Red Velvet Crush (16 page)

It is, I realize, the perfect place for our shit to fall apart. There was no opening band, no headliner, nobody to hide
behind tonight. It was only the five of us, skimming along, trying to keep our heads up in this dark and dirty little bar. Things couldn't get much lower than this.

Winston crosses the stage, glowing red.

“Their money is still good,” he says, grabbing the amp closest to him. I don't think he cares what we play, country or rock or funeral dirges, as long as we get paid.

Ty walks toward me, and I hold my breath, hoping he'll grab my hand and bring me back to center, whisper into my ear how everything will be okay and we'll find our way back somehow, but his eyes stay dark, studying the floor as he moves.

I follow him to the edge of the stage and wrap my fingers around his wrist. “Her arm won't be broken forever.”

“No,” he says, slipping free. “But for long enough.”

His hands disappear, stuffed deep into his pockets. “Is this what you want for the rest of the summer? More nights like this?”

I know he doesn't want to give up on my songs, and neither do I. But I can't bring myself to hand them over. Not to Billie.

“It's great this way, Teddy Lee,” he says, dropping down onto the first step, away from me. “You don't get to play your music. Billie doesn't get to sing your songs. And the rest of us don't get to play anything but covers. It's perfect.”

He heads for the exit, leaving disappointment in his wake and my heart tightening up.

I should have just said no. No, Billie, you are never going to sing my songs. With no wiggle room. No chances. No gray area. But I didn't. I had to go and say something about her bone setting. I had to go and give her hope. And hope is a bitch.

I stomp over and snap the cord from my amp. The plug flies out and lands at Billie's feet.

“Just 'cause you're not happy,” I say to her, “doesn't mean you have to suck.”

“Why not?” she asks. “You do.”

My fists clench, and my jaw squares as I eye her up. She does have another arm to break.

She drags her mic stand across the floor, pushes it into Winston's empty hands, and follows practically on Ty's heels, through the small crowd and up the dark stairs to the street.

Jay is standing off to the side of the stage, looking uncomfortable. He's holding his guitar against his hip at a strange angle. He bounces not at all.

Ginger is behind him in a shiny black shirt with silver cowboy detailing. It looks authentic, right down to the pearl buttons, but even that didn't help us tonight.

They start packing up their gear, quickly slamming cases and locking locks, all while stealing glances at me. They hop off the edge of the stage when they are done, one after the other, Jay like a gymnast and Ginger like a flamingo.

I wait while they climb the stairs, the light from the street slowly disappearing behind them as the door completely
closes. It sucks knowing that standing up for myself is letting everyone else down.

Winston walks up beside me, winding a thick cord over his bent elbow and between his fingers.

“What do you think?” I ask him as he winds and winds and winds.

I am hoping I'm not the only one who thinks Billie shouldn't sing my songs. That someone else will vote in my favor—especially the guy who talked me into starting a band in the first place.

Winston knows what Billie is like.

He knows it won't be easy, but it might be worth it to try to keep something for myself. He has to see why I can't give in this time.

He is still. The bundled cord hangs slack in his hand.

“I think it's your band,” he finally says, a single spot lighting up his shoe.

“You said that before.”

“I know. Now act like it.”

All I can hear is the scratch of silverware and the rustle of the newspaper next to me. Who reads the paper? I think, leaning away from the smear and ink of it until Ginger finally finds the rest of the story he is searching for, snaps the curling pages straight, and dives back in.

The morning sun is bright today, and my plate of steaming
eggs is yellow under a baby blue sky. I stare out the diner's front window with a ketchup bottle caught in my hand, struck by the fact that so much summer has passed us by.

It got lost in a bleary-eyed string of nightclubs and basement bars. I miss the smell of mowed grass, the sticky drip of a Popsicle melting down my fingers. I've seen so little of the sun.

I want to be awake at noon.

I want to know Ty in the daytime.

I miss the short shaved heads that started the summer. We are into August already and the boys are grown out now, completely shaggy and sullen.

Today we are heading west, turning back toward home. I don't want to think about that yet, though. The fact that real life is waiting for us, right around the corner. I try to tell myself we still have plenty of time.

Ty is going to Humboldt in the fall. That's the plan. He has semesters of hemp weaving and ethics seminars and a campus full of girls with thick, braided hair ahead of him. We have only a few more gigs to go. Soon summer will be over, and we all will be back home, breaking up, saying good-bye.

Ty has grown distant since Billie broke her arm, spending time alone, strumming his guitar or disappearing without a word. He is distracted now, always on to the next thing.

And Jay doesn't jump as high. He looks like his batteries are wearing out.

Ginger's fingers don't dance along to silent melodies anymore. His eyes don't light up as he scribbles notes and twirls his pencil, punctuating the air. His stillness speaks volumes.

We all need a vitamin.

I want everything back the way it was six weeks ago. Back when we were fresh and clean and new, covered in downy fuzz and anticipation. Before we wanted to bite one another's heads off.

Winston climbs into the booth, back from a smoke, and knocks Ginger's knees into mine under the table.

“I booked tomorrow night,” he says, and then orders a Coke. Winston doesn't believe in coffee, only soda.

“It's big for us,” he says, watching the waitress walk away. “Blasting Cap sent it our way. They were double booked.”

Jay sniggers. “How is that possible?”

Winston shrugs. “People like smoke.”

“Yeah,” Jay says, “or ukulele-size guitars.”

He pops up on the bench and starts playing his sternum like a guitar. Ginger watches over the top of his paper, his eyebrows up. Jay has one side of the booth entirely to himself. No surprise, since he is wearing his bright yellow I'm with Jealous
T-shirt. It made Ginger and Winston and me all elect to cram in together on the other side.

Jay slides back into the booth when the waitress returns and bumps into the table on his way down. The table rocks. The water in our glasses shimmies.

“Anyway”—Winston continues after Jay settles down and Ginger's paper snaps back up—“it's gonna be loads of people, lots of cash.”

That's good. After the last few nights it would be nice to have a shot at breaking even.

He twists the paper from his straw, tosses it aside, and takes a long dark drink.

“Who else?” I ask.

“A bunch of surf punks called Highway Robbery.”

I nod. Time to get our shit back together then, because I plan on blowing them out of the water.

“Where are they now?” I ask.

Winston looks around, confused. “The surfing bandits?”

“No . . . Billie and Ty.”

Winston shakes the ice around in his Coke.

“Maybe she's learning lefty,” Jay says, strumming the air.

He stops, unhinges his jaw, and pours a glass of milk down his throat as I watch. One large white gulp and it is gone. Boys are such pigs.

Jay stifles a burp and adds, innocently, “It's not like she had that much righty.”

True, but sometimes Jay is way too much like having another brother.

Winston sets down his Coke.

“So . . . you'll build a set list?” he asks, his long frame halfway out of the booth.

“Yep.” I nod to his shoulder, his half-empty glass of Coke. I reach for my fork and stab some eggs.

Winston waves from the doorway, already pressing his phone against his ear as I start building the set list in my head.

It doesn't matter where Billie is right now—or Ty. I've decided I'm not giving in this time, no matter how broken any one of us might be. It is my band after all.

“S
cheisse
. . .
”

Jay spins in a small circle, taking in the club.

It is big. Huge. As in seats-and-round-tables huge, room-down-front-for-dancing huge. Two bars. Even-has-a-balcony huge.

It must be an old-time theater that's been converted into a nightclub. White scrolled plasterwork edges along the ceiling and the balcony. The walls are covered in a plush dark red fabric, and the floor has a patterned carpet, intertwined vines that run the length of the room and twist together, dulled under years of spilled beer and foot traffic.

Winston finishes shaking hands with a dude in a navy blue sport coat who I am guessing must be the manager, then takes the steps leading up to the stage two at a time.

“Sweet, huh?” Winston asks us, a huge grin on his face.

We waited in a corner, letting him put on his responsible and mature managerial act while he got the full tour. He looks impressed.

“Let's load in, and then we have”—he grabs Ginger's wrist and checks his watch—“half an hour to sound check. So get your asses in gear.”

“But first,” he says before anyone can disappear. He reaches inside his jacket and pulls out five sheets of paper, rolled together into a makeshift tube. “The set list,” he says, struggling to find the center of the pages.

We assemble in a loose circle around him while he smooths the papers flat against his chest. He hands one to each of us.

I take mine and prepare for Billie's perfect storm of bitching and moaning. It only takes a second.

“What is this shit?” she asks.

“They're called copies,” Winston replies.

“This place has an office, too?” Jay looks up from scanning the page, still in wonderment.

Ginger and Ty stay silent, one on each side of me, papers down, far ahead of everyone else in reading comprehension.

“No.” Billie's voice burns. “This shit.” She taps the top of her copy with her fingertips. The cotton poking out the top of her cast is brown and dirty. She doesn't look at me.

Jay stops reading, finally catching on. His mouth gapes,
but he says nothing. He even stays still.

“Well, Bill,” Winston says with a long breath, preparing for his explanation, “it's a big show, and we need to bring our best.”

I cringe because that isn't the way we rehearsed it this morning when I handed Winston the set list. It was supposed to be something like “It's only one song, Billie, and you get all the rest and you are going to rock it.” With a soft smile and maybe a candy necklace. He needs to baby her more. He knows that.

Billie drops her copy. The curled page drifts to the floor as her boots clomp, first to the right, aimlessly, and then change course, heading left toward backstage. She turns back at the doorway and glowers at me.

Jay and Ginger shuffle around and look at their feet.

“Get started without her,” Winston announces. “I'll set up her stuff.”

I hesitate, knowing this is not the end. Billie will not give up so easily.

Ty stands with his chin lifted, watching Billie go.

I desperately want to see him right now: his face, his eyes. I want him to look down at me the way he used to at the beginning of the summer, when he was so eager and I was so sure.

But he turns and brushes past me, knocking me off kilter.

All the time I've spent with Billie and her broken arm over
the past few weeks, I want to take it back with my lips, my fingers. I miss him.

I close my eyes and think of the first time I kissed him. How it felt, light and warm and tingly, my stomach dancing, not dripping with hot battery acid like it is now. I hold on tight for a few seconds, my lids blinking, and wait for Ty to return to me, to be the boy I used to know.

Winston grabs my arm, and my eyes pop open.

“You're sure about this?” he asks.

Ty drops into action on the far side of the stage, his muscles moving as he pulls gear across the floor with Jay without a word or a glance in my direction. As if he doesn't see me at all.

I nod and reach for my guitar. I think I am.

One by one the mass becomes a mob, and then the mob becomes a throng. Out front the club is coming alive. I can hear it filling up with the hum and chatter of people, the tink of stacking beer bottles, the clink and chunk of cash registers being stocked for the night.

Backstage our headliners are busy trashing their dressing room. They are going for legendary status. I shudder against the sound of splitting wood and creaking joints.

“A
www,
come on!” Jay groans from behind me.

His complaint is followed by laughter from Highway Robbery.

“We're too poor to smash guitars!” he adds, and they laugh louder.

A double bill with Highway Robbery and Blasting Cap must be a path of destruction. I hope we won't disappoint. The only thing that gets smashed at our shows is Billie.

Highway Robbery started early, sacking their dressing room as soon as we finished our sound check. They called it a preparty, and two hours later the plaid couch and the keg of beer in the corner are the only items that remain intact.

When the TV drops to the floor for the second time, I wiggle off my broken barstool and leave Winston, Jay, and Ginger in the rubble. Ty slipped away down the slim hallway long ago, avoiding the party like always.

I feel boyish eyes on me all the way to the door, mannish ones, too, so I am careful not to move so fast that my ass shakes. I turn into the hall, taking tiny geisha steps in my tall black boots. I'll save the staring for when I am onstage, thank you very much.

Stopping backstage, I steal a look through the curtains at the swell of the crowd.

The lights are dim, but from back here I can just make out the bartenders pulling taps and pouring beers as fast as they can under a chasing string of colored lights. They finish the beers off with a splash and a perfect streak of foam at the top as the lights speed back to the other end of the bar and then start again.

This is, by far, our biggest audience yet. Girls and guys and some that look like both are working it in worn leather and ripped denim, everyone smoking and texting and looking for somebody to take home at the end of the night.

They are a boiling thundercloud of energy and anticipation that bounces against the stage. Their expectations hover overhead, reaching down like fingers that stretch out and feel for me, trying to find me and figure me out.

I skirt around the back edge of the stage and head for the safety and quiet of our tiny dressing room, picturing only the set ahead and the list of songs that hold it together.

RED VELVET CRUSH
is printed in some PC font on a plain sheet of white copy paper and taped to the door. I reach for the knob and turn it.

The door won't budge. It isn't locked, but stuck. Wedged.

I smell the sweet shadow of pot smoke. Billie laughs on the other side of the door. I push hard against the cracked wood, putting some shoulder into it. The door gives, and I trip over the threshold.

It is chilly in the hall, the air conditioning blasting, but the room is muggy and smells of smoke and sweat. The lights are off, and my eyes have to adjust to the darkness.

Ty's head turns. His eyes are glazed, his brain elsewhere. His sticks poke out of Billie's back pocket. I grip on to the doorknob.

I don't see everything at first. Only bits and pieces. Blink.
Horror. Blink. Hurt. Blink. Heartbreak.

I stand, trying to take it in.

The bottles. The rolling papers. Billie's hand on his knee, the worn, dirty bottom of her boots as she kneels down in front of him, so comfortable, so close. Her face as she twists toward the door, long blond curls spilling over her shoulder. Her smile when she sees me.

My heart races and explodes.

It is the big finish, the final end to our great rock 'n' roll song. The drums crash, the bass thrums. Blistered fingertips blaze along a wire-hot guitar string, and I stand, frozen with my toes at the edge of the stage and watch as my life falls apart.

I bash into Ginger in the hallway but stumble on, my fingertips sliding down an endless wall. The floor leans and tilts, coming up to meet me, then pulling away. I flinch against the hanging bare bulbs and the sound of smashing guitars.

I push into the bathroom. Lock myself in a stall, breathing, heaving. I am shaking like tremolo, with puky spit and shaky hands.

The bitter bile of betrayal rises in my throat, choking out my breath, burning my eyes with tears, and sticking my hair to the back of my neck.

My mind is flying, faster than fingers on a keyboard doing scales, chasing, racing, looping to come back and bite me again, tearing this time with teeth that drip with blood.

I am such a fool. An idiot.

I gulp in the stall air. Curl my hands into fists and pound into the wall.
GO AHEAD AND SIT DOWN,
someone scribbled on it.
CRABS CAN JUMP FIVE FEET.

Toes appear on the other side of the stall. Worn boots I know too well. I can see the bulge of her baby toe rubbing through on the right side.

My mind is filled with hatred and anger, but in a moment of surprising clarity, I realize she is going to need new shoes soon.

“Nothing happened,” she says.

She sounds so close. Like she is pressed up against the stall door. I stagger and sit down, not even worried about the crabs.

“I didn't do anything.”

Of course she'd say that. She says that about everything. The world just happens around her. Disasters abound, and Billie is blameless, innocent and doe-eyed, sitting in the middle of my catastrophe.

She comes closer to the door. I shift, sliding away. Sorry, Billie, but there's no coming back from this one.

She has taken everything—my music, my heart, even my faith in her—and left me with nothing but a mouthful of shit. I can taste it curling down my throat and settling to rot against my teeth.

I don't care anymore. Billie can have it all. She can sing everything.

There is nothing left for me now. Here is the end, and holy shit, does it hurt.

The bar is thumping loud, a cinder-block millstone behind me as I stand in the middle of the dark parking lot with nothing to my name but an old cardigan with a patched elbow.

I step into the streetlight and look down the street. Which way did we come from? Where is the hotel? How the hell can I get away from here, and how long will it take? I feel like I've spent the last six weeks living with my eyes closed.

I've had nightmares like this, I think.

Winston comes swinging out of the back door of the bar in a blast of music. Ginger is right behind him. They are moving fast. I hate that they know what happened. That everyone knows.

I shrink back, out of the light. If Ty comes through that door, I am going to lose it. I am already a snotty, puffy mess. My throat hurts.

Winston grabs my arm and hustles me toward the van. I cross my arms and let him walk me along. The van is right there, parked right in front of me all along.

“Take her back to the hotel,” he says, lighting a cigarette in the middle of it all. He tosses the car keys to Ginger. “I'll go inside and figure this out.”

Ginger opens my door and trots around to his side to start the van.

“Come back for us later,” Winston shouts. “When she's okay.”

It takes me two tries to pull myself up into the passenger seat. My boot keeps slipping, and my arms feel weak. Like I am ever going to be okay again.

The engine is cold, and the van roars and squeals as we back up and drive down the street, away from the bar. I slip down into my seat and stare at the passing streetlights, so glad for once that Ginger doesn't have a single word to say.

Somewhere in the middle of the night a phone rings. I'm not really sleeping. I'm not really awake. I am barely there. My eyes have been staring blindly as the sky dips from battered blue down to deep purple and then slowly descends into pure, deep night.

I reach for my phone, but it's the one beside the bed.

“It's Ben,” the other voice says, “from Blasting Cap.”

Even in the dark I can see his fingers shooting an imaginary gun.

I wait.

“Billie's here with us.”

Of course she wouldn't stick around to face up to what she'd done. At least I didn't need to picture her ending up all alone in a gutter somewhere, with cracked lips and imaginary bug holes scratched into her face.

“She didn't want me to call, but I found the number
anyway. I thought you should know.”

He pauses.

“I'd want to know if Billie was mine,” he says as if she were a purse or a lost sweater. “We're finally on our way to Seattle. She says she wants to come along.”

I rest my head down. The phone is so heavy in my hand. I breathe out and he keeps going.

“I guess Glen gave her his number.”

I see black numbers on a white cast.

“Let me give it to you.”

The number bounces around inside my head, and I roll over. Don't bother, I think. You can keep her.

“I hear heartbreak makes for great music, Teddy Lee.”

I drop the phone onto the desk. That's good to know. Then I am a goddamn gold mine. The phone lands, knocking over some empty pill bottles and a bunch of Billie's other crap.

I long for a way to wipe out what happened tonight and everything else from the last five months. My arm scrapes across the desk, dumping everything onto the floor as my jaw starts to shake.

Billie's bag sticks out from under a chair. I grab it and cram in everything I can find: undies, jeans, her toothbrush, curled magazines, mismatched shoes, shirts, even her mostly used soap from the shower.

A sleeve still pokes out when I zip the bag shut and check
the room. It is good enough. I wipe my eyes, take the chain off the door, and dump it all in the open hallway in a heap. For once someone else is going to have to clean up Billie's mess.