Rockoholic

by Skuse, C. J.

  “Oh, no. No it’s not . . .”

  He turns toward the door and, without another single sensible thought, I place my palm on his back and we start walking. I look behind me. No one is watching us. No one is watching us!

  “Where are we going?” he says, stumbling through the door.

  “Uh . . . don’t speak,” I say. And all the time we’re walking out of there into the cold night air, I try not to concentrate on the Mac side of my brain which is saying, What the hell are you doing? He thinks it’s a knife, he thinks your Curly Wurly is a knife! Tell him it’s just a silver wrapper, tell him it’s just a misunderstanding. Let him go, just let him go!

  But I can’t let him go, I just can’t.

  Keep going, keep going, keep going. Don’t look back. No one notice, please no one notice!

  And anyway we’re out the door now. “Put your hands down,” I tell him, and he does.

  The door shuts quietly behind us, and we’re walking, across the silent bus parking lot, heading toward some tall metal gates. I look behind again. No one calls out. No one stops us. Two security guards are watching football on a small television screen inside a booth by the gates. We approach them and I slow my pace. Please don’t see us. We walk past them. My hearing is so messed up I can’t even hear what they’re talking about. Please don’t see us. It’s like they’re speaking through a cardboard tube. But they don’t notice us and as we make it through the gates to the pavement on the main road, I rip my fleece from my waist and put it over Jackson’s head. He’s shaking. His walk is slow and his feet scuff on the ground like a kid coming down from a tantrum. I steer him around trash bins and speed bumps and burger boxes until we arrive around the front of the arena and cross the road. He mumbles something.

  “What?”

  “Where are you taking me?” he mumbles again, somewhere under my fleece.

  I don’t know what else to say to him. I rack my brain, trying to think of movies where people are being taken hostage. What do the bad guys say? I don’t want to tell him to shut the eff up. He is, after all, still my hero. I just want him with me, that’s all I know. That’s all I want at that moment. “Just keep moving,” I say and he does, slowly.

  There are fans milling around outside the arena, and scalpers still trying to sell tickets for a gig that’s pretty much over. Some guys stand on the street selling tour posters and cheap-looking T-shirts with band logos on them, and for a second I want to stop and buy one, but then I think I couldn’t possibly buy anything now that will compare with what I already have.

  Reality check: OMFG!

  But I choose to ignore it. Don’t think just do, don’t think just do. We walk past them all, through a sea of cans, bottles, flyers, and cigarette butts, across the road toward Mac’s car. Right where he said he’d be — hazards on, under the lamppost.

  A police car whizzes past, followed shortly by an ambulance. A stab of fear slices through me. It’s OK, they’re not for me. I just pray no one works out what’s going on. But I don’t know what’s happening, so I doubt anyone else will.

  “Just walk, I’ll guide you,” I say as we cross the road. Mac is dozing in the driver’s seat, wrapped up in his coat. I knock on the window and he jumps and fumbles with the door before pulling the seat forward.

  “That was quick. Thought you’d be ages. Didn’t you get a T-shirt or something?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t they do an encore even? Stingy gits. Oh, are we giving someone a lift?”

  I push Jackson inside first so he is sitting behind Mac’s seat and then get in next to him and shut the door.

  “Why aren’t you sitting in the front —”

  “Go, Mac, before we get caught in the traffic.”

  “Hang on, where does your mate live?”

  “I’ll tell you on the way, please just drive.”

  And he does. He puts his foot down and we are out of there like a speed skater. We bolt through the town, straight through every traffic light, increasing speed until the orange streetlamps become blurs outside the windows. It starts raining hard. The wipers are on full pelt and they’re squeaking loudly. We get to a traffic circle. Mac is looking at me in the rearview mirror with his serious face on. He adjusts the mirror to see the face of “my mate” but Jackson still has my fleece over his head so he adjusts it back.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Mac says as we make it to a big traffic circle.

  “Are we on the motorway yet?”

  “Jody, tell me now. What have you done? Why’s she under your coat?”

  “Are we on the motorway yet?” I say again, more forcefully. He pauses, puts his foot down. We head along the edge of the circle. He flips up the blinker. We take the second exit and hit the rumble strips.

  “Yes, we’re on the motorway, all right?”

  “So you can’t turn back?” I say.

  “No, Jody, for Christ’s sake . . .”

  I pull the coat off Jackson’s head and he shakes his hair out. Mac adjusts the mirror and flicks on the reading light. “What the . . .” He flicks the light off and on again. Then he flicks it off and doesn’t say another word.

  I tend to do stupid things when left to my own devices. Mac will testify to this, if it ever needs testifying to, as he’s usually a witness. So I thought if anyone would understand why I took Jackson when the opportunity came up, it would be Mac. He knows how I feel about Jackson, so he should understand why I did it. But as we speed along the near-deserted M4 motorway out of Cardiff, it becomes clear that Mac is definitely not on the same page as me. I don’t even think we’re in the same library.

  Jackson falls asleep as the car bombs along. In fact, he goes practically unconscious. And then, without warning, Mac pulls off the motorway at the next exit and hits the turn signal for the rest stop. Red-and-white lit-up signs for a KFC and a drive-through Burger King glow in the misty dark and the parking lot is empty except for two hatchbacks and a tourist bus. He pulls into a space near the entrance and switches off the engine.

  “You need . . . to tell me . . . what the hell you’ve done,” he says, very slowly, like he’s had a stroke and is learning to talk again.

  “Um,” I begin, and then I try to remember being back in the first-aid room, hearing the music pumping and the Fat Controller and the St. John Ambulance people and Cereal Bar Girl and Pash coming in and Pash falling over. “Well, Jackson came backstage, to see the fans in the recovery area. He shook my hand. And then his manager came in and he was really rude to him, kept swearing and stuff, and Jackson looked really fed up and he said he had a headache. I offered him my Curly Wurly —”

  Mac holds up his hand to shush me. “Is that sex slang for something?”

  I frown. “No, my chocolate bar.” Mac is silent for another age and I gabble away to fill the void. “Anyway he came over and I didn’t know what to do, my brain just went into overdrive cos I’d fainted and hit my head and I couldn’t believe he was there and I didn’t know what to say so I thought I’d offer him my chocolate bar and see if he would have a bite so I could take it home and frame it or something and when I reached out to give it to him, I think he thinked —”

  “Thought.”

  “— thought it might have kind of been a bit of a . . . like . . . sort of . . . knife.”

  A looooooong sigh. More silence. He turns in his seat to look back at me. “He thinks you’ve kidnapped him? By force?” I nod. “Hmm?” he reiterates in that harsh way teachers do.

  “Yes,” I say quietly, so as not to wake Jackson up. “But he sort of relaxed, once I’d got him in the car. He didn’t seem to mind. He hasn’t freaked out or anything. Look at him, he’s asleep.”

  “Why do you think that is, Jody?” Mac shouts.

  “Keep your voice down.”

  “No, this is my car and I can shout as much as I want!” I look across at Jackson but he doesn’t even flinch. Mouth agape, he is completely out of it. I raise a hand to feel for breath. “You di
dn’t even see it, did you?”

  “See what?” I frown.

  Mac sighs again. “He’s a tweak-head.”

  “No he isn’t. He’s just got a headache. I saw him take an aspirin earlier. He’s been clean for, like, two years. . . .”

  “Oh, wake up and smell the bullshit, Jody, please. Wild Man Rocker Jackson Gatlin? Angst-Ridden Jackson Gatlin? Drugged-Up Wastoid Jackson Gatlin? You bought the magazines.”

  “Stop it. Not all those stories are true.”

  “No, they are, you just don’t want to believe them.” Mac sighs for a third time, scraping a hand through his spiky black hair, and when he gets right to the back, he rubs it harder and harder through his hair again, like he’s trying to sandpaper his head. The spikes don’t move, though; there’s that much gel on it. “Oh my nightmare day,” he says. “Please, someone, someone tell me I’m dreaming. I mean, are you clinically depressed or something? Is there something here I’m missing? You’ve done stupid things, I know. I was the one who broke your fall when you tried to climb that telephone pole. . . .” Silence. Then he shouts. “WHAT the HELL have you DONE?”

  Jackson stirs, but turns over and falls back to sleep, his face right up against the cold window. “I just saw an opportunity,” I say, my voice shaking. “It’s your fault.”

  “What do you mean this is my fault, how the hell is this my fault?”

  “It was your Curly Wurly.”

  “Oh my God,” he says, scrunching his eyes. “I can almost hear the soap dropping in the shower. Do you realize people will be out looking for him? Police? His manager? The press? They’ll hunt us down. They’ll search the Saxo. They’ll find fibers!”

  “No they won’t. It’s OK. I’ll clean the car. I’ll eat the evidence. Ow, my head hurts.”

  He laughs sarcastically. I feel I should speak, or at least make some noise. I hate that laugh. That’s the “Jody, you are something else” laugh and it makes me feel stupid. Fat and ugly and freckled and embarrassed and stupid.

  “I just wanted more,” I tell him. “I wanted to meet him properly. To spend more than just thirty seconds with him. More than just a handshake. He came with me quite willingly. . . .”

  “Because he thought you were going to stab him, you stupid cow!”

  I flinch like he’s pricked me with a pin. He calls me a cow all the time and I never get offended. But when he says it now, I don’t like it. “I only got to see three songs, Mac. . . .”

  “That does not entitle you to take home the lead singer, Jody.”

  “I know.”

  “Most people settle for a T-shirt or a poster. Not Jody. Jody wants actual band members.”

  There’s an odd shuffling and clanking noise behind the car and all of a sudden there’s a light knock on the back window next to Jackson’s head. I scream and Mac jumps about two feet in the air. This is it, I think, it’s the police. I’m beyond busted. A figure shuffles along to Mac’s window and knocks again. But it’s not the police, it’s a sketchy old woman pushing a supermarket cart stuffed with trash bags. Mac catches his breath and goes to roll the window down.

  “Don’t!” I cry out. “She could have an ax or hairy hands or something,” I urge him, instinctively clinging on to Jackson, like she might try and take him away.

  He ignores me and rolls the window down an inch. She must be about eighty, and she’s wearing a wool hat, long brown coat, and a Hello Kitty nightgown. Her face looks like a mashed-up envelope and she obviously has no teeth because her jaw seems to be chewing itself.

  “Spare change?” she sniffs, holding her hand up to the crack in the driver’s window.

  “Uh no, not tonight,” says Mac.

  She peers into the car. “Who else you got in there with you, then?”

  “No one,” he says, and rolls his window back up.

  “Have they got any change?” she asks again, more muffled through the window. We both watch her as she shuffles back around to Jackson’s window, tries to clear the glass and have a good beak in at him. He has his face completely against the window so she must see him. She disappears around the back of the car and out of sight.

  My heart is going like fist blows to a punching bag. “Do you think she saw him?” I whisper.

  “I don’t give a shit. In fact, I hope she did see him and I hope she does recognize his face when it’s plastered all over the tabloids tomorrow.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic.”

  “You’ve kidnapped a celebrity, Jody. All right, he’s not Princess Kate or the president or anything, but he’s still famous. He’s still in all the gossip mags. Once it gets out he’s gone missing, presumed kidnapped from a concert, you’re a ghost on toast.”

  “I don’t care what you say, he was miserable in that room. When his manager was saying those things to him, all he wanted to do was to get out —”

  “— and don’t think you’re bringing him back to the pub, either, no way,” Mac interrupts.

  I forgot. I no longer have a home, do I? I’m a house-guest at the pub. I can hardly bring home some other waif and stray to stay, can I? “Please, Mac, can he just stay at yours —?”

  “No way.”

  “Well, what am I going to do, then?”

  “I don’t know. This is your problem, not mine.”

  “Where are we going, dudes?” a voice next to me pipes up. Oh, it’s the rock star I kidnapped. He’s pulling my pukey black fleece around him and he’s shivering.

  Mac snorts. “Oh nice, Ozzy Osbourne’s back with us.”

  “Uh . . . to a pub,” I tell Jackson.

  “I need a burger,” he mumbles, and falls back to sleep.

  “OK,” I say and I point to the Burger King across the parking lot. “They sell veggie burgers or cheesy somethings over there, don’t they?” Mac throws me a filthy look. “I’ll pay.”

  “Oh, I know you will.” He starts the engine again, heading toward the drive-through ramp.

  “Mozarella bites or something?” I say, turning toward Jackson.

  “Burger,” he mumbles, drool oozing from his mouth. He slurps it back up to speak. “I want meat. Bacon. Meat.”

  He eats MEAT?! And I went through months of eating rabbit food just for him!

  “Ha!” Mac flicks on the mirror light and reaches over the back of his seat to lift up one of Jackson’s eyelids. “Clean-living vegetarian, is he? Don’t make me wet myself, Jody.”

  “He’s just hungry. They did a long set tonight.” That must be it.

  “I know. I waited outside for most of it. Look at him. Any normal lead singer would be amped having ten thousand people calling his name. He should be bouncing off the walls. Look at him!”

  So I do. I look at him.

  “He’s a rock star, Jody. It comes with the job.”

  The guy appears at the first window and Mac places the order for a Whopper with fries, mozzarella balls for me, and two Diet Cokes. Mac says he’s not hungry. Big surprise. I hate his poor martyr act at times like this, not that we’ve ever had a time like this before, but he always does this. Goes without so I’ll feel sorry for him. I don’t feel sorry for him, not anymore. He can nail up his own cross. I’m not helping.

  “He’s not like all the others. Jackson’s different,” I tell him, getting my emergency £20 from my sock and handing it over.

  Mac gets the change and flings it back at me, moving the Saxo along to the second window to pick up our food. “The only thing different about him,” he says, “is that he hasn’t choked to death on his own vomit yet. He’s just as screwed up, just as miserable, just as fake.”

  And this is the point where I have had enough of his barbed little comments. “OK, fine, whatever, he lied. He lied on the Behind the Scenes DVD, he lied in that interview, Wikipedia lies, everyone lies, he’s a drug user, he’s not really a vegetarian, he’s not really into zebras. I don’t care, OK? I want him with me. And you are going to take us back to the pub, right now, me and Jackson, or I’m going to do something really, re
ally, really . . .” And then I lose my nerve a bit and I stumble over my words and I can’t think of a single thing that I would do if Mac didn’t drive us back to our shitty little town. Back to Nuffing. Nuffing-on-the-sodding-Wold. So I just end the sentence on the third really.

  And Mac says, “Really what?”

  I’ve had a little more time, so I’ve thought of something. “I hope you never find out.”

  Mac twists back in his seat, does a few more sighs. Then he mumbles about the windshield being too steamed up and whacks the heat up full blast.

  “Well, if you stopped sighing it might clear a bit quicker,” I snap. He throws the straws and paper napkins back at me, followed by Jackson’s burger and my mozzarella balls in turn. We hit the road again. For a second, I think that he’s going to go back around the traffic circle and head back to Cardiff and that, if he does, I will never ever EVER speak to him again. But he heads for the South West. He heads back toward the Severn Bridge. Back to Nuffing-on-the-Wold.

  “Thank you,” I say and he holds his hand up to shush me, then puts it back on the steering wheel where it grips hard. I slurp half of my Diet Coke — I hadn’t realized how thirsty I was until now — and place Jackson’s burger box on his chest with his fries. I eat my mozzarella balls in total silence, watching him. There’s no stereo on. It’s just the car bobbing along the deserted motorway toward the bridge, jolting over the odd speed bump and whipping past the tall orange streetlamps as the rain lashes down upon the metal roof. I’m usually ravenous for anything fried but this time I can taste every globule of fat, feel every artery snap shut, and pretty soon I have indigestion.

  “Stop it,” says Mac in the silence.

  “What?”

  “Looking at him, all cow eyes. You’re not keeping him.”

  I haven’t even realized I’m doing it. I’m just staring at Jackson. The car is so quiet and this is well odd, because when me and Mac usually go out in his car, he has the radio blaring and we’re singing our lungs out to classic rock or doing Gaga impressions to make Cree laugh. But not tonight.

  Every so often Mac sighs, or Jackson gargles or coughs, but apart from that, it’s just road noise and the occasional other car overtaking us. I can’t look at Jackson so I watch the pine tree air freshner and the jelly dolphin charm swinging together under the rearview mirror. It isn’t until we’re on the bridge, right in the middle of the bridge, that the silence is cracked by a sharp intake of breath and a deafening yell.