How to Kill a Rock Star (29 page)

“I like you better when you mumble inaudibly. But if you have an alternative idea, I’m listening.”

“Think about it,” Loring said. “They’re leaving in three days—even Paul knows he can’t back out of the tour now.

Why not let him go knowing the truth? That way you can work it out before it’s too late.”

“Why is it so important to you that Paul and I make up?” His eyes were locked on the chessboard, and he might as wel have been speaking to his queen when he said, “Surprise, I care about you, okay? I just think you’l be sorry if you don’t tel him.”

“I plan on moving back to the apartment as soon as he’s gone.”

“You can stay here as long as you want. That’s not the point. July is four months away. A
lot
can happen in four months. A
lot
.”

Loring’s words real y hit me. I imagined myself old and gray and alone, staring out a window in a dank apartment on Delancey Street, a soft-rock station on the radio. The DJ

would play “Wildfire,” “Seasons in the Sun,” and “Superstar,” and I would be haunted by lingering thoughts of Paul Hudson, wondering where he was and tel ing myself everything could have been different if only I hadn’t been such a coward.

I moved one of my pawns forward two spaces, and Loring positioned his queen to trap my king.

“Checkmate,” he said.

The next morning I cal ed the apartment at an hour Paul often termed “the butt crack of dawn.” His voice was grog-gy and hostile. “What do you want?”

“I need to talk to you. Can I stop by after work?”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“It’s important.”

I could hear him breathing. Final y he said, “Come by around seven” and then hung up.

As usual, the F train took forever. I decided F stood for fucking-slow-ass-crowded-fucking chug-a-lug train. I got to the apartment a little after seven and ran up the steps wondering if Paul could hear me coming the way I used to be able to hear him.

At the fourth floor landing I froze, struck by how strange and baleful the bleeding door looked.

Paul was standing in the kitchen when I walked in. He was shirtless, his hair looked greasy, and there was something gangrenous in his eyes as he picked up a pack of American Spirits off the counter—not his standard brand—and smacked the bottom until a few popped up.

He grabbed a cigarette with his teeth and lit it. As I approached him, he blew a mouthful of smoke in my face.

“Wel ?” he said. “What’s so goddamn important you had to come al the way down from your penthouse to talk to me?” His animosity was thicker than the smoke but I let it go.

I deserved it. “Obviously you’re upset, and I don’t blame you.” I fanned the air. “Loring was right, I should have been honest with you right from the beginning and—”

“
Don’t
utter that name in my house.” But I never got the opportunity to utter Loring’s name, or anything else after that. Time stopped, and the last year and a half of my life became a blur as I watched the topless figure of Amanda Strunk strut like a proud peacock out of How to Kil _internals.rev 2/22/08 5:00 PM Page 254

25Paul’s bedroom.

“As you can see, I have company,” Paul said. “Can you make this snappy?”

For a second I thought I saw something in Paul’s eyes that said:
This hurts me more than it hurts you
. But when Amanda sidled up to him, ran her hands down his chest and drawled, “Where were we before we were so rudely interrupted?” he flashed his cocky-bastard grin and fol owed her to the bedroom without ever looking back.

When Loring came home I was on my bed, wrapped in a thick blanket, trying to picture what happiness might look like if it could be contained in a piece of matter. After careful consideration, I decided happiness would be an unwieldy, odd-shaped object, like a big lava rock or a chunk of ore.

Undoubtedly, it would have to be an object that, because of its properties, because of its very essence, would sink in any substance whose molecules flowed freely. This I knew for sure: Happiness would never, ever, under any circumstance, have the ability to float.

I listened to Loring putter around the kitchen and put the water on for tea. Then he must have noticed the light in my room. He shut it off as he walked by, but a second later he reappeared in the doorway and flicked it back on.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d be here.” I tried to hide my face. Loring knew I’d arranged to see Paul. He’d be able to take one look at me and guess something had gone awry.

He sat down on the edge of the bed and cocked his head so that our eyes were on the same plane. “Did you tel him?”

“I didn’t get a chance,” I said, picking at the ratty tissue in my hand.

“Why not?”

“Let’s just say he’s moved on.”

Loring reached down and lifted a piece of lint from my pil ow. Then he dropped it and it sailed to the floor. “Is that what he said, that he’s moved on?”

“He didn’t real y
say
anything. He didn’t have to. The half-naked woman who came out of his bedroom kind of tipped me off.”

Loring scratched his temple and said, “Shit.”

“Wait, it gets better. It was Amanda Strunk.”

“
Amanda Strunk
?” Loring shook his head and mumbled something about Paul being an idiot, but after gauging my reaction to that, he said, “Sorry.

It’s just that Amanda Strunk is the bottom of the barrel.”

The clamor of a harmonica began blaring through the apartment. Loring had the sil iest teakettle I’d ever heard—when the water reached its boiling point, it didn’t whistle, instead it sounded like Bob Dylan warming up in the next room.

“Hold on,” Loring said, and when he got to the kitchen he must have turned Bob off because he was back, tea-less, within seconds.

“You should’ve seen the way he looked at me, Loring. He hates me.”

Loring sat on the floor next to the bed. “He doesn’t hate you. He knew you were coming over, right? He was just trying to hurt you.”

I shook my head. There was so much more to it. I likened it to the intimate version of Doug’s
Tell me what you listen to
and I’ll tell you what you are
theory. This was:
Tell me who you
fuck and I’ll tell you what you are
.

Spiritual duplicity.

“Choice betrays character,” I said.

“That’s not true.” Loring moved his finger along the sheet as if writing his name in cursive. “Eliza, you can’t judge a man solely on his actions.

Sometimes actions are nothing more than
re
actions.”

25What Loring meant, but was too nice to say, was that he thought I had no one to blame but myself.

And I couldn’t get the images of Amanda out of my head: The way her surgical y perfected breasts defied gravity as she strutted across the room, the way her dark pink lipstick looked permanently smeared around her mouth, the way she stood behind Paul and made nail marks in his chest.

I blinked hard to make it al disappear. When that didn’t do the trick I tried to create a diversion, focusing at length on Loring’s warm, sympathetic eyes. I wished I could curl up inside one of Loring’s eyes and hide. And I thought maybe, just maybe, Loring’s eyes could make Amanda go away.

Loring swal owed, noticeably uncomfortable, but he didn’t look away, and I leaned toward his face like a baby bird reaching for food from its mother’s beak. The tip of my nose brushed his and I turned my head a fraction, but when our lips were about to touch, Loring flinched and made a face like he’d just smashed his finger with a hammer.

“What’s wrong?” I said. “I thought it’s what you wanted.” His body twisted. “Eliza, I like you. A lot. But I can’t be the puppet in some two-can-play-at-that game between you and Paul.” He got up and kissed my forehead. “Try and get some sleep.”

I closed my eyes and listened to the carpet crunch and flex below Loring’s feet as he left the room. And he never did finish making tea.

He went across the hal and took an eight-minute-long shower.

Paul was gone. And not just physical y. What he’d personi-fied, the potential that his life, talent, and love held for me was now as far away as he was.

Making matters worse, without consultation, Paul had decided to sublet the apartment on Ludlow until he returned in July. For al intents and purposes, I was not only heartbroken, I was also homeless.

Vera and I saw each other often after the band left, and she was quick to offer me ebul ient accounts of Michael’s news from the road: what his days were like, the cities, the weather, the people, the shows. But never a word of Paul.

According to Vera, Michael was living his life’s dream.

In my mind this meant Paul was too, and with pitiful pro-fundity, this made my pain worth the consequences it was yielding.

Michael kept me updated via the occasional email. He was happy to report that the audiences were responding wel to Bananafish. The problem, he explained, was that only ten percent of the ticket holders showed up for an opening act they’d never heard of.

Michael also let it slip that Ian Lessing, the Drones’s singer, was an alcoholic egomaniac and “dumb as a doornail.” I knew this must have disappointed Paul. Ian was one of his heroes. But when I asked Michael how Paul was doing, he ignored me.

25I couldn’t take it anymore. I needed answers. Closure.

Proof that Paul had indeed moved on. And final y, before the band left Portland, I broke down and cal ed his cel phone.

He didn’t answer, and I left a message asking him to cal me, but it was Michael who I heard from that night. At first al he talked about was Oregon, and about how he and “some of the guys” had driven to Hood River and gone windsurfing on their day off.

“Did your lead singer go?” I said. In a mil ion years I couldn’t imagine Paul windsurfing.

“Yeah. And Eliza, the reason I’m cal ing…” Michael’s voice was dul and careful. “Paul’s real y trying to get on with his life, and you cal ing up, leaving him messages isn’t going to help him do that.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“I think it’s best if you live your life and let Paul live his.”

“Is he sleeping around?” I asked. I kept imagining the Oregonian versions of Christy and Janis slipping their room numbers under the salt shakers, with Paul and Angelo tossing coins and cal ing heads to see who got which girl.

Michael refused to say another word on the subject, and the next morning I cal ed Vera and demanded to be told the truth.

“You must know what’s going on.”

“You mean with Jil y Bean?” Vera sighed.

“
Jilly Bean
? What the hel is
Jilly Bean
?” I was sitting at the kitchen counter pretending to read the previous day’s
Times
when Loring came home from walking the boys to school during a freakish spring snow storm. His cheeks were pink from the cold, his long eyelashes had tiny icicles on them, and the hat he wore was dusted with snow.

“Morning,” he said, whipping his hat off in a quick swoop, causing little flurries to sprinkle to the floor. He put How to Kil _internals.rev 2/22/08 5:00

PM Page 259

the water on and asked me if I wanted any tea.

“Paul has a new girlfriend,” I said.

Loring spun around. “How is that possible? He’s only been gone a month.”

“Four weeks and two days, actual y.” I shut the paper.

“Her name’s Jil Bishop. Michael told Vera she leaves notes for Paul al over the place, signs them
Love, Jilly Bean
.

Apparently they’re inseparable.”

“
Jilly
Bean?” Loring said, the inflection fal ing hard on the J. “Paul’s new girlfriend is
Jilly
Bean?”

“Don’t tel me you know her.”

He pul ed off his wet shoes, dropping hunks of slushy dirt onto the floor. “Eliza, everybody knows her.”

“She’s a groupie?”

“Tab coined the term
leechie
. She has a tendency to leech onto budding rock stars. Picks a new one every year. She just hasn’t been able to pick a winner yet.” I ordered Loring to tel me everything he knew about the girl. He wiped melting snow from his face, and the two little lines in his brow appeared as he tried to conjure up images of Jil y Bean. “I only met her once, at a show in San Francisco last year.”

I let my head drop to the counter with a thud, and then lifted it back up to say: “Paul’s not supposed to fal in love with a leechie. Jesus, at least tel me she’s mean and dumb and looks like the Elephant Man.”

“I shook her hand and said hel o. That was the extent of my interaction.” Loring shrugged apologetical y. “Tab slept with her, though. He thought she was nice.”

“
Nice
? Warm, sunny weather is
nice
. You need to be more precise than that.” I raced into the kitchen and hopped up on the counter. “Let’s start with the obvious: what does she look like?”

He made a quick check to see if his water was boiling.

26“She has a smal head.”

“A smal head?”

“I remember Tab saying that. He thought her head was completely out of proportion to the rest of her body.”

“She’s cute, isn’t she?”

“She’s al right.”

Loring’s responses were entirely too evasive and for this reason I tried to boot him in the leg, but he was quick—he put his hand down and blocked me.

“Careful where you aim,” he said. “I might want more kids someday.”

“Yes or no. Is she cute?”

He ran his hand through his hair and sighed. “Yeah. She’s kind of cute.” He was surveying his vast array of teas, deliberating between Royal Yunnan and Jasmine Pearl. “But she’s just, you know, she’s just a girl.”

“Translation?”

“There’s nothing special about her.”

I got the impression Loring was censoring himself, but apparently he chose to override that, probably because he knew my need to hear what he had to say was greater than his inclination to keep it inside.

“Compared to you, I mean,” Loring said. “I can assure you it’s blatantly obvious to Paul, of al people, that Jil y Bean Bishop doesn’t hold a candle to you.” Loring was a good friend. He always knew the right thing to say. And if he’d been standing a foot closer I might have kissed him.