In the Absence of You (21 page)

The lyrics are on my phone.

“I used to think that love was just a fairy tale

Until that first hello, until that first smile.”

My bitchy girl loved this tune. Swoony, silly Zee.

No girl looks at a guy like Zoe looked at me. When I sang it, she’d tear up and bore her gaze into me like she meant it.

She doesn’t mean it anymore.

Months-long agony rips through my chest, wanting me to blast open. I stalk out again to grab the liquor—I can’t sing when my voice chokes on regret.

Watery eyes stare back at me from the mirror. I soothe my tongue with more whiskey, slap my face hard, the echo of it tinny in the bathroom. Another chug of him helps much, oh Jameson.

I shut the bathroom door, shove against it from the inside, hit it with my forehead to feel something other than her absence. I start to hum.

The pain quiets with the effort of my vocal cords.

I don’t dial her from my own number. I key in star and six and seven, then the number. With the lyrics bright on my phone, I wait while it rings.

And as her greeting reaches its end, I begin to sing.

AISHE

The look in
my plague’s eyes told me he shouldn’t be alone for long, so I don’t go to the bus with my sister. She and I hug goodbye in the lobby.

I take the elevator up. The carpeting is soft under my feet, leading me down the corridor, and the keycard creates a slow electronic tick that allows me to enter. I’m quiet, almost hoping he’s asleep.

The lights are on. A voice I don’t know vibrates through the bathroom door. It’s beautiful, haunting, singing an old ballad I’ve heard before.

A choked sob punctures the song; Emil’s sob. He’s doing one of his imitations, such an expert, but the sob is all his before he returns to living the lyrics like they’re important—

A thousand words couldn’t describe what he feels for her, he sings.

She’s all a man could want, he sings.

She’s all that he lives for, he sings.

He isn’t singing for me.

I don’t know what I’m doing when I turn the knob slowly and slide the door open. When I find eyes that shimmer in the mirror, blond fringes coated with wet grief as he sings that he wishes their love had lasted forever.

There’s a phone in front of his mouth.
His
phone.

He looks at it, clicking it off and interrupting the song mid-sentence. My throat thickens with sadness, but I bite my lip, staring and waiting, until the time for an explanation has passed.

It’s too late to complain now that I’ve made my bed. I knew from the start what I went into. I can’t talk without crying though, so I whisper my question out. “Didn’t she want to hear the rest of the song?”

The cell falls into the sink with a dry clatter. Emil’s hand goes to his face. Rubbing away moisture and devastation, he whispers back, “No. She didn’t want to hear any of it. I…”

His Adam’s apple lifts in a swallow. I want to breach his space and his grief and put my arms around him. “What, baby?” I manage.

“I just sang until her voicemail cut me off.”

AISHE

W
e go to bed together.
Jameson is on the nightstand, and I smell it on his breath when I curve up close under the covers. Emil doesn’t drink from it tonight though. He isn’t drunk. He’s just crushed. Again and again and again she crushes him. I don’t want my plague to suffer, and I try—

I keep trying—

I try so hard.

A flash of hopelessness hits me. I’ve seen him much better than tonight. I hope to God that visiting Chavali didn’t trigger this breakdown. My sister and her not-so-subtle message,
Love my sister like she deserves to be loved.
Damn her sweetness.

My pitiful mind runs back to the bathroom scene I walked in on. Emil lives for
her.
That’s what he sang with such feeling;
Zoe’s
still all he lives for.

I suppress my misery, enjoy the feel of his skin beneath my fingers, tell myself what I tell myself every day—

It’s just a matter of time.

He’ll be ready for you soon.

Emil, he smiles and pulls me down on his lap whenever I fulfill wishes he hasn’t even uttered on the bus: a drink, food, turning on the TV. He kisses me like he wants me to mean something, and bad, so bad I want it too.

“Are you tired, baby?” I ask him now, tracing his lip with my finger. Emil’s eyes bat shut. Then they open and float to his bag on the floor. Shoulder first, he bends from me slowly, leaning out enough to rummage in the main compartment. The revolver for “The Entertainer” appears. He falls to his back again and lets it thump to his chest.

“I should write a song about revolvers.”

No, you shouldn’t.

“They’re sexy,” he husks, sounding every bit as road-worn as Troll fears he’ll become. “Sexy as a woman. And lethal like one.”

“I’m not lethal,” I murmur, resisting the urge to pull the gun out of his hands and toss it out the window. Gone forever. How nice it would be.

“No, you’re not,” he says, dilated pupils finding me over the gun. “You’re nice.”

I want to keep talking, explain that he deserves better than some deadly chick who never picks up his calls. I wonder if she realizes where she’s got him: wooed by millions but playing with guns, owning a glittery stage floor but buried by her. I’d do anything to have him sing to me the way he sings to her.

Emil spins the cylinder of the revolver. It makes a whirring sound I haven’t heard before. It’s the first time he does it in front of me offstage. I’m a shitty “girlfriend” for not telling him how much he sucks for doing this to me.

After two weeks together, I still have everything to gain, and I don’t know which issues to press to get closer to him. What I know is I won’t take my chances on losing the small piece of him I have won—the trust to be himself with me.

I watch him, willing him to understand how he frightens me. He doesn’t. Emil’s mind is far away, studying the revolver in the way I want him to study
me
—with longing, with love, with the urge to be one with it.

“Oh bullet me, bullet me… you make it easy.” A smirk, like he’s talking to a lover, caresses his face.

“What the hell?” My Gypsy blood finally boils, instincts taking over. “Give me that.” I reach out and grab the weapon, but he wrenches it out of my hand like it’s nothing.

“It was just a song, Aishe.”

“Didn’t look like a song to me. It looked like you were singing to your
girlfriend!
” I gasp the last word out, fingers splayed and empty.

“No, no. Don’t be sad.” He’s with me now. He’s left the gun and the pain. He hides deadly steel under his pillow and hoists up on his side for me. “Shit, I’m taking you down too. I’m so sorry.”

He strokes my cheek, wanting to comfort me, apologizing for before, for now, but my lungs spasm, wanting to flood out anguish, show him what I feel when he hides and doesn’t let me help.

Please let me in!

Emil’s eyes beseech of me that I leave him—I know it’s what they say.

“What would you do if I moved over to the crew bus and didn’t come back to you?” I hiss out.

He holds my face, indecision washing over his features. I think that he knows what he’d do. I think that he’s deciding whether to tell the truth or break my heart.

“You want to know?”

NO!

“Yes.”

“I’d hate not having you here, but I’d understand. I’d write songs. I’d sing. I’d be with groupies when I needed it. And I’d—” The break he inserts before the next words isn’t a good omen. He wants to spare my feelings, but then he can’t hold back. For the smallest beat, his stare hits the pillow where the revolver lies. “I’d play more with my sexy friend here.”

I wish his “sexy friend” RIP’d.

“I won’t give up on you that easily,” I whisper. Shifting deeper under the sheets, I hide my face and pat wet makeup away from my eyes.

Emil lets out a raspy breath. “I’ve done nothing to deserve you.” Then he pulls me in, sadness in every limb under our covers. “I wish I was strong enough to let you go.”

He’s a man.

He reacts to my nearness.

And I make him forget if even for a scanty hour.

EMIL

“No. We’re definitely
not playing it tonight, Emil. No promises, but at the earliest on the next tour.”

“Why the fuck not? Who makes decisions in this band, just you?” I look around at the two other members of Clown Irruption. All girls and crew members are gone, and we’re having a band meeting in our shower room—a single hotel room we rent for washing up on days when we’re sleeping on the bus. “Where’s Troll?” I ask.

“You think he’d support your case?” Troy asks, as hostile as he’s been lately. He’s icing his forearms down. We have a show in one hour. It’s sold out, and Bo insists we be at our best. Of course we will. It’s what we live for.

“What’s with your arms?” I ask.

“You’ve got to be kiddin’ me,” Elias mutters, turning to latch the window open. “Do you notice anything
lately? Troy’s been hitting the shit out of the drums. He’s not a finesse drummer, right? Remember this?”

“Power drummer, sure. And?”

“It’s okay. I’ll explain,” Troy tells Elias. His shoulders heave as he pulls a bright white T-shirt over his head and shakes his dreads free of the fabric.

“He’s been going caveman-style for a while now, dude. He’s
this
close to getting carpal tunnel or something. Whaddaya think it’s gonna look like for us if he can’t beat the drums anymore?”

Troy’s gaze levels on our friend, waiting for him to stop gesticulating. “Never mind me. I’ll manage. As long as I get new skins every night and the occasional drumstick replaced—”

“How many a night?” Elias breaks in again. “Troll’s getting them shipped in by the box now, right?”

“What does it matter? My drumming is not what this meeting’s about. I believe I’m doing just fine for Clown Irruption.”

“Elias, he’s right. Let’s get back on task, here. We’ve got another eight days in concert, then a few months off from touring. We’ll step down on practice so Troy’s arms can heal. Now, let’s save the remainder of this tour, shall we?”

The others’ attention goes to me.

“What’s wrong with a song named ‘I’m sorry?’” I ask.

“It would be fine if it weren’t the darkest we’ve ever sounded. It’s a different style, Emil. It’s not us,” says Bo. Mister Broody and Weird. No way?

“Oh so you can judge the level of darkness allowed now? What happened to…” I rummage through the songs from Bo’s gloomy past without Nadia. The ones alluding to hearts shattering, either his own or his ex’s.

Okay, so this song is different. It can’t be played with a hyped-up beat or with a jumping bass. It’s got to stay down there, the level of it,
just
fucking
killing
the way the words do.

I feel good singing those words, putting them on top of a melody I’ve created myself as well, one that Bo originally loved. Before he heard the lyrics. I don’t know why everyone looks so serious playing it. Troy glared. Bo just shook his head slowly after the first time we all played it together.

“Emil, we love you, man. It’s hard for us to understand what you’re going through. At this point, even I can’t fully immerse myself in it, but you have to think about the audience. This song. The way it needs to be played and the way you want to sing it? We’re slaughtering the fans, all right? We can’t do it to them, unprepared.”

“Please?” I don’t mean to sound like I’m choking on the word. “Ah. I need us to play it. It’s… it’s got to be played.”

Bo doesn’t pull away from my insistence. He meets me head-on, pupils swollen within his grey irises. He’s good at hiding what he thinks; a master of the stone-face. But if you’ve hung with him for most of your life, it’s not hard to see the compassion under that still surface.

Elias throws his hands open, staring at Bo. “You’re not considering it, right?”

“Emil. I see what you’re doing, but we need to make an effort for our fans. This is our livelihood,” Bo says.

“I don’t even know if I need a livelihood,” I say.

“What?” That’s Elias. “No need for food or drink or something to live off of?
Live
, man.
Livelihood.”

“Oh I’m aware of what it means.” The subject change is the first thing that’s caused me relief today. I open my mouth to continue.

“Emil.” Bo whips his demand out.

“What?”

“Listen. The song is great, and we play it like a motherfucker. But we’ve given our fans too many surprises on tour as it is, between your suicide version of ‘The Entertainer,’ and ‘Bullshit.’ We cannot do this to ourselves, okay?”

I open my mouth to dispute him again, but he lifts a hand, palm toward me to keep me quiet. “I’ll send an email to our publicist tonight. I’ll see if he can get something going. If he can spread the word on such short notice, perhaps our last show in New York could be the place we play it.”

There’s air escaping my throat in a relief I didn’t expect. I—fuck. I really need to sing this song to an audience. To all the girls. To my girl.

In case she listened.

“Promise,” I try to say out loud. I’m a mess, so I drop off the bed I’m sitting on and start digging inside my bag. Souvenirs given to me by fans. Underwear, dirty and clean ones mixed. I don’t even have an organized overnight bag off the bus anymore. But my revolver is there.

I clasp my fingers around it inside the bag. I don’t tote it in front of the others. I don’t want them to find out that it’s real.

“No promises,” Bo decides. “We’re checking with Ollie. If Ollie says he can put out a press release or whatever and prep the audience, maybe get a few journalists over there, I’m in. If not, we’ll record it on the next album, and we’ll play it on the spring tour.”

I don’t agree with him, but I’m unable to speak up.

I used to want so much. There isn’t much I want anymore. My girl. If I can’t have her, I want the freedom to roar out my agony and my regret.

I need them to give it to me.

I don’t know if the spring tour will be too late.

Soon it’s Christmas. Christmas break. Ha. I let my eyes roam over my friends, knowing that Bo will take Nadia to Skala to meet the family in Sweden. Troy will be with his fam in Los Angeles. Elias, probably back home too.

I can’t picture myself in Skala this year. Mom and Dad, my siblings, they’d be thrilled if I came, but it’ll be too fucking pretty. Layers of sparkling snow shining blue in the low, mid-winter sun. A postcard Christmas with real ornaments on real trees.
Tomtegubben
, our Santa Claus, visiting in person, making my nieces and nephews so damn happy it’s painful to watch, when all you want is to hear bullets explode so fucking close to your head.

My mother isn’t used to seeing me like this. She wouldn’t take it well. I’d do my mother a favor by staying away.

As we head out of the shower room, Bo passes out the set list for tonight’s gig. It doesn’t have many changes on there. We play the tunes people love and sing along to. Two of them are entirely my creations, and if this were before, I’d be damn stoked.

In the lobby, I see her walk through the door. Not my girl. My tour girl. She’s so beautiful my heart twists for her. Shiny locks slink along her frame all the way past that tight top to the waist of another Gypsy skirt. For the first time, I notice that her eyes are oval and tilt up at the outer edges. She’s fodder for lyrics, for sure, for a writer who loves.