What Happened to Lani Garver (27 page)

I woke up in a stupor, finding the house almost dark. Only snow on the TV screen lit the living room. I shot up, wondering how long ago the movie had ended. Ellen was gone. I turned on the lamp and spotted a little note on the coffee table. "Call if you need anything. El." It had her cell phone number underneath. Under that was scribbled Lani's number, as if he had called, and a note from my dad that said he had left to play with his band, Suhar was with him, and she had made Japanese food, which was in the microwave. The little clock on the wall read 7:10. I was supposed to be at the Calcutta practice in twenty minutes.

I flopped back, staring at the ceiling, not freaking over the little time I had to get ready. I felt like I had two clear choices. I could take time to eat or I could try to make myself look awesome in my new black leather to go jam with these college guys. Ellen's words rang in my head:
Don't try to impress them. They won't be trying to impress you.

I stumbled toward the kitchen, deciding I could throw on the leather pants, leave on the T-shirt I slept in. It was too hot for the jacket, anyway. I would get to wear part of my new stuff without looking like I was trying to impress anyone.

I started in on Suhar's Japanese food and plowed through half the plate before dialing Lani's number. "You are the best. I cannot believe you bought me that beautiful stuff."

"I thought you'd like it." He giggled.

"'Like it'?" I opened my mouth to tell him I'd tried the very stuff on. But my eyes shot to my watch again. Fifteen minutes until practice, and I had to walk with two guitars.

"I'm almost late for rehearsal. We'll talk a lot more later. I just wanted to know if you found your missing nightgowns."

"I got the book back."

I almost choked on the milk I was downing furiously. "How?"

"It was in the gutter in front of the house this afternoon. Kind of like it had always been there. Guess there's no question that the package on the porch was from Abby."

"But do you think somebody took the time to dump the book back in front of your house? That's diabolical. I'll bet the book fell out in the gutter..."

He chuckled. "Claire, you're naive, but I love you, anyway."

"You actually think some rip-off artist put it back there."

"To let me know they had the nightgowns. Only they didn't have Tony's nerve, to make their delivery onto the porch. They had to leave it in the gutter, and then flee—"

"Cowards!" I blasted, pushing my plate away in frustration. "I'm calling Macy."

"She's your friend, and you can do what you want. But what would you accomplish by calling her?"

"I'll tell her off! I can't believe she knifed me in the back like that to Sydney ... and then
this?
Do you really think it was Macy?" I couldn't get over this.

"I saw her this time."

"You
saw
her? Why didn't you tell me that right off?"

"I was afraid you would think I was having a convenient recollection." He laughed, but I didn't see anything funny.

"You
saw
Macy throw that book in the gutter?"

"Yeah. She opened the passenger door of Vince Clementi's car, got one foot on the ground, and heave-hoed."

I shut my eyes and swallowed spit, having a complete flashback of eighth grade. Not that Macy had ever done a mean thing to me. But back then I hadn't known about the thin lines cutting through her versions of good and evil. She could rip on and on about a fat kid pigging out on potato chips and totally terrify me that I could be her next victim.

"What did you do when you saw her leave the book?"

"Oh, I just watched." His voice picked up more happily. "But after she jumped back in Vince's car and the whole truth struck me,
I
started to laugh hysterically."

"What whole truth?"

"If they had simply gone online for ten minutes? That volume of Andovenes is worth about nine hundred dollars."

My jaw dropped. "No way. You own a book worth nine hundred dollars?"

"Check it out on eBay sometime. Instead, she could have had a decent down payment on a car. She's playing gutter games."

I laughed my side off. "Care if I tell her that?"

"Do
not
tell her that. I don't want anybody rifling my room for their next trick. And I've got a better idea than you calling her."

"What's that?"

"Go to band practice."

He wanted me to rise above it.

"I just wish I knew what she was doing with those nightgowns," I muttered, heading into the bedroom to change. "Is she going to bring them into school on Monday and, like, totally humiliate both of us?"

"Do you really care?"

All of a sudden I couldn't answer that. But I admired Lani's courage. And if that was the worst that could happen, I supposed I could live with it. I thanked him again for the black leather, and we hung up pretty quick.

I got to this upstairs empty room over a restaurant where Calcutta rehearsed, and all I noticed at first was the run of good news. First, these guys did not play any hip-hop, which thrilled me to no end. They had a horn player, and yet, they were so much about rock 'n' roll that I got to try out both the electric and acoustic guitars. Second, they were very nice, but in a professional way. No one went gaga over my guitar playing, like Erdman, but how they filled in around it said a lot.

They knew mostly eighties and nineties stuff, and I knew mostly sixties and seventies. But we discovered they and I both knew some Elton John. My dad had burned "Rocket Man" onto one of those practice CDs back when I was sick. It starts out with just piano and a voice, and then everything comes in at the first chorus. I gripped a guitar pick, listening to their lead singer, this Jason French, laying out clean vocals to the piano, waiting for that chorus. And it occurred to me, I had never played with a backup before that wasn't on a CD or MP3.

When I hit my first chord and heard drums, synth, piano, bass, rhythm, myself ... the rush of being surrounded by flesh-and-blood sound was like going over the straight-down part of a roller coaster. I almost lost my knees. These guys were passing through me—like we had become floating ghosts, or one giant ghost, one power.

Complete happiness can feel so much like complete terror that it's hard to tell them apart. I fought my shaking knees by jamming against the rhythm player in the parts where he had lead runs, and we made a fun game of it, like a Ping-Pong match. There's a part in the chorus that requires three-part harmony. Jason poked at me, pointed at his throat, then made a thumbs-up sign. I moved to share his mike. The music was already gel. Then this Jason and I had our lips so close to his mike I could smell toothpaste. Add to the sound three more voices, which, by some luck, nailed these harmonies. The ceiling buzzed octaves we weren't even singing.

We wandered into "Tiny Dancer," then "Levon," the only other two Elton Johns I knew. I was afraid if I made eye contact, one of these guys would eventually say, "You look young! How old are you?" Rather than risk getting kicked out, I was being way shy with my eyes. I did catch on through stray glances in the dimness of the room that these guys were old; I mean
old.
Dr. Erdman had said University of the Arts, but four of them looked like they had to be closing in on twenty-five. I probably would have noticed more things sooner if I had been staring like Macy stares.

They started talking after we ran out of Elton John tunes, and I could not believe this thing was getting better than it already was. They were arguing about putting "Rocket Man" on their album, now that they had a decent acoustic guitar player, and would Elton John's people make them pay a fortune for that?
They had an actual recording contract with Millennium, a Philly-based recording studio.

I kept staring at the carpet for fear of drilling a happy hole in the ceiling if I opened my mouth. We got into practicing these three original songs over and over again, which were for their album.

I started to relax a little and look at these guys in that Macy way. I realized they were about the strangest conglomeration of types I would have ever put together.

The sax player and bass player were African American but were nothing like each other. The sax player had sounded way educated, and the bass player looked and talked like a street person. Jason looked like something off the cover of
Gentleman's Quarterly.
The guy who doubled on piano and synth was painfully thin, like a sixth-grade girl, and he had on a T-shirt that read:
I GRADUATED
HARVARD:
THIS ISN'T JUST THE FUCKING SHIRT
. The drummer and the rhythm guitar player both looked like they could have been big-time druggies. They had buzzed hair, which was thin, and you could see their scalps, which you would have put more with a diet of free-basing than milk and eggs. The rhythm player had two badly chipped teeth in the front.

Four of these guys had definitely seen better days. Jason French seemed the most normal and grounded, and I was glad he did most of the talking with me. But their talent was so hot, it made me think of Lani and Ellen: "
Got to pay your dues to sing the blues.
" The stuff had a fire to it that I'm not sure would have lit up under a bunch of middle-class garage-band lesson takers.

One song we practiced, called "Irma," was written by Jason French about some girl he had known who had gotten sick and died. It was kind of bluesy, and I provided some Jonny Lang–type runs on electric that turned out pretty good. I could not figure out an exact style for these guys, though all three original songs had something to do with AIDs. And it came out plainly near the end of the rehearsal that this recording contract involved not just Calcutta but also four other Philly-based groups who were putting together an anthology album as a fund-raiser for the local AIDs alliance.

I wasn't even disappointed to hear that, though a tour would have been nice.

"Don't talk much, do you?" the drummer said, as we were folding up rehearsal. His name was Mike. Mike went
ba-da-boom
at the end, and they all laughed.

Of course, a dumb-stupid-Claire remark followed: "I talk a lot when I'm with my friends."

"Oh! We don't rank!" Jason beat his heart like it was breaking.

Aaron, Mr.
HARVARD,
boinked out a one-hander on the piano. "Don't worry, Claire.
They
don't have any friends.
They're
obnoxious."

His finger circled around, meaning all of Calcutta, and they were all laughing and making donkey noises. I wanted to dive out the door, but I hung around long enough for one more dumb-stupid remark. Mike came toward me, drummed on my head, and I pointed at his wristband. He, the bass player, and the rhythm guitar player all wore the same type of bright orange wristband. It had handwriting on it.

"You guys trying to be twins?"

"We're all part of a certain hospice."

I couldn't remember what a hospice was. He said that on the wristband was a "buddy's" phone number. He said that many people knew that if they saw the bright orange wristband on a person in medical distress, to call that number right away.

The truth struck me finally as I remembered Lani's strange comment on the phone. "
Don't be afraid to reach out and touch those guys.
" Thin-haired, buzz cuts, nicks on the scalp, not an ounce of fat in the place...

Jesus. Every one of these guys is HIV positive.

That was not exactly confirmed for me—not at that time. After my wristband comment, Jason said, "Calcutta is not just us six; it's about two dozen people that come and go ... depending on who's sane, who's healthy." He laughed, and the other guys joined in, like that was some sort of funny. "Every one of us has a life-threatening illness. And since you were sent by Erdman, we're assuming you can keep our politics pure."

A small part of me wanted to throttle Erdman for setting me up with a dose of reality I'd always tried to avoid. Yet they were looking at me like this was some sort of interview question.
You're in, or you're out ... Do not mess up your answer, little girl.
I felt dizzy, like my insides were on the outside, and my skin was squashed somewhere near where my stomach used to be.

"I ... am in remission from leukemia. I just had a blood test that came back good, but, uhm. You just don't know, you know?"

They cheered about my blood test. They clapped me on my back. Jason kicked the drummer in the ankle and said, "see? something just told me. This Erdman girl is gonna be really
sweet
..."

They weren't kicking me out. I'd never spent much time feeling proud of being a cancer survivor. All of a sudden I was never so proud in my life.

Sunday afternoon I stepped off the bus and set foot on Hackett feeling great, despite all the crap I was returning to. For one thing, my mom had chewed out my dad three times over the weekend—for letting me come on a bus, for sending me to a shrink, and for letting me walk the streets of Philadelphia by myself. She didn't know about playing in a band with a bunch of older, HIV-positive guys. She had told me to call her from the bus station and she would pick me up. But I got the thought,
I have about ten more minutes to enjoy my weekend by walking home alone and reliving it one more time. Am I entitled to a few simple pleasures before I get nagged and guilted?

Why I would want to walk home looking like I did, I had no clue. The ungodly heat for that time of year had kept up, so I had my cheerleading jacket shoved down in a shopping bag. I had on a torn T-shirt I mooched off my dad that said
BLOODY MARY
on it. I don't know why I had liked the thing—it was old and faded and torn, leaving my one shoulder bare to the sun—I guess maybe I thought it fit my stage of life. Over top of it was this ratty old guitar case that worked like a backpack, sporting an electric Fender my dad had loaned me. I had been used to hiding my guitars—like, sneaking them over to Sydney's before Vince picked us up—so I would not give Macy any visual reminders that I was screwing up our Saturday nights. But now I looked like I had been nailed to a sideways cross, and it gets better.