My Life in Heavy Metal (3 page)

We were with a bunch of our friends, Jo's friends is what they were, people brimming with statistics and good intentions, people engaged in
projects,
people who used words such as
empowerment
and nodded meaningfully when they talked to you.

Guys kept putting tequilas in front of Jo. They wanted to see her poise on display. She got up to dance and now the whole club watched, the young cats sipping gin and the lonely Corona dykes and Barratto himself, the droopy old
conguero,
long past such uncomplicated
pleasures, tittering at the motion of her hips, bidding her this way and that with his thick fingers and his drum.

She wobbled in her red suede boots and laughed and insisted she was fine. Then she and a friend went to the bathroom and only the friend returned. Gallantry now demanded that I enter the ladies' room. That was fine with me. I liked the idea! I imagined a bright alcove full of dishy women putting on lipstick and talking cock. But the place was empty and smelled sort of disappointing. A gurgle came from the far stall. Jo looked as if she'd been dropped from a helicopter. The tile pressed against her cheek. Her legs were bent in a few directions. She smiled the glassy smile of the non-ambulatory. On the drive home she threw up twice more, dainty little strings of puke.

How stunning she looked laid out on our bed—like a beautiful corpse! I pressed a washrag to her forehead.

“I'm dying, David. I'm going to die.”

“You're not dying, sweetie.”

“I'm gonna fall asleep and throw up and drown on my throw-up. Like that guy from the Doors.”

“That was Hendrix,” I said delicately.

“I'm going to
die,
David. Tell me you love me.” Jo closed her eyes. The lids were round and soft purple. They made her look terribly vulnerable. “Don't lie to me,” she said. “I love you, David. Don't lie to me.”

“Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, I love you.”

“How much?”

“A lot.”

“How much lot?”

“Infinity lot,” I said. “Infinity to the infinity power lot.”

Jo smiled. Her teeth were totally unstoppable. It seemed inconceivable to me, at that moment, that I would fail her. I could see what she had in mind: the settling down, the having of children, the long, good promise. Motherhood would make her glow like a planet.

“Gimme kiss,” she said.

The tequila was coming off her in yellow fumes I found not undesirable. I began, then, to undress her. She squirmed. Moonlight hung in the window and advanced along her body. The skin over her heart flickered.

“Where are you going?” Jo said.

“Nowhere.”

“Don't go.”

“I'm just going to take my clothes off.”

“Don't. I'll fall asleep. I'll drown.”

“I'm right here.”

“You can't ever leave me. Kiss.
Mmmmm.
Kiss again.”

Claudia couldn't cook. Her specialty was
flautas,
which tasted of burned lard. She said the recipe was from her mother. There was always never much to talk about. Her sister was getting engaged. Ozzy Osbourne was coming to town. We drank wine from green jugs.

Without glasses, Claudia's face looked naked. She blinked a great deal. Her skin smelled faintly of chlorine at all times. Our coupling remained hurried and incompetent. Claudia preferred the lights low. We never, ever spoke. But always, there came a moment
when her body unclenched; her eyes lost focus and the torrent began. This was just how she was built, though I was convinced it
meant
something.

The idea I had was to do it in the bathroom. I liked the way her thighs bulged against the white of the sink. I liked the light, which was a little too bright, which fringed our skin in yellow, lent us a crispness I associated with interrogation.

I knew there was a complicated person living inside Claudia's body. A reason she wasn't living at home, a reason she was involved with me. She had her own hopes stashed somewhere. But I wasn't interested in those. I wanted only an accomplice.

I reached down and Claudia threw her legs a little wider. Her mouth went sloppy. Her eyes half closed. Water began gushing down the soft skin of her thighs. I pressed forward, and the water, wanting out, pressed back. The sensation was warm and almost painful. Then I felt myself begin, and pushed in all the way. Claudia shrieked. Her head thumped the mirror. There was a sharp crack, a rapid downward motion, and water. Geysers of water, gurgling up, sweeping down. We lay tangled on the floor. I could see blood threading the puddle near my head. Claudia, I was certain, had exploded. Then I saw the sink, toppled nearby. The leads to the water pipes had snapped clean off.

Jo met me at the door. This was maybe one in the morning. I was pretty well sobered up by then.

“What the hell happened to you?” she said.

“In what sense?”

“In the sense that you left the paper four hours ago, and your hair is wet.”

“Claudia's fucking toilet overflowed,” I said. “I had to take a shower.”

Jo stood directly in front of me. She didn't say anything. I could see the blood in her cheeks spiraling.

“It was disgusting.” I said. “Believe me. You should be glad I took a shower.”

“I want to know what the hell's going on with that woman, David.”

“Claudia? What's going on with Claudia? I would guess she's mopping right about now.”

“If you're fucking lying to me, David. If you're fucking that woman—”

“Hold on,” I said. “Just slow down—”

“Look at me, David.”

“I am looking at you. I'm looking right at you.” I could feel an awful, thrilling current inside me. “Now you listen to me,” I said. “If I were fooling around, if I were flouncing off to fuck this woman, don't you think, did it ever occur to you, that I might be a little more
subtle
about it? That I wouldn't try to do it right under your nose?”

Jo took a half step back. “Why can't I meet her, then?”

“You can,” I said. “You can meet her any time you want. I've told you. Do you want to call her right now, and have her come over and you can ask her if I fuck her and then come back here and sleep with you? Is that what you want?” I was breathing through my nose now. My chest was puffed up like a gamecock. “Because you obviously don't believe me. You don't believe I could just be friends with this woman.”

“I didn't say I didn't believe you.”

“You might as well have.” Behind her rose El Paso's new civic center, which was supposed to be a sombrero but looked more like
a flat tire. Farther out, the barrel fires of the
colonias
danced like matchsticks. “Look,” I said. “Claudia was part of my life before you came here. Maybe that's why I hold her apart a little. The truth is she's a pretty unhappy person. Troubled. And a part of me feels like she needs my company. She's not like you, honey. She doesn't have the world at her feet.”

“Who says I have the world at my feet?” Jo said quietly.

I grazed my fingers along her cheek. “You can't keep doing this to yourself. You've got to trust me, baby.”

Was it wrong for me to want to protect Jo from such terrible hurt? From a part of myself she was better not knowing? Was it wrong to preserve her belief in me? After all, I wanted to believe just as much as she did—in my own decency, in our bright future together. I wanted to make her happy. This other business, as I saw it, was just something I needed to work out of my system. It would never have occurred to me back then that behind all my fancy footwork was a darker sin: I didn't love Jo as she loved me. I knew only that I felt guilty all the time, unworthy and resentful and complicated. And so, every few weeks, I went out and drowned myself in loud song and copulation and this made me feel simple. And when I returned home, I told Jo heroic lies that defended us both from the ruinous truth.

I didn't love her as she loved me. What other sin is there, finally?

Jo was on the phone in the other room. “Oh my God!” she cried out. “That's so amazing!” A couple of minutes later, she came in the bedroom, puffy and exorbitant.

“That was Kirsten.”

“Who?”

“
Kirsten.
My best friend from high school. She's getting
married.
She wants me to be a
bridesmaid.
”

I nodded at the closet, where her other gowns hung. “Peach chiffon or teal?”

“Very funny,” she said.

“When's the big day?”

“November twentieth.”

“Not
this
November twentieth?” I screwed on a tight little smile.

“Don't you dare,” Jo said. “Don't you dare pull this shit. I am not going to this wedding alone because you have to review some idiotic band.”

“Guns N' Roses,” I said, “is not just some band.”

You have to understand: I had interviewed Kip Winger three times. I knew the names of his pets. I had memorized, without any intention of doing so, the words to “Headed for a Heartbreak.” Possibly better than anyone else
on earth
I recognized the depths to which heavy metal had sunk. The intensity and musicianship of its earliest practitioners had given way to pretty-boy schlock. This is what made the Gunners so compelling. They represented a return to the core values of the genre, the angry hedonism, the dramatic release. I doubt Axl Rose would have described himself as an Aristotelian, but that is what he was. His voice ramped forever up, toward catharsis.

I had explained all this to Jo, several times. But she just looked at me like my head was on fire. “What we're talking about, David, the issue, is whether you're coming with me to this wedding.”

“I'm not,” I said.

“This is Kirsten,” she said dramatically. “This is one of my best friends.”

The trick with Jo was to let her self-regard run down a little. Then to pause, always to pause, which conveyed thought. And then to assume a softer tone. “I know it's important,” I said. “I hear you. But this is important to me, honey. It's my job. And I know you think it's just bullshit, but it's also something I value. Can you understand that?”

We were, all things considered, in a phase of expectant compromise. The paper had nominated me for a three-month stint at
USA Today,
in D.C., where I hoped to earn my wings in the world of depthy glitz. Jo was talking with Nader's people about a job. Marriage wasn't on the table just yet. But—as I now gently reminded her—the end of my metal days was in sight. Couldn't she give me this one last hurrah?

Later, in bed, she made me promise. “I want Washington to be different.”

“Of course it'll be different,” I said. “It's a whole different city.”

“You know what I mean,” she said.

She closed her eyes and smiled a little and for a second I could see her at sixty, with a bolt of white hair and skin too tired to shine all the time.

“Who're you going to take?” she said.

“One of the sports guys, probably.”

“What about Claudia? I haven't heard about her for a while.”

“She's got a new boyfriend,” I said. “A cop, I think.”

It would be fair to call the show a letdown. Loosed from the studio firmament, Axl's voice came across as chalky and unmodulated, the bark of a hungry seagull. Slash was so drunk he kept falling over. A
roadie had to scurry onstage and prop him up again. This grew disheartening.

My review was indignant. The band was taking its fans for granted, squandering a hallowed opportunity, retreating from the mandates of thus and such. I clacked away on my laptop in the empty cavern of the coliseum as, down below, the roadies broke down the lights and drum risers and mikes.

Claudia was where I'd left her, on a bench near the back exit. When I'd told her about the move to D.C., she'd only looked down and nodded. It was what she'd expected all along, I guess. But now, as I approached her, sitting there in her sad little blouse, I wanted to be able to do something for her, some terrific, unassailable thing that might restore the magic she held as a lifeguard (a guarder of lives!), quiet and secretly powerful so long ago.

“Let's grab a drink,” I said.

“I should be getting home.”

“Nonsense.” I took her hand. “We'll have some wine. We'll go to my place and have some wine.” And as we moved out into the night, with its sooty breath and slender moon, I understood that Claudia was one of those people who is acted upon; that imposing her own desires invited risks she felt unprepared to take.

When I moved into her for the last time, she closed her eyes and lay back and her smell, chlorine and skin lotion, mingled with Jo's perfume, which rose from the sheets. I was in no hurry. I had dropped Jo off at the airport six hours earlier. She would be landing in New York, combing out her hair, wrestling with the overhead compartment. I gave no thought to the weather back East. El Paso, after all, was sweltering.

Claudia's knees began to tremble. Her toes dug at my calves and her mouth went slack. With each thrust, I could hear the faint
clack of her teeth. And when her hips began to tilt up, I reached down to caress her, that her body might open and bring the miracle of water. I had a vision, even then, with all that had happened, was about to happen, that I might bow my head between her legs and be washed.

When you live with someone, you come to recognize the way they move, the pace and gravity of their gait. It's the way of our kind: we can't help but reveal ourselves. Jo always took the stairs two at a time, favoring her right leg from an old ballet injury, executing a little hop-skip on the landings. And now, somehow, despite the fact that she was thousands of miles away, I could hear the dangerous jig of her footsteps drawing closer. Claudia began to moan and her body opened and released the water and I felt my own body reaching ecstatically to repeat itself.