Mikel was listening, his head down a little, as if to keep it closer to my own. When Tailhook had left on tour, we’d been popular, but nothing like we were now. Our third album,
Nothing for Free,
had just been released, and we didn’t have any idea how it would do. Certainly neither Click nor I had ever been stopped while doing our shopping. It had happened to Van, but only rarely, and only at home, because we were, by and large, a local band.
“Never bite the hand that feeds you,” Mikel said.
“Not even that.” I glanced back down the aisle, saw that the three of them had gone. “You want to know what that was all about?”
“They wanted to tell you how much they like you.”
“Yeah, but do you know why?”
“It’s a way of saying thank you?”
“That was about how they want to be my friend. They shake my hand and tell me their names, and I tell them mine, just to remind them I’m a real person, too, that we should act like real people act when they first meet one another. And then it’s small talk, weather, music, movies, shit like that.
“Then there’s the pause—and there is
always
the pause, Mikel—the moment when there’s nothing else to say, because they’re done, and they’re waiting for me.”
“To do what?”
“To say something like, hey, you guys seem totally cool, why don’t we go get a pizza together. Or, hey, you know what would be fun? Let’s go back to my place and watch DVDs. They want to be more than fans. They want to be special to me, and that’s when I offer them my hand again, and I say thank you so much for saying hello, and have a very good life. Most of the time, they go away happy.”
“Most of the time?”
I started pushing the cart again, heading to dairy. “Sometimes they don’t get the hint. Sometimes they get cranky—‘you wouldn’t be where you are without me.’ Or ‘you love all the attention, don’t pretend you don’t get off on it.’ But maybe ninety percent of the people who stop me, all they want to do is say, hey, thanks.”
“I couldn’t do it,” Mikel said, after a couple seconds. “I couldn’t keep it up.”
I was trying to decide between low- and nonfat milk. I went with the skim, placing it next to the cereal, so they could get used to each other’s company.
“You should see Van do it sometime,” I told him. “She’s very smooth, always smiling. I’ve seen her in a Virgin Megastore signing autographs for six hours straight, no breaks, no pauses. Always makes eye contact, always says, ‘May I sign that for you, please?’ and then always says, ‘Thanks so much for coming to see us.’ She’s better at it than I will ever be.”
“You seemed pretty smooth to me.”
“No,” I said. “But it’s nice of you to say so.”
We filled the back of my Jeep with the groceries, and when we got back to my house, I put the car in the garage. We unloaded the bags into the kitchen through the back door, and while I sorted and stored my purchases, Mikel took a wander through the house. I was still at it when he came back into the kitchen, and he picked up the phone and used his PDA to find the phone number for Scanalert, and I heard his half of the conversation. He had to give them his name and then a password—“Renderman”—to verify his identity, and then requested that they switch the system back on. He hung up happy.
“Done,” he said.
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. They just throw a switch or something.”
We finished with the unpacking, making light conversation. I finally remembered to ask about Jessica, and he told me that they had stopped seeing each other during the summer, that he was going with a girl named Avery now. I felt bad that I hadn’t known about the switch, and he told me about the new girl, and how she was a dancer, and how much he thought I’d like her.
“You need a dancer for a video, you should get her,” he said.
“I’m not in the band anymore,” I reminded him. “Even if I was, I wouldn’t have any say in it.”
“You could talk to Van.”
I shrugged, thinking that the way Mikel went through women was just another residual of our shared childhood. I couldn’t remember ever having had a romantic relationship that lasted more than a month myself, and the only one that lasted that long had been almost ten years ago, during high school. But Mikel’s news sobered me; it had looked like the thing with Jessica was serious.
I’d bought beer even though Mikel had given me the hairy eyeball while I was doing it, and as I put the last of the six-packs in the refrigerator, he dropped the bomb. It was probably part of the reason he’d insisted on accompanying me, and he must have been waiting from the moment we’d finished breakfast, but it had taken him almost three hours before he could do it.
“Tommy’s out.”
I stared at my newly stocked refrigerator shelves, at a box of Land O Lakes butter. I wasn’t certain I’d heard him right.
“What?”
“He’s out,” Mikel said. “Got out three months ago.”
I did the math in my head, closing the refrigerator door. “That’s not right, he’s supposed to be in for another five years.”
Mikel had been folding the paper grocery bags, making a stack of them on the counter. He smoothed the last one down, shaking his head.
“Paroled?” I asked. “If he was paroled there should have been a hearing, Mikel. I should have been notified. I should have been able to attend.”
“He wasn’t paroled,” Mikel said. “He’s out, he’s done. All finished.”
“He was supposed to do twenty years.”
“There’s this thing, it’s called a buy-back or time-served or something like that. For every day of good behavior in prison, the state takes a certain amount off your sentence. It’s how they deal with overcrowding.”
“That’s not right.”
“He did fifteen years, Mim. That’s a long time.”
I was practically spitting. “Fuck that. Mom’s still dead.”
“And he’s still our father.”
“No, my father’s dead.”
“I’m not talking about Steven—”
“Good, you better not.”
He took a soft breath, looking away from me. I waited, then decided I didn’t want to wait for what he might have to say, and found my cigarettes. I lit one and flicked angry ash into the sink.
“He’s been staying with me, Mim. He’d really like to see you.”
“He’s
what
?”
“He didn’t have a place to stay. He’s staying with me until he can get on his feet.”
“Ex-con Tommy living with my drug-dealing brother? Are you out of your mind?”
“It’s not like that. I’m just helping him out. He’s having trouble finding a job, you know, with the economy the way it is.”
“Hard to get a gig when you’re an alcoholic killer,” I said. “I’m really torn up for him.”
“He was in prison for fifteen years for what he did,” Mikel said. “He’s not the same man he was when it happened, he’s not the same man he was when we were in that house.”
“Bullshit.”
“Maybe it’s time you stopped inventing history, Miriam, and saw Mom a little more for who she was, rather than this sainted martyr you want her to be. Maybe you ought to give Tommy the benefit of the doubt.”
“You saw it happen,” I said, softly. “You saw it, too.”
“I know that, but—”
“You saw it, too!” I screamed at him.
It pushed him back a step, surprised him. I smoked more of my cigarette.
“He’d like to see you, just to talk with you.” Mikel picked up his keys from where they were lying on the counter. “I think if you can give total strangers twenty minutes at Fred Meyer, then he’s not asking all that much.”
“You’re leaving?”
“I’ve got shit to do, you’re tired, and I don’t want to get in the way of your drinking.”
“Hey, fuck you, big brother.”
He started down the hall, to the front door. “I’ll give you a call tonight or tomorrow, to check up on you. You might want to call Joan, let her know you’re back.”
I caught up with him at the front door, as he was moving onto the porch.
“He’s staying with you?”
“I told you already.”
“Right now, Tommy’s there right now?”
“I don’t know about right now. He’s been picking up construction work where he can, so he heads out pretty early.”
“Do me a favor? When you see him?”
“What?”
“Make a point of telling him I hope he burns in hell,” I said, then slammed the door on him.
CHAPTER 6
I cracked a beer, then fetched my flight case from the hallway. The alarm panel said the system was “ready,” so I armed the system, and when the panel sang its three-tone alert, I actually felt safe and tight in my house. Then I took the case down to the basement, to the music room.
The contractors had done as I’d asked, sealing the windows and replacing the entry door with a heavier, reinforced version. There was padding now down over the concrete, and acoustic tile on the ceiling, and my gear was there, too, my amps and other guitars—the ones that hadn’t come on tour with me—and my keyboard. In a pinch, the space could serve as a passable recording studio.
I worked the combination on the flight case and snapped the locks up, then checked the Tele. It had traveled fine, secure in its bed, dry and happy and cool to the touch. It wasn’t my first guitar and it wasn’t my newest, but it was my favorite electric. Leon Fender and George Fullerton started making Fender guitars in 1950, and their first model was called the Broadcaster, but they had to change the name because the Gretsch company made drums also called Broadcaster. They renamed their guitar the Telecaster, and it’s been pretty much the same instrument ever since; the only real difference you find is in the quality of workmanship and materials, who did the building, what was used to construct the guitar.
My Tele was made in 1954, body of ash, neck of maple, black pick guard, still fitted with its original hardware, a gift from the label after
Nothing for Free
went gold in the U.S. They’d given Van an emerald and gold necklace from Tiffany, and Click a set of Keplinger snare drums. The Tele was almost fifty years old, now, and to this day I’ve never met an electric that plays as sweetly. It had the original pickups, but the input jack had been replaced, and the fingerboard refretted, a custom job that made it less collectible but let it play like butter under my fingers. Fabrizio did some other minor work on it while we were on the road, as well. Before each show, he would string every one of my guitars, replacing the old ones with the new. He was utterly tone-deaf, and relied on an electronic tuner, and each and every time he handed me a guitar, it was perfect. I’d fiddle with the tuning heads just for show, but he and I both knew it was garbage.
Holding the Tele and thinking of Fabrizio, I realized that Van hadn’t even given me the opportunity to say good-bye.
I put the guitar in its stand, next to the Gibson SG, got out the soft cloth and gave every instrument a wipe-down, then put the case and cloth away in the storage closet. I had to move a couple boxes to make room, and when I was shoving things around, one of the boxes tumbled. Copies of the press kit from
Nothing for Free
spilled onto the floor, black-and-white photos of the band sliding across one another like a monochromatic tide. I swore a lot and bent down, trying to gather them all together again. There were another three boxes in the closet just like the one I’d toppled, each filled with the same promotional material, and I still had no idea on earth why they’d been sent to me rather than our manager, Graham.
Things back in their place, I headed upstairs. The beer was dead, so I exchanged it for a fresh one in the kitchen, drank it while I smoked another cigarette, looking out the window at the backyard. The lawn was more crabgrass than anything else, and the rosebushes all needed a desperate pruning. Maybe I could get a recommendation for a gardener from one of my neighbors.
I finished the cigarette about the same time I finished the beer, so I opened another two, then dragged myself upstairs to my bedroom. I put both beers on the nightstand. The bedroom smelled of fresh carpet and the hint of fresh paint, and, again, carpentry, but nothing more. The pictures on my bureau were all the same. There were three of them—a small picture of myself with my mother, taken at one of my barely remembered birthday parties, when I’d turned either five or maybe six. Another one, larger, of me and Mikel, taken a couple years back at a bar. The last one a backstage shot taken here, at the Roseland Theatre in town, after a Tailhook show, of me standing between Steven and his wife, my foster mother, Joan. In the picture, I’m shining with sweat and holding a bouquet of flowers, and Joan and Steven each look like they’re proud enough to burst.
I unpacked my bag, throwing my dirty clothes in the laundry basket and my clean clothes in their drawers. I undressed, took a beer with me into the shower. I stayed under the water long enough to finish it, got out when it was empty, and dropped the bottle in the trash. There was condensation on the mirror, and I swiped at it and stared at my reflection, seeing my mother. She’d been a small woman, too, and for some reason I couldn’t conjure a memory of her hands ever being warm. She’d been thirty-two when she died, barely six years older than me, and showing more age than she should’ve, thin-faced and already creasing.
No wrinkles on me yet, nothing that would take three hours in a makeup chair to hide. I looked myself over, checking from every angle I could manage, and remained pretty pleased with the results of my survey. I hadn’t been vain before meeting Van, and I didn’t like to think I was, now, but being with her for so long had taken its toll. We’d been a band for less than a month when she shared with me her Thesis of Rock Stardom, which essentially came down to this—for guys, it’s how you sound
first,
then how you look; for women, it’s how you look,
then
how you sound, and even then, it’s more about how you look. It was fine if Click wanted to chow on cheeseburgers and sit on his can watching TV, she’d say; you and me, girlfriend, we’ve got a date at 24-Hour Fitness.
I wondered if the man with the gun had liked what he’d seen. I wondered if he’d gotten off on it, and then thought I was probably damn lucky he hadn’t.
And for a second, I wondered if any of it—the man with the gun, the back of the Ford, the drive around for nothing—had happened at all.
Mikel was wrong about a great many things, and he certainly was no authority on trust or The Truth, but he was right in at least one respect: I am a hell of a liar.
I’m so good at it, half the time, I don’t even know I’m doing it myself.
I came back to my reflection, the water still on my skin, and began toweling off. Honestly, I thought I looked pretty good. Hell, I thought I looked better than pretty good, I thought I looked great, and I told my reflection as much, and then added some unkind things about Van and vanity and how it was appropriate that the one was named after the other. I wasn’t quite sure which one I meant, but I was very passionate about the whole thing, and my reflection, if anything, seemed even more sincere about it than I.
There was another beer waiting, and I went to keep it company, and a little later decided that there were more downstairs, and I could have a couple of those, too. I thought about putting on some clothes or a towel and then decided, my house, my rules. I negotiated the descent okay, and I made it to the kitchen just fine, but I had some trouble getting back up the stairs.
Actually, I had a lot of trouble getting back up the stairs.
I remember making it to the bedroom. I remember a bottle breaking on the bathroom tile. I remember that there was blood, and that upset me.
I don’t really remember much more than that, honestly.