You Say Goodbye

by Keith Steinbaum

  “We’re having a talent show the last Saturday in July. I need someone to play the guitar for the kids who are going to sing.”

  Sean’s eyes grew wide for a moment before shutting closed as he shook his head back and forth. “No way!” he cried out. “You want me to play corny-ass songs for nervous little kids?” Shaking his head, he reached for the door. “Give me a fucking break.”

  “You’re looking at it all wrong, Sean,” Elliot said, a pleading tone to his voice. “You’d be doing a good deed, something impactful for these poor kids, just like you are now with that sick girl. And who knows? Maybe she’d like to come to the show. I bet she’d love it, watching her teacher play the guitar.”

  Sean glared at Elliot. “Don’t call that playing, all right? It’s not even close.”

  “Well, compared to what you used to do, of course it’s not the same. I didn’t mean to imply--”

  “But I’ll give you this,” Sean said, his voice lower, “I know how much your place meant to Merissa, so I’ll think about it.”

  Elliot smiled and patted Sean on the shoulder. “That’s wonderful,” he exclaimed. “I’ll only need you for that final week. A little practice time with the kids and then the show. That’s it!”

  Sean wagged his finger at Elliot. “I’m still not agreeing to anything, understand?”

  “I understand,” Elliot replied. “We still have some time, but all I ask is that you let me know sooner rather than later. It may not be a rock concert, but there’s still a lot we have to plan for.”

  Across the street, Sean noticed a cop writing out a ticket, leading him to think of Detective Maldonado and his list of suspects. Ridiculous as it seemed considering the man’s homosexuality, why not take advantage of the moment to mark someone else off the list? Now it’s my turn to ask you a question,” he said.

  Elliot gave a slight tilt of his head.

  Sean paused, gathering his thoughts for a lie that required a convincing storyline. “According to you, I look better, so thank you,” he said. “But I’ve been told that part of my healing process is to picture the location of Merissa’s close friends the night of her murder. It’s supposed to help remind me that their normal lives were also affected, that it wasn’t just me. One of our salesmen said he was at a bar with some friends. The GM said he was helping his kid with her homework.” Attempting to show his best unassuming demeanor, he added, “So, if you don’t mind me asking...”

  Elliot bit his upper lip and stared at Sean, his eyes tightening and blinking in rapid succession. “You mentioned the Lakers earlier, so it’s a sad coincidence that you’re asking me this question. Martin--my partner--is a big basketball fan and was given a couple of tickets for the Lakers game that night. About an hour before we were supposed to leave, I got a call from a board member, asking what time I’d be arriving at a charity affair I thought was the next night. It was sponsored by one of our major donors and there was no way I couldn’t attend--not if I didn’t want to jeopardize seeing another check from him again.”

  Sean stroked his goatee and nodded in silent acknowledgment. A quiet, sarcastic chuckle followed. “I imagine Martin wasn’t too happy about missing the game.”

  “Oh!” Elliot exclaimed, raising his right hand as if taking an oath. “I insisted he go to the game anyway.” His expression changed in an instant as he looked down on the blacktop, somewhere in the space between the two of them. “Who would have thought?” he asked, shaking his head in a solemn back-and-forth manner. With a moist sheen in his eyes, he pinched the tip of his nose and held his hand there for several moments before dropping his arm back to his side. “Guess there’s nothing more to say about it.” Taking a deep, visible breath, he rubbed his right palm across his right eye. “Please think about doing the show, okay?” Reaching into his pocket, Elliot removed a business card from a small gold case. “Here’s how to reach me.”

  On the way home, Sean dug his nails into the leather passenger seat, disgusted with himself for utilizing the same phony excuse to accommodate Maldonado’s request.

  “Jesus,” he whispered. “My healing process? How ’bout a lobotomy? That might help my healing process.”

  Carlos, Dino, and Adam remained the last on Maldonado’s original list, but after overhearing Carlos’s conversation with Tom about visiting his family in Guatemala during the week of Merissa’s murder, the detective had told him he’d get confirmation from the airlines and to just finish up with Dino and Adam.

  Dino and Adam: two suspects who made no sense whatsoever. Dino’s current leave of absence from the hair salon prevented Sean from speaking to him now, but he anticipated seeing Adam at the next bowling night. When Roger informed him about the woman’s groping allegation, the claim had seemed preposterous. Picturing that straight, clean-cut guy as a closet pervert, or even worse, didn’t compute. Sean expected to encounter the same empty feeling with Adam as with the others--the proverbial dog barking up the wrong Beatles’ tree.

  Chapter 13

  When the final horn sounded, Kayleigh rose from the couch, her shoulders slumped and her head lowered. Her Lakers jersey seemed to hang like a purple and gold curtain, a closing curtain, draping much of her frail body.

  “It’s just the first game, honey,” her father said. “Remember, you have to win four of them.”

  “Yeah, I know,” she said, her voice sounding pained. “But we gotta make more baskets. We only scored eighty-eight points!”

  “The Celtics play really good defense,” Sean said, “but you’re right. The Lakers need to shoot a lot better.”

  “Do you think Coby will ever play, Daddy?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so, Kayleigh,” he answered. “When it comes to playing for the championship, only the top twelve are going to suit up.” He smiled. “You know the way it is. Coby is the thirteenth Laker.”

  “And I’m the fourteenth!” she trumpeted.

  “And don’t you forget it!” her father cheered.

  Sean rose to his feet to say his goodbyes, but Kayleigh approached him before he uttered a word, standing at his feet and looking up.

  “Can I show you my travel pictures now, Mr. Music?”

  He gazed down at the circular, pallid face, housing one and three-quarters eyes of hopefulness. Her cracked, thin lips curled into a slight, encouraging smile.

  “Lead the way,” he answered.

  The first object capturing his attention didn’t involve the many wall photos but, rather, the table by her bed, with several prescription bottles, a large container of antibacterial soap, and a green and yellow box that read “disposable vomit bags” lined up.

  “Look!” she shouted, rushing up to the wall on his right. “Here’s my newest one. It’s Cinderella’s Castle at Disney World.” She absorbed the photo in silence as her eyes gazed in wonder. “Isn’t it beautiful?” Kayleigh stared a few moments longer before directing Sean to a photograph of Mount Rushmore. “I bet you know what that is,” she said. “Everybody does! How could somebody do that to a mountain? Isn’t it amazing?”

  Changing direction as if the floor tilted back and forth, Kayleigh continued to veer toward one side of the room and then the other, twice standing on her bed and pointing to various square, round, multiple-sized pictures with a joie de vivre that seemed alien to him. A diminishing amount of wall space remained from the bumper-to-bumper traffic jam of worldwide photos taped alongside one another. Her small bedroom-tour exuberance never waned as she showed off her pictures of the Egyptian pyramids, the Grand Canyon, the Eiffel Tower, a Hawaiian sunset, the Great Wall of China, a German castle overlooking the Rhine, the snow-covered Alps with a village below, an ornate Thai temple, and the Statue of Liberty, among a number of others.

  “My daddy says if you want to see the Statue of Liberty up close you have to go on a boat.” Her face contracted into a wrinkled grimace. “I don’t want to get seasick.”

  “I don’t think you will,” Sean said. “It’s an easy boat ride.”

&n
bsp; “Really?” she asked, her tone buoyant.

  “Really.”

  Kayleigh breathed an exaggerated sigh of relief. “I hate throwing up.” Her solemn tone seemed a complete disconnect from the previous minute. “Like after my treatments.”

  Sean studied her expression as a fleeting look of sadness passed over like a dark cloud blowing across the sun. “It looks like you’ve got a lot of adventures ahead of you,” he said, turning back to scan the walls.

  “I’ve had a lot of ’em already.”

  “You have?”

  “Uh-huh,” she said, nodding up and down, up and down, as if her head connected to a spring. “I can go wherever I want to.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I just look at a picture and pretend I’m there,” she explained. “I’ll show you.”

  Kayleigh examined the various pictures on the walls until her gaze zeroed in on a poster of a lush mountain forest parted to expose a towering waterfall hurtling down into a crystal blue lake far below. He watched as she hurried over and stood with her eyes closed and an ear pressed against the paper.

  “Close your eyes, Mr. Music,” she told him. “Can you hear how loud the water is?”

  Sean gazed for a moment at the little dreamer in front of him before shutting his eyes as she requested. “Yep,” he told her. “I can hear it now.”

  Kayleigh turned to face the poster with her eyes still closed. She placed both hands on her face, caressing and stroking her cheeks. “I can feel the mist on my skin. It’s cold and wet, but it feels good.” She stood silent for several seconds before continuing. “And now I feel the branches and leaves around me,” she said, extending her arms to the side. “Everything is so green and pretty!” She started moving her hands back and forth, as if petting a dog. “Now I’m feeling how slippery the rocks are.”

  Sean watched Kayleigh inhale, her delicate, bony shoulders rising several inches in a momentary holding pattern before dropping down.

  “Smell how clean the air is.” With a sudden upward motion, Kayleigh tilted her head back, her eyes remaining closed. “Look, Mr. Music!” she cried, pointing at something only she could observe. “See that? There’s a big, colorful butterfly above you.”

  Sean found himself staring at the blank ceiling.

  “It’s got orange and purple wings with black stripes and yellow spots. Isn’t it beautiful?”

  Sean studied Kayleigh, contemplating the difference between her immense imagination and the straitjacket limitations inhibiting his own.

  As she stood transfixed in front of the waterfall, a young girl immersed in the vibrant hues of belief and transported on the winds of hope and infinite expectation, he realized that his dreams, relegated to the safety of the harbor, remained cautious in scope and confined by life experience.

  He felt a simultaneous sensation of being an old man and a child--a limbo-like state of knowing too much and too little. Several lines from his song, “Tug of War” seemed appropriate, even biographical, at that moment.

  Innocence of youth

  Innocence of truth

  Is it better knowing so much more?

  The why’s, the how’s, the reasons for?

  Sometimes yes, sometimes no

  Back and forth I go

  Just like a tug of war

  The reality seemed obvious. Kayleigh’s strength and determination to fight her battle and live life to the fullest far outweighed his own. He didn’t want to die, of course, but he waited three weeks to make the appointment for a CAT-scan, fearful to face the future over what lay ahead when...if...that test scheduled for next week revealed the truth he’d brought upon himself. The certain cigarette truth.

  Chapter 14

  Entering Adam’s driveway, Sean struggled to control the double-trouble despondency blanketing his thoughts. His possible cancer prognosis constituted a relentless whiplashing to his focus and sense of normalcy, but the irritating call he’d received that afternoon from his exasperated brother, telling Sean to “get off his high horse” and “accept the damn offer already” compounded his problems. “The deadline for signing the paperwork is almost up,” he told him. David went on to explain the pressure he faced at the firm, that no one had anticipated a problem after learning of the sibling relationship, but now they’ve started asking questions about the delay.

  “So answer me this,” he said. “How do you think it will make me look if I have to tell our new money-making, great-for-the-firm client that we can’t use the jingle they want because the owner of the song, my own damn brother, won’t agree to it?” Attempting to lighten the mood, he wound up making Sean feel worse by uttering a shard-of-glass comment penetrating his sensibilities.

  “Everybody’s looking forward to the cleanser hitting the American market in August,” he explained, “and as the company has personally told me, ‘Looking Glass’ will help ensure that ‘windows across the USA get cleaned the Wally Way!’”

  David’s shameless recitation of the cleanser’s insipid slogan disgusted him, but he now recognized the burden placed on his brother. His partners at the firm figured the jingle part of the deal was a case-closed, slam-dunk situation, but what did those assholes know, or care, about maintaining one’s integrity? They were lawyers!

  David reminded Sean again about needing the extra money, capping the conversation off with a clichéd lecture about second chances. He reiterated his argument about major artists selling their songs to sell products, but Sean believed that to be an asinine line of reasoning. Guys like Dylan, or Seger, or Townsend, had a shitload of hits to be remembered by: one song-turned-jingle didn’t affect them or their reputation.

  David’s entire focus centered on Sean’s future earnings, but “Looking Glass” remained his one and only success, his lone badge of honor as a serious artist. In return for the money, he’d sacrifice his self-esteem and end up a corporate stooge.

  Sean honked twice and waited. By a stroke of luck, Adam had called him at work the day before, asking for a ride to the bowling center. The situation presented the perfect opportunity to ask the same painful, prickly question he’d presented to the others on Maldonado’s list.

  “Thanks for picking me up, Sean,” Adam said, easing himself into the seat. “When I found out Nancy needed my car tonight, I figured I’d be stuck at home.” Locking in his seat belt, he added, “I owe you one.”

  “No, you don’t,” Sean replied. “Now we have a chance to catch up and see what’s new.”

  Adam uttered a forced, brief laugh. “What’s new?” he echoed. “You know what happened to me, right? Why I’m not at the Santa Monica dealership anymore?”

  “Yeah, I heard.” Glancing to his right, Sean shook his head. “Freakin’ unbelievable.”

  “I’m sure God has a plan, but I still can’t understand why that woman accused me of touching her like that,” Adam said.

  Sean shrugged. “Who knows?”

  “I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but she must have been six feet tall, with a chest out to here,” Adam said, holding his arms out and his hands turned inward for emphasis. “Was it my fault she couldn’t unhook her shoulder strap? I was only trying to help, but there wasn’t much room to reach around. I guess I brushed up against her, and she went ballistic.”

  “I’ll talk with my father if you want me to,” Sean said. “If I explain what happened, maybe he’ll bring you back.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t want to stir the pot any more than I have already.” Crossing his chest, he added, “Thank God, I still have a job.”

  From the moment Sean had met Adam at the dealership, he’d reminded him of a roadie he’d befriended in his touring days. Both men stood an inch or two under six feet, with long necks and skinny physiques, and their ears, not much larger than poker chips, stuck out like a human version of Mr. Potato Head. Each combed their thinning red hair in a slight downward angle from left to right in a failed attempt to cover up their widening foreheads, pale and lineless like the rest o
f their face, which seemed to accentuate the deep blue of their eyes.

  Although they both resembled a nerdy high school teacher whose students made fun of him behind his back as he wrote math equations on the blackboard, that was where the similarities ended.

  Whereas Sean scored much of his weed and blow on the road from Red, the band’s nickname for the roadie, Adam’s idea of rebelliousness centered on such risky behavior as ordering a fattening dessert at lunch without his wife’s knowledge, or stepping off the curb to cross the street before the walk sign turned green.

  “How are Eleanor and the kids?”

  “They’re great. Luke’s playing little league and starting piano lessons and Nancy’s on the cheerleading squad at high school. There’s a game tonight, so she needed my car.”

  “What about Eleanor’s car?”

  “It’s Bible study night. Every other week a church group gathers at someone’s house to discuss passages. She loves those things so it’s only right that I didn’t ask to use hers.”

  “I know you’re into your religion and everything, Adam, but you don’t appear to be as deeply involved in that stuff as she is.”

  Adam nodded several times before answering. “I believe deeply in the Lord,” he replied, “but Eleanor leads more of an active life when it comes to His teachings.”

  “So I guess you and her have found a way to work it out,” Sean said. “I mean, here you are joining your beer drinking, rowdy friends to go bowling, even bet a little money, while your wife’s at a Bible study.”

  Adam looked out through his window, gripping his thighs with each hand.

  “Eleanor doesn’t ask too many questions.”

  Sean waited for an elaboration, but none came.

  “I never really thanked you and Eleanor for your support and friendship after Merissa’s death,” he said, keeping his eyes straight ahead. “I tried to keep people away, but you guys dropped by anyway to see how I was.” He looked at Adam and patted his shoulder. “You even brought food for my dog. That was a pretty cool thing to do.”