Why couldn’t people just leave him alone? He was sick of everyone trying to cheer him up. Fucking well-wishers were making him nuts. Lisa had been dead for nine months, and he still had to suffer through long looks and uncomfortable silences, followed by constant words of condolence. He just wanted to be able to go out, drink a few beers, and have a good fucking time. Maybe even flirt with a girl without his wife’s death hanging over his head like the hangman’s noose. It wasn’t so bad when they were playing out, but on these breaks from the tour, he just didn’t know what to do with himself. At least when he was behind his drum kit he was busy. He was slamming out beats, exhausting his body doing something. He’d recently joined another big-name rock band to fill in some of the downtime. He used to work like crazy for fame and fortune; now it was for sanity.
Finally his purgatory would be coming to an end. Becket would be back on tour in two more weeks. The last month on break had been sheer hell. In just a few more days he’d head over to London with Madison and Link to see a few of those tourist sites Lisa had never wanted to bother with and reconnect with Becket for the kickoff of the European leg of the tour. All through his marriage his wife had never wanted to be any place too far outside of the small Texas town they’d grown up in. He slowed his pace to let Link catch up. His friend and bandmate was prone to glancing into storefronts, always on the hunt for new model-building kits. “Hey, Link—we gonna grab a beer, or are we on a fucking shopping trip?” He turned to see Link staring at a Hobbit Lego set.
“Yeah, sorry. Just looking for something to work on.” Link resumed walking. “Hey, I haven’t told Madison you’re driving up with us, but I know she won’t mind. Besides you still need to pick up your travel visa, and my son needs a passport for the trip, so we might as well go together.”
“I appreciate the ride. I put the Viper in long-term storage for the tour and don’t feel like dealing with a rental. A couple of days in Boston won’t kill me.” Ross dreaded spending time in a hotel with nothing to do, but there was no hope for it. He couldn’t intrude on Madison and Link beyond the ride, but he was sick of hanging out in hotels and watching television by himself. He thought about Lisa again, surprised how numb he was to all of it. She had been his high school sweetheart and the prettiest girl in North Creek, Texas. She’d loved watching him play drums in a little four-piece country rock band. They were just out of high school, and the boys were trying to rock the local honky-tonk bars. Lisa was a sport about it all, even helped him lug his drum kit on three-hour drives to play at hundred-dollar gigs. But John Ross knew he was going nowhere fast and didn’t want to risk losing Lisa to a better man. So he married Lisa right after she graduated—he’d dropped out and worked as a ranch hand. She took a job waitressing, and they put a deposit down on a double-wide. They initially leased the land, but he figured out that if he did cattle runs for tourists a couple months at a time, they’d have enough bank to buy the small plot of land they were renting. He would go out seasonally and put his time in entertaining the city folk who hankered for a “real cattle drive.” They’d camp out with catered dinners and air-conditioned tents, pretending to run cattle from one side of Texas to the other. None of them wanted to be part of the reality of cattle runs, to get livestock on transport for slaughter, so the backstory involved watering rights and such.
After two years he came home to his young bride and discovered he barely knew her. She loved being a long-distance wife; she was out all the time at the local gin joints enjoying the attention her looks brought her. Having Ross at home working full-time at the Conroy’s horse ranch and taking night classes was less fun for her. He was thinking she shouldn’t be out all the time, and the fights began in earnest. But Lisa wouldn’t give up her extensive social life; she liked getting off work from the diner at eight o’clock and hitting the bars until closing. She could sleep in while John Ross had to be up at the crack of dawn. Almost out of spite he joined up with a new band and started performing in places on his weekends off. At least he sometimes saw his pretty young wife out at the local hotspots. It was what it was.
Then by chance it all happened. Thomas Morgan discovered him playing in a dive bar outside of Dallas. The gig had gone all right, no one threw any beer bottles at them, and he even got to do a drum solo while the rest of the band smoked a joint out behind the building. Thomas Morgan had made his name in an English rock band and was trying to put together his own group. He had connections and funding. He’d grabbed a Juilliard-trained prodigy to play guitar, and some old pal from another band was signed on for bass. All he needed was a drummer, and John Ross was who he wanted. Thomas explained that Ross’ beats were just what he had in mind and would he consider joining up and going on a tour as an extra opening act.
Hot damn, once he figured out what the Englishman was actually saying, he couldn’t wait to sign on. He would get to play drums for some decent money and get out of Texas. Great! Thomas offered him a $10,000 advance that very night. He kept a grand of the money and gave the rest to Lisa to pay bills and make up for his ranching salary for the next six months. He fully expected to be back home at the double-wide in a few weeks, having failed at stardom, but that wasn’t what happened.
The new band Thomas had put together—Becket—took off like nothing else. Within a year they were filling stadium shows as headliners, and the money poured in. Lisa was thrilled. She quit her job and started spending his money. Hell, they both started spending money since neither one of them had ever had any before. She loved to go out to the local restaurants and bars, flashing money around and bragging about her husband playing drums for Becket. She didn’t want to go on tour with him, though, just preferred to be around friends from home whom she knew and could easily impress. He didn’t mind being the Jay Gatsby of rock and roll, but Lisa was no Daisy. Ross knew she hated leaving home, fearing all those people who would look askance at her for her Texas drawl and her slightly too bright makeup. He kept trying to get her to come with him or at least move somewhere near a major airport so they could see each other more often, but Lisa wouldn’t leave their past behind.
He’d thought he loved her, but after eight years of almost non-stop touring, he realized he didn’t even know who she was. She’d been on his boat just off shore in the Gulf of Mexico with some of her friends when it happened. He was away at a Dallas Cowboys game, sitting in a skybox with members of the band and a few business associates. The score was tight, the beer was flowing, and they’d been talking about doing a show at AT&T Stadium. Ross was having the time of his life. But sometime during that evening his wife, on a combination of pills and booze with her drunken friends, had fallen overboard and drowned. He’d had to answer a ton of questions from the authorities because of the drugs—which weren’t his—and everyone with him that night had to vouch for his presence. Hell, every trooper in the Lone Star state seemed to think he had something to do with her accident, but it was an accident, a really shitty one.
He was numb for a long time and that helped, but before long he couldn’t stand being around people. Everyone he knew just kept telling him how sorry they were for his loss and that there was no words to express what he must be feeling, etc., etc.et cetera, but they kept talking anyway. He felt bad that Lisa had died, but he just didn’t feel like a part of him had died or that his soul mate was gone, nothing like what all the friends and family kept saying he must be feeling. It felt more like getting a call that an old school friend you hadn’t seen in a dozen years had passed away. He couldn’t tell everyone that Lisa had become a stranger to him after two years ranching and years on the road.
He’d been walking quietly down Park Street thinking his thoughts and generally being left alone by Link strolling next to him. That was one nice thing about people believing you were in deep mourning; they expected you to succumb to brooding bouts of silence. Still, at some point the silence got to them, and they had a need to say something and expected you to respond. It was then that Ross realized Link had been calling his name, and he finally looked over and answered with a curt, “Yeah, what?”
“We’re meeting my wife and her friend in a minute, so try not to look so cheerful,” Link sarcastically reminded him.
“Whatever. I just want to grab a beer and something to eat before I go back to the hotel. The food there sucks.”
“You know, you could have stayed with Madison and me. We have the room.”
“Awe, Link, I’m flattered, but I’ve spent enough time with you on tour busses to know you snore. No, seriously, I don’t think a family needs a fifth wheel tagging along. Besides, we’ll be spending so much time together on this next leg of the tour you will swear I’m haunting you.” Ross slapped his friend’s back to take any sting out of his words. Truth be told, he didn’t want to stay with Link and Madison because it just made him feel like such a fraud. He’d had a wife, and he never felt what he knew Link and Madison shared. It bothered him. He wanted the real thing, but he sensed it was never in the cards for him.
“You are such an asshole, Junior.” Link laughed, flipping him off with both hands.
“Back at you, Lionel Junior.” Ross repeated the gesture, knowing using Link’s real name would piss him off just a little. What were friends for?