It had been a long day and tonight she fell asleep instantly.
Mary was standing on an empty street. A red light glowed above her head, reflected in the rainwater pooling by the grating at the side of the road. She was wondering what she was doing there until the teenage boy with the hood concealing his face came around the corner. He was running as before and she sensed his heart beating hard. He turned in time to see the boys following. She called to him but he couldn’t hear her.
She ran out into the road with her hands up to stop the boys but they ran through her. She turned as one grabbed the hooded boy and pushed him to the ground. She watched helplessly as the blows rained down. The gang divided. Three kicked and punched him while he attempted to protect his head. A large boy, built like a bear, loomed in the middle distance. He was holding an empty vodka bottle like a tennis racket and screaming that it was his turn. Another boy was leaning against a car watching the beating and it was obvious that he was the rabble’s leader. He was surrounded by darkness. He turned to watch the large boy dance with the bottle. His slash-like mouth bled into a grin and he called to the three who were kicking. She heard him laugh as he pointed at the bear with the bottle.
“Look, Topher’s excited!” he sneered.
She looked around wildly for help but the street was otherwise empty. Somebody please come. Somebody save him. She ran until she saw a man and woman and willed them to turn to where the boy was being attacked but they got into a car and drove away. Oh, God! She ran back in time to hear the gang’s leader say, “Give Topher a go.”
The boy-bear moved in and the others made way for him, leaving the hooded boy on the ground, too injured to run. She felt his broken knuckles clutching at his face and his body curled into the foetal position to protect his balls from the oncoming onslaught – and woke with a start.
She was shaking, and her heart was racing, her pulse too. Her hair was damp and a migraine was coming on. She could hear the TV murmuring faintly through the floor. She needed to take a pill but she kept the bottle in one of the kitchen cupboards. She put on her long cardigan, the one that made her feel like Miss Marple, and made her way downstairs.
Sam looked up from the floor. “Are you OK?” he asked, concerned.
“Just a headache, that’s all,” she said, passing into the kitchen.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he remarked.
She returned with a glass of water and a pill that she popped into her mouth and swallowed.
“Stay!” he called.
She stopped.
“After all, we’re both awake,” he added.
She nodded, knowing that sleep would not come easy. She sat on the sofa and he lowered the TV volume.
“Are you getting a migraine?” he asked, as though he’d seen her medical file.
“I think I’ve caught it in time.”
“You’re shaking,” he pointed out. “What’s wrong?” Clearly it was more than a headache.
“Just a nightmare.” Without warning her eyes filled with fat tears that threatened to tumble. Oh, my God, I’m mortified. Do not cry! she warned herself but a rogue tear rolled towards her chin. Knickers!
“It must have been a bad one,” he commented, evidently surprised by the tear.
“It was.”
“You want to share it?”
“No,” she said, wiping her eye.
“I have nightmares too,” he said, with unexpected honesty, “a lot. I guess that’s why I have trouble sleeping. It’s hard to sleep when you’re scared to.”
Mary was as taken aback by his candour as he had been by her tear. “It seemed so real,” she said.
“Like one of your visions?” he asked, and she eyed him, suspicious. “Ivan told me.”
“No – usually they’re pretty surreal.”
“Like the cat on the flying mat?” he said, with a smile.
“Yeah.” She laughed, then became serious. “This was like a movie and somehow I found myself in the frame.” She rubbed her forehead.
“But it’s just a nightmare, right?”
“I don’t know. I’ve had it before. It was exactly the same except this time I got to see a little more. It’s never happened like that before. Maybe it was a dream but something’s not right.” He was silent and she watched him from the corner of her eye. “You don’t believe it could be anything more than a dream, do you?”
“It’s nothing personal but I don’t believe in much,” he admitted.
“That’s OK. Penny thinks I’m a basket case – maybe she’s right.”
She warmed some milk for them both and they chatted freely. Sam admired her diamond necklace and she told him about her day spent remembering her mother. She shared some of the tales her father had told her and he talked about his grandmother. In the telling, he inadvertently revealed his nerdy origins.
“I can’t see it.” She laughed.
“Well, trust me. My teenage years were a nightmare.”
“You’re not alone.”
“Oh, shit, sorry.”
“Don’t be.” She smiled. “It was pretty good up to the coma, dead boyfriend and freak pregnancy.”
He laughed and she stood up. “I should get back to bed. I’m in the bar first thing and you have a full day on the floor ahead of you.”
“Actually, I’m booked in with the Bone Man. Ivan set it up earlier.”
“Good for you.”
“You think it’s the right thing?” he asked, betraying a little panic.
“You’ve got nothing to lose.”
“Well, except for the ability to walk.”
“You’ll be fine,” she soothed.
“Thanks for taking care of me.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, with new warmth. She stopped to straighten the picture of Ben and Mr Monkels, then made her way up the stairs and back to her bed.
13. Rear window, hard ground
Although Sam was capable of straightening and, with great difficulty, assuming the seated position, the pain that followed was so excruciating that it brought tears to his eyes. Mary wanted to insist he take his medication but thought better of it.
Ivan tried to take his friend’s mind off his discomfort with what his own mother often described as idle chatter. His description of Sienna’s performance in bed got them to the other side of Killarney. “Jesus, she’s a wonder!”
Sam laughed despite the pain.
“I tell you, my balls could have been on fire and my wife wouldn’t have licked them,” Ivan continued happily.
Sam wondered what woman in her right mind would lick balls that were alight.
Ivan was rubbing his nose on his sleeve. “Jesus, she’s a wonder!” he repeated. “And as for positions!” He slapped the steering-wheel. “Jesus, she must come from circus folk!”
“I’m happy for you,” Sam said. “She sounds like she could be the one.”
“I tell you, it’s a wonder I don’t have to visit the Bone Man myself!” Ivan turned onto a long and winding road that seemed too narrow for the car, not to mind the oncoming one, but he was used to it and carried on unconcerned.
Later Sam asked if he had called his wife.
“This morning.”
“And?” Sam asked, curious as to whether Mary’s vague premonition had any merit.
“And,” Ivan said, “she told me I had some ego for an eejit. Apparently I’d be the last person in hell she’d call out for.” He sniffed, wrangling with the glove-box in the quest for tissues. “Feckin’ hay fever.”
“So Mary was wrong?”
“She is not,” Ivan said, blowing his nose.
“You still think your wife wants you?”
“Oh, she doesn’t want me but she might need me because there’s something wrong. I know that much.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Well, I’ll wait until the kids come for Easter and I’m going to ask them,” he said matter-of-factly, and turned into a farmyard. “We’re h
ere.”
Sam couldn’t conceal his concerns when it emerged the Bone Man was in fact a farmer and his surgery was a table in the back of a barn. But Ivan swore by him and Sam was only hours away from submitting to the painkillers prescribed by the GP – or, at the very least, smoking the cannabis Mossy had so generously offered when he had called in to apologize to Mary for being too off his head to help with the dog. Sam knew he couldn’t risk taking any drug, prescribed or not. He couldn’t be any worse off, he’d thought – until he met the Bone Man. He had hands the size of shovels, wild curly hair and a big beard. He reminded Sam of one of the crazy homeless guys in New York. He did as he was told, though, because the guy was six eight and almost as wide. In the end it took only a moment. He heard a loud click, felt an excruciating pain that lasted one second and then relief. The effect was much like heroin.
Sam wasn’t dancing a jig like Tommy the Coat but he was home and back in his own bed that night. Although he was happy to return to isolation he found himself missing Mary. In the absence of the TV he had grown accustomed to, he turned his full attention to the guitar he had previously only tinkered with. It had been odd that he had been so comfortable playing in front of Mary. His ex-girlfriend had begged him to play many times, but he had refused. Then again Mia was a world-renowned recording star and Mary tended a bar so he guessed it was most likely something to do with that. He didn’t have anything to prove to Mary, and even if he’d felt he did, she wouldn’t have given a shit. He’d felt good when she’d stopped to listen to his version of Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me”. To him, it had sounded shoddy but she hadn’t noticed or maybe she just hadn’t cared. It was nice.
When Jerry Letter had knocked on the door with Sam’s prize possession carefully boxed – her emancipation reliant upon a signature – it had been a good day, despite his unfortunate circumstances. Once the front door was closed he had set about freeing her with a ferocity that matched a zealous child’s on Christmas morning. However, he was forced to leave the unveiling to Mary. And, once she was revealed, he had paused to gaze at her as though he was seeing her with new eyes and new appreciation.
“Hello, Glory!” He’d sighed.
“It has a name?” Mary inquired.
He didn’t care if she thought him stupid – a hero of his had named that guitar and that was good enough for him. And now, alone in his own home and fabulously free from pain, he took Glory out and held her on his lap, his right hand sliding up and down her neck, his left cupping her body. Until his time on Mary’s floor he hadn’t played guitar in years – in fact, he’d only ever played this instrument once before on the night it was presented to him by Leland when Sam’s first signing for Seminy Records had gone platinum. He had taken her home and tinkered with her, but he was drunk and she was the original Scotty Moore Gibson ES-295, so he’d thought better of it. When he was sober, the guitar embarrassed him. As much as he loved her and the idea of her, he had a deep-rooted fear that he wasn’t worthy of her. She was used to being played by one of the all-time greats and Sam had long ago proved that he was mediocre at best. So Glory’s new owner retired her and Scotty Moore’s Gibson was designated to become a museum piece, an expensive element of a businessman’s décor.
Alone and lost in a distant memory, he held her for five minutes before he strummed. She needed tuning. He didn’t have a tuner so he set about doing it by ear. This took a little while but when he’d finished she was perfect. He placed his fingers on the first chord and then she sang “Hotel California”, one of his granny’s favourite tracks. He followed up with “Life In The Fast Lane” forgetting the mid-eight but returning to it after the second verse. He played it again three or four times until it flowed and his hand was less stiff. The Kinks were next – working out “Louie Louie” took him until tea-time. He stopped to fry up some French toast, then resumed, playing Steely Dan, the Grateful Dead, a little Floyd and, of course, he couldn’t resist Led Zeppelin. It was after ten when he put her down and, exhausted, took to his bed, his mind buzzing with something he had long ago forgotten about. Sam’s gospel phase was over.
Music had mattered to him once, before he’d been disappointed too many times. His first band Diesel, featuring Hilarie, the dick-licking bass player, had lasted a mere six months. They’d broken up when the drummer fractured his leg in a car crash and Hilarie decided she wanted to be a nurse.
Sam had also been hospitalized but for different reasons. He hadn’t broken any bones, but his injury would take the rest of his life to heal. He had also moved schools that year and spent his last year of high school as a recluse. He didn’t bother with college but, desperate to leave home, he found himself a job in a music shop and rented a boxroom in a tiny apartment he shared with a lesbian couple, Ronnie and Sue. It was Ronnie who had introduced him to the bass player in the band Limbs, an all-guy unit made up of three art-school dropouts, Fred, Paulie and Dave. They used to joke about it, saying they were missing a limb, as if it was funny, but he guessed that when you were twenty-two and high, it pretty much was.
The music was serious, though. Fred was the bass player and lead vocalist – he had a set of pipes on him. Paulie was the drummer, and what he lacked in talent he made up for in raw energy and enthusiasm. Dave, on guitar, was the quiet one and the main songwriter. They wanted a second guitar player and Sam fitted the bill. He would have been designated “the pretty one” but the epithet was used only once: Dave and Fred had to pull Sam off their terrified drummer, who sustained a black eye and a fat lip. Although Sam apologized for the seemingly unprovoked attack, he didn’t explain to his new band mates why he had torn into Paulie.
Sam was desperate to be in a successful band and he knew that, with the right songs, these guys could go all the way. Dave’s were shit so he hoped that after an apprenticeship he could introduce a few of his own, and maybe then they’d rocket and he’d no longer be window-dressing. It didn’t work out like that. Dave was precious and, although Sam’s songs were infinitely better, Dave was boss. It was his band and Sam could fuck off if he thought he was coming in to take over. So he did fuck off. Instead of trying to hook up with another band he auditioned for his own. That was how he met Sophia Sheffer, the rocker chick with the big hair, hips and voice. He knew instantly that she was the one. He also knew that she was into him, and he slept with her that first night, sealing their newly formed partnership. He wrote the melodies and she wrote the lyrics – she insisted they had to mean something to her. He didn’t mind because she wasn’t bad and it felt right that she should sing about chick stuff – he definitely couldn’t write that.
He plugged them as the Carpenters of the late eighties. Of course they sounded nothing like the Carpenters, and their songs were hardcore rock anthems, which they considered an antidote to Karen and Richard’s squeaky-clean soft pop-rock. Also, they weren’t related, which was good because they had sex at any given opportunity. It wasn’t love, and Sophia understood the concept of opportunistic fucking – she was a rocker, after all.
They worked well together; he secured them paid gigs early on and free recording time, finding that he could schmooze with the best of them. She was serious about improving vocally, became stronger with each passing day and was dedicated to working on her image. Neither batted an eyelid when the other slept with someone else. He acted as manager and found that for some reason doors were quick to open. Maybe it was because he flirted with the PA to every record-company executive in New York and maybe not, but their demos were always heard. Sam was always working. When they weren’t gigging, they were writing. When they weren’t writing, they were practising. When they weren’t practising, he was networking.
They’d been together for nearly two years when the buzz started. Vocally, Sophia had found her niche – one critic describing her voice as husky, dark, warm, sexy and pitch-perfect. The music was strong too, reminiscent of Janis Joplin’s raw iron but hinting at what would later become grunge. But music is all about timing: what’s h
ot today isn’t tomorrow, and it turned out that Sam’s burning, pain-soaked anthems were a little ahead of their time. The world was still into metal-inspired rock ‘n’ roll and the charts were dominated by bands like Guns N’ Roses teasing the girls and instructing the guys with tracks like “Patience”, and on the other side, U2’s The Joshua Tree had delivered America a new-found church: the Church of Bono. Record companies with little imagination were looking for the next U2 and the next GN’R. Sam and Sophia didn’t fit the bill but Sophia alone – well, she had a voice that could raise the roof, just like Axl and Bono and all those guys, but she was different because she was a girl. Better than that, she was a girl with balls and Max Eastler, the hottest A&R guy on the east coast, had wondered the first time he’d seen them play how much better she would be with a shit-kicking band around her.
He’d sat back and watched her on the stage, analysing her dirty against her guitar player’s pretty. He had liked the songs but the songs were the guy’s and he was a complication. Besides, Eastler had songs – great writers, great producers, great players were all available to him – so all he had to do was get rid of the blond kid.
It wasn’t hard to persuade Sophia to abandon Sam – after all, they had no allegiance to one another, not sexually and certainly not emotionally, and, hey, business is business, after all. Just when they had a chance to get somewhere, she walked and his faith walked with her.
“Please don’t do this,” he’d begged.
“It’s done,” she said, unable to look him in the face.
“Please.” He was on his knees.
She shook her head. “You’re a good player, Sam, but we both know that you’re never going to be great.” She still couldn’t meet his eyes.
“I’ll work harder,” he pleaded.
“Max is right – talent like yours is… Well, you’re expendable. I’m sorry.” She paused and added, “This is my shot and I can’t blow it on some guy I probably won’t even remember in ten years.”
No Way to Say Goodbye Page 14