Crazy For You (31 page)

“Believe me…the fewer people who know…the better.”
Roxanne choked back thoughts of Frank finding out.

“How long do you think you can hide it?” Kirk asked,
staring at her swelling tummy.

“As long as I possibly can,” Roxanne showed
fortitude, but she knew she couldn’t hide it forever.

B
y the time Roxanne reached
her eighth month of pregnancy, her delusions about Frank Garrett
were emerging frequently. At any given time, her fantasies
convinced her to believe that she wasn’t in New York at all. In her
mind, she was still in Florida and she and Frank were still
together. She didn’t care about the present because she was quite
happy living in the past. She may not always know where she was or
the year, but she always knew
who
she was.

During production of the movie, Roxanne, Candy, and
Kirk often lunched at a nearby café. On this day, the three of them
talked about and discussed the roles of Ben and Cherie. Things
moved along fine until Roxanne reverted back into the past.

“Well…” Candy dropped her napkin into her plate.
“I’ve got to get going.”

“I’ll see you later.” Roxanne watched her leave and
then turned to Kirk. “You’d better go, too. Frankie will be here
any minute. He gets kind of jealous at times.”

Typically, that would’ve been enough to scare off
the average guy—especially with the increasing frequency of these
episodes—but not Kirk. She needed a friend, and he was determined
to be that for her.

~ ~ ~

Frank laid the manuscript down on the desk and
massaged his forehead. After a moment, he looked at her. “Is all
this true?”

“Every word.”

“Does anybody know why this happened to her?”

“Only in theory,” she said. “Jerry can only suppose
that she couldn’t let go of you.”

“I should have been there for her.”

“It’s kind of hard to be there for someone when they
won’t let you.” Her precise words pierced his ego.

“There’s been more than one opportunity for me to be
there for her. I should have been…but I wasn’t.”

Candy gave him a challenging look that was quickly
followed by a short, saucy smile. “Tell me about when you guys went
out to California and recorded the first album?” she suggested,
effectively changing the subject. “How did you write your songs
anyway?”

“How did I write my songs?” That earned a soft
chuckle.

“Well, yeah. For instance…
Without Her
…how did
you come about writing that song? What exactly was it that prompted
you?”

“How do you think we came about writing it?” he said
snidely. “You and Roxie left. We got drunk and wrote the song.”

“We?” Candy asked, surprised.

“Yes…we. Rich and I wrote that song together.”

“Really?”

Apparently, Frank was telling her something she
didn’t know. But with all the things she did know about
Garrett-Hollander, it only seemed logical that she would’ve known
that Rich had co-authored many of the band’s songs. Frank was
surprised she didn’t.

“Tell me about that?” she asked with eager
affection.

Thinking back on the night they were on that
infamous drunk, Frank could remember it so clearly, as if he were
back there, once again…

~From the autobiography

After hours, the bar was locked up tight. Only
Frank, Rich, and the club’s manager remained inside. Even the
waitresses had taken off, after a few failed attempts at throwing
themselves at Frank and Rich. While the manager settled the
evening’s business, Frank and Rich had seized a table near the bar,
bringing with them a bottle of Jack Daniels and two shot
glasses.

Pouring the whiskey, Frank said, “Everybody thinks
they know what’s good for us, but they don’t know shit.” He passed
a shot to Rich. “Everybody says, forget about her, Frank.” He held
the glass in his hand while naming all the well-intended lines of
advice everybody had been giving him. “You’re better off without
her. She wasn’t the right girl for you. Now you can concentrate on
your music.” He mocked them all bitterly, then sucked down the
shot. “What we need, my friend,” he said, banging the glass against
the table, “is another drink.” He waited for no confirmation from
Rich, just grabbed both glasses and poured two more. “Here…” He
pushed a refill toward Rich.

They gulped down the shots.

“What are we gonna do?” Frank welcomed suggestions
since he had no idea where to go from here.

Rich thought about it for a second. “We’re gonna
have another drink,” he decided and banged his shot glass on the
table.

Frank poured two more shots, and they proceeded to
drink their troubles away.

Everybody’s got their own opinions

And they all know what I can’t seem to see

They tell me to shake it off and carry on

They downed another shot. “I just don’t understand
it,” Frank said, bewildered. “Where did I go wrong?”

“You’re going to have to learn…” Rich’s thought
trailed off as he held his empty shot glass out to Frank. “More
please.”

“Learn what?” Frank poured two more.

“How to live without her.”

“Yeah…well,” Frank said with a slight snicker. “If I
could just forget about her, then maybe I could learn how to
live
without her.”

And I can’t go on without her

Although I’ve tried

And I can’t forget about her

“We’re on our way though,” Rich said. “Straight to
the top.”

“Yeah. But is this the way it’s supposed to be?”

“We’ll get girls!” Rich said melodramatically. “Lots
of girls. Gorgeous girls.”

“Pretty girls.” Frank joined in the fun and poured
two more shots. “That’s good.”

“But it’s her face that keeps coming back to me,”
Rich said sadly.

I go out and discover new places

But this isn’t the way it was suppose to be

And I try to replace her with new faces

But it’s her face that keeps coming back to me

I can drink away my sorrows

But my loss will stay

For the rest of my tomorrows

They downed another shot and Frank discovered the
bottle was empty. “Not only do I have to learn how to live without
her,” he said. “But all the damned whiskey’s gone, too.”

“Without her.” Rich paused, deep in thought. “That’d
make a nice song.”

“Let’s get a bottle to go,” Frank suggested. “And
let’s go write ourselves a song.”

~ ~ ~

Frank looked at Candy. “And that’s pretty much the
way it happened.”

“You guys got drunk and wrote that song?” She found
that notion amusing.

“Sad, but true.”

“I’m surprised that either of you remembered the
conversation,” she said, “much less turned it into a song.”

O
nce again, Frankie’s
sobbing woke his father in the middle of the night. Frank lumbered
out of bed and stumbled toward the boy’s room. To his surprise,
Frankie was sitting up, wide-awake.

“Hey, buddy.” Frank entered his room. “What’s up?”
He sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Daddy,” Frankie said between sobs. “Why won’t you
go get my Mommy?”

“Frankie, we’ve been through this before.” Frank was
a bit too tired tonight. “Mommy’s in the hospital.”

“She’s not in the hospital, Daddy.”

“She
is
in the hospital, Frankie.”

“No she’s not. She’s at the water,” Frankie’s tears
continued to fall. “She is. I seen her, Daddy.”

Frank pulled his son into his arms. “I know how much
you miss your Mommy. You want her to come home. So do I.” He wished
there was something he could say that would make Frankie feel
better. But there wasn’t—nothing short of a lie, anyway. Frank
wasn’t going to go there. “She can’t come home. Not right now. And
what you think you saw was just a dream.”

“No…Daddy!” Frankie refused to give in. “She’s at
the water.”

***

Chapter 27

C
andy was sitting at
Roxanne’s desk, typing away on the computer. The knock at the door
didn’t break her concentration. “Come on in,” she called out over
her typing. She expected to see Frank, but was pleasantly surprised
when Rich appeared in the doorway.

He smiled at her.

She pushed back from the desk. “I’m glad you’re
here. I want to talk to you.”

“What’d I do now?” he wondered with a sharp
laugh.

Candy giggled. “I want you to help us.”

“Us?”

“Frank and me. We’re trying to finish Roxanne’s
book, and we’ve decided to put you guys in it too,” she said. “I
figured it’d be wise to get a second opinion about what happened to
you guys.”

“This is a book about you and Roxie.” Rich eyed
Candy skeptically. “Who cares what we did.”

“Who cares?” she questioned him aggressively. “I
care. Whether you like it or not, we’re all a big part of each
other’s lives. And if we don’t talk about you and Frank in the
book, then we’re not telling the whole story.”

Rich couldn’t argue with that. How could Roxanne
tell her story without discussing Frank Garrett? It’d be
impossible.

“So…” Candy handed him a batch of typewritten pages.
“Read this.”

~From the autobiography

Garrett-Hollander wrapped up their first album, and
Frank tried his damnedest to replace Roxanne. He’d gone through
girl after girl, but all of his efforts ended in vain. He’d even
gone to the extreme of trying to personify Roxanne in other women.
If their hair wasn’t the right shade, he had them dye it until it
perfectly matched the color of Roxanne’s light chestnut-brown hair.
If their eyes were the wrong color—which they always were—he had
them purchase violet-colored contact lenses in a hopeless effort to
duplicate Roxanne’s unusual eye color. If the girls were too thin
or too heavy, he tried to readjust their weight accordingly. And
for all his time and trouble, his plan proved useless every time
because he couldn’t teach any of them to act like Roxanne.

Without Her
claimed its place as the first
single released from the album. Shortly after the song’s debut, and
before the album’s actual release, the song sailed up the
charts.

Frank decided to acquire himself an image that was
befitting a rock star.

He entered the California motel room wearing his
newly purchased Vaurnets. “So what do you think?” he asked, looking
at Rich from behind the shades.

“About what?” Rich was lounging on the bed, watching
TV.

“The Vaurnets. Aren’t they great?”

“Yeah.” Rich gave him a passing glance. “I suppose
they are.”

“It’s my new image.” And his new way of protecting
himself. Roxanne had peered into his soul through his eyes. That’s
how she’d gotten to him. He had to prevent that from happening
again. The best way he could think of was to cover his eyes. That’s
where the shades came into the picture.

M
eanwhile, in New York
City

Roxanne was due to give birth any day. It was just
after the first of the year and she was miserable. She and Kirk
were rehearsing scenes when she went into labor. Kirk took her to
the hospital and immediately called Sara.

“Sara, I don’t know what to do,” he told his wife
over the telephone.

“Did you reach Candy?”

“No, I can’t find her. But I did leave messages all
over town.”

“Then you have to stay with Roxanne. She shouldn’t
be alone right now.”

“I’d always thought that the first child I’d see
being born would be ours.” Maybe Kirk didn’t realize it, not at
that point anyway, but a part of him truly didn’t want to leave
Roxanne’s side.

“Well you don’t have to actually
watch
her
give birth,” Sara said dryly. “Just stay with her until Candy gets
there. Or until they take her into delivery.”

They said their goodbyes and Kirk went back to
Roxanne’s hospital room. Somehow, being there with her didn’t seem
right. Probably because the baby wasn’t his. Maybe, just maybe,
deep down inside, Kirk secretly wished Roxanne’s baby was his, even
though he hadn’t realized it yet.

“Hey…” Kirk smiled and took hold of Roxanne’s hand.
“How are you doing?”

“Okay,” Roxanne said weakly. “Except for those
contractions that keep coming around.” She tried to laugh, but it
was hard.

“Things are a little uncomfortable, huh?” Kirk took
the wet towel from the stand and swabbed her forehead.

“Did you find Candy?”

“No, not yet.”

Feeling another pain, she tightened her grip on his
hand.

“Go ahead,” he said, “squeeze my hand if it
helps.”

Roxanne tightened her grip on his hand as the
contraction peaked. She tried to stifle a moan, but it escaped
anyway. Thoughts of Frank Garrett flittered through her mind.
Frankie, where are you
? She needed
him
to get through
this.

The pain subsided and Roxanne loosened her grip on
Kirk’s hand.

“You handled that one like a pro,” Kirk said,
dabbing her forehead with the cool moist towel.

“So how many more do I gotta go through before I
prove myself?” She tried to laugh, but didn’t have much luck.

“The fewer the better, right?” he said. “Believe me,
I understand about pain.”

Roxanne was tired. And she just wanted to sleep.
Knowing the pain-free interval would be brief, she closed her eyes.
She could almost see Frank standing over her. Even though,
somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew it wasn’t real…still,
the thought of
him
being there offered her a measure of
comfort.

Another contraction squeezed her belly like a vice
grip. She opened her eyes and saw Kirk’s sparkling brown eyes
gazing down at her. But Kirk’s eyes weren’t the ones she wanted to
see. She desperately needed to see those captivating, hypnotic baby
blues. “I think you’d better get the doctor.” The pain ripped
through her. “I can’t handle this anymore.”