“I don’t think she saw it that way,” Terrance said.
“No shit.” It wasn’t like he had a problem with hearing the way she saw it. Just not out there. “They’re all fucking nuts.”
Terrance leaned back in the couch, easy as ever. “They sure don’t like getting told they look like one of your girlfriends.”
What the — oh. Tanya. No. Jackie. “T, I got my own fucking problems.”
Terrance snorted. “You always do, Ricky.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Yo, asshole. I ain’t one of them.” Terrance got up and pulled a beer from the mini-bar. Rick watched him drop the bottle cap on the counter and thought about the whiskey.
“Just let her cool off, Ricky. Work it out tomorrow.”
“Oh, hell no. There ain’t no tomorrow.”
Terrance’s eyebrows shot up, and Rick was suddenly aware that he was losing it over a woman. And he wasn’t alone.
Terrance just shrugged.
Shit. Breaking mirrors or emptying bottles wasn’t the most profitable way to work this out. Rick turned from Terrance — and the whiskey — and slammed the connecting door to his room behind him. His notebook was right where he’d left it, and he couldn’t remember the last time the words flowed in his head so freely. If he couldn’t pull a fucking song out of this, he wasn’t worth another record anyway.
He grabbed the paper and shoved a chair out from the wall enough to sit behind it, on the floor, his back in the corner. Which was insane, but if he was keeping with that back-to-the-beginning theory, he couldn’t go much further back than this.
No room in that house on Beckman Avenue, and every other week some relative moved back in. He’d wondered why anybody thought Violet would do a better job with him when she hadn’t managed to get her own damn kids raised. He’d figured Lydia out completely after two days with her mother, in that house her father bought after World War Two. To rent out, not for her to end up living in, for God’s sake.
She was a bitter old bitch and a racist, but hey, at least she was a sober one.
He had a bedroom, one of the two, but he was forever being shoved out. Nowhere to go except the corner of the living room, filling blank notebooks until his hand cramped, his view of the rest of the world and its view of him blocked by the overstuffed easy chair — because his cousins were the nastiest pack of white trash he’d ever known. They taught him fast that if he was dreaming about anything, he’d best keep it to himself.
He’d thought he’d kept it from everyone.
He could still feel the pull of gum on his shoe, could still smell the stench of garbage in the dumpster from the side of the Quick-Stop, souring in the heat.
Could still hear Aiesha’s voice, first catching him off guard — then putting him right on it, waiting for a barrage about how he couldn’t even walk without stepping in —
“We had a deal, Rain.”
He turned and saw her leaning against the brick wall of the convenience store, eighteen and looking twenty-five, her hair braided with silver beads that winked in the sunlight.
Rick scraped gum off his sneaker, no clue what she was talking about.
“Last summer,” Aiesha said. “On the way home.”
He almost had the gum off, and he’d just started seeing Mary, but he already knew he’d find out how late he was when he got there. “You know what time it is?”
“From Cincinnati.”
Rick stared at the string that stretched from his shoe to the curb for a second before he looked at her again.
Aiesha shook her head. “You didn’t forget.”
He hadn’t. For reasons that escaped him, her grandmother believed she’d be safe with them last year. Rick’s ears rang the entire weekend. Aiesha’s grandmother had caught him on the porch before he got in Kale’s car. That’s my only baby left. You best take care of her.
On the way back, Aiesha made him promise. Next year. He wouldn’t just be listening.
Aiesha shifted herself off the brick wall of the Quick-Stop. “So why the fuck you even thinking about staying here?”
“I ain’t thinking that.”
“Hell you ain’t,” she said. She started to walk away. Then she glanced down at the gum on the sidewalk before leveling her dark eyes at him. “And you’re a goddamn fool.”
That sounded like her. She’d dogged him since the day she moved in down the block, about three months after he had. What he didn’t need, a scrawny eleven-year-old who’d come to live with her grandmother because her father shot and killed her mother. She’d locked onto him, picking him out as some kind of outcast soul mate.
She wasn’t eleven anymore. She was this regal teenager who seemed to always know exactly what was going on inside everyone around her.
Or maybe that was just him.
“There’s guys on the radio ain’t half as good as you. And you know it.”
He could only stare at her.
Aiesha’s gaze flicked down to his shoe. “So there must be some other reason you want to stay stuck here.”
He didn’t know how she knew. He’d mentioned Scribble Jam to Mary. Just once. If he went, it was gonna be a fight.
Aiesha looked at him like he was betraying her.
Rick finally transferred the rest of the gum to the curb. “You coming with me?”
She might have looked twenty-five, but when her eyes widened and she smiled, the dimples still hit the corners of her mouth. He could never be mean enough to shake her. She threw her arms around his neck, jumped up with both legs wrapped around his waist.
“Goddamn, Esha — get off me.”
She just laughed as she walked away. By some stroke of luck, no one else was in the parking lot. He was glad for that when she turned and called back over her shoulder.
“You’re gonna make it, Rain. I know you are.”
He just shook his head and headed off to a fight he’d never planned on starting. A fight he hadn’t figured out how to end, until today on a Manhattan block of marble steps.
Whatever he’d written blurred in front of his eyes. Rick stretched his fingers and the pen fell on the plush carpet beside him. When he rotated his shoulder to work the kinks out, he realized that his ass had actually fallen asleep.
Too exhausted to argue with it, he dropped the notebook and crawled into bed.
30: Red Wine and Brandy
Carolyn ignored the phone two — or was it three? — times. Finally, because it wouldn’t stop, she reached from the tangled covers and knocked something off the nightstand, but the ringing continued. She opened her eyes, pain seared her temples, and her lids slammed shut.
Carolyn moaned, tried the touch method again, and succeeded.
“Ms. Coffman?”
She managed an affirmative grunt. Who did Daniel expect?
“I’m terribly sorry to disturb you, Ms. Coffman, but there’s a gentleman here who says he tried to contact you numerous times. He seems concerned.”
A swell of panic rose in her.
Daniel said, “Shall I have him call you again?”
No. Yes, please, yes. No. Through the dull beat pounding in her head, a discordant note rang through. Rick would have called her cell phone.
Peter. “Oh, God.”
“Ms. Coffman? Mr. Carter says he would — ”
“Mr. Who?”
Daniel hesitated. “Mr. Terrance Carter.”
Everything still hurt, but the panic vanished. “Just send him up, Daniel.”
He covered a surprised noise with, “Certainly, Ms. Coffman.”
She managed to hang up the phone on the second try and burrowed back under the covers. Aspirin. She had to find some but couldn’t imagine leaving the bed to look for it. God, how much did she drink? Not enough to stop her tongue from sticking to the roof of her mouth.
More pounding, then the doorbell rang. She pulled back the covers and squinted at her bedroom door. The bell wasn’t there. She heard the knocking again and groaned. The
point of sending Terrance up to her was so she wouldn’t have to move. Or something like that.
She slid out of bed and dragged her robe off a pile of discarded clothing , trying to belt it as she headed for the living room. That didn’t work, because one hand was occupied with holding her brain still. The other kept reaching for the wall to stop it from running into her. She was still unbelted when she opened the door.
Terrance looked down at her. “Good … morning?”
“Is it still morning?” Judging by the light, she would have sworn it was high noon. Excruciatingly-high, middle-of-Las Vegas noon.
“Just barely,” Terrance said. “May I come in?”
She pulled the door wider and turned around. Terrance could do what he wanted, but she had to sit down. She curled up on the sofa and pulled a throw pillow under her head. That helped. Some. Her stomach rolled over. Had she thought getting drunk would make her feel better?
It had. She remembered feeling worse. Just before she reached for the bottle of wine.
“Carolyn.”
A glass of water hovered in front of her when she opened her eyes.
“To wash down the aspirin.” Terrance opened his other hand to show her three white tablets as he set the water on the coffee table. Beside the empty bottles.
“What makes you think I need aspirin?”
He dropped the pills on her open palm, then picked up the bottles. “Red wine and brandy? Doubt anybody in shouting distance needs aspirin more than you.”
“Please don’t say ‘shout.’”
Terrance chuckled, and he and the bottles disappeared from view. Carolyn reached for the glass and shifted to a swallowing position just long enough to down the medicine.
“You need to drink all the water.”
She pushed herself back onto one elbow and obeyed, tentatively at first, until she was sure her stomach could handle it.
“Good girl.”
Carolyn smiled weakly. Maybe it was a placebo effect, knowing the medicine was on the way, but the room didn’t seem so bright.
“This a nice place,” Terrance said.
All she’d contributed was the mess. “Thanks.”
He crossed to the corner, and she heard a light tap from down near the end of the sofa. “Walls a little thin.”
“I don’t make much noise.”
“No, you don’t.” Terrance moved back into her view. “You more like an earthquake. Can’t hear nothing coming until shit starts crashing down.”
He continued his examination of the room, found the Godiva box and held it up in question. Carolyn nodded and he popped one of the chocolates in his mouth.
“Are you saying I’m destructive?” she asked.
“Mmmm.”
She didn’t know if he was responding to her question or the chocolate. He settled into the chair beside the fireplace. Nice, because she could see his face without moving.
“Destructive ain’t necessarily bad,” he said. “Sometimes things need to get knocked down.”
“Did he send you here?”
Terrance’s entire body radiated his ‘hell, no.’
“So you just thought I might need somebody to find the aspirin?”
“Hadn’t actually considered that. Didn’t strike me as the type.”
“I’m not.”
“No doubt. You’d a drank all the water without being told.”
Carolyn looked at the empty glass. She couldn’t even do a hangover right.
He stood again, but when her gaze followed him, the room shifted and she closed her eyes. She heard running water. When she opened her eyes, the glass was full, and he was back in the chair. He nodded at the water, and she obeyed again. Obviously, he knew what he was doing.
“You told the desk clerk you were concerned about me.”
“I told the desk clerk I was … ” Terrance raised his eyebrows. “Concerned.”
The throbbing was receding enough for Carolyn to discern the difference in their statements. Not necessarily concerned about her. What happened after they pulled away last night? If she asked, would he tell her? Would he give her the excuse she needed to override her resolve?
Her stomach shifted again, and she didn’t think it was the alcohol. “Why’d you come here?”
Terrance responded with an easy smile and reached for a brown paper bag on the table in front of the fireplace.
“I came for an autograph.” He pulled a copy of her book from the bag, set the book on the coffee table, and slid a pen from the pocket of his dress shirt. “You mind? I hate standing in lines.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want you to go to any trouble.”
He smiled that slow easy smile and returned to his chair and the chocolate.
Carolyn eased herself onto one elbow and reached for the book. “You have an interest in the material?”
“I have an interest in the writer.”
“Why?”
“Because she a writer.”
Her brain was still sluggish, and she didn’t see what difference her profession made. “How does — ”
“Your stomach feel?”
Carolyn’s hand covered the offending part of her anatomy. “Bad.”
He stood, and she lost him again. She heard him calling room service.
Oh, thank you, Terrance. “Make sure they send cream, please.”
“Could I get two orders of toast?” He turned to her. “White or wheat?”
“No toast. I want coffee.”
“Dehydrate you more. You need food and water.”
“I don’t want food. I want coffee.”
“Later. White or wheat?”
“Coffee.”
“Wheat,” he said into the phone. “Thank you.”
She started to argue again, but he hung up, and she remembered where this had started.
“Why do you care what I do for a living?”
Terrance sat down and just watched her.
A lump rose to her throat, filled with anger. Terrance’s face didn’t change, and she relaxed her grip on the binding of her book and looked away. He didn’t know her. When she looked up again, she saw that same brief sympathetic look in Terrance’s eyes that she’d seen last night.
“Why do you stay with him?” she asked.
“What I do.”
“Isn’t there something more … ” Important. She swallowed. “Significant?”
Terrance raised his eyebrows. “I turned twenty-six last March.”
Past twenty-five, un-incarcerated and alive. “So you beat the odds and hitched your birthday cake to a white man’s star?”
His features hardened, and Carolyn buried her face in her hands. The aspirin was working, but she desperately wanted the physical pain back.
The doorbell rang, and Terrance’s chair creaked. Meaning to intercept him, Carolyn sat up, but her headache flared and the movement proved the two full glasses of water were approaching the end of their run. She managed to choke out that her purse was by the door for the tip and escaped the heavy air in the living room. The air in the bathroom was no better and the mirror seemed far too clear. When she returned, he was closing the front door.
Carolyn took a breath. “I am so sorry.”
He nodded, first to her, then to the tray on the coffee table. “You should eat. Carbohydrates.”
He settled back down across from her and he popped another chocolate while she ate her toast. She might actually survive this.
“I never planned on any of this going down the way it did,” he said. “My father was killed in the Gulf War — ” Carolyn gasped and he shrugged. “Long time ago. My mom kept back enough life insurance for college. Still won’t let me at it. I was just about thinking I’d be going, teach, coach football maybe. Ricky got signed, looked like things were on their way for all of us.
“He was gonna be touring that next summer. Plenty of drugs on a tour. Didn’t see that being a problem. Then he came home from recording that first album, and I didn’t know what happened
to him.” Her mouth went dry when his gaze steadied on hers. “But I think you do.”
Carolyn swallowed. “I would never repeat anything.”
He just looked at her.
“I swear, Terrance.” I love him, too. Hot tears sprang to her eyes. She grabbed the napkin from the tray and wished she’d never swallowed the aspirin. If she were leaning over the edge of a whirlwind, trying to reach inside a tornado to extract something precious, she might be safer than she felt now. She might not lose herself in the rescue.
She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but after a moment, he nodded.
Carolyn took a deep breath. “Besides, do you think The Source is really interested?”
“Maybe not yet.” He went to the phone and called down to room service again. For coffee this time.
“Oh, thank you.”
“You keep drinking water, you can have some. And finish the toast.”
She picked up the last piece and took a bite. It was helping.
“You gonna sign that for me now?”
She reached for his book and pen on the coffee table. “Do you really think … someday … ”
“No way to know.” A faint smile crossed his face. “But if he do? I figure I don’t want to miss it.”
Neither do I. Carolyn looked down to the book in her hand. She opened to the title page and swallowed, but the lump refused to dislodge from her throat.
It wasn’t sorrow. It was jealousy.
31: Stone Sober
Rick was only half-asleep, otherwise he wouldn’t have heard the phone vibrating on the table. He grabbed it without looking.
“Rick, it’s Louis.”
He grunted. Could have been worse. He’d hoped for better.
“What the hell is going on?”
Rick jerked the phone away from his ear.
“I need to know what happened last night.”
A whole lot of bullshit. Carolyn —
“Were you performing?”
Louis wasn’t interested in his personal problems. “Not exactly.”
“So what I’m hearing about Ricky Rain battling at The Shack is just a damn rumor?”
Rick swallowed. He needed a toothbrush. “No, that ain’t a rumor.”
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