Tangled Web (14 page)

* * *

Heather had long been over being upset over
where the two women had been perched for the show. All three acts
had been enjoyable, and after Shock Treatment left the stage,
Heather had actually come out of her daze, long enough to inform
Katie that she was “in love” with Shock Treatment’s lead singer.
She pretended to swoon, then giggled and began moshing again.

Now that they were backstage, Katie almost
felt like a third wheel. Johnny had said hi and allowed Katie to
introduce him to Heather, but he had then wandered off, playing
host to myriad fans and press and various musicians from all three
bands, posing for the occasional picture and sipping at a beer in a
red plastic cup. Heather was engaged in genuine conversation with
Kiefer, and from what little Katie overheard, she guessed they were
hitting it off pretty well.

It was funny, she thought. The hunky blond
football-player type who’d been hitting on her in the mosh pit had
asked her to join him and his buddies at his place for an after
party. When she told him she and her friend had backstage passes,
he looked at her as though she were a groupie slut. Sadly enough,
she was starting to feel that way--used, bored, and unwanted.

She filled up her cup with some beer from
the pony keg in the corner. She couldn’t decide if she wanted to
get a small buzz on and pretend everything was okay or just be a
grown up about it and tell Johnny she wanted him to spare just
three minutes of his precious time so she could tell him she was
sorry. And, if not, maybe they could do it some other time. Since
she’d started school again, her time was indeed important, and she
frankly didn’t want to spend it staring at lukewarm suds in a cup
in a room that smelled like dirty socks in the din of drunks (who
thought their voices were at a normal range) and fans whose ears
were still ringing from the concert. If she had a chance to talk to
Johnny tonight, Katie had already decided
not
to tell him
everything on her mind, couldn’t bear to tell him everything she
and Heather had talked about. God. She had been so stupid. Of
course Johnny had gotten over it. She could tell that just by
watching him right now. He was surrounded by a group of skinny
little twenty-somethings in the corner, just like when they were in
high school. Katie was a good friend, but Johnny couldn’t be
bothered because she wasn’t a bevy of admiring anorexic blond girls
who giggled at every stupid-ass thing Johnny said.

Jesus. She was jealous.

That’s it. She took a deep breath, swallowed
what little beer she had left in her cup, and walked over to
Heather. Heather pulled her head away from Kiefer to look at Katie,
a sure sign of what a good friend she was. Katie lowered her voice.
“I’m going to head on home. You go ahead and stay.”

“Katie! Are you serious? WTF?”

In spite of herself, Katie grinned at
Heather. Heather just could not bring herself to drop an eff bomb,
no matter how effective it could be. She literally had said,
“Double-ewe tee eff?” So Katie responded in kind. “What the
eff
is that I have to teach tomorrow morning, remember?”

“Yeah, but not till eleven, right?”

Katie sighed. “Yes, but I’m tired.”

Heather looked at her in the eyes and
brought her face close, their noses touching. In between clenched
teeth, she said, “Kate Logan! I know you have not said a word to a
certain person about what we talked about.”

Katie didn’t move her face and just said,
“Yeah, I know.”

“And so you can’t go yet.” Katie rolled her
eyes. “And, besides, he’s coming over here.”

Katie felt her eyes grow wide. Shit. She had
already resigned herself to not saying anything and now...well, now
she would have to say
something
. Johnny stood beside them
and hunched over, his knees bent, hands on his thighs, lowering his
head so that his eyes were level with theirs, his grin growing
wider as the two women turned their heads to look at him. Kiefer
was still standing beside Heather, smiling, a stoned grin on his
face, waiting to resume their conversation. Katie wondered why she
didn’t have the talent Heather did, that ability to make people
comfortable and willing to talk about themselves on any level, for
hours on end. Heather was an every woman’s Barbara Walters. And
that talent had one particular guy quite interested.

Heather was also Miss Manners this evening.
She smiled at Johnny and said, “Excuse me,” turning back to face
her new friend, leaving Johnny and Katie alone.

“So, what brings you to a place like
this?”

Katie couldn’t help herself and started
laughing. “Does that line
really
work?”

Johnny was still smiling. “I don’t know.
I’ve never had to use it.”

Smooth. And if she hadn’t been his friend
for so long, had been a girl he’d just met, she would have been
completely turned off. But she wasn’t there to be picked up; she
was there to talk. So, how to ease into the conversation? She just
nodded, feeling a little uneasy, and took a sip of the beer that,
for some weird reason, tasted faintly of bananas. Johnny kept
talking. “So, you’ve been chomping at the bit. What were you
wanting to talk about? Or were you just wanting to hang?”

Shit, shit, shit. She couldn’t back out now.
And if Heather even knew she was wavering, she would be kicking
Katie in the butt right now. Besides, she owed it to Johnny to be
as forthcoming as possible.
Grow a pair
, she thought to
herself, and took a deep breath. “It’s too loud here. And crowded.
Is there somewhere else we can talk?”

“Ooooh, secret-y stuff,” Johnny teased.
Katie frowned at him, then nodded. “There are a couple of dressing
rooms back there.” He pointed behind Katie to a couple of doors
against a wall. “Will that work?”

“It’ll do,” she said, moving that direction
at the insistence of his outstretched hand pointing the way.

Johnny and Spawn of Satan had left town a
few weeks earlier, and Katie was feeling restless. She had been
working at an ice cream parlor several evenings a week and socking
away her money for college.

One afternoon in early August she was doing
what she always did on payday: spending one-fourth of her paycheck
on things she wanted, mostly music, clothes, makeup, jewelry, and
books. The rest of the money she put in a savings account she’d
opened right after graduation with money relatives had sent for the
occasion. She got home later in the day, toting two bags through
the front door, and felt the air rush out of her lungs when she saw
the look on her parents’ faces. Something was very wrong.

After an evening of tears, Katie learned
that her father had been diagnosed with liver cancer. Her parents
were tight-lipped about the treatments, but they told Katie that
her father would have surgery to remove a part of his liver and
then he would have some other sort of procedure done involving
electric current. Katie couldn’t stand it much longer and asked,
“But will that get rid of it?”

Her mother’s eyes were rimmed in red too,
and she told her daughter, “Cancer doesn’t really disappear, Katie.
We learned that today. But if your dad’s lucky, it will go into
remission.”

“What’s that mean?” Katie asked. But no
answers her parents gave her were good answers. Her father was
going to have a rough few months, and there was no guarantee he
would live through it. It didn’t take Katie long to decide not to
go to college hundreds of miles away in Boulder, even though
everything had already been arranged and she had received a
President’s Scholarship based on her grades and SAT scores. Several
days later, Katie announced to her parents that she was staying
home. They tried to talk her out of it, but it was evident to Katie
that they were relieved to have her stay. She enrolled in
Winchester Community College for classes starting later that
month.

She worked a few hours every week and
attended classes full time; what free time she had, she spent with
her parents. She didn’t hear a word from Johnny until Christmas,
and she didn’t tell him what was going on. When they talked, she
didn’t tell Johnny that she was still living at home. He had no
idea she had changed her plans, had thought she was visiting her
parents for Christmas break, and didn’t learn that Katie attended
school closer to home until a long while later. For all he knew at
the time, Katie was getting a degree in English with an emphasis in
Creative Writing.

Her dad fought and survived the cancer...for
a time, at any rate. After Katie finished two years at the
community college, she transferred her credits to a nearby
university just an hour away. But the cancer never lost its
foothold in his body, and her father was ill again when Katie
graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Sociology. He continued to
fight, though, and Katie and her mom did all they could to give him
a reason to live. During her senior year, Katie interned at the
local Child Protection office, and they offered her a position when
she graduated. She took it. She was going to have plenty of student
loans to pay off, and she already had the experience. The job paid
more than she’d ever made in any other job, so it was easy enough
to slide into the position.

Her father died that fall. Johnny’s mother
must have told him, because he showed up at the funeral. It was the
only time Katie had ever seen him wear a suit. He was a comfort to
both her and her mom, and she was grateful he was there. He and
Spawn were working on their second CD, so he could have easily told
her “Sorry” over the phone and left it at that, so it meant a lot
that he came.

Nothing ever filled the hole in her heart
that the absence of her father left, but it became a little easier
to deal with as time went on. The hole that Johnny left every time
he exited the picture, however, never seemed to ease up, but Katie
wondered later on if it was also what she’d done to herself. She
would never regret staying home with her parents, because she’d
never get the time with her father back. Her education too was
superb, even if it wasn’t her dream career. But when she finally
hooked up with Johnny that one night, it reminded her of all her
youthful dreams--not just about Johnny, but about her future. It
awakened a part of her that she had forgotten existed. And,
reawakened, it could not be put to sleep again.

* * *

The “dressing room” was nothing more than a
glorified closet. It had at one time been painted white but the
paint was now a yellowed version of its former self. The room did
have mirrors along one length as well as a countertop; directly
across was a rod for clothes, and several wire hangers were tangled
on it, and so, Katie supposed, it could be considered a dressing
room, although any woman in her right mind would beg to differ. At
the back of the room stood an old floor buffer that looked like it
hadn’t been operated since Reagan had been President. The old tiles
were yellow and gray and many of them were cracked and lined. Katie
wondered what the other dressing room was like, if this one
happened to be the better one. Sad if this was how the venue
treated its stars. Of course, she knew that Johnny and his band
didn’t care. The room they cared about was out there, where fans
and bands could mingle. They were rock stars, for God’s sake, not
models. She knew Johnny well enough to know he had probably spent
no more than three minutes in here earlier tonight, if that.

And she had simply asked to talk with him
anyway. Why should a cramped, dirty little room bother her? There
would never be a perfect time or a perfect place to tell him what
she felt, so she just needed to say what she had to say.

He shut the door and stood, facing Katie.
“Well?” Katie drew in a deep breath. She was grateful that she
wasn’t getting the vibes off him she had at their last face-to-face
meeting. That night outside the bar when he could hardly stand to
look at her was one of the worst nights of her life. She’d never
felt so miserable as she had then, and she was convinced until
today that she’d lost the best friend she ever had. She felt
relieved now but knew there was still more she needed to say.

Johnny leaned back onto the counter, not
sitting but no longer standing, his legs stretched out so that his
eyes were almost level with Katie’s. There were no chairs to sit on
in the room, and Katie was all right with that. This wasn’t that
kind of conversation, and she didn’t need to relax. She took
another deep breath before she began. “I just feel like we left
things on a bad note the last time I saw you.”

Johnny shrugged, a wan smile on his face.
“Hey. I’m over it, okay?” His smile finally moved up into his eyes
a little bit. “No harm done. We’re still friends.”

“Yeah, but...” Katie forced herself to look
in his eyes. “I just want you to know none of what happened was
meant to intentionally hurt you.”

“Yeah, I know. You already told me that. And
you’re forgiven, okay? We don’t have to keep talking about it.”

Katie swallowed. Wow. This was hard, and he
wasn’t going to let her relieve her own guilty conscience. That was
fair, she guessed. “Well, I just wanted to thank you, though,
because if we hadn’t...done what we did...I would probably be
married now and stuck in an endless, soul-sucking job for the rest
of my life.”

Johnny’s mouth screwed up into a ball before
he said, “I thought you liked your job.”

“I thought I was doing something important,
and I was good at it, but I don’t think I could honestly say that I
liked it. But...” Johnny finally raised his eyebrows, encouraging
Katie to continue. “You remember what I planned to do after high
school?”

“Yeah. You’re were gonna write the great
American novel.” Katie nodded. “Weren’t you going to go to CU or
something and study English or creative writing or something like
that?”