Punk and Zen (47 page)

A thought occurred to me. “Hey, Graham?” I called as
he reached the door.

“Yes?”

“Could you ask someone to send some food out here? I’m
starving.”

“Consider it done, then,” he said. “Can’t have you
wasting away.”

Candace came over to the outdoor table I’d chosen as I
once more put my guitar down. “Can we try this discussion again?” she asked me
with a small smile, her eyes gleaming in the starlight as I straightened. She
reached out and gently grabbed my tie. I let her.

“You’re easy to fall in love with, Nina, but you’re
hard to love,” Candace said quietly.

Whatever angry thing I was going to say in response
died in my throat when I saw the sad twist to her lips and the tears in her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Candace, but I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. I
gently took her hand from my tie and the skin that lay beneath it.

“Sit with me. Let’s try this again. Do you want a
cigarette?” I offered.

She sat, she took one of my cigarettes, and I lit it
for her. Light flared again from the door, and we both looked when we heard a
voice.

“
Están en esa mesa
.” They’re at that table,
someone said, and over came two waiters carrying a small tray table and a cart.

“Coca-Cola,
señorita
?” one asked, pouring out a
bottle for me as the other set the table down. Coke. Oh how awesome. And that
tray, that smelled very much like…yes. Two cheeseburgers, with fries.
Oh,
Graham,
I thought,
you’re the best—fucking funny—but the best.

“Eat with me,” I offered, “heavy conversation after. I
don’t think well when I’m hungry.”

“I suspect you probably think too well, either way.”

What I recognized as mirth tugged at the corner of her
mouth, and I arched an eyebrow at her and shrugged as I reached for my plate.

We ate in a companionable, civilized silence, quite a
bit different from our last dinner together or our first.

“Do you remember Port Marseille?” Candace asked me
with a small smile.

The waiters had turned on one of the torch lights that
lined the edge of the courtyard so we were no longer in complete darkness.
However, outside of that circle, you could see the star field again.

“It’s not something I’ll forget,” I told her with a
smile. “It
was
a beautiful summer night.”

I have to admit that, at some point, I asked her if
she’d felt the least bit bad about sleeping with someone her girlfriend had
felt so strongly about, especially since she was “on a mission,” I’d teased
gently.

“Guilt is such a funny human construct,” she answered
seriously. “Should I feel guilty because a gorgeously dynamic young woman finds
me attractive? Or because she responds to my interest?”

I thought about that. I guess, well, I wouldn’t
either, would I?

But Candace had more to say. “You carry a wall that
says ‘don’t come near me,’ and it’s part of what makes you so damnably sexy.
You’re exceedingly generous with everything but yourself—you keep that for
you—and for her.”

Candace stood. “You mentioned before that I did my
research thoroughly,” she began.

I stood, too. “Look, I’m sorry I said that. It was
completely uncalled for,” I apologized and touched her arm.

“No, no, you were right. When I do something, I see it
through.” She smiled at me. “And honestly, Nina, you made it very enjoyable. I
wanted to know what it was about you that could absolutely do that to someone,
why she ABC carried you in her heart like some carry those prayer
beads.”

“What did you find out?” I asked quietly.

She touched the charms that hung on my neck. “That you
value life,” she said as she touched the ankh, “that you value truth,” she said
and ran her fingers down the little blade under my throat. She looked into my
eyes. “They’re inseparable for you—and you are more than her match.”

I was surprised when she lightly touched my cheek. “I
was sending her to New York to find you—accidentally on purpose. I didn’t tell
her who you were because I didn’t know if anyone could tame you.” She moved her
fingers from my face to my forehead, brushing my hair back. “I didn’t know you
were waiting for her.”

I smiled at that because she was right—whether I knew
it or not at the time, I
had
been waiting for my Samantha. “I was,” I
said. “I didn’t know it, though.”

Her hand moved from my hair to my shoulder. “I’m
sorry…about what happened between you and Francesca,” she said softly as she
applied sympathetic pressure to the muscle under her fingertips.

“Are you?” I asked, stunned at the unexpected sting I
felt in my eyes as my throat went tight.

“You’ve never really, ah, loved someone before, have
you?” Candace asked delicately.

She could have been fishing, trying to find out how
I’d felt about her maybe, or asking about how I might have felt about anyone,
Trace included, since Candace had sort of met her that one night. But that’s
not what she was really asking. I knew what she really meant, so I looked
Candace in the eyes and took that question right on the chin.

“No, I hadn’t,” I answered with simple strength. I
would never be ashamed of loving my lion.

Candace dropped her eyes and took a breath before she
spoke again. “A part of you will always be hers,” and she touched the ankh on
my neck, “just like a part of Samantha is Annie to me.”

I shook my head, because at that moment, it felt like
I had nothing. “That’s just…that’s just fucking great,” I said finally. “What’s
mine, then?”

Candace grazed my chin with her fingertips. “Samantha.
Samantha, whole and free. You knew her when she was happy, her potential spread
out before her, part of her, before she…” Candace sighed, but wouldn’t finish
that thought. “I only ever got to see glimpses of that, and only on those rare
occasions when she spoke about the past,” she said instead, “when she spoke
about you.”

She leaned in and kissed my cheek. “I envy you, Nina,”
she said softly in my ear and put her arms around me.

I hugged her back, because I knew that despite what
she said she did or didn’t feel, what she didn’t say was the important
thing—the thing I’d known earlier. She loved Samantha, she loved her enough to
see her happy, loved her enough to let her go, and like it or not, I was the
one Samantha had gone to.

But still, there was one thing I had to know, after
all that was said this evening. “Candace, everything between us…was it all just
research?” I asked gently. I’d really liked her then, and honestly, I still did.
I was sort of hoping that we could, I don’t know, be friends, or something like
that. I know that sounds weird, but that’s how I felt—I don’t know why. And I
needed to know, needed to know if I’d really and truly been that wrong, that
mistaken.

“No, of course not.” Candace laughed and squeezed me.
“I told you, you’re very easy to fall in love with.” She kissed my cheek, then
pulled back to look at me as we let go of one another.

“Besides, as I told Annie,” she tweaked my nose, “I’ve
grown rather fond of you.” Her teeth and eyes gleamed in the torchlight.

“I’d grown rather fond of you, too,” I told her. I
kissed her cheek. “Thanks for being honest, or something like it.”

We really didn’t have much left to say, so we walked
back into the lobby together and said good night. Just before I was about to
leave, a question occurred to me as I caught myself about to yawn.

“Hey, Candace?” I called to her back.

“Yes?”

“Why are you in Barcelona?” The real question was why
didn’t I ask that before, but I think I was so surprised to see her and so
wired out from the show, my brain had fogged. Man, though, I needed to get some
sleep if I was missing things like that.

“Two things, really,” she said, her eyes glinting with
humor.

I arched an eyebrow, waiting.

“I’m on holiday—and I love Spain,” she said first.

“And…?” I prompted.

“I’ve been following your tour. I wanted to see you.”
She seemed pleased with herself.

Oh. Okay. I sensed something behind that, but I was
too tired to really pursue it further at the moment. In truth, I would
eventually find out much later.

“Will I see you again?” I asked, ABC this time
not able to swallow my yawn.

“Go get some sleep,” Candace said kindly. “You’ll see
me again sooner than you think.”

I grinned. Okay, I could buy that. This time, we said
good night and I really went back to my room, where Stephie slept with a spoon
in her hand and Jerkster slept in the chair, comic books scattered on the
floor.
My
comic books, to be precise. Whatever. We could take
care of that in the morning.

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

Ibiza as a party town was like the Red Spot as a
country. Everywhere, everything, was hot—the weather, the music, the people,
the scenes—everything. It was whiplash city: you couldn’t help but snap your
head constantly at the parade of outrageously beautiful people and scenes.

We had rooms in a resort—an actual apartment with a
little kitchen, two bedrooms, and a pullout couch. Jerkster wanted the sofa
because he could watch TV all night. That was totally fine with me and Steph,
because each room also had its own bath—awesome! We had time to nap and bathe
before hitting the stage. That…was heavenly.

I had enough time to go for dinner with Graham, and
during our meal, Graham told me the tour would extend. After Madrid, we’d
return to London after revisiting Paris, marking the end of our original
contract, and we’d do a last London show before a week’s break—the time
necessary for us to get the new contracts reviewed and signed. He wanted to go
back to Germany, head to Austria, jump to Italy, and then…Tokyo.

“They’re gonna love what we’re doing there,” he
enthused. “It’s a huge market.”

I considered. “Why not tell the whole band?” I asked
him. “Why speak with me?”

Graham looked at me as if I’d dropped my clues
somewhere. “Nina, you’re the show. You write the music, you figure out the
arrangements—including the harmonies. Nothing happens without you.”

His perception of the whole thing shocked me—I didn’t
see it that way at all. We were a team, we all did our jobs. That’s what it was
all about, to me anyway.

“I’ll talk with Stephie and Jerkster—let’s all grab
lunch together tomorrow, and you can explain it all then?”

Graham nodded thoughtfully. “Sure, we can do that.
Noonish then, here?”

“Sure,” I agreed, “that works.”

We finished the rest of our meal chitchatting about
the different places we’d played and comparing sound from one venue to another.

When I went back to our room preshow, I caught Stephie
and Jerkster up on everything Graham had told me, and that we’d have lunch
together the next day to figure it all out.

“Does he need to know tomorrow?” Stephie asked.

“I don’t think so. We’ve got time to figure things
out, why?” I asked her.

Stephie shrugged and shook her head. “No reason, just
wondering.”

“Hey, well, I’m signing the dotted line—I’m playing,”
Jerkster said enthusiastically.

I totally understood. I just figured we should know
what we were getting ourselves into first and said so.

Jerkster nodded judiciously. “Yeah, you’re right. I’ll
call my mom tomorrow. She does that law stuff, she can help us out.”

“Hey, cool,” I said, and dropped it from there—it was
time to get going.

The show itself went great, and I did another set with
the Microwaves afterward as well. This time, Jerkster and Stephie stayed to
watch, and it was so cool, because Graham had them come up to do the encore and
it was, again, the ever-classic “Could You Be Loved.” That’s just such a
rockin’ tune…

When the show was over and we were all done hugging
each other, I grabbed my guitar and walked backstage. I was still coming down
from the very real stage high and rapidly falling into the sense of
disappointment that had been building over the last two days. I’d heard nothing
from Samantha—and I’d made sure to leave messages.

I walked back to our room. Everyone was going out, but
for once, I didn’t want to. I was going to watch some television, maybe rent a
movie. I just wanted to be alone, you know? Besides, I hadn’t had time to read
lately; maybe I could read a few comics. Oh, hell, maybe there was an old
X-Men
or something somewhere I could pick through, take me to someplace different,
and after, I’d work on some music. It was time to at least run through the
basics, take my guitar apart, make sure everything was how it needed to be.

That was my plan, anyway, as I walked the corridor. As
I approached our door, I noticed someone had left us flowers. “Nice,” I thought
as I slid my key card out of my back pocket. I opened the door and dropped my
guitar off inside, then came back out for the blooms: irises and tiger lilies.
They made me think of Samantha and Fran as I searched for a card, the irises
for the amazing color of my Sammy’s eyes and the tiger lilies for Fran’s
fieriness.