Zipless (8 page)

She adjusted a capo onto the neck and played a tentative chord.

“I’ll be in the bedroom. Need to get some stuff together.”

She heard him move towards the bedroom door. With him gone she felt a little better. She picked out a song, an old Scottish ballad. One of the first songs she’d ever learned to play. She sang, softly, not wanting him to hear. Bangs and rustling noises came from the bedroom. He wasn’t listening, she realized, and instantly felt her voice and playing grow stronger. She closed her eyes. She was alone in the bathroom where she usually recorded herself. Door locked. Great acoustics. She lost herself in the song. Almost. The sound of the bedroom door opening made her instantly forget the words and screech to a halt.

“Sounding good, Lou. Keep going.” His voice was soft and sweet in the darkness.

“I...I...can’t.”

“When did this start? Did anything in particular happen?”

Lou took a deep breath. She knew exactly when it had started. She’d been in the school choir and band with no performance problems. She’d been studying music education at university and had no problems with her exam recitals. No, the problem had started with “Strathglennan Miners’ Club.” She closed her eyes, remembering. “Mum had only been in the ground a couple of weeks. I got a phone call, asking if I’d be interested in opening up for a local band. The original act had cancelled for some reason and they needed someone in a hurry. That night. I needed the money, so I said I’d do it.” Lou swallowed nervously, listening to the patient silence. “I was kept late at work, so I got myself and my gear into a taxi. Too expensive, but it was only a couple of towns over. I got there a bit later than I should. Found out I was opening for some kind of speedcore heavy metal outfit and that the audience was not happy about having to wait.”

He was out there, behind the bright lights. She closed her eyes again. If only she hadn’t been able to see the audience that night. Maybe… She stroked Beloved, feeling the smooth heavy gloss beneath her fingertips. “I didn’t get more than a few words into my first song when they started to boo. Then they started to shout. Soon they were all chanting the same thing, the same words, louder and louder.” She dropped her gaze to the floor.

“What were they yelling?”

“Tits out or get off. Over and over and over.”

“Bastards.”

“And then…then…” She heard him move behind the lights, a soft shuffle of feet. As if he was backing off. As if he didn’t want to know how bad it had been.

“Tell me,” he said, his voice firm. “I can’t help you get over it if I don’t know how traumatic it was.”

Lou sucked in a deep breath. She had to get this out, had to lay it out there on the table. “They threw something at me. At first, I thought it was a pint of lager. That’s what it looked like. But the smell told me what it really was. Urine. They threw a pint of piss on me.” Lou realized her teeth were bared, the fury and humiliation of that night coming back to her. “I put my guitar away, dragged my amp off the stage while they jeered and cheered. I didn’t have enough money for a taxi, so I had to wait for a bus. All the way home, crying, and reeking of someone else’s piss.” She strummed her favorite chord—B7th—its plangent tone too sad to voice her anger, but perfect for the grief she’d felt that night. “I’ve never been able to get on stage since. I freeze up. I forget the music. I forget the words. I remember those jeering faces. I remember feeling stripped naked. Humiliated. I was only nineteen.” She dropped the guitar and buried her face in her hands. “I can’t do it, Chris. I’ll never be able to do it.”

He was there, kneeling in front of her, his arms going around her. “I’ll kill them. Every single one of them. Slowly. Painfully. How could they do such a shitty thing?”

“Drunk. Impatient. Bored. A young girl on the stage in front of them, obviously nervous.” She shrugged. “I didn’t know the music business was so hard on women.” She stroked her fingers through his hair. “But I know now.”

“I didn’t realize it could get that bad. It couldn’t get any worse than that.”

Lou stared into his sympathetic eyes. “It was terrible, but that was only the start. I managed the band, but do you know how often people just assumed I was a groupie?” She watched him flush. “No matter how many people looked at my name underneath the songs, do you know how many people assumed they were Paolo’s?”

He lowered his head until it was resting on her knee. “Lou, I’m sorry.” He looked up at her. “How can I make it up to you?”

“Get me over it. Get me past it. Get me back on stage. I don’t care what it takes. Do it. Just do it.” Lou looked down at her hands. They were shaking with the rage at what had been done to her, with fury at herself for letting them win. She should have stood her ground. She should have stayed on that stage, dripping piss, and played until they loved her, until they begged for another song, just one last encore. She could have done it. She should have done it. She wanted to do it on American TV.

“Then play me a song,” Chris said softly.

Lou’s hands went to her guitar. Now.
Do it now before you even think about it.
She played the first notes of her angriest song and opened her mouth to sing. The words melted away into the back of her brain, irretrievable. Her fingers forgot the notes. Her hands dropped and so did her head. She squeezed her eyes tight against the angry jeering faces, smelled the reek of urine, felt it drip down her hair. It was useless. She’d never be able to get over this.

“Are you back there again? Are you reliving it?”

She nodded, closing her eyes to hold back the hot tears.

“And this happens every time you try to perform in front of someone else?”

She nodded again, then glanced up into his eyes.

He leaned back on his heels. “I’ve got an idea, Lou.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Might be kind of rough on you, though.”

“How rough?”

“Pretty damn rough. But I don’t think anything I do would make your performance anxiety any worse. And something drastic is called for, that’s for sure.”

He wasn’t wrong there. She nodded. “I’m in your hands, Chris. Let’s give your idea a try.” A shiver ran down her back. That was as close as she’d ever come to telling someone she trusted them.

He cocked his head to the side, his eyes mischievous. “Back in the day I had a wicked case of stage fright myself. I was sixteen, skinny as hell, with bad skin. No way I was gonna be able to get up on a stage and rock out the way I did in rehearsal. Jake wanted me to share frontman duties. He wanted full on Rock God. Pretty tall order for a shy, skinny, zit-faced kid. But he got me there. It was tough. I hated him for it—for a while at least—but it worked.”

He ran a finger down her cheek and touched her lips. “I don’t want you to hold a grudge against me, Lou.” He dropped his gaze to the floor and shrugged. “I really like you.”

Lou smiled. She could almost see the skinny kid with a spotty face and low self-esteem.

But then he looked up, smiling. And he was once again the mature, confident man she was falling in love with. She gasped. What on earth made her think that? She wasn’t… She couldn’t… She gave him a hard push and he fell backward onto his ass.

He climbed to his feet slowly. “Gonna be like that, are you?” He smiled wolfishly. “Well, that’s gonna make this easier.

Oops. Lou wished she hadn’t shoved him. She needed him to be kind and gentle. She was already feeling a bit fragile.

“Stand up,” he ordered.

She did.

“Play.”

She played the opening chords on her favorite ballad.

“No. Something angry.”

She paused, selected a song and put her hands in place. Nothing.

“Start playing. I’ll be back in a minute.”

He disappeared into the bedroom again and Lou started to play. Quietly, but at least with Chris no longer staring at her, she could manage. He re-entered, dragging a box, paying absolutely no attention to her, then disappeared into the small kitchenette. Lou continued to play. As long as he ignored her, she could do it. Nervous, true, and not on her best form, but she was managing.

“Louder,” he barked.

Lou upped her volume a little, feeling a pang of anxiety, but the words stayed with her, even if she couldn’t blast them out the way she was supposed to on this song.

Chris returned and plopped down in front of her. She froze.

“Play, damn you,” he growled.

“I can’t—”

“Yes, you can!”

He approached her, then shoved a sparkly blond wig on her head. “You’re not Lou. You’re Maggie May. Or Jolene.” He took a few steps back, then returned with some oversize sunglasses, which he shoved on her face. “You’re Billie Jean or some other badass woman who doesn’t give a fuck about anyone except herself.”

Lou stood there, disbelieving. “I don’t think—”

“Just play the same chord over and over. Sing la-la-la. I don’t give a shit. Just play something!”

Lou placed her left hand on Beloved’s neck, formed her fingers into the first chord she’d ever learned. She strummed it once, then sang “la-la-la.” This was ridiculous. The wig wasn’t on properly, the sunglasses kept slipping down her nose. Suddenly she was playing a different chord. Her voice wavered as she sang some silly words, an old nursery rhyme her mother had sang while dandling her on her knee. She stared into the back of the sunglasses, avoiding the sight of Chris in front of her, her voice growing stronger. She was playing… She was playing! She attempted a little run up the neck then switched into another song. The words were right there in the front of her brain where she needed them to be. She grinned, then opened her mouth to start singing—

“Tits out or get off!”

Lou froze. He didn’t. He didn’t. He didn’t just say that. It was too cruel. He’d never be that unkind. She looked at him over the sunglasses, a lump lodging in her throat.

“Tits out or get off!” he screamed. “Play that G chord. Sing la-la-la. Now!”

Lou sniffed hard and attempted the chord. No sound came out of her mouth. The large lump prevented anything from escaping.

“Sing it, Maggie May! Then get your tits out.”

She closed her eyes. She wouldn’t have believed he could be such an arsehole. Her Zippy.

She sobbed.

“Cry louder, Jolene! Or get off!”

Lou dropped her hands from Beloved, the tears steaming down her face. His eyes were so hard; he didn’t care if he was hurting her.

“You’re wasting my time,” he growled. “You need to get back to whatever gutter you crawled out of. You’re nothing. You’ll never amount to anything. You’re useless. Can’t even get your tits out.”

Lou gripped Beloved. Hit him with her treasured guitar? Or put it down and use her fists?

Chris wrestled with something in his hands. He finally managed to wrench the top off the bottle of beer. He approached and poured the bottle over her head. “Tits out or get off,” he whispered.

Lou felt something rise from deep within her gut. Not just anger. Not just rage. Something more. Something to do with the unfairness of it all. Having found him, having trusted him, having put herself in his hands—just so he could humiliate her, hurt her. Deep within, she found a hard knot of pride. She grabbed him by the scruff of his t-shirt, wiped her face on it, then shoved him hard in the chest. She bent over, plugged Beloved into the amp and turned the volume up to eleven. She was in the Chelsea fucking Hotel in New York fucking City in front of a man who used to wear nothing but a ridiculously small thong on stage.

And she was better than all of them!

She gritted her teeth, put her hands on Beloved, and hit a power chord while screaming her rage right into Zippy’s shocked face. Her hands found the music for a piece she hadn’t yet written the words to. Or thought she hadn’t. The lyrics consisted mostly of the words “fuck you.”
 
She dropped her hands. “Want to see my tits, do you?” She ripped her shirt, starting at her neckline, shredding it down the seam of one sleeve. She yanked it down, her bra strap coming with it. With one breast exposed, she started playing again, faster, faster, louder, louder, until ending on one long desperate discordant note. Panting and gasping, she licked the beer that still dripped down her face.

She walked up to Chris. “Want an encore, you fucker?”

He nodded, looking appalled. Lou lurched forward and gave him the Glasgow kiss—her forehead smacking hard into the bridge of his nose. Then she turned, switched off the amp and collapsed on the couch. She glanced down at her bare breast and shrugged. “I’m
not
getting off.”