Stupid and Contagious

by Caprice Crane

  I don’t want to go back to the couch with Darren, so as soon as I finish, I refill 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 intelligence and hard work and attitude to make it. Darren is who I was. Crazy, half-assed, sometimes brilliant, never-surrender Brady reminds me more of who I want to be.

  Darren finally walks over a couple minutes later.

  “You all right?”

  “Yeah, just . . . thirsty,” I say. And out of nervousness, I get up and refill 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 really 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 tell what it is. All 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 tell Brady that nothing happened, but I don’t know if that’s even necessary or if he really 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 hell 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 ball them all 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 million 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 call up Zach because I’ve gotta get my mind off this. He tells 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 tell anyone.

  The bar is now officially closed, and I think my ass has fallen 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 tells 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 till 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 kill someone. This much I know. And yet I want to kill Darren.

  “Maybe not kill 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’ll 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 call out to him. “Me getting the band and the girl.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Zach says. “You almost pulled 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’ll 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 wallowing in self-pity and join Phil in the office to wallow 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 gracefully. Hell, 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’ll be different for them, that all the bullshit will go away, just this once, and their ride will be silky smooth. But it’s not . . . it’s hard. And when you feel like you’re goin’ nuts . . . call me. I’ll 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, B
rady.”

  “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 millionth 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-dollar 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 all 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 . . . hell, 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 well 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 calls.”

  “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 all grown up.

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

  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 all. “Hey, Sam. How’s it goin’?”

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

  On the table? Fuck, yeah, it’s on the table. Served up, piping hot, with drinks all 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. “What happened? What changed your mind?”

  There’s another pause. “A couple things,” Sam says. “Number one, you. Some things you said about the shitty ride and having someone with silk . . . I don’t remember exactly, but we all decided we want to go with someone real.”

  “What was the second thing?”

  “The Stones,” Sam says. Huh?

  “The Stones?”

  “Darren called us last night and promised to ‘make us the next Stones.’”

  Then it comes back to me. Crooked. Big-company bullshit. My story about how the label once promised me that we’dbe the next Stones.

  “We won’t make you the next Stones,” I tell him. “There’s already a Stones. But there’s never been a Superhero.”

  “Yeah, okay, I gotta go,” he says distractedly. “We’re rehearsing.”

  “All right. I’ll look for those contracts. Take it easy, man,” I say. So much for my poetic moment. But we got the band back.

  I stay at Zach’s for the rest of the week. I go commando for the first two days, but I break down when my socks reek so bad that they almost smell like food. (Obviously not a food anyone would want to eat, but not your run-of-the-mill foot stench either. It’s kind of an accomplishment, I gotta say.) So when I go and buy my three-pack of socks, I pick up some boxer shorts as well.

  I pass a woman pushing a stroller as I walk out of the store, and I get a shooting pain in my left eye. Sarah. The pregnancy. Is it mine? Is it human?

  I head over to her place and follow an old woman into the building. When I get to my old front door I’m bitter all over again about losing my rent control, but there are bigger issues at hand. I knock and hold my breath. Sarah opens the door with a glass of red wine in her hand.

  “Hi, asshole,” she says.

  “Nice to see you, too.”

  “Who said it was nice to see you?” she says.

  “Look, something’s really been bothering me.”

  “Wondering if I’m still into you?” she says.

  “No. Wondering if my baby is into you. Sarah, I know we had some hard times, but you know I’d always . . . do the right thing . . . whatever it is.”

  “How about grovel? Would you grovel?”

  “If it provided a healthy environment for the child, sure I’d grovel. But . . . is there a child? And if so . . .” There’s no easy way to ask this of the last person on earth you’d want to be carrying your baby. “Is it mine?”

  Sarah doesn’t answer at first. She just looks at me with a smile that holds no maternal bliss and brims instead with eternal hellfire. “First of all, let me say that you are the last person on earth whose baby I’d want to carry.” At least we’re in agreement. “Second of all, I’m not sure what groveling would do for the kid, but it would do me a world of good. And third of all . . . no. I’m not pregnant. I missed a period, but I think it was just my new pill.”

  And then I say a prayer for Phil and any other man who should stagger into Sarah’s life. Please, God . . . don’t ever let her forget to take that pill.

  I can tell Zach is sick of babysitting me, so I spend my last night in New York with Jonas and his girlfriend. This turns out to be a very bad idea because I’m faced with a happy couple and I keep thinking about Heaven and Darren. And that fucking rose. The only thing that sustains me is the pending trip to L.A. where we will be cutting soon-to-be-overplayed singles for Superhero (formerly a property of Rosenthal and Company).

  Phil and I get to JFK. Neither of us is checking bags. I actually recognize the airport staff since I was just here, but they don’t seem to remember me.

  When we get on the plane Phil apologizes for sitting in the window seat.

  “I didn’t do it on purpose,” he says. “It just happened that way when they got booked.” I guess a lot of people really like to look out the window. I’m just not one of them. I prefer freedom. But that doesn’t stop me from guilting Phil for at least ten minutes and working it to my advantage in the form of his bag of peanuts.

  The flight is pretty uneventful, but when I’m waiting for the lavatory (why they can’t just call it a bathroom, I don’t know) I bump into that fucking guy I sat next to last year on my way back from South by Southwest. Old pancake-hands, who wouldn’t shut up for the whole trip. He walks out of the bathroom and lights up when he sees me.

  “Hey, bro!” he says. “Marc! Remember me? We’re like flight buddies or something,” he says as he puts his hand out to shake. I can’t help but wonder if he washed his hands, and I’m reluctant to shake. But I figure I’m going in next, so I’ll just wash my hands really good, before and after.

  “Yeah, man. I remember. How are ya?”

  “Really good,” he says. “I took a job at Virgin. Just moving the last of my stuff out to Lost Angeles. You?” I don’t want to get into it. I don’t want to tell him anything. I just want to take a piss.

  “No news here.”

  “I saw Sean Combs’s Broadway opening last night. A Raisi
n in the Sun. Powerful stuff, man. Really powerful.”

  “So he’s Sean Combs now? Not Puffy or P. Diddy?” I don’t even know why I’m continuing this dialogue, so I put the kibosh on it. “Anyway, good seeing you,” I say, and I walk into the bathroom, slide the knob to OCCUPIED, and wash my hands twice before I even unzip my pants.

  Phil and I check back into the Riot House, and it feels totally wrong. I’m on a different floor at least, but everywhere I turn, I have flashbacks of Heaven. Luckily, I’ll be spending most of my time in the studio.

  I’ve deleted all of Heaven’s messages. I just can’t stand to hear her voice. It makes me lose my focus and think of her and Darren.

  I’m in the recording studio in Burbank. Things are really jammin’ when they tell me I have an urgent phone call. Without thinking, I pick it up.

  “Hi, remember me?” Heaven says, sounding pretty upset. Urgent? I should have figured.

  “The voice sounds vaguely familiar,” I say, teasing her, trying to keep it light.

  “Where have you been?”

  “Where do you think? I’m with the band. We’re recording.”

  “I know you’re there now,” she says. “But what about the two weeks before now? I didn’t know if something happened to you. I mean, you just disappeared. You didn’t even say good-bye.”

  “I didn’t know I had to check in with you.”

  “I don’t know . . . I would have thought maybe you would have wanted me to come with you.”

  “I’ve got it under control . . . I don’t need you here.”

  “Okay,” she says. “I just thought . . . I thought you’d maybe at least tell me you were leaving.”

  “I didn’t tell you last time either,” I say in a monotone. “You just happened to find out because you opened my mail. By the way, have I missed anything good this week?”