Donna Has Left the Building

by Susan Jane Gilman

“Tah-dah. Welcome to Nashville’s premier punk-indie club,” Zack announced. “The White Stripes have played here, REM. Pere Ubu. This is your tribe, woman.”

  But the bouncer barricaded the door with his arm. “Sorry.” Though half of his head was shaved, he looked to me about twelve. “Tickets to this sold out three days ago.”

  “What? How?” said Zack.

  “Online? We’ve got an app?”

  “You have an app?” I heard myself say. “How is that in any way ‘punk’? What the hell happened to paying at the door?”

  “Yeah,” said Zack. “And in cash, man. None of this credit-card or Bitcoin shit. Don’t you know, that’s how the government tracks you?”

  “Sorry, ma’am, that’s how it is,” the bouncer said to me.

  “‘Ma’am?’ Are you kidding?”

  At that moment, the show started; the courtyard was assaulted with music. Pubic Lice was screech metal. It was juvenile and atonal and just, well, loud. All the bones in my face seemed to rattle; I felt myself recoil. Worse yet, I found myself thinking: You’re a bunch of white twenty-year-olds in America with high-end musical instruments. What the fuck do you have to be angry about?

  “Zack, forget it. Let’s get the hell out of here.” I nodded back toward the alley. “Thanks for a great tour, baby. It’s been a terrific evening.”

  He threw his arms open. “Are you fucking kidding me? Woman, we are just getting started here. Woman, this is Nashville! This is us!”

  He led me next to an overblown shack with a pool table. Then to a bluegrass club that felt like a cattle car. “Bella, you sure you don’t want one drink? C’mon. One drink’s not going to kill you. The cops won’t give you a Breathalyzer if all you’ve had is a vodka.”

  Having to say no all the time was starting to needle me. “Really? You’re going to keep making me drink alone here?” Zack kept saying. But before I had to resist again, he kissed me hungrily. “God, I can’t wait to take you back to my place and fuck you again.”

  My feet began to throb. I told myself that I was still the wild girl, still up for anything. Zack was the great love of my life. Surely I could still keep up with him sober. Surely I could manage this.

  He guided me toward another wobbly stool in another crowded bar. “Yo! Lee-Juan!” he called out.

  A heavyset man with a Fu Manchu mustache and a red bandanna around his head waddled down the length of the bar. “Hey, hey, hey. It’s the Zakkolator.” He and Zack exchanged an intricate handshake, as if preparing to arm wrestle. Lee-Juan’s chest, arms, and neck were inked with gargoyles and Komodo dragons. “Long time no see. How you been, Zakkolator? You here with your crew?” He eyed me casually.

  “Lee-Juan, this is Belladonna. All the way from Michigan. We go back, like, forever, man. Like, three or four hundred lifetimes. Ha-ha.”

  Lee-Juan nodded. “Welcome to Nashville. Ain’t nobody better to show you around than Spider-Man here.” He tilted his head. “Just watch out for his webs, is all. This guy can spin ’em.”

  “Bwhahaha!” Zack slapped the side of the bar. “Bella, LJ here is the number one bartender in all of Tennessee. He is, like, the maestro of all margaritas. The lord of all liquor. Ain’t that right, LJ? So.” Zack leaned over the bar. “Set ’em up, my man.”

  Lee-Juan took down a beveled highball and made Zack a margarita with salt, no ice. He turned to me. “For you, ma’am?”

  Ma’am? Again? “Just club soda and cranberry.” I tried to look put-upon, though the truth was, I was getting increasingly irritable. “Designated driver.”

  Zack raised his glass. “To hot sex and cold tequila. Lee-Juan,” he said, “you guys still host open jam sessions here?”

  “Why? Did someone suddenly convince you that you can actually play the saxophone, Zack?” Lee-Juan scooped ice into a shaker and grinned. “’Cause I’m telling you right now, brother, that’s only tequila talking.”

  “Oh my God.” I turned to Zack. “Your sax! Do you still play? Not the one I got out of hock?”

  Zack peered into his glass. “Wow. Now, that was a long time ago.” Leaning forward, he seemed to consider whether to tell me something else. “Cindy actually pawned it for good, one night when she got pissed at me.”

  He braced for my reaction, as if awaiting the reading on a thermometer.

  “Cindy?” I said after a moment. “Oh. My. God. That bitch?”

  Senior year in high school, Zack had moved into a double-wide in Inkster Township owned by a woman named Cindy. She was a twenty-two-year-old chain-smoker with fried blond hair and heavy eyeliner and a six-year-old kid. She worked the cash register at the gas station with Zack. After his stepdad kicked him out one time, she’d let Zack stay with her for free because, she claimed, she needed a guy around for “show” in case her ex came around hassling her again—and also to help with her kid. They were totally just friends, Zack insisted—she wasn’t even his type—but I’d started hearing rumors at school. Sure enough, one Saturday afternoon when Zack didn’t show up to rehearsal, Danny Thurman drove me over, and we found them both stoned out of their minds and her blowing him in the kitchen. Zack had insisted that it was no big deal—that he just had sex with her to placate her—she was totally in love with him—what could he do? She was crazy! If he didn’t fuck her, he’d be out on the street.

  It was our most epic breakup. Eventually, Zack moved back into Rooster’s van and convinced me that he still loved me and only me. But after he and I had broken up for good, I’d heard he’d gone back to Cindy. To say that she’d been a point of contention between us was an understatement.

  “Cindy, Jesus. Was that chick ever a nightmare. Wow. I haven’t thought of her in years,” he said now. “I think Rooster told me she OD’d.” He shook his head quickly as if to disperse the memory. Reaching over, he squeezed my hand and pressed it to his heart. “Man, when your name popped up on my screen the other night, Bella? I almost fell off my fucking scaffold.

  “Hey, Lee-Juan?” he called down the bar. He put his arm around me and squeezed. A little too hard. “Did you know that Belladonna over here is a total kick-ass guitar player? Back in the day, in Michigan? She used to stage-dive into the audience wearing nothing but a leather bra and a dog collar.”

  He was making me sound not like a guitarist so much as a stripper. I found myself saying with annoyance, “Actually, I was more like Sonic Youth or Iggy Pop musically.”

  “She was fucking huge. Locally. Like, a cult following.”

  “Really?” Lee-Juan said mildly. A waitress at the other end of the bar signaled to him and he slid her a mug of beer. “What were you called?” He took out his phone.

  “Toxic Shock Syndrome,” Zack informed him.

  “It was a long time ago. It was no big deal,” I said quickly.

  Lee-Juan frowned at his screen. Our group, of course, had no digital footprint whatsoever. “So if you’re from Michigan, did you ever know Kid Rock?”

  “Totally,” Zack said. “In fact, did I tell you, he’s got us down on the VIP list for his show tomorrow? We’re the Michigan contingent, man. Special guests. We’ll probably even party with him afterwards.”

  Without being asked, Lee-Juan pulled the bottle of tequila out and poured Zack a shot. I had the impulse to stop him. “If you wanna play, come by any Tuesday or Sunday, two to six p.m.,” Lee-Juan said to me. “Open mike. You sign up on the whiteboard in there, and the musicians rotate. It’s real casual. No money. Just pass the hat.”

  “Boo-yah!” Zack pivoted around and high-fived me so hard, my palm smarted. “Did I tell you? When she’s a big star here, LJ, you owe me, man!”

  Throwing back his drink, he slammed the glass down on the bar. “And now that my work here is done, people,” he announced happily, “Spider-Man’s gotta take a piss.”

  Lee-Juan and I both looked after him. As he made his way to the bathroom, he nearly collided with one of the waitresses; bowing, he pantomimed tipping a hat. Then he lurched into some pool players he knew and gave
one a big, slappy bear hug. As he continued through the crowd, I saw him wince and press his palm to his spine. He looked suddenly abstracted and hobbled and lost, and I again saw his fundamental rootlessness in the world, just as I had seen it when we were sixteen, and again back in his bedroom that evening, when he’d shown off his case of army surplus meals.

  “Hey,” I said to Lee-Juan. “Should I be worried about him?”

  “Ah. Zack’s a wild man. But he’s got a big heart.” Lee-Juan aimed a soda spigot into a pitcher. “When I was first out on parole, he let me crash with him for almost two months. No rent, no questions asked. Not a lot of guys would do that.” Lee-Juan motioned to my empty glass. “Refill? Sure you don’t want anything stronger?”

  I shook my head. “You were paroled?”

  Clearing his throat, he poured me another cranberry and club and squinted across the room. “I haven’t been nearly as lucky as the Zakkolator. The charges against me always seemed to stick.”

  I picked up my glass, then set it down. “Zack’s been arrested?”

  Lee-Juan fixed me in an unreadable gaze. “Ah,” he said after a moment. “I’m just messing with you.” A customer flagged him; he waddled back down the bar.

  I shifted about uneasily on the stool. It seemed to me that important pieces of information were being withheld from me. What the hell did I really know about Zack now? Twenty-six years was more than half my lifetime. Okay, yeah, sure, Zack still felt like Zack. He still looked like Zack. He certainly kissed and fucked and enthused like Zack. But? I thought of him photographing me in front of Nashville’s fake temple, calling me a goddess. He was my greatest love. I knew him, didn’t I? I’d known him forever, in fact. He’d been in my cards.

  I scrolled through my phone. I chose the best photo Zack had taken of me at the Parthenon to send to Austin as a peace offering of sorts. In the spirit of your Odyssey rap, I typed, squinting at my phone. A piece of Greece from Tennessee. Well, that rhymed. I was very careful, however, to make sure I was sending only that. I hadn’t yet deleted all the photos from the bedroom. While I knew I should get rid of the evidence, it had been years since I’d seen myself look so unabashedly sexy. That one in the mirror: I would likely never, ever look so good again in my life. From here on in, it would be only gravity and erosion. Was it so terrible to want to hold on to some indisputable proof that I was once, in fact, beautiful? Desired? Loved? I could squirrel the picture away in some made-up file labeled “pap smears”; it would be like a modern-day digital locket.

  Zack finally returned from the men’s room, still tugging at his jeans, the phone in his hand vibrating with alerts. “LJ, my brother, we have an emergency. My glass is empty.” Leaning into me, he clutched my chin in his hands and kissed me. He was drunker than I’d realized. I felt assaulted with slobber, wholly devoured. Perhaps because I was sober and it was late, his tongue now felt eel-like, thick, slightly repellent.

  He wheezed into my face. “Hey, remember that time you gave me a blow job while I was driving Rooster’s van? And I came so hard, we almost crashed into that dumpster? Oh, and that other, time, with the Reddi-wip I stole from the gas station?” His eyes were on me but heavy-lidded now; he seemed to have trouble focusing. His voice was getting increasingly loud. “Oh, man, and that other time, remember, when I fingered you in gym class, and you were all wet and—”

  “Zack. Jesus Christ. Lower your voice!”

  “Whoops. Sorry,” he said in an exaggerated whisper. “My bad. Indoor voice only. But oh my God, Bella. Feel how hard I’m getting.”

  Lurching, he grabbed my wrist and pulled it toward him. I yanked it away. “Will you stop?”

  Leaning in toward Zack, his eyes glossing over me, Lee-Juan said in a low voice, “Listen, brother, I don’t wanna ruin your party here, but I think I better warn you. Anita was in earlier, asking about you.”

  Zack jerked violently. “You’re kidding. Here?”

  “She’s been coming around all week.” Lee-Juan looked at us both haplessly.

  “Fuck.” Zack raked his hands through his hair. “What did you tell her?”

  “Who’s Anita?” I said.

  Lee-Juan held up both his hands as if in surrender. “I told her I hadn’t seen you for months. I said, last I’d heard, you were on the road indefinitely.”

  Zack leaned against the bar and let his head drop, mop-like. “Oh, fuck.”

  “Who’s Anita?” I said again. Though I was only too aware of my own foolishness. If you have to ask a man twice, you probably already know the answer. A queasiness rose in me.

  Lee-Juan said, “She was asking if I thought you might be working the fish fry or over at the stadium.”

  Hooking his hands around the back of his neck, Zack stared up at the ceiling. “Okay,” he exhaled. “Bella, mind paying up?” He turned to Lee-Juan. “Thanks for the heads-up, man. Look. If she comes back here tonight?”

  “I know nut-tink, I see nut-tink. You vere not here,” Lee-Juan said in a German accent, shaking his head vehemently. “Two margaritas, comes to $12,” he said to me. “The cranberries are on the house. Welcome to Nashville.”

  Miserably, I dug out a twenty and told him to keep the change.

  Zack was already halfway down the steps when I caught up to him.

  “Crazy, fucking bitch.” He glanced distractedly around at the street, the cars, scanning the distance. “Claims I owe her money, when I totally fucking don’t.”

  In the Subaru, he turned on the radio full volume to some sort of thrash-metal station until I had to yell, “Zack!” He snapped it off and sat slumped against the window in silence, glaring at the dark streets sliding by. When I made a wrong turn, he said, “Jesus Christ, Donna, don’t you have a fucking GPS?”

  I glanced at him and said, my voice hard, “Zack, do you really have apartments in Miami and LA?”

  “Huh? What are you talking about?”

  “Tell me, truthfully. Have you ever been arrested?”

  “Excuse me. What the hell? What is this, the Jewish gestapo?”

  I pulled the car to a screeching halt. “Oh. Don’t you dare.”

  He threw up his hands. “Hey, hey, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Okay? Just trying to make a joke. I’m a little drunk, okay?”

  “More than a little,” I said bitterly.

  He stared at me. “Is that what this is about?”

  “Is that what what’s about?”

  “C’mon. Oh, please. You think I haven’t noticed? ‘No thanks, I really can’t.’ ‘Oh, I’ll be the designated driver tonight.’ C’mon, Donna. I’m not an idiot.”

  “That’s not what this is about, Zack.”

  “Oh no? ’Cause that seems like it to me. You’re all pissy because you’re the one not drinking. I told you that one drink was not going to get you pulled over. But instead, you’ve decided to be all Miss High-and-Righteous.”

  “Excuse me? Excuse me? I paid for every one of your drinks tonight, Zack, in case you didn’t notice.” I put the car firmly into park, yanked off the ignition. I had no idea where we were. Someplace on the outskirts of southern Nashville, past a river.

  “Who’s Anita?”

  “Ah. Of course. There we are. ‘Who’s Anita.’ So that’s it. You fucking women. You’re all alike.” He threw up his hands. “I told you already. Anita’s this insane chick who keeps claiming I owe her money. When I totally don’t.” He looked at me reproachfully. “She’s like this weird, psycho stalker. For the past year and a half or so, she’s been, like, obsessed with me.”

  “Oh, right. Sure. She’s totally in love with you for no reason at all. Just like Cindy was.”

  “Cindy? Cindy? Are you fucking kidding me? Are we still stuck on that?”

  I glanced away. “I know when you’re sleeping with somebody, Zack. Believe me.” I knew it was ridiculous to feel proprietary after twenty-six years, but I did. We were lovers again; it changed everything for me.

  “Oh for Christ’s sake, Donna. Anita’s a fucking lesbian. S
he’s another rigger and, like, a total bull dyke.” He fixed his eyes on mine as if he were attempting to drill his words into the back of my head and affix them there. “She’s this Russian immigrant who grew up in, like, Siberia, and she just latches onto people and gets all paranoid and KGB on them. I don’t know, her childhood was bad or something. But we’re both in the union here. There’s no getting away from her.”

  We sat there for a few minutes, breathing loudly, looking at each other in a face-off. The outlandishness of his explanation was an affront to my basic intelligence. He must have sensed this, too. But this was Zack. This was how he lied. This was how he’d always lied many, many times before, I realized. It was like a song I knew from high school. I knew it as intimately as the scent of his skin, and the curve of his penis, and his sneezy, lunatic laugh. Somehow, though, I’d completely forgotten it.

  “A Russian lesbian stalker, Zack? Really. That’s the best you can do? Are you sure she’s not an amputee as well?”

  Zack’s face softened. Slowly, gently, he began to laugh. “Oh my God. You’re jealous. You’re still jealous. That is so sweet. That is, like, the nicest compliment anyone’s ever given me.” He reached for my hand and kissed it before I could jerk it away. “Oh, Belladonna.”

  He gave me an adoring, puppyish look. “Wow. You really think I’m that much of a player now? Look at me, Bella. I’m forty-fucking-five.”

  “Well so am I. And I’m too old for this shit anymore. For these games.”

  “What games, Bella? What games?”

  I unclicked my seat belt and turned to face him. “I don’t know the first thing about your life now, Zack. You’re here, you’re there. You tell all these stories. I’m sick of not knowing what the fuck is going on, of having people lie to me, of having men pull all this shit on me behind my back.”

  I felt like someone was pressing down on my thorax. Kicking open the door, I climbed out into the street, gulping in air so quickly, it sounded as though I was dry-heaving.

  “Jesus Christ, Donna.” Zack was out on the street now, too, coming around the front of the Subaru, his arms outstretched as if to demonstrate that he wasn’t carrying any weapons. “What the fuck do you want from me? The whole reason you don’t know anything about my life now is because you said you didn’t want us to talk. You said flat-out, ‘Zack, I just want to be in the moment. Zack, I just want us to be in our bubble. Our life beyond space and time.’”