I hear the blues playing, and I close my eyes so I can concentrate on the song. The guitar sounds like it’s in the room with me, and the feedback sounds like an amp is right beside me. The song plays for what seems like forever, no words, just the picking of the guitar. Maybe they pump music into these rooms to help ease the process. It seems to help me as the stomach pain continues to ease.
“Henley?” I hear him say.
I open my eyes, and Jimi Hendrix stands in front of me.
“Holy shit. Am I dead?”
“I don’t think so,” he says.
“It feels like I’m dying.”
“Imagine so.”
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“Playing you the blues.”
“Hmph.”
“Lie on the floor, the concrete will feel good on your skin,” he says.
I sit up and crawl to the floor where I lie on my back and look to the side so I can see Jimi. He was right; the cold concrete floor is soothing to my skin.
“I’ve always liked to play this number,” he says and plays Once I had a Woman.
I close my eyes and listen to the crescendo of his guitar as it gradually builds to him singing the blues. The song morphs into a slow guitar solo taking my breath away. I’ve never heard anything like it. I must be close to death if I’m seeing him. Upon opening my eyes, I see him sitting on top of the amp, tapping his foot to a drum beat or bass line that isn’t there. He moves his guitar and body with the music and leans his head back when his notes scream in pitch.
He stops playing and calls my name. I look up at him and watch him lower his cupped hand and then throw its contents in the air. Small white pills rain down, and I open my mouth and several drop in as the rest land as tiny pelts on my body. He plays the blues again, and it seems as though his guitar has some cosmic connection with my pain because the song he’s playing is my song. It is the anthem of my sadness and pain. I lie on that cold concrete floor and listen to Jimi play for hours.
He serenades me to sleep and when I wake, he is gone, and the pain has returned with a fierceness I’ve yet to experience. I roll to my side and vomit the contents of my stomach. When I regain some composure, I begin screaming for Jimi. I want him back to make my pain bearable again.
Staff from the facility burst through the door and pick me up off the floor to place me back in the small twin bed bolted to the floor. I continue to scream for Jimi. I need him to come back and help me. Why did he leave me? Everyone leaves me. Caleb left, then Jagger. My own child left me. Red’s left. He may still be alive, but he isn’t him anymore. I’m so tired of being abandoned.
I cry myself to sleep like a child and dream of the happily ever after version of my life I have always envisioned. In my dream, Jagger and I live in a large, white, plantation-style home in the middle of the country. A little boy who is the spitting image of Caleb is playing tag with a little girl who appears to be me, and another little boy who appears to be Koi. Jagger and I sit in rocking chairs nearby and smile as we watch their interactions.
“Caleb, don’t push Koi,” Jagger scolds the little boy. .
“He doesn’t play fair, daddy,” little Caleb says.
Jagger stands from his rocking chair, and leans over mine to give me a kiss. He breaks it, pulls back, and when I open my eyes he is smiling at me mischievously.
“Mrs. Carlyle, you and I are going to send Caleb to your parent’s house tonight so we can fuck all over the house,” he says.
I coo at him and take a drink from a glass of lemonade as Jag chases the children around the large yard.
“Ms. Hendrix, would you like to attempt to eat?” a female voice says and interrupts my happily ever after.
I pry my eyes open and see a blonde woman ten or fifteen years older than me. Time has not been kind to her, but her smile is genuine.
“I’ll just puke it back up,” I answer.
“You should at least try to drink something so you don’t get dehydrated.”
“I’ll try to drink.”
She sets a tray of food and water down on the nightstand that’s bolted to the floor and turns on her heel to leave. She turns around just as she walks through the threshold of the door.
“It gets better in a few days,” she says with a purse of her lips.
Chapter 25
Jagger
We haven’t heard from Hen in thirty days. She won’t take our calls, and we’ve left message after message for her. The director states she’s in an anger phase. He’s recommended she stay an additional fifteen days, and wants her to have a sober living companion, which she wants nothing to do with. You can’t force that girl to do a damn thing she doesn’t want to do. She’s one hundred and twenty pounds of hopping hell, and a force to be reckoned with.
After forty-five days we wait to hear from the director of the facility, and I’m pacing her damn living room, wearing a hole in the carpet. We’ve been here since six this morning hoping to hear from her, and nothing. Cory finally gets a call at five in the afternoon to pick her up, but she requests he come alone. She’s fond of him, and he of her, so maybe she just wants to talk to someone she trusts outside of friends and family.
Cory texts two hours after his departure, “We’re stopping for coffee. She’s quiet, not saying much of anything, but she’s sober. I’m trying to get her to open up.”
When the two walk through the door ninety minutes later, she walks right past us without so much as a hello, and into her bedroom where she closes the door. Twelve of us are staring down the hall, waiting for some sign from her. We get nothing, but we wait it out. She emerges an hour later, scoops up Cash, and walks to the beach. I go after her. I need her to talk, to say something, anything. I don’t care if she screams at me as long as she speaks.
Kip tries to stop me, but Derek intervenes, “He needs to be the one to go to her right now. Let it be him, Kip.”
Kip nods and steps back, the desperation in my own eyes mirrored in his. He needs to hear her voice. He needs to see his Henley is back.
I take the steps from her deck to the sand. She sits close to the surf with Cash fetching his tennis ball and bringing it back to her. When I reach her, I sit down. I want to grab her, touch her, kiss her, make love to her, but I don’t know how she’ll react.
“He’s gotten really big,” I say.
“Yeah.”
“He’s missed you a lot. He looks for you,” I offer.
She says nothing for a long while. She plays fetch with Cash, refusing to make eye contact. I listen to the wave’s crash and then recede back into the Pacific Ocean. She’s always loved it out here, the tranquility and peace the beach and ocean offer.
“Hen?” I ask desperately.
“I’m not out here to do drugs, you don’t have to babysit me. I will not have a sober living companion. If I’m going to do drugs, I don’t need some fuck wad who doesn’t know me telling me what I can and can’t do. Fuck that,” she says still not making eye contact.
“Okay,” is all I can manage.
“Who took care of Cash?” she asks.
“Kip and I.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. He’s a great dog.”
“I know,” she says defensively.
Cash tires out, and curls up in her lap. He lays his head down, and seconds later he peers up into her eyes, gives her a kiss on the cheek and lays his head back down. It’s as though he wants to ensure she is really here and tell her he loves her so she doesn’t leave him again. I envy him right now. I wish I could do the same.
“How’s Red?”
“Derek says he’s making tremendous strides in rehab. We haven’t told him or your grandmother. Your dad didn’t want to put them through that,” I say.
“Good.”
Silence stretches between us for another bit. She lies back into the sand and closes her eyes facing twilight that surrounds us. I follow her lead and lie
back, looking into the sky. I wonder what answers she seeks in its expansiveness. She turns her head towards me and puts those big grey eyes on me. I almost choke on my tears. Those eyes see straight through me and are the window to her beautiful soul. There’s this light in them, a light that wasn’t in them last time I saw her. Her eyes tell you everything you ever want to know. They express every emotion she feels, and right now she looks empty. Her right hand is lying beside her head, so I take a chance and interlace my fingers through hers. She looks deep into me, and her mouth parts as words almost pass through them, but her eyes blink, and nothing crosses her lips.
She focuses her attention back to the heavens, sighs, and finally says it.
“I want to die.”
The tears I’ve held back cause me to gasp for air. I don’t think I’ve ever been so hurt in my life, but those words cut deeper than anything ever could.
“Don’t say that, baby,” I plead.
“I’m so tired of living. I won’t commit suicide, so you don’t have to commit me. I just don’t want to live anymore, Jag. I’m just tired. I’m tired of all the hurt and unknown. I prayed to whatever exists out there to take me while I was detoxing. I thought I would die, and yet here I am. I don’t want to be here anymore. She was right, ya know?”
“Who?”
“Caleb’s mom. It should’ve been me. Caleb would’ve dealt with this shit so much better than I have. It would’ve bent him for a while, but he would’ve lived life to the fullest. He would’ve made beautiful music and helped people. I do nothing but hurt people.”
“She wasn’t right. She had no right to say that to you. Jesus Christ, I could choke her selfish ass right now,” I grit out.
A whimper sounds from her throat, “I’m just so goddamn broken.”
Tears slide down from her eyes, and from my own.
“Breaks mend, Hen. Let me help you. Let me love you,” I beg.
“You don’t need my shit, Jag. Stay away from me, far away from me. I’m toxic, and you don’t need that shit in your life,” she says.
“You don’t mean that.”
She suddenly sits and faces me. I sit with her as she grabs my face in her hands. Her touch would bring me to my knees if I weren’t already sitting.
“Listen to me, Jagger. I will tear you down. I will make you hate me, and I can’t live with that. No matter what we’ve been through, and how difficult it’s been, I love you. I’ve always loved you. You are the only person in this world that I could ever love, and because I love you, I’m telling you to run far away from me. It will only end badly, and what we’ve already been through won’t hold a candle to it.” She sighs as she removes her hands from my face, and as she looks down to the sand, she says, “Please ask them to leave my house. I can’t deal with all that energy right now.”
She stands and she and Cash walk around her house. She will use the garage entrance, so she doesn’t have to see anyone. I stare after her until she’s gone and wish I knew what words to give her to make it all go away. She loves me, and yet she thinks so little of herself. How did this strong ass woman get to this point? How did I let this happen?
I walk the steps up to her deck, and our friends and family wait impatiently for me to utter words that will make them feel better, and yet I have nothing.
I sigh and repeat her, “She’s asked for everyone to leave, please.”
“I’m not leaving,” Kip announces and turns on his heel towards the basement, where he lives.
Whispers of questions hang in the air, but I hear none of them. I shake my head because I’ve failed her so many times. I’ve hurt her and ripped her fucking heart out, and now she wants to die. I did this. I know I wasn’t alone in this, but if she had me through the hard times, she wouldn’t have gotten to this point. I took me away from her. I did that to the woman who makes the heart in my chest beat each beat, and now she can’t find the will to live. A woman so full of life and laughter now wants to die. Her smile lights up an entire room and pulls you into her. She has the magnetism where people drift towards her, and not because she’s a celebrity, but because she is kind, beautiful, loving, compassionate, and lively. I sucked the life out of a woman who was full of it.
I walk to my car and somehow make the twenty-minute drive to my apartment. I open the door to an empty home. She’s not here; she’s not in my bed, or my kitchen, or on my couch. She isn’t waiting on me with a smile on her face and mischief in her eyes. Her eyes are empty now. I hit my knees, and scream.
“Please don’t take her from me! Please help her. I need her back. I can’t fucking breathe without her! Fuck! Please don’t take her; I need her so fucking much. I need her. I just need her. I’m so sorry for what I’ve done. I will spend the rest of my life making up for it, just give me one more chance. Give me one more chance to love her. She needs me to love her. I need her so fucking bad!” I sob and wail.
***
Rhys
She walks into the studio the day after rehab and nods as a greeting.
“Kai, can you pull up ‘I Can’t Quit You Baby,’ I need to lay down the vocals, so we can mix it,” she asks all business.
Kai stares at her like she’s grown two heads, and finally sputters, “Uh, um, yeah. I’ll have it up in a few minutes. I don’t think you’ve heard the final cut of the instrumental.”
“I’ll listen to it in the vocal booth, and then replay it so I can sing,” she says matter-of-factly.
I send Koi, Derek, Jag, and Kip a text to let them know she’s here and what just went down. Within in minutes, each of them responds saying they’re on their way, and they walk in altogether as she belts out the lyrics. She pushes the air from her belly and lets out her raspy, blues voice. She sounds like a cross between Etta and Susan Tedeschi when she sings the blues. Goose bumps cover my skin as she shouts out from her petite body. At the second verse, she steps to the microphone and makes sweet fucking love to it in a low, sultry voice that makes my cock hard. I’ve known her my whole life, but to hear her sing the blues affects me and every straight man I know.
On take two, she moves along with the music in the booth, and places her hand on the mic. Her lips open, and her facial expressions change as she feels each and every word in the song. She throws her head back between verses and moves her gorgeous body to the guitars. They serenade her through the headphones, and when she gets to the second verse, she purrs the words into the mic. It’s the sexiest thing I think I’ve ever seen. She commands this power from the universe. She owns the surrounding air, and you are lucky to breathe the same air. She has this love affair with music and bends that bastard when and how she wants to fit her desires. She’s lost in the middle of a battle right now, where she is bending it to her will, but it always bends for her.
“Jesus Christ,” Kai says lost in her as much as the rest of us are.
He’s never seen this side of Henley Hendrix. The Guitar Goddess showed up today and isn’t taking no for an answer.
“I’ve got wood,” Kip says.
When she’s like this you can’t pull your eyes away because you might miss something. You might miss the way her lips softly touch the mic, or the way her eyes scrunch close and lips quiver when she’s pouring out raw emotion. She learned to play the blues before any other genre, and damn if mama didn’t just take me back some years.
“Sing it, baby,” Derek cheers her on.
“Goddamn,” Koi and Memphis together.
Jagger looks at her like she’s something to eat, and to him she is. I’ll be glad when those two get their shit together. I’ve never seen two people more in love with each other.
She pulls her headset off and enters the sound room. She nods at everyone and sits down to mix the vocals with Kai.
She finally turns to us, “We should record a blues album.”
“Who?” Koi asks.
“All of us,” she answers.
“What about Abandoned Shadow?” he asks.
/> “I’m doing that, too,” she says.
“Fuck yeah! Let’s do it, Hen,” Kip throws a fist in the air.
“You too, Dad,” she says.
“I’d love that,” Derek smiles.
“Do you want to write your own stuff, or cover the greats?” Jagger asks.
“Cover the greats.”
We all get on board. I have no idea why we haven’t thought of this before now because we’re all blues lovers. We were trained as blues musicians first. As Kai continues to work on the current song, we sit around the conference room table and throw around song ideas. Kai’s agreed to produce it, so once it’s recorded we figure out which direction we take with a label.
***
Memphis
I hear my sister howling vocals out from the hallway of the studio. I can hear her strong, soulful voice crooning out the damn blues that live inside her. Her idea to make a blues album was fucking genius. I step into the sound room, and the place is packed with people I’ve never fucking seen before. She’s sitting in the middle of the larger studio room, singing into a vintage microphone. She’s belting out “Voodoo Woman,” while Kip drums in the back. Koi and Derek are on the guitars, and an old timer is blowing the flames in hell on a harp. Henley’s rocking back and forth, eyes closed, and pulling the mic to and from her mouth as she needs it. She growls out the words and sends a shiver down my spine.
The woman is a phenomenal rock star, but somehow the blues fit her even better. We all know she’s got the blues and needed to make this album for her and Red. Kai jumped on board because he’s never produced anything like it. The rest of us jumped on because we want to be a part of history. If anybody can bring the blues back to their rightful position in the music world, it’s my sister.
Guitar Face Series Box Set: Books 1-4 Page 53