The telephone rang while I was upstairs looping samples, experimenting with some bhangra beats, and I had the feeling I should answer it.
“So there you are, mate,” Nick said. “I was looking for you.”
“I’m still recording at Melissa’s. Where’ve you been?”
“Manchester. I’m sorry I didn’t ring you. Wanna do something?”
I didn’t want to tell her what had happened over the phone and asked her to meet me at the Bethnal Green station. I’d spent several days babying my ankle and wanted to go out. I rang Melissa’s mobile, and she said she’d meet me at Nick’s flat later.
I didn’t have far to walk to reach the Hampstead tube. I took the Morden train south to Bank then changed from the Northern to the central line, which took me to Bethnal Green. Nick was waiting at the mouth of the station. She took her hands from the pockets of her leather jacket just long enough to give me a hug. She was wearing black mitts and the tips of her fingers were red with the cold. “Oi, what’s happened to your hand?”
“I’ll tell you over a cuppa.” I wrapped the brown tweed coat I’d got at an Oxfam charity shop more tightly around myself.
“Are you limping?” Nick was wearing bright royal-blue trainers. A light snow was falling as we walked to her flat. It was hushed and beautiful even with the surrounding dilapidation. I had the Jam’s “Dreams of Children” playing in my head because that song reminded me of Nick. “Something’s gonna crack on your dreams tonight. / You’re gonna crack on your dreams tonight.” I had a live version with a guitar riff during that last chorus that could break your heart. I’d recorded a song that sounded a bit like the studio version at the end, with backward guitars and keyboards fading out. I did it by playing my guitar riffs into the digital recorder using the “reverse” effect. It sounded ghostly.
The “Dyke” graffiti had been partially scrubbed off her building, leaving traces of red like a smeared lipstick kiss. Nick unlocked the door and we went upstairs. The walls of her flat were light green and lavender. There was a stereo and a crate of CDs, and the floor was lined with books on cinder-block shelves.
We settled on a blue settee with cups of tea and I looked at Nick more closely. Her eyes looked dull, heavy, and haunted like she hadn’t been sleeping well.
“What, for fuck’s sake, is the matter with your hand?” Nick gestured at the bandage.
I looked out the window at the tower blocks. I wasn’t sure how to begin.
“Spit it out, luv.”
“Don’t get upset,” I said, and Nick groaned. “Really. Don’t.”
Nick spread out her arms like she was being crucified, and I thought about my stigmata injury. Her eyes were green-gray against her brick-red jumper, which had zippers on the sleeves and a zipper going diagonally across the front. I could tell she’d sewn that one on herself by the uneven black stitching. “Nick, I got aggro from a bloke hanging round your flat.”
“You what?” Nick looked alarmed.
I told her everything that had happened in the most cheerful tone I could manage without sounding like a vacant-eyed, born-again Christian talking about the Rapture that never comes when it’s supposed to.
“I’ll kill ’im,” Nick murmured. “I am absolutely gutted.”
“I’m not blaming you,” I said. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“I saw him and just ran. I never dreamt he’d hurt anyone but me. Honestly. Are you alright now? God, I’m just so sorry. I didn’t want you getting in the middle of this. That’s why I scarpered.”
“What were you doing in Manchester, visiting your family?”
“I visited some old mates. You know my family don’t speak to me.”
“What? For real?”
“Aye,” Nick said gruffly. She softened her tone when she saw my confusion. “Kid, you do know me mam chucked me out of the house when she found out I was gay? I was sure Melissa would have told you.”
“She didn’t,” I said.
“She was respecting my privacy.” Nick thoughtfully fingered the punk bracelets around her right wrist, the black one with small bondage rings and the red one with silver conical studs. “Anyway, it done me head in for awhile. But not anymore.” Nick played with the homemade bracelet on her left wrist, neon-pink beads, glittery blue, green, pink, and purple letters that spelled out “Punk” and a diminutive razor blade charm.
“You should have at least told Melissa what was happening. She knows your history with this Atom wanker.”
“I wanted to deal with summat by myself for once. Besides, Jake’s my best mate, not her. I can’t just inflict myself on her now she’s gone.”
I stared at her in disbelief. “Has your trolley completely derailed?”
Nick shook her head. “No, luv. You mean, am I off my trolley?”
“Are you off your trolley? Don’t you know that Melissa loves you?”
“Oh, aye, an’ Jesus loves me and all. She doesn’t need me whingeing on about some queer-bashing brother of an ex-lover. I wouldn’t be in this shite in the first place if I weren’t—”
“Oh, come on. You’re not even going to try telling me some bollocky, rubbishy bullshit about Melissa caring what your sexuality is. That’s absolute bollocks and you know it. The three of us are like family.”
“You’re a romantic bugger, ain’t ya?” Nick said. “You hardly even know me.”
“Don’t fucking say that,” I protested. “Of course I bloody know you.”
Nick squinted at me. “All I know is whenever you’re around me, you get hurt. Christ, if I were any kind of a mate at all I’d stay away from you. In fact, after I walk you back to the tube, that’s exactly what I’ll do.”
“You don’t mean that,” I said. “Besides, Melissa’s meeting me here.”
“Melissa’s coming here? Fuck me.” Nick looked frantic. “She will fucking kill me for what happened to you.”
“No one’s gonna kill anybody.”
Nick stood up. “It’s getting dark. I’ll walk you back.”
“What about Melissa?”
“I ain’t gonna be here, mate, am I? I can’t face her.”
I crossed my arms and sat immobile on the couch.
“I cannot be arsed with this.” Nick sounded near tears.
“I’m not going anywhere. When Melissa gets here, the two of you can carry me out when I go limp. I wasn’t a member of ACT UP all those years for nothing, you know.”
“You are not committing an act of civil disobedience in my flat.”
“Nonviolent civil disobedience,” I corrected her.
We heard the buzzer go off.
“Well, let her in,” I said. Nick didn’t move. I went downstairs and opened the street-level door.
“What’s going on?” Melissa followed me upstairs.
“Don’t yell at her,” I said.
“Don’t tell me what tone of voice to use.” Melissa looked more hassled than I’d ever seen her, except for the night I’d been injured. She sat on the arm of Nick’s settee without removing her coat. “Have you got any idea what’s been going on around here in your absence? Have you got any explanation? She could have been bloody killed. Why did you not tell us Emilia’s brother had turned up again?”
“I’m sorry,” Nick said, trembling. “I wish it had been me.”
“That’s crap,” Melissa said angrily. “You know I’d be just as upset if it had been you who’d got hurt.”
“I was scared,” Nick said. “I never thought Atom would go after anyone but me. Why would he? If I had thought for one moment—Christ, you’ve got every right to hate me.”
“Hate you? I could never hate you. Jesus, who puts these daft ideas in your head? I am not your mum. You’ll not suddenly lose me, you know. I was really gutted by what happened to Amanda and pissed off you weren’t here.” Melissa draped an arm loosely over Nick’s shoulders, and I thought her hand looked kind and full of grace.
“No, you’re right. I should have warned you.” Nick leaned against Melissa’s damp, charcoal-gray wool coat.
“Listen. I did something you won’t like,” Melissa said. “I found an old address of Emilia’s in Belfast. I couldn’t get her number but I wrote her, telling her what’s been going on.”
“Fucking hell,” Nick looked ill, “you told her? That is summat I cannot deal with. It took me so long to get over her. Seeing her brother brings it all back.”
“She needs to know. She used to be my mate too, remember? It hurt me when she left, too. Not like it hurt you, but I felt betrayed. I should have got in touch with her ages ago, but you made me promise not to. You can slag me off all you want to, but I can’t have this happening to Amanda or to you. I had to do something.”
Melissa took us back to her flat and ordered in a nice curry. Nick was too upset to eat much.
“I know it’s shit ‘orrible,” Melissa said. “But if leaving you is her way of coping with a crisis she doesn’t deserve you. We probably won’t hear from her anyway. And what does that say about her? Please have more than that.”
Nick speared a pea with her fork then put it and her knife down, said, “Sorry,” and went into her room.
“She was absolutely devastated when Emilia fucked off back to Ireland. I think it was her first really serious relationship. Keep eating.” Melissa pushed back her chair and went to check on Nick.
I finished my plate of curry and did the washing up. As I made the tea, I could hear them talking through the open door. “You’re a sensitive person,” Melissa said. “These things hit you hard. But you can stay with me for as long as you like. You don’t have to cope with this on your own.”
“I got so bloody depressed the last time.” Nick’s voice sounded shaky. “I don’t want to go down there again.”
I could certainly understand that. I brought in a tray with the tea. “Nicky,” I sat on the edge of the bed next to her and Melissa, “I know what it’s like to be too depressed to function.”
“You do?” Nick asked forlornly. “My head goes black. Like a curtain being pulled down.”
“I know it does,” I said softly, touching her foot.
“If it gets to be too much for you to handle there are things we can do,” Melissa said quietly. “Remember we talked about you temporarily going on some medication?”
Nick lowered her head. “You think I’m mental.”
“No, I don’t,” Melissa said. “You’re having a hard time. Everybody needs help sometimes.”
“You don’t,” Nick accused her tremulously. “You’re always so fucking well-adjusted.”
Melissa patted her leg. “Oh no, love, I’m not. I have my problems like everybody else. We all have different ways of coping with them. Believe me, sometimes I need help, too. Some people just have a difficult time showing that side of themselves.”
“I show it too damn much,” Nick said. “I’m afraid of what you’ll think of me if I fall apart.”
“I couldn’t give a monkey’s,” Melissa said firmly.
“A monkey’s what?” I asked.
“It means I don’t care,” Melissa laughed. “For fuck’s sake, Nick. I put up with this half-Yank.” She gestured at me then rumpled Nick’s hair playfully. “You think that I would judge you?”
Telling myself to shut up, I revealed, “Nicky, I’ve taken psychiatric medications before.”
“You have?” Nick asked.
“In the past,” I said, hating myself for only telling the partial truth. But I wasn’t ready to let Melissa know that what was wrong with me was permanent, that I would be on medication for the rest of my life.
We sat in the back room together and watched the Nirvana video Live! Tonight! Sold out! Nick and I cried through most of it because Kurt was dead. I guess Melissa reckoned it would be cathartic for Nick. It was for me too, though I’m not sure she knew that. “He’s dead. Kurt’s dead,” I said. “I cannot believe that he’s dead.”
“He’s been dead since 1994,” Melissa said, not unreasonably.
We watched her uncut copy of Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged, which was beautiful, and Nirvana at Reading in 1992. I loved the way Kurt started playing the guitar to Boston’s “More Than a Feeling” as the introduction to “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
Nick still didn’t think she could sleep, so Melissa put on Quadrophenia, a film based on the Who’s rock opera about the mods and the rockers in Brighton. We watched videos well into the night. I was terrified of the questions Melissa would ask about my psychiatric history once we were alone. Eventually she’s going to catch me taking pills, I thought. Or I’m going to run out of meds completely, and she’ll catch me having a nervous breakdown. My current cache was in my Gibson case. But she never asked a thing. Instead, she tucked Nick and me into the guest bed with a hot-water bottle by our feet and kissed us both goodnight.