of Julian being like his stepmother.
Meet me for lunch, Eddie continued. We’ll talk about it.
Rafi wrinkled his nose. Go meet up with Julian’s uncle, whom Julian clearly disliked, to talk about him behind his back? Nah. Thanks, but I think I’d rather talk to Julian about it, Rafi sent, and then, since it was now his turn to load groceries onto the belt, Got to go.
As he was transferring grocery bags into the back of his SUV, the phone rang in his pocket, and Rafi curled a lip at it. It had better not be Uncle Eddie, pushing the issue—
It was Julian.
Rafi felt guilty as soon as he saw the name, which was a sign that he needed to do approximately zero more talking about Julian behind his back. He also felt unaccountably annoyed and uneasy, as if…well, as if his stepmother had called.
“Yeah?”
“‘Yeah’?” Julian repeated in a snide drawl. “My darling, I can’t tell you how cherished I feel when you’re always so glad to hear my voice.”
“It means a lot to know you appreciate me,” Rafi retorted, loading groceries into the car one-handed. “What’cha want, Jules?”
Julian hesitated in replying, just long enough for Rafi to regret his sarcasm and wonder if something was wrong.
“I’d appreciate your presence at a clean-up effort,” Julian said at last. “House fire. I anticipate a lot of manual labor, the kind of thing you’re good at.”
Rafi suppressed a groan. The last thing he felt like doing right now was performing for cameras, helping Julian look good. On the other hand, manual labor actually sounded pretty appealing, after all the frustrations of the day before—and he assumed they really would be helping the victims of the house fire, even if it was all for publicity. “Fine. Where should I meet you?”
“I’ll text you the address of my apartment. Wear something you can work in. And don’t forget your bracelet.”
“Back at you, darling,” Rafi said, and hung up.
* * * *
Julian lived in a high-rise in Greenwich Village, not terribly far from Rafi’s condo in the Meatpacking District. The building was one of the gaudiest, most overblown architectural mistakes Rafi had ever seen, scrollwork and wrought iron and nonsense. He curled his lip in disgust, already wanting to go back to his condo with its clean, square lines and straight white furniture. He’d had visitors call his place cold, before, but Rafi disagreed. It was open, it was fresh and light, it was elegant in its simplicity.
Bo had loved it.
Rafi shook his head, hard, and stepped inside the pretentious building. He wasn’t here to judge Julian’s taste, and anyway, his own apartment within the building might be done very differently.
But when the doorman sent Rafi up, and he stepped out of the elevator into Julian’s home, it was even worse. The foyer had a marble floor and crystal chandelier, with some kind of spiky, avant-garde statue that didn’t match the rest of it at all. Worse, it was messy. At least two pairs of muddy shoes were scattered over the marble, with a scarf flung across the spiky statue. A glass bowl collected keys by the door, atop a rickety table that might have come from IKEA; the bowl was chipped and cracked from careless use.
So not only was Julian a tasteless decorator and a show-off, but he didn’t even take care of his valuable things. Spoiled brat. Rafi sighed.
“Julian,” he called, but heard no answer, or even any rustle of movement. “Julian!”
Ugh.
The entryway fed him down a hallway, where another, equally ill-advised statue, this one roughly humanoid, was wearing Julian’s straw hat from the beach. The hallway opened out into a sitting room that was nearly Victorian in its overcrowded, over decorated glory.
“Good thing I’m not claustrophobic,” Rafi muttered, dodging around overstuffed furniture with tassels. Tassels. Here, too, Julian showed his true colors—the mahogany coffee table bore multiple water rings, and books and papers sat in haphazard piles. Another hat perched atop a lampshade. There were cigarette butts on the Persian rug.
Wait—did Julian even smoke?
There was artwork on the walls, but Rafi could see very little of it. Most of the paintings had been taped over with posters and prints—Starry Night, horses of middling quality, even some unidentifiable thing done by a child in crayon. On some sort of flat-topped sculpture doubling as a side table, someone had been using a heavy bottle of wine to crack pecans.
“Julian!” he called again, and when there was still no response, he started opening doors.
The first door led to a bathroom, hilariously overdone with sconce lighting, mosaic walls, a hot tub and a shower stall big enough for six. The sink was a riot of beauty products and tools—tipped over, left open, piled on top of each other. Interestingly, they seemed to be gathering dust. Didn’t Julian have a cleaning service at all?
Opening the next door was almost like stepping into a different house.
Julian’s bedroom suffered from the same architectural choices as the rest of the apartment—though the skylight actually wasn’t a bad touch—but Julian seemed to have done everything he could to cancel them out. The place was neat and clean and stripped down to a degree that approached unsettling. Display nooks sat empty, the wide bed bore a single pillow and blanket—even extraneous light fixtures had been disassembled, leaving bare wires and empty sockets. The only décor was a few piles of books, none of them shelved. It was, Rafi thought, as if Julian had torn out everything he hated, but didn’t know what to replace it with.
“Julian?”
&n
bsp; This time there was a response—a startled gasp followed by a crash. Rafi followed the sound into a little dressing room off of the bedroom, where Julian was fighting his way free of a rack of clothes. Rafi extended a hand, but Julian shook him off.
“I didn’t mean to surprise you,” Rafi said, trying not to laugh. “Weren’t you expecting me? The doorman was.”
“Yes,” Julian said irritably, “obviously I was expecting you, I invited you, I was just—lost in thought, I suppose. Is that what you’re wearing?”
“Is that what you’re wearing?” Rafi’s T-shirt and denim shorts were perfectly appropriate for the hot, dirty work of a house fire cleanup, he thought. Okay, the T-shirt was bright orange and had the Distant Kingdom logo on it, but if Julian thought that was gauche, well, so was helping someone solely in order to get credit for it. Meanwhile, Julian was wearing long sleeves. The material was thin, but it still seemed like a bad idea. “You’re going to roast.”
“Better than sunburn.” Julian pushed past him, leaving the clothes he’d knocked down in a pile on the floor, and took a seat on the edge of the bed to lace up his boots. There was only one chair in the room, and it was full of books; Rafi remained standing.
“Did you do your hair yourself?” Rafi couldn’t help asking. Julian’s bright red locks were drawn back into a tight French braid, which they were barely long enough to sustain. Rafi couldn’t imagine that doing that behind your own head was easy.
“Do you see anyone else here to help me?” Julian said with a snort.
“Speaking of which, where’s your bodyguard?”
“She won’t be necessary today.”
Rafi wasn’t sure why she’d be less necessary today than at the beach, but he wasn’t about to bemoan her absence. “Where are we headed? I can drive if you want.”
Julian, finishing up his boots, stared distantly down at his own hands. “That might be best.”
Clouds moved, high above them, and sunshine suddenly streamed through the skylight. It fell across Julian like a halo, turning his hair to fire, his eyelashes to gold and highlighting the faded pink flowers on his shirt. He seemed, for a moment, as beautiful and immutably alone as a statue on a pedestal. Then the light faded, and he was just a young man in a weirdly desolate bedroom inside a gaudy apartment.
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