“Listen, I don’t like to bother ya with stuff from home. But things have been… a little tough for me with the club.”
“Money?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. The courage it took to utter that one syllable probably shaved a year off his life. Pop was a lifelong boy from the Bronx who’d worked in clubs his whole career. An aging punk who would bleed rock music if you cut him. He wasn’t a classically paternal guy. But it’d been only him and me together since he and my mom got divorced when I was ten and she moved out.
Pop was a man made up of pride, stubbornness, and steel-toed work boots. Money—having it and talking about it—was his idea of a nightmare.
“What’s going on with the money?”
“I’m, uh… I’m a little over my head. Hard to stay on top of this city’s prices. It’s been hard, I should say.”
“Yeah, I get that,” I said sympathetically—still waiting. Conversations with Pop had always been about patience.
“I got a letter in the mail this morning, a notice of petition. Landlord is suing me for $50,000 in back rent.”
“Wait… what? You mean Stevie’s suing you?” He’d been the landlord there since before I was born. He and Pop had a long friendship that had helped in the past when times were tough.
“It’s not him,” Pop said. “It’s his son. Took over for him. And I’ve been… a little behind each month, and it added up faster than I thought, I guess. Stevie and me, we’d always work it out. I always paid in the end. But not this time. It’s the law. Fourteen days to pay or I gotta go.”
Each sentence grated over me like sandpaper. I blew out a breath, let my head fall back against the brick wall. “Fifty grand is a lot of cash.”
“Yeah.” Pop gave a humorless laugh. “And I don’t got it.”
I tilted my head back and dropped the phone to my shoulder. I’d been dreading a call like this for a while now. I had so much love for The Red Room and the musicians who had helped raise me—in one way or another—after the divorce. It had been almost communal, my time there. Punk rock was in my bones. But this was what I was always trying to talk Pop into—pulling up his roots and leaving. He should have cut ties the same day I did and hit the road. Then this shit would have been someone else’s headache.
Mom got it. Every time we talked, even though it wasn’t often, she was always on to the next adventure, enjoying the bends in the road and all the detours.
“I need your help,” Pop said, voice soft at the edges. “I need you to come home, Max.”
The plea in his voice stilled me. “Yeah?”
“Please. You know I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t scared out of my damn mind.”
“I’m not sure what I can do,” I said. “I don’t know a lot about fighting landlords or finding money when we’ve got none.”
Pop let out a short bark of a laugh. “Well, me neither. But my other option is… well, fucking no option. So yeah.”
He didn’t come from a family that had things like savings or retirement plans. The Red Room was his retirement plan.
So yeah.
“Can you quit your new spot? Where are you anyway?”
I glanced at the ocean. “Bar Harbor, remember?”
“Last I heard, you were still in Nashville,” he grumbled.
That was more than two months ago.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Because yeah of course I can quit. My boss knew I was temporary from the start. I can pack up, leave tomorrow morning, and be home by dinner.”
“Okay.”
My chest felt heavy. “Does Mom know?”
“Would she care?” he asked. “She hasn’t called me in two years. Asking for money that I don’t have.”
“Things are tight for her too, Pop,” I said, always needing to defend her at least a little. It wasn’t easy. She’d made some bad decisions in her life. And the memory of Pop’s grief after she left us was basically imprinted on my brain. But still. She was my mother. She was her own person, and charming as hell, so it was hard to stay pissed at her for too long.
Pop grunted a bit, which was his usual response when I said things like that. “Whatever. Listen, I’m gonna be glad to see you. Real glad.”
I could hear him trying to be casual. I rubbed my forehead, actual guilt in the pit of my stomach now. I knew why Pop had called. Was damn glad he did. But I still didn’t know how I was going to help this situation.
I squashed that concern, though, like I squashed any negative emotions. Life was too short, and much too fun, to dwell on bad shit. Of course I would come. A month back home could be good. I would see Pop, see Mateo and Rafael, hang at The Red Room, drink at my old haunts. It was the most exciting city in the world with some of the most beautiful women. And as long as those beautiful women were fine with my temporary stopover, I’d certainly enjoy myself.
“We’ll figure this out,” I said. “We’re a team, remember?”
We ended our call, and I took one last lingering look at the Atlantic Ocean. Rubbed a hand across my jaw as I glanced back into the shop. Waved a hand at my boss to get his attention. Quitting was easy for me, and I’d done it a hundred times before.
As my mom liked to say, ain’t no shame in wanting your freedom.
4
Max
I set the stand down on my bike and tugged off my helmet, placing it under my arm. I stared up at my second home: The Red Room.
Six buildings down from it was the apartment where Pop still lived. I’d grown up on the third floor—just me and him for half of my childhood.
This block in the East Village was full of shoppers and pedestrians now. I caught a few raised eyebrows at my bike and my leather. But I shrugged it off. This was my home.
Or at least, it had been.
Seven years. Felt like the blink of an eye to me. I’d held down twice as many jobs, lived in ten different towns and cities in eight different states. Now, staring at the dodgy-looking building where Pop had raised me, seven years of homesickness reared its ugly head, just in time to wallop me across the fucking face.
My old apartment looked old. Even The Red Room looked old. Pop never said anything about that, although our phone calls weren’t really long or emotional. That’s why him calling me home meant things were worse than I feared. The man was stubborn and private. He didn’t like to bother people.
And I never thought to ask him anyway.
A moment later, Pop walked out the front of The Red Room, and he was exactly as I’d remembered from seven years ago. There was that feeling again—like a faded bruise that hurt when you pressed on it. Because as I watched him walk toward me, he looked a little more shrunken. Which was weird because I was taller than him by six inches at least, but in my memory, he was a fucking giant.
“Good to see ya, Maxy,” he said as he walked up. He was still bald, still covered in faded tattoos.
“Aw, Pop.” I grinned, pulling him in for a bear hug I knew he’d pretend to hate but secretly appreciate. “It’s been seven years, let me hug you for fuck’s sake.”
“You’re smashin’ my face.”
“Good.” I gave him an extra hard pat on the back before releasing him. He was red-cheeked and surly-looking, but the twinkle in his eye was the one I remembered from being a kid. He was proud of any little thing that I did. Period. “You look real good.”
“Stop bullshitting me,” he grunted, although his mouth tipped up into the tiniest of smiles. “New bike?”
I turned back to my baby, a black-and-red Harley, a gleaming classic ride that brought me more joy than I thought possible. “Ain’t she a beauty?”
“You’ll be making a lot of folks jealous at The Red Room when they see it.”
“Just my style.” I shrugged, tossing him a grin. “So why don’t you take me up to the office before I head home to unpack my stuff? As long as you’ve got the room.”
He nodded, avoided eye contact. “Left your room just like it was.”
My chest pinched
the tiniest amount. “Cool. Thanks, Pop.”
He waved a hand, dismissive. “I, uh… didn’t have a chance to organize anything in the office. It’s a little messy.”
I followed along, stepping into the dimly lit cavern of The Red Room. Before Pop started managing this place thirty-five years ago, it had been at the center of the city’s punk and new wave scene, along with venues like CBGB. After he took it over, it stayed true to its roots, rotating through bands both famous and up-and-coming. It looked exactly the same—from the old bar, to the posters on the wall, to the stage set at the perfect height for crowd surfing. There was a band I didn’t recognize setting up and running through a sound check. The immediate blast of chords and guitar twangs and cymbals clashing together was as familiar as a bedtime story.
We made our way up the narrow staircase and into the small office that looked out over the stage through a big window. This office had been my playground, my time-out spot, the place where I did my homework while Pop worked at the big, messy desk. As I stepped into the room and looked around, it was still messy, dusty, and covered in paperwork and old receipts. There was an old, shitty desktop computer. Two giant wall calendars with fraying edges were taped to the wall, Pop’s scratchy handwriting indicating which bands were playing when.
Was this feeling homesickness? Nostalgia? It felt like yearning mixed with sadness. And I didn’t do sad.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Always.” I shrugged, kicked out a chair with my boot, and fell back into it, dropping my bag and helmet on the floor. “Just shocked you haven’t done anything different to the office. I think that stack of papers over there’s been around since I was in tenth grade.”
“I got a system,” he said.
“Yeah, I know.” I grinned, clapping his arm as he sat in the chair across from me. “I’m happy to see you, Pop. I know I meant to get home last year for Christmas, but then things didn’t work out.”
I was halfway across the country, in Colorado, and between the weather and the cost of a holiday ticket, I never pulled the trigger on doing it. Which I figured was fine. Pop’s giant family all lived in Jersey, and he spent his holidays there. He was never alone.
But I wondered if he was ever… lonely.
I’d spent the weekend of Christmas in bed with a beauty named Jessica in a snowed-in cabin in the mountains with a roaring fireplace.
I definitely hadn’t been lonely.
“Your aunts fed me enough for two lifetimes,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “I missed ya, but I wasn’t mad.”
That’s what he said every time.
“You don’t miss me that bad,” I teased. “Although I’m a lot less work now that I’m twenty-eight. I don’t have homework you need to help me with, and I can feed myself.”
Beneath our feet came the steady thud of a bass. When I glanced down, both of us were tapping our heels in time with the beat. Loud, non-stop sound was the backdrop of my childhood, and even now I didn’t mind falling asleep to music. The life of a club owner was a mostly nocturnal one. Me and Mateo would walk home and wake Pop up at 3:00 pm with coffee and a slice of pizza from the shop down the street. And then he’d set us loose in The Red Room with instructions to finish our homework before running the block or terrorizing the bands setting up.
He drummed his fingers on the table, and dust floated up. “How long you think you can stay?”
“A few weeks probably,” I said. “I’ve got a little bit of savings to float me, and job applications out to half a dozen shops across the country. It’s never been a problem to find a job. Bike mechanics are needed everywhere.”
I’d even sent an application to Rusty’s, the famous shop in the Hollywood Hills. They were looking for a mechanic to handle custom builds, the kind celebrities and rich people paid for. It would mean getting my hands on machines that were new, shiny, and interesting. I wasn’t really a “dream job” kind of guy, but if I was, Rusty’s would be the place.
“You could stay longer if you wanted,” he said, not looking at me. “I mean, you know, there’s a room for you. At home.”
I smiled. “You’ll get sick of me in no time. Besides, I’ll get itchy feet like always.”
He nodded but stayed silent. Tapped his fingers some more and then handed me a piece of paper that was wrinkled and worn.
“This the letter?”
“Yeah.”
I glanced down at it, the words and legal language blurring in front of my eyes. Notice of Petition it said at the top. Pop, the tenant, was being sued for the $48,295 he owed in back rent. And per the law in New York, he either paid in fourteen days or he’d be evicted.
He’d been here for thirty-five years. This building was The Red Room.
“Wow,” I said, raising a brow at him.
“You’re tellin’ me,” he said. “Just about shit myself when I opened it.”
“Did you know this was coming?”
He shrugged again. Looked away again. “I do pay my rent every month. But I started not being able to pay all of it back in January. It added up way faster than I thought. Stevie knew I was good for it because he was good people. His son…” He shrugged.
It might not be the most efficient of systems, but Pop was part of a shrinking group of folks in this city who still did business from a place of honesty and relationships. “He was good people,” to my father, meant that rent in the most expensive city in the world could operate on some kind of credit and debit system. Vendors, musicians, performers—Pop still used handshakes and favors. I once saw him scrawl an agreement on a napkin and give it to a sound guy. It wasn’t like I was some big-shot, world-weary traveler. But I’d been out on my own long enough to understand this way wasn’t super common anymore. Maybe in some of the smaller mechanics shops I worked at. But the newer shops, with younger owners, didn’t give a flying fuck if they knew you or knew your people. You paid what you owed. Case closed.
I glanced around at the dirty paint on the walls, the stack of terrifying-looking bills, the old calendars and beat-up equipment. I kicked back on one leg of the chair, trying to think. When I was younger, the overall griminess of this place felt authentic and real.
I wondered why he had avoided being honest with me about how things were going.
“Alrighty then,” I said, forcing a smile. “You and me, we gotta save this place, okay? How hard can it be to find $50k? Or maybe… maybe we need a lawyer or something.”
“Okay.”
I looked back down at the letter, the words swimming across the page. I wasn’t used to being the adult in the room. My dad was stoic, and he handled his shit. I knew things were pretty bleak when I was in middle and high school. Without Mom around, money was stretched thin. I was never hungry, though. Never worried. Pop was Pop. He gave off a whole vibe of competence.
This time, I was legit worried.
The bass line beneath the floor changed up. So did our feet. Without looking up I knew I’d catch him bobbing his head along in time to the music, same as I was. I always caught a couple shows on the road, but never like I wanted. Never like it used to be when live music was my every day.
Maybe tonight could be about a couple of beers, some loud music, and flirting with a pretty woman. Tomorrow I’d start reaching back out to friends here, make some calls, try to find someone to help.
“What are you thinking?” He asked.
“I’m thinking you’re worrying for nothing,” I said. “Let me sit on this tonight, get working tomorrow. Maybe you could sit with me and walk me through how things have been going, money-wise, since then? Show me some of the ropes? I bet it would help jog some ideas.”
He took the letter back and added it to a messy stack. “It’s embarrassing.”
“It’s not,” I said firmly. I stood up, grabbing my bag and helmet. “I’m gonna go set up back home, grab a shower and some food. You need help with the set tonight?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, if you want. Although it’s The H
and Grenades’ weekly set, so they know the drill.”
Now I was actually happy. “I didn’t realize they still held that Tuesday at ten pm slot?”
“I’ll have to wrench it from their cold dead hands.” He smiled, just a little. Ran a hand over his bald head. “Their daughter is a fancy lawyer now.”
I was halfway out the door. Stopped. I knew of Lou and Sandy’s daughters—Roxy and Fiona—but we were never close. Fiona and I were in the same grade but went to different schools. I remembered them as blond, teenaged menaces who scared the hell out of me in a good way. You didn’t fuck with the Quinn sisters. They’d been taught to throw elbows when they danced.
“Which one?” I asked, surprised.
“Fiona.”
“Huh.” She was the more straitlaced of the two sisters. Though I’d also seen her dive off that stage without fear too many times to count. So what the hell did I know? “I’ll keep her in mind as a source of info. See you in a few hours?”
He wrenched over a silver filing cabinet as old as I was, muttering beneath his breath. I hid a smile, chest warming to hear the mangled version of I’m happy you’re home, I love you.
“Love you too, Pop,” I said.
He waved his hand at me, but his eyes were surprisingly soft. “Yeah, all good. Try not to break too many hearts tonight, will ya?”
I slid on my sunglasses and walked backward out the door. “That’s a promise I can’t keep.”
It was a joke and he absolutely knew it. My relationships with women lasted 72 hours or less and were purely sexual in nature. Giving women pleasure was my religion, and I was more than happy to worship whatever lucky lady took me home to her bed tonight.
Hearts—and the breaking of them—had not a goddamn thing to do with it.
5
Fiona
There was a distinctly Roxy-like knocking at my door.
When I realized the time—and the day of the week—I groaned.
It was a Hand Grenades night.
Not the Marrying Kind Page 3