A Song For Josh, Drifters Book One

by Susan Rodgers

  Jessie shrugged. “We’ve had a decent rate of success, but not a 100% rate…we’re working on that. I come down here a lot when I’m home in Van just to spend time with the girls, to do what I can…just to listen to their stories, mostly.”

  Quizzically, Josh appraised her. “I admit I’m surprised to see you fitting in around here, Jessie. Although I know you’ve got your own story…”

  She straightened, although she fixed her gaze on her plate at first. “Look Josh, these streets are more home to me than my condo will ever be. I like the anonymity. Nobody here gives a shit about Jessie Wheeler the singer. All they care about is surviving from one day to the next.” She added quietly, “And yeah, I’ve been there.”

  Shifting uncomfortably, Josh ached to ask more. He wanted, needed to know more. But he held back – Jessie would share her story in her own good time, if she wanted to, that is. Instead he asked, “You’re not afraid? Even a little bit? Hell, not even your average gal strolls around here on her own.”

  “Why should I be afraid? I lived that life. I know the territory. Some of the people on the streets I knew from the acting class the Deacons sponsored. Others I remember from seeing their ghostlike eyes vaguely staring at me from the sidewalks. Most of them don’t care who I’ve supposedly become. They remember the real Jessie, the girl who busked for a slice of pizza.” She paused, vaguely remembering a dark studio and unwanted touching, then she shook the shameful cobwebby thoughts away and reached for her water, tipping the glass up to her lips before continuing. “Some of them don’t care because they can’t muster emotion about anything. But you know what? In my heart I know others are still clinging to life, and to hope. Despite having mountains piled up against them.”

  “Like Terri?” Josh asked between bites of a spicy chicken mango wrap.

  “Like Terri,” Jessie answered coolly, spearing a leaf of spinach.

  Despite her candid observations about others, Josh felt sincerely that the one still really clinging to hope, despite her success and fame - was Jessie.

  Yup. He got it, all right.

  Jessie insisted on paying the bill, then together the Drifters stars sauntered into the brisk afternoon and wandered the streets, working with the teams who aided the homeless by handing out blankets, sleeping bags, water, coffee, nourishment, kind words and hugs. Josh was in awe. Not a soul said a word to Jessie about her fame. Not a soul said an unkind word. These people were the kindest, most gentle people he had ever met. They were not artificial, fake, lost rich people playing wealthy people’s games and striving for more. They wanted only the simplest things in life – warmth, and a full belly. And they laughed – a lot. There was a definite community here, in these people whose reasons for being on the streets were as varied as the Christmas gifts under his family’s tree as a child. It was January now, and although Vancouver traditionally did not get a lot of snow, there was frost in the air and a light drifting of the flaky white wetness was nestled on their faces, arms, legs. It lent a surreal appearance to the bundles of folks huddled together and alone under blankets – haloed by the streetlights, they were paintings by the masters, all shadows and crags and wrinkles and heartbeats. They were sublime. Here on the streets, living the most banal basic lives, they were transcendent, exalted. There was no way God or the Universe had forgotten His people, not a one of them, not a hair on a hand or a wrinkle on a face. This day was overwhelming in the glory it handed Josh, one genuine, simple, lovely face at a time.

  By five they too were chilled, and the sleeping bag and food teams were out of supplies. Everyone on the streets seemed to be under some cover, so they themselves also took shelter. Jessie led Josh to a nearby club, Castaways, wooden, homey and dimly lit, where she often ended up after these busy days on the Downtown Eastside, and they played a few games of pool with Nate and her other old friends there after light dinners of fish and chips. They did not drink alcohol – no beer, although both would have loved one, but they generally avoided any substances at all these days, with the exception of Jessie’s occasional Baileys. Everyone got a kick out of Josh trying to manage the pool cue with his cast, and Jessie found it slightly erotic as she leaned over him to help guide the cue. But she pushed those thoughts away as quickly as they came, and resorted to just having a good time.

  A live band came on at nine, and they danced – just the fast dances at first. Both were too entranced and still under the hypnosis of the day to chance a slow dance like the one they shared before Jessie joined the cast of Drifters. Near the end of the first set, though, someone finally acknowledged Jessie’s alter ego and her presence in the bar, and they cajoled her up on stage for a song or two. Laughing, she went for it.

  As he watched her make her way up to the small stage, Nate leaned over to Josh. “Jessie always sings a few tunes with this band, the house band, when she’s around. She played with them all the time in the old days, back when we messed around in the acting classes. Even before that, too, when she only spoke through song.”

  Josh caught his breath. “What? What was that?” He leaned an ear towards Nate so he could hear him better over the cacophony in Castaways. “About only speaking through song?”

  Eyeing Jessie’s friend carefully, Nate wondered whether he could trust this guy. But the way Jessie looked at him…and Josh seemed to have a good vibe…so he gave Josh what he wanted – no, maybe needed – to hear about Jessie. “Yeah man, it’s true. She didn’t speak for about two years.”

  Floored, Josh stared at Nate as, on stage, Jessie took a proffered guitar and started to tune, to the cheers of the folks in the club.

  Nate continued. “She was hurting, man. I remember her coming here to the streets when she was a kid, maybe eighteen. She played music. But she didn’t make friends, she didn’t talk. We left her alone. It was Jack Deacon got her engine goin’ again. Jack believed in her.”

  As Jessie believed in me, Josh thought humbly, dumbfounded. What goes around, comes around.

  It was all so surreal. Nate offered Josh a stool by the bar and they watched. And listened. The first song was a party tune everyone knew, a hit Jessie scored big with last year. But the second was just for him - Josh’s Song, she secretly called it. Josh recognized it from the very first strum of the guitar. Her voice was like warm liquid honey, and it filled the pores and caverns and holes of that room and of the soul of every person in it. She was magic, captivating, and never more so than here in this dingy space in an old hoodie, jeans, and yellow Chucks on her feet sporting smiley faces that the people in the front row spotted and hooted and hollered at in jest.

  Jessie’s voice wasn’t sultry, but it was low and mellow. When she wanted to, though, she could belt out the high notes and swing back to the lows with the most echoing lilts and magnificent, flowing transitions. She went somewhere else when she sang, usually somewhere deep inside herself, but tonight she broke that rule and her voice in song was aimed straight at Josh, like Cupid’s arrows shot – twang – straight for the heart.

  Then she sang a new song about loss from substance abuse, and how it split apart two people who loved each other. She used a name – Johnny – it was a sort of anthem, a pleading call from the girl. To Josh’s elevated, star-cross’d mind that night it seemed she was again speaking to him, calling him, telling him everything would be okay if he could just trust her.

  The owner of the club, Bert, was watching him as Josh set his eyes on Jessie and never wavered. Then he saw that Jessie was also watching Josh as she sang. And he shook his head in disbelief. He and Nate exchanged curious glances and shoulder shrugs. There was a wedding coming up – or was there? Yet neither was surprised. Charlie Deacon never darkened the door of this club, a sanctuary where Jessie always seemed to be right at home.

  Grey-haired Bert discovered as he dried wine glasses and beer mugs that it was really quite extraordinary, watching those two as she sang. It was as if there were thin red threads running between the two of them that joined them together, connected them. He h
ad heard of such threads – he had two adopted Chinese daughters, and it was part of their tradition and folklore. He knew it existed, but had never seen it from a distance like this. This time, the thread was translucent, glowing, lit from within by stars. He found he could not take his eyes off Josh, sitting there watching Jessie like that. Josh was in another place. Had anyone spoken to him, he likely would not have even heard. And Jessie - well she was right there with him.

  They shared a slow dance after that, finally. And it was as grand and daring and special and crazy as the first they’d danced together. Even better – because now they had some ground beneath their feet, a newly born shared history, albeit a short and sometimes tense one. And there was no one there with film cameras, no grips and electrics flying around or make-up gals trying to get their attention. No director yelling Cut, no producer watching their every move and counting the dollars dependent on their interactions. They were safe, or so they thought.

  It was the age of cell phones, and word had gotten out that Jessie was in the club again. Photos were snapped, even though the bouncers grabbed the phones of those they caught taking her picture. But after her songs for Josh, and the ensuing slow dance, Bert knew they were sunk – someone would have photographic or even video evidence of their smoky eyes, and it would either be sold or end up on YouTube. Grudgingly, he approached them as a fast dance started while they still clung to each other, and he pulled them gently apart.

  “Time to go, Jess,” he said, and he pointed to Nate, who had just confiscated a cell phone and was holding it over the head of some fake blonde in a mini skirt so short you could tell she hadn’t shaved, if you looked close enough.

  They were escorted out the side door of the club, and Jessie gave the band a quick wave and Bert and Nate hugs on the way out. They ran for Josh’s truck that was parked about three blocks away, and jumped in, laughing. But they were quiet on the way home, so quiet that Josh tried to flick on the radio, but he couldn’t do it with his sore fingers protruding from the cast, couldn’t squeeze them together without them hurting, so Jessie put her hand over his and pushed the button. She took his hand in the cast and placed it between them, her fingers encircling his sore ones, and he wished with all his heart that the cast were on the other arm so he could feel more of her skin on his.

  He drove to her building, leaving her car safely parked behind her Downtown Eastside shelter, but there were paparazzi outside Jessie’s condo, still hunting for more drama to add to the Charlie story and wondering about the wedding, wanting a statement from her, and knowing if they stuck around long enough their telephoto lenses would grab a snapshot of her doing something ordinary, like drinking a Starbucks in her lululemon pants. Or perhaps, if they were really lucky, their lenses would shoot her doing something extraordinary, like what the gal in the bar with the lens built into her cell phone had captured.

  Josh didn’t want their fancy Nikons to spot Jessie in his truck and, judging by the way Jessie groaned and sank down in her seat, he figured she didn’t want that either. So he revved up and pulled back out of her building’s parking lot before they spotted his pick-up with Jessie inside, and he drove them to his house twenty minutes away.

  They didn’t speak. When they stepped inside his modern home, Josh took Jessie’s hand and led her to his guest bedroom. He left her there while he rooted around for towels and an extra toothbrush in the ensuite bathroom, then he paused rather wistfully inside her door to say goodnight. But Jessie’s willpower was not as strong as his, and she was tired of fighting the exquisite agony that came with loving someone you knew you couldn’t have, could never touch the way you ached to.

  So after Josh left her in the guest room and closed the door behind him, she pulled off her old grey hoodie and untied the yellow plaid Chucks, and removed the socks beneath them. Jessie didn’t think about it. The drive on the way from her place to his was utter torture, and she was jumping out of her skin. Hell, Charlie did it all the time. Even though she knew with every fiber of her being that this was different, that she really deeply truly cared about this man and that for Charlie it was simply sex and a good time, well – she pushed that thought out of her mind before it had a chance to embed itself there.

  Jessie wiped her sweaty hands on the front of her long sleeved tee, and opened her door.

  When she peeked in Josh’s starlit room she found him standing by the bed, his back to the door, staring at something. She glanced over his left shoulder and saw with a start that what he had locked in his vision was a framed photograph of the two of them. It was a still from Drifters, shot by a professional photographer, sitting on the bedside table on the far side of his tidy bed. The photo showed Josh over her shoulder, looking down, his breath on her neck, as she looked off into the distance, her right hand laid gently over his. Jessie remembered well the day it was taken. The memory of Josh’s breath on her skin caused her knees to weaken in anticipation of feeling his warm breath on her skin again tonight.

  For she was certain they could push the world aside tonight. Gone would be the cameras and the crew and the cast. And – Charlie. Tonight it would be just Jessie and Josh, the way both longed for each other from the time they met in Charlie’s garbage, whether they had truly been able to admit it or not. Gone would be the nineteenth century clothing that caused such agony as it stood always as a barrier between them; gone were the lights that sometimes blinded them. Here they stood, now, Jessie looking intently at Josh with such hope in her eyes that, when Josh sensed her presence and turned, he finally thought he understood what she meant by that sunny yellow card so long ago, although he supposed that she likely didn’t even understand it herself, then. Hope.

  He saw her standing there, alone, hopeful, the hoodie and sneakers discarded, and watched as she looked behind and pushed the door closed. For a moment he held his breath as he thought she might be leaving him there wanting, but she didn’t and, mercifully, her eyes stayed locked into his as she reached down to her waist and pulled her top off over her head. Still they didn’t speak a word, but there was no need for utterances, as she stepped towards him and finally, finally! placed her hand upon his cheek, pressed her lips to his, and moaned with the sweet pleasure of it.

  Josh lifted his weakened arms and let his hands fall against the small of her back, where he held her earlier during their slow dance, and let her kiss him. With a gentle pressure, he nudged her hips against his and then he slipped a hand down her back and between her legs, eliciting a second tiny sigh as Jessie leaned in against his chest. He would feel the fallout tomorrow; he surely would, because this day, this glorious night, could not last. But that would be then, and this was now. So he didn’t hesitate.

  Josh lifted Jessie onto the bed and laid her there, tenderly, and when he kissed her neck so delicately it felt like butterflies, moved his lips down her body to her breasts and then, achingly, over her jeans between her legs, he did not allow his thoughts to linger on any possibility of regret. Instead, he lifted his body for the briefest instant, unzipped and pulled off Jessie’s jeans, and then her panties, her bra; and she took hold of the white T-shirt she loved so much on him, yanked it over his head, and helped him tug off his own jeans. Jessie remembered the feel of his shoulders and the hardened look of them, so strong, bathed in the artificial moon of the Drifters set, and she dug her fingers into them now as she drew him close and held him tight. When he slipped inside her, Josh groaned with the excruciating pleasure of it all - his lips on her neck, one hand cupping a breast, his fingers clutching hers. By the first thrust Jessie was already in an altered state, her back arched and her body responding with explosive force.

  Oh, how she loved this man, as she had loved Sandy years before, only this time, with Josh, it was a love born of the worst kind of loss, of knowing you could lose, and of the sobering knowledge that these cherished moments they chose to grasp this night were stolen from the hands of time.

  ***

  Chapter Nine

  The salty, homey
aroma of eggs and bacon wafting into Josh’s bedroom nudged Jessie pleasantly awake in the morning. She had grown accustomed to light breakfasts of yogurt and granola these past years but often felt a lingering melancholia for the age-old breakfasts of yore, in other lifetimes it seemed. Her father, and then Sandy, were eggs and bacon men. For her, the tickle of eggs and bacon in her nostrils would always be associated with happiness and joy. Yogurt and granola would be resigned to ordinary, lonely times.

  Tugging the auburn duvet up under her chin, snuggling under it like a child on a school day morning in the depths of winter, Jessie seized those first few moments of wakefulness to have a good look at Josh’s bedroom. It wasn’t really anything out of the ordinary – a box shaped black leather chair guarded the far corner at the foot of the queen sized bed; there, a grey hooded sweatshirt and a pair of faded jeans lay comfortably entwined, as if they’d been tossed haphazardly together and were ecstatic at the opportunity to snuggle. There was a tidy nightstand, a bookshelf, and a door that, she discovered at some point overnight, led to an ensuite bathroom. The best feature was the west side glass patio door, which led to a small deck that provided a stunning view of the ocean. Overall, this room is fairly orderly for a guy, she caught herself thinking. Not much around except for lots of books (mostly historical in nature, she noted with interest, like books about King Arthur’s time as well as some Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald). There were a few photos in frames, likely of family, she figured logically – three small children, a woman she assumed was his mother (same handsome cheekbones), and then the intimate Drifters photo.

  A number of magazines were stashed on the nightstand’s open shelf. Jessie leaned over and pulled out the top one. On its cover was a Harley Davidson motorbike. She noticed the second, below it, was also a specialty motorbike magazine. Well, she thought, at least they’re not Playboy. She knew Josh had a bike – he occasionally drove it to set. She wondered what else he was into. She frowned when she realized all she really knew of him was that he had a rocky relationship with his father, he was a motorcycle junkie, he was a fine actor, and apparently he liked historic fiction. Oh, and he had a way about him with horses, who appeared to like nuzzling him as much as she did; he had apparently been riding since he was a small child. That didn’t seem to be a lot of information about the man she was crazy about, the one whose presence in her life was so disarming she felt her impending marriage to Charlie was now at risk.