“Bullshit.”
“Maybe it’s time you stopped inventing history, Miriam, and saw Mom a little more for who she was, rather than this sainted martyr you want her to be. Maybe you ought to give Tommy the benefit of the doubt.”
“You saw it happen,” I said, softly. “You saw it, too.”
“I know that, but—”
“You saw it, too!” I screamed at him.
It pushed him back a step, surprised him. I smoked more of my cigarette.
“He’d like to see you, just to talk with you.” Mikel picked up his keys from where they were lying on the counter. “I think if you can give total strangers twenty minutes at Fred Meyer, then he’s not asking all that much.”
“You’re leaving?”
“I’ve got shit to do, you’re tired, and I don’t want to get in the way of your drinking.”
“Hey, fuck you, big brother.”
He started down the hall, to the front door. “I’ll give you a call tonight or tomorrow, to check up on you. You might want to call Joan, let her know you’re back.”
I caught up with him at the front door, as he was moving onto the porch.
“He’s staying with you?”
“I told you already.”
“Right now, Tommy’s there right now?”
“I don’t know about right now. He’s been picking up construction work where he can, so he heads out pretty early.”
“Do me a favor? When you see him?”
“What?”
“Make a point of telling him I hope he burns in hell,” I said, then slammed the door on him.
CHAPTER 6
I cracked a beer, then fetched my flight case from the hallway. The alarm panel said the system was “ready,” so I armed the system, and when the panel sang its three-tone alert, I actually felt safe and tight in my house. Then I took the case down to the basement, to the music room.
The contractors had done as I’d asked, sealing the windows and replacing the entry door with a heavier, reinforced version. There was padding now down over the concrete, and acoustic tile on the ceiling, and my gear was there, too, my amps and other guitars—the ones that hadn’t come on tour with me—and my keyboard. In a pinch, the space could serve as a passable recording studio.
I worked the combination on the flight case and snapped the locks up, then checked the Tele. It had traveled fine, secure in its bed, dry and happy and cool to the touch. It wasn’t my first guitar and it wasn’t my newest, but it was my favorite electric. Leon Fender and George Fullerton started making Fender guitars in 1950, and their first model was called the Broadcaster, but they had to change the name because the Gretsch company made drums also called Broadcaster. They renamed their guitar the Telecaster, and it’s been pretty much the same instrument ever since; the only real difference you find is in the quality of workmanship and materials, who did the building, what was used to construct the guitar.
My Tele was made in 1954, body of ash, neck of maple, black pick guard, still fitted with its original hardware, a gift from the label after Nothing for Free went gold in the U.S. They’d given Van an emerald and gold necklace from Tiffany, and Click a set of Keplinger snare drums. The Tele was almost fifty years old, now, and to this day I’ve never met an electric that plays as sweetly. It had the original pickups, but the input jack had been replaced, and the fingerboard refretted, a custom job that made it less collectible but let it play like butter under my fingers. Fabrizio did some other minor work on it while we were on the road, as well. Before each show, he would string every one of my guitars, replacing the old ones with the new. He was utterly tone-deaf, and relied on an electronic tuner, and each and every time he handed me a guitar, it was perfect. I’d fiddle with the tuning heads just for show, but he and I both knew it was garbage.
Holding the Tele and thinking of Fabrizio, I realized that Van hadn’t even given me the opportunity to say good-bye.
I put the guitar in its stand, next to the Gibson SG, got out the soft cloth and gave every instrument a wipe-down, then put the case and cloth away in the storage closet. I had to move a couple boxes to make room, and when I was shoving things around, one of the boxes tumbled. Copies of the press kit from Nothing for Free spilled onto the floor, black-and-white photos of the band sliding across one another like a monochromatic tide. I swore a lot and bent down, trying to gather them all together again. There were another three boxes in the closet just like the one I’d toppled, each filled with the same promotional material, and I still had no idea on earth why they’d been sent to me rather than our manager, Graham.
Things back in their place, I headed upstairs. The beer was dead, so I exchanged it for a fresh one in the kitchen, drank it while I smoked another cigarette, looking out the window at the backyard. The lawn was more crabgrass than anything else, and the rosebushes all needed a desperate pruning. Maybe I could get a recommendation for a gardener from one of my neighbors.
I finished the cigarette about the same time I finished the beer, so I opened another two, then dragged myself upstairs to my bedroom. I put both beers on the nightstand. The bedroom smelled of fresh carpet and the hint of fresh paint, and, again, carpentry, but nothing more. The pictures on my bureau were all the same. There were three of them—a small picture of myself with my mother, taken at one of my barely remembered birthday parties, when I’d turned either five or maybe six. Another one, larger, of me and Mikel, taken a couple years back at a bar. The last one a backstage shot taken here, at the Roseland Theatre in town, after a Tailhook show, of me standing between Steven and his wife, my foster mother, Joan. In the picture, I’m shining with sweat and holding a bouquet of flowers, and Joan and Steven each look like they’re proud enough to burst.
I unpacked my bag, throwing my dirty clothes in the laundry basket and my clean clothes in their drawers. I undressed, took a beer with me into the shower. I stayed under the water long enough to finish it, got out when it was empty, and dropped the bottle in the trash. There was condensation on the mirror, and I swiped at it and stared at my reflection, seeing my mother. She’d been a small woman, too, and for some reason I couldn’t conjure a memory of her hands ever being warm. She’d been thirty-two when she died, barely six years older than me, and showing more age than she should’ve, thin-faced and already creasing.
No wrinkles on me yet, nothing that would take three hours in a makeup chair to hide. I looked myself over, checking from every angle I could manage, and remained pretty pleased with the results of my survey. I hadn’t been vain before meeting Van, and I didn’t like to think I was, now, but being with her for so long had taken its toll. We’d been a band for less than a month when she shared with me her Thesis of Rock Stardom, which essentially came down to this—for guys, it’s how you sound first, then how you look; for women, it’s how you look, then how you sound, and even then, it’s more about how you look. It was fine if Click wanted to chow on cheeseburgers and sit on his can watching TV, she’d say; you and me, girlfriend, we’ve got a date at 24-Hour Fitness.
I wondered if the man with the gun had liked what he’d seen. I wondered if he’d gotten off on it, and then thought I was probably damn lucky he hadn’t.
And for a second, I wondered if any of it—the man with the gun, the back of the Ford, the drive around for nothing—had happened at all.
Mikel was wrong about a great many things, and he certainly was no authority on trust or The Truth, but he was right in at least one respect: I am a hell of a liar.