“Don’t, leave it, just...let’s—”
“Deck, Randy’s gonna call. I can’t! I have to get it!”
Lady Gaga pumped on, asking about her telephone.
“Fuck!” he said, as if he’d just lost a thousand dollars in Atlantic City. “Fine!” He looked away, out the window at the blinding sky, and I was laughing as I got up, loving him, feeling the music in my mind, not worried about—
I saw the name on the display. My legs went weak, my stomach went cold. The passion flew out of me like crows dispersing from a gunshot. “It’s Xavier,” I half mumbled, half-murmured.
“Huh?” Deck hadn’t heard me.
The phone buzzed and trilled in my hand and I held it hard, feeling like it suddenly weighed a ton. XAVIER, the screen said. I clicked the green phone symbol, and put the phone to my ear. “X—Xavier?”
“Is this Blaze Ryleigh?” That wasn’t Xavier’s voice. That was a deep, official voice.
“Uhm, yeah?”
“Mizz Ryleigh, this is Officer Davis of the ninetieth precinct. There’s been...an incident. We’d like you to come down to the station and...well... Could you come down now?”
Already I knew what it was. Somehow. I felt it, like a premonition, a feeling in the gut. The officer didn’t need to tell me, but I knew. I knew from the moment I’d heard his voice. Sometimes you just know these things, and I knew.
It felt like ice had just been dumped down my throat.
I remembered that day in January, months ago!, when I’d rushed to Xavier’s apartment. I’d rushed there with Vikki and Vlad and Savva at my side. When we’d gotten there, he’d been holding his infamous Ruger Six-Shot revolver in his hand, wielding it around in his white, plush condo in Williamsburg, playing Russian Roulette with himself, high as a skunk on weed and—
“Mizz Ryleigh?” It was the officer’s voice, pulling me back.
“Uhm, is he OK?”
Silence. Then, “Mizz Ryleigh, I need you to come down to the station, please.”
“Is he in some sort of trouble? Is he OK? Just let me know if he’s OK!”
“Mizz Ryleigh.” Officer Davis sighed desolately. “Please, ma’am, don’t make this any harder than it is. I need you to come down to...the station.”
And then my voice locked up. I tried to speak, tried to. But flashes of Savva had been slamming me all this time. Her brother, this was her brother! It couldn’t be. It just could not be that he also went the way she did! My lips trembled. Words formed in my mind but their path to my tongue and out of my vocal chords was a delirious one. They got lost along the way, dazed, confused. My eyes misted up. At some stage the strength left my legs and I stretched my hand out to the counter to hold myself up.
“Miss Ryleigh, is there perhaps someone else there I could speak to? Mizz Ryleigh—”
Hoarse-throated, like a person in the fifth stage of TB, I croaked out, “I’m here. Wh—what is this ‘incident’ you’re talking about, and why are you calling me from Xavier’s mobile?”
The ensuing silence was like the chasm between life and death. And I waited, looking out into its blackness.
Then he told me.
And the answer was exactly what I’d expected, what I’d somehow instinctively known.
Xavier was dead.
I started sobbing instantly. Retching sobs that tore me inside and out, ripped my guts up and down and left me shaking, shivering, howling at the world and wanting to rip its substance apart.
The ground hit my knees, my phone tumbled, lemony pangs of pain ripped through my glands under my jaw. My shrieks pierced all of Brooklyn, travelled down the East River like a banshee overdosing on crack and fled up and down the Williamsburg Bridge, Soho, Dumbo, everywhere, my wails howled in every single place, and the world shattered and was torn apart and I yowled violently into every crevice, every nook, every godforsaken fucken shithole of this mean, mean fucking world that has no love, no sympathy, no compassion and, worst of all, no goddamn heart!
I heard Officer...Davis, was it?...buzzing away somewhere, in the distance, far, far away. My tears splashed onto the wooden floor, my hands covered my face. I heard Declan calling me, then I felt him holding me. I cried, I punched him and thought about Savva. Everything about her came back to me.
That goddamned smile. She was smiling at me, in my head, looking up at me with her blued-up eyes and saying, “Now my brother’s with me, babe.” I punched the ground with my fists, hurt my hand and punched it again. My knuckles grazed, my fingers bled, and then I got mad. I got fucken mad at that...at that— WHY! Why did he have to follow a path which led only to death as if no one freaking cared for him!? WHY! “You fuckin bastard! You bastard!!” I was on my feet now, screaming. The nearest mug I found was flung to the wall. It splattered in crazy shards across my floor and left a white stain on the brick of my wall, a wall that wouldn’t be mine in a month because my lease was expiring so why not just fuck the place up anyway! I threw glasses, vases, records. Declan stopped me from throwing my mixing decks.
I was furious. Furious!
Deck held me, and into his chest I mumbled and wailed and cursed Xavier for being so idiotic and foolish!
And then I cried some more. I was crying for his sister. Xavier just wasn’t worth crying for. But his sister was. And the tears I cried now were fresh ones, fresh ones for her, a body exhumed from its grave, a pain brought back to life. Her death had been buried deep in my mind, hidden, stomped over and forgotten, especially since I’d met Deck. He’d made me forget.
This incident made me remember. Made me remember all too vividly.
And that’s when it really started to go bad for me and Declan.
Fear was back. And He was back to stay.
The Atlantic would soon swallow us whole.
-2-
I was inconsolable. The bright summer days were gray and dark to me, filled with an emptiness and unreality so deep that sometimes I felt like the whole damn world would just shatter if I simply stretched out my hand and touched its mirage. The buildings were flimsy, the floors were quicksand. Everything threatened me, the bright sky looked down at me and laughed, the sun burned my skin, the occasional clouds scraped my nerves, and the stifling summer air suffocated me.
I was a wreck.
And Xavier had not been the reason I’d been a wreck. Xavier was what he was. I’d given him a chance to change. I’d even called by his place several times after our encounter there in January when he’d put the Russian Roulette Ruger to his head and pulled the trigger only to find that the bullet had not been chambered. Every time I’d gone by after that I’d pleaded with him to stop his ways, the dealing, living the life which had unwittingly led to the end of his sister. I’d asked him to change, because I knew he was more than what he’d let himself become.
And every time I did it, he’d ignored me, told me he couldn’t do it, wouldn’t change.
In late March, a little after Deck and I had made love again and a little under two months before Gina would come out of her trance, I staged an intervention. I wouldn’t let him destroy himself. Couldn’t! Vikki and I and Skate and Deck all went to Xavier’s place. We even got that fucker into rehab!
And then he escaped. Three days later he was out on the street, dealing again.
It’s not that Xavier’s life was not worth living. No, that’s not it at all. It’s that...he had nothing left to give to the world. And what he gave hurt people. The last time I’d seen him, after he’d escaped from that rehab, he’d said only one thing to me, over and over again: “I’m sorry.” That’s it. It summed up his life. It might sound cruel, but it’s true. It’s a cold, hard, bald-faced truth that must be stated: Xavier had a special place in my heart, but I don’t miss him, and he was no good for the world doing the things he did.
I wish I could have helped him, changed him...but I don’t miss him.
Maybe there was something more I could have done. Maybe I could have chased him for the rest of my life and tried to get
him off the weed, off the H, sent him to jail even! But I just...don’t...miss him.
I miss his sister. I miss Savva.
I miss our talks as we caught the L to the city and then walked along Central Park and ate Blue Bell Ice Cream from big fat tubs and perved over sexy men in suits. At one stage I missed even the bad things we’d done, the things that led to her inevitable end. The things I blamed myself endlessly for.
Savva I miss.
And Xavier’s painful and brutal death only brought home just how much I missed her, and how much the hole of her loss was still there, gaping, pulling me into it like the black hole that it was. I missed her endlessly, my sister, my soul-sister, my life. Xavier’s passing had thrust upon me the truth that Life was here and Life was gonna show me that it was the bigger thing, that it was the stronger one of us two! The Universe teasing us, as Declan had said. I couldn’t help thinking about that endlessly as I walked the streets aimlessly in the days and weeks after, kicking stones and looking at posters for Adult Literacy Classes Every Tuesday At Warmer’s Community Center! or Bring your date, we’ll bring another - Speed Dating 101.
This is what happened to Xavier:
I’d been called to the station. And then we’d gone over to the morgue down the road at Bethlehem Hospital and they’d rolled out his body in one of those silver drawers that extend from the wall and echo like the doors of a crypt, and they showed me his brutalized face.
I hurled. The site was shocking, half his head blown off, his teeth, broken, showed through the missing skin on his jaw. The left side of his nose was nothing but a gaping cavity. Blood had caked on his curly black hair, and his golden, Latino skin—skin that had once been rich like his sister’s—was now almost pallid.
When I’d recovered enough, I looked up at Officer Davis and nodded. Officer Davis—a tall black man with muscles so large his blue NYPD shirt could double-up as a tank top—had been calling every number in Xavier’s cell phone in order to get someone to come over and identify the body. It turns out I was the only one who didn’t slam the phone down when he had introduced himself as an officer of the law.
“Gang hit,” Officer Davis said. “It’s a damn shame.” And then he covered Xavier’s bloodied face with the white cloth, and the drawer rolled in and echoed shut with that metallic clang of complete finality.
Gone forever.
One tear broke loose. Deck, on my side, held me tight. I wiped that damn tear away, and hoped no one saw it. But if no one saw it doesn’t mean that it wasn’t cried. Because it was. And like the last straw on the camel, it set the ball rolling, set the Tsunami going. The Tsunami which would finally bury my and Declan’s relationship for good.
Not our love, no. That can never be buried. But our relationship, us being together, yes. For good.
Randy noticed my discomposure in the mixing studio in the weeks that followed. The studio was in his apartment. He noticed probably better than anyone, because I can hide my expressions, I can hide my emotions and my words, but I can’t hide through my music. It brings out the real in you, Savva’s boyfriend had once said to me.
I was supposed to be cutting a Groove House beat for Randy, a beat that would appeal to a younger crowd—you know, the type of crowd that hasn’t yet partaken of the darker side of clubbing and party life. A more innocent crowd. Instead, I was mixing hard shit the likes of which even Tresor in Berlin, a club renowned for its Industrial Hard House, would say was too hardcore. The sounds were black, ghostly, haunting.
In the studio, while I was ripping the beats up and cutting some sick tunes, Randy got up from his seat behind the glass, earphones flung suddenly aside like so much paper. He burst into the studio, generous belly protruding over his tight belt. His ponytail flicked back and forth as he shook his head and said some things to me that I didn’t hear; the headphones were still on my ears. Eventually, like a wasp that won’t let go, I heard his voice coming at me like someone screaming from underwater: “BLAZE!”
I took my hand off the mixing knob, stared at his darkly concerned eyes, scowling and frowning with deep worry for me. The sweat from my brow and face stuck to my fingers as I slid off my headset. I laid it down on the mixer in front of me. Large red buttons and knobs stared back at me, buttons which, based off my mood, may as well be triggers to bullets or That Big Red Button they’ll push when the world finally comes to an end.
I was a wreck. Blackness and pain was all I could see. “Sorry, Randy, I’ll do better.” I was instantly aware of what I had done. I had let my hidden terrors—terrors that I could not yet even articulate!—take over my music. And—although I don’t believe you can do it any other way, although I believe music starts and music flows without the creator’s control—that’s not the way it goes in the music biz. This was something I was learning: When the label wants fuzzy-wuzzy smiley shit, you give them fuzzy-wuzzy smiley shit, or else you’re out on the street.
If I hadn’t been with Randy, the label would not have been so patient. Which is why I’m still with him today.
I was too new in the game to understand this. I was like a baby who couldn’t yet walk. I started to have doubts, right there in the studio with Randy’s tall and large figure looking down at me like a caramel Papa Smurf. I started to have doubts that I could do this recording thing. I’d always played music from my heart. I couldn’t do it for what a label wanted.
“Blaze.” Randy put his hand up to me, sighed. “Take some time off, girl. Go out of town.” His Sri Lankan accent rang like mellifluous church bells in this empty room. “You’ve got some dough from da label, use it. Take some time off, relax, visit da Canyon if you must, but you need some air, you need to chill and then we can try dis again.”
I didn’t want to do that. Music and DJing was all I had left. I’d lost my best friend. Losing her brother had made it feel like I was losing her all over again, reliving all the sick emotions I’d felt when she’d taken her life. Part of me knew I was losing Deck as well. By this time, July, Deck and I had fought plenty, angrily, viciously. But the worst was still to come. The sheer irrationality of the wars he and I would wage against each other had yet to wield its full brunt against our souls.
The clashes that were yet to arrive, would be the ones that would ultimately ruin us.
I felt it in my mind, my world, my aura, felt that Xavier’s death had somehow gashed a cut so deep in my existence that I could never let myself get close to anyone again.
Deck and I hadn’t made love since I’d seen Xavier’s body. Forget “making love,” we hadn’t even had a good meaningless fuck. Nothing. Just distance, and the distance was all me.
Now I know this. Now I can see this.
The mind plays tricks...
And: Rearview Mirrors.
But we did eventually have sex again. Deck and I ultimately had sex right to the end. If we hadn’t, if the passion and the communion between us had not been so powerful, I think our relationship would have died a lot earlier. It was when we made love to each other that we realized what we meant to each other. There was something about it, something...transcendent. Was it right? Wrong? This is not a moralistic story. Merely a statement of facts, a statement of truths. And the lies in between...
“No, Randy. I don’t want any time off.” I shook my head, feeling that if I lost my music, lost this gig, I’d lose literally everything. “No, I can’t, I have to mix, I have to cut this single.”
“Blaze, I can’t let you do it. Maybe if I was Ministry of Sound or one of the other big boys I’d say go ahead, mix until you drop dead and forget your state of mind. But I’m not. I’ve known Deck many years. I’ve known you not even a year but I care what happens to you, Blaze. Take a break. A lot has happened to you in da last six months. You need to relax.”
Tears slammed at my eyes. The force of a dam ready to burst pushed against me, clawed at the backs of my eyes, trying to escape. I wouldn’t let it.
I looked down, looked at my black and white Chuck Taylors, turned my ri
ght foot inwards, said nothing. I wasn’t gonna damn well leave this freaking studio. If Randy wanted me out, he was gonna have to wrestle me out! I stood firm, not budging, not moving, not saying anything. Too afraid to lose the last thing that was keeping me sane. Too afraid to lose the music.
He urged, “Blaze, please.” His voice was soft, pleading, practically begging. Begging me to help myself. I wondered if Xavier had not been the same during our intervention, seeing the sincerity and care and love in someone else’s eyes but being too damned stubborn to listen! Bastard! And I was an equal bastard for not listening to Randy’s pleas, his whispery accent making them sound even more caring.
After a minute, maybe three, he sighed loudly, said nothing else, turned. Just before he exited the studio door, he mumbled, “Blaze, at least make da music lighter, OK? It’s not that I don’t like Hard House, it’s just that that’s not what we’re cutting right now.”
The door closed with a silent click. I put my headset on. Xavier’s gashed and slashed face slapped me as I looked down at the Red Button of Doom. I pumped the hardest damn beat I could find and made it blare so screechingly loud in my ears that I thought my eardrums were gonna burst.
That tear that had slammed and ripped at my eyelids earlier finally won. It tickled the corner of my right eye, and it fell like a lifeless body going down Niagara. The salty tear hit the mixing deck. As it splashed on the display which showed me 128 BPM, a hard crash of sound reverberated in my ears and echoed through my lonely head. It was a groovy sound, dark but still groovy. I rolled with it, added some fades and effects, let it hollow and swirl and turn. Soon I was mixing groovy and dark at the same time. I’d struck a balance, a delicate balance where too much of one would make it too hard, and too much of the other would make it too airy-fairy and false. A delicate balance of yin and yang. Poetic.
I rolled with it, knowing precisely that this moment of music was one of personal revelation, a philosophical sound that meant more to me than it ever would to anyone else hearing it. At the end of it, I looked up at Randy. His mouth was agape and his eyes wide with wonder. He was almost crying. His lips twitched up into a nervous smile. When I was done, he flung the headset off again, almost fell as he tumbled around his chair and then struggled with the studio door. It wouldn’t open. The handle jiggled and jaggled and I imagined he was probably saying “Fuck!” on the other side of this soundproof room. Finally it opened and he almost fell inside, his face warm and glowing with excitement.
Need Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy Book Three) Page 6
