A Fistful of Rain

by Greg Rucka

  Heat flared in my cheeks and neck, and I realized the humiliation I’d been feeling had simply been the orchestra tuning up, going through their scales. We’d hit the overture now. I opened my mouth and couldn’t find my voice enough to respond.

  “We’re worried about you.”

  “You bitch,” I said.

  “Mim, you were so drunk the second night in Melbourne you barely made it through the encore.”

  “My playing stands,” I said. “My playing is solid, this is not about my fucking playing!”

  “You don’t need to shout.”

  “I can’t believe you’re doing this! You didn’t have shit to sing before I came along, you were an actress with a rhythm section, that’s it! Now you’re cutting me loose because I drink? At least I’m not chasing dick onstage, Vanessa!”

  She pinked up, and maybe was rethinking her choice of setting for the scene. “What I do in my time has never gotten in the way of the band.”

  “You’re full of shit,” I said. “This isn’t about my drinking, that’s just your fucking excuse. This is about that fucking Stone piece, that’s what this is about.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t want me eclipsing your light. You don’t want anyone looking past you and your bass to see me on guitar.”

  “Jesus, are you still drunk? You’re not threatening me, Mim, and you never have. You can’t, it’s not in you. I’ve never argued that you weren’t the better musician, the better writer. I’ve never pretended that wasn’t the case. But if you were up front, Tailhook would never have come this far. Because even though you can play like fire, you’re a crap showgirl.”

  “Fuck you—”

  “This is about the band!”

  The shout shut me, and everyone else in the lobby, up.

  Van wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, lines digging in around her eyes. “Graham has a check for you. What you’re owed from the last four gigs. He’s got a ticket for you, too, back home, the flight’s in a couple hours. I’ve talked to A&R and the label, and they know the situation, and I’ve told them that we’re replacing you for the rest of the tour.”

  “You tell the press that I got canned because of a drinking problem, I will personally run a truck over you first chance I get.”

  “Jesus, Mim, I’m your friend, I would never do that!” She shook her head slightly, as if she couldn’t believe I could be so hurtful. “There’ll be a statement, saying that you’re wasted from the tour, that you just need some time off. We’ll be back home in June, and we’ll talk then, see if we can’t give it another try.”

  I stared at her, disbelieving. Graham had come over to my side, was crouching down on his haunches, opening the portfolio. He took two envelopes and tried to hand them to me, and when I wouldn’t take them, dropped them in my lap. He murmured something to me, but I didn’t hear it.

  “You’re really doing this,” I said to Van.

  “It’s done.”

  “Who’re you replacing me with? You replacing me with Birch? That beanpole son of a bitch?”

  “Birch is busy.”

  “Who?”

  “Oliver Clay. He’s meeting us in New York day after tomorrow. That’s when we’re making the announcement.”

  The urge to cry was sudden and almost irresistible. “No, no way.”

  “It’s Clay.”

  The finality in her voice was clear, but I tried one last time. “Don’t do this to me, Van. Please don’t leave me behind.”

  “You’ve got a flight to catch.” She stood up. “We’ll have your gear sent on as soon as we’re back in the States.”

  I just sat there, watching as she walked away, toward the restaurant off the lobby. Graham followed close behind her, casting me a pitying glance. Click came around behind me, and put his hand on my shoulder, gave it a brief squeeze. Then his hand was gone, and when I looked up at him, he was walking away, too.

  I felt the weight of everyone in that lobby staring at me as I got my bags together and went outside to catch a cab.

  CHAPTER 8

  The sunlight came, assaulting me. It pulled at my eyelids, trying to scratch my corneas, and when I rolled to get away from it, my right hand lingered, not ready to come with me. I pulled, felt pain slicing through skin, and forced myself to look.

  I was in bed, my bed. There was blood all over the pillow next to me, and my palm was stuck to it, flat. I lifted my hand, watching as the pillowcase followed the motion, and then the fabric ran out of play, and I was lifting the pillow, too. The pain came back. I gritted my teeth and pulled again, and the weight of the pillow peeled the accidental bandage free. Fresh blood began leaking to the surface.

  The rhythm sections of several collegiate marching bands were working on a quick time in my head. When I tried to sit up, they went batshit, really going nuts. My stomach didn’t appreciate it, either, and told me it wanted to leave, now.

  I went to the bathroom and threw up, mostly dry heaves, and something that looked like it wasn’t meant to actually be outside of me. When it was over I leaned back against the counter, staring at the shower stall, feeling shaky and hollow. The room smelled of vomit and stale beer, and there were shards of broken glass on the floor, and smears of blood. A bath towel was in a lump by the door. Blood had dried in mud brown on the white terry cloth, and I had a feeling it wouldn’t ever come out.

  Seeing the towel reminded me of my hand, which was still seeping. I reached up and pulled another towel from the rack, and just that left me breathless and queasy again. I wrapped my hand with the towel, went back to staring at the shower stall door. There was no water visible on the glass, and I tried to use that as some sort of benchmark for how long I’d been out. A while.

  I was wearing a pair of sweatpants I’d forgotten I owned, and a T-shirt. There was some blood on the T-shirt, on the right sleeve, which I figured must have gotten there when I’d pulled the thing on. I couldn’t remember doing that, but I couldn’t remember trying to clean up spilled blood or getting into bed, either.

  Somewhere, downstairs, the phone started ringing. There was a phone up here, too, but I didn’t hear it. I was in no hurry to find out why. I was in no hurry to move.

  I just wanted to curl up on the floor and die.

  It was evening when I woke again, and I was cold from the tile, but this time my first urge wasn’t to throw up, so that qualified as progress. I hadn’t turned on any lights, and it was almost dark. I sat up and heard glass tinkling as I brushed it with my leg. My head throbbed, but it was endurable, though maybe this lack of illumination helped. My eyes didn’t take long to adjust, and when I thought they and the rest of me were ready, I pulled myself to my feet using the counter, then picked my way to the light switch by the door.

  The downstairs phone was ringing again. Or maybe it was ringing still.

  Using the light from the bathroom, I made it to the switch in the bedroom, and turned that one on, too. Drops of dried blood peppered my new carpet, recounting my travel from bathroom to bed, and then the return trip. I perched on the edge of the mattress and unwrapped the towel from my hand, slowly. It stuck, like the pillowcase had, but not as much, and there was almost no fresh bleeding when it came free.

  The downstairs phone went silent, and I looked for the upstairs one, to find out why it hadn’t been participating, and discovered that I’d yanked the unit free from the cord at some point. Maybe it had been in response to it ringing. The other option was that I’d tried to make a call or four, and the thought of what such conversations would have been like almost sent me back to the bathroom.

  After a while, I got up and found some slippers in the closet. I put them on and made my way downstairs, to the pantry. In the corner, I found the dustpan and brush.

  It took me most of two hours to clean up the mess. When I’d finished, I had the broken glass out of the bathroom, the tile cleaned, the sheets on the bed changed, and the towels in the trash. I used the towels to cover all the empties I’d ga
thered. There were ten of them, not counting the broken one.

  While I was cleaning up, the phone started ringing again. If someone wanted me badly enough, they could come and get me.

  I took another shower and put a real bandage on the cut in my palm. The laceration didn’t seem to have been so deep as to require much more than that, but once I had the bandage in place, I curled my hand, as if I was holding my pick, just to see if I could still do it. It ached, but I could still play.

  I got dressed in clothes I hadn’t worn for over a year, and discovered that I’d lost more weight than I’d thought. It’s hard to eat well on the road, and I hadn’t been nearly as religious about it as Van had, so it was kind of surprising. As I was tightening my belt, I realized that I was famished.

  Back downstairs, I looked in the pantry again, at the shelves freshly stocked with boxes and cans I’d purchased with Mikel, and I didn’t see anything I wanted to cook, let alone eat. I dug through the drawers and cabinets in the kitchen until I found the Yellow Pages, then found the listing for Kwan Ying’s, picked up the phone to dial. The voice mail tone was active, but I ignored it and ordered dinner. I ordered Szechwan chicken, veggie lo mein, veggie spring rolls, hot and sour soup, won ton soup, and an extra side of white rice. The guy who took my order asked if I was entertaining.

  “I used to be,” I said.

  After he confirmed that I’d be paying in cash, he hung up, and I did, too, then picked up the phone again and called the number to retrieve my voice mail. Voice mail makes getting messages easy when you’re on the road, and I’d used it a lot in the past year.

  The recorded lady told me that I had seventy-eight messages.

  Just for kicks, I played the first one. The recording said it had been left “yesterday,” which didn’t tell me when today was, but made me nervous.

  “Hi, Miriam, this is Jamie Rich, I don’t know if you remember me. I did the piece on Tailhook for Spin last April, we had dinner at Canter’s in L.A. I’m calling to see if you have anything to add to the statement Vanessa Parada and Click released this morning regarding your hiatus from the band. You can call me back at—”

  I fast-forwarded through the rest of it, deleted it, and then hung up again.

  Only seventy-seven of those left to go.

  I ate my dinner, such as it was, in the front room, listening to Mark Knopfler’s Sailing to Philadelphia. All I could really manage was half of the hot and sour soup, and a little white rice. I finished with a cigarette, listening to the whole album through, then hoisted myself and put the food in the fridge before returning to the stereo. I swapped discs and loaded all five slots with Dire Straits, the albums in chronological order up to Brothers in Arms, then climbed back on the couch and shut my eyes.

  I started crying sometime during Telegraph Road.

  I fell asleep somewhere in the middle of Making Movies.

  I woke up to the doorbell ringing, and new sunlight coming through the blinds to warm me. I tumbled off the couch and stubbed my toe on the coffee table and swore and hopped into the hall, and the doorbell sounded off again as I was trying to disarm the alarm.

  “Hold your fucking horses,” I shouted, and punched the last digit and heard the cheerful bleat and yanked the front door open, ready to tell whoever it was to go to hell.

  Which worked out fine, because it was Tommy.

  CHAPTER 9

  “Hello, Miriam,” Tommy said. When I didn’t respond, he added, “I was hoping we could talk.”

  He’d been almost my brother’s age now when he’d been sent away to prison, and he was still so big I had to look up to see his face, even though I’d grown and he seemed to have shrunk. His black hair had taken on a lot of gray, and it was in his stubble, too, along his jaw and chin and above his mouth. His eyes seemed smaller, heavier, and there were a lot more wrinkles and creases on him, but they didn’t sag, as if he’d earned them while on a diet. He was wearing canvas work pants, and work boots, and three shirts; a white T-shirt visible under a half-buttoned Pendleton flannel, covered by a thicker, quilted flannel, open. A pair of leather work gloves were stuck through his belt, riding at his hip, and a pack of Camels was resting in his T-shirt pocket.

  I stared at him, the surprise already drowning in my anger, then stepped back and pushed the door open the rest of the way, gesturing to let him inside. He hesitated, then stepped over the threshold. After I closed the door, I put my back to him and made for the kitchen.

  Tommy followed, looking around as he came. I ignored him, set to making coffee, measuring grounds and adding water. The clock on the microwave said it was 8:11 A.M.

  “I didn’t wake you, did I? I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  My cigarettes were on the counter, so I shook one out and got it going, turning to keep an eye on him. He’d made it as far as the kitchen table, and was looking out the window into the backyard.

  “You’ve got a nice home.” It sounded a little cracked when he said it, as if his throat was parched. He turned his head to look at me, to see if he could get a visual response since I wasn’t giving him an audible one. When I still didn’t speak, he added, “This is a very nice place. Nice neighborhood, too.”

  I took some more smoke off my cigarette, staring at him. The coffeepot was nearly full, the pump inside wheezing the last hot water into the basket. I turned away to get myself a mug.

  “Mikel told me that I shouldn’t come by without calling first, that it probably wouldn’t be a good idea,” my father said. “I left you a message, but I guess you didn’t get it.”

  The coffeemaker gave a dying gasp, pushing out the rest of the water, then rattled. I flicked some ash into the sink, then poured myself a cup. When I looked again, he’d taken the same seat Mikel had on Tuesday, his hands in front of him on the tabletop, one cupping the other.

  “It’s just that I was nearby. I got a job today, starts at nine, this construction site on Sandy. They’re doing a renovation. Since I was in the neighborhood, I thought it wouldn’t be too bad if I stopped by. To say hello. To see my girl.”

  My cigarette had died, and I ran the tap to kill the last of the embers, then dropped it in the trash under the sink. I lit another one.

  “No ashtrays, huh?”

  I drank some of my coffee.

  The chair squeaked as he turned in it, dropping his hands back into his lap. He drew himself up with a breath, as if strengthening a resolve.

  “I’ve heard your music, you know,” he said. “Mikel has both of your albums—”

  “There are three albums,” I said.

  The surprise was visible on his face, not that there was an album he didn’t know about, but that I’d bothered to speak in the first place.

  “I don’t . . . I never imagined that you would have a gift like that.” He raised his hands slightly, as if showing their potential, as if they weren’t his but were mine. “You remember that Silvertone we got from Sears? I guess that wasn’t a good guitar, but you did like it, you’d sit on the couch and pluck on it for hours.”

  “It was a piece of shit,” I said.

  “We ran it through the hi-fi, you remember that? To get it to sound through the speakers, because you wanted an amp. The noise was awful. I thought your mother was going to throw us both out of the house.”

  I glared at him, trying to make him see that he’d crossed a line, that he’d crossed it a while back. Tommy lowered his hands, looked away.

  “I just didn’t know,” he said. “That you could play those instruments and write those songs. And sing, too. You sing.”

  “Van sings. I do backup.”

  “Yes, I understand that, but there are a couple of songs where you’re singing, and she—Vanessa?—is backing you up, too. I like those songs a lot.”

  “I can’t sing very well,” I told him.

  His mouth worked slightly, and his head sort of shook and nodded a little bit at the same time. “Well, I liked those songs, the ones where you were singing.”

  “
Thanks, Dad,” I said.

  The sarcasm hit him like a whip, and there was a brief instant where I saw something flicker in his eyes. Then it died away, and he looked like he had before, sad and lost, like I’d just kicked a three-legged puppy.

  “I just . . .” He took a breath, started again. “I’ve never forgiven myself for what I did to you, or your brother, or most of all, to your mother. I don’t drink anymore, I don’t take drugs anymore. I don’t do those things that I used to do anymore. I know you’re a grown-up woman, now, and I know you’re famous and I know you’re successful. But you’re also my girl, and I want you to know that I’ll try to be your father again, if you’ll give me the chance to do that.”

  “You’re not my father,” I said. “My father’s name is Steven Beckerman, and he died three months ago. He was a musician and he was a singer, and he died from aggressive cancer of the throat. He died unable to do the one thing that made him totally happy. My father taught me how to sing and he taught me how to read and write music. My father taught me how to play guitar, and I still have the first one he ever gave me, and when I play it, I hear him, and that’s his legacy, that’s what he taught me.

  “All you ever taught me was how to drink.”

  He was silent for several seconds. “I can teach you how to stop.”

  “Why the fuck are you even here, Tommy?” I demanded. “Did you really figure you could show up and I’d say it was great to see you, all is forgiven? You killed her. You fucking killed her. Mikel may believe your bullshit, but I didn’t then, and I sure don’t now.”

  “It was an accident.”

  “I want you to leave.”

  He had more he wanted to say, it was all over his face. But whatever he saw in mine kept him from trying again, and he got up from the table. I walked after him to the front door.

  “You know, I barely remember that day,” Tommy said. “I was so drunk I barely remember anything that day until I was in the emergency room, looking at Diana as they pulled a sheet over her face.”