by Sara Taylor
“Please stop talking about it.”
“Oh, here we go: Sophie and heavy metal guitarist Chris Egerton called it quits in July after three years together. Three years! Shit.”
“I don’t know what the hell he could possibly want with me,” I said.
“You’re awesome. Much prettier than Sophie Cleaver,” Fern said. “She’s all airbrushed in these photos. You look great without all that. Plus you have talent. You’re interesting. I mean, any one of us can pose and look sexy. Fuck, remember all that stupid Women of Metal shit I did? The photos don’t even look like me. It doesn’t take talent to stick out your chest and remove any hint of intelligence from your expression.” She laughed. I laughed too. This really, truly, was the most engaging, most fun, most herself Fern I had seen in so, so long. It was like a switch had been thrown within her.
“So are you and Edgar going to the beach?”
“I think all of us might go, except for you.”
“Oh shit. I’ll have to forego the pleasure of seeing Toad in a bathing suit.”
“I might have to loan him one of my bikini tops,” Fern said, and we howled.
“You feel better, huh,” I said.
“I do. Much. I feel like last night was a step for me. You know?”
“I think so.”
It was sort of funny — we were talking about a murder as if it was a self-help exercise, like meditation or making a collage or something. I have to admit, I felt lighter too. I don’t know how to describe this, really. Maybe it was like we’d taken back some small level of control, or somehow expressed an aspect of how we’d felt inside since all that horrible shit happened with DED. Like we were letting out some of the anger. And let’s be real. No one was going to miss that guy from that Florida parking lot. You show me one news segment, one missing persons report, one bereaved family member, anyone who gave a shit. Yeah, they identified the guy’s body when his fingerprints came up in the system because he’d already been to prison for rape and child molestation. And it didn’t even make the news until everything came out about Fern and me and someone connected the dots. So — my friend and I not only started feeling better about ourselves and our lives by smashing that guy’s face in with a brick, but we helped. We did a good thing. But, sure, I get it — not everyone sees it that way.
FORTY-SEVEN
Chris came lumbering across the parking lot wearing the same perplexed frown he always seemed to wear around me, his hair obviously washed and dried — it hadn’t looked so soft since I’d met him, I adolescently thought. I tried to keep myself from puffing too heavily on my cigarette as I rose from my seat on the curb.
“Hi,” he said in his deep voice as he neared.
“Hi,” I said, and froze as he leaned down to stiffly hug me. I hugged back. For some reason I patted his shoulder blade as we embraced, the true sign of an awkward, platonic hug — the way one hugs an estranged family member. It sucked. But he was so tall, and he smelled clean, and that soft hair brushed my cheek.
“So,” he said, clearing his throat. “There’s, er, a carnival thing going on up the road a little ways. Did you want to go check it out?”
“Sure,” I replied, and we fell into stride beside each other. Well, that’s putting it gracefully. Since his legs seemed about twice as long as mine, I broke into a coltish trot beside him to keep up. He slowed his pace. Eventually we found a common ground. God, it really was uncomfortable. I wanted him to think I was cool, and it just wasn’t going to happen. Images of slinky, sexy Sophie Cleaver kept appearing in my mind. She wouldn’t have galloped along beside him.
“I have to ask you about your girlfriend.”
“Girlfriend?”
“Yes. Ah — do you have one?”
He was quiet for a moment. “No. Not anymore. I was with the same girl for a few years and we broke up a few months ago.”
“Oh.”
“I was really sad about it,” he said. “Guess I still am, in some ways. I really loved her, you know?”
I was touched by the level of emotion in his voice. He lapsed into thoughtful silence again. I didn’t want to press the issue. We walked quietly along the road, which was lined with fast-food joints and gas stations and strip malls.
“What about you?” he finally said. “You have a boyfriend?”
I don’t know why I was so startled by his question. I hesitated for a moment. “No. I don’t really have boyfriends. I’m not — I don’t know.”
He nodded. “It’s hard to keep things going when you’re always on the road.”
“Yes,” I said. I was glad he’d given me a reason.
“Me and my ex — it was hard, and she had her own things going on. It still hurts.”
“I understand.”
We changed the subject, talking casually about the tour and our bands. I explained how we’d gotten our band started, and he told me some stuff about his. Cars whizzed past us. He was quiet and attentive. I remembered how Toad had laughed about how much action Chris would be getting on the road. It didn’t seem to make sense. He was such a quiet, thoughtful guy — not the outgoing party moron type. I reminded myself that I barely knew him, but still. He just seemed too nice.
xXx
We arrived at the fairground, which was a short walk from the ocean. The warm breeze blew across us as we walked, smelling like popcorn and cotton candy and fried food, and the atmosphere was fun and festive with the spinning rides and music and people. The sun was just starting to lower in the sky, bathing everything in a pink glow. I felt great, walking beside Chris. People kept looking at us, probably marvelling at how tall he was, how menacing he looked. I felt a sort of stupid, puffed-up pride. I wanted to take his hand, but I didn’t.
“Do you want to go on the ferris wheel?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said, picturing us gazing across the ocean, the sparkling sunset in its reflection, totally cute and sweet. It would be a beautiful moment, something we would remember forever. I really did get ahead of myself in this stupid dreamy way. It was all too great. In Florida, in the sun, at the fair, with this giant famous metal guy beside me, wanting to take a ride on the ferris wheel. You know the type of dumb-ass giddy thing I mean. It really did feel nice.
The ferris wheel was quite big, and there was some horrible rock music playing as Chris gave the tickets to the weirdo running it. We climbed into the car, and it swayed. The guy clanged the safety rail to lock us into the seat, and we jerked into motion.
As the car began its ascent, the wind swept over us, catching the ends of Chris’s hair and lifting it, stealing the breath from my throat and making me instinctively reach for the lap rail. I gripped it in my hands, which were sweating, and focused on ignoring the fact that the ground was falling farther away from us with each passing second. To my horror, the wheel groaned as we reached the top — a sound that signalled either something needed oiling on the damn thing, or something was full-stop wrong with it. Either way I was ready to get off the ride, and we were only making our way around for the first time.
I tried to breathe deeply as we flew over the highest point and began to descend. I glanced sideways at Chris. His eyes were fixed over the hand rail, his brow furrowed, his lips pursed in the usual tight frown.
We fell through the air and were back at the bottom. My stomach felt like it was full of helium. I was concerned I might cry out. As we moved along to ascend once more, the shitty radio music blasted in our ears for a quick second, and I braced myself. I was not going to look like a fool. The wheel groaned again, and I didn’t know if it was my imagination or not but I felt the whole thing shudder slightly. I moaned.
“This is horrible,” Chris said in a tense monotone. “This really sucks. I don’t like this.”
“Me neither.”
“Fuck.” We fell silent again as the ferris wheel swept us down and around, up again, and over. Ch
ris was dead silent and stiff beside me. We finished the ride without speaking, and when our seat stopped at the bottom, I rose and almost collapsed. My legs felt like jelly and my mouth hurt from frowning.
“Hey, aren’t you from Ripsawdomy?” the guy running the ride asked as we climbed off.
Chris scowled. “Yeah. Thanks for the ride, bro.”
“Rock on!” the guy said, flashing the horns as we passed him. Chris buried his hands in his pockets, striding away, and I broke into my little trot to keep up. Romantic, right?
xXx
Chris won me an orange sea horse that felt like it was stuffed with tin foil at the water-pistol-balloon game, and we got some cotton candy and hot dogs. It was fun, but Chris was really quiet. I wondered if it was because the ride had bothered him, or if he was thinking about his ex, or what.
When we were finished at the fair, it was twilight, and Chris suggested we walk along the beach. We took off our shoes and walked along the shore, the water lapping at our toes.
“I’ve never been to a beach like this before,” I said.
“Really?”
“Yeah, never. Florida’s just a place you read about in a magazine, or see on TV,” I said. “Back where I’m from, right now, it’s cold. It’s autumn. The leaves are changing colour, people are wearing sweaters.”
“Weird,” he said.
I felt like I was talking too much, so we walked on in silence. He seemed so pensive. I wasn’t sure if I should keep talking or be quiet or what. He seemed perfectly comfortable with the silence, so I decided just to enjoy the moment and the ocean and the sunset, and listen to the gentle wash of the waves and the cry of the seagulls and leave him to his quiet thoughts.
“I’d love to get some weed,” he said.
“Oh,” I said.
“You smoke weed?”
“Uh, not really. Not really my thing.”
“I love to get high, play my acoustic, and just really feel music,” he said softly.
I looked up at him sideways to see if he was joking. He very clearly wasn’t, and I tried to put aside my cynical mind and just accept what he’d said. All of a sudden he stopped and turned to face me. I looked up at him and he looked down at me with that gentle, slightly perplexed expression and those beautiful blue eyes.
“I really like you, Rachel,” he said softly.
Because he was so tall, it took him a long time to slowly lean down to my face and I had time to decide I would dismiss what he’d said about the weed and the acoustic. He kissed me on the lips, and I was so nervous and not sure how I felt about it, but I tried to kiss him back and hoped I came across as being calm and cool instead of the bag of fluttering nerves I felt like. He straightened back up again and took my hands. “I think you should come back to my hotel tonight,” he said.
“No,” I said immediately, and then cleared my throat and started again. “Chris, I mean, I really like you too. I just, I don’t think that would be a good idea. I mean not right now. Not yet. I’m just, ah, I guess I’m just not ready for that.” I was babbling, and the fact that we’d kissed was giving me this weird, overwhelming feeling of intimacy with him and I felt myself yearning to tell him what had happened, what had happened to me and Fern, because he would understand, and he would care, and he would hate it, and he would want revenge — he would understand everything. Hot tears prickled in my eyes; I was desperate to tell him what they had done to us.
“I understand,” he said, gazing at me, not noticing that I was almost crying. “I respect that. I hope I didn’t offend you by asking.”
“No,” I whispered.
He looked out over the ocean, his hair gently blowing. I wanted to reach up and touch it, but he was too tall. It would’ve been awkward. “You’re really special, Rachel. Really beautiful. I want us to get to know each other. And we can take things as slow as you want.”
I didn’t point out that we lived on opposite sides of the continent and that our tour would end in just a few more weeks. I was content to just stand there, holding his hand, looking out over the ocean. It really was a nice moment, one of those ones you don’t forget.
FORTY-EIGHT
Fern was back. She was always smiling, she stayed up and watched movies on the bus and laughed and ate a lot. I hadn’t noticed how fucking skeletal she’d become until she started eating normally again, wanting to share ice cream with me. Onstage she was totally psychotic, playing with more energy than ever, taking on this amazing persona and leaping and darting around, almost manic. She was close with Edgar again as well, and suggested that we start working on new music. She became the life of the party on our bus, and more than once I caught that little moron Timmy staring at her with a stupid grin on his face.
As the next two weeks passed, things with Chris sort of developed into a routine. We’d smoke together outside the buses, we’d watch each other perform (I still tried to do it discreetly), and sometimes we’d go for a short walk after the show and hold hands. The guys in his band started being friendly to me, except for the grizzly old grey-haired Chick, who just seemed completely disinterested in everything to do with our band and breezed around backstage as if he had important places to be.
We even kissed a few more times. He seemed happy with the little routine, and I have to admit I was sort of keeping an eye out to see if he was going to mess around with anyone. Often I’d see Chick in the company of some (much younger) girls backstage, or some of the other guys with their arms around girls, but never Chris. He was always just in the background or joking with his bandmates or drunk or whatever. He didn’t talk much when we hung out, and I didn’t feel as though I was getting to know him any better, but I figured time would tell. We’d have to figure something out when the tour ended, anyway.
And so we continued. I’d watch Marie-Lise walk her little dog — she’d started smiling more at me and Fern, but she and the Gurgol guys stayed on their bus, whereas the Ripsawdomy guys were usually backstage, ready to have drinks and chill out. Socks and Edgar hung out with them a bunch. I gathered that Gurgol were all vegan and into meditation and didn’t drink. They’d hang out with Ripsawdomy sometimes, as they were all old friends, and everyone respected the fact that they were doing this tour their own way. I was bummed out that it didn’t seem like Marie-Lise was interested in being friends. I’d envisioned somehow that we’d bond. She was still absolutely amazing onstage, but she really would disappear at the end of the night.
I guess some bands want to party all night, some bands want to keep to themselves, some bands want to do drugs, some bands want to avoid meat and dairy. Colostomy Hag was always right in the middle. We were social, but not insane. We liked to get our sleep, but we’d hang out. Socks, Edgar, and lately Fern were always up to having a few beers and joking around in the dressing rooms. Toad was definitely up for partying. I was a bit more withdrawn than all of them. I wasn’t into drinking, and besides, I would usually go off with Chris to hold hands.
xXx
The tour moved into Louisiana, and we had a day off in New Orleans. Ripsawdomy had gone on to Baton Rouge for the off day, because their drummer had family there, so I wasn’t going to see Chris. Which was fine. Our bus was parked behind a hotel near downtown. Toad, Socks, Edgar, and Timmy decided to walk down Bourbon Street to find cheap alcohol, and Fern and I wanted to explore the less booze-soaked parts of the city.
“Now look — and I mean it — don’t go anywhere stupid,” Toad said. “You stay on the main streets. There are some really ugly parts of this city, you know what I mean? You stay where there’s people, on the main streets. You don’t take chances.”
It sounded pretty melodramatic, but as Fern and I walked away from the downtown area, I could see what he meant. Some of the area was scarily vacant and creepy. Buildings sat empty; giant abandoned houses were overgrown with weeds and tall grass, their windows smashed out. As we walked past, I thought I co
uld feel eyes following us, and my skin crawled.
There were some beautiful buildings. Fern took a lot of pictures, both of destroyed and preserved architecture. We’d look down side roads as we wandered, seeing shady characters hanging around, so we kept moving. The sun beat down hard on our shoulders.
We found the large, walled-in graveyard where the Voodoo Queen, Marie Laveau, was buried. We opened the rusty gate, and it screeched loudly, making us pause, but we entered. It was like a miniature city, with rows of small cobbled walkways leading along blocks of vaults and crypts. There were beautiful statues, crumbling angels, crosses, and obelisks. We walked slowly, reading names and dates. A lot of them were illegible. We walked in silence, looking for the Voodoo Queen’s grave.
“I have to pee,” Fern said.
“Okay, let’s go.”
“No, I want to find the grave. I’ll just go back around the corner into those bushes and we’ll keep moving.”
“Fern!” I was shocked. “You can’t pee in a graveyard!”
“It’s not like I’m going to just piss on someone’s grave,” she said, and laughed. “I’ll just go in the bushes. Don’t worry. No one here will mind anyway. They’re dead, right?”
“I guess.”
“Wait here.” She started moving back along the path. “Keep your eyes open in case someone comes along.”
She disappeared into a thicket of bushes beside one of the nearby vaults, and I looked around. It hadn’t occurred to me that there might be someone else in the graveyard. We hadn’t encountered anyone, but there could easily be someone else wandering through this stone maze. The stones and crypts were too tall to see over. I shivered.
The bushes where Fern had disappeared rustled violently, and I heard her voice, muffled at first, then rising to a shout. I threw myself towards the sound, scratching myself on the thorny branches to reach her.
In the seclusion of the little thicket, the sun twinkled through the leaves to dapple Fern in moving light. It was cool and shady here, quite nice, really, but sweat prickled my skin. She stared down at a guy.