Softer Than Steel (A Love & Steel Novel) (6 page)

I Never Promised You the Garden

“Hey, let me show you the lake.”

Rick rose slowly to Kat’s request. He and Adrian were out by the grill, having another beer as Adrian painstakingly built a pyre out of twigs and stick matches inside a huge pyramid of charcoal briquettes and Abbey serenaded them with the little pink ukulele Rick had sent from Hawaii for her birthday last year.

“Want to join us?” mother asked daughter.

“Nope.” Abbey handed Adrian her instrument. “Your turn.”

Rick looked to his best friend for backup. Surely Adrian wasn’t going to allow him to be subjected to some sort of heart-to-heart alone with Kat?

“Sorry, mate. It doesn’t matter how metal you are. If an eight-year-old hands you a pink ukulele, you sure as hell better play it.” Adrian smiled and began to strum as Abbey made hula motions with her hands to wave Rick and her mother out of the yard.

Bugger.

Kat led the way toward the road. Neighbors were just ending their day’s commute, coming home from work in town or from the city. A car rolled past, giving a beep before crunching into the gravel driveway a few doors down. As Kat lifted a hand in greeting, Rick wondered what most people would think about their odd little commute this morning. Nine to five had no meaning in the music world.

“So,” he grunted, “you’ve enough food for an army.” Small talk. “Who’s coming?”

“Oh, Marissa and her family.”

“The chesty one?”

Kat laughed. “She’ll love that! And you, for noticing. Yep, that’s her.”

“How about the ginger? Your brother’s girl?”

“Liz?” She shook her head. “First time she’s missed spending the holiday up here in years. She’s taking inventory in her bagel shop over the long weekend. So it’ll just be us. Oh, and my neighbor, Karen, with her family. They won’t eat much, though. They’ve recently gone macrobiotic.”

“Sounds painful.”

“It’s not too crazy. Mostly raw veggies, grains, and—”

“I was kidding, Kat. I know what it is. We tried it with Simone, after her diagnosis.”

Rick hoped his grim and halting tone would stick a pin in any widow-to-widower heart-to-heart Kat was considering. Yes, they had both lost spouses. When Kat rang him up out of the blue four years ago, they had instantly bonded over their heartbreak. And over Adrian, of course. But the parallels ended there.

“This.” Kat allowed Rick to punctuate her pause with a gasp upon sight of the lake. “This is my Polihale, where I come to ponder things.”

In that first phone conversation, Rick had mentioned the vast beach near his house back in Hawaii, and how it had been a savior to him. Obviously Kat had not forgotten.

“Superb, Kat . . . really.” Rick stood at the shore, hips jutted slightly forward in his cargo shorts. The far horizon hovering over the watery expanse had his undivided attention. Who would’ve thought there would be such a vista hidden at the end of a sleepy suburban block?

“I can’t believe we’ve never gotten you up here before now.”

Rick shrugged. “Ah, you know. Touring, recording. Now, if you were to build a midsize venue back here . . .” His laugh dwindled. “Listen, Kat. I’m sorry for ranting earlier. I really like you, and cripes, Adrian is the happiest I’ve ever seen him. It’s just . . . well. Marriage can be a shock on the rock and roll system. And vice versa.”

Kat cringed at his stress on the word
vice
. Adrian had obviously confessed Digger’s every sin to her, long before any talk of marriage had taken place.
It was a cheap shot,
Rick silently admitted. He was fairly confident, even though the Digger persona was present and accounted for these days, that Adrian was the person in control.

“Are you both sure you’re ready for it?” he continued. “I’ve seen Adrian on marriage.” Adrian didn’t speak of his ex-wife Robyn very often, but Rick knew the knife of that relationship still twisted in him every so often, especially when their daughter, Natalie, was involved. An old TV commercial popped into Rick’s head, of an egg hitting a sizzling frying pan.
This is your brain . . . and this is your brain on drugs.
Would “Adrian on marriage” appear any different to Kat than he did now, after four years of cohabitating?

“I’m not Robyn,” she said slowly.

“Thank the bloody Lord for that.”

I’m not Simone, either,
her eyes seemed to say, or perhaps it was his own imagination inflicting such cruel and unusual punishment. After all, he found new ways to torture himself daily, thinking about the way he had abused his own marriage. He’d give anything to take the wasted hours back: the affairs, the lies, the excuses. How he wished he could make it up to his loyal wife tenfold. But how could a sinner repent when his confessor had slipped from his grasp, languishing under her lover’s touch before he could fully redeem himself?

Rick hurled a rock into the watery gray expanse. “All this talk of making it legal after four years of engagement, did this stem from Miles’s passing?” he wanted to know.

Miles, the band’s longtime sound engineer, had passed away a few months before, leaving behind a wife, a girlfriend, four children, and a big heartbreaking mess. Married to one, living long-term with the other, children in both houses needing the benefits and life insurance that neither woman was willing to swallow their pride and share.

Kat scooped up a handful of sand and let it sift through her fingers. “His death certainly made us reconsider our current arrangement, yes.”

“So why not make it a quick, small thing and be done with it?”

“Believe me, I suggested that. He’s the one who wants his mother and Natalie, and my family and
all
the friends, mutual and exclusive, together for one big shindig.” She squinted out to where the late-day sun was bouncing blindingly off the water before turning back to Rick. “Adrian may say it’s me who wants the fairy-tale wedding, but it’s really him.”

“He always did like tales.” Rick smirked. “But they usually had bloodletting and gore and medieval weaponry of some kind.”

“I don’t care if he shows up for the wedding in full chain mail, carrying a cat-o’-nine-tails. As long as he comes home with me at the end of the night as my husband.”

Kat’s comment caused the tension in Rick to break like the tiny whitecaps rushing to the shoreline. An unbridled laugh escaped. “You really do love the hell out of him, don’t you?”

She responded, just as Adrian had happily reported she had after he proposed to her using just a Sharpie marker, an antique emerald ring and two stone lions as his witnesses. “YES!”

* * *

25 May

It’s evening, my love. I’m in bed in a stranger’s room, staring up at a photo collage of twenty-five-year-old me. It feels very odd—not so much that I’m in a strange bed; I’ve gotten used to that again. No, it’s the fact that I have no recollection of even being present when these pictures were taken, let alone printed in magazines for the world to see. I’m wearing that shirt you gave me, the loud tropical one I never liked, but you loved. As if you foresaw us destined for Hanalei one day.

The purple naupaka on the
mauka
side of the house was blooming like mad when I left for our European tour. I hacked away the lot last year, but it all came back with a vengeance. Its half flower shape saddens me, and they still smell like you. Impossible to think a flower could mimic a person’s scent, but I swear on my life, these do.

There’s a picture of you and me with Miles up here on the wall as well. Remember our sound engineer? We lost Miles this spring—prostate cancer took him quick. Did you know he was Jewish? I didn’t. We never talked about that kind of thing on the road. The family needed a minyan, so yours truly got a starring role. I recited the Mourner’s Kaddish, like I do for you each year.
Yitgadal v’yitkadash . . .

Fuck cancer in its motherfucking arse.

I’ve almost filled a notebook, writing to you since the tour started. Ever since I found those postcards, I’ve felt compelled. I cannot believe you saved every single one.

I should’ve written you more, Simone. Out of the blue, just because. Love notes for when just walls, not even continents, separated us.

* * *

Feck. It was happening again. Starting like a seedling. Nudging, itching at the back of Rick’s brain. Waking him with a jolt. Cold dread iced up his spine, nourishing the fear in his head until it became a reedy whip of a sapling. It smacked him with horrible thoughts of
this may be it, this may be the big one, are you ready for this, you’re going to die, you’re dying alone, it’s here.
When he tried to shake away the thoughts, his mind began to buzz like an amplifier. Rendered helpless, unable to think logically with all the static and feedback.

Then the sweating began, flashes of toxic heat irradiating his entire six-foot frame. The bowels in an uproar. He vaulted from the attic bed to the bathroom and back again.
Lie down. Calm down. It’s nothing. The doctor checked you out before the tour started. You’re fine.
His heart blasting beats as quick as Lars Ulrich on the double bass drum pedals.

Why me? Why now?

Stress. Don’t they call it the silent killer?

Rick cursed himself. He should never have stepped off that bus in the first place. He should be in Boston with the others, not stuck with the consolation prize of Adrian and Kat’s company as they talked nonstop for two days about their wedding plans.

He tried to keep his breathing measured and deep.
Focus, man.
His eyes hit the ceiling, reeling in their sockets for a focal point.

And there’s your wasted life, flashing before your ruddy eyes.

Thoughts Rick relied upon to bring joy and comfort under normal circumstances—his children, his home, the ocean—cruelly magnified the panic. And now, faced with the time line of his career sloping down from above, he felt a double betrayal.
You quixotic tosser, still tilting at windmills, chasing cheap thrills, the meaningless attention, and at what cost? Your wife, your sons? What are you doing here? What were you thinking?

Each and every photo mocked him, accused him.

You never should have boarded that bus. You should be home.

“Home” was as empty as the porcelain bowl Rick hung his head over, dry heaving, burping, gasping. The twins were newly graduated; coming home wasn’t on their agenda this year. Their older brother, Paul, hadn’t been back for an age, and rarely called.

The band. It’s what matters now. You run the show. It’s your gig.

Madison Square Garden.

The other band they had challenged was unapologetically huge. The masses loved them. But Corroded Corpse had always owned Madison Square Garden on Halloween in their heyday. And it had been the date and place of their first reunion show as the Rotten Graves Project. It was territory worth pissing in.

If they got the date, and Adrian refused to play it . . .

You left him behind before.

You left him in jail. And the band played on briefly before spiraling down in flames. Some bandleader you are.

Thankfully, the pulse pounding behind his eardrums drowned out the voice in Rick’s head. He felt dizzy.

Their agent would be calling tomorrow with the outcome.

Rick wondered if he’d last that long.

Far below him, he heard the bells begin to toll from Kat’s father’s clocks striking two, over and over, as unsynchronized as his thoughts.

He needed air.

Stealth and silent, he descended the steep steps, mindful that Abbey was sleeping in the room at the foot of them. Just the action of moving, doing, seeking out sanctuary, improved his condition. He slunk past the menagerie of ticking clocks.

Perhaps a good Bo-Peep on the lanai will do the trick,
he thought. After more than twenty years of living on Kauai, Rick’s British tongue had become Hawaiianized. It wasn’t unusual to mix Cockney rhyming slang with something exotically Austronesian. His lingo certainly elevated the status of his hosts’ musty screened-in porch, which contained a few potted plants and a lopsided futon.

“Hey.”

To his surprise, Kat had already beaten him there.

“Bugger, you scared me!” As if his heart needed any more reason to knock like the clock hammers against their chime rods. “What are you doing up?”

Kat laughed softly, but Rick could see the balled-up tissues in her fist, the reddened eyes. “Stupid insomnia. It always hits me before he leaves again.” She swiped at her eyes. “Like my brain has decided to not miss a minute of his furlough.”

She shimmied over to make room for him, but he couldn’t sit. Adrenaline was flooding through him, and suddenly even the lanai felt claustrophobic. He began to pace.

“Maybe we shouldn’t have come . . . for the off-days,” he managed. “Spare you and Abbey . . .” He gulped. “The roller coaster.”

Kat frowned. “You’re the one who looks like you’ve been through one too many loop-dee-loops. You okay?”

“I think . . .”
I’m dying it’s a heart attack aneurysm stroke I need to get to the hospital something’s happening I can’t stop it I don’t know how to stop it and it feels like—

He stopped and pressed his cheek against the old porch screen.
You’ve dealt with this before.
Now breathe.
“I’ll be okay,” he managed.

“I think you’re having a panic attack.”

Rick closed his eyes and turned the other cheek to the screen.

“Anxiety isn’t a sign of weakness, Rick.” Kat paused a moment, then quietly added, “I’ve been told it’s a sign of being strong for too long.”

He didn’t feel strong. He felt wiped out. It was as if all the miles logged had suddenly caught up to him, and he couldn’t fathom taking another step.

“Maybe you should take—”

Rick cut her off at the pass. “No drugs, Kat. No way.” He had made it through raising three teenagers on his own without “mother’s little helpers”; he certainly wasn’t going to start taking anything now as an empty-nester. He was only forty-four years old; wasn’t this supposed to be the prime of his life?