Rock

by J. A. Huss

  I sigh. “This is one fucked-up life we have up here on the mountain, Missy.”

  “I know, RK. But it’s not the mountain’s fault.” She glances at me from of the corner of her eye. “It’s not my fault and it’s not your fault. It’s her fault. You started something when you wrote the song, Rowan Kyle. But you never finished it. Not for real. It trapped you in the past. Somehow, some way, that song trapped you in the past and screwed you all up. And I think if you just did that, if you just finished the song, you’d feel a lot better.”

  All we have to do is finish what we started.

  “Are you still hungry?” Missy asks after a few long silent minutes.

  “Yeah,” I reply, lost in thought.

  “All right. I’ll give the grilled cheese one more try.” She laughs as she gets up and walks into the kitchen.

  “I’ll eat it no matter what,” I whisper to my reflection in the mirror. “Because that’s the kind of guy I am.”

  I get up off the bench, lift the lid, and then shuffle through the sheet music looking for a note book. Not much here. Just loose pages. Things from my childhood. If I want anything recent, this isn’t where I’ll find it.

  “Come talk to me while I cook,” Missy calls from the kitchen.

  I do join her. If only to watch her attempt to be domestic.

  “Don’t laugh at me,” she says, pointing the spatula in my direction.

  “What else do you make, Miss? Tomato soup? PB and J?”

  “My PB and J can win awards. And my can-opener skills make me the best tomato soup maker in Grand County.”

  “What kind of cheese is that?” I ask, looking at the white stuff bubbling down the bread and scalding on the pan. “Please don’t say Swiss.”

  “Muenster!” she says. “Jesus, you give me no credit for knowing all your favorites.”

  I walk up and wrap my arms around her middle, my hands slipping into her front pockets. “You probably know more about me than I do,” I whisper. “So, not true.”

  Missy takes a deep breath and then lets it out. “Will you finish the song?”

  “Maybe,” I say, kissing my way up her neck. “Will you come back to LA with me?”

  Her body stiffens. “When?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, continuing to work on her ear. “We can work out the details. But… would you ever? Come to LA, I mean?”

  She flips the grilled cheese sandwiches over and they sizzle in the frying pan as she thinks. “I don’t know,” she finally says.

  “Just a visit? See if you like it? Don’t you ever get that old feeling, Missy? You used to want to go everywhere. Be a rock star. Tour the world. Play in front of stadiums filled with people.”

  “And I thought you were over your rock-star days. I thought you weren’t going to play anymore. So if I go back to your rock-star life, what does that mean? Will you play? Will you look for new members? Keep the group going?”

  I think about it as she gingerly lifts up one corner of a sandwich to check it. “I’m not there yet,” I say after a long minute of silence. “And I haven’t talked to Kenner, but I’m going to assume he’s not there yet either. So no. I’m not going to worry about the music. I just want you.”

  “Then why do we have to leave Grand Lake? We’re already here. If there’s nothing there you want or need, then why go back to LA?”

  She takes two plates out of the cabinet above her head, then slides a grilled cheese onto each one. I take my hands out of her pockets and grab two beers from the fridge, and then we walk over to the breakfast bar like we’ve done this a million times. Like this is a habit we made together.

  “I know why,” Missy says as I take a bite of my sandwich.

  “Why?” I say with my mouth full.

  “Because you think Grand Lake is a place to retire to. That’s what your dad did. That’s what my dad did. They were old, washed-up, assholes. They spent the last of their real money on these houses. This land. Those basements. The bar.”

  I shrug and take another bite, chewing before I speak this time. “Maybe I just don’t want to be a one-hit wonder like they were.”

  “RK,” Missy chastises. “That’s not fair and you know it. So they only had one big hit as a band. They wrote and sold songs until they died. We both get the royalties from those songs, and we will for as long as our estates retain the copyright.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “No, no buts. They wanted to get out of the scene, RK. The one that poisoned them in the first place. The one that stole everything. The one that broke you too, even though you knew the risks.”

  “Look,” I say, a little bit pissed off that she’d bring up my addiction. “You’re the one who wanted to be the rock star, Missy. Not me. It just happened this way. I don’t need the fans, or the accolades, or even the money. But this place is a poison. Grand Lake is the poison.”

  “No,” she says, shaking her head before I’m done talking. “Nope. This is a good town. These are good people. If you were in LA and all this shit was happening, no one would give a fuck about you, RK. No one. Not the sheriff, not the librarian, not the therapist who lets you walk in every Monday morning after a blackout. You have no Sean in LA. You have no Gretchen in LA. You have no TJ in LA. And most importantly, you have no me in LA.”

  “Which is why I want you to come with me, Missy.”

  “What if you black out in LA and never come home?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Why do you black out now?”

  “I didn’t remember how Melanie died. I was trying to make myself forget. I probably blacked out every time I started to remember. This place reminds me of everything, Missy. All of it. I can’t stand it.”

  She stares at me, her eyes darting back and forth, searching them the way she does. “I don’t think that’s why, RK. I don’t think that’s why. And until you figure it out, I’m not going to LA, or anywhere else, with you.”

  “You’ll stay here?” I ask, annoyed with her. “In this dead-ass town? Nobody lives here, Missy. It’s a dead end in every sense of the word. The world ends here in the winter. We have avalanches and moose. They fucking killed a wolf out near Kremmling last year, Missy. We have one road in, one road out. And that highway between us and civilization is a deathtrap.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake! You didn’t drive off a cliff, RK.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I huff.

  “It does matter.” Missy gets up and takes her mostly uneaten sandwich over to the sink and drops it in with a clang. “If you leave,” she says, her back to me, “I won’t go looking for you, RK. I’m not going to chase you.” She turns around, her palms grabbing the countertop as she leans back a little and studies my face. “If you leave, you’re just running away again.”

  “Running away from what?”

  She stares at me for a few seconds. “Did you black out in California?”

  “No,” I lie. Why am I lying?

  “Never?”

  “No,” I say, digging in my heels.

  “So why are you blacking out now?”

  “If I knew I’d tell you. I’m not keeping secrets.”

  “What—” she starts, but stops short. She stares out the back window.

  I wait, but nothing else comes out. “What, what?” I ask. “What were you going to ask?”

  She hesitates, looking down at her feet. Then, just a I’m about to get frustrated, she says, “What’s the name of the song?”

  That wasn’t what she was going to ask. But hey, if she wants to drop it, I’m gonna go along. Because I do not want to start thinking about the blackouts in LA. Not now. Maybe not ever. “Errr, well, it never really had one.”

  “How’s the first verse go?” She takes a deep breath and then walks over to me, takes my hand, and places it over her heart. “Tell me how it goes. I’ve been dying to ask you that for five years.”

  I pull her in for a hug, thankful that our argument has passed. I don’t want to fight with her. �
��I have to change it all now. I’m not going to use any of the verses I was thinking about.”

  “Ah-ha!” she says, laughing into my chest. “I knew you had words!”

  “It’s just a bunch of feelings, really, that’s all. I never put it all together. So it hardly counts.”

  “You should go write it down. Right now, RK. And then play that song for me and sing those words. My life would be complete if you did that.”

  “The piano is a little out of tune. It’ll drive me crazy.”

  Missy pulls away from me and walks over to the door next to the pantry, punching in the key code and pulling it open to reveal the blackness within. “You don’t need a piano, RK. You’ve got your dad’s studio in the basement.” I stare at the dark stairwell for a long time before Missy can’t take it anymore. “Just go down there. I stocked it all up for you, Rowan Kyle.”

  Margie was right. There is a big difference between Rowan Kyle, RK, and Rock. And there is a big difference in the way people use those names when they’re talking to me.

  “The fridge has food, soda, and beer. The bathroom has fresh towels. There’s even cigarettes if you need them.”

  I scowl at her.

  She shrugs. “Rock stars smoke, right? I didn’t know how many bad habits you picked up in the City of Fallen Angels.”

  “So dramatic,” I say. “I don’t smoke. Anymore, anyway.” My smile leaks out with the words. “My throat won’t tolerate it.” I haven’t tried to smoke since the accident. But I don’t want to either. It hurts just thinking about it.

  “You filthy degenerate.”

  “I don’t think I can sing.”

  “You can. Your dad completely remodeled the studio right after you left. State of the art, RK. All of it. My dad helped. They even mixed a few songs at the end.”

  I look up at her face. “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “What for?” She smiles, but it’s weak. She knows why.

  “For not being here when your dad died. For not coming home to help you say goodbye.”

  She pouts her lips a little, looks down, looks up at me. “Don’t be sorry. We both had a lot of reasons to be mad at them, you know? They were total fuck-ups. Total.” She smiles a little wider now. “In all ways but one. Your dad made you and my dad made me. So they did something right. Because I cannot imagine my life without you, RK. Never again. I’m expecting you to figure this out. I’m counting on you to do it. So”—she waves a hand at the open door—“go down there and make me proud. It’s the next step. Maybe it’s not the final step in your healing, but it’s necessary.”

  I don’t want to. I really don’t. But I do want to make her happy. And proud. So I take a step across the kitchen. And then another and another. And before I can think twice about it, I flip on the light, step down, and close the door behind me.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Some things never change and this studio, even with the recent upgrades, is one of them. It smells the same. Old smoke, because my dad did have a thing for cigarettes, hence the lung cancer. Old records, because this place is climate-controlled and he kept his album collection down here. And old books, because hey, if you’ve got perfect climate control and a thing for first-edition books, why not keep your library down here too?

  But the remodel is apparent too. Mostly in the production room. Brand-new analog desk with a digital version off to the left with a bank of monitors. But the actual performance studio looks the way it did the day I left.

  The drum set is tricked out in the center of the performance room, surrounded by acoustic panels. On the left side is the bass setup, the right side is the guitar setup. There are mics, and amps, and cords, and pedals. Music stands that still have music propped up on them. The keyboard set up is in the back, hidden by the drums.

  The pictures on the walls haven’t changed either. My dad when he was young, the single gold record they earned when their band had their first hit. Pictures of every friend he ever had in the business sitting down here on the couches, smoking, drinking, doing drugs. I don’t remember anything about those days except being banned from the basement, but I’ve been looking at those same pictures all my life.

  Bad influences, my mom used to say.

  When I got older the famous people stopped coming. It was all phone calls and online meetings. Jack stopped recording and only wrote by the time I was eleven or twelve. So Teej and I would come down here and fuck off. We learned how to mix, how to record, how to do it all from scratch. Hell, we mixed tons of songs down here before we were in high school. It wasn’t anything special. But it was good experience.

  I flip the rest of the lights on, start up the computers and then the rest of the equipment in the production room. I check out the headphones and pull open drawers, just to see if they contain all the same stuff.

  They do.

  And then I walk out into the performance room and pick up the papers on the stand near the lead mic. I have never written down the notes for the song, but I can read music with the best of them. And I hear that melody tapping out on the piano in my head as I scan the notes in my hand.

  My dad did this. My dad was the one who leaked that video of me at the funeral. He recorded it, wrote it down, and let it loose.

  I sigh and put the sheet music back on the stand. Don’t need it. I just head over to the keyboard and turn it on along with all its accompanying equipment.

  I sit on the padded stool in front of the keys and a moment later, my fingers know what to do. I play it straight through one time, all nine minutes of it, and wipe the words I have been writing in my head away.

  Starting over, Rock. Starting over.

  From there it’s a whirlwind of work. I find a notebook and a pencil and take them over to the couches at the front of the room. I drink a beer, then a water, then grab a snack from the fridge. Missy was right, she stocked it all up. Like she was expecting me to come home. Like she was waiting for me. There’s even milk in there. And cereal in the kitchen cupboards. Nothing is expired. Nothing.

  I scribble the words, counting the syllables to keep my rhythm. I count it all out, sing it in my head. Tap out the beat with my foot, or with my pencil, or my fingers on the old wooden coffee table.

  And after six beers, eight sodas, two bowls of cereal, and one batch of microwave popcorn, I get up and walk to the guitar area. I choose a vintage 1959 natural-colored Gibson that graces dozens of framed pictures on the wall.

  And I play.

  I don’t stop. Not like when I’m songwriting. When I’m composing I go until I’m done. And when I get that right, I lay the track down, mix it in with the keyboard, and move on to the bass.

  I always knew the rhythm, and bass is not one of my specialties, so it’s simple. It doesn’t need to be overpowering and hard the way it was with Son of a Jack. Just simple.

  I record that, mix it in with what I have, and move on to the drums. I excel at the drums. Not as much as the guitar and the piano, but I’m really good. And since this is primarily a keyboard piece, it’s subtle and soft.

  I do it all backwards of course. Melody, harmony, rhythm instead of rhythm, harmony, melody. But that’s the way I like it, right? The long way around.

  I mix it, then put the headphones on, and stand in front of the mic, controlling the production with a laptop.

  My heart beats so fucking fast.

  My throat aches so fucking bad by the third take.

  My head pounds from lack of food, and lack of sleep, and lack of sunlight.

  I have no idea how long I’ve been down here.

  But I don’t care. Because when I’m satisfied and play it all back, I feel different.

  I feel whole. And satisfied. And ready.

  For what? I’m not sure. But I’m ready.

  I shower down here, then wrap a towel around my waist and go upstairs. The sun is just peeking up over the mountains when I look out the window. I don’t even know what day it is. The air is cool as a gentle wind blows through the house
, making the curtains shudder and wave.

  I find Missy asleep in my bedroom, her legs all wrapped up in the white sheets. I drop the towel and climb in next to her, exhausted.

  “Did you finish?” she asks, sleepily turning to mold her body into mine.

  “Mmmm,” I say, unable to stay awake.

  “I love you,” is the last thing I hear before I drift off.

  I say it back in my dreams. Over and over and over.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The mattress bounces a little and I roll over to find Missy kneeling on the bed, wide grin on her face. “Good morning, sunshine.”

  I close my eyes and mumble, “What time is it?”

  “Six,” she says, easing down next to me. Her body is cool and mine is warm from being wrapped up in the blanket. “At night.”

  I laugh as I slip my arm under her back and pull her up to me. “What day is it?’

  She giggles as my fingertips find their way under her shirt. “Wednesday.”

  “Jesus,” I say, eyelids flying open. “How long was I down there?”

  “Two days. Do you still want to go to the party with me tonight?”

  “Party?”

  “Yeah, for the opening bands this weekend at Float’s.”

  I think about this for a moment. “Are you one of them?” I turn a little so I can see her face as my thumb traces a slow arc over her belly button.

  She sneaks a smile out. “Headliner this year.”

  “Headliner?” My hand dips under the waistband of her shorts and slips between her legs. “You’re turning me on, Melissa Vetti.”