Текст книги "The Girl On The Half Shell"
Автор книги: Susan Ward
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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 23 страниц)
I manage to hold it together through the remainder of the call, but long before I drop the receiver back into the rest I am shaking, and everything is running wildly loose through my body.
Oh god, what is wrong with me? Is that what I feel in him? Why I am drawn to him? I’ve touched a dead person before. My brother. It changes you. Death lingers in your flesh. It is not something you can shake off; it is metaphysically altering. Am I even more fucked up than in the ways I already know?
Oh shit, oh shit, of shit! There is more going on inside of me than ever before at any time, like a fast free-fall instead of a wave, fragments in my brain running and colliding, emotions accelerating. What is that pounding on the edge of my consciousness, fighting to get in? I am feeling it again, like I did at CBGBs seeing Vince Carroll, this horrible picture fuzzy and fighting to become clear.
I want it to stop. Oh, please make it stop. I realize I am sitting on my knees on the cold marble bathroom floor, in front of the vanity cabinet, unaware of how I got here. I jerk the heavy black lacquer box out and dump the contents on the floor: pills, so many pills, weed, pipes, coke vials, balloons, a tie off, needles…
I pick up the needles in my shaking hands, the world falls away beneath me and I sink to the floor. Oh god, please no! And the messy inside of me is no longer mess. It is dark and ugly, in focus and real.
Chapter Ten
My name is being called and it sounds far away, as if in a tunnel. I stay motionless, curled on the bathroom floor.
Then the cold and lifeless air around me is supercharged with the feel of Alan’s presence.
He drops to his knees beside me. “Fuck, Chrissie! What did you do?” I feel limp like a rag doll, as he pulls me from the ground and drags me into his lap. “What did you do, Chrissie? Baby, what did you take?”
He is rummaging through the mess of his stash box splashed across the floor. He slaps my face. “Baby, you’ve got to tell me what you took.” He slaps me more. I can’t feel his touch, I can’t feel my lips, and I can’t find the words in my head.
Panicked and terrified, Alan starts to drag me across the floor. “Oh fuck! Damn it, Chrissie. What did you take?” He is pushing me over the toilet and his fingers are pushing in on my mouth.
Part of my brain focuses. No, no, no. This is wrong. I don’t need to throw up. I plant my hands on the porcelain and struggle to break free. “I don’t do drugs. I didn’t take anything,” I say, my voice breathy and toneless.
Alan releases me and sinks on the floor. He is shaking. “What the hell is wrong with you? I thought you OD’d. Jesus Christ, I thought you’d OD’d.”
His breath is rapid, hard and ragged, as if he’s just run himself to exhaustion. When I finally look at him, he is sitting elbows on knees, face in hands.
His eyes, burning and angry, lift to fix on me. “What the fuck is that doing scattered all over the floor? What game are you playing here? Are you fucking out of your mind, pulling a stunt like that?”
I curl into a ball and stare. Alan starts picking up the mess from the floor, tossing it back into the lacquer box before slamming the lid shut and putting it back beneath the vanity.
He stands above me, rigid and enraged. “Goddammit, speak to me. Is this some fucked up little girl tantrum because I had to leave today? I don’t do bullshit, Chrissie, and I don’t play little girl games.”
When I don’t answer, he reaches out and grabs me from the floor. He is hauling me from the bathroom, his fingers tightening and tightening with each step. They press too hard into my side and I wince.
He jerks up my shirt and the color drains from his face. “Oh fuck, Chrissie. Why did you do that today? Baby, just tell me. I don’t know how to help you.”
I curl on my unburned side and wrap myself around his pillow. I start to sob, quietly at first, and then harder and harder because the numbness is fading and the distraught look on Alan’s face made it all come tumbling back.
The things I now know for certain to be real. The things I remember. The things I want to forget. The things about Alan that terrify me. The things about myself that I hate. My thoughts are echoing and bouncing inside my head, and he wants me to tell him how to help me. He can’t help himself. We are two fucked up people. Jack had it half right. Neither of us are circus ready.
I feel his fingers in my hair. “Hush, baby,” he breathes, and gently he pulls my paralyzed body into his arms, burying his lips into my hair. “Can you tell me what happened?”
His voice is so achingly anguished. I force myself to shake my head no. He exhales what sounds like a sigh of relief that I’m responsive and continues to kiss gently all through my hair.
“Did something happen to you, Chrissie? Did someone hurt you?”
I shake my head. He exhales again.
“Are you upset that I left?” He runs a shaking hand through his hair. “I should have called. I would have called. I didn’t have a chance to.”
I shake my head. His hands, soothing and tender, move to my arms, gently rubbing up and down. “Shit, you’re freezing cold. How long have you been laying there?”
I shrug. He scoops me up and carries me back into the bathroom. He is worried and almost despondent. “I don’t know what I did. You have to promise not to do this again. Just get angry. Just yell. Why can’t you talk instead of doing this?”
I watch him from my perch on the toilet while he fills the tub. After shutting off the knobs, he comes back, eases off my shirt, examines the infinity burn on my lower left abdomen, and then transports me into the warm water of the tub.
Alan collapses into a sitting position beside the tub, long limbs exhausted, and I curl in a ball in the center of the tub hugging my knees silently.
We sit together like this, neither of us moving or talking for ages.
“Does the water make it hurt?” he asks after a long while.
I turn very slowly until my cheek is against my knees so I can face him. “A little. Not bad. I like the pain.”
His eyes flash. “Well then you are one fucked up little girl, because I can’t even stand the sight of you in pain.”
I don’t know why that does it, but it makes me cry, a more normal and emotional cry.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to put you through that.” I use the towel on the ledge to wipe my nose.
“I’ve never had anyone scare me more in my life,” he whispers, eyes widening, the fearful expression returning.
“It’s no big deal. It’s just what I do when everything gets too close and too real.”
“I understand the too close and too real.” His eyes close again and I watch myriad emotions cross his face. “But please, for me, don’t do that again. I’ve seen a lot of shit, but that was the fucking worst. You looked dead. Why did you do it? Goddammit, talk to me!”
I don’t answer him.
He opens his eyes and looks at me. “OK. But soon, baby. Please make it soon.”
He lifts me from the tub and sets me onto the waiting towel. He pats me dry, sets me on the bed and goes to my duffel for fresh clothes. He covers me in a long sleeve t-shirt, pulls on my panties and then a pair of sweatpants.
“Do you want to go to sleep?” he asks.
I shake my head no and then notice the exhausted lines on his face. He’s been at it since 7 a.m., he’s still dressed in the types of clothes he wears for interviews, it is 4 a.m., and he came back to the apartment having to deal with me. I feel my heart clench anew, but for kinder reasons.
Fucked up he is, but Alan is a good guy, more than he believes.
“Are you hungry?”
I shake my head no.
“Have you eaten today?”
“No. Too many people in the apartment and a hideous girl in the kitchen.”
That makes Alan laugh in a tired way. “Hideous girl would be Jeanette. My secretary.”
I struggle to make a comical face. “See, you do know what someone does here, who works for you.”
He pulls the blanket from the foot of the bed and wraps me in it. I’m transported down the hall to the kitchen, where he sets me on the butcher block island before going to rummage in the refrigerator.
He starts pulling out cartons and setting them on the counter. “Kitchen finally stocked. An entire buffet of readymade here. What do you like? Does it matter? I just need something to kill the pain.”
I shrug and watch. I haven’t the energy for behaving as if I’m OK. Not just yet, but I’m nearer.
He dumps the cartons and a fork on the counter, settles in a bar high chair, and then scoots me around until I’m facing him, my legs dangling at his side.
He fills a fork and holds it up for me. “I’m not sure what this is. Eat.”
I take a bite. A reluctant laugh whispers out of me. “It’s potato salad.”
He takes a bite. “Not bad. Let’s see what we have here.”
Fork to my lips. Another bite. “Macaroni salad.”
He takes a bite and sets it aside. “This I know. Meatloaf. Do you want me to heat it? I like it cold.”
“Then I’ll eat it cold.”
We pick at the meatloaf until we’ve both had our fill. At some point between forks full, he poured himself a very tall glass of whiskey. A part of me really wishes he wouldn’t, and a part of me taunts Who are you to be critical of his weaknesses? We are both messed up. Equal. The same.
As he cleans up the mess, he asks, “Are you tired? Are you ready for bed yet?”
I stare at my toes. “No, I don’t want to sleep. I don’t want to go back to the bedroom. I was trapped in there all day.”
Alan laughs, tired. “You didn’t have to stay in the bedroom. I told you to do what you want to do here.”
I shrug. “That’s what I wanted to do.” I stare out the wall of glass. “Can we sit out on the patio for a while? It’s nearly dawn. I want to watch the sunrise.”
He settles us on a double chaise lounge and it is not long after we’ve curled into each other that Alan is asleep. As I tighten my arms around him, strangely finding comfort in holding him, the taut bands of emotion inside me finally finish unraveling. And in this moment—this moment of quiet with Alan—I am completely overcome by my feelings for him. I don’t know if he loves me. I don’t even know if I love him. But for the first time, I am offered a glimmer of understanding of what it should feel like to love.
The sunrise comes and spreads across the sky. Just having Alan near has made me calm faster inside than ever before. Last night in the bathroom was the worst of the worse, lockboxes fully opened, fragments of memories joining into clarity. I expected the horror of finally understanding all the tormenting, unrelenting images to drag me down for weeks, but I am calm today, strangely calm, more than it is logical for me to be.
It is well into morning when I hear sounds from the apartment, the terrace door open and then clicking heels on tile. I lift my cheek from Alan’s head, and open my eyes to find Jeanette hovering in front of me, setting a breakfast tray on the foot of the chaise. One plate. One setting. One cup of coffee. Message received, as if I couldn’t read the look she’s giving: Jeanette hates me.
“He needs to wake,” she says, imperatively. “He needs to eat, shower, dress and leave here by ten. Do you think yourself capable of communicating that to him?”
“Yes, I think I can manage that.”
She doesn’t offer me breakfast. I watch her leave and I don’t give her the satisfaction of seeing me wake him. The perfect lines of Alan’s face look so peaceful when he sleeps, his breathing is so shallow as if he still needs sleep, and I hate the thought of waking him.
I touch my lips to his forehead. “Alan, you need to wake up.”
He straightens up, from dead asleep to wide awake in a blink, those penetrating black eyes fixed on me. “Are you OK?”
I nod. “It’s just your breakfast is here and I have a message to communicate, and I wish to communicate before I forget it and make a mistake: You need to eat, shower, dress and leave here by ten.”
Alan laughs, stabbing his omelet with a fork. “Ah, you don’t like Jeanette. She’s supposed to be a slave driver, Chrissie. She keeps me organized and on track with where I need to be and what I need to do. She is very good at it.”
I take a sip of his coffee. She is also very beautiful. I smile. “I’m sure she is.”
We eat, taking alternating bites, until his plate is completely clean.
“Are you really OK, Chrissie? You wouldn’t lie to me would you?”
“Yes, I’m fine today.”
I change the subject. “How did you guys come up with the name Blackpoll?”
Alan laughs, a lazy, sort of quiet laugh. “I can tell by how you say that, that you are one of the three Americans under thirty who know what a Blackpoll is.”
I make a face at him.
“Len has a thing about birds,” he explains, smiling. “Blackpoll is what you get when you don’t have a name for a band and Len answers the phone drunk, holding an Audubon book. There is symmetry to it, so I kept it.”
“A small songbird surrounded by needles and cones?”
Alan laughs. “I didn’t say good symmetry.”
I hug my legs with my arms, pressing my cheek against knees, following him with my eyes as he returns to the kitchen for more coffee.
When he settles beside me, I decide to ask the question I’ve turned in my head since we settled on the terrace last night.
“Why do you keep the box in the bathroom?”
“I told you, I don’t believe in that total sobriety bullshit. It’s no big deal, Chrissie.”
“But the smack, Alan. Why keep the heroin if it’s a good thing you’ve kicked it?”
He hands me the cup of coffee. “Tossing it won’t change a thing if I decide to use again. It would be a meaningless gesture. Christ, I’m surrounded by it all the time. Tossing it would be as pointless as me taking your bracelet away.”
I stare at my toes and I can feel him watching me.
“Jeanette, bring me my book!” Alan bellows.
Clicking heels on the tile close in on us. To Alan, she smiles and sets the book in front of him before taking away the breakfast tray. Alan rummages through the pages.
“There isn’t anything here I can’t cancel if you want me to stay today.”
He gives me a smile and what’s in my center is nearly a happy sensation.
I shake my head. “No, you don’t have to stay. I’m all right. Really, I am.”
“Only if you’re sure.”
The tone of his voice tells me he means it, and it still amazes me that out of nowhere there is this guy who worries about me. “I’m sure.”
His lips touch mine in such a sweetly gentle kiss that I instantly regret that I am sending him on his way. The tender kisses and touches are always the most potent, they light a fuse that makes me desperate for the rest of him.
I don’t know if my impulses are normal, they are too new and fresh, but right now it feels as if it would be desperately right to make love with him.
“My day isn’t long. I’ll be back late afternoon. Jeanette knows how to reach me.” His eyes fix on me sternly. “Call, Chrissie. If you need me, if you need anything, call me. You have to promise me or I won’t go. If something happens again, baby, you will call me first.”
I nod and watch Alan disappear through the doors.
After Alan leaves, I put on my one-piece and sit on the terrace, letting the sunshine soothe me and put me nearly to sleep.
I hear sound from the apartment and I jump.
“Shut the fuck up, Jeanette!” I hear from the great room. “Go back into your coffin or something. I’m not leaving and you are not keeping us away any longer.”
The voice is loud, female, and edgy.
“You really need to leave, Linda,” says Jeanette.
Linda? The girl from the letters in the cabinet? I’m wide awake now, I haven’t a clue who Linda is, but by how she handles Jeanette I know she is someone to worry about.
“And you really need to get your fucking face out of my face before I toss you over the patio railing. Len! Get your witless, wetback, limey ass in here and dispose of Cruella.”
She comes through the terrace doors like a hurricane. Linda’s severely beautiful face turns toward me, locking me in an absolutely diminishing stare.
“Aha,” she says. She sinks on the chaise beside me. “So that’s it. Manny has a new house cat. Who the fuck are you?”
I don’t have a chance to answer.
“Len, get the fuck out here!” she screams. “We’ve been worrying about nothing. He is fine. The band is not breaking up. He is ignoring everyone because he has a new house cat.”
Her eyes shift back to me. “Well, pretty little kitty, I’m Linda Rowan. Who are you?”
“I’m nobody.” Oh crap, why did I blurt out the first thing that came into my head?
Linda laughs. “Is that your name or your vocation? One can never tell with Manny’s girls.” She grabs a cigarette and lights it. She studies me over the smoke. “You’re a smart girl, aren’t you? You keep your mouth shut. That’s good. Don’t trust anyone, that’s my motto.”
She fixes her intense stare at the terrace doors. Even sitting silently, it feels as if the entire terrace is electrically charged from her.
I would have considered Linda Rowan a flawless beauty like Rene, if not for the ring through her nose, the ring through her eyebrow, and the ring through her lower lip. The stud in her tongue is something particularly irritating since it clicks against the back of her teeth whenever she speaks. It’s hard to tell how old she is. Anywhere between twenty and thirty. The eyes look a lot older, but her face is fresh and young.
I focus on the large pansy tattooed on her wrist, as she reaches to pour herself a hefty glass of whiskey.
“Well, fuck! Don’t just sit there staring at me. Say something.”
“I have nothing to say to you.”
Linda laughs a husky laugh that tells me she laughs often. “I like you, little house cat. I’m never wrong about these things. And I like you.”
I’m really getting irritated at being called the “little house cat” and I’m about to say something when Len Rowan decides to join us. He is a tall, swaggering, and good-humored Britisher. I’d recognize Alan’s bass player anywhere. He is not good looking, but he has an interesting face. Very English features framed by a mane of wavy reddish-blond hair.
“Len, meet the house cat,” Linda announces. “I can’t give you her name because she won’t tell me. This one is a clam. House kitty, this in my husband, Len Rowan.”
Len sinks too close to me on the chaise after grabbing a full bottle of Jack Daniels. He’s reclined on one side of me, Linda in front, so I feel surrounded.
“You’re a pretty little thing, aren’t you? All fresh and cute like he plucked you from an Iowa corn field. Where do you imagine he picked up this one, Linda?”
Linda sighs and shakes her head. “She’s too good for him. I can tell that at a glance. And I like her, so stop messing with her Len and stop staring at her tits.”
Len leans over to kiss his wife. “I only have eyes for you, love. And so long as you like her, that’s all that matters.”
“So, where is Ugly?”
Ugly? Does she mean Alan? “I don’t know,” I say cautiously.
The Rowans laugh.
“We’re all family here,” Linda says.
“You’re not exactly catching us at our best,” says Len humorously.
“Ya think, Len?” Linda shakes her head. She leans forward into me, chin in hands, eyes sharply on me. “Cruella has a way of bringing out the worst in me. I’ve been trying to call Manny since he touched down in New York. Cruella has been running interference and we worry about him. OK?”
“Haven’t had sight or sound from him in nearly six months,” Len explains. “The only things we hear are from Arnie Arnowitz. How’s a guy supposed to react to finding out his best friend is breaking up the act via a phone call from the accountant? Not even the fucking manager. The fucking accountant. After all that’s gone on, it was time to find out what the hell is going on directly from the source.”
“We got tired of being shut out, so we barged in,” explains Linda, reaching for another cigarette. “Len and Manny are like this.” She crosses her fingers. “Like brothers, and who the fuck tells their brother to kiss off via the accountant.”
I try to keep any reaction from surfacing. The phone call in the car from the airport: I knew before they knew that Alan was quitting.
Linda smiles. “So how long have you been with Manny?”
“I’m only visiting New York.”
That brings a sparkle to Linda’s eyes. “Interesting. We’ve had no contact with him since December so we’d very much appreciate a no bullshit, no carefully spun answer. We’re not the fucking press. We’re family. How is he?”
That question is far from simple, multifaceted, and serious. Linda is worried. Very, very worried. I can feel it underneath everything else.
“I don’t know. I don’t know Alan well enough to know for sure.”
Len spits out a full mouth of JD across the chaise. “You call him Alan?”
“Jesus Christ, Len, it’s nothing to split a gut about. It’s probably part of that Rehab getting to the true, honest self shit. You know how they love to fuck with your mind in Rehab. Pull it together, who gives a fuck what the little house cat calls him. It’s probably therapy.”
I’m ready to be done with this. I stand up and quickly secure my sarong.
“Don’t run off, little kitty,” Linda says mockingly. “We’re not done with you.”
Every muscle in my body tenses and I wonder where the flash of anger so unlike me came from. “Well, I’m done with you,” I say pointedly.
Linda rolls her eyes. “Not a smart move, little kitty. Not if you plan to stick around. I’m the last person you should make an enemy of.”
I meet her stare for stare. “No, Linda. I’m the last person you should make an enemy of. So back off.”
Girl stare. Serious girl stare.
Len spits out his drink again and then falls laughing on the chaise.
“Oh lighten up, lighten up, love. She got you good there, Linda. We don’t need a cat fight. Not today.”
Linda relents. “You don’t have to run off.”
I lift my chin. “I’m not running.”
“Then sit down dammit. It’s going to be explosive enough when Manny returns without you being pissed off at us.”
What the heck does that mean? Is she warning me that things are going to get worse from here? It’s already awful.
Linda takes a steadying breath. “I’m sorry, and I’d be more than happy to call you something other than little house cat, but you’re the one who won’t tell us your name.”
Good point. I sit back down. “Chrissie,” I say stiffly.
Linda smiles, and when she really smiles it’s quite spectacular. “There now, we are friends. I want you to stay here with me. Keep me from doing something stupid. This is not going to go at all well.”
Holy crap, what does that mean?
“So, where are you from, Chrissie? Where did Manny find you?”
I look at Len. “California.”
Linda crinkles her nose. “You didn’t meet in Rehab did you? You don’t look the type.”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.” Linda shakes her head in exasperation. “You know, you don’t have to be so cautious about everything. We’re just making idle chitchat until it’s time for the fireworks to go off.”
“So, what do you do in California,” Len asks.
“I go to school and I play the cello.”
The minute I say it I realize how lame that sounds. When do you outgrow these moments of embarrassing conversational awkwardness?
Len starts to rummage around the remains of my buffet table Jeannette unexpectedly set up for me while I was inside putting on my swim-suit.
“Aha.” Linda takes a plate of fruit from Len. “She’s a smart one, Len. All college posh and cello. Maybe the Rehab shit is good. Maybe this one will keep him straight. I like her.”
I know she means it as a compliment, but for some reason each time Linda announces I like her it’s like nails on a chalkboard. It is incredibly irritating, the self-importance she gives her own opinions.
Len Rowan’s eyes sharpen on me. “So, you’re the reason he bought the cello.”
How do they know about the cello?
Linda and Len lock stares.
“That means they’ve been together since January,” Linda announces with an air of discovery.
“I just met him last week,” I say emphatically, though I don’t know why I feel an urgent need to clarify that.
“Oh, don’t play coy with us,” Linda chides shrewdly. “Quite a retirement fund. Better than the jewelry. I knew you were a smart one. Jewelry always loses its value. But the cello. That was smart. And we know exactly when he bought the cello. Like I could ever forget that day. Remember, Len?”
Len gives her a sympathetic, heavy nod.
“I cried into my magazines for nearly a week,” Linda continues gravely. “It is a sad day when the only confirmation you get that your dearest friend is alive and well, since no one will tell you whether he is or where he is, is when he buys a cello for 1.7 million at auction at Christie’s. The Times in January. That was the first time we knew for sure he was OK.”
Linda starts to cry. I don’t know what to do. She is crying and Len is staring off into space. I inch across the chaise lounge to tentatively put an arm around her. Linda feels so fragile when I touch her. The hurricane is scary on the surface, but fragile within.
“I can see you care about him,” I whisper.
She is suddenly buried against me.
“It’s just been really, really hard. The three of us—Len, Manny and me¬—that’s all there’s been for eight years. The three of us. From London here. Then one day it falls apart. You don’t see it. You don’t prepare. And you are writing letters to your best friend, the guy who’s like your brother, because they won’t let you do anything else. You can’t call. You can’t visit. And he’s not writing back. I’ve been so afraid. Really, really afraid.”
She’s wrapped around me as if she’s holding on for dear life, and I’m uncomfortable and I can’t figure out why she’s wrapped around me instead of her husband.
“He has your letters. They’re in a cabinet in his bedroom,” I inform her gently.
Linda’s face snaps up. “Really? Then why the fuck didn’t he write back?” Linda sits back on her heels. “OK, you’ve seen it. I’m running on my last nerve here.”
I start to move away. She grabs my arm. “No, stay with me. This is going to get awful. They have history together that even I don’t understand. It’s going to get awful and you need to keep me out of it.”
Len is reclined on his lounge chair asleep, and Linda and I are laying side by side as though we are the best of friends, waiting, though I don’t know for what. The fireworks?
“Do you know where I’m from?” Linda asks.
I shake my head.
“The Valley. Encino. I’m a Valley Girl. I miss Southern California. I miss the sun.”
I laugh.
Linda turns on her side. “How did two California college girls end up with this strange herd of British wetbacks? They only want to marry us for the citizenship and the tax advantage. Take my advice. Finish school. Don’t run off with the first Brit who wants to marry you for a green card.”
Linda falls asleep. I sit beside her, watching the sun move across the sky, dip in the horizon, and then the expanding swirl of sunset. The hours are punctuated only by the sound of Jeanette’s clicking heels and Len’s snoring. Clearly, the Rowans are not leaving until Alan returns. It’s evening. Good one, Alan, you could have returned when you promised to!
A sound makes me jump, and the movement of my body jolts Linda awake. There is noise in the foyer. Is Alan back? I start to rise, but Linda latches onto me like a barnacle. “No, stay. This is going to get ugly. Stay with me.”
Len goes from asleep to turbo-charged in a blink of an eye. He’s through the terrace doors. And then there is shouting, lots of shouting, but it is mostly Len, and shouting and breaking glass.
After what seems like a monumental amount of time, I shake Linda off and run toward the great room. Inside I find Alan and Len tangled on the floor, and the room is a mess. I start to move to break it up, but Linda stops me.
“I am not going to fight you, Len,” Alan snaps, trying to break free.
“I’m the one who fucking found you!” It rings through the room with acid potency. “So, is that what you’re pissed about? You’re pissed I didn’t let you screw things up permanently? I happen to love you. And you let my wife cry. You don’t take her calls. You don’t answer her letters. You just disappear, and then come back to New York, smug as you please all secretive and shit. And then you slap us in the face with Arnie Arnowitz.”
“I fucking deserve a little time after eight years,” Alan says, shoving Len back and then sitting up.
“Fine. You can have time. What you can’t do is leave us all hanging around with our cocks in our hand, not knowing what we’re doing, not knowing if you’re all right, and not knowing if there’s a band. Some of us need the fucking work. We don’t have the royalties. Some of us ain’t rich as the Federal Reserve.”
“So is that where we are? It’s about the money?”
“No. It’s about you not telling us you’re in trouble. I thought you kicked that shit. Next thing I know, I’m finding you dead on smack, and they’re bringing you back to life. Fuck you! You were dead, you witless bastard.”
Len pushes back against a sofa, sitting on the floor sprawled and weak, and he is crying.
I’m frozen at the terrace doors, but Linda is suddenly across the room, with Len in her arms, and he’s crying against her.
After several minutes, Linda looks at Alan. “How could you think that it was ever about the money, Manny? Not us. Never us. That’s unfair. Len’s just letting all the garbage out. It’s been rough. But don’t ever accuse us of having it be about the money.”
Alan rakes a hand through his hair. “I never thought it was, Linda.”
Linda brushes at the tears on her face. “You scared the hell out of us, Manny. You’ve really got to stop this shit.”
“I’m working on it.” Alan’s eyes find me and his expression changes into something that looks like apprehension. “Why are you staring at me like that, Chrissie?”
I break free of my thoughts. Alan is still breathing heavy, still trying to calm himself. Before the Rowans, somehow everything managed to remain in my lockboxes. But they are all open again and the mess is here in the room with me, his truth, my truth. I don’t know how I was looking at him and I don’t know what he can see.
I drop to my knees beside him and Alan pulls me fiercely against him. The room is so heavy with grimness, and my thoughts and emotions are in free fall again.
Say something quickly, Chrissie. Something funny. It doesn’t matter if Alan hates the playacting. Right now it is all there is to get me through this. I kiss his cheek. I make an exaggerated face. “It’s the bowl, Alan. The Columbian pottery. I wish Len had broken that horrid little piece over there on your head, but the one he broke was exquisite.”
