“I’m twenty-six,” I told Mikel. “I own a house, I could buy five or six others just like it. I own more guitars than I could ever need, more amps than I can possibly use, I’ve got a platinum American Express card life. I don’t have to look at the prices when I’m shopping for groceries at Fred Meyer, because they will never stock something I can’t afford.
“That’s all because people like them like Tailhook enough to pay eighteen bucks for an album, or eighty for a seat at a concert, or twenty for a forty-five-minute compilation of very bad, very overproduced music videos.”
Mikel was listening, his head down a little, as if to keep it closer to my own. When Tailhook had left on tour, we’d been popular, but nothing like we were now. Our third album, Nothing for Free, had just been released, and we didn’t have any idea how it would do. Certainly neither Click nor I had ever been stopped while doing our shopping. It had happened to Van, but only rarely, and only at home, because we were, by and large, a local band.
“Never bite the hand that feeds you,” Mikel said.
“Not even that.” I glanced back down the aisle, saw that the three of them had gone. “You want to know what that was all about?”
“They wanted to tell you how much they like you.”
“Yeah, but do you know why?”
“It’s a way of saying thank you?”
“That was about how they want to be my friend. They shake my hand and tell me their names, and I tell them mine, just to remind them I’m a real person, too, that we should act like real people act when they first meet one another. And then it’s small talk, weather, music, movies, shit like that.
“Then there’s the pause—and there is always the pause, Mikel—the moment when there’s nothing else to say, because they’re done, and they’re waiting for me.”
“To do what?”
“To say something like, hey, you guys seem totally cool, why don’t we go get a pizza together. Or, hey, you know what would be fun? Let’s go back to my place and watch DVDs. They want to be more than fans. They want to be special to me, and that’s when I offer them my hand again, and I say thank you so much for saying hello, and have a very good life. Most of the time, they go away happy.”
“Most of the time?”
I started pushing the cart again, heading to dairy. “Sometimes they don’t get the hint. Sometimes they get cranky—‘you wouldn’t be where you are without me.’ Or ‘you love all the attention, don’t pretend you don’t get off on it.’ But maybe ninety percent of the people who stop me, all they want to do is say, hey, thanks.”
“I couldn’t do it,” Mikel said, after a couple seconds. “I couldn’t keep it up.”
I was trying to decide between low- and nonfat milk. I went with the skim, placing it next to the cereal, so they could get used to each other’s company.
“You should see Van do it sometime,” I told him. “She’s very smooth, always smiling. I’ve seen her in a Virgin Megastore signing autographs for six hours straight, no breaks, no pauses. Always makes eye contact, always says, ‘May I sign that for you, please?’ and then always says, ‘Thanks so much for coming to see us.’ She’s better at it than I will ever be.”
“You seemed pretty smooth to me.”
“No,” I said. “But it’s nice of you to say so.”
We filled the back of my Jeep with the groceries, and when we got back to my house, I put the car in the garage. We unloaded the bags into the kitchen through the back door, and while I sorted and stored my purchases, Mikel took a wander through the house. I was still at it when he came back into the kitchen, and he picked up the phone and used his PDA to find the phone number for Scanalert, and I heard his half of the conversation. He had to give them his name and then a password—“Renderman”—to verify his identity, and then requested that they switch the system back on. He hung up happy.
“Done,” he said.
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. They just throw a switch or something.”
We finished with the unpacking, making light conversation. I finally remembered to ask about Jessica, and he told me that they had stopped seeing each other during the summer, that he was going with a girl named Avery now. I felt bad that I hadn’t known about the switch, and he told me about the new girl, and how she was a dancer, and how much he thought I’d like her.
“You need a dancer for a video, you should get her,” he said.
“I’m not in the band anymore,” I reminded him. “Even if I was, I wouldn’t have any say in it.”
“You could talk to Van.”
I shrugged, thinking that the way Mikel went through women was just another residual of our shared childhood. I couldn’t remember ever having had a romantic relationship that lasted more than a month myself, and the only one that lasted that long had been almost ten years ago, during high school. But Mikel’s news sobered me; it had looked like the thing with Jessica was serious.
I’d bought beer even though Mikel had given me the hairy eyeball while I was doing it, and as I put the last of the six-packs in the refrigerator, he dropped the bomb. It was probably part of the reason he’d insisted on accompanying me, and he must have been waiting from the moment we’d finished breakfast, but it had taken him almost three hours before he could do it.
“Tommy’s out.”
I stared at my newly stocked refrigerator shelves, at a box of Land O Lakes butter. I wasn’t certain I’d heard him right.
“What?”
“He’s out,” Mikel said. “Got out three months ago.”
I did the math in my head, closing the refrigerator door. “That’s not right, he’s supposed to be in for another five years.”
Mikel had been folding the paper grocery bags, making a stack of them on the counter. He smoothed the last one down, shaking his head.
“Paroled?” I asked. “If he was paroled there should have been a hearing, Mikel. I should have been notified. I should have been able to attend.”
“He wasn’t paroled,” Mikel said. “He’s out, he’s done. All finished.”
“He was supposed to do twenty years.”
“There’s this thing, it’s called a buy-back or time-served or something like that. For every day of good behavior in prison, the state takes a certain amount off your sentence. It’s how they deal with overcrowding.”
“That’s not right.”
“He did fifteen years, Mim. That’s a long time.”
I was practically spitting. “Fuck that. Mom’s still dead.”
“And he’s still our father.”
“No, my father’s dead.”
“I’m not talking about Steven—”
“Good, you better not.”
He took a soft breath, looking away from me. I waited, then decided I didn’t want to wait for what he might have to say, and found my cigarettes. I lit one and flicked angry ash into the sink.
“He’s been staying with me, Mim. He’d really like to see you.”
“He’s what?”
“He didn’t have a place to stay. He’s staying with me until he can get on his feet.”
“Ex-con Tommy living with my drug-dealing brother? Are you out of your mind?”
“It’s not like that. I’m just helping him out. He’s having trouble finding a job, you know, with the economy the way it is.”
“Hard to get a gig when you’re an alcoholic killer,” I said. “I’m really torn up for him.”
“He was in prison for fifteen years for what he did,” Mikel said. “He’s not the same man he was when it happened, he’s not the same man he was when we were in that house.”