by Roxie Noir
“Did this happen last November or the year before?” he asks, mostly to himself.
“All right,” I say into the phone, standing. “I’m more than happy to switch solicitors but I haven’t got any money to pay you with and I’ve no idea why you’re—”
“Gavin Lockwood’s paying me,” he says, cutting me off.
It’s one of the worse facts of life that money makes problems go away, but bloody hell does it work. Walking into Portsland’s offices is like being swaddled in a soft sheepskin blanket. From the moment I sit down opposite him, it’s obvious that he knows what he’s doing.
Apparently, this particular judge is quite strict about drugs and alcohol, which is bad for us, but he was also born the son of a coal miner and worked his way up from nothing, so nor is he impressed with the landed gentry.
I sit there and listen to all this, slightly stunned. I’m not sure that Bigsley knew the case had a judge, let alone what his father did.
“All right,” he says, after two hours. “It’s a bit much money overall, but none of this should be a problem. Everything’s quite sound. I’ll see you Tuesday, and be on time.”
I thank him, get up to leave, but as I close the door behind me he speaks up again.
“And take a car, for God’s sake, don’t you dare bicycle to court!”
That night, I call Gavin first. He picks up on the first ring, his voice echoing strangely.
“Did you just answer the phone in the bathroom?” I ask.
Running water sounds in the background.
“How’s England?” he asks, ignoring my question.
“It’s lovely,” I say. “I seem to have an influx of solicitors, though.”
“Do you?”
I pause, look out the cottage window. It’s the same thing I did when I called him to apologize, months ago.
“I’m sure Frankie’s the one who told you, but why are you doing it?”
There’s a long, long pause. I can practically see him, staring off into space or something, trying to think of the right answer.
“Because it could be either of us and I know that,” he says.
“It couldn’t. It wasn’t.”
“I’ve never known why I got clean after one round and you didn’t,” Gavin says. “And even though while you were gone I tried to figure it out a million times, I kept coming back to the fact that it was luck. Just pure, dumb, blind luck. When we got out I went to the right places, saw the right people, and you didn’t. It’s that simple.”
I don’t know what to say. It doesn’t feel like luck at all that I’m here and he’s there. It feels like a personal failing, like there’s some innate part I’m supposed to have that I’m missing. It’s always felt that way, that no matter what I was going to be a fuck up and watch the world around me rise while I sank.
“It’s not simple,” I say.
“It’s not complicated,” Gavin says.
“You shouldn’t be doing this,” I say, shutting my eyes. “I tried to break you and Marisol up, I made you relapse, I got blood all over your sofas—”
“And now you’ve not shot up in a year,” Gavin says. “There’s some parallel dimension where I did all those things to you instead. It was us at the beginning, Liam. Let it be us until the end.”
There’s a long, long pause because I don’t know what to say to that. Gavin’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a brother, the closest thing I’ve ever had to real family.
“I also know about punching a bloke because of a girl,” he admits. “Only I got away with it.”
“I should have been so lucky.”
“Exactly.”
I don’t bother mentioning that I was also drunk driving and lucky as hell that I didn’t kill anyone that night.
“She told you?”
Gavin laughs.
“She called a band meeting. I was afraid she was going to tell me you were dead, she was so serious,” he says, and I smile.
“She doesn’t really understand,” I say.
“Nor does Marisol,” Gavin says. “Would you want her to?”
“No,” I say. “I quite like her as she is.”
Once the money’s involved, everything goes beautifully. I show up to the courtroom three days running in the suit I wore to Gavin’s wedding, the only suit I own. Alistair’s got a squadron of pinstriped men over on his side, and they talk amongst themselves incessantly, irritating the judge to no end.
There’s evidence, pictures of the car I crashed, discussion of my blood alcohol level. One of the witnesses says that I punched Alistair first and another swears that he punched me first, and it becomes apparent that it was dark and foggy and everyone was shouting and it was hard to tell what happened.
The days do tick on, though: Tuesday becomes Wednesday becomes Thursday, and just as I think we might be able to wrap up the judge tells everyone to go home twenty minutes early instead.
I call Frankie every night. I know I’ll see her again soon, but it surprises even me how much I miss her when she’s not there. It surprises me the small, stupid things I want to tell her about, the things I want to ask her thoughts on.
Finally, Friday comes. I bring my luggage to court because my flight leaves from Manchester at four, and thanks to the strange magic of time zones, if I make the flight I’ll be in Los Angeles in time for the show.
The judge is late. Still deliberating, I guess, because we wait for an hour and he doesn’t show up.
Please don’t postpone this another day, I think.
Even though I know that Dirtshine already has a backup drummer lined up, and even though I know they’d give me another chance, I want to go home to where there’s too much traffic and it never fucking rains.
Finally, the door behind the bench opens, and the judge walks out.
Chapter Forty-Six
Frankie
My phone rings at ten in the morning, when I’m at work. I jam the needle I’m using into a pincushion, drop it, curse, pick it up, jam it in harder, finally answer it.
“Ten thousand quid,” Liam says.
I’m stunned into silence.
“Mostly for the wall, as I understand it,” he goes on, sounding almost giddy. “He did plenty of whinging in the witness booth, but there was quite a lot of confusion and I had a black eye as well, and besides the judge thought that a hundred thousand quid was absolutely outrageous...”
He keeps talking, unable to stop, and I lean back in my chair.
Ten thousand pounds.
It’s not nothing. It’s a whole fuckton of money, sure, but it’s not the same size fuckton as a hundred thousand would be. Ten thousand pounds is an amount I can wrap my head around, an amount that will actually seem to dwindle over time as Liam pays it off.
Someday, it’ll be gone. A hundred thousand seems impossible to finish paying.
“You were right,” Liam says suddenly, and I laugh.
“Say it again.”
“Do I have to?”
“Yes.”
“You were right. I should have just told them, particularly because Gavin saved my arse. Happy?”
“It could use some practice.”
“You’re impossible,” he teases.
“You’d hate it if I weren’t.”
There’s an announcement on his end of the line, and Liam goes quiet, listening.
“That’s me,” he finally says. “See you in a few hours.”
I nearly say it again, I love you, but I stop myself. It feels silly, but I don’t want the first time to be over the phone.
“Hurry home,” I tell him instead.
“You’re nervous,” I say.
“I’m not.”
Liam cracks his knuckles again, for what feels like the hundredth time in five minutes. We’re in the Troubadour’s tiny backstage area, which isn’t much more than a hall with a few chairs scattered around.
The venue itself isn’t a whole lot bigger, but it’s stuffed to the gills, the crowd spilling out o
nto Santa Monica Boulevard. Sometime earlier today word got out that Dirtshine was playing new songs as a ‘secret’ show, and ever since it’s been pandemonium.
Less reported is the fact that they’ll be playing with their original drummer, but I think Liam’s glad about that. He’d rather pretend that this is a perfectly natural progression after a long hiatus, not a stroke of earth-shatteringly good luck.
“Then stop cracking your knuckles.”
He makes a face at me.
“I don’t want to,” he says. “I just like cracking them sometimes, all right?”
I can’t help but laugh, and then he laughs as well, shaking his head and stuffing his hands in his back pockets so he stops fidgeting. We drove straight here from the airport, so he’s coming off an eleven-hour flight to play his first show with his band in two years. Of course he has nerves.
“Maybe I’m a touch nervous,” he says.
“What the fuck for, mate?” Gavin shouts, coming up behind him. He grabs Liam by both shoulders and shakes him, practically tackling him in a rowdy half-hug that nearly takes out a chair.
“Fuck off, you’ll break my hand before we even started and then you’ll be really bolloxed.”
Gavin points at me, grinning.
“Frankie looks like she could play the drums. It’s not like it’s hard, you can get some sticks and whack them on the round thing. Don’t even have to count above four.”
“That’s why I’m back here, is it? Because any arsehole in off the street can drum for you lot?”
“Hey!” I protest.
“Jesus, Liam, ruining this already, are you?” Gavin asks, laughing.
He’s clearly in a great mood, laughing and shouting, and I’ve got a feeling that it has to do with Liam being back and being sober.
“It’s all right, she’s quite forgiving,” Liam says, winking at me.
“Not with that attitude I won’t be,” I tease back.
“You ready, though?” Gavin asks. “I’ve got to go find Darcy and Trent, last I saw them Trent was pacing back and forth in the back alley and Darcy was nowhere to be found.”
Liam just laughs.
“That means she’s hiding in the bathroom, trying to tell herself that no one’s come to the show, so she won’t have to actually play in front of anyone,” he says. “I was hoping that’d stopped by now.”
“Of course not, you’re all three a couple of loony basket cases before a show,” Gavin says.
“And you’re mad as a hatter, fucking split your face grinning like that,” Liam fires back. “Don’t tell me I kept my nose clean all this time only for you to be doing lines without me.”
The longer they talk, the thicker their accents are getting, and I think I might be getting a bit lost. It happens if they’re on the phone with each other, too. A few more minutes and I’ll need subtitles.
“That’s not even funny,” Gavin says, still grinning. “Fucking thing to joke about, sobriety.”
Liam grins as well.
“As if you’d ever be that far gone,” he says. “This from the man who thought it was hilarious when I suggested he bring a pillow on stage after he nodded out up there once.”
He looks over at me, like he’s trying to include me in the conversation, even though I’m still catching up.
“That did happen,” Liam goes on. “I may be a fucking degenerate, but I wasn’t the only degenerate.”
“What did happen?”
“This bloke shot up before a show and nodded out in the middle of a song,” Liam says, half-grinning.
“He’s smiling because he always likes not being the biggest cock-up,” Gavin tells me.
“Only because I usually am. Lovely to have a change once in a while.”
A guy wearing black pokes his head around a corner, and Gavin and Liam both straighten up and look at him. I nearly laugh out loud, because in a few respects they’re so similar sometimes: the same body language, the same look on their face like someone caught them fucking around.
And in that moment, I’m suddenly even happier for Liam: I knew he missed Gavin, but he didn’t talk about it that much. I never realized how badly he missed his best friend.
“Five minutes?” the guy says, holding up five fingers.
“Cheers,” says Gavin.
The guy disappears, but before either man can say anything, I hear the sound of heels running down the hall, and then Marisol appears in a blouse and pencil skirt.
“Hi!” she says, breathlessly, coming up to Gavin and giving him a kiss. “Made it.”
He settles one hand on her shoulder, fingers in her dark hair.
“How was work?”
She laughs and shrugs, still a little breathless.
“You know how it is,” she says. “I’m always there half an hour later than I’m hoping to be, and traffic is always fifteen minutes worse.”
“You could always learn to get organized and manage your time,” Gavin teases her, and she rolls her eyes, smiling.
“Right, that’s her problem,” Liam says. “Marisol, just get organized, why don’t you?”
“Screw you both, I’m getting changed,” she teases, and points at a door. “That one?”
Gavin points to the next door over.
“That one.”
Marisol disappears. Gavin and Liam look at each other.
“I’ll go get Trent?” Liam says.
“I’ll go pull Darcy from the ladies’ room,” Gavin says, then steps in, one hand clapped on Liam’s shoulder. “You ready for this, brother?”
Liam just laughs.
“I was born ready,” he says.
The next few minutes are pandemonium, even at a show this small. Or maybe especially because the show is this small. It’s not like I’ve ever been backstage at a rock concert before.
Liam gives me a quick kiss, then hurries off somewhere. A minute later, Marisol comes out of the room — I think it was a broom closet? — Wearing ripped skinny jeans and a worn t-shirt, her hair up in a knot.
“Oh God, that’s so much better,” she says to me. “I swear, I feel like I’m stuffed into a sausage casing by the end of every day.”
“I’d offer advice, but I know for an actual fact that pencil skirts were designed as an instrument of torture,” I laugh. “You can look it up.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” she says. “Did anyone say where we’re supposed to be, or did they run off in every direction like usual?”
“The second thing.”
Marisol shrugs. She doesn’t seem like she’s particularly bothered by any of this, and I’m sort of glad that at least there’s someone else around here who knows what they’re doing, because I sure don’t.
“Let’s just wander until we’re told to stop,” she says. “That’s my usual move. Turns out no one is actually in charge back here, and the band is always too nervous or whatever to care what I’m doing. Or, what we’re doing, I guess. Usually it’s just me looking sort of lost.”
I point in the direction of the stage.
“Want to try that one?” I ask.
“Seems promising,” she says, heading toward the hall. “How’s The Spinster’s Panorama going?”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Liam
Frankie was right, and I’m fucking nervous as hell. All the pacing and knuckle-cracking in the world isn’t going to fix it, or make it any better, or erase the fact that I feel like if I fuck this up I’m sunk forever.
I did show up sober. With a girlfriend, no less, one who’s already gotten on Darcy’s good side, which can be tricky, and who’s hit it off with Marisol. More than anything, it might be Frankie’s presence — a straight-laced girl who doesn’t take any shit — that’s helped me the most with the band.
Make it up to her tonight, I think, and smile quietly to myself.
“Got her,” says a voice behind me, low and American.
“I’m not a stray cat you had to trap,” Darcy’s voice says, and I can hear the ey
e roll in it.
“I’ll stop saying that when I stop having to go into the women’s bathroom to get you before every show,” Trent says.
“It’s my pre-show ritual,” she says, wrinkling her nose at him as they come stand next to me, waiting just behind a curtain.
The stage is tiny, and there’s about six feet square of space to stand back here, so we’re all a bit closer than custom would ordinarily dictate. With nearly anyone else it would feel strange, but with them it just reminds me of months spent together on the tour bus, and before that a van, sharing single hotel rooms to save money.
You get a strange kind of intimacy with a band. Your lives intertwine in ways you wouldn’t expect. You know one another’s shoe sizes and bathroom habits, you know who snores and who needs what sort of pillow, so standing close isn’t bothersome.
Feels a bit like coming home, in a way.
“Sort of like your pre-show ritual is pacing back and forth until you drive someone crazy,” Darcy teases.
They both glance at me, and the pointless talk of pre-show rituals dies on their lips, so I point at myself.
“Heroin,” I say, meaning that was my pre-show ritual. “Very relaxing, at least.”
Darcy just snorts, but Trent’s shoulders relax a little. I think that neither of them is exactly sure how to deal with me yet, whether they can bring up the past or joke about it or whether the mere mention of illicit substances will send me spiraling back down.
“True,” Darcy mutters, glancing at Trent quickly. “I did nearly kill Gavin a couple times on tour when it turned out that the non-junkie version of that guy was an uptight dictator.”
I raise one eyebrow.
“Gavvy was?”
“He got better again,” Trent says. “But there were a few times Darcy almost got into it with him.”
“Me?” Darcy laughs. “What about the time you kept fucking up the chord change on—”
A curtain moves, someone thumping along the other side, and then Gavin finally pops through to all three of us staring at him.
“What? It’s tricky,” he says. “You lot fucking ready or what?”
