Pretty Things Don't Break

by Lauren Jayne

  “She told me that she always feels safe around you. I try to give that to her, but she needs you, and I need you to watch her for me while I’m away. You girls run around in your jammies and camis like you’re in a sleepy town,” Jon said.

  “We are in a sleepy town. It’s Seattle, not LA.”

  “Everyone I know from LA and NY is here now, and there aren’t enough hours in the day for all the work. The music scene here is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It’s an entirely new genre of music. If we see one new band in a decade that brings in a new sound we get pumped, but right here in Seattle you’ve got a dozen, it’s revolutionary, it’s fucking incredible. Feeling like your big brother and Carmen’s boyfriend, I’m worried about you girls. You’re in this wild heyday and completely oblivious. I’ve been in this business long enough to know, something magical is going on, and you guys are smack dab in the middle of it, clueless. Your sleepy town’s not so sleepy, trust me. Just be careful and keep her safe, for me, ok?”

  Jon was making it sound like we were living on the corner of Haight and Ashbury in the seventies, I thought he was being overprotective and nuts. Everyone we knew, knew someone in those bands, and we loved them. But it was a Seattle thing, our thing, and he was blowing it way out of proportion.

  *

  Walking into Carmen’s room with two cups of coffee in my hand, I found her lying on her couch; it looked like she’d fallen asleep there last night.

  “Ugh…too much everything; come lay with me.”

  I handed her the coffee mug and lay at the other end of the couch; she wrapped my feet in her blanket and rubbed them warm.

  “How was your trip to Vegas? Tell me a funny story about Booboo and Milton.”

  “So, Booboo met Mom’s letch of a boyfriend for the first time.”

  “Wait a second; your mom has a boyfriend?”

  “Yea, didn’t I tell you what he did when I met him?”

  “No, what?” she said, now sitting up and cradling her coffee in two hands.

  “So, we’re at Salty’s on Alki; we walk in, and they are waiting for us. He looks like an almost normal guy. He’s tall – not Jon tall, but about 6’3” with dark hair and eyes. I was kind of impressed. And then he spoke. The way each syllable went up at the end like he was preaching the word of God made my skin crawl. My name is Grrreeegggg, with a weird East Coast or something gross accent. We went to sit down and when Mom scooted into the booth he waited and then sat after me on my side of the booth. You know how I am about being trapped, but I tried to take a deep breath and not be so weird. With Mom sitting right across from us, Greg put his hand on my leg, then moved it up and up and squeezed my thigh.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. Another fucking perv?” she said, taking a sip of her coffee. “What did you do?” never taking her eyes off of mine.

  “I told him I had to go to the bathroom and when I came back I scooted in next to Noah and Mom.”

  “What did Noah do?” she asked.

  “I didn’t tell him, or he would have killed Greg right then and there. I told Mom and Hope in the bathroom later. Mom was like, ‘that’s just how he is. He’s not serious.’ But, that’s not the worst part.”

  “What?” she asked, as she scooted up closer to me.

  “We met in Vegas for Passover and Booboo looked up at Greg and said, ‘ugh, you’re too tall; sit down, I can’t stand to look at you up there.’ She only referred to him as ‘the Armenian’. Milton was mysteriously away whenever he was around, and Mom was lost in a cloud of his greatness.”

  “That doesn’t sound too bad; how’s that the worst part?”

  “OK, are you ready for this?”

  “What?” she put her coffee down on the little table by the couch; now we were knee to knee.

  “We were out all day with Booboo. She was showing us the light show at Caesar’s; totally lame, but she loves showing us her town. When we got home, she announced that we had to leave for Seder at the club in exactly one hour. Mom, Greg and I all needed to shower. So Greg came into Booboo’s dressing room where I was staying and said, ‘leave the door unlocked when you take a shower so I can shave and dry my hair.’”

  “Do men dry their hair?” she said, and we laughed.

  “No, it’s gross. But listen, it gets worse. I said, ‘No, you go ahead and do whatever; I can get ready really fast.’ Then he said in his slimy accent, ‘Go showa and leave the door unlocked. Don’t worry, the glass is mirrored – I can’t see in’. Feeling crazy, I walked into the bathroom where the sink was and looked through the big square window into the shower.”

  “Was it mirrored?”

  “See the sliding glass door?” I asked, pointing to the doorway.

  “It’s the same glass; it wasn’t tinted or mirrored or frosted, just a plain old piece of crystal clear glass. When I walked out of the bathroom, Mom was in the room with Greg. I said, ‘Mom, Greg wants me to shower in front of him.’ Mom didn’t even look at me. While she was digging through her suitcase, she laughed and said, ‘Oh Lauren, it’s in another room. Don’t worry about it. You’re being silly; you better shower or Booboo will go crazy’. I just grabbed my clothes and tiptoed into Booboo’s room and got dressed without showering.”

  “That’s so gross! I wish I could meet this Greg animal – I’d make sure he never tried to fuck with you again.”

  *

  I pulled my tired eyes open at Mandi’s when the light shined on us like a flashlight at eight A.M., grabbed a pillow, pulled it over my face, and rolled over.

  “Are you up?” Mandi asked in her always-peppy voice. “I’ve been waiting for you to wake up.”

  I just moaned - never being a morning person.

  “You OK?” my voice muffled under the pillow.

  “Well, when do you think you’ll get up?”

  I sat up in her bed as she handed me an envelope.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s your birthday present!” Mandi said, bouncing on her knees in excitement in front of me. “Open it!” and she ripped the envelope out of my hand and handed me a ticket.

  I looked at it and then curled my brows, “What’s Lollapalooza?”

  “I don’t know. I think it’s like Bumbershoot. But guess who’s playing?”

  “Who?”

  Then she stood on her bed and screamed in the loudest, happiest voice, “PEARL JAM!”

  In less than a second, I sprung up and we were jumping on her bed.

  “I know you love them, so I redialed Ticket Master for hours until I got through and now we are going – today!”

  “Why does it say Lollapalooza, though? Who else is playing?” I asked.

  “OK, I wrote this down because I have no idea who most of them are. Soundgarden, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stone Temple Pilots, Rage Against the Machine…”

  “I’ve seen most of them with Carmen, but somehow we keep missing Pearl Jam, and if they were the only ones playing I’d be happy. Let me jump in the shower and we’ll go. Love you, Mandi; thanks for the best birthday gift in the world.”

  “It starts at one, and we have to take a ferry – let’s go!”

  We jumped in her white Cabriolet, drove downtown, and were the very last car to pull onto the Bremerton Ferry.

  As we neared the stadium, we could hear the music, and as we got closer and closer, it was booming. Within a few blocks, Mandi and I had to scream to hear each other.

  I grabbed Mandi’s hand, and we ran into the outside stadium, feeling like Carmen as she’d drag me through the bars and clubs in Seattle. When we got through the opening, my jaw dropped. Instead of the hundred or so people crammed into the smoke-filled Off Ramp, RKCNDY or wherever the show of the night was, it felt like what I imagined Woodstock had been. It made the crowds of fifteen thousand at the Coliseum feel like our school gymnasium. We ran through a sea of thousands of sweaty people jumping and screaming, some with their plaid shirts tied around long, ripped, dingy shorts, and bikini-clad girls on their boyfriend’
s shoulders. Mandi and I weaved through the mob of people hand in hand as we made our way down the hill and stopped right before it dropped into the mosh pit. As Rage Against the Machine screamed, “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!” I closed my eyes and felt glad that they could write and scream what I felt.

  Between each set the bands tuned their instruments as we stared, waiting; is Pearl Jam next? My heart was pounding in my chest just thinking that we were sharing the same air, and then panic struck. They are going to shut this down. There are too many people here, too many drugs, too much… The police are going to shut it down, and I’m going to die without ever seeing Pearl Jam live. For hours, Mandi and I stood among the crowd: me in my baby blue and white gingham bustier and little white shorts, with my hair in a high pony and wearing pearls; Mandi, long hair blowing in the wind, the face of an angel and the body of a cheerleader in her white bustier and shorts, looking as out of place as any two people ever could.

  Finally, we heard people saying that Pearl Jam was next. Mandi and I started to scream as we saw the curtain billow in the wind. First, we heard the guitar and we knew…The curtain dropped, and there he was, Eddie Vedder. He looked like every other guy in the audience, but somehow different. He was an angel who could write what I felt and scream how I wished I could scream. I grabbed Mandi’s hand. We were speechless. As the crowd jumped and screamed as if their lives depended on it, I stood with my hand over my mouth and watched as he tore around the stage and up the sides of the walls and into the crowd and back up, whipping his hair and grabbing his face and his chest. Whatever I thought of him before, I loved how real he was; he was one of us. Even though I’d seen the other bands in tiny venues of less than a hundred people, here among a sea of tens of thousands of people, it felt more intimate, like it was just the two of us. Mandi and I were now jumping and screaming in unison with the crowd as the band played all my favorite songs to perfection before walking off the massive stage. We walked up the dusk-soaked hill through the crowds of crazed, hot people, still jumping as if they’d just arrived.

  From the very first chord to the last, I’d felt something I’d never felt before - like I was part of something. Something that was real. Something that belonged to me and my generation. When we listened to bands like The Doors and Fleetwood Mac, it was amazing, but it wasn’t ours; not our decade or our voice. At this concert, it felt like we were all in it together. For the first time in my life, I felt like someone was singing the words I wanted to say, but couldn’t. Like someone was acting how I wished I could: free and wild and uninhibited. And it was happening here, in Seattle, the city I fell in love with the first time I saw the mountains circle the water. Just being around the beautiful energy that was reverberating through our city as grunge music came to be, I felt a little less alone in the world. Being a part of it felt like I had a voice in the world.

  “It’ll never get better than that!” I said as we bounced our way back to the car.

  Chapter 27

  Rome Via Vegas

  Carmen swung into the circle in front of Cucina and picked me up before heading to the airport.

  “You all packed?” she asked, as she lit a smoke and passed it over to me.

  “No, we were still at Dick’s ordering a milkshake and fries at two and I had to be here at nine. I’m fucked.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll help you pack and we’ll get you to your Booboo with time to spare,” Carmen said.

  Running up the stairs to Mrs. Miller’s house, we raced to my room. Thankfully, Mrs. Miller had already pulled my old brown tweed suitcase from the basement.

  “OK, you’re going to Vegas, Rome, and Israel, so you basically need everything you own,” Carmen said.

  “Remember, I’m not allowed to wear shorts or skirts or anything that shows my…” and I looked down and put my hands over my pink bra.

  “Well, that eliminates everything; you can’t hide those!”

  Carmen took all of my hanging clothes with one hand on each side, squeezed, and lifted them into my suitcase, saying, “You’re done.”

  I grabbed my sandals, thongs, and shoes, threw in my bag of toiletries and tried to close my bag.

  “Hold on,” Carmen said, laughing. She climbed on my bed, then on my suitcase, and said, “Now try.”

  I ran out, said goodbye to Mrs. Miller, and we headed to the airport.

  Arriving right on time, I did exactly what Booboo had instructed me to do. “You’ll go down to Alaska Air and wait for your Booboo. And don’t dilly-dally!”

  Just as I walked out with my bag, Booboo screeched down the curb in her light blue Cadillac. Waving down a guy in under a second, she looked me up and down and gave me half a hug.

  “What’s going on? You look thin.”

  Now, this was a phrase that had never before left her lips. Booboo would rather sit across the table from a known ax murderer than be seen with someone unattractive or fat. The difference between me being too fat and too thin in Booboo’s eyes was about one-tenth of a pound. I jumped into the front seat next to Booboo, a fresh carton of Marlboro Lights between us.

  The familiar smell of Chanel No. 5, smoke, and bleach in Booboo’s house always put a smile on my face. I scanned the room for Milton. He loved that I never flinched at anything he said or did, but talked back to him with all the sass I had in me without holding anything back. We could talk politics, girls, music, his past; he told me things he’d never told anyone in the world. When Milton refused to see or talk to anyone else, Booboo would call or send for me. When everyone on the planet bugged me, he never did. With his special number memorized, I could call it anytime, day or night, and the girls at the hotel would find Milton and connect him to me. He was my saving grace when I lived in Maui. Being able to call the 800 number from any payphone and be connected to Milton was better than a cash card. I could always shoot straight with Milton, and he could always shoot straight with me. All the joking between us aside, I got Milton, and he got me. I think I was the one person on the planet that didn’t want or need anything from him but his company.

  When he walked through the door with his driver, he wrapped me in a hug, and we were cozied up at his spot on the couch in under a minute.

  “Come and sit with me,” he said, patting the seat next to him. “Sharon was in today; they’re filming a movie – some fucking movie – she was telling me about a scene they were shooting about the opening party at the Stardust. Can you imagine her telling me about that party? I was there, for fuck sake.”

  Just then Booboo walked in, “Where? What party?”

  “The opening night at the Stardust,” Milton said. “Booboo was there, and I will tell you, they didn’t spare one expense.”

  When she walked away, Milton went on, in a lowered voice, “She was there, but so were two of my girlfriends.” He slapped his thigh, took a bite of the coffee-drenched cookie Booboo had just left for him, and let the story roll off his tongue. “I’d asked my girlfriend to come with me; she was – oh – she was French Moroccan. The ass of a princess, she was my favorite girlfriend. Anyway, it was supposed to be the two of us. Then, one of the girls from work got the idea that I was taking her. Then, this one. She found the invite and assumed I was taking her. Trust me, all she needs is to be known as Mrs. Frank; she doesn’t care if I’m within a hundred feet of her as long as she gets the treatment. And at that party, I think even the bellboy had a guy assigned to him to make sure he was happy if you know what I mean.”

  “What about Sharon?” I asked.

  “What about her? She’s a fucking sex bitch. Steve (Wynn) wanted to fuck her; he had her room filled with flowers. She threw them out because some of them were fake. That one, she’s got a temper on her. Sex bitch, that’s all.”

  Getting through the airport the next morning with Booboo and Milton was like a sketch comedy. Booboo scooted at a snail’s pace, and Milton did whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. He forgets he’s not in Vegas, where everyone knows who he is. But then, if someone
asks, it’s always, “We’re from LA, kid, remember that.” He’s paranoid someone will know him and immediately want to kill him.

  “Find a guy,” he said to Booboo as we came through the door.

  Now, Booboo could flag someone down in an empty room.

  “Put our bags up here and drive us to the gate,” she ordered.

  “Yes, Ma’am, right away.”

  Milton was behind her handing out twenties like a politician handing candy out to babies. Booboo bossed this poor guy around for twenty minutes and handed him two dollars.

  Milton looked at me and shook his head. “She takes twenty from me and gives him two. This is her scam, and she thinks I don’t know.”

  He just laughed and handed out money like paper. He was notorious for the money shake. He’d take your hand to shake it and you were left with a hundred in your palm, which is exactly what he gave to his new best friend that day at the airport.

  We finally got to our gate. Booboo was in the restroom, and I was under Milton’s watch, but he was taking a nap, so I snuck off to the magazine stand to buy some reading material. I carefully picked a book off the bestseller list and a few magazines that I couldn’t wait to pour through; I quickly paid and ran back.

  Milton woke up, saw my pile, and said, “What’s all that shit?”

  “Milton, we’ve got a twelve-hour flight. It’s a few magazines and a book.”

  In one fell swoop, he took the full bag and threw it in the garbage.

  “If you read, who’ll talk to me? Help me up; we’re getting on.”

  We walked onto the plane and were seated in the smoking section. The combo of twenty-five competing perfumes and cigarette smoke was more than I could bear. Booboo looked at me, and I must have looked a little green, as she jammed a dry cracker in my mouth.