After we pass blocks full of bars, restaurants and stores completely take over. Even this late, students fill the sidewalks, most carrying backpacks or wearing OSU clothes in scarlet and gray.
Then Jonathan points to an old theater marquee that reads, in large black letters, “Sat 6/3 Mercurial Visions.”
“Tomorrow night,” he says.
Then the bars take back the street, this time on both sides. People stand in lines to get to places like Papa Joe’s, Travel Agency, Rock ’n’ Roll Palace, and Mean Mister Mustard’s. Cars cram the street here, and people are crossing willy-nilly, not caring if the light is red or not, or even if they’re at an intersection at all. We crawl along in the traffic. Right after we creep past South Berg, the sign for Crazy Mama’s hangs out over the sidewalk.
After that sign, the bars, and all street life, simply stop; there is only a strip mall across Seventh Avenue, and blocks of two- and three-story buildings with hardly anyone on the sidewalks. It’s like someone turned off the fun.
He tells me to turn left on Seventh Avenue and then left again into an alley behind Crazy Mama’s, and to snag a space near a black doorway. I carefully fit the car between Ron’s hearse and a green Dumpster. It’s a tight fit; we can’t open the doors all the way, so we have to squeeze out.
After walking through an alley that reeks of piss, puke, and rotting garbage, we turn onto High Street and come to a wood door, painted all black, and nailed to it is a thick wooden cutout of a blonde woman’s head wearing angular sunglasses and smoking a cigarette in a long holder.
Jonathan strokes the painted blonde hair, his fingers flipping off the curled ends, gazing at it as if it’s an ex-girlfriend. “Been a long time.”
“It’s the same,” his sister says. “Nothing changes in this town.”
He pulls open the door and holds it for us. We climb steep stairs in a skinny stairwell lit only with reflections from round mirrors scattered over the black walls. As I step into the bar, music pumps from a mirror-encased dance floor. To the left, a room crammed with small round tables full of people drinking, smoking, and talking, and the bar itself is crowded two people deep. It’s small, dark, smoky, loud, and full of freaks.
Cooler than I expected. Even with all his ghosts lurking about.
Stepping around me, he leads us past the bar to an open doorway at the far end. There a tall, skinny man with long black hair steps in front of Jonathan.
“Keith,” Jonathan says. “Didn’t I say we’d be back?”
They hug.
“Good on your word, man,” he says, sweeping his arm, blackened with tattoos, around the full bar. “Look what your goddamned name does to this place. Shit. I call a couple people and wham, half the damned town shows up. Like the old days.”
“Like the old days.” Jonathan looks very pleased.
The owner then leads us to the end of the bar and though a doorway into a back room where Scott’s setting up mics; the keyboard case is pushed against the wall behind him. Kenny is sorting through cables with Nancy. AnnMarie is setting up about half the drums she normally uses. Ron is freezing moments with sharp blasts of his camera’s flash. Overlooking this all from a glass case is a mannequin of a woman in combat fatigues and a gas mask.
“Want me to set up your gear?” I ask. “You can hang out, catch up.”
“Sure. Great,” he says. “I’ll be around if you need me.” He turns to talk to the owner.
There: the act of kindness that shows the hero and heroine are moving in the right direction in spite of the difficulties. Every happy ending needs this hint a wink to the audience that everything’ll be okay.
His sister follows me to the corner of the room that they’re using for a stage tonight. We step between the four small tables arranged to keep the space in front of the band free. She watches as I set up the stand near the center of the area blocked off by the tables. Then I open the heavy black case, which feels relievingly familiar, as does catching Scott watching me.
My expression sours.
Lisa follows my eyes. “Oh, him? Enema. Definitely.”
Lifting the keyboard from the case, I carefully set it on the stand.
“Now, could you hand me his stool?” I ask Lisa.
I’m sure Bossman’s still watching, so I keep ignoring him as I unfold the stool and sit on it to adjust the height of the keyboard and the mic the way Jonathan likes. That done, I step around the keyboard and plug the cables into the snake, and then I turn the keyboard on; all the while, Ron snatches shots.
The way Lisa keeps looking around the room gives me the heebies—like the chick in a horror movie who notices that something’s wrong right before the slasher pops out of wherever.
Scott steps out from behind a clump of partiers. “Everything good to go?”
I nod.
Amy appears from behind him.
I freeze.
She puts her arm on his shoulder, leaning her breasts onto his arm. Her nipples show through her sheer black blouse. Her red micromini clings so smoothly to her hips I know she can’t be wearing anything underneath. Sex radiates from her violently.
“I didn’t know you guys were going to be here,” she says, sounding so very innocent.
He steps back and looks her over. “Obviously.”
“Jonathan here?”
He gives her a cold stare.
“I haven’t seen him,” she replies.
“I imagine that’s on purpose,” he says.
Amy looks at me for the first time with her bright blue eyes. “His taste in women hasn’t improved.”
“Nor has talking with you.” He walks away.
The ex. I expected this, right?
Raising her eyebrow, Amy gives me a wicked grin, turns, and struts away, her glossy, red high-heeled boots making her ass pump voluptuously, as if she is a centerfold come to life.
Ron’s camera captures its swells and waves.
I’m shaking. Not sure if I’m more pissed at her or at Scott for leaving me alone with her. I take a deep breath.
Course you just had to tell me how she gave you a fat lip in that bathroom. Right there.
All at once, this bar feels as if it has been transported into a David Lynch movie where something horrible has already begun to happen and I can do nothing stop it—only watch it unfold.
All this needs is a midget to step out of that bathroom and start speaking backward.
I go look for Jonathan. Sliding my way through the growing crowd and back into the main room, I almost worry I’ll find a severed ear or see Scott inhaling from a gas tank and whimpering “Mommy.”
Jonathan’s not at the bar. He’s not sitting at any of the tables around here.
I push my way onto the mirrored dance floor. He’s not dancing either.
Okay. This place isn’t that big. Where else is there?
I glance down a skinny hallway at the edge of the dance floor. From a hidden doorway, Jonathan’s head flies back; he’s laughing. I take a step into the hallway, reach out, and tap his shoulder.
“Hey,” he says, still laughing with the DJ who’s sitting inside the little DJ booth there. “What’s up?”
“Amy’s here.”
“I heard. So I’m hiding. Don’t really want to run into her.”
“You will.”
“Probably.” Smirking, he shakes his head.
That smirk disturbs me. It’s part of this nightmare I can’t escape from. Part of how it will happen. By secretly looking forward to meeting her, he’ll find out he wants her again, as if this whole night’s another Jonathan and Amy duet.
I won’t watch this.
“Jonathan,” I say. “Don’t let that happen.”
“It’s a half-hour set.”
“No. Her. Don’t meet her.”
“What?”
“Don’t. You c
an’t talk to her.”
“Not planning on it,” he says, stroking my shoulder. “Believe me. She’s the last person I want to see. She gets out of line. We’ll kick her ass out.” He tosses his thumb over his shoulder like an ump ejecting a player on WGN.
“She made her choice. So’ve I.” The smirk’s left, replaced by a real smile.
Come on, Jen, don’t be so pitiful; you’re not the girl the audience wants to get killed first because she’s so useless. You’re the resourceful one—the one who survives. The one audience roots for. She’s the bitch who gets killed in the most horrible way. The one the audience wants to see get what she deserves.
“Everything set?”
“Yeah,” I say, and I tear a cigarette out of my pack. His Zippo’s out and lit before I can find my lighter.
He doesn’t see how wrong being here is; how wrong here is. Leaving him joking with the DJ, I push my way through bodies to the back room and realize how treacherous any place gorged with someone’s past can be.
I have to figure out how to get out of here in one piece. It’s tricky, ’cause Lynch never lets anyone escape unscathed.
By the time I get to the keyboard, I’ve decided that I need to get us both out of here as soon as the gig is over.
Someone grabs my elbow.
I jerk my arm away.
Scott looks at me in surprise.
Yeah. Something bad’s definitely going to happen tonight.
Then Nancy and AnnMarie emerge from the crowd and join us at the instruments.
“Go grab Jonathan,” Scott says. “It’s time we get this done so we can start partying for real.”
On my way back to the DJ booth, I find his sister talking to a bunch of people, and tell her we’re about to start.
Tonight’s soundtrack: Amy theme-music. Old time favorites like “Amy’s Face” and “The Ritual.” At least there’s “Just Walk Away” and “Joie.”
Jonathan’s still talking to the DJ. I tell him everyone’s waiting, and he asks the DJ to stop the music at the end of the song after next. I take off.
In the back room, I start squeezing through the crowd to the corner where we’re set up. As I get around the last couple of bodies and am about to step through the ring of tables, I see her—Amy—standing alone in front of the keyboard. Opposite her, Scott adjusts the way his Stratocaster lies across his body. To the sides, Nancy and AnnMarie adjust their mics.
It’s the O.K. Corral. For once I’m rooting for Scott.
I feel a hand pulling my shoulder.
“Don’t need this,” Jonathan whispers into my ear, nodding at Amy.
Letting go, he steps between the tables and around her to his keyboard.
The music stops playing. The whole room goes suddenly quiet.
I try to step back, but the crowd pushes forward.
“Hey, Jon-boy,” Amy says. “How’ve you been?”
“Wonderful,” he says after a moment without turning around.
Is this a Mercurial Visions or a Jonathan-and-his-ex show?
“I’m going to New York. Like I told you. Wanna come?”
Pursing his lips, he shakes his head. “No thanks.”
“She that good in bed?”
He looks down and starts to turn away.
“You can really make the big time there. Get you away from your queer guitarist roomy. And this sad little girl.”
“You made your choice,” he says. “When I left.”
“I couldn’t go then,” Amy says. “Now I can take you. Think of it. New York City. Us. The games. The songs you’ll write.”
Without so much as glancing back, he walks away from her.
As he gets to the keyboard, the crowd surges forward, shoving me, stumbling, between the tables and directly at Amy. I must either grab her or crash into the keyboard.
I catch myself on her shoulder.
She turns her head, snarling, “What the—”
Immediately an ugly expression flashes across her face, and she shifts her weight. Leaving her right leg extended, she swings her shoulder back around, leading with her elbow. It catches me in the back of the neck, and shoves me forward, over her leg. Falling forward, I have nothing left to grab. I get out a quick screech as my hands slam into the keyboard, full force, knocking it from the stand. I land across the legs of the stand, which gives way under me. My hands barely cover my face before hitting Jonathan’s knees.
“Told you she can’t keep up with me,” Amy says. “No one can.”
The camera keeps flashing. Then I see Scott ripping off his guitar. His chest strains the buttons on his shirt. He’s frightening; it’s like watching Bruce Banner erupting into the Hulk. He leaps at Amy.
“You’re fucking out of here!” he yells, grabbing her jaw and lifting her to her tiptoes.
“Go! Now!” he roars.
The camera keeps flashing.
In the charged silence, I freeze. My hands and chest hurt; I’m not clear about what just happened.
Then voices cry out: “Catfight! Catfight! Catfight!”
Jonathan’s helping me up, but I stumble and want to sit down.
Scott lets Amy’s face go.
“Lover boy to the rescue,” she says to his face. “Fucked him yet?”
“You!” Scott bellows at her. “Get out of here!” His face is red; bands of muscle and tendons spring from his neck in a picture of rage.
“Jonathan. You’re so stupid.” She looks more sad and hurt than angry. “So stupid.” Amy shakes her head.
The cadaverous owner appears with two bouncers, who turn her around and start walking her away.
Scott glares at me. “What the fuck!”
He looks at Jonathan. “Told you you shouldn’t let her come.” He points at me. “This is exactly why! She’s a menace!”
Chin shuddering, I shoulder people out of my way as angry, frustrated tears dribble over my cheeks. As I leave the back room, I see her being walked down the stairs. Stopping, I drop my head and steady myself on a table. All I hear is my heart’s pounding and my heaving, raspy breath.
“Wasn’t your fault,” Lisa says, appearing beside me. “Everybody saw her trip you.”
I stare at my fingers, spread out on the table. I hurt in so many places. There’s an ugly scrape on my right hand. Someone touches my shoulder.
“Whaddaya want!” I shout, squeezing my eyes closed.
“To make sure you’re okay,” Jonathan says.
“No. Not okay. Not okay at all.”
“We’ll take off right after we get done. Twenty, thirty minutes.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “Just … go.”
The camera flashes, relentlessly.
“We’ll leave. Really, I—”
“Play,” I say, pushing him away. “Go …” I turn my back to him. It hurts in so many places on my body. I hate this place. Coming here tonight was such a mistake.
“I’m getting you a drink,” Lisa says. Her shock of white hair dangles across an eye.
I shake my head, waving her off.
“She’s gonna be outside anyway,” she says. “You’re stuck. Have a drink.”
I can’t believe how much the scrape on my hand stings.
“Come on,” Lisa says, taking my arm as she cuts a path to the bar.
I let her pull me along. I can’t care anymore. Don’t want to.
Then the DJ’s voice booms through the sound system, “Back from Chicago for a private thank-you show for supporting them way back, when you knew them as White Heat, it’s Mercurial Visions.”
The keyboard strikes the opening chord of “Just Walk Away.”
Amy theme music. She’s here even after she gets kicked out.
I sip the beer his sister bought me, paying no attention to anyone and trying to ignore
the music, but the lyrics still creep in.
“Yes,” I say under my breath. “You’re right. Walking away can be better.”
Next come more ex-lover theme songs—“Amy’s Face,” “The Ritual,” “Sin with Me”—until this bar is stuffed with the sounds of his ex-lovers.
At last I hear “Joie.”
The whole bar whoops so loudly.
Once the DJ starts filling in for the sound of applause and cheering, people bump into me as they return to the tables. Someone is standing next to me for too long, and it pisses me off, so I look up to tell her off—
“Hey there,” Tanya says. “You’ll have to catch me up on Wendy and let me know how Les Femmes is doing.”
“What?”
“Oh, Jonathan. Glad I caught you,” she says as he walks over to us; she then looks back to me. “Let’s talk later, okay?” She pats my shoulder and turns to talk to him.
This night gets weirder with every moment.
When Jonathan finally has time to talk to me, I say nothing, and I stay quiet when he introduces me to a parade of old friends.
So many places on my body hurt. I’m tired. I want to go home.
Chapter 45
Concert-Sized
—Jennifer—
The early afternoon sun is harsh as I drive down I-90, straight for Chicago. My thumbs tap the steering wheel in time to Celebrity Skin’s cover of “SOS” as Toledo recedes, beat by beat. Twenty minutes ago, I dropped Jonathan off at their hotel and gave him a last good-bye kiss. He tried to talk me into hanging out and catching the show since I missed the one at the Newport Music Hall. I would’ve liked actually being able to see them once, but four hours is too long a drive after a show starting at eleven, and there’s no room in the inn for me. Not that I bothered asking. I knew it was impossible, and he didn’t offer anyway.
Woulda been nice if you’d at least asked me. But why would you have?
This whole trip’s been a train wreck. Starting with Crazy Mama’s.
After the scene in the back room with his ex, we ended up staying longer than he said we would. I hated every minute of it. By the time we got to his mom’s place, it was very late.
I was beat, but I couldn’t sleep.
So I was lying with my back to him, and he was petting me, sighing, trying to get me to talk and let him convince me things are okay.
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