“Tomorrow,” I said. “I’ll make it up to you tomorrow.”
She shook her head and grabbed the flower, pressing it to her nose. “You’d better, mister.”
WHEN I GOT BACK TO Motor City no one asked me when the Killers were coming. They had arrived. They blended in with the crowd in their jeans and flannel. They all had a week’s growth of beard on their faces and if you noticed them at all they would just look back at you, shining like the malcontent disco ball: What? What are you looking at?
That’s when Guy showed up. He had a bright smile on his face as he told everyone about the show. And next to him stood Gaga, the radiant little underage girl. The singer with no songs but who had a record deal with Island Def Jam.
She had a big smile on her face too. There’s something about dressing up and getting excited and waiting to get picked up and waiting for the show to start and waiting to go out after that somehow becomes more exciting than just seeing a band play in a hockey rink. The excitement of the date—even before it happens—matters as much as whatever happens. Same thing here. Tonight was just another night of denim and rock ’n’ roll in this glorious downtown shithole. Only it wasn’t.
I didn’t say anything then, but if Gaga were supposedly signed to the same record label as the Killers, shouldn’t she have gotten backstage passes or something? Either she had a low position on the totem pole or she’d gotten dropped and didn’t tell us. Turned out to be the latter.
But you wouldn’t know it from her enthusiasm.
“Hey, rock star,” she said when I walked back to the booth.
“Hey, gorgeous. How was the show?”
Her eyes grew starry like a pair of comets. “Amazing.” She said it loud enough so Guy could hear before pulling me closer. The Killers had debuted just a few years earlier with a nerdy, dressed-up, indie rock attitude. Now they wanted more. The show was a success, stunning with their new stadium sound and arena vocals. She detailed every bit of the stagecraft as if she were already planning on topping them. Her eyes were glowing like bright factory windows, her mind inside chugging along, excited by the noise of production. I could see she was already full of ideas for her own show at Madison Square Garden. “How did you get them here in the flesh?”
“I’ll tell you the story if you promise you’ll believe me.”
“Of course.” We both glanced over at Guy, who had already disappeared into a welcoming nest of cigarettes, other women, and hair-care enthusiasts.
“When I was working for NASA my landing capsule was lost at sea. I eventually came to a remote island and waited for rescue.” I watched her eyes as they patiently awaited my performance. “And one day I was working on a mixed-media found-object collage that would spell ‘help’ in all the languages I knew. And so I’m walking around this island and I pick up this vintage Jim Beam decanter, right? Only it feels like there’s something inside and I could really use a drink right about then so I pop open the bottle and guess what pops out?”
“A young blonde genie? Is that how a nerd like you landed a girl like Nikki?”
“Did I already tell you this story?”
“No. But does it end with you accidentally telling the genie that you wish you could get the Killers to come to your party?”
“It was one of my three wishes too.”
“Speaking of, where’s Nikki? I really liked her.”
“To tell you the truth: Nikki’s pissed.”
“Whatever. Now I can have you all to myself! That girl can be pissed and we can party with the Killers!”
GAGA DIDN’T STAY IN THE booth long. When she went back to Guy I looked out on the crowd, a pulsating mass of leather and denim. Their pint glasses were held aloft as they screamed along.
I texted Nikki. “Looking good in here! You gotta come by.”
And she responded, “Going home after.”
So I stood there pretending not to be terribly sad.
In the prime of your life you can only be divided by yourself and one. She’s the one. Older people have jobs and kids and mortgages, things that weigh on them. But we only have each other and I know that she’s the one because I am the one laying all this hurt on myself. She tears me apart and I wish she’d do it more because I feel so whole when we come back together. I’m only on the other side of Rivington Street and I miss her.
I had created something and she would never see it. I could parlay this into a ticket out of bartending. I could throw parties, I could book bands. I could write novels all day long, she could take care of her lingerie business. The difference being that we could build something. Waitressing and bartending are maintenance jobs. But what I do now is different. We could do this! Right?
Right . . .
Why am I so depressed in the middle of this party?
Everyone in the room gravitated towards the jostling corner where the Killers sat. They wanted to overhear them saying something cool or daft or to blaspheme the saintly court of rock ’n’ roll, or to stay on hand in case any of them asked who was the band who sang one song or another.
I wanted to go home.
And then I heard a voice: Oh pretty boy, can’t you give me nothing but surrender? The voice was Patti Smith, crackling around on the turntable.
I stepped on one of those milk crates they use as busing tubs and looked out on the gorgeous room, with all the party kids dancing in the glimmer of the malcontent disco ball.
Life is full of pain, I heard. And I fill my nose with snow. And go Rimbaud, go Rimbaud, go Johnny go.
I should toss in a rock ’n’ roll killer like “Personality Crisis” by the New York Dolls or “The Clapping Song” by Shirley Ellis. But this was my party and I wanted to hear Springsteen’s “Thunder Road.” The chill harmonica shimmered through a drumless beat. The crowd stirred. You could hear jokes and phone numbers exchanged, drink orders hollered. The malcontent disco ball didn’t dance either. And then the mass began to sway as the piano fired up.
Gaga watched the hair perk up on the Killers’ necks and ran over to me. “Tell me you did this on purpose!”
“Of course, honey.”
“Ah! Love it!” She joined me in the booth.
“You love Springsteen?”
“Love doesn’t begin to describe it.” We both looked over at her boyfriend as he laughed and backslapped his way around the room. She shook her head at Guy. “Can you believe he doesn’t know any Springsteen? None. He heard the new Killers songs tonight and didn’t catch a single Springsteen rip-off.” She bounced around in the booth, marveling at the equipment and watching me maneuver the knobs and faders. “Love it, love it, love it! And you know the Killers do too!”
THE PARTY WENT STRONG RIGHT up until four. We pulled the shutters down and hid inside. People still ordered drinks and we all did shots with the bartenders. Jameson, Jameson, Jameson. I cleaned up my records and needles and headphones and whatever. At four-thirty the crowd became too much.
Francesca, one of the managing partners, handed me a thick wad of twenties.
“What’d we ring?”
She looked at me, kind of annoyed. “You got it.”
“I got what?” Oh. These are not twenties.
“You got the all-time ring at Motor City.”
I can’t keep track of each fallen robin
The Chelsea Hotel stood in the middle of Twenty-Third Street, dressed up and a little out of place. At birth, it was the tallest building in New York City. Mark Twain stayed there, Dylan Thomas died there, Sid may or may not have killed Nancy there. Brendan Behan—my countryman—wrote some of his best work in his soundproof room. Patti Smith once loved Leonard Cohen to an earth-shattering degree there. When I first moved to New York, you could live there if the owner liked what you did as an artist. The walls were lined with art from the very talented who couldn’t pay their rent. The building was ringed in wrought-iron balconies that looked like foundry type on the printing presses of a mysterious language. The basement had a guests-only bar that was ne
ver open and next door was a Miguel de Cervantes themed restaurant called Quixote’s. To even stand in front of the place you were forced to inhale a monument to the power of the written word in verse.
Plus, it’s gorgeous. I stood on the balcony of room 220, surrounded by friends on my twenty-fifth birthday, and basked at the unbelievable quiet of Twenty-Third Street.
I know the number because Conrad chipped it off the door and gave it to me as a birthday present. The ancient bathtub filled with bagged ice and canned beer and birthday-gift bottles of whiskey.
My little secret that night was one I shared only with Gaga. I felt exuberant, full of the New Year’s Eve energy that promised a new age. That morning I had written the final scene in my third-time’s-a-charm full-length manuscript The Confessions of Mercutio—a retelling of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. To tackle the great work, I took Shakespeare’s finest character and Romeo’s best friend, a long-winded drunk with a knack for getting into situations, and gave him free reign of Verona.
ALL THE GUESTS LEFT AT seven or so in the morning. I found a bottle of champagne in the bathroom and opened it. I wanted to enjoy the Chelsea while I could. Nikki wanted to sleep. We filed into the two double beds, me cozy with the unwrapped plastic hotel cup of champagne, her curling up across the bedside table from me.
I looked up and saw her looking at me, appraising. I loved those little eyes of hers. “Our relationship is changing,” I said. “And I just want you to know that I want it to. This is fun and all but . . .”
She smiled. But I would only later find out why. It took a week and she had to go out of town on business. I got hired to play at Luke & Leroy on the following Saturday night and came back to her apartment when she got out of work. We agreed to get pizza for lunch and just have a good weekend together. But I fell back asleep after she first got up.
And the next time I woke up I could see that she was crying.
I know I should stick up for myself but I really think it’s better this way
The question remains: Is life just like high school or is high school just like life? Even here, at Rivington High. The bullies, the band geeks, the popular girls. Nowhere is that more obvious than inside the LES panopticon’s observation of my breakup with Nikki.
The next day Gaga sat me down at St. Jerome’s. “I heard,” was all she said, her tiny, intricate hands coming out of her leather jacket, holding my arms, scared I might float away like a child’s balloon at a county fair. I figured Guy would hear first and get the most excited, Nikki being single and all. Who knows who told him. Or how excited they were.
But when I looked into her big Russian-doll eyes I could tell she genuinely cared. “Have you talked to her?” Even though I saw her almost every night, this was the first time we talked about anything that wasn’t at least in part theoretical.
“What is there to say?”
“Lots.”
“She called yesterday.”
“And?”
“And what? She left her dress from New Year’s at my house. She wants me to drop it off at Stanton Social.”
“Tell her if she wants the dress she can come and get it.”
“I don’t want to give her back the dress.”
“She’s not even your size.”
I looked up at the girl. Her lame joke caught me off guard and I accidentally smiled. For about a second. “It’s not the dress, it’s her. She keeps saying she wants that and her phone charger. But I can’t give them back. Why would she need an extra phone charger? Do you think she’s with someone else?”
“Everybody needs an extra phone charger. When did you guys start having problems? April? So Nikki is twenty-nine and eight months?” Gaga looked nonjudgmentally into her Bud Light.
“Yeah. Wait. How did you guess that?”
“Has anyone ever told you about a Saturn return?”
“No.”
“You can’t fight it,” Gaga said. “Twenty-nine-and-a-half years after you’re born the planet Saturn returns and throws off your whole universe. It tears you away from everything and you can’t fight it.”
“But I just turned twenty-five. Does that mean I’m in for five years of torture?”
“Pretty much.” Gaga had just turned twenty-one. And then I realized that the poor girl was going through the same thing with Guy. “You need to read The Secret.” Around that time I remember a lot of people my age, very naïve girls mostly, who’d found the power within from this book. According to it you had to visualize your dreams. Gaga had visualized that one day she would play Madison Square Garden like the Killers. She wanted me to visualize getting back together with Nikki. Not to be crass, but what the fuck do you think I’m doing all day and night?
“I’m not reading The Secret.”
“Roll your eyes all you want. But you have to have a vision for what you want. You have to picture it in your mind.”
I flagged down Conrad and ordered a Wild Turkey neat.
“Can I ask you something? Do you want to get back together with Nikki?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Wh—” I had no answer.
“Can you envision a time in the future where you are with Nikki and things are not like this?”
“Like what?”
“Are you one of those guys who will fuck some girl and then leave in the middle of the night? Or do you stay and cuddle?”
“How could you even ask me that?”
“If Nikki wants you in her life she’s going to want you to stay and cuddle. Her—stay and be there for her. Don’t always be running off to the next party or disappearing into work. Can you envision a time when it will be different?”
I looked over at Guy. “Are you talking about me or him?”
“I’m talking about all of you.”
ON THE WAY INTO WORK on Wednesday I had already decided that everything would be okay. Can’t be that bad, right? Intergalactic crises be damned. I still had a life to lead. Just had to work out some kinks. We were overwhelmed, Nikki and I. Under-rested. I didn’t understand what was going on and there’s a part of me that just wanted to let it be. That’s mature, right? So I would try to do what Gaga said and envision a time when I didn’t feel this way. I had already consoled myself with the fact that I would probably make out with someone else. Would it be someone I knew? Someone new? What a fantastic distraction! The train became a smorgasbord of possibilities. It worked for about fifteen seconds per day, seeing as how every street corner, train station, restaurant, and sidewalk in this city reminded me of Nikki.
On the ride to work my train burst through a cave at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge and glided over its gleaming arch into the morning sunshine. Next stop on this train is Canal Street. I checked my phone now that we’d got above ground, hoping to hear from Nikki. Nothing. Remember that time you got caught in the rain on Canal Street and when you and Nikki went into a store to buy an umbrella you got her a ring instead? That’s Canal Street. Next stop is Canal Street.
I took a deep breath.
This would not happen overnight.
One thing did come to mind. When I finished my last manuscript I walked away from it. Let it marinate for six weeks and came back to it fresh. These things didn’t come out perfect all at once. A little distance helped. A fresh look would tell me if I really wanted to put in the work to make it great. This part of our relationship was just a first draft. I would put Mercutio and Nikki aside for six weeks. I can do that, right?
Next stop is Fourteenth Street, Union Square. Transfer for L, N, R, 4, 5, and 6. It’s also Nikki’s stop. You could just get out and walk to her house from there. Stand clear of the doors. The doors shut and the train took me away from the station and into my uniform at the museum.
THE NEXT TIME I SAW Gaga the only thing I could say was that the city felt new to me again. Just as I once looked down at my checkbook and said, “This is my first full month living in this apartment,” I now said, “I’ve made it a week alone an
d haven’t suffered any organ failure.” They put up a new exhibit at the museum and I walked into work every day surrounded by new art, new images, new ideas.
When I got paid that Friday I said, “I made it through a full week at work without crying in my uniform.” I even went downtown after work so that people could have proof that I was still standing. In my vision I looked at my new world: In it I only ever worked for myself. I had carved out a nice little life for myself in the city and it was full of all the bands and whiskey and Chuck Berry records I’d always wanted.
It was in that time that Gaga went from being just a girl I knew to becoming someone I thought about when we weren’t together. That has always been my standard of quality in books and movies and records and decent people. How much you think about them when you don’t have to. She lent me strength and smiles when I didn’t have any and she let me keep them for as long as I needed.
And at the end of the first month I kissed the first girl who laughed at something I said.
I’m killing it.
I’m doing this.
I’m going to ride this out.
I left working at my beloved museum for good. I needed a fresh start. I needed to work where I belonged. I was ready. I was optimistic.
ON THE WAY HOME FROM my last night of work I got a call from Nikki. “Fine.”
“What’s fine?”
“Fine I’ll come get my stuff if you won’t drop it off for me.”
Coming and getting my stuff. A pointless and knife-twisting ritual, where you go and get things you don’t really need from someone you don’t really love. When you tell another person that they weren’t worth half a bottle of moisturizer. Where you are ready to walk out of someone’s life for good, but not without that novel you never finished reading and never would. Certainly not with the weight of their house keys.
I caught a glimpse of myself in a window and shook my head. For six weeks I’d prayed for Nikki to call or come over. Careful what you wish for. “Now’s not a good time.”
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