Stupid and Contagious (37 page)

Gross . . . but funny.

“Yeah,” Darren says. “I’m ready to settle down.”

“Real y . . .” I put some disbelief in my tone for good measure.

“It’s true,” he says. “With the right girl. I just think I may have blown it with her a long time ago, and I don’t know if she’l give me another shot . . .”

Oh God. If it wasn’t obvious before, now it is—he’s talking about me. And he’s trying to be romantic and sincere, but some guy is in my right ear, stil talking about that time he busted a nut in that guy’s girlfriend’s mouth, and I’m finding it a little hard to focus.

There was a time when I was crazy about Darren, but that was years ago. When we hooked up in L.A., I thought it was just going to be one night of real y good sex. I didn’t even entertain the idea that we’d ever get back together, so this is al a bit of a surprise. That said, the sex was
really
good. This is so confusing.

Then again I don’t have anyone
else
in my life, right?

Do I? What’s to be so confused about? Why do I feel so goddamned
confused
?

When we ask for the bil our waiter tel s us that it’s already been taken care of.

“By who?” Darren asks, clearly feeling aced out.

“Mr. Simmons, the gentleman at the next table. He knew they were going to be loud, so when he came in he told us he was going to pick up the tab for the tables on either side of him.”

N o w
that
is one cool dude. We thank him, he shakes our hands, and we walk outside and pour ourselves into a taxi.

Fifteen minutes later, I’m on my couch with Darren.

He’s kissing me, and clothes are starting to come off.

And al I can think about is Brady.
Brady!
What the hel is
this
? This is not supposed to be happening. I try to put him out of my mind but I can’t. It’s like he’s here in the room with us. I push Darren off me and get up.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“I’m thirsty,” I say. And I walk to the kitchen and get some water. I sit on this bar stool just outside the kitchen and slowly drink the whole glass of water.

I don’t want to go back to the couch with Darren, so as soon as I finish, I refil my glass and sit back down.

Not only do I not want to go back there with Darren,
I
don’t want to go back there with Darren.
Back to eighteen. Back to nothing mattering but this guy who was going to be a big record producer because of someone his dad knew. Back to relying on anyone or anything else to make me feel like I matter, like I’m going somewhere, like I need anything but my own intel igence and hard work and attitude to make it.

Darren is who I
was.
Crazy, half-assed, sometimes bril iant, never-surrender Brady reminds me more of who I want to be.

Darren final y walks over a couple minutes later.

“You al right?”

“Yeah, just . . . thirsty,” I say. And out of nervousness, I get up and refil my glass
again.

“I see that,” he says.

“Want some water?”

“Is there any left?” he asks, and I laugh. “What’s going on, babe?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think I do. It’s fuckin’ Brady, right?” He remembered his name
this
time.

“Kind of.”

“I thought you said there’s nothing going on,” he says.

“There isn’t . . . we haven’t. But being here with you .

. . I feel like I’m
cheating
on him.”

“Hmmm . . .” he says.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“It’s okay. I was an idiot to let you get away in the first place. But I
did.
So I can’t blame anyone but myself if your heart’s with someone else now.”

“I didn’t know it was.”

I get up off the bar stool and give Darren a hug.

Then he buttons his shirt back up, puts on his shoes, and I walk him to the door.

“No chance at breakup sex, huh?” Darren says with a mock pout. I laugh and shake my head at him. He kisses me on my forehead. “I
have
changed,” he says. “And it probably wouldn’t have been fair anyway

. . . me getting you
and
the band.” He turns.

“What?” I say.

“Superhero. They’re gonna sign with
me.
”

“Since when?” I say, though I’m frozen solid.

“Since this morning. I got the text message when I got off the plane.” He buttons his shirt cuffs. “This was shaping up to be a real y great day.”

“Sorry to ruin your perfect game,” I say. And he’s out the door. And I’m left standing there feeling . . . I can’t even tel what it is. Al I know is, I start to cry. I cry for Brady . . . and I cry for me.

I pace around my apartment for a while. I feel like I need to tel Brady that nothing happened, but I don’t know if that’s even necessary or if he real y cares. His mood has to be in the basement right now. No, below the basement. What’s below the basement? Mud.

And abandoned subway tunnels. And rats.

I knock on his door anyway, but he’s not home. I check back a couple more times after that—about thirteen—but he seems to be out for the night. Now I’m wondering where the hel he went. Not that I have a right to wonder.
Do
I have a right to wonder?

Brady

To say I am crushed doesn’t capture it. To capture it, we would have to invent new words about depression, and hopelessness, and hurt and loss—and then we’d have to bal them al up into one super word.

Superhero is gone. And Heaven is out of reach.

Bad enough that she’s out with that prick, with his California tan and pearly white teeth, but now I’m saddled with the image of her . . . naked . . . with a fucking red rose between her ass cheeks. And he’s—

FUCK! I can’t even
think
about it. He couldn’t come up with a better reason? Who am I kidding? He could probably come up with a mil ion and one reasons.

And every one of them would turn my stomach.

Because it would be her and
him.
Darren Rosenthal.

Winner of the Superhero Sweepstakes.

I cal up Zach because I’ve gotta get my mind off this. He tel s me to come down to the bar, and I oblige.

I’ve been here for six hours, drunk many alcoholic beverages, and sung unspeakable karaoke songs including (but not limited to) Neil Diamond’s

“September Morn.” Thank God, Zach was the only one to witness this display. And I had to promise to pay
him
a hundred bucks not to tel anyone.

The bar is now official y closed, and I think my ass has fal en asleep. I get up off the bar stool and find that my ass is
indeed
asleep, as is the top half of my left thigh. I put my hand on the bar to steady myself, and Zach assumes I’ve had too much to drink. I
have,
but that’s not why I’m walking funny. I’m walking funny because I have pins and needles shooting down my ass.

Nonetheless, Zach tel s me to crash at his place since he lives just upstairs. I’m disappointed to find that the pizza place next door is closed at 4 a.m.

There’s a pizza place on Houston that’s open til six in the morning . . . but their pizza sucks, so I just go upstairs to Zach’s and eat a half-empty box of stale Wheat Thins.

It’s wrong to want to kil someone. This much I know. And yet I want to kil Darren.

“Maybe not kil him,” I say out loud. “Just hurt him . . .

make his face look like a smashed crab.”

“You goin’ on about her prick ex-boyfriend again?”

Zach says, yawning.

“It’s 4:21 a.m. He’s gotta be done having mind-blowing, knock-your-dick-into-your-watch-pocket sex with her, and she’s probably spooning with him right now. Ugh, it makes me sick. I’l bet he’s in front, too, the dick. Anyone would know that Heaven is supposed to be the little spoon, but he’s probably making her be the big spoon.”

“Dude,” Zach says, mashing his face with his hand.

“If she’s in bed with him it’s because she wants to be.”

Zach staggers off toward his bedroom. He’s right.

Everyone
wants to be with Darren. And even Zach doesn’t wanna be with me.

“You want the perfect crime?” I cal out to him. “Me getting the band
and
the girl.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Zach says. “You almost pul ed it off.”

“She doesn’t want to be the big spoon. I know that much.”

I wake up feeling particularly morbid. Not angry, though, just sad. Sad because as drunk as I was last night, I
heard
what Zach said. And he’s dead-on.

She’s with Darren because she
wants
to be. Which means she
doesn’t
want me. Which means I can’t want her. I can’t waste my time thinking about her when she’s thinking about someone else. And even if that guy doesn’t understand that she needs to be married in seven months, and I
do,
she’s made her choice, and she’l have to live with it.

After four days of watching my own homemade
Gilligan’s Island
marathon on Zach’s TiVo and eating whatever I could find that wasn’t freezer-burned, I’ve had enough. I decide to quit wal owing in self-pity and join Phil in the office to wal ow in mutual pity. I’m hurting and feeling a little lost, but my mind is refreshingly clear for the first time in a long while. It’s definitely the end of some things for me, but it’s a beginning of something for Superhero, and I owe it to them to lose graceful y. Hel , maybe I owe it to myself even more. I pick up the phone.

“Hey, Sam, it’s Brady,” I say.

“Uh . . . hey, man,” he says awkwardly. “Did you get my message?”

“Yeah, I did. And I hate to lose you guys.”

“Listen, it’s not—”

“No,” I interrupt. “You don’t have to explain a thing.

You guys are going to be facing a ton of important decisions, sooner than you think. With Darren you’ve got a great company behind you, but if there’s ever anything that bugs you or confuses you, or you just want to talk to somebody who’s been there—I’m here.”

Sam says nothing for a second. So I go on,

“Everyone who starts in this business thinks it’l be different for them, that al the bul shit wil go away, just this once, and their ride wil be silky smooth. But it’s not . . . it’s hard. And when you feel like you’re goin’

nuts . . . cal me. I’l be one more person who honestly cares that you guys become the best fucking band you can be.”

There’s another pause, and I’m half thinking my words are the victims of a lost connection. “Thanks, Brady.”

“You’re welcome.” And then because there’s nothing else, we hang up.

As I walk into the office, Phil is standing there like a store manager who’s about to celebrate me as the mil ionth customer.

“Good news,” he says.

“That’s a first,” I say.

“The bank’s gonna approve our loan. I just heard from Lawrence. We’re getting a twenty-five-thousand-dol ar line of credit for Sleestak Records.”

I’m astonished. “How did this happen?”

“I made it happen,” Phil says proudly. “Your idea got us there. The compilation money proved out, Larry told me. So we don’t have it in stone yet, but he says it’s a lock.”

This time I grab
him
for a hug. “Now al we need is a band to blow it on,” I say with a tired laugh.

“I figured it was my turn to step up. We started this company with money from your uncle, which . . . has been dwindling. So this is to help us take a new direction . . . hel , take
any
direction. And to show you that as useless as I am sometimes, I believe in our company and our friendship . . .”

I can’t very wel hug him again, so I give him a grateful smile and nod my head. “We’re gonna do this

. . . somehow,” I say.

“And when we do,” Phil says, “I’ve got us studio time at Ocean Studios in Burbank.” I give him a wondering shrug. “Yeah,” he says. “When I heard you got Superhero, I got off my dead ass and made some cal s.”

“And what did you do when you heard we
lost
Superhero?” I ask him.

Phil ponders for a second. “Started thinking about who you’d find next.”

Almost makes me want to cry. My boy is al grown up.

I don’t take Heaven’s twelve phone cal s during the week. I have half a mind to set her number up with a distinctive ring on my cel so I’l know from the first notes of the ring which incoming cal s to completely blow off. But for now, it’s hear the ring, check the display, and blow off the cal .

And it is in this mode that I hear yet
another
ring late in the afternoon, and absentmindedly check the display. But this is different, area code 213.

“Brady,” I say.

“Brady?” the voice says.

“Yeah, this is Brady,” I say impatiently, in my agitated state of mind.

“Hey . . . it’s Sam. Remember me? Sam, from Superhero?”

Just what I need. Probably an early invitation to their first record release party. But I can’t be mad at this kid. He just made the right move, that’s al . “Hey, Sam.

How’s it goin’?”

“Wel ,” Sam says. And there’s a long silence, like I’ve lost the cal . “Is your offer stil on the table?”

On the table? Fuck, yeah, it’s on the table. Served up, piping hot, with drinks al around. No ID check.

“Absolutely.”

“Okay,” Sam says. “So . . . uh . . . do you want my dad to overnight the contracts?”

“You’re going with Sleestak?” I ask, but the excitement almost chokes the question to death.