Punk and Zen (54 page)

Maybe things might have been a little
different had we actually spoken with her before we’d signed our first
contract, but…you live and learn and sometimes you get a bloody nose, and if
you’re lucky, you live through it.

Samantha and I were pushing to get the
recording done at a reasonable pace instead of the rush Enzo was asking for so
we could spend some quality time together—and not just in the studio. We had
stuff to work out for ourselves.

We had a solid plan with the timing we had
in mind: we’d tour in the spring and into the summer instead, which would pack
a bigger punch on our new release.

Yep, those were the plans Samantha and I
had, well, that and we were really and truly going to do the crazy thing and
get married. We discussed it on the flight back to Heathrow from Madrid. How
had she put it? Oh yeah, over twenty thousand feet in the air, she asked, “Can
we get married before you decide to join a new band and go tour Borneo, then
give it all up to live with the aborigines in Australia?” She was nuts, but she
was nuts about me, and that’s kinda sorta what really mattered.

I laughed, though, and told her if I was
going to give it all up it would be to bodysurf on the West Coast or, better
yet, Hawaii. I’d start swimming and never stop until I was one with the great
blue. She leaned over the seat, then wrapped her arms around me and laughed.
“Only if you take me with you,” she said, “only if you take me with you.” I
heartily agreed.

“Okay, we’ll do that knot-tying thing,” I
said, “but there’s a couple of conditions.”

“Anything. Name it,” Samantha swore, as
she cupped my cheek and her eyes were that deep blue that made me want to
do—everything.

“Full disclosure, Sam,” I told her. I was
dead serious, too. “I want to know where in the world you were for six weeks
that I didn’t hear from you and that you won’t disappear on me like that
again.”

I was less than surprised to find that
Candace worked for Rude—she was A&R, “Artists and Repertoire,” which meant
she scouted new talent and signed them. Oh, how it fucking figured, you know?
It just fucking figured.

“Uh, I think tonight would be a good time
to fill in the blanks,” I told Samantha while we waited in Enzo’s office.

She took my hand, kissed it, and swore she
would. She was absolutely as good as her word. Samantha told me a whole lot of
the things I didn’t know (and a few I didn’t want to, but that’s another
story—in fact, it’s hers).

While in London, I finally got to
officially meet her Uncle Cort, who really was as big as she’d described him to
me when we were in high school. I loved him immediately, the big, almost burly,
slightly gruff man who was probably one of the gentlest people I’d ever met.

He made me feel welcome, a part of the
family that was he and Samantha.

Back in New York, I got in touch with
Jerkster, I mean, Jer—I really couldn’t call him Jerkster anymore since the
accident—and Stephie right away. I really missed them! And tell you the truth,
they were the people outside of Samantha and Fran I was closest to. That’s the
thing about being in a band—you really are a family, even if you don’t play
together anymore. It was hard to accept in many ways that Adam’s Rib was over
and gone; it had been such a nice dream! But that’s life, and the most
important thing was that we’d had a great time while it lasted.

Jer picked me up from my apartment; we
were going to get Stephie and go back to his house. I wanted to meet his mom
anyway—to thank her for everything she’d done for me and for us and offer her a
retainer for all the stuff I was pretty sure she’d end up doing for me in the
future. It ended up becoming a lot for a couple of years.

Jer really wouldn’t be able to play
again—not the way he had before, anyway. It could have been heartbreaking, but
he was going back to school to study engineering—sound engineering. “Fuck the
sheiskopf
bus-driver thing,” Jer said with a grin. “I’m going to be an uber sound guy.”

I agreed with him. He would be great at
that, and I knew right then and there who would do our sound on tour—and who’d
run the studio I planned to open one day. Hey, it was okay to have a new dream,
right?

The big shock was Stephie. I’d been
smoking a cigarette while Jer and I waited for her in his car, and when I saw
her—I flung it away without even thinking about it—she was huge! She was due in
about four months. Damn, that was why she’d cried almost every day—and
explained a lot more than that, too. I wished I’d known, though. I don’t know
what Jer and I could have done differently, but maybe, something. I was glad
I’d given her all those Oreos, at the very least.

Stephie was done with touring, though. ABC
But she mentioned that John was a drummer, and you could tell from the
way the baby kicked anyway, sticking her little feet out of her mom’s belly as
if to say, “Here I am—let’s kick it!”

“Yeah,” Stephie said after she made us pet
the belly and play tag with each foot, “not even breathing on her own yet and
already a punk.”

We laughed a lot about that, and in my
head, Stephie worked in that studio I was going to have. I knew she still loved
music, and she was super sharp—there had to be something we could do together.
I’d find it, whatever it was.

I was definitely going to talk with
Samantha about checking John out as a drummer. I mean, maybe he couldn’t tour,
what with a new baby and all that, but we were going to spend about six months
in the studio—maybe he could do our recording sessions.

For the time being, though, I promised I’d
bring baby April funky stuffed animals and write her silly baby songs.

“Why did you decide to name her April?” I
asked.

“Um, uh, because that’s when, she was,
uh…” Stephie stumbled and blushed.

Jer and I looked at each other and burst
out laughing. I high-fived Stephie.

“That’s cool, that’s way too cool.” I
smiled.

“Hey, good thing it wasn’t in John’s car,”
Jer laughed, “or her name would be Ford!”

When Stephie flushed beet red, we laughed
so hard we started crying.

“Ah, shit, I think I peed myself,” Jer
said, and I fell off my chair and rolled on the floor.

“Stop, stop!” I kneeled up on the floor,
held my ribs, and gasped between fits. “My stomach hurts!”

“When you’re done laughing…” Stephie interjected,
her lips twitching as she tried not to crack up.

It was a humbling moment when Stephie
asked if Jer and I would be godparents—and he and I stared at each other.

Wow. That was, like, a big deal, like, a
huge
deal. I hesitated. I mean, maybe someone else would be more appropriate, at
least more appropriate than me.

“Uh, what about, you know, your family?” I
asked her.

“Yeah, your family?” Jer echoed. I smiled
at him a moment because I knew for sure he wasn’t nearly as out of it as he
pretended.

Steph frowned and stared at the ground,
then spat eloquently. I admired the way she did that. If I did it? It would
either land on my shoe or back on my shirt.

“Yeah, well…they’re not thrilled that I’m
throwing my life away on some waste-of-life, shithead musician.” She looked
back up at us and tried to smile, but the result was small, hard, and forced. I
saw the tears in her eyes.

I hugged her carefully; I didn’t want to
crush April. The world could be a fucking lonely place, and I couldn’t imagine
how scary it had to be for Stephie while trying to bring this little innocent
thing into it. I didn’t know John well enough, hadn’t really seen Stephie and
him together enough, to know how solid things were between them, but even if it
was sealed in stone, Stephie still needed her friends—and I was one of them.

“Hey, dude, I’m your backup,” I said, and
kissed her cheek.

Stephie hugged me back. “So yeah, then?”
she asked, laughing through her tears.

“Ah shit, you guys are making me cry—it’s
a group hug now,” Jer said, and put an arm around each of us.

“April’s going to get the best guitar
lessons,” I promised Stephie. That kid wouldn’t ever have to look too far to
find a friend, not if I could help it, anyway.

We caught each other up on everything, and
I told them about stuff between me and Samantha—and begged them to be in the
wedding party. I told Jer to wear his kilt—with underwear, please.

And maybe, I thought as we hugged each
other and played with the tiny feet that kept poking out to say hello, I had
more than the beginnings of a studio here. Maybe one day, we’d be a label of
our own. That dream was growing…

When I got to the bar, Dee Dee and Jen
were happy to see me, although they expressed it differently. Dee Dee gave me
rib-crushing hugs, laughed, cried, and kept playing with my hair—which was
okay, because it was supposed to stick up all over the place anyway. Jen, on
the other hand, gave me a quick, stiff hug and kept slapping my shoulder, and I
was okay with that, too; it was part of who she was and I got that, really. I
was happy to see them, too.

“When you settle in, maybe we’ll talk
about training you to manage the bar?” Dee Dee asked.

“I’ll think about that.” I grinned at her.
What the hell, managing a business was managing a business, right? It would be
an awesome learning experience, and I already knew Dee Dee was a great teacher.
Besides, I had to earn a living somehow, right? At least until other things
settled out—if they did.

Nothing was nothing until it was
something, and in the music world, that meant signed pieces of paper and a
check. I had to wait now and see if Enzo’s people liked what Mrs. J thought was
good for me, then review that and send it back, and so on and so forth until
the thing was nailed to the ground.

It never hurt to hedge a bet, though.

Samantha had her own stuff to do, so I met
Fran when she came back to New York. She teased—a lot—about the wedding while I
reviewed the paperwork she’d brought with her, but we both knew she wouldn’t
miss it for the world. When the three of us got together for dinner the next
night, she told me privately that the most beautiful things in the world she’d
ever seen, she’d seen in Spain—and not in El Prado. I smiled at that; I knew
what she meant.

Other people who needed to know were, of
course, the various and sundry beings I was genetically related to. I took my
mom out for lunch and told her this was it, I was getting married, and it was
to Samantha. This was my life, to fuck up, fix up, and learn from any way I
could, and yeah, I fell down, but yeah, I kept getting up—and if she didn’t
want to be there, I’d get over that, too.

I told her that she was my mom and I loved
her, but this was my line and I wouldn’t let her cross it, and we either could
agree to disagree, or we could forget it. I’d still love her, I mean, of
course, she’s my mom, but I’d do it from a distance if I had to—she’d have to
respect me.

My mom nodded at all of that and hugged me
less stiffly than she had the last time. She then asked me to bring Samantha
over next Sunday to the barbecue party they were throwing, so everyone could
meet the person I wanted to bring into the family. I asked if we could invite
Samantha’s uncle, since he’d be flying in within the next two days. I think it
made her nervous, but she agreed.

As nauseous as the thought made me—and I
think I could have given Stephie a run for her money there for a few days—it
wasn’t nearly as horrible as I thought it would be, although for a moment when
Cort shook my dad’s hand his grin changed, became something slightly feral, and
I couldn’t see my dad’s face, but he was subdued for the entire event,
thankfully.

Cort fascinated Nico, I think he may have
scared Nanny a bit, but he absolutely charmed my mother and my aunt Sophia with
his knowledge of various cultures and legends. He told some of the best creepy
stories around the fire pit in the yard after the sun went down while Victoria,
uh, Tori sat in my lap and shivered at all the appropriate parts.

I didn’t want any sort of pre-party thing,
in fact it didn’t even occur to me, but Dee Dee insisted and even called my
mother (ugh!) to help arrange the whole ABC thing.

No. Just, no. This was not—no! “Dee
Dee…why?” I think I whined.

“She’s your mother,
lieb
, she’ll
want to do this for you,” Dee Dee told me when I buried my head in my arms to
prevent myself from banging it repeatedly on the bar.

Dee Dee slapped my back with the towel
before dropping it on my head, laughing the whole time. She was a great friend.
Jen picked the towel up, looked me in the eye, and laughed harder as she
dropped it back. She was a great friend, too.

Of course, it was part fun and part
nightmare. The fun was, well, I’m not over it enough to think it’s funny yet.

It’s not so much that I thought the idea
of a shower—party—whatever you want to call it is a bad thing, it’s just that I
didn’t want to do the bachelor/bachelorette thing because I felt silly. And the
shower thing, well, I knew it was going to get political—you know, family
friends, work friends, work people you have to deal with.