Softer Than Steel (A Love & Steel Novel) (18 page)

Rocks and Hard Places

No wonder I haven’t been out here in ages.
The traffic out to Brooklyn had moved at the speed of sloths, cramping Rick’s long legs within the confines of Kat’s borrowed Mini Cooper, and now it had taken him a dizzying walk through a labyrinth of graves to try to find the Banquet family plot.

This isn’t about your convenience,
he reminded himself as random raindrops began to darken the path and decorate the tops of the tombstones.
This isn’t about your comfort at all. It’s the least you can do.

The early summer shower turned to a soaker just as he spotted the pink granite marker in a sea of white and gray. He stopped in his tracks, eyes falling out of focus for a moment. The only thing that kept him tethered to the here and now was the cool drench, plastering his shirt to his skin. He felt the material strain and shrink with each breath he took.
Focus. Breathe. Walk.

It took him seven small steps to reach Simone’s grave. He remembered the seven pauses the processional had made, from hearse to burial site. Simone’s parents had insisted on a traditional service, and who was he to object? Seven times they halted at the rabbi’s signal, the pallbearers shifting their weight, friends and family shuffling to a stop, his young sons bumping into his knees and stepping on his heels in confusion. “Why, Dad?” Paul had asked him. “Why are we stopping?”

“To show our reluctance,” Rick had explained. “Our unwillingness to end the service.” When all the while, he’d wanted to break away and run, far from this place he had no connection to. Simone didn’t belong here. She wasn’t in that box that rocked and paused, rocked and paused, seven times. Heading toward a hole of fresh-dug earth.

Now the rain pooled and dammed at the soil close to the stone, beating the grass down. Fourteen years had manicured the spot to blend into the landscape, generations of deceased resting eternally under perfect and level terrain. Not like that day, when the precarious gap in the earth accepted the wooden casket. Rick remembered tossing the first shovelful of dirt, balancing it on the back of the spade before heaving it in. Another tradition. Another reluctance. Each mourner one by one, even the twins, took their turn. There was no noise in the world quite so forlorn as their shovelfuls of dirt and rocks hitting that casket. It sounded so hollow.

Simone wasn’t in there.

After the service had finished and the crowd straggled away, Rick had grabbed a waiting shovel once more. Side by side with the gravediggers, he heaved in pile after pile, returning the earth from whence it came. He worked until the calluses on his hands bled, his sons sniffling stoically by his side. He worked until he could no longer see wood. And he worked until he no longer heard that haunting, hollow sound.

Fourteen years, but I still can’t shake the hollow feeling inside.

As quickly as the rain came, it ceased. Rick glanced up. A short shuttle bus had pulled through the cemetery gates, and a group of senior citizens was slowly dispelling in various directions from its doors. Like homing pigeons, they navigated their way to the resting places of loved ones. Some with canes, even one with a walker. Many were spry and sure-footed, but he noticed they slowed their pace as they approached their destinations.

Rick reached a finger out and traced the engraving of his wife’s full name.

I always thought it would be me. What kind of God out there would take you first?

He watched as the old folks from the shuttle bus began to pull small stones from their pockets and purses and place them on top of their loved ones’ graves. More eternal than flowers, lasting as long as love and memory.

Bugger.
Rick patted his jeans pockets and came up with a money clip and two guitar picks. What exactly did that say about him? That fame and fortune were always at the forefront of his mind, and honoring family, an afterthought? He searched the pristine, soggy grounds in vain for a stone.

Spying a flat rock nearby, he reached to pry it up. It turned out to be deeper than he had realized. He leaned his weight in, mud sucking up the sides of his motorcycle boot. His legs twisted and down he went, arse first, in the wet grass, his shoulder smacking against the unyielding curves of Simone’s headstone.

Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place.
The thought coaxed an exhausted laugh out of him.

“Oh my dear. Are you all right?”

An elegant older woman leaned over him. She looked familiar, in that timeless beauty sort of way. She wore a hair scarf to protect her russet hair from the elements, like a movie starlet riding in a convertible would.

Rick pushed himself up and out of his predicament, careful not to spatter her with mud. The rock he had been trying to free was like a tectonic plate, still moored to the earth and much larger than he had assumed.

“Here, dear. I have extras.”

Jeweled rings and smooth nail polish graced her knobby, wrinkled fingers, and her touch was tissue-soft. As she placed two small stones in his hand, he finally placed her. Vivian. She was one of the women in Sidra’s beginners class. Whether she recognized him outside of class was debatable. With his long hair loose and clinging wet to his face, he hardly looked Zen.

“Thank you.” Rick carefully set them on the top of the smooth granite, one from the boys and one from him. He tried to think of a prayer or a good thought or wish. Words swirled in his head, but nothing intelligible formed.

“Simone . . .
Zichrona livracha
.” She must’ve interpreted the crumple of his brow as puzzled. “That’s what it says right there,” she added. “‘Of Blessed Memory.’”

Other than the pink color, which was chosen by the boys for their mother, Simone’s parents had made all the decisions about the headstone. Had Rick not been so numb at the time, he may have opted for a different saying.

She patted his hand. “May her memory always be a blessing to you.”

Rick nodded and mouthed his thanks. But in the hollow space inside him dwelled the unspoken truth:
If her memory is supposed to be a blessing, why do I feel cursed?

Big Reveal

“Trivia time,” Sidra called across the store to Fiona. It was a common way for Revolve Records employees to pass the time when the store was devoid of customers and no one felt like restocking shelves or rotating displays. It was hard to restock when product wasn’t moving.

“I’m in!” Fiona was like a human jukebox, and always up for a challenge. Sidra surmised that resilient trait applied to all aspects of her life, since she had been Mikey’s girlfriend for eight years now. She earned extra brownie points for working with him, too. “Dead or Alive? Or do you want to play Cover or Original?”

“How about naming all the artists you know named Rick?” After yesterday’s encounter, Sidra had been unable to think of much else. She still felt his pounding pulse point on her lips, where she had rested them against his neck. She was crazy for even entertaining the idea of getting involved with a student, let alone another musician, and yet . . .

“With or without a
K
? Or both?” Fiona asked, clearly in it to win it. She had yet to notice the madness behind Sidra’s methods.

“Gee, I don’t know. Both, I guess. As many as you can in five minutes.” Mikey had just left on a late lunch run down to Lucky’s Famous for burgers, and Charlie was in the back room sorting merch for the road.

Fiona began rattling off names like nobody’s business. “Rik Emmett, Ric Ocasek, Rick Savage, Rick Allen . . . um, Rick Derringer. Ricky Martin! Rikki Rocket—does that count?”

“Sure.”

“So what game am I paying you girls to play today?”

Damn, Mikey was back. He plopped a sack down on the counter and pulled a fistful of French fries out.

“Guess the name of the hot guy in Sidra’s yoga class,” Fiona said nonchalantly.

“Fi!” Sidra sputtered.

“Well, isn’t that what we’re doing? Oh, oh, I got one!” Fiona hopped up and scurried down the main Pop-Rock aisle. “How about . . .” She pulled an album from the bin and danced it back and forth between her airbrushed nails. “Rick Springfield?”

“No way.” Sidra gave an embarrassed laugh. “Anyway, five minutes are up. Game over.” She grabbed a stack of albums from the rack next to the listening station and moved to shelve them. It had been a silly undertaking, anyway. Who’s to say this guy was even a household name? Any yahoo with a guitar these days called himself a musician. Then again . . .

The devil made me famous by twenty,
he’d said. Her fingers gripped the pile of records to her chest, and she wondered if any of his music could possibly be here in the store. The thought made her heart pound.

“Here ya go.” Mikey held his half-eaten burger in one hand and a cardboard sleeve in the other. “Rick James.”

“Mikey,” Fiona scolded. “You’ve seen the guy. He’s not black.”

“Or dead,” Sidra added, laughing.

“So who’s the guy Sid’s getting all superfreaky with?” Charlie had emerged from the back room, apparently having eavesdropped on the entire conversation.

“Mikey, his credit card!” Sidra exclaimed, completely ignoring Charlie. “You charged him for an unlimited month. Do you remember the name on the card?”

“I remember a Platinum freakin’ Am Ex.” Mikey pulled a manila envelope from the drawer beneath the register. “Go nuts.”

Sidra pulled the sheaf of curling credit card slips from the envelope. It didn’t take her long to locate Rick’s; his was the only twelve-hundred-dollar transaction in the bunch. She expected a signature that was doctor-on-prescription-pad-worthy in terms of its illegibility, but he had signed in a neat, left-slanted scrawl:

Richard Rottenberg

She committed the name to memory before sliding the receipts back where they belonged. Apparently her cousin, who had been looking over her shoulder, had, too. He was on the Internet in a flash. “Oh my God. No fucking way.” He began to hee-haw loudly.

“What? Come on. I hope you choke on your burger.”

Mikey stopped laughing long enough to make his way over to the Metal section. Apart from some early Megaforce pressings of Metallica’s first album and several used Iron Maiden imports, not much moved from those bins. “Here’s . . . Rrrricky!” her cousin said in his best Jack Nicholson, poking his face out between two horrid-looking album covers.

Fiona marched up and grabbed one. “Corroded Corpse . . . lovely.”

I’ve spent half my life in a different kind of Corpse pose.
Sidra heard his words in her head as clearly as he had uttered them the night of the blackout.

“Corroded Corpse? There’s no way Riff Rotten is hiding out in Sid’s yoga class.” Charlie laughed. “Although it does say here”—his finger traced along the monitor screen—“there’s a new album in the works this year, and it’s being recorded in New York.”

Sidra accepted the albums Mikey and Fiona handed her. She paid no mind to the gruesome graphics, rife with flames and blood splatter. She inspected the photos on the back cover and inside sleeves. She couldn’t reconcile any of the ass-clowns posturing in the pictures with the soft-spoken and eloquent student who knelt on his mat and awaited her instruction. Who shared her same mantra and who kissed her with such passion and reverence that it made her want to weep.

“Hell, Sid, you’d better wear a full-body condom—no telling how many skanks that guy has slept with,” Mikey warned.

“I’m not having sex with
anyone
!” Sidra announced, right as the door jangled and Evie walked in with Seamus in tow. An amused but sympathetic smile played on the fiddle player’s lips, but she said nothing of Sidra’s outburst.

“Vaniel Day Lewis is packed and ready to roll.” Although he had hoped for a tour bus, Seamus had willingly adopted the fifteen-passenger Ford Econoline the band had procured through Reggie’s uncle last week. Good thing, since Charlie had appointed him primary driver.

“Don’t forget the two Gildan boxes in the back, okay?” Charlie gestured but didn’t take his eyes off the computer screen. Seamus gave his sister’s shoulder a squeeze as he made his way toward the back room.

“Holy balls,” Mikey exclaimed. “Look at the size of his”—Sidra took the bait, glancing backward just as he finished—“Wiki entry.”

“Har har.”

“Made you look!”

“What are you, five?”

“I know you are, but what am I?”

Sidra stuck her tongue out at Mikey. He retaliated just as he had since they were in grade school, by thrusting his hand toward her chin in an attempt to make her bite her tongue. She ducked away and went to help Seamus with the front door, since no one else was making a move to do it.

“So.”

“Sew buttons on your underwear.”

Sidra smiled at Seamus’s retort. The Sullivans all seemed to be stuck in retro mode today.

“So, what are your intentions?”

Seamus rolled his eyes at his sister. “I assume you don’t mean auntie intentions.”

“Nope. Gimme some good old-fashioned yoga intentions.” Like many yogis who set their intentions before their practice, the Sullivan children had been encouraged at a young age to be mindful and present and to choose words to lead them through their days. In this case, Sidra was referring to Seamus’s summer on the road.

“Creativity. Positivity. Openness.”

She hugged him tight, her fingers falling on his damp-from-the-shower curls. “Those sound great, Big Brother,” she whispered. “Proud of you.”

“Love you, Sid.”

“Love you, too, you nutball. Text, call . . . I’ll be here.”

There were classes to teach and iguanas to feed, after all. Sidra glanced over Seamus’s shoulder and spotted Mikey in the window, rubbing the LP cover over his chest in mock ecstasy as if he were in some porno. She bit her lip to keep from smiling. Staying in the city this summer might not be so bad, after all.

Discord and Rhyme

“So this is the velvet rope club of Lauder Lake, then?” Rick took in the neon décor with a roll of his eyes. “Sergeant Pepperoni’s Karaoke Night.”

Adrian cracked a smile. “What did you expect? Neal Kay’s Bandwagon?”

Rick snorted at the mention of the infamous club, just a back room in the North London pub where Corroded Corpse rode the New Wave of British Heavy Metal like conquering heroes back in the eighties. It was postage stamp–size in relation to the arenas that followed over the next decade, but unarguably one of the most prized pieces within their collective memories.

Never forget your roots,
as their former manager, Wren, had always reminded them.

Even as he had been kicking them to the gutter.

Adrian led Abbey by the hand through the vestibule clogged with impatient families: adults who looked as if they had already had one too many slices of pizza pie in their lifetime, prodding at their whinging children. Rick found himself automatically falling into the old habit of scouting mode, as he did in most unfamiliar social settings. He looked for the hottest female in the place and imagined having sex with her. It brought a strange comfort to him, even though he had no intention of going home with someone that night. Sidra was all he wanted.

A knockout brunette stood near the hostess station with a group of girlfriends. Rick recognized the group’s behavior: lots of teeth flashing, hair flipping, bursts of laughter at seemingly nothing.
Here comes the turn,
he thought. And sure enough, she flicked her eyes nonchalantly over her shoulder. Eyes that were, as it turned out, strictly for Adrian only. They zeroed in on his left hand, the one that happened to still be grasping Abbey’s. Her smile got hopeful, huge.

Rick knew the type. A woman got to a certain age and stage in her life where the sight of a man tending to a child was sexier and more appealing than a guy in a hot rod with no strings attached. Abbey was a chick magnet, he realized. And Adrian was either ambivalent or oblivious. The woman kept smiling at Abbey, clucking her tongue at the banter between apparent father figure and angelic child.

Banter, ha.
More like relentless bargaining by Abbey on why she needed a second dinner of pizza. She’d make a fine attorney some day, Rick thought, with her single-minded quest for pepperoni and justice. He stood back and watched as the eight-year-old ruthlessly pursued her goal of wearing Digger Graves down.

Adrian and Rick had been in charge of dinner for Abbey while Kat spent a girls’ night out with friends. The guitarists had grilled steaks earlier; spent the day marinating them, in fact. And when Adrian suggested they take Abbey for an ice cream in town, Rick had been game. It hadn’t exactly been Rick’s idea of a rockin’ Saturday evening, but he was along for the ride. Now, as they threaded through half the population of Lauder Lake, Rick wondered if Adrian’s next suggestion of “popping in on the girls” was just a clever ruse for another disastrous blind date situation.

“Come on then, let’s at least find your mum. Shall we?” Adrian pushed Abbey by the shoulders past the clogged bar and into a side room. It took a moment for Rick’s eyes to adjust from fluorescent pizzeria atmosphere to the darkened space, peppered by strobe effect lighting and a long-suffering disco ball slowly revolving overhead. The karaoke PA system assaulted their ears with an “in the style” version of Green Day. Rick, cursed with perfect pitch, winced and longed to adjust the treble and bass knobs.

“Hi, guys!” Empty beer pitchers rattled as Kat pushed back from the table to greet them. “Fancy meeting you.” The kiss she granted Adrian was short but sensuous, and probably far steamier than Sergeant Pepperoni’s was used to.

“We were down the road for ice cream, drawn in by your siren song,” Adrian said, grinning. Kat gave him a playful shove.

“Lizzie’s up next, check her out.”

Abbey bear-hugged her mother around the waist, eyeing the metal tray of half-eaten pizza on the table behind them. Rick raised a hand in greeting to all present and blew a sigh of relief. Besides the ginger channeling her inner Billie Joe Armstrong up on the stage, it appeared to be only the chesty one called Marissa and Leanna, the sarcastic one, out with Kat tonight. “Double Jack, please,” he called out to the passing waitress. It wouldn’t hurt to have reinforcements, just in case Kat and her friends decided to bring in some of their own during this Holy G.R.A.I.L. quest.

“Woooo, go, Red! Ain’t she great?” Kat wolf-whistled.

“Methinks your ladylove is blotto,” Rick observed.

Adrian grimaced. “Let’s see . . . First she had to change our wedding date because
someone
had a conflict. Next she had to change the locale because it turns out Natalie won’t step foot on Manhattan soil after 9/11. And she’s been doing all the legwork because I’m locked in the studio all week, every week. So I think she deserves a drink or three.”

“Could be worse. Isabelle could be her wedding planner.”

“Bite your tongue. And by the way . . . the new date is August 17. At the lake. So pen that into your busy social calendar, okay?”

“Noted.”

Rick turned his attention toward the stage. Liz wasn’t half-bad, actually, although “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” wasn’t exactly a song known for its challenging range. She had the moves down. There was something stoic tonight about the otherwise freewheeling party girl; Rick knew she was the only unmarried one in the bunch, and most recently had been in a long-distance relationship with her high school sweetheart, Kat’s brother, Kevin. She was also the only girlfriend they had to import back from Manhattan to hang out on a night like tonight. He had met her on several occasions; she was Kat’s concert buddy when the Rotten Graves Project played live, raging just as hard as Kat from side-stage. And he and Rick had popped into her Manhattan eatery more than once on a break from the studio and ravenous.

Liz swayed to the beat, marched in place. Beneath the fiery red fringe of her bangs, she let her eyes rest on no one. Repeatedly, she let the hand not gripping the microphone rest near her abdomen while singing about walking alone.
Was she—

“She’s pregnant,” Adrian murmured at close range. “Kat’s furious with her brother.”

Rick recovered quickly. “Has he pulled a runner?”

“Not exactly sure what’s going on. The ladies confronted her at the Naked Bagel a while back; she had been MIA and they suspected something was up.”

“Speaking of the ladies . . .” Rick glanced around, causing Adrian to laugh. “They’re not plotting to shanghai me here with another blind date, are they?”

“Not to worry, mate. I think they’re only interested in getting their drink, and their tunes, on.” He perused the karaoke schedule. “Pity. Looks like the playlist is totally full. No time for us to steal the spotlight, I reckon.”

“Very funny. Look, I’ve been meaning to ask . . . Could you tell them to call off their search?” He tipped the waitress heavily and relieved her drink tray of the double Jack. “I beg of you. In the name of all that is holy.”

“Oh?”

He caught the mischievous gleam in Adrian’s baby blues, sky-high with the limitless possibilities of taking the piss out of him if given the chance.

“What happened to being a free agent?” Adrian wanted to know.

“I’ve narrowed down my options. To one.” If he downed his drink, he wouldn’t have to elaborate.

“I’m not goin’ on stage by myself!” Marissa’s voice was even brassier when doused with drink. “Le’s in the can! Oh, man . . . we’re up. Who’s with me?”

Kat was quick to find new recruits. “Hey guys. All the slots are filled tonight. If you want to have a turn, you’re going to have to take Marissa and Leanna’s song.”

Rick allowed Adrian to humor his slightly inebriated fiancée. It was going to take a helluva lot more than a few shots of Jack to get—

Abbey handed Rick the wireless karaoke mic and gave him her best puppy dog eyes. No doubt her mum’s clan had put her up to it.

“Shall we have a go? We’ve certainly done a lot worse,” Adrian prompted. Grinning, Kat plucked Rick’s drink from his other hand.

“Oh, bloody hell. At least tell me what they’ve got cued for us.”

The men strode to the low stage, then hopped on. Rick tried to remember the last time they played to a crowd of roughly thirty. Give or take. Mostly women. Mostly drunk. And one child who cupped her hands to her mouth and shouted a request, mangling the pronunciation of “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

“So . . . about this
option
you’ve narrowed your sights on,” Adrian began, grabbing the back-up mic.

“She’s a nice Indian girl. Do I have your blessing?” Rick tossed back his curls and allowed the meager spotlights to warm his face.
A stage is a stage is a stage. All the world’s a stage.
Being on one was more than just comfortable; it was as natural as taking a slash.

The caption machine flashed Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf” title in big purple letters.

“Seriously? Can’t we get a last-minute change request?” Adrian sputtered. The guy in charge of the PA just shook his head and pointed to the sign typed in seventy-two-point font next to the machine.
ALL SONG CHOICES
FINAL—NO EXCEPTIONS!

“You got us into this, Simon Poxy Le Bon. You’re singing lead.”

“Fine. You can do all the doot-do-do-doos.” Adrian laughed and signaled for the track to start. He began to snap his fingers to fall in with the eighties synthpop beat. “By the way . . . you totally have my blessing. Curry is, after all, the new national dish of Britain.”