Stay Until We Break (Hub City Romance, A)

by Mercy Brown

  “He’ll have to crack a window at some point,” he says. “And I’m not moving or getting rid of this sandwich until he does.”

  “Let him go, Trap,” Joey says.

  “They desecrated Steady Beth,” Travis says. “Now they have to pay.”

  “Oh, they’ll pay,” Joey says. “I promise. Later, though. When they’re least expecting it.”

  ***

  Saturday, August 26, 1995

  The Milestone, Charlotte, NC

  With Crown the Robin and 4-Squares

  Soft Tour—Day 17

  We open the set tonight, but now we have an actual crowd, so I’m even more of a wreck. I don’t eat all day but still manage to throw up and then get the dry heaves before we go on.

  I manage to play okay—not fantastic, but a little better than last night. I’m able to pick my head up and look at Joey a couple of times, and that helps. I still can’t face the crowd, who are nowhere near as into it as they are when Cole is up here. That’s one way I know that playing in a band is a hell of a lot more than knowing the notes and the pedal changes. But I’m determined to get there.

  Thinking about Cole still makes my stomach hurt, and I try to push the thought away as I make an attempt to get into the music. But how the hell can I not think about him while I’m holding his bass, playing his parts, stomping on his pedals? It’s constant war in my head, the entire time I play.

  The next day in the van, Joey sits up front with Travis so Emmy and I can work on the set in the back. I’m trying to be careful with Cole’s bass (it will always be Cole’s bass to me—I will never be able to bring myself to consider it mine) as we careen north. We work through the set some more, with Travis playing a cassette of rehearsals, Joey tapping along on the dash.

  “Cut it out,” Travis says. “No drumming the dash.”

  “Fine,” Joey says, and starts drumming the door, his legs, anything he can.

  “Stop the tapping,” says Travis. “It’s fucking annoying. Why do drummers always have to tap?”

  “Because we’re drummers? Asshole. It’s good practice.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t see guitar players air guitaring all over shit.”

  I look at Emmy next to me, totally air guitaring her parts.

  “Hey, you can’t hear air guitaring,” she explains. “Far less annoying.”

  “You’re still a dork, though,” I point out.

  On Monday, Joey tries to get a hold of Cole to see how he’s doing but nobody answers, so he just leaves a message. Then he makes a call to his mother in Lodi, just to check in. She tells him she’s seen Cole, Katelyn, and Claire in the neighborhood. Katelyn seems to be up and about okay since her hospital ordeal. Did he know Cole started working for Patrick on the plumber’s truck? He’s coming over later to check on that leak by the washing machine.

  “Patrick’s been hounding him to come work for him for years,” Joey explains to us. “He was going to buckle sooner or later. Plus he can get in the union.”

  “That’s one hell of a commute from New Brunswick,” Travis says.

  “Yeah, he’ll probably end up moving back,” Joey says, glancing my way, but my eyes are fixed out the window. I should have guessed Joey would have picked up on Cole’s plans, even if Cole didn’t come out and tell him.

  “What will you do for a roommate?” Emmy says. “What about our band cave, dude?”

  “We’ll figure something out,” Joey says. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

  ***

  Tuesday, August 29, 1995

  Richie’s Pacific Grill, Richmond, VA

  With Crown the Robin, Chimp Cringle, Crypt Whores

  Soft Tour—Day 20

  By Tuesday we’ve crossed the bridge back into Virginia to play in Richmond with Chimp Cringle and Crypt Whores again. Being reunited with them is like seeing long, lost family after all the different places we’ve been and people we’ve met. They bring a bunch of their friends out, too—including Little Lauren Hutton. Joey is so relieved when she explains that she had to get to work that morning and that she’d left her number on the bureau before she left. She even writes it across his palm in Sharpie so he won’t lose it this time.

  I still feel shaky as hell getting up on the stage, but I’m getting better at it. No dry heaves tonight, just a little queasiness before we play. With a couple more shows under my belt, my hands are beginning to feel better, too. I have the pedal changes down. But I hate to admit I don’t love playing bass for Soft. I can’t get into their music the same way from up here. My playing is improving, and we sound better than we did at the Caledonia, but not better enough, and I just can’t figure out why. The songs aren’t so difficult for me now. They’re not perfect yet, but that’s not the real issue. The real issue is I’m not feeling it. I have to get over this if I’m going to play Maxwell’s in front of Matador, because if Matador pans Soft, word will spread and it will be a lot harder for them to get picked up by another label at that level. Jason said as much.

  We’re in the middle of playing “Loud Is How I Love You” when it occurs to me that every time I’m on stage playing Cole’s bass, I feel exactly the way I felt when we broke up in Atlanta. That’s why I can’t get into the music—I don’t want to feel close to him, and this bass, these songs? They’re like a direct channel to that boy’s soul. My anger is this thick, glass wall, protecting me from going there.

  When I realize that, I force myself to think of something good about Cole instead. So as painful as it is, I think about that night with him in Tinglewood, and how excited he was looking at the tree carvings. I think about how he kissed me and teased me about my lip gloss. I’m banging out the chorus of “Loud” and thinking about him bare and frantic inside of me, and how when it was over he teased me about babies and a house in north Jersey and how close I felt to him then. It’s a knife to the gut to think of all that, but when I do, the glass wall shatters and now I fucking bring it. My head is moving, my legs are moving with Joey’s kick drum. I look up and see Travis and Emmy grinning at me. Obviously, they feel the difference in my playing. “Fuck yeah, Sunshine!” Emmy yells across the stage, and now I’ve arrived. Fucking finally. Our eyes lock while we’re syncing up on this sweet riff and she puts her forehead right to mine as we rock the chorus. I feel it all the way through my body. It’s good now.

  Maybe even good enough for Matador.

  ***

  We stay at Chimp Cringle’s barn again, and when we arrive at two a.m. I just want to lock myself in the bathroom because being here reminds me of Cole. I haven’t been able to reconstruct that wall around my heart and now I miss him more than ever. It hurts and I hate him for making me feel like a fucking goddess, but never taking me seriously as a girlfriend.

  I sit outside alone, out in the pasture on top of a large rock, holding on to Cole’s bass. I’m trying to smooth out the change from the chorus to bridge in “Short Shrift,” playing it over and over and over until I get it right. This is where I need to take the reverb off and hit the distortion, a tricky move, so I don’t want to be thinking about hand position. I need to get this song down by Maxwell’s. But fuck, this is frustrating.

  I look up at the sky, cursing the stars for not arranging themselves so Cole could be right here, where he belongs. Right here, playing bass in the band, where I know he wants to be. Here, holding my hand and saying, “Look at all those stars, Sunshine,” like the stars are brand-new and he’s the first one to have ever seen them.

  All alone out here, I look up at the sky. Those stars aren’t very good company, though. All they do is remind me that Cole isn’t here, and he’s never going to be here looking up at the late-night sky with me again.

  “Hey,” says a familiar voice behind me. I’m surprised and grateful to see Joey there.

  “I thought you’d be busy by now,” I say, giving him an eyebrow wag
gle. “You know . . .”

  “Nah,” he says. “Meg is great, but with her in Virginia Beach it’s not going anywhere. We had a great night and she’s a cool girl but I think I’m done with road casualties.”

  “Being a road casualty myself, I appreciate that,” I say.

  “Come on now,” Joey says. “You were never tour fodder for Cole.”

  I’m in no mood to argue with Joey about this. I look down at Cole’s bass and start fingerpicking a random bass line, but I still can’t hide my scowl.

  “You know he’s in love with you, Sonia,” Joey says, and it takes all my strength not to laugh outright at that. “He must have told you that.”

  “He didn’t, actually,” I say and feel cold and hollow. Now I just want Joey to go away.

  “Know how I know that?” he asks. He points to the bass in my lap and says, “Cole never lets anybody touch his bass. And he left it with you.”

  I look down at it, the chrome knobs glinting under the stars. I remember how he didn’t want to hand it to me when I was drunk, begging me not to drop it. The way he always looked when I was holding it or playing it, like I was holding his first born.

  “It’s just a guitar,” I say.

  “Not to Cole,” Joey says. “He bought that guitar in a pawn shop down in Weehawken when he was fifteen. Sonia, he had nothing back then—all his pants were short on him, he had no winter coat. Half the time he and Claire didn’t even have food on the table because his fucking father . . .” Joey stops, collects himself because I can see he looks upset, like he’s remembering something awful.

  “What?”

  “His dad was a nasty drunk—bad fucking news. His mom was no prize back then, either. He used to turn up at school with black eyes, cuts, bruises everywhere, when he turned up at all. Who knows where he and Claire would have ended up if Cole hadn’t done all the shit he did, some of it stupid, yeah, but his paper route didn’t quite cut it.”

  “You mean selling weed?”

  “Yeah, that,” Joey says. “But then, Emmy got this idea that we’d start a band and we’d hit the road one day, and he saw that as his ticket out, you know? We were all obsessed with Sonic Youth, and Emmy could already play guitar like she was born with one in her hands. I got a drum kit for Christmas that year, and we tried to figure out how to get Cole a bass. He mowed lawns, painted fences, shined shoes, and I think he probably even ran a few ounces to squirrel away every cent he could find to buy that damn guitar. And when he finally bought it, that was the proudest day of his life. But oh shit, the beating he took.” Joey mimics Cole’s mother and says, “Where did you get the money for this? Did you steal it? Your ass is going to jail, just like your father!”

  I’m staring out into the field as I listen, imagining fifteen-year-old Cole without a winter coat, holding on to this same P Bass like it was everything to him. Like it was bread and shelter and a future. I think about him taking a beating for it and feel my hand tighten around the neck.

  “She doesn’t deserve him,” I say quietly. “How does someone like that deserve a son who’d drop everything and come running when she’s in trouble? Why would he even do that?”

  “Because of Claire,” Joey says. “Katelyn stopped drinking after Cole got locked up, and I guess she tried to do better. She never hit him again, that’s for sure. They don’t get along great, but you know, they put up with each other for Claire’s sake.”

  I almost ask him—does he know Cole is already gone? That he’s not ever coming back to Soft? Does he realize all of what he’s giving up for Claire’s sake? But I can’t bring myself to bring it up. And now, I think I understand why it was so hard for Cole to bring it up, too. Even with me. It feels hopeless and it threatens everything we’ve worked so hard for. It undoes everything that feels important to us.

  In the silence, I notice all those sounds of a deep country night. The cows, the rustle of a slow breeze in the leaves. There are no airplanes overhead, no highway noise here. No soundtrack for anger, for sure. That’s when I realize I’m not angry anymore.

  I gently pick that chorus-to-bridge change in “Short Shrift,” and this time I nail it. I exhale with relief.

  “This bass is pretty magical,” I admit. “I’m getting attached to it.”

  Joey smiles and puts his arm around me. “You know, Cole once told me this bass was the only thing in his life that ever gave him any hope. And I’m sure it was, until you came along.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, Sunshine,” he says. “You.”

  ***

  On Wednesday, we have the day off. It’s a day where I do some hard thinking about things, and I realize maybe I was a bit more of an asshole than I should have been. Hey, it happens.

  When Cole told me he was quitting the band, I flipped out that he wasn’t who he appeared to be. It was like my world and everything I thought I knew crumbled beneath my Doc Martens. I felt like such a fool. But when I look back, maybe I was more into the idea of dating a rock star than I let on. And I have to ask myself if I was more angry that he didn’t tell me his plans, or just more disappointed that he’s a plumber from Jersey, and not some up-and-coming hot musician touring the country, chasing dreams. I was so mad that Cole was caving to pressure from his family, that he let himself be trapped by those obligations when I’d fought so hard to be rid of my own. I saw that as weakness. But after hearing his story from Joey, I see things differently. I don’t see him as weak at all now. In fact, I see him as remarkably strong. The kind of guy who would set his own dream aside to take care of the people he loves.

  And when I think of him like that, my heart aches so much it nearly brings me to my knees. I feel even more in love with him now, for better or worse, and I can’t pretend anymore that us falling apart was all his fault—like I was totally blameless here.

  Not sure what the hell I’m going to do about that from Charlottesville, though. Or when we get back to Jersey. The best I can really do right now is focus on being the best bass player I can for Soft. That’s what he asked me to do, isn’t it? Play so well they forget I was ever in the band, he said.

  Don’t know about that, but I can play well enough to get signed to Matador. All I need now is a little attitude to go with it.

  So when Shen and Jeremy announce this is the right day for Manic Panic, the punk rock hair dye, I decide I’m going to dye my hair bright blue. Not all of it, but right around my face and part of my bangs.

  “Kind of like war paint,” I say.

  “Yeah, whore paint!” Shen says.

  I guess that works.

  It turns out even better than I’d imagined. Bright blue streaks against my black hair make me feel like a badass. Like I could join Lush. Emmylou squeals with delight when she sees it. When I think of just how much my mother would hate it, I smile.

  I wonder if Cole would like it. No, actually, I don’t wonder. I know he’ll love it.

  Feeling way bolder now, I ask Joey for the number for Cole’s house in Lodi, even if I’m not sure what I’m going to say to him. “I’m sorry,” for starters, but I need to say a lot more than that. All I’m sure of now is that I need to hear his voice. But when I do call, it’s not his voice I get to hear.

  “Cole isn’t here right now,” a woman says, rough and tired sounding, so it’s a pretty safe bet it’s not Claire. “He’s working.”

  What was I thinking? It’s three in the afternoon on Wednesday—of course he’s working. He could even be at Joey’s parents’ house, fixing his mother’s washing machine.

  “Is this Mrs. McCormack?” I ask.

  “Yes, is there a message?” she asks.

  “Would you please tell him Sonia called?”

  “Is this his girlfriend?”

  I almost drop the phone when she says that, because for a second I think maybe he’s got another girlfriend. But then the part of my brain that’s
not broken realizes that he must have mentioned me. He’s actually mentioned me to his mother.

  “Um . . . yes,” I say. “It is.”

  “I’ll tell him you called,” she says.

  I should just hang up, I know. I should mind my own business. But I can’t seem to do that. Ever. So before she can hang up, I say, “You know he’s a phenomenal musician, right?”

  I definitely catch her off her guard with that, because she doesn’t say anything for what feels like ten minutes.

  “I know he’s a good plumber,” she answers. “That’s enough for me.”

  “Do you want to come see him play his last show at Maxwell’s this Saturday night? I’ll put you on the guest list.”

  “He said he’s not playing any more shows.”

  My stomach clenches like I’m going to vomit again and I’m back in my conversation with Joey last night, feeling enraged at this person I don’t even know, Cole’s mother, who just doesn’t get it. Who’s hit him and hurt him and is allowing him to give up his own dreams to send his sister—her daughter—to college. I should definitely hang up now before I say something I’ll regret. Ha, right.

  “Well, this show is very important,” I insist. “He wants to play it, trust me. He lives to play bass, and Maxwell’s is his last chance to play for a packed club. Mrs. McCormack, he’s so good that a major-label band offered him a spot, so I’m just saying, you might want to see him play once before he quits. He’s giving up everything he cares about for his family, so maybe you could, you know, appreciate that.”

  If I thought the silence was awkward before, I’m surprised the ice coming through the phone line doesn’t put me into a permanent deep freeze. Fuck it, though. It needed to be said.

  “Is that all?” she finally answers.

  “Yeah,” I say, angry as hell. “That’s all.”

  I slam the phone down.

  If Cole ever does speak to me again, he’s going to kill me.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Cole

  Wednesday evening, I walk into the kitchen of my mother’s house after a long-ass day of fixing leaky toilets and snaking out clogged drains while my uncle Patrick played with his brand-new cell phone in the truck.