World Enough

by Clea Simon

  ‘I’m not hearing wedding bells yet,’ she said. ‘No lullabies, either, if you get my drift.’

  ‘Neela’s not pregnant? I thought she wanted to keep it.’ Tara knew better than to pry, but her own disclosure seemed to prompt sharing.

  ‘Who the hell knows?’ Or maybe it didn’t. Min certainly didn’t sound like she cared. ‘All I can tell you is she’s spending time with Chris again. Maybe she got rid of it. Maybe it’s his. Maybe there never was a baby in the first place.’

  ‘Well.’ Tara heard voices over by News. ‘That would make life a lot simpler.’

  ‘No shit, sister.’ Min was getting up. ‘Hey, I’ve got to run. You going to the Casbah on Saturday? The Aught Nines are doing a surprise gig. A makeup for that shit show before the holidays. Last show before New York, they’re saying. Frank will be on the door.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said, already wondering if Peter would want to go. If Peter would want to be with her again. The way things turned out, it hardly mattered. That was the show that never happened.

  ‘You never did get that story, did you?’ It’s after midnight. The pizza’s gone, and Tara is lying back on the sofa, half asleep.

  ‘There was no bust.’ It was a non answer. He was sensitive about that. ‘The snitch bailed. Or disappeared.’

  ‘That’s right.’ She’d been so busy back then, Peter’s concerns had faded into the background. What with everything that happened, the editor had wanted a special issue – her first cover – on the rise and fall of Chris Crack. By the time it ran, she and Peter were seeing each other regularly. ‘I should have remembered.’

  ‘No reason.’ He sounds sad. He’s remembering too, she thinks. ‘But there were no busts, and now here you are, asking questions.’

  ‘For a feature.’ Her eyes are closed. ‘On the clubs. The music.’ She can’t keep having this conversation.

  ‘You’ve got to tell the police about what you’re working on.’ He’s repeating himself. He hasn’t moved. ‘You’ve got to tell them that it wasn’t random. Wasn’t some kids.’

  ‘We don’t know that.’ The long day, the fright, the hunger … all she wants is her bed. She could ask him to stay. It might be easier.

  ‘Well, you shouldn’t go in tomorrow.’ He knows her. Stands and reaches for his jacket. ‘It’s not safe.’

  ‘I have to.’ Tara rouses. Rubs her face with her hand as she gets up to see him out. She hasn’t told Peter about the screw up. Doesn’t need the lecture. ‘We’re … I’m on a deadline for the quarterly report.’

  He nods. She’s saying the right things. Sounding corporate. ‘Yeah, well, keep in mind that someone knows where you work. And these people you’re asking questions of – they’re not the cream of the crop.’

  ‘G’night, Peter.’ She’s leaning on the door.

  He pauses, and when she looks up, she can see that he’s worried. That the worry lines are permanent now.

  ‘Peter?’ She’s too tired. Not thinking. Doesn’t want to think. He turns, his face so sad it could break her heart, and she reaches for him. For his hand, and she pulls him back.

  It’s comforting to have him there. Companionable. But even though she wakes enough to want him, to want the release, she finds she can’t sleep afterward. His presence, after Saturday, is too confusing. Either that or the pizza is keeping her awake. She’s not twenty anymore. Not even forty. And as her ex-husband lies there, snoring softly, she finds herself revisiting the early days of their courtship. Thinking of Peter, and Min and Frank. Of Chris Crack and the scene, and how it all fell apart.

  They heard the news like they always did back then. Someone talking in a club. In the shadows of the ceiling, Tara pictures Oakie’s, the way it used to be.

  ‘Did you hear about Chris?’ Gina, always wanting to be part of the story. Then again, she’d been hanging around with the Aught Nines.

  Tara remembers looking over at her. Seeing … more of a mess than usual. ‘He’s signed with Epic?’ It was what everyone assumed would happen. She’d told her editor to expect an announcement at the show on Saturday.

  ‘No.’ Gina’s voice dropped away, breathless. ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘Gone?’ She thought of the gig. The time spent in New York, LA. ‘Where?’

  ‘No.’ Gina shook her head. ‘Gone.’

  It hadn’t made sense. Tara didn’t believe it. Chris Crack was on his way. Headlining the Casbah that weekend. Signing, everyone said, and then on the road.

  Only he wasn’t. He was dead at twenty-eight. Killed by the heroin he loved so much. A hot shot, people were calling it. Just like the song. There’d been an autopsy, Tara remembers. But the verdict had been what most expected. Chris Crack had died from the drugs, alone in his apartment. The needle still in his arm. Not that the heroin was pure. The street drug had been cut – ‘stepped on’, the word had been – with something stronger. Something to give a user his money’s worth. Odds were, it wasn’t anything he hadn’t had before. But maybe after his stint in rehab, it had been too strong for his emaciated frame to handle. Maybe after some time away, his resistance had gone down. However it happened, it had been too much.

  She’d written the story – part appreciation, part reporting – and it cemented her status at the paper. And with her star on the rise and Peter’s momentarily dimmed, they’d found an equilibrium too. They’d kept seeing each other. Moved in to his place, over by the Fenway. Gotten married. As the clubs started closing, it had seemed like the way forward.

  The morning is easy. They have a routine. The smell of coffee wakes her. Groggy still, she makes her way into the kitchen.

  ‘Here.’ He hands her a mug, done up with milk and that fake sweetener she likes.

  ‘Thanks.’ She takes it. ‘Peter, I was thinking …’

  He tenses. Even with his back to her, she can see how his shoulders rise, waiting for the blow. She rushes to fill the gap. Pity, but also curiosity.

  ‘About your story, you know, back in the day.’ The coffee is good. Stronger than she makes these days. ‘You never found out who the snitch was, did you?’

  ‘No.’ He draws the syllable out, waiting.

  ‘But you think it was Chris Crack? Or, that’s what you thought, right?’

  ‘I couldn’t prove anything.’ He leans back against the sink, relaxed. ‘And none of my sources would go on the record. All I know is it was someone in the rock world.’

  She drinks more of the coffee. Tries to make what she remembers fit. ‘But why would he? Why risk it?’ The question isn’t really for Peter, although he answers.

  ‘Maybe he made a deal. Maybe it was part of getting clean. Maybe he was ready to start a new life. Ready to move on.’

  She thinks about Neela. About Frank and Min. ‘Maybe,’ is all she says.

  TWENTY

  Thanks to Peter, Tara is in early. He gives her a searching look as he drops her off. ‘Tara.’ She sees him holding back. ‘Think about it.’

  ‘I will,’ she says, although she’s uncertain whether he’s talking about his own suit or calling the police. She has no thoughts to spare for either, though she’s grateful for the ride. She’s at her desk when Rebecca comes in, that line of worry still creasing her brows.

  ‘It’s Mr Hughes.’ She looks like she’s ready to apologize. Like she wants to say something. ‘Calling himself,’ she whispers, like it’s a scandal. ‘On line four.’

  ‘Thanks, Rebecca.’ She reaches for the phone, gives the poor woman a smile, and turns away. ‘Good morning.’

  ‘Tara!’ The VP shouts in her ear. ‘Glad to see you’re up and at ’em. Got the revision you sent last night, too.’

  ‘I’m sorry it was necessary, sir.’ Rebecca has retreated, but Tara resists the urge to roll her eyes. She needs to sound serious. ‘I hope to make it up to you.’

  ‘It’s not me you need to make it up to.’ The VP is still yelling. He’s on his cell, Tara realizes. Outdoors. ‘I’m off as soon as this is published. I’m forwarding it to grap
hics now. But when I’m back, we need to have a heart to heart, Tara. And you need to do some thinking about where you see yourself in five years. About whether Zeron is really the place for you.’

  Tara makes the right noises, but she still feels bruised by the time she hangs up. No, she wants to shout. This isn’t where I want to be. But she’s not a kid anymore. She can’t just pinball around.

  She’s about to call Peter when her phone rings. This time, the call is direct – Rebecca doesn’t announce it – and she picks up, grateful for the distraction.

  ‘Tara Winton.’ She’s closed her eyes. She could use a nap, if Rudy really is out of the office.

  ‘Tara, it’s Greg.’ At that she sits up, alert for the threat, the danger. ‘I wanted to apologize for going off yesterday. I guess I’m still sore – and with Frank gone …’ She doesn’t respond. Barely relaxes. ‘I’d like to talk – you know, set the record straight. I mean, if you still want to interview me for your story.’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’ She reaches for a pad, a pen. ‘Are you still free for lunch?’

  ‘Yeah, I can be in the Seaport area around one, if that works for you.’ She picks the café at the corner. He knows it. Of course he does, she thinks. He’s a contractor, and this whole area is a work site. Not to mention that the waterfront was part of Southie – South Boston – long before it became the Seaport or, God help us, the Innovation District. Greg’s Boston Irish. If he didn’t grow up here, he probably knows tons of folks who did. And he knows full well where she works, too.

  It’s not an easy morning, and the lack of sleep doesn’t help. When she talks to the garage, she balks at the price. She needs brake work, and the tires aren’t salvageable, Ed, the owner, tells her. They’ve been punctured – stabbed rather than slashed – all the way through. It’s not that she can’t pay it – all that money in the bank. Only when did tires get so expensive? She and Ed reach a compromise, finally, but neither ends up happy.

  ‘You can pick it up before we close,’ he says, and hangs up.

  With Rudy out, she expects some of the pressure to be off. Only word has gotten out that she’s on probation of a sort. That she’s being watched. She can almost feel the eyes on her as she walks to the break room. She retreats to her office and, in a break with decorum, closes her door. Only then does she see that she’s missed a call: Nick. His voice is warm.

  ‘Hey Tara. Hope you made your deadline,’ he says. It’s enough. She closes her eyes, leans back. Nick. Peter. Min is right. She can’t keep fucking her ex-husband. Not even when he rescues her from a jam. Not if she wants to move on.

  She calls him back, gauging her fatigue, and is almost relieved when she gets his voicemail. ‘Hey, Nick,’ she pauses. Wonders how much to tell him. ‘Thanks. I made it, but it’s been crazy.’ She stops herself before she can say ‘call me’. He’s a grown man. She’s an adult, too. She feels better when she hangs up.

  Not so much better that she wants to work on Zeron copy today. It’s not the company’s fault that she needs four new tires, but she resents the place anyway. Resents the scare Rudy put in her. Besides, she tells herself, if she’s going to meet with Greg, she might as well work up some questions. Her interviews thus far have been way too casual. More reminiscing than digging up facts.

  She spends the next hour reading. She starts with her old stories, the ones she archived on her website when she heard the Dot was folding, before she realized she’d stay so long at Zeron. They were good, she decides, with a faint flush of surprise. Sure, she had some unfortunate tendencies. Too many quotes, for starters. And the buzzwords of the day – from post-punk to psychedelicized – recurred way too often. How does a guitar ‘chime’, anyway? And did she really use ‘thrash’ as a noun, adjective, and verb in that profile? But these are the sins of youth. The foibles of deadline writing in what was essentially a hothouse environment, where everybody shared the same fifteen descriptors like cold germs.

  She pauses before opening that final Chris Crack piece. In retrospect, it doesn’t read that much different from her Underground Sound work. Maybe the Dot’s punctuation is cleaner. Maybe that’s the typeface. By comparison, the ’zine pages she scanned in look pockmarked and cheap. What comes through, though, is the emotion. Not only hers – Scott had taught her to scoff at the idea of journalistic distance, of fake objectivity – but those of everyone she interviewed. People had loved Chris, loved the Aught Nines. She reads that now and she remembers how fresh it all was. How young they were.

  She flips back to the Underground Sound pages and her first write-up of the band. Yes, it was all there, between the lines. She’d described how skinny he was. How pale, and she’d referred to the controversy about authenticity. At the time, it had seemed so important. Now she reads about a group of club kids looking for a savior, and a sickly suburbanite who happened to catch their eye.

  No wonder Frank couldn’t compete. None of them could, and Neela was probably lucky that her old flame stuck around, waiting. And with that, Tara gets it – the tickle of an idea. She switches over to the present day, to her interview notes, as skimpy as they are. To the questions she’d typed up, sitting by Peter on the couch. The memories she’d recalled. She’s looking for the theme – the through-line – that will tie the article together. The motion from here to there.

  What she finds isn’t enough for a piece, not yet, but maybe it’s enough to start with. To build on. There was a community, she finds, and she had documented it. A ragtag coming together. And while it existed before and after in a shaggy, adolescent form, there was a year, maybe two, when it coalesced into something magical both in terms of the artistry and the fellow feeling.

  Reading back now, she can see. The elements that created it also tore it apart – the eccentricities. The pushback against convention, and the drugs. But maybe that’s part of the story, the underlying tragedy. In this narrative, Chris Crack and Frank Turcotte epitomize opposite ends of the spectrum. Chris was the outsider, the wild genius who burned bright and flamed out. Frank was the neighborhood boy, along for the ride. The one who survived – until he didn’t.

  Tara starts jotting – lines and arrows, linking one idea to the other. Noting the gaps. The holes she needs to fill. When she’s done, she sits back. Taps her pen on the pad and thinks about what she’s just read. It’s a story, sure, but is it enough for Scott? There’s no edge here. No spark. Should she work in the rumors? That Chris Crack had killed himself or been killed by some darker force than addiction? If it weren’t for Peter, she’d dismiss the idea. Nobody likes an accident, especially when the victim is young and popular. Only Peter wasn’t some conspiracy theorist. He was a journalist back then, a good one, and he’d been on a story. He’d had it from good sources that someone was going to talk.

  She laughs and pushes back from the desk. Wouldn’t it be something, she thinks, if after all these years, she’s the one to finally finish her ex’s investigation?

  ‘Hey, Peter.’ She gets his voicemail too. Tuesdays are his meeting days. The corporate quadrille, he calls it. ‘Do you still have your contacts from the clubland story? I know it’s been years, but …’ Her voice trails off. There is no exception – no counterintuitive reason. She wants to figure out what happened, that’s all.

  Greg is seated when Tara enters. He’s leaning back, holding a hot cup on his belly, and looking out the window. His face is grim, though it’s possible age has set it that way, and Tara finds she has to buck herself up a bit to approach him with a smile.

  ‘Hi, Greg.’ She walks up. Reaches out her hand. ‘Thanks for meeting me.’

  ‘No problem.’ He puts the cup down. Pushes himself up using the table for leverage, and Tara lets her hand drop to her side. ‘Before we start. I want to make some things clear.’

  ‘Of course.’ She puts down her bag, takes her recorder out. Clearly, this isn’t going to be a companionable lunch.

  ‘First, I don’t know why you’re digging this shit up again.’ He glowers, then looks d
own at his coffee. ‘I mean, the man’s got family. Think of them.’

  ‘Chris Crack?’ She remembers his parents, or at least some mention of them. ‘His folks are still alive?’

  ‘Don’t you even …?’ Greg’s voice sinks to a growl. ‘Two sons, they lost. And you, like a vulture or a leech or something. Fucking clueless. Look, I said I’d talk to you, because I know you’re going to write this anyway. And I care about a lot of it. The music. What we did. But you can’t act like Chris was supposed to be something other than a normal guy.’

  ‘He was a big deal.’ She won’t be intimidated. ‘I mean, he wanted to be a star.’

  ‘What Chris wanted …’ Greg pushes back from the table. Looks away. ‘Look, he had something, all right? Something everyone wanted a part of – and that crazy girl. She didn’t help.’

  ‘Neela?’ Tara thinks back on the timing. ‘You mean, because she chose to get back with Frank?’

  ‘Chose. Shit.’ He shakes his head and Tara waits, unsure what the big man before her means, when a thought hits her. So obvious.

  ‘You mean, she married Frank because Chris wouldn’t marry her?’ The timeline fits. ‘Was Chris the father?’

  He shrugs. ‘Maybe, who knows? Though there was talk that Frank knocked her up on purpose. Make her settle down.’

  ‘He must have known. Suspected, at least …’ Tara does the calculations. The repercussions.

  Greg has no time for that. ‘Look, Chris didn’t want a baby. Who did, back then? But he’d have come around. Made a good dad, even. She was the one who didn’t care.’

  ‘So, she didn’t want the baby?’ Tara can’t help it. She thinks of Min.

  ‘Didn’t act like it.’ He scowls. Anyone else, Tara would ask – he must have children of his own. ‘God, she was a terror.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’ Her mind reels. If Neela didn’t want to have a child, she could have had an abortion. It was easy enough. There weren’t even protesters back then, before the backlash. The clinic shootings.