Five Women (19 page)

Then one night she woke up because Harry wasn't in the bed with her, and when she went downstairs he was sitting alone in the living room drinking bourbon.

“What?” she asked gently.

“I couldn't sleep.”

“Is it business?”

“No, just thinking.”

She stroked his hair. He didn't respond to her touch so she knew it wasn't sex he needed at this moment, and she stayed quiet.

“We hardly ever use that pool table,” he said.

“I know. Just people do at parties.”

“Want to play pool with me?” Harry said.

“Sure.”

So there they were in the middle of the night, alone and sad, playing pool under the yellow light, the click and skitter of the balls the only sound. Billie realized then that it was one of the only times they hadn't had music in the background. Suddenly she got scared that he didn't love her anymore.

“Are we in trouble, Harry?”

“Why would you think that?”

“I'm worried. Shouldn't I be?”

“We'll be fine,” he said.

“Are you tired of me? It happens.”

“Not to us.”

“If it isn't business or me, what is it?”

“Neither one,” he said. “But if it was, it certainly wouldn't be you and me.”

Could it be business? Billie wondered. Three strikes and you're out. She had seen so many little record companies go bust after having had several hits, and she knew there was always that possibility. But not to them. Not to Billie Redmond, whom everybody loved, whose fans screamed and reached out to her, all those raised hands, all those admirers. Not to Harry Lawless, who was the bravest, smartest man she knew. There was something comforting about playing pool with him, stark naked in the middle of the night, in their own luxurious house. He had a right to be moody once in a while; who wasn't? She let him win, and then they went upstairs and lay in each other's arms, and he entered her almost in his sleep, as if she was his comfort, his safe haven, and she knew they would be just fine.

She was still on the road, more than she would have liked because Harry wasn't with her as much as he used to be. They had been together five years, and the honeymoon madness had changed to something that was still good but not the way it was the first two years. Billie wondered if he was having affairs when she was away, but this time she was afraid to ask. She kept bringing back to memory the night they had played pool together and the way he had seemed in bed afterward, and her confidence then that whatever the problem was he would be sure to fix it. Now, as the months went by and spring went into summer, then to fall, she watched Harry withdrawing into himself.

“We have to start to economize,” he said one day. “I'm having a little difficulty with my cash flow.”

“Okay,” Billie said. She wondered where they should start. They hadn't had a party in a very long time, and they didn't even have friends over anymore. The hotels and motels she and the band stayed in on tour were always second rate. Harry had gotten rid of the bus and driver, and now she and the band rented cars when they had to, or took planes, always going coach. She and Harry hadn't bought clothes recently; they had enough to last them forever. They still ate out, but not at any place particularly expensive. They hadn't had a vacation for a long time either. Harry had no plans to cut another record for anyone at the moment, not her and not any other artist. After Pigman and the Wanderers had bombed several years ago he had concentrated everything on Billie.

“Do you need me to lend you money?” she asked him.

“No. Don't be silly.”

“Hey, you don't have to act like my cowboy hero. Money is just money.”

“Keep your money,” he said, in an abrupt, closed-in tone that made her drop the subject, but now she wondered about everything.

Winter was coming. There was a different chill in the air, the days were short, and the leaves had fallen off the little trees in front of their house. Billie hated how every time she came back from a trip things were so different. She was alarmed about the passage of time, and about the way Harry seemed to be keeping her farther and farther away from him. If in fact his problem was financial, there was a straight line from Harry's bank account to Harry's dick. It was something Billie knew about men in general, but she hadn't expected it would happen to Harry.

“I'm always here,” she said when he called her. “If you need me, I'm available to listen. I love you.”

“Well, I love you, too,” Harry said. She heard coins drop and realized he was using a pay phone.

“Where are you, anyway?” she asked.

“Some bar.”

“I'll be back tomorrow and you won't have to go out to any bar.”

“Goodnight,” he said softly, and hung up.

He had called her from bars and friends' houses and parties before, but this time after Harry broke the connection Billie sat there on her bed in the stuffy motel room for a long time, feeling like crying because their goodbye had been so unsatisfactory and she didn't know where to call him back.

The next day she took a cab from the airport alone because she didn't want to wait to drop off the others. She had to get home soon, she needed to see Harry, even if he didn't need to see her. When she got to their house she saw a piece of white paper taped to the front door.

It was a marshal's notice of foreclosure. The bank had taken back the house. She was so surprised she was numb at first, but she had the presence of mind to pull the embarrassing thing off so no one in the neighborhood would see it, and then she put the key into the lock, and the key didn't fit. She looked at her key chain to be sure she had tried the right one because she couldn't believe someone had changed the lock, and then she tried the key again to see if it wasn't just stuck, but it wouldn't budge. Then she looked at the notice more carefully and read, “To Whom it May Concern, the contents having been taken to ABC Storage . . .”

She ran to the first-floor windows and peered in. The house was empty. No furniture, no rugs, no chandeliers, no pool table, no phone; nothing but a few motes of dust floating in the wan afternoon light. It looked as if they had simply moved away. She knew it was her house, but she looked at the number on the familiar front door again just to be sure. It was like a bad dream and she wanted to wake up, but she knew she wouldn't.

Harry!
Where was Harry? She hadn't any idea, and he wouldn't know where she was either, so maybe she should just stay until he came for her. She thought seriously of kicking in a window, but what good would that do? There was nothing inside that house, not even a phone.

She went to the store down the street and got change and used their pay phone to call her answering service and then Harry's. There were no messages for her, and she left one for him when the service said it didn't know where he was. “Tell him I'm at the house.”

Then she went back to the stripped and vacant shell. She sat on the front steps with her suitcases and her guitar beside her and wished she had a drink or just a glass of water to take a pill to make the trembling stop. Was he so broke he couldn't even have come to the airport? Was he hurt somewhere, in a hospital?

Billie waited for an hour, until she was cramped and chilled and going crazy, and then she went back to the store down the street and got more change and began using their pay phone to call everyone she could think of, including the guys in the band, to see if Harry was there or had left a message for her. She told everyone she had lost her keys. Then she started calling all the hospitals.

Nobody knew anything.

It was dark now, and cold, and she was exhausted. She needed a place to stay for the night. She was reluctant to call any of the guys from the band again. They'd been on each other's necks for two solid weeks and needed to get away from each other. But she didn't have any choice. She called Toad and he said to come right over. She pretended to be calm. She needed to keep the band from finding out how broke Harry was until she found out what was going on. She was surprised to see herself so cool and rational, but you just had to put one foot ahead of the other or else you would have time to think and get scared. She still couldn't let herself believe for one moment that Harry had left her, but what else could she believe?

“Harry's probably out getting drunk,” Toad said. He gave her a joint and a glass of tequila.

“Some welcome from my old man,” Billie said, pretending to be miffed, not terrified.

“Well, you two have been together for a long time.”

“It doesn't seem long to me,” Billie said.

She slept on Toad's couch, and the next day she started looking for Harry again, every hour plunging her deeper into depression and fear. That night, when she still couldn't find out anything, she knew she should go to a hotel, but she couldn't stand to be alone; she was too upset. She told Toad the whole story, finally, partly because they were both stoned. She told him he shouldn't get any ideas that she was available on the rebound. All she wanted was to find Harry and get things right.

“Me, too,” Toad said. “I'd like to know what's going to happen to the rest of our bookings, if there are any.”

He called the other musicians and they got together at Toad's apartment and decided Harry was gone for good. Billie refused to admit it.

“This must have been going on for a long time,” Legs said. “I got kicked out of a place I owned once; they kept sending me letters and notices and putting things on my front door for months. Harry just didn't tell you.”

“Harry handled the business,” Billie said, to defend him.

But she couldn't sleep and the days were endless. She called her answering service every half hour and kept leaving Toad's number on it too. She also called Harry's service several times a day to see if he had picked up her messages, but they wouldn't tell her, apparently at his request because he was hiding, and finally his service told her they had been discontinued. Her insides were churning, and she felt lost. Outlaw Records was gone, too, without a trace. The record company office had been in the house, and that had been their answering service.

She knew she would have to start all over again, knock on doors, go see the record companies with her songs, see if they wanted her voice on someone else's song, and she didn't know how she could when just going through the motions of living were all she could handle. All she could think about was Harry, so how could she ever pull herself together enough to write a decent song?

She kept looking at the notice that had been on their door, and finally she decided she should go out to Long Island City and get back her clothes and her jewelry. She rented a U-Haul truck because she knew she needed something big; she had a lot of stuff. But when she got to the storage place she was greeted by a stubborn little creepy man who said she couldn't have her clothes or jewelry without presenting all the original sales slips, which of course she hadn't kept; why would she? Some she had never had; they were gifts from Harry.

“But they're mine!” she said. “I'm Billie Redmond, here's my driver's license, my credit card . . .”

“I know who you are,” the man said. “I just don't know who owns the property. How would it look if I gave it to you and then tomorrow his other girlfriend showed up and she had all the sales slips because it was hers?”

“He has no other girlfriend,” Billie said, although now she wasn't sure. “The clothing was in my house. I'll tell you the labels. I'll describe my diamond bracelet in detail. How would I know what it looks like and that it was even there if it isn't mine?”

“Get me a notarized letter from Harry Lawless that the women's clothes and jewelry that were in the house were yours and you can have them. That's the best I can do.”

He didn't even say he was sorry.

Billie cried from helpless rage all the way back in the truck. She felt her property had been stolen from her, and it had. She knew Harry would have wanted her to have her things; he had bought some of them for her, and she had bought some for herself. They were not only expensive but they had sentimental value. Some of the best were from their wonderful trip to Paris. They represented hits, they were her happy memories of love. All she had now was what she had taken with her on the road—her Tank watch, her rings, some earrings—not much because she had been afraid of being robbed in a motel; but now she had been robbed by the law.

When she got back she told Toad what had happened and he said Harry probably didn't know she would need all that proof to get her things back. She knew Harry hadn't even thought about it. She was finally beginning to understand there was a more serious reason he was on the run.

Two long weeks after she had come home to find she had no home, Harry finally called her. Her heart flipped up with relief and she felt as if the lights had gone on again.

“Where did you go?” she asked him. “I missed you so much.”

“I'm not in New York,” he said. “I have some problems with my taxes.”

“What does that mean?”

“I didn't pay them for a couple of years. It's all my accountant's fault.”

“That bastard!” she said.

“I know.”

“Didn't you notice you weren't signing any forms?” Billie said. “Didn't you ask?” Immediately after she said it she wished she could take it back because she sounded like a nagging wife. That was the one thing she had never intended to be.

“I'm going away,” Harry said.

“You are away. I want to go with you.”

“You can't, honey. I'm in trouble.”

“But you can pay back what you owe little by little,” Billie said.

“They're calling my plane,” Harry said.

“Where are you going? When are you coming back?”

“It was fun, honey,” Harry said, “but it's over. As the man says, that's all she wrote. Take care of yourself.” Then he hung up. He was gone.