Louder Than Love

by Topper, Jessica

  “Tír na nÓg, excellent! Thanks, Mariss.” Many a lunch hour had been spent at the restaurant bearing that name on the corner of 33rd and Eighth. It was painfully close to Penn and my old office. Pushing those thoughts aside, I merged boldly east toward Adrian.

  Artificial sun and dry skies awaited under an awning of black and orange as I allowed myself to be swallowed up by the wide bright mouth of the parking garage nearest Penn station. I stashed my overnight bag in the trunk before relinquishing my keys to the parking attendant. “Wait, hold on.” I grabbed Adrian’s jacket at the last minute and slipped it on before ascending up the slick ramp to surface level.

  The rain had let up somewhat; random fat drops plunked down rudely in strategic spots. It was easily ten degrees cooler than earlier in the afternoon. I crisscrossed the Armani arms across my chest for warmth as I jaywalked swiftly across the avenue. This section of the city was hell this time of day on a Friday; the weary workday commuters and early-bird weekend revelers were not quite where they wanted to be, forming a slow-moving purgatory across the sidewalks and pissing me off.

  “Kat!”

  Adrian pulled me from the crowded path and kissed me under the bar’s golden sign. A cement column and a large ornamental potted tree blocked us on either side from being jostled back into the fray. His hands found mine, lost under excess inches of his jacket sleeves.

  “I started to think you wouldn’t . . .” A wayward raindrop broke against the top of our lips as they met again. “I’m sorry, Kat. Earlier . . .”

  I shook my head, leaning my temple on his cheek. “No. Don’t you apologize,” I whispered. It was easy to close out everything, with my eyes pressed shut and his arms around me. But when I opened them, I was staring straight across at the last doorway I ever saw Pete walk through. My ghosts were gaining on me.

  “You’re shaking.”

  “I’m all right.” Through the bar window, I saw a strange mixture of rough-looking longhairs, suited professionals, and Hell’s Kitchen locals. “Are we going in?”

  “No time. Unless you’re famished, we could grab something somewhere quick.” He gestured vaguely toward the other corners.

  It took most of my faculties to keep my eyes off both the doorway into Penn Station and the lacerations on Adrian’s knuckles. I shook my head, antsy and ready to roll wherever it was we were going.

  The rain and sidewalk crowds had disappeared as we hurried up the block. “So am I dressed right for where we’re going?” I was still in the silky kimono wrap top and jeans I had thrown on after my cleaning binge and shower.

  With a smile, Adrian flicked his eyes over me. “It’ll do. Trade jackets with me, though. You’ll probably be more comfortable in my leather. There . . . biker meets bohemia. You never fail to look beautiful, Kat.”

  An irritated hipster with a swoop of stupid-looking hair bumped shoulders hard with Adrian. “Jeez, walk much?” We had disrupted the flow of foot traffic, apparently.

  “Easy there, mister cockedy man.” Adrian’s murmur was more amused than offended. What a relief, and a far cry from the day’s earlier events. He let the rude guy push past us, yet we continued to shadow him up the street.

  As we approached the pale-bricked front of the Hammerstein Ballroom, the hipster and Adrian made similar abrupt right-angle turns under the UFO-bright lights outside. “Guest list?” Adrian asked the bouncer at the door, who motioned toward a will-call window. Hipster got stopped in his tracks yet again at the end of a long line behind swags of velvet rope.

  I had missed the name on the marquee, such was my preoccupation with street etiquette. “Who’s playing?” I whispered excitedly in Adrian’s ear as he showed his ID and was handed a plain white envelope. From the crowd, it was hard to tell. Although it appeared many of the long-haired clientele had moved up the block from the bar.

  “Dead Can Dream. They’re kind of new prog metal meets post-hardcore.”

  “Translation?”

  “I think you’ll like them.”

  I wasn’t the only one wearing a leather jacket in June. As we were sucked deeper into the cattle-crowd, I understood Adrian’s earlier comment about feeling more comfortable in it; it provided a tough barrier and a camouflage of similar skin to protect me. Adrian, meanwhile, appeared perfectly at ease in his Armani and denim. “Just a small piece of my world,” he shouted over the din. Screeching guitars and tribal thumping competed with the roar of three thousand throats. Evidently, the band of the hour had taken the stage. “Another stop on the Digger Graves five-quid tour.”

  We squeezed down a narrow aisle toward the bright lights of the stage and the sea of writhing bodies on the floor. “We’re not going into that, are we?”

  “Gen pop? Wouldn’t think of it.” He led us up a tiny staircase and showed his tickets to security at the top. We were ushered into a decent size opera box, the lowest one stage right. I could see three similar boxes across the venue from us, jutting from each curved balcony level. All were packed with people, but ours stayed relatively empty. Those who were in the box with us wore satin VIP sticky passes of green and black. Adrian pulled ours from the ticket envelope. He nonchalantly stuck one on his denim-clad thigh and applied mine to my top, above my right breast. “Hello, Miss VIP.”

  The band was impressive. I had a hard time deciding where to look as the lasers, lights, and backdrops pulled my eyes from each band member and back again. The singer was a stump of a guy with a long black ponytail and a powerhouse voice that ripped through the rafters of the building. He was flanked by one guitarist and a bass player, but the sound was large, heavily melodic, and constant. Our vantage point provided a great view of the drummer, who was mesmerizing to watch. I could see the grim set of his mouth, lips pressing closed in concentration, as his muscular arms, colorfully sleeved in tattoos from his shoulders to his elbows, snapped out from his body. “That’s my friend Jim.” Adrian nodded in proud approval with each beat, but he kept his arms crossed for most of the show. I watched him survey the audience every now and again, his eyes flicking cool and calculating over the crowd.

  The house lights came up as the band exited for a short set break. The low buzz of the crowd and Gabriel-era Genesis from the PA took its place. Adrian found my belt loops under the leather and silk and hooked his fingers through them, pulling me close. “Whaddaya think?”

  I was thinking I wanted to model my lingerie for him, but stuck to the topic at hand. “Killer. Like Porcupine Tree meets Coheed and Cambria.”

  He seemed to enjoy that reference. “Let’s go say hi to Jim.” He took my hand, and we scurried down the stairs and through a side door that led backstage. Every security guard inspected our passes with a silent nod. We found ourselves making our way up a steep stairwell, then down a cramped hallway full of chatter and pot smoke. The tiny greenroom was impossible to access. I plastered myself to Adrian’s side as he checked his phone. “He’s in the dressing room. One more flight up.” Another round of stairs put us in a much quieter, although still diminutive, space. Luckily, there were far fewer people in the room. In fact, it held just the four band members who had occupied the stage moments ago. The singer smiled shyly as he passed, towel tucked around his shoulders, on his way down to his friends. The guitarist was wolfing down a limp turkey sandwich from a deli plate on the counter while talking on his cell. Jim was in deep conversation with the bass player, but as he caught Adrian’s reflection in the mirror that spanned one long wall, he spun and grinned. “My brother of steel. What is up, my friend?”

  They greeted each other with a solid hug, one so long that the bass player and I smiled at each other and began laughing. Introductions were made all around, and Jim played a tired but happy host, offering us catering and beer. Out from behind the drums, he was over six feet tall, with chiseled good looks and a neat dark goatee similar to Adrian’s. I put him around my age. They chatted about the tour, and Adrian asked after Jim�
��s family. It occurred to me he was the first person I’d met in person from Adrian’s past life. “How long have you known each other?” I asked.

  Jim turned to Adrian. “You didn’t tell her?”

  Adrian laughed. “You tell the story better than I.”

  Jim ran his hand over the damp bandanna knotted to his head, smoothing the wavy brown hair that escaped through the back. “It was the Metastasis World Tour, I was fifteen. Kat, if I tell you Corpse was my favorite band, I’d be downplaying it. Huge fan! So they’re playing an amphitheater in my small hometown—”

  Adrian rubbed at his graying goatee. “Was that the Merriweather?”

  “Yes. Don’t interrupt! So they’re playing my hometown. Columbia, Maryland. Not only is this my first Corroded Corpse concert, it’s my first rock show ever. The band was on fire. I was right up front, caught Riff’s pick, the whole nine yards. And after the show, my buddy and I decided to wait behind the stage to try to meet them.”

  “You and about forty birds . . . Guess who got backstage?” Adrian joked.

  “My friend got tired of waiting, and his mom was driving us, so he totally bailed. I didn’t care. I waited for, like, two hours, and finally it paid off. I met every guy in the band but you, Digger; you were the last to come out. I thought I had missed you.”

  “Me and Cass,” Adrian recalled. “He had a hired car and we were headed back to the hotel.”

  “The hotel that I knew was right near my house,” Jim added. “So after you gave me your autograph, I summoned up the nerve to ask you for a lift home. And you said—”

  Adrian laughed. “Fuck off. Or was it bugger off?”

  “Adrian!” I gasped, giggling.

  He raised his brow at me. “What? He was a cheeky little git.”

  “So that was that; they drove away,” Jim continued. “Out of luck. Five minutes later, I was looking around to find a pay phone to call home when their car pulls back around.” He paused and smiled at Adrian. They were like an old married couple, fondly finishing each other’s stories.

  “And I said, ‘Get in the bloody car’—I couldn’t just leave him there!”

  “And then my mom made you the best damn she-crab soup you had ever had—”

  “The only she-crab soup I had ever had . . . the best damn thing I had tasted Stateside.”

  “And so twenty years later”—Jim spread out his arms—“here we are. Do you kids need a ride home tonight?”

  “Seriously . . . you’ve stayed in touch all this time?”

  “Yeah . . . pretty much. Every northeast Corpse gig after that. Then I started DCD in ’93, and I guess we’ve seen each other, what? Maybe a dozen times since? Not enough, man. You look good.” Jim turned to me. “Kat, seriously. It must be you, because normally he looks half in the bag.” Adrian squeezed my hand, and I squeezed back, smiling. “Dig, so you wanna?”

  “Depends. Which one?”

  “‘Syndrome.’”

  “When?”

  “Second segue.”

  I glanced from one to the other, trying to get a handle on this line of conversation. Along with unique facial hair, musicians apparently shared their own tonal language.

  “Nah.”

  “Come on.”

  “All right. No intro.”

  “Deal. Outro?”

  “Fine.”

  The tour manager was rounding the band up like a large pissed off mother hen, trying to herd them back onstage. Jim gave me a bear hug, hissing into my ear, “Keep him around, okay?” With a slap handshake to Adrian: “Staying for the aftershow?”

  “Don’t press your luck.”

  The band thundered down the stairs, and a few moments later, we heard the crowd raise a massive cheer and the room thump with muffled acoustics from below.

  “Quickie in the dressing room?” Adrian suggested, stripping off his jacket.

  “What, are you—”

  “Kidding, Kat. Kidding! I’m sitting in with the band in a moment.” He chuckled.

  “That’s what you guys were going on about? I had no clue. Seriously?”

  “Yeah. It’s actually a Corpse song they’re covering. They play it better than we ever did, in fact.” He handed me his jacket. The tour manager popped his head over the stair railing.

  “Sean wants to know if playing his Roadstar is okay for you.”

  “Absolutely, mate.”

  I followed them down the stairs, which was an entirely different experience now that the band was back onstage. The manager used a Maglite to direct me to a safe spot backstage as a guitar tech rigged Adrian up. Whatever song they had been playing segued right into “Syndrome Dreamer,” whose opening bars now sounded vaguely familiar to me. In fact, I was pretty sure I had pinpointed Adrian’s mobile ringtone. I recalled Kevin commenting years back that the rarely played song displayed a “cerebral side” of Corroded Corpse. At the time, I had considered that description as the mother of all oxymorons, but now, as I concentrated on the lyrics while watching its creator shred a complex composition so melodic it brought tears to my eyes, I was glad to be proved wrong.

  Pieces of darkness

  haunt the unusual

  painting the world

  of the syndrome dreamer.

  Fate is the key

  chance, the answer

  unlock the door

  to the unknown.

  From my perch tucked between the monitor board and half the road crew, I could see down into the pit. As Adrian had once described, only the first several rows of the crowd were illuminated and visible, but I detected an incredible wave of response coming from the entire house as I watched arms swaying in unison and heard the appreciative whistles and screams. I wondered where in the crowd Irritated Hipster Guy had ended up. Had he realized his brush with greatness? The opera box we had vacated held several more bodies now, nodding and staring with rapt attention.

  Star-tipped whispers

  refrigerated doubts

  a man of many colors

  answers number zero.

  Although the band had respectfully shifted to allow him to come front and center, Adrian chose to hang back. My eyes delighted in taking him in from head to toe. The lights wove crazy patterns over his shaggy hair and bounced blindingly off the tiny silver trails of the pickups as he moved. His stance was one of accomplished nonchalance as he leaned slightly back, his gaze shifting only from the frets to the other musicians as his fingers nimbly up-stroked and pulled off from impossibly high frets to create the most spine-tingling arpeggios.

  Untame the obvious

  despondent fear of shadows

  recalling the morose

  at the hands of the syndrome dreamer.

  Jim grinned as his arms swung like a demented octopus, making contact with every skin and cymbal as the song’s crescendo thundered to the rafters.

  “Mr. Digger Graves, ladies and gentleman!”

  Adrian didn’t stick around to witness the response of the singer’s pronouncement; I watched as the neck of the guitar swung back with his sudden movement and he pivoted on the heel of his motorcycle boot. He was shrugging off the guitar strap and handing the axe back to the guitar tech with a nod as the band played the last dwindling notes of his song. The crowd’s cacophony tunneled behind us down the cement ramp and out a back exit door near the loading dock. We were practically to Eighth Avenue before he released his grip around my waist and spoke.

  “You don’t see that every night, now do you?”

  “Adrian,” I began as he pulled me close to fumble into the pockets of his leather to find his cigarettes, “that was incredible! Do you realize what—”

  “What being outed onstage after fifteen years of silence means? Pretty sure it means fuck-all.” He exhaled smoke toward the summer sky, then fixed his gaze pointedly on me.

&nb
sp; “I was going to say what that meant to your friend Jim, to play with one of his heroes. And what it meant to me, to finally see you really play . . . a song you created,” I blurted.

  He stomped on the barely smoked cigarette and proceeded over the zebra-crossing without a sideways or a backward glance. I stood defiant, allowing my words to plow after him rather than my feet.

  “We believe in you. But if you can’t even give yourself that courtesy, then yes—it means fuck-all!”

  A taxi’s horn provided an exclamation point, punctuating my outburst. It whizzed narrowly by Adrian as he strode back across the avenue. The rise of his chest and his sigh was a complete surrender. I pulled him off the sewer grate and into my arms, and his lips fell on mine with a hard crush.

  “You’ve got all this. . . this love—no, it’s louder than love. It’s passion and beauty built up inside you that deserves to burst out,” I whispered against his mouth as we came up for air.

  “Where’s your car?”

  “That’s all you’ve got to say?”

  “For now . . . yes.”

  Blossoming

  Waking up in Manhattan was both comforting and surreal. Opening my eyes to find Adrian lying next to me on the bed in peaceful slumber was almost dreamlike, especially after the intensity of the evening’s events.

  We had scrambled up to his apartment and had barely made it through the door fully clothed, not bothering to flick a light switch. I was still quivering with the memory: my silky lingerie lay forgotten in my bag as he stripped me down bare and spread me across the Persian rug. His tongue urged me toward a screaming finish, but I denied myself, instead pulling him roughly toward me, yanking off the rest of his clothes. Adrian deftly flipped me over and I bent invitingly, yielding to him by the expanse of his living room windows. His hands cupped my breasts, protecting them from the cold glaze of the glass as he slid into me from behind, a foot propped on the low sill for leverage. We both came rapidly, suspended above the rustling treetops in the deep violet sky, Adrian’s breath over my shoulder fogging the scenery and my mind. It had been easy to fall back against him, mewing and crawling into his naked lap, kissing every inch I could find in the dark.