Gray (20 page)

“Ah think one of them girls musta taken ’em,” he drawls, scratching his stomach. “Or maybe I lefem at th’ house. You think we can go back there again tonight?”

I laugh and say that we probably won’t be going back there anytime soon. As we go inside, he pats me on the back and chuckles, “Boy, whata night. . . .” I can tell he’s aching to continue, but he knows that maybe right now isn’t
the best time to relive past glories. He is a good friend. The sun is slowly setting in the canyon, and the rocks are glowing electric red. We open the windows and sit on metal folding chairs—the only real furniture we’ve got in the place—listen to the birds settling into the trees for the night, greeting each other with their familiar calls. Soon the coyotes will emerge from their dens and scurry through the brush; the owls will start up their mysterious, sonorous racket. The moon will come up, will shine yellow on the canyon floor. She will still be up in our penthouse, alone, or with some other guy, it doesn’t matter. I will still be sitting here, in this metal folding chair, with my best friend in the entire world. Maybe we will go out and explore, and maybe the Disaster will finally bag a coyote. Or maybe we won’t. We’ve got plenty of beer and some great stories to tell, when the time is right. I think we both deserve a night in.

P
retty
much everyone saw the pictures. People I haven’t heard from since high school are texting me, my mom calls and tells me she doesn’t approve, says she’s read stories about that girl. I can hear my dad laughing in the background. Kids on message boards are talking about it, saying the usual stupid bullshit. I even get an e-mail from Her, a one-liner, “Star fucker,” followed by a smiley face. The smiley face was key . . . otherwise I would’ve thought she was mad at me. Not that I cared or anything.

She is also calling me every other day, leaving me voice mails that are getting progressively more insane. At first, she was polite, rasping that she had a great time the other night, and if the Disaster and I (she calls him “your friend”) want to come by the house again, just let her know. Received at 2:27 a.m. When I don’t return her call, she leaves me
another
message, her voice a little more agitated, wondering where I’ve been hiding, what I’ve been up to. Received at 3:52 a.m. I can hear
Raw Power
playing in the background. When I
still
don’t call back, she
blows a gasket, leaves me a rambling message that says her cousin shot himself in the head, but he didn’t die; rather, he’ll be a zombie for the rest of his life. She says she’d call me bad luck, but I’d probably take that as a compliment. Received at 4:14 a.m. Worried, I finally call her back, ask about her cousin, and she sounds like she has no idea what I’m talking about. She calls me an asshole and tells me never to call her again before hanging up. Perhaps everything my mom read about her was true.

Our album is released and debuts. Heatseekers chart and all that. The first single is getting played on the radio, and our video is being shown on MTV (when they actually
show
music videos). The world is pulling me away from my hideout in the canyon, and I am obliged to obey. I pay the landlord six months’ rent, and the Disaster and I rent a car and drive down to San Diego, where our tour is scheduled to begin. Meet up with the guys for the first time in months. Everyone is happy to see that I’m not only living, but
flourishing
. I joke that it’s that good California air, and that they should all get the hell out of Chicago before it’s too late. They all laugh. That night, we go out and get absolutely shitfaced in the Gaslamp; the Disaster and the Animal get into a brawl with a bunch of dudes from the navy. The two get beaten up pretty bad, but it wasn’t a fair fight. The Disaster ices his face with a can of beer. The Animal swears a lot and says he’s officially an enemy of the state. The tour begins the following night, at the decrepit, old San Diego Sports Arena. Before the show, the manager of the place excitedly tells us that Elvis Presley played there once and gave a brand-new
Cadillac to one of the security guys. We’re more interested in the Chick-fil-A across the parking lot. We haven’t seen one of those since our swings down South.

The show is great, the kids are loud, and the place is packed. I introduce a new song by shouting, “This one is for anyone who’s ever looked at their hometown
and wanted to burn the motherfucker to the ground,
” and all the girls squeal. I’m not sure if it’s because I cursed, or because they hate San Diego. Probably a combination of the two. Afterward, we hug each other and spray champagne around Elvis’s old dressing room. Our manager looks on with a huge smile on his face. None of the other guys see it, but he winks at me. We are off and running. We are catching up to the present. We are in top form.

The tour snakes throughout the Southwest—Phoenix, Flagstaff, Albuquerque, Santa Fe—and down into Texas, skimming along the Mexican border (we campaigned hard to take a detour into Juárez), shooting east to San Antonio and Houston, a hard north to Dallas. The tour bus slinks along through the night, taking us up into Oklahoma and Kansas. Our bus driver is a chain-smoking, delightfully acrid road dog named Vincent, who used to drive for Ozzy Osbourne and doesn’t have time for your shit. He stares out at the open road—the same road he’s stared out at a thousand times before—and tells us stories about Ozzy snorting just about everything you can imagine, chasing women, and pissing on things, namely the Alamo. “Shit, you guys are pussies compared to him,” he sighs. He’s probably right. We are stopping at Indian casinos to play nickel slots, and places like Truckhenge,
outside Topeka, where a guy named Ron shows us the rusted-out trucks and buses he’s stuck in the ground for no reason. Admission was free. Some nights we stay in hotels—each of us in our own room, finally—and terrorize the staff and our fellow guests. We toss furniture into the pool. Run the housekeeping carts down the hallway. Flush bizarre things down the toilet. Vincent drinks beer in the hotel bar and shakes his head. The following morning, the managers always give us dirty looks, but they don’t say anything. I don’t even have to use the business centers anymore . . . we’ve got wireless on the bus.

We head into Kansas City, two shows at a venue named after a cell phone company, then begin the long drive across Missouri (nothing in the middle except for Columbia). Hit St. Louis on a Tuesday and then head up into old Illinois, past Springfield and Decatur, heading home to Chicago. The show there is sold out, has been for weeks. My parents are coming, and so is my high school music teacher. Unlike at our last hometown show, she is going to be there too. I left Her two tickets and VIP passes at will call, just in case she wants to bring anyone. You know, Her roommate or whoever.

We get into Chicago a day early, and my parents take the Disaster and me out to dinner, ask us questions about California as if we’ve just returned home from a semester abroad or something. I will never grow up in their eyes. I am okay with that. After dinner, the waitress asks if she can take a picture with me. I laugh and pose for the shot, holding a goofy smile on my face while we wait for the flash to go off (the flash never goes off when it’s supposed
to). I glance over and see my mom and dad smiling. What must this be like for them? I am thinking, getting slightly emotional, when all of a sudden my dad sticks his tongue out and I crack up and the waitress and I have to take the picture again. My mom wraps up all the leftovers and has me take them back to the apartment, just in case.

My apartment is hermetically sealed. Frozen in time. An inch of dust is on everything. My bedroom is still filled with cardboard boxes, just like I had left them. Reminders of my previous life. I decide to unpack and put T-shirts I will never wear again into drawers I will probably never open again. It feels good to do it: I’m burying my past in a Hemnes dresser. I can remember the night she and I put it together, me getting all frustrated and Her trying so hard not to laugh. Her stuff is still in the bathroom, and I find myself staring at Her toothbrush, contemplating putting it in my mouth. It’s almost as if she died or something. The Disaster is fumbling around with something in the living room, so I put the toothbrush down and turn off the light. I grab my coat—the one I had missed in New York—even though it’s summer, and tell the Disaster I’m going to sleep at my parents’ house. He doesn’t object, probably because he knew I was going to anyway. My mom is so happy when she hears my key turning in the lock. We stay up and talk in the kitchen, then she touches my arm and tells me not to stay up too late. I sit there with the lights on, looking out the window, at nothing. Up the creaking stairs to my old bedroom, still there, still the same, not a speck of dust because my mom cleans it just in case I pop in unannounced. They have repainted my brother’s room
and put a treadmill in there. I think how pissed he’ll be when he finds out and laugh to myself as I fall asleep.

The next morning, the Arts & Entertainment section of the newspaper has an interview with me. A full-color photo of the band. A mention of my infamous fling with you-know-who. My dad has left the paper open to the page, so when I come downstairs, I am greeted by my face staring up at me from the kitchen table. He smiles and asks if he can have my autograph. Then he tells me to mow the lawn. For the first time in history, I actually don’t mind doing it. The big rock star, angling a Craftsman mower around the flower beds. The Disaster comes by, and he and my dad sit on the porch and laugh at me. My dad is pretty close to retiring from his job at the law firm, so he doesn’t give a fuck about anything anymore. He is sitting back in his chair, wearing jogging shorts and shoes with no socks, drinking a beer with the Disaster. He has raised two sons and has navigated his way through life. He has earned the right to have someone else mow the lawn for him. Someday I hope that will be me. Only I’ll probably wear longer shorts.

That night, we play the Allstate Arena. Before the show, the manager presents us all with jerseys, our names stitched on the backs. I freak out way more than I probably should about this, and the manager looks at me like I’m crazy, but that’s mostly because I’m so nervous. It’s not that this is our hometown, or that my folks are going to be here, or even because
she
will. It’s more about who she’s bringing with Her. Doors are at 7:00 p.m. Kids start streaming in. Backstage, I am trying
unbelievably hard to stay cool. I walk the corridors in my Columbia jersey. My parents come back to say hi, wish me luck. My dad is drinking some champagne from the craft-service table because, why not? My mom is taking pictures of everything because she can. They are having a ball. It’s sweet, I suppose. The opening band starts playing, and their guitars chase me back into the dressing room. I feel the slight trickle of panic dripping down my spine. First time in months. I breathe and count to ten. Let go of the moment. Try to remember this is all beyond my control. Then there is a knock on the door, and it’s Her. I pretty much forget about all that let-go-of-the-moment crap. The last time I saw Her was when Her mother was sick, when I left Her apartment and got on a plane headed back for Los Angeles. When I was lost and manic and out of my mind. I can remember Her kissing me with Her eyes bunched tight, still warm and half-asleep, beautiful in the way all girls look when they’ve just woken up. Now she looks
different
. Older. The way exes always look when you see them again. You notice the small things. She is wearing a jacket I have never seen before. Her eyes are ringed and dark. We hug and my face is in Her hair. She’s still using the same shampoo.

We make small talk: I ask about Her mom, she asks about California. A wall is between us. Both of us want to say something to the other, but neither of us have the guts to do it. So we just shadowbox, pantomime. Then she tells me she wants me to meet someone. The gloves come off. The bottom falls out. We go out into the hallway and she
introduces me to Robert. “This is
Robert,
” she says, raising her voice on his name, just so I know he’s someone special. He is totally boring. Wire-rimmed glasses. Collared shirt. Dumb haircut. Small-dicked intellectual. He looks at me with a mixture of fear and jealousy, the way new boyfriends always look at the man they have replaced. He is picturing me fucking Her. Girls never notice these things.

“Hey,” I say, and nod to him, and we shake hands, a gesture that never ceases to be awkward in situations like this. Then I just stare at him and wait for words to come out of his meager little mouth.

“Thanks for the tickets, man,” Robert says, his voice rising slightly. He is way too excited. I can tell she is embarrassed.

“Sure,” I say, hands on my hips. Then I am done with him, so I turn to Her. “Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?”

I pull Her into the dressing room before she can even answer. Robert stands in the hallway with his hands in his pockets. Frozen. The door latches behind us and I turn to Her, eyes wild. Part of me wants to throw Her down on the couch and remind Her what she’s missing. Another part of me wants to cry. I feel so betrayed. So angry. I have no idea what is about to come out of my mouth.

“Are you
serious
?” she spits before I even have the opportunity to speak (she knows me pretty well by this point), then, again, just in case I didn’t hear Her the first time, “Are you fucking
serious
right now?”

“You fucking bring a guy to my show?!” I yell, loud
enough so Robert can hear me. “I can’t fucking believe you’d do that. Why would you fucking do that?”

“I’m not even going to fucking
talk
to you about this. I don’t need to. We fucking
broke up
. I fucking
broke up with you
. I’m with Robert now, so what? Get over it. Grow the fuck up.”