How to Kill a Rock Star (38 page)

“Eliza, say something.”

I knew what he wanted me to say, but I couldn’t pretend anymore either. “I told you I couldn’t do it. I told you I was incapable of giving you what you wanted.” Loring banged his fist into one of the stal doors and it flapped violently back and forth for a good ten seconds.

I was staring at his shoes, trying to remember which foot his birthmark was on.

“I give up. I’m done,” he said.

I took in my surroundings with a heightened sense of awareness: the urine smel of the bathroom, the fluorescent lighting that made even Loring’s lustrous skin look sal ow,
and the leaky sink that sounded like the thrust of a jet engine every time a drop of water hit the porcelain.

This is what it means to be in the middle of love, I thought. Being in the middle of love is like being in the middle of a war zone.

I stood there contemplating how long I had to wait before I could run off, find Paul, and tel him everything.

Twenty more seconds, I decided. I started counting them down in my head. Nineteen Mississippi, eighteen Mississippi, seventeen…

Then the door behind me swung open.

“You’ve
got
to be kidding me,” Loring said.

I wasn’t facing the door but I could see Paul in the mirror. He had a backpack thrown over his shoulder and that stupid orange hat stil on his head.

“Shit,” Paul said, sounding as though he felt foiled by the two people he’d happened upon.

Loring’s eyes fol owed Paul to the sink.

“Hey, don’t look at me, Sam. You wanted her, you got her.

She’s your goddamn headache now. I just need to wash my hands.”

Paul silenced the drip by turning on the cold water.

Behind his back, Loring snarled, “Fuck you, Paul,” and left.

“Damn, he sure is crabby today,” Paul said. “What’s the matter? You get caught making out with Eddie Vedder or something?”

I tried to meet Paul’s eyes but he wasn’t playing that game. He seemed to be doing everything in his power to avoid looking at me. I watched him let the water run over his fingers, press the soap dispenser, rub pink goo between his palms, rinse off the soap and then shut the tap so tightly the whole room was as quiet as the inside of a coffin.

He was at the door when I turned and said, “
Wait
.” I could sense his hesitation, but eventual y he rotated to How to Kil _internals.rev 2/22/08 5:00

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33face me.

“I have to go,” he said, adjusting his fal ing backpack.

I took a smal step forward and spoke just above a whisper. “Do you think maybe we could find someplace to talk?”

“
Talk
? You wanna
talk
?”

“I’m on my way to Michael’s. I’l be there al weekend watching the dog. If you have time, maybe you could stop over.”

“I don’t have time.”

“There are things I need to tel you.”

“Tel me right here. Tel me now.”

My eyes were on his hand. I saw him tighten his grip on the door. His knuckles were bloodless around the handle.

Like Phil ip Oxford, he was ready to pul , ready to run.

“I messed up, Paul.”

“Holy Hel , you have no right to lay this shit on me now.”

“I never meant to break your heart. You have to believe me. Al I ever wanted was—”

“
Hold
it!” He let go of the handle and his fist exploded into a shape that reminded me of a spider web. “Break my
heart
? Is that what you just said? I have news for you; you didn’t break my
heart
. My heart’s
fine
. My heart’s in the best shape of its life. You know what you did to me? You took an AK-47 and blew my
soul
open. So fuck you and your fucking
talk
because nothing short of a miracle could take back the last nine months of hel you put me through!”

“I know I can’t take it back. I wish I could. What I
can
do is tel you the truth and hope that—”

“Shut your goddamn mouth. You don’t know the meaning of the word
truth
.” He took another step back. “You know what
I
wish—I wish I’d never
met
you. Better yet, I wish you’d bled to death in your bathroom twelve years ago instead of living long enough to move to New York and assassinate my soul.
That’s
what I wish—that you’d never
fucking made it here.”

I didn’t even bother trying not to cry, but to retain some self-respect I pul ed my shoulders back and lifted my head high. “No one has ever said anything that awful to me.
Ever
.” But I was seized by something I saw in Paul’s eyes. What lay beneath his gaze didn’t match the hate in his voice.

There was a trace of regret. A cry for help, maybe. I made one last-ditch effort to hang on whatever it was.

“We
need
to talk. Later tonight, tomorrow, two months from now, whenever you’re ready, okay? I’l wait.” He began to quail, like he was being pul ed backward against his wil , like someone was yanking him by the sleeve.

“Don’t hold your breath,” he said.

By then he was standing in the hal . He let go of the handle, the door shut in front of him, and he was gone.

A plastic T-bone steak, a yel ow ducky, a red fire hydrant, a furry hedgehog. Fender had more toys than a kid, al strewn across the floor like squeaky landmines, and I stepped on every one of them, not because I wanted to play, but because without the noise, the silence was unbearable; without the day to let light in, the house felt like a morgue.

I was alone with nothing to do but obsess over the contradiction of Paul’s cruel words against the look on his face.

It was
I wish you were dead
versus
Save me.

I told myself I would feel better when it was no longer dark outside. And Michael and Vera would be back on Monday. The minute they returned I would go straight to Ludlow Street, climb the stairs, use the key that stil hung on my chain to unlock the bleeding door, go in, and
make
Paul listen.

And afterward, if he stil didn’t want anything to do with me, fine, I would accept that. But not until he’d been given the facts.

Vera had made up the sofa bed with one of Aunt Karen’s afghans. The smel was too much. I stuffed it in the closet and put on one of Michael’s sweaters to keep warm.

At some point during the night, Fender began pawing at my arm. The dog’s leg looked like a furry chopstick. I figured he had to pee, and I got up to let him out.

It was early October, the weather had been chil y and rainy al week, and through the front window I could see How to Kil _internals.rev 2/22/08 5:00

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drizzle il uminated by the light of a street lamp.

I opened the door and my eyes were instantly drawn down.

Paul was sitting there, heels on the ground, his toes errat-ical y tapping against each other like two shutters in the wind. His arms encircled his knees, his head was lowered, his back was to the house, and he stil had that stupid orange hat on.

I whispered his name and he leaped up and turned around, giving me the impression I’d startled him even more than he’d startled me. He had the dizzied look of an amne-siac, one who didn’t know where he was or how he’d arrived there.

Fender scurried out from underneath my legs, jumped on Paul, then darted down the sidewalk and lifted his leg on the neighbor’s garbage. Michael had asked me to make sure I wiped Fender’s feet before I al owed the dog back inside, but when he came home I let him go right past me.

Paul leaned to the left and peered into the house. “You alone?”

I nodded. “How long have you been out here?”

“A while,” he said, monkeying with the zipper on his sweatshirt. “Trying to decide whether or not to knock.” I opened the door a little wider—my way of inviting him in without having to say it—but he stood in place, chafing his palms together as if they were wood and he was trying to start a fire.

“Eliza, about what I said to you at the theater—”

“Forget it.” I made a shooing motion with my hand. “I deserve it.”

“I just don’t want you to be thinking back on
us
someday and believe that’s how I real y felt. I just had to say that to you, al right?”

I didn’t like the way he said
us
, as if
us
was lost forever.

33“
All right
?” he said again, desperately.

My mouth was dry from sleep. I let saliva col ect around my tongue and then nodded in simultaneity with a deep swal ow.

Holding the door open, I walked back into the house and, in a completely calculated move, lowered my chin, widened my eyes, and blinked until Paul’s face showed signs of col apse.

“I can’t,” he said.

“Just for a minute.”

He looked over his shoulder, surveyed the sleeping neighborhood, then stepped inside and shut the door behind him, but with a noticeable disinclination to do so.

I reached out to touch his chest, moving slowly to see if he was going to flinch or jerk away. He did neither. He set his palm on top of my hand, lifted it up, and slid it underneath his sweatshirt, placing it directly over his heart. My hand was colder than his skin and he trembled. Then he closed his eyes, and I began edging forward until I was standing so close to him, the back of my hand was pushing into my own chest.

“I shouldn’t be here,” he said.

Everything happened so fast after that. Within seconds we were kissing and fumbling onto the bed. Then we were undressed; Paul was above me, inside of me, and he was violent, though not in the act itself, but in the intensity with which he performed it.

“Paul…”

“
Shh
.”

I opened my eyes and realized he stil had the stupid orange hat on. I tried to take it off but he grabbed my hand.

“What’s the matter, you get a bad haircut?”

“Something like that,” he said, but his voice contained no trace of good humor.

I wrapped my legs around him and felt him tense up before he came, was able to let go just as he let go.

Moments later I was staring at the shadow of a cross on the bedroom wal , cast by two power lines outside the window. “There’s so much I have to tel you.” He dovetailed himself around my body, drew me in, and said, “No talking. Not tonight. Just let me hold you, okay?” How to Kil _internals.rev 2/22/08 5:00 PM Page 340

When I woke up I knew, even before I turned over, that Paul was gone, and the first thing I did was cal and leave him a message asking him to cal me back.

I put the couch back together and then brought the phone into the bathroom in case it rang while I was in the shower. As I was getting dressed, there was a knock on the door, and I rushed to answer it with a towel wrapped turban-style around my head, hoping to see Paul waiting on the porch with coffee and breakfast. I got Loring instead.

Loring stepped inside, looking around. “Michael and Vera aren’t back yet?”

It was an odd way to start the conversation considering how our last one had ended. “No. Not until Monday. Why?” Loring perched himself on the edge of the couch and sighed heavily, his eyes trained on some invisible spot in the carpet. “There’s something I have to tel you.” I took the towel off my head and felt droplets of water dampen my shoulders. “There’s something I have to tel you, too.” I sat down next to him. “It’s about Paul.”

“
Paul
?” His whole body bent toward me as if pushed by the force of a wave. “You mean, you know?”

“Know what?”

Loring’s face went limp. “Eliza, what are you talking about?”

“Paul was here last night,” I said, using a penitent tone,
implying there was a lot more to the story.

Loring immediately put his arms around me and cradled me the way he cradled the twins when they cried, rocking me back and forth, kissing the top of my head. And had it not seemed so out-of-place, I might have described his behavior as the utmost in piteous compassion, the likes of which I hadn’t seen so intensely since the day I returned to my high school classroom having lost two parents in a plane crash.

Fender started clawing at the door. Seconds later Michael and Vera staggered in looking like two scarecrows weathered by a storm. Michael and Loring exchanged somber glances, and Vera’s eyes were red like she’d been crying.

“I just got here,” Loring said to Michael, and then he announced that Paul had been a recent visitor.

“
What
?” Michael’s head fel back. “He was
here
? Last
night
?”

Michael touched Loring’s shoulder as if to say,
Let me
, and the two of them traded places—Michael took the seat next to me while Loring lingered beside Vera. The way everyone was gawking at each other was giving me the creeps. I grabbed my brother by the arm and said, “What’s going on?”

“Eliza.” Michael’s face was pal id. “Something happened this morning.”

My body began to shake and my eyes wel ed up with tears.
An accident
, I thought.
Paul’s been in an accident
. I imagined planes col iding in midair, a taxi being crushed by a semi, a mugging gone awry, terrorism.

“Something bad?” I asked, my breath shal ow, my heart pounding.

Michael’s lips were locked together. He seemed to be trying to keep the words in, as if the ones that wanted out didn’t belong in the air.

“Yeah,” he said, barely opening his mouth. “Very bad.”
part three

Sometimes a

Person Has to Die

in Order to Live

or

(Why are the ones

who need the

most shelter

always the ones

left out

in the rain?)

“Suicide.”

Michael said the word, he knew what it meant, and yet al he could feel, at that moment, was anger—anger at Paul for throwing in the towel, and for putting Michael in the position of having to be the one to tel Eliza.

She was shaking her head; tears were streaming down her cheeks.

“No…” she kept saying. “No…”

Michael couldn’t look at her. He muttered the word a couple more times, trying to knock it into his head, trying to make himself believe it, too.