“This is the third one this week,” Neil yelled. “How the hell are we ever going to get the bathroom completed if every goddamn worker runs screaming from the place? I don’t care how you do it, Sid, find a plumber—hire a blind one if that’s what is necessary. And remind me why I signed on for this debacle. A man in my position shouldn’t be subjected to this incompetence.”
Andrew could picture the man cowering on the other end of the line: Sid, the short, crew-cutted, and beleaguered foreman on the job, whose main goal in life was to try to explain to his ashen-faced crew why the temperature in the house could drop ten degrees while the radiator banged away. Why plaster buckets were turned over and tarps went missing. Why a tin-pan piano sounded from the empty attic early in the morning and at dusk.
Neil ended the call and stared straight at Andrew. “I received a call from a rather irate promoter who wanted to know where the lost Lost Boy was.”
“Apologies. It won’t happen again.”
Neil, clad in a well-pressed oxford shirt and trousers, looked over Andrew in his threadbare T-shirt and jeans, the red scarf hanging limp around his neck. “Please understand, I’ve pulled a lot of strings to get you these gigs, and I don’t want to be made to look like an idiot. It isn’t much to ask for you to show up on time. Either you’re going to act professionally or you’re not. It’s your decision.”
The tone in Neil’s voice only served to drive the point home. Andrew had had it; he had to get the band out of here. He was done being on probation like a schoolboy.
“Have we let you down in any particular way? If I’m not mistaken, we’ve sold out every one of our shows, with multiple encores each night. It was my fault I was late tonight, for which I’m sorry. Like I said, it won’t happen again.” He took a deep breath. “We have to think about getting back on the road, anyway. We have a list of places in Boston and New York that are interested, and I’m sure you’d like us out from underfoot.”
Neil stopped short. “What? You have the shows in Sacramento next week, I’ve already confirmed them.”
Just then Christian emerged from the kitchen, accompanied by a zaftig woman dressed in overalls. She was coiled around him in a fervent embrace, her fright of shoulder-length tortoiseshell hair caught up with his dreads as he hugged her in earnest, babbling something in French. Her handsome face widened in laughter as she stepped back to examine him, her wrists jangling with silver jewelry as she did so.
“Fucking-A, Christian. Shit, I can’t believe it! Look at your bad self,” she gushed.
Andrew leveled a glance at Simon, who had just entered the room and stood against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. Groupies. Hell. The last thing he needed tonight. He peered into the kitchen for her likely friends.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Christian slung his arm around her large shoulders and squeezed her until the woman cackled in glee. Christian beamed. “Everyone, this is Zoey Cohen. Zoey and I went to summer camp together for—what was it—for six years?”
What kind of camp would cater to the likes of two such disparate people, Andrew had no idea, but by the way they were grinning, there must have been a good reason why they kept returning, and it had nothing to do with s’mores. Fatigue, however, had overcome him. Plus, he wasn’t feeling the least bit social after his arguments with Simon and Neil.
Before he could excuse himself, the group had plowed back into the kitchen, and Christian’s exuberant old girlfriend began to pull food from grocery bags that littered the kitchen floor. Food. They hadn’t seen unboxed food in a long time. If that wasn’t shocking enough, she performed her first miracle and actually got the stove to light. Then she began to cook. And cook. Like some punked out Snow White, she produced a bottle of Jack from another bag, found clean drinking glasses in the sagging cupboards, and placed them on a makeshift table she had created out of a stray piece of plywood and two sawhorses and placed in the middle of the kitchen, all the while directing Christian on how to grill the steaks. She poured, toasted, and downed hers in one shot, gushing how she loved the room’s high ceilings and long casement windows…and was that a garden out back? She sipped away at her second like it should have an umbrella in it as she sautéed mushrooms and apologized that her roommates had to leave early. All the while the men gazed at her in awe, wondering if her roommates too, came with their own grocery bags.
Christian, in his typical fashion, jumped in and invited them to the show tomorrow night, even throwing in drinks with the offer.
Zoey’s face instantly fell. “Can’t do it. Crap, you know I’d love to, but we’re looking at apartments on Saturday, otherwise I’d be there with bells on. God, I can’t believe how amazing you all were. My roommates—they were totally in shock. I’ve never seen them look like that. It was like when Emily ate a peanut and had one of her allergic reactions, she was so pale and shook up. I thought for sure we’d be doing that whole Pulp Fiction needle in the heart thing before the end of your first set.”
“And that’s a good thing?” Andrew asked, torn between the desire to flee to his room or devour a plate of piping hot garlic bread.
But she didn’t respond. “Fucking awesome tattoo.” She gawked at the letters on Simon’s fingers, fingers that were wrapped around the neck of a beer bottle, the only item not to come from her grocery bags. “Do you want to see my latest? I just got it done down at Santa Cruz. Here…it’s a little lower on my hip.”
Simon’s eyes had flashed wide open at the speed with which Zoey had unbuckled her overalls and was yanking aside the strap of her thong.
“Whoa! That’s cool, Zoey. But we don’t want to be slamming that hypodermic into Simon,” Christian cried and helped her refasten herself.
The conversation and drinks continued. Each time Andrew attempted to get away, Zoey grabbed his arm as she regaled them with another story of the horror of apartments they had checked out, or the plight of being reduced to producing her huge canvases in the loo because it was the only room in their flat with natural light, much to her roommates’ constant vexation.
By the end of the night, Andrew was wound tight and drinking heavily. As for Zoey, everyone loved the woman, as her nature demanded it. Even Neil had stayed, his keen eyes taking it all in: Andrew’s never empty glass, Simon’s ever growing look of concern, and how Christian stared at the artist’s ample breasts which jiggled seismically beneath her overalls whenever she laughed.
Sometime around one-thirty Neil finished his drink and put down his glass with a resounding thud. His sat back on the wooden chair. “I have a solution to your problem,” he told her.
Zoey’s thick eyebrows scrunched together like caterpillars, probably wondering which problem he was addressing; the woman seemed to collect them.
“I have a flat for rent.”
Her eyes mimicked Simon’s, the caterpillars now residents in her bleached bangs.
“Yer jokin’,” Simon remarked, clearly buzzed. “Why the hell aren’t we livin’ there?”
“Because it happens to be above yours.”
Andrew leaned forward to make sure he heard him correctly, his brain slamming against the inside of his skull as he did so.
“Would you like to see it? It’s got wonderful light,” Neil continued to a smitten Zoey.
“Yeah, ’cause it hasn’t a roouuf,” Andrew slurred, taken aback. What was Neil thinking? The flat was a disaster; Andrew had seen it. No one in their right mind would live there. The man was either incredibly generous or a sadist. Or he was entirely nutters, as Andrew had always suspected.
It didn’t matter. Zoey had been lured in, hook, line and sinker. She was already getting out of her seat to take a tour. As for Christian, there was only one word to describe him. Smitten. For Simon. Intrigued. For Neil. Pleased.
Shit, Andrew thought. How was he ever going to get them to leave now? He laid his head down on the table and groaned. The room began to spin, in that Tilt-a-Whirl-amusement-park-ride way, the precursor to what was sure to be a
killer hangover. But before he cast off into inebriated sleep, he swore he heard something coming from the floor above. It sent ice water through his veins and stood the hairs on his neck on end. With a shudder, he placed his arm over his other ear to block out the sound. A sound he had heard before. It was unmistakable—a man’s eerie laughter and the tinkling of a piano.
4
* * *
THE FOLLOWING NIGHT, STUDENTS crammed through the front doors of the Skellar, yelling over one another, impatient to reach the seats below. Emily fought her way through the mob as well but could barely make any progress, the crowd was so great.
The Lost Boys were already playing; she could hear the crescendo of the guitars, but the harder she fought to reach the floor, the stronger the bodies buffeted her back. She twisted this way and that on tip-toe in an attempt to locate Zoey or Margot, but she could see nothing except backs and shoulders and the glare of angry half-turned faces that stood between her and the stage. Suddenly cheers and applause broke out around her, and over the din she heard a clipped London accent thanking everyone for coming.
The crowd began to drift apart, and for the first time Emily noticed that the men were dressed in suits, not jeans and T-shirts or hooded sweats as she would have expected, but suits that were broad in the shoulders, with peaked lapels, some with wide stripes, others with bolder plaids, and a few in the surreal colors of emerald green or electric blue. They wore their hair slicked back and slinked their arms around women whom seemed to have stepped out of Myra’s shop, women with lips of cherry red and bodies wrapped in wasp-waisted dresses with netted hats obscuring their pale faces.
Was it a party? A costume party that she hadn’t known about? She looked down at her own clothes but was mortified to see that she wore only a nightshirt and her feet were bare. Immediately self-conscious, she spun around, searching the crowd to see if anyone noticed, but they hadn’t. They didn’t see her at all.
Cigarettes glowed and ashed between nearly everyone’s fingers now. A blonde, her hair slinked over one eye, blew a puff of smoke from the side of her mouth where it joined the dense fog under the club’s dim lights.
“They were fabulous, darling,” she cried to her date. “Fabulous.”
The voice from the stage continued, “Thank you, yes, thank you. You’ve been grand. Good night.” It was followed by the finality of footsteps thundering across wood.
No! How could she have been this late? How could she have missed the entire show?
“I thought she’d be here,” the woman said to her date and threw the cigarette to the floor, grinding it under her heel before she turned to leave.
“I’m here!” Emily shouted back, but her words sounded like they came up from underwater. The gang of people maddening to depart crashed about her in waves, their faces twisted and distorted and ghostly white. With all her might, she flung herself forward and broke through the horde, sending chairs clattering to the floor.
“I’m here!” she cried at the top of her lungs, but the doors to the back stage had slammed shut, leaving only a drum set behind. Frantic, she turned back to the crowd, ready to force her way through them, but what she saw made her freeze in place. The room was entirely deserted—no one remained, not a table, not a chair—every suit and gold lamé dress had vanished. Only shadows and the echo of a ticking clock filled the vacant space.
A cool hand of dread clutched at her shoulder, and she knew she had to get out of there, she had to run. As fast as she could she bolted for the door, the same door where the band had exited. It was cast iron, indescribably heavy, and required all her strength to budge, but finally she managed to shove her shoulder against it hard enough to force it to open a crack.
She slipped through and reached the other side, letting the door slam behind her. Relieved to have escaped, she plastered her back against the door, but when she turned to run, there was no hallway, no dressing area as she had thought. Instead she stood in a high-ceilinged Victorian room.
Sunlight streamed through a pair of tall casement windows that hung opposite her. A breeze ruffled their sheer curtains and brought with it the distant scent of lilac and the sounds of birds and spring. The sun’s rays reflected in the crystals of a chandelier hanging from the ceiling and then stippled their way down the lime-washed walls, catching the glitter of swirling dust motes. In the center of the room sat a brass bed covered in rumpled sheets.
The tension and fear in her body evaporated, and joy rushed through her veins. She knew this bed, she knew the sounds it made and the softness of its mattress, but more importantly, she knew the man who lay on top of it. He took a sip from his wine glass, stared up at her, smiled, and said nothing. A thrill lighted her blood at the sight of his face, the white, starched shirt unbuttoned at his throat, and the baggy trousers that he wore. All familiar, all known.
“What took you so long?” He stood, placed the glass on the floor, and walked toward her, his eyes never leaving hers.
“I don’t know.” Her voice broke; she felt weightless and hopeful and fragile and wanted nothing more than for him to hold her to the earth.
She knew what would come next. He would kiss her, not now, but soon. He would falter at first and knock his nose against hers, and then they would laugh before she cried, a strangled sound into which they both would fall. Later, naked and entwined, her hair would drape his face, shield it from the setting sun that would steal over the wood floor and across their empty glasses until it gilded the magnificent gramophone that sat in the corner. He would wait, wait until the record he had placed there began to play, wait until his hands had finished caressing her, wait for his body to settle into hers, to inhale and exhale, to be alive. Tremulously, his mouth would cover her mouth, and he would kiss her with a word, always the same word.
“Wait.”
Emily sat bolt upright in her bed. The dream rushed past her eyes like the snap of an old film being ripped from a projector. She fought to grasp hold of a frame, to snatch an image before it receded into oblivion. But she failed. In its place stood the stark backdrop of her room, dark, spare, and jammed with stacks of books and moving boxes, all too silent and real.
“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” she said and lowered her face into her hands, her words creating a perfect descant to her pounding heart. “Oh God.” Despite the chill in the air, sweat covered her. “It was just a dream, just a dream,” she repeated to herself. That’s all it was—a dream.
They had studied dreams in her psychology class. Dr. Vandin had spent half a semester on them alone. This one would be, oh, what would it be? An illustration of some deep-seated fear, or a failure to cope with the past, triggered by some conflict in the present. Undoubtedly, Vandin would know and would lecture her about some urgent message brewing in her subconscious that was demanding to be understood and would plague her until she dealt with it. Yes, that was what he would say, and then berate her for not knowing the fact to begin with. Yet if it was a dream, why could she still feel the pressure of her lover’s hips and the heat of his fingertips as he played her? Why could she remember every detail of his face?
The same face as that of her guitar player. Her guitar player who wasn’t homeless or destitute or drug-addled after all. Who was the lead guitarist of a band, but not just any band, a band that “stunned crowds whenever they performed.” A “heartrending” band to be sure, if the women around her last night were any indication, screaming like their tongues were on fire.
Seeking refuge in the bathroom, she was thankful only cold water rushed from the faucets, as the apartment was too old to produce anything warmer. She splashed her face, then bracing her hands on the basin, stared at herself in the mirror.
“But I found him first.”
That was her first reaction upon seeing him surrounded by those other women last night. A reaction that was as instinctual as it was selfish, one she hadn’t felt since she was a child, one that should be accompanied by a stamp of the foot or a slam of a door. She had found Andrew firs
t.
Andrew Hayes. That was his name. The man who haunted her dreams and so many of her waking moments; the man she knew nothing about, who knew nothing about her. How had she let herself fall into such a hopeless obsession?
Oh God, oh God, oh God.
She wasn’t proud of this fact; the whole episode, no matter how one tried to explain it, made her feel desperate and not the least bit sane. In fact, it made her feel ridiculous and ashamed. Fantasizing about him like some crazed groupie—God. His face. His body. His hands. As though once they met, some fantasy would explode to life. But above everything else, this fascination scared her. She had no idea how it had taken such a hold of her or how, for the first time in her life, she could not control any of her thoughts or feelings when it came to a man. How had she become so consumed by an illusion? And because of this, she had made the decision not to let her roommates know anything about the whole sordid mess. If nothing else, she had her pride; it had taken her far too long to stand on her own two feet. Dream or no, she wasn’t the type of woman to drop everything for a man—her mother had drilled that into her head from the time she could nod back in agreement.
It was all for naught, anyway, she told herself; he’d soon be long gone. He was a in a band. Bands toured. They also engaged in clawing, disease-ridden sex with women like the ones at the Skellar, but that was when they weren’t busy destroying their hotel rooms or crashing their Maseratis off cliffs. She had watched too many documentaries to think otherwise. If the car crashes didn’t kill them, then the overdoses, the suicides, or the auto-erotic asphyxiation most certainly would. Margot had been more than willing to recite an impressive list of dead rockers last night on the ride home.
But Andrew was here now. In San Francisco. The Lost Boys would be playing at the Skellar again tonight. What would it hurt to see him one more time? To see him standing there, to see those clear, maddening blue eyes that she hadn’t seen before. To see his hands.
Grave Refrain: A Love/Ghost Story Page 5
