by Nora Roberts
He was rarely alone, but detested and feared even a ten-minute span of solitude. In those moments, it would be only him and the machines that hummed and grumbled in response to his vital signs.
After two weeks he quieted. But he also became sly. He would wait them out—the tight-lipped bastards that had put him here. He would eat his fruit and vegetables, he would smile and answer all their questions. He would lie to the pretty, cool-eyed psychiatrist. Then he would get out.
He dreamed of scoring again, of filling his veins with that glorious combination of Chinese white and top-grade snow. All that beautiful white powder. He fantasized about it—huge, mountainous piles of beautiful white powder heaped on silver platters. He would scoop it up with both hands, fill himself with it.
He dreamed of killing them, the doctors, the nurses. He dreamed of killing himself Then he would weep again.
They said he’d damaged his heart, and his liver. They said he was anemic and were ruthlessly dealing with that, and his cross-addiction to heroin and coke. No one called him a junkie. They said he had an addictive personality.
It had been hard not to laugh at that. So he had an addictive personality. No shit, Sherlock. All he wanted was for them to leave him and his personality alone. He was the best fucking guitarist in the world, and had been for twenty years. He was forty-five and twenty-year-old girls still wanted the honor of a few hours in his bed. He was rich, filthy rich. He had a Lamborghini, a Rolls. He bought motorcycles like potato chips. He had a twenty-acre estate in London, a villa in Paris, and a hilltop hideaway in San Francisco. He’d like to see any of the smart-mouthed nurses or holier-than-thou doctors top that.
Had they ever stood onstage and had ten thousand people scream for them? No. But he had. They were jealous, all of them jealous. That’s why they kept him here, away from his fans, away from his music, away from his drugs.
Wallowing in self-pity, he stared at the room. The walls were papered in a soft blue and gray floral. A thick gray carpet covered the floor, and the windows faced south. The matching drapes tried to disguise the fact that the windows were barred. There was a color-coordinated sitting area across the room, two cushioned sofas, and a spoon-back chair. Festive fall flowers sat in a wicker basket on the coffee table. A tasteful reproduction of a nineteenth-century wardrobe held a television, VCR, and stereo system. An entertainment center, Stevie thought bitterly. He wasn’t entertained.
Why had they left him alone so long? Why was he alone?
He felt his breath back up, then release slowly as the door opened.
Visit after visit, Brian tried not to be shocked by his friend’s appearance. He didn’t want to dwell on the limp, graying hair, the lines sunk deep around Stevie’s eyes and mouth. He didn’t want to look at the thin, brittle body—a body that had shrunken with misuse as a man’s shrinks with age.
Most of all, he didn’t want to look at Stevie and see his own future. A rich, pampered, and helpless old man.
“How’s it going?”
Because he was grateful for the company, Stevie’s smile was genuine. “Oh, it’s a barrel of laughs in here. You ought to join me.”
The idea sent a slice of fear up Brian’s spine. “Then you’d have competition for all these long-legged nurses.” He offered a five-pound box of Godiva, a fix for the junkie’s notorious sweet tooth. “You’re looking almost human, son.”
“Yeah. I think Dr. Matthews’s real name is Frankenstein. So what’s going on in the real world?”
They talked uneasily, and much too politely, while Stevie worked his way steadily through the chocolate-coated creams and nuts in the box.
“Pete hasn’t been by in a while,” Stevie said at length.
“He’s pretty tied up.” There was no use mentioning that Pete had his hands full dealing with the press, and the promoters. Devastation’s American leg of the tour had been canceled.
“You mean he’s pissed.”
“Some.” Brian smiled and wished desperately for a cigarette. And a drink. “When has that ever bothered you?”
“It doesn’t.” But it did. Every slight hurt like a seeping wound. “I don’t know what he’s being so tight-assed about. He got out the press release. Viral pneumonia complicated by exhaustion, right?”
“It seemed the best way,” Brian began.
“Sure, sure, no problem. No fucking problem. Wouldn’t want the public to know old Stevie mixed one speedball too many and thought about blowing his brains out.”
“Come on, Stevie.”
“Hey, it’s cool.” He blinked back tears of self-pity. “Only it burns me, Bri, really burns me. He doesn’t want to come see the junkie. He doled out the smack when he was afraid I couldn’t perform without it, but now he doesn’t want to see me.”
“You never told me Pete scored drugs for you.”
Stevie dropped his eyes. That had been a little secret. There was always one more little secret. “Now and then, when things got tight and my sources dried up. The show must go on, right? The fucking show always goes on. So he’d score a little H for me, all very disapproving, then when the show was over, he’d put me back in one of these places.”
“None of us knew it was going to get this bad.”
“No, none of us knew.” He began to drum his fingers on the top of the candy box. “Remember Woodstock, Bri? Christ, what a time. You and me sitting in the woods, dropping acid, tripping out, listening to the music. Jesus, what music. How’d we get here?”
“I wish I knew.” Brian dug his hands out of his pockets, then pushed them in again. “Look, Stevie, you’re going to pull out of this. Hell, you’re right in fashion now. Everybody’s drying out, cleaning out.” He worked up another smile. “It’s the eighties thing to do.”
“That’s me, always on the cutting edge.” He grabbed Brian’s hand. “Listen, it’s hard, you know. Man, it’s really hard.”
“I know.”
“Man, you can’t know ’cause you’re not here.” He swallowed the anger and resentment. He couldn’t afford to show either now. “Maybe I’ll do it this time, Bri, but I need help.”
“That’s why you’re here.”
“Okay, okay, so I’m here.” Goddammit, he was sick of platitudes and good wishes. “But it’s not enough. I need something, Bri, just a taste of something. You could slip in a couple grams of coke—just to get me through.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d asked. With a sinking heart, Brian knew it wouldn’t be the last. “I can’t do it, Stevie.”
“Christ, Bri, just a couple grams. Nothing major. All they give me in here’s Tinkertoy drugs. It’s like going cold turkey with aspirin.”
Brian pulled his hand away and turned around. He couldn’t bear to look at those dark, haunted eyes. Pleading eyes. “I’m not going to score coke for you, Stevie. The doctors say it’d be like putting a gun to your head.”
“I already tried that.” Fighting tears, Stevie pressed both hands to his face. “All right, no coke. You could get me something else. Some Dolophine. It’s a good drug, Bri. If it was good enough for the Nazis, it’s good enough for me.” He began to whine, staring at Brian’s back. “It’s just a substitute, man. You’ve done it for me before so what’s the big fucking deal? It’ll keep me straight.”
Brian sighed. When he turned, opening his mouth to refuse yet again, he saw Emma in the doorway. She stood like a statue, her lush hair caught back in a braid, baggy blue pants hitched with white suspenders lying on a crimson shirt. There were big gold hoops at her ears, and she carried a game of Scrabble. Brian thought she looked sixteen, until he saw her eyes.
They were cold. A woman’s cold, accusing eyes.
“Am I interrupting?”
“No.” Brian stuck his hands in his pockets. “I’ve got to get on.”
“I’d like to talk with you.” She didn’t look at him as she spoke, but moved to the opposite side of Stevie’s bed. “Maybe you could wait outside for me. I won’t be long. The doctor said Stevie needed r
est.”
“All right.” It was ridiculous, Brian thought, but he felt like a child about to be scolded. “I’ll see you in a day or two, Stevie.”
“Right.” He said nothing else, but his eyes begged as Brian left the room.
“I bought you this.” Emma laid the board game over Stevie’s bony knees. “I figured you could practice up so you could try to beat me.”
“I always beat you.”
“When I was a kid, and because you cheated.” She lowered the bedguard to sit beside him. “I’m not a kid anymore.”
He couldn’t keep his hands still. His fingers played a nervous tattoo on the box. “I guess not.”
“So you want some drugs.” She said it so matter-of-factly, it took a moment for it to register. His fingers picked up the rhythm against the box as he looked at her.
“What was the name of it again? I’ll write it down. I imagine I can get my hands on some in a few hours.”
“No.”
“You said you wanted it. What was the name?” She’d taken out a pad and held a pencil poised over it.
There was hope, and a desperate greed, before shame flushed his skin. For a moment, he looked almost healthy. “I don’t want you involved.”
She laughed at that, a low, amused sound that made the sweat break out on the back of his neck. “Don’t be soft, Stevie. I’ve been involved since I was three. Do you really believe I had no idea what went on at the parties, on the tours? Give me some credit.”
He had believed it, because he’d needed to. She was, and had always been, the quiet light of innocence in all the noise and madness. “I—I’m tired, Emma.”
“Tired? Need a lift? A little buzz to take the edge off reality? Give me the name, Stevie. After all, I saved your life. It seems only just that I should help you lose it.”
“I didn’t ask you to save my life, goddamn you.” He lifted a hand as if to push her away, then let it fall limply on the sheet. “Why didn’t you leave me the hell alone, Emma? Why didn’t you just leave me alone?”
“My mistake,” she said briskly. “But we can do our best to fix it right up.” She leaned closer, bringing him a whiff of soft scent as her voice and eyes hardened. “I’ll get the fucking drug for you, Stevie. I’ll get it. I’ll feed it to you. I’ll push the needle in whatever vein you might have left. Hell, maybe I’ll even try it myself.”
“No!”
“Why not?” She lifted a brow as if amused. “You said it was a good drug. Isn’t that what you said to Da? It’s a good drug. If it’s good enough for you, it’s good enough for me.”
“No. Goddammit. Look what I’ve done to myself.” He held out his scarred and scabbed arms.
“I see what you’ve done to yourself.” She threw the pad and pencil across the room. “I see exactly what you’ve done to yourself. You’re weak and pitiful and sad.”
“Miss!” A nurse came through the door. “You’ll have to—”
“Get out of here.” Emma whirled on her, fists clenched, eyes blazing. “Get the hell out. I’m not finished yet.”
She left. The hurried sound of her retreating feet echoed.
“Leave me alone,” Stevie murmured. The tears were spilling out of his eyes, seeping through the fingers he pressed to his face.
“Oh, I’ll leave you alone, all right. When I’m done. I found you lying on the floor, in your own blood and vomit, beside the gun and the needle. Couldn’t you make up your mind which way you wanted to kill yourself, Stevie? It was just too damn bad, wasn’t it, that I didn’t want you to die. I pumped life back into you, right there on the floor. I cried because I was afraid I wouldn’t be quick enough or good enough or smart enough to save you. But you were breathing when they took you away, and I thought it mattered.”
“What do you want!” he shouted. “What the hell do you want?”
“I want you to think—think about someone else for a change. How do you think I would have felt if I’d found you dead? Or Da—what would it have been like for him? You have everything, but you’re so hell-bent to self-destruct you could have twice as much and it wouldn’t matter.”
“I can’t help it.”
“Oh, that’s a poor excuse, poor and pitiful and sad and completely suitable to what you’ve made yourself.” She was near tears now herself, but she fought them back, letting the bubbling anger pour out instead. “I’ve loved you ever since I can remember. I’ve watched you play and year after year been astonished by what you’re capable of creating. Now you’re going to sit there and tell me that you just can’t help killing yourself. That’s fine then, but don’t expect the people who love you to stand and watch.”
She started out, only to be stopped in the doorway by a petite brunette. “Miss McAvoy? I’m Dr. Haynes, Mr. Nimmons’s psychiatrist.”
Emma’s body braced, like a boxer readying for a new match. “I’m on my way out, Doctor.”
“Yes, I can see that.” The woman smiled and offered a hand. “Nice show, dear. I recommend a brisk walk, then a hot bath.” She moved by Emma to go to Stevie’s bed. “Ah, Scrabble. One of my favorites. Care for a game, Mr. Nimmons?”
Emma heard the tiles hit the wall, but kept on walking.
She found Brian outside, leaning against the hood of his newest Jaguar. When he spotted her, he took one last drag on his cigarette, then flicked the butt away.
“I thought you might stay a bit longer.”
“No, I said all I had to say.” As she spoke, she fastened the bottom snap on her dark blue bomber’s jacket, then pulled up the zipper. “I wanted to ask you if I’d heard correctly. Did you buy drugs for Stevie?”
“Not the way you mean it. I’m not a dealer, Emma.”
“Word games then,” she agreed with a nod. “Did you provide him with drugs?”
“I provided him with an opiate substitute—to help get him through the tour and keep him from going out to some alley and trying to score heroin.”
“To get him through the tour,” she repeated. “I thought Pete was bad, lying to the press, helping Stevie lie to himself.”
“Pete’s not at fault here.”
“Yes he is. You’re all at fault here.”
“Are we supposed to take out an ad in Billboard saying that Stevie’s a junkie?”
“It would be better than this. How is Stevie ever supposed to face up to this if he can’t admit what he is? And how is he supposed to stop being what he is if his friends, his very dear friends, keep handing him drugs so he can get through one more show, one more city.”
“It isn’t like that—”
“Isn’t it? Or are you deluding yourself into thinking you’re doing it out of friendship?”
Too weary for anger, he leaned against the car again. The breeze that ruffled his hair was brisk with autumn and smelled of rain. Peace, he thought as he studied his daughter’s furious face. He only wanted peace.
“You don’t know anything about it, Emma. And I don’t appreciate being lectured by my own daughter.”
“I won’t lecture you.” She turned and walked to her own car. With her hand on the door, she looked back at him. “You know, I never told you, but I went to see Jane a couple of years ago. She’s pathetic, wrapped up in her own needs and her own ego. Until now, I hadn’t realized how much you’re like her.”
She slammed the door, gunned the motor. If there was pain on his face, she didn’t look back to see it.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Emma married Drew in a quiet civil ceremony. There were no guests, no advance press. She had told no one, not even Marianne. After all, she was over twenty-one and needed no one’s permission or approval.
It wasn’t the wedding she had dreamed of. No misty tulle and glowing white silk. No flowers except the single pink rose Drew had given her. No music, and no tears.
She told herself it didn’t matter. She was doing exactly what she wanted. It was selfish, perhaps, but she felt justified in committing one purely selfish act. How could she have told Mari
anne or Bev without telling her father? She hadn’t wanted him there, standing beside her, giving her away.
She would give herself away.
She’d done her best to cheer the dull, mechanical ceremony by wearing a fussy silk dress, shades deeper than the rose she carried. Lacy at the bodice and at the drifting, tea-length hem.
She thought of her father’s wedding. The first wedding she had ever seen. Bev looking gloriously happy. Brian smiling. Stevie, all in white, singing like an angel. The memory brought tears to her eyes, but she held them back as Drew took her hand.
He was smiling at her. Smiling as he slipped the simple diamond band on her finger. His hand was so warm and steady. His voice was clear and lovely as he promised to love, honor, and cherish. She so desperately wanted to be cherished. When he kissed her, she believed it.
Then they were man and wife. She was no longer Emma McAvoy, but Emma McAvoy Latimer. A new person. And, in vowing her love and her life to Drew, she was beginning a new life.
It didn’t matter that he had to race off directly after the ceremony to the recording studio. She understood the demands and the need for premium session time better than anyone. It had been her idea to be married quickly, quietly, and in the middle of the making of his new album. It gave her time to prepare the hotel suite where they would spend their wedding night. She wanted it to be perfect.
There were flowers now, banks of hothouse roses, orchids, narcissus. For her own pleasure, she arranged them personally, setting tubs and vases throughout the rooms, down to a basket of flowering hibiscus she set in the bath.
A dozen candles waited to be lit, all white and scented with jasmine. Champagne chilled in a crystal bucket. The radio was on low, to enhance the mood.
She indulged in a long bath, fragrant with oils. She creamed and powdered her body, and enjoying the female ritual, dabbed more scent at every pulse point. Like the room, like the night, she wanted her body to be perfect for him. She brushed her hair until her arm went numb. Then slowly, drawing out the pleasure of it, dressed in the white silk and lace peignoir.