A Fistful of Rain (6 page)

The first television spot was live, for an audience, and when I saw myself on the monitors, I knew the makeup chair hadn’t been enough. I looked awful, and even though my hands knew what to do, Van froze me out during the set, and even Click kept his distance. The worst part was that after we’d finished playing “Queen of Swords,” the host wanted time with Van in the chair, and that meant that Click and I had to stay on the stage, beneath the lights. It took supreme effort to keep from being sick again.

Then we changed studios and did another set. This one went a little better, but not much.

As soon as we were finished, Graham carted me back to the hotel, and put me back to bed. The good news was that we had the night off. The bad was that we were flying to New York in the morning, to do an MTV gig, and that we were all supposed to meet in the lobby at six.

I thought that maybe, just maybe, I might be sober by then.

I was, but not enough that I realized what I was seeing when I reached the lobby the next morning. I had my bags and my flight case for the Tele, and I came out of the elevator and into the lobby with the dawn just starting to stream in through the hotel’s windows, bouncing harsh off the marble floor. Beyond the service counter there was a little sitting area, and they were all already there, Van, Click, and Graham, seated around a little coffee table.

Click saw me making toward them first, and he reached out and tapped Van’s bare knee through her torn Levi’s, said something. She and Graham both looked my way, standing up, and Click followed to his feet a second later, slower.

None of them had any bags visible, and I supposed it could have meant that they’d already loaded them, but even as I thought that, I knew it wasn’t the case. A weird tightness crawled across my chest, as if trying to squeeze, but from the inside, and I could feel my heart beating, not like it was faster, but as if it had suddenly grown larger, as if each pulse threatened to rupture my chest.

Van had one of her trademark tank tops on, a black one with a silver logo in its center. The logo was an image of a stylized, almost Art Deco, woman, standing in a swirling
G,
and beneath the letter was the word “Girlfiend.” It was the name of a lesbian boutique in Los Angeles, on La Cienega, though Van didn’t wear the shirt because she was advertising a preference; she wore it because it made the boys crazy. Her skin was clear and her eyes were bright, and her hair professionally unruly. She hadn’t bothered with makeup, and when she smiled, her lips seemed to almost pale away against her face.

“Mim,” she said, and for a moment I thought that I could get forgiveness without asking. Then the smile went away, and I wasn’t going to see it again.

“This is ominous.” I tried to make it sound flip. It didn’t.

“We’ve got to talk about some changes.” She was watching me closely, not quite staring, but really focusing. Then she gestured at the seat that Click had vacated and added, “You want to sit down?”

I looked at Graham, but Graham wasn’t having any, focusing instead on the leather portfolio he was holding in his hands. Click barely gave me eye contact before looking away to Vanessa.

“You’re canning me?” I directed it at Van, trying to keep my voice strong. It came out too loud, and bounced around the lobby. Early risers glanced our way.

“Why don’t you sit down?” Van motioned at the chair again, then fell back into hers.

I stared at her, but she was only giving me her profile now, facing the empty seat. Neither Graham nor Click made a move or a sound.

I had to set down my bags to take the chair, and it was clumsy, and humiliating.

Van waited for me to get settled. “You were really fucked-up yesterday.”

“Are you canning me?” I asked again.

Van shook her head slightly, as if to say that I had her wrong, that wasn’t what this was about at all. “Been a long tour, Mim.”

“Why won’t you give me an answer?”

“Gonna be even longer, now that we’ve added all those European dates.” She glanced past me, around the lobby. Out the windows, you could see the harbor and the opera house. “I’m not sure you’re up to it.”

“What—I don’t even understand what . . . what are you
saying,
Van?”

She focused on me again. “Your drinking’s way out of control.”

Heat flared in my cheeks and neck, and I realized the humiliation I’d been feeling had simply been the orchestra tuning up, going through their scales. We’d hit the overture now. I opened my mouth and couldn’t find my voice enough to respond.

“We’re worried about you.”

“You bitch,” I said.

“Mim, you were so drunk the second night in Melbourne you barely made it through the encore.”

“My playing stands,” I said. “My playing is solid, this is not about my fucking playing!”

“You don’t need to shout.”

“I can’t believe you’re doing this! You didn’t have shit to sing before I came along, you were an actress with a rhythm section, that’s it! Now you’re cutting me loose because I drink? At least I’m not chasing dick onstage, Vanessa!”

She pinked up, and maybe was rethinking her choice of setting for the scene. “What I do in my time has never gotten in the way of the band.”

“You’re full of shit,” I said. “This isn’t about my drinking, that’s just your fucking excuse. This is about that fucking
Stone
piece, that’s what this is about.”

“What?”

“You don’t want me eclipsing your light. You don’t want anyone looking past you and your bass to see me on guitar.”

“Jesus, are you
still
drunk? You’re not threatening me, Mim, and you never have. You
can’t,
it’s not
in
you. I’ve never argued that you weren’t the better musician, the better writer. I’ve never pretended that wasn’t the case. But if you were up front, Tailhook would never have come this far. Because even though you can play like fire, you’re a crap showgirl.”

“Fuck you—”

“This is about the band!”

The shout shut me, and everyone else in the lobby, up.

Van wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, lines digging in around her eyes. “Graham has a check for you. What you’re owed from the last four gigs. He’s got a ticket for you, too, back home, the flight’s in a couple hours. I’ve talked to A&R and the label, and they know the situation, and I’ve told them that we’re replacing you for the rest of the tour.”

“You tell the press that I got canned because of a drinking problem, I will personally run a truck over you first chance I get.”

“Jesus, Mim, I’m your
friend,
I would never do that!” She shook her head slightly, as if she couldn’t believe I could be so hurtful. “There’ll be a statement, saying that you’re wasted from the tour, that you just need some time off. We’ll be back home in June, and we’ll talk then, see if we can’t give it another try.”

I stared at her, disbelieving. Graham had come over to my side, was crouching down on his haunches, opening the portfolio. He took two envelopes and tried to hand them to me, and when I wouldn’t take them, dropped them in my lap. He murmured something to me, but I didn’t hear it.

“You’re really doing this,” I said to Van.

“It’s done.”

“Who’re you replacing me with? You replacing me with Birch? That beanpole son of a bitch?”

“Birch is busy.”

“Who?”

“Oliver Clay. He’s meeting us in New York day after tomorrow. That’s when we’re making the announcement.”

The urge to cry was sudden and almost irresistible. “No, no way.”

“It’s Clay.”

The finality in her voice was clear, but I tried one last time. “Don’t do this to me, Van. Please don’t leave me behind.”

“You’ve got a flight to catch.” She stood up. “We’ll have your gear sent on as soon as we’re back in the States.”

I just sat there, watching as she walked away, toward the restaurant off the lobby. Graham followed close behind her, casting me a pitying glance. Click came around behind me, and put his hand on my shoulder, gave it a brief squeeze. Then his hand was gone, and when I looked up at him, he was walking away, too.

I felt the weight of everyone in that lobby staring at me as I got my bags together and went outside to catch a cab.

CHAPTER 8

The sunlight came, assaulting me. It pulled at my eyelids, trying to scratch my corneas, and when I rolled to get away from it, my right hand lingered, not ready to come with me. I pulled, felt pain slicing through skin, and forced myself to look.

I was in bed, my bed. There was blood all over the pillow next to me, and my palm was stuck to it, flat. I lifted my hand, watching as the pillowcase followed the motion, and then the fabric ran out of play, and I was lifting the pillow, too. The pain came back. I gritted my teeth and pulled again, and the weight of the pillow peeled the accidental bandage free. Fresh blood began leaking to the surface.

The rhythm sections of several collegiate marching bands were working on a quick time in my head. When I tried to sit up, they went batshit, really going nuts. My stomach didn’t appreciate it, either, and told me it wanted to leave, now.

I went to the bathroom and threw up, mostly dry heaves, and something that looked like it wasn’t meant to actually be outside of me. When it was over I leaned back against the counter, staring at the shower stall, feeling shaky and hollow. The room smelled of vomit and stale beer, and there were shards of broken glass on the floor, and smears of blood. A bath towel was in a lump by the door. Blood had dried in mud brown on the white terry cloth, and I had a feeling it wouldn’t ever come out.

Seeing the towel reminded me of my hand, which was still seeping. I reached up and pulled another towel from the rack, and just that left me breathless and queasy again. I wrapped my hand with the towel, went back to staring at the shower stall door. There was no water visible on the glass, and I tried to use that as some sort of benchmark for how long I’d been out. A while.

I was wearing a pair of sweatpants I’d forgotten I owned, and a T-shirt. There was some blood on the T-shirt, on the right sleeve, which I figured must have gotten there when I’d pulled the thing on. I couldn’t remember doing that, but I couldn’t remember trying to clean up spilled blood or getting into bed, either.

Somewhere, downstairs, the phone started ringing. There was a phone up here, too, but I didn’t hear it. I was in no hurry to find out why. I was in no hurry to move.

I just wanted to curl up on the floor and die.

It was evening when I woke again, and I was cold from the tile, but this time my first urge wasn’t to throw up, so that qualified as progress. I hadn’t turned on any lights, and it was almost dark. I sat up and heard glass tinkling as I brushed it with my leg. My head throbbed, but it was endurable, though maybe this lack of illumination helped. My eyes didn’t take long to adjust, and when I thought they and the rest of me were ready, I pulled myself to my feet using the counter, then picked my way to the light switch by the door.

The downstairs phone was ringing again. Or maybe it was ringing still.

Using the light from the bathroom, I made it to the switch in the bedroom, and turned that one on, too. Drops of dried blood peppered my new carpet, recounting my travel from bathroom to bed, and then the return trip. I perched on the edge of the mattress and unwrapped the towel from my hand, slowly. It stuck, like the pillowcase had, but not as much, and there was almost no fresh bleeding when it came free.

The downstairs phone went silent, and I looked for the upstairs one, to find out why it hadn’t been participating, and discovered that I’d yanked the unit free from the cord at some point. Maybe it had been in response to it ringing. The other option was that I’d tried to make a call or four, and the thought of what such conversations would have been like almost sent me back to the bathroom.

After a while, I got up and found some slippers in the closet. I put them on and made my way downstairs, to the pantry. In the corner, I found the dustpan and brush.

It took me most of two hours to clean up the mess. When I’d finished, I had the broken glass out of the bathroom, the tile cleaned, the sheets on the bed changed, and the towels in the trash. I used the towels to cover all the empties I’d gathered. There were ten of them, not counting the broken one.

While I was cleaning up, the phone started ringing again. If someone wanted me badly enough, they could come and get me.

I took another shower and put a real bandage on the cut in my palm. The laceration didn’t seem to have been so deep as to require much more than that, but once I had the bandage in place, I curled my hand, as if I was holding my pick, just to see if I could still do it. It ached, but I could still play.

I got dressed in clothes I hadn’t worn for over a year, and discovered that I’d lost more weight than I’d thought. It’s hard to eat well on the road, and I hadn’t been nearly as religious about it as Van had, so it was kind of surprising. As I was tightening my belt, I realized that I was famished.

Back downstairs, I looked in the pantry again, at the shelves freshly stocked with boxes and cans I’d purchased with Mikel, and I didn’t see anything I wanted to cook, let alone eat. I dug through the drawers and cabinets in the kitchen until I found the Yellow Pages, then found the listing for Kwan Ying’s, picked up the phone to dial. The voice mail tone was active, but I ignored it and ordered dinner. I ordered Szechwan chicken, veggie lo mein, veggie spring rolls, hot and sour soup, won ton soup, and an extra side of white rice. The guy who took my order asked if I was entertaining.

“I used to be,” I said.

After he confirmed that I’d be paying in cash, he hung up, and I did, too, then picked up the phone again and called the number to retrieve my voice mail. Voice mail makes getting messages easy when you’re on the road, and I’d used it a lot in the past year.

The recorded lady told me that I had seventy-eight messages.

Just for kicks, I played the first one. The recording said it had been left “yesterday,” which didn’t tell me when today was, but made me nervous.

“Hi, Miriam, this is Jamie Rich, I don’t know if you remember me. I did the piece on Tailhook for
Spin
last April, we had dinner at Canter’s in L.A. I’m calling to see if you have anything to add to the statement Vanessa Parada and Click released this morning regarding your hiatus from the band. You can call me back at—”

I fast-forwarded through the rest of it, deleted it, and then hung up again.

Only seventy-seven of those left to go.

I ate my dinner, such as it was, in the front room, listening to Mark Knopfler’s
Sailing to Philadelphia.
All I could really manage was half of the hot and sour soup, and a little white rice. I finished with a cigarette, listening to the whole album through, then hoisted myself and put the food in the fridge before returning to the stereo. I swapped discs and loaded all five slots with Dire Straits, the albums in chronological order up to
Brothers in Arms,
then climbed back on the couch and shut my eyes.

I started crying sometime during
Telegraph Road
.

I fell asleep somewhere in the middle of
Making Movies
.

I woke up to the doorbell ringing, and new sunlight coming through the blinds to warm me. I tumbled off the couch and stubbed my toe on the coffee table and swore and hopped into the hall, and the doorbell sounded off again as I was trying to disarm the alarm.

“Hold your fucking horses,” I shouted, and punched the last digit and heard the cheerful bleat and yanked the front door open, ready to tell whoever it was to go to hell.

Which worked out fine, because it was Tommy.