It must be an old-time theater that’s been converted into a nightclub. White scrolled plasterwork edges along the ceiling and the balcony. The walls are covered in a plush dark red fabric, and the floor has a patterned carpet, intertwined vines that run the length of the room and twist together, dulled under years of spilled beer and foot traffic.
Winston finishes shaking hands with a dude in a navy blue sport coat who I am guessing must be the manager, then takes the steps leading up to the stage two at a time.
“Sweet, huh?” Winston asks us, a huge grin on his face.
We waited in a corner, letting him put on his responsible and mature managerial act while he got the full tour. He looks impressed.
“Let’s load in, and then we have”—he grabs Ginger’s wrist and checks his watch—“half an hour to sound check. So get your asses in gear.”
“But first,” he says before anyone can disappear. He reaches inside his jacket and pulls out five sheets of paper, rolled together into a makeshift tube. “The set list,” he says, struggling to find the center of the pages.
We assemble in a loose circle around him while he smooths the papers flat against his chest. He hands one to each of us.
I take mine and prepare for Billie’s perfect storm of bitching and moaning. It only takes a second.
“What is this shit?” she asks.
“They’re called copies,” Winston replies.
“This place has an office, too?” Jay looks up from scanning the page, still in wonderment.
Ginger and Ty stay silent, one on each side of me, papers down, far ahead of everyone else in reading comprehension.
“No.” Billie’s voice burns. “This shit.” She taps the top of her copy with her fingertips. The cotton poking out the top of her cast is brown and dirty. She doesn’t look at me.
Jay stops reading, finally catching on. His mouth gapes, but he says nothing. He even stays still.
“Well, Bill,” Winston says with a long breath, preparing for his explanation, “it’s a big show, and we need to bring our best.”
I cringe because that isn’t the way we rehearsed it this morning when I handed Winston the set list. It was supposed to be something like “It’s only one song, Billie, and you get all the rest and you are going to rock it.” With a soft smile and maybe a candy necklace. He needs to baby her more. He knows that.
Billie drops her copy. The curled page drifts to the floor as her boots clomp, first to the right, aimlessly, and then change course, heading left toward backstage. She turns back at the doorway and glowers at me.
Jay and Ginger shuffle around and look at their feet.
“Get started without her,” Winston announces. “I’ll set up her stuff.”
I hesitate, knowing this is not the end. Billie will not give up so easily.
Ty stands with his chin lifted, watching Billie go.
I desperately want to see him right now: his face, his eyes. I want him to look down at me the way he used to at the beginning of the summer, when he was so eager and I was so sure.
But he turns and brushes past me, knocking me off kilter.
All the time I’ve spent with Billie and her broken arm over the past few weeks, I want to take it back with my lips, my fingers. I miss him.
I close my eyes and think of the first time I kissed him. How it felt, light and warm and tingly, my stomach dancing, not dripping with hot battery acid like it is now. I hold on tight for a few seconds, my lids blinking, and wait for Ty to return to me, to be the boy I used to know.
Winston grabs my arm, and my eyes pop open.
“You’re sure about this?” he asks.
Ty drops into action on the far side of the stage, his muscles moving as he pulls gear across the floor with Jay without a word or a glance in my direction. As if he doesn’t see me at all.
I nod and reach for my guitar. I think I am.
One by one the mass becomes a mob, and then the mob becomes a throng. Out front the club is coming alive. I can hear it filling up with the hum and chatter of people, the tink of stacking beer bottles, the clink and chunk of cash registers being stocked for the night.
Backstage our headliners are busy trashing their dressing room. They are going for legendary status. I shudder against the sound of splitting wood and creaking joints.
“Awww, come on!” Jay groans from behind me.
His complaint is followed by laughter from Highway Robbery.
“We’re too poor to smash guitars!” he adds, and they laugh louder.
A double bill with Highway Robbery and Blasting Cap must be a path of destruction. I hope we won’t disappoint. The only thing that gets smashed at our shows is Billie.
Highway Robbery started early, sacking their dressing room as soon as we finished our sound check. They called it a preparty, and two hours later the plaid couch and the keg of beer in the corner are the only items that remain intact.
When the TV drops to the floor for the second time, I wiggle off my broken barstool and leave Winston, Jay, and Ginger in the rubble. Ty slipped away down the slim hallway long ago, avoiding the party like always.
I feel boyish eyes on me all the way to the door, mannish ones, too, so I am careful not to move so fast that my ass shakes. I turn into the hall, taking tiny geisha steps in my tall black boots. I’ll save the staring for when I am onstage, thank you very much.
Stopping backstage, I steal a look through the curtains at the swell of the crowd.
The lights are dim, but from back here I can just make out the bartenders pulling taps and pouring beers as fast as they can under a chasing string of colored lights. They finish the beers off with a splash and a perfect streak of foam at the top as the lights speed back to the other end of the bar and then start again.
This is, by far, our biggest audience yet. Girls and guys and some that look like both are working it in worn leather and ripped denim, everyone smoking and texting and looking for somebody to take home at the end of the night.
They are a boiling thundercloud of energy and anticipation that bounces against the stage. Their expectations hover overhead, reaching down like fingers that stretch out and feel for me, trying to find me and figure me out.
I skirt around the back edge of the stage and head for the safety and quiet of our tiny dressing room, picturing only the set ahead and the list of songs that hold it together.
RED VELVET CRUSH is printed in some PC font on a plain sheet of white copy paper and taped to the door. I reach for the knob and turn it.
The door won’t budge. It isn’t locked, but stuck. Wedged.
I smell the sweet shadow of pot smoke. Billie laughs on the other side of the door. I push hard against the cracked wood, putting some shoulder into it. The door gives, and I trip over the threshold.
It is chilly in the hall, the air conditioning blasting, but the room is muggy and smells of smoke and sweat. The lights are off, and my eyes have to adjust to the darkness.
Ty’s head turns. His eyes are glazed, his brain elsewhere. His sticks poke out of Billie’s back pocket. I grip on to the doorknob.
I don’t see everything at first. Only bits and pieces. Blink. Horror. Blink. Hurt. Blink. Heartbreak.
I stand, trying to take it in.
The bottles. The rolling papers. Billie’s hand on his knee, the worn, dirty bottom of her boots as she kneels down in front of him, so comfortable, so close. Her face as she twists toward the door, long blond curls spilling over her shoulder. Her smile when she sees me.
My heart races and explodes.
It is the big finish, the final end to our great rock ’n’ roll song. The drums crash, the bass thrums. Blistered fingertips blaze along a wire-hot guitar string, and I stand, frozen with my toes at the edge of the stage and watch as my life falls apart.
I bash into Ginger in the hallway but stumble on, my fingertips sliding down an endless wall. The floor leans and tilts, coming up to meet me, then pulling away. I flinch against the hanging bare bulbs and the
sound of smashing guitars.
I push into the bathroom. Lock myself in a stall, breathing, heaving. I am shaking like tremolo, with puky spit and shaky hands.
The bitter bile of betrayal rises in my throat, choking out my breath, burning my eyes with tears, and sticking my hair to the back of my neck.
My mind is flying, faster than fingers on a keyboard doing scales, chasing, racing, looping to come back and bite me again, tearing this time with teeth that drip with blood.
I am such a fool. An idiot.
I gulp in the stall air. Curl my hands into fists and pound into the wall. GO AHEAD AND SIT DOWN, someone scribbled on it. CRABS CAN JUMP FIVE FEET.
Toes appear on the other side of the stall. Worn boots I know too well. I can see the bulge of her baby toe rubbing through on the right side.
My mind is filled with hatred and anger, but in a moment of surprising clarity, I realize she is going to need new shoes soon.
“Nothing happened,” she says.
She sounds so close. Like she is pressed up against the stall door. I stagger and sit down, not even worried about the crabs.
“I didn’t do anything.”
Of course she’d say that. She says that about everything. The world just happens around her. Disasters abound, and Billie is blameless, innocent and doe-eyed, sitting in the middle of my catastrophe.
She comes closer to the door. I shift, sliding away. Sorry, Billie, but there’s no coming back from this one.
She has taken everything—my music, my heart, even my faith in her—and left me with nothing but a mouthful of shit. I can taste it curling down my throat and settling to rot against my teeth.
I don’t care anymore. Billie can have it all. She can sing everything.
There is nothing left for me now. Here is the end, and holy shit, does it hurt.
The bar is thumping loud, a cinder-block millstone behind me as I stand in the middle of the dark parking lot with nothing to my name but an old cardigan with a patched elbow.
I step into the streetlight and look down the street. Which way did we come from? Where is the hotel? How the hell can I get away from here, and how long will it take? I feel like I’ve spent the last six weeks living with my eyes closed.
I’ve had nightmares like this, I think.
Winston comes swinging out of the back door of the bar in a blast of music. Ginger is right behind him. They are moving fast. I hate that they know what happened. That everyone knows.
I shrink back, out of the light. If Ty comes through that door, I am going to lose it. I am already a snotty, puffy mess. My throat hurts.
Winston grabs my arm and hustles me toward the van. I cross my arms and let him walk me along. The van is right there, parked right in front of me all along.
“Take her back to the hotel,” he says, lighting a cigarette in the middle of it all. He tosses the car keys to Ginger. “I’ll go inside and figure this out.”
Ginger opens my door and trots around to his side to start the van.
“Come back for us later,” Winston shouts. “When she’s okay.”
It takes me two tries to pull myself up into the passenger seat. My boot keeps slipping, and my arms feel weak. Like I am ever going to be okay again.
The engine is cold, and the van roars and squeals as we back up and drive down the street, away from the bar. I slip down into my seat and stare at the passing streetlights, so glad for once that Ginger doesn’t have a single word to say.
Somewhere in the middle of the night a phone rings. I’m not really sleeping. I’m not really awake. I am barely there. My eyes have been staring blindly as the sky dips from battered blue down to deep purple and then slowly descends into pure, deep night.
I reach for my phone, but it’s the one beside the bed.
“It’s Ben,” the other voice says, “from Blasting Cap.”
Even in the dark I can see his fingers shooting an imaginary gun.
I wait.
“Billie’s here with us.”
Of course she wouldn’t stick around to face up to what she’d done. At least I didn’t need to picture her ending up all alone in a gutter somewhere, with cracked lips and imaginary bug holes scratched into her face.
“She didn’t want me to call, but I found the number anyway. I thought you should know.”
He pauses.
“I’d want to know if Billie was mine,” he says as if she were a purse or a lost sweater. “We’re finally on our way to Seattle. She says she wants to come along.”
I rest my head down. The phone is so heavy in my hand. I breathe out and he keeps going.
“I guess Glen gave her his number.”
I see black numbers on a white cast.
“Let me give it to you.”
The number bounces around inside my head, and I roll over. Don’t bother, I think. You can keep her.
“I hear heartbreak makes for great music, Teddy Lee.”
I drop the phone onto the desk. That’s good to know. Then I am a goddamn gold mine. The phone lands, knocking over some empty pill bottles and a bunch of Billie’s other crap.
I long for a way to wipe out what happened tonight and everything else from the last five months. My arm scrapes across the desk, dumping everything onto the floor as my jaw starts to shake.
Billie’s bag sticks out from under a chair. I grab it and cram in everything I can find: undies, jeans, her toothbrush, curled magazines, mismatched shoes, shirts, even her mostly used soap from the shower.
A sleeve still pokes out when I zip the bag shut and check the room. It is good enough. I wipe my eyes, take the chain off the door, and dump it all in the open hallway in a heap. For once someone else is going to have to clean up Billie’s mess.
A car is in the lot out front, waiting with its parking lights on. The engine is running, a soft humming that climbs its way up to the second floor.
“Thanks for calling, Jay.” A familiar voice sneaks up the open stairway and across the all-season carpet. I stop, hiding myself in the safety of my doorframe. “I know it was hard.”
Ty’s dad.
I creep out of the shadows and tiptoe toward the voice. Four people are moving in a slow shuffle across the parking lot. Jay and Ty’s dad are walking in front. Jay has his hands jammed in his pockets. Ty’s dad carries his duffel.
Ty follows with his mom. He walks slowly, curved over, his head down. His dad opens the car door, and Ty ducks into the backseat, like an outlaw. His mom climbs into the passenger seat, and Jay bends down toward Ty, his checkered Vans rocking to the sides. He leans in, talking quietly. I can’t hear a word.
Jay finally stands. He pushes the door shut, quiet in the night. Ty is shrouded and invisible behind tempered glass.
His hand resting along the top of the car, Jay thumps twice—drive safe—and they take off. There is a flash of bright headlights, the whir of new tires gripping wet pavement, and that is it. Ty is gone. The sun hasn’t even thought about cracking the sky, spilling orange and purple and liquid all over a new day.
I buckle and back into the room. The door shuts slowly behind me, my heart imploding into a billion pieces with the click of the latch, until I am only bits and pieces, a disappearing star, floating in a black, black sky.
just me and the sky
18
Dad is waiting up for us when Winston and I get home. Winston called ahead, telling him about Billie and about me. Dad is ready—arms out. He wraps me up in a hug as soon as I walk in. Winston leans against the counter and watches my bags drop to the floor.
I might hold on too long, maybe squeeze too tight, but in the dusky hours of early morning, my dad rocks with me and doesn’t let go. All my music is gone, I want to tell him; I only hear the flat, empty sound of space.
We drove forever and ever to get home. The boys took turns at the wheel, stoic and solitary, while I sat in the back, curled up on the bench. I couldn’t talk. I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to be anywhere else, anybody else. I don’t ev
en know what really happened, only that I was there and Billie was not. And neither was Ty.
In the end there wasn’t much to decide or much to do. Two of our band members had disappeared. We had only three shows left anyway.
Winston spent the day canceling and apologizing and talking to Randy. Jay and Ginger holed up in their room, probably watching Mexican soap operas or composing intricate power ballads.
I stayed alone, sitting and crying, lying down and crying. Wiping my eyes with cheap hotel Kleenex until my skin screamed, looking out the window, longing for home. I checked my phone, blinking against its glare in the darkened room. No texts. No messages. I missed Ty.
Then I swore for a while. Punched the bed. I think I even slept.
Late in the day Winston banged on the door. “Let’s go.”
My eyes swept the room. The worst night of my life happened here, I thought. Flowered bedspreads will always make me sad.
There was little left of Billie. An earring I stepped on in the night. A sock. Some hair spray. And one empty orange pill bottle, same as those in the dressing room the night before, glowing bright and clacking together on the table next to Billie and Ty.
I picked it up and read the label: AS NEEDED FOR PAIN. I dropped it onto the unmade bed. Looks like they worked; I have never hurt so much.
With each mile closer to home I gradually started coming back into focus. There’s our exit . . . our town . . . our corner . . . our streetlight . . . our mailbox. Next stop, lonesome town.
Now I am afraid I am going to be cold forever—cold and wet and lonely. Stuck in this quiet, empty place in my brain, feeling these feelings. A storm cloud has settled in over my life, and I’m scared there will never be a wind strong enough to blow it away.
I avoid my bedroom at first and head for the bath instead. I can’t look at myself in the mirror, so I swing the medicine cabinet open while I turn on the tap.
Our water heater takes a while to do hot. It’s better now, but when we were little, lukewarm was all we had. I remember my dad describing the water that way, and it sounded so good to me. I immediately wanted a boyfriend named Luke Warm. He would have big hands and brown eyes, with soft, smooth skin that was satiny on my cheek when we kissed.
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