I Love the 80s

by Megan Crane

  What if I’m not making all of this up?

  It wasn’t that Tommy suddenly believed her. He didn’t. Of course he didn’t – she was a nut.

  But if his life had taught him anything, it was that everything could turn on a dime – and given the opportunity, probably would. A wise man was not likely to take the advice of an unhinged woman who was obviously a deranged fan, with Hinckley aspirations. A wise man would do exactly as Tommy had done, and distance himself from that train wreck as far as he could.

  But a wise man, because he had seen a few things in his day, might take a few precautions.

  Just in case.

  When he woke up the next morning, he called his lawyer.

  28

  It had been easy to track Nick around the city, Jenna reflected sourly while clutching her third cup of deli coffee between her palms. She’d ordered each cup extra light and extra sweet, because after the night she’d had, she needed a boost – and she was about fifteen years away from a Starbucks on every corner, complete with a shiny espresso machine and luscious frappuccinos.

  But she digressed.

  Nick was a creature of habit. He liked the same bar, which he went to every single evening he could, because the bartenders knew him and he could be as famous or as anonymous as his mood dictated. All of which Jenna knew because of the weeks she’d spent hanging out with the band, learning their idiosyncrasies while supposedly spying on them for Duncan.

  Richie, on the other hand, was not Nick. He did not have the temper or the predictable bar routine. In fact, the only thing Jenna knew for sure that Richie liked was Sebastian. She had therefore installed herself at the bodega across from Sebastian’s preferred residential hotel, and waited.

  And waited.

  The coffee kept her warm, and jittery. The half-and-half was entirely too delicious, and she couldn’t help but love the sugar. Who didn’t love sugar? It was an extra light, extra sweet treat – practically dessert.

  And Jenna definitely felt like she deserved extra desserts.

  Not that she was brooding over last night’s hideous interaction with Tommy, because she wasn’t. She refused to give in to brooding. She refused to give him the satisfaction – as if, from across the city, he would sense her brooding somehow.

  And, anyway, she was slightly concerned that she might have sprained her tear ducts. Or cried them raw. She’d wept herself into the exhausted sleep she’d desperately needed when she’d finally gotten home last night, but had still managed to drag herself out of bed and across town by noon today. If that wasn’t dedication to one presently horrible man, she didn’t know what was. She hoped Tommy was sleeping soundly, surrounded by feather pillows and his bedrock belief that she was a crazy person.

  Sebastian, she knew, jerking her thoughts away from Tommy, liked to get up early and spend a few hours at the gym every day. Richie, on the other hand, preferred to be known as a more old-school rock-star type, and had often complained about the early hours at the recording studio. He was, he’d claimed, the kind of guy who liked to roll in around dawn, and rarely got up before the afternoon. Which meant he’d staggered in bleary-eyed and muttered, this fucking sucks or why the hell does this have to happen at dawn to whoever happened to be sitting there, that being whole treatises of discussion where Richie was concerned.

  Jenna was therefore pretty sure that noon was far too early for Richie to have roused himself. It certainly felt far too early for her, and she did not have any rock-star street cred to worry about. So she planted herself near a display of fruit, bought a satisfyingly pre-Tina Brown New Yorker to read, and waited.

  Waiting was even more boring when there was no possibility of a Tommy sighting, she concluded glumly some time later, when she was getting herself yet another delicious cup of coffee, the better to avoid succumbing to the cold. She was considering a second hot dog from the guy on the corner – her protesting stomach be damned – when she saw Richie barrel through the doors of the hotel and head off down the street on foot.

  Startled, Jenna tossed her coffee into the trashcan on the corner. She pulled her turtleneck sweater high up on her chin – it was one of those awful Facts of Life-ish sweaters, all ribbing and big arms and an unfortunate blazing red colour – and her baseball cap lower over her forehead. (Aunt Jen, apparently, was a Red Sox fan in a Yankees town, a fact which at least two gentlemen had already taken exception to. Loudly and profanely.) She’d braided her hair and tucked it into the back of her sweater, hiding it and hopefully disguising herself without use of another wig. Jenna had not dared look in the mirror on her way out of the house, but she felt reasonably certain that if Richie glanced in her direction he wouldn’t recognize her immediately.

  She set off after him, keeping the back of his head in sight as she walked south. On some level, following various Wild Boys around New York was probably an exercise in futility. Sure, she might learn something new about Richie today – like she’d learned about Eugenia and Duncan and their unlikely feelings for each other, for example. Anything was possible. But the reality was that most people lived boring lives. Even superstars. And even if they were killers plotting away merrily, they wouldn’t necessarily put up signs to that effect while walking into Hell’s Kitchen.

  The fact that they were in Hell’s Kitchen – the scary Eighties version rather than Jenna’s beloved twenty-first-century neighbourhood – was her first clue that Richie was perhaps the exception to the rule. She watched him go in and out of about three different places along the increasingly crappy street – never for more than a moment or two – before he disappeared into a dry-cleaner’s. After he’d been gone about ten minutes, Jenna ventured closer and peered in the window. The interior looked pretty much the way a dry-cleaner’s was supposed to look. And Richie wasn’t standing at the counter.

  Jenna felt herself biting down on her lower lip, and stopped herself. There was no point dithering about it. She couldn’t think like Jenna Jenkins, Eighties Encyclopedia – she had to think like her idol Veronica Mars, Kickass Private Detective. Which meant she had no choice but to go in. She opened the door and eased herself inside, looking around carefully – half expecting Richie to leap at her from one of the plastic-covered garments hanging on a hook beside the counter.

  ‘There was a man …’ she said to the impassive woman behind the counter – the one who was looking at her as if she’d just discovered Jenna on the bottom of her shoe. The woman’s eyebrows, already plucked perilously thin, arched high.

  ‘There’s always some man, honey,’ the woman replied, snapping her gum and rolling her eyes simultaneously. She snorted with laughter. Hilarious.

  ‘He came in a few moments ago?’ Jenna wished her voice had not gone up at the end like that. How wimpy. Veronica Mars would never be so fearful or cowed by someone standing bored and annoyed at a register. Veronica Mars would grind such a person beneath her sassy little shoe, or decimate her with a few sharp words.

  The woman stared at Jenna for a moment, then sighed, and jerked her thumb behind her.

  ‘Go to the back,’ she ordered. ‘Can’t miss him.’

  Interesting, Jenna thought, because there was a certain inflection there that she didn’t understand. She smiled her thanks – and was, unsurprisingly, ignored. Carefully, slowly, she picked her way down the crowded aisle of the store, hemmed in by carousel machines and plastic-covered clothing on both sides. She reached the back of the store and was confronted with three doors. She was starting to feel a little bit like Alice in Wonderland.

  She went to the closest one and inched it open, mindful of the fact that she didn’t exactly want to hurl herself into some room containing Richie, because how could she explain herself? She peeked through the crack she’d made and saw a dark supply closet. She moved to the second door, put her hand on the knob, and then asked herself what the hell she was doing.

  Possibly this was a long overdue question.

  What if Richie was sitting there, right on the other side of the
door? Seriously, what was her plan? Oh, hi, I happened to be wandering around the streets of Hell’s Kitchen, as you do, and I saw that you came in here and didn’t come out, and I was worried about your health, so that’s why I have appeared here, at the back of a dry-cleaner’s …

  Jenna took her hand off the doorknob.

  Because if Richie wasn’t the killer, it would still be an unpleasant scene. He would rightly accuse her of stalking him. He might call the police. He might call Tommy, which would be even worse than the police, since at this point Jenna would rather spend a night in Riker’s Island than have to see that look of contempt on Tommy’s face again.

  Okay, maybe not.

  But it was a close call.

  And then, of course, if Richie was the killer, everything was even worse. Seriously, upsettingly worse. Maybe he’d kill her himself, then and there. For all Jenna knew, this was one of his criminal hideouts. Or a place where he practised murdering his friends and colleagues. And aside from how very much Jenna did not want to die personally – how very, very much she would prefer to stay alive – she also didn’t want to die because that would mean no one would be around to save Tommy. And Jenna really couldn’t see the point of this whole exercise if Tommy wasn’t saved.

  She rubbed at her temples in an attempt to force herself into a decision – and then froze as she heard heavy footsteps coming towards her from behind that second door.

  Looking around wildly, Jenna leapt for the supply closet and closed herself inside, leaving only the tiniest crack open, so she could see out. Why had her life become reduced to critical moments in supply closets, anyway? Was that a metaphor? But she didn’t have time to ponder that, because her heart pounded frantically and then went into triple time when the door she’d been standing in front of slammed open and Richie walked out.

  She felt almost faint with relief – that she’d moved, that she’d hidden, that she hadn’t opened that door – and had to hold her breath to hear what Richie was saying over his shoulder. She couldn’t, not over the churning clatter of the dry-cleaning machines all around them. But then another man came out, and it was impossible not to hear him.

  ‘Don’t give me that shit,’ he advised Richie, in one of those braying voices that had never known less than a dull roar. Jenna did not need to see his face to understand that he was a scary individual with thug tendencies to match his overly-broad shoulders and that I’ll mess you up strut. ‘You show up here, with all the money you owe? What the fuck am I? A charity?’

  ‘After everything we’ve been through together,’ Richie said bitterly, facing Jenna’s hiding place so she could hear him this time, and not seeming as cowed by the thug as she felt he ought to be. ‘You won’t even throw me a bone?’

  ‘A bone you can have,’ the thug said, with a snort. ‘But a ten-grand buy-in? Like I owe you some Christmas present? Forget it. You’re a bad bet, Richie. A bad fucking bet.’

  ‘All I need is one good game—’ Richie began, almost wheedling. Almost desperate.

  ‘You’re running out of time.’ The thug’s voice was quieter then, but no less lethal. ‘You should think about that, and stop worrying about one good game, ‘cause it ain’t gonna happen.’

  ‘Fuck you, then,’ Richie raged at him. ‘Don’t you know who I am? I can make ten grand in ten minutes!’

  ‘Then you don’t need me to help you, do you?’ the thug threw back at him, obviously unimpressed. ‘And that’s big talk – last I heard, you were in a five-million-dollar hole.’

  ‘Go to hell,’ Richie snarled, and turned on his heel.

  The thug watched him go for a moment, then turned around himself and disappeared behind the door again.

  In her supply closet, Jenna tried to process what she’d overheard.

  Richie in five million dollars’ worth of debt made him an excellent candidate for Tommy’s murderer.

  In the dark, Jenna squeezed her eyes shut, and braced herself. She knew she had to take this new information to Tommy, as little as she wanted to see him. Which was itself a lie – because there was a sick part of her that didn’t care that he would be mean, that he hated her, that he would look at her in that awful way again. The sick part wanted to be near him no matter what he did, or said. She had become masochistic where he was concerned, and that appalled her.

  But it didn’t appal her enough.

  So, after waiting a while to make sure Richie was gone, she fought her way out of the shop, back into the cold and sketchy neighbourhood, and headed back uptown towards Tommy’s place.

  The good news was, she had spent that whole night watching Tommy’s building not so long before, so it wasn’t very difficult to sneak inside and make her way up to his apartment eventually, having long since figured out the schedules and habits of the doormen. She figured she’d camp out at his door, and try to reason with him when he appeared. The element of surprise would be her presence at his door – she assumed she’d avoid the bodyguards that way.

  The bad news was, when she rang Tommy’s doorbell, he answered.

  They stared at each other.

  He did not look particularly worse for wear. Perhaps he hadn’t spent the night weeping, or the afternoon creeping around in a ridiculous red sweater, subject to extremes of temperature and unwise hot-dog selections on street corners. Whatever he’d been doing with himself, it had led to tousled dark hair, moody green eyes, and those lips of his twisted to one side in a sardonic manner that should have been more insulting than sexy.

  Oh, and he was wearing nothing but a pair of battered jeans with the top button undone.

  It was enough to give Jenna heart failure. She wanted to press her face into the valley between his defined pecs, and kiss the hollow there. She wanted to feel the heat of his skin, and smell him all around her. She wanted.

  ‘This is like a bad dream that never ends,’ Tommy snapped, breaking the spell. He glared down at her. Jenna tried to stop thinking about want.

  But then he walked away from the door, leaving it open behind him. Since he hadn’t slammed it in her face or notified his security detail, Jenna decided this comprised an invitation. She followed him in warily, shutting the door behind her.

  Inside, Tommy stood over by the window with his back to her, looking out at his amazing two-storey view of Central Park. Jenna let herself drink in the expensive, if somewhat personality-less furnishings. The tasteful art on the walls, the spiral staircase to the next floor.

  ‘I told you I’d call the cops,’ Tommy said without turning around. Jenna wondered if he could see her reflection in the window, or only his own. ‘I wasn’t kidding.’

  ‘So call the cops,’ Jenna said, with unfeigned weariness. ‘I don’t care. But listen to me first.’

  ‘Listen to you.’ He let out a hollow sound, not quite a laugh. ‘All I do is listen to you, Jenna, and what happens? You get more and more insane.’ He turned, but his face was thrown into shadow from the afternoon light outside. ‘So why should I listen to some more of the same?’

  ‘I know it’s hard to get your head around—’

  ‘Your argument is based on you travelling back in time to save me from my tragic death, about which only you know,’ he interrupted, his voice arid. ‘Yeah. That’s a little hard to get my head around.’

  Jenna sighed. She pulled the braid out from the back of her turtleneck where it was making her skin itch, and tilted her baseball cap back on her forehead. She felt sweaty and frumpy, and it irritated her to feel that way when he just lounged about in unfastened jeans and looked like some effortless god. It was so unfair.

  ‘Fine. Don’t get your head around anything. Just listen.’ She shrugged, and decided there was no point in sugar-coating anything. Not at this stage in the game. ‘I followed Richie today.’

  ‘Terrific’

  But Jenna ignored that acidic tone, and told him. What she’d seen, what Richie had said, what the thug had said. When Tommy only stared at her, and the silence stretched out between them, she
reminded him that dead legends sold a ton of records – much more than living stars who faded into obscurity. As Tommy himself had pointed out, in that town-house garden, what felt like ages ago. And Richie had every reason to cash in. Five million reasons, apparently.

  When she was finished, she could tell it didn’t matter. He hadn’t moved, and she couldn’t see his expression, but she knew. She could feel his disgust.

  ‘You have to stop stalking the band,’ he said, much too quietly, when he finally spoke. ‘I really will call the cops the next time I see you.’

  Jenna sighed, and looked down. Her hands were clenched into fists at her sides, though she had no memory of doing that. She ran her tongue around her teeth and fought for calm – but it wasn’t that she felt angry. Anger would be easy. This, she feared, was defeat, and the panic that went along with it.

  ‘I know you don’t believe me,’ she said into the shadows where he hid his face. Because she had to say something – anything – or accept the despair that threatened to suck her under. ‘I know you can’t. I even understand why. But I know that you’re going to die tomorrow if I don’t do something to stop it.’ She heard her voice crack. Tommy moved forward, out of the shadows, so she could see that he was frowning.

  ‘Jenna—’

  ‘I have loved you my whole life,’ she said, stopping him with a raised hand. ‘Since I was a little girl. I remember sitting in my bedroom when I was eleven, listening to “Lucky Penny” and just knowing that you understood me. I loved you so much that I wrote my diary entries to you, like letters. After you died, I hid in memories of you my entire adult life. Every time something went bad for me, I had you to make me feel better.’ She sucked in a shaky breath. ‘I mourned you, and I didn’t even know you. All I knew were interviews, posters, videos. Your public face. But I loved what I knew. I listened to that song that Bono sang at your funeral for decades, and it always made me cry.’ She laughed slightly, her eyes filling. ‘I mean, Bono and Sting? Singing an acoustic version of “The Unforgettable Fire”? It gives me chills just thinking about it.’