Chasing Kane (36 page)

“Georgia
fucking
Hall?!” he hollered back with a deep, barreled voice. Thick and gritty, much like the character of the bar he ran.

Georgia held up her left hand. “Kane to you, sir. I’m spoken for.”

Creature slapped the bar as he moved towards us. “You’ve gotta be
shittin’
me!”

Without yet acknowledging the man holding her right hand, Creature grabbed hold of her left and closely inspected Georgia’s ring finger. Despite the crowded bustling of the bar, Georgia and Creature’s interaction garnered the attention.

“Is that Billy’s kid?” I heard from someone who looked about a hundred and two, but was probably in his late sixties.

Georgia almost never used her father’s name, so hearing it always took me by surprise. This intense, anti-heroic character from her past had a name. And a face, and presumably a smile, though I know Georgia saw less and less of that as time went on. He was a real person before his liver turned to stone.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes, kid,” Creature said with what seemed to be uncharacteristic gentleness in his voice. Given my few-minute assessment of the man who went by the title
Creature.
“How’s San Diego treatin’ ya?”

I eyed Georgia carefully during the entire interaction as she answered questions of varying degrees of intimacy. She seemed surprised that Creature knew which questions to ask.

“You’ve kept close tabs on me,” she said with mild accusation as two bartenders flitted around Creature, who remained fixed against the bar, leaning over it to talk up my wife.

He shrugged. “That cocky drummer friend of yours stops in to play once in a while. Kind of a closed book when it comes to you, though—gotta give him that. Took me two years to get out of him where you ran off to. How long you been married?” Creature finally acknowledged my presence.

Georgia smiled. “Three years. This is Regan—cousin to the cocky drummer friend.”

His eyes met mine, and I saw the faintest glimmer of familiarity pass through them. “Say if it isn’t,” he said slowly as he extended his hand to shake mine. “You … you’ve been here before.”

I shook his hand, nodding. “Like a hundred years ago. Used to play with CJ from time to time.”

Georgia knew all this, but often forgot that we may have crossed paths in our youth without even knowing it.

Creature nodded knowingly. “Fiddler,” he stated, not asked.

“That’s me.”

He tilted his head toward Georgia, dropping his hand from mine. “You taking care of her?”

“Yes sir,” I answered as if I were speaking to her father. This was the most fatherly conversation I’d ever been in regarding Georgia, so I figured I ought to take it seriously.

“You bettah,” he replied, his eyes boring into me uncomfortably. “If not, I’ve got guys—”

“I’m sure you do.” I held up my hands in mock defense. But I knew he likely wasn’t kidding, and I wasn’t interested in hearing about the creative ways they’d separate my insides from my outsides if they got word that I’d somehow hurt Georgia.

Georgia cleared her throat. “This is going to sound weird, but, who’s living upstairs?”

Creature shook his head. “No one. Just used for storage now.”

She swallowed. “Mind if I take a look? And in the office, too?”

He shrugged, pulling his tree-trunk arms back from the bar, appearing to get back to work. “This place is more yours than mine, doll. Have at it.”

She winked, leaning all the way across the bar to kiss Creature on the cheek before pulling me across the floor to the tiny office that was down a short, narrow hallway near the bathroom.

Georgia didn’t say a word as she opened the heavy, steel door. The office was no bigger than a glorified broom closet, holding a metal desk, a rolling chair with a tattered cushion, and a small filing cabinet. There was barely room for the furniture, let alone
two
people, so I stood in the doorway and watched her.

Her back was to me for a moment as she stood still in the center of the space and took a deep breath. I imagined that her eyes were closed, as they often were when she inhaled the scent of things.
“So you can smell them all the way,”
she always said.

She ran her hands slowly across the top of the desk, as if searching for memory-Braille. With smooth, calm movements, Georgia squared herself in front of the shoulder-height filing cabinet, crouching in front of the bottom drawer, opening it, and reaching into the set of folders in the very back.

“Um,” I broke my own vow of silence, “what?”

Unruffled by my vague accusation of theft, Georgia slid a yellowed sheet of paper from the farthest back folder. Soft with age, it didn’t produce a noise when she folded it and tucked it in the back pocket of her jean shorts.

“Want to come with me upstairs?” she asked, eyeing me with a hopeful, non-criminal look.

I looked between the filing cabinet and her three times before answering, “Of course. But, maybe tell me about the little klepto-action there?”

She smiled, laughing once before grabbing my hand. “Creature was right,” she said as she led me up a set of stairs down the same narrow hallway as the office. “This place
is
more mine than his. My dad owned the building outright. When he died, it naturally went to me, as his only living kin.”

I stopped midway up the dusty staircase. “Seriously? And you were going to tell me … when?”

She shrugged. “It hardly mattered. This happened before I met you, and Creature has a lifelong lease on the place, assuming all responsibilities for taxes and whatever. Unless he fails to pay them, I guess.”

“Then you’d be on the hook?” I asked with what I considered an appropriate amount of concern regarding the hefty taxes on this kind of location.

Georgia rolled her eyes and continued up the stairs. “He’d sooner sell his soul to the devil than fuck me over.”

“I saw that tattoo on his neck,” I mumbled before pinching her butt, deciding to let it go and trust her judgment.

“Anyway,” she said as we reached the top of the stairs, “I’m transferring the deed to him. Or selling the place to him for a dollar, or whatever.”

“Does he know this?”

She shook her head. “No. We’ve never talked about it since he signed the lease.”

“This is a hefty piece of real estate.” I peered out a porthole window on the stairwell, which overlooked the ocean.

Georgia’s voice softened. “Emotionally, too. It’s been like this vestigial organ-thing hanging off me for fifteen years, or whatever, and I just don’t want it anymore.” Her words spilled out faster as she talked, like she was trying to prove something, which I hadn’t intended—not intentionally, anyway.

Wrapping my arms around her waist, I pulled her close and kissed her nose. “I know. I support whatever you want to do. As long as you let me take you and all your other organs home.”

She smiled, then put her hands on my shoulders, pushing me back slightly. “So, listen. I haven’t been back up here since I moved out. And my dad lived here until he died, and I’m not sure what condition it’s in or anything like that …” She swallowed hard and took a deep breath.

Wrapping my hands over her wrists, I gave her a soft kiss on the lips. “Take as much time as you need. I’ll just wait … right here.” I took a seat on the stair below her and waved her on.

Georgia leaned forward and kissed me on the top of the head. “Thank you,” she whispered.

Turning for the door, she tried the knob and it clicked—locked. I was anxious for her, but evidently I was the only one, because a second later, she reached into a rusted old watering can on the floor and produced a key that allowed her entry.

“I’ll call when I’m ready,” she said before disappearing behind the dusty old door.

I was dying to know what it was like in there. While Georgia had spent most of her young childhood in a modest house she shared with both parents, when her mother left, she and her father moved up here—he couldn’t afford the house and the bar. But, while I wanted to satisfy my own curiosity and hold the hand of my wife as she undertook such an emotional overhaul, I was practicing treating her like the adult she was, rather than a figurine destined to break at any second.

She could do this.

I thought about reaching for my phone to pass time, but decided against it. I wanted to be as present in this moment as I could—ready for Georgia if she needed me, and just comfortable in the discomfort that sometimes comes with life. A lot of the breakdown that occurred between me and Georgia had to do with reluctance on both our parts to be present—to face reality. Sure, sitting there on a narrow staircase in the back of a bar might not seem like a huge deal to anyone from the outside, but I needed to be patient here. For Georgia. I could sit here and wait for my wife.

Not more than a few minutes had passed before the door creaked open behind me. I stood to face Georgia. Her eyes were red, fighting tears. Her jaw was relaxed, though, and it seemed she was just letting the emotions work their way through her.

“Are you okay?” I asked quietly, climbing the two stairs that separated us.

She nodded, blinking slowly once. “Want to see? There’s a bunch of boxes around but, honestly, not a lot’s changed.”

My pulse raced at the thought of being in the space that hosted some of the worst damage that Georgia faced. She stepped back, holding the door open.

While I’d planned to take a slow look around, giving attention to one space before moving on, the place kind of swallowed me all at once. It looked like the fisherman apartments I’d seen in movies like
The Perfect Storm
. Wide open spaces, a galley kitchen with a broad window overlooking the ocean, and a tattered couch and recliner facing an old tube television.

Sliding my hands in my pockets, I paced carefully through the place while Georgia stood by the door. The floors creaked beneath each step, and muffled, thunderous noise bellowed up from below.

“Was it always this loud?” I ask, facing her, checking on her. She seemed okay.

Georgia shrugged. “I guess it had to be, but I don’t remember it like this. I was probably just used to it.”

I pointed to a small framed-out room near the back, which looked like it hung right above the bar itself. “Bedroom?”

She nodded, taking a slow step toward me, her arms crossed over her chest. “I haven’t gone in there yet. It was mine. He mostly slept on the couch if he slept at all. I think he felt all kinds of bad for making me move out of our house—served him right,” she added under her breath.

“Can I?”

“I’ll go with you,” she answered nervously. “I just didn’t think I could bear it alone. I mean, it’s just four walls, right? I don’t know if I even left anything, and whatever I did is probably—”

Georgia’s words ceased with the flicker of the light illuminating the room. The walls were painted a pale blue, and in one corner was a twin bed, unmade. The walls were bare, save for old pieces of tape that looked like they used to hold posters, given their squared-off arrangement.

But, on the table next to the bed was the reason for my wife’s sudden speechlessness. A picture. Three-by-five, in a tarnished silver frame.

“I have this … at home … right?” she questioned to herself in a whisper.

Sitting on the bed next to her, I held one edge of the frame as she held the other. “Yeah,” I agreed. “We have this.”

It was a picture of Georgia and her parents on the day they brought her home from the hospital—all hopes, dreams, and smiles.

Georgia swallowed hard, bringing a hand to her mouth as tears spilled from her eyes. “He must have … he must have moved in here when I left and just … put this up. I—I didn’t know he had one.”

I put an arm around her shoulders, pulling her in to kiss her temple. “He loved you.”

She nodded, swallowing through a rush of tears. “He tried. I really believe he did. He just … it wasn’t enough.”

“I know,” I whispered, pulling her as close as she’d go. “Sometimes …”

I trailed off, not knowing what else to say. In truth, Georgia had some great memories from her dad, and half of who she is—challenging and wonderful—came from him and the time she lived with him here in this emotional anchor of an apartment.

We sat in silence for a long time while Georgia ran her thumb over a picture we saw every day in our own apartment three thousand miles away. Because this one was different in every emotionally possible way.

“Let’s go,” she finally said, rising to her feet with the picture still in her hands.

“Are you sure?”

She nodded and a faint smile pulled at the corners of her mouth. “I can come back here any time I want—I’ve had enough for today.”

I stood, kissing her once before leading the way out of the room. “I’m proud of you.”

“Thank you for coming in here with me.” She paid little attention to the rest of the apartment before turning off the light and shutting the door behind us.

Once back on the staircase, Georgia locked the door and dropped the key back into the watering can. With a deep cleansing breath, she looked me in the eyes. Looking back at her, I saw a storm of resolve, along with a calm wisdom I swear hadn’t been there before.

“It didn’t kill me,” she said, almost to herself. “I faced the big ugly thing, and it didn’t kill me.”

“No,” I grinned, “it didn’t. What are you gonna do with that?” I gestured to the picture still in her hands.

She descended the stairs ahead of me, answering over her shoulder. “I don’t know yet. But are you heading over to the stage?”

“Yeah,” I replied, checking the time on my phone. “It’s about that time.”

“K. I’ll meet you there. I’m going to go put this with my stuff at your parents’ house so I don’t forget it. Leave me here, though,” she said as we prepared to enter the cacophony of the bar. “I need to talk to Creature.”

“You sure?” I leaned forward, searching her eyes for hesitation. I found strength there instead.

Georgia rose up on her toes, kissing my nose. “I am. I
really
am. Up there? That was really four walls. But this?” She held the picture between us. “This is … more than I could have imagined.” Her eyes welled with tears and I lifted her chin with my index finger.