“It did happen fast,” Ganek admitted. “One day we were homeless, dirt poor—Rocco was talking about teaching me bass just to get a band, any band, going; the next thing I know, we were moving to L.A. and Roc had landed this sweet apartment off Melrose. Then Throne’s flying off on their first world tour and I’m going with them. Europe, Asia, Australia. It was like a dream we never wanted to wake from.”
“Was there someone who started the ball rolling? Someone Rocco met?”
Ganek seemed to draw a blank and Clay resigned himself—Boyle would tell him or no one would. Except then inspiration jolted the old road warrior and he leaned forward, elbows heavy on his knees. “The earliest memory I have of Rocco talking to anyone in The Biz was when we were living on top of that Mouth House. I’d passed out on the beach—which was sort of common back then. But that time I remember ’cause I didn’t come to till the middle of the night. I went staggering under the stars back to the Mouth, and I see this stranger, up on the roof with Rocco. It was odd. When we were up top, we generally kept out of sight in case the cops drove by. But there they were, standing straight up and tall for anyone to see. And I don’t know why I’m telling you this—other than this is goddamn fine scotch—but the sight of that other guy kind of freaked me out.”
“Really?” Clay fought to keep his voice level. “Why’s that?”
“He wasn’t a tramp like us. Not even close. Guy was wearing a suit and he had this fine polish to him. He belonged on our roof about as much as we belonged on Rodeo Drive, and that’s what made me afraid. I hung back in the drive-thru bushes, trying to eavesdrop. The guy was constantly reassuring Rocco, patting him on the shoulder, reasoning with him. And—now that I’m remembering—there was something… falling on them.”
“Falling on them?”
“Like little pellets. But it wasn’t falling anywhere except on the Mouth House. I distinctly remember holding my palm out, looking to the sky. The storm was only over the two of them.”
“The Hailmaker,” Clay mumbled.
“Say again?”
Clay shook it off.
“Anyway, Roc finally seemed to buy whatever the suit was selling. The storm quit and the suit climbs off the roof—and just starts straight up PCH. Who the fuck walks a highway in the dead of night dressed like that?”
“Did Rocco talk about it?”
“When I hopped the dumpster, he jumped, like he thought the suit had come back. I asked who the accountant was and he told me, ‘Some random dude—I was playing guitar and he came wandering out of the dark.’ Except next morning, in the sunlight, Rocco confessed Suit was in The Biz. We all knew Rocco wanted to be a star, but that morning was the first time he mentioned moving to Hollywood and actually doing it. Never saw Suit again and I assumed Roc didn’t either. Through the years, I met a lot of industry people who gave me the willies. None like him though.”
Ganek stroked his chin and glanced in the direction of the Generator for the first time. “I don’t know if that’s the story you were looking for, but it’s the one I got. I’ve spent so many nights wondering what really happened to my friend. I doubt we’ll ever know.”
Clay emptied his glass. “Even if we did, it won’t change what happened. That’s the hardest part.”
“Amen.” Ganek checked his watch and winced at the angle of the hands. “Shit, I think my plane leaves in an hour.”
“You need a ride?”
“Nah, the buzz was there a few minutes ago, but it already left for the airport.” To prove the point, he lifted himself gracefully from his chair. “Thanks for the sips.”
“Stop by any time. I’m kind of a glutton for Throne stories.”
Ganek promised he would, but Clay doubted he’d be seeing him again; the nostalgia for the old estate was out of his system and there was nothing left here but an uneasy dread that everyone who’d known Boyle (in life or death) seemed to carry with them.
A flash of movement caught Clay’s eye through the French doors—Essie, making lunch in the commercial lapse between her favorite soap opera and her favorite talk show—and he told Ganek, “By the way, Rocco’s old guitar isn’t the only thing still around. We’ve also retained Estelle’s services. My father liked her so much he’s offered her a full-time position.”
“Estelle?”
“The woman who cared for your flowers?” He gestured through the doors, where Essie could be seen, madly tossing a salad.
Ganek gave her a long look. “Don’t know her. I did all the housework when I lived here. Shirl wouldn’t let me call a plumber if the toilet turned into a geyser.”
“Oh, was I mistaken? Did she work for Boyle?”
“He had a gardening service. All men.” Ganek’s brows knit together with big-brother concern. “Did you background-check her, Clay? Because you know some folks would sell their souls to get in here. Be real careful.”
“What do you mean Ganek never heard of her?” Across the table, Peter gave his son the best wry-eye he could muster at such a late hour, having endured a day of corporate legalities, now only wanting to enjoy the cornucopia of food—Chinese appetizers, Italian entrees, cheesecake from Cheesecake Factory—delivered all together like the best of Western living. And here was his only begotten son, once again throwing a goddamn wrench in the works, claiming his perfect girlfriend was a liar and a fake.
“Boyle never employed her either,” Clay said, keeping his voice low.
Peter frowned with his whole body. “But she knows all about the house.”
“Any Throne diehard would know that. Didn’t you do a background check?”
“She knew her flowers,” Peter insisted, tighter. “Hollyhocks, black-eyed susans. She went on and on about fertilizer.”
“In other words, no.”
“No, counselor, I didn’t check her out.”
“Not with your brain anyway.”
Peter’s expression darkened, but his usual quick tongue lay flat. He glanced in the direction of the kitchen. “What does it matter? If she wanted to rob us, she’d have done it already.”
Clay threw his hands in the air. “So you’re not even going to ask her about it?”
“No. Because this is just another way of you vandalizing my room. Why can’t you…?”
Peter trailed off. And though the familiar bitterness spread through Clay’s chest like cheap tequila, he urged his father on. “What? What?”
“…just grow the fuck up.”
The words hung there. Clay nodded. Moments like this made it easier to understand their relationship, that Peter would become less and less of a fixture in his life, until their communication amounted to a few curt phone calls on holidays. The inevitability of that was difficult to take, if for no other reason than it would have broken his dead mother’s heart, and when Clay reared up from the table, it was less out of anger, more to hide his face.
He swung around and spotted Essie in the kitchen doorway, holding two plates in her hand. And a third, balanced precariously on her forearms. Father and son hurried over to help her.
When they were all seated again, dipping garlic breadsticks in Kung Pao sauce, Essie cut the silence by humming a melody, vaguely familiar, (Clay thought it might have been Cinderella’s “Nobody’s Fool”), before she said, “He was right to tell you.”
The words flattened Peter. Clay chewed in silence.
“I saw Rocket Throne in concert 32 times,” Essie confessed. “I was just another Boyle fanatic hanging outside the gate. When the Ganeks moved out, I got a crazy, crazy idea. I’ve taken care of flowers before—it’s one of the six-hundred jobs I’ve done in my life. So I figured at the very least I might get on the property to have a look around.” Essie grabbed for Peter’s hand. “I had no idea this was going to happen. And I’m so sorry to you both. Starting a relationship on a lie, it’s made me so awfully sick inside. I didn’t know how to come clean. Really Clay, you did me a favor. I”—her voice broke—“I just hope you guys don’t hate my guts now.”
/> Clay worked his spaghetti around his chopsticks. “Was anything you told us true?”
“Clay,” Peter warned.
“No, don’t you see, Petey—he’s protecting you.” With her free hand, she caught Clay’s wrist before he could move it off the table. “My name is Estelle Monahan. I’m originally from Phoenix, just like I said. My favorite Throne song is ‘Gray Matters’—the B-side to the ‘Face the Music’ vinyl single? I’m a Gemini free spirit, I love coffee and most dogs, and I can’t wait to see your band perform, Clay. All truth!”
A whole moment passed before Peter fell all over himself to say how much he appreciated her candor, that at times he too had lied to people—who hadn’t? Know the joke about how lawyers sleep? Haha! The important thing, going forward, was that they never be afraid to tell each other the truth.
Essie agreed and they leaned over the table and kissed, hands stroking hair, violating the three-second rule for basic consideration of others, and Clay grabbed his plate and made his exit.
In the night, his bedroom door swung inward. He was awake, lying in the dark with his earbuds cranking Faith No More, and it was awhile before he realized someone was in his room. A hand came from nowhere to reach for him and he shrank violently away. Deidre! She’d escaped the bottle!
The hand swatted out an earbud. “It’s only me,” Essie told him. She was wearing a wedding-bright nightgown, which only added to her spectral appearance.
“Essie? What the fuck!”
“I’m not your first nocturnal visitor, am I?” Without permission, she sat on the foot of his bed. “You want me to be straight with you, Clay, so I’m going to be. Over dinner I mentioned working a lot of odd jobs—and that’s true, I swear. But I was holding back what my real occupation is.”
Oh God, please don’t say prostitute, Clay thought.
“I’m a medium, Clay.”
“What does your shirt size have to do with it?”
“Don’t be a smartass.” Essie forewent the courtesy laugh. “I communicate with spirits. Ghosts who, for one reason or another, are unable to make the journey to the next world.”
“Can we put a light on?”
“You’re acting like this is a joke, but I know you know it’s not.”
“Have you mentioned any of this to my father?”
“Nope.”
“Then why are you telling me? He’s the one you shouldn’t keep secrets from.”
“Because you have the gift too.” Essie leaned dramatically forward. “Extrasensory perception.”
Clay did his best to give nothing back. “Are you serious?” he tried, but his voice fell off key and it sounded about as convincing as Charles Manson saying, What crazy family?
“After his bedroom was vandalized, your father was worried sick. He doesn’t understand the type of music we listen to. He thought you were going off the deep end, hanging with the wrong crowd, but I convinced him that wasn’t the case. I knew all that rage wasn’t your doing—but the work of a fearful apparition that was trapped here. An apparition named Deidre.”
Clay was quiet. Ambushed as he was, he knew he had to slow his heart rate if he hoped to dodge her disturbingly accurate observations. “So you mean her dead ghost did it? I like that, Es. Let’s go with that story.”
Essie cocked her head, so that all her hair spilled down one arm. “The real reason I wanted to get on the property was to see if Roc and Deidre were still in residence. I felt that poor woman’s grief the first time I entered this house. She didn’t like the idea of new. She was threatened by us. But you took care of her, huh? Forced her dormant—using an old, old trick.”
“Absolutely.”
“You don’t have to admit anything. The proof is right there in your band name. Farewell Ghost? There are maybe one in ten million people who still know what that is, and even fewer who’ve tried it.”
“Well, you’ll have to ask my bassist,” Clay kept on. “Fiasco Joe? He was the one who suggested the name. I just thought it sounded better than The Queefs.”
“Now who’s lying through their gosh-darn teeth?” Essie flashed a grin in the dark. “Boyle’s still in the Generator. I hear you in there, talking to him.”
“Listen, Es, I think we need to pretend like this conversation never happened. If you heard me talking to anyone, it was one of my bandmates. If I was out there alone, you probably heard me reading lyrics. It’s part of my writing process.”
Essie’s hand was cold as she reached under his sheet to seize his bare ankle. “Boyle trusts you, but he doesn’t feel the same about me yet. All I ask is you mention my gift to him. I’ve trained my whole life to communicate with the dead, with the mystics of Jeramigo Canyon and elsewhere. I can help him be at peace. If you’re really his friend, you’ll—”
“Okay, yeah. I’ll put in a word for you.”
The cold hand went away. Essie’s nightgown floated back across the room.
“This is why you’re with him, isn’t it?” Clay told her. His voice was sure-footed again. “You only want to hit the medium jackpot.”
“I would never do that to another soul. Your father is a sweet, good man. I’m grateful for his kindness, and to be with him.”
“Well, I’ll be sure to tell him all this, so he can disown me.” Clay inserted his earbuds. “Close the door behind you.”
Essie stood defiantly in the doorway. Before she did as he asked.
Fortunately, for everyone involved, Rocco Boyle didn’t turn into a violent spirit. So lonely was the occupying soul, so concerned he’d be abandoned by the only people who still knew he existed, that when Clay returned to the Generator with a pair of guitars, he’d hardly set foot inside before Boyle emerged. I never struck anyone in my life, he said. Not even in the school yard in seventh grade, when most of my classmates were the cruelest bunch of assholes imaginable. Violence was my old man’s style. I spent my life doin’ the opposite of him. It worked most of the time.
“Is this your way of saying sorry, Rocco?” Clay asked.
I was never real good at it, but yeah—sorry’d be the word.
Clay set the guitars—a black-and-blonde Telecaster and a “dragon’s blood” B.C. Rich Eagle—down on the couch for Boyle’s examination.
“For a small restocking fee, I can return any guitar I buy at Dooley’s Den within 48 hours.”
What do you need two at a time for? You’re not a rock god yet, my friend.
“I thought we could jam.”
Won’t someone see? He lifted the Telecaster to illustrate how it could play itself in mid-air. I don’t want your feisty new housemate walkin’ in and makin’ brownies in her pants.
“Oh, don’t worry, Essie’s informed me she’s a medium with special powers. Have you gotten that impression? Does she have what Savy and I have?”
Boyle’s laughter started long before Clay could finish. She’s in here every few days. I have to click off the internet so she doesn’t think you’re the one browsin’ MILF porn sites. But yesterday she found your Ouija board. She started doin’ some kind of new-agey chant with it.
“Yeah, she’s studied with the mystiques of Catatonia Canyon.”
I went right up to her face, shouted Booooo! Nothin’. Total blank. I think even Ganek’s wife was less dense.
“Shhhheeeeeet,” Clay laughed. “I’ll have to start locking the door and pulling the blinds.”
Speakin’ of Ganek, was that him drinking by the pool yesterday?
“It was. I offered to bring him in here, but he was… reluctant.”
A lot of that goin’ around these days.
“Don’t worry, I don’t have enough friends to chuck you aside, Roc.” Clay lifted the B.C. Rich and tossed the strap over his head. “And for the next few days, Essie won’t be bugging us. Her and my father left for a weekend in wine country. So what say you?”
I don’t know. The biggest difference between life and death, to me, is tactile. It’s like knowing how to play piano, then having to do Chopin with o
ven mitts.
“The first time I heard you in here, I challenged you to play ‘American Rapture’ and you did it perfectly. So quit bellyaching. Unless you’re worried I’ll show you up.”
Show me up?
“Like maybe you think I’m going to blow your ass through the wall.”
Alright. Shut up and tune down.
Clay chuckled and plugged them both in. “What’s the song of choice?”
One of mine, of course. Tip the deck in my favor.
Boyle tuned to Drop D and broke into “Occasional Pleasure & Guaranteed Pain.” It was rough going at first. He stopped, re-started, fucked up right away, re-started again. But within minutes, the strings were twitching and snapping with melodic precision, and Clay shut his eyes and joined in. They played half of Watch It Burn! and most of The Disharmonic, along with a handful of Metallica and System of a Down favorites.
“Oven mitts or not, you could still mop the stage with me.”
Yeah, move over, Rover! Boyle laughed, sounding about as relieved as he did amused. But not for long. Call that gut instinct—even if I ain’t got guts no more. You’re twice the guitarist you were even a month ago.
“Thank you. My ass is here all morning if you want to keep kissing it.”
No, I’ll leave the kissin’ of private parts to your guitar player.
Clay grimaced and Boyle cracked up. Ha! Knew it! How many times did I warn you to leave the pie alone? Just had to serve yourself, huh?
“It happened after the fire. Imminent death has a way of making you randy and impulsive.”
Boyle lowered the Fender. I guess if I ever had a player that fine, restraint would’ve failed me too.
“Well, she’s come to her senses. Since that one time, Savy’ll barely hug me goodbye. The music comes first, and I guess most of me agrees.”
Doesn’t make it easier.
“No. Sooner or later, I’ll be writing a song about her.”
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