How to Kill a Rock Star (23 page)

It was almost noon by the time I woke up. I had no idea how long the party had gone on after Paul and I left, but I’d made plans to run with Loring so I stopped by his suite to see if he stil wanted to go.

Tab answered the door with a beer in one hand and a piece of cake in the other.

“Is that breakfast or a late-night snack?” I asked.

“Both.” He jutted the cake towards me. “Want some?”

“No, thanks. I’m going running. Is Loring up?” Tab beckoned me in by opening the door as wide as it would go. “Lori,” he yodeled. “A Thousand Ways is looking for you.”

“What did you cal me?”

Tab laughed. “Nothing. Come in.”

Inside, Starr was making Bloody Marys over the sink. A girl I didn’t remember meeting was watching TV. Anna was asleep on the floor, and Brandy, who had taken a liking to Angelo hours ago, was nowhere in sight.

Loring was on the couch, knees pul ed up into his chest, his face bent over a steaming mug of tea as if it were a fire keeping him warm.

“Morning,” I said penitently, playful y kicking the bottom of his foot.

He raised his eyes and gave me a weak smile.

“Are you mad?” I said.

“No.”

“You seemed kind of mad last night.”

“I wasn’t.”

“In that case,” I nodded in Anna’s direction, “you get any?”

At least I’d made him smile. “You think you’re so funny,” he said. “Right. We’l see who’s laughing when I channel al my pent up sexual energy into my run and dust you.”
January 14, 2002

The concept of time, as it’s commonly understood by normal people with normal jobs and normal goddamn lives, doesn’t exist on the road. The nights spread out like the dark, godforsaken highways that distinguish them, and the days run together like Thanksgiving dinner smothered in gravy.

You never real y know where you are or what time it is, and the outside world starts to fade away.

It’s cool.

And sure, an extended period of said lifestyle would no doubt have major drawbacks, my biggest complaint so far being the food—it’s next to impossible to avoid shitty food. But two weeks isn’t nearly enough time to suffer the disadvantages common to life on the road. Hel , I like riding around on the bus. I like waking up in a different city every day. Playing for thousands of people night after night is the high of al highs and right now, sitting in my bunk in a parking lot in our nation’s capital, I feel like being on this tour is a glimpse of the band’s goddamn yel ow-brick future. Not to mention that Loring had to go and tel me stories about how, on his first big tour, he and his wife set up cribs in the back of the bus, and how his kids had been to almost every state in the country before they were a year old. Loring’s wife thought being on tour was like living in hel , though. She eventual y went home and that’s when things started getting “rusted.”
Since Eliza doesn’t fly but longs to travel al the same, this is a dream come true for her. Unfortunately I never get to bed before the middle of the night, so I sleep half the day, but my betrothed is always up at the butt crack of dawn to run. She usual y sleeps while the bus is moving, then she hangs out with Loring—this was part of the deal with
Sonica
. Lucy let her have the two weeks, but only if Eliza agreed to do a daily online diary of life on the road with Loring Blackman. Basical y, Eliza fol ows Loring to soundchecks, hangs out with him backstage, compiles set lists, takes a few candid digital photos, then hooks into the
Sonica
website and posts it al .

It’s not like I mind—theoretical y—but Eliza and Loring have been spending a lot of time together, and there was this one incident a few days back…probably not even worth mentioning, but it’s on my mind so I’m going to document it.

We had a day off in Chicago, and Eliza and I had been sharing a room with Michael al week, so I forked over cash out-of-pocket and got us our own one bedroom suite. As soon as she got back from a run with Loring, which has become a daily event, she and I were going to do some sightseeing and then go shopping for wedding rings. I was expecting her back by eleven. At noon I heard a commotion in the hal way, and when I looked out the peephole, Loring was standing in front of the door, carrying Eliza on his back and trying to get the card key in the slot without dropping her. They were laughing in this relaxed, familiar way that seemed, I don’t know, way too relaxed and familiar. Her arms were holding his shoulders, his furled like a pair of goddamn wings around her legs.

I didn’t know what to do so I went back into the bedroom and waited. There was a half wal dividing the sitting room and bedroom, and I was pretty sure they wouldn’t be able to see me when they came in.

I watched Loring set Eliza on the couch like she was break-able. “RICE,” he said. “Rest, ice, compression, elevation.” How to Kil _internals.rev 2/22/08 5:00 PM Page 200

20Whatever the fuck that is.

She took off her shoe and propped her foot on the arm of the couch while Loring grabbed a towel and fil ed it with ice.

Then he cradled her ankle like Prince Charming testing the goddamn glass slipper and set the ice pack on top if it.

I kept watching Loring watching Eliza and a disturbing thought came to me. But it wasn’t a strike of lightning or anything. More like a subtle tap on the shoulder, which is why I didn’t go bal istic. Besides, I trust my betrothed.

This is not to say I wasn’t put off by the way Loring’s eyes darted around Eliza’s face when she wasn’t paying attention to him. And by the way they both laughed when the towel slipped and ice spil ed al over the floor.

I got up and made like I’d been sleeping, and both of their heads spun in my direction. Eliza seemed genuinely happy to see me, which made me feel better, but Loring acted like a teenager who’d been caught screwing in his parent’s bed.

I asked Eliza if she was okay. She laughed and looked at Loring and said she thought her ankle was broken, giving me the impression “broken”

was some kind of inside joke told for Loring’s benefit because he laughed right back at her and said, “It’s not broken. She just twisted it. It’l be fine in a few days.” I looked at her ankle. It was definitely swol en, and there was a bruise forming on the left side. When I asked her what happened she started tel ing me Loring had tripped her. Then he raised his hand and cut her off, claiming she’d wanted to race, and because he’s considerably faster than she is—his exact words—she purposely stepped on his heel and then fel .

I’d never heard Loring talk so goddamn fast, so loudly, or so clearly.

Eliza started moaning, and right away Loring volunteered to go get her some Advil. I told him not to bother, I had some, and I might have sounded rude. Actual y, I’m sure I did, because
Loring gathered up al the spilt ice, dumped it into the sink, and said he’d see us later.

Eliza thanked him a zil ion times and he gave her one of those charming, humble smiles that make the sorority girls swoon. When the door shut behind him, Eliza looked up at me and said, “You’re in a lousy mood today.” Lousy mood? I wasn’t in a lousy mood. It was just that, as I pointed out, I blew the whole goddamn morning waiting for her while she was gal ivanting around Chicago with Loring.

Using her pissed-off, I’m-about-to-kick-you voice, she huffed and told me she hadn’t been gal ivanting. She said when you can barely walk, gal ivanting is literal y impossible.

I wanted to come right out and say what was on my mind, but I didn’t want to spend the day in a big goddamn fight. Stil , I knew I’d feel better if I threw my worries up in the air and watched to see where they bounced so I asked Eliza, very calm-ly, if it had escaped her attention that she’d spent more time with Loring in the last week than she had with me.

She goes: “You exaggerate, Paul.”

Next I asked her if she and Loring were like, best friends now or something, and she said, “Wel , we’re friends, I guess.

Does that bother you?”

I asked her if it should.

A honey-sweetened smile crossed her face, her head tilted down, her eyes blinked toward the sky, and al the doubts plaguing my feeble fucking mind dissipated into the air.

Jesus, she would kick my ass if she knew I’d just recounted that story. This one’s between you and me. Thanks for listening.

Over.

The band got the news before the show in D.C., when Feldman showed up unexpectedly, flying into the dressing room like a bomber ready to drop its payload, swooping down on Paul who, along with the Michaels, sat huddled around an advanced copy of
Sonica,
which had a review of Bananafish’s just-released, eponymously titled record.

“Swear over your life you didn’t tel him what to write,” Paul yel ed at me over his shoulder.

I was on the floor near a phone jack, computer on my lap, sending in a diary entry. “I swear,” I said. I’d made no secret of tirelessly pleading with Lucy to assign someone to review the record, but beyond that it was out of my hands. Lucy’s position on Bananafish was stil critical at best.

Although she did admit, after I miraculously convinced her to attend Bananafish’s last Ring of Saturn show, that Paul had an incredible voice, she also couldn’t help but throw in a typical y negative
but—
“He looks like a junkie.”

And when Lucy heard Bananafish would be replacing Dogwalker for the two-week tour with Loring, she said, “Eliza, does your fiancé know you’ve screwed half the Blackman family?”

Sonica
cal ed
Bananafish
“a promising, intense debut,” and said Paul was a songwriter possessing “the heart of a madman, the soul of a hopeful romantic, and the voice of a
god. Definitely worth a listen.”

Time Out
also did a piece on the band, heralding them as “light at the end of a long, dark, pop-music tunnel. A post-rock, rock ’n’ rol tour de force.”

Not everyone liked it.
Rolling Stone
only gave it two stars, equating the songs to “self-indulgent Hal mark cards.” Oddly enough, this review pleased Paul, as
Rolling Stone
had recently given three-and-a-half stars to a famous dancer-slash-actress-slash-singer whose musical success, Paul claimed, was proof of the decline of civilization.

Feldman grabbed Paul’s arm. “We gotta talk. It’s about the Drones tour.”

The whole band had been in the clouds for months over the possibility of a tour with the Drones. Their faces shriv-eled instantly. But I could tel Feldman was hiding something. His cheeks were like pomegranates, round and pink and ready to burst with juicy little seeds of pleasure.

Feldman made a fist and shadowboxed a one-two punch.

“Pack your bags,” he said. “You’re in.” I stood to the side and watched one Paul and three Michaels go slack-jaw, their tongues lying motionless like dead fish in their mouths. Then wild revelry broke out among them, complete with high-fives and cries for alcohol.

Michael borrowed Paul’s phone to cal Vera. And when Paul dove to embrace me, the look on his face was one of absolute, perfect joy—the kind of joy that can’t be reproached, stolen, or marred—the kind that only the innocent or the ignorant are capable of experiencing.

I wanted to freeze the moment. Freeze it and jump inside of it and stay there until it melted into the warm, swishy liquid of happy memories.

Feldman threw his arm across Paul’s back and said, “I’m real y proud of you,” and I found myself fil ed with momen-tary affection for Feldman. I thanked him and even kissed his
20pinguid cheek. But as I continued to watch the celebration, my feelings got more and more convoluted. I was thril ed for Paul, for Michael, and the rest of the band—I wanted nothing more for them than this—but there was a prickling underneath my skin that felt like a portent to heartbreak.

My own, not theirs.

I was scared.

I already felt left behind.

Once everyone calmed down and Michael got off the phone, Feldman expanded on the details of the tour: The band would be flown to San Francisco the first week of March to meet up with the Drones. They would travel down the coast, through most of the Western states, the Midwest, Texas, the East Coast, Florida, and then culminate with a show at Madison Square Garden in early July.

“Madison Square Garden,” Paul mumbled in disbelief.

“And this isn’t your average sideshow carnival,” Feldman said. “We’re talking first class al the way. The Drones are gonna cart your asses around in a 737, for Christ’s sake.

Boys, we ain’t in Kansas anymore.”

Feldman had said: “
737.
”

I had heard: “
Potential rudder reversal problem
.” Vivid images came slashing through my head like a machete, hacking away at my tenuous, oscil ating bliss: March, 1991.
Slash.
I skipped school to watch the news after United flight #585—a 737-200—crashed in Colorado Springs, kil ing al twenty-five people on board.
Slash
. The USAir flight that went down outside of Pittsburgh in 1994.

Again, a 737.

Judo, Bananafish’s tour manager, told the band it was time to hit the stage, and Paul gripped the sides of my face.

“Can you believe this?” he said. “We’l go a few days early.

San Francisco can be our honeymoon.”

“Let’s go,” Judo yel ed.

Paul moved in to kiss me but I couldn’t seem to kiss him back.

“What’s wrong?” he said. “You haven’t changed your mind about the honeymoon, have you?”

I shook my head.

It was supposed to be a love scene of sorts.

It wasn’t the time or the place to say anything else.

The show that night was so spectacular I couldn’t watch it. I felt like a hanger-on. No better than Starr or Brandy or any nameless fan who wanted to be a part of the Bananafish world, but in reality would never be anything more than an interloper.

I asked Feldman to tel Paul I was tired, and I headed back to the bus. In the parking lot I thought I saw Loring walking towards me, carrying a pizza.

“Shouldn’t you be inside?” I said. The guy looked up and I chuckled. “Sorry. I thought you were Loring.” I stepped back and surveyed the guy’s face.