Plush (17 page)

40

“Yes Annie?” I put the phone on speaker. I’m putting mascara on in the mirror, trying to fill all the ugly I feel. Sometimes I can’t see my reflection at all. If I blink too hard, I go away. So I try to be careful to keep myself here.

“Hey, Hayley! You’re never gonna believe it! I found the perfect session guitarist for you! He’s amazing. He’s everything you are missing for th–”

“What the fuck do you mean I’m missing? Are you saying that my songs are –”

“Hayley. Be calm. Don’t be so defensive. I just mean you need a good lead guitarist and someone who can solo, you know, over your chords. Nothing’s wrong. You’re doing great, kid.” My heart is sinking. One of my biggest fears that keeps eating me is that I’m nothing without Jack. But I bite it down and put the mascara wand back in. “ – and I’m bringing him today with me. I saw him play at the China Club last night. He’s so right for the end of this album… maybe just some overdubs.” Managers are always overstepping.

“Ok, fine. I’ll try it out…. And, urn… can you make sure people stop walking on eggshells around me? Thanks.”

Click
.

Click
.

Kiss Carter.

Kiss the kids.

Walk to the studio.

Read through all the fan mail for Jack and me.

Put some really beautiful drawings I find on the shrine.

Kiss the shrine. Cuddle the vase of ashes.

Get myself together.

Wipe away the tears before everybody gets here.

Donnie is first. This is a first. He’s really trying to step it up since Jack left. “How’s my favorite midget wackadoo. Did you shrink since the last time I saw you?” Donnie. “Hahaha, no. I’m just not in my fucking heels, Donnie.”

He slaps my ass. So, I guess Annie sent the band the ‘no eggshell’ memo. I prefer them perverted then soft and shy. At least it’s real – almost nothing feels real anymore.

“Hayley, gorgeous Hayley, I brought you some apples from the farmers market. And I wrote a new bass riff for you.” Diego is too pretty for me. Too pure. I love him though; he’s like a nephew, even if he’s a year older than me – and even though I can still hear the sound of his innocence breaking from the time we hooked up. He told me he didn’t mind it, but I still mind it.

We start to warm up together when the door opens… slow…

Annie walks in. Behind her, a tall, dark, androgynous, bad boy. This must be him. Something about him is so Jack.

“Hey, Hayley. I’m Enzo.” His hand and my hand shake – fire all over me. If I wasn’t married…

Wait a second – what the fuck? His dark eyes cop-searchlight up and down Donnie’s shirtless body and then Diego’s too. I look at him, and the clues are all over. His delicate, perfect hands have black nail polish painted better and straighter than any girl I know. They match his tiny black bracelets – which aren’t the male, standard, thick, hard, leather cuffs either. He’s wearing earrings in each ear – not just the left, straight-guy-acceptable side – and he has silver cuffs up high on the lobe too. And he has so much freaking eyeliner on – not like Keith Richards style, all smudgy – but perfect and done with care, clearly by someone who has been doing it for years. He brushes past Donnie touching his arm… Um. So, I think I get it. He bats for the other team. He’s kind of like a more effeminate Jack.

Enzo takes out his guitar from his red velvet lined case and puts it on. His fingers speed everywhere: beautiful electric soliloquies of magic and sadness and fun, if that’s all possible.

We go into the first song, and it’s as if he understands exactly what is missing. The band just feels complete again. The lead he writes is fucking magic. He’s always looking down, but sometimes his eyes sneak a thief look at me. Maybe to see how I like it? Waves of confusion fall over me. He is magnetizing me. We sing. I feel like dancing and putting on a show. And I do:
Bowie, electric, Ballroom Blitz, Iggy, shake, appeal, swinging my Tina hips, flapping my Jagger big and saucy lips
.

I jump high, go low like a birthday party floor, then tiger-pounce, wail, and sing. I’m the image of Hayley that everybody once saw. Haha – I can do this; I can get back in the swing of things.

At three we take a break. Donnie is too vain to smoke and Diego too pure and pretty. To try to be respectful, I go behind the studio so the smoke doesn’t get in, even though I smoke inside as soon as they leave.

“Can I bum one?” Enzo is a tall, lanky dream walking towards me. Black shirt. Black jeans. A lock bounces around his neck like Jack’s. I wonder if he even knows. I pull out a cigarette for him and our hands touch for a second. His long, strangle-weed fingers pull it back. I look in his eyes for a moment, then away. I feel something strange in me bend, but this is crazy because I know he’s into men.

He puts the fag in his mouth and pulls out a purple lighter with a giant eye on it – like Jack’s. He lights his first, then puts the fire of his against the unlit one in my mouth. I suck. The white of my cigarette lights so hard and fast. I can’t stop looking at him. He looks so much like my brother. I’m overwhelmed by it all. My heart is thunder, a thousand wild elephants stomping.

He pulls away his fag. We blow our smoke out in unison. The world has answered my hungry prayers.

“Hey, Hayley! What do you want to eat?” Annie steps out towards us. He and I take a casual step back from each other and pretend to watch things around us like clouds and trees and other things that aren’t him and me.

“Um, I don’t know. I’m not too hungry.” Annie is in the highest spiked heels ever. How she does those shoes 24-7, on rocks and dirt, I’ll never know.

“And you, Jack?” Enzo looks up. This jolts me out of the moment. Twinges of pain. Annie stammers to correct herself: “I mean – Enzo. Sorry…”

“Um. Some fruit would be delectable. I’m not too hungry right now either.” He recovers well. I try so hard not to watch him. It’s like trying to pull myself out of quick sand. We are pretending not to watch each other and smoke our cigarettes so slow, in and out of our mouths. But alas we must go, and he’s the first to walk in the studio. I’m falling. Yes, I’m falling. But – it’s so confusing – from behind, all I see is Jack. Is Jack here with me now? Is his spirit in the body of this boy? Have I lost my little cracked-eggshell mind? The thing I want most in this world is forever gone… or is it? It’s almost as if I watched the rest of the day go by from a window.

We finish recording. All I can do is focus on the songs to forget about Enzo. He’s gaining more confidence. We touch our backs together on accident sometimes when he’s playing and I’m singing – just like Jack and me. Electricity. So much electricity. I’m trying to hide it, so the band doesn’t see. So crazy. And confused. It’s just like Jack and me.

Everybody leaves. I give everybody a hug except him; it would be too dangerous. Tonight, I sleep in the studio. I need to write. I need to explore the music in his mind

  alone

without prying eyes.

Can we decipher each other?

41
    July 21, 2012

Donnie and Diego are on the couch talking about some new band they just saw at the Satellite last night. Enzo and I are working on a riff. Sometimes when I reach for a pen or some water, I brush his leg. We avoid each other’s eyes. We can’t let everybody know what’s tearing at us inside. Well, I think it’s inside him too, but I’m not sure. I mean, it’s burning up in me.

“I think if you change the chord to a minor at the end of the chorus, just for the last time through, it will melt the song and make you feel more unresolved and uncertain as to what will happen to the person in the song.”

He’s so fucking right.

He’s cautious not to overstep. But things are getting way better. It’s time to start recording the song. As I step up, Enzo whispers in my ear… “I know what you’re thinking.” Like Jack. And I need that. I go to the mic. On fire. Every cell in me is on fire. I sing so full of passion, trying to hold it together when all I want to do is go to bed with him. Guilt splatters my melting insides into all the confusion and the loss and yet the insane joy of having even a little breathing piece of something that was destroyed.

I am so fucked. So fucked. In the bed with Carter, I can’t kiss him back. It’s been so long since I could kiss him, like really kiss him. We’re missing that deep connection ever since Jack died. His lips, quivering with questions that I can’t answer, are so close to my face. I push him away -- just a soft push. “Carter… you know I can’t. We killed him. Our love killed Jack.” Carter doesn’t yell like most men would yell at my fucked up head, but he did steal me from my brother knowing how weak Jack was. He’s just as fucking guilty as I am.

He scratches his head and says soft, “Haze… this is not healthy thinking. Maybe you need to go to therapy twice a week again?”

I want to scream FUCK YOU, but I don’t. He’ll never understand. I look at my two tiny hands. They’re so small; I can’t play a bass well. I hate my small hands.

“Ok,” I say and go into the bathroom.

I lock the door and lock out the world that eats me alive – worms to the soul – and turn on the bathtub to drown in this self-created hell. Water will flush all over my body. Clear drops clear away the pain. I dissolve into liquid and slip down the drain.

42

“Enzo. Today I think you should try out for the band. I think you might be good on tour.” Annie states it like she fucking owns this band and my heart is concrete.

“Sure. I’d love to.” He’s so calm. Nothing phases him.

Donnie smirks and starts one of our early obscure songs “Scream Into Me.” Enzo starts right where Jack would. It’s magic – how the fuck does he know this song? Only hard core fans have the bootleg home demo of it. He’s swaying his hips, eyes slit. I sing, growl. Our backs fall against each other and stay there just like Jack and mine. His lead has the exact same vibe and string bends as Jack. He knows it with his soul. We go through half our catalogue and Enzo is like this with every song. No one had to say anything to know he is the one… for the band that is. Not just my fantasies.

Annie gives him pickup time for the airport.
Blah, blah, blah
.

Enzo says as he packs up his guitar, “Our minds may not understand, but our soul does.” He turns, not even looking at me, not even saying goodbye, throws his case into the back of his car, and drives away. I watch him. I watch him all the way down the hill. And Annie sees:

“Hayley. Be careful. Really fucking careful. He’s not Jack.” She hugs me and goes. Rock-n-fucking-roll.

43
    Sept. 12, 2012

I’ve bleached my hair white. I’m all toned up. I’m ready to live this persona that I once was. This is hard. Real hard. Jack was so much of the voice of the two of us. I’m in the studio chain-smoking. The room is a white veil of smoke and despair. Slinky, sex-freak Annie is making coffee. A knock on the door.

“The reporter’s here. Butch Hopkins.” In walks a black-band-shirted, high water jeans, loafers, no socks, indie-bearded-hipster. Oh Lord, I’m fucked. Mr. Silver-spun Pickups is not my target audience. Probably the only thing we have in common is Miko Mika.

He sits. We shake hands, exchange pleasantries. And then -

“Soooo… What went wrong with Jack?” I inhale deep into my cigarette. Tar. Yum. Good thing I popped a Xanax right before this whole thing started, otherwise I’d really be losing my shit right now.

“Is it really your fucking business?” – Wait, play nice. That’s right, be a good girl – “Um… just kidding. I don’t know, I guess when I met Carter and the whole getting pregnant and kids… I was so distracted and, you know … the needle and the damage done.”

All I can see is Jack and that fucking needle in his arm. Keep it together, Hayley. Come on. For Jack. “I mean looking back I wish I would have noticed more of the signs. But you know ,,,, denial….” Butch shakes his head. The red light of the recorder is on. He writes something down. I wish I could see what. Butch: “And now?” I see he’s eyeing my Jack altar. Fuck, I shouldn’t have let him in my personal space. My sanctuary. “Uh, yeah. I was really dark for a while, losing my mind, and then I just started writing again and writing all about Jack, and ‘Half of Me’ was first, and that’s the whole album; it’s my homage to my great, great… um – ” Don’t break now, Hayley. Don’t cry. “ – brother.”