How Much More
Lisa Brackmann
LOS ANGELES, 1989
“Oh my God I’m gonna kill Melanie Lane.”
“You mean Miss Melanie Lane.”
“Fuck you, Tim.”
I tried to catch the waiter’s eye. I was out of beer, and maybe it was time for one of those birdbath margaritas anyway.
Tonight had really sucked.
At least we’d scored a small booth at La Cabaña, which even on a Tuesday night at 1:30 a.m. was not a sure thing. Room enough for me, my bass, Tim, and his snare. No way I’d ever leave my bass in my car in Venice, not even for five minutes. Sure, it’s a beat-up Fender Mustang I bought for $75, a “girlie” bass because it’s short-scale, but it’s what Tina Weymouth plays, and seeing Tina and Talking Heads was what gave me the idea it was cool for a girl to play bass in the first place. Most people thought it was weird the first couple years I started playing—like, why wasn’t I a keyboard player, or a chick singer?
La Cabaña was a musician’s hang, one of the only places I knew that stayed open until 3 a.m., where you could still get something to eat right to the end. And it was in my neighborhood. All I had to do after I left was drive a couple of blocks and not get busted by a cop, find a parking space a few blocks from home, and then walk a few more and not get mugged or raped.
“I don’t know why she has to be such a bitch,” I said.
Tim shrugged. “I think it’s mostly that she wants to be taken seriously, and she freaks out if she feels she isn’t.”
Tim was pretty good at the emotional stuff, especially for a drummer. You wouldn’t think that if you looked at him. He was a stocky guy, easy-going, older than me by at least a half-dozen years, who usually wore a beat-up, narrow-brimmed black Stetson.
I couldn’t let it go. “She gets everything she wants from everyone; one little thing goes wrong and she blows a fucking gasket.”
Actually, tonight there’d been two things. But only one of them was my fault.
“Yeah,” Tim said, nodding. “She’s a little insecure.”
That was an understatement.
I should have known the gig was going to suck when I saw the marquee at Mango Fantaszia before the set. I don’t know why a club on Sunset Strip is called “Mango Fantaszia” or why they spell “Fantaszia” with an SZ. My best guess is it’s some leftover ’70s thing and the owners were so coked out it seemed like a good idea at the time. It’s painted in green and purple poster paint and the inside has claustrophobic low ceilings and smells like sour beer, but they do have free peanuts, and mainly, it’s about the only club on the Strip that isn’t pay to play. Some great bands have gigged there over the years, and we were lucky to get a slot on the main stage, even at 11 p.m. on a Tuesday.
Melanie didn’t see it that way.
When I got to the tiny parking lot in front of the club, she already stood there, hands on hips above her ripped and sequined ballerina skirt, staring up at the marquee.
“This is wrong,” she said. “Where’s Kent?”
The marquee said “MELANIE LANE,” spelled out in black plastic letters. At first, I couldn’t see what the problem was. They spelled her name right. And Melanie Lane was the band.
Zack quickly sidestepped behind her and rubbed her shoulders, looming over her—she was tiny, and he was a tall, lanky guy, with that cool nerd David Byrne look. Kind of cute, but I didn’t spend too much time thinking about that, under the circumstances.
Melanie jerked away from him like his hands gave off electric shocks.
“I don’t think this is worth going to Kent about.” Zack was trying to be soothing, but mostly, he sounded anxious.
She whirled to face him, her mutant ballerina skirt swirling around a beat later, the sequins she’d sewn on it flashing.
“I am Melanie Lane,” she hissed. “The name of the band is Miss Melanie Lane. They aren’t the same.”
With that, she stomped into the club, the heels of her engineer boots tock-tocking on the asphalt.
Zack followed her, probably thinking, “damage control.” Get to Kent before she did. Kent booked the club and if he decided he hated you, well, so much for getting another gig at Mango Fantaszia.
Tim snickered while Joe stood there shaking his head.
“This is gonna be great,” I said.
It’s not like I have to play with these people, I told myself. I’m a bass player. I might not be the best bassist on the planet, far from it, but a good rule of thumb is, if you want to play in bands, play the bass or the drums. Everybody wants to play guitar or be a singer. You know, be the star. There are never enough solid bassists or drummers by comparison. I could think of a half-dozen bands off the top of my head who needed a bass player who wasn’t a meth-head or a converted guitar player who didn’t really want to play the bass in the first place.
Plus, I’m only twenty-five. Maybe not front-person material but cute enough. I can sing okay, too. Good enough for backup vocals, anyway.
But I really liked playing with Joe and Tim. Especially Tim. He was way more experienced than me. Had toured in some New Wave and cow-punk bands and really knew his shit. He wasn’t flashy, but he played in the pocket and his time was perfect. He taught me a lot. Basic stuff. Hit the kick. Listen for the snare. You don’t have to be fancy for this kind of music, just be there when it counts.
So that was what I focused on. Keep it simple and don’t fuck it up. Be there when it counts. I’d gotten good at that.
It’s also why I committed the sin that ruined our night.
We started playing to a nearly empty room forty minutes behind schedule, so pretty much on time. There were some people in the Mango, but most of them hung out by the bar in the middle of the club, between the stage and the room with the pool and foosball tables in back.
Didn’t matter, I was nervous. I hadn’t played in that many big-time Los Angeles clubs, and so what if most of them were dives and one of them smelled like cat pee? They were dives in L.A., where everyone wants to be a star and you never knew when an A&R guy might be in the audience.
The first song we played, “Razor in My Soul,” was in E. Most of our songs were in E. Melanie didn’t have much of a range.
I focused on playing my part, glancing up from the fretboard of my Mustang now and again to watch Melanie sing and dance in front of me. I stood in front of Tim’s hi-hat. To my right was Joe playing lead guitar, jet-black hair making a curtain over his face. Zack stood behind his keyboard on the opposite side of the stage. Melanie occasionally picked up an acoustic guitar or a tambourine, but it was mostly for show, another element in her performance.
At least the onstage sound wasn’t too bad. We were using the club’s backline, and you never know what you’re going to get when you do that. The bass amp was a little underpowered, and if Tim had been the kind of drummer who really bashes the drums, I could’ve had a problem. But he plays tight and controlled. I can hear what I’m doing, I thought. I’ll be fine.
People trickled in from the rest of the club. By the time we started our third song, they crowded the front of the stage. That was the thing about Melanie. She wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous, her voice was raw, but something about her made you want to watch, to listen.
Damn, pay attention, I told myself. This wasn’t a hard tune, but that didn’t mean I could space out. I had backup vocals to sing, and I still had trouble singing and playing bass at the same time. It wasn’t automatic, I really had to rehearse the shit out of it.
Which was why, when we did the encore, I fucked up.
We were supposed to do “Dancing Boots.” That was what the set list said. But when we came back out on stage, Melanie said, “I’m not feeling it. Let’s do ‘Target.’”
“Baby, why?” Zack asked, cupping her elbow. She yanked her arm away.
“You know why.”
“Fuck,” I muttered. “Target” was a new tune. I’d barely rehearsed the backups. I wasn’t even sure I remembered the bridge.
Just focus on getting the bass right, I told myself.
“I know you think I’m cruel…you think that I don’t care…” Melanie sang. “Got a heart surrounded by barbed wire…and you wanna know who put it there…”
Dang, it’s a good tune though, I thought. One of her best.
“I could be a victim…this could be a crime…but I’m still around to testify. You didn’t leave…no body…behind…”
The audience was digging it, too. We chugged along. I felt bad when we got to the chorus and I didn’t do my vocals—I knew if I tried, I’d fuck up the bass line, and that would be worse.
“Well I looked around to lay the blame…and ended up just staring at my face…Some people gonna hurt you if they can…just tell me what would I do in their place…”
We were into the last chorus now, and so far, I hadn’t fucked it up. Tim and I were locked in, Joe playing an understated but cool lick, Zack doing the pad on keys, Melanie gearing up for the big climax.
“You picked a…cold target…picked a…cold target…right on me…”
She paused in the center of the stage, mike in hand, sinking slowly to her knees as she sang the final “Right on me.”
Her voice cracked on the last note. It wasn’t pretty, and yeah, backups from me would have covered it, but after that performance, no big deal, right?
Wrong.
At least she waited to unload until we were outside.
All I had was my bass. Joe carried two guitars and his effects rack, Tim, his snare and sticks. Zack had it the worst—keyboards are bulky, no matter what. Melanie was already halfway across the parking lot with her acoustic guitar while Zack still loaded his keys onto a dolly.
She was pissed, I could tell. But I didn’t understand why. It had been a solid set. No major train wrecks. The audience dug it. I’d seen Kent afterward, chatting up Zack with a big smile on his face. We’d get another gig there, I was positive.
I don’t know what made me do it. I should have known better. But I jogged to catch up with her. She was still a step or two ahead of me when I said: “Hey, Melanie. That was a great set.”
Her shoulders stiffened. Then she whirled around to face me. “Where the fuck were you? Why didn’t you do the backup vocals?”
“I…look, I barely know that song, and I—”
“I fucked up the note and you left me hanging out there by myself!”
Red blotches on her cheeks. Were those tears?
“You were great. It was one fucking note, and nobody noticed it but you.” And me, but I didn’t count. I was in the band, and it was my job to notice stuff. “Jesus Christ, get some fucking perspective.”
It was my turn to prima donna. I stomped off in the general direction of my beater pickup.
“Ever since she found out I can sing, she wants me to do backups, all the fucking time, even when I don’t really know how to play the song! Like the backups are more important than the bass. It’s crazy.”
“It’s because you have a better set of pipes than she does,” Tim said, scooping more guac onto a tortilla chip.
“So, make me sing all the time? How does that make sense?”
Tim shrugged. “It’s like…reverse psychology or something.”
I sighed. I knew I could sing pretty well. But I hadn’t joined Melanie’s band to sing. I’d joined it to play bass and get better at that. And playing bass and singing at the same time is hard.
Maybe I had a better voice, but what I didn’t have was Melanie’s stage presence, her charisma. Her confidence. And maybe, her need for all that attention.
That’s what I told myself, anyway.
“It’s stupid,” I said. “I don’t want to sing. I just want to play the bass.”
I made it home in one piece, walking the three blocks from where I’d had to park to my apartment. I was exhausted but not too tired to think, “What a dump,” like I did every time I opened the door. The place smelled damp and a little like cat piss, and I knew if someone pulled up the ancient carpet they’d find mold—I’d had a ton of water damage during last winter’s storms, and of course, the creepy slumlord who owned this place didn’t want to do a fucking thing about it.
I could clean it up, I thought. Fix the things I could fix and make it look nicer.
I just hadn’t felt much like it since Duncan and I broke up.
Getting to work the next morning was brutal, even though I could walk there and, since I worked at a coffee house, I had coffee to look forward to. But coffee wasn’t nearly enough—I was wiped out, operating on four hours sleep and feeling a little hungover on top of that. If somebody had offered me a line of crystal, I might’ve said yes, and I thought that shit was the devil.
I got through my shift without throwing hot coffee on any jerks, and after my shift, I managed to sneak a cup and a muffin to Harry, the homeless guy who camps somewhere near Bitter End. “Thanks, doll,” he said. Normally I wouldn’t be crazy about some old dude calling me “doll,” but Harry’s a nice guy. He says he’s a Vietnam vet. Who knows if that’s true? What I know is that he’s grateful for the coffee and keeps things neat around our entrance. When I open in the morning, I see him there, picking up trash and shooing away anyone sleeping in the doorway. The sidewalk still smells like piss some days, but it’s not as bad as a lot of places on Rose Avenue.
I had time for an hour nap before I needed to leave for rehearsal.
Rehearsing the night after a gig wasn’t ideal but it was the one night this week we could all do it. Driving all the way to the Valley wasn’t ideal either, but that’s where rehearsal space was cheap, and since Melanie and Zack were paying, it wasn’t my call.
Our room was down a concrete hall with caged lights, the number “9” stenciled on the door. It wasn’t terrible as these places go, even if the carpet did smell like a combination of beer and bong water.
I grabbed the refrigerator handle doorknob and pulled hard to open it, my mouth already opened to apologize for being late. Melanie hated it when people were late. But coming from Venice, you never knew when traffic was going to be a problem, and, okay, I’d had a hard time waking up from my nap.
“Hey, guys,” I said. And stopped.
Tim sat at his kit, practicing a light pattern on his hi-hat. Joe tuned his guitar. Zack stood behind his keyboard, jaw clenched tight.
Melanie wasn’t there.
That was a first.
“Where’s Melanie?” I asked.
“Late,” Zack muttered.
We all stood there in silence for a moment. The place was pretty well-insulated, but you could still hear the thump of bass and drums and a thin wail of guitar and vocals from the room next door.
“Anybody want a beer?” Tim finally asked.
“Sure,” I said.
He’d sprung for Sierra Nevada. I took a few sips. “Has anyone called her?”
“Why?” Zack drained a third of his bottle in one gulp.
“I don’t know, because she’s never late and maybe something happened to her and we should probably give a fuck?” I was feeling a little bitchy, it’s true. But maybe because I was the only other girl in the band…even though I didn’t like Melanie much, I didn’t get his attitude. Hadn’t they been dating for a while? Shouldn’t he care?
Then I thought about the scene last night, when she called “Target” for the last song, how she couldn’t stand for him to touch her. Maybe they’d had a fight, and that was what this was all about.
“I’m gonna call,” I said.
I padded down the hall to the payphone, waited for a metal-head to finish making his drug deal, and punched in her number, which I’d written down in my gig bag notebook, the one where I jotted down chord charts and lyrics and, okay, some ideas for songs of my own.
After three rings her answering machine picked up.
“Hi. I’m not here. You know what to do.”
Ha, I thought, I really don’t know what to do. I cleared my throat and said, “Hey, Melanie, it’s Kat. We’re just wondering where you are. Hope everything’s okay.”
Duty done, I trotted back to Room #9 and wondered what we were going to do for the next two and a half hours without a lead singer.
“Let’s just play,” Tim said. “Zack, you can sing some of the tunes, right? Enough so we know where we are?”
“Yeah,” he said, finishing his beer. “Sure.” He looked at me. “And you can do a couple of them, right, Kat?”
I thought about it. There were two tunes where the harmonies were extensive enough that I’d had a lot of practice playing and singing them. “Yeah. I’ll probably fuck up the bass though.”
“That’s okay,” Joe said. “It’s why we call it ‘practice.’”
“I don’t think I know all the lyrics,” I said.
“I have them,” Zack said abruptly. “Tell me the ones you can sing.”
The tunes I had a pretty good handle on were “Stone Cold” and “Nail.” The first couple times I tried to sing them were pretty rough. But third time through and I was actually getting it.
“Living this way…guess it works for me…I don’t know if it’s what I want it’s just how I know to be…”
Man, her songs are sad, I thought, feeling the words, the notes. I’d never exactly paid attention before, I’d been so focused on getting my parts right.
“Sometimes I’d like someone to talk to…but I’m afraid of someone listening to me…”
A little shiver went through me as I sang and played. It’s that feeling you get when you’re carried along by the music, when you’re singing the song but it’s singing you, too.
“I can’t explain the crimes that hold me in this jail…I’m just a hammer pounding on a broken nail…”
We finished the song. Everyone was quiet for a beat or two.
“That rocked,” Tim said. He looked at me. “You should sing more, man.”
I could feel myself blushing. I was embarrassed, and I wasn’t even sure why. “I don’t know. Maybe. When I get better at playing.”
“Fuck her,” Zack snapped. “We don’t need her. There’s no reason you can’t sing the songs.”
“They’re not my songs,” I said. “And I don’t think—”
“We wrote the songs together. I have as much right to them as she does.”
“Wait a second,” Joe said, pushing the hair curtain out of his face. “Did Melanie quit or something?”
Zack looked away, his cheeks reddening, but not, I thought, from embarrassment. He was angry.
“I don’t know,” he mumbled. “We had a fight. I don’t know what she wants to do.”
Great, I thought. This is why couples in bands and band romances were a bad idea. Because shit like this was bound to happen. I mean, I’d looked at Tim a few times and thought, maybe? If he’s interested? But what if he is, and we got together and then it didn’t work out? Then everything would be fucked up.
And I was still pretty hung up on Duncan if I was being honest.
Joe shrugged. “Let’s just chill, then. See what happens.” He turned to me. “You sounded good though, for sure.”
“I just want to play the bass,” I said.
I just want to play the bass.
I fired up the joint and took a hit. Sipped my nightly beer. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, same as what Tim had brought to rehearsal last night. I hadn’t thought I liked beer until I’d tried this.
I leaned back against my couch and let the music wash over me—The Sugarcubes, “Life’s Too Good.” The album had come out last year, but I’d only just bought it. I liked the girl singer a lot, her voice was amazing, on the edge of chaos but somehow controlled, almost operatic.
I can’t sing like that, I thought.
But you don’t have to, the other voice said. You can sing like you. And be the center of attention. The star.
“I dunno,” I said aloud. Was that really what I wanted?
I wanted to be a good musician. To show that I was as good as the guys, not just some token who couldn’t hang. I still had a lot of work to do to get there.
But it would be nice to be the star, wouldn’t it? The one everyone wanted, as opposed to the girl who got dumped?
The phone rang.
“Hey, it’s Zack. You busy?”
“Hey. I…Not really. What’s up?”
“Just wondering if you had some time to talk.”
“Sure.” I waited for him to say something. Silence. Then: “I’d rather talk in person. We could go out for drinks or something.”
I was pretty stoned, and I’d drunk about half a beer, and it was 10 p.m., not late for me, but I wasn’t in the mood to walk the three blocks to my car and drive anywhere, either. “I’m pretty much in for the night.”
“I can come to you. I was going to suggest that anyway.” He sounded…not exactly anxious. Intense?
Well, Zack was an intense dude.
I thought about it. I wasn’t sure I was in the mood for more band drama.
But he was kind of cute.
Don’t, I told myself. Don’t even go there.
We don’t need her. There’s no reason you can’t sing the songs.
Zack said he’d be here in forty-five minutes. When he’d mentioned the drink, I’d almost opened my mouth to suggest we just drink a beer at my place, but then I remembered what a disaster my place was, and besides, was that really a good idea? I’d known Zack for almost a year now, but only as part of the band. I didn’t have the kind of relationship with him I had with Tim, or even with Joe.
Funny thing was, at one point, I even had a closer relationship with Melanie. A couple of months after I started playing with her, we seemed to be getting along. We went out a few times for drinks and hiked Runyon Canyon. But it wasn’t always comfortable being around her, even then. She was so intense about everything, like a guitar string wound too tight, to the point just before it broke. Things were always fucked up, people always letting her down, or that’s how she saw it, anyway. “Zack can be such a manipulative little shit,” she told me once. “He’d better not be doing the band with me just because he wanted to get into my pants. He’d better be doing it because he believes in the project. Otherwise he can fuck right off.”
I shook my head, thinking about it now, as I changed into a tighter pair of jeans and an old Pretenders Tour T-shirt and dug around in my closet for my battered leather motorcycle jacket. The fog had come in heavy, so it was going to be chilly out. Thickened up my mascara and added eyeliner. A little hair gel, some lip-gloss and I was good to go. Good enough, anyway. It wasn’t like I was going to make a play for Zack.
But…what if he had decided to do the band because he wanted to be with her? What was so bad about wanting to be with someone? It wasn’t like he hadn’t really committed—he worked hard and contributed a lot. At least some of the songwriting. He did the booking. The publicity. The kinds of things a manager would do.
The band was more important to Melanie than her relationship with Zack, I was sure about that. If she had to make a choice between him and the band, she’d choose the band.
What if Duncan had given me an ultimatum, I thought? Quit the band, or I’m leaving.
I had to laugh. Because Duncan had been fine with the band. Duncan didn’t give a shit what I did. There was nothing I could have done to stop him from leaving. Except maybe be a different person.
10:55. Zack’s forty-five minutes were up. Maybe I’ll just meet him at the gate, I thought, and avoid the whole awkward “invite him in for a drink or no?” situation.
Besides, I never picked up my mail today or yesterday, and I’d probably better make sure there weren’t any bills with red borders around them.
I climbed up the stairs to the lobby, where the elevator and mailboxes were. It was an old building, built in 1915 or something, a red-brick horseshoe with the lobby in the middle. My apartment was on the corner on the first floor, slightly below ground level, so it probably would be damp even without the broken pipes and the lack of drainage in the window boxes. I should move, I thought, not for the first time.
Then again, I lived less than two blocks from the beach, and I didn’t have the money to move anyway.
Advertisements. Flyers for a special election. Junk mail. I took all that stuff and tossed it in the lobby’s overflowing trashcan. A phone bill. No red border, so that was good.
A letter. Thick textured paper the color of cream.
From Melanie.
My heart thudded. Was she firing me through the mail? I didn’t want to open it. Didn’t want to see whatever nasty things she had to say to me. I wasn’t in the mood.
I walked down the stairs, thinking, I’ll slide the mail under the door. That’s what I did with the phone bill. But as I held Melanie’s letter, rubbed my thumb over the thick paper, I changed my mind. Why not get it over with?
A sheet of paper, folded in thirds. I lifted the top third.
Melanie’s messy, slashing handwriting.
“Dear Kat. First off, I apologize for being such a bitch to you. I’ve had things going on, but that’s no excuse to treat people like shit who don’t deserve it, and you really don’t.
I can’t work with Zack any more. I’m not sure what will happen with the band. I totally understand if you don’t want to have anything to do with me, but if you still want to play together, I’d like that.
Zack will probably be asking you if you want to do a band with him. I wouldn’t if I were you. He’s not a nice guy.
If you want to get together and talk about all of this, let me know. XOXO, Melanie.”
I folded up the letter and put it back in the envelope. So not what I was expecting.
“Hey, Kat?”
Zack stood there on the other side of the gate, shifting back and forth on his feet. I stuck the letter in the inside pocket of my jacket.
“Hi.”
For a moment I thought about bailing. Just saying, “I’m too tired to go out, sorry.” But that would have been really rude after he’d driven all the way from Sherman Oaks.
I opened up the gate and stepped out. “Where do you want to go?”
“How about that bar north of Rose? That’s still open now, right?”
I started to walk down the alley that parallels the boardwalk.
“Why don’t we walk on the boardwalk?” Zack said from behind me.
Between the gang-bangers and the meth-heads, there were parts of the boardwalk where you didn’t want to walk at night. “The alley’s safer.”
“Oh, come on. There’s two of us. I feel like hearing the ocean.”
Well, that would be better than dodging cars and smelling pee in the alley. And the stretch of the boardwalk we’d be walking on wasn’t as bad as things got going south, it was mostly just empty, especially since they cleared out the big homeless encampment down on the beach.
We turned the corner.
Out on the boardwalk, it was dark, damp, and quiet. I could smell salt in the air, hear the crash of the waves. Zack was right. It was nice to be out here.
“You thought any more about singing?” Zack asked.
“I’m thinking about it. I’m not sure if it’s something I want to do.”
“Why wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t know, being the front-person…I don’t know if I’d like that.”
Zack laughed. “Jesus, it’s like you’re the anti-Melanie. You don’t wanna be the star?”
I shrugged. “I want to be a good musician.”
“You are good. You work at it, you’ll keep getting better.”
“Thanks.” I could feel my face flush a bit from the compliment. Stupid, I told myself, but it felt nice to be appreciated. To be seen.
Maybe I could handle being out in front. Maybe I’d even like it.
“It’s cool that you’re not all about ego. It’s…kind of refreshing…”
He looked at me and smiled. I smiled back. Then his smile left, and he looked sad. He had round, dark eyes, like a puppy. I almost wanted to hug him.
We were about halfway to the bar. A homeless person—a woman, I think, it was hard to tell with all the layers of clothes and rags she wore—pushed a shopping cart past us. Hardly anyone was out here. The action was further south, closer to the old rec center.
Zack let out a deep sigh. “Melanie, she just…it was always all about her. She just took so much energy. Like a vampire. I didn’t realize how exhausting it was until she was gone.”
Was?
“You guys broke up?
“Yeah. We broke up.” He jammed his hands in the pockets of his jacket—an old tweed coat he probably got in a thrift shop.
“I had a feeling,” I said.
He stopped walking.
“Why? Did she say something to you?”
I stopped too. He turned to me. We stood by one of the pavilions, and there was enough light that I could clearly see his face. His eyes were big.
“Not very much,” I said. “Mostly she wanted to apologize for being a bitch.”
“When did you talk to her?”
“I didn’t. She sent me a letter. I just got it.”
“Oh.” He started walking again. “What else did it say?”
I shrugged. I didn’t want to talk about it. The letter was addressed to me, not him.
“I’m sure she trashed me. Well, you can’t believe everything she says.” His left hand came out of the pocket, waving and jabbing at the air in front of him like he was trying to brush away the fog.
“It wasn’t about you,” I finally said, because he was upset, and it was making me uncomfortable. “She wanted to know if I still wanted to keep playing with her.”
He snorted. “I wouldn’t count on that happening. You know how she is. She dumps people as soon as she’s finished with them.”
His right hand stayed on the pocket. The pocket bulged slightly like he was making a fist inside it.
We passed another pavilion. A couple of guys sat on the peeling benches, bundled up against the chill, drinking out of paper bags. I thought I recognized Harry. I’d seen him out here before, drinking and smoking with his buddies.
Zack took a couple deep breaths. He seemed calmer. “She told me she might be splitting town for a while, to get her head together.” He laughed again. “I’d need to go to another planet to get far enough away from her to get my head together. You know?”
Now he was looking at me with his big, sad eyes. Like he wanted something from me. Agreement? Sympathy?
“She didn’t say anything about leaving town,” I said.
“She did to me.” His voice was sharp.
I thought about the letter she’d written me.
If you want to get together and talk about all of this, let me know. XOXO, Melanie.
Maybe she’d lied to him.
Maybe he was lying to me.
I could be a victim…this could be a crime…
“We don’t need her,” he said. “The band is better off without her.”
But I’m still around to testify…
“You know what?” I said. “I think I’m gonna go home. I’m really tired. Let’s talk in a couple days, okay?”
“Wait—” He reached out and grabbed my arm, right above the elbow. His other hand, the clenched fist, stayed in the pocket. “What did I say? Why don’t we talk now?”
You didn’t leave no body behind…
“Let go of me, Zack.”
“Hey, doll—you good?” Harry called from behind us.
“Yeah,” I yelled back. “I’m good.”
I stared at Zack and pulled my arm away.
“I’m going,” I said.
I left him standing there. I turned and headed back down the boardwalk, toward my apartment.
I’ll try to call Melanie when I get home, I thought. Not because I wanted to play with her any more. Maybe it was time for me to do my own thing.
I’d call just to see if she answered.