by Clea Simon
So maybe Cool’s problems were inevitable too, or at least already well launched before she left town. Even her official site remarked on how, after her Grammy-winning debut, Cool had taken time off for rehab. Once her drinking was behind her, it became almost a badge of honor, proof that she was a real blues musician, and the depth of her two follow-up releases always referred to the struggle. These had all sold well. They even got some airplay on the adult stations; Cool’s mellower tracks and deep voice suggested sultry nights rather than inner torment. But that last disc had come out more than two years before, and there had been no announcement of any others pending.
I tried plugging Cool’s name into a search engine, knowing that fans can be better at documenting the travails of their idols than labels may be. I didn’t find any of the usual star-search gossip: no reports of label in-fighting, no bidding wars that held up recorded product. Not even any hints of star tantrums, band members leaving, or the like. No news of any kind. Nothing but silence. And the fans weren’t happy: “UnCool!” began one site. “Where’s ‘Cool’ Coolidge Gone?” read another. Clearly, we had a lot to discuss.
***
It was Ronnie I asked for at the front desk, and Ronnie who let me in when I arrived at the grand suite for lunch.
“She’ll be here in a minute, darling.” He poured me coffee from a plastic room service carafe. “Her trainer stayed late today.”
I sipped and looked around the suite’s living room, feeling a bit out of place among the overstuffed ivory upholstered furniture and the gilded lamps. If this was “making it,” I could maybe almost see why Tess had opted out. The room was comfortable, but anonymous. Fresh flowers and coffee on demand not quite making up for the bad, heavy art that aped styles of a century past. Couldn’t Cool have gotten a funky loft on a short-term lease and had it decorated for her? Or at least had Ronnie bring some photos or music to liven things up? I wandered around, drinking the weak hotel coffee, my head full of questions.
When Cool walked in, several minutes later, I began to understand. My old friend had just stepped out of the shower; her red mop was hidden by a toweling turban and an oversized terrycloth robe nearly dwarfed her solid form. But despite the clean soap smell that preceded her, the usually bright, brash redhead looked anything but fresh. Dark half-moons dragged at her eyes, and the round cheeks that, post-workout, post-shower, should have been a lively pink were pale, almost yellow.
“Cool!” I rushed to embrace her, stopping short as I noticed her flinch. Instead I sat on an overstuffed couch and patted the cushion beside me. “Come, sit down. Are you ill?”
“Hey, thanks a lot, old friend.” She tried to laugh as she settled onto the sofa beside me. However, the hands reached out to take a coffee cup from Ronnie were trembling. “Yeah, so okay, I had a rough night.”
I sat there, leaning back on a damask pillow, not knowing really what to say. I could tell her something about rough nights, but right now it seemed better to focus on her. Behind me, Ronnie cleared his throat.
“Theda, we know you’re working on an article, but there are some things we’d like to discuss first.”
“Of course.” Setting up the ground rules for an interview only made sense. Usually, I’m the one who lays them out, warning people not to say anything to us journalists that they don’t want to read in the paper. We’re human, we’re working, we want you to let something slip. Plus, if it’s “off the record,” why even say it? I also usually warn people, at least when I like them, that telling me afterward that something is not for attribution doesn’t cut it. You knew I was here to interview you, you said it, you deal with it. But Cool was a friend and clearly a friend in need. I made a point of pulling my tape recorder, pad, and pens out of my bag and placing them on the coffee table—almost out of reach. “Both of you—Cool, Ronnie—I’m not working right now. I’d like to interview you for this story, but we can talk first, totally unofficial and just between us.” I turned back to my friend. “Cool, what’s happening? How are you?”
She smiled, leaning back to address her manager. “I told you, Ronnie.” To me, she said. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m in trouble.”
I nodded. “Drinking?” It would explain the dearth of new music or recordings, even the move back to Boston.
“Oh, that’s the least of it.” She put down her coffee and turned to face me, tucking her tiny bare feet underneath her. “Look, Theda. I’m okay, really. I’m going to be okay. But, yeah, I got myself in trouble again. I could say it was the touring, or the pressure. Or even the damned label always after me to lose a few pounds so I’d look more like those damned posters they give away.”
I knew the ones she meant: I’d thought that her waistline looked a bit too concave in them, even in a belted jacket. For a while, it had seemed that the powers that be had finally accepted that Cool was never going to look like Whitney Houston, and instead had marketed her as the “blues sweetheart,” a chubby version of “the girl next door” with her own earthy pizazz. But those photoshopped posters were proof that they had never quite relented. Now it sounded like they had continued to push for more conventional sex appeal from Cool herself, as well.
“But it was my choice. I did it to myself. And I am getting myself together again. One day at a time.”
“Good for you, Cool. But, well….” How did I say she still looked like crap?
“But why do I still look like crap?” Either she and I were still closer than I had thought, or she was psychic. Maybe she was simply very good at reading faces. At any rate, I nodded.
“I’m just out of rehab. That’s part of it. Truth was, when Ronnie took me in, they said I had blood levels that would’ve killed a less habituated user.” The way she accented “habituated” made me think the word had been bandied about a lot. “But I survived. It’s just that, well, we’re older now. It’s a lot easier to kick when you’re in your twenties.”
“Kick?”
“Nothing illegal, thank god.” She reached for her coffee again. “That’s the plus of fame, I guess. You get anything you want with a good doctor’s scrip. No, if I was broke, I’d have been a street junkie and I’d probably be facing charges. As it is, I just had what they call multiple dependencies. Alcohol, pills, you name it.”
“But you’re okay now?” Her pallor still worried me. Even against the white robe, her skin had so little color.
“Basically,” she grinned, and her cheeks pinked up a bit. “I mean, it may take a while for my liver to forgive me. But, yeah, I’ll be okay. I think. If I keep going to meetings and working the steps.”
“So, that’s why you dropped out of sight?”
“You’ve been reading my press! Yeah, that’s why. Well, not so much the rehab as the year of hell-raising before. Part of it was the label. They spent good money on keeping things quiet, and they’re reminding me of it every day.”
“But why?” Even the official press had been quite open about Cool’s earlier battle with demon alcohol.
“Everyone loves a reformed sinner, Theda. It makes you humble, makes you real. But I’m a heritage act now. A confirmed adult-format star. A past lapse gives me credibility. Anything new makes me unreliable.”
“Like it hurt Aerosmith?”
“That’s rock, honey. And they’re men. Not to mention that those guys made their name as the ‘bad boys of Boston.’ I’m the ‘blues sweetheart.’ Sweethearts don’t pass out at parties.”
I knew enough about radio—and about record labels—to believe her. Almost. There was still something going on, though. Something she wasn’t sharing.
“So, I’m assuming they paid for you to go through rehab? And they know that you’re here?”
“Getting away from the bad influences.” She nodded.
“Then why all the secrecy now? Why don’t they just announce that you’ve been on sabbatical? That you’ve been ‘suffering from exhaustion’ or something?”
For a moment, I thought the big sofa had swallowed my questions.
Cool sat there, frozen, her pale face staring at a point somewhere beyond my left shoulder. Then she turned toward Ronnie, and I could see where one curl had escaped the toweling, dark Titian red against the white turban and her too-pale skin. The silence continued.
“Cool?” The softness of the sofa made it difficult to sit up, but I did, leaning toward her.
Ever so slightly, Ronnie nodded. Cool turned back to me, her eyes holding mine.
“This has to remain private, Theda. My professional life may depend on it.”
I nodded. Found my voice, and said, “Yeah.”
“I’m being blackmailed, Theda. Someone out there knows some of the horrible things I did. Things I barely remember. And they want money, Theda. A lot of it. Or the blues sweetheart is going to get broken.”
***
We were silent then. Cool refilled both our cups, lacing hers liberally with cream and sugar. Ronnie looked at me and I, digesting everything, stared back. I let my cup sit on the table, getting cold, and began to feel rather bitter myself. Slowly, everything from Cool’s coldness to Ronnie’s protectiveness had begun to make sense.
“You thought it was me. That I was the blackmailer.” I looked at him, rather than my friend. He was the one whose Southern smoothness had kept me at bay, and the alternative was too painful to consider. “You thought that’s what I wanted.”
“We didn’t know what to think, honey.” Ronnie pulled up a chair opposite us. “Cool wanted to trust you. She did. But I had to be careful, to look out for her. That’s my job.” He had the grace to look abashed. “I can see now that she was right.”
Cool put her hand on my arm. “We were both so freaked out, Theda, we didn’t know what to do. We got two phone calls, one last weekend and another one on Tuesday, telling us to have the money ready by the weekend. I wanted to call the cops, at first. But that would blow the whole thing open, wouldn’t it? That’s what they said, anyway.”
“What did they say? Exactly?”
“That I had to pay up, or else certain stories would get out. Both times, the voice was muffled, but it could have been a woman. I’m not sure. They—she, I guess—wanted two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. They’re going to call me back with the details.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I may just pay up. I mean, I’ve got the money.”
I looked at her. “Yeah, I know,” she said in response. “And I know that paying wouldn’t stop it. But if I could do some kind of trade. She said she had proof that I wasn’t ‘anyone’s sweetheart,’ as she put it. If I could get whatever she had…”
“What does she have, photos or something?” I envisioned a Paris Hilton-style video.
“Who knows. Theda, I was pretty far gone all of last spring. Blackouts. Waking up in all the wrong places. You name it. Three months in rehab and a few weeks hiding here, going to meetings every day, and I’m just beginning to get some of it back. Some of those nights may be gone forever.”
I nodded, and thought of Bill. If only I could tell him, but Cool and Ronnie would never agree to that. Given my recent history with my cop beau, maybe that was for the best. Then I thought of Rose.
“They didn’t threaten to hurt you or anything, or anyone close to you, did they?”
“No, I can damage myself enough.” She laughed, and a little more color began to creep back into her cheeks. “Just my career. Why?”
I told her Rose’s whole story, then, from that first frantic phone call to the horrible discovery. Somewhere in there, I also explained about the cattery break-ins, about the prized animals that had gone missing.
“Man, that business sounds even more screwed up than mine. But, that’s different, isn’t it? I mean, nobody said they’d hurt me, not physically. I don’t even have any pets, not anymore. You have to have a home to have pets. This has just got to be some kind of sick coincidence, right?”
Chapter Nine
My head was reeling as I pulled up in front of the Mug Shot, the neighborhood coffee place where I’d agreed to meet Rick a few hours ago. Man, only that morning, I’d seen this little reunion as the high tension part of the day. Now, in light of Cool’s news, meeting with a troublesome ex seemed relaxing. I pushed open the glass door on the little café, breathed in the tang of a fresh, dark grind, and thanked the goddess for such refuges.
“Hey, Theda, what’ll it be?” Joanie wasn’t as conversant with my caffeine needs as Violet had been, back when my friend had been a full-time barista.
“Tall skim latte, I think. I need something comforting.”
“You got it,” said the buzz-cut counter girl. “I’ll bring it back to you. There’s someone been waiting.”
There, tucked behind one of the woodblock tables that filled the back of the long, narrow storefront, was Rick. His dirty blonde hair was still shaggy, sticking out like a grownup Dennis the Menace as he bent over a magazine— Spin , it looked like. The coffee house’s sound system, now spinning some vintage funk, had covered my entrance. But as if he could sense my presence, he looked up. Our eyes met and in that moment my mouth went dry.
“Theda!” He stood, brushed his bangs from his eyes, turning to inch toward me between the closely spaced tables.
“Rick!” I croaked, weaving my way back. A chair found its way between us, and maybe that was just as well. Unsure whether to embrace or shake hands, we stood there, staring.
“Hey,” he said, his grin boyish and awkward.
“Hey.” I couldn’t have looked much better.
“Tall skim latte.” Skinnier even than Rick, Joanie weaved with ease between the tables and deposited a steaming pint glass. I handed her two bucks and, grateful for the reprieve, sat down.
“You look great, Theda.”
“So do you,” I lied. Truth was, Rick looked beaten. I couldn’t figure out if that shaggy mop was just a shade too long, or the late nights were beginning to show in the skin around his eyes and mouth.
“Thanks for lying.” He flashed a full-blown smile, but it faded quickly. “Truth is, Theda, I’ve made some bad mistakes.”
Here it comes, I thought, feeling a flush spread up my chest. The fantasy. Would it be “I never should have left you” or “I didn’t know what you meant to me”? Both had kept me tossing and turning in the first months of silence following his departure.
“Mistakes?” I prompted.
“I don’t know how you do it. Write for so many different people, even when you don’t give a damn what you’re writing about.” The flush disappeared, replaced by a cold, sick feeling I remembered all too well. “I mean, I’ve been so cocky, and I figured, ‘Hey, they hired me. They want me.’ I didn’t think through the reality of what I’d have to be doing.”
He paused, but I just sat there. With no choice, he continued.
“Theda, they wanted me to write, like, three stories a week. Features and those stupid puff profiles that really drive me mad. Plus a round-up column. And I had to go to departmental meetings almost every morning.”
Inquiring what was wrong with such a schedule didn’t seem necessary so I sipped my latte instead. Right now, I needed the warmth.
“Plus, I was supposed to be in the office all the time. I mean, I’m a rock writer. If I’m not out there every night, I lose my profile. What were they paying me for anyway?”
My sympathy was following my hopes down the drain. I wanted him to get on with it.
“So, what happened finally?”
“I had the stupidest fight with an editor. Not even the top guy, some young Asian woman they hired, obviously as an affirmative action move. She didn’t even know what CMJ was.” Rick had been attending CMJ—the College Media Journal’ s New York convention—every year since I’d known him, using the week-long barrage of international media and cutting-edge bands to schmooze editors and stock up on story ideas for months to come.
“They wouldn’t send you to New York?”
“They wouldn’t even give me the time off. Said
I hadn’t earned the vacation time yet. I told her what I thought of her. I mean, she wasn’t the one who had hired me.”
But she was an editor, and reading between the lines, I gathered he hadn’t made any allies to counter her complaints. The result, he said, was a rapid chain of events that had led to his dismissal, leaving him to make his way back to Boston, broke and defeated.
“So, now you’re back.” It wasn’t how I wanted it, but I couldn’t resist feeling smug. I dipped my face down to the latte froth to hide my smile.
“Yeah, and, Theda, if it isn’t trespassing too much on your territory, I wanted to ask about the Mail .” For the second time since I sat down, I felt vaguely ill. “I mean, I’ve been looking for your byline and I haven’t been seeing it. Would you mind too much if I hit them up? I could really use the work.”
So much for self-satisfaction. Did I want to explain about my own tiff with an editor? Were my issues that much more evolved than his, or were Rick and I truly flip sides of the same coin? I didn’t want to answer him before I knew myself. “You’ve been looking for my byline?”
“Well, yeah,” he chuckled, a little uneasily, I thought. Thank god the diversion had worked. “I mean, I thought about you a lot when I was out in Phoenix, so until I got up my nerve to call, I’d been looking around for you. For signs of life, so to speak.”
