“Fine,” I said.
She kept pouring it on. “Left when we needed you most. Fucking tax bullshit nearly broke us, and if I hadn’t steered the ship away from the rocks, I don’t even think we’d be having this conversation. Todd and I would be a nice middle class couple with a few kids in an upscale suburb.”
“That’s enough.”
“I saved the goddamn band, you hear me? I played up the tragic end to sell some records, and it fucking worked, made us all pretty damn comfortable, paid the taxes, made my rep as a manager.” Her voice shook. “If I hadn’t done that, maybe I could have kept my man. Todd was my man. I’d told you before, you never needed me the way he did. Obviously, you didn’t need anyone at all.”
I let her take those shots because she was pretty much right. As lonely as I sometimes felt deep into the night, the truth was I felt most at ease when I was by myself. So I self-destructed every relationship I ever had, kept stabbing at them with sarcasm, anger, suspicion, until the women gave up on me, broke it off, and I was glad to have someone other than myself to blame. That’s why things with Beth were so different, as if she had rearranged the pieces of me in the right order. I was such a pussy, too, that I couldn’t bring myself to tell Sylvia about her.
“What’s next,” I said. “For you, in town, I mean.”
“I’m meeting the police in a couple of hours. See Todd’s body, sign the papers, answer their questions. Then probably a press conference, and I’ll fly out tomorrow.”
“Are you going to mention me?”
She took a deep breath. “What do you want me to do? Whatever you say.”
I saw what she meant about me having control. In the band, we let her call most of the shots. I argued mostly for spite, but she was right on in most cases. Now, with that one answer, she’d given up on me.
I told her, “Not yet. Please, not yet.”
Her nod was subtle, and not much assurance. None of the good rhythms of my memories, only her bad ones. The drummer rushes. The drummer leads. The drummer is not a team player. The drummer is the backbone and never lets you forget it.
I pushed my chair back, stood, and turned for the street.
“Will I see you again?” Sylvia said.
It stopped me, but I didn’t want to face her. Instead, I spoke over my shoulder. “I thought so at first. Not so sure now.”
“No, wait. Don’t shut me out again, not yet.”
I thought about how she might help smooth my resurrection, manage my real life the same way she did my business. If anyone could write the script to bring me back, keep me out of jail, and get the IRS off my back, well…
“I’ll call you when I’m ready,” I said.
A hesitation, but then, “Okay, yeah. Trust me. We can handle this.”
I walked out of the courtyard onto the sidewalk, turned right at the first corner and kept going, hearing broken heart ballads in my head.
26
Sitting on anonymous front steps across the street from an apartment building that looked barely livable, I pulled Justin’s cell phone from my pocket when it sounded the synth run from The Cars’ “Just What I Needed”. I opened it, held it to my ear, and said, “Nice ringtone.”
“Where are you?”
“In the Quarter. I lost track.”
“I’ll come pick you up at the bar.” He sounded angry.
“You talk to Beth?”
“Yes I did. She’s willing, but it won’t be a sweet meeting.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“After talking to her, I’m even more pissed at you. Shit, Merle, you tried to get her drunk and fuck her?”
“I didn’t do anything. She tell you that? I could’ve and I didn’t. That should count for something.”
“Oh, you’re a goddamn saint. You want to do this or not? She’s meeting us at the Lakefront park in an hour.”
“Fine, okay.” I wanted to concentrate on what I should tell Beth, but my wrapped hand twisted the pill bottle in my pocket. Soon as the call was over, I planned on downing a couple. So far, the day was all edge and I needed it dulled. “At the bar, soon as I can.”
“Don’t blow it.”
“You think I’ve got a shot with her?”
“The only way I got anywhere with Beth was because I felt equally betrayed. I think you just need to stand still while she beats you.”
“A little selfish, aren’t you? No one’s talking about my life at stake here.”
“Boo hoo. Maybe this’ll learn you a lesson, boy.”
I closed the phone and felt a tingle, something familiar. I pushed myself off the steps and staggered, balance not coming naturally. Back to the bar. Probably a fifteen minute walk, not so bad. The creepy feeling didn’t fade. Then I understood why—my mugger was coming towards me on the street. He didn’t notice me, so I hid in an alley. I wanted tourists, people, safety. I was too weak to last five minutes in a rematch.
The guy with the cinnamon skin and yet another space age tracksuit passed, hands in his pockets, easy going. He wore a wide bandage on his face where the parking lot ripped his skin.
I let him go about ten yards, then I fell in behind him. He was headed towards Canal Boulevard. I followed, barely able to stand, bracing myself on the buildings. Wherever he was going, I wanted to be there when he came out.
It took twenty difficult minutes, but I followed him across Canal and through the Central Business District, into the Warehouse District. He ducked into an old building that looked nearly abandoned—boarded-up windows, no sign announcing a company name. I took note of the cross streets and hoped to hell I could remember them through the dope fog. After that, I settled in for a while.
He came out within the hour, started in a different direction. My strength was coming back in waves. Maybe I could hold my own against him. So I quickened the steps, right on his tail, reached out and grabbed the back of his shirt. He jittered and said, “Ok ok ok, listen—”
I pushed him against the wall. He turned his head and got a glimpse of me. No fear, but plenty of irritation.
“The people who told you to break into my house? Are they back there? Some IRS fuckers?”
“Listen.” He was agitated, his hands restless, scratching the bricks ahead of him. “You’ve got the wrong idea. It’s not the government. These people, they’re insane, what they want to do to you. That tape we took? They thought you’d come after it, but then David beat you up. We wanted you to follow right then. It’s a trap, and they chasing you to the cheese. All subtle-like, you don’t even notice.”
“That’s silly.”
He followed. “You want proof?”
“No, thanks. Suspicion is good enough for me.”
“Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to go in there after the tapes, and these people are going to ambush you. Kiss your life good-bye. If you think you’re good at disappearing now, I’m saying they’re better.”
“So they’ll make sure I disappear for good.”
He grinned in spite of himself. “Exactly.”
“That’s pretty lame.”
“You’ve got to believe me!” He reached for my arm, got the sleeve before I yanked it away. Another step back. He moved closer, all hopped-up on espressos or something.
I took a swing at him. He dodged, but I banged his shoulder. The guy slapped my fists but I kept coming—his ear, his armpit, his chest. Now we had a few spectators. I didn’t need it, so I kicked him hard, aimed for the nuts but got his thigh. He staggered and I took off. A light jog was all I could muster.
He limped after me shouting, “I’m trying to help.”
“Lying piece of shit,” I yelled over my shoulder.
“I swear, they even gonna use your friend against you. The homo.”
The burn in my chest wasn’t normal. I could barely speak.
“Justin,” I said. Sounded like a cough. “They got…problem…what about it?”
He looked at me funny. “Not him. I meant the bass p
layer.”
The burn doubled.
I grabbed his shirt again, reeled him close. “What did you say?”
“The faggot bass player in your old band. Name’s Doug. And he’s got the AIDS.”
“You know where he is?”
“The people I work for do, and that’s going to be what does you in. He’s the bait of last resort.” He pointed a finger gun at me. Dead aim.
It took me a moment to notice I’d grabbed him with my bad hand, the one this asshole had sliced in the first place. My fingers were curled into a vicious fist and I hadn’t felt the stitches pop, the skin break, the throbbing up my arm, until it was too late. I let him go, cradled my hand. Looked at the wrap, blood spots like kissing lips.
“You all right?” The mugger said. He didn’t reach to help.
“Shit.” I gave up on standing and sank to my knees, then sat on the sidewalk, hunched forward. “What if I go to them first? When they’re not expecting it.”
The mugger got down on one knee beside me, patted my back. “Better to get the hell out of Dodge now before they realize you’re in the know.”
There it was. The fork in the road. All the little coincidences that kept me in town longer than I wanted had been orchestrated to do so. The score was played perfectly, both by my pursuers and me, the entire time, long before Todd bowled into the middle of it all.
Leave now. Sure, I could still do it. Go home, get in the pick-up, ditch it at a truck stop and steal a rig. The thought made me smile. I couldn’t drive a rig. All the time in the world to learn, and I never did.
I wasn’t ready to leave yet. Goddamn conscience acting up again.
“I want to talk to these guys.”
He sighed like a Broadway ham and stood. “Don’t say I didn’t try to help. Your best bet is to take off. Took them this long to catch up with you the first time, then I’d say you’ve got a good shot of learning from your mistakes next time out.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
He was already gone, jogging down a side street. His bosses wanted me to come after them. That was the whole idea. Throwing Doug into the mix, they must’ve been pretty sure that was the key to hooking me. If they wanted to reel me in, I needed a way to cut the line.
I tried to stand. The few people on the street stepped wide or avoided eye contact. I was less than a bum to them. I straightened the fingers on my bad hand and pressed hard on the palm, stopping the bleeding and giving me enough of a jolt to scramble off the sidewalk and lean in the general direction of Justin’s bar. Let momentum take me as far as it could.
Bass, snare, bass bass, snare. Bass, snare, bass bass, snare.
It got me to the French Quarter nearly an hour later. I saw a beer stand—pretty much a storefront with a long plywood bar, a hurricane machine, and one tap of lighter-than-light beer, a big plastic cup for two-fifty.
I went inside, worked the pill bottle out of my pocket along with a handful of quarters, and slammed them on the bar.
“One beer, please.”
The frat boy working the joint slid a plastic cup off a tall stack and took a long look at me. “You sure?”
I had already popped the top of the pill bottle and palmed a couple, tossed them into my mouth. “Quicker the better.”
He filled the cup lip high.
27
Everywhere, 1990
Standing in my living room. Bottle of ungodly expensive vodka in one hand, a Zippo lighter once owned by Desi Arnez in the other. My life to that point had been a roller coaster. Maybe like Space Mountain, one where you couldn’t see the drops until you were falling. I’d had enough.
My living room was a shrine to opulence, and I didn’t even like most of the shit in it. Plush carpet, furniture with pointless embellishments and engravings that upped the price—“craftsmanship”—just because the designer wanted to show off. Weird how rough-and-tumble metal guys wanted old-world elegance when they could finally afford it. The stuff never felt like “me”. I think one of the stripper girlfriends I had at the time talked me into it. She left three weeks after we bought it to move in with a movie producer who’d scored his first surprise hit.
The cars in the garage, I loved those. Vintage BMW racers, a fine Porsche 928, Couple of Caddys with fish tails, one fire engine red and the other a creamy yellow, and a sporty Mercedes convertible that I used to impress the chicks. I wanted more, but since I’d just been told twenty hours earlier that I couldn’t even keep these, why should I give a shit? That band meeting did one big thing for me—opened my eyes to how much of the rich-and-famous bullshit I didn’t enjoy, and how the few things I did only made me feel slightly better.
“I’d rather be rich without fame than a has-been surrounded by all his failures,” I shouted to the room. Arms wide, tears on my face. I was doing this for Doug. Alive, I’d be a poor friend watching him die, only my two ex-lovers in on the secret. Dead, I was worth a half-million easy from the insurance money, the investments I’d set up for him, all for Doug. “Not much of a choice, right? Not fucking much at all.”
As for Sylvia and Alison, blame my obsessive personality, but I couldn’t get them out of my skull. If I wasn’t me anymore, then the next love would be my first, so to speak. I wanted to feel deep warmth and peace, less drama. What was I missing? What did regular folks have that the rock stars and actors didn’t?
The answering machine was blinking like mad when I got in after the flight. From Sylvia: “You need to call me now, Mister Christopher,” and later, “I need an immediate answer. Are you or are you not in this band? If you don’t answer by midnight, I’ll answer for you.” In-between were calls from Todd (“Does it always have to be about ‘me, me, me’, Cal? What the hell’s wrong with you?”), Stefan (“Dude, I’m cool with it, but let’s try one more album. Our Abbey Road.”), lawyers, agent (“Don’t believe a word of it. You and me, we can beat this.”), and the heartbreaker from Alison.
“Please, please, please. Don’t walk out on us. It’ll kill him. It’ll kill me, too.”
The tape cut her off.
Her guilt trip was almost effective. I picked up the phone. I dialed four numbers. Then I stopped.
She had played me like ping pong, like poker, like tic-tac-toe. Her call was about money. Using a suicide threat? That was about emotional priority. All our sex was about control.
Slammed the phone down. “We’ve tangoed for the last time, baby.”
I shoved a rag into the mouth of the vodka bottle and lit it. My home was soaked in every booze and chemical I could find. I set the vodka on the tile near my front door, then lit a copy of Savage Night’s live album, a waste of time and energy if I ever saw one, and slung it Frisbee style down the hall. Then I got the hell out of there for the last time.
*
I spent the first few weeks in the desert, moving from one cheap motel to the next through Arizona, Nevada, Wyoming, all over. I grabbed the newspapers, read every angle of my disappearance, and watched a little CNN when I had the chance. Went overboard with the disguise and cover story. Hair dye and a phony Texas accent. I liked bars in casinos, where no one paid attention to anyone else—only the drinks, the cocktail waitresses, and the video poker machines in front of them. But I was always looking, learning how sad sack guys kept people away. How those cocktail waitresses wanted nothing to do with those types.
Something about the desert suited me, especially as late fall turned to winter and the landscape showed its subtle side, no longer hounded by the paparazzi sun. The ranches seemed the most peaceful places on earth, but I was watching from outside the fence. Thought about buying one—the money was there—until I got spooked by the people around me.
They wanted to know more, needed a story, and I didn’t have one. I had the news of the day, the weather, simple political philosophy (preaching to the choir out West, the rich rock star in the same camp as the libertarian militia sympathizers), and women. But they kept asking questions, deeper and deeper, gauging how much they co
uld pry from me depending on how many drinks were in me. Some nights I needed too many drinks, the only substitute for the tiny pills I used to lean on, and a couple names slipped out: Alison. Doug.
Not that they made the connection. Just another brokenhearted romantic starting over under the big sky.
I was on the road by sundown, drove my cheap Olds bucket straight to North Dakota. More isolation. More quiet. And I stayed the winter there to wean myself from the Need. Days and days in bed, letting the snow pile window-high against my small house, the owners nice and warm in Florida, no interference as long as the rent check arrived on time. I curled in front of cable TV. My only mail was Bulk Rate Circulars. I grew a beard, let the hair get a bit wooly, and talked to myself. Talked through the life ahead of me, made sense of the life behind.
By spring thaw I was ready to see the country and accept my choice—call it early retirement. St. Louis for a couple of years, then Nashville, where I fell in love with a sound more raw than metal. Atlanta, a nice place to lose yourself but not find yourself. Raleigh, then D.C., Niagara Falls, where I could spend hours, days, weeks, staring into the rush, the abyss, never losing the fascination. From there, I drove the long three-day run to Tampa. I skirted the Gulf Coast, falling in love the way one does with a third wife—cautiously, making sure she lacks all the trouble spots of the last two. I liked the psychology as I lazed through the panhandle, Alabama, Mississippi—100% Southern, but far from the stereotypes I expected.
As I kept going down the boulevard along the beach winding past Bay St. Louis, I was surprised to see the road sign telling me how close I was to New Orleans. Change of plans: French Quarter or bust.
The first thing I did in town was to find Bourbon Street and hit as many bars along the way as I could manage in a few hours. My first Hurricane—a sweet drink full of rum—hit me harder than those drunks in England. Tried the tourist drinks at the frat bars, the vampire bars, the jazz clubs, the strip clubs. Washed them down with watery beer. The music was killing me with goodness, the bar bands more talented playing cover sets than most of the high profile L.A. people I’d worked with back in the day. Fusion guitarists with gritty blues in their veins, bleeding on the strings. The singers straining through a cloud of cigarette smoke and touching my frozen kernel of a soul. I cried. Couldn’t help it.
The Drummer Page 16
