The two little lines creased in his forehead.
“For someone so smart, you can be a scatterbrain. Never wear short sleeves on a plane. In the event of a fire, your arms would be pizza crust.”
“In the event of a fire, my arms would be the least of my problems.”
I grabbed the shirt's tag. “Synthetic. This is nothing but ground-up plastic. It would melt right into your skin.”
“My Kevlar shirt was at the cleaners,” he said.
“Joke all you want. If I were you I'd wear a race car driver's suit. Leather is your best bet. After that, pure wool, then untreated cotton.”
Loring kissed the top of my head and laughed. “Can you imagine the field day the press would have if I walked through JFK in a racing suit?”
I wished he hadn't mentioned JFK. JFK reminded me of Paul.
“Eliza, can we talk seriously for a minute?”
I felt my face twist into a grimace. Talking seriously, to Loring, meant asking questions that seldom provided him with the answers he wanted. And it was too late to start lying to him, he knew too much.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he said.
“Like what?”
“Like you just bit into a lemon.”
I was sitting on the bed with my back against the headboard, hoping Independence Day would never come, and trying to adjust my sour face so as to appear normal. “You've been gone almost a week. Can't we just fool around?”
He finished separating his dirty clothes from his clean ones, dropped what needed to be washed into a big ball on the floor, and then sat down. “What is it we're doing?”
The question suffused me with inexplicable sorrow.
And Loring was slouching. Usually he had excellent posture, but he suddenly seemed depleted of all upper-body strength. “I found myself talking about you a lot while I was gone. Of course it never failed that someone would ask who you were and I didn't know what to say—she's my friend, she's my roommate, she's the girl I'm sleeping with? What am I supposed to call you?”
“Last weekend, Vera and I met a guy in Prospect Park who, for a dollar, made up a rap using our names. He told us to call him Yo-Yo. Why don't you call me Yo-Yo?”
Loring neither smiled nor laughed. “Help me out here, please.”
“Sorry. What do you want to call me?”
“Mine.”
I sighed, and Loring's expression grew even more staid. “At least tell me this,” he said. “Tell me what's going to happen on the fourth.”
“I'm not going to the show, if that's what you mean.”
“That's the least of it. Eliza, I need to know if it's really over between you and Paul, or if I should be prepared to watch you pack your bags, hail you a cab, and wave goodbye while you drive back to your own personal Jesus down on Ludlow Street and out of my life for good.”
In a million years Loring could not have realized the significance of his word choice. If he had, there's no way he would have said it.
“Reach out and touch faith,” I mumbled.
But Jesus didn't live on Ludlow Street. The following night I rode the train down to Second Avenue and walked by my old apartment, and it looked so completely Jesus-less I couldn't believe I'd ever been fool enough to think otherwise.
For at least ten minutes I stood outside the building. And then, more or less unconsciously, I headed in the direction of Rings of Saturn, jaywalking at the intersection, almost wishing a car would turn without looking and flatten me.
John the Baptist stopped what he was doing. “Well, if it isn't Miss American Pie.”
His eye was disconcerting. I couldn't tell, from where I was standing, if he was looking in my direction. “Are you talking to me?”
“Yeah, I'm talking to you. Who else would I be talking to?” He fixed me a drink and said he'd missed me. “So, how's our boy? He enjoying the life of a rock star?”
I knew, by way of Vera, that Paul had spent a lot of time drowning his sorrows in Rings of Saturn after our breakup. There was no doubt in my mind John knew the score.
“Don't be gay,” I said.
“Whatever you say, Miss American Pie.”
“Why do you keep calling me that?”
“It's a good name for you. Know where Don McLean got the title for that song?”
“No.”
“Supposedly, American Pie was the name of the plane that crashed and killed Buddy Holly.”
If John was trying to be funny, he was failing. “That's a horrible name for me. And anyway, what kind of idiot gets on a plane named after a pastry? He should've known better.”
” We should all know better, Miss American Pie.”
Leith was having a wrap party for the cast and crew of an indie film he'd just cut, and I'd promised to meet Loring there at ten, but it was after eleven when I left Rings of Saturn and started walking toward Leith's place on Leonard Street. Halfway there, I took out my phone intending to call Loring, to tell him I was on my way, but when I passed a wall of fliers advertising the upcoming Drones show at Madison Square Garden, something possessed me to call Paul instead.
I loitered on the corner of Canal and Broadway looking at the posters, looking at my phone, trying to work up the courage to send the call, and reasoning that it came down to one basic fact: Loring deserved an answer to his question, but I couldn't be Yo-Yo or anything else to Loring until I learned where I stood with Paul.
At the last second I almost abandoned the cause, but then I realized I had nothing to lose that wasn't already gone and I pushed “send.”
Paul picked up on the third ring. The sound of his voice was like a defibrillator to my chest. I wanted so badly to hate him, but his voice had the power to flood all my enmity and water it down to nothing but a steady stream of longing. Despite everything, I swore I could still hear a burning supernova of hope and truth and love inside that voice.
It wasn't until his third “Hello” that I finally spoke.
“Please don't hang up.”
He cleared his throat. Behind him, a girl's voice said, “Baby, who is it?”
Paul told the girl to go back to sleep. Into the phone he said, “You still there?”
“I'm here.”
“Hold on.”
I listened to what might have been a sliding-glass door open and close. I pictured Paul shirtless, a sheet wrapped around his lower body like a holy shroud, leaning over a hotel balcony.
It was beyond heartache, imagining Paul like that. It was heart obliteration.
“What do you want?” he growled.
“I'm not sure. I was just walking down the street, I saw posters for the show, and thought I'd call and see how things were going.”
I heard him drag a lengthy stretch of smoke into his lungs. “I'll ask one more time. What the hell do you want?”
I stifled the urge to call him a bastard, and another one to cry I love you. My eyes were fixed on a water tank atop the building across the street. “I need to know what I am to you.”
He laughed, but the sound translated into contempt. “What's the matter, you and The Thief have a spat?” I heard him take another drag. “By the way, you're affectionately known as The Liar.”
His voice was sharp as spit and every word that came out of his mouth was thicker and more venomous than the last.
“Can you be civil for a minute?” I pleaded. “We used to be friends, remember?”
“Friends don't lie and cheat.”
“What if I told you the truth is a lot more convoluted than you think?”
“Is it true you lied to me?”
“Yes, but—”
“Can you take it back?”
“No, but I can almost explain it away, if you'd give me a chance.”
“How about how you're fucking someone else? Can you explain that away?”
He kind of had me in the corner there. Nevertheless, I found his position staggeringly hypocritical. “Can you?”
“We're not talking about me. The quest
ion is: can you or can you not change the fact that you suck Loring Blackman's dick?” He waited, and when I didn't respond he said, “Answer me.”
I sighed. “No.”
There was a loud bang in my ear, like Paul had taken the phone and hit the wall with it. “I can't do this, Eliza. I can't talk to you.”
“I answered your question. At least answer mine.”
“Fine. You want to know what you are to me? You're my guitarist's sister. My old roommate. After that, you're nothing. Zero. Naught. Nil. Zip. Zilch. Don't call me again.”
“I won't, you—”
He hung up before I could get the rest out.
In mutiny, I dialed Leith's apartment.
A male voice answered, party static behind him, and I asked to speak with Loring. I heard the voice yell something about Loring being wanted on the phone. A second later the voice got back on the line and said, “Who can I say is calling?”
“Tell him it's his girlfriend.”
Because of the security measures implemented after 9/11, we arrived for our flight out of Miami ridiculously early, but the weather was shitty, there were thunderstorms and hurricane-force winds all over Southern Florida, and they told us it would be at least an hour before we'd take off.
I didn't feel like sitting around the lounge so I hit the sundry shop. I got a bag of pistachios and a carton of cigarettes for myself, and a bottle of perfume for Jill—she went back to San Francisco to restock her suitcase and is planning on meeting up with me before the show at the Garden.
At the newsstand, I stopped for some reading material. I picked up a novel called Hallelujah, written by some guy who, according to the inside flap, had died in a drowning accident before the book's publication. I opened the book to a random page and read the first sentence my eyes landed on:
“I couldn't give in to them because I knew that if I did, I'd be giving away the part of me that belonged to her.”
I bought the book. I also bought a few magazines: Sonica, Time, and with the acme of reluctance, GQ.
“GQ?” Burke laughed as we boarded the plane. “Since when do you read GQ?”
I'd tried to hide that one, but Burke grabbed it from under my stack. And when he saw Loring on the cover next to the headline: Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Happiness—Blackman Speaks Candidly, he put it back and said, “Ah, man, why do you have to torture yourself like that?”
Now I understand what Eliza meant when she complained about pity. Burke's face was a goddamn symphony of the stuff.
Less than five minutes after we took off, the first officer announced they were expecting moderate to severe turbulence for the next half hour. He asked everyone to stay in their seats with their seatbelts fastened until he shut off the sign.
I didn't think it was any big deal, but most of the tour personnel, who were seated toward the back, acted like they'd just been told the plane was going down. They all started rustling in their seats, their lips formed little Os of worry, and they talked in these hushed tones that sounded like a bunch of elves behind me.
But the real ruckus was coming from the front of the plane, where Ian was laughing and singing a drunken medley that included the best of Jim Croce, Pasty Cline, Harold “Hawkshaw” Hawkins, Rick Nelson, and every other music-related plane-crash fatality that popped into his blueberry-sized brain.
Eliza would have hated that. With a passion only she would have been capable of exhibiting.
Burke put on his earphones and fidgeted. Angelo bounced his way up to the galley and armed himself with a can of tomato juice and a mini bottle of Smirnoff. I asked him to grab me a soda and he told me to fuck off. Angelo and I haven't been getting along. He keeps accusing me of undermining my success and I keep lecturing him about falling prey to the trappings of the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. Another week on the road and I'm sure it would've come to blows.
The flight got bumpy, worse than I'd ever experienced. But what can you do? It's not like they could pull over and let us out. I tightened my seatbelt and stared out the window. And maybe Burke was right. Maybe I do like to torture myself. Because I kept trying to picture all the things Eliza would have been doing if she'd been there. I knew exactly what she would have wanted to do—walk up to Ian and kick him, only she would have been too afraid to get out of her seat.
“Turbulence is like driving on a worn-out road,” I would have explained to her. “Just a couple potholes. Nothing to worry about.” Then I would have pulled down the shades, held both of her hands and sang “To Sir with Love” or something by Jeff Buckley until the bumps went away.
The plane flew into a thicker, darker cloud, and we all shook like little bits on the inside of a rattle. That's when Burke tapped me on the shoulder and asked me if I was scared. I wasn't. “Not with that guy around,” I said, pointing at Caelum asleep across the aisle. “He's a guardian angel for the whole rotten bunch of us.”
According to my calculations, the law of probability was on our side, as the likelihood of Michael being in a plane crash after losing his parents in one seemed nonexistent. No exaggeration, the plane could've run out of fuel or flown into a wind shear and I still would've expected to walk away unscathed. Had Eliza been with us we'd have been doubly blessed.
“Bring on the hurricane!” I shouted. “Fate is on our side!”
Burke said if I didn't shut up I was going to jinx the flight, but I assured him that the jerk-off up front singing “Crazy Train” at the top of his lungs was the real bad luck charm.
Just between me and you, tape recorder, the reason Burke was such a basket case was because he'd had a little incident in Austin where he'd gotten drunk and ended up fooling around with some chubby blond who worked for the caterer. Only Burke. There are supermodel-caliber groupies everywhere and he ends up with the caterer. Anyway, to say he felt guilty is an understatement. He was positive the flight was the wrath of God raining down on him. And he swore he was going to confess to Queenie as soon as he got home. Then he said, “Do you think I should tell her? Paul? I should tell her, right?”
Thinking about Eliza had put me in a crappy mood. Burke's my friend, he needed my shoulder to lean on, but you know how I answered him? I told him it didn't matter. I reminded him that Eliza and Queenie were friends, and that meant Queenie had probably been screwing the mailman while Burke was gone.
Burke called me an asshole and turned the movie up so loud I heard voices coming out of his ears.
I spent the rest of the trip dwelling on how Eliza should have been sitting next to me on that plane, and how she should have been my goddamn wife. And what did I get in her place? Loring Blackman's perfect GQ face staring out from the seat pocket in front of me. Even if I was wrong about fate, losing an engine or flying directly into the eye of the storm couldn't have been much worse than that.
With Burke distracted, I pulled out the magazine. One more look at the cover and I decided the whole thing was part of a plot to destroy me. Loring had allowed his face to grace the pages simply to crush yours truly. Loring had “Eliza Is Mine” written all over him. Loring had “I'm head over heels” in his smile. He had “too bad, Paul” in his eyes.
But you know what hurts the most? In so many ways Loring is everything I'm not, everything I'll never be, and honestly, part of me doesn't blame Eliza for choosing him.
Let Loring be her goddamn messiah. Let Loring save the world with his sappy goddamn radio songs. I'm not trying to save the world, I'm just trying to save myself. And hell, I can't even do that.
All his humble-ass bullshit was bad enough. I certainly didn't need to see the two of them together like that. But there they were—The Thief and The Liar in a candid, picture-perfect love embrace.
Life, Love, and the Goddamn Pursuit of Happiness.
Funny. Ha Ha.
I call it highway robbery.
Overoveroveroverover.
All I wanted was a Snickers. I was in the 59th Street station, standing in a zigzag of strangers, trying to forget the words to that
old Tom Waits song about riding the train with girls from Brooklyn, the one about being lonely, when the craving hit. Before that I'd been musing over the likelihood that one of the strangers would turn around and be Paul. Almost eight million to one, I figured. I had a better chance of getting hit by the subway than I did of running into Paul while I was riding it.
It was a brilliant idea, pretending pain was hunger. I walked to the newsstand for a candy bar and the first thing I saw was Loring on the cover of GQ. Compared to my plummeting blood sugar—i.e., self-induced, world-weary malaise—he was nothing more than a random face on a magazine.
A few bites into the Snickers, I regained my equilibrium enough to admit that Loring looked quite handsome in the photo. And yet the idea that his face was right there gave me a headache. Or maybe that was the chocolate. Something felt inappropriate. Loring seemed vulnerable and manipulated. A Winkle's pawn.
I realized how hypocritical my sentiments were considering I'd encouraged Paul to become the sacrificial lamb of rock ‘n’ roll, and I immediately questioned the rightness of my decisions, but the idea that I might have been pursuing a selfish, erroneous goal was too hard a pill to swallow, and so I spit it out.
Paul had gotten what he'd wanted. He was content. I had to believe that.
With no sign of the train, I picked Loring up off the rack and read for distraction:
…Blackman lights up at the mention of her name, and when pressed for details about his new girlfriend (Eliza Caelum, a journalist), all he'll say at first is, “She's an amazing girl and I'm really happy.”
Slowly, Blackman opens up and tells me the story of how the two met.
“I was standing in a buffet line at a party when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around and almost dropped my plate.”
Rumor has it Blackman romanced his new live-in love right out from under the nose of Paul Hudson, lead vocalist for Bananafish, the band Loring toured with earlier this year. It's a rumor he adamantly denies.
“That's not how it happened at all,” he says.