Beneath the Stain - Part 2 (4 page)

“Sure they are,” Jefferson said, nodding. “Gerry got those for him. He got real wound up when we had to perform, and the traveling—couldn’t sleep, couldn’t sit still. That shit helped. Isn’t that right, Mackey?”

To Trav’s surprise, the wad of comforter started to move. “Yeah, Gerry got that.” The comforter moved some more and Trav got his first look at the elusive Mackey Sanders.

He looked about twelve years old—an underfed twelve at that.

Messy hair, bleached blond at the ends and growing out from sandy-brown roots, fell in his eyes and across his mouth. He was wearing a pair of plain white briefs, the kind you bought at Walmart, and they didn’t look all that clean. His chest was narrow and his arms were stringy. His skin was marked with sex, and grimy, like maybe sweat and come were the only liquids that had touched it in the past couple of days. Trav could smell his unwashed body from the far side of the bed. He had a few red marks on his arms, Trav noted clinically, but no hardened track marks—not yet.

Who needed needles when you had all those lovely pills?

“What’d you do with the coke?” Mackey asked, squinting at Trav. “Who are you, and what’d you do with the coke?”

“I threw it away,” Trav said patiently. “I’m your new manager, this band is officially drug-free, and the coke’s in the trash can.”

Mackey squinted some more and stumbled to his feet, holding the once-white comforter over his shoulders like a cloak. “If you’re our manager, don’t we have to go to the studio today?”

Trav nodded patiently, figuring that with the state of the room and Mackey’s bloodshot eyes, he was probably
way
too stoned to make any sense. “You’ll have to go tomorrow,” he said, his voice short. “Today we’re going to lay down some ground rules.”

Mackey grunted again. “No coke?” he asked, like he was making sure. He glared at Trav again, but his eyes were covered by hair and barely open. Trav couldn’t have recognized him on the street if he saw him awake and sober. “So I don’t have to get up and do anything? And I can’t have any drugs?”

He was staring at Trav like maybe Trav just made this up for fun, so Trav kept his asshole teacher voice. “No, Mackey. You
can’t
have any drugs.”

“Okay,” Mackey mumbled. “Jeff, move. I’m going back to sleep.”

“’Kay, Mackey. We’ll shut the light off when we’re done cleaning up.”

“We’ll do
what
?” Trav’s chin actually dropped, even more so when Jeff held his finger up to his lips.

While Trav was standing there, wishing for a breath mask so he didn’t have to smell Mackey’s unwashed body and the stench of sex and drugs and booze, jaw unhinged, Mackey sank down into the soiled comforter, curled up into a little ball, and covered himself with that once-fluffy blanket. Jeff walked to the end of the bed and stripped it, then shoved the sheets and the clothes that littered the floor—mostly jeans and T-shirts, no store brand, like Kell—into a fabric laundry hamper, which he dragged to the door.

“Bring the trash out,” Jefferson said. “We can ask for maid service and a new comforter—he’ll sleep right through it. Gerry used to do it all the time.”

“But we need to wake him up! Dammit, he can’t—”

Jefferson sighed and looked around the room, his eyes unfocused. For the first time, Trav noticed the stack of notebooks—the cheap spiral kind—sitting on top of the desk in the corner of the room and the well-used acoustic guitar leaning against the wall. A few empty cans littered the area—soda, not beer—and the occasional cheeseburger wrapper. It was like the room was divided in two parts: Mackey the hardworking musician, and Mackey the hard-partying rock star.

“What’re the notebooks for?” he asked after a moment.

“Writing songs,” Jefferson said, surprised, like Trav should know this. “He was up until four in the morning doing that.” He glanced at the bed and shrugged. “Whatever he did with that other guy, that only lasted ’til ten. Mackey’s got an album to put out, and our mom’s got a house we bought on credit. You don’t think he’d forget that, do you?”

Trav looked at his watch, feeling old. It was ten o’clock in the morning. No wonder the kid had asked for coke to wake up. “He’s got two hours,” he said, trying to sound like a hard-ass.

“Yeah, okay,” Jefferson said, but he was still looking around the sterile hotel space. It wasn’t a bad hotel room, but in the end, that was all it was. “Mackey used to have rock posters all around his room, do you know that? There were three of us in there, and he had all these free posters he got from the music store, and every one of them had someone great. Michael Hutchence, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison. I sorta miss those posters. Stevie says when we get a real home, we can put up framed pictures. I’m looking forward to doing that.”

Jeff’s lips quirked up at a sudden cacophony of voices in the front room, and Trav realized he was going to have to change his tack.

He’d take care of the rest of the band first and
then
deal with Mackey. Heath had been right—whatever obscure warning he’d been trying to give Trav, he was right.

The Sanders boys weren’t kids, but they were special. He was going to have to pull out his dusty people skills before he got military precision out of
this
bunch.

S
OMEONE
YANKED
the comforter off of him, and he was
fucking freezing.

“Give it back,” he mumbled. “Kell, gimme the blanket back, I’m fucking cold.”

“You’re in withdrawal,” came a flat voice, and Mackey groaned.

“Fucking shakes, man. I didn’t even need the coke, but where’d you put the fucking Xanax? I need that shit.” Mackey dimly remembered waking up to pee and coming back to the freshly made bed, only to see his stash had been leveled. He’d gone back to sleep—
God
, it had been so long since he’d been able to sleep—but then he’d been yanked rudely awake, and the pills were still gone.

That
time, the fucker who’d taken his drugs had dragged him into the bathroom and shoved him under the fucking shower.

That was confusing. Someone had
bathed
him, rubbing his hair roughly with shampoo and scrubbing at his back and between his legs with a washcloth. It had been awful and invasive, but at the same time sort of comforting. When was the last time someone had taken care of him?

But that didn’t mean he wanted douchemonkeys washing him without his permission again.

Mackey sat up in his little corner, clutching the suddenly clean comforter to his naked chest. “I’m fucking sick,” he snapped. “Can’t I just get one lousy fucking pill?”

“No, but you
can
get one lousy fucking trip to rehab,” snapped the douchemonkey who’d forced him into the shower.

“I don’t need rehab!” Mackey shouted, standing up in his space, the holy country of Mackey. “Just give me the fucking drugs!”

The guy was sitting by the side of the bed, one hand on the concierge phone. For the first time, Mackey got a good look at him.

He wasn’t bad, really. Short brown hair, maybe a little red in it. Brown eyes. One of those long faces with a long jaw, and a strong nose—not a pretty face, but a hard-ass face. You’d follow that lantern-jawed bastard into hell.

Apparently Mackey was doing just that.

“Don’t worry, Mackey,” the guy said in an absurdly gentle voice. “They’ll help you clean out in rehab. Sedate you until this shit’s out of your system.”

Mackey laughed a little, even though his skin felt like it was being pierced with a thousand tattoo needles. God, all the other guys had gotten inked, but not Mackey. Mackey wasn’t sure he knew what he wanted on his body for permanent yet. Nothing that was his. Nothing real. So maybe what tattoo needles
would
have felt like—myriad pinpricks on exposed skin—and his joints ached like he had a fever, and his chest hurt, and his head. A wave of black nausea washed over him, and he bent double.

“Man, I’m gonna puke,” he muttered, and before the next wave swept him, a firm hand was supporting his back, lifting him so he could hang his head over the trash can.

He finished, and the guy disappeared, leaving Mackey blessedly alone to die in peace. He was
not
pleased when the guy came back and wiped his face with a wet cloth and made him rinse out his mouth. He was even
less
pleased when strong arms—hella strong, like tree trunks—lifted him off the floor and laid him on the bed.

“Let me back down!” he protested, feeling feeble. God, he could barely roll over. “Man, I hate this bed. Too big. Too fucking big. Don’t need a bed this big.”

He wrestled with the comforter, which disappeared with a jerk only to float back down on top of his body. He clutched it to his shoulders again and huddled, freezing and sweating and wishing he could die.

“One fucking pill,” he muttered. “All this asshole needs to do is give me one fucking pill. Goddammit, I need to fucking write.”

He struggled to sit up. “Don’t you see that I need to fucking write? I need to write, motherfucker! We’re not gonna get the album done, and then there goes our contract, and I gotta have the music, man—what else’m I gonna fuckin’ do?”

“Sh, sh sh….” A washcloth, warm and not freezing, wiped at his forehead. “Mackey, I swear, you haven’t lost your contract, okay? Could you just calm down so I can call the rehab clinic? They’ll send an ambulance, get you an IV—it’ll be fun.”

“That there is a bald-faced lie,” Mackey said bitterly. “That don’t sound like fun. That sounds like a fucking hospital, but worse because there’s not any fucking Xanax!”

The washcloth kept wiping. “Mackey, do you really want to need the Xanax this bad? Do you want to need
anything
this bad?”

Mackey whimpered. “Music,” he muttered. “Music. It’s all I need.”

“Good. I’ll bring your iPod, make them play it all you want.”

Another wave of shudders wracked Mackey’s body, and he was too tired to fight. “God, who the fuck are you?”

“I’m Trav Ford, your new manager.”

And Mackey remembered Gerry, face blue, tongue distended, a puddle of vomit and pills next to his face. “Hell. Can
I
die this time?” he muttered. “I don’t want to see Gerry die again.”

“Yeah, kid,” the guy—Trav—said, smoothing back his hair. “I mean, no. You can’t die. But we won’t make you see anyone else die, okay?”

“’Kay,” Mackey muttered. “’Kay. Whatever. Just… God. Put me to sleep. Anything. But it hurts. It hurts and I need it.”

“Yeah,” Trav said. “Music, Mackey. Remember that. Music.”

A sudden shaft of humor penetrated Mackey’s misery. “She don’t lie, she don’t lie, she don’t lie,” he sang.

The only thing that got him through the next couple of hours was Trav’s voice, off-key and sardonic, singing the chorus.

H
E
DIDN
’
T
remember much about the hospital. Mostly it was like the hotel, but his iPod was on shuffle in the background and the people giving him the sponge baths were not half as memorable as Trav.

He did a lot of sleeping—he remembered that. And when he woke up, clean and confused, a nice man in a very expensive sweater vest and tie was sitting next to his bed. He had neat gray hair and a goatee and a sort of patronizing smile.

“How are we doing, Mr. Sanders?”

“We feel like a weasel crapped in our mouth. Who are you?”

The guy blinked. “Why a weasel?”

“’Cause it sounds funny. It’s a funny animal. Nothing rhymes with weasel. Who the fuck are you?”

The patronizing part left and only the smile remained. “I’m Dr. Cambridge. You’re in a rather exclusive rehab facility in Beverly Hills, Mr. Sanders. I’m going to be your tour guide on the way to recovery.”

Mackey narrowed his eyes. “How long is this tour supposed to last?” he asked suspiciously. “And what stops is it supposed to take?”

Dr. Cambridge smiled, oh so gently. Mackey was reminded of all the times he’d gotten kicked out of school for fighting. Not all of the kids he’d beaten up had been mean.  Some of them had been missionaries or counselor’s kids or kids trying to start a club.  All of them had smiled
exactly
like that.

T
RAV
’
S
FIRST
order of business after getting Mackey to rehab was getting the guys out of the fucking hotel room. No, they couldn’t record without Mackey—and Kell and Blake complained bitterly about the decision to send Mackey away for that very reason. They shut up, though, when Trav emerged from the bedroom, Mackey in his arms, so Trav could take him downstairs to the waiting ambulance.

Trav didn’t want to think about how thin Mackey was, his emaciated ankle and absurdly large-boned foot sticking out of the covers. Trav had carried children who weighed more out of war zones.

He didn’t want to think about a lot of things relating to Mackey, actually. He didn’t want to think about his pathetic insistence that he had to work, and he didn’t want to think about the way he’d sung, everything from Eric Clapton to Foo Fighters, as withdrawal cramps racked his body.

He didn’t want to think about the surprising, darkly funny bursts of irony from a guy he’d had to throw in the shower because he couldn’t stand the smell anymore.

Or the fact that Mackey James Sanders, who had a multimillion-dollar recording contract and six Les Paul guitars, had three personal items in his room besides his laptop. He had his iPod, his beaten-up Walmart brand kid-size guitar, and his notebooks.

That was all.

God. Trav had actually bought him underwear so he’d be able to send some clean clothes to the rehab center.

He took some deep breaths and shored himself up. He’d co-opted Mackey’s room in the suite and given up his own room. He hadn’t even unpacked. As soon as he’d walked into Mackey’s room later that first afternoon and heard him moaning while stinking in sweat, he’d realized that this was not a hands-off operation. God, he’d never seen anyone look that bad and live.