Plush (22 page)

In synch.

One.

“Lalalalalalala – I’m playing with fire…”

We start to almost kiss while singing – our lips are so close but not touching -and then the chord changes into some strange thought that I can’t completely understand. It’s some dark twinge of pain. It’s a breakdown. So, I speak it like Patti Smith would:

“I am living amongst the thirsty mouths of the ladies of hours.”

He:
“I am living amongst the clouds, always running from my shadows.”

Me:
“I am living each day though they’re dancing from me”

He:
“I am living. This is my world, my hunger, my dream. I scream”

Us:
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

We scream so loud; he drops the guitar and we forget about the world for a moment. The night is ours. The tension so great. What’s going to happen next? I can’t handle the suspense – then he pushes me down on the bed.

It’s about to happen, and he turns around and does a line of blow. I do another line of blow after him.
Faster, faster! I’m spinning into the clouds
. We write and we write. Everything falls out of us, all this tension and desire. The music is magic. We record a more complete version of “Playin’ with Fire.” Oh. I’m on fire. WOOOT!
The queen is back!

Enzo runs into my suitcase and grabs a glittery backless dress and dances burlesque-style, his shirt and pants off. So strange. He’s wearing the exact same kind of underwear Jack used to wear: purple vampires with a glitter band. It’s so weird that he fits in my dress. He throws me his tight leather vest and I take off my shirt and put it on. Then he tosses me his pants. I like being in his pants. I feel him all over me. Another line of blow…

I jump on the bed, screaming knees dancing to my chest. He throws on
Pretty Hate Machine
and turns the music louder – ALWAYS LOUDER – to drown out the pain of this retarded, fucking world and all its misunderstandings. Then he’s jumping with me. Our hands hold, and we laugh, spin around, and jump higher, faster, harder, screaming dreams and collapsing into each other with the speed of the thrill of whatever the fuck this is. We circle faster and faster, spinning wilder and wilder into the clouds. The world is ours if only we’ll take it, if only with the right guitar lick and voice yelp, and they will all quiver and worship us, licking our rock-god feet.

Enzo. Enzo. Us. It’s so fucking perfect – like we’re dancing in the stars and the universe spins for only us. Higher, higher, higher! AHHHHHHHH! This is the kind of fun I had when it was just me and Jack in the south Texas house: all alone drawing on the walls, blasting music, and being whoever we wanted with no one to judge. Legs to chest. Legs to bed. Jump. Howl. I howl. Enzo howls. Glitter skirt flounces. He turns around and shakes his ass. Holy fuck. It’s a tattoo of half of Jack’s face melted into half of mine, and it says,
“Hayley & Jack 4ever”
Weird.

“Um… When did you get that tat?” My buzz is killed. No one wants to see their dead brother’s face melted into theirs over the ass crack of someone you’re about to fuck. Enzo’s face turns beet red…“Oh. I was nineteen and stupid. After your second album a lot of fans got them and posted the photos on your site… Sorry. Ah…” Good thing I’m not a guy and I won’t be fucking him from behind. “No worries man, I am the queen of doing stupid shit.”

And with that Enzo starts to kiss my neck and makes me weak all over again. This moment is all I want. His hand grips my neck and chokes a little. Harder. His metallic nails curl harder. Smoke in my head. Enzo picks me up in his arms and runs me out the doors and up a flight of stairs. At the roof there is a giant fence around the pool and a sign that says,
‘CLOSES at 10!’
People like us don’t understand time. We climb, metal digging into our fingers and palms, and at the top of the fence we grab hands and jump feet first into the deep end of the pool. Our legs entwine underwater. He is all white flames, clutching me like a man who is drowning. A thousand fevers could not cure us of this passion. Chariots flame into the sky and drag me down, down to him.
Water. Thrash. Kiss. Fuck. All night. Cry
. Then he pulls me under the water for too long. I can’t breathe. Chlorine enters my nostrils. I’m thrashing, gasping for air.
Blue blur. Crazy lights
. My arms try to grasp and climb up him, but he’s holding my head down and I feel the blackness… Is he trying to kill me? Am I gonna fucking die?… Now…

Water, black water. Drowning, Liquid inhalations enter lungs. Fight it off. Black holes, black skies, burning eyes. Everywhere. Go into the light…

Then right when I feel like I’m going to black out, he pulls me up. I inhale so deep and he shoves it in so hard – I scream and he scratches my back – red thorns of pain freeing me from my brain – then slaps me hard. Everything is crooked and how I want it. I’ve never been fucked the way I needed and deserved to be fucked, and he is the one to finally give me what I always wanted. This. Now. Orgasm upon orgasm.

At some point in the great abyss of each other, we pull out our many hydra heads and look up.
Hahahaha
. In a window from the hotel next to us, much higher than us, we see a naked, potbellied guy drinking beer watching us, burping, shaking his head, and contradicting the big cross around his neck. In another room a couple toasts us with champagne, laughing and pointing. Too many eyes.

Enzo throws me over his shoulder, sopping wet. The city spins below. He takes me to the hotel room, throws me on the bed, jumps on me and whispers,
“I know this is what you wanted…”
His crazy eyes devour mine. The world with us is spinning, laughing, sighing, moaning.

He chains me to the bed, takes a knife, and rips my wet clothes down the center, then tears them off. Oh. Fuck me again, Enzo. His sinister voice:
“I’m all you’ve ever wanted…”
He’s holding the Bowie knife to my neck…
“If you moan once I’ll fucking slash you”
And he shoves it in again. His long, perfect cock. I breathe deep. I can’t moan. The blade is closer. He’s going harder.
“Don’t say a fucking word you slut”
It’s only making me wetter. I want to scream in all this thunder and surrender. I want to scream at the world for making me so fucked up. I want to love him forever. I want this all night and every night. I want him to light all the stars under my skin. Under my skin. This is it. Electric. This is it.

This is all I want.

And right when I’m about to cum, the blade goes just a tip into my neck and he stops moving all together and one small drop of blood forms…

“Enzo, please, please, let me… let me”

“You don’t make the fucking rules. I do. And you’ll cum when I say you’ll cum.” He blindfolds me. I hear the blade drop.
Wetness, black stars, torn up hearts
. UH, UH, UH.

My whole existence is flawed. Again he fucks me slow and hard and touches my clit and I want to scream. He keep going right until I’m about to cum, then he pulls out – “No, no…” I want to fight against him; I want the orgasm.

52

City after city. Hotel room and after hotel room burns with white fires of desire.

Enzo sneaks in late; Enzo wakes early and sneaks out. We are so much in synch I can hear what he says before his lips even move. I smile all the time. I wear scarves to hide the hickeys and giant, silver wrist cuffs to hide the rope marks. Now all the fans are doing it too. Scarves and cuffs…

Enzo protects me from the creepy fans and he throws away the letters if they are bad. I canceled Carter and the kids’ trip out to Miami. I lied and said I’m too busy writing the new album. Well, it’s not a full lie. I never want to end this tour. I want to just keep going on: hiding hand-in-hand under stairwells, sending secret texts even though we are right across from each other, living this fantasy, drinking each other’s blood. It almost feels like having Jack back but better because I can fuck this guy all I want. He’s a genius. He completes me artistically. We obsess over each other to the same degree. He doesn’t judge me. He gets who I am deep down under the ravines of pain. It’s OK for me to be a little insane. And I’m having so much fun. It’s like I never had kids, never got married. And, well, Enzo – I’m under his spell. I want to stay here forever, with him.

When I love,

   I love so completely.

   I lose myself.

    I should not love like

        this, but it’s

already too late.

53

I’m in the stretch limo riding in the back, alone, on the way home. My cherry has come down. I told Enzo it was over. Over. Over. There is no more ‘us.’

Well…

At least until the next tour.

Maybe? Would that work?

Focus.

You’re going home… FOCUS, HAYLEY.

We are driving past Leo Carillo Beach. The waves crash. Like they are crashing on me. The sun is being swallowed by the water; the light is being swallowed by all my darkness. He accepted it too well. Am I that easy to let go of? He should have screamed and cried and begged. Instead all he said was, “That was always the understanding.” And he shrugged his shoulders. What the FUCK?! All those words we wrote, all that fucking love, and that’s it?

FOCUS, HAYLEY. STOP OBSESSSING!

Waves of orange turn black hitting cliffs that I am no longer allowed to fall from. I’m listening to “Wave of Mutilation” by The Pixies. All of this fun and now back to this insanely normal reality. I have three scarves tied into one around my neck hiding the oh-so-recent past.

We turn into the canyon of Mulholland Highway, swerving past giant, rich people’s houses on big-acred ranches, up higher and higher on the road, down lower and lower inside my soul. I don’t fully understand my worlds and the roles I’m supposed to play. I miss Enzo already, but I need to forget him starting…
now
. That was the tour chapter of my life. I am turning a new page. I’m going back to plain.

We pull pass my neighbors’ house, and the couple are power walking along the road with their little, white, puffy pooch, Pamela, so I roll down my window and try to say ‘Hi.’

Evie looks at the limo hood to trunk, then frowns and moves her head ever so slightly, not even a nod. I’m too weird for this neck of the woods. It’s full of crazy canyons, knotted-up roots, exposed trees, wild animals, the rich that want to escape from city life, and then there’s me. The driver turns around and says, “Hate your music that much, huh?”
Haha
. “My kids once tied a wagon to their dog and had it pulling toys up a hill…”

I point to my driveway--the entrance has a sign Carter hand-carved himself that reads
“Rockin’R Ranch”
. The security gate is tall and all locked up. Deep breath. I can do this. I can put this character on. I can live this life that is not my own.

I get out of the car and look into the camera: “Open up. Mama’s home!” No one answers. You think they’d be super excited and waiting. I punch in the code.

SNAP!
– twigs breaking. Someone’s behind me – is that fucking fan waiting for me?! I flip around and there is in man in a black sweatsuit and knit cap flashing photos. The butch-ass, femme-fatale driver jumps out of the car and chases him, but he’s in his white shit-car – too fast. She does manage to crash her fist down on the hood as he speeds away hard.
Haha
. I love me a bad-ass bitch.

“You ok?” she asks.

As we both climb back in the blacked-out vehicle, the gate swings open. We drive up. I see only my car and an old Alpha Romeo – the nanny must have got a new car – but I don’t see my husband’s. What the fuck? I’m home off a huge tour and he’s not even here? The driver pulls my bags out and puts them right near the door. I search for my keys and tip this bad-ass bitch extra for hitting the paparazzo’s hood. “You’re one tough cookie,” I laugh. She smiles back and asks, “Thanks! You want me to wait?”

“Nah, I’m cool.”

She rolls down the hill and the gate clangs shut. I pull at the brass doorknob and it’s unlocked. How weird is that? No one should leave this unlocked. I mean I’m kind of a big deal – I’m a fucking celebrity. Extra precautions should always be taken with people like me. Or maybe I
was
a celebrity, but I will be again once I finish this new shit with Enzo. Why the fuck did I send the driver away? Something feels really off -- like all of the wrong labels are on all the wrong drawers and I walked into somebody else’s life. Maybe I can call the driver back. I know the number’s in my phone somewhere from when she called to check where I was. Fuck. Don’t panic. Shit will be cool. Panic won’t solve my problems or some Deepak Cobra shit like that. It’s so quiet out here. Too quiet. Too dark. No moon. It’s just me and this strange world. Where the fuck is my cell? I can’t even find my fucking cell! AHK!