Yes, the scandal gave my band more attention, but the music was always there. We had just needed a nudge to get more people to listen to us. If it took that to get an audience, so be it. I’ll never regret or care what gave us the push we needed. Ironically, “Missing Person” was the next big hit single off the CD, Damage. Then our fans went back to discover the rest of our catalog. Of course no one would know what “Missing Person” was really about, although it did have lines like: “The vultures had picked over your carcass years ago.”
I thought about how Robin and I had two very different fathers. Sometimes I wondered how they made a difference in our lives. Mine was an abusive alcoholic, but to me, Robin’s dad was the worst. He’d smile at you while pretending whatever he was saying wasn’t abuse. Her self-doubt, her unresolved anger, all of it could’ve come from living with a phony jackass like Jimmy Sanders. Those were the types who really messed with your head. At least you knew where you stood with my dad, even if he did speak with the back of his hand.
Chapter Forty-Six
Adrienne
When I got to the governor’s mansion, I was surprised there wasn’t more security around outside, especially after the debate. I pressed the doorbell, and it seemed to echo on and on like cathedral chimes. Then a housekeeper answered the door.
“I’m looking for Robin Sanders,” I said urgently. There was no time for pleasantries.
“She’s away in meetings,” the woman said. That would explain the lighter security.
The next thing I knew, Robin’s husband Tom shoved his way to the door, and the housekeeper promptly went away.
Of course he recognized me immediately. I spotted the change in his face the moment it fully sank in.
“You,” he said. “If you’re here to finish off my marriage, I won’t let you.”
I later learned he’d already booked a flight to Boston, where, I figured, he was going to try to kick my ass. But he wasn’t the type. You could tell he was a reluctant player in this drama, a truly nice guy who just wanted to have his quiet life in the suburbs. But in spite of his best efforts, it wasn’t meant to be.
“Whoa.” I threw my hands up and backed away from him.
“Just as I thought,” he snarled. His face held a bizarre mix of contempt and fascination.
“Your wife’s a grown woman,” I reminded him. “If your marriage is in trouble, it’s not because of me.”
“Is that what you tell yourself, you dyke?” He added special venom to that last word.
Strange. He’d seemed kinder on TV.
“When is she coming back?” I asked.
His hands were on his hips. “You must be kiddin’. As if I’d tell you.”
“Uh-huh.” I glanced away, noting the endless pasture beyond the house.
I turned and headed down the brick patio stairs.
“Adrienne Austen!” A girl’s high-pitched voice called after me.
Kendrick, Robin’s daughter, blew past her dad and rushed toward me like a fan.
“Kendrick!” Tom called. He wasn’t having it.
But before he could reach her, she placed a CD in my hands with a pen.
“Will you sign it?” she asked. Her face was hopeful. She didn’t seem to care about the mess going on around us.
I smiled and obliged immediately. I could see Tom tearing down the steps reluctantly. He didn’t want to get any closer to me but was compelled to pull his daughter away. Before he could reach his mark, I added my hotel room number underneath my signature.
“Will you tell your mom?” I asked softly.
She gave me a quick nod that reassured me.
* * *
I liked hotel rooms because they had no memories. Except for the haunted ones you hear about in Savannah and other places, hotel rooms had an impermanence where you could dispose of all your sins just by handing over the room key at checkout.
I paced the room, which was a little more spacious than I knew what to do with. Pulling back the curtain, I was confronted by a view of smoky gray buildings that rose up to meet me, a skyline that reminded me I wasn’t in Boston anymore. I felt the sting of this awareness, that I wasn’t now nor had I ever been welcome here in Atlanta. Memories of the last time I was here sickened me a little, and I tried not to think about it too much.
I checked my phone; it was a minute or two later than the last time I checked. I sat on the bed, pulled open the drawer beside it and saw nothing but a Bible, some hotel stationery and a pen rolling around. The Bible stopped me. I had been getting very philosophical lately, which pissed me off. That Bible, though, was always in the way—the thing that seemed to separate me from everyone else, if politicians like HER had their way.
I closed the drawer, lay back on the bed and closed my eyes. Hoping to escape to someplace—anyplace that wasn’t Atlanta—I was startled by the sudden hum of the heating unit under the window. I opened my eyes. Before I could close them again, there was a loud knock on the door.
I bolted up from the bed and went to the door, my heart racing in my chest. Peering through the peephole, I wasn’t prepared for the person I saw.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Adrienne
It wasn’t Robin. It was Tom, who obviously intercepted my note. Then again, what kind of moron gives her mistress’s daughter a message right in front of her husband?
Even though I thought better of it, I opened the door. I opened it to a snarling wire of a man in a suit, always in a suit, who insinuated himself into my life so rudely, yet inevitably. Then again, who was I to talk? I squared my shoulders, taking a perverse comfort in the perception of my own innocence: After all, it wasn’t my fault she was married.
“We need to settle this.” His baritone voice came quickly against the click sound of the closing door.
“Drink?” I raised the bottle of vodka from my suitcase, the same vodka I’d expected to need when I saw Robin again. If I never got to see her on this trip, I was still going to have that drink anyway.
“No.”
“Good for you.” I ignored his confrontational stance as he hedged further into my room. I went to the bathroom and poured the vodka into a plastic cup. I downed it before I came back out where he could see me.
I found Tom standing at the farthest part of the little hallway from the door, blocking the exit. I’m sure it was intentional.
“I won’t let you destroy my marriage,” he said with spider dark, shiny eyes, narrowed at me in a declaration of war.
“Did you practice that all the way down here?” I asked, crossing my arms. “It’s very good.” I was full-on patronizing.
“Bitch.”
“That’s original. Why is that all men can say when they’re pissed at a woman? Can’t you be any more creative? Really. Whatever you got, say it.”
“What do you want with her?” He was stoic, trying to gather in his emotion; I could almost see it all happening on his face, as he tried to be careful not to show his hand again. I think he was terrified.
“You should’ve asked her that question.”
I went over to the window, trying to hold on to the calmness that I could feel slipping away inside me. I’d purposely stayed at a hotel in the city miles away from the governor’s mansion to avoid suspicion.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
I turned away from the window. “You didn’t know she came to Boston?”
There was a flicker of confusion, just a hint, but I could see I’d caught him off-guard.
“Bitch?” I offered, as if to help him out.
Strangely, he lost the tough-guy stance pretty quickly. Playing hardball wasn’t his thing. His face fell and his body was a crumpled suit, sitting on the corner of my bed.
Where was the cutthroat lawyer he was so famous for being? Then I realized—it wasn’t as easy to be so disconnected, so calculating, when it came to the person you loved. And he obviously loved her. The only trouble was, so did I.
For the first time, I felt a twinge of
sympathy. Most of the time, though, I’d seen him as this powerful guy who didn’t really love her like I did, that it was a marriage of convenience, and how dare he screw up her life like that—all the while forgetting how Robin had made that choice too.
“Are you having an affair?” he asked weakly. I could tell he didn’t want to be in this spot, to be the last-to-know spouse.
“No,” I answered quickly. “Not exactly.”
He stood up. “What the hell does that mean? Either you are or you aren’t.”
Interestingly, that was something else he should be asking his wife. And here he was, desperate to get information from me, the mistress. It was very odd.
“It means no.” I went over to him, letting my guard down a little. Instead of winning her back, I knew what I had to do. “She came by to see me, yeah. But I was with someone else. Robin doesn’t mean anything to me…not anymore.”
He winced when I said her name. His aftershave stung my nose, reminding me how he’d probably still had sex with her. We stood about a foot apart from each other like combatants in some strange sport where nobody makes a move, because the first one who does, loses.
“If she doesn’t mean anything,” he said, “why are you here?”
“I wanted to tell her.”
“You could do that on the phone.”
“No,” I said, “not this. There’s history. But we’re in the past.”
“You ruined her career in the present.” Something about the way he said it, like a condescending teacher telling me what I didn’t know, the contempt in his voice…I could see he wanted to dispose of me quickly like some trash he didn’t want people to see on the governor’s lawn.
“A career based on lies,” I hissed. The time for playing nice was over.
“You and your kind are unnatural,” he said, again in that contemptuous tone. “You’re trying to ruin her with your perversions.”
I couldn’t keep it stuffed inside any longer. Call me stupid. Call me whatever. But I let it fly.
“Your wife is my kind,” I said with a vodka-laced grin. “And yeah, I love her! Always have.”
“You won’t get anywhere near her. Not now, not ever!”
The slam of the door sent chills rippling over my skin. If only I’d shut up, let him think I wasn’t a threat. My pride, my ego…always in my own way.
Now I’d ruined everything.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Adrienne
I didn’t sleep all night, wondering what I’d done. Tom didn’t seem like the violent type. He wasn’t overly aggressive. My dad was the type who would retaliate. Not this guy. Then I’d turn over, and my thoughts would shift again. Those political types were weird, doing the opposite of what they would in front of a microphone. What if he locked Robin in a room when he came back to the mansion?
No. Remembering Robin on TV, her fist high in the air, she wasn’t a woman who would easily do what he wanted. What if she had no choice, though? What if he pretended to be okay then got violent with her? What if she became one of those political mysteries where no one ever found her again? Only I’d know the truth—in my gut. It would be Tom who killed her.
You can never trust your thoughts in the wee hours of the morning. I stared up into blackness, now hearing the rumbling engines of four-in-the-morning Atlanta traffic. Picturing Robin in a body bag. Seeing Tom’s blank affect as he’s interviewed by police about his wife.
What was I doing here?
When it became obvious that sleep would never find me again, I got up, splashed lukewarm water on my face and tried to make a cup of watered-down room coffee.
In between sips, I zipped my suitcase, knowing it was over for me and Robin. She’d be okay. And somehow, I would have to be okay too. But I realized how much her influence seeped into every crack in my life. She’d had an impact on me like no one else. I wondered if I could write a song that encapsulated everything she’d meant to me. But I decided that no single song would be enough.
The final zip. Suitcase handle pulled out, ready to go. I spent some time scratching lyrics on hotel stationery first, and then it was six thirty.
I went down to the lobby for a plate of eggs and way-too-strong coffee. I was still cold, like that early morning, sleep-deprived chill that comes over you when it’s too early to be in the world of the living.
They had a TV on the only available wall space in the lobby.
Breaking News: Governor Sanders a no-show at a campaign rally. Speculation as to whether Governor Sanders’s remarks at the debate were actually her swan song to politics. But it wasn’t like her to simply not show up.
My heart sank, as all my early morning thoughts about Tom came crashing in—thoughts I deemed crazy by daybreak. What if they weren’t so crazy?
“Hey,” a little voice behind me called.
I turned to see a teenage girl timidly offering me her pad of hotel stationery.
“Could I get your autograph?” she asked.
It took me a long second to orient myself.
“Sure.” I took the pad and signed it.
“I love your work,” she said. “I’ve got all your songs on iTunes.”
I handed it back to her.
“Thanks!” Her voice cracked with a giddiness that everyone has before getting burned by the world. Nothing had sucked the life out of her yet, I thought cynically, then laughed at my own cynicism.
Give her time, I thought bitterly, wincing at the lighter-fuel-tasting coffee before setting my cup down. Why was it I could never get a good cup of coffee on the road?
* * *
Before I left Atlanta for the last time, Robin found me in the airport. First there was a wailing sound, and I thought a mother had lost her child. I turned and realized that it was her, calling out to me. We scrambled toward each other, but we had to be discreet because the press was swarming the place. We ended up talking in a women’s restroom after bribing a janitor to put an “Out of Order” sign outside.
I was so relieved to see that she was okay after missing a rally, I didn’t care what else happened.
“I know Tom came to see you,” she said breathlessly, trying to collect herself. I could tell she’d had more than a few rough nights. “I don’t know why you came all the way down here, but I can assure you, I’ll never interfere in your love life again.”
“Will you shut up?” I took her in my arms and held on until she stopped talking and her breathing finally relaxed. She was all that mattered, and I had to make sure she knew. I touched her face, feeling the energy return to her, as we both began to breathe again.
“But…”
“But nothing,” I said. “I was trying to convince myself I had no place in your life. But it’s bullshit. I know it. You know it.” I smiled a little, then we were both laughing—laughing at how stupid we’d been, laughing at how unlikely a pair we made together.
Tom eventually stepped aside when it was clear I wasn’t going anywhere. But life got harder for Robin. She had to finish out the year as governor, and it was all pretty brutal. Then… that was it. Nothing. Somebody got to her. But we’ll never really know.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Cory
“Wait a minute!” I flipped out. I think Adrienne knew she’d just completely upended my universe. “Are you saying that…” It seemed highly unlikely that Tom could’ve murdered Robin. If she’d disappeared right after the debate, maybe. But she didn’t. Unless he finally snapped after a year of watching her perform her duties as governor, albeit keeping a low profile. Maybe the final straw was seeing the footage of her shooting her former lover’s video in Hawaii.
Adrienne took a drag off her cigarette and glanced nonchalantly at the slice of New York lights visible from the living room. We’d come inside a while ago when night fell and the air grew colder. The skyline now twinkled like jewels from behind the sliding glass door.
I watched her expression restlessly. If Adrienne was upset remembering all of this, she didn’t show it
.
“You saw her after that, right? When she directed your video for ‘Voodoo’ the next spring?” I knew all about the stories of the two of them shooting on the beach. Everybody did. The couple who’d spotted Robin had said she looked relaxed. Content. And then, poof. She was gone. Something didn’t add up.
“Yeah.” She smiled to herself. “By the way, ’Voodoo’ was about politics, like the critics guessed. That was the only one they got right.”
I was amazed by her flippancy. I tried not to seem flustered. “Was that the last time you saw her? In Hawaii?”
“Yeah.”
Before coming here, I’d done plenty of research, in addition to what I already knew, or thought I knew, so that I’d be impeccably prepared. It had been a strange time in politics, and Robin Sanders seemed to be at the center of it. She had become so popular, so fast, that she seemed certain to become the Republican nominee and quite possibly the first woman to serve as president of the United States. But her response to a debate question, which suggested she was more okay with gay and lesbian people than her party wanted her to be, ultimately became her undoing. It sounds so weird today, because people of my generation who grew up when gay marriage was always legal wouldn’t have given that a second thought. But it ended her career. And possibly her life.
Resisting calls for her resignation, Robin had served out her last year as governor, a year that was most likely hell on earth, given legislative obstructionism and the regular painting of uncreative, juvenile graffiti like “carpet licker-in-chief” on the governors mansion’s fence. When she refused to say anything more about her failed bid for the nomination, a variety of pundits rushed in to fill the sound-bite vacuum and write her story for her. Obnoxious lumps of misogyny like Benny Rhodes labeled her “disgraced” and “no longer credible,” especially after a tabloid published photos of her with Adrienne Austen that had been taken by the tourists who’d recognized her in Hawaii.
In Her Eyes Page 18