Catherine (27 page)

Cooper was directing a swarm of roadies. He didn’t exactly look happy to see me. “Didn’t
I tell you to wait at the juice bar?”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I saw Hence leave.”

“He could come back at any second.”

“I don’t think so. He and Stan looked like they were headed somewhere to catch up.”

“You could tell that just by looking at them?” Coop had a black smudge on his cheek.
I wanted to reach over and wipe it away, but I was pretty sure that would have annoyed
him even further. “Get across the street. I’ll come find you when I’ve got a free
second,” he said, brushing past me on his way back out to the truck.

I should probably have done as he said, but instead I found myself wandering deeper
into the club’s dark interior. It looked like Cooper and the staff had been busy cleaning
all morning; the kitchen sink was free of dirty glasses, and the bar had been thoroughly
stocked with cocktail napkins and those little plastic stirrers. So I pressed on,
and found the door to Hence’s office ajar. Though it maybe wasn’t so wise, I couldn’t
help myself; I slipped in and switched on the light. The hole he’d punched in the
wall had been patched, and the room had been tidied up.

I wandered over to the wall of eight-by-ten glossies of musicians from the seventies
to the present, like a time line of bands, some I recognized and a whole lot of others
I didn’t. Looking at them made me wish I hadn’t been exiled from The Underground,
with all its noise, neon, and excitement. How would I ever return to my ordinary life
in the suburbs?

“If Hence comes back and finds you staking out his office…” Cooper’s voice from behind
me brought my musings to a screeching halt.

“I didn’t touch anything.” I held out my palms to show they were empty. “I wasn’t
snooping.”

“Then what are you doing in here?” Cooper massaged his temples, like I was giving
him a headache.

I gestured toward the glossies. “Looking at the bands. Wishing I knew more about music.
Wishing I hadn’t been exiled to Brooklyn.”

He dug his hands in his pockets and looked intently at me through the shag of his
bangs, waiting for me to say more, but I wasn’t in the mood.

“I’ll go,” I said. “I know this is a big day, and you’re busy. In fact, I’ll go back
to Jackie’s. You can call me later… or just text.”

“Stop,” Coop said. “Listen. I didn’t drag you all the way here so we could pick a
time to meet up tomorrow.”

“Why, then?”

“There’s a place where you can watch tonight’s show without being seen,” he said.
“From the mixing room. It has a smoked-glass window. Nobody will be able to see you.
Hence sometimes watches from there, but he won’t tonight.”

“You want to sneak me in during a show?”

“You
need
to be here tonight. Hence is going to join the band onstage. He hasn’t played since
the last time Rat Behavior came through town, and he’ll try to beg out of it, but
Stan will insist. You’ve got to see him. Onstage. The way he used to be.”

“But what if Hence finds out?”

Coop lowered his voice. “I’m starting to like living dangerously.” Despite the sly
look in his blue-green eyes, I couldn’t help thinking that maybe he wasn’t completely
kidding.

“Seriously. You could lose your job.”

“Only if you get caught. Stay out of sight, and come around to the back just before
the show starts.” Now he was walking me toward the door, looking both ways before
ushering me out. “I’ll be busy, but I’ll keep checking for you, so don’t leave.”

That night, Coop sneaked me into the mixing room, a chamber so dark, musty, and tangled
with wires it seemed like the kind of place rats might burrow in. I took a seat on
the heavy table beside all the equipment, cross-legged to keep myself safely out of
reach of vermin. I was excited—not only was I going to see another show, I was doing
it on the sly. Plus, I’d get to spy on Hence.

I could see and hear really well from my little nest—I could even feel the buzz of
excitement from the growing crowd, to the point where it was hard to sit still for
the warm-up bands and the roadies shuffling instruments and equipment in between sets.
It would have been so nice to have someone tucked in the dark beside me, to share
my sense that something exciting was coming.

The main room filled up slowly. Just when I couldn’t sit still a minute longer, Rat
Behavior took the stage, and the buzz of the audience escalated to a roar. There were
four of them—two pale, wiry, near-identical guitarists; the stocky, bearded bassist;
and Stan Hodicek, tall and lean, his black hair mussed and spiky, who
waved here and there at faces in the crowd before settling in behind his drum kit.
Stan shouted, “One, two, three, four!” and the band launched into its first song,
a blast of sound—grungy guitars and a booming bass that sent the crowd bouncing up
and down to the beat. Forgetting about the
actual
rats I’d feared might be running around the room, I slipped down from the table and
danced a little in place as I listened.

The next song was as good as the first. As I lost myself in the noise and the beat,
I still paid special attention to Stan. After all, he’d known my mother. He seemed
good-natured and goofy, grinning as he slammed away at his drums, and I mused about
how if only my mother had fallen in love with him instead of Hence, maybe things would
have gone better for her, and she’d have had her happy ending. Maybe she’d be here
now, waiting backstage with a smile on her face.

But of course I never would have been born.

Before long, the show drove all other thoughts out of my head. Rat Behavior was more
than just good, and I resolved to download all of their music when I got home. Maybe
I’d slip Coop some money to buy me a T-shirt from the merchandise table. When I saw
Larissa again, I could act all nonchalant about how I’d seen Rat Behavior at the legendary
Underground. Oh, and, incidentally, that I was descended from rock-and-roll royalty.

The band played full throttle for so long that even I was starting to feel wrung out.
Just when I was wondering if maybe Cooper had been wrong about Hence joining the band
onstage, Stan slipped out from behind his drum set to address the audience.

“Tonight…” He repeated the word a few times, waiting for
the crowd to simmer down before continuing. “Tonight a special guest will be joining
us for a few songs—one of the greatest musicians I’ve ever had the pleasure to work
with. No. Scratch that. One of the greatest musicians in rock and roll. Period. He
gave it all up to play host to hundreds of up-and-coming bands, to give them a leg
up and all of us a venue for hearing the best music out there. He doesn’t get up onstage
much anymore, so anytime he does, it’s an event.”

Throughout the night, there had been a low-level buzz of conversation between songs,
but now Stan’s words echoed in the sudden stillness. “So please welcome my old friend…
and yours… Hence.”

The applause was so loud it startled me. I pressed my forehead to the glass window,
trying for a clearer view, wishing I could be right in front of the stage. From where
I was sitting, I could see the look on Hence’s face as he strapped on his guitar—solemn,
as though this were church and not a nightclub. If I’d expected him to change into
black leather or silver studs, I’d have been disappointed—he was his usual self, in
a white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled partway up and an ordinary pair
of black pants. He looked out over the crowd like he was taking inventory and smiled.
Had I ever even seen him smile before? Certainly not like this, a flash of teeth like
the beam of a lighthouse cutting through fog.

“Stan overstates my case.” Hence waved a hand at the crowd, signaling them to stop
clapping, but the noise only got louder. As he stepped to the mike, I held my breath,
thinking of how much my mother had loved his singing. Could he really be as wonderful
as she’d believed? Given all the buildup, I thought his voice would have to be a disappointment.

But it wasn’t. It was bigger and deeper than I’d have guessed, with a range I couldn’t
have imagined. I recognized Riptide’s big hit, with its lyrics about being lost and
homesick and finding love, only to lose it again. I knew the song better than I had
realized and could sing along with the chorus, except I didn’t want to miss anything,
so I didn’t. The song was upbeat but the lyrics were sad, and as Hence sang, an openness—a
sweetness—stole over his face. Launching into a complicated guitar solo, Hence looked
almost surprised, as if he hadn’t been sure he’d still be able to play with such ferocity.
Stan took a drum solo, and Hence stood, arms crossed, watching with evident pride.
Was this what he’d been like before he’d gotten so bitter?

The song ended and the band launched into one I hadn’t heard before, about riding
a Greyhound bus into New York City, trying to catch a break and make it big. The second
verse contained lines about wanting to “escape the eyes of a one-horse town, escape
the ghosts who drag me down.” And something changed in Hence’s voice when he belted
out the third verse, about escaping the palm of his father’s hand and the devil in
his face. By then I was sure he’d written the lyrics. He looked down at the ground
as he sang, barely acknowledging the crowd, as though the words still had the power
to hurt him.

I wondered: Had my mother ever heard this song? It seemed to answer all the questions
she’d had about Hence’s past. Maybe she was hiding out in a one-horse town herself,
listening to Riptide’s one and only CD and wondering what had ever happened to
her old love. I smiled to think of it. Just then, Hence looked up, his eyes trained
in the direction of my window. I caught my breath and ducked, sure for a split second
that he knew I was watching. But of course he couldn’t know. When I could breathe
again, I let myself return to the window.

When the song drew to a close, while the crowd whooped and cheered, Stan jumped out
from behind the drum kit to clap Hence on the back. I thought that might be the end,
but Hence returned to the mike. “We’re going to play one more,” he said. “A new one.”
He lifted his hand to start strumming, but he froze. “The lyrics were written by,
uh…” A funny look crossed his face. For a moment, he seemed lost for words. “Somebody
I used to know. I’ve hung on to them for a long time—since I was eighteen, when Riptide
was getting started.”

A man in the crowd shouted “Hell, yeah!” and there was a smattering of applause.

“And just this week, someone… something moved me to finally set them to music. I…
um… hope you like it.”

And the song began, a slower one this time. He didn’t have to say her name for me
to know who had written the words. Had Cooper known about this? If so, why had he
kept it from me? But a moment later, those questions didn’t matter. I struggled to
catch every word, but I missed a lot:

Had Mom written those words when they were happy together, or in that time when she
knew she’d have to choose between Hence and the future she’d dreamed for herself?
The song—its lyrics and its tune—was so sad it made me ache for her… and for him.

As I listened to her words in Hence’s deep, mournful voice, I kept forgetting to breathe.
And when the song drew to a close, I jumped down from the table and fought my way
out of the tangled wires I had forgotten were there. What I was about to do was borderline
insane, but I couldn’t stop myself: I burst through the door and past Cooper, who
looked completely surprised to see me. Though I was risking his job and Hence’s wrath,
I couldn’t seem to stop myself. I ducked into the main room, through the milling crowd,
working my way toward the stage. As Hence stepped down into the shadows, I needed
to be right in front of him, so I was.

What I had to say rushed out before I had time to think better of it. “There’s something
you have to know,” I shouted, desperate to be heard above the applause. “About what
you thought you heard my mother say. On the steps of Jackie’s house. When you ran
away from her.”

At the sight of me, Hence looked utterly shocked. He opened his mouth as if to speak,
then shut it again.

“What you heard wasn’t what she meant,” I shouted.

Hence gave me an urgent look, as if I were telling him I’d found a ticking bomb in
the back room. Ignoring the fans who waved for his attention, he led me by my elbow
through the stage door and into the back of the club, hurried me into the relative
quiet of his office, and locked the door behind us. I sank to the chair in front of
his desk, but instead of sitting, he stalked back and forth.

“You should have stayed to listen to the rest of what she had to say,” I concluded.
“You should have let her explain.”

“How could you know about any of that?” In the fluorescent office light, Hence’s face
looked as white as paper. He couldn’t have seemed more rattled if I’d told him my
mother’s ghost had come back to tell me the story of their beautiful relationship
and its ugly end.

“I found her journal.” I told him about the hiding place in the hollowed-out book
and how I’d been afraid he would take it from me before I could finish reading it.
Of course I was still running the risk that he’d confiscate it, but somehow that didn’t
matter as much as setting the record straight.