Body and Bone (4 page)

One time he tried to explain the convoluted plots and intricate strategies he devised, but I gave up trying to understand, because the truth was it bored the shit out of me. At least he had excellent taste in music.

I hope he's not still in that same head space. I really do.

God, I'm afraid. All my fears funnel into my biggest one: that I won't stay sober. Because if I don't, I might as well be at the bottom of Tuttle Creek Lake.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen.

 

Chapter Seven

N
ESSA ARRIVE
D AT
the station at eleven
P.M.
every Monday and Thursday night, armed with electronic music she'd chosen from her and John's vast collection of more than 150,000 songs. Her oldest file was a tune from 1895, the same year her house was built, by a group called the Unique Quartette.

She made it a point to never play the same song twice, unlike the other “deep cut” shows on syndicated and satellite radio. She assumed the overplay elsewhere was intended to sell music, but luckily that wasn't the focus of her show. At least, not yet.

KCMA operated out of a lonely building overlooking a field with a tall sign declaring
WELCOME T
O
9
8
.
6
K
C
M
A
C
O
U
N
T
R
Y
!
It was mostly computer-­run with only two live jocks on the job, one for the morning drive (such as it was in a town of fifty-­six thousand) and one for afternoon drive (ditto). The rest were syndicated shows from a satellite feed.

Now as she pulled into the dirt parking lot, she saw a Vespa scooter parked next to the car her producer, Kevin, drove.

She hoped she could hold it together tonight. She'd selected a slate of music that was aggressive, drum-­heavy—­nothing that reminded her of John. She could do this. It was just another Thursday.

The front of the building was glass with a foyer to trap the heat or chill, depending on the season. She went inside and saw Kevin sitting atop the reception desk stretching a rubber band compulsively.

“Oh, hey,” he said. “Didn't expect you in so early.”

Sitting behind the desk with his feet propped up on it was a young guy in a narrow-­brim fedora and skinny jeans with a knapsack on his chest. Ah. The Vespa rider.

“You Nessa?” the new guy asked, making no move to stand or even sit up.

“Yeah,” she said.

“I'm your new producer,” he said.

Nessa looked at Kevin in confusion. “I wasn't aware I was getting a new producer.”

Kevin kept his eyes on the rubber band and said, “I can't keep doing the overnights. My kids are . . . and my wife . . . well, anyway. So this is Otto Goss. He's the guy who makes sure the satellite feed doesn't cut out when no one else is here.”

“In other words,” Otto said, “I babysit the computer five nights a week. Might as well produce a show since I'm already here.”

“Oh,” she said.

“I'm gonna take off,” Kevin said.

“Good working with you, Kevin,” Nessa said, feeling knocked off her game. She wished he'd have given her a little more notice, although what difference it would have made she couldn't quite articulate. Too much crazy stuff going on this week.

“You too,” he said. “I'm sure I'll see you around.” And he walked out the door.

Nessa turned to Otto, who was texting someone. She waited, but the thumbing went on and on.

“So, Otto,” she said.

He held up a finger without looking up and went on thumbing.

She started to feel superfluous and stupid standing there watching him, so she walked toward the break room. As soon as she was almost out of earshot, he said, “So, Nessa.”

She stopped and turned.

He didn't look up from his phone as he said, “We need to go over some ground rules before we go live.”

“What do you—­”

“Hold on,” he said, still not looking up.

It took every ounce of her self-­control not to walk away. Instead, she waited politely.

“The end,” he said. “Just finished my novel.”

Nessa didn't say anything to the anticipatory look on his face. The silence stretched until Otto's expression dimmed and turned into a frown.

“Ground rules. One. I'm not your lackey. I'm not going to fetch water and snacks for you like Kevin did. Two. I will not be answering mail for you or anything like that. I'm not your secretary. And three. I need to have some input on the playlists.”

Wow. He was talking like he was the “talent.” Was he trying to be funny? “I don't think you—­”

“Let's go in the studio,” he said, and led the way. Once inside, Otto tossed his leather flapped-­and-­goggled helmet and knapsack into the corner, then switched on the lights and board, hit some buttons and dials. He put his own headphones on upside down, like a beard—­in order to not disturb that ridiculous hat.

Nessa felt rushed and jumbled by this guy's dismissive attitude. His disregard for her was stunning.

“You don't look like a malcontent,” he said. “You look like a suburban housewife. Which I guess is subversive-­lite in its own sad little way.”

Her hackles began to rise. “What's that supposed to—­”

“All that to say I didn't realize who you were,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“You're the anti-­Beatles girl.”

This one-­line biography irritated her almost as much as his appearance. He had a Van Dyke beard and wore a cardigan and scarf, even though the temperature was in the high eighties. Seeing him, Nessa knew she'd been born too late. She longed for the old days when ­people meant what they said and weren't ironic, intoning everything with quirked eyebrows and figurative air quotes. But she was grateful because his douchebaggery was just what she needed.

She pointed at his get-­up. “You warm enough?”

This threw him off, but only for a beat.

“How old are you?” he said, ignoring her question.

“Excuse me?” She hated the old-­fashioned “how dare you ask a lady her age?” tone in her own voice.

“You're in your thirties, right?”

“I'm twenty-­five. And how old are you? Gonna go to prom next year?”

He tilted his head. “Do you want my honest opinion of your show?”

“Meh,” she said in her most bored voice, looking at her phone and scrolling through emails she'd already read.

“It feels like you're trying too hard.”

She pocketed her phone, crossed her arms, and smiled. “Is that right,” she said.

“Your desperation to seem relevant is embarrassing.”

She shrugged. “Here's the funny thing, junior. I didn't
try
to get this show. They came knocking on
my
door. So the fact is I ain't tryin'
at all
. . . all the way to the bank.”

Otto's face turned a gratifying shade of puce.

“You don't deserve to have this show,” he hissed.

“Oh? And who does, princess? You?”

Otto punched up his glasses and sat straight. “I graduated from the journalism school at K-­State in May after toiling away for four years. I spent hundreds of hours at the campus radio station. I interned every summer for free at shitty little radio stations like this one. I busted my ass. I'm up to my neck in debt, but I can't find a job now.” He stabbed the air in front of him with each point he made. “All I can get are hour-­long freelance production jobs for minimum wage. And then I find out that before your appearance on WBEZ you'd never been on radio at
all
. You didn't even major in broadcast. You tossed off some little
blog post
about hating the Beatles and now you get to be on
Sound Opinions
? Who the fuck do you think you are? You haven't earned this.”

Nessa's temperature rose to a high, rolling boil. Otto had no concept of what she'd gone through to get here, how she'd put herself through college at Metropolitan State University of Denver working in a record store and waitressing, living on ramen noodles and American cheese. She'd earned a bachelor's degree in communications. She had just as much right to be here as this pasty-­faced tool. Probably more. She'd clawed her way out of LA with nothing. With less than nothing, doing things he'd only ever read about.

“You don't know anything about me,” Nessa said, her animosity sharpening her senses. “And what I do has nothing to do with you. So if you're going to whine like a spoiled little bitch, you can get the hell out of my studio.”

“It's not your studio,” he said.

“It is from midnight to four every Monday and Thursday.”

“This should be my show.”

She allowed a slow, sincerely cruel smile to spread over her face and gave him a lazy shrug. “Life's not fair,” she said. “Is it?”

According to the countdown clock, she had less than thirty seconds to air, and she didn't have a water bottle or her tissue box set up, and now she wouldn't have time.

“Your blog isn't that interesting,” Otto said. “It's hacky and precious.”

“So don't read it,” she said.

“You're a
poseur
,” he said, using the French pronunciation.

Incredulous, she said, “
I'm
a poser.”

He nodded at her.

“Let's see.” She ticked items off on her fingers. “Pretentious facial hair. Check. Doc Martens. Check. Horn-­rimmed glasses. Check. Hipster helmet. Double-­fucking check.”

“On in five . . . four . . . three . . .”

He pointed at her. She felt razor-­sharp and alert like she hadn't in ages.

Her theme music played in her headphones along with the intro voiced by some guy on the coast with balls the size of boulders, his voice deep and rich and rumbling.

“It's midnight on Thursday, which means it's time for
Unknown Legends
with Nessa, the only radio show that plays the really, really deep cuts.”

Nessa opened her mic. “Happy Thursday, gang, and welcome to
Unknown Legends
. This is Nessa, and this first song's official video is not exactly my cup of tea—­it's lead singer Josh Homme having a night out with a bunch of Asian businessmen. Guess it's indicative of the difficult time the band had putting the album together. I recommend listening on full volume so you can decide for yourself what it all means. Here's ‘Smooth Sailing' from Queens of the Stone Age off their album . . .
Like Clockwork
.”

The opening synthesized beats blew into the jangling guitar of Troy Van Leeuwen, and Nessa clicked off her mic, shoved back her chair, and danced like she was at a rave in 2004. She sang loud, while staring straight at Otto. She could feel the hate waves rolling off him like San Francisco fog, and they strengthened her.

They didn't speak for the rest of the shift, but she did her best show ever. She hadn't gotten so many phone calls since the Beatles post, and it kept Otto hopping all night. When the bumper outro for her show played, she stood and stretched. Otto was sprawled on his chair.

“See you Monday,” she said, and walked out the door.

Friday, June 3

A
N
O
I
S
E
O
N
the front porch woke Nessa, and she walked downstairs in the dark. She opened the front door, and there stood John, soaking wet.

“I just couldn't get to a phone. It's taken me weeks to walk home, but here I am.”

Nessa collapsed in relief, because he was real John, not crackhead John. He hadn't relapsed after all. It had all been a horrible misunderstanding. She got him a towel and tried to dry him off, but she kept finding leaks, and water continued to run from his head, from his nose and ears and eyes.

“What's happening?” she said.

“I'm so sorry,” he said as water poured from his mouth in a stream.

Nessa opened her eyes and looked at John's side of the bed, undisturbed, smooth, unslept-­in for weeks. She didn't have even a moment's reprieve, no periods of forgetting John was gone, no times of not wondering whether he was alive or dead. It was as if this new fact of her life sat on a shelf suspended above her and clocked her in the head every time her thoughts shifted away from it.

Probably somewhere in the back of her mind, she'd believed if John were to die, it would actually be a relief. Because he wasn't the man she married anymore. He was a burden. But she wasn't like her mother—­she couldn't stop loving John even if he was deeply flawed, even if he had destroyed his own life and hers in the process.

She looked at the bedside clock and saw it was six-­thirty
A
.
M
.
,
four hours earlier than she normally awoke the morning after her radio shift. She tried to go back to sleep, but she couldn't stop picturing John soaking wet on the front porch.

If he was gone for good this time, dead, she wondered how she would raise their boy alone.

Daltrey, who looked so much like his father they'd called him Mini-­me, was a constant reminder. The ache that accompanied it was a sharp ice pick in her consciousness. Her love for the little boy was both visceral and transcendent, but at the same time she wished him vanished too—­a thought she'd never actually voice. How was she supposed to go on? How was she supposed to do this alone?

She got up and went to Daltrey's room. He was still asleep, lying on his stomach, his little lips pursed. He looked like an infant when he was asleep, his long straight eyelashes lying across his cheek like angel feathers. He breathed like he was in a hurry. Fast in. Pause. Fast out. His fat little fingers curled in a sweet fist. She lowered her face to his hair and inhaled, the muzzy, sweet toddler scent making her heart ache. She went downstairs and looked out the back window where Isabeau was doing yoga in the morning sunshine.

What was it like to be so young and carefree? Isabeau was only four years younger than she, but Nessa felt like an old crone weighted down with the life experience of someone in her fifties.