Chasing Kane

by Andrea Randall

  Nessa and I had enjoyed a civil dinner with general tour conversation at the sushi restaurant before making our way to a nearby pub that morphed into something of a nightclub with a DJ on Thursday nights, it seemed. It wasn’t often we found many exciting things to do on Thursday nights while on tour, so it was a solid score for Minneapolis in my book.

  We were a few drinks in when she tossed the question. She was just loose enough to ask it while maintaining eye contact. And, I was just loose enough to answer. With questionable eye contact.

  “I figure it was a long time ago,” she shouted. “Since you and Georgia have been together forever.”

  “Rae,” I started. Then stopped.

  We were tucked away in a small part of the bar that remained a seating area while the rest of the place turned into a dance floor. It was loud and private at the same time.

  “Rae …” She sounded out, looking for more information.

  I ran my tongue across my teeth, setting down my pint glass. “One for one?”

  “Excuse me?”

  I nodded toward the pool table. “We’ll shoot. Whenever we make one, we ask the other person a question and they have to answer.”

  Nessa shook her head. “Pool’s not my game.”

  My eyes widened. “Seriously? With arms and legs that long you could glide right across the table.”

  She laughed. “Darts?”

  “Nah, that’s all CJ.”

  “Oh, right. I remember …” she trailed off, and I didn’t ask for more. “Cards then.”

  I patted myself down, comically buzzed after a few beers, but nothing serious. “Fresh out.”

  Inexplicably, Nessa reached behind her and produced a pack from her back pocket. “Here.”

  Nodding in approval, I said, “I thought those were a pack of cigarettes, which I thought was weird since I’ve never seen you smoke. Who carries cards with them?”

  She grinned, opening the pack. “Someone who’s picked up some tricks on her first tour. Always be prepared.”

  “Fair enough. What do you want to do?”

  “Keep it simple.” She split the deck in half, gesturing for me to choose one pile. “We turn over the top card at the same time, person with the higher card asks the question. We go until we’re out of questions.”

  “Or cards?” I suggested.

  She laughed. “Oh, I have way more questions than cards.”

  I shot her a challenging glance, then ordered a pitcher of beer for myself, prepared to settle in for the long haul.

  “Can I order a pitcher of vodka?” Nessa asked the waitress. I thought she was serious. The waitress seemed to think so, too, judging by her shocked expression. “Whatever,” Nessa continued with a wave of her hand, “I’ll have a pitcher of whatever he’s drinking.”

  Okay then …

  “Flip ’em, Kane.”

  To my dismay, my three was trampled by her ten.

  “Shoot,” I said, leaning forward on my elbows.

  “Rae,” she said. “This was the girlfriend?”

  I nodded. “Yep.”

  “Long time?”

  I waved my index finger in the space between us. “Uh uh. That would be another question …”

  She didn’t look amused, but turned over another card. A seven. I turned over a nine and raised my hands in victory. Still, I decided to start easy.

  “How many brothers and sisters do you have?”

  Her eyes pinched at the sides for a split second. “One. One brother.”

  It was her turn next.

  “Were you and Rae serious?”

  I allowed a soft smile. “I guess …”

  Nessa won the next flip, too, and I chugged half my beer down, prepared for more Rae questioning.

  “What is Rae’s last name?” she asked.

  Was. What was her last name …

  “Cavanaugh.”

  Nessa looked confused for a moment, then her eyes widened and focused back on my face. “Rae Cavanaugh. Like Bo Cavanaugh’s little sister? Shit,” she cut off my start to answer, “different question.”

  I put my hand over hers as she started to flip another card. Her eyes met mine again. “I’ll give you this one. Spare you the agony of the fate of a deck of cards.” I swallowed the rest of the pint and filled it up again, setting it to the side. “Yes, Rae Cavanaugh, Bo Cavanaugh’s little sister. We dated but didn’t really break up.”

  Nessa swallowed hard. “Horseback riding accident?”

  “Yeah …”

  “Sorry,” she said, shaking her head and looking down. I moved my hand off hers. “Can we flip? This is heavy.”

  I beat her four with a king.

  “Did you find out about Rae on the Internet searching for me? Or for Bo?” I let the beer ask the question that had been tumbling around my subconscious mind.

  “Bo. He’s dreamy.” She fluttered her eyelashes and rested her chin in her hands like she was a Disney princess at a window.

  “Real nice,” I mused, rolling my eyes.

  Nessa burst into laughter. “It’s true. He’s a total dreamboat. So sue me, it was like three years ago and I was new to the business. All you guys were like my idols.”

  I shifted in my seat, and she caught me.

  “Ohh,” she goaded. “Someone suddenly uncomfortable with attention?”

  “Suddenly? Always.”

  She huffs through her nose. “Doesn’t seem it up on stage.”

  I clinked my glass against hers. “Same to you. Seriously, do I seem self-centered in any way?”

  She grinned. “Is that a question? We didn’t flip.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Throw me a bone.”

  “Fine. No. You don’t seem self-centered. Which is a bit annoying. Though, most people on this tour seem pretty down to earth …”

  “Kind of the indie stereotype, huh?”

  She laughed. “Yeah.” Then she chugged the rest of her beer down that long, slim throat. “Fine,” she said, slamming the pint down.

  “Fine,” I repeated, finishing off my pint and feeling quite cloudy. “Fine what?”

  Probably from the vodka she’d consumed before downing half a pitcher of beer, Nessa’s eyes were glassy and her speech wasn’t fully slurred, but slippery.

  “I’lltellyou,” she said, as kind of one word.

  I looked side to side, leaning in. “What?”

  She patted the space next to her, sliding over. “Here. I don’t want to yell it across the table.”

  I did as she commanded, joining her on her side of the table; loud, club sex music pulsating around us. Nessa leaned close, the sticky heat from her arms connecting with mine as her lips settled millimeters away from my ear. “I don’t want to play that fucking violin on stage, because of my brother.”

  I swallowed hard, the sharp edge of her voice calling me to drop it. “We don’t have to talk about it,” I spit out quickly.

  She waved her hand dismissively. “I’m not going to make you wait around for the next few months to find out why. And I might as well be honest with someone about it. It’s not really a secret. It just … fucking sucks.”

  I nodded slowly, resting my elbow on the table and wrapping my hand around my chin. “Okay.”

  “But first,” she said. “Tell me something about Rae. Something real that no one else knows.”

  Squeezing my eyes shut, I wanted to unhear the question. But I couldn’t. Our one-for-one game had just become raw. I could have gone with something obvious like Rae’s incredible laugh—but everyone heard that. Or her gigantic heart—also a no-brainer. I could have talked about the million little things she loved about the people around her, and ways that she practiced loving them. She always called love a practice, like it was a muscle that would atrophy if you didn’t practice. Like the heart, she’d always say.

  Instead, looking at Nessa, I went for the real, like she asked.

  “She was afraid she’d never be good enough,” I admitted out loud for the first time in my life.
I sighed. “She’d gone through a lot of shit. Drug addiction in high school and early college, coming back swinging each time. She helped run an amazing nonprofit that Bo and Ember still run today. She smiled constantly, was insufferably happy,” I laughed at my own assessment, “but she thought she was irreparably damaged. She wasn’t manic about it, or anything. She didn’t put up all kinds of smoke and mirrors—it was the most curious thing. She just … kind of accepted the untruth about herself and went about trying to prove herself wrong, in a way. I don’t know …” I shook my head. “But she did cry a lot, when no one was looking. She had this weird strength, I mean, like I said, she just … she had those negative thoughts about herself but also had these crazy-wonderful positive ones and just sort of, I don’t know, decided to believe those. Live those …”

  “She sounds amazing,” Nessa said softly, barely audible in the loud bar. Her eyes never moved from mine.

  I smiled. “She was. I was an optimist before we dated, but she challenged me to be more. Be more of myself, really.”

  “Do you think you would have married her if she hadn’t died?” Nessa’s hand flew over her mouth before she even finished asking the question, her eyes wide. “Sorry. Shit. Sorry. Thanks, beer. Wait. No. I’m not sorry. Do you think so? We’re getting real with each other, right?” she rambled.

  “I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “In the weeks and months following her death, yeah, I’d have answered yes. But the truth? We dated for like half a summer. Who knows where that relationship would have gone. I can’t imagine my life without Georgia, honestly.”

  “You don’t seem so mopey this time around,” Nessa said. “Last time Georgia left for home you looked like a kid who just lost their balloon.”

  I laughed, pouring myself another drink. “It gets a little easier as the tour goes on,” I half lied. In truth I was still processing the events of her visit. Definitely not planning on getting into any of that over drinks with Nessa. “Anyway … your brother?” I prompted.

  “We’re twins,” she started without any hesitation. “And we were best friends and played the violin together, for fuck’s sake. We even played local bars and other small venues until halfway through high school.”

  I remembered from one of Nessa’s previous stories, the night I first heard her play, that her parents stopped being able to pay for private lessons at that time—halfway though high school.

  “What happened?”

  She looked to the table, continuing her story like she hadn’t heard my question. Her eyes flitted wildly back and forth. “Vinny was just so good. Like you good. He was doing all kinds of tricks early on. Don’t get me wrong, I’m good, I get that. But I was always in awe of how comfortable he was. He’d have no problem just strolling down the street playing if someone asked him to. Fuck, he may have done it if no one asked. He just … had to play. All the time.”

  “I can appreciate that,” I said with a smile, remembering when my family and CJ’s family each put in sound proofing in the basements of our houses to help deal with our loud hobbies.

  Nessa groaned, her lips curling up as she bared her teeth a bit. “He was too good, sometimes. Just … as a person. Didn’t think enough,” she said, tapping at her forehead.

  “What happened?” I asked again.

  She faced me, finally, an indignant but heartbroken look on her face. “Joyriding through the desert with his friends on ATV’s,” she said. “If they brought helmets with them, they sat in the truck, and in one split fucking second, my larger-than-life brother misjudged a jump and his cervical vertebrae cushioned his fall. His C-4 to be exact.” She blindly reached for her glass, filled it, and began to chug again.

  I put my hand on her wrist, not wanting her to throw up all over the table, which is what was bound to happen if she didn’t slow down.

  “C-4?” I questioned, shaking my head. “Fill me in.”

  With a huff she said, “he’s lucky he can breathe on his own, and talk. Everything else?” she moved her hand up and down the front of her. “Dead. Well,” she corrected herself in a sarcastically bright voice, “he can kind of move his arms, and it’s cause for a big fucking celebration since he wasn’t ever supposed to be able to do even that. But he can’t open or close his hands, and doesn’t have great control over the arms—can you move?” she asked, nudging my shoulders. “I need some fucking air.”

  Twenty

  Regan

  I swayed into the cool Midwestern night outside the bar, trailing Nessa.

  “Can we bum two cigarettes off you?” I asked a pair of gawking girls a few feet away. “And a lighter?”

  I smiled, they giggled, but a few seconds later I held the light to the cigarette dangling from Nessa’s lips.

  “Thanks,” she said as she exhaled. “These are awful.”

  I grinned. “I know.”

  “Light up. Don’t make me do this alone,” she begged, half grinning.

  In truth, the weight of her story made me want a cigarette without her prompting, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had one. I was never a professional smoker, but sometimes life on the road operated under skewed rules.

  I lit mine and tossed the lighter back to the barely legal girls flaunting their cleavage in my direction. Once the lighter was back in their hands, I shit you not, they began taking pictures of themselves with it—even kissing it.

  Great, they know who we are.

  “So,” Nessa started again a few drags into the space she’d asked for, “overnight everything was different. My dad stayed home to do hands-on care of Vinny with the nurses since my mom’s job as a pediatrician, of all fucking things, held the health insurance and paid a fuck of a lot more. I wouldn’t say either of them adjusted well, but they made it—are making—it work. They still smile at each other, if that says anything. And the last time I was home for Christmas, they were cuddled on the couch and I saw them kiss.” She bit her lip and looked down, a tear rolling down her cheek.

  I leaned next to her, rocking my shoulder into her. “What about you?”

  She shook her head, her cheeks turning redder as tears fell freely. “What about me? I … my violin instructor didn’t just think I had talent. He allowed me to teach with him and get lessons for free so I wouldn’t kill myself.”

  My jaw dropped. “Are you … serious?”

  Staring forward and sniffing the tears away, Nessa held up one of her arms close to my face. Faint, shiny scars worked their way from her wrist to elbow.

  “I wasn’t serious,” she said, interrupting my thoughts. “I was grieving and needed attention, I guess. Who the fuck knows what sixteen-year-old girls think.”

  “Yeah …”

  She quickly elbowed my side. “Don’t look so serious about it, Regan. God. It was negative attention-seeking behavior.”

  “Ah, yes.” I laughed, exhaling some smoke. “A tantrum, but for the over-five set.”

  “Someone’s been to a therapist,” Nessa mumbled in amusement.

  “Many,” I answered back. “But that’s another story for another card game.”

  “Anyway,” Nessa started again, as if I hadn’t said a word, “I kept playing, but never at home. And never in public. Basically just at my teacher’s studio. I felt … guilty, I guess. That Vinny had the talent but not the ability anymore.”

  I stopped her with my hand. “Nessa, you have the talent.”

  She shook her head. “I know… but … he really was like you, you know. You remind me so much of him when you play. You play with your whole being. He was like that when he was … able to move at all. He says he wants me to play, but I know it kills him that he can’t.”

  “So … you don’t want to play on this tour because it will somehow hurt him?”

  “And me,” she admitted, not trying to dress anything up. “I played for a long while after the accident to just see me through the darkness. But after that? I just wanted him next to me, playing.”

  “Nessa,” I said, putting ou
t my cigarette under my foot. “If I lost both my arms right this instant, I wouldn’t want a single violinist to stop playing on my account. In fact, I’d want someone new to start to take my place.”

  Her eyes darted to me, almost hurt. “Now you sound like him.”

  She turned on her heels and walked inside. I followed behind, catching up to her as she tried to escape me by weaving through the dance floor.

  “Hey,” I shouted over the crowd.

  She turned, looking drunkenly pissed. “What?”

  It was all too heavy. Rae, her brother, actually talking about it. Not to mention the shit I wasn’t talking about.

  My wife might not ever be able to fully trust me. And we want to have a baby. Is that even a thing? Can that work?

  Looking into Nessa’s intriguing eyes, I felt relief. Someone who understood this life, even when everything around it was tangled and messy. Maybe especially because of that. A life where art is both torture and release. I felt safe in the camaraderie we shared. Safe from judgment and inquisition.

  “What?” she asked again, taking a step toward me. “You gonna puke, or something?”

  “Nothing.” I shook my head, trying to sober up even a little. “Let’s get back to the studio.

  Twenty-One

  Regan

  The groups had pretty much finished up formal practice by the time Nessa and I got a cab and found our way back to River Junction’s studio. My intoxication had downgraded from “borderline drunk” to “buzzed,” and Nessa seemed to be in the same camp—quiet, but not swaying on her feet or looking sick.

  After paying the cabbie, we noticed a small group of musicians in the back corner of the parking lot, and the tapping, cracking of snare drums mixed in with hoots and hollers.

  “The hell?” Nessa asked, squinting.

  “Oh, joy,” I chuckled. “A drum-off.”

  Moniker’s drummer was back in action after his broken wrist had sidelined him, and he, CJ, and The Brewer’s drummer, Marco, were lined up with snare drums around their necks, marching band style. I hadn’t seen CJ in a snare “competition” in a long time, but was looking forward to it. Despite being only one drum, these kinds of drum-offs are sometimes harder than using a set, because there’s less noise-making, frankly, and technical missteps are noticed immediately.