Grave Refrain: A Love/Ghost Story (8 page)

The same face as that of her guitar player. Her guitar player who wasn’t homeless or destitute or drug-addled after all. Who was the lead guitarist of a band, but not just any band, a band that “stunned crowds whenever they performed.” A “heartrending” band to be sure, if the women around her last night were any indication, screaming like their tongues were on fire.

Seeking refuge in the bathroom, she was thankful only cold water rushed from the faucets, as the apartment was too old to produce anything warmer. She splashed her face, then bracing her hands on the basin, stared at herself in the mirror.

“But I found him first.”

That was her first reaction upon seeing him surrounded by those other women last night. A reaction that was as instinctual as it was selfish, one she hadn’t felt since she was a child, one that should be accompanied by a stamp of the foot or a slam of a door. She had found Andrew first.

Andrew Hayes. That was his name. The man who haunted her dreams and so many of her waking moments; the man she knew nothing about, who knew nothing about her. How had she let herself fall into such a hopeless obsession?

Oh God, oh God, oh God.

She wasn’t proud of this fact; the whole episode, no matter how one tried to explain it, made her feel desperate and not the least bit sane. In fact, it made her feel ridiculous and ashamed. Fantasizing about him like some crazed groupie—
God
. His face. His body. His hands. As though once they met, some fantasy would explode to life. But above everything else, this fascination scared her. She had no idea how it had taken such a hold of her or how, for the first time in her life, she could not control any of her thoughts or feelings when it came to a man. How had she become so consumed by an illusion? And because of this, she had made the decision not to let her roommates know anything about the whole sordid mess. If nothing else, she had her pride; it had taken her far too long to stand on her own two feet. Dream or no, she wasn’t the type of woman to drop everything for a man—her mother had drilled that into her head from the time she could nod back in agreement.

It was all for naught, anyway, she told herself; he’d soon be long gone. He was a in a band. Bands toured. They also engaged in clawing, disease-ridden sex with women like the ones at the Skellar, but that was when they weren’t busy destroying their hotel rooms or crashing their Maseratis off cliffs. She had watched too many documentaries to think otherwise. If the car crashes didn’t kill them, then the overdoses, the suicides, or the auto-erotic asphyxiation most certainly would. Margot had been more than willing to recite an impressive list of dead rockers last night on the ride home.

But Andrew was here now. In San Francisco. The Lost Boys would be playing at the Skellar again tonight. What would it hurt to see him one more time? To see him standing there, to see those clear, maddening blue eyes that she hadn’t seen before. To see his hands.

“Emily?” Margot asked, grounding her back into the reality of the freezing four-by-four bathroom. “Are you going to be in there long? I need to shower.”

Emily opened the door. Margot stood there, the picture of composure, back from her morning run without a drop of sweat upon her. Not even a wisp of her blue-black hair that framed her pointed chin and strict cheekbones dared to disobey her.

Margot had once explained that she was a perfect genetic combination of a painfully beautiful Filipino mother and a never-to-retire Marine captain father. The resulting agile mind for figures, coupled with such an agile figure, continued to discombobulate the most seasoned of her physics professors, long after she had finished her PhD.

“So has she returned yet, or is she officially declared a spoil of war?” Margot asked, meaning Zoey, of course, who, as of two a.m., had not surfaced.

However, there was no judgment in her voice as to their roommate’s whereabouts. The creak of Margot’s bedroom door opening in the early morning hours was not an unfamiliar sound in the apartment, although not a common one. It was inevitably followed by the fumble of heavy shoes and the curses of a man stumbling and trying to dress while being led to the front door. For as long as Emily had known Margot, none of her men had ever been invited to stay for breakfast. They had, according to Margot, never earned the right.

“No sign of her. You remember she knew one of the musicians? She could be in L.A. by now for all we know.”

Margot looked askance at her as she shut the door behind her. Emily padded across to the kitchen, the walls of their soon-to-be-vacated apartment looking depressing and worn now stripped of Zoey’s vibrant canvases. At first, the apartment had belonged to Margot and Zoey, but Zoey’s tiling work often took a back seat to the creation of those canvases and other forms of her “art,” and Margot felt that the third bedroom/closet should be put to better use. Whether Emily was the first to respond to their ad, or the only one, didn’t matter; their friendship was instantaneous. Even Margot’s incongruous shrine to every Catholic saint imaginable (courtesy of her mother, who never stopped trying to lure her back to the church), with its prayer cards and little plastic figurines which sat peering out from the mantle, did not dissuade her.

Emily had finished her first cup of coffee when Margot reappeared wearing a black turtleneck and obedient slacks, waving her phone over her head. “She has good news and bad news—which do you want first?”

“The good.”

“Oh, ever my little optimist. All right, please bear in mind this is highly subjective, but the ‘good’ news is that she has a line on a ‘killer’ apartment—her words, not mine. But that she has to—” she paused to scroll down the message and read further “‘—experience it in natural light. Dirt cheap, available right away. Tell Em it’s near her work and has charm out the wazoo.’”

“And the bad news?”

“It seems we’re all going to the ball, Cinderella. She got us reserved seating at The Lost Boys’ show tonight, compliments of this Christian of hers. And it seems they also want to take us out for drinks afterward.”

“No.”

“I’ll give her this, she works fast.” Margot poured herself a mug of coffee.

“No…no, no, no.”

“Listen, if I have to go, you have to go.”

“No, you don’t understand. I can’t go. I can’t—I don’t have anything to wear. And I have to—I have—Vandin has a paper that he’s submitting and I have to finish editing the bibliography. Drinks? Where?”

Margot’s mug stopped midway to her lips. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing. It’s just that it’s so sudden. To invite us, and he doesn’t even know who we are, what happens if he, if they—”

“Yes?”

“I mean, it’s one thing to look up there and watch them play, but to have to talk? I don’t think I’m ready for that—I mean, what would we say? We have nothing in common.”

“We’re going out for drinks, not giving them a kidney. And seriously, we’ve suffered through worse for her before. All we have to do is endure a few hours of noise and the obligatory first drink and then we leave. That’s it, just drinks. It’s probably a good thing that we meet her little musician and his friends and make sure she hasn’t made a complete fool of herself yet.”

“There’s nothing little about him.”

“Excuse me?”

Emily floundered. “The drummer—the drummer’s tall,” she blurted out in the vain hope that Margot’s guarded intrigue in the Irish drummer, with his battering arms and sly banter, would effectively detour the direction of the conversation and put an end to her increasingly critical stare.

“Statistically, I’d say he falls onto the far end of the bell curve, yes,” Margot offered into her coffee mug. “At least when it comes to talent, that is. But he looks unwashed.”

“True. But didn’t Newton or somebody say something about opposites attracting?”

“Attractive? Well…I suppose he might be in a James Joyce, John Lennon, rebel-as-artist sort of way, if you like that sort of thing. But I need a mind functioning within all that…noise. And somehow, that man couldn’t have both—it’s not statistically possible.”

“What? Look at you. Why can’t that happen with a Y-chromosome?”

“Because it can’t, and even if it could, it ultimately comes to down to someone sacrificing to make it work. And women are engineered to sacrifice, it’s in our DNA. Whereas the best of men, no matter how talented or intelligent or attractive, will suck you dry and then complain to you about the aftertaste. Trust me. Men aren’t engineered to sacrifice or to stay around, especially men in bands, so it’s better to leave first before you end up making a huge mistake.”

“But we’re just talking about drinks here.”

“My point, exactly. So I suggest you be ready to go by seven.”

Emily sometimes hated having a genius for a roommate.

As Emily entered the Skellar, she pinched herself to verify she was indeed awake, and as an extra precaution, scanned the club to make sure the audience looked firmly of this century. At her side, Margot took no notice, or if she did she didn’t say a word. She hadn’t said a word about Emily’s attire of a blue-black velvet jacket and treacherously high pumps donated with relish by Myra for the occasion who claimed they made Emily look exactly like a feminist fairy tale princess. Margot was used to her friend’s bohemian style of dress, herself opting for a leather jacket and appropriately frayed jeans as did the rest of the crowd. Her black, tight-fitting T-shirt, however, bore a bright yellow radioactive symbol on it in apparent warning.

The same as the previous evening, the dark room was packed. Within seconds of reaching the tables they were whisked along by Zoey, who nabbed them each by the arm and escorted them to one that bore a reserved VIP sign. She must have come home at some point during the day, thought Emily, because she was done up in a macraméd peasant dress and white go-go boots. No sooner had they taken their seats than she launched into the description of their new apartment.

“But a house?” Emily said after finding out the details. “We barely make enough between us to afford our current place. How much is the rent?”

“It’s cheaper than our place,” said Zoey, “that’s the beauty of it. And it’s a Victorian. And it’s an apartment, not the whole house, so don’t start worrying about cleaning and all that because there’s no need. It’s getting some work done.”

Margot barked a laugh. “Sounds like it’s getting Botox. What do you mean exactly when you say ‘work’?”

“Nothing that we can’t live in,” answered Zoey a bit too quickly. “Wait till you see her—the wainscoting, the fireplaces, the light, and there’s even this little garden, and we share a conservatory in the attic.” She began to sketch the layout on a nearby napkin and continued on in an orgasmic
Architectural Digest
fashion about the vintage Chambers stove and the window seats, but all Emily could hear was one word: share.

“Whoa, whoa…share?” Margot interrupted before Emily could open her mouth. “You mean to tell me we’ll be living in a apartment with God knows who traipsing through it every day to make sure it doesn’t collapse on our heads, plus we have to live with other people?”

Just then a body walked onto the stage, and Emily’s heart skipped a beat. She nearly snapped the stem of her wine glass between her fingers. But he was only there to check equipment and quickly left.

Why was she so nervous? She had until midnight. Wasn’t that true of all fairy tales? Then this fantasy of hers would return to just that. She didn’t want to think about it anymore, the reality of expected disappointment. All she wanted were beginnings and hope and happiness, not what she knew would come once the last encore was done and the lights came up and they said hello. But what happened if they did hit it off? If he found her beautiful and charming and intelligent? Was that so farfetched?

Suddenly the lights dimmed, and Emily’s heart began to make its way to her throat via her lungs. Her hands were sweating and freezing all at the same time. The room was beyond capacity at this point. Bodies were everywhere, all holding their collective breath.

Again, the metal-studded girl scurried on stage to announce the band. The door opened up from the side of the stage, and The Lost Boys entered. Wild applause rang out.

Christian was the first to take his place. He grabbed his bass from its stand and fiddled with it, while Simon followed and snatched up his sticks, getting comfortable behind his barricade of drums. Both were wearing low slung jeans and dark T-shirts. They grinned as the crowd cheered and raised their hands in greeting.