Softer Than Steel (A Love & Steel Novel)

by Jessica Topper

  Isabelle pestered him via his mobile. Rather than letting her call go to voice mail so she could record her unique brand of harassment, Rick pushed the Talk button and set the phone back down on the counter. Isabelle drowned in an earful of Lower East Side Jewish delicatessen din and dropped the call after forty-three seconds. Today was all about Sidra. The last thing he needed was Isabelle giving him grief.

  He had been addicted to grief for much too long now.

  Back on the street, he meandered. He thought about his lover, sitting in a sterile environment somewhere, surrounded by the steely machines that would diagnose her future. He wished he were with her. They’d get through this.

  Rick knew in his heart he wouldn’t make it uptown today. He strode from Orchard to Rivington and didn’t stop until he felt his hand on the doorknob of Revolve Records.

  * * *

  “Hire me.”

  Sidra’s cousin looked at Rick like he had lost his bleeding mind. “What you?”

  “You’re down two men this summer. Put me to work.”

  “I don’t think I could afford you, dude,” the shop owner said slowly.

  “So I’ll do community service. No pay necessary.”

  “I’m a New York State employer.” Mike’s chest puffed proudly. “Everyone in my shop is on the payroll. I pay into work comp, and disability, in case anyone were to get hurt.”

  “I’ll take minimum wage, then.” And donate it back by buying records. “When do I start?” Mikey made a face, so Rick added, “I’m not taking the piss, mate. I need this.”

  I need all the help I can get.

  “Don’t you have an album to record?”

  “Eventually.”

  Rick thought he saw a little of Sidra in the man’s wary gaze. They were family, after all. “You got a visa? Green card?”

  “I’m a permanent resident, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “I don’t want Immigration in here, breathing down my neck.”

  The principal shareholder of Rotten Graves Holdings, Ltd. gave a full-bellied, throaty laugh.

  “Fine. You can start with restocking. And help me with inventory. Stay away from the register.” He thrust an application at Rick. “You’ll need to fill this out.”

  Rick smiled and did what he was told.

  “Good. Can you sign these, too?” Mike was holding the used Corroded Corpse albums he had in stock. The men exchanged a grin.

  Mikey needed all the help he could get, too.

  Sidra

  Pure Romance

  Sidra loved the Astor Place Starbucks. Although the lines always made her wonder if they were giving coffee away, she loved tucking into a seat along the windows looking out over the entire neighborhood. The vantage point overlooked a complex myriad of intersecting streets disconcerting to anyone who relied on the city’s numbered grid. But for Sidra, it was a crossroads she had traveled throughout her entire life. You could watch people ascend from the 6 train and see the tourists take their lives in their hands as they tried to cross both Lafayette Street and Cooper Square during a single traffic light change. On any given day, there were buskers or skaters loitering near the Cube, a huge steel sculpture that perched on one of its eight corners. It had been there since before Sidra was born, and she could count on her hands the number of times she had been recruited to help spin it. Now she watched with a smile, latte to her lips, as a group of four kids, incoming NYU frosh age, beckoned a lone pedestrian to cross over to the traffic island and help them. The guy tilted his head as the ringleader of the group gestured wildly with his hands while the others, two more boys and a girl, stood back and looked on shyly. He turned and contemplated the task. In his hand was a bright bouquet of flowers. Sidra watched as he handed them off to the girl with a flourish before reaching up to lean on one side of the cube. The other guys followed suit, and together the four of them began to slowly rotate the cube on its vertical axis. The girl did a little happy hop dance before snapping pictures with her phone camera. Sidra delighted in watching their triumph, while the rest of the busy intersection barely took notice.

  “Bravo,” she murmured moments later as she fell into Rick’s embrace. “You’re officially a New Yorker now.”

  “Is that so?” he said against her temple as kissed it.

  “It’s not so easy to get that thing spinning.” She thought of the times she and Seamus, kids barely tall enough to touch it, plotted out their methods for moving the “Alamo” cube. And later with Charlie’s band, all of them too drunk to stand, let along coordinate a mass push against eight hundred and fifty pounds.

  “I was about to tell them to pull the other one; it’s got bells on it.” Rick laughed when Sidra eyed him queerly. “You know. I figured they were putting me on. Having a laugh at the old man. Then I realized, blimey, this thing really does move!” He suddenly remembered the bouquet in his hand and brought it gently to her chest. “For you.”

  “Oh, Rick. They’re gorgeous.” She breathed in the barely there scent of the roses, all yellow with their tips tinged in red. Their blossoms were tight but voluptuous, and she marveled at their symmetry.

  “They had wildflowers that reminded me of you, and I considered a mixed bunch, but they were all different heights, and I thought, no, like in yoga, you’d appreciate everything squared off.” He chuckled.

  Sidra grinned. It was true; she was a broken record of “square your hips” and “stack your shoulders” during class. Yoga demanded perfect alignment. Now, holding Rick’s flowers close, she felt her legs turn to jelly and had to sit back down. “They are perfect. Thank you.”

  Charlie used to whip a dozen red roses out from behind his back every Valentine’s Day without fail, and she had always been embarrassed and confused by her own reaction: polite appreciation, feigned to mask disappointment. Now she understood why. Flowers for no occasion was pure romance.

  “Tell me,” Rick urged, pulling a chair close, “how’d it go?”

  The diagnostic mammogram had been the longest thirty minutes of Sidra’s life, an uncomfortable haze of squeezing and pressure and question after question. When was your last period? Have you had a previous mammogram? Are you pregnant or could you be pregnant? Then there had been the ultrasound. Sidra shivered at the memory of the cold gel and the transducer passing around and around on her skin, searching for abnormalities. Scary, darkened masses that might seal her fate. She remembered bargaining with herself, wishing she were there for any other reason. Really? Her brain dared her to think the previously unthinkable. Any other reason, even . . . ?

  Yes.

  It had been shockingly easy to imagine the technician sliding the wand just a few inches lower, and hard not to fantasize what it might be like to hear a little heartbeat galloping. The thought of ever growing a life inside her was still terrifying, but at the same time . . . slightly less inconceivable—no pun intended.

  Rick took her hand, and her own heart quickened its pace.

  “The radiologist said the tests appeared normal, just dense tissue, thank goodness. But he’ll still send the full report to my doctor.” She took a deep cleansing breath and shook her head. “Then she’ll decide if I need to go back for any follow-up.”

  She hadn’t been aware of the tension Rick was holding until she saw his jaw twitch and all of his neck muscles relax. The change in his demeanor was almost imperceptible, but Sidra had made it her mission over the last month to help quell his panic attacks. She noticed. “What?” she asked quietly, gently, but he just gave a shake of his head and a gusty exhale before smiling and kissing her cheek.

  “That is great. So relieved for you. Let’s celebrate. After classes, of course.”

  “Actually, I asked Gretchen if she could cover my classes today. I wasn’t sure I’d feel up to it.” She’d also texted Rick from the waiting room to meet her out, rather than back at the apartment. She had decided whether the results were good or bad, she would be too emotionally drained either way to face the walls of
her apartment. And think about the tiny dresses in her drawers. Or her father sleeping off the drink upstairs. It was the first time she’d ever “called in sick,” so to speak. The camp director had been very understanding, and Gretchen had been more than willing to step in. Now Sidra felt a little giddy, like a kid playing hooky from school. It was Friday afternoon, and the whole weekend waited for her.

  “Oh, Banana Louie!”

  A few Starbucks patrons turned their heads at Sidra’s outburst, and Rick leaned back with an amused look. “Come again?”

  “Yes, let’s celebrate. But first there’s something I have to do.”

  * * *

  “So this is how you spend your weekends while I’m upstate, eh?” Rick tapped the top of the iguana cage gently. Banana Louie was happily back under his bulb and munching on some kale after Sidra had taken him out for some exercise. “What’s so funny?”

  “Oh, my friend Reggie’s latest note. He stays here during the week and takes care of Louie.” She held out the scrap of paper. Fresh okra and sweet potato in fridge. Just changed the basking bulb. Used Evie’s toothbrush to scrub the shit out of cage. “Neither of us is a fan of Charlie’s girlfriend. So when we swap notes, we usually have to say something disparaging about her.” She laughed.

  Rick flipped over the paper and wrote: Louie ate all the kale. I gave him a bath. Then Rick and I had sex in Evie’s bed.

  “Richard Rottenberg!”

  “The ladies prefer to call me Riff Rotten.” He snaked his arms around her waist. “And I will gladly soil your reputation rotten, my dear.”

  “I am not having sex with you in that bed,” she exclaimed. “Besides, you wouldn’t want to touch me if I’d cleaned the cage.”

  “We could always shower.” He cocked his head toward Charlie and Evie’s tiny bathroom.

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?” She contemplated his expression, then decided he wasn’t. “You goofball.”

  “This bloke is Charlie, then?” Rick gestured to various framed pictures hanging on the white cinderblock walls. Charlie as leader of the band, Charlie shirtless with a low-slung guitar, Charlie barking wide-mouthed into a microphone. “Takes himself rather seriously, does he?”

  “Oh, you have no idea.” When she was alone, Sidra barely glanced around at her surroundings. She dutifully tended to Louie’s well-being and made sure she locked the door behind her. Now, she took in the sad sagging middle of their Bohemian couch, the attempt at hipster bric-a-brac, and didn’t envy Charlie and Evie’s love nest one bit. “Can you do me a favor, though?”

  “Anything, luv.”

  “Go check out their bedroom and tell me what it looks like.”

  Rick raised a brow. “My offer still stands, you know.”

  Sidra laughed. “I know.” She turned back to the cage as Rick embarked on his mission. Banana Louie arched up to her hand for petting. Sidra found it amazing that he seemed to remember her and trust her after all this time.

  “Well?” she asked when Rick emerged, poker-faced and seemingly unperturbed.

  “Nirvana poster on the wall. Cheap IKEA furniture. And she’s got an old stuffed animal on the bed that has clearly seen better days.”

  Sidra snorted. “That’s Charlie’s.”

  “What were you expecting?”

  Sidra shrugged at Rick’s question. A den of iniquity? Red tapestries, candles burning? Sex swing hanging from the ceiling? “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I guess, just . . . something more?” She had built walls of solitary confinement with her anger and her hurt to protect herself from their betrayal. Had assumed the fortress they’d built together would somehow always be larger, stronger, better than hers. But Rick’s flippant description made it pedestrian, boring. Evie and Charlie were just boring, normal people.

  “He’s a hack, Sidra. And a fool to give up everything you had to offer.”

  “I know,” she said quietly. She looked up at him and, with conviction, nodded and smiled. “Let’s get out of here, okay?”

  They left Alphabet City behind, winding up St. Mark’s Place hand in hand. Rick told her about visiting St. Mark’s over the decades, first as a teenager on his visits with family to the States, then as an upstart musician. They swapped stories of “remember when” as they crossed each numbered block, recalling the days when sushi places were record shops and bars were institutions, not trendy flavor-of-the-month chains.

  “I’ve been wanting to do that, right on this very spot,” he said, breaking his soulful kiss with a boyish smile and a nuzzle to her nose.

  “Um, what?” She laughed. “Kiss me next to a garbage can, between a pizza place and a body piercing shop?”

  “No, silly girl. Under the caryatids.” He gestured up toward a residential building sandwiched between the businesses. Sidra gaped at the half-naked ladies making up the stone support columns that decorated each side of the doorway.

  “I’ve walked by here hundreds of times, and I never noticed them,” she marveled as he kissed her again. In some ways, he knew her village better than she did. “They’re beautiful.”

  “Stunning.” His eyes sparkled a memory. “Like you, in Mermaid pose.”

  As they approached Third Avenue, an aging punker was hopping down the graffiti-and sticker-covered metal stairs of an old storefront. He looked about as old as Trash and Vaudeville, the rock and roll clothing store whose gaudy red neon sign winked above his head. The shop had been inspired back in the seventies by the rock and roll meccas surrounding it: Electric Circus, the Fillmore East, and, of course, CBGB. All had faded away, but Trash and Vaudeville remained as one of the last holdouts of the old East Village.

  “Riff fucking Rotten!” He landed in front of them with a thud of his steel-toed Doc Martens. “Not to disturb you with your lady friend, but if you could give me a few minutes of your time, I’d be much obliged, dude.”

  Sidra discreetly took in the stranger’s appearance, from Mohawk to facial piercings down to his Bouncing Soles, with amusement. It was funny to hear such polite and reverent banter coming from pierced lips, heavily smeared in black.

  Rick’s reaction was even more interesting. She felt him raise himself even taller beside her as he met the guy’s gaze, a guarded but friendly expression on his face. Sidra realized he must’ve spent years during his band’s heyday having to gauge fans’ zeal. She trusted he had a built-in meter that crossed from Normal to Crazy in these situations, and she wondered at what point the needle hovered currently. “What can I do for you?”

  The guy reached his lanky arms across his chest and pulled his T-shirt up and off in a lightning-fast movement. “I’ve got everyone’s autographs but yours, man. All of Corroded Corpse, see?” He hunched over for inspection and, sure enough, tattooed on his back were three signatures surrounding the Corroded Corpse logo inked on his spine.

  “Crikey, you don’t look old enough to have collected all of these,” Rick marveled. He turned to Sidra and explained, “The band broke up in ’88, you see.”

  “Sam’s was the first one I got, back on the first US tour,” the guy called over his shoulder. “Then I got Adam’s before he went all Jesus-freak and stopped wanting to play. I traveled all the way to London to see your show at Hammersmith and thought for sure I would get all of youse guys there, but it didn’t happen and then the band broke up. I found Digger in Washington Square Park, like, two years ago. Pushing his kid on the swing, but he gave me this.” His finger, covered in silver skull rings, pointed at a scrawling signature that snaked across his scapulae. “I went right over to my girl on the East Side and she inked it before the marker had even dried! Digger said if he hadn’t had his little one there, he would’ve gone with me to get a new tat, too.”

  Rick chuckled. “That sounds like something Dig would’ve said.”

  “And now”—the guy extracted a black Sharpie from the back pocket of his stovepipe jeans, as if he had just been lying in wait for such an opportunity—“if you could complete the tattooed tetralogy, I wo
uld be massively stoked.”

  “Of course,” Rick said without hesitation, taking the marker from the guy.

  “Do you have a phone? I could take your picture,” Sidra offered.

  “Yeah yeah, awesome!” He handed off his smartphone. “Thanks.” Sidra snapped multiple pictures as Rick leaned over the guy and carefully added his signature to the work in progress. “I think I’m going to get, like, a ring of thorns around the whole thing,” he told Rick excitedly.

  “Look at me, guys. Smile!” Sidra snapped a photo of the two of them, grinning and hanging on to each other like brothers.

  “Here we go, one more,” Rick joked, and held the bouquet of roses he had kept in his hand the entire time up to their chins. The Mohawked man beamed like he’d won the lottery, and Sidra could hear the rings in his bottom lip hit his teeth.

  “Are these your kids?” Sidra asked as she handed him his phone back. Two brown-haired beauties smiled sweetly on his wallpaper screen.

  “My twin girls. They just turned fifteen.” He held the display up with shaking hands. “Proud of my girls. Honor students. This one is Siren, and this one is Simone.”

  Rick

  Testing, Testing, 1-2-3

  Rick waited for the dread and bile to rise. It didn’t. He braced himself for the prick of panic that primed his nerves for the attack, but it never came. He expected anxiety to flatten him right there on St. Mark’s Place like a hit-and-run. He thought the world would freeze to a stop with the incantation of his late wife’s name.

  From the corner of his vision, he caught the slow, steady movement of the Cube he had helped push earlier. It was being rotated again.