Have Mercy (Have a Life #1) (20 page)

Captain Kirby finally stopped staring at the elevator like a dog waiting for its master to take it for a walk and we wandered toward the bar where Bilbo had his arm around Tim talking to Clarisse’s phone which she was holding up in front of them like she was taking a video.  Bilbo said something to Tim who nodded in agreement and said something back.  “Louder, both of you,” Clarisse said and they repeated whatever it was they’d said. “Got it,” Clarisse said, looking at her phone’s screen.  Bilbo shook Tim’s hand, pecked Clarisse on the cheek and walked up to me and Captain Kirby.  “You’re the bass player and the drummer, right?  See you tomorrow afternoon.”

              Clarisse said she had some friends she wanted to see.  She congratulated Tim, nodded goodbye to me and Captain Kirby and left.

              “What was that about, with the iPhone I mean?”

              “I made a contract for us with Bilbo.  He fronts the demo and gets paid when the band hits it.  No papers to sign. Pretty cool, don’t you think?”

              The Griffin had told me that novice musicians should never sign anything without an entertainment lawyer being in on it because by the time they wise up it’s too late. They’re already slaves. Well, too late had just happened.

              “I gotta turn in,” Tim said, yawning.  “I’m beat from the drive. Let’s get some sleep before breakfast.”  The three of us drifted towards the registration desk.

              “Listen,” I said, halting the procession.  “I’m going to leave.”

              “What are you talking about?” Captain Kirby said, “Why do you want to leave?” 

              I was too tired to explain the urgency I felt. My head was bobbing, but no actual words were coming out of my mouth.  All I knew was that if I didn’t leave for Houston right now I was never going to go. Something would always get in the way.  A flat tire.  A demo.

              “We need you,” Tim said, “or how do we do the demo?”

              “It’s your song, Tim.  You don’t need me.”

              “It’s our song,” he said. 

              “I’m not going to argue with you,” I said.  “You’ll get a studio musician to sing and play bass, probably better than I do.”  I looked from Tim to Kirby. It was the truth. It hurt but I was finally saying it.

              “Look, it’s three o’clock in the morning.” Tim said. “Clarisse paid for a suite for us. We’ll get some sleep and you’ll feel different in the morning.”

              “I just need to borrow some money from you guys.”

              I still had the three hundred dollars that Captain Kirby gave me in the basement of Kulick’s. A plane ticket to Houston had to cost at least that and I still had to get to The Griffin’s house.

              “You don’t have any ID,” Captain Kirby said.  “How are you going to get on a plane?”

              “I have my driver’s permit,” I said.  “I’ll tell them my faithful dog is dying or something.”

              “If you just wait a couple of days, we’ll drive down together,” Tim said.  But he was already reaching in his wallet.  He handed me two hundred dollar bills.  “It’s half of what I saved from work.”

              Captain Kirby went to a chair, sat down and took off her left shoe. “Here,” she said, handing me two hundred dollars after she put her shoe back on.  “It’s half my refund from Zina. She owed me five hundred but four was as far as she would go, immigration or not.  Look, I would leave with you tonight, they have studio drummers too, but I gotta stay and see what happens.”  She jerked her head towards the elevator and I knew she meant Carmencita.  “You understand, right?”

              “Absolutely,” I said and hugged her. 

              “We’ll be right down as soon as we do the demo,” Tim said. “I just don’t understand why you’re leaving.”             

              “You’re doing what you have to do.  So am I,” I said.  I kissed him and held him for a minute.  “I gotta get my backpack and guitar out of the van. Then I’ll have the valet call me a cab.”

              I’d never felt more alone in my life but I felt elated, too, almost like I was going to faint.  I was finally on my way to Houston and my real life.

I know it sounds funny, but the cab to the Nashville airport was the first cab I ever took.  We only had one cab in Milltown, called the Quikcab, which Mr. Dow said was the very definition of irony in case any of us wanted to know.  The owner of Quikcab, Mr. Hefflefinger, was a little off, endlessly cruising the streets of Milltown after his soldier daughter was killed in Iraq, forgetting to pick passengers up and forgetting to let them off. 

              Anyway, the driver of the cab in Nashville had a beard with like a hair net over it and wore a giant white scarf wrapped around his head.  I’d never seen that.  When I tried to be sophisticated and make polite conversation and ask him where he was from, he got testy.

              “I am a Sikh,” he said, and when I asked him what
that
was, he said, “
Google
it.”

              But I didn’t let his bad mood get me down.  Nothing could get me down.   

              The highway out of Nashville was empty, probably because it was only four in the morning.  As we sped toward the airport I saw a highway information sign ahead of us that made me rub my fists into my eyes.  I pressed the down button, stuck my head out the window, and looked up at the sign as we whizzed under it.  The sign said in white letters like twenty feet high: JOHN C. TUNE AIRPORT, exit, 2 ½ miles, use right lane.  A
tune
airport?  It was obviously a sign.             

              Anyway, the back seat had no seat belts and the driver sped over every pothole—I think he 
aimed
at them—and I wasn’t heavy enough to anchor myself to the seat so I kept bouncing up, almost to the roof of the cab and I was definitely getting carsick. 

              “Hey!” I said, and was going to complain when the driver pulled up at the entrance to US Airways without him even asking me where I was going.  He glared at me in the rearview mirror and pointed to the meter which said forty dollars.  I handed a hundred dollar bill to him. 

              “You don’t have anything smaller?” he asked.

              I shook my head.

              “I have to get change,” he said, snatching it out of my hand and going into the terminal. He came back with five twenties which probably meant that I was supposed to give him a twenty dollar tip which I considered for about a millionth of a second before I jumped out of the cab, shouldered my backpack and guitar and walked through the terminal doors without looking back while he shouted at me in Sikheze.

                According to the giant departure and arrival billboard US Airways flew to Houston.  The terminal was quiet.  A girl janitor was slopping water onto the floor. A bored looking attendant was manning the US Air counter.  I wound my way to him through a belted maze like they have at movies on Saturday nights.  

              “Checking in?” he asked.

              “I want to go to Houston,” I said.             

              “On which flight?”

              “Whichever one is next.”

              He looked at me for the first time.

              I gave him a big smile.

              “Do you have identification?”

              “I have money,” I said, pulling out the hundreds.

              “I need to see some identification.”

              I pushed my driver’s permit across the counter and he examined it and me, then pulled out a clipboard and slid his finger down the page. 

              “I have a six o’five to Houston.”

              “Great.  Sign me up!” 

              “Are you traveling alone?”

              ”Yep.”

              “What kind of credit card will you be using?”

              “Money.” 

              I pushed my bills towards him and he looked at them like they were monopoly money.  He picked up the hundreds, making a face.  “We don’t take cash, miss. Just a minute, please.” He disappeared through a door and after what felt like a long time he came back with a security guard right behind him.  The attendant handed the guard the clipboard, and after he read it the guard was talking into his cell phone and I was thinking that maybe Granny O’Reilly had put my name on a special deportation list.

              The terminal was beginning to fill up and five or six people had appeared in line behind me.  One of them pushed up next to me at the counter.  He was tall and dressed like a businessman except for his thick gray hair which was tied back in a ponytail. 

              He gestured to my guitar and smiled at me.  “You a musician?”

              I nodded.

              “You going to a gig?” he asked.

              That was a good question.  “Yes, I am.”

              “It’s a tough life, being a musician.  Your parents know what you’re up to?”

              I thought about it for a minute, then laughed.  “No.  They have no idea practically.”

              He laughed, too. 

              “You remind me of myself when I was a kid.”

              The attendant was talking into his cell phone, conferring with the security guard and looking at me.

              “Is there a problem with your credit card?” the man asked me.

              “The problem is, I don’t have a credit card,” I said. 

              When the airline attendant came back, the man said to him, “Excuse me, this is my niece.  I was supposed to meet her earlier.”  He turned to me.  “Hello, dear.  Sorry I’m late.  Put her ticket on my card.” He handed a credit card to the attendant who looked at the security guard who made some let-me-think-about-it grunting noises then nodded okay, and in a minute the attendant was handing me a ticket, a boarding pass, and my three hundred dollar bills. “Your flight departs from Gate 25, Miss O’Reilly,” he said. “Have a pleasant journey.”

              “Let me help you with that,” my rescuer said, picking up my guitar which I’d been resting on my foot while all this was going on.  As he walked me away from the counter, you can imagine, I didn’t know whether to kiss him or run.  But since he had my guitar the second option was out. The mystified look on my face made him laugh and his laugh was nice so I laughed too.

              “I’m Tom Borden, Miss O’Reilly.”

              “Mercy,” I said.

              “Nice to meet you, Mercy,” he said and handed back my guitar. “I have to admit, I laughed when I saw the man at the airline counter giving you a hard time.  Musicians are suspicious characters.” 

              He made a sinister face and I laughed. 

              “I’m going to Houston, to join my dad’s band.  Although, actually, he doesn’t know it, yet.”  

              “And who is your dad?”

              “The Griffin.”

              “The
Griffin
?  No kidding!”

              “Do you know him?”

              “I lived in Detroit for a while in the 1970s and I was friends with Fred Smith.  You know him? Sonic Smith, MC5, Patti Smith’s husband?”

              “
Are you kidding
?  I have a poster of Patti Smith on my practice room
wall!
Although,” I could see it now, “That’s not the same as knowing someone
personally
.  Did you play with him?”

                “Yeah.  I did.”

              “Then why…” Why are you wearing that business suit? I wanted to ask.

              “I didn’t want it badly enough,” he said. 

              “You mean you weren’t good enough?”

              “No, I was plenty good.  I just didn’t want it badly enough.”

              I could only stare at him like an idiot and Mr. Borden laughed again. “So you’re going to be playing in your dad’s band?”

              “Well, not exactly,” I managed. “I have a band of my own.”

              “Very cool,” he said.

              “But it’s complicated at the moment.” 

              “It always is.”

              We had been walking the whole while he was talking and we’d arrived on auto pilot at the check-in to my parting gate.  Mr. Borden looked at his watch.  “Well, Miss O’Reilly,” he said.  “This is where we part.”  He pointed at the first class lounge.

              “Hey, I owe you money,” I said. “For my ticket.”

              “Right.”  He looked at the bills I pulled out of my pocket, then looked at me. 

“You know what?  I don’t have change.  Pay me back when you’re a famous rock and roll star.”   

              I was emboldened by his friendliness and blurted out, “Mr. Borden, do you really think I’m going to be a famous rock and roll star?  Or did you just say that as a joke?”  I needed to know what he saw when he looked at me. Did he see that something special that says I’m going to make it as a rock and roll star or did he see someone who was kidding themselves?  I mean, what if it was just some weird fantasy that I cooked up?  I closed my eyes.  “I mean, what do you
think
honestly?”

              When I opened my eyes, Mr. Borden was staring at me, then he smiled.  He touched his brow in a salute, said, “If you’re going to be a rock and roll star, Miss O’Reilly, I can’t stop you,” and turned to walk towards the first class security check.

              “Miss, hello, Miss,” a security guy was tapping me on the shoulder. “Your boarding pass, please.” 

              “Yeah, sorry,” I said.  I was watching Mr. Borden disappear.

              The guard stamped my pass and handed it back to me and I joined a line of people who were taking off their shoes and emptying their pockets and putting their stuff in bins that looked like what busboys use to clear dishes in restaurants and pushing them onto a carousel that went into a tunnel of some kind so I did the same, pushing through my guitar and backpack and putting my cell phone and shoes in a bin. 

              A female guard signaled me to walk through an archway and when I walked through it an alarm sounded.  “Step forward,” the guard said. She ran a wand up my legs and between my legs and around my torso and shoulders.  “Do you have any metal in your body?” she asked.

              “Just the metal plate in my head,” I said, thinking of Captain Kirby, then giggled. 

              “This isn’t a game, girlfriend,” the guard said.  “You wanna miss your flight?  It’s probably your belt buckle. Go back, take your belt off, put it in a bin, and walk to me again.”  Which I did and no alarm went off this time. “Next,” the guard said.

              I retrieved my backpack and guitar, my cell phone and belt, and put on my shoes and walked down a long busy corridor toward the Gate 25.

              There are hassles on the yellow brick road I said to myself.

              I stopped at a food stand and bought ham and eggs, toast and coffee, and took them to a table by a window which I looked out of as I ate them—they were awful and made me think of my perfect omelet at the mill—and I watched the faces in the windows of a plane that was taxiing by hoping that Mr. Borden’s would be one of them. 

              I opened my cell phone to call The Griffin, I knew this time he would answer, but before I could press his number my phone rang.  The screen showed a Milltown exchange I didn’t recognize.  I stared at it for a minute then I touched answer and gave a very quiet, “Hello?”

              “Mercy O’Reilly?”

              “Who’s asking?” I said, thinking I would hear Mrs. Valliere’s voice. 

              “This is Specialist Dutton from Lehigh County Prison.  I have someone who wants to talk to you.”

              Before it registered what was happening, a familiar voice came on the phone, “Mercedes?  It’s me.  It’s Jane.”