“No,” I said. “I didn’t see we got a message.”
“Christ!”
I heard Scott play the message again.
“Why didn’t I …? We …?” I asked Amy, who shook her head, wearing a look of consolation.
“Hello, is Maury there?” I heard Scott ask. “This is Scott Marshall. From White Heat.”
He said nothing for a few moments. I started for the hall, where Scott held the phone to his head.
“Oh, I see. Yes. Thank you.”
“What?” I asked. “What?”
“You didn’t hear the phone ring?”
“I … I didn’t get to it. So …”
“You let the machine answer. But didn’t bother to listen to it?”
“What did they say?”
“Already booked someone. Opportunity: lost.”
I slammed the heel of my hand on the wall.
Scott pushed past me into the kitchen.
“Oh, exactly,” he said. “She’s here. No wonder. Why would I think otherwise.”
Putting her cup down, Amy watched him approach, her expression turning from concerned to coldness.
“Can’t we talk to them anyway?” I asked. “In case this other band drops out.”
“What was it this time?” he asked, leaning over the table toward her. “Locked his head between your thighs? Getting off that important to you?”
“Back off, mister,” Amy said calmly.
“Can we try?” I pleaded. “It’s Warren Zevon.”
“You’re a menace,” Scott said to Amy, pointing at her face. “To us. To everything.”
“Look, you closet fag,” she snarled back, her hand up to fend off his finger.
“Useless snatch.”
“Goddamn! Stop it!” I shouted. “Now!”
They looked at me, ugly expressions hanging heavily on both of their faces.
“Now,” I said, “is there any chance we can call them back?”
“You asshole,” Amy said to me. “Go. You call ’em. And then go fuck yourself. Every night. Forever.” She walked to the door and then turned back one last time. “Your wannabe boyfriend here should be happy as hell now.”
The door slammed loudly after her.
Inside, I burned for days. No matter how many times I called, she never picked up; no matter how many messages I left, she never returned one. I filled the tape up with pleading until even the machine refused my calls. I couldn’t pay attention at work—got me cut early twice that week. I couldn’t concentrate when I was playing. Every time I thought I saw her, or the phone rang, I felt a surge of blinding hope that squeezed my breath out; but it was never her, and my hope broke into sharp pieces until every part of living cut into me.
After another difficult rehearsal that next Saturday, I let the band take me out for drinks at a hole-in-the-wall just south of The Ohio State University.
We ordered drinks, but I turned away from everyone else; I didn’t want to talk.
Then I saw Amy—only two tables away.
She was talking to a boy, leaning closely to him as if she might kiss him.
I could only stare, screaming inside: How could you when it hurts this badly?
Then Scott noticed who I was looking at.
“We gotta leave,” he said.
He tried to grab me, but I slipped through of his grasp and slammed into a table, knocking drinks over. People started shouting at me, and whole bar looked to see what was happening—including her.
She got up, knocking her chair over, and stomped directly at me, nostrils flaring. She got close enough I could touch her, and then her hand flew out and grabbed my throat.
“You,” she said. “Fucking. Asshole.”
“Psycho,” Scott said, holding back Sean and Marsha. “Let them. He’s gotta get that she’s nuts.”
Then she kissed me ferociously, digging her hands deep into my hair. I grabbed her waist, swung her around, and laid her over a bar stool.
“Don’t you,” I said as she wrapped her legs around my waist, “ever walk out like that again.”
“Don’t let me, asshole,” she said. “I love you more than I can even think.”
“I won’t,” I said. “Not ever. I swear.”
That night had felt as life altering as the night we met, and pretending to break up so we could get back together has become another game we play to stay so fiercely in love. What’s real and what’s play has smeared together for us; yet which is which has never mattered. Until this ride home, when the real asserts itself so starkly.
The opportunity I need is Chicago. This opportunity does not include Amy. Our last breakup won’t be play.
If I can cut her from my life.
I get sick into the bag.
Chapter 3
Eyes in the Mirror
—Jonathan—
Scott starts drilling my head about plans for the move right after we get past Indianapolis. I’ve been yeah-ing along, half ’cause there’s not much we can do and half to keep from telling him I’m not so sure anymore. The only plan we actually nail down is to call Tanya to go back for another visit. He stops talking for a few miles, giving me time to think, but I can’t shake the feeling of confused dread, so I stare at the freeway in front of us, watching the miles and minutes vanishing before we’re home and I have to face her.
Then I notice Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” playing on the radio.
Scott’s mouthing the lyrics “Inside we both know what’s been going on,” and he puts his hand on my arm as if to comfort me.
“Excuse me,” I say, looking at his meaty hand.
He glances at me, and then down, and yanks his hand away, quickly grabbing the steering wheel.
“Sorry,” he says, shaking his head and frowning. “I only meant to apologize for busting out earlier. ’Bout Amy.”
“Sure,” I say. “Thanks.”
He must be dying to say it’ll be better this way, with her gone. He’s never gotten Amy. Thinks she’s only a distraction, and worse, a problem for White Heat, completely missing how I feel with her: fiercely alive. But that relationship’s ending now, which is disorienting. My thoughts stumble around, and then I notice him searching the rearview mirror. Finding me looking into it, he holds my eyes, lip-synching, “Never gonna let you down,” as if he meant the words for me.
This jolts me. I look down. Quickly finding the seek button on the radio, I push it to stop whatever’s happening.
“Faith” by George Michael comes on.
“Hey,” he says. “I liked that other song.”
“Overplayed. Just like this one,” I say, reaching down to change the station again.
He fends my hand away. “I’m the one driving.”
“Driver’s choice. Fine,” I say. The hangover is still clawing around inside me, tangling itself up with Chicago and Amy, his arm-holding apology, and that weird lip-synching, and then a sign flicks past, telling me we’re passing Ft. Wayne, Indiana, and it’s only 137 miles to Columbus, pushing me nearer to facing Amy and forcing me to figure out how to tell her I’m leaving.
This should be great. We’re taking a chance, getting our opportunity. Getting out of that cow town. But I hate the way I’m feeling now. I hate everything about this trip home.
Chapter 4
Lies and Other Fictions
—Jonathan—
I need someone to talk to. So much is going on inside my head.
Ever since getting back a week ago, Chicago’s been the last thing I think of before sleeping, and the first after waking. The move is almost the only thing I think of at all. I’m always on the verge of blurting it out to Amy; she’s my lover, the one who pulled me back into life, yet moving is essential for me. I want to tell her. I owe it to her. But I can’t; she’d try to stop me, and I�
�m not sure I could resist. Sometimes I want her to find out and convince me to stay, ending all these lies.
That urge I can never reveal to Scott, so I have to tell one lie to Amy and another to Scott, and what seems like another to myself to keep from losing it: that everything will work out okay in the end.
Understanding that our past has no place in our future is easy. Here we failed. In Chicago, our future, we will be new—unstained. The past must remain the past—the back there, the forgotten, the cut away—so behind everyone’s back, Scott and I have been making calls to Tanya and AnnMarie, plotting our next visit Chicago to find a place to live and pick a date for the move.
I’m also okay with not telling the two other members of White Heat, our final Columbus band. As Scott said, “They refused to give up a couple of shifts and come with us to even visit Chicago. And ‘Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.’ They persist in waiting tables. They are determined to be waitrons. We persist in playing. We are determined to be musicians. Let them succeed in making fifty bucks a shift. They’re not committed to the band. Not like you and me.”
The move is clearly for Scott and me—for our new band.
Yet plotting behind Amy’s back has never felt right, and I can tell she’s catching on that something’s up.
The last time I brought it up, Scott told me, “You cannot tell her. Even if she guesses. Can’t.”
“Maybe she’d want—”
“Do you really think that she’ll quit that sweet design job of hers, pack up, and run off to Chicago with you? Go back to bartending?”
“Could be a promotion. Bigger market, right?”
“Moving to be with her boyfriend, a promotion? For a Madison Avenue firm? Only in fairy tales.”
I shake my head. She’s not even twenty-three and already the head of a design group for Kolby, Green, and Michelson, the New York advertising agency. She’s got what I’m still striving for, and I’m not more important than her career; that I know.
To tell everyone fewer lies, I’ve started isolating myself, avoiding calls, sleeping in, and not going out; but as much as I can avoid other people, I cannot elude myself.
In some ways, it’s been harder since Amy unwittingly let me off the hook a few nights ago. Since we’d gotten back two days before, she’d been treating me as if I were someone she was sizing up for the first time.
That night, after Scott left for work, leaving us alone together, she began scrutinizing me: my expression, the things I say, the way I answer her or don’t, how much I look at her, and whether I can meet her gaze.
After an hour of this examination, I can bear no more and slip away to the bathroom. Relax, man. Calm down. You’re not going to say anything.
“Like I said,” I tell myself in the mirror, trying out my best nothing’s-going-on expression. “It was only a party. That’s it.”
After giving myself a thumbs-up, I open the door, and Amy is standing right there, her expression hard, like an interrogator’s.
“Um …” I say. “Yes?”
“Chicago,” she says.
“Chicago. What … about it?”
“Did you have fun there?”
“Yeah.”
“What’dya do?”
“Went to a party. Like I said.”
“Did you meet anyone interesting?”
“Anyone interesting. Well …”
She’s gazing directly into my eyes.
Waiting for me to tell her what really happened in Chicago. To admit to deceiving her.
She taps her foot impatiently.
“Hmm,” I say. “I … No. I don’t think so. Not really. Boring party.”
The weight of suspicion tilts her head to the side.
You’ve figured out we’re moving. My heart takes off running.
“Boring party?” she asks.
“Nothing’s going on. Really. It was just a party.”
“You’re going to spoil it with these lousy lies,” she says.
“Spoil it?”
“Come on. You’ve strung it out two whole days. Making me wonder what happened up there. With no one to watch you. It’s been exciting. Hot.” She puts on a severe expression. “So. What was her name?”
“Her name?” I ask.
“Who’d you get into bed?”
“No. I …”
“Don’t lie about it. It’s so obvious. The way you’ve been acting since you got back.”
“I’m not. I didn’t talk to anybody. About plans. We’re not—”
“We?” She nods, smirking. “So you did get someone in bed.”
In a flash, I realize she thinks that I’m been playing some elaborate erotic game, pretending to be covering up a tryst in Chicago.
Okay, Jonathan. Tell her a dirty story. About anyone. Easy as pie.
I draw a blank.
She lets out a disgusted grunt. “I hate lousy liars.”
“Why would I lie?” I ask as coolly as I can. “See, I’ve nothing to lie about. No young girls. No one like you.” Think, Jonathan. Doesn’t matter who. Any face.
“Who was she?”
I squint in theatrical anger. “Oh, so you really want to know what happened a week ago? What I’ve been hiding from you? What’s been making you so hot?”
“Yes. Oh god, yes. Tell me everything.”
“Everything that happened between me and the hot little tramp who kept letting me know how available she was? How eager?”
Amy’s eyes grow wide in anticipation.
“Do you think I pushed her away after she led me to Tanya’s bedroom? Huh? What do you think I did when she lay down right on Tanya’s bed?”
Amy scowls melodramatically, balling her fists around her face. “What was her name?”
“I lifted up her skirt is what I did. No panties. Shaved. Just like you.”
“Oh, that bitch,” she says.
“Such firm, smooth thighs. Pale, like yours.”
“What’s her name?” Amy shouts.
“You want to know the name of the girl who begged me to fill her with my seed?”
“What the fuck’s her name!” she shrieks.
“Jennifer.” It’s the only name that comes to mind. I bite my lip. “Such a hot little girl.”
“Little girl?”
“Dark brown hair and young. Barely eighteen. Remind you of someone?”
“Eighteen—you pervert!” she yells, trying to slap me.
I jerk my head back, making her miss.
“You should know,” I say, smirking.
She coils and launches herself—hands out to throttle me. I lean forward to catch the brunt of her weight, easily grabbing her wrists and shifting her to the side, right past me. I push her against the wall and pin her there with my hips, my hands pressing her wrists to the wall. Her body is taught. Our noses nearly touch. I slide a knee between her legs, and she starts grinding the seam of her jeans into my thigh. I release her wrists. She lets go of all her tension. Her mouth opens.
We kiss.
Pulling her around, I sweep the telephone, message pad, and pens off the hall table and lay her across it. I pull down the zipper of her jeans. She shakes her shoes off. I unbutton her jeans, and she lifts her hips, letting me pull them off. Her legs fall open.
“Jennifer isn’t as good as me,” she says defiantly. “No one is.”
“Not even close.”
I live for these moments. They allow me to make sense of the world and give me the will to get out of bed, climb onstage, and perform, trying to explain to myself why any of this is.
Holding her tightly against me, I whisper into her hair, “I’ll never let you go.”
Chapter 5
I’m Pregnant
—Jonathan—
Scott and I’ve arranged for
this Friday to Sunday off work and have planned to leave late Friday morning. On Thursday we tell the other members of White Heat that we’ll be gone for a couple of days and there won’t be any rehearsal until Monday. They seem relieved, like schoolkids hearing it’s a snow day. Friday, after I toss the last travel bag into the car, I call Amy and tell her we’re going to be gone a couple of days scouting bars White Heat can perform in around Dayton and Toledo, and in Indiana and Illinois.
“And you didn’t bother letting me know you were planning this?” she asks.
“It was kinda last minute. Wasn’t sure if—”
“Wasn’t sure if what? I’d care?”
“Scott thought—”
“Scott shouldn’t think.”
“Look, I just …” I say. “I’ll be back late Sunday. I’ll see you—”
She hangs up.
I feel odd standing there with a dead telephone in my hand. Yes, I’ll be back Sunday. But one of these times—
Averting my mind from that day, I put the phone back in its cradle.
A few minutes later, I climb into the Nissan next to Scott, and we drive the same route as before. The sight of Chicago—bursting like Valhalla from the gray industrial landscape of Gary, with the skyward reach of its towers, the immensity of the lake, and the plains covered with houses as we cross the bridge over the Little Calumet River—thrills even more this time. The coursing cars in the valley of the Dan Ryan aren’t so intimidating, and the exit to North Ave and the way to Tanya and Randal’s house are familiar.
Randal waves at us as we park the car. He’s good looking in the same way Tanya is—tall, Aryan blond, and lithe. He dresses to show that off—today in a fitted, boldly striped shirt and skinny, straight-legged jeans. They’ve never married and probably never will. But they act as if they are. For him, I’m sure, sleeping with the boss’s daughter is more intriguing than being married to her. Instead of merely being a part of the family, he’s still sleeping his way to the top. More of a continual thrill. Like them living in Wicker Park. They should be in a romance-novel mansion, not kicking around the edges of Spanish gang territory. It’s like a twisted fairy tale: “Looks, money, popularity—we didn’t want them. But since they’re here … why not have fun with them?”
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