Tully
I’ve just gotten out of the shower after rehearsal, and someone is pounding at my hotel room door like an insane person.
“Hold the hell on!” I yell as I try to shimmy a pair of jeans up my slightly damp legs. The pounding continues.
I toss a tank top on over my head, braless, and grab a hoodie that I end up holding in front of me as I open the door with my hair still damp and uncombed.
Dez is standing on the other side, his normally mellow demeanor gone, and in its place worry and panic are spread all over his face.
“Hey…” I mutter, not sure what the hell he’s doing here.
“Is Blaze with you?” he asks, breathlessly.
“No. Why?” A rush of adrenaline spikes in my gut and I almost grab Dez by the shirt and give him a shake because I can tell something’s not right.
He runs a hand through his hair and looks anguished. “We had an argument and he took off—”
“Oh, he’s probably fine.” My blood pressure drops a couple of points. “I’m sure he’ll call you or turn up soon.”
Dez shakes his head. “Tully, he’s an addict. We had a huge blowout, the worst fight we’ve ever had, and he’s been missing for over three hours now. He’s not…” He swallows and I can tell how really frightened he is about this. “He’s not as stable in his recovery as he likes to make out. It’s a constant battle for him. He doesn’t deal with stress well.”
I gesture for him to come in and close the door. My chest is a little tight, and I can feel the rushing sensation of anxiety setting in. “Has he slipped up? Since he got out?”
“Not that I know of,” Dez answers, standing and looking out of the window that overlooks the city lights.
“But he’s come close.” I don’t even ask it. Somehow I know what the answer is, and if I’m honest, I’ve known all along. I’ve known he wasn’t as strong as he likes to pretend. I’ve seen it in his eyes. Last night at my birthday I could sense his tension. Sometimes when there have been parties at the hotel with all the other bands after performances he’s been reluctant to go, and I could see he wasn’t comfortable when he did go.
“Okay, where could he have gone? Did he take security with him?”
“No. I asked our team leader and he said none of his guys were out with Blaze.” He starts pacing the length of the room. “Fuck. How could I have let this happen? I fucking knew better than to take him on like that. I just—I just didn’t want him to do something he’ll regret.”
“What was the argument over?” I ask, wondering what could have gotten both Dez and Blaze so upset. They seem to get along really well.
He darts a look at me, then turns his back quickly, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Just some stupid shit about playing the Super Bowl. It doesn’t matter what we fought over, only that he left here in a rage, and now no one can find him.”
“Okay, let me try calling him, maybe he’ll answer for me.”
Dez nods and I grab my phone and text first, then immediately call as well.
I get his voicemail and leave a message asking him to check in with one of us as soon as possible.
“Does he know anyone here in town?” I ask after I end the call. “Anyone he might have gone to see?”
Dez shakes his head. “No.”
My phone buzzes and I snatch it up, my heart beating like a little hummingbird’s. It’s Walsh, and I almost don’t answer, but Dez gives me a chin tip. “Grab it, I can wait.”
“Hey,” I say as I answer. “What’s going on?”
“Tully. We were thinking about going to dinner at this barbecue place that Mike’s all hyped over, you want to come?”
I look at Dez. I’m not sure how many people he wants to know about this, but just like you’d go to your family when you were worried about a friend, I feel compelled to let Walsh know about this right now. I’m scared for Blaze. I need help from people I trust.
“Dez is here with me. We’re worried, Walsh. He and Blaze had a fight and now Blaze has disappeared…” I look at Dez. He’s watching me but not indicating I need to stop, so I forge on. “He’s worried about Blaze’s sobriety. I guess he doesn’t handle stuff like this well. He’s not in as good a shape as everyone might think.”
I hear Walsh sigh on the other end of the call. “No addict ever is, Tully.” Tears are burning behind my eyes now. I wasn’t thinking about Walsh’s alcoholism when I told him.
“Are you in your room?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll be right there.” He ends the call and I turn to Dez.
“It was Walsh. He’s coming. Maybe he has some ideas about what we can do?”
Dez nods, seeming beaten by the whole thing. He sits in an armchair and leans his elbows
on his knees.
“I didn’t mean to get on him like I did.” The anguish he’s obviously feeling reverberates in his voice. “I was trying to keep him from destroying everything. He’s finally in a good place, I want him to be happy. But he’s…fuck. He’s really self-destructive.”
There’s a knock on the door and I swing it open to reveal Walsh and Colin.
“Mike and Joss are ordering pizza so that we can all grab food as we need to,” Walsh says striding into the room with the most in-charge look I’ve ever seen on his face. “Let’s make the list and then we can start sending the security staff out to the least likely places and the rest of us will split up for the higher priority spots.”
Dez looks at me confused, but Walsh doesn’t seem to notice as he pulls out his phone and brings up the notes app. Colin walks over and puts his arm around me, pulling me in for a quick side hug as he murmurs, “We’ll find him, don’t worry.”
“Uh, what are you guys talking about?” I ask, shifting my gaze from Dez to Walsh and back again. Dez shrugs to indicate he’s as in the dark as I am.
“I thought you needed to find Blaze?” Walsh says pausing in his flurry of activity.
“Well, yeah. I guess we didn’t know how we were going to do that though.”
Walsh nods before he sits on the sofa, gesturing for me to join him. Colin takes the other armchair.
Walsh talks to both Dez and me. “I’ve had a little experience with falling off the wagon,” he says, a wry smile on his sweet face. “I know the way an addict’s mind works. Let me put that insider knowledge to work for you.”
Dez nods, relief passing over him like a wash of color. “I’d really appreciate it, man. He’s disappeared before, when he was still using, but that was always in L.A. where I knew his haunts and his dealer’s address.”
At the mention of a dealer my stomach twists. It conjures images of seedy apartments with junkies laying on the floor, or gangsters with guns on their belts, drugs laid out on every surface around them.
“Well, as much as I hate to say it, this probably won’t be the last time it happens, so you’ll get better at handling it.” Walsh shakes his head. “It’s not something we want our friends and family to have to know, but the fact is, when you’re an addict, you’re always one moment away from falling, and the people around you have to be ready for it, even as they have to believe that you won’t do it.”
“So what do we do?” I ask, anxious to get started. I’m not going to be okay until we have Blaze back here, safe where he belongs.
Walsh outlines a plan where we look at places Blaze has been in the last two days, along with the kinds of places he tends to go at home—Blaze loves the water for instance—then on to places he’s mentioned wanting to visit. When we’ve got a list together, Walsh asks Dez to go with his gut and pick those places he thinks are most likely. We save those for us, and divide up the other locales between Lush’s security staff and Rhapsody’s.
Within fifteen minutes Walsh has started sending guys out searching like he’s the head of a police investigation or something. My suite becomes Blaze Search Central and before long Mike, Joss, Garrett, Carson, and Topher are all there along with ten large pizzas and more sod
a than I’ve seen in one place outside of when one of my extended family graduates or gets married.
After everyone’s had a chance to scarf some food and the security teams are all out hunting, we look at the remaining locations on the list.
“So Dez, you and the guys want to pick two or three you think are the most likely and head out?” Walsh asks.
Dez looks at the other three and they murmur their assent. He picks his top three places and they start getting their stuff together—it’s summer, but San Francisco is chilly at night, so everyone brought jackets and some of the guys have beanies. In the back of my mind I wonder if Blaze thought to bring a coat with him. I imagine him cold, high, lost in some bad part of the city and my chest gets so tight I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to take another breath.
“Tully?” Joss says softly from across the room. All eyes turn to me. “We’re going to find him. I promise. It’ll be okay.”
I nod quickly as the tears well up in my eyes. Colin puts his arms around me and I take a moment, my face buried in his shoulder, breathing in his scratchy wool scarf and letting his heat envelope me. I take a deep shuddering breath and calm myself before I turn to face all the guys again.
Dez looks at me and there’s something that passes between us. He can tell. How I feel about Blaze. He can tell because he loves him, and well, I think I might love him too. I reach out and squeeze his hand before I tell him, “Go find him. Bring him home.”
“We’re out,” Dez says to the rest of the guys as Carson, Topher, and Garrett nod at everyone and the four of them head out.
“All right,” Walsh says as the door closes. “We’ve got four more places on this list, let’s grab a car and get moving.
Blaze
I’ve been walking for hours through the streets of San Francisco—rich neighborhoods, poor neighborhoods, up hills, down hills, in endless traffic, and along the bustling wharfs. I breathe in the odors of the city—diesel, sweat, cigarette smoke, fish. It becomes a miasma of sounds, scents, and colors swirling around and around in my head like the shit that Dez said swirls around and around in my heart.
Goddam Dez too. Fuck him. He doesn’t get it. But then he never has, and I can’t blame him for that. Only someone raised by Peterson Davis the Second would understand what I do. Only someone who’s had the privilege and the burden of my upbringing would be able to fathom doing the things I do. But that’s what sets Davises apart. That’s why we win. Always. As much as I sometimes wish I weren’t, the fact is that I’m a Davis—through and through—and so I’ll win too.
Problem is, winning this time is going to cost me more than it normally does. And I hate that, but I also hate that Dez can’t seem to understand the opportunity we’re being handed. The P.I. I hired is finding a lot of leads that will tarnish Lush in the eyes of the NFL. It’s our golden ticket, and I fully intend to use it.
I feel the familiar itch under my skin as I walk through a rapidly declining neighborhood. Dez’s words hammer away at my conscience. That fucking conscience my father told me to jettison years ago, but I’ve never been able to unload fully.
“They put their trust in you, man. She put her trust in you. How the hell can you turn around and do this?”
I scratch at my left arm, and my steps falter as I feel the dark descending on me. If fucking Dez would have just kept his mouth shut I’d be fine. Yeah, I know what I’ve set in motion isn’t the thing a good guy would do, but it’s the thing a winner would do, and when we’re standing on that stage at halftime at the Super Bowl it’s the thing that we’ll be grateful for. Even Dez. Because as Zen as he is, he’s not in Rhapsody because he wants to lose. He likes the awards and accolades as much as any of us do, he just doesn’t want to have to be the one to make the hard choices that get us to the winner’s circle.
The hard choices are my arena. They always have been. I’m the one who made the decision to dump our first lead singer when critics started saying that our music was better than our singer could perform. I was the one who walked away from a sure-thing recording contract because it didn’t include a tour. We were new, fresh off the club circuit, and it was a contract with a solid label, wide distribution on all retailers, and some big market radio placements, but no tour. And the fact is, touring is where the real money is. Dez and the other guys were scared to say no, figuring that we were looking a gift horse in the mouth, but I knew we couldn’t tie ourselves down to a deal like that for two years. If we were going all the way, we had to be willing to hold out for the whole package. I said “no” to the deal, it was a huge risk, but sure enough, a few months later we got the real thing complete with an international tour.
“Hey, man, you want something to make your night betta’?” a big guy with sagging jeans and a red baseball cap on backwards asks as I walk by the shadowed alcove where he’s leaning, almost invisible here in this part of town with few streetlights and fewer open stores.
I glance at him, my mind spinning with the temptation. I draw the line at smack, but I bet this guy could get me some crank and that’d do just fine.
“I got a girl down the block, man,” he tells me, taking a small step out of the shadows. “She’d treat you real good. Or if you like boys, I can get you one of them too.”
Fuck. He’s a pimp, not a drug dealer. I swallow, disgust pouring through me at the idea of human beings bought and sold on street corners.
“Nah, I’m good, thanks, man,” I tell him as I pick up my pace.
“You sure? She’s fine, this girl, got a pussy that’ll make you beg for more.”
I shake my head and keep marching along, fighting the urge to ask him where the closest dealer is, because I know there is one, there always is—somewhere nearby. And I’m walking through this shithole of a neighborhood in the dark alone because part of me is praying that the local dealer will see me, approach me, make me an offer I can’t refuse. If I could get a hit Dez’s crap would get out of my head. I just need a few hours in that empty head space and I’ll get straight on all this shit and recommit to what I'm doing to insure we get the Super Bowl slot. I don’t need the goddamn doubt and guilt right now, and some powder would erase that like it erases everything.
As I approach the end of the block I see the girl that the pimp must have been talking about. She’s obviously fucked up, her eyes at half mast as she stumbles around the corner, yelling out to any cars passing by.
“Hey, baby!” she calls. “I got you some sugar right here.”
As I get closer I see that beneath the transparent skintight top are breasts that are barely developed, and beneath the plastic miniskirt are hips that haven’t rounded and legs that are spindly and too long for her adolescent body. When I get within a few feet I look into a pair of eyes surrounded by cheeks that haven’t yet shed their baby fat. A large purplish bruise mars her jaw on one side, and when she opens her mouth to proposition me she’s missing a tooth in the front.
She’s all of fifteen and she might be the saddest thing I’ve ever laid eyes on.
“Hey, baby,” she slurs. “You want some sugar? I got me lots of tricks. Only twenty dollars, baby. I’ll make you feel gooood.”
I stop, and my gaze darts to her skinny arms that jut out from her shoulders, her hands planted on her hips. The track marks on the tender flesh of the inside of her forearms tell me the only story I need to know.
“How much do you need to make sure he’ll let you take the night off?” I ask.
Something indecipherable crosses her face, but it’s gone as fast as it came. “You want to have me all night, baby?” She takes a wobbly step closer.
“I want to help you get someplace warm and safe for the night,” I tell her.
She looks suspicious now. “You one of them preachers? I don’t need no Jesus man trying to change me. Take your bible shit and go somewheres else.”
I shake my head and take my wallet out of my pocket. “No Jesus, I promise. No strings, just a night off. Here—” I hand her five hundred do
llars. “Give your pimp his cut, then get yourself a room for the night. Watch a movie, eat some dinner. Get a good night’s sleep.”
She stares at the cash for all of two seconds before she’s snatched it out of my hand.
“You for real?”
“Yeah.” I shrug.
“You crazy, you know that, right?”
I give her a small smile. “You’re not the first person to say so.” She takes a step back, tucking the money into her top at the same time. “Hey,” I say before she can take off across the street. “Do me a favor?”
“What?” she asks, giving me the stink eye again.
“Don’t use tonight?”
Her eyes go clear, the haziness transforming to something sharp and sad all at once. She tips her chin at me. “Yeah, all right, baby. For you.”
I lift my hand in a wave and watch as she teeters across the street on her sky high heels. When she gets to the other side I see her pimp appear and take the money from her before he grabs her elbow and drags her off down the street. Just before they turn the corner she looks back at me, and the guilt on her face is impossible to miss even from this distance.
Fucking drugs. Fucking addiction. Fucking men who do this shit to little girls.
Before I can move on up the sidewalk my phone rings for the umpteenth time in the last few hours but this time I pull it out of my pocket to look at the screen. It’s the one person I’m willing to talk to. The only one who’ll make me feel like a human being again, and oddly it’s also the person whose trust I’m betraying unforgivably, irreparably, unconscionably. I swipe the screen and put the phone to my ear.
“Tully,” I answer quietly. “I think I need you.”
A Lush Rhapsody: A Rhapsody Novel Page 18