CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
We take several winding paths through the trees and over little hills. It’s beautiful in the park. There are lots of people walking with their dogs, with friends, with family members, or alone. There’s even a man with a tiny pup using a little wheelchair for the dog’s back legs. I wish I could take a picture to show Rose. I make a mental note to tell her about it later.
“It’s just up here,” Ty says.
We reach a small clearing with something embedded in the pathway in the shape of a circle. Ty points to a building across the street at the edge of Central Park. “That’s where Yoko Ono lives, at the Dakota. It’s the same place where John Lennon was shot and killed.”
I look at the building that seems very much like many of the others I’ve seen. But it isn’t. Of course it isn’t. It’s where a music legend, known for preaching about tolerance and love, had his life taken by a madman. I feel very blue all of a sudden. Before, when I heard of a musician being killed, it was sad, but now it feels much more personal. What if someone wanted to kill Ty because they didn’t think he belonged in the band? The idea chills me to the bone. Wanting to help him becomes an urgent need.
“Such a tragedy,” I say, trying to get my thoughts back on the sane track where they belong instead of veering into Crazytown. “Why are people so awful?”
“Sometimes the music affects people in strange ways.” He stares down at the ground, his jaw muscles twitching over and over again. I know he’s talking about himself, but should I ask him for specifics? I can tell it’s something that really bothers him.
“Is that what’s so special to you about this place? Are you a John Lennon fan?”
“No. I am a fan, but this is why I come here.” He points at the ground.
The word Imagine is embedded in the sidewalk, a mosaic of tiny tiles.
Ty explains. “There were so many fans and people in mourning always gathered around their apartment building, it was causing problems for the residents. So, Yoko Ono donated a million bucks to this area of the park—it’s shaped like a teardrop—to create this memorial for him. It’s called Strawberry Fields. A lot of times when I come here, people have it decorated with rose petals in peace signs and stuff.” He shrugs. “I don’t know . . . It just kinda makes me think.”
“What do you think about when you look at this?”
He folds his arms across his chest, appearing to cave in on himself. His body language is screaming pain. “I don’t know.”
I lower my voice. “Sure you do. Just tell me.”
He looks up at me. “If I tell you this, will you answer a question for me?”
I shrug. How bad could it be? I have no big secrets anymore. “Sure.”
“When I stand here and look at this, I think about the cost of fame. I wonder if the choices I’m making now are going to hurt me later, or hurt people I love later. And I wonder if it’s going to be worth it. I mean . . . if someone I love gets hurt, am I going to look at what happened and say it was still worth it? Still put my happiness before theirs?”
“That’s pretty dark.” I laugh a little, trying to lighten the mood.
“But it’s valid. People make choices all the time, but they don’t realize how much those choices can affect somebody else. Maybe we’re wired to be selfish. Maybe we’re supposed to just do what we want to do, and if somebody’s hurt in the process, so be it.” His words reflect almost exactly the thought process I went through after coming home from college. I had a choice, and I made it based on avoiding causing pain to the people I loved. I wonder where I’d be right now if I’d been more selfish . . . if I’d put my own happiness ahead of the good of my family.
“It doesn’t sound like you’re wired that way,” I say. “You seem to be very concerned about how your choices are going to affect other people.” It makes me like him more than I already did, to know we feel the same way about people who are important to us. How can he be like this and be a jerk at the same time? He can’t . . . not deep down, anyway. This man has a conscience. I think in this industry it’s rare. The men who are fathers to my sisters and me don’t have one—or at least it’s a very belated anomaly that they do.
“My life is dark sometimes,” he says. “I guess it’s appropriate for me to have dark thoughts once in a while.”
This sounds too much like a pity party for me to indulge anymore. “Come on . . .” I punch him lightly in the arm. “What’s so dark about your life? You’re playing lead guitar in your favorite band, the band you love more than anything in the world. So people boo you once in a while . . . Who cares?”
“You’d be surprised how much it hurts, even for an asshole like me.” He smiles bitterly as he slides his sunglasses back on.
I think about it for a little while and nod. “Maybe I wouldn’t be able to brush it off so easily if it were me either.”
“I don’t know. You seem pretty tough.”
“I can be tough. But I don’t think I’m nearly as hardcore as some of the people who live in this city.”
“I don’t think either one of us is.”
We stand there staring at the memorial for a long time. I lose track of how many minutes go by, and I like it; I like getting lost in time with him. He’s two feet away from me, and it’s not like we’re holding hands or anything, but it feels intimate and I don’t want it to end.
“So . . . I get to ask you a question now,” he says.
“That was the deal.” I try to sound bright and unconcerned, even though I’m worried about how deep he’s going to try and dig. I don’t want him to know that he’s affected me so much.
“Who is your father?”
Phew. That’s an easy one. I shrug. “I have no idea.”
“Can you explain that to me?” He pulls his sunglasses off. “It’s a personal question. If you don’t want to answer it, that’s cool. But I really wish you would.”
I get the impression he wants to be closer to me. That’s all the motivation I need to tell him my secrets. “The story is actually pretty simple and short. My mom and her two best friends were groupies of the band. They followed Red Hot around for a couple years. They all got pregnant around the same time, with someone or someones in the band, and then they left. End of story.”
“Why didn’t they bother to find out who the fathers were, though? Didn’t they care?”
“Of course they cared. That’s our mothers’ problem, actually . . . They care too much. They wanted to protect us. Knowing who our fathers were was a lot less important than keeping us out of their crazy world . . . keeping us safe.”
“So the band set them up in some commune in Maine?”
I shake my head. “No. The band was not involved in that. Not directly.”
“What do you mean?”
I sigh. “I don’t really want to talk about this. It makes me upset, and I would rather stay chilled out.” Every time Ty asks for more details, I feel anger toward my mothers, and I know that’s not right. The ones I should be angry with play in a band called Red Hot. I gesture at the mosaic. “This memorial is really nice and this last half hour with you has been nice too.” I look up at him, pleading. “Let’s not ruin it, okay?”
He nods curtly. “I agree. So, what are your plans after this walk?”
“That is a great question. One I don’t have an answer to.” My mind swims with options. I could call my sisters again. I could go have another hot dog. I could try a slice of one-dollar pizza. I could take a nap in my hotel room and try to get rid of the rest of this headache. But none of those options sounds very appealing. If I’m going to be honest with myself, I would say I want to spend more time with Ty, but that would be crazy. A mistake. Inviting trouble.
“I have some shopping to do,” he says. “You want to go with me?”
“Shopping?” That doesn’t sound too awful. “What are you looking for?”
“I’ve got to get some clothes. All I have for hanging around are these dirty jeans and a couple T-shirts.” He looks down at himself. “I need some new stuff. Nicer stuff, maybe.”
“I thought the grunge thing was part of your look.”
“No, not quite. I don’t usually look quite this rough. I lost a lot of my stuff recently.”
“You lost your clothes?” I’m trying to imagine how he could have managed to lose all but a few items of clothing, but I’m not coming up with any ideas.
“Kind of. More like they were stolen.” He looks embarrassed.
“What was stolen? Your whole wardrobe?” I laugh. He can’t be serious.
“Yeah.”
“No way. How?”
He lowers his voice, looking left and right suspiciously before he answers. “There’s this group of kids who like to break into celebrities’ places and steal their clothes.”
“Seriously?” I stare at his face, trying to determine from his expression whether he’s pulling my leg, but I can’t see his eyes through those damn glasses. He sure sounds like he’s telling the truth, however.
“Yes. It seriously happened. I don’t like to talk about it, though.”
“Why? Because it’s still an open investigation with the police?”
“No, because it’s embarrassing.”
“Why is it embarrassing? I’d think it would be more angering than anything else.”
He whispers, “Because they took my drawers too.”
Now he’s talking crazy. “The drawers from your dresser? Like the actual drawers? What did they do . . . bring a moving truck?”
He smiles awkwardly. “No, not those drawers. The other kind. Underwear.”
“Oh.” I can’t help it; I giggle and whisper probably way too loudly, “They stole your panties?”
He pushes on my arm. “Shush. Men don’t wear panties.”
“But . . . You must have a huge wardrobe, though.” I can’t imagine how someone could steal the entire contents of a person’s closet and not get caught in the middle of the act. “I heard celebrities never wear the same thing twice.”
“My wardrobe wasn’t that big. There’s a person with us on the tour who’s responsible for buying all my clothes, and after I wear what they buy, we usually just get rid of it. It’s too hard to find Laundromats on tour. So there wasn’t much there . . . just jeans, T-shirts, other stuff . . .”
“Your drawers.” I wink at him.
“Yeah.” He tries not to smile but fails.
“Okay . . . well . . . I guess you’re starting from scratch, then. Do you have any idea what you’re looking for?”
“We’re going to be working in the studio for a while, so I can afford to put a little bit of a wardrobe together.”
“Any special style?” I’m getting into the idea of helping him shop. I know for a fact he looks good in both casual and formal clothes. I wonder if he’s wearing drawers right now . . . I swear I try not to look down . . .
He shrugs, the movement forcing my eyes upward.
“I don’t know,” he says, oblivious to my ogling. “I figure I should upgrade my look a little bit. I could use a second opinion, so I don’t make a wrong move.”
“And you think I’m qualified to do that?”
He looks at my outfit. “Well . . . not exactly. But you’re better than me all by myself.”
I reach out and gently slap his shoulder. “You are so rude.”
“Hey, I like the hippie chick look. But it’s not the look I’m going for, for myself. If you tell me you’re more than a one-hit wonder, then maybe I can trust your judgment.”
“I don’t know if I’m more than a one-hit wonder. I’m into natural materials and I’m not going to apologize for it.”
“Hey, yeah, me too. That’s cool. You don’t see me wearing leather pants, do you?”
I look him up and down. “No. And you get points for wearing canvas shoes, too.”
“See? I can be a hippie dude.”
I laugh at that. There’s no way he could ever be a hippie dude. He smells too nice for that. “Okay, fine. I’ll shop with you for a little while, but at some point I’m going to need to have a conversation with my sisters, so if they call I’m going to abandon you and leave you to your own devices.”
“No problem. Come on.” He reaches out and takes my hand.
I’m in too much shock to fight him off. His fingers interlace with mine, and I try to act like it’s the most casual, normal thing in the world to be holding hands with Ty Stanz. It means nothing. We’re just two people going on a normal, casual, no-big-deal shopping trip together.
My heart is not buying that nonsense at all. It’s hammering wildly in my chest, telling me that this is no casual thing and that of course it’s a big deal. People don’t hold hands with their acquaintances or friends; they hold hands with people they feel close to, people they want to touch.
I’d really love to not get overly girly about this, but it’s impossible. In my experience, handholding leads to kissing and then sometimes to a whole lot more. Oh God, don’t let him try to kiss me! I think about that for a few seconds and then alter my request: Okay, God, maybe let him kiss me once, just to see what it’s like.