Rock Star (5 page)

Bryan was still speechless and could only shake his head.

“I mean, that’s what you’re doing, right? Blaming yourself for Brodie’s death? Did you give him the needle, Bryan?” Callie asked insistently.

“No, Callie, I already told you…” Bryan growled through clenched teeth.

“Then why in God’s name are you sitting here blaming yourself?” Callie yelled.

Bryan lowered his head; he really couldn’t formulate a response.

Callie decided to try a gentler tack. “Look, Bryan, you’ve been beating yourself up for months, thinking you caused Brodie’s death, right?”

Bryan raised his head, his eyes wet. “I could’ve stopped him, I know it.”

Callie reflected on that for a moment. She didn’t really know that much about substance abuse and was painfully aware that she was hideously unqualified for the role she’d been thrust into.

Callie shook her head, “Bryan, have you talked about this with anybody?”

Bryan gave a harsh laugh. “I wondered when that was coming. Ever since I got old enough to talk, one person or another has suggested that I needed to ‘talk to someone.’ ” He mimicked the overly clinical voice of a school counselor. “Look, it’s not about my potty training or being locked in closets or seeing my mom screw strangers or any of the other bullshit from my childhood, okay?” he shouted. “It’s about my best friend being dead and me not doing a goddamn thing to stop it!” As if trying physically to regain control, he suddenly dropped his voice to a disconsolate whisper as he hunched his shoulders and lowered his head back down on his knees. “Callie, I don’t want to talk to ‘someone.’ I want to talk to you.”

The brief glimpse into Bryan’s childhood had left Callie speechless. They’d really never talked about it before, but the picture she’d gotten wasn’t pretty. He seemed hell-bent on discussing Brodie with her, here and now. She couldn’t see any way out of this conversation and only hoped she wasn’t doing irreparable damage. She fell back on her best tool. “Let’s look at this logically, okay?”

Bryan had to smile; Callie was nothing if not always logical and efficient.

“You knew Brodie most of your life, right?”

Bryan nodded.

“You were like brothers, even closer than brothers, from what you’ve told me. Right?“

Bryan nodded again.

“So he knew he could come to you for anything, and you would help him no matter what.”

Bryan hesitated, unsure of where this was going. “He knew he could come to me, but at the time, I was all wrapped up in this girl, and…”

Callie interrupted, not really wanting to hear about Bryan’s love life. “Had you ever turned him down before?”

“Of course not, he was my brother,” Bryan replied emphatically.

“Do you think he knew that he could come to you if he wanted to, and you would move heaven and hell to help him?”

Bryan paused, but then finally had to admit to himself that Brodie had to have known that he would not let him down. “Yes,” he murmured reluctantly, not at all happy with the direction Callie seemed to be taking.

“So, if he knew help was available and didn’t use it, what do you think that means?”

Bryan stared at her, not wanting to acknowledge Brodie’s complicity in his own death.

Callie softened her tone. “He obviously didn’t want help. I don’t know that much about addiction, but I do know that you have to want help. You have to do that for yourself, sweetie,” she murmured softly. Her voice, though barely above a whisper, resonated with tenderness and compassion. “No one can do that for you.”

Bryan still didn’t respond, so Callie asked another question. “Bryan, how did you find out that Brodie was using?”

Bryan leaned back until he was prone on the ground, his knees still bent, his arms stretched above his head. He seemed to reflect for a moment, then gave a heavy sigh. “You know, like I told you, we all were using stuff in the beginning.” Callie nodded. “Then Brodie and I moved to B.T.’s house, and his wife Maria didn’t put up with it, so we stopped.” His mouth curved into a shadow of a smile as he recalled Maria’s reaction when she located their stash of marijuana. She’d stormed through the house with all the force of a Valkyrie. There had been hell to pay that night, and they’d never dared try that again. Somehow, recalling the horror of watching her flush two weeks’ pay had quelled any desire they might have had to attempt smoking in the house again. He hadn’t seen Maria that angry before or since, but he was eternally grateful for her intervention. He continued the story. “I mean, we still drank beer and smoked weed, when we could get away with it, but it wasn’t a regular thing anymore. We hooked up with Jon, and then a little later we met Twist. After that, we worked so hard we didn’t have time to party anyway. I was okay with that, but now, looking back, I don’t think Brodie was. Then we hit big with our second album. We moved out of B.T.’s house and lived together for a while. Brodie would go on these incredible binges. After a while I couldn’t hang with the constant partying and moved out. But Brodie and I still spent most of our time together. At first Brodie was on coke. I tried it once, but I really didn’t like it.”

Callie interrupted, fascinated by what she was hearing. Since she’d never tried any illegal drugs, she was curious. “Why didn’t you like it?”

Bryan wiped his hands over his face. “It was just too good, you know? I mean, the moment I came down, all I could think about was how badly I wanted it again. That scared the crap out of me, and I didn’t want to use it again. Brodie did, though. I mean, this was the early nineties, everybody was using something. Me and the other guys pretty much left it alone five or six years ago. For me, having a life where I could write and play my music and have people actually pay money to hear it was more than enough of a high. All I ever wanted was to play music, have enough money to pay my rent and buy CDs. Storm Crow gave me all that and more than I ever thought possible. Hell, I actually own a house. Never in a million years did I ever think that would happen. I didn’t need to get high anymore. I guess I grew up or something. I don’t know. I knew Brodie was still using occasionally. I’d see him sometimes and he’d be really wasted, but I didn’t worry too much about it. He seemed okay with just using it for partying. He was still able to function at that point. I didn’t know how bad it had gotten until about a year or so ago.”

“What happened?” Callie was wide-eyed as she tried take it all in.

Bryan took another tremulous breath, then continued after a long pause. “We were practicing for our tour, and Brodie kept missing rehearsals. That wasn’t like him. No matter how messed up he was, he never bailed on the band. Anyway, I realized I hadn’t seen him as much as usual. So I went over to his place.” Bryan paused again, licking his lips and taking several shaky breaths as if steeling himself to relate the rest of the tale.

Callie could see the sweat beading on his upper lip. His color had faded as if he were feeling ill or nauseous.

“He was shooting up, Callie. I saw the needle, the works, everything. I couldn’t believe my eyes.” His voice shook. “And the thing is, he was so goddamned casual about it, like it was no big deal. He invited me in and tied his arm off with me sitting there. He’d already cooked the stuff. I don’t think I’ve ever been as sick as I was when I watched him shoot that garbage into his vein. I was stunned. I mean, I knew that he liked to party, but I had no idea it had gotten like that. And it happened so fast, or at least it seemed to. Part of me just wanted to grab that poison and flush it down the toilet, but I just sat there and watched, like I was paralyzed or something. I couldn’t even say anything.”

Callie couldn’t imagine what it felt like to see a friend, or anyone for that matter, shooting up heroin. The very thought horrified her. She reached out and touched his hand. “What did you do?“

Bryan sat up, his grim expression adding additional poignancy to the gruesome tale. She’d noted before that his eyes, already tempestuous, darkened considerably whenever he experienced emotional distress. Now they had turned almost black, taking on the appearance of a southwestern sky she’d seen once right before a tornado struck the city. She marveled at the powerful emotions that could initiate such a change. “I stayed there with him, and I tried to talk to him about getting clean. He said the usual crap, you know, about not being an addict. We fought, and he kicked me out. Then I called B.T. and the rest of the band. We tried to talk some sense into him.”

“An intervention?”

“Yeah, I guess you could call it that. Brodie was like me, didn’t really have any family to speak of, so it was just the band, B.T., and Maria. We didn’t really get anywhere, and he never agreed to get help. But he did keep it together long enough for us to finish rehearsals and go on tour. We were about halfway done when he died.” Bryan closed his eyes, obviously struggling to master his emotions. When he opened them again, the deep blue pools revealed a suffering so torturous that Callie wanted to weep. The muscles in his throat moved strongly as he choked out, “The tour, the goddamned tour! My best friend was strung out on smack, and we just patched him together enough to go on tour!”

Callie reflected on what Bryan had just shared with her. So this was the source of his self-destructive tendencies. He really hadn’t caused his friend’s death and was in no significant way responsible. But the guilt seemed to be eating him alive. It seemed surreal, totally alien to her, and she was clueless as to how to process it. As she struggled with her own overwhelming emotions, a ghastly thought occurred to her. “Did you find him?”

Bryan pressed the heels of his hands against his closed eyelids, as if to shut out the horrific scene. “No, Twist did. We were in London and had one more show before we were going to take a two-week break. You know, come home, regroup, then start on the American leg of the tour. Twist went to Brodie’s room for some reason, and he found the body.” He took another deep breath and swallowed the hotly sickening wave of nausea the memory still evoked.

“He’d been dead for hours. Apparently he’d gone to his room to shoot up as soon as we finished the show. We’d been keeping a close watch on him because it’s so goddamned easy to score in London, but he said he was tired and didn’t want to hang out. Hell, we all were, so we weren’t suspicious. Anyway, Twist started screaming…We all ran down there…yeah, I saw him, too. He had turned blue, his mouth was all purple, the veins in his neck stood out. It looked like he had vomited. There was…” He rubbed his eyes again. “Oh God, I’d never seen a dead body before.”

Callie felt like screaming herself at the picture Bryan had painted. She could not imagine what it felt like to see the dead body of a close friend. Especially a friend who had died such an appalling death. She was relieved for Bryan’s sake that he hadnactually had the initial shock of finding Brodie, but knew that seeing someone he loved in that condition had to have been incredibly traumatic.

She took a deep breath to regain her composure, “So what do you think you could’ve done? I mean, you tried to talk to him. You got other people who were close to him to talk to him. You were available for him. What else do you think you could’ve done? Do you really think he’d still be alive if you had stopped the tour? Maybe he would’ve died sooner. Maybe having to get it together for the tour actually helped prolong his life. Do you really know?”

“That’s the real pisser, Callie. I don’t know if it would’ve made a difference or not.” Bryan sighed heavily, finally ready to acknowledge the truth. “I know you’re right, Callie,” he choked out, “but it doesn’t make it any easier. It just seems like I put the band before Brodie’s life. Did we really have to go right then? Why didn’t we stop and make him go to rehab? I should’ve been able to do something.”

“Bryan, the person has to want help. You offered help, and he didn’t accept. What more was there to do?” She looked on as he put his head back down on his bent knees and brought his hands up to cup the back of his head. She could tell that he was deep in thought, but wasn’t sure that her words had penetrated. After watching him for several long moments, she finally touched his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

Bryan raised his head and gave her a bittersweet smile. Then he reached out and grasped her hand in his, raised it to his lips, and gently kissed each finger. “Thank you, Callie,” he said, looking intently into her eyes. “No, I’m not okay, but for the first time in a very long time, I really do think I’ll be okay soon.”

Much to Bryan’s frustration, after the trip to Chattanooga, his relationship with Callie remained pretty much the same. He continued spending as much time as possible with her, but she seemingly felt, at most, a polite interest in him. Bryan couldn’t help being aggravated by her behavior as he knew he had not imagined the closeness between them that day. She had given him exactly what he needed to realize the futility of blaming himself for Brodie’s death. Others had given him sympathy, even pity, but Callie had been the first to make him stop kicking his own ass and look at the situation in all its sordid glory. Of course, she’d probably forced him to let up on himself only so there’d be room for her to ride his ass. He puzzled over the heretofore unknown but perversely masochistic quirk in his nature that caused him to actually enjoy and even look forward to the sarcastic little comments she was prone to make. Had he become so jaded by the way people fawned over him that he actually enjoyed being on the receiving end of her witticisms? Apparently so. He couldn’t recall ever delighting in a woman’s company the way he did with Callie. In all his previous encounters with women, he’d participated in the niceties of conversation only to the degree necessary to get the woman into bed, and sometimes if she was particularly star-struck, conversation wasn’t necessary at all. That wasn’t the case with Callie; he was astonished to find that he actually enjoyed talking to her. His celebrity status notwithstanding, she didn’t pull any punches. She was a real person, with no agenda of her own. She didn’t stroke his ego because she wanted an entrée into the business; she only laughed at his jokes if they were genuinely funny. And she didn’t hesitate to smack him around when he needed it. He laughed to himself when he recalled an incident earlier that week.