Being Frank (16 page)

“Look, I know you're upset,” he said, softening a little when he saw my pathetic attempt at coolness. Then he explained that one of the guys in the band had called Mrs. Zappa and told all sorts of lurid tales about our little ‘road romance'. Frank knew it was a bald attempt to get me kicked off the tour, but under the circumstances he had no choice. Clearing his throat, he said, “In the morning we're going on to Toronto. I think you should go back to L.A. But” -- he cleared his throat (
stalling for time
, I thought) -- “I've been watching you go through changes over some of this stuff, and I don't want to keep putting you through that. Do you understand?”

"Sure, I understand. You're tired of me and want to get rid of me. You've gotten whatever you wanted, and now it's time for you to move on. Don't sweat it, I'll go. There's no point
my
having any feelings on the subject.”

Frank took an inadvertent step backward and almost stumbled. From the look on his face it seemed as if I'd suddenly breached the place where he kept his unbearable memories at bay behind rusted iron doors. Then with an effort he recovered, reached down, and tugged me to my feet, pulling me close to him and holding me there.

“You don't understand. I care about you, but with you here all the time, there's just too much going on. It gets in the way of the things I have to do if I have to be thinking about you and worrying about you all the time.”

Jeez, that sounded almost flattering. Was I that much of a distraction?

I should have been angry, but I only felt sadness — sadness unto death. If I could have managed to blurt out the truth, that I loved him and wanted him to treat me like a human being, with dignity and respect — I have no doubt that he would have understood. He'd always wanted to hear that from me. But it was probably too late. Miss Moviola wasn't even part of the problem; the
real
problem was that I had no place in Frank's life, and I never would have. I hadn't wanted to think about this moment, although it had been inevitable from the beginning. Now it was here, and there was nothing I could say to forestall it. I just pressed my face against Frank's shirt and stood there in dumb agony, too hurt and too proud to speak.

Frank held me close to him, his silence eloquent. There was nothing
he
could say, either. Whatever the situation, it wasn't in his character to lie about it or even to soft-pedal it. My thoughts raced painfully — if he wasn't going to say something, maybe I had better. But what? Something? Anything? He'd blasted away my reserve, but the abyss remained, an unbridgable chasm...

I was inundated with scenes from the previous two months: airports, coffee shops, cars, buses... motel rooms:
dark universe, billions and billions. . . enveloped, exploding,. . . that voice: “Maybe we can get one together.”
I saw him onstage, masterfully controlling the band... What was that hand signal again — “
Let me know...
”?

I thought of Miss Moviola, of the mutant beast with two backs. That did it: with a blinding flash of light Zurkon's universe imploded, and all of a sudden I was standing in an antiseptic motel Living room with an ugly brocade couch and a shag carpet, in the arms of a tall, gangly
Italian guy who smelled like coffee and cigarettes and desperately needed a shave.

... Nothing
.

There wasn't a fucking thing I could say.

In the morning I rode to JFK on the band bus. I was full of raging emotions — despair, frustration, anger — but mostly I felt an aching sense of loss and injustice, as though I were being unfairly expelled from Utopia. Frank was plainly and visibly exhausted. He'd stayed up with me until almost 5 a.m.; I'd finally fallen asleep with my head on his shoulder, cut off in mid-whimper by a snore. He woke me an hour or so later. Now he was all business, the road rat on fast forward. He had his suitcases and gear waiting by the door, and in very few words he told me to get packed; the bus was waiting downstairs, and everyone but us was on it.

For the first time since I'd joined the tour, we didn't sit together; looking like death warmed over, he deliberately took a seat by himself in the back of the bus. Miss Moviola had given him a parting gift, a smutty novel by Aleister Crowley.
How very appropriate
. I peeked back at him. He was pretending to read it, but the wasn't turning the pages very fast.

At the airport I had to find a flight to LAX; I hadn't had time to make a reservation by phone. At least I had plenty of dough — Frank had settled up with me before leaving that morning, in cash. (I couldn't help wondering where those brand new hundreds and fifties came from. As I stuck the ‘wad' in my wallet, it all seemed slightly sleazy to me, although the explanation wasn't anything more sinister than the fact that Frank, knowing I didn't have a checking account, had gotten the cash for me from Herbie or Dick.)

Frank and his band of merry men were bound for the international flight section. As they headed off in that direction, some of the guys were spiritedly bellowing a little ditty, full of charming obscenities about the tits and ass and cheap thrills to be found just around the bend. It sounded pathologically cheerful in that dismal terminal, and there were gloomy glares from the gray commuters waiting for their grim flights to their bleak destinations in the freezing North.

I had written a little farewell note to Frank, and I walked over and handed it to him. It said:

 

F.Z. —

I know you don't believe in love. Well, then, take mine and use it for uacuum cleaner bags or something.

—
N.L.

He tucked it into the back of the book, but didn't seem about to actually read it, at least not in front of me. I knew better than to expect anything as conventional as “Goodbye, it's been nice knowing you” from him; he'd bid me farewell in front of a sold-out house in Carnegie Hall last night, and then he'd kicked out my ass in private — what more did I want? Skywriting? What a fucking masochist I was!

I forced myself not to hesitate; without further ado I turned and began to trudge resolutely toward the domestic flight counters. I had to physically struggle not to turn around and take one last look at him, but I managed to get around the corner without doing it.

It was just my accursed luck that there were no nonstops available to LAX that day; the only flight out of there before midnight required a transfer at O'Hare in Chicago. When I boarded the plane for the first leg of the flight, I felt like I was being nailed into my coffin. The minute I was in my seat I accosted the stewardess and demanded a double dry vodka martini. She hesitated, and I groaned inwardly,
Oh shit, what a time for me to get carded again.
Then, seeing my haggard face, she quietly went back to the galley and brought out two plastic cups full of clear liquid, a twist of lemon dangling over each rim. “On the house, sweetie,” she said simply. A saint.

I took a deep, soul-saving quaff, opened my carry-on bag, and looked around inside it for something to keep me from going crazy. And
what were the first objects there from to catch my eye? Frank's sock —
The Sock
, my fetish totem — and my fucking
journal
. I heard Guitar Slim moaning, “You're all packed up and ready to leave me, baby, and the good Lord knows I'm about to die... but just before you leave me, please give me something to remember you by...”

“I hate you, Frank Zappa,”
I growled savagely into the first martini. It was almost gone. I drained it and seized the other with a hand that should have been covered in coarse black hair.

My seatmate, a motherly Midwestern sort of lady, who was sitting next to the window, turned and stared at me as if she'd just seen me take off my shirt and reveal a snarling werewolf tattooed across my tits in flaming red.

Stuck in the bottom of my bag I found the copy of “Slaughterhouse Five” I'd bought at some airport gift shop several weeks ago but had been too
otherwise occupied
to find time to read. Well, there was
plenty
of time now. Yes, I was
choking
on the stuff. Didn't it just feel
great
, ladies and gentlemen?

This was going to be
twelve hours in hell
. I downed the last martini in a single horrible gullop, belched atavistically, and stuck out my
poot-stomper
to trip the stewardess as she came up the aisle wheeling the drink cart. From some recess of the damp, echoing grottoes in my mind I heard a strangled half-growl, half-groan, the sound of incisors quietly, efficiently rending epidermis as
Werewolves Ripped My Flesh
...

By the way, I've never been back to New York since then.

B
ack in L. A, again, and things were, with due apologies to Fats Waller, slightly less than wonderful. I had been gone for more than two months, and my father had been forced to replace me in the shipping department. My mother, meanwhile, had appointed herself a media vigilante vs.
The Zappa Threat
. She had seen Frank being interviewed on the Johnny Carson Show (taped while we were in New York) and determined that he was a]
a degenerate
; b]
a drug addict
; c]
suffering from some acute and nameless disease not classifiable by medical science, but still eminently communicable
; and/or d]
Sicilian
, and therefore automatically
a card-carrying member of the Cosa Nostra
. She was batting. 500 on item d] and more or less in the ballpark with item a], but I was sorry she was so set against him. I wished there was some way she could understand how, despite the contradictory nature of our relationship, he had sometimes bordered on being the best mother I'd ever had.