“I don't know if I'm going to make it. My pancreas is killing me and I can't breathe. Will you meet me at the airport on Friday?”
It sounded like the choice between life and death.
“Just say you'll try.”
“I'll try.”
I didn't make it to the airport. Instead I spent the five and a half hours Paul was on the plane calling the airline's automated flight arrival and departure information number every fifteen minutes to check on the status of his trip just like I'd done when he'd left.
When I heard Paul's feet ricocheting off the stairs, I ran to the landing and leaned over the railing just far enough to get a peek at him. He was lugging his duffel bag over his shoulder, and his face looked jet-lagged and freakishly pale for someone who'd just spent the better part of the month in Southern California.
Without a word, he took me by the arm, dragged me into his room, and made me sit on the bed. At first I thought he was mad that I hadn't shown up to meet the plane, but he didn't look mad. He looked single-mindedly preoccupied.
“Nice to see you too,” I said.
Dropping his bag to the floor, he said, “Close your eyes,” and then picked up his guitar.
“What kind of hello is that?”
He leaned over, gave me a quick peck on the cheek, and then proceeded to tune the guitar. “Close your eyes.”
“Are you high?”
“Don't be ridiculous. I have a surprise for you. Now close your goddamn eyes.”
Once I complied, he said, “Okay. This is the sound of Paul Hudson making Clint happy. And the only reason I don't consider it selling out is…well, just listen…”
He did a vocal dance to find the right key, and then strummed a slow, melodic, dare I say “radio-friendly” tune and sang:
She is a dolphin. She is a keyhole.
She is a candle but the wind still blows.
She is a lover. She is a dance.
She is an angel but only at a glance.
The days before her never were
Nights alone now only a blur
I just want to go home to her
She is a choir. She is a hurricane.
She is the sun when it looks like rain.
She is granite. She is sand.
She won't tell me the way but she'll take my hand.
She is a virgin. She is a whore.
She gives it all and I beg for more.
With lace under her clothes she drinks my soul.
She opens up and swallows me whole.
Not only was it the most commercially viable song Paul had ever written, with a running time of less than four minutes, it was romantic, sexy, and remarkably close to being a ballad.
“It's about you,” he said.
This incited an emotional riot in me, and for a brief, irrational moment I didn't want anyone else to ever hear the song. I no longer wanted to share Paul with the world. I wanted to lock him up in that room and keep him there like a songbird in a cage. I wanted him to belong to me and only me. I didn't want his talent or his soul to be picked apart and trampled underfoot by Winkles and critics and all the potentially insensitive music listeners who might never dig deep enough to find a place for him.
He set the guitar on the floor and scooted toward me.
“It's beautiful,” I said. “What's it called?”
“Originally, ‘The Goddamn Single,' but Clint is forcing me to rethink that. I might name it after you just for shits and giggles.”
I flopped backward onto the bed, pulled Paul on top of me, and for the rest of the night, at least, he did belong to me and only me.
Some people believe in a master plan, that there's no such thing as free will, and humans are nothing but pawns in the chess game of the gods who sit up in the sky on their white fluffy clouds lavishing good fortune on a select few and conspiring against the rest.
I know better. Namely, I know that if I ever have the audacity to blame fate or God for holding a gun to my temple, I also have the wherewithal to remind myself that if I end up with a hole in my head, I was the one who pulled the trigger.
Those were the thoughts running through my mind after Paul turned to look out the window of the limousine and said, “Someone shoot me now. Please. Just put me out of my misery.”
“Gimme a gun,” Angelo grumbled.
“Chump,” Queenie said.
Vera threw ice at Paul's head. I rubbed his arm and said, “Don't be gay. This is going to be fun.”
We were on our way to a Labor Day picnic at Mr. Winkle's East Hampton compound. Winkle had called Feldman personally to make sure the band would make an appearance. He even sent the limo to pick them up. Although according to Paul, Winkle made it sound like a job requirement, not an invitation, emphasizing that there would be press there.
“Basically, the guy ordered us to come,” Paul said. “Who does that? Who orders people to a party?”
Feldman didn't agree. He considered the attention monumental. “Winkle's putting a lot of eggs in the Bananafish basket.”
“Mother-of-Pearl,” Vera said when we arrived at the gated entrance and started up the long, paved driveway to the stately Georgian mansion.
“I've died and gone to hell,” Paul said.
Before we got out of the car, Burke commented that the driveway looked like the yellow brick road to Oz.
“Yeah,” Paul said. “Oz in Hell.”
Paul stepped onto the lawn and looked around in disgust. “It's a goddamn heathen-and-pagan festival.”
There were at least three hundred people at the party, including numerous famous “heathens and pagans” I recognized right away, along with what Vera described as “the typical Hamptons crowd”—people who looked like they were about to either play or watch Polo.
“These are the same boneheads who used to come to all my events,” Vera said, referring to her former job in the nonprofit world. She pointed to a bejeweled woman slipping forks into her handbag. “See? All the money in the world and they steal things. Winkle should have a guard checking bags on the way out.”
Winkle's backyard was huge. There was a tennis court to the right of the patio, adjacent to the spot where a white, Barnum & Bailey-sized tent was set up, under which numerous buffets sat. And the lawn was overpopulated by round tables decorated with crisp linens and floral arrangements filled with voluptuous purple flowers. It looked more like a debutante's wedding reception than the Labor Day festivities of a music mogul.
Despite copious bars set up at various strategic locations inside and out, a perky waitress popped up to take drink orders the minute we stepped foot on the grass.
“Shit,” Paul said, squeezing my hand. “Here comes Winkle.”
I watched the man move across the lawn at a perfectly calculated, I-Am-the-Boss speed, as if he were on a public relations conveyor belt. His appearance surprised me. The way Paul talked about the guy, I'd expected a gargoyle. But Winkle had a friendly, working-class face. He looked like the lead singer of Styx during the Kilroy Was Here phase. And even though his eyebrows were white and bushy, he was younger than I'd imagined. Forty-five, tops.
Mrs. Winkle, donning a hat that seemed to have been designed to match the centerpieces on the tables, fell in line beside her husband and feigned knowing who the band was when Feldman announced them as Bananafish.
“Follow me,” Winkle told Paul and the Michaels. “There are people here you need to meet.”
In my ear, Paul whispered, “If we're not back by dark, call in the National Guard.”
The band trailed Winkle into the house a moment before the perky waitress returned with all the drinks. She appeared unglued about what to do with the orphaned glasses on her tray.
“Give them to me,” Queenie said, lifting the tray right off the waitress's arm.
I took my water-filled martini goblet, and as Queenie went to distribute libations to Paul and the Michaels, Vera and I made our way to the food tent, stopping at the end of the shortest line, behind a coup
le of men who were having an amicable dispute about which Doug Blackman record contained a song called “The Landscape You Made Me.”
“It's on Speaking Without Words,” a guy with thinning hair and a bulbous chin said as he scooped a heap of gourmet potato salad onto his plate.
The other guy, who was tall, had thick, shiny hair the color of bronze in the sun, and whose back was to me, mumbled, “Lay This Burden Down.”
The shiny-haired guy was right. As sure as I know my name, I know “The Landscape You Made Me” is the third track on Lay This Burden Down.
“I don't care who you are, you're wrong,” the big-chinned guy said. “While you were off in your oblivious little Brit-punk world, jacking off to the Clash, I was living and breathing Doug Blackman.”
“I'll bet you a grand,” the shiny-haired guy said to his friend.
“Make it two and it's a deal.”
They sealed the pact by setting down their plates, maneuvering their drinks into their left hands, and then shaking with their rights.
Vera nudged me. She wanted me to set the guys straight. Shrugging, I tapped Mr. Shiny Hair on the shoulder and said, “If you promise to split half the cash with me, I can settle—”
“Whoa. Hi there,” Vera said as soon as the guy turned around.
Like Vera, I recognized Loring Blackman immediately. Not just as Doug's oldest son, but as the man whose most recent record, Rusted—a gut-wrenching rhapsody about the breakup of his five-year marriage—happened to have been one of the biggest success stories of the last year, making its way into the number one album slot amidst the heathens and pagans, where it remained for four weeks straight.
It was hard not to notice Loring Blackman. His features were flawlessly proportioned and made complete aesthetic sense, as if a sculptor had used mathematical equations to calculate the ideal placement of eyes, nose, and mouth. He was the kind of man I would have normally referred to derogatorily as “clinically good-looking,” but there was something about him that enabled me to see beyond his handsomeness—he seemed to wear it like a burden; it often overshadowed his music, garnered him just as much attention as his famous father, and I could tell by the mortified expression on his face after Vera's greeting that he considered it to be nothing short of a curse.
The blond guy stepped in front of Loring. “What do you two know about Doug Blackman? You're girls.”
“Thanks for noticing,” Vera said.
“I have to pee,” I whispered to her.
Shaking his head, Loring turned toward me and muttered, “Don't pay attention to Tab. He just spent the better part of the year on the road and what few social graces he had are long gone.”
Loring's voice was deep and he spoke so quietly I had to take a step forward to hear him.
“What are you implying?” Vera asked Tab, helping herself to two slices of watermelon, handing one to me. “Girls aren't allowed to like Doug Blackman?”
“Call me sexist,” Tab said. “But Doug's a man's man. Women just don't understand that kind of pain.”
“Ha,” I said.
Loring smiled at me. Tab said, “Are you a musician? If not, then you don't know what you're talking about.”
“She writes about music,” Vera announced.
Loring asked me who I wrote for but I just shrugged. I knew Sonica was on his shit list. The needle dick who wrote the review of Loring's record tore it apart by comparing every one of his songs to one of his father's, proclaiming that he was nothing but a poor imitation of the master. Then Lucy Enfield added insult to injury by having the nerve to bombard Loring with numerous requests for a cover story once he hit number one. After enduring months of her begging, he wrote her a wry letter declaring, in no uncertain terms, that he wouldn't grant an interview to Sonica if his life depended on it.
Tab lurched toward me and began playing with the fringe on the scarf I had around my neck. “Who are you, the president of the Doug Blackman fan club?”
Tab's chin had a deep cleft, reminding me of a butt, and I had to make an effort not to laugh at it.
“Trust me,” I said, yanking the scarf out of his hand and then looking at Loring, thinking he might back me up while I sparred with his friend. But as soon as our eyes met, Loring glanced down at the untouched tomato, basil, and mozzarella salad on his plate, and I categorized him as shy to the point of being backward.
“You gotta give me better proof than that,” Tab said.
Vera picked up a cube of cheese, plopped it in her mouth, and said, “Hmm. Coke? Pepsi? Oh, sorry, Tab —I happen to know that my friend here was listening to that record the first time she had sex. Trust me, a girl's not going to forget a thing like that.”
“Vera .”
Tab bit the side of his cheek, causing his butt-chin to shoot out even farther as he nodded with a newfound affection for his adversary. “You know,” he told Vera, “if you ixnaed the glasses, you'd be hot. In a math teacher sorta way. And I think you've convinced me.” He elbowed Loring. “She convince you, Lori?”
Loring was still staring at his tomato. “I didn't need convincing.”
I was about to pee my pants. As gracefully as possible, I spit two watermelon seeds onto the lawn and started dragging Vera away.
“Mother-of-Pearl,” Vera said as we entered the house. “What a face on that guy. Whew. Can you say hottie?”
After I peed, it took me five minutes to find Paul in the crowd. When I spotted him he was making his way to the gazebo, shouting: “Samuel goddamn Langhorne!”
He was addressing Loring, who looked up and squinted, visibly trying to place the face in front of him.
“Hudson?” Loring finally said, wiping off his hand and extending it out to Paul. “I'll be damned.”
The two men greeted each other like long lost war buddies. Paul congratulated Loring on his recent success and Loring dismissed the applause, seemingly more interested in what was happening with Paul's career.
“You're Bananafish?” Loring said. “No kidding, there's a serious buzz about you guys. The next Drones, right?”
Paul rolled his eyes and invited Loring to stop by Rings of Saturn on Saturday to judge for himself. “We're kicking off a two-week club tour around the East Coast. It's our last New York show until the record's released.”
I stepped up beside Paul and he said, “Ah. Here's my betrothed.”
With a weak smile, Loring looked up and said, “Hi again.”
“You two met already?” Paul said.
“Not officially.” Loring extended his hand and introduced himself to me in a way that was humble and self-effacing.
“Eliza Caelum,” I said, straightening the bra strap that kept falling out from under my T-shirt. “FYI, you might want to put a leash on your friend. He tried to follow my sister-in-law into the bathroom.”
“Tab's not my friend, he's my drummer,” Loring teased. Then his eyes spun. “Wait a second. What did you say your name was?”
Shit, I thought. He couldn't possibly know.
“You work for Sonica, don't you?”
I shook my head and Loring nodded, laughing. “Yes, you do. I know who you are. You're the girl who stalked my dad in Cleveland.”
“Busted,” Paul quipped.
With his thumb, Loring pointed toward the food tent. “Why didn't you say anything over there?”
“I know you're not a big Sonica fan.”
“Forget Sonica,” Loring said. “My dad told me so much about you, I feel like I know you.”
I found that virtually impossible to believe. “Can I just say, for the record, I didn't stalk him. I—”
But then Mrs. Winkle came rushing over to tell Loring that her sixteen-year-old daughter wanted to have her picture taken with him. As the woman dragged the hapless rock star away, Paul yelled, “See ya ‘round, Sam!”
“Same time, next year, this could be you,” Loring said, waving as if he were going off to war.
Loring was in trouble and he knew it. He heard the warning bells
and a voice in his head telling him that if he were smart, he would walk back out the door and disappear into the crowd on Houston Street.
The voice said flee.
It said fool.
Unfortunately, Tab's voice was louder: “There she is. At the bar.”
Loring saw no point in denying the reason he'd come to Rings of Saturn. For the last hour—hell, for the last four days—he'd been telling himself it was to see the band. But when he saw the girl slouching over the bar, her chin in her palm, with a tropical flower tucked haphazardly behind her ear, he knew it had nothing to do with the band.
She hadn't spotted him yet. The bartender, who looked like a one-eyed Hell's Angel, had her undivided attention, and was in the middle of an exhaustive explanation on the science of how one could ascertain the distance of a storm in miles simply by counting the number of seconds between thunder and lightning.
“Some people think the lightning can happen without the thunder,” the bartender said. “Not possible. Just because you can't hear it, doesn't mean it's not rumbling out there somewhere.”
Loring didn't want to interrupt what looked like a profound, if not one-sided conversation on the wonders of meteorological phenomena. But if he'd been hoping to remain unobtrusive, bringing Tab along had been the wrong move.
“Don't just stand there, you shithead. Stop gawking and say hello.”
“I'm not gawking.”
“You're a rock star, for fuck's sake. At least get her phone number.”
“Tab, she's engaged.”
That's when she looked over and waved.
“Eliza Caelum,” Loring muttered, as if he'd happened upon her by chance.
After asking the bartender to excuse her, she rotated her barstool in Loring's direction and said, “Paul didn't think you were going to show up,” at which point Loring decided he was obligated to stay. For Paul.
Tab took Eliza's hand, kissed the top of it, and then said he was going upstairs to get a table.
Without Tab acting as wingman, Loring couldn't think of anything to say except, “Can I get you another drink?”