Softer Than Steel (A Love & Steel Novel) (8 page)

Son Knows Best

“Don’t be daft, mate. We move to the lake house for the summer as soon as school’s over next week. The apartment is yours for the asking. All the comforts of home.”

Rick hadn’t remotely considered asking. Holing himself up for the past two weeks in generic well-appointed anonymity had eased the anxiety triggers. “Eh. I don’t know, Dig. There’s something to be said for hotel living.”

He had to practically grind his mobile into his ear canal for Adrian’s response to register over the din of Bedford Avenue.
Cripes, Brooklyn is just as loud as Manhattan.
Rick had assumed the outer boroughs might be a bit more laid-back.

“Spending your summer in a hotel sounds downright depressing. And like a waste of bloody cash.”

“Yet clean towels and a well-made bed every day,” Rick countered.

“Right, well, you wouldn’t have my housekeeper every day for
that
.” Adrian laughed. “But Ana does come once a week to keep up with things. And think, you’ll be close to the park, to the studio.”

Truth be told, the appeal of the Benjamin was wearing thin. He had chosen the luxury boutique hotel as his home base during the band’s recording session before remembering how much he loathed Midtown East. The location was convenient for meeting his in-laws out at an occasional dinner, but little else. Simone’s parents tirelessly tolerated him, but he wondered how many more East Side dinners he could handle out with the Banquets before taking a fork to his eyes. They felt the need to return, item by bloody item, everything he’d ever given Simone that had stayed behind in her childhood shrine. Bad enough he had found the letters she had saved back home. Now he had possession of dusty stuffed animals, bad poetry he’d written her, and a crate full of warped record albums.

He’d beg off embarrassingly early after each meal, not exaggerating when he used the early morning schlep to the recording studio as an excuse. West 54th might as well have been the West Bank and Gaza Strip, for all the trouble it took him to get there.

Rick cracked his neck from side to side, catching in his peripheral the loping stride of his eldest son. Paul was twenty minutes late for the brunch date of his own making.

“Gone are the days of just kipping on the studio floor, I reckon?”

“Not advisable at our advanced age.” Adrian tutted.

“Thanks, mate. I’ll consider your offer.”

Adrian’s spacious flat on Central Park West certainly trumped that attic bedroom at the lake house; its ceiling, held together by the cello tape of broken dreams and wasted years, appeared to sink lower to Rick with each visit.

“Oh, and Kat insists you continue to join us upstate on the weekends.”

Bugger and blast.

American hospitality.
Bah.
Simone would’ve offered the same thing for any of his bandmates, left to their own devices in a rented town. But for some reason, this got under his skin. The last thing Rick wanted was Kat examining and fussing over him. He hoped she was at least keeping her promise not to reveal his panic spells to Adrian.

“Right, mate. Isabelle’s clicking in. Cheers!”

“I found your little match girl,” Isabelle opened with. “A hop, skip, and a jump from skid row. Rivington. Under the Bowery.”

“You sure?” A stir of excitement, followed by a pang of something else he couldn’t quite define, shifted inside him.

“Of course I’m sure. Do you want me to draw you a fucking map?” She hung up before Rick had a chance to thank her or tell her to piss off.

“Ready for the best breakfast in Brooklyn, Dad? They serve it until five o’clock in the evening!”

Rick clapped a hand on Paul’s shoulder. “So you’re still four hours early then, not a half hour late?”

“Sorry, got held up printing our boarding passes.” Rick’s blank look prompted his son to add, “Ilana and I leave for Greece tomorrow, remember?” Paul gripped his father’s forearm and pulled him into the closest thing resembling a hug between them in the last six months. “Good to see you, Dad.”

They entered the narrow, glass-fronted space of Egg and squeezed their way to one of the few unoccupied tables. Paul signaled for a pot of the restaurant’s signature French press, giving Rick a chance to survey his son. The dark Rottenberg hair tamed to a hip, shaggy swoop, the Banquet blue eyes slightly magnified behind chunky-framed lenses. The beard was new. “What’s this?” Rick gestured. “You’re looking a bit Orthodox.”

Paul laughed, slowly preparing their coffee. Rick envied the patience it took, along with his son’s youthful elegant nonchalance in performing the task. “Williamsburg certainly has its fair share of Hasidim, but the hipsters are slowly outnumbering them.”

Rick wondered whether he could channel his own inner Grizzly Adams, don the serial killer glasses, and pull off the look. Nah, too old for it. And he certainly wasn’t ready for the Professor Calculus look just yet. He noticed the ladies were giving Digger dewy-eyed looks whenever he succumbed to his reading glasses on the road, more and more so these days. Rick still preferred to stumble around like Captain Haddock, blind on too much Loch Lomond, like in those old Belgian
Tintin
comics he used to read to his sons during those rare nights he wasn’t on tour.

“So, Greece?”

Paul nodded. “We’re backpacking around the islands for a month before I’m due in Thessaloniki. My second summer at ISSON.”

Now Rick remembered. “The nanosciences and nanotechnologies summer program. Right, blimey. A doctor in front of me,” he marveled as his son grinned from behind a mouthful of candied bacon. “And doctors behind me.” His own parents boasted PhDs in art history. “How did all that brilliance skip a generation?”

“Come on. You’re the mastermind behind a legendary band, and you managed to raise three normal children despite all the rock and roll craziness. No easy feat.”

Simone was owed most of the credit, Rick felt. The children were raised out of the spotlight and under her maiden name of Banquet.
My legacy,
she would jokingly boast,
my greatest hits.

“Thessaloniki.” Rick cleared his throat. “Beautiful, beautiful city. We played the Theatro Dassous in ’86, if I recall. Digger drank enough ouzo on that run to put hair on
both
our chests.”

Paul smiled, his eyes shining behind those thick glasses. He and his younger brothers had loved the stories of their road warrior father almost as much as they had loved
Tintin
. Rick couldn’t recall if he had ever shared that tour tale before.

“How is Adrian these days?”

“Fine. Better than fine.” Rick busied himself separating the Grafton cheddar oozing from between his omelet using the tines of his fork. “Marrying soon.”

“Wow, that’s so great!” Paul scraped the front legs of his chair up off the floor in a “Hi-ho, Silver” move, as if to physically display how taken aback he was by the news. Rick wasn’t fooled.

“And not at all a surprise to you.”

“Well.” Paul gave a sheepish grin. “Ilana babysits Abbey now and then. She and Kat
do
talk.” He folded his arms, still tipping confidently back in his seat. “I figured I’d let you bring it up. You okay?”

“Of course I am okay! He’s my best mate. And Kat is wonderful. I’ve her to thank for reconciling us in the first place. It’s just . . . timing, that’s all. Dig’s at the top of his game right now.” Rick bit into one of the sticky buns Paul had insisted upon ordering. He felt his jaw lock in protest and worked to wrench it back into place. “Musically,” he said with a wince.

“And emotionally, wouldn’t you say? It’s all woven together.”

Rick concentrated on chewing. He fixated on Paul’s fingers, staring as they tapped against their owner’s elbows now.
He has my hands,
Rick marveled. Long capable fingers, a dusting of dark hair at the knuckles, flat square tips. “Doctor’s hands,” Rick’s mother often remarked, as if she could channel a self-fulfilling prophecy with an oft-repeated compliment. He turned his own hands over to study them now. Where Paul’s were probably kept smooth in academia, Rick’s were permanently calloused, grooved from years of hard play and heavy-gauge steel. They weren’t doctor’s hands; they weren’t helping hands. Sure, they had helped themselves to a fair number of women over the years. But they had no power to heal. To Rick they felt heavy, useless now. Scraping the bottom of the barrel. Nowhere near the top of his game anymore.

“I just thought . . . maybe they’d wait a while longer. Hold off till we really got the band back on track and sorted. I guess it would be too much to ask . . .” He drifted off, shifting his jaw back and forth.
Crikey,
he thought.
I’m like the bloody Wizard of Oz tin man in need of oil.

“Ask him to give up what he loves, to choose between the two?” Paul supplied the words Rick didn’t dare speak. “What purpose would that serve? Mom never made you choose.”

Rick did little to hide his pained expression. Having the rusty jaw of a tin man didn’t hurt as much as knowing the cavity where his heart used to beat was empty by his own making.

“Dad. Fourteen years is a long time. More than half my lifetime.”

“Don’t.”

“It’s okay to hold on to your memories . . . but don’t let them hold you back.”

Rick gritted his teeth, swallowed hard. “Again, how did you get so bloody brilliant?”

“You and Mom raised us well,” Paul replied, gently righting his chair to solid ground. “You did a good job.”

Rick opened his mouth to speak, but only elicited a pop as his jaw cracked out of alignment again.

“Jeez, is that your
mouth
? You’d better have that looked at. Sounds like TMJ.”

“I just came off the road and we’re in the studio for the next two months. It can wait a little longer.”

“You look ropy. Carrying all your tension here.” Paul rubbed the back of his own neck. “When was the last time you had a massage?”

Rick gave a laugh. Women from every
arrondissement
in Paris were clamoring to touch him just a short while ago. Did that count?

“Seriously. Have you ever thought of taking yoga?”

“Okay. Now I think
you’ve
been talking to Kat. She’s into all that poxy new age mumbo jumbo, too.”

“So try it. Here.” Paul pushed his faculty ID across the table. “Ilana swears by these classes at NYU. She says people line up around the block during the semester, but I’m sure you’d have no problem getting in during the summer. But you have to be faculty, staff, or alumni. I won’t need this back till September.”

Rick practically choked on the last swallow of coffee from his mug. “You want me to impersonate you?”

Paul gave his father a piteous withering look. “No, I want you to fit in with all the nanobots self-replicating down at the Commons as they perform their DoS attack in pursuit of total mass exercise ecophagy.”

“Eco-what?”

“Ecophagy,” his son repeated. “As in consumption of the entire ecosphere.”

“Nanonerd humor. Nice.”

“Just swipe the card at the door for entry. You probably won’t even have to interact with another human.”

“It’s not one of those fire-and-brimstone classes, is it?”

“Hot yoga, you mean?” Paul laughed. “The only thing hot will be the scenery. That might do you some good, as well.”

Rick ran his index finger with its permanent E string groove around the laminated edge of Paul’s ID card. “I’ll have a go,” he said finally.

“Give it hell, Riff!”

Now it was Rick’s turn to throw a look of mock disdain, just as he threw bills down on the table for the check. “Riff Rotten gives as good as he gets.”
I’m in hell now,
he thought.
So what more do I have to lose?

“Hey, where’s Rivington Street?” he thought to ask.

“Lower East Side. But up-and-coming. If you see a bail bonds place next to a pho restaurant, you are probably in the right place.” Paul gave a laugh.

Father and son exchanged a real hug back on the street. “By the way, your grandparents gave me some of your mom’s old LPs last time I saw them. Any interest?”

Paul threw up an apologetic hand. “I don’t even own a CD player anymore, Dad. Let alone a turntable. MP3s are where it’s at.”

“Think your brothers would like them?”

“
Dad.
They probably don’t even know what LP stands for.”

Rick watched as his son strode off, Greece putting an extra spring in his step.

“Yo, yo, on your left!”

Rick managed to sidestep last-minute to avoid being taken out by the blond guy on a bicycle that looked like something straight out of a Terry Gilliam movie. It appeared to be a high-performance mountain bike retrofitted with antique parts, capable of flattening random passersby and the occasional stray dog. A box attached to the back towered with paper sacks. “Thanks, man!” The blond boy gave a wave and a honk from an old brass bicycle horn as he sailed effortlessly into the intersection and disappeared into the sea of taxis.

Rick just shook his head, feeling ancient. Retrofitted into the modern-day metropolis. There had been a time when New York felt like it belonged to him. Was it in the seventies, when he first met Simone here? Or had it been in the eighties, when he decimated it with rock and roll? Talk about ecophagy. Either way, too many decades had piled on since then. He walked slowly, trying to find his bearings and the correct subway line to get him back to Manhattan. Pre-production work in the studio was almost complete. Time to start chipping away at the rock.

Propositions

“Just the girl I was looking for!”

Sidra didn’t look up from the register tape in one hand or the pile of cash in the other. Charlie’s hair could be on fire, for all she cared. She and Mikey shared a cash register, and each week she reconciled her books.

“Favor to ask you, Sid.”

“Shush. Counting.”
Seven-eighty? Or was it . . . Shit.
She crushed the tape in her hand. “What. Do. You. Want.” Each word suffered between her clenched teeth.
Two more weeks,
she told herself.
Two more weeks until he’s out of the borough, out of my sight.

Charlie stood directly in her line of vision, hips cocked. His hair was not on fire, but spiked as prickly as Sidra’s mood had turned at the sound of his voice.

“It’s not me. It’s Banana Louie. He misses you.”

Sidra shoved the money into a paper bag. There was no way she was going to be able to count straight with her ex-boyfriend leaning over the counter and giving her the sad eyes.

“I’m not watching him while you’re on the road, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

Charlie pulled his six-feet-two frame over the counter instead of walking around it like a normal person. The chain leashed to his wallet rattled like a ghost’s shackles as he went. “Come on, Sid. It would only be on the weekends.” He followed her into the back room. “Reggie just landed a sweet deal on a Fire Island summer share.”

“Reggie’s taking care of him during the week?” There was one person on the planet who detested Charlie’s new girlfriend even more than Sidra, and that was Reggie. Sidra was surprised to hear their mutual friend was involving himself. “At his apartment?”

“Are you kidding? His girlfriend would kill him if he tried to bring Louie in there. No, at my place.”
His place.

Charlie’s place was Evie’s place. Sidra could barely walk into Alphabet City; just the thought of the two of them cohabitating within a four-block radius made her throat form a sickly lump and her palms sweat profusely. “I can’t,” she said weakly.

“You can’t. Or you won’t?” Charlie plucked the bag from her hand and nimbly worked the safe tucked between Mikey’s desk and the wall. Sidra helplessly watched his fingers, so capable of quickly manipulating the dial while hers just fumbled under pressure.

There were days when she thought Charlie was just a senseless oaf, incapable of realizing the torment he put her through. And then there were the days when she realized Charlie knew precisely what he was doing. The safe sprang open at his bidding.

Sidra bent to collect her yoga bag. “Tell me Evie
really
wants me in her apartment.”

“She’d rather have
you
in there than a smelly dead iguana.” Charlie grinned, tossing the money in and securing the steel door with a clunk. Sidra wished she could lock up her heart and her feelings as easily.

“I’ll think about it. For Louie. Don’t ask me again in the meantime.”

“Excellent!” Charlie reached to give her shoulder a squeeze, but she turned quickly with a shrug, causing her yoga bag to knock his hand away. “Oh, and before I forget . . .” He bounded back to the counter and began rummaging through his messenger bag. “For the show next week,” he said, handing her a satin stick-on pass. It was just a house pass, generic to the venue. Someone had added the date of the show in Sharpie. “It’ll get you in the door without being hassled.”

Sidra nodded, slipping it into her bag. “Gotta go. Class.”