Days Like This

by Laurie Breton

  And Rob understood. He really did. She and Danny had been an institution. She’d lost the love of her life, and that wasn’t the kind of thing a woman ever got over. If he had half a brain, he’d get down on his knees and kiss the ground, because even though he couldn’t begin to fill Danny’s shoes, for some crazy reason she loved him anyway. She just didn’t love him the way she’d loved Danny. He’d long since accepted it as truth, and did it really matter at this point? Danny sure as hell wasn’t coming back. He, Rob MacKenzie, was the one who was upright and breathing, the one whose ring she wore, the one who slept in her bed every night. So he accepted second place in her life, silently thanked the gods for his good fortune, tiptoed around the elephant in the living room, and stuck to the safety of cassette tapes.

  His response to hearing Danny sing was vastly different from hers. Sure, he felt nostalgia and a little sadness. Danny had, after all, been his best buddy. But beyond the sadness, there was exhilaration, for every time he heard one of those hit songs, he was blown away by the magic the three of them had created. That magic had given him a life he never could have imagined when he was a scrawny nineteen-year-old guitar player with vague, unformed dreams about making a living with his music.

  Everything that was good in his life today he owed to Danny Fiore: the woman who was sitting beside him; the career that was exponentially bigger than his wildest dreams; the money sitting in the bank that allowed him to work when he felt like it and loaf when he didn’t; even the house he was living in. Without Danny Fiore, he would have none of those things. Without Danny Fiore, he would probably still be playing the Boston bar scene. Or worse, he would have given up his music years ago for some dreary nine-to-five job that would have sucked the soul right out of him.

  Instead, thanks to Danny, he’d led a charmed life. Oh, there had been a few bumps in the road. He’d had his heart broken a time or two, had gone hungry for a few years while they struggled to achieve success. That had been hard, but it was a cakewalk compared to Danny’s death. That was the toughest thing he’d ever had to face, losing his friend, his front man, the guy whose voice gave brilliant life to the music he and Casey wrote. He’d loved Danny like a brother, and losing him had felt like the sky falling on his head.

  But it hadn’t always been that way. He hadn’t much liked Danny Fiore at first.

  As cities went, Boston wasn’t a big one, and in the summer of 1973, the local music scene was small and incestuous: if you were out there playing, sooner or later, you knew everybody else who was out there playing. And if you didn’t know everybody, you knew everybody’s bass player, or everybody’s cousin who used to play with your drummer’s college roommate. That was the kind of place it was. For a couple of months, he’d been hearing about this singer named Danny Fiore, who had a voice, they said, that could peel the wallpaper off the walls. Rumor said he’d been bringing down the house everywhere he played, and at the age of twenty-two, he was already achieving local legend status.

  One Saturday night when they had nothing better to do, Rob and a couple of his friends went out to Somerville to check out Fiore and his band. The bar was crowded, the audience about three-quarters female, and the instant Fiore stepped up on stage, Rob understood why. The guy was a total chick magnet. He had a face like a Greek god, and he oozed sex appeal like ketchup from a bottle. Disappointed, Rob was ready to dismiss him as just another pretty face. All flash and no substance. He figured he’d stay for a couple of songs, finish his beer, and find some better way to spend what was left of the evening.

  Then Fiore opened his mouth to sing, and any thought of leaving went cha-cha-cha right out the door. It was strictly garage band stuff, but holy mother of God, could the guy sing. Rob instantly forgave him for the pretty face because it didn’t take more than fifteen seconds to realize that Danny Fiore was going places. But not with this band. The bass player wasn’t bad, but the drummer was weak, and the lead guitarist sucked. Rob nursed his beer and watched and listened and ruminated. When the set ended, acting on an impulse that came from someplace he didn’t even recognize, he thrust his beer bottle into his buddy Eric’s hand.

  “Hold this,” he said, and stalked resolutely through the crowd to the stage. “Hey, Fiore!” he shouted.

  The Greek god glanced up, eyed him from stem to stern, took in the tangled mess of curly blond hair, the long, scrawny legs encased in ragged denim, the scruffy army jacket and the wrinkled Led Zeppelin tee shirt underneath it. And said, “What?”

  “Your guitar player’s for shit.”

  For five long seconds, they took each other’s measure. And then Fiore said, “So, Junior, do you think you can do better?”

  He snorted and said, “With one hand tied behind my back.” He might be barely nineteen and still wet behind the ears, but he knew his way around a guitar. “How about I show your friend here how it’s supposed to be done?”

  Fiore raised a single, cynical eyebrow. “Hey, Trav,” he said to the bass player, “this kid thinks he’s Jimmy Page. What do you think? Should we put him to the test?”

  The bass player grinned and said something that sounded like, “This should be fun.”

  “Come on up, kid.” Into the mic, Fiore said, “Eddie, get your ass back up here, we need you on the drum set. Dave? This kid here says he wants to show you how it’s supposed to be done.”

  Rob sprinted up onto the stage, shrugged off the army jacket and tossed it to Dave, and picked up the guy’s piece-of-shit guitar. When Fiore said, “You have a name, kid?” he just shrugged.

  “Okay, then,” Fiore said into the mic. “Looks like we have an anonymous guest guitarist tonight. Let’s see what this kid can do.”

  There was a smattering of applause, a few catcalls, a handful of beer bottles raised in salutation. Rob ran his fingers up and down the neck of the guitar to get the feel of it, plucked a couple of notes, tightened his B string, and launched himself into the opening riff of Clapton’s Layla.

  He didn’t have the bottleneck slide Duane Allman had used to play that legendary guitar riff, but he managed to do a damn fine job without one. The look on Danny Fiore’s face was priceless. Their eyes met, and something passed between them, an acknowledgment, an instantaneous understanding. Rob lifted his bony shoulders as if to say, “Told you so.” Fiore nodded and, without missing a beat, jumped into the vocals. The rest of the band fell in, and Rob MacKenzie closed his eyes and just played, making that piece-of-shit guitar sing and wail and scream like a woman in the throes of ecstasy. It was a beautiful thing, and when they got to the piano solo, because there was no piano, he improvised, made the guitar weep as sweet and as tender as a mourning dove at the break of day.

  When he was done, the applause was gratifying, but that was never what it was about for him. For him, it was about the music. Always, it was about the music. He hopped lightly from the stage, handed a stunned Dave the guitar in exchange for his jacket, and walked away into the crowd.

  “Hey, kid!” Fiore shouted into the mic. “Who the hell are you?”

  He didn’t answer, just kept going, out the door and onto the sidewalk. If Fiore wanted to find him, it wouldn’t be hard. This was, after all, Boston. Everybody knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody. What he’d done was a little over the top, not his usual style. But he’d always believed that if you wanted something, you had to go after it. And he’d never been fazed by a challenge.

  Besides, something about Danny Fiore had provoked him, had brought out a perverse side of his nature he hadn’t known was there. He’d liked seeing the guy sweat. Now the ball was in Fiore’s court. It would be interesting to see how long it would take him to volley it back.

  Thirteen-and-a-half hours later, he got his answer when his mother yelled up the stairs, “Robbie! Somebody here to see you!” He came loping down the staircase and found Danny Fiore standing in his mother’s kitchen. Rob glanced at the wall clock, silently counted the hours, and nodded. Not bad. Not bad at all.

  “MacKenzi
e,” Fiore said, by way of greeting.

  “Fiore,” he said.

  Without another word, Fiore tilted his head in the direction of the rusty and dented ‘64 Bel Air parked at the curb, and Rob followed him outside.

  Inside the car, Danny Fiore handed him a twelve-ounce Bud from the six-pack on the floor, took one for himself, and lit a cigarette. He drew the smoke in deeply, exhaled it in a blue cloud, and flicked an ash out the window. They popped open their bottles and sat in a comfortable silence, sipping beer and scoping out each other’s vibes.

  “Okay, kid,” Fiore finally said, “here’s the deal. Because I’m the front man, my name goes on the band. I bring my bass player, and you find us a drummer that knows his ass from his elbow. We split the money four ways, except that I get an extra ten percent, because it’s my name and my band.”

  Rob took a long, slow pull on his beer, slithered down onto his tailbone and propped his size-eleven sneakers on the dashboard of Fiore’s beat-up Chevy. And said, “Your name goes on the band, because we’d be fools to do it any other way. You can bring your bass player, and I already found us a drummer. We split the money four ways, and you don’t get any extra, because I’m as good at playing guitar as you are at singing, and you don’t intimidate me one iota. You and I will be equal partners in everything, because it’s our band. We play the covers the audience wants to hear, but we also play some of my original stuff, because covers won’t break us out of the bar band ghetto. And if you call me kid, or junior, one more time, I’ll put my foot up your ass so far you’ll need dental work.”

  “Anybody ever tell you that you have brass balls, MacKenzie?”

  “Right back atcha, Fiore.”

  Danny Fiore exhaled a cloud of smoke and said, “You must be some kind of wizard to play like that. I think I’ll call you Wiz. How long you been playing?”

  “Ten years. Five on the electric.”

  “Christ, how frigging old are you? You look like you’re still in high school. You’re a long drink of water, but you’re scrawny as a wharf rat.”

  “Nineteen. Just finished my second year at Berklee.”

  “Berklee,” Fiore said. “That explains a little. Tell me, can you sing?”

  “Not like you, that’s for sure. But, yeah, I can sing.”

  “Nobody sings like me, MacKenzie. But you can do harmonies?”

  “A real humble guy, I see. And yes, I can do harmonies.”

  “If you’re looking for humble, you’re barking up the wrong tree. What else can you do?”

  “A little piano. A little composition, a little arranging, a little transcription.”

  “God bless Berklee! I think this just might be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

  “What about you, Fiore? What else can you do?”

  “Piano. Years and years of lessons. A little guitar. Self-taught. Nothing like what you can do—Jesus Christ, I’ve never met anybody who could do what you can do—but I can pinch-hit on rhythm if I have to. What are you playing?”

  “A third-hand Fender Strat with an ancient Marshall amp that I picked up cheap a couple of years back. Temperamental bitch. Sometimes she works, sometimes she doesn’t.”

  Fiore took a sip of beer and ruminated for a while before saying, “We’ll have to get you some better equipment. And maybe some decent clothes. Because, my friend, we are serious musicians, and we are going to go far together.”

  Rob raised his beer bottle and said, “I’ll drink to that.” They clinked bottles together, sealing a partnership that would, indeed, take them far. It would take them to places neither of them could have ever anticipated, and it would cement their standing in the pantheon of rock-and-roll history.

  “What you did last night,” Fiore said, and took a drag on his cigarette, “that was really ballsy.”

  He crossed his ankles up there on the dash and said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, Fiore, but as soon as that first note left your throat, I saw my future in your eyes.”

  “That’s okay, MacKenzie, because I’m pretty sure I saw God when you played that first guitar riff.” Fiore snickered. “You should have seen the look on Dave’s face when you picked up his guitar and started wailing on it. I thought he’d cry. It was a beautiful moment.” He drew on his cigarette, exhaled. “So who’s this drummer?”

  “Guy named Jake Edwards. Used to go to Berklee with me.”

  “So you called him, and he said yes, just like that?”

  “I called him at six-thirty this morning and dragged him out of bed. His wife was royally pissed. He didn’t say yes until I told him who I’d lined up to be the lead singer in my new band.”

  Fiore raised both eyebrows and said, “Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you, MacKenzie?”

  “Nope. Pretty sure of you, though.”

  Fiore studied him at length, then said, “You really are nervy for a wharf rat.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And now, my audacious friend, we have to find a place to rehearse. I strongly suspect that Dave won’t let me use his garage any more.” Fiore tossed his cigarette out the window, into the street. “Especially since I fired him and Eddie five minutes after I found out your name.”

  “Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you, Fiore?”

  Fiore grinned and said, “Nope. Pretty sure of you, though.”

  “We can rehearse here. My folks will be cool with it. They’ve been putting up with my music for years. They figure it keeps me off the streets and out of jail. We have a big family room downstairs. With a piano.”

  “I think this is a marriage made in heaven, MacKenzie. You suppose we should at least ask first?”

  He grinned, said, “Details, details.” Set down his empty beer bottle, opened the car door, swung his long legs down off the dash, and said, “Come on in. Let’s get this party started.”

  Casey

  She would have gotten hopelessly lost trying to find the address, but Rob navigated the streets of South Boston with the familiarity of a native. While he drove, she read house numbers. “Right here,” she said when they reached number 36. “The blue one.” He slowed, craned his neck to get a better look, then found a parking space two houses down and wheeled the Explorer into it as though he’d been parallel-parking behemoth four-wheel-drive vehicles all his life. He turned off the ignition, and they looked at each other in silence before opening doors, exiting the car, and meeting on the sidewalk. She stepped into his arms, and they held each other, warmth to warmth, giving and receiving strength to deal with whatever lay ahead.

  He let out a ragged breath. “Looks like this is it.”

  She touched her palm to his cheek. “Are you ready?”

  “I don’t think that’s possible. We just move straight ahead, ready or not.”

  “This is a good thing, MacKenzie. A moment of great significance.”

  He kissed her palm. “Just be there to catch me in case I pass out.”

  She heard a car door slam, then footsteps approached, and they stepped apart and turned to look at the man who had just crossed the street. He was about their age, dressed in a gray suit, and he carried a briefcase. “Mr. MacKenzie?” he said. “Greg Atkinson.”

  Rob shook his hand, then said, “My wife, Casey.”

  “Mrs. MacKenzie.” Atkinson shook her hand. “I hope your trip was pleasant.”

  “It was. It’s a lovely day for a drive.”

  “Before we go up,” he said, getting right down to business, “I want to make sure you’re both fully on board with this. It’s not something you can undo, and you’re both looking a little shell-shocked right now. She is your responsibility, Mr. MacKenzie, but nobody’s forcing you to take physical custody of the girl.”

  “We are absolutely both on board with this,” Casey said. She took Rob’s hand, threaded fingers with him. His hand was damp, and overly warm. And a little shaky. “One hundred percent. Of course we’re taking custody of her.”

  Atkinson studied her face, nodded, and turned to R
ob. “She’s my daughter,” Rob said, and squeezed Casey’s hand. “She’ll be going home with us.”

  “Good!” Atkinson turned and they began walking toward the blue house. “Paige seems to be a pretty resilient kid. She’s been through a tough time, but she appears to be weathering it as well as any kid could. This all happened very quickly. Sandy was only sick for a couple of months. In hindsight, that was probably a blessing for both of them. It could have been so much worse if she’d lingered for months, but her illness was mercifully brief. On the other hand, it happened so quickly I’m not sure Paige has had time to absorb the significance of it. You may want to handle her with kid gloves for a while.” They reached the house, and he turned to Rob. “You talked to her last night?”

  “I did. It was a pretty brief conversation. And a little awkward. I didn’t know what to say, and neither did she.”

  “Just guessing, I’d say you should expect that awkwardness to continue, at least for a while. Yes, you’re her father, but she doesn’t know you, and you’re taking her away from everything and everyone she’s ever known.”

  They stood for a moment, staring up at the faded triple-decker, with its peeling paint and sagging porches. “Second floor,” Atkinson said, and they began to climb the worn wooden stairs.

  “Do you have any idea,” Rob said, “what Sandy told her about me? How long she’s known I’m her father?”

  “I don’t. But considering that she has your last name, I have to assume they addressed the issue at some point. I don’t know too many kids who’d reach the age of fifteen without asking why their last name is different from their mother’s. Or, for that matter, without asking who their father is. But I have no idea how forthcoming Sandy may have been.”