Cool Shade (18 page)

Fake Plastic Trees

Rick loved it all. The lights. The glamour. The women. Most of all, the women.

Living in a hotel room. Having contracts that indulged his every whim, no matter how ridiculous. His big thing was demanding that all his M&M's be red, and that the hotel towels have his name on them.

For Eddie, it was death.

Of the spirit, of creativity. What was there to write about when all you saw was the inside of a tour bus and hotels with bowls of red M&M's?

Artificial.

His life had become artificial. It was no wonder whenever anybody made it they started singing about televisions and hotel rooms. What else was there?

"I can't take it anymore," he told Rick one night after a sold-out performance. "I need to see the sky. Birds. Nature. My dog. I need to feel dirt under my feet. I need to sweat because of the sun, not spotlights."

Eddie, who had thrived on the outdoors, who ascribed to a minimalist lifestyle, was smothering, suffocating. "I can't take it anymore. I want out. I'm losing my mind, losing track of who I am."

"You just need a break," Rick told him, lying in bed, watching TV, drinking a beer. "You're just tired. Don't give this up. You asked me on board, remember? What happens to me if you quit? I'll still be Rick Beck, but I'll be Rick Beck the loser. Rick Beck without a song to sing. Don't do that to me."

"I'll still write songs for you. Better songs, if I can get out of this cycle of crap."

"Take your pills and forget about it."

"I don't want pills. I don't want an artificial existence."

But deep down he knew Rick was right. This was the life Eddie had chosen for himself. The life he'd wanted. He just hadn't known about the undertow.

Ghosts

They'd been playing a hometown benefit concert when it happened, when some madman shot Rick.

The benefit was low-key, something Eddie had demanded. He'd been sick to death of the star treatment, the limos, the press, the security, the hype. He'd been starved for something normal, or as close to normal as they could get.

So there had been no publicity, the band's appearance at the outdoor fundraiser kept a secret until the last minute.

It had been great. Almost like the old days. There had been a minimal amount of crowd control. The cops were mostly volunteer, used to directing traffic after high school football games. Because the band's appearance had been a secret, there was no ambulance standing by, no trauma unit on call, no decent hospital for sixty miles.

Just blood.

And bone.

And brains.

Pieces of Rick.

The cadence of the crowd changed, went from excitement to terrified, disbelieving screams.

A hero had fallen.

A friend.

Some stood in dazed shock. Others thought it was part of the show.

Baking under the heat of the stage lights, the blood smelling like hot metal, the amplifiers buzzing, filling his ears with hollowness, Eddie held his friend in his arms.

There on the stage, with thousands of people watching, the aloneness he'd felt all his life found him.

Was anybody coming?

Was anybody going to help?

Hours, days, years, passed before Eddie heard the sirens, heard them draw closer until the wailing was on top of him, the flashing red light a strobe of continuous panic.

Paramedics bumped him.

"Let him go, Eddie."

Eddie pulled his gaze away from Rick to find Greg Carnes kneeling beside him.

"Greg?" Was he a paramedic? Last Eddie knew, he'd dropped out of school and was big into drugs and booze.

Was any of this really happening?

It was. Eddie could tell because of the scared, horrified look on Greg's face. Just how long had he been at this ambulance shit? His training probably hadn't covered a victim who’d had his brains blown out.

They tried to tell him he couldn't come along, but Eddie got in the ambulance anyway. He wasn't going to turn his friend over to a bunch of druggies.

On the way to Omaha Medical Center, Rick's heart stopped twice.

Greg kept his head, shocking Rick twice, getting his heart going again both times.

It didn't do any good.

At 11:46 p.m., three hours after being shot, Rick Beck was pronounced dead.

The news hit Eddie like a mallet. His knees gave out. He slid down the hospital wall, collapsing to the floor.

All Eddie'd wanted was to be able to make a living playing music. What had happened? How had everything gone so wrong?

It was like he'd asked for things, but the person taking the requests hadn't understood his language. Or had just gotten a buzz out of torturing him. He'd wanted to make it in music. It had happened, but in the process it had stolen his soul. He'd wanted out, and now it had stolen his best friend.

He went home, to the forty acres his grandfather had left him, drove his Chevy into the yard and left it there.

Home.

He felt safe there. He'd made enough money to stay forever if he wanted to. He wouldn't have to write another lyric, play another note.

The press invaded the town, setting up camp in the town square and the park and the 4-H grounds. Eddie couldn't step out of his house without microphones being stuck in his face.

"What will happen to the band now?"

"Rick was working on some new stuff. Will you try to record any of it without him?"

"Was anything finished?"

Eddie ignored their questions, shoving them out of the way. They were invading his space. He wanted them to leave.

~0~

The funeral was closed casket.

It seemed like half of North America showed up for it.

The period that followed the funeral was a blur, one day melding into the other. Eddie had been home a week when Rick's mother came by.

Eddie sat on the porch, his back against the railing, watching Adel Beck make her way across the yard.

Eddie was drunk, but not so drunk that she would notice.

He should have been the one to go see her, but he hadn't been able to make himself leave the farm.

Truth?

He couldn't face her.

How could she stand to look at him? But then Adel didn't know that Rick hadn't written those songs, that he wasn't the mastermind behind the music. Eddie wasn't going to tell her. Not because he didn't want her to know that he should be dead instead of her son, but because he didn't want to tarnish her memories of Rick.

"They got the person who did it," Adel told him, sitting down next to him on the steps.

"I heard."

Heard. Seen. Some psycho who'd carved a girl's initials in his forehead, the girl he’d tried to impress by murdering a public icon.

"For you, Helen," he'd rasped, his eyes glittering into the camera lens. "I did it for you."

Why they'd allowed the killer's image into every home in America, Eddie didn't understand. But there he was, explaining his actions as if it all made sense.

"The words," he'd shouted. "The words told me to do it."

"What words?" some unseen person asked, baiting him.

"The words in the song. The music. The words told me to kill him."

Eddie must have made a sound, some strangled sob, because Adel leaned close and laid her hand on Eddie's, a mother-to-son gesture that tore him up. He didn't deserve her sympathy.

"Eddie?"

Her voice pulled his gaze to her.

She looked tired. Sad. "I have something to tell you." But there was more than weariness in her face. Hope? What was there to hope for?

"Rick isn't dead."

She was nuts. Grief had driven her over the edge.

Eddie shook his head. He couldn't handle this, not now, not on top of losing his best friend.

"You'd better get home, Mrs. Beck."

"Eddie, it's true."

"He was pronounced dead. I was there."

"Yes, but he came back. From wherever he went, wherever people go when they die. Rick came back."

"No."

Every night Eddie dreamed that Rick was still alive. This was just another one of those dreams.

"I wanted to tell you before, but we weren't sure he would live. It would have been cruel to tell you too soon."

He shook his head.

"There's something else I have to tell you."

"I think you've told me enough already."

"Rick is severely brain damaged."

She'd held it all together until that point. But as soon as she spoke the words brain damage she broke down. She sobbed, burying her face in her hands.

Eddie had known Adel Beck all his life. She'd fed him cookies. She'd bandaged his cuts. She'd driven him to band practice.

Was it true? Was Rick still alive? Or had she gone completely over the edge?

"I'm sorry," she said in a choked voice, pulling Kleenex from her pocket, wiping her eyes, blowing her nose.

"I don't get it, any of it."

"It was Dr. Sheridan's idea," she said, her voice quivering but getting stronger. "He knew the media wouldn't leave Rick alone, that they would haunt him for the rest of his life. He would have no peace. He'd been pronounced dead. The press had already been notified. It seemed like a sign."

Adel had always been big on signs. Eddie recalled that she'd contacted a psychic anytime she had to make a major decision in her life.

Her voice dropped to a whisper. She looked directly into his eyes. "No one can know, Eddie. Swear you won't mention it to a soul, not even the walls."

"I swear."

~0~

Eddie didn't see Rick for three months.

Adel brought him by, introducing him as a nephew who'd come to live with her.

Eddie wouldn't have recognized him. He wasn't weird looking or anything. They'd done a good job putting his face back together. He just didn't look like Rick anymore. Or act like Rick anymore.

He kind of talked around his tongue, like someone Rick would have called a retard. His movements were slow, heavy, like somebody trying to function on a planet with too much gravity.

"His name is Jason."

The forced perkiness in Adel's voice couldn't be missed. Eddie's eyes met her damp ones. He nodded.

"Hi, Jason."

Maybe there was something left of the old Rick, because Jason took to Eddie right away.

"Do you like to fish?" Eddie asked.

"Fish?" Jason turned to his mother. "Do I, Adel?" Rick had loved to fish.

For the briefest of seconds, Adel's face kind of crumpled, then she recovered. "I'm not sure. You'll have to give it a try, won't you?"

He smiled. And God, that smile was Rick's.

All the good times they'd had came tumbling back to Eddie, all the jokes, the shared laughs.

Rick.

I'm sorry, Eddie wanted to tell him, wanted to beg his forgiveness. Sorry as hell.

But there was no one to tell, no one he could ask for forgiveness.

Madison

Jason was Rick Beck.

Maddie had figured it out on her own. She'd waited for Eddie to tell her, but he hadn't said a word.

That hurt.

More than she would have dreamed.

It was like he was hiding himself from her, hiding who he really was. What did that say about their relationship?

That they really didn't have one.

Whenever they were together, she sent brain signals his way.

Tell me about you. Share yourself with me.

But he never picked up on it. Or else he chose to ignore it.

And when they made love, she sensed a desperation in him that broke her heart.

"Maybe we should get a bigger bed," he said one night in the afterglow of lovemaking as they lay curled up together in his single bed. And what would it be after that? Separate beds? Then separate rooms? Separate lives?

She sensed that she was crowding him, maybe even smothering him.

She'd never meant to smother him. She'd never meant to be a burden, a weight, something to endure. She'd only wanted to make him happy and be happy herself.

Ever since the day Jason had come over, Eddie had been withdrawn, disappearing for hours at a time.

She was losing him.

Maybe she'd never had him.

Maybe she never would.

That possibility ate away at her. She hurt. All the time.

He was better about crowds. Just yesterday they'd gone to the park. There had been a moment when she looked up to see Eddie walking lazily toward her, Murphy on a leash at his side.

And she felt on the outside, looking in.

When Eddie walked, his feet touched the ground like everybody else's, but at that moment he'd seemed bigger than life. There was more to him than it appeared. And in that fragmented instant, a door had opened, then quickly shut. She'd caught a glimpse of the real Eddie. Like the transience of a sand painting. Like "Cool Shade," a song nobody would hear.

Like life.

It was that feeling of not being able to quite capture it, not being able to commit the moment, the feeling, to memory because it was too fleeting.

She loved him so much. So very, very much.

And she was afraid she would never have him, not really.

That evening, as she was leaving for work, Eddie stopped her. He pulled her into his arms.

"Play a song for me."

What kind of song did you play for a man who'd given the world so much? Because Maddie understood that, even though Jason was Rick Beck, so was Eddie.

Was she becoming a burden to him? If he wanted her to go, then she would go. She would move on.

After all, leaving was what she did best.

He kissed her good-bye.

~0~

At work, Brian sensed Maddie's depression. "Things not going well for you and Eddie?"

She shook her head, unable to talk about it. She wished she hadn't moved out of her apartment, wished she had some spot to hide, to sort things out and grieve if she had to.

"I hate to dump this on you, but could you check and see if this is suitable for airplay?" He tossed a tape to her.

Maddie caught it with both hands. No writing on it, nothing to give any kind of clue as to what was inside. "Sure." It would take her mind off Eddie. "What is it?"

"Something a buddy put together."

She made a face. "Asked you to play it, huh?"

"Actually, he wanted you to give it a listen. You're a better judge of stuff like that, anyway."

A con line if ever she'd heard one. "I'll check it out."

At two A.M., Maddie remembered the tape.

She'd just started a sequence of four songs, so she dug out the Walkman, put on the headset, snapped in the tape, and leaned back in her chair.

First mere was just the whir of the tape. Then… music.

A ballad. Haunting. Mysterious...

There are times in our lives

When the shadows grow so tall

They block out the moon

And the stars

There are times in our lives

When every breath is effort

Every sigh despair

Then along comes Madison

It was signed, Eddie. But it couldn't have been anyone else. That's what he'd meant when he’d asked her to play a song for him.

His voice. God, his voice. It made Rick Beck sound like a child playing in an adult world. This was real. It got to you, tore you up inside. Raw. Aching. Full of ragged emotion.

Love.

When the last note faded, Maddie pressed the rewind button and played it again.

His music had flaws. Wonderful, wonderful flaws. There was a spot in the vocals, in the refrain, that was slightly off-key, where his voice cracked. And it was a sound that tugged at her heart.

As the last note died, Maddie closed her eyes and leaned back in the chair, trying to come down to earth, waiting for the goosebumps to fade.

He'd told her the truth in his own way, the best way, with his music.

Another song began:

She's like a hangnail

That won't go away

Said she was a hooker

She came for a lay

My dog attacked her

Licked her white face

Said she was a hooker

I was on the case

Told her that I loved her

But she loved someone else

Said she was a hooker

I said, What the hell?

She's like a hangnail

That won't go away

Said she loved me

I'm hoping that she'll stay

The song ended abruptly.

Maddie sat there, hand to her mouth, laughing and crying at the same time.

She'd finally come to understand how she'd given herself to him so freely that first time. Because it hadn't been the first time. He'd been touching her for years.

He was the one.

He'd always been the one.

Eddie was the sweet ache of music in her soul.

She had to talk to him; she had to see him.
Now.

She stuck the tape in her purse and headed for the door, stopped, went back into the control booth and set the reel to reel to start as soon as the CD player finished, then she turned and ran.

Outside.

To the parking lot.

There, under the tungsten glow of the streetlight, Eddie leaned against the front fender of her car, his arms crossed at his chest, feet at the ankles, trying to look casual. She could see through his act.

When he straightened away from the car, he moved a little stiffly, as if he'd been there for hours.

"Rick Beck didn't die that night four years ago, did he?" she asked.

"No."

"Jason is Rick Beck, isn't he?"

"I promised Rick's mother I would never tell anyone."

She couldn't condemn him for such stoic nobility. His silence had been a strength, not a weakness.

"I won't say anything," she said.

"I know."

"You wrote the music, but you couldn't perform in front of people. So you got Rick to do it. Am I right?"

"That about covers it."

"What about Evelyn? Does she know about Rick?"

"Evelyn?"

"Rick's aunt."

"Are you talking about Evelyn Stoikavich?"

"She was Enid's landlady."

"Oh, wow." He looked like she'd just taken him to a place he didn't want to go.

"Evelyn likes to tell people she's Rick's aunt, but she isn't. Get ready for a shocker. Her son was the guy who shot Rick."

Maddie thought she had everything figured out, but what he'd just told her was something she'd never dreamed of. "I don't get it. Wasn't he from California?"

"Yeah, but he was visiting his mother here in Chester when we did the concert. Evelyn's always had it in her head that I hired her son to kill Rick. The truth was probably too much for her. At least this way she can tell herself that her son wasn't completely to blame."

"Poor Evelyn."

Maddie thought about all the memorabilia in her basement. It had probably belonged to her son. No wonder the place had given her the creeps.

"Fear can keep us from living our lives the way they should be lived," Eddie said. "Don't ever let somebody else live your life."

He was talking about his music. About himself.

"You woke me up,” he said. “You shook me up. You made me want to write again. To live again."

Everything was blurry. She was crying, and her face had somehow gotten wet without her knowledge, without her going to any work to make it that way.

Eddie's confession completely absolved Maddie of the pain of Enid's final words. She didn't need to discover a cure for anything for her life to have meaning. She could be a quiet flame.

"Maddie, I'm afraid. Not for me, but for you."

She tried to speak, but her throat hurt.

"I've been thinking about how being around me could put you in danger. But then I realized you're a danger to yourself. You do crazy things. Like not locking doors. Like going to meet strangers in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere. Like pretending you're a hooker. And then I decided, I don't know if I can handle thinking about you out there by yourself, wondering what kind of naive, dangerous thing you might be up to."

She pulled herself together enough to speak. "You're getting a little lavish with the compliments, aren't you?" she asked in a tight, achy voice. Loving him was the most dangerous thing she'd ever done in her life. And the most exhilarating. With Eddie, there would be no safety net.

"I knew this would get me in trouble." He paced. He came back to stand in front of her. "I don't mean you need somebody to make you eat right, although, come to think of it—" He looked skyward, then back, but not directly at her.

He's nervous
. The concept was intriguing.

"I know you've been having second thoughts about me, about us—"

She shook her head, but he was on a roll.

"Problem is, I don't know if I can live without you. I mean, I lived without you before, but I wasn't really living. It was kind of a suspended state, like I was waiting for you to show up. But now, now that I know you, I don't think I can handle losing you. We see the world through the same eyes. Some people search their whole life for that kind of connection. Most people never find it."

It was hard to believe that just months ago her life had seemed a lonely, directionless highway, a highway that had ended up taking her to Eddie. How could something that had seemed so random have turned out so right?

"Is there anything else I should know about you?" she asked in a voice that was both serious and teasing, her emotions fragile. "Any other surprises?"

"Sometimes I watch Dukes of Hazzard reruns."

She laughed. "I always suspected you were secretly into that highbrow stuff."

"You?"

"I ate cat food once."

"See? That's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. You need me to make sure you take care of yourself."

He pulled her into his arms. He kissed her deeply. Thoroughly.

"And," she added, "I haven't had a shower in two days."

"I can remedy that. Let's go home. I'll fix you a bath."

"With candles?" she asked hopefully.

"And me."

"You didn't tell me what you thought of the new music. I've been working on it ever since Jason showed up the other day, singing 'Cool Shade.'"

So that's what he'd been up to. "It made me cry."

She wouldn't reveal just how deeply it had moved her, not yet anyway.

"Good."

"And it made me laugh."

"Even better."

She was about to leave with Eddie, the love of her life, when she remembered her job and stopped short, her hand in his. "I can't go."

"It's okay with Brian. I worked out a deal with him. If he lets you have the rest of the night off, he can get in on the production of my new release."

There was one more thing she had to ask him. "Your old music. Most of them are love songs. Who did you write them for?"

"You."

"Just how gullible do you think I am?" she asked, even though she'd thought the very same thing. "You've only known me a few months."

"I've known you a lifetime. Here." He touched his chest, his heart. "You've always been right here."

She smiled at him.

Words.

He had so many wonderful words in him.

-o0o-

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