Louder Than Love

by Topper, Jessica

  Heroin. Rehab. Assault. Jail.

  I may not have recalled all of the details surrounding those actions or events, but upon waking, I remembered those words could accurately describe Digger Graves just as much as the standard cliché “sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll” could. How darkly droll it must have been for him, romancing the naive widow. Millionaire rock star junkie being invited to a library, to my house for soup! I slapped clothes upon myself, cursing every good thought I had had about our blossoming relationship. Cursing myself for exposing Abbey and opening her up to disappointment. Cursing him and his sadomasochistic attempt to play along.

  I couldn’t bring myself to face Marissa that morning during drop-off. She had called the night before to see if our Wednesday coffee date was back on regular schedule, and I had given her the noncommittal go-ahead to gather with or without me. Even if I only cruised in to tell him off and got back in time to join them, I didn’t think I could handle the chatter and gossip today. I made sure I was the first one in and out of the lot. I gave Abbey extra kisses and hugs and tried not to let my face betray my emotions when she instructed me to tell Adrian she missed him.

  I already missed him, too.

  Imagine

  Central Park opened its lush green arms and instantly comforted me. I took my time walking down familiar paths and past favorite landmarks on my way west. As I passed the kids playing in Heckscher Playground, oblivious to the abundance of concrete, I missed Abbey desperately. There was a bevy of those brown squirrels she loved to chase flitting about; as I walked I pondered why we didn’t have any brown squirrels around Lauder Lake. Hipster squirrels that eschewed the suburbs, no doubt. People were scaling Umpire Rock like it was some urban Everest, with the nonchalance only New Yorkers and tourists could have on a hunk of bedrock a half billion years old.

  Before I realized it, I was upon Tavern on the Green and its wonderful menagerie of topiaries. I fervently wished to hide myself within that leafy fantasyland, but continued trudging up the bridal path instead. It was deserted, but there was evidence of freshly dug horseshoes in the dirt. I rejoined the paved path leading to Strawberry Fields well before the Riftstone Arch, which was desolate and creepy even on a sunny morning. And then I began to brace myself.

  Willing myself to stay calm and cool was a futile task. I could no longer enjoy the peaceful beauty of the trees on my path. There was the faded Lennon Imagine mosaic, so much smaller in real life, and the endless parade of people paying photographic homage. And there he was, sitting along the curved triangle of benches that bordered it. His elbows rested on his denim-clad knees, and he was leaning forward into a small book.

  I stopped short, almost causing a pileup of French backpackers behind me who had been close at my heels, eager to see the New York City landmark. I needed a moment to collect myself, to survey the situation. To capture his image before all hell broke loose.

  Black faded Norton Motorcycles shirt, tattered jeans, brown leather boots that looked like they had journeyed across a hundred dusty desert miles on a Harley. At his feet were two Starbucks cups of coffee, which almost broke my heart. Our fourth date and the man not only brings coffee, but I knew it was exactly how I liked it, too: one sugar, two splashes of skim. Adrian was the type of guy who noticed the details. A shame he didn’t bother to clue me in on some of his own important details, I thought bitterly. “Nothing is real” indeed.

  He kept gazing periodically to his right, figuring I’d enter the Fields like most people did, through the 72nd Street entrance. He glanced at his watch more than once, and I observed his shoulders rise in what could only be a gusty sigh. Does he think I failed in solving his riddle? Too thick—or thin-skinned—for the challenge?

  I remembered his remark in the Naked Bagel. If someone were to call his given name, he had said, he would barely think to turn his head. I felt all the rage return. Who was this guy really? He was a lie, a stranger.

  Before my brain had a chance to chicken out, I let the word fly. I knew the moment it exited my lips and entered his ears, there was no going back.

  “Digger!”

  What was meant to sound strong and absolute came out as a quivering bark. But sure enough, he jerked up his head in a pitiful Pavlovian response and met my gaze across the mosaic. I had vowed to stomp off the moment I received confirmation, but somehow I just couldn’t. The look in his eyes could only be described as haunted. Go, go go. My feet finally obeyed my brain and twisted me back the way I had come.

  “Kat! Katrina!” I had only taken a few steps before I heard the collective gasp of tourists and pigeon-feeding bag ladies alike. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Adrian hurtling across the middle of the mosaic, which had to be some sort of sacrilege. He deftly hopped over the lit votive candles and the bouquets of limp roses carefully strewn across the shrine, making sure he didn’t tread upon John Lennon’s resounding and timeless single word on his way to me.

  I dodged bumps in the pavement and people and dogs in my effort to leave gracefully as he pursued. “So that’s it, you’re just going to walk away because you think I’m a washed-up scumbag who doesn’t deserve a chance to prove himself?”

  “No!” I yelled, causing the people and dogs in our path to leap and scatter. “I’m walking away because you didn’t trust me enough to tell me the truth.” I stood rooted to the spot, my body white-hot and twitching as adrenaline flooded it. Many times I had witnessed shouting matches in the streets of New York, but I never imagined I would find myself in the middle of one. It was mortifying but strangely liberating.

  “Trust?” he sputtered. “All my life I trusted people to do right by me, and I was burned at every turn! Made a commodity by those who I thought cared about me—my friends, my wife, my own daughter . . .” His voice dwindled as he drew a ragged breath and stared me down.

  I held my ground. “Well, I’m thinking of my own daughter! She trusted you! I let her get close to you, and you hid the glaring fact that—”

  “The fact is, Kat, I’m never going to fit into the neat and logical order you’re used to!”

  Logic? He was really going to play the logic card with me? Life had already pulled the mother of all tricks, pulling the rug out from under me and leaving me to ponder the ultimate disappearing act. Could he blame me for wanting life to play nice for a while?

  “I’m not asking you to fit into anything. I . . . I . . .” I had no idea how to express what I wanted, what I needed. My heart wanted to ask plenty, but my head was afraid to.

  “That isn’t me anymore,” he explained calmly, approaching me slowly as if I were a Central Park hipster brown squirrel that would scurry off with any sudden movement.

  “What—did you go to prison and find Jesus?”

  “No, I went to hell and back and found myself.” Three giant steps and he was nose to nose with me. “I sprouted wings and I carried myself far away and started a new life!” He shook his book at me. One glance at the cover and my heart soared. It was Ursula K. Le Guin’s Catwings, the book I had mentioned on the day we met. “But until you and Abbey came along, I wasn’t really living it. I know that now,” he finished softly, resting his forehead on mine.

  “I was going to tell you; I just needed the right time. I brought you here”—his arms swept backward toward Strawberry Fields and upward vaguely toward the high-rises that lined Central Park West—“because I had decided I was ready. It’s not so easy to say, ‘By the way, while you were walking down the aisle at high school graduation, I was snorting lines off some groupie’s arse.’ I told you, I was a different animal back then.” I heard the weariness in his voice and saw the years lining his frown, but his eyes were what led me right down to where he was laying his soul bare. I had thought for certain his eyes would be different, seeing him in a new light today. I had feared they would be cold and unyielding steel. But they were as deep and as pliable as ever, and they began to well as I finally embraced him.


  Only a few smells in life instantly bring me back to a happy place. Most of them are tangled up in childhood memories, of feeling safe and loved. The fruit and spice of pipe tobacco always brings me back to my grandpa, raking leaves on crisp autumn days. A just-extinguished match brings blowing birthday candles to mind, along with their gritty, sugary secret wishes. Shaving cream and papaya shampoo will always break my heart yet keep Pete close. And now Adrian, with his mixture of coffee and leather, combined with that peppery richness and the smell of cigarettes in his hair . . . for sure his scent will hit my memory triggers every time. His T-shirt sleeve darkened with the press of my tears against it. “You’ve got to understand . . . I haven’t let anyone . . . not since . . . and . . .” My exhale of words weren’t getting anywhere fast, so instead I stopped, inhaling what I could of him.

  “Listen . . . come . . . just come home with me,” he murmured, his fingers weaving through my hair. “Listen to what I have to say. Or you can watch some rock bio flick on MTV and make your own judgment, I won’t stop you.” I shook my head to his latter suggestion and allowed him to lead me back through the wisteria arbor, its vines exploding with purple and violet blossoms, past the street vendors still commercializing Lennon with their T-shirts and monochromatic prints.

  “How did you . . . not that it matters, but . . . did someone—”

  “Kevin’s room,” I managed to get out. I snuck a look at him and thought I detected a mixture of relief and embarrassment slide across his face.

  “Ah yes. The shrine. Imagine a place where all your biggest triumphs and blunders were on public display. And then imagine trying to fall asleep there.”

  The ridiculous irony of it all made me want to laugh, but one more sideways glance at Adrian quelled the urge. The grim set of his mouth made me wonder what other demons he may have had to contend with that night in my attic.

  As we walked onto Central Park West, he began to carve out a rough time line of events to bring us to the here and now, vague pinpoints that were safe to be overheard in public. But I could tell by the tone of his voice and the way he linked his arm through mine, steering me as we walked, he was eager to get me somewhere private to speak candidly.

  “We were huge, beyond our wildest dreams. Everything we recorded flew off the shelves, every promoter wanted us; the guarantees thrown at us were staggering. Kids rioted in the streets in Europe and South America when we came to town, and Stateside, every red carpet was laid out for us, in any direction of excess we chose. Stretch limos, girls, five-star hotels. When we were young and starting out, we swore if we ever made a name for ourselves, we would never sully it with overdoses or bad publicity stunts or fights about birds or money. It would always be about the music, plain and simple. But all that other stuff comes out of the woodwork and finds you. We had it all: addiction, involuntary manslaughter, infidelity, embezzlement.” Each word came off his tongue like a curse, and each breath in like an invocation.

  “Everything went to hell around ’88, I got kicked out of the band, and then the whole bloody operation dissolved. I spiraled into a depression that lasted a good four years. Losing custody of Natalie was a real wake-up call. I realized I had been an addict as long as I had been a rock star, which was downright terrifying, if not pathetic. That’s when I picked myself up by my bootstraps, kicked my habits and, when the situation presented itself, moved here.” He bumped my hip with his to move me onto the grass and deftly stepped around shards of a smashed bottle directly in our path. “But the real story can’t begin at the end, as much as I would like it to. To truly explain things, I need to tell you about Rick. Simone. And Wren. Names I don’t often like to think about.”

  He stopped in front of a brown and redbrick prewar building with a navy blue awning. The doorman was quick to greet Adrian by name, formally but warmly. The buttons of his double-breasted coat matched the ample brass on the door. We breezed in and were met by the elevator attendant, who was also full of salutations and pleasant remarks as he whisked us up to the fifteenth floor.

  “I like how everyone knows you,” I said, echoing his words to me from Saturday evening as a tease, but they hung pregnant with their meaning in the hallway as Adrian chuckled and unlocked his door. How well did they know him here? He was a name on the buzzer and certainly a healthy tip in their pockets come Christmastime. Who was he to his neighbors? A daily reader of the Wall Street Journal, as evident from his subscription lying on the doormat. But what lay in wait beyond the threshold? That album cover from Kev’s room with its ominous song titles, its graphics of fake blood mixed with stage makeup flashed through my mind. We all use various props as we move through the scenes in our lives. I was eager to see beyond the dress rehearsal of Adrian’s act.

  “It’s no San Remo, but it’s home,” he said modestly, ushering me into a cavernous space of hardwood with huge fixed pane windows that framed the treetops of the park.

  “You’re kidding me—your living room is bigger than my whole Manhattan co-op was.” I spied a set of wrought-iron stairs spiraling up in a far corner. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “Um, it’s called a staircase, and it has these things called steps that connect this floor to the one above it.”

  “Smarty-pants. I’ve just never known anyone who had an upstairs in Manhattan!” I looked around in delight like a child as he watched me, hesitantly gauging my reactions. Three shiny electric guitars leaned on stands in one corner like ultramodern objets d’art. “I think you’ll need to put a velvet rope around those if Abbey ever visits.”

  “Like a museum? Bollocks. She can have free run of the place.” He tentatively placed his hands on my shoulders from behind. “How about some coffee? I abandoned ours in the park.”

  I was reluctant to leave the light-drenched room with its boxy gray couches and lush ebony drapes, but I assented. He led me down a hallway, our feet falling softly on a beautiful Persian runner. I wondered if he had decorated the place himself or if he had had help. Noticing a powder room to my left, I excused myself and ducked in. Marissa would be happy to hear my report of no pubes on the toilet seat. With water from the tap, I erased the tearstains from my cheeks. No pubes in sight and L’Occitane verbena hand soap—he’s got to either have a maid or a wife.

  I found my way to the kitchen, first passing through a dining room large enough to seat twenty and impressive double pocket doors. It was a modern affair of stainless, slate, and teak. My brother would keel over to cook in a room like this. The pictures from the Rainbow kids were displayed prominently on the door of his refrigerator, along with Abbey’s get-well drawing. Adrian was grinding coffee beans in a European-looking machine, flipping switches to start the brewing process. He pulled open the fridge, and over his shoulder I spied a shrunken lemon and several ancient-looking takeout containers. “No skim for your coffee,” he said apologetically. “Will two percent do?”

  “Sure.”

  He held the door wide in a sweeping gesture. “Ah, and here we have a prime example of early take-away from the Mesozoic Era.”

  I laughed. “See? And you said this wasn’t a museum!” I picked up one of the paperboard oyster pails delicately by the handle. “And you will note here the detail in early paper construction, indicative of the development of fast food during the Western Han Dynasty,” I said as enthusiastically as a museum curator.

  “Okay, I’ll admit it. I don’t do much cooking in here. Manhattan makes it too easy. I had the local deli send up a pack of cigarettes one winter because I couldn’t be arsed to walk down and get them myself!”

  “My fridge isn’t much better,” I assured him. “Marissa always tells me food is love. I keep wondering when I am going to be arrested for neglect.” A sauerkraut jar of indeterminate age rattled on the door shelf. “Is that left over from the Nazi occupation?”

  “Nah, that was from the Luna Rose occupation. My relationship with that fräulein expired long
before the jar did.”

  “Luna Rose . . . sounds like an exotic dancer.”

  “Lingerie model, actually,” Adrian said matter-of-factly, pulling mugs from the cupboard. An apparition of a long-legged, small-pored beauty with a gleaming updo and a push-up bra, all smoky eyes and no cellulite, perched on the kitchen island in a vision before me, pouting shiny swollen lips and tapping a stiletto heel.

  “Okay, I’m going to shut up now,” I mumbled, feeling the heat flame to my face.

  He put a hand on each of my cheeks to cool the burn. “All the beauty in the world can’t help an ugly relationship,” he said softly. Pulling his fingers down along the edge of my jawbone and lingering on my chin, he tilted it ever so slightly. “This . . . now this is pure beauty.”

  His lips found mine in that slow and strong way, and I was lost to the world. The coffee machine began to gurgle and spit rudely and, to my utter surprise, speak in tongues.

  “Ó Senhor Graves! Dê-me licença.”

  Adrian pulled back abruptly, and I saw we were not alone. A girl of about twenty, with a curtain of long dark hair, stood rooted to the spot. She wore sweat pants rolled up to the knees and flip-flops around her pretty pedicured toes. A cross of gold peeked in and out of her tank top as she labored to catch her shocked breath.

  “Desculpe, Ana . . .” Adrian stuttered as he searched for the right words, and I was amazed to hear them slip from his tongue with relative ease. It sounded similar to Spanish . . . Portuguese, perhaps? “Esta é a minha amiga, Katrina. Katrina, meet Ana . . . I completely forgot she was coming today.”