Night Shifts Black

by Alyson Santos

  “Are you ok? You’re sure?” he asks. It’s a silly question, but I love that he asks. The way his eyes search mine as he waits for the answer he already knows. I respond by kissing him again, reaching for his jeans.

  “Ellie,” he whispers.

  I freeze. “Ellie?”

  He does, too, and we stare at each other. Our breathing is heavy. The silence is like a massive curtain settling over us, pressing us into the couch, and suddenly his weight is more than I can bear. He understands and moves away, his head buried in his hands. It’s then that I hear it, the sobs. I know now he’s probably drunk, but realize it’s the tears causing the drinking, not the other way around.

  I close the distance between us as my heart shatters and wrap my arms around him. He leans into my shoulder, crying like the neighborhood bully after another beating from his abusive father. They’re hard tears, unfamiliar, but completely wild as they push through the fortress protecting his battered soul.

  We sit like that for a long time. The tears eventually subside into an embarrassed swat at his face, and he rubs hard, as if punishing his eyes for putting on such a display. I refuse to let him be embarrassed.

  Instead of pulling away, I loop my arm through his and lean against him, gripping his hand in mine. I’m not looking at him anymore, instead staring at our reflections in the giant screen hanging on the wall across from us. I’m not letting him go. I’m not letting him face Ellie’s ghost alone.

  After another long pause, I can feel him start to relax. I run my fingers along his arm, partly out of my own fascination, but mostly to remind him I’m here, and he’s alive. I don’t need to see his face to know he’s left me to go to that other place again.

  “Her name was Elena,” he says finally, his voice still trembling a bit as it cuts through the silence.

  I don’t respond. It’s my turn to listen. But it quickly becomes clear that name is all I’m going to get. Ellie is Elena. End of story.

  I’m not surprised by the stingy gift, just disappointed. I want more than anything to be his anchor, but he doesn’t seem prepared to come into shore yet. I wonder if he’ll ever be.

  “That’s a beautiful name.”

  “She was a beautiful person.”

  I nod. “I’m sorry, Luke. Really.” I’m completely sincere but I can tell by his expression that my words don’t mean anything to him. In fact, I suddenly sense that I understand even less about his story than I thought.

  “I am, too,” he says quietly. He shakes his head. “But nothing personal, right?” he snickers, pulling away and pushing himself up from the couch. I understand his joke, a ridiculous comment to make while we are both half-naked in a hotel room. He doesn’t elaborate and moves back to the bar, draining his glass and refilling it. I instinctively want to stop him, knowing he’s doing himself no favors by hiding in expensive liquor, but it’s not my place. I will accomplish nothing by turning myself into the enemy. I have no choice but to accept him as he is at this moment.

  I reach for my sweater and pull it back over my head. He watches me quietly, and I wonder about the darkness I see suddenly seep into his features. I hold my breath when he looks away.

  “Callie, about what just happened, I’m sorry. About all of it. I shouldn’t have asked you to come here. I shouldn’t have…I just…” he doesn’t finish.

  “No one can do life completely alone. We’re not supposed to.”

  He looks at me then. I’m close, I can tell.

  I get up and join him at the bar. It’s my turn to remove the glass from his hand. I place it firmly on the table and drop the remote in his hand instead.

  “I’m free the rest of the day. Let’s watch a movie.”

  The light returns to his eyes as a slow smile spreads over his lips.

  “Really? You’re sure?”

  I nod. “One hundred percent.”

  “Comedy, ok?”

  I almost laugh. “Definitely.”

  Day Ten - Fifteen.

  Room 403 becomes our new Jemma’s Café, and breakfast club becomes more of a brunch room service. Luke is careful to keep his distance when I visit, and we both understand more and more about what happened when I first came to his room. How the vacuum created by two empty souls sucked them into each other in a moment of mutual weakness. We don’t regret the connection, just understand what it was and that it doesn’t have an impact on the present.

  We spend our days as friends now. Watching movies, chatting about safe topics, and drinking. Lots of drinking. Well, by Luke anyway. I try not to say anything as I watch him fill his glass over and over again. I’m actually amazed he functions as well as he does, given the amount of alcohol that’s probably in his bloodstream at any given moment. I know it will be my business at some point in our friendship, but we need each other right now, and I can’t bring myself to alienate him quite yet.

  “Here,” he says after about a week of my visits. “You might as well just have this. It’s not like I have anything here worth stealing anyway,” he adds with a smile.

  I roll my eyes, but my heart nearly stops when I peak inside the small, card-shaped envelope to see a key to his room. I stare up at him in shock.

  “Are you serious?”

  He shrugs. “I feel bad that you had to wait so long yesterday before I heard you knocking. Now I don’t have to roll out of bed to let you in.”

  I laugh. “I see. So this isn’t so much a statement about our friendship, but about your laziness.”

  He grins. “Basically.”

  “Business Suit Lady would lose her mind if she knew you did this.”

  “Business Suit Lady?”

  “Yeah, the Guardian of the Lobby who gives me a death stare every time I soil these grounds with my commonness.”

  Luke laughs and drops beside me on the couch.

  “You’re talking about Mara Jacobson. Yeah, she’s a piece-of-work.”

  “She’s something alright.”

  I pull my legs up under me and lean back against the armrest to face him. “Really, though. Thank you. I promise I won’t abuse the privilege. You tell me when you don’t want me to come and I won’t.”

  Luke waves his hand. “Nah, you’d be invited to all my wild parties anyway.”

  “Oh? What about the ones I want to host here?”

  “Will there be pancakes and toast?”

  “Absolutely. And all the orange marmalade you can handle.”

  “Whoa. Let’s not get crazy now.”

  I laugh and study him for a moment. “Luke, tell me what it’s like being a rock star.”

  He glances at me before laughing. I think maybe it’s an uncomfortable laugh, but he doesn’t seem overly surprised by the question.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “I don’t know. Anything. It’s not every day a girl gets to hang out with one on his couch.”

  “Ah, I see,” he replies, suspiciously. “So I was right all along. This whole thing was an elaborate ploy of a psychotic fangirl.”

  It’s my turn to laugh. “Yeah right. A fangirl who had no clue who you were.”

  He grins, but studies me with that intensity that makes me want to climb inside his head.

  “It’s different than what people think, I guess.”

  “Different how?”

  He shrugs. “They think it’s all glamour and supermodels and drugs.”

  “It’s not?”

  He stretches and closes his eyes for a moment before staring at the far wall again. “Maybe it is at the end, I don’t know. Not in the beginning.”

  “You mean when you were first starting out.”

  He nods. “Then it’s all late nights, smelly vans, cheap hotels, and constant fear that your gear will get stolen.”

  “So no supermodels is what you’re saying.”

  He lets out a snort. “No. You aim for the hot bartender, if you’re lucky.”

  “And were you?”

  He shrugs. “Sometimes.”

  He
quiets, and I can tell I’m getting into dangerous territory again. He’s determined not to let me, so he continues. “It’s not an easy life. I’ve seen more people give it up than stick it out. You have no roots, no home, just night after night of setup and teardown. Lukewarm catered food, pizza, and cheap beer.”

  “Did you ever have your gear stolen?”

  He grunts. “Yeah. We were parked at this cheap motel outside of Austin. We took the van to get something to eat, but left our trailer. It was locked but they still got in and took two guitars, a pedal board, and pretty much all of Casey’s stuff. Thankfully, they left the in-ear system and most of the rest of the equipment. They obviously only took the stuff they recognized. Amateur thieves, I guess.”

  I laugh. “You lucked out then.”

  “Yeah. We could barely afford our gas at the time, let alone replacing all our equipment. Believe it or not, I was more upset about losing my pedal board than the guitars. I had my best one in my room. Those were backups I’d tune to different keys when we played ‘Sanctimonious’ and ‘Argyle.’”

  “Argyle? Like the sweater?”

  “Like the only thing a kid sees as his father is beating him.”

  I swallow. “Oh.”

  He grins at my expression. “Still think we’re a boy band?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. The old ladies really love you.”

  “No, the old ladies want to make me vegetable soup and teach me Pinochle to keep me off the streets.”

  “Well, it’s no wonder with your ripped jeans and frayed t-shirts!”

  He instinctively glances at his shirt. “It’s not frayed. It’s worn. There’s a big difference.”

  “Wow. I’m surprised in a place like this they can’t afford better laundry service.”

  He laughs and shrugs. “You’re very critical of my wardrobe. You would prefer me in polo shirts and khakis, I guess?”

  I scrunch my nose, almost horrified at the thought. I can’t think of a more ill-suited look for him. “I see your point. Although, I’m dying to know what your tattoos would look like with a pink polo shirt.”

  “Pink, even? Wow. You have the strangest fantasies.”

  “What, fantasies about rock stars in pink polo shirts? You’ve never encountered worse? Come on.”

  He grins and shrugs with a mischievous expression. “Not until I got famous,” he comments cryptically.

  “That’s not fair! Come on, Luke! Give me something!” I cry, instinctively leaning toward him in my earnestness.

  He laughs.

  “At least tell me the weirdest gifts you’ve gotten from fans. That has to be safe, right?”

  He squints and bites his lip, as if deep in thought. “Weirdest gifts, huh? Let’s see.” I wait, not about to interrupt him. “Ok, once a fan gave me a calendar she made of shirtless pictures of myself.”

  I burst out laughing, and he returns my amusement. “Of yourself? Why in the world would you ever want that?”

  He shakes his head in disbelief. “I have no idea. The guys just about died when she presented it to me at the autograph table. She waited in line for over two hours for that.”

  “Wow. That’s devotion right there. I’m going to guess it didn’t have the intended effect on your heart.”

  “Unless she was trying to get me to double my security for the rest of the night, no.” He gave me a sly look. “What about you?”

  I glance back, startled. “What about me what?”

  “What’s the worst gift you ever got?”

  I laugh. “I can’t top that, believe me.”

  “That’s ok. You must have gotten something you hated at some point in your life.”

  I think about his question and wonder if my face resembles his a moment ago. “Hmm…well, one time I got a stuffed cabbage.”

  His brows knit in confusion. “A stuffed cabbage? You mean a stuffed toy shaped like a cabbage or an actual cabbage.”

  I chuckle. “Does it really matter, given those options?”

  He laughs. “I suppose not. Still, I have to know now.”

  I grin. “An actual cabbage. Well, cabbage leaves stuffed with some kind of meat.”

  “Was it good?”

  “I didn’t eat it!” I laugh.

  “Why not? Maybe it was good.”

  “I had no idea where it came from or who made it. It was a door prize at some school event.”

  “They gave away a stuffed cabbage?”

  I shrug. “Yes. Apparently.”

  He lets out his breath. “What kind of school did you go to? You weren’t kidding about Sheltertown, were you.”

  “Shelteron.”

  “Whatever.”

  I shake my head in amusement and lean back against the cushions. After a long silence, I finally glance at him again. “You don’t happen to still have the calendar do you?” I ask.

  He glances at me in exasperation, and I laugh.

  Day Sixteen.

  I give Luke’s door a gentle courtesy knock, but when he doesn’t answer after two attempts, I let myself in. The room is dark, except for a small lamp on an end table, so I assume he is still in bed. Not wanting to disturb him, I grab the remote and plop on the couch, turning the volume low.

  There isn’t much on network TV that interests me so I try the movie channels. I find it strange that despite the six hundred options at my fingertips, there’s not one thing I feel like sitting through. Maybe not so strange when I consider that I’m only here for Luke and he’s absent.

  Shortly after noon, it suddenly occurs to me that he may not even be in his room. I mute the TV and begin my self-tour of his suite. I’d never explored his accommodations apart from the main area, and figure now is as good of a time as any to satisfy my curiosity about how an ex-rock star lives.

  I figured the place had to be large. After all, basic math skills illustrate that, given the huge structural dimensions of this hotel and the tiny number of doors on this floor, each door has to be hiding a massive space. I was always good at math, but I’m still not prepared for what I find as I venture from the enormous open room of the main living area. I don’t understand why a hotel room needs a corridor, but it has one. Two, actually, I learn, as I reach the end of the first and realize another juts to the right. I count one bedroom in my journey, which contains an unexpected custom stall shower along one wall of the room. The random bedroom-shower throws me for a loop, and I stand staring at the floor-to-ceiling glass, intricate stonework, and multiple jets. I spend a long time wondering why one would want to shower in their bedroom rather than the attached bathroom, how many people it was intended to accommodate at one time, and what I’d have to do to convince Luke to let me test it out. I notice the bench and controls, and suddenly realize it’s a sauna, as well as, a shower. I’m even more impressed, if not confused, about the floor plan. I see no sign of human occupation, however, so quickly determine this is a spare room, not Luke’s. Clearly, a guest of a guest would need a private wall shower.

  The next room is an office. Not the particleboard desk with a lamp and hospital waiting room chair I’m used to, but an actual office. I see a giant oak wall unit with matching hutch, a solid hand-carved workstation that would make a lawyer jealous, and an actual, honest-to-goodness, coordinating filing cabinet. Because every rock star needs a filing cabinet when they travel. I smirk, imagining Luke sifting through three-tab folders and hanging files with his ratty tee, ripped jeans, and glass of whiskey in hand. I’m not surprised that it appears I’m the first to even open the door to this room.

  The next room is just another bathroom. There’s a powder room off the main space for visitors, but this must be for those who get lost touring the suite and can’t find their way back without a break. It’s decorated in the same rustic stone style as the other bathing amenities I’ve seen, so I don’t waste much time here.

  Only one door remains, so I’m certain it must be the master suite. I hesitate as I approach the open doorway. It’s dark inside, which leads me
to believe it’s probably vacant as well, but I’m still not totally comfortable about invading his space. The other rooms were easy. They didn’t seem like his, for some reason, as though they still belonged to the hotel and he couldn’t care less what happened to them. This room though…

  My curiosity wins out, and I move toward the darkness.

  The stench of alcohol assaults me when I enter, and I almost cough. Despite everything I’ve witnessed so far, I’m still surprised by this. Luke seems so together most of the time. He laughs and jokes and makes his way around the city. I’m very familiar with the bar in the main space, but the idea that the bulk of his drinking occurs back here hits me harder than I expect.

  “Oh, Luke,” I mutter to myself, shaking my head.

  “What?”

  I freeze. “I…I’m sorry…I was worried.”

  By now my eyes have adjusted to the darkness enough that I can make out the lump on the massive king-sized bed centered against the wall.

  The lump doesn’t respond, and neither do I, not sure if I should apologize again and leave in shame or call an ambulance.

  “I’m fine,” he lies. I know he’s lying. I can hear it in his voice.

  “It’s after noon.”

  “So?”

  “So, you’re still in bed. Have you eaten today? I’ll order something for you.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Are you sick?”

  “No. Just tired. I don’t want company today. Sorry.”

  “Luke…”

  “Callie, I don’t want to be a jerk, but I need you to leave me alone right now, ok?”

  It’s not ok. His voice is trembling. I know now he wasn’t sleeping.

  “Luke, please. Let me…”

  “Just go!” he shouts, and the lump transforms into a half-man as the comforter reveals a head and torso.

  I know I should, but I can’t.

  I pause, my mind racing furiously, and yet in no clear direction at all. I get the heavy sense that I’m standing at a crossroads, although I suspect it’s not just one on my journey.