The Girl On The Half Shell (30 page)

Ryan pulls them apart, and Ian slides down the wall to the floor.

“What is wrong with you, Alan? We were just talking,” I whisper, stunned.

Alan doesn’t look at me, and his anger is very extreme. It was like it was at CBGBs, out of nowhere, illogical.

“Take it easy. We’re all on edge, and nothing happened, so let it go, Manny.” Ryan says intensely. There is a uniquely soothing quality to Ryan’s voice.

I can see the tension shuddering through Alan’s flesh. He looks at me. “Fuck, Chrissie! First Jimmy Stallworth, then Vince Carroll and now Ian Kennedy. It’s like you’re a magnet for fuck-you-over guys.”

I flush scarlet. That was insulting, and worse, it has a hurtful ring of truth because it could be said about me being with him, the recovering heroin addict, train wreck, blasting extreme emotions without warning.

“So what are you going to do, break his arm like you did Vince Carroll for not getting me out of CBGB’s quietly?” I snap, smarting and indignant.

“I broke Vince Carroll’s arm for drugging you,” Alan growls at my departing back, clipping each word harshly.

My hand freezes on the knob.
Oh shit
, and suddenly everything about that night makes sense. I sink away from him onto the couch, feeling small and stupid and struggling not to cry.

The studio is nerve-rackingly tense. I can’t even look at him now. “Still, you shouldn’t have broken his arm,” I whisper. “He’s a drummer, Alan.”

I’m held in the raging burn of his gaze. I look at him and the tears rise behind my lids. On top of all the other things I’m feeling, I’m scared because I have never done a hard drug in my life, am terrified that I’d become an addict like my brother.

“What did he drug me with?” I ask on a trembling voice.

Alan drops to sit on his knees in front of my curled legs. “Just ludes. I’m pretty sure it was just ludes by the way you were acting.” I nod, and he starts to brush the hairs from my face. “It was only ludes, baby. If I thought it was something worse, I would have broken his other arm the next day.”

A soggy laugh bursts out of me after Alan’s weird reassurance.

I blink at him rapidly. “Can we pretend I never came to the studio?”

Alan kisses my cheek. “No. Besides, I was about to go get you. I need you here.”

I roll my eyes. “Me? I seriously doubt that.”

“I want you to record a song with me.”

It feels like someone has just punched the air out of my lungs, and it is absolutely impossible to assimilate this turn.

“Alan, I don’t sing. I’m a cellist.”

“Wrong. You have that backwards. You are a singer, not a cellist.”

I frown at him. “What is that supposed to mean?”

He meets my eyes directly. There is something in those penetrating black orbs that makes me tense.

“You were never going to get into Juilliard. You are a competent cellist, technically proficient, but when you play it’s like a beautiful meal with no taste. You hide behind the cello and put nothing of yourself in the music. I don’t even get a sense that you enjoy it. As a cellist, you will never be more than third chair in a third rate orchestra.”

My entire face burns from the humiliation of truth. I know he speaks the truth, and it is something I’ve always known, that no one would say to me. But it really does hurt the first time you have it confirmed by someone else.

“You told me I was flawless. Perfect.”

“Technically flawless. No taste.”

My brain and my emotions are not working cooperatively. “So why did you lie to me? Were you trying to hit on me?” I fling.

“Yes, I lied because I was hitting on you. But spending time with you made it something I just couldn’t do. Not that night. Not that way.”

I am caught completely off guard because I’ve forgotten Alan’s warning that he doesn’t do bullshit and to be careful what direction I go.

This conversation has deteriorated in ways I never imagined possible. I am breathing heavily, hurt, acutely aware that Alan let loose some really ugly truth in a room where we are not alone and he expects me stay to record with him.

“God, you’re an asshole.” I can’t hide the pain from my voice.

“Why? Because I prefer to be honest with you?”

My wounded eyes fix on him. “It’s not about honesty, Alan. Its meanness. You can be so mean sometimes.”

“I confirmed that you are not a cellist. That should be a relief to you. I asked you to record a song with me. That should be a compliment. I told you that I wanted to fuck you. That should be obvious by now.”

“Conceited and an asshole.” I rise. “I don’t sing.”

“Bullshit. You were willing to sing for Vince Carroll.”

I stare at him, shocked.

He leans against the closed studio door, crossing his arms, blocking my exit. “I changed my mind about how I wanted to complete this, the moment I heard you sing. I knew when I heard you. I knew what I wanted. Why are you being so stubborn about this?”

“Because I don’t want to record a song with you,” I counter in growing frustration.

He runs a hand through his hair. “You asked what you could do for me, Chrissie. Do this.”

It feels like the earth has fallen away again.
Oh that was unfair, Alan. That was unfair.
His quiet, raspy plea makes all the junk inside me stir up again.

Aggravated, I run my hand through my hair. “You are such an asshole.”

“I need you to do this,” he orders.

“You don’t need me for anything,” I say, feeling my resolve weaken.

He grabs my chin and kisses me roughly. Against my mouth, he breathes, “You are everything I need for everything I do.”

More theatrics. I let out a shuddering breath. “I’m not a singer.”

Alan touches my cheek with his callused thumb. “You are not an artist when you play the cello, but, baby, you are an artist when you sing. Perfect pitch. Beautiful tone. Believable. You don’t playact when you sing. You are magnificent.”

I brush at my face and realize I am crying. That was why Alan brushed me gently with his thumb, touching the tears I didn’t even feel because I am completely emotionally drained.

“Fine,” I agree, not all graciously.

Getting his way has made Alan shift in the blink of an eye, now energized and focused as if none of the prior thirty minutes happened. He’s talking with Ian like
their thing
was normal. He’s holding me against his chest like
our thing
was normal. And he’s about to record a song with me as if
that is normal.

“Hit track seven, Ian.”

Alan is pulling me into the studio and he is all work again. I can feel Ian staring at me through the glass. Watching. The lyric sheet is forced into my hand. And then there is music in the studio. The melody is so beautiful. It’s a ballad.

I scan the lyric sheet. His words are so moving and yet nakedly revealing. I feel a sick suspicion that this incredible ballad is about us. Allusions to the beach and other things. How the heck does he expect me to record with him a song about us? And jeez, why did he title it
Long and Hard
. It’s a beautiful ballad and he gave it the title of a porn movie.

Alan sinks on the floor in the middle of the room, guitar in hand, and he is looking at me, but I don’t look at him. He is waiting for the music to end.

“Come, sit. Watch my hands while I play. Just sing it, Chrissie. Don’t worry about being perfect. Don’t worry about even hitting the right notes. We’ll just sing through it until you’re comfortable.”

The first-run through is halting, off-key and just plain awful. I glance around. How long have we been here? Ian and Ryan are still at the console and the expression on Ian’s face says it all.

Alan reaches for a CF Martin acoustic guitar and lays it in my lap. “Again. This time you play, Chrissie.”

I stare at the instrument and I don’t pick it up. How does Alan know I play?

Those penetrating black eyes are watching me, amused. “Six instruments by the age of nine. Flute, guitar, piano, cello, violin, piccolo. It wasn’t bullshit, Chrissie. You are all that Jack talks about.”

I let out a shuddering breath and can’t stop myself from thinking:
if that’s true, Alan, then why doesn’t he talk to me? Why does he ignore me? Do you have that nifty answer conveniently located in your head?

“Don’t roll the track again,” Alan shouts into the intercom. “We’re just going to play until Chrissie is comfortable.”

I feel on the verge of tears. “I don’t want to do this, Alan.”

“Play!”

I do as I am told and, for some reason, now that we are playing together, this is effortless. Like when we laugh or when we argue or when we have sex. We gel without trying. Whatever we do together is easy, and it feels right and I feel completely absorbed into him.

When we’ve run through it about fifteen times, Alan springs to his feet. He takes away the guitar, then grabs my hand and pulls me to my feet. He puts the headset on me.

“This will be one take, Ian, if you don’t fuck it up,” he says into the intercom. “And then we can call it quits for the day.”

His long fingers gently message my shoulders. He smiles. “It will be perfect, Chrissie.”

There is so much on his face, in his voice as we do this. For some reason, it flows through me, and my voice flows from me deep, throaty and powerful. He looks so beautiful when he lets the emotion run freely on his face.

When we are done it is quiet.

“Give me a minute and I’ll play it back.” Ryan’s voice echoes from the intercom.

Nervously I wait, but Alan is reclined beside me, long limbs relaxed. I don’t know how I sounded. I couldn’t hear myself, as absorbed I was with his haunting rasp and the feel of him. I pray that it wasn’t awful, and I’m more worried than I let on, since I’ve never heard myself on tape. I’ve never permitted Jack to record me, not even for shits and giggles. And I know the natural voice, the recorded voice, and the voice in your head are all different voices.

I have some natural talent, no training and, cords I rarely exercise, and for the life of me I can’t understand what Alan hears when he listens to me sing that would make him want to record with me. Then the playback starts and the tight curl of my body grows anxiously tighter. It is my voice with Alan, but it is not a voice I’ve ever heard. I sound like a female version of my brother, throaty and pure and wispy, woven with emotion.

Halfway through the playback Alan touches my cheek. “Perfect,” he murmurs. He stands up, pulling me with him. “And no, baby. That’s not your brother you think you hear. It’s a little bit of Jack and all the things you don’t ever let show that are Chrissie.”

* * *

In the bedroom, I curl on my side, on the bed, while Alan draws a bath for me. I am a touch panicky about what I just did, since now that it’s done I can’t take it back.

I recorded a song with Alan Manzone. Our voices will be linked forever on vinyl. Even if no one ever hears the song, it will always be a piece of me forever connected with a piece of Alan.

My limbs feel like putty and I am weak. I am not used to letting so much emotion to the surface.

Alan takes me to the bath and he undresses me. It is the first time I notice that neither of us has spoken since we left the studio. He puts me in the tub. Why are we both silent? What is this I feel?

Alan starts undressing and my eyes round. He climbs into the water and eases me back against his chest. I relax and close my eyes. I feel my head move with the rhythm of his breath. My hair is all around us. The steam and dampness makes it puff out and cling. Those long fingers are gently washing me. Up and down my arms very slowly, and then everywhere. And by the time he is done, I am languid and aroused and I can feel his erection.

I want him. I want him now.

“Close your eyes.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

I close my eyes.

“Don’t open your eyes until I tell you.”

I feel him touch me between my legs. My hair is lifted from my shoulders and his lips are on my neck. He turns me in his arms until I’m straddling him and he is devouring me with his mouth, the kisses are deep, greedy, ragged with unspent adrenaline, and I want him in me, but he keeps us separate.

There is something different in me. I can feel something different in Alan. My fingers curl in his hair as his mouth moves to my breasts. I am impatient inside in feral way, and I don’t know where this urgency comes from. It is as if I can’t get close enough to him, that nothing I do, not even sharing my body, will get me close enough to him.

Alan lifts me from the tub and carries me back to the bed. He spreads me on my stomach. He lies down beside me and we are both damp. He starts touching and kissing me. The back of my body, up from my feet, down my back. When his tongue touches at the base of my spine, I feel his fingers between my legs and then in me. As he cups my sex with his fingers expertly teasing me, his tongue and kisses are in a different orifice of my body, since I am on my stomach, and I am mildly disgusted and incredibly hot. He is kissing me there. Around it. Near it. In there. All the while, his hands are cupping my sex and filling me with his fingers. As intense as my muscles have clenched during sex, they have never clenched in anticipation this way.

Why am I letting him do this? It’s disgusting and wrong and I don’t know why he wants this. He knows he is driving me crazy, and I can feel his excitement as he makes me more and more frantic.

He turns me on the bed and I can feel his damp, naked body surrounding me. I am breathing hard. And I am pulsing there. My eyes are still closed because Alan has not said I can open them, and for some reason I am raging in this in a way unlike any other time before.

Alan is all around me, totally consuming my body. His lips are against my ear. “The opposite of death is not life, Chrissie,” he roughly breathes into my swirling senses. “The opposite of death is you. You are my opposite of death.”

Oh god…
and I am afraid. I am desperately aroused. I want him and Alan is in me.

Chapter Twelve

I am exhausted. I want to sleep. I don’t know how Alan manages the pace. Every hour he gets more energetic. Every hour I just want more to hide beneath the covers and sleep. The last forty-eight hours have been grueling. Hours in the studio. Sex. Sleep. Then the cycle all over again.