by eden Hudson
Shannon
Brooklyn, 1998
I swear I just saw a flash of wings at the rooftop of that building across the street, but when I look at Tiffani, she shakes her head. The rain plus the early evening gloom is playing tricks on my eyes. This time.
Corey sighs. “Damn it, Shan, will you at least pretend to listen to me?” He follows this up with a sidestep into my line of sight, as close to the edge of the awning as he can get without standing in the runoff. “Eight o’clock. The interview with the guy from STF. You. Will. Be. There. Say it.”
“I’ll be there,” I say. But my eyes keep going back to that rooftop.
Corey throws a look at Tiffani, as if she can get me to pay attention.
Tiffani stares him down. She means, If Shannon’s not listening it doesn’t matter. She’ll ask me later what we were supposed to be doing and we’ll do it. I’ll make sure she doesn’t flake on the interview and when we get there I’ll make sure she doesn’t screw the reporter or punch him in the face, so stop being such a pissy little bitch.
Okay, the last part is just me being mean, but damn it, Corey let the director of the new music video schedule a shoot for a Friday night. The Lost Derringers don’t perform on Friday nights in any fashion—not anymore. Either that’s in all of our contracts now or I paid a bunch of lawyers for nothing. I know it’s in mine—Shannon Colter doesn’t play live shows, record, re-record, negotiate, or shoot music videos on Friday nights. Friday night the wings come down, the water’s dark, and then you drown.
“Eight p.m. at The Bright,” Corey snaps, and then he’s off, heading back inside and tossing a wave over his shoulder. Maybe to go manage the rest of the band, wherever they are. I didn’t see Anna, Terrie, or Bro this afternoon while I was laying down the guitar track for “Out of Spite,” but I never see them anymore, so who fucking knows?
I can’t get my hand to stop shaking on the cigarette.
“It’s fine,” Tiffani says because she notices stuff like that.
One last all-consuming puff and I flick the cig at the dirty sidewalk and watch the torrential downpour drag it into the gutter. Burning paper, ash, leaves, filter sucked down by water. There’s no point in smoking if it doesn’t calm your nerves.
“I want something,” I say.
Tiffani’s the only person who would just let me say something like that and not go crazy—What, Shan, what do you want? What can I get you? Please let me get you something! Do you want this? Do you want this? Everyone else is too busy kissing my ass or coddling me to let me just be a person.
I start walking and Tiff follows. I can’t hear her over the traffic and rain, but I know she’s there. Like Scully and Mulder. We’re partners. That’s what I think sometimes, even though she’s totally badass and I’m just some rocker chick she babysits.
Another damn interview.
All the X-chromosomes used to be why I did interviews with rocker ‘zines that could hardly believe girls could play guitars—because I was a novelty, some angry bitch who could pick like a motherfucker and scream like a banshee. Now they interview me because I’m the angry bitch all the angry guys want to screw and all the angry girls want to be. Wouldn’t they flip out to know ninety percent of the time I’m not even very angry? Just jittery.
I pull out another cigarette and snort when Tiffani tries to get the umbrella over my head so I can light the damn thing.
At least there’s no one out to bother me in all this rain. Not even photo hounds. Because what would I be doing in downtown Brooklyn anyway? Depending on which magazine you believe, I’m still living with Philly on the Upper West Side until I leave for the tour. Trying to work things out. In reality, people are going to move the crap I left there while I’m out of the country. There’s no way I’m going back to his apartment, not after the last time when his neighbors called the cops on us and all I wanted was to get my acoustic back.
“I don’t want to go to that interview,” I tell Tiffani. “He’s just going to want to know about the breakup anyway. It’s going to be all court-order-this and disturbing-the-peace-that.”
Tiffani shrugs. That’s the thing about her. Nothing fazes her. I’ve never seen her hands tremble once. That’s why I started smoking in the first place—she does and she never shakes like a damn junkie.
Two puffs and that cigarette follows its buddy into the gutter. And I’m off. I’ll walk to Manhattan. Hell, I’ve got three hours before the interview. I’ll show up drenched to the bone, really give the guy something to write about. “Is ultra-paranoid rocker chick Shannon Colter afraid to take cabs now?” Maybe I’ll get lucky and catch pneumonia.
“Plenty of time to eat if you want.” Tiffani’s voice is right beside me.
“I’m not hungry.” It’s a reflex. I have to stop myself before I tell her I just ate. She knows I didn’t. “Coffee,” I say. “I want coffee.”
Coffee makes me jittery—imagine that—but I’m already jittery, so why the heck not?
One thing you can say for the rain, it’s keeping the shoppers from looking around. Not that I’m likely to get recognized here in the Fulton Mall. My kind of music is too “bitchy white girl” for the black and Latino crowd. I assume. I don’t really know anyone black or Latino, so I guess I can’t say for sure. Why would they be into my stuff anyway? They probably think I should shut the hell up and be glad I got work and a way to put food on the table.
Thinking that makes me feel a little better, and the shakes calm down a little bit. I’ve got work. I’ve got a way to keep food on the table. I just have to run out on stage every night for the next three months and scream for an audience of people I don’t know anymore and who don’t care that I’m playing better than I ever did, even with the shakes. Boohoo, I’m so mad no one likes me for the reasons I want them to like me.
I cross the street without looking, but Tiffani’s running traffic interference. She really doesn’t get paid enough. Not enough to be the keep-Shannon-from-screwing-it-up-for-everyone, keep-Shannon-from-getting-hit-by-a-bus, make-sure-Shannon-doesn’t-OD-on-her-own-bullshit-and-lock-herself-in-her-room bodyguard.
I shake my head. I only locked myself in my room once—just one time, before one show—and refused to come out, and that wasn’t even my fault. A whole funeral procession, complete with hearse, really did pass by just as I was laughing at something Terrie said. Terrie should get the blame for that one and I think she knows it.
Crazy Shannon Colter, the chick who’s going to destroy the Lost Derringers from the inside out, blow up like a bomb everyone heard ticking, but no one could stop.
“Coffee,” Tiffani says, gesturing at a shop with its carryout window open even though the rain is coming down in sheets now.
But when we step up to the window to order, I get a look inside.
“No way.” It can’t possibly be him. Not here, not in Brooklyn, and definitely not in a coffee shop when he doesn’t even drink coffee. That’s not coincidence, that’s X-files-grade conspiracy.
I veer toward the entrance. Tiffani follows me in and drops our umbrella in the pile by the door.
Then I don’t know where Tiffani is anymore because it really is him. How can it be him? Just sitting there reading like he lives here, like it’s the most natural thing in the world, like it’s okay for him to be in this city when just going to Saint Louis used to make him nervous.
“Danny Whitney?” I say it like one of those girls at your high school reunion who pretend to be happy that you made it.
Until he looks up, I’m still pretty sure I’m hallucinating. Crazy rocker chick Shannon Colter—now with real crazy! The eyes are what prove it’s him. Not even I can imagine a blue-green as dark and peaceful as Daniel Whitney’s eyes. Until I see those, he could be any other raven-haired masturbation fantasy come to life.
“Shannon?” He says it like a million years have passed since we broke up and he can’t believe I’m still alive. Well, I can’t either.
“What are you doing in Brooklyn?” I
ask. “I thought you were at seminary down in the Ozarks.”
“I was, but God called me to a different path while I was there,” he says with complete disregard for anyone who might hear him. And then I see the book he’s reading is his Bible and he’s got a notebook full of his heavy, stitchy cursive open beside it.
I nod at it. “Homework or extra credit?”
Danny looks down at the table like he forgot anything was there.
“Oh. Senior thesis stuff.” He straightens the notebook and sticks his pen down in the metal rings. “I graduate in a few weeks—assuming I get this finished.”
“And if you don’t get it finished, it won’t matter anyway because Pastor Gauge’ll kill you,” I say, shrugging.
That finally wrings a smile out of him. And even though I know that anybody who knew Danny’s dad could’ve made the same stupid joke, I feel almost like I used to while we were dating, like I cracked some invisible magic barrier. Danny was such a serious teenager, so damn old for his age, but when I made him smile…something about it just shattered me.
Back when our single “Bleed Out” started climbing the charts, people were always nagging me about the convoluted lyrics.
I smile so you’ll know you’ll never know me,
You’ll know every single other man instead,
And when you know for sure that you know them and not me,
You’ll wake up with me there inside your head.
There are still some ‘zine writers out there who would kill to know that song is about a preacher’s son from Missouri.
Danny nods at the chairs across the table from his.
“You could sit down if you wanted,” he says. “Both of you.”
I look over my shoulder, not sure who I’m going to see, but it’s Tiffani. Of course she’s there. Someone needs to keep me from having a panic attack when I hear someone sneeze and no one say “Bless you.”
“We were just getting coffee,” I say, then wonder if I’ve already said that. “But we could stay a little while, I guess. This is Tiffani Cranston. My…” I let it trail off because I don’t owe Daniel Whitney any explanations. And even if I did, bodyguard is such an inadequate description of what Tiffani does. “My everything,” I say.
Tiffani smiles at that.
Danny stands up to shake her hand, then comes around the table to pull out our chairs.
Time’s really been good to him. Growing up, Danny looked like he was made out of sticks and rubber bands. Three heaping, home cooked meals a day and the guy still couldn’t put meat on his bones. Now he’s all lean muscle, full and powerful, cables and steel. It’s hard to believe that a few years at seminary would fill out a body like that when a lifetime of working on a farm didn’t.
Danny clears his homework off the table and a waiter comes by and takes our order. A coffee that Tiffani will fix up with cream and sugar and pretend to drink—she’s so good at that—and a super-duper giant mocha something or other with like five shots of espresso for me. If I have to shake anyway, I want to vibrate.
“So, been by the home place lately?” I ask, bouncing my leg under the table.
“Not for a while now,” Danny says. “Last time I talked to Dad, he said you didn’t go back for—”
“You were saying how you changed your major or dropped out or something?” I say.
“Not necessarily. Instead of a focus on ministry, I’ve been led to apologetics and sort of…mysticism. That’s why I’m in Brooklyn. There’s an apologetics conference this week and me and a couple of the guys drove out.”
Apologetics fit, mysticism didn’t. Danny’s dad was the preacher in Halo. His parents were these real reformist, by-the-good-book, if-it-ain’t-in-the-Bible, it-ain’t-in-my-church Christians. Which meant they never got mad at me when I slipped up and cussed, but Danny got taken to the woodshed if he did. Sort of. The Whitneys were more debaters than they were fighters.
“How’re your parents taking the mysticism?” I ask.
“Not well, but I sort of out-argued them on it.”
“Hour-long lecture with Bible references and a slide show?”
“Something like that,” he says. “I’d heard you were living in New York City now.”
“You added the tabloids to your reading list?” I ask.
Instead of answering, Danny pulls one of those deflections I’ve gotten so good at since the reporters have stopped asking me about the music and started digging into my personal life.
“Tattoos, huh?” he says.
I hold my arms out and twist them so that he can see the sleeves go all the way around.
“Yeah,” I say. “Like them?”
“Not really.”
“Then I guess it’s a good thing they’re not on your arms.” My life story is in these sleeves. It took me three years to get them perfect—they weren’t just some impulsive, drunken decision like everyone assumes. I know that’s what Danny’s thinking, the jerk. But then, it wouldn’t be the first time he believed something without even bothering to ask me whether it was true or not.
“I just didn’t think you liked tattoos,” he says, which is as close to an apology as I’ll get from him.
“They grew on me,” I say.
The silence draws out until it’s awkward, but I decide I’m not going to be the one to break it. I just sit there and let my leg bounce under the table and watch Danny decide how he should proceed.
He lands on, “Dad told me you didn’t go back for Henry or Charlotte’s funerals.”
“You didn’t either, then,” I say, even though it’s a million times worse that I didn’t go because it was my dad and my kid sister.
“I was in Santa Barbara,” he says. “I didn’t hear about the wreck until I got back to school.”
“You do a lot of traveling for a student-preacher.”
Danny looks down at my hand. For a second, I think he’s going to pick it up, but then he doesn’t.
“I’m really sorry, Shannon.” He means it and I hate that. Just because he was like part of our family while we were dating doesn’t give him any right to miss them and it especially doesn’t give him any right to feel sorry for me.
The waiter drops off our coffees. As soon as he leaves, I jump in. I don’t want to give Danny the chance to say anything else about Dad and Charlotte.
“So, you’re here with some friends for a conference, but you’re sitting in a coffee shop alone,” I say. “Drinking coffee. Who’d have thunk it?”
Danny never used to drink coffee. He said it kept him up all night, even the decaf stuff, which really just has a portion of the caffeine, it isn’t completely decaffeinated. He’s the reason I even know that stupid, useless fact.
He shrugs. “I don’t sleep much nowadays anyway.”
“Daniel Whitney, do you have a girlfriend?” I ask, because nothing embarrasses him like the implication that he’s having pre-marital sex.
The Whitney blush is truly one of the wonders of the modern world, something everyone should see before they die. It’s as if Danny’s cheekbones catch on fire and light up his face from the inside out. If he was paler, he’d probably glow.
“No, I just—with school and work—and my thesis is due next month—” He won’t even look at me, I’ve got him so flustered. I could ask him anything. Maybe I should become a reporter. Except I don’t know him well enough anymore to know what I should ask.
So instead of a hard-hitting question, I’m like, “Why not?”
Danny cocks his head at me. “Why not what?”
“Why don’t you have a girlfriend? I mean, shouldn’t you? Weren’t you wanting to get married and have a bunch of little black-haired babies?”
“What about you?” he says. “Weren’t you dating that guy from that other band?”
“Philly. From Area 52.” And suddenly I want a cigarette or something in my hands. I pick up my coffee cup and take a few deep gulps before Danny sees the waves in it and how badly I’m shaking.
“I�
��m sorry to break you guys up, but we really need to get going,” Tiffani cuts in. She gives Danny a harried smile. She’s such a good actress. “If Shannon’s late for that interview, her manager’s going to kill me.”
I throw Tiffani a thank-you look. I don’t pay her close to enough.
Danny acts like he’s sorry to see me go, and for a second, I am sorry to go because it’s him, it’s really Danny. Being around him is like being back home, even with all the bad memories.
“What’re you doing tomorrow night?” I ask him.
“I don’t know,” he says.
“Come to the show. I’ll get you some passes and you and your friends can come backstage and hang out. Which hotel are you in? I’ll messenger over your tickets.” It’s all out before I think about what I’m saying, but I tell myself not to worry about it because Danny’s going to say no. He’ll tell me his preacher friends aren’t as forgiving of bitchy white girl rock as he always was and he’s got to do conference stuff all tomorrow and they’ll probably be tired anyway, so…
Instead Danny says, “All right. Sounds like fun.”
Danny
My dad used to illustrate temptation like this: A man who was addicted to sweets learned he couldn’t eat sugar without going into shock and dying. He cleaned everything made with sugar out of his house. He quit his job at the plant because he had to walk by the bakery to get to work. He left his wife because she loved chocolate and he couldn’t stand to kiss her with sugar on her breath. The day the man moved into his new house in his new town, every one of his new neighbors stopped by and dropped him off batches of cookies and cupcakes until the whole dining room was full. They found his body the next morning.
For about thirty minutes after Shannon and her friend leave, I’m still sitting here, staring at the door, thinking over that man who couldn’t eat sugar and how Shannon said something about sending me tickets to her show for tomorrow night and passes to go backstage afterward. I can’t even remember what I told her, but it sure wasn’t “No, thanks.”
