Public Secrets (17 page)

S
TEVIE HAD NEVER
been so scared. There were bars all around and the steady drip, drip, drip, of a faucet somewhere down the hall. Voices were raised occasionally and echoed. There was the shuffling of feet, then the godawful silence.

He needed a fix. His body was trembling, sweating. His stomach was knotted, refusing to let him release the nausea in the scarred porcelain John in the corner. His nose and eyes were running. It was the flu, he told himself. He had the freaking flu and they’d locked him up. He needed a bloody doctor, and they’d shut him up and left him to rot. Sitting on the cot, he brought his knees up to his chest, pushing his back into the wall.

He was Stevie Nimmons. He was the greatest guitarist of his generation. He was somebody. But they had put him in a cage like an animal. They had locked him up and walked away. Didn’t they know who he was? What he’d made himself?

He needed a fix. Oh Jesus, just one sweet fix. Then he’d be able to laugh this off.

It was cold. It was so goddamn cold. He yanked the blanket from the cot and huddled under it. And he was thirsty. His mouth was so dry he couldn’t even work up enough spit to swallow.

Someone would come, he thought as his eyes began to fill. Someone would come and make it all right again. Someone would fix it. Oh God, he needed a fix. His mother would come and tell him everything had been taken care of.

It hurt. He began to weep against his knees as the pain
wracked through him. Every breath he took seemed to hold tiny slivers of glass. His muscles were on fire, his skin like ice.

Just one. Just one toke, one hit, one line, and he’d be all right again.

Didn’t they know who the fuck he was?

“Stevie.”

He heard his name. With eyes bleary with tears, he looked toward the cell door. Dragging the back of his hand over his mouth, he struggled to focus. He tried to laugh, but the sound came out in a whooping sob as he struggled up. Pete. Pete could fix it.

He tripped over the blanket, and lay sprawled on the floor a moment as Pete watched him. Stevie’s body was stick-thin. His legs angled awkwardly out from it and ended in five-hundred-pound snakeskin boots. His face as he pushed himself up was gray and pasty with lines dug deep and dug hard. The whites of his eyes were streaked fiery red. There was a trickle of blood from his lip where he had hit the floor. And he stank.

“Man, I’m sick.” He began to pull himself up, hand over sweaty hand on the bars. “I got the flu.”

The junkie flu, Pete thought dispassionately.

“You got to get me out.” Stevie wrapped his trembling fingers around the bars. Though his breath was stale, Pete didn’t back away. “It’s fucking crazy. They came into my house. Into my goddamn house like a bunch of bloody Nazis. They waved some kind of paper in front of my face and started pulling out drawers. Jesus, Pete, they dragged me in here like I was some kind of freaking murderer. They put handcuffs on me.” He began to cry again and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “People were watching when they took me out of my own house with handcuffs on me. They were taking pictures. It ain’t fucking right, Pete. It ain’t fucking right. You got to get me out.”

During the outburst Pete had stayed very still. His voice was low and calm. He’d handled crises before, and knew how to turn them in his favor. “They found heroin, Stevie, and what’s politely called drug paraphernalia. They’re going to charge you with possession.”

“Just get me the fuck out.”

“Are you listening to me?” The question whipped out, cool and quiet. “They found enough in your place to put you away.”

“It was planted. Somebody set me up. Somebody—”

“Don’t bullshit me.” His eyes hardened, but whatever disgust he felt he kept carefully inside. “You have two choices. You can go to jail, or you can go into a clinic.”

“I’ve got a right—”

“You’ve got no rights here. You’re messed up, Stevie. If you want me to help you, you’re going to do exactly what I tell you.”

“Just get me out.” Stevie sank to the floor and folded into himself. “Just get me out.”

“H
OW LONG WILL
he have to stay in?” Bev poured the chilled Pouilly Fumé into glasses.

“Three months.” Johnno watched her, pleased that the old Bev wasn’t buried too deeply in the newer, sleeker model. “I’m not sure how Pete pulled it off, nor do I think I want to know, but if Stevie spends his time in the Whitehurst Clinic, he won’t stand trial.”

“I’m glad. He needs help, not a jail sentence.” She settled on the sofa beside him, feeling foolishly nervous. “The news is all over the radio. I was just wondering what to do, what I could do, when you knocked at the door. Perhaps, in a few weeks, I could go to see him.”

“I’m not sure he’ll be such a pretty sight.”

“He’ll need his friends,” she said, and set her wine down untasted.

“And are you still?”

She looked up. Her face softened before she lifted a hand to his cheek. “You look good, Johnno. I always wondered what you were hiding under that beard.”

“The sixties are over. More’s the pity. I actually wore a tie last week.”

“Please.”

“Well, it was white leather, but a tie nonetheless.” He leaned over and kissed her. Time, he thought, was only time after all. “I’ve missed you, Bev.”

“The years went by so quickly.”

“For some of us. I hear you and P.M. are an item.”

She picked up her wine, sipping, stalling. “Did you come to gossip, Johnno?”

“You know how I adore gossip, luv. Shall I pretend I didn’t see the pictures of you and P.M.?” The familiar sarcasm was
back, faint, but sharp as a blade. “Of course my favorite is of you and Jane, right after you bloodied her lip.” He grabbed Bev’s hand before she could rise, and kissed it. “My hero.”

The laughter bubbled up, and though she took her hand away, she relaxed again. “I had no intention of fighting with her, and no regret that I did.”

“That’s the spirit. You Amazon.”

“She made a comment about Darren,” Bev murmured.

“I’m sorry.” His smile faded. When he took her hand again, she let hers lie comfortably in it.

“I just saw red. I know that’s a cliché, but you do when you’re viciously angry. The next thing I knew I was plowing into her, for Darren, for myself. And for Emma. A lot of nerve I have defending Emma after what I did to her.”

“Bev.”

“No, we won’t get into all that,” she interrupted. “It’s done now. I imagine Jane will say some filthy things about me in her next book, and my business will boom as a result.” Push it aside, she told herself, and go on. “P.M. tells me that you’re about to form your own label.”

“It should be official in a couple of weeks. Just where is our boy?”

“He had to fly to California a couple of days ago. The divorce business. Actually, he’s expected back anytime now.”

“Expected back here?”

She drank again, but met his eyes levelly. “Yes, here. Is that a problem, Johnno?”

“I don’t know. Is it?”

A trace of the old fire came into her eyes—stubborn, defensive. “He’s a very sweet man, a kind man.”

“I know. I’m rather fond of him myself.”

“I know you are.” She sighed, and let the fire die. “Don’t let’s make it complicated, Johnno. We’re just looking for a little happiness, a little peace of mind.”

“That’s bullshit. P.M.’s been in love with you for years.”

“So what if he is?” she demanded. “Don’t I deserve someone who loves me? Someone who puts me first?”

“Yes. And doesn’t he deserve the same?”

She shoved away from the sofa to pace to the window and back. The rain slicked down the glass like bars. “I’m not going to
hurt him. He needs someone right now. So do I. What’s so wrong about that?”

“Brian,” he said simply.

“What does he have to do with this? That was over long ago.

He got up slowly. “I won’t insult you by calling you a liar, or by calling you a fool. I will say that I care about you, and P.M. And Bri. And I care about the band, what we are, what we’ve done, what we still can do.”

“I’m hardly a Yoko Ono,” she said stiffly. “I won’t come between your precious band. Have I ever? Could I ever?”

“You never have. Maybe you’ve never known how easily you could. Brian’s never loved anyone like he loved you, Bev. Believe me, I know.”

“Don’t say that to me.”

He started to speak again, but they both heard the door open, and the rush of footsteps down the hallway. “Bev! Bev!” P.M. turned into the room, his coat wet from the rain and flapping open. “Johnno, thank God. I just heard about Stevie on the radio. What the hell’s going on?”

“Have a seat, son.” Johnno settled back on the sofa himself. “And I’ll tell you.”

H
E LOVED HER
so sweetly. He touched her so gently. The candles flickered, flames dancing with the dark as Bev stroked a hand down P.M.’s back. His whispers were soft, the words lovely. It was easy, so easy to give herself to him, to let the strength of his feelings carry her along.

She would never have to ask herself if he needed her, if she would be, could always be, enough for him. With him, she would never have to spend nights wondering, worrying, aching. And she would never, never, feel that thrill of unity, of Tightness, of belonging.

She gave him all she could, arching up to him, opening for him, accepting, even welcoming him into her. Her body didn’t shudder as his did, her heart didn’t threaten to burst through the wall of her chest. But after a good, clean climax came the peace. And she was grateful.

But she should have known such simple things don’t last.

The candles still flickered as he drew her close, to hold her
warmth to him. He loved the serenity that always cloaked her after sex, the complete and somehow elegant stillness of her body.

Her eyes were half closed, her lips soft and just parted. Her limbs were pliant. If he rested his head, as he often did, on her breast, he would hear the strong, steady beat of her heart.

Sometimes they talked like this—as he had never talked with his wife of seven years. They talked of what had happened to them during the day, or what had happened to the world. Or they lay and listened to the radio that had played during their lovemaking. They would drift to sleep like that, quiet and content. And in the morning he would wake, dazzled and delighted that she was beside him.

He shifted her so that he could brush his hand through her hair. “The divorce is going through.”

Roused out of a half-doze, she opened her eyes and watched the pattern of light and shadow on the wall. “I’m glad.”

“Are you?”

“Of course. I know how hard it’s been on you the last few weeks. You want it behind you.”

“I do. I married Angie for the wrong reasons, Bev. I wanted to settle down so badly, to have a wife, a home, a family. Of course that monster in Beverly Hills was never a home, and she always had an excellent excuse for putting off starting a family. Just as well. I was as poor a choice for her as she was for me.”

She linked her fingers with his. “You’re too hard on yourself.”