Casey busied herself making tea, trying to ignore the murmur of voices from the bedroom. Rob returned, wearing a wrinkled gray sweatshirt that matched his pants. He opened a corner cupboard and took out a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. “I’m sorry,” Casey said, pouring hot water over a matched set of Lipton’s finest. “The last thing I wanted was to interfere with your sex life.”
He uncapped the bottle and poured a shot into her cup, another into his. “Stop worrying,” he said. “The only thing you interfered with was my sleep.”
She took a sip of tea and grimaced at the taste. “What did you tell your lady friend?”
“The truth. That I had a friend with a domestic problem.”
She leaned over the kitchen counter, holding her teacup in both hands. “Pretty pathetic, isn’t it?” she said, examining the intricate design of red and white roses that circled the cup. “I’ve lived in this burg for six years, and you’re the only person I know well enough to impose on at one o’clock in the morning.”
He took a bag of Chips Ahoy cookies from the cupboard. “I’d be crushed,” he said, “if you imposed on anyone else.” With his free hand, he picked up his teacup. “Couch?” he said.
“Couch.”
They settled at opposite ends. He opened the bag and handed her a cookie. She set her teacup on the arm of the couch and snapped the cookie in two. With a calmness she was far from feeling, she said, “I’ve left him.”
He studied the cookie in his hand. “Permanently?” he said.
“I don’t know. Right now, I’m too furious to be thinking straight. Did he tell you what he did?”
He broke off a piece of cookie and dipped it into his tea. Grimly, he said, “Surprise me.”
She got up from the couch, walked to the fireplace, studied the Behrens original that hung above the mantel. Closed her eyes and swallowed. “He had a vasectomy,” she said. “Six weeks ago.”
Rob’s mouth fell open. “You’re shitting me.”
She crossed her arms and began pacing. “The worst thing,” she said, “is that a part of me understands why he did it. But, good grief, Rob, I’m only twenty-nine years old! He has no right to make a decision like that behind my back, without even discussing it with me! And you know what he says? ‘I did it because I love you.’ Because I love you! I think he’s lost his mind.”
Rob scowled. “I ought to put my foot up his ass.”
“What good would it do? The deed’s already done. It’s a little late to take it back.”
At Rob’s elbow, the telephone rang, and they both froze. He raised his eyebrows, and she bit her lip and shrugged. Rob picked up the phone. Eyes still on hers, he shot her a wink.
“That’s okay,” he said into the phone. “I wasn’t sleeping. Yeah, she’s here.” He paused. “I don’t think so,” he said, “but I’ll ask.” He covered the receiver with his hand. “Do you want to talk to him?”
“I’ve already said everything I have to say.”
“Dan? She says she doesn’t want to.” He paused, continued nodding his head. “I know, I know. Well, Jesus, Danny, if you really want the truth, I’d say this time you blew it good. Listen, you don’t have to worry about Casey, she’s right here with me. Try to get some sleep. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”
He hung up the phone, slowly massaged his temple, and exhaled. “Your husband,” he said, “is on one hell of a tear.”
She sat back down beside him and propped her feet on the coffee table. “I shouldn’t have come here,” she said. “It’s not fair to put you in the middle of this.”
“Wrong,” he said. “How many times have you picked me up and dusted me off?”
She leaned her head back against the couch. “Too many,” she said.
“Well, kiddo,” he said, and patted her shoulder, “this is payback.”
The lamp light softened the sharp angle of his jaw. “You’re a good man,” she said. “Why didn’t I fall in love with you instead of Danny?”
He waggled his eyebrows. “It’s never too late,” he said.
“It’s far too late,” she said. “I love you far too much to fall in love with you.”
“So what are you going to do? You’re welcome to stay here, you know.”
She took a deep breath. “I’m moving east. Back to Boston.”
He didn’t say a word, but the stubborn set of his jaw gave away his feelings on the subject. “I need to be by myself for a while,” she explained. “Away from Danny. After everything that’s happened, I need some time alone to heal.”
He threaded fingers with hers. “I’ll miss you every damn day of my life.”
“You’ll visit, won’t you?”
“Wild horses couldn’t keep me away. Do you have a place to stay when you get there?”
“I’ll find something. There are plenty of hotels in Boston.”
“Mom will have a kitten if you stay in a hotel. You’ll stay with my folks until you get settled.”
“I don’t want to impose.”
“Be serious. I’ll call Mom first thing in the morning.”
“You’re an angel.” She squeezed his hand. “Now be a good boy and find me a pillow, and then get your carcass back to bed before your lady friend stops speaking to you.”
***
When his wife left him, Danny Fiore went on a three-day bender.
He locked the doors and closed the shades, cracked open a bottle of Jack, and threw himself a whopper of a pity party. While he drank and brooded, brooded and drank, he waited like some pathetic teenager for her call. The phone rang occasionally, but it was never Casey, and he let the answering machine take care of everybody else. He had nothing to say to any of them. Sooner or later, when Casey realized what a monumental mistake she had made, she would call, begging him to take her back, and it would be a hell of a thing if she couldn’t get through because somebody else had the line tied up.
Except that for some inexplicable reason, she didn’t call.
Every couple of hours, Danny picked up the phone and listened to make sure there was a dial tone, that it was still working properly. Reassured, he would hang it back up and take another swig of Jack and wait some more. Sometimes, when the waiting got too difficult, he would press the outgoing message button on the answering machine, just to hear the sound of her voice. And sometimes, deep into Tennessee whiskey and depression, he wouldn’t bother to hold back the tears that were always waiting just a blink away. On the evening of the third day, after one more call that wasn’t from her, he picked up the telephone, ripped the cord from the wall, and heaved it across the room. It hit the bedroom mirror, and the sound of shattering glass was immensely satisfying.
On the morning of the fourth day he emerged from his stupor, bleary-eyed and hung over, shaky, unshaven, and rank, to the growing suspicion that maybe this time, she wasn’t coming back. He put an inch-long gash in his finger picking up the broken glass, and then the only Band-Aids in the house had Oscar the Grouch on them, remnants of a happier time in his life. Cursing, he wrapped two of them around his injured finger and carried the broken glass out to the trash bin. When he returned, he stripped off his clothes in the bedroom, leaving them where they landed. Avoiding the bathroom mirror, he took a long, hot shower.
The shower took away most of the eau de Jack, but it did nothing for the pounding in his head. Still naked, he went to the kitchen and mixed himself a concoction consisting of tomato juice, crushed aspirin, and hair of the dog. He gagged it down, then returned to the bathroom to brush his teeth.
He handled his toothbrush gingerly, because even the smallest movement sent daggers through his head. Frowning into the massive mirror over the vanity, he took a good, long look at Danny Fiore, Superstar. King of all he surveyed. A teenybopper’s wet dream. If his adoring fans could see him like this, eyes swollen and bloodshot, face buried in whisker stubble, they might think twice before shelling out big bucks so they could scream and swoon at his concerts. He looked every day of his thirty-five yea
rs, and then some. “Christ,” he told his reflection in disgust, “you’re pathetic.”
Eventually, inevitably, there was business to take care of. He went back to the bedroom and picked up the clothes he’d left on the floor and played back the messages on the answering machine. Rob had called to make sure he hadn’t hung himself from a rafter; Drew Lawrence had called to talk about the new album; his manager had called to remind him that the photographer was coming on Friday to shoot the new album cover, and he needed to be there first thing in the morning. And his publicist had called twice: somehow, the tabloids had already gotten wind that Casey had left, and they were circling, sniffing for blood.
He called his manager first, assured him that he’d be there on Friday, and then he called his publicist. Jackie Steinberg was as straightforward as anyone he’d ever met. “You know how these people are,” she said in her distinctive whiskey-throated voice. “If you don’t give them something, they’ll manufacture it. It’s better for you, in the long run, if you give them what they want now.”
So he reluctantly agreed to a press conference, and then he called Rob. “I want to know where my wife is,” he said.
After a brief hesitation, Rob said, “I can’t tell you. I gave my word.”
He rubbed the side of his face. Cleared his throat. “Look,” he said, “I have a press conference scheduled for two o’clock, and I have no idea what to say to them.”
“You want me to call her and ask?”
He closed his eyes. “Yes. Please.”
He paced while he waited for Rob’s call. Picked up the phone on the first ring. “She says it’s up to you,” Rob said. “You’re the one in the public eye. Say whatever you think is best, and she’ll go along with it.”
A few minutes past two, he strolled into Jackie Steinberg’s reception area, wearing his suede jacket and a pair of mirrored sunglasses. Jackie’s receptionist glanced up and gave him a smile that must have cost her parents a small fortune. “Conference room B, end of the hall,” she said, and he nodded without speaking.
They were waiting for him inside, a dozen reporters, impatiently if the buzz meant anything. Danny stepped up to the podium and adjusted his glasses and rested his hands, palms down, on the textured oak. The buzz instantly ceased, the room growing so still he could hear Jackie’s secretary in the next office, clicking away on the computer keyboard. “Mrs. Fiore and I,” he said, “have separated. Obviously you’ve already heard, or you wouldn’t be here. So let’s get this over with so we can all go home.”
Andy Constantine, from People magazine, raised his pen high in the air. “Mr. Fiore,” he said, “who initiated the separation?”
“It was a mutual decision,” he said.
Kimberly Downes asked, “Are you filing for divorce, Mr. Fiore?”
He rocked back on his heels. “There are no plans at this time,” he said, “for a divorce.”
A red-haired woman he didn’t know shouted from the back of the room, “Danny, is either one of you involved with someone else?”
Jesus H. Christ. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a cigarette. Lit it. Drew deeply and exhaled a cloud of smoke. “No,” he said.
“Mr. Fiore? Can you tell us why you and Mrs. Fiore are separating?”
Danny took another draw on the cigarette. His hands were shaking. He cleared his throat. “You’ve all heard about our daughter’s death. The adjustment has been difficult for both of us. We decided that for a time, it would be in our best interests to maintain separate residences. Period.”
He looked out over the sea of faces. Vultures, all of them. “One more thing,” he said. “I’d appreciate it if you’d leave my wife alone. She’s had a rough year, and she doesn’t deserve to be plagued.”
***
This was the first time Rob had been to the Malibu house since shortly after Katie died, and there was a sadness hovering on the air, an emptiness that made his skin crawl. He wasn’t sure how Danny could stay here, now that his wife had left him and his little girl was buried on a rocky hillside in Maine. But then, he’d never really understood what made Danny Fiore tick. He’d come tonight because Danny had called, looking for a shoulder, and he couldn’t refuse. In spite of everything, in spite of the fact that he wanted to strangle the guy for what he’d done to Casey, underneath it all, they were still brothers. Bound not by blood, but by two decades of history and an inexplicable loyalty that sometimes really pissed him off.
“Marrying Casey,” Danny said, staring into his drink for inspiration, “was the smartest thing I ever did. If wasn’t for her, I’d still be playing the bar scene for thirty bucks a night.”
Rob leaned back against the couch cushion and crossed his legs at the ankles. Studying the toes of his Reeboks, he sipped his bourbon and water. “If it wasn’t for her, Dan, you’d be washed up.”
“When I met her,” Danny said, “I was an arrogant, wise-ass kid from the streets who thought he had the world by the tail. But she saw something in me. I still don’t know what the hell it was.”
His mouth thinned. “You mean besides your pretty face?”
Danny shook his head vehemently. “It wasn’t that. She looked past that. She looked at that nobody wop kid and she saw something. She made me feel good about myself.”
He got up and went to the bar and mixed himself another drink. Casually, he said, “And you’re going to let her just walk away?”
“She’s better off without me. What the hell did I ever give her?”
He turned and leaned his lanky frame against the bar and studied the tinkling ice cubes in his glass. “Somebody to believe in?” he said.
“Hah! I’ve been nothing but an albatross around her neck since day one. She deserves better than that.”
“And you can be sure she’ll get it.” He uncovered the crystal candy dish on the bar and took a fistful of peanuts, popped a few into his mouth. “Women like Casey are damn rare. Some guy will grab her up so fast your head will spin.” He took another fistful of peanuts. “Who knows? It might even be me.”
Danny scowled. “Screw you, MacKenzie.”
“I’m just giving it to you straight, Danny. You let her get away, you’re a bigger goddamn fool than I thought you were.”
Danny snorted. “Thus saith the world’s leading authority on women.”
“We’re not talking here about my track record. You and Casey are a fucking institution, for Christ’s sake! How can you let her go?”
“She doesn’t want me any more.”
“Bullshit! What she doesn’t want is the flaming asshole you’ve been for the last few months. She wants a guy who has something better to do than sit around feeling sorry for himself.”
Danny scowled. “Are you finished? Is there anything else you’d like to add, since you’ve already got me down for the count?”
Rob hesitated, then shrugged his shoulders. Might as well get it over with. “There is one more thing,” he said.
Danny raised his glass in a mock salute. “Go ahead. Make my day.”
He took a deep breath, then looked Danny directly in the eye. “I’ve decided to go solo.”
There was a moment of silence before the explosion. “You’re walking?” Danny asked, his voice cracking, disbelief oozing from every pore.
“Ah, shit, I knew you’d take it that way. Damn it, Dan, it has nothing to do with you. I want to try it on my own for a while. It’s something I have to do for myself.” He paused. “I made a commitment to finish this album, and I’ll honor it. But once it’s done, I’m history.”
“If I was sober, I’d probably throttle you, but I’m too wasted. How the devil will I ever find anybody who can replace you?”
He grinned. “Try Clapton.”
“The man has no chops.”
The grin broadened. “Still love me?”
“Fuck you.”
That’s a healthy attitude, Fiore. Hang onto it.”
“You’ll go far, MacKenzie. You’re a better musician than I am.�
��
“Correction: more technically proficient. You’re the one with the talent.”
“I’m glad to see,” Danny said dryly, “that we’re still each other’s biggest fan.”
“Yeah, well, old habits are hard to break.”
The three weeks it took them to complete the album were the longest Rob had ever lived through. He was tired of it all, tired of the hype, tired of the parties and the groupies and the drugs. He and Casey talked on the phone daily. He knew the separation was difficult for her, but Casey avoided talking about her life. Instead, they talked about his, about his frustrations and about the idea that was gestating inside his head. And she gave him her blessing.
“You gave me a piece of advice once,” she said, “to tell the world to go to hell and follow my heart. It was good advice, and because I love you, I’m giving it back to you now.”
He clutched the phone tighter. “You don’t think I’m nuts, then?”
“Rob, listen. I’ve known for years that you wouldn’t be happy forever playing second fiddle to Danny. You’re a talented musician. And if you have to go off alone in order to straighten out your head, then that’s what you should do.”
Three days after he heard the final playback of the new album, he rented a Jeep, packed up his clothes and his guitar and his cat, and headed north. With no particular destination in mind, he knew a freedom he’d never before experienced. He took his time, exploring the coastal villages, walking the beaches, studying the flora and fauna. When he reached San Francisco, he headed inland, through the verdant Sacramento Valley and into the mountains of northern California and Oregon.
Here, the air was clear and smog-free, the land a vast wilderness totally foreign to a man city-born and bred. The cool mountain streams and cascading waterfalls beckoned him, as did the lakes and the trees and the abundant wildlife. If paradise truly existed, this was it.
He was several days out of L.A. when he stopped for gas at a rustic general store tucked into the shadow of a towering mountain. While the dour-faced attendant filled his tank and checked his oil, he wandered around inside. The place held an eclectic collection of goods: everything from corn flakes to ammunition; from fishing supplies to a dust-laden copy of Hustler tucked away on a back shelf just behind the latest issue of Rod and Reel.
Coming Home (Jackson Falls Series) Page 25