Encore to an Empty Room (16 page)

Randy sees me first and his eyes clear up. “Hey, Sum. Don't worry, I got this under control. No better way to pass the high time than Ping-Pong.”

“Hey.” Caleb looks my way and his eyes swim to find me, like we're separated by fog. He steps toward me but it feels more like he's coming at me. His too-big smile, his red cheeks and lurching steps, and yet I might just be imagining that because I know he's high. He wraps me in a hug and kisses my head. “I was wondering where you were.”

I don't even want to deal with him right now, but I can't help saying, “I was where you left me. When you said you'd be right back.” I know I sound like Summer the bitch. But I also don't have the energy to hide it.

Caleb pulls back and looks at me quizzically. His eyes swim. “Oh, right, you told me you'd be right back.”

“No, actually—”

“Come on, game on!” Jon shouts.

“Go ahead.” I give Caleb a shove back toward the table. I could say that I meant it to be playful but I know I deliver it one notch too hard and he stumbles.

“Whoa.” But then he and Jon just crack up more.

“Do you want to join in?” Randy asks. He's laughing a little less hard.

I honestly wish I could just say yes. Just relax and roll with it, but that isolated feeling has become overwhelming, claustrophobic in its emptiness. “No. Have you guys seen Matt? Or Val?”

Randy's brow scrunches. Every move he makes is cartoonish. “Not for . . .” He counts on his fingers. “A while? Oh!” He slaps his pockets like he's remembering something. “Val came and got the keys to the van. She said she needed to get something.”

“Where's the van?”

Randy consults the ceiling. “Two blocks . . . that way.” He points toward the wall. “Or that way.” He points in the other direction.

“Perfect.”

The sarcasm goes completely over Randy's stoned head. “I could help you find it— Oh yeah!” Jon, not listening to me at all, had served the ball and Randy hits a vicious return.

“That's cool,” I say, already heading up the stairs. “I'm on it.”

I struggle through the crowd to the merch table to get my coat. A DJ has taken over and the room is engulfed in dancing. She's really good, but the way the beats are vibrating the house and the crowd is all wrong for me right now. The lights have gotten darker, and I feel like everyone I push past is leering or judging as if with every second that I am sober and they are not, the further they devolve into late-night zombies, the more likely they'll eat me alive.

I push my way to the front door, and am relieved to feel the cold air and space on the front porch. There are fewer people out here now. Clusters smoking and talking softly. I zip my coat and hurry past them, down the steps.

A gust of wind buffets me and sideways snow strafes my face. I wrap my arms tightly around myself and dig my chin into my collar. People really live in this weather by choice?

“Summer!”

I turn to see Ethan disengaging from one of those porch groups and running after me.

He throws his cigarette down in the snow and pulls up his collar. “Where you off to?”

“I've gotta find our van. The band got stoned and there are two members who are maybe hooking up in it.” As I say this, I flash back to a year ago, when Ethan and I used to spend considerable alone time in his station wagon after sets. Man! When did life become a minefield?

Ethan stares at me seriously for a second and I wonder if that's what's on his mind, too, but then he bursts out laughing. “Wow, you guys are really embracing the true spirit of tour. Well, let's go.” He starts up the sidewalk.

“You don't need to come with me.”

“It will be fun,” says Ethan. “Plus, I heard there's a gyro place nearby that's open late.”

When I hesitate for another second, he says: “I won't make it weird. Promise.”

“Fine.” Also, a gyro sounds like heaven.

We head up the street. Everything is coated on its windward side with an inch-thick crust of snow. The edges of the world are curved and softened. By the time I am a few steps into the street, the tinkling fragments of conversation have been muffled, the thumping of bass seems distant, and there is only a sort of wide silence and the papery patter of flakes.

Ethan pulls out a pack of cigarettes and starts lighting up. “Want one?”

I shake my head. “No. I'm little miss abstinence tonight.”

“That's a good thing,” he says, blowing smoke.

“I thought I got you to quit last year,” I say.

“Yeah, you were weird like that. Trying to get me to behave in ways that were actually good for me.” He nods to the cigarette. “Last few months have been a ride, what can I say?”

This statement immediately makes me want to ask him to elaborate. But this is Ethan: isn't that exactly what he's going for? “Your set sounded good,” I say instead.

“Thanks, it was okay. This was a cool gig.” He says it with a sigh.

“But . . .”

“Ah, I just thought our days of playing house parties were over. If you told me last summer that I'd be here tonight, I'd never have believed you.”

“Yeah, well, that makes two of us.”

“It makes me feel like even more of an idiot than I already did for losing you.”

Oh boy.
Checking shield integrity . . . still intact, sir!
“You got a good offer,” I say.

“Maybe. Your offer from Candy Shell is better.”

“You heard about that?”

“Enough.” He blows smoke away from me. “In spite of what we've gone through, if you wanted my advice I'd say to take the deal.”

“Hmm,” I say, not sure how else to respond.

We turn onto the next block. There is no sign of the
stalker van. There is, however, the tiny gyro restaurant on the corner. “It must be a mirage,” Ethan jokes. “Mind if we stop?”

I squint through the snow looking for the van. Meanwhile, my stomach growls. “If it's quick.”

“You guys caught a break with that Eli White connection,” Ethan says inside, as we wait for our order.

I busy myself brushing snow off my hat and shoulders. This is not a conversation I want to have. No comparing the two bands with Summer in the middle. Besides . . . “It's not really a break from Caleb's point of view. But it is a good thing for publicity and stuff.” I have to stop there. Can't tell him about the lost songs. Then it occurs to me: he may already know about them. What if the reason for this walk tonight, hell, for Denver and Needlefest, is because Jason told Ethan and has recruited him to gather information?

But I don't think so. I know Ethan well enough to know that he always has some other agenda, but I don't think that's it.

We get our sandwiches, sit in a booth, and start wolfing them down. I didn't realize how hungry I was for something not from a rest area.

“Summer,” Ethan says, and I don't like the weight of him saying my name. Too many ghosts associated with that sound. I don't even want to make eye contact with him, but I force myself to.

Ethan is making a face that I remember, his
I'm-about-to-be-honest
face. I made up my mind afterward that this was always a calculation by him, except now I have to say, it feels real, just like it always did. He is either some kind of Jedi . . .

Or maybe we are all just complicated.

But then I wonder: if not the lost songs, maybe his real motivation is some kind of rekindling with me. Except it hasn't really seemed like that either. It's possible that I should cut him a little bit of slack.

“I'm really sorry about last year,” he says. “I wanted to tell you that before now, I just wasn't sure if you'd even want to hear it.”

He's probably right about that. But I'm surprised to find that while this is causing all of my nerves to ring, it is maybe because I'm relieved. “Thanks,” I say.

“I'm glad Caleb and the new band are good. And I'm glad we're doing this gig together. Maybe we can be friends going forward?”

I don't quite know how to respond, and he adds: “Business friends?” He sticks out his hand.

“Business friends. Sure.” We shake. I keep it short.

We finish our sandwiches and head back out into the snow. We are three blocks away from the house when I finally spot the van.

The windows are dark.

“They're probably already back at the party,” I say. But
if I really thought that, I wouldn't be feeling short of breath.

I grab the back door handle and yank it open.

“Oh fuck!”

There is a flurry of movement as orange streetlight floods in, and in the blur I see Matt lying back against a drum case with his shirt unbuttoned—and then there is Val, her bare shoulder and her bare back and I have a second to feel this weirdly parental relief that their jeans are still on—

I also see the peach schnapps bottle nearby.

And I notice that my bag, along with the others, has been used as a sort of pillow and YUCK.

“What the hell!” Val shouts, pulling her hoodie across herself.

“You guys!” I say. I don't even know what to do with this. “God, get dressed! Matt, Maya has been texting me about you.”

“Why?” he whines as he pulls on his shirt.

“Probably because she's your girlfriend!”

Val leaps forward into the van and gets herself organized. I reach in and grab the schnapps bottle. It's only about a quarter full now.

“Classic,” says Ethan, grinning at the show.

I look at the bottle and just smash it on the street.

“Hey!” Val snaps, giving me a lethal glare.

“What's going on with you?” I shout. “You have to stop.”

“You have NO IDEA what I'm dealing with!” she screams, and suddenly tears are springing from her eyes. She throws open the side door and stalks back up the street, no coat, snow sticking to her sweatshirt.

“Val . . .” Matt slips out the back. “Give her a break,” he says to me. “She needs our support, not a nag.” The words would sting more if the delivery wasn't slurred by alcohol and pot, but I still feel their impact.

Matt stalks off, too, and I find myself standing there.

“Well, that was worth it,” says Ethan. He flinches and pulls his phone from his pocket. “Ah,” he says, “my guys are loading out. You ready to go back?”

I look into the van. “Damn, I don't know if Val has the keys or not.” I can't lock the van if the keys are inside. And I can't risk leaving it unlocked. Our bags are still in there, and our amps. And when I picture the crowded party, my stoned band mates . . . “I'm just going to stay here.”

“What?” says Ethan. “Nah, come back.”

“No, seriously. You go. I have my phone.”

Ethan's mouth scrunches. “Am I allowed to say I'd worry about you?”

I shake my head. “Not really.”

“All right, then. So you guys are really going to drive to New York?”

“We have to clear it with our parents,” I say, yawning. “But I think so. I'll let you know by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Cool. Okay.” He pauses like he thinks we might hug. I
don't move. “See you soon, then.”

He turns and heads back up the block.

Watching him go, I feel a mix of things. Maybe one part relieved. The part of me that's been huddled in a cell these last nine months, that part that simply cared for him, is allowed a few hours out in the prison yard now.

Another part is exasperation with Matt and Val and really everyone. Even Caleb. I want him around right now and it's not his fault he's stoned but I'm annoyed anyway.

But stronger than all of those is the wave of exhaustion rolling over me. I close the back door of the van, slide the side shut. I lock all the doors and crawl into the Spa, then text Caleb and Randy.

None of my stoned companions reply.

I stare out the frosty window. The wind has kept the glass mostly clear. Flakes are running in herds diagonally through the orange cones of streetlight.

I shiver at the cold, but weirdly I find that, worrisome dramas aside, I feel the best I have in the last hour. Being solitary suits me right now. Just a girl in a car on a random street in Denver. And the gig was a success, at least from a playing-music-to-people perspective. Everything else might be a mess, but I don't want to think about it until tomorrow.

It's almost five a.m. when the band returns to the van. We drive to the Holiday Inn, nobody speaking, and crash, agreeing to reconvene at ten.

I wake up to knocking on the door. It feels like only a second has passed.

“You guys decent?” It's Randy.

I throw on my clothes. Val is still dead to the world.

“Everybody's a go,” says Randy. “Amazingly, the parents all trust me. Did you call yours yet?”

“No,” I say. I grab my phone and when I open it, I find three texts waiting:

Oh no.

Sunshine? Ugh. This all feels like way too much to deal with.

I call my dad at work. I've been sending him and Mom photos from the trip, so they roughly know how it's going. After a couple minutes recapping the safe details about last night, I launch into it.

“We had this amazing opportunity come up,” I say. “One of the bands last night offered us a slot at this huge pop festival in New York called Needlefest. It's happening this week, and we were thinking since we're already on the road . . .”

“You want to drive to New York City for another show? Isn't that kind of far?”

“Yeah, but, it's worth it. I mean, since we're off school, anyway. Randy's game to go. The other parents said it's okay. You can talk to him if you want . . .”

“No, that's okay. We trust you, Cat . . .”

That makes me queasy. If they only knew that right after this I'm going to email Andre and cancel the interview they think I already had.

“I mainly feel bad for you,” Dad continues, “spending that many hours in the car, but I suppose you think that's fun. Let me call your mom and talk it over, okay? I'll get back to you in a minute.”

“Okay, thanks, Dad.”

“Think they'll bite?” Randy asks.

My phone buzzes thirty seconds later.

“We're good,” I say. And though I'm excited, I can't quite smile when I say it.

“Rock and roll!” says Randy, though he sounds exhausted. “Okay, wake up Valerie. We need to be on the road ASAP.”

A half hour later we are back in the van and waiting in a McDonald's drive-through and the email I've composed on my phone reads:

In a way, it feels like the most honest I've been to anyone about the choices I'm making. I guess I'm hoping that somehow this will spark Andre to say something nice to the admissions office about me, or maybe just cause the fates to
smile more kindly. That is, if I want them to.

I don't know! So I hit send before the nervous energy in my gut makes me second-guess it.

I take a shift driving in Kansas. My nap in the van last night has left me slightly more awake than the others. But after a couple hours, the road gets blurry and I trade with Randy for the Spa. He keeps driving and driving. Everyone else is sacked out hard in the back. Jon is snoring.

“How do you do it?” I ask groggily.

“Lots of years, lots of miles,” says Randy. “And lots of band mates too wasted to drive.”

I doze on and off as the miles of flat, frost-covered white roll by out the window. The sky is a featureless gray from one end of the horizon to the other. Eventually, the guilt that I feel about the email to Andre, about deceiving my parents, fades, and I start to feel excited again. All of that worry belongs in a world behind us, and now we are on a new map. Like we have left our known galaxy by making this choice. The rogue drive to New York City is a trip into another world, and now anything is possible. We don't know where we will eat next, where we will sleep next, any of it.

It's kind of amazing.

I drift off again, and when my eyes open, dry and sore, I see that Caleb is driving. And I hear Randy behind us saying, “Okay, Thursday at three. That will totally work. We'll see you then.” He puts away his phone. “The Hard Rock still has the guitar on display,” he reports. “The
curator, Lara, said she'd let Caleb pose with it if they were allowed to use the photos.”

“What about looking inside it?” Caleb asks.

“I figure we wait to ask until we're there and it's in our hands, and then we explain how we want to open up the back and take a look. That way, no time for a supervisor to mull it over and say no.”

“We're getting really close,” I say, reaching over to hold Caleb's hand.

“Yeah,” he says, and almost smiles, but not quite.

Two hours later, Matt lurches up from his coma. “Stop the van,” he grunts.

“Emergency?” Randy asks, changing lanes.

“Yup,” Matt groans. “Quick.”

“One sec . . .” Randy veers to the breakdown lane and pumps the brake. We shudder over the snow and ice and slide to a stop.

Matt tumbles over Val and Jon, waking them both, yanks open the side door, and stumbles out. He hits his knees on the plow pile, doubles over, and pukes. The brown liquid steams and seeps into the snow like alien blood.

He hurls again, then goes to wipe his mouth with his sleeve.

“Use snow,” I say, joining him. He rubs a handful across his face. Then he staggers to his feet and leans against the side of the van, breathing hard. “You okay?”

“Better.”

Wind whips at our sweatshirts. The reflection of sun off the snow makes it nearly impossible to see.

When Matt has gathered himself, I say, “I got texts from Maya. She knows something's up.”

“Yeah, she's pissed.”

“You need to call her.”

He nods. “All right.”

“No, dummy. Now,” I say. “You seriously need to call her right now.”

“What am I supposed to say?”

“At the minimum? That you're sorry. Whatever else you want to say is up to you.”

“Right.” Matt gets out his phone and trudges around to the back of the van.

I get back in. We can hear the muted sounds of him talking. When his voice starts to rise, Randy turns up the radio.

Ten minutes later, he climbs in. “Well, that was easy,” he mutters, pale and shaking from the cold, and hungover.

“Everything okay?” I ask.

“We broke up.” He collapses back on the van floor.

On cue, my phone buzzes.

My stomach drops out.

My first instinct is to defend myself, to defend anything, but . . .

Maya doesn't reply.

We reach Indiana before everyone is too bleary to keep driving, so we check into this highway-side motel called Relaxation Depot. Randy doesn't mind putting these rooms on his card and we promise to pay him back with gig money.

We eat mealy food at a Cracker Barrel and collapse in our rooms.

Caleb knocks on our door around nine. “We've got the video camera set up.”

We gather in the guys' room and Randy plays the tape from Dylan's.

Just like on Eli's earlier tapes, there is a blank blue screen with a date in the top corner in white numbers: 7/30/98.

“This is later in the summer,” Randy says. “Post band breakup.”

As the seconds pass I have that same worry that nothing will happen. That we are chasing nothing . . .

But then there is a wash of light, the screen becoming pure white and then darkening. There is Eli, backlit by a sunny apartment window. At first, the camera adjusts to the outside light, making Eli a silhouette against the brownstones and the fire-escape bars out the window, but then
it finds him. When it brightens, we see that he's grown a scruffy beard. His eyes are rimmed by dark circles.

“Hey, far comet.” His voice sound more raspy and beaten than last time. He coughs hard, the camera shudders, and then he turns it so we can see that he's sitting on a couch in a small, disheveled apartment.

“Welcome to the Summer Soho sessions,” he says over the rattle of the air conditioner. “There is where I've been—
cough—
hiding out. . . .” His eyeballs dart around the room and he makes a weird half smile. He's jittery. He looks thinner than on the first tape.

“Okay.” He grabs his guitar from the couch. “This one . . . This is from the great beyond.” He starts to strum, dark and fast, and sings, eyes closed:

We're quiet when it's done.

“Well, that's a beautiful song,” Val says bitterly. She stands. “I'll be in our room.”

“You okay?” I ask her. I know it's a dumb question.

“I will be.” She heads for the door.

“Want to talk about it?” Matt asks.

“Not really.”

A few minutes later, we hear the slap of her bass strings through the thin walls.

I feel a touch of Val's anger. Why would someone end their life when they could write things this beautiful? But that's so often how it goes. The light is made more brilliant
by the intensity of the dark behind it. We wonder how that beauty could not be enough . . . and yet we'll never know what Eli was going through. What it really felt like to be him on the inside. All we know is that he couldn't live with it.

I stay with Caleb afterward. For a while, we just stare at the sports highlights that Jon turns on.

Then, slowly, Caleb comes back from inside his head. “It's so weird to hear him,” he says. “And I don't understand how the guy in that video ends up killing himself like two months later.”

“I don't either.”

I see Caleb's brow working. Then he adds, “I feel like the lyrics he writes, I could have written them, sort of.”

“Is that a good thing?”

He shrugs. “Kinda. I mean, it makes me worry about me. I don't want to end up like him. It's hard to see him in these videos. Like, having a real person to miss is worse. But hearing the songs makes me feel like we're connected. I think that's a good thing. I don't know. It all feels so mixed-up inside.”

I run my fingers through his hair. “Can I tell you a secret?”

“Sure.”

“I think your songs are better than his.”

He shakes his head. “Nah.”

“Yours have the same emotion, but with more . . . hope,
I guess. I know you worry about being like him, and you are, but you're also like a better version of him.”

He kisses me. “Well, if you want to think that, it's okay with me.”

I put my head on his shoulder, and he lays his atop mine. We knot and unknot our fingers. I feel like we are closer than ever, and yet also like he is still distant, still lost in his head. And a surprising thought crosses my mind, now that it's too late: maybe finding this second song is enough. Maybe we shouldn't continue the search. Because the further we go, the closer we get to Eli's death. And I am starting to wonder if we really want to know what we'll find.

It's nearly eleven on Thursday night when we finally roll into New York City. All of us perk up at the sight of the long, glowing skyline. Maybe we catch a whiff of the possibility this place holds.

We had plans to go look around the sights in Midtown, to get pizza, but everyone's too tired.

The boys are staying with Randy's cousin Dave. Val and I are staying at her friend and former band mate Neeta's apartment. The boys drop us off in the East Village on their way to Brooklyn.

“I've got to put in the family time,” says Caleb. “I'll miss you. We'll hang out tomorrow, though. Right?”

“Definitely.” We kiss until everyone is annoyed, and then Val and I get out.

Neeta goes to NYU and lives with two other girls in a studio apartment with a loft. Two of them sleep up there and one on the couch in a rotating cycle. When we arrive, the three girls are deeply immersed in a multiplayer video game where they are sexy Amazonian-style warriors mowing down some thuggish male army.

Val, who may not have spoken a single word the entire day, brightens up when we arrive and jumps right in with them. We order pizza. There is small talk. Mostly about bands and former boyfriends. Also I learn that Neeta is a freshman and thinking of a major in International Relations.

Val grabs a beer from the fridge, and catches me watching her. “I'm good,” she says. “I'm over it.”