Blame It on the Bachelor (10 page)

“Nope.” Billy shook his head.

Dev got the small can of fish food. “You want to do the honors?”

Billy shook out a pile of flakes near Ike’s head.

“Okay, all we need now is a dirge.”

“What’s that?” Billy asked.

“It’s a kind of song played at funerals.” Dev went to his laptop and pulled up iTunes to find proper music for Ike’s send-off. He finally decided on “30 Days in the Hole” by Humble Pie, and they marched Ike into the bathroom.

Dev set the makeshift burial barge in the toilet while Billy crouched next to it, fascinated. Good. Dev had done his job: to distract the kid from his guilt.

Next he lit a few of those candles that women called
tea lights
—why, he didn’t know, since they had nothing to do with tea. Dev arranged them around the toilet seat and hit the dimmer switch.

“Got any last words for Ike, Billy?”

The kid furrowed his brow and pursed his lips. “Um. Well. ’Bye, Ike. I hope that you don’t get hungry on your way to heaven. And I hope that they have Game Boys there and that you get to play. Oh, and we’ll miss you.”

“Ready?” Dev asked, lighter in hand.

Billy gulped. “You’re going to set him on fire?”

“Yeah, just like the Vikings did. It’s cool. Okay?”

“Okay. I guess.”

Dev ignored the weird lump in his throat and reached down into the bowl. He got the little barge lit without burning off his thumb, and they watched it catch fire. “’Bye, Ike,” he said softly.

Then he flushed the poor little guy.

The flaming fish circled the bowl faster and faster until the barge tipped, the whole thing fizzled and Ike was ceremonially sent down the crapper and out to sea.

Billy’s lip trembled again as he blew out the candles on the toilet seat.

“C’mon, kid. Let’s go get some ice cream.”

DEV’S MOUTH TWISTED as he sat alone in his condo later, playing his old Rickenbacker for a wildly cheering shot-glass of Patrón. Buy a kid a strawberry ice-cream cone and chase away his demons in a flash.

Dev’s demons, on the other hand, were here to stay. They sang the Humble Pie song with him again, and flickered with the muted television in the darkened living room. They swam in the first double-shot of tequila that burned down his throat, and the second, and the third.

The demons got into true party mode, though, when he inevitably put on the old video of Category Five’s last set, the one where Wilbo was still alive, and playing this same guitar.

They’d performed on South Beach that night, on a raised stage on a patio behind an old Art Deco hotel a couple blocks down from the famous Delano.

The crowd had been wild for them, screaming the lyrics right along with Dev, acting like they were rock gods…Aerosmith or something.

Wilbo went nuts on the bass, playing with a manic energy even though the dark circles under his eyes were huge and his skin sweaty and pallid. He’d been drained and exhausted from a bout with mono that he’d never quite kicked, but this was their big shot to impress Ronnie Rizzoli, the head of TJX Records, who happened to be in Miami for a friend’s fiftieth birthday bash. Ronnie had been staying at the Delano with one of his many girlfriends, but had condescended to stop by on his way to the party.

Before the opening set, Wilbo had been puking his guts out, and had then crawled over to the couch in a ratty cabana and lay prone on it.

“You okay?” Dev asked him, with only vague sympathy. “Because we can’t mess this up. You know that, right?”

Will closed his eyes and nodded.

“You need something? A boost? Vitamins?” They both knew what Dev was referring to, and it wasn’t a nutritional supplement.

“Nah, man. Got something.”

Dev nodded. “You’ll be okay. It’s only one set, right?”

“Yeah,” Will whispered. “Only a set.” A rivulet of sweat ran from his temple down his cheekbone and then plopped onto the couch cushion. He didn’t bother to wipe it away.

Those had been the last words Wilbo ever said to Dev.

Dev should have known. Should have taken him to the ER, or at the very least told him to lie there and not get up and perform. Who the hell cared that Rizzoli, the prick, was in the audience?

But Dev had pushed them all on stage, turned a blinding, egocentric smile on the crowd and soaked up the rays of the spotlights.

Devon McKee of Category Five hadn’t given a rat’s ass, ladies and gentlemen, for anyone but himself. They’d played a helluva set, that was for sure.

He sang a few lines of their hit single around a tongue that felt thick and half-paralyzed by tequila.

Gimme it all, gimme Miami Vice,

Gimme that hot girl—I’ll do her twice!

Gimme the next one, yeah, I’ll take a slice—

This is Miami, Miami Vice…

He’d been autographing a girl’s bare breast with a hot pink Sharpie when Wilbo fell backward off the stage. He was dead before his skull hit the cement patio. His heart had stopped.

Dev didn’t believe it, not even when the EMS team arrived on the scene and were unable to revive him. Will was asleep—he’d wake up any moment. Right?

Wrong.

Wilbo lay prone on the gurney, his hair askew, his eyes closed and his smart, sarcastic mouth weirdly slack.

Once EMS had come and gone, the cops arrived and asked a lot of questions. Devon answered them mechanically, as best he could. No, he didn’t know exactly what Will had ingested, or where he’d gotten it, thank God. He wouldn’t have been able to live with the guilt. Bad enough that he’d
offered
to get him something.

When the cops were finished with Dev, his first thought was to get to Will’s parents before they did. They deserved to hear the news from a friend first.

He tore out the door of the hotel, barely registering that he’d barreled into Rizzoli, who was calling after him. “Hey, kid! I wanna talk to you.”

“Not now,” Dev said tersely.

He outran more cops on the way to Will’s parents’ home, when they tried to pull him over for speeding. But by the time he squealed his old Camaro into their driveway, another patrol car was pulling away from the curb.

He threw open the heavy metal door and ran for the porch without removing his keys from the ignition. Then he stood there, unable to ring the bell, his hands shaking and greasy bile burning its way up his throat.

In the end he didn’t have to. Will’s mother opened her front door and stared at him wordlessly with tears running down her lined face. Her eyes were bruises, shock pooling darkly under them.

“I’m sorry,” Dev finally managed to say. “I got here as fast as—”

She drew back her arm and slapped him, hard, without flinching. Then she turned and walked away, her shoulders shaking.

Will’s dad met her halfway down the hall to the kitchen, her white cardigan sweater and her purse in his hands. He looked at Devon with pure hatred in his eyes.

This wasn’t the guy who’d taught him and Will how to play backgammon. Not the guy who’d cheered them on in Little League. Not the guy who’d picked them up, no questions asked, when at age fifteen they’d called him at 2:00 a.m. for a ride home from an area of town they had no business being in. And that, after sneaking out.

“You,” the stranger who looked like Will’s dad said. “You’re the reason he’s dead! Get the hell out of here. Get off my property.”

Devon felt his face crumple and his lungs collapse. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “So sorry.”

“Yeah, you are.”

I loved him, too,
Dev wanted to say.
I loved him, too.

But it clearly wasn’t the time or the place. Dev hunched his shoulders and turned away. Took the three steps off the porch and into his new reality…which now included not one iota of ambition to be a big rock star.

Was it true? Was he the reason that Will was dead? After all, Dev had brought Will into the band, into the lifestyle that had killed him. Dev didn’t know. He didn’t know much of anything anymore.

He walked to the car, still idling, and slid into the driver’s seat. Something in his pocket jabbed at him as he sat. He shoved his hand toward it and closed his fingers around hard plastic. Dev pulled out the pink Sharpie, recalled what he’d been doing with it when Will had fallen off the stage and threw up out the window of the Camaro.

DEV CLICKED OFF the TV and bowed his head. His fingers played Will’s bass line from the Vice song of their own accord as tears rolled down his face and dropped onto his T-shirt. Had he really told Kylie that her tits made up for her personality?

He had a hell of a nerve. Because the thing was…what made up for his own personality? What made up for who he’d been? Was there anything that
could
make things right?

He doubted it.

As Dev poured his fourth double shot of Patrón, his damned cell phone rang. He glanced at the caller ID as he hoisted the glass, and then put it down again.

Ciara, his sister. He may as well talk to her now, instead of tomorrow with a hangover.

“Yeah.”

“How was the wedding?” Ciara had once had a crush on Mark.

“I’m fine, sis, thanks for asking.”

“What did Kendra’s dress look like?”

Dev rolled his eyes heavenward. “I don’t know…white. With lacy stuff.”

“Dev! Describe. Long sleeves? Short sleeves? Big and poofy, or sleek and sophisticated?”

“Uh. Short, poofy sleeves. Skinny waist, big skirt.”

“What was the neckline like? Did she have a train?”

“A what?” He sighed, trying to remember.

“Did it drag in the back?”

“Yup. And the neckline was a
V.
Does that help?”

“Did she look pretty?”

“Yes. Kind of scrawny, but nice.”

“Scrawny,” she repeated thoughtfully. Ciara, like their mother, was well-endowed, and she was clearly relishing that Kendra was not. Women!

“Did Mark look happy?”

“No, Ciara. He looked like he was on his way to a funeral. Of
course
he looked happy.” Dev blew out an exasperated breath. “Get over it,” he added with typical brotherly brusqueness.

“Have you been drinking? Because your voice is kind of thick.”

Dev glared at the phone and did the fourth double-shot. “Your head is thick.”

“Answer the question.”

“Maybe.” Dev plucked the strings of the Rickenbacker.

“Liquor?”

“Get off my ass, Ciara.”

“Playing guitar and drinking Patrón, I’ll bet. Which means you’re depressed.”

“You’ve got me confused with someone else, sis.”

“Promise me you’ll put away the Patrón, or I’m coming over. And I’ll go get Aidan.”

Their brother.
“No.”

“Or Mami. I’ll bring Mami. I will, Devon. I’ve done it before.”

How could he forget their mini-intervention, during some of his darkest days after Will’s death? His excitable, nosy Cuban mother, his dour, sarcastic Irish father, saintly Aidan and bossy sister Bettina—they’d all, with Ciara, announced their concern that if Dev didn’t put the brakes on he’d end up like Will.

“Jesus, Ciara. I’ve had three drinks, all right?” Dev automatically subtracted one.

“
Alone.
And if you’re admitting to three, they’re doubles and you’ve probably had five.”