by Clea Simon
‘Well, yeah, they were paying for it.’ Tara’s skepticism is shaken off with a close-mouthed grin.
‘Nah, believe me,’ says Onie. ‘I worked with other bands. The Whirled Shakers? They would still be figuring out the arrangement, asking me to weigh in.’
‘You worked with the Whirled Shakers?’ Tara looks at the man across from her with new appreciation. ‘On “World Enough”?’
He nods.
‘I love that song!’ She’s beaming now, gone totally fan girl.
‘Thanks.’ He looks down, slightly embarrassed, as he begins to sing, his voice barely audible. ‘“If we had world enough and time”. Talk about another lifetime!’
‘But Chris …’ Tara can’t let that go. ‘He was together then?’
She doesn’t need to say any more. ‘Yeah.’ Onie sounds a million miles away. ‘I mean, I guess he was using. I heard the same rumors as everyone else. You’d see him at parties …’ Another bad memory to wave away. ‘But in the studio, he had it all under control.’
‘For a while.’ She speaks softly, but he hears her.
‘It seemed like a lot of people were getting into it then.’ His smile is gone.
She remembers those parties, too. Someone nodding out on the sofa. Min telling her not to go into the back room, not that anyone was fucking in it – not anymore. ‘You have any idea what happened?’
‘No.’ He’s lost, staring off into some distant space. ‘Just suddenly … that shit was everywhere. I can’t tell you how many people thought I’d be able to hook them up.’ He turns toward her, his eyes serious despite the wry grin that once again pulls at the corners of his mouth. ‘I wasn’t into reggae, either.’
She huffs out a half laugh and shakes her head. Sympathy, or despair. ‘Was anybody in Last Call … was Frank into smack?’
‘No.’ A vehement shake of his head. ‘He hated that shit with a passion. No, with Frank, it was the drink that did him in. I mean, the band … we were no great loss. But he was really hurting for a while. Couldn’t hold a job. Last I remember, he was at the Casbah.’
‘The Casbah?’ Tara’s voice spikes with disbelief. ‘Jonah Wells gave him a job?’
‘No, no way.’ Onie laughs at the thought. ‘He wasn’t pretty enough. But Brian was managing by then. The bar, anyway. He got Frank a gig working the door. Only Frank was too angry – too angry and too drunk. He beat up some kid. Some poor junkie, stoned out of his head. Kid was screaming it was a shakedown, but it was just Frank being Frank, pissed at the world and wasted. Even Brian couldn’t keep him on, after that. If anyone had asked me, I’d have thought he’d have been the one to go – not Chris.’
NINE
It all comes back with the legwork. Phone work, really, although these days it really is only the phone – no more Rolodex of scrawled and crossed-out names. By the time she leaves work on Wednesday, she’s played phone tag with Jim and Jerry, with Nieve, who still tends bar over at the Drift, and left messages for Phil and Robbie from the Whirled Shakers, as well. Even if one or two of them drop out, she’s got the bones of the piece. Not the structure, exactly. Not yet, but a sense of the narrative. Of the flow. A story of creation and community, of struggle, and a tragic near miss. Of the survivors who still warm themselves at the embers.
Of course, she’ll need to talk to Neela. Frank’s widow ties together the two parts of the story, past and present. She was there with Chris, and, obviously, now, with Frank. Only his funeral was just last week, and it’s too soon. Tara can still picture her. How pale she looked. How exhausted. She’ll reach out to her – spend some time with her – sometime before her deadline. She tells herself it’s only human to give the grieving woman a bit more time. Anybody would.
Still, she’s hesitant to call Scott back. She remembers well enough how bullheaded he can be, and he clearly wants this piece. That there’s a story there, she no longer has any doubt. But as it begins to take shape, she’s starting to question if it’s the one he’ll want. The one she’s half-promised her old buddy she could deliver.
It’s nearly six. She’s hoping for voicemail, but he’s still at his office, and so, with her notes spread on the coffee table, she outlines what she has and what she hopes to get. It’s all professional, smoother than she had feared, and they quickly come to loose terms. Four thousand words. Five, maybe, if she gets something really good. A dollar a word, with a bump if it makes the cover. She’ll get him something in three weeks. A draft, at least, but even before, she’ll keep in touch. So they can talk about art, he says. Photos or an illustration, maybe. But she knows Scott. He wants to be able to shape the piece as it happens. And then he begins to riff.
‘Sex and drugs and rock and roll.’ Scott is chuckling, a deep rumble bouncing his words along. ‘We’ve got to find a way to work that into the lede.’
‘Wait.’ Tara jumps in before he can say more. This isn’t what she meant, what they’ve been discussing. ‘Are you serious?’
The pause that follows worries her. Makes her more aware than Scott’s new look, new job – more than anything – of the time that has passed. How much has her old friend changed?
‘Well, you are talking to the widow, aren’t you?’ Scott always did have a sense for Tara’s weak spots – urging her on when she shied away from something hard. ‘I mean, she’s your story.’ He’s getting carried away. Taking what she’s told him, only twisting it slightly. ‘Neela Turcotte – the dancing girl turned grieving granny. From cranked-up Chris Crack to sober Frank Turcotte. That’s your piece, Tara. Neela, Chris Crack, and the aftermath. Sex and drugs and rock and roll.’ He says it again, the phrase rolling out of his mouth, like he’s selling something. Like he’s a suit, jollying her along. ‘Yeah, that’s it. I like it.’
‘Scott.’ She hears the peevishness in her voice. The slight whine, but really, she has cause to be annoyed. Or, no, disappointed. ‘You can’t be serious.’ She pauses. He’s the editor of City now. He is a suit. ‘Are you?’
‘Well, sort of.’ He has the grace to sound abashed. In the silence that follows, Tara finds herself drifting back. The old Scott – the fat, sloppy Scott – would have scoffed at that tag line. It was cheap – no, ‘easy’, he’d say, as a precursor to urging her to dig deeper. To think harder about the people involved. The personalities. Not just a hook for the uninitiated. For the tourists.
‘I’m sorry, Tara.’ What he hears in her silence he doesn’t say. Clearly, he’s picked up some of her unhappiness. No – she corrects herself – her ambivalence. ‘City isn’t a ’zine. It’s a glossy monthly, with a circulation of more than three hundred thousand, ninety-nine percent of whom will never have been in the clubs. Will never have heard of any of these people. They hear “Boston rock”, they think Aerosmith or maybe, maybe the Cars. And they’re our readers, too.’
Tara swallows her response. He’s right, though that final ‘too’ is a bit much. She didn’t know Scott had this gig because she never reads the magazine. ‘I guess I’m not the target demographic,’ she says, her voice soft. An offering of peace.
‘But you are!’ He’s excited again. ‘College educated, gainfully employed. Soon to be a homeowner, maybe.’ As he talks, she wonders – did she tell him about the condo? ‘Well, you don’t have kids, and most of our readers do. But you can write, Tara. You just have to’ – the pause is telling – ‘broaden your scope a bit. Just to bring them in. The story is still yours. Still what you were telling me.’
‘I guess.’ She thinks back to their dinner. His apartment – how he looked. For the first time since seeing him again, she misses the old Scott, stained hoodie and all. He would have understood her reservations.
But she’s changed too. ‘I’m just not sure anymore,’ she says. She never used to balk at any of Scott’s suggestions. Then again, she’d been a novice then – and he’d been a good editor. ‘It seems like maybe you want something more sensational than I’m comfortable with.’
‘Nonsense!’ She hears the old Scott in
his voice. The enthusiasm, the passion. ‘I want the real story, Tara. I want to know what happened. What went so horribly wrong, and you’re in a unique position to find out.’
‘I am?’ Something isn’t right. He’s selling it too hard.
‘You’re one of the best writers I know,’ he says, and she tries to resist the glow his words conjure. ‘I’ve been meaning to get you into the magazine. Been meaning to get in touch since I’ve been here. And you’ve got perspective, Tara. You were always in the scene but never really of it.’
‘Oh.’ One short syllable is all she can manage. She knows what he means, as much as she wishes she didn’t. For years, she told herself it was her role. A critic needs some distance. Needs to maintain some kind of objectivity on the goings-on around her. But she knew that was only part of the truth. Everyone knew that redhead from Boston Rock fucked half the bands she wrote about. That Tom was doing lines with Brian – and probably with every other bouncer or barkeep who let him in early to drop off his copies of Underground Sound. And she didn’t even want to think about Min. It wasn’t just Frank, like it wasn’t just coke, after a while. There was a reason her friend kept her away from the back rooms. Only now, Tara finds herself wondering.
‘Were you part of the scene, then?’ She visualizes the man on the other end of the line: trim and clean-shaven. Soon he’ll have his feet up on that glass coffee table. The sun is setting, and the view over the docks, over the water, will be amazing.
‘We were there, Tara.’ She hears him sit up. The conversation is coming to an end. He wants to go home. ‘Hey, I met you because of it. And I also met Jonah. I’d say we did OK for ourselves.’ She pictures that window. The view. ‘Maybe we were on the fringes. Outsiders looking in. But at least we survived.’
Scott’s only being smart. Being what Peter would term ‘adult’. She knows that. He’s guiding her toward the piece he can use – something ‘edgy’ enough to titillate his corporate master, but still sufficiently mainstream for the majority of his readers. Still, she’s disappointed. No, she realizes as she sits and stares at the silent phone, hurt. She had thought they were a team. She had thought, maybe … no. She shakes her head. This is a gig. A story. Nothing more.
While she’s been sitting here, in her own living room, the sun has set. The soft September twilight faded, leaving her in darkness.
‘God, I’m a sad case.’ She talks out loud, to cheer herself up. For, as Scott would say, distance. But after switching on the reading lamp, she grabs her phone again.
‘Nick!’ She’s so happy when he picks up that she forgets why she’s called. He’d invited her to dinner – and then called to rescind the invitation. ‘I’m – ah – returning your calls?’
It sounds lame, even to her.
‘Tara.’ His voice is warm. She likes the way he says her name. ‘I’m glad you called. And, I’m sorry – that was all sort of half-assed.’
‘No,’ she responds. ‘No problem. I mean, is everything all right?’
His sigh turns into something like a laugh. ‘Just the usual drama,’ he says. ‘Patti – my ex – was having problems with the boys. I mean, they’re teenagers. But, well …’ He hesitates. ‘She hasn’t had an easy time of it. Would you hang on a minute?’
She waits as he talks to someone. He’s at the bar, she realizes, saying something about the register. About a delivery that came in. When he gets back on, she apologizes.
‘I guess I caught you in the middle of things,’ she says.
‘Not at all.’ He sounds better, almost chipper. ‘In fact, I was just leaving. Hey, I know it’s last minute, but … would you want to get a pizza or something?’
‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘I would.’
They agree on Bertucci’s. It’s closer to her place, but he’s got his car anyway, he points out. After a day in the office, she’s glad to walk. It’s full dark by then, but even mid-week the city is humming and she feels the old lift, the surge of energy and hope that comes from going out. Maybe it’s not the culture she misses, she thinks as she makes her way into Central. Maybe it’s simply the night.
He’s not there when she arrives, but there are no new messages on her phone. No last-minute cancellation, and so she gets a table. Orders a glass of wine and tries to quell her sudden nerves. It’s Scott, she tells herself. He put her on edge, with his talk about the scene, about the piece. It’s all silly, really. Her old friend is merely being pragmatic. ‘Adult.’ Peter’s voice sounds in her head again. Still, Tara feels uneasy. Unsure what she has committed to. Unsure, if she is going to be honest, about why she wants to write this piece.
She looks up, but nobody has entered in the few minutes she’s been sitting there. She thinks about calling Min, but she already knows what her friend would say. Min never really liked Scott. And besides, Nick has just walked in.
‘Just in time,’ she says, as he sits down. Before she has a chance to stop herself.
‘Bad day?’ He seems to get it, and she nods, grateful.
‘This helped.’ She raises her glass, and then catches herself. ‘I mean, I’m not …’
‘No, I know.’ He raises his hand to stop her protestations and, then, to flag over the waitress. ‘Would you want more? Let’s have a carafe.’
By the time she brings it, Tara has finished her glass. By the time they order, she only feels a slight pang of guilt – the sausage and banana peppers is Peter’s favorite, though Nick doesn’t go for the extra cheese. She sips her second glass slowly, aware of the pleasant buzz, but when he asks how the story is going, she ends up telling him about Scott. About her reservations with his editorial direction. And with his flip description of her detachment.
‘Maybe I’m being silly,’ she says. She dips her finger in a drop of wine, circles the rim of her glass. She’s not hungry, not anymore. ‘But, well, I always felt like the scene was my family. Maybe because my real family wasn’t particularly emotive or expressive. And now, I guess, I wasn’t either. I guess I held myself aloof, too.’
She hears herself talking, and it’s as if she’s hearing Scott all over again. ‘I mean, was he right, do you think?’
‘Aloof? No.’ He speaks softly, his blue eyes sad, and she realizes that she was worried that he wouldn’t take her seriously. ‘An outsider? Maybe. But we all were. I mean, wasn’t that the point, sort of? We could all be misfits together.’
‘Maybe.’ She thinks of her friends. Of Min and Frank. Of Scott, who she thought she knew so well. ‘Maybe I did keep my distance.’
‘Maybe you had good instincts.’ He reaches over, puts his hand on hers, just as the pizza arrives. ‘Fantastic,’ he says, sitting back as the waitress places the pan between them. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m famished.’
Tara separates slices and plates them. Biting into her own, she finds her appetite, the knot in her belly gone. When Nick picks up the carafe, hovering over her glass, she nods. Why not? She’s not driving. Besides, she hasn’t felt so good in ages.
‘I insist,’ he says, when she laughs off his offer to walk her home. ‘Central Square hasn’t changed that much. Besides,’ he lowers his voice to a conspiratorial hush, ‘I could use some air before I get behind the wheel.’
She doesn’t protest. The street has grown quiet, and, besides, she’s enjoying his company. They’ve moved off talk of work and their respective families. It turns out, he’s a reader. ‘History, mostly, but anything I can get my hands on.’
‘My ex was into history,’ she says. By this point, that’s not a conversation stopper, though he does make a face, which in turn sets her laughing. ‘No, really. That’s not a bad thing,’ she clarifies.
They’ve reached her building by then, and when she turns to tell him, she finds herself hesitating. It’s not his eyes, or even the lean, muscular bulk of him, so much more fit – more physical – than Peter ever was. When he leans down to kiss her, she kisses him back, wrapping her arms around him to draw him close. To bring him in to her body. To her world.
TEN
‘So what did you decide?’ Min’s question startles her out of her reverie. She’s on her way to work, singing one of the old songs to herself. ‘Are you lining them up for the weekend?’
‘Oh, sorry.’ She catches herself. Thinks back. ‘I don’t – things have changed.’
‘Let me guess. Scott called, too?’ She hears Min settle in. Thursday, her day off, and she always had an ear for when something was on Tara’s mind. ‘Tell.’
Tara takes a moment before she responds. She hasn’t been thinking of Scott. She hasn’t been thinking about much, actually, which is how she’d like to keep it. She feels good. Happy, even, and not yet ready to unpack her thoughts about the night before. And so she decides to answer the question that Min gives voice to, rather than the more salacious one implied.
‘Yeah, we talked about the piece. He’s pushing for something a bit more sensational than I had in mind,’ she says, as she makes her way toward the office. At this moment, she can’t quite remember why Scott’s coaching bothered her so much, and she tries to conjure the discomfort she felt. Min will expect it. ‘Something a little cheesy.’
‘Well, it is City.’ Min is enjoying this, Tara can tell. Almost as good as sex. ‘Soccer mom central.’
‘Yeah.’ The problem with revisiting the conversation. It does begin to bother her again. What Scott said, how he said it. This was really not the time to dredge it all up again. She’s got work, even if Min doesn’t.
‘Do you think the scene was made up of outsiders?’ She posits the question as she walks up the stairs to Zeron’s main entrance. That’s not really what she’s thinking, but it’s close enough.