Rockoholic (37 page)

I’ve never fancied a bloke in high heels before. D’you think he’s gay in real life? He’s got to be, doesn’t he? To play a character like that.

He might not be gay, just a really good actor.

Yeah, that kid’s going to be famous, mark my words.

Jackson looks at me over his rucksack and whispers, “Yeah, he is. Poor bastard.”

The woman in the next stall drops her program as she leaves to wash her hands and doesn’t come back for it. I reach down and pick it up. I flick to Mac’s headshot and look at him. He’s top of the bill. His write-up says about his school acting, his experience playing Riff in
West Side Story
, and his hopes of starring on Broadway. “I’ll get there some day,” says his quote. “ ‘Don’t Dream It, Be It,’ as the song says.” And he will make it some day. And I feel so sad all of a sudden.

The banging doors and splashy taps and chatter and whirr of the hand dryers gets less and less and eventually stops altogether. I slowly venture out of the stall to check everything’s clear. And Sally Dinkley is standing by a hand dryer, smiling at me.

I pull the door of the stall shut behind me. “Sally.”

“Jody,” she says. “Thought I saw you come in here a while ago. You’re not having trouble, are you?”

I shake my head. “No. I’m fine. I’m just going back for the second half.” I stride to a sink and press the soap dispenser, lathering my hands up. Sally walks to the stall I’ve just come out of. She touches the door ever so slightly. It doesn’t budge. He’s locked it.

She nods to it. “Someone in there with you?”

I shake my head, rinsing the soap off my hands. “No. It must have locked itself.” I go to the hand dryer and shove my hands underneath it. The horrible loud blast of air covers us until my hands are dry and I’ve thought of something to say.

“Who’s in there, Jody?” I shake my head. She smiles,
clip-clopping
slowly toward me in her death-defying heels. “It’s him, isn’t it? He’s in there, isn’t he?” She looks as though she’s going to burst out laughing, such excitement in her eyes.

“No one’s in there.”

“He is, isn’t he?” She knocks on the door. “It’s OK, you’re amongst friends.”

“Sally, please . . . no one’s in there, OK?”

“Jackson, come on, what are you so afraid of? I’m on your side.”

My throat constricts, but I still find enough air to shout, “It’s not who you think. Get away from the door!”

Dinkley looks at me. “Jody, I’m not going to hurt him. I just want to see him. Look, I’m not the Big Bad Wolf here. . . .”

“No, you’re just a pig!” I shout, and with all my strength I push her backward and she totters
clip, clip, clip, clip, bam
, slamming hard against the hand dryer and sending it into a drying frenzy. I can barely hear my own breath wheezing in and out of me as she slumps to the floor. She lies beneath the furious dryer, her blonde hair dancing all around her head on the hot air, and yet she’s out cold.

“Oh shit. What have I done?” I crouch down to feel the place on her neck where Mac showed me. There’s an awful wait. And then I feel the bump bumps.

The dryer stops. A door creaks behind me. Jackson comes out of the stall, his hood up over his hat. He stares at Sally’s unconscious face. He opens his mouth to speak but I speak first.

“She’s not dead, it’s OK. I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t know how to stop her opening the door. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. She was going to find you. . . .”

He places his hand on my shoulder. “I wasn’t going to lecture you. I was going to say, we need to tie her up. She’s obviously here to cause problems. You gotta do something with her, just until I’m gone. OK?”

I fumble for the right words to say, my hand angry with pain, my fingers aching as I stretch them out. “Yeah, I suppose. What am I going to tie her up with, though?”

• • •

It takes ages to bind up and gag Sally with my feather boa and the gaffer tape I’ve used to hold up my stockings. We eventually get her into the end toilet stall. I keep checking her breathing, like a good first aider, and try to leave her on the floor in the recovery position as best I can, which isn’t easy when her legs are halfway up the stall wall. We can’t risk sticking around in case she wakes up, which means I’m not going to see the second half of the show. We’ve missed most of it trying to tie her up, anyway. “Don’t Dream It, Be It” is playing quietly on the speakers in the lobby as we leave, and the words run round and round my head as we make our way down to the library to meet the white car.

It’s colder outside, or maybe it’s just the same as it was before, only I’m noticing it more now because my neck is bare. Or perhaps it’s because as Jackson and I are walking in step along the pavement, I’m realizing this is the last time I’ll walk beside him. The last time I’ll see him in the flesh again. I just can’t think about it, so I’m concentrating on how cold I am. The icy night air slaps against my throat. I check my watch: 10:16
P.M
.

“Are you really going to go through with this?” I ask him as we scurry along the pavement.

“Yeah,” he says. “You think I’m chicken?”

“No. It’s just such a . . . change. You’re stripping all your life away.”

“Yeah, I am. I’m shedding my skin. For the first time in a long time, I’m clean. It’s a good thing, Jody. This is a good thing.”

The town is pretty much deserted. A few take-out places glow with life and at the pub on the corner opposite Mac’s pub, a cluster of smokers stands beneath a lamppost with their cigarettes. I want to reach out and hold Jackson’s hand as we walk, but I resist. He’s walking too quickly, so much so I have to skip every so often to keep up. Finally, we reach the post office and the walkway across the river, opposite the bridge where I pushed him off two weeks ago. I gesture toward it as we cross the walkway, but he doesn’t seem to understand the joke.

There is no white car at the taxi stand. We sit on the bench outside the library, watching and waiting. We both sit right on the edge, as the bench is wet from where it’s been raining earlier. I feel so stupid in my
Rocky Horror
outfit. I want to wipe off all my makeup right there, so I look plain and inconspicuous like Jackson. So I look like I’m waiting for a taxi with Jackson. I want to get in the taxi with Jackson. We still have a few minutes before the car’s due.

“I could come with you,” I say suddenly, to the paving stones beneath my feet more than to him. “I don’t think I belong here anymore. Mac hates me. Grandad’s gone and he’s the only one who ever understood me apart from Mac. There’s no point in me being here. Let me come with you.”

“You’re just stressing because of that reporter. It’s all right. She won’t be able to prove —”

“I’m not worrying about her,” I tell him, remembering the pain in my right hand. “I don’t care about her at all. Once you’re gone, I’ll just bullshit her, it doesn’t matter. Let me go and get my stuff, and I’ll come with you.”

“No. There isn’t time.”

“There is. I’ll just get some clothes and my bankbooks and we can be off. Five minutes, just give me five minutes.” I can’t hold my tears in anymore. “Please don’t leave me. You don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to. I could just be, like, your sister?”

He pats me a couple of times on my knee, hard. “It’s all right. Just, stop crying.”

I look at his hand smacking my knee. “What are you doing?”

He looks at me. “I don’t know. You know I don’t go in for all that huggy shit.” A white car pulls up and joins the end of the line of taxis. Right on time. He stands up. “Car’s here,” he says, swinging the rucksack onto his shoulder. My rucksack.

I claw at him, begging him. “No, please don’t. . . .”

His hand is on my shoulder. “Let’s do this quickly, OK? Come on.”

“Don’t do that,” I say, shrugging him off. “Don’t hold my shoulder. That’s how my dad left me. That’s how my grandad left me.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what else . . . Look after yourself, OK? You knew how this was going to end.” The car engine revs at the back of the line. I can’t see the driver’s face.

“Please,” I beg. I grab hold of his hand. “If you go, I’ll have nothing, no one. You and the band, Grandad, Mac — you were the only things that made it better.”

Jackson shakes his head, then moves my hand up to his mouth and kisses it. “I’ll send your money back, once I know where I am.”

“No, I don’t want it back. I don’t want any of it back, you keep it. It’s yours.”

He smiles. “Thank you, Jody. For everything.”

He walks away from me and over to the white car. It’s turned around. Brake lights on, exhaust pipe chugging.

Dignity already hanging by its ankles, I sob like I’ve never sobbed before. I watch as he hitches up his gray hood over his head and opens the back door of the car, throws my rucksack inside, and steps in without another look back. The brake lights go off. The car moves away.

“It’s not fair,” I whisper to the starless sky. I shake my head. I rip my tiara out of my crimped mess of hair and sink to the ground. I crouch to my knees and cry like I’ll never stop. The next sound I hear is footsteps. Running footsteps. I look up. Jackson’s running back to me. The white car has stopped at the edge of the parking lot, brake lights on, back door wide open.

He’s running back to me. He’s coming back to me.

I stand up. He slams into my arms and squeezes me so tightly. He feels so strong, not like he was two weeks ago when he was limp and could barely stand up straight. He feels tight and full of pent-up energy just waiting to explode. I never ever want to let go. If I let go, that will be it. He’ll just be Thomas and I’ll just be Jody. And I’ll never see him again. I’m hugging him like I should have hugged Grandad before he left me forever.

“I don’t want to let you go,” I
huff-huff
in his ear. “Please don’t make me let go.” I squeeze harder onto him, breathing him in, trying to memorize every sense so I can draw it over and over and over again, but images of Grandad flash through my mind and confuse me. I feel him crumble away from me, like a rock of sand in my fist. He came to me as Jackson James Gatlin, singer, born 3 September, beautiful, big blue eyes, messy brown hair, teetotaler, vegetarian, Stephen King–fanatic, broken-homed, bookish, bliss on legs. He’s leaving me as Thomas Gordon. And I don’t know anything else about him now.

He’s Mr. Nobody now. Just how he wants it.

He looks at me. He walks backward, turns, and runs to the white car and gets in.

I don’t know if the driver of the white car will get him across the English Channel. I don’t know if he’ll make it to Switzerland to get his money. To get where he needs to go. I don’t know. I know how those fans felt as they stood on that bridge and threw flowers into the muddy water. Those fans who are calling suicide helplines. Those fans who have rushed out and got tattoos so they don’t have to feel the inside pain anymore, so that they can feel some other kind of pain from the unbearable sense of loss I’m feeling now as I watch that white car drive away. I am just one of those fans, but I’ve been given so much more than they have. I’m the only one who knows he’s not dead. Kidnapping him did make the world of difference, but now it’s torturing me with a world of pain. My brain is an even tighter paper scrunch of sadness, and Grandad wheels fast into my mind. I stand sobbing — my mouth wide open, waiting to say something to a world that’s so empty and dark and awful to me now, I can’t see straight. Everything hurts so much. Grandad. Jackson. Mac. They all keep my world on its axis. Two of them have gone forever and one of them hates me. There’s nothing left. My world is rolling fast down the hill and there’s no one to hold it back.

I turn to face the bridge. To face the river. The river I pushed Jackson into when he first arrived. Where he was so horrible to me. I wish he’d been horrible to me just now. I wish he hadn’t hugged me. It made it worse. It wasn’t as warm as one of Mac’s hugs, but it still reminded me of him. He’s the only other person who hugs me like that, wrapping me up completely in such a hard, safe lock like that. I wish I wasn’t alive. I want to jump off the bridge. I want to feel the pain of that cold water again. I don’t care how shallow it is. I want to drown.

But I can’t see the bridge. There’s too many tears in my eyes. It’s too dark. And there’s a transvestite in my way. Just standing there.

I stare at Mac’s face for the longest time. He stares back.

“Wh-what are you . . . you should be onstage. You’ll miss your encore.”

“I’ve already missed it,” he says. He’s got tears in his eyes, but he’s trying not to release them. He’s dabbing his eye at the corner with one of his black fingernails. “My makeup’s running.”

“You’ll miss your enc-core,” I say again, overwhelmed by another surge of tears.

He steps toward me. He’s even taller than usual in his high heels. He hitches one leg up and undoes the strap, then the other one, and he throws his shoes behind him onto the ground. “I thought I’d missed you. I thought you’d gone, Jode.”

I shake my head. “I just said all that to make you jealous.” I’m huffing on every word. “You were jealous, weren’t you?” He nods. “Why? I’m a disaster area, Mac. You’d be better off without me.”

He shakes his head. Water drips down from both his eyes. “No I wouldn’t.”

And though I don’t see it coming, he moves closer toward me and we face-smash into the longest kiss ever — the saddest, wettest, messiest kiss I’ve ever had. And we’re both soaked and we’re both sobbing. And our makeup smears together so it’s all over our faces.

I pull back, but he holds my face in his hands. “I would have gone, if it wasn’t for you,” I say. “When we argued, I thought you hated me. I thought I
should
go, then.”

“But you didn’t,” he says, all serious voice, and kisses me again and it’s like a thousand strobe lights and the loudest, dirtiest guitar chord smacking me in the face.

And it’s better than all of that. Because he’s real. Rock steady before me.

And it’s because it’s Mac. “I love you, Jody,” he whispers.

And because it’s really mine.