Punk and Zen

by JD Glass

  “Están en esa mesa.” They’re at that table, someone said, and over came two waiters carrying a small tray table and a cart.

  “Coca-Cola, señorita?” one asked, pouring out a bottle for me as the other set the table down. Coke. Oh how awesome. And that tray, that smelled very much like…yes. Two cheeseburgers, with fries. Oh, Graham, I thought, you’re the best—fucking funny—but the best.

  “Eat with me,” I offered, “heavy conversation after. I don’t think well when I’m hungry.”

  “I suspect you probably think too well, either way.”

  What I recognized as mirth tugged at the corner of her mouth, and I arched an eyebrow at her and shrugged as I reached for my plate.

  We ate in a companionable, civilized silence, quite a bit different from our last dinner together or our first.

  “Do you remember Port Marseille?” Candace asked me with a small smile.

  The waiters had turned on one of the torch lights that lined the edge of the courtyard so we were no longer in complete darkness. However, outside of that circle, you could see the star field again.

  “It’s not something I’ll forget,” I told her with a smile. “It was a beautiful summer night.”

  I have to admit that, at some point, I asked her if she’d felt the least bit bad about sleeping with someone her girlfriend had felt so strongly about, especially since she was “on a mission,” I’d teased gently.

  “Guilt is such a funny human construct,” she answered seriously. “Should I feel guilty because a gorgeously dynamic young woman finds me attractive? Or because she responds to my interest?”

  I thought about that. I guess, well, I wouldn’t either, would I?

  But Candace had more to say. “You carry a wall that says ‘don’t come near me,’ and it’s part of what makes you so damnably sexy. You’re exceedingly generous with everything but yourself—you keep that for you—and for her.”

  Candace stood. “You mentioned before that I did my research thoroughly,” she began.

  I stood, too. “Look, I’m sorry I said that. It was completely uncalled for,” I apologized and touched her arm.

  “No, no, you were right. When I do something, I see it through.” She smiled at me. “And honestly, Nina, you made it very enjoyable. I wanted to know what it was about you that could absolutely do that to someone, why she ABC carried you in her heart like some carry those prayer beads.”

  “What did you find out?” I asked quietly.

  She touched the charms that hung on my neck. “That you value life,” she said as she touched the ankh, “that you value truth,” she said and ran her fingers down the little blade under my throat. She looked into my eyes. “They’re inseparable for you—and you are more than her match.”

  I was surprised when she lightly touched my cheek. “I was sending her to New York to find you—accidentally on purpose. I didn’t tell her who you were because I didn’t know if anyone could tame you.” She moved her fingers from my face to my forehead, brushing my hair back. “I didn’t know you were waiting for her.”

  I smiled at that because she was right—whether I knew it or not at the time, I had been waiting for my Samantha. “I was,” I said. “I didn’t know it, though.”

  Her hand moved from my hair to my shoulder. “I’m sorry…about what happened between you and Francesca,” she said softly as she applied sympathetic pressure to the muscle under her fingertips.

  “Are you?” I asked, stunned at the unexpected sting I felt in my eyes as my throat went tight.

  “You’ve never really, ah, loved someone before, have you?” Candace asked delicately.

  She could have been fishing, trying to find out how I’d felt about her maybe, or asking about how I might have felt about anyone, Trace included, since Candace had sort of met her that one night. But that’s not what she was really asking. I knew what she really meant, so I looked Candace in the eyes and took that question right on the chin.

  “No, I hadn’t,” I answered with simple strength. I would never be ashamed of loving my lion.

  Candace dropped her eyes and took a breath before she spoke again. “A part of you will always be hers,” and she touched the ankh on my neck, “just like a part of Samantha is Annie to me.”

  I shook my head, because at that moment, it felt like I had nothing. “That’s just…that’s just fucking great,” I said finally. “What’s mine, then?”

  Candace grazed my chin with her fingertips. “Samantha. Samantha, whole and free. You knew her when she was happy, her potential spread out before her, part of her, before she…” Candace sighed, but wouldn’t finish that thought. “I only ever got to see glimpses of that, and only on those rare occasions when she spoke about the past,” she said instead, “when she spoke about you.”

  She leaned in and kissed my cheek. “I envy you, Nina,” she said softly in my ear and put her arms around me.

  I hugged her back, because I knew that despite what she said she did or didn’t feel, what she didn’t say was the important thing—the thing I’d known earlier. She loved Samantha, she loved her enough to see her happy, loved her enough to let her go, and like it or not, I was the one Samantha had gone to.

  But still, there was one thing I had to know, after all that was said this evening. “Candace, everything between us…was it all just research?” I asked gently. I’d really liked her then, and honestly, I still did. I was sort of hoping that we could, I don’t know, be friends, or something like that. I know that sounds weird, but that’s how I felt—I don’t know why. And I needed to know, needed to know if I’d really and truly been that wrong, that mistaken.

  “No, of course not.” Candace laughed and squeezed me. “I told you, you’re very easy to fall in love with.” She kissed my cheek, then pulled back to look at me as we let go of one another.

  “Besides, as I told Annie,” she tweaked my nose, “I’ve grown rather fond of you.” Her teeth and eyes gleamed in the torchlight.

  “I’d grown rather fond of you, too,” I told her. I kissed her cheek. “Thanks for being honest, or something like it.”

  We really didn’t have much left to say, so we walked back into the lobby together and said good night. Just before I was about to leave, a question occurred to me as I caught myself about to yawn.

  “Hey, Candace?” I called to her back.

  “Yes?”

  “Why are you in Barcelona?” The real question was why didn’t I ask that before, but I think I was so surprised to see her and so wired out from the show, my brain had fogged. Man, though, I needed to get some sleep if I was missing things like that.

  “Two things, really,” she said, her eyes glinting with humor.

  I arched an eyebrow, waiting.

  “I’m on holiday—and I love Spain,” she said first.

  “And…?” I prompted.

  “I’ve been following your tour. I wanted to see you.” She seemed pleased with herself.

  Oh. Okay. I sensed something behind that, but I was too tired to really pursue it further at the moment. In truth, I would eventually find out much later.

  “Will I see you again?” I asked, ABC this time not able to swallow my yawn.

  “Go get some sleep,” Candace said kindly. “You’ll see me again sooner than you think.”

  I grinned. Okay, I could buy that. This time, we said good night and I really went back to my room, where Stephie slept with a spoon in her hand and Jerkster slept in the chair, comic books scattered on the floor. My comic books, to be precise. Whatever. We could take care of that in the morning.

  ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

  Ibiza as a party town was like the Red Spot as a country. Everywhere, everything, was hot—the weather, the music, the people, the scenes—everything. It was whiplash city: you couldn’t help but snap your head constantly at the parade of outrageously beautiful people and scenes.

  We had rooms in a resort—an actual apartment with a little kitchen, two bedrooms, and a pullout couch. Jerkster wanted
the sofa because he could watch TV all night. That was totally fine with me and Steph, because each room also had its own bath—awesome! We had time to nap and bathe before hitting the stage. That…was heavenly.

  I had enough time to go for dinner with Graham, and during our meal, Graham told me the tour would extend. After Madrid, we’d return to London after revisiting Paris, marking the end of our original contract, and we’d do a last London show before a week’s break—the time necessary for us to get the new contracts reviewed and signed. He wanted to go back to Germany, head to Austria, jump to Italy, and then…Tokyo.

  “They’re gonna love what we’re doing there,” he enthused. “It’s a huge market.”

  I considered. “Why not tell the whole band?” I asked him. “Why speak with me?”

  Graham looked at me as if I’d dropped my clues somewhere. “Nina, you’re the show. You write the music, you figure out the arrangements—including the harmonies. Nothing happens without you.”

  His perception of the whole thing shocked me—I didn’t see it that way at all. We were a team, we all did our jobs. That’s what it was all about, to me anyway.

  “I’ll talk with Stephie and Jerkster—let’s all grab lunch together tomorrow, and you can explain it all then?”

  Graham nodded thoughtfully. “Sure, we can do that. Noonish then, here?”

  “Sure,” I agreed, “that works.”

  We finished the rest of our meal chitchatting about the different places we’d played and comparing sound from one venue to another.

  When I went back to our room preshow, I caught Stephie and Jerkster up on everything Graham had told me, and that we’d have lunch together the next day to figure it all out.

  “Does he need to know tomorrow?” Stephie asked.

  “I don’t think so. We’ve got time to figure things out, why?” I asked her.

  Stephie shrugged and shook her head. “No reason, just wondering.”

  “Hey, well, I’m signing the dotted line—I’m playing,” Jerkster said enthusiastically.

  I totally understood. I just figured we should know what we were getting ourselves into first and said so.

  Jerkster nodded judiciously. “Yeah, you’re right. I’ll call my mom tomorrow. She does that law stuff, she can help us out.”

  “Hey, cool,” I said, and dropped it from there—it was time to get going.

  The show itself went great, and I did another set with the Microwaves afterward as well. This time, Jerkster and Stephie stayed to watch, and it was so cool, because Graham had them come up to do the encore and it was, again, the ever-classic “Could You Be Loved.” That’s just such a rockin’ tune…

  When the show was over and we were all done hugging each other, I grabbed my guitar and walked backstage. I was still coming down from the very real stage high and rapidly falling into the sense of disappointment that had been building over the last two days. I’d heard nothing from Samantha—and I’d made sure to leave messages.

  I walked back to our room. Everyone was going out, but for once, I didn’t want to. I was going to watch some television, maybe rent a movie. I just wanted to be alone, you know? Besides, I hadn’t had time to read lately; maybe I could read a few comics. Oh, hell, maybe there was an old X-Men or something somewhere I could pick through, take me to someplace different, and after, I’d work on some music. It was time to at least run through the basics, take my guitar apart, make sure everything was how it needed to be.

  That was my plan, anyway, as I walked the corridor. As I approached our door, I noticed someone had left us flowers. “Nice,” I thought as I slid my key card out of my back pocket. I opened the door and dropped my guitar off inside, then came back out for the blooms: irises and tiger lilies. They made me think of Samantha and Fran as I searched for a card, the irises for the amazing color of my Sammy’s eyes and the tiger lilies for Fran’s fieriness.

  I found a vase under the sink in the kitchenette, and as I transferred them from the paper they’d been wrapped in, the card dropped out from the stems.

  “Nina,” it read, “this is a poor substitute for being there, I know. I will see you as soon as I can.” It had a lovely single S beneath it.

  I stared at it for a moment and drew the S with my finger. I flipped the card over, I don’t know why. There was nothing, no actual information, time frame, phone number, anything. It was blank, as it should be.

  Yep. Fine. I was staying in. Well, I might as well get my night started, right? I grabbed my guitar and sat down on the sofa to play.

  I spent the next few days getting some sun at the beach with Stephie and Jerkster and enjoying the hottest nightclubs I had ever been to—before or since. There’s no real way of describing it.

  And then? We were back on the road. I took a single iris and a single tiger lily and pressed them in the back of a book so they could dry before we left, and made a bunch of phone calls to let everyone know where we would be. This time, I made sure to leave the label information on Fran’s voice mail as well as Samantha’s, just in case.

  Everywhere we went as a band, we tried to take in some music—from the bars and the bands that played in them if we had free time, from the radio, from TV—and there was the whisper of a hot band called Loose Dogs and their lead singer/bassist, Ann R Key. Jerkster picked up their CD and we listened to it. The people were right—the music was hot, and Stephie and I could definitely hear what Jerkster loved about them. The bassist was phenomenal.

  “I wonder why they didn’t call themselves Cry Havoc, or something like that,” I mused aloud. I looked up to find Stephie, who sat across from me, and Jerkster, who sat next to me, staring as if I’d dropped my mind off the train as we sped along the continent.

  “You know, ‘cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war’?” I asked as they kept staring. “No?” I shook my head lightly.

  “No,” Stephie shook her head, “that’s why you write the lyrics, Nina,” she said, smiling at me, “because you know shit like that.”

  Considering that the lyrics we had consisted of things like “we don’t have cable anymore—someone threw the little box on the floor. The cat bit the wires and fried all night—Man it was terrible! But it gave light,” FN (“Cable No!”—Adam’s Rib), I wasn’t writing Shakespeare, so I laughed. “Whatever works,” I answered, “whatever works.”

  Jerkster shifted in his seat and pulled the little boom box we carried around from under his seat. We kept it there so we could listen to our performances, review and dissect them, or, sometimes, just relax, listening to CDs we picked up wherever we went.

  “Hey, let’s listen to their album again?” he suggested hopefully, waving the jewel case in the air.

  We all agreed, and Jerkster carefully balanced the player on top of the pile of stuff between our facing seats, then with a gentleness that would have surprised anyone who didn’t know him, he put the disc in. I settled back and shut my eyes as he hit Play.

  Their music did something for me, something very special, because it had the same sort of stirring beat that the Sisters of Mercy had, but added to it was a heavy sensuality coupled with a desolation that I responded to, in a very visceral way. I listened to the disc while we rode on yet another train, my eyes closed and feet stretched over our equipment. One particular track stood out for me.

  As the lyrics and the music flooded through my brain, the unbidden image of my lion above me, before me, shifted, shimmered, became diamond-bright eyes and the sensuous curve of a deadly smile, deadly because it cut right through me. So real was the sense of imminent heat that I felt my body stretch and shift. Samantha. I missed her.

  I sat up, banishing the too-real picture from my head, but it did nothing for the heavy throb in my chest. I caught my breath and let it out slowly, but the hammering didn’t stop either. I ran my hands through my hair, tried to get my bearings, while Stephie and Jerkster stared at me with concerned puzzlement. Stephie clicked off the boom box.

  “What’s the name of that s
ong?” I asked Jerkster.

  He grabbed the jewel case he’d tucked next to him and inspected it.

  “Um, track four, track four,” he muttered as he searched. “Oh, track four!” he exclaimed triumphantly, “it’s called ‘The Kiss.’ The bassist is singing lead on this one.”

  I bought my own copy.

  ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

  Bizarre Love Triangle

  Now I’m standing here all by myself—I take the world from my shoulder

  Put my heart on the highest shelf and make my world a little colder

  Make my heart a little colder

  Make my love a little colder

  “Colder”—Life Underwater

  ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

  By the time we returned to London, Stephie was done, and it was a very ABC sad good-bye that led to panic—we had to rehearse the set with me singing lead. This all went well until we arrived in Vienna where a combination of alcohol, bad communication, and hysteria resulted in Jerkster’s wrist getting broken—he and the wrist got sent home.

  I could have packed it in, too, but I wasn’t ready to go back broken, you know? Besides, my new contract was still good. Maybe I could do something different, my own thing—something, anyway.

  I lit out for Madrid and landed a job as a DJ at La Santa, a club we’d played. What the hell, Spain had been the last place I’d said I’d meet Samantha—not that I’d thought that would happen. I’d heard nothing—absolutely nada.

  No, I didn’t call Candace. That would have been too weird.

  Ah, fuck it. I lived in a little apartment on the roof of the building and was supplied with the things that mattered: a studio in the club that the owners, Carlos and Enrique, let me use to record in during the day, a rooftop pool to ease tension and build my tan—the first one I’d had in years—and time, free time to work on music, my music.

  I celebrated my “new life” the way I did most major changes—I cut my hair. Short on the back and sides, with long spikes on top. I dyed the whole thing bright cherry red. What the hell, right?

  I’d stopped looking, stopped caring, about anything, really. I’d given up trying to get in touch, too. No one called anyway, except for Graham and Enzo, the contact at Rude, and it wasn’t as if I hadn’t put the information out there. Even Dee Dee knew how to get in touch with me, and we spoke once every three weeks or so. She kept threatening to kidnap me back to New York, and I kept telling her she’d never want to leave Spain once she got there.