Strap stepped to the back of the car, laid a hand on the raised trunk lid. He pointed at the contents, nodded at me. “This it?”
I eased closer, looked inside. A bright green and yellow duffel bag, a pair of black boots, the mini-recorder, and a Dell laptop PC, practically brand new. It was closed, no lights flashing on the front. A wireless card stuck out of the side.
“Yeah, his stuff. I can give it back to his family,” I said.
“Still need to pay for it. No way around that.”
“How much?”
Strap tapped his fingers on the trunk lid, slowly without rhythm. It was killing me.
“Five thousand,” he said.
I patted my pockets. “I don’t have it on me.”
A rush of air through his teeth, then a glance over my shoulder at Duncan. “Your boy here didn’t come to do business.”
“He’s grieving,” Duncan said.
“Wasting my time.”
I said, “I can get it. Might be a couple of hours.”
More of that tapping. Even those new R&B songs with the herky-jerky shit kept better time than this guy. I liked the sound, though. A bit hollow. I could loop it through the synth—
Strap slammed the trunk, and the noise sent me reeling. He reached out to steady me.
“I wonder how much CNN would pay for this shit,” Strap said.
“Nothing. Why would they care?”
Duncan slipped closer to us, his parted lips and wrinkled forehead telling me he didn’t like where this was going.
Strap said, “Well, Rolling Stone, then. Or Variety, one of those. They pay a hell of a lot for photos, so I’m sure they’d go even higher here. Personal effects. I could retire.”
“He’s wasn’t that famous.”
“You haven’t been paying attention, then. Dead makes you mucho famous, bumps up the circus freak celebrity all over again. River Phoenix? Kurt Cobain? Fuckers are heroes now.”
Duncan said, “C’mon, give the guy a break here.”
Strap turned his I know all gaze from Duncan to me. “If your boy wants the stuff, he should think about market value and offer me five figures at the very least.”
My hand itched like crazy and I wanted pills and sleep and the after-orgasm-like feeling of it all. This Strap asshole stood in my way.
I said, “Listen, I can go ten, sure. Let’s do something here and stop giving me the philosophy lecture you picked up on the Discovery Channel.”
Strap didn’t like that. His face went double-thick platinum hard. He snapped his fingers and the Avalon’s engine cranked, brake lights flared.
“You lost out. I’m taking it to the highest bidder instead.”
Strap thumped a knuckle twice on the trunk and the car pulled away. I jogged after it. Arms grabbed me from behind, Strap holding tight. He spun me and I got a glimpse of Jessica pulling her pistol. Duncan shouted, “Aim for the tires!”
She didn’t fire. Someone else did. A slug sparked off the SUV’s door and left a hole. Jessica didn’t flinch, taking careful aim before Duncan pulled her behind him. “Forget it, get in the truck.”
Strap dropped me, Justin duckwalked low and took a fistful of my shirt, more shots zinging overhead, he and I cringing every step back to the truck, expecting to be hit. I was barely inside when Duncan hit the gas. My boot scraped the road before I yanked it inside the cab and slammed the door, smelled burnt rubber. The SUV banged up on the curb and stopped, reversed towards the gangbangers firing from behind cars. Strap was out of sight. Must’ve split quicker than lightning. Pistol pops outside. More clanging on the doors, and I held my knees close to my body, like that would help.
Duncan followed the Avalon’s taillights. He gunned it down the road. The taillights flared, split left.
“Shit!” Duncan shot ahead faster and we were like a boat on choppy waters. He took the turn onto Canal Boulevard too fast. Jessica’s window was down, her elbow on the doorframe, gun ready.
We shot across the intersection at Harrison and nearly clipped a minivan.
“Bouncy, bouncy.” I laughed. Justin looked over like I was nuts.
“Like a boat,” I said.
“You’re fucked up.”
I wished, because I still knew the difference between reality and fantasy, and the reality was that my freedom was long gone. Couldn’t blame my driver, because he was going like a bat out of hell. He’d already lost Strap’s business forever and was maybe even facing some vengeance. Better to stand tall than get punked.
The asshole in the right lane drifted over the line, then drifted over half a car, then signaled left. Duncan hit the brakes and I banged into the back of his seat. Justin braced himself. Jessica’s seatbelt caught. The tires screeched too damn long and we had an inch to spare, the guy ahead angled out of the break in the median, wanting to U-turn. Behind us, horn blast.
Duncan pounded the steering wheel over and over. I thought it would snap.
“Goddamn!”
“Easy,” I said. “My bad, my problem. Sorry to get you involved.”
“You didn’t deserve that. What a fucking lousy job I did.”
“You did great.” I patted his shoulder. “It was all my fault.”
I tried to grin it away, but I felt like I was being eaten inside-out, starting in my throat. I’d lost the Avalon’s taillights. That was that.
“Maybe we can still catch him,” Justin said.
“Never mind.” I sunk low. “Forget it.”
16
After midnight I showed up at Beth’s door toting a bottle of tequila.
Justin had dropped me off near his bar. He’d asked questions but I decided to let him find out tomorrow with the rest of the world. I made it to the funeral home, where I grabbed the tequila, Sammy Hagar’s brand, and fired up the Caddy. Only one more night left with someone I had planned on growing old with.
She opened the door and leveled me with a blank angry look. She wasn’t dressed for bed. I heard CNN in the background, guessed they already had my face on her screen, my real name and former life intoned through Columbia School of Journalism training. But it was too soon for the media to have the whole story and it probably wasn’t big enough too knock off another Middle East tit-for-tat anyway.
“You want to explain how you know that dead singer?” she said.
I shook my head. “Not really. Just an old friend.”
Arms crossed, a nod towards the tequila. “That supposed to make me feel better?”
“Depends.”
“You can’t drink that with pills.”
I held the bottle out to her, saw her distorted through the dusky glass. “I’m pretty sure I can’t overdo it with you here, right? A little bit. Come on.”
She deflated, sighed, stood aside.
I headed for the kitchen. “You’ve got margarita mix, right?”
*
In the kitchen I settled for plastic cups. Tossed the mix and booze and ice into the blender.
She stood behind me and said, “You were friends with this famous guy and didn’t want to tell me?”
“I didn’t think you liked metal.”
“That’s not the point. Are there other friends like that out there? Are you ashamed of me so much I can’t meet them?”
I swiveled my head as far as it would go. “That’s stupid. I’d take you anywhere.”
“Apparently not.” She stepped closer, bare feet slapping the tile. “They said you—”
“I didn’t kill him.”
“But you know something about it.” Beth’s chin on my shoulder. She mumbled, “You dealing him heroin? Keeping him mellow?”
I fumbled her glass, spilled some tequila. “You know I don’t do that.”
“How would I know?”
I spun on her, ready to defend myself. She took a step back. Beth’s worried face broke my heart. I felt the most sober and stupid I could remember.
I handed her a half-assed margarita.
“Give me a chance to explain?�
�� I said.
For a moment I thought she’d make me do this stone sober under the florescent lights in the kitchen. The story wouldn’t sound the same if she forced that on me. Full of holes and desperate. But she saved me by reaching for the drink then turning away.
“Let’s sit down,” she said, walking towards the living room. I followed like I was leashed.
*
The story was simple and only half a lie. I watched a blurry three-second video of myself on Headline News, the sound muted, while telling Beth that I knew Todd before he was famous. We hadn’t really kept in touch.
“Not good friends,” I said. “Still close enough for him to give me a call when he came to town.”
Beth seemed to buy it, snuggling closer to me on the couch, thighs on my lap. My good hand was warm and damp between her knees. She kept drinking and I couldn’t reach my cup. After her first one was gone, she hopped off the couch and poured another. I took mine from the coffee table and knocked it back quickly, letting the booze carry another dose of codeine along with it. I was running low, needed something stronger.
Beth was singing in the kitchen. To me it sounded gorgeous like she was in the choir loft of a gothic church in Germany, echoes and everything, explaining away the bad notes by saying, It’s Baroque.
Headline News was still innocuous, rerunning political shots of men in suits sitting at tables and shaking hands and speaking into microphones. That would change soon enough. I turned it off and switched the stereo on.
Beth hummed along with the music as she settled back on the couch, the glass already to her mouth. She spied my empty one and said, “You should have said something. I’ll get it.”
“No. You were right about the pills. I’m not as almighty as I thought.”
“You got that right.” She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek, sloppy and wet. Perfect.
*
By the start of her fourth, Beth was sweating, extra-relaxed, her hands on me more adventurously than before. I was too numb to enjoy it. She reached into her T-shirt, wiped her neck.
“It's hot. I'm hot. Are you hot?” she said.
“More than you know.”
A little giggle. It was weird, seeing her drunk. Two different people—the one I knew and the one I’d only fantasized about, this slithery loose Amazon woman leading me by my balls. Love slave to the death.
“What am I going to do about this heat?” she said, her breath warm, sweet and sour against my skin. “Any ideas, you?”
“A shower,” I said. Croaked, more like it.
“A cold shower? I don’t know. Do you need a shower? Are you dirty?”
Her hand settled in my lap. She noticed the instant change in my body, cheered it on.
She’ll never see you again after tonight. You’ll never have to apologize. It’s still love, even if you leave her.
Almost like Todd’s voice. Or Ozzy. Or Bret Michaels. Or Diamond Dave.
Not like Lyle Lovett on the stereo speakers, singing, “And as you walk and as you breathe, you ain’t no friend to me…”
Beth let out a low, “What should we do?”
Smiling.
We kissed hard and greedy like we were addicted. It was a painful kiss that we couldn’t break, barely aware of our hands on each other’s skin—her back, her ass, up and down her leg. Beth cupped my balls.
She finally turned her head and inhaled a desperate breath, said, “Wait, wait, wait.”
I sat up and expected the “talk,” the one we always had when it got this far. The voice of reason trying to tell her it would be better if she waited.
Fucking morality.
She didn’t say anything for a long moment. Stared at me, stared into me, leaned forward, her teeth nipping the air. And again. I went in for a kiss, but her hand slid across my lips.
“You, Merle, you want something else. I know how you like it. I know. And I want to let you.” Then, like a growl, “Jesus, I want to feel it.”
She turned around on the couch, her knees deep in the cushions. She yanked her skirt up, her thighs white and soft and asking me to lick them. Her plain white panties were the most erotic thing I’d ever seen. She tugged at them.
“Take them off, Merle. Get em off me!”
I did. I fingered the elastic and slid her panties down. I threw them across the room.
“I want you to take me. I need it more than once. I need it for every year I missed.”
I fumbled with my belt, the button, the zipper. Complication, delay, forcing me to look away from this sexy animal in front of me. My bandaged fingers were fucking me up. No wonder. They were dead to me. I couldn’t feel them. I felt shit nothing, no pins and needles, shit shit shit.
That led me to thinking.
Thinking.
You’re kidding, right?
Beth noticed my distraction, whimpered, “What’s wrong, baby? Baby?”
I remembered another time long ago with Alison. One I still regretted.
17
Jacksonville, 1987
It was after I’d found out about Doug, the first time after that, and I couldn’t get it up. It was all of the pressure. Inches from her mouth, I said, “No, not like this. Not now.”
“What? You get this far and wimp out on me?”
“It’s not that. Shit, I want to so much.”
“But you won’t.” She shoved me hard, cut my skin with her fingernail. “God, I’m so embarrassed. Look at me.”
Her legs clamped shut and she scrambled for clothes. She went on about me not being a man for a good ten minutes while I kept apologizing, telling her another time, maybe.
“My brother, he’s a man. You, what the fuck are you?”
A few nights later after band practice, I hung around and tried to apologize again, but Alison held a finger to her lips, grabbed my hand, and pulled me along down the sidewalk. We ended up at the local elementary school playground, past the kickball field, past the basketball court, to the woods beyond the fence. We were in a ravine full of soft new grass and weeds. Without a word, Alison dropped her shorts then started on my jeans and shirt. I fought with my high-tops until they were off, trying to kiss her the whole time. She avoided my lips, weaving left and right. She wanted to fuck without the romance. Wanted the heat and the sweat, not the things we only say when we’re hard up.
I didn’t say no this time. She grabbed my ass and down we went, her legs holding me tight like torture, beautiful torture, while she guided me inside her. I tried to kiss her again, but she shook her head, stared into my eyes. Her eyes were hard, mouth open and saying “Oh god,” and “Fuck me.” Then she got my full attention, eyes that hypnotized, they were so powerful.
She said, “You like this? It feels good?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Think I’m the best?”
“Oh god yes you are, baby.”
Alison said, “Next time, it’ll be Todd fucking me.”
Like I’d been struck my lightning. I said, “Never.”
“Yeah, I’ll let Todd fuck me. And you’ll never get another chance. Never.”
I wanted to stop, but her legs held tight, ankles crossed, digging into my back. She teethed her bottom lip in a grin with wide-open eyes that loved every minute of the power she had. Reduced me to tears, just a stupid fucking drummer. When it was over, she let go and I rolled off, crying loud but trying to hold it in—huffing, puffing. Alison stood, grabbed her shorts, and knelt by me.
“I’d better not be pregnant.” She climbed out of the ravine.
No, that wasn’t the last time between us. Actually, things got more intense. She hinted around that Todd did her, but never came out and said it. Whenever I got pissed off, she’d deny it, but I never believed her.
What I’ll never understand is how it could feel so good and so bad at the same time.
18
New Orleans, 2004
Beth was drunk. She tried to stand, couldn’t do it, and grabbed my shoulders. “No no no, don’t give
up on me. Please. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”
I thought about what Alison had done back then. Two weeks on edge, she would barely talk to me except to say her period was late. When it finally came, she became a different person—aggressive, spiteful, and full of a passion I couldn’t explain. When things finally went bad between Alison and me after Sylvia came into the picture, I swore I’d never let a woman wrap me up like Alison, spin me like an emotional top for her own amusement. Use me in a way I didn’t think possible for a man to be used. Sex with her was heroin, and she damn well knew it.
I fucked women all over the world after that, never told any of them it was love, except Sylvia, maybe once. Before Beth, I’d spent fifteen years walled away in my comfort zone, sex cut free from feeling. All I felt anymore was the music, and even that didn’t mean too goddamn much.
I had planned on spreading Beth and slapping skin until my balls hurt and she was crying. Here was the invitation right in front of me. Man, her ass in the air, she was sending out the pheromones, the raw unbeatable urge.
That’s the moment my conscience showed up.
Beth was sinking into sleep. I eased her onto the couch. She made purring noises. I pulled her skirt down, covered the temptation, felt stupid for letting the chance escape and expected regret. But it didn’t come. I propped Beth against a pillow and went searching for my pills. I gnawed off the lid with my teeth, then dosed some deep in my throat. Forgot my drink. I stumbled to the kitchen, leaned beneath the faucet and sucked water. It ran all over my face, cold and sweet. Then I sucked some up my nose and gagged, almost threw up. Stood in the middle of her kitchen hunched over with my hands on my knees. Dying on my feet at thirty-five.
Beth was deep asleep, head lolled and mouth open, her deep breaths rumbling my ears. I eased myself against her couch cushion on the opposite side, kept going down, never landed.
*
I woke up with a sharp pain in my head. Beth was slapping me with her five-pound Bible. The cover was thick old leather that felt like a cinder block to my skull. I slid off the couch and took another blow, Beth standing over me screeching. Morning light yellowed everything fuzzy.
The Drummer Page 9