“You’ve gotta be shitting me,” I say, shaking my head.
“It’s cool,” Mike says. “Happens all the time.”
Jonathan gives a no-big-deal shrug and nod at Mike.
“No. It’s really not okay,” I tell Jonathan. “Not at all.”
“What’s the—”
“Problem? We’re supposed to be working. And now we’re accommodating her?”
“Jonathan,” Jennifer says, “I’ll go home. No problem.”
“Yes, problem. Him. Making a big deal of nothing.”
“You see Lynda here?” I ask him. “Ron?”
“You want to do this thing?” Mike asks. “We need to …” He motions to the door.
“Or are we spending the twenty minutes I put the money up for here, on the sidewalk, squabbling?” Nancy asks.
I clench my jaw. “I cannot believe this,” I say under my breath.
Walking to the bouncer, I turn and take my wallet out. Then I lift my ID and hold it out to him. “I’ve got mine. But I’m actually over twenty-one.”
The bouncer ignores my ID and looks to Mike.
He nods, and then they shake hands.
The bouncer waves us all in without a word.
“Sure,” I say under my breath, walking past the zebra-striped stools along the bar. “No problem. Come right along. What the hell.” I jam my ID back into my wallet.
Chapter 30
Peephole
—Scott—
“So,” Nancy says, ushering me into the living room of her new apartment the next evening. “What do you think?”
“Cozy.” The room is done over in leather and dark wood. One whole wall is floor-to-ceiling bookcases, stuffed with books, like some tony men’s club. I half expect a butler to appear from of the hall with cocktails on a silver tray. “Madam.”
“That and, well,” she says from the large bay window. She waves for me to join her. Once I get there, she points out the window at the trees and open space of Wicker Park. “My front lawn.”
“Impressive,” I say. “Frankly, I thought you invited me over to help move heavy furniture around.”
“No. I paid people for that.”
I nod. First she fronts half the deposit for recording the EP, then she’s buying an apartment and furnishing it like a Gold Coast mogul. She’s got no job she’s ever talked about. It’s like she’s some trust fund kid or secretly works as a day trader or is the legendary Madam X, the ecstasy queenpin. That must be what she’s always smiling about.
“Paid people,” I say. “Right. With the millions from your Swiss bank accounts. Which comes from—”
“What was last night about?” Nancy asks. “The sidewalk drama.”
“Jennifer.”
“No kidding.”
“Okay. Remember Amy?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Psycho, hurling-bottles, fucking-in-the-middle-of-the-day Amy?”
“Yes, Scott, I know who.”
“No, you don’t. You saw her a couple of times. I basically lived with her, off and on. She was an absolute obsession with him. I’d even thought he’d stay in Ohio for her. She’s like a black hole he almost didn’t escape.”
“And since she’s not in Chicago …” She moves her hand, palm up, in small circles to push the idea along.
“Jennifer’s a replacement Amy.”
“Um, Scott,” Nancy says, “they’re a bit different. Slightly. As in, from different planets.”
“He’s not.”
“You lost me there.”
“Love like his is deadly,” I say.
Her smile droops to incredulity.
“I’ve seen it,” I say, looking down. “Sometimes someone does end up dead.” I refuse to think about that, and look at the leather-bound books in the bookcase. “I’ll … No. Wrong. We’ll have to keep him focused.”
Nancy has left me in the bay window and now runs her hand along the back of a chestnut-brown leather couch. She offers it to me to sit on. I shake my head.
“She’s a cancer. I know because it’s the only way Jonathan seems to be able to relate to women—to a woman. Other than you, it’s been Amy and only Amy for as long as I’ve ever known him. But it’s been off and on, and off and on, and off. He’s bipolar with her. And he will be with Jennifer.”
I stare through the doubt in Nancy’s eyes.
“I had to shepherd him that whole time. For years. I kept bringing him back to music when he got lost in her thighs. Ignoring their manic fuckfests—wherever, whenever—listening to their fights, hoping I don’t find one of them dead afterward, or sprawled naked in the middle of the floor, sweaty, his spunk all over her.” I close my eyes, and wipe my hand down my face to strip that image from my mind.
“Frankly,” she says, “I think he needs to get laid to write. ‘Just Walk Away,’ our best new song, came from schtupping his obsession.”
“Breaking up with her,” I correct.
“They had to be schtupping to break up.”
“Yeah.” I turn my back to her.
“Hey,” she says, “I’m not choosing sides here.”
“You need to get that Jennifer’s only another body for him to plug himself into to bring his obsession to life. Goddamned Frankenstein’s monster.”
“He is … who he is. We’re married to him. For better and for worse.”
“Sure,” I say, tapping the end table with my thumb.
“Don’t worry about what you can’t change. Think about what you can.” Her smile leaps back. “Let’s get a cocktail.”
She snatches up her keys, and I follow the trail of her perfume into the warm evening.
That didn’t go well. I need someone on my side in this. AnnMarie’s all cozy with them. Ron thinks they’re “so photogenic.” Lynda—well, it doesn’t matter what she thinks. What matters is turning this around. Starting tonight.
When we push open the door to Rainbo Club, a former burlesque hall, only six people sit at the bar that wraps voluptuously around a small half-moon stage covered with liquor bottles. The long row of booths across from the bar are empty.
Nancy pulls up a stool at the bar and orders two pints.
I add two shots.
“You trying to get me drunk?”
“It was your idea to get a cocktail.”
“I see—trying to take advantage of me.” Her smile turns mischievous. “What do you take me for? Some common whore? Tsk, tsk.”
“Common whore?” I rat-a-tat my fingers on the bar. “Hardly.”
“So you do think I’m a whore?”
“Uncommon woman,” I say as the barmaid sets out the drinks in front of us.
Nancy picks up her shot. “To Nights of Cabiria.”
After draining the shot, I spin the glass on the bar. “Nights of who?”
“Fellini.” A hint of disappointment flits through her smile. “Not important.”
I feel as if I lost something here. I’m unsure what, but I want it back.
“You might be right,” I say, picking up my pint, “to think about what I can change.”
“Yes?”
“Amy—complete obsession. Jennifer—probable obsession. You—one night. How’s that? How were you safe and the other two not?” I take a long pull of my pint. “He’s never picked a woman up. Ever. Then there’s you. Because of a lighter trick? And that’s okay for him. What am I missing here?”
Pausing in thought, she turns her pint around on the bar. “I can’t speak for him, of course.” She takes a long drink. “But for what it’s worth, the night I met our front man … It was right. I can’t put it any other way. The planets, the moon, the music, the lighting, the cocktails, the audience.
“Before that,” she says, her forefinger up, touching her lips thoughtfully. “I think he had it righ
t with Amy. Hold on; let me finish.” She holds a hand up to stifle anything I might have said. “Most people only like the thrill of the new, the wow, the ‘how interesting this person is,’ and when it’s new, you want to gobble your lover down: every particle of them—every fiber, every memory and thought. Finally, you want to disintegrate into them. To own and be owned. But then, the thrill fades, and most people get indigestion or this whole ‘seeing each other all the time’ thing goes flaccid, and you wonder who the hell this is and ‘why is he here all the time?’
“Jonathan and Amy found a neat trick: never let it get stale. They were always falling in love or breaking up, always living out the most thrilling, hottest parts—a love affair cast away before it moldered, but lived over and over again. That’s too emotionally exhausting for me, thank you—having constantly to be that high, raw, and shimmering all the time. It’s better, I guess, than everyone else who wakes up one day and realizes she doesn’t feel it anymore, but there he is. What do you do then? No thanks for that either. I like boring.”
“You? Boring?” I scoff.
“You’re right, ‘boring’ isn’t the right word. More like assignation apoptosis,” she says, “knowing that when the morning comes, the love’s over. Lovers really aren’t all that.
“That night, after I sang”—she taps her finger on her lip—“must have been in the right mood from the show. I don’t really know. But I saw him do that thing with his Zippo and looked at him. There it was—the moment. The idea of sleeping with him—I had to. And that was that. It was over in the morning. But it pissed you off. For weeks. Oh, yes”—she nods—“don’t make that mock innocent surprised face.”
“I don’t want him to be sleeping with someone in the band,” I say.
“We weren’t in a band then, and we don’t sleep together now.”
“It wasn’t so clear then.” I grunt and take a drink. “Now you’re, what … celibate?”
“No, not celibate. Out of the market. Celibacy is AnnMarie’s gig.”
“AnnMarie?”
Nancy gives a noncommittal half shrug.
“Hey, Scott,” Kenny says from behind us. I turn and see his friendly, flirty smile. It sends a pulse through my chest—a thrill. Like with Sammy. Jonathan once. I look away. I hate that sensation.
“Hey, Nancy,” he says.
“Hey you,” she says.
“So,” he says, extending his hand to her, “how did the recording session go?”
“Got some great stuff,” I say.
“When’re you mixing?”
“When we get the money. A week or so, I hope.”
“You mind?” Kenny asks, pointing at an empty seat next to me.
“Grab it.” I call the barmaid over, order another round of shots, and a beer for Kenny, and we talk shop: our recording, his band and songwriting, where to play. All the while, he slips in flirty glances and smiles at us both. It irritates me more whenever it’s with Nancy.
You can’t sleep with someone in the band. The same one Jonathan slept with.
I shake my head. Always hated queer games like this.
“What are you disagreeing with there in your head?” he asks, putting a finger on my hand.
It burns. I take my hand away, shaking my head.
“Nothing,” I say.
“Okay,” Kenny says with a smirk. “As long as it’s nothing.”
His expression of knowing more than what’s being said unsettles me. I take a drink.
“Hey,” he says. “I have to go.”
“Oh?” I ask.
“Have got to get up in”—Kenny pulls back a sleeve to find his watch—“too few hours.”
“Where’re you headed?”
“Evergreen. Next to the park. Eight, nine blocks.”
“You’re practically next door to me,” Nancy says. “Let’s go together.”
I shrug and drain my pint of beer.
You remind me so much of Jonathan. That thought sends a cascade of excitement through me. It’s too strong. I stand up and take off toward the exit. Walking dissipates the panicky feeling, but I need to get out. I feel trapped, as though I’m back in the trailer park, hiding with Sammy.
Stop it. You’re dead.
Pulling up next to the door, I wait for them. There I notice a blacked-out bay window filled with bondage Barbie dolls and a masked Marquis de Ken, whip in hand, standing in the midst of them. Kenny arrives with Nancy, stepping up right beside me.
“That way,” Kenny says, rolling his hand, thumb out, toward the bondage scene.
“Dom or submissive?” Nancy asks.
“Where I live, actually,” Kenny says. “But either. Both really. Barbie, Ken, GI Joe, whoever—I don’t care.” Kenny then looks at Nancy, raises an eyebrow, glances at me, purses his lips, and winks. “Sometimes at the same time.”
Turning quickly, I push my way out the door and into the night.
Finally outside, I relax in the warm night air, yet what I felt in the Rainbo Club clings to me like hot tar. I want to scrape it off, this vague sense of dread that reminds me of things I saw growing up and that never should have happened, like Sammy getting killed and the need to run from it.
I follow the two of them but keep quiet while they talk about the neighborhood.
“I’m over here,” Kenny says after a few blocks. “Were you serious? About rehearsal?”
“Sure,” Nancy says. “Stop by tomorrow about six.”
“Will do,” Kenny says, walking into the shadows of Evergreen Street.
Once we reach the park, she turns right, and I watch her walk the last few doors to her new place. She waves bye, and I continue along Damen Avenue, looking into the park. The streetlights cast the leaves of the nearby trees in dark summer greens, and beyond that lies deep blackness, obscuring everything.
Approaching the intersection of North, Damen, and Milwaukee Avenues, I hope Jonathan’s working late. I could use the time alone.
Nobody deserved to die. It happened anyway. That’s what Jonathan refuses to see.
Crossing Damen, I pass the fenced off no-man’s-land between the legs of the ‘L,’ a deserted alleyway of gravel and garbage. As I emerge from under the tracks, I see no lights on in the loft.
He is working late. Good.
After unlocking and opening the street-level door, I step into the darkness. Behind me the door swings closed, muffling the sounds of the street. The building is silent except for my steps as I climb the four flights of stairs. On our landing, I stand still and listen: nothing. Good. I unlock the strapped steel door and slowly push it open in respect of the stillness. Closing the door as softly as I opened it, I let the stillness wrap around me. The murmur of the street four stories below sounds very distant.
Weak shafts of light from the windows provide the only light, and I strain to see into the deep shadows for movement.
Nothing. Good.
“Oh, Jonathan,” I whisper into the silent darkness. I’ve worked so hard trying to keep you safe and to keep the band going. For both of our sakes.
A sense of nearly remembering some horrid crime surges up inside me, as if I did something unforgivable but can’t quite remember what. As if what I felt at Rainbo Club was a peephole and if I dared looked through it, I’d see what I don’t remember: my unforgivable crime.
The sensation grows so strong, so quickly, like in Rainbo Club.
Bolting away from the sensation again, I rush away from the windows and the light.
I don’t want Kenny around here anymore. He can’t flirt with me like that. It’s wrong.
In time, my eyes grow accustomed to the darkness, and I can now make out the shape of Jennifer’s head atop Jonathan’s chest, their bodies covered in sheets.
“Jonathan,” I whisper. “She’ll kill you. She won’t mean to. But you’ll be dead a
nyway. This time, I won’t let it happen.”
Chapter 31
Dime a Dozen
—Scott—
When I arrive home from work, I find Jonathan and Jennifer showing Lynda and a friend around the loft. Lousy night for dropping by. It was a very rough night at work. I can’t wait to get out of these clothes.
At the restaurant, only fifteen minutes ago, I picked up all of tonight’s checks and charge receipts from the hostess stand, and then slipped behind the heavy wine-red curtain next to the bar and opened the office door. The manager sat at a paper-cluttered desk pushed into the corner. His thin, somber face made him look much older than thirty-two, as if the restaurant had sucked those years out of him, feeding on his life. I dropped my check presenter full of receipts onto the table opposite the desk and untied my long black apron, dumping it alongside the check presenter.
“Slow night,” the manager said.
“Decent money, though.” Sitting, I took out my checks, and started adding them up.
“Got your request off for next Friday,” the manager said.
“Cool.” I pulled out my cash and unfolded it. Ordered by denomination, each bill faced the same direction.
“I can cover it,” he said, turning around in his chair to face me. “This week. But you’ve been making too many schedule requests.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You need to be here when we need you scheduled.”
“Hang on. I’m always on time. Never ask to be cut early. Do my job. No one has ever complained about me—ever. I always come in to cover lunch shifts when you need me. So I don’t think it’s too much to ask for an occasional night off so I can play out. It’s not like I call in sick because I’m hungover, like Robert, or want to go to some party, like Christy or Robin.”
“I don’t have the people to always be able to cover all your shift requests. Especially on Thursdays, Fridays, or Saturdays—our busy nights.”
“Sometimes I need weekend nights. I always give you at least a week’s notice. Month if I can. Plus everybody’s always complaining about not having enough shifts. Me? Never. I have a goal in life.”
“People’re complaining you’re always getting the nights you want off.”
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