Rockoholic (17 page)

“He’s not going to die, is he? He’s not taking them anymore. This is just the comedown. It’s a bad comedown but it’s still a comedown. He’s shaking it all out of his system.” He gives me a lingering frown. “
Where
exactly is he shaking it all out, by the way?”

“Everywhere.”

“Grim. Well, as long as he’s in that garage, he’s safe, anyway.”

“OK,” I say. “What about his cigarettes?” I say, holding up the shopping bag.

“Yeah, that might take the edge off a bit,” he says, taking the bag. I follow him back downstairs to the garage, where he pulls out one of the Marlboros and a lighter. He lights it, sucks in the smoke, and coughs it out. “Ugh.” Then he bends down and tucks it through the cat-flap door, saying, “Jackson, want a smoke? Here, kitty, kitty.” Then we stand well back.

Within seconds, the cigarette disappears and the flap snaps shut.

“Right. Keep an eye on him, keep his fluids up, and try and clean up after him. And if he behaves and he talks to you respectfully, he can have a smoke as a treat.”

“OK,” I say. I keep saying OK, like I know what he’s talking about. Like I even know what’s happening, what I’m doing, where this is going to lead. Nothing’s OK, though. Nothing has ever been further from O and K in its entire life.

Later, when the beast is asleep, we sneak into the drum room to attempt a cleanup. The drum kit lies in pieces, the skin torn on each drum, the sticks snapped. The beast himself lies legs akimbo on my nice duck-feather cushions, mouth wide open, dead to the world. Mac’s aproned and gloved and wearing a face mask so he doesn’t have to smell anything. He just about manages to scrape fruit slush from the walls before he has to run out and gag in the fresh air. He’s such an actor.

“I’ll stick the cushion covers in the wash, put fresh ones on,” I whisper. Mac nods, peeling wet pages of an Argos catalog from the walls. But as I’m trying to pry the cushion out from under Jackson’s head, I notice he doesn’t look so good. I put my hand to his neck.

“Oh my God. I can’t feel his pulse.”

“What?” says Mac, running over to me. “No, he can’t be . . . no, no, no . . .”

“I think he’s dead. He doesn’t have a pulse,” I say, feeling frantically along his wrist.

Mac lifts Jackson’s arm and releases his grip. The arm drops to the floor with a little thud. He is dead. He is heavy and pale and pulseless and dead.

And then he coughs.

“Jesus Christ.”
We both jump back as though zapped with a cattle prod. Jackson rolls onto his other side and goes back into his deep, corpselike sleep.

“I thought you said he didn’t have a pulse?!” Mac screeches at me.

“I couldn’t feel one!” I say defensively. “You check him if you don’t believe me.”

“No, it’s OK,” he pants theatrically. “I think. I’m just going to . . . lie here and . . . have heart failure.” He slumps against one of the upturned boxes.

My hand is clutching a fistful of T-shirt. “So . . . that’ll be the chronic inertia, I s’pose.”

I get to my feet and tiptoe over to Jackson again, crouching down to inspect his neck. “He definitely doesn’t have a pulse, Mac. Look, come and feel.”

Mac eventually gets up and joins me by Jackson’s head, somewhat nervous. “Oh for God’s sake, you don’t feel for a pulse there! I thought you were trained in first aid! You’re touching his chin, the pulse is in his neck, like this.” He puts two fingers against his Adam’s apple. He fumbles around a bit. “Hang on.”

“See, see what I mean? Maybe some people don’t have them in their necks?”

Mac’s bewildered. “It amazes me you found the right way out of the womb.” He has a feel around Jackson’s neck. “No, there it is,” he says as his two fingers settle on a spot just under Jackson’s jawline.

I feel for myself, still not convinced. This chronic inertia side effect should be relabeled the “looks dead” stage. My fingers land on a little thumping spot deep inside his neck.

“Right, so he’s not dead,” sighs Mac, putting his mask back on. “God, he really stinks, Jode.”

I can’t deny it anymore, not that I’ve been trying to deny it, really. I’ve just been breathing through my mouth. He’s been peeing in the corner, too, rather than using the downstairs loo as offered. His pants, my grandad’s sweatpants, reek like a festering stable.

“Well . . . if he’s not going to wake up,” I tell Mac, “we could give him a bath.”

“Can’t you give him a squirt of Febreze or just keep changing his clothes?” Mac suggests.

“He’ll still smell like a turd, just a turd wrapped in a clean T-shirt. Let’s give him a bath.” Jackson’s mouth falls open and he starts snoring. I’ve heard lions roaring quieter, and OMG the breath! “I could clean his teeth, too.”

Mac frowns, probably searching for a reason not to do this. “What if he wakes up when we’re washing him? He’ll go skitz.”

I shrug. “At least his breath won’t smell so badly when he’s shouting.”

“All right,
if
we can get him up the stairs,
you
can give him a bath. I’ll help you get him up there but I ain’t washing his crannies. I’m not going downtown.”

I smile as I take Jackson under his arms, then Mac gets an attack of the guilts and tells me to take his legs cos they weigh less, while he takes Jackson under his arms. Jackson’s not that heavy, but we both make a big deal of getting him out of the drum room, across the garden, and inside the kitchen. We’re standing in the hallway, right next to the staircase, when a shadow darkens the glass in the front door. Someone’s standing on our doorstep. I hear a jingle. A key in the lock. Mum. But it’s only one o’clock, what the hell is she doing home in the middle of the day? And why am I worrying about why she’s come home in the middle of the day? Point is, she
is
home in the middle of the day and we are carrying a very famous, unconscious, missing rock star who really shouldn’t be in our hallway stinking of piss!

“In here!” I say quickly, nodding toward the coat closet under the stairs and I pull the door open with my elbow and Mac folds Jackson into me so he’s doubled up, and we bundle him clumsily into the closet and shut the door.

“Mac, mask!” I whisper, and just as Mum steps through the door, he rips off both his plastic apron and mask and throws them both in the closet and shuts it.

Mum comes in, all of a bluster, loaded down with groceries. Mac stands against the closet door. I stand next to him, trying to look trustworthy. “Hi,” I smile.

“Take these will you, Jode,” she says. “Oh hi, Mackenzie. Here.” She hands Mac a bag, too. He just stands there with it. She looks at him but he smiles sweetly. He reminds me of Jackson when he fake smiles. In most of the pictures I have of Jackson smiling he is doing that exact same smile. It doesn’t look fake, but it is fake, and only an expert in fake smiles would know. Mum doesn’t know. She trusts Mac, on the whole, as he’s so much more mature than I am, but he’s acting so sketchy at this moment I’m worried he’s going to give the game away. Some bloody game.

“I’ve got it,” I say, taking the bag, picking up another by Mum’s feet, and taking them into the kitchen. Mum breezes in and dumps the bags on the breakfast bar.

“How come you’re back so early?” I say, looking back out into the hallway where Mac attempts to move away from the coat closet. Jackson’s hand flops through the crack. Mac folds it back in and stands against the closet door.

“I had to leave work early anyway so thought I’d do the food shopping. I went out to Lidl’s for a change. Can’t move for bloody baklava at Waitrose.” This is Mum Code for “we can no longer afford to shop at Waitrose.” “I’ve got to see the lawyer this afternoon. They’re reading your grandad’s will today.”

“Oh,” I say. Another plunge of dread. If Grandad’s got debts, we could be out of a home. “Do you want . . . me to come?”
Please no, please no.

“No, don’t worry. It’s a foregone conclusion, I think. I hope.” She sighs wearily.

I have to ask. Sometimes I need more than a sigh or a bit lip. I need confirmation. “Are you worried? About, like, losing the house and stuff?”

She makes a little puff noise and starts unpacking the groceries onto the counter on top of a pile of mail. All bills. One from the funeral directors is on the top. “We’ll find out today, won’t we?”

“At least the divorce is through. You won’t have to give anything to Dad.” This is my attempt at a bright side, but the “D” word is enough to shove her deeper into her mood. She grabs a carton of blood orange juice and some vegetarian sausages from one of the bags and makes for the fridge. I think about telling her not to bother buying veggie stuff anymore, as it’s like an extra two pounds a pack and I’m not vegetarian anymore, not since I found out Jackson was the most arrogant piece of meat that ever walked the Earth, but I daren’t. “What time have you got to be there?”

“The appointment’s at half two. I wanted to take a shower and do my hair first, though.”

“Well, I can put the shopping away if you want to go and shower. I don’t mind.”

She looks at me like I’ve just sneezed in her face but I’m hoping she’ll soon come to the conclusion that I’m trying to build bridges. There I go with bridges again. But she takes the bait.

“Yeah, OK. Might put a color on it,” she says, fluffing her hair at the back. “D’you think?”

“Yeah, yeah.” I think about adding,
That nice auburn color really suited you when you put it on once before
, but I don’t. For two reasons: (1) because Mum’s radar always beeps when it comes to me overdoing it with the bullshit and (2) because her hair always looks bloody awful when she home-dyes it. So I just leave it at the two yeahs.

She touches me briefly on the shoulder and leaves the kitchen, passing Mac again in the hallway on the way up the stairs. I arrive to see him towering over her, smiling like a loon, and her looking up and giving him the dodgiest eye.

“What’s that smell?” she says.

“Kitchen trash,” I say, quick as a flash. “I’ve just put it out. They come today, don’t they?”

“Oh thanks. I’d forgotten that. Can you do the others as well? I’m not going to have time.”

I nod. Mac’s making a halfhearted attempt to undo the laces on his Converse. “Takes me ages to get these off,” he laughs nervously. “I’m all knotted up.”

“You don’t have to take your shoes off to go in the kitchen, Mackenzie.” Mum smiles as she starts to go up the stairs. “It’s a tiled floor.”

“Oh, hahahahaha,” he laughs again but stays put, still tugging at the laces. We both wait in the hallway and look at each other as we hear the noises that signal Mum’s arrival up the stairs and creaks across the landing. We hear the bathroom door open. This is her getting clean towels from the wicker drawers. Then into her bedroom. Then the door to her en suite bathroom shutting. The water going on . . . and eventually, the shower door closing.

“Right, come on,” I say, pulling the door handle on the coat closet. Jackson spills out onto the hallway carpet and with him comes the fug of unwashedness and it only makes me even more determined to get him upstairs as quickly as possible.

“Back outside, yeah?” says Mac as we pull him out.

“No, bathroom,” I say.

“What?” he screeches. “We can’t now your mum’s here. She’ll see him!”

“She won’t,” I say. “She’s putting a color on her hair and then she’s going to the lawyer’s for Grandad’s will reading.”

“This is insane,” says Mac as we roll Jackson onto his back and pick up where we left off, maneuvering him around the corner and up the stairs, Mac going first at the head. Each step is like a small mountain and we lump up so slowly I could scream. Halfway up, we get the giggles.

“Come on!” I try and say. “Keep going. Mac, stop laughing!”

Mac’s in hysterics.

“Brilliant, just brilliant. Mac, come on, will you?!”

But once we finally regain our composure and begin moving up the stairs again, Mac trips on his trailing lace, loses his footing, and drops Jackson, so I take the full weight of him and we both fall
gadoink, gadoink, gadoink
down the few steps we’ve just climbed. Miraculously, Jackson doesn’t wake up. I break his fall. Mac is poised like a waxwork on the fourth step up. We’re both waiting for my mum to appear and wonder why I’m flat on my back at the bottom with a missing rock star on top of me.

“Are you OK?” Mac whispers down to me after a while.

“Yes. Just get him off me,” I whisper back. He runs down and grabs Jackson under the shoulders.

Finally, once we’re up, we take him into the bathroom, plonk him down on the floor, and close the door. I put the plug in the tub and start running the water. I pour in a shitload of ylang-ylang and crushed-diamond bath cream to get a foam started. I didn’t know crushed diamonds even had a smell, but it’s well nice. Mac starts to peel off Jackson’s clothes, looking like he’s pecking through a rancid trash can for a lost five pound note. I root about in the medicine cabinet for something to de-fuzz him. There’s some Nair cream, but it smells like chemotherapy in a tube. I find one of my grandad’s razors.

“I’ll find him some towels,” says Mac, rummaging through the wicker drawers before I can ask him to help me remove Jackson’s pants. I hear Mum’s shower whirring distantly.