“Get Duke,” I demanded.
“I’m here, darlin’.” Duke was standing in the door, all the Rock Chicks and Tex behind him, Ava was holding my cup of coffee.
“Let’s go, everyone out,” Tex herded the Rock Chicks away as Indy left me and Duke came in.
He sat down next to me, one leg bent, one straight out, his wrist resting on his bent knee.
Tex shut the door and we were alone.
I turned to Duke and since he wasn’t a Rock Chick, I figured Mace wouldn’t get mad at me when I blurted, “We’re back together. Mace and me. He came home to me last night and we worked it out.” I watched the blurry surprise hit Duke’s face and continued, “We have to pretend we’re not back together because his Dad is playing some kind of game. So we have to keep it a secret.”
“All right, love,” he replied, his gravelly voice deeper and I knew it was with emotion which I had to ignore because I was holding on by a thread.
“He started to tell me about his sister but it’s hard on him. I have to let him tell me his own way,” I said.
Duke reached out and slid his fingers through my hair at my forehead, pulling it back away from my face. “You’re bein’ smart.”
“The Rock Chicks can’t know about us being back together. And they can’t tell me anymore about what happened to Caitlin.”
“I’ll talk to the girls.”
“But you have to tell me.”
Silence then a gentle, “Stella, I’m not sure –”
I leaned into him. “Duke, I just hurled because I couldn’t take it. If it gets worse, I can’t let him see that. I have to be strong for him. He’s being strong for me. You have to tell me. I have to be prepared.”
“You’re allowed to have an honest reaction –” Duke began but I shook my head.
“No, you don’t understand. He loved her. They were close. This is eating at him. I have to be strong. I have to let him give this to me. I’ve got to be able to take it from him.”
Duke’s eyes searched mine for a few beats, I watched him come to a conclusion and he nodded. He got closer and his arm moved around me, his big hand coming to the side of my head, pressing against it so my cheek rested on his shoulder.
“Okay, darlin’. Hate to say it but it gets worse,” he said softly and I sucked breath in through my nose, not at all certain what could be worse than a girl being kidnapped and having her hand cut off but, since it ended in murder, I figured it definitely got worse.
Duke went on, “You need me to stop so you can get yourself together, you just say so.”
I nodded my head against his shoulder.
After I did that, he told me.
I didn’t make him stop. I listened to the whole thing without making a noise except for my breathing going heavy.
When he was done, we both just sat on the floor, my head against his shoulder, his arm around my waist.
We sat there silent a long time, both of us lost in our own thoughts.
Finally, I said, “I’ve seen the scars.”
“Sorry?”
“From the bullets, Mace getting shot. On his thigh and his shoulder. I didn’t think anything of them. He was an athlete, athletes have injuries. I just thought…” I stopped because there was nothing else to say.
Duke didn’t reply.
“He thinks he did the wrong thing, calling in the police,” I told Duke.
“Far’s I can tell, she was dead the minute they took her. Only wrong thing done was her Dad makin’ it worse by not doin’ everything he could to make it easier for her while they had her. Her Dad knew what he was dealin’ with, Mace didn’t. He just wanted his sister back. Nothin’ wrong about that.”
I nodded my head in agreement and pulled in more breath.
Then I whispered. “I’m not going to be able to take them away.”
“Take what away?”
“His demons,” I explained, feeling hopeless, lost, maybe a little scared and definitely like I was wrong about my luck changing. “They’re never going to go away.”
Duke’s hand gave me a squeeze at my waist then he got up and left me on the floor. He closed the bathroom door behind him and I stared at it, wondering what to do.
I wanted to go to Mace, put my arms around him, absorb his pain like I was an emotional sponge. I wanted magical powers so I could erase his memories. I wanted to be able to time travel so I could warn him, protect Caitlin. I wanted to give her the life she was supposed to have, allow her to move to New York and become a ballerina. I wanted Mace to be able to go to the theater, sit in the audience and watch his sister dance.
Most of all, I wanted to kick his Dad’s ass.
On that thought, the bathroom door opened and Duke came back, a toothbrush in its packaging in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other. He put the coffee cup on the back of the toilet and held out a hand to me. He pulled me up and rooted through the medicine cabinet, closed the mirrored door and handed me some toothpaste and the brush. I brushed my teeth, scoured my tongue and rinsed my mouth.
When I was done, Duke put down the toilet seat and guided me to it. I sat down, he handed me my coffee and I took a sip as he crouched in front of me and looked into my eyes.
Then he spoke, “Don’t know Caitlin Mason. But I ‘spect, she’s anything like her brother, you go back in time eight years, sit her down, tell her this was gonna happen, I know what she’d say to you.”
“What would she say?” I whispered.
“She’d say ‘be happy’.”
I knew what he was trying to do.
I also knew it wasn’t going to work.
It wasn’t that simple.
Nothing about this was simple.
I shook my head and the second wave of tears that hadn’t yet come stung my eyes.
Duke continued, “You’re right, Stella. This is eatin’ him. You say they were close and that’s proved true by the way he’s torn apart by this. But any sixteen year old ballerina who loves her brother wouldn’t want her spirit to haunt him. She’d want him to let go of those demons and be happy. Your job is to make him understand that’s what she’d want.”
“How do I do that?” I asked, feeling the wetness start to roll silently down my cheeks.
“By making him happy. You do that, it’ll come. He’ll let it go.”
I shook my head again.
This was not something you let go.
I could make Mace breakfasts of eggs benedict and Belgian waffles topped with strawberries and whipped cream and homemade blueberry pancakes smothered in warm maple syrup and apple coffeecake with a thick crust of brown sugar crumble (or whatever) every morning for the rest of his effing life and it would never make him happy enough to let this shit go.
Duke grabbed my hand and squeezed. “Trust me, girl. I know what I’m talkin’ about. I been watchin’ the way he is with you. Don’t know it all. Don’t know what happened to him after it went down. What I do know is he hasn’t let anyone in. Not until you. You work at makin’ him happy, he’ll let it go.”
For some reason, that’s when I remembered what Mace said to me onstage after I sang “Black”.
I can’t be the star in your sky when you’re the only star left shining in mine.
I wondered what he meant by that.
The only star?
How could I be the only star?
Mace was a good guy. Understandably intense and maybe he had a short fuse but all the Hot Bunch respected him. More than respected him, they liked him. They weren’t colleagues, they were friends.
He had to have a life back then, before that happened to Caitlin.
He had to have people he cared about who cared about him.
He had to have other family.
Friends.
His Mom.
He never talked about his friends, his past, his Mom.
Ever.
And it hit me then.
I knew.
I knew because he was like me.
He was black.
/>
He left his career as an athlete and became a private investigator.
He left his life behind, shut it out, moved on. Everything before Caitlin was gone. He’d pushed it away.
I knew this because I’d done the same thing.
That’s when the idea came to me and my back went straight.
I pulled my hand from Duke’s, wiped my eyes and asked, “Duke, can you do me a big favor?”
“Anything, love.”
“I need Mace’s Mom’s name and her phone number. But I don’t want Mace to know you gave it to me.”
Duke stared at me a second.
Then he smiled and said, “You got it.”
Chapter Nineteen
Crazy Honkies
Stella
“I saw it first!” Leo shouted.
“I don’t care, this tee is mine!” Pong shouted back.
I was standing with Indy and Ally and at the shouts, the three of us looked across Head West to see Pong and Leo standing by a round clothing rack filled with t-shirts. They looked like they were playing tug of war with a rainbow, tie-dyed tee stretched tight between them.
Beautiful.
My effing band.
From the look of it, Annette’s store opening was a smash hit. There were people shoulder-to-shoulder, all of them consuming cashews, olives and Ritz crackers spread with squirtable cheese and drinking Fat Tire beer like these were the finest of delicacies. A lot of those people carried brown paper bags with “Head West” stamped on the side of them in old Wild West style lettering, bags that held t-shirts, bongs and posters, amongst other things.
It had been fun (thus far) and it was taking our mind off things which we all needed. That day, Shirleen had been shot at (and lost her couch) and my world had been rocked by all that had happened to Mace. A party, even if it had the weird mixture of olives, squirtable cheese and bongs (though the bongs weren’t in use), was exactly what we needed.
Annette was happy as a clam and sifting through the crowd, looking kick-fucking-ass in a cream boat-necked hemp top and khaki loose-fitting hemp trousers. Her feet were bare, all her toes painted in different colors of the rainbow. A thin cream, khaki and green hemp scarf was wrapped around her blonde hair but lots of that hair was poking out here and there, some of it twisted, some of it braided, some of it curled, some of it just hanging.
The store was one day old but looked like it had been there since the 60’s. The walls were covered in Jimi Hendrix, Grateful Dead and Jim Morrison posters and big blankets decorated with Celtic symbols or pot leaves. There were five big, round clothing racks filled with t-shirts, sarongs and hemp clothing. There were three flipping poster displays showing posters of rock bands, she-devils riding tigers and psychedelic everything with rolled up, plastic-covered posters in numbered slots beside them. There were shelves filled with books like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Jerry Garcia biographies. There were glass-topped and sided display cases along the front and down one full side of the store chock full of bongs of every shape, size and color, one-hitters also of every shape, size and color, Zippo lighters, bumper and other stickers, incense of every scent known to man as well as a variety of incense burners, candles and an assortment of other head shop paraphernalia.
The Rock Chicks and Hot Bunch were all in attendance except Mace who, Luke told me, was working and, for the benefit of the Rock Chicks (something Luke didn’t tell me, I just knew), keeping a distance.
The boys were there for security purposes and made this plain by having holstered guns at their belts alongside walkie talkies. Not to mention wearing identical “Don’t fuck with me” expressions on their faces (and, for your information, these expressions were Hot Bunch Universal and, with the wide berth they were all getting from the customers-slash-partiers, effective).
The girls didn’t go the way of hemp but, at Annette’s demand, we were all displaying Annette’s wares wearing jeans and most of us wearing cowboy boots (except Ava, who had on flip-flops). Indy had on a Grateful Dead tee. Ally was wearing a peach and yellow tie-dyed tee with a yellow peace sign on the front. Jules had on a violet tee that said, “Give peace a chance” across the front in psychedelic scrawl. Ava was sporting a vintage Jefferson Airplane tee. Upon arrival, Annette had given me a pink tee with “Flower Power” written across the boobs in cartoon daisies and, like all the other girls, I’d changed in one of the dressing rooms. Roxie had on a killer Indian-style tunic that was also sold in the shop.
Daisy appeared to have missed the dress code communiqué. She was wearing a white, denim mini-skirt, a backless, halter top made of what looked like tiny, silver beads and had a drape at the cleavage that was so low, on her enormous bosoms, it was vaguely threatening. She’d completed her ensemble with a pair of silver, platform go-go boots and her hair was teased out to there.
When I’d looked her from head-to-toe, Daisy told me. “I don’t do hippie, comprende?”
I just nodded, there was nothing else to do.
I watched as a scruffy-looking guy who I knew was a friend of the Rock Chicks because I’d met him at a gig some time ago (he went by the moniker “The Kevster”, FYI), shuffled up to Leo and Pong and said one word.
“Dudes.”
Then he lifted up both his hands in peace signs like this was going to work.
I closed my eyes in despair mainly because I knew this wasn’t going to work.
“Fuck off, hippie,” I heard Pong snap and I knew it was time to act. With an apologetic glance at Indy and Ally, I pushed forward to take care of my band.
As I made my way through the crowd, I watched The Kevster rear back in offense. “I’m not a hippie. I’m a pothead. World of difference, man.”
Leo ignored The Kevster and yanked on the tee. “Let go, Pong.”
Pong turned back to Leo. “You let go!”
Leo yanked again and shouted, “No! You let go!”
“Dudes, you gotta respect the vibe of a head shop,” The Kevster cut in informatively. “It’s like walkin’ into a Kabbalah Center and starting a bitch-slapping fight. You don’t do that shit. You’re killin’ the vibe.”
“Fuck the vibe,” Pong yelled just as I made it up to them.
I had bad timing. Pong lost hold on the shirt. He went flying backwards and since I was behind him, he slammed into me and we both went down. Our arms reeled out to find purchase and we took down two clothing racks with us. They fell to their sides and crashed around us with loud bangs and then started rolling, t-shirts and hemp clothes flying everywhere.
“Chaos!” The Kevster shouted, arms waving over his head. “Chaos at the head shop!”
Ally arrived and pulled The Kevster back, ordering, “Calm down, Kevin.”
Kevin didn’t feel like calming down. He pointed at Pong then at Leo. “Eject. Eject, eject, eject!”
“If there’s no chaos at the head shop, there ain’t no eject either,” Pong said from the floor but The Kevster was having none of it.
“It’s about respect, man,” The Kevster decreed. “No one brings chaos to a head shop. Everyone knows that!”
Indy was behind me and she pulled me up by my armpits as Hugo made it to our clutch.
He looked down his nose at Pong.
“Crazy honkies,” Hugo muttered, making it clear he wasn’t there to help.
Shirleen was all of a sudden close and looking at Pong too.
“Brother, you got that right,” she said to Hugo.
I’d let this all wash over me without much thought.
This was not unusual. Chaos, in my life, even before the bullets were flying, was not unusual. My band caused chaos everywhere they went.
But at that moment, I was over it.
Effing over it.
I’d spent an hour after my time in the bathroom with Duke that morning sitting in Lee’s office while the Rock Chicks guarded the door. I read through the papers that the Rock Chicks, Duke and Tex finally shared with me.
The story about Caitlin was all there,
with pictures. Pictures of a beautiful, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, smiling, tiny teenage girl. There was even a picture of her with Mace during his surfing days, maybe after a competition. He was standing on a beach in a wetsuit, his hair and suit slick with water, his board planted in the sand behind him. Caitlin, tiny and young, maybe ten years old, was pressed into his side, hugging him around his waist, smiling brightly, her head tilted back to look up at him as his was tilted down to look at her. His arm was around her shoulders, his long, strong fingers curled in, holding her tight. You could see she didn’t care, not even a little bit, that she was dry and Mace was soaking wet.
Mace was smiling at Caitlin too. He was a lot younger in the picture. I had no idea how old, maybe in his early twenties. He smiled at her in a way I’d never seen him before. His face relaxed, open, unguarded and it hurt my heart to look at it.
I didn’t know how much of himself he’d lost after that situation, not until I saw that photo.
When I saw it, I knew he lost everything.
And it was my job to get it back.
And I was damned if I knew how.
I’d learned about Preston Mason too. A lot about him. Mostly I learned that I wasn’t wrong. He was the Supreme Asshole of All Time.
And I’d read about it all. About her hand. The commandos. And how Mace had watched his sister get her head blown off right before his beautiful body had nearly been riddled with bullets.
This meant Mace had a dickhead father, a dead sister and now a girlfriend under fire.
That was worth being pissed off about.
That was earth-shattering.
That could fuck you up for the rest of your life.
I found I no longer had patience with Leo and Pong fighting over a tie-dyed t-shirt of all effing things.
And seriously, could you blame me?
When Pong got to his feet, I moved forward, my cowboy-booted feet treading on t-shirts and I put my hands in his chest and shoved. This surprised him, I’d never done this before and he went back on a foot.
“What’s the matter with you?” I snapped.
Pong’s eyes got wide as they stared at me and my uncharacteristic loss of control and he muttered, “Stella Bella.”
Rock Chick Reckoning Page 32