He took a sip of beer, irritated by the itch the music spawned inside him. Why now, with Casey falling apart, his marriage in crisis, his life in limbo, were his insides suddenly screaming at him to get back up on the stage he thought he’d left behind forever?
It wasn’t an option. Not even worth considering. Going back onstage meant going back on the road. He was a family man now, with a wife, two kids, a big house in a small town. He drove a frigging Ford Explorer, for the love of Mike. He hadn’t bothered to replace the Porsche after Paige totaled it. What was the point, when he couldn’t even fit his growing family in it? His days of cruising the freeways, stick shift in hand and wind threading fingers through his hair, were over. He was rapidly approaching forty, far too old to play rock star. Time and the world had moved on, had left him sitting on his ass in the dust. Nobody wanted to hear the kind of music he wrote; he and Casey were Edsels in a Lexus world. It was the kids, the teenagers and the twenty-somethings, who bought record albums and concert tickets. Those kids wanted to hear songs about love, about sex. He was writing songs about growing older. While he’d been otherwise occupied with the business of living, his brand, his style, his music, had become obsolete.
The very idea of going back out there was ludicrous.
Besides, how would he raise the issue with his wife, who already had enough catastrophe happening in her life? Guess what, honey, you’ll never believe what happened the other day. I played an impromptu concert for thirty people. Did you know I have fans? Real, live fans who want to see me back in front of the footlights? And the weirdest thing is that for those few short minutes while I was playing, I was able to breathe again, for the first time in so long I can’t remember when I last breathed.
She would laugh at him. And if she didn’t laugh at him, she would list all those reasons why it wasn’t feasible: the house, the kids, the Ford Explorer. His Two Dreamers Records, the goddamn sheep ranch she was building in their back yard.
Then, there was the other piece of the pie he had to consider: this strange, dark place where his wife was living. The glass bubble she’d surrounded herself with, the one nobody could breach. Her poor, broken heart that even he couldn’t mend. How could he come to her, confide in her about what amounted to little more than growing pains, when her own pain was so much bigger than his?
Sacrifice. Wasn’t that what love and marriage were really about? Sacrificing your needs, subjugating your desires, in favor of the needs and desires of your loved one? That was the kind of man he was, the kind who would lay down his life for the woman he loved. Hell, that was the kind of woman she was, the kind a besotted man would gladly die for. And the road ran both ways, thanks to that damned invisible cord that connected them. Even before their long-time friendship had ripened into something more, she would have walked through fire for him.
So it wasn’t like he had a choice. This woman who was so obsessed with the thought of having another baby, this woman who was so preoccupied with her pain that some days, she barely remembered he existed, was still the woman he’d married, the woman he couldn’t breathe without. She might have been swallowed by grief, but Casey was still in there somewhere, locked inside that stranger who slept in his bed. Eventually, she would heal, and then she would come back to him fully. Even if she didn’t, he would wait for her. It was the way he was made. He would always wait for her. He couldn’t imagine doing anything else. He couldn’t imagine his life without her.
In the meantime, he’d continue to do what he’d recommended to Luther: pull himself up by the bootstraps and keep on keeping on.
And rid himself, once and for all, of any asinine ideas about going back onstage.
* * *
When he got back, Casey was sitting on the couch in the dark, staring at the muted television. He closed the door quietly and bent to take off Leroy’s harness. She looked up from the television and their eyes met, but neither of them spoke. Rob unclipped the harness, swept his hand down the dog’s back, from his ears to the base of his tail, then clapped him gently on the rump. “Go on, buddy,” he said. “Time for bed.”
He cracked open the door to Paige and Emma’s room, and Leroy squeezed through. Walking barefoot to the kitchen, he took a couple of beers from the fridge. He popped the caps, tossed them in the trash, then carried the bottles to the couch and eased down beside his wife. Silently handing her a bottle, he propped his feet on the coffee table. “So,” he said, and took a long, cold swig of Heineken. “Are we talking about this, or what?”
The flickering light from the television screen lent a nightmarish cast to her face. With her free hand, she swiped furiously at a tear. “I’m sorry,” she said.
He leaned his head back against the couch. On the silent TV screen, a black-and-white Lucy, her wayward curls done up in a checkered kerchief, was wailing, face scrunched up dramatically, while a monochromatic Ricky Ricardo rolled his eyes and muttered what was undoubtedly a string of incomprehensible Spanish.
“Seems to me,” Rob said, running his thumb around the rim of the beer bottle, “that you’ve been spending an awful lot of time lately being sorry.”
She studied him mutely. Then said, “This is not who I want to be.”
“Who do you want to be?”
“Me,” she said. “I want to be me! Whoever the hell that is.”
He took another sip of beer. “I had high hopes for tonight.”
“Yes. So did I.”
“Every morning,” he said, “I wake up and I can’t wait to see your face. You’re the reason I get out of bed every day. Even in sleep, you’re the bright, shiny thing my world revolves around. The glue that holds me together. That holds this entire family together.”
“I’m not holding much together right now. That’s what you’re saying.”
“No,” he said bluntly. “You’re not. You’re coming unglued. And the more you come unglued, the more our family falls apart. There’s only so much I can do. I can try. I am trying. But I don’t have the magic that’s inside you. That’s something only you have. I depend on that magic to always be there, and without it, I don’t know what to do.”
“Just love me, Flash. That’s all I ask.”
He slammed the beer bottle down on the coffee table. “Don’t you ever, ever doubt my feelings for you! You have been the most significant person in my entire adult life. The other half of me. The goddamn air that I breathe!”
“Damn it, Rob, be quiet! You’ll wake the girls.”
“I don’t understand,” he said in a stage whisper. “I don’t understand what happened here tonight. I don’t get how something so right could go so wrong, so fast.”
She set down her untouched beer, stood and crossed her arms. Walking to the window, she drew the curtain aside and gazed out at the lights of Manhattan. “I’m afraid,” she said, her back to him. “I’m afraid all the time. I’m afraid when I wake up in the morning and I’m afraid when I fall asleep at night, and I’m afraid all of the time in between.”
I Love Lucy segued into a commercial for the Clapper. Clap on. Clap off.
Casey turned around, slender arms still crossed over her chest. “I don’t know what to do about it,” she said. “I don’t know where to put it. It’s something new to me, this fear.” She reached a hand up, scraped her hair back from her face. “No, that’s not right,” she said. “What’s new to me isn’t the fear. It’s being controlled by the fear. No matter what happened to me in the past, no matter how scary life got, I always dealt with it.” She paused, took a breath. “But I’m not dealing anymore. I can’t tell you why. I don’t know why. I just know that I’m clinging to what’s solid and familiar to me. The things that I believe are good and right and true. Because all the rest of it is a dark and murky place, a drop-off-the-face-of-the-earth, there-lie-monsters kind of place.”
He squared his jaw. “Great. So where does that leave us?”
“I’m trying to keep it from affecting us.”
“Yeah? Well, you’re not doi
ng such a hot job of that.”
“You don’t understand.”
“No,” he said, “you’re the one who doesn’t understand.” He got up from the couch, crossed the room, and took her face between his hands. “You think you’re afraid?” His thumb gently rubbed at the soft skin of her cheek. “Try walking in my shoes. I waited sixteen years for you, and now that I finally have you, I can feel you pulling away from me, a little more each day. It scares the bejesus out of me. It would almost be better if you just ripped off the Band-Aid in one fell swoop. Because this step-by-step bullshit is making my head explode.”
Disappointment clouded her eyes. “You have it all wrong, MacKenzie. As usual, you’re completely and utterly missing the point.”
“Oh?” he said. “And just how am I doing that?”
“You’re missing the fact that you are the most solid and familiar thing in my universe.”
“Look, I’m a patient man, but—”
“Patient? Patient? You’re hot-headed, quick to jump to conclusions, jackass stubborn, and prone to tantrums when you don’t get your way. I’m not sure how you equate any of that with patience. Even so, you’re still my happy place.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m not feeling very happy right now.”
“Guess what, my friend? Neither am I.”
Silence. He puffed out a hard breath through pursed lips. “So what do we do about it?”
“I have no idea. But I’m not backing down on the birth control issue. Having another baby is something I’m not willing to give up on. No matter what you say.”
“Then we’re at an impasse, because I don’t intend to back down, either. Keeping you alive is something I’m not willing to give up on. No matter what you say.”
“Damn it, Flash.” A tear glimmered at the corner of her eye. “Why are you making this so difficult?”
“You just said it. I’m a jackass. I come from a long line of jackasses.”
“And yet, I still love you. Why is that?”
“Believe me, babydoll, there are days when you’re no picnic yourself. But I’ve loved you since the first time I set eyes on you. I couldn’t change it now if I wanted to.”
Fear widened her eyes before she shuttered them and the fear was replaced with defiance. “Are you saying you want to?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth, Fiore.” The tear rolled down her cheek, and he cursed himself for forgetting how vulnerable she was right now. “Look,” he said, “it’s late. We’re not about to resolve a damn thing tonight. Let’s dump out the beer and go to bed.”
She nodded, wound her arms around his neck, and pressed her cheek to his chest. He brushed his lips against her hair. “So you’re still my girl?” he said.
“Are you kidding, MacKenzie? Always. Always and forever. I may be a little crazy, but I’m not that crazy.”
He let out a breath as the fear that had a tight grip on his insides eased a little. “Jesus,” he said. “We are a mess, aren’t we?”
* * *
Thus began the most miserable episode of enforced celibacy he’d ever lived through.
They’d experienced celibate periods in the past, but there was always a legitimate reason: the weeks before and after childbirth, the weeks that followed each miscarriage. The weeks he’d spent on tour with Chico Rodriguez, after Chico’s lead guitarist had an unexpected medical emergency and he’d stepped into the breach. There’d been good, solid reasons for them to forego intimacy, reasons they’d both embraced, so it hadn’t seemed a hardship. Those six weeks apart while he’d been on the road had been a challenge, but the homecoming had more than made up for the entire six weeks of deprivation.
This was different. This was deliberate, born out of conflicting desires and fears. A line had been drawn in the sand, and because neither of them had any intention of stepping over it, the situation created a tension between them that had never existed before. They’d become adversaries. If it hadn’t been so serious, he might have found it comical. But this was a life-and-death issue, and Casey was determined to torpedo his well-meant intentions. Because they both knew there’d be no resolution until one or the other caved, every word, every glance, every touch was rife with implicit meaning. They’d always been able to hold a conversation without words. But now, the unvoiced conversations that coursed between them ran to silent accusations: “You know, we wouldn’t have to go through this if only you’d stop being such a jackass and see things my way.”
But of course, they were both jackasses, each of them unwilling and unable to see things from the other’s perspective, so the gap between them widened, fueled by anger and hurt and resentment.
And, on his part at least, a growing fear.
* * *
Sweat, assisted by gravity, drizzled down his ribcage and along his spine, saturating his clothing and leaving him stewing in his own juices. The air conditioner had been on the fritz for the last three days. With the five-dollar part needed to fix it on back order, the atmosphere in this place could best be described as one step this side of hell. Somebody had brought in a fan, but all it did was move around stale air, and the damn thing was so noisy, he couldn’t use it while he was recording anyway. New York City was clutched in the grip of a full-fledged heat wave, the kind of heat that accelerated the murder rate, left sidewalks steaming, and turned New Yorkers—not known for their courtesy under the best of circumstances—into total assholes. All you had to do was turn on the TV to the nightly news to see the effect the weather had on normally sane and rational people. He’d lived through three New York summers, and he’d grown up in Boston, so it wasn’t as though he didn’t know the score. But he’d been spoiled by his years in California, where this kind of mugginess, so thick you could eat it with a fork, was rare.
One good thing had come of the weather: the notable absence of Phoenix’s posse. Even Luther, who was built like a linebacker, had succumbed to the brutal heat. The gentle giant had spent half of yesterday mopping sweat from his face with a snow-white handkerchief before giving in and returning to his hotel.
Work wasn’t going well. The heat, the time squeeze, the pressure to perform, were all getting to Phoenix. He’d been snippy all morning and into the afternoon. Cold pizza and tepid Coke hadn’t done anything to sweeten the kid’s mood, and when Rob asked him, for a fifth time, to dig deeper into his emotional repertoire to mellow out a line that sounded too harsh, the kid slammed his headphones to the floor and said, “It’s only flippin’ pop music! What in bloody hell is wrong with you?”
Sighing, Rob made a mental note about covering the cost of the headphones from his rapidly-dwindling budget. Into the mic, he said, “It’s only your flipping career. What in bloody hell is wrong with you?”
“Bugger off,” the kid said.
Rob glanced over at Kyle, whose balding pate gleamed with perspiration, and made an executive decision. “We’re quitting for the day,” he said. “Kyle, go home and spend a few hours with your wife, before she forgets what you look like. Phoenix, front and center.”
“Man, you don’t have to say it twice,” Kyle said. “I’m outta here.”
“See you tomorrow, buddy.”
The kid dragged into the control room, a sneer on his pretty face. “What?”
“You’re coming with me.”
“And where might we be going?”
“For a walk.”
“In New York.” The kid raised a single dark eyebrow. “In this heat.”
“That’s the way it plays out.”
“You’re fuckin’ serious.”
“Jesus, Phoenix, lighten up a little. You’re seventeen. Life’s supposed to be fun at seventeen.”
“No thanks to you. Bleeding sadist.” But he followed Rob down the corridor, past the reception desk, where Sheila sat, fanning herself with the sports section of the New York Times, and out the front door.
Outside, heat rose in waves from the pavement. Traffic was at a standstill, all those combustion engines adding a heady c
ocktail of heat and gasoline fumes to the sultry atmosphere. An elderly couple with cameras conferred over an open map, while a statuesque blonde wearing too much eye shadow and a black leather miniskirt—in this heat—clicked down the sidewalk on silver stiletto heels. “Stop staring,” Rob said to the kid, who was standing on point like a bird dog. “She’s way out of your league.”
Half a block away, a vendor sold hot dogs from a pushcart. Rob bought two with the works, one for him and one for the kid. “You’re welcome,” he said, handing a hot dog and a bottled water to Phoenix.
The kid eyed him through those mirrored sunglasses, which did nothing to camouflage his identity. Not that it mattered. In these temps, any girl who recognized him would be too weak from heat exhaustion to do anything about it. “Thank you,” Phoenix said fussily, and bit into his hot dog.
They ate, and walked, in silence. Eventually, his hot dog gone, Phoenix said, “I don’t suppose you’ve a destination in mind?”
“Right over here.” Rob veered across the densely crowded sidewalk to a sporting goods store that featured a wide array of athletic shoes in its window display. “Ever play basketball?” he said.
“Are you barking mad?”
“I take it that means no.”
“It means yes. But not in this bloody heat.”
“Oh, come on, Russell. Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“I left it back in London. And don’t call me Russell. That’s not my name any more.”
He clapped the kid on the shoulder and steered him through the entryway. “Live a little,” he said.
After some deliberation, which took longer than it should have because the store was so nicely air conditioned, he bought a regulation basketball. While the sales clerk rang it up, he picked out two white terrycloth sweatbands. He paid, and they headed back out into the brutal heat in search of the small public court he vaguely remembered from his New York days.
The Miles Between Us Page 14