Fear and Laundry (29 page)

“Guess you told her?” he said.

“She is my best friend.”

He kissed me. “So what does that make me?”

I pulled back and studied him. He was a lot of things, I thought. Smart. Funny. Creative. Passionate. A little moody. Impulsive sometimes. Maybe too sensitive. But above all, caring, decent and good. And – I couldn’t dispute or forget – he was also very nice.

You’re something else
, I thought.

“What do you
want
to be?” I asked him.

April appeared beside us then, asking if I’d seen another roll of packing tape lying around. So I didn’t get the answer to my question until later – when Clyde Kameron showed up.

***

H
e came in just after Roy and Lia had carried a couple of boxes out the back door to the parking lot. Only Jake, April and I were in the dining room when the bell above the door jingled. The three of us looked up and saw him standing just inside the door, folding his sunglasses into his frayed t-shirt collar.

“Clyde,” I breathed when I saw him. Whether he heard me or just happened to look up at the same moment, I didn’t know. But his eyes met mine and he smiled tentatively.

He looked thin. Thinner, even, than the last time I’d seen him. I guessed an extended hospital stay could do that to a person. He also looked cleaner, showered and shaved, with his long hair in a pony tail, only a few strands straggling free around his gaunt face. He wasn’t wearing any makeup and I was surprised at how much younger and more innocent he looked without it. His eyes were clear and alert.

“Veronica, right?” Clyde’s boot laces were untied and his soles clomped noisily as he crossed to us. I could only nod. He held his hand out to April and, absurdly, told her his name.

“Holy crap,” said April. I knew how she felt; it’d been my first reaction when I met him, too. “I mean, hi,” she said, shaking his hand and introducing herself.

Clyde turned to Jake, who stood close behind me with his hand on my waist. “This your boyfriend?” he asked me.

“Um,” I said, unsure how to respond.

“Yeah,” Jake interjected, squeezing my hip to let me know he was answering my earlier question at the same time. “That’d be me.” He shook Clyde’s hand and gave him his name.

“You’re a brave man, Jake,” Clyde told him, winking at me. “Good luck with her.”

“Very funny,” I said, and told Jake I’d explain later. I’d been relieved to hear him confirm we were officially a couple, but didn’t have much time to enjoy it before Clyde asked another question.

“Where’s your friend?” he wanted to know. “Where’s Lia?”

“I’ll go get her,” said April and shot away to the back door.

“Figured you’d left town,” I told Clyde.

After the hospital had released him, he said, an old friend who’d read about him in the paper had come by and offered to let him lay low at her place for a while. Deciding he could use some more down time, he’d taken her up on it. Now he was on his way out of town, but hadn’t wanted to leave without finding Lia and me and saying goodbye first.

“I’m surprised you stayed so long,” I said. Carreen was a “crap-hole,” after all, wasn’t it? Best to get out of here as soon as possible and not look back?

Clyde swallowed. I’d have to forgive him, he said, but he didn’t remember everything he’d said to Lia and me that day in the hotel. Just enough to feel ashamed of himself.

April came back in. “Here she is,” she said, yanking Lia along behind her.

“Hey.” Clyde smiled at her but she didn’t reciprocate. “Good to see you again.”

Lia just stared at him, looking pale and blank.

Had he really tried to kill himself? April asked Clyde.

No. The pills had been a legitimate prescription, just as he’d told Lia and me. He’d been a little too drunk when he took them to realize he’d already taken some earlier. Not to mention he’d mixed them with alcohol.

“It was an accident,” he said, “Even if no one believes me.” The police had gone through his hotel suite and found his lyric book. They’d interpreted some of the things he’d written as possible indicators of a “suicide mentality.” The “shrinks,” he said, had pointed to the recent downturn in his success as further proof he’d been trying to “off” himself. They’d told him people were often driven to do desperate things when they “felt their public personas were threatened.” The doctors had then used all that evidence to keep him locked up for a while.

They were ultimately wrong about his being suicidal, Clyde said, but acknowledged they may have been onto something. He did drink too much sometimes, and had become depressed over the way his life had played out over the past few years.

He said he hadn’t told the police about Lia and me when he woke up because he figured that’d only get us into trouble.

“Thanks,” I said. “And I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve got you to thank. Both of you.” He looked at Lia, who still looked pretty stiff, like she’d been carved of ice. “That’s why I came by. To thank you guys for what you did. And to, uh, see what all the fuss was about.” He gestured at the surroundings. “This is a nice place. Very cool.” He told me maybe I was right and Carreen had changed. “We definitely didn’t have anything like this when I lived here.”

“You should’ve seen it before,” Lia finally spoke. “It’s practically closed up now. Our last show was last night.”

“Wish I’d known that,” said Clyde, sounding sincerely regretful. He looked around at the boxes piled everywhere. “Got behind on the rent, huh?” He must have seen the surprise on our faces. “I read about it, remember?” He pulled a creased and beat-up copy of
The Blank Slate
from his back pocket. In fact, he said, once he’d finally been allowed visitors, he’d had his manager bring all the back-issues by the hospital and reread them while he was laid up. Lia’s notes and letters, too. We were good writers and artists, he said. Very creative. And he appreciated all of the nice things we’d said about him. “Sorry to hear about this place,” he said, looking around again. “And sorry I couldn’t help you, you know, rescue it.”

“Would you have?” I asked. “If you hadn’t ended up in the hospital, I mean. Would we have been able to convince you to play the benefit?”

He scraped a barstool away from the counter and raised himself onto it. “Probably not,” he admitted. But he was in a different place now. Being shut up in the hospital all alone for a while had forced him to confront a lot of things about himself.

I could relate.

Clyde had spent unwisely and trusted the “wrong sorts” of people, he went on with embarrassment. So he didn’t have a lot of money left over from his more prosperous days with Blank Fiction. If he had, he’d have offered Roy a donation or loan of some sort, to try and save Lynch’s for us.

My anger toward him had gradually softened as he spoke and I told him it was okay; that Roy had accepted Lynch’s closing and the rest of us eventually would too.

Roy, out of breath, finally waddled up from the back of the building with something in his hand. “It really is you,” he panted. Did Clyde remember him, he wondered? From the days when Roy would come out and watch Scott and all of the local bands perform?

“I remember your son.” Clyde nodded at the framed picture of Scott that now sat all alone on its shelf by the door. He’d read about him in the
Slate
, he said, holding up the zine, and was so sorry to learn what’d happened to him.

Up close, I saw Roy carried the framed 7” copy of Blank Fiction’s first single. He must’ve been out there in the parking lot, digging through the packed boxes until he found it. He polished it briefly with the hem of his shirt and held it out to Clyde. “Sign this, would you? It’d mean a lot. I mean, it would have meant a lot to Scotty.” April rummaged behind the counter and produced a black marker. Clyde took both and mused over the record.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“I haven’t seen this in a long time,” he said, “I’m remembering when we first made it. Hardly anyone had ever heard of us back then. And the people who had didn’t care much about us one way or the other.” The memory of his own obscurity seemed to amuse him, even please him in some way. Things were so much simpler then, he said. There'd been no expectations and no pressure, and for some reason that'd made it easier to create good music. “It might not be such a bad thing,” he went on, signing the glass with a flourish, “Starting over from scratch.” He capped the marker and handed it and the single to Roy.

“So you’re not quitting the business?” I asked.

Clyde said he wasn’t sure.

“But you’re still breaking up the band,” said Jake.

Maybe not permanently, Clyde hedged. But for now, Blank Fiction was on indefinite hiatus. He looked at Lia again. “I really am sorry, kid,” he told her. “You think you can forgive me?” For not appreciating where he was from? For practically forgetting who he was and why he’d become a musician in the first place?

She sniffled and chewed her lower lip.

I thought maybe I should say something to her, try to convince her. Because I knew if she didn’t forgive him now, she’d regret it later. But she launched herself at him before I could open my mouth. Clyde caught her up in his arms and held her tight for a while, finally kissing her on the forehead before releasing her.

“I’ve gotta go,” he rasped. He thanked us again and said he’d be in touch, then put his sunglasses back on, turned and clomped away. We crowded after him.

“Wait a second,” Lia called after him when the group of us was bunched up in the doorway, watching him leave. He’d almost reached the black rental car idling by the curb. “Where’re you going?”

The driver stepped out of the car and came around to open the back door for Clyde. He started to climb in and I thought maybe he wouldn’t answer her. But then he paused, one foot in the car and the other out. “I have no idea,” he said happily.

Epilogue

October 29
^th
, 1994

S
ix weeks later, I stood in a hallway, holding a giant bouquet of red roses and reflecting on everything that’d gone on since Lynch’s closed.

After Impressionable Youth disbanded, Paige started her own group called Rinse and Repeat. Between that, her schoolwork and multiple jobs, she stayed pretty busy and I rarely saw her. When I did run into her she told me she’d found out she had just enough credits to graduate in December, and planned to move back to Dallas right afterward. It was sort of a shame, really, because I’d gotten to like her a lot, and would miss her.

I still didn’t know for sure if she’d ever stabbed anyone.

The Grubby Mitts’ singer recovered from her illness but dropped out of the band to join a new one. Lia replaced her indefinitely. The Mitts, and all the other local bands, played wherever they could get a gig. I still hadn’t been by Scout’s but I knew people who had and they’d all told me it was “okay,” but no Lynch’s.

Lia kept in touch with Roy and told me he was doing alright. She was trying to convince him to open another venue somewhere. She told him her dad could hook him up with investors and financial advisors, and avail him of Elyse’s expertise. After years of volunteering for so many non-profit organizations, Lia’s mom knew a thing or two about stretching a dollar. Whatever Roy decided, he wouldn’t be opening anything in Lynch’s old location. He’d sold the building to cover his debts. I’d driven by it recently and seen it was being gutted.

Lia and I’d decided to continue publishing
The Blank Slate
. With Blank Fiction on hiatus and Lynch’s closed, I wasn’t sure what we’d write about. But we’d finally gotten our Clyde Kameron interview when he’d called Lia to wish her a happy birthday the week before. He’d sent her one of his old lyric notebooks as a present.

He’d told us he was hanging out with a model friend of his at her beachfront house in the Caribbean (I’d rolled my eyes at this) and writing songs for a solo concept album tentatively called
Suicide Watch
. We’d told him the title was in poor taste, but that’d only seemed to encourage him. So I guessed he really was “back.”

Soon he’d be back, literally, too. John and Elyse had invited him to Thanksgiving dinner and he’d promised to come. Mom and I would be there, too. But not George, because Mom wasn’t seeing him anymore. She told me they didn’t break up over me, but I couldn’t be sure.

Things had been tense between Jake and his dad. Soon after Jake started working again, John told him he needed to move back out of the house by the end of the year.

Jake moved out the next day.

I don’t think he was as angry as he was hurt. He didn’t see John was just trying to motivate him, keep him from getting stuck. At least, that’s what I’d thought he was doing. Because, lets face it, Jake and I both sometimes needed someone to give us a little push in the right direction.

Anyway, Jake was sleeping on Caleb’s couch for the time being. He picked up extra shifts at Cell Farm whenever he could, though, and was saving money. He hoped to have his own apartment by January. And he’d probably enroll at Carreen College in the spring. He told me he thought he wanted to study Music Theory part time and maybe get a teaching certificate.

He was still playing music, of course. Not only with Caleb and Good Television but with another band, too, that hadn’t decided on a name yet. They sounded a lot harder and pretty different than anything I’d ever heard Jake play before, but they were amazing. Caleb told me he blamed me for Jake's having brough a lot of “embarrassingly sappy” song lyrics to Good Television’s latest band meetings.

I decided to get a job, so I could afford a car and save up for when Lia and I moved in together after graduation. There were a lot of prospects. Mom offered to put me to work at the hotel; Lia’s dad offered to hire me at Paper or Plastic; Jake said he could hook me up at Cell Farm. Even Paige offered to help me find something, since she knew almost everyone at the mall.

But in the end I’d taken a job as an usher at the Maribel Theater, where Scott Connor used to work. I liked it pretty well. I got to watch movies and eat popcorn for free, just like when I was a kid waiting for my mom in one of the Crawford suites after school.