A Fistful of Rain (9 page)

“You’re our little girl,” Joan told me.

The sting of guilt stayed with me to morning.

CHAPTER 12

When I came down in the morning, Joan was already up and preparing to head to work. She looked very proper for school—navy slacks and a cream blouse, the uniform of a woman ready to fill fresh young minds with the infinite possibilities of music. She pressed a mug of coffee into my hands, then went back to loading sheet music into her book bag.

“How’d you sleep?” she asked.

“Fine. You’re teaching all day today?”

“Fridays are busy. I’m at school until three-thirty, then lessons until eight.”

“I was thinking of taking you to dinner tonight. We could go to that Lebanese place you like, Riyadh’s?”

“Tonight won’t work, honey,” Joan said, pulling the bag onto her shoulder. “I’ll be exhausted. But tomorrow’s a Saturday, and the only lessons I have are done by three. We can have dinner after that, if you like.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“That would be fine.”

I nodded, dumped the rest of my coffee out in the sink. She waited for me, and we walked outside together. It was clear and cold, but there was no wind, so the chill didn’t hurt.

The old Volvo was in the driveway, and as I walked her to it, I asked, “You’re okay? Do you need anything?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“I’ve got plenty of money, now. I’d be happy to spend buckets on you. It’s the least I can do.”

She unlocked the door to her car, then stopped, holding the keys, looking at herself reflected in the window. I knew I’d said the wrong thing.

“I don’t want charity,” Joan said. “That’s not what we ever wanted from you.”

“That’s not what I meant, Joan, I’m sorry—”

“Steven asked for you.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Would it have been so much to come home, Miriam?” she said. “Just for one day?”

“I couldn’t.”

“That’s a lie. You didn’t want to.”

“I was filming—”

“That’s the excuse. You were his
daughter,
Miriam.”

Joan opened her mouth, ready to say more, to say what came next, but she abandoned it, shaking her head slightly instead. She climbed into the Volvo and tossed her bag across to the passenger’s seat, then followed it herself. She fitted her seat belt, then the key, but didn’t start the engine.

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Over dinner.”

“I’ll call,” I told her.

She nodded and started the engine, and I watched as she backed out of the driveway, then went to the Jeep. When I reached it, I turned around and looked back at the house.

It was still big and worn and old and wonderful, and yet it just didn’t feel the same inside, and I understood enough to know it wasn’t only because Steven was gone. Nothing is constant, nothing remains, and the things we rely on go so quickly, quicker when you try to keep them, it seems.

In that house I’d had happiness for a while, but it had gone, and I wasn’t going to get it back.

I stopped for breakfast at this fresh juice and crêpe place near my house and ate, trying to decide if I was being brave or stupid heading home. Whichever it was, I pulled up just before nine to see Mikel’s Land Rover parked out front. He saw me from the porch and followed the Jeep around the side of the house as I pulled into the garage. He was still going with the Gap casual look, wearing a duster that gave the whole thing a funky cowboy feel.

I got out with a scowl, ready to tear into him about Tommy, on top of everything else, but as he moved to meet me I could see that he was really upset. He got a folded piece of paper out of one of his pockets and was thrusting it at me.

“When did you pose for this?”

“Pose for what?”

“This, dammit.” He was still trying to get me to take the folded sheet, and tension was in everything, in his words and in his movements. I hadn’t seen him act this way for years, not since before he went into Hillcrest, and it made me nervous, because it reminded me of how Tommy could be. “I got it this morning, one of the Web guys I know e-mailed it to me.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a picture of you, Mim, what do you think it is? I’m asking if you posed for it.”

I took the paper, unfolding it to its eight and a half by eleven, expecting one of the pub shots, or maybe the one from
Rolling Stone
.

That wasn’t what I got.

It was color, a little pixilated, and I suppose it might have been possible to find it flattering in some way, but whatever way that was, I didn’t see it. It explained perfectly why Mikel was so upset, though, and why he’d been waiting outside my door with it burning a hole in his soul. There are certain things that, I suspect, outrage any sister’s brother.

Naked pictures of her circulating on the Internet probably tops that list.

There was no question that it was me, and even though the background was blurry and out of focus, I wasn’t. The picture was snapped at an angle, as if from a slight elevation, and I was totally naked, full frontal onto the camera, but not looking into the lens. Both of my arms were up, like I was stretching, and my hands went out of the frame at the top of the shot. My head was canted down, as if I had just seen something on the floor, and it hid enough of my expression that I couldn’t tell what I’d been feeling at the moment of capture. My mouth was open, as if I was speaking.

If the picture itself wasn’t humiliating enough, someone, perhaps the photographer, had added some postproduction work. A blue border surrounded the image, thicker at the top and bottom than at the sides. In the space above the picture, in red letters, were the words
MIRIAM BRACCA OF TAILHOOK
. At the bottom, also in red letters, were the words
WET, WILLING & WAITING.

The caption more than the image did it, made my face flush hot, and some of that heat leaked into my voice.

“Where did this come from?”

“Off the Internet someplace, one of those naked-celebrity Web sites. Did you know about this, Mim?”

I stared at the picture in my hand, shaking my head. There was nothing in the image that helped me place it in time and space, nothing to tell me where it had been taken, or when. It looked a little like a dressing room, maybe a venue someplace from the tour, but I couldn’t tell, and I sure as hell didn’t remember parading around a backstage anyplace in the nude. The best I could say was that I’d shaved my legs and pits fairly recently before the shot had been taken.

“It’s on the Web?” I asked.

“It’s all over the Web,” Mikel told me, taking the picture back. “It’s on newsgroups and Web sites, you know it is. Shit like this breeds on the Net. I’m asking again, did you pose for this, Mim?”

“You think I
would
?”

“It looks posed, Mim.”

“It’s not posed, Mikel! It’s a fucking Peeping Tom shot!”

“Dammit, if you’re lying to me again, I swear to God I’ll put you through a wall! If you did this, if you got shit-faced and let some little fucker take happy-snaps of you, you tell me right now!”

The accusation was worse than looking at the picture, and I felt the heat in my cheeks intensify. “How can you even ask me that?”

“Because you’re out of control! Because you do stupid shit and then when it’s too late you pretend it never happened! And this is serious shit, Mim, this is out there, right now, don’t you get that?” He took a couple of deep breaths, crumpling the photograph in his hand. His grip had turned his knuckles white. With his free hand he reached for my shoulder. “Let’s go inside.”

I didn’t move until he’d let go of me, then walked dumbly down the driveway and around to the front of the house. The alarm started beeping as we came inside, and I tabbed in the code, and it beeped its A-C-E tone and then went silent. Mikel shut the door after himself, and I reached around him to lock it again, and he trailed me into the kitchen. I went to the back door, to look out into the yard, and lit a cigarette. In the reflection on the glass, I watched Mikel smooth the picture out on the counter, facedown by my toaster, so neither of us had to look at it.

“Could you have been drunk?” Mikel asked.

I made him wait before I said, “No.”

“If you got drunk and don’t remember—”

“That wasn’t taken while I was drunk, Mikel.”

“How do you know?”

“I’d remember.”

“Sure you would. If you didn’t pose for this, if you didn’t let someone photograph you with your permission, then this isn’t just a picture of my baby sister naked. This is some fucker spying on you, that’s what this is.”

“I didn’t pose for it!” I shouted at his reflection, then turned and gave him the rest face to face. “Will you get that? None of us do shit like that! Hell, not even Van, and
Playboy
offered her a couple hundred grand to reconsider not four months ago.”

He frowned, thinking. “Can you tell when it was taken? Or where?”

“I don’t know! Maybe a dressing room someplace, but it could be a hotel room. I can’t even make out the fucking background, how the fuck do I know where it was taken?”

“I think that was done on purpose. Looks like somebody used a Gaussian blur to break up the rest of the image around you.”

“A what?”

“It’s a graphics effect, real easy to do if you have Photoshop or another program like that. Just takes the image and messes it up. Mostly it’s done as an artistic effect.”

“That’s not art.”

Mikel looked at the paper lying on the counter, then grimaced and flipped it over again. “You should talk to a lawyer.”

“I don’t have a lawyer.”

“Sure you do.”

“No I don’t.”

“You must.”

“If I do, nobody told me.”

“Then call Van or Graham and find out, because you definitely need some legal advice, little sister.”

I moved to the sink, flicked ash down the drain. It seemed like I’d finally caught my breath. Mikel didn’t say anything, probably looking at the picture again while trying not to look at the parts of it that were me, and just the thought of it got my heart racing once more. How many people had seen it already? How many people I didn’t know, and—God Almighty—how many that I
did
? Jesus Christ, what if Joan had seen it? Or Tommy?

For a moment, just for a moment, I thought I was going to vomit.

“I don’t understand what’s happening,” I said, turning to face him.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I get kicked out of the band and I come home and there’s a man fucking stalking me and last night he’s in my
house
—”

“He came
back
?”

“—and now you’re showing me a picture of myself that maybe people all over the world have seen.”

“Did you say he came back?”

“Last night. I think it was him. I don’t know anymore. I’d been in the basement and the door was open and I set the alarm and ran, and then I saw this guy running down the block, but I didn’t really get that good a look at him. It looked like the same guy, he looked the same, but the hair was different.”

“Different how?”

“He’d shaved his head.”

Mikel scowled. “Motherfucker.”

“I don’t understand this! I don’t understand why this is happening to me!”

The scowl held for a moment longer, and then Mikel seemed to hear me, and it smoothed. “You’re famous, Mim.”

I shook my head.

“You are, and the sooner you admit that to yourself, the easier you’ll find it is to deal with this stuff.”

I pointed at the photograph. “How am I supposed to deal with that? How am I supposed to go outside? Fuck that, how the hell am I supposed to get onstage, thinking that maybe everyone in the audience has seen how I trim my bush?”

He winced. “See, that’s something I didn’t want to know.”

“It’s not funny!” I screeched.

“No, I know it’s not.” He came forward, put his hands on my arms. “Look, call a lawyer, okay? Get some legal advice.”

I caught my breath, then nodded. Mikel gave me a hug, and I took it, but it didn’t make me feel much better at all. I asked him if he wanted me to make coffee or anything, if he wanted to stick around, but he said he had to get going. He left the copy of the picture, saying that the lawyer might need it, and he gave me a kiss on the top of my head, and went out.

I locked up again after he went, then picked up the phone and dialed Graham’s mobile number. I wasn’t sure if he was in London yet, or if maybe they were in the air, or maybe even still in New York.

The phone rang twice before he answered. “Havers.”

“Graham? It’s Mim.”

“Mim,” he said, and he made the one word sound ominous. “You’re home safely?”

“I’m home. I need some help, Graham.”

“Mimser.” He sighed, an echo on the phone. “You know I’m doing everything I can, baby, but Van’s made up her mind—”

“It’s not about Vanessa, Graham. I need to know, do I have a lawyer in town, here in Portland? Or does Tailhook, at least, have someone I can talk to about something?”

Caution caved to concern, probably more for Tailhook than for me. “You in trouble, sugar?”

“Do we, Graham?”

“Of course we do, he’s been on retainer for two years now. Weren’t you wondering where five percent was going every month?”

“What’s his name?”

“What’s this about, babe?”

Normally I didn’t mind the “babes” and the “sweeties” and the “honeys” but right now it made me want to reach through the phone and throttle him. “It’s about naked pictures of me on the fucking Internet, Graham! Now will you give me the goddamn name and the goddamn number for this goddamn attorney?”

There was a pause, and I was getting angrier, thinking he was trying to determine if I was full of shit or not, then realized he was pulling the listing up on his PDA.

“Fred Chapel,” Graham said, then rattled off a string of digits. I didn’t have a loose piece of paper anywhere, so I ended up writing the number on the back of the picture. “This is just about you? Nothing about Van or Click?”

“No, Graham.” I snapped it at him. “I’m the only one who’s being humiliated.”

“Hon, I’ve got to ask—”

I hung up, then started dialing Chapel’s number.

The receptionist transferred me to Chapel as soon as she had my name, and without my having to ask. So even though I didn’t know who Fred Chapel was prior to five minutes ago, at least I was assured that he and his staff knew who I was.