Chapter 30
1994
Kentucky. More than halfway to New York.
I didn’t dig graveyard scenes or talking to guys who weren’t really there. I didn’t understand putting flowers down for a dead guy who hadn’t seemed to like them when he was alive. The young groupie hated downer shit, and the jaded law clerk—no, lawyer—didn’t have the time.
And there was still the whole issue of feelings.
I told Drew when he opened the car door for me, “Doing something for the express purpose of making yourself feel sad is fake. The thing is fake, and the feeling is fake.”
“The lawyer doth protest too much.”
He held his hand out for me, and I took it, letting him pull me out of the car. I didn’t need help, but he liked helping. Didn’t take me long to figure that out, and who was I to refuse him his pleasure?
He’d given me too much in the past six months. He’d stood by my decision to let Jonathan stay my brother, to let my parents think I knew nothing about their loss. Though my father had masterminded the entire fairytale, his scheme to keep his grandson in the family was meant to protect my mother.
I couldn’t refuse my father that, but mostly, I remained silent to protect my son, Jonathan. I’d die with that secret. I’d sew my own mouth shut before letting it pass my lips.
The only other person who knew was the man holding the flowers in the parking lot of a Kentucky cemetery.
* * * *
The little notes all over my house were long gone.
“I’ll end you,” I whispered to Drew one night, wrapped in sheets and darkness, my voice shredded from crying his name too many times.
He kissed me. I could taste my pussy on his face.
“You always threaten me before you fall asleep.”
That was when the worry swept in. The worry that my family would be upended. That my brother would lose his mind. That my mother would go off the deep end. And my father, ever unpredictable, would hurt the messenger if the messenger wasn’t me.
“You’re the only one who knows.” I touched his face in the dark. “I trust you. But I will end you.”
He pinned my hands over my head. “I’ll end you too.”
We’d had this discussion a hundred times. In bed, over dinner, in earnestness and in jest. “I’ll end you” wasn’t a threat. Not really. It was a way of telling him how deeply I trusted him.
“Not if I end you first,” I said, pushing my hips against him.
“How are you going to do that, Cinny-sin-sin?”
“Test me.”
He let my hands go and wrapped himself around me. “Never.”
“Smart guy.”
He didn’t move and barely paused. “Come back to New York with me. I can’t live without you. The city feels like a tomb.”
I sighed. We’d been long distance for too many months. “Speaking of testing… I’m sitting for the bar in February.”
He got up on his elbows, eyes wide and blue, shocked and delighted. I’d waited to tell him so I could drink in that expression.
“The New York State Bar?” he asked.
“No, asshole, the old man’s bar on Seventh and B. Of course the New York State Bar.”
He was off me like a shot, sitting straight, suddenly awake. “You have to study. Have you been studying? We have to get on it.”
“Relax. It’s easy.”
He scooped up my entire body and covered it in happy kisses.
I hadn’t forgotten what had brought us together, but it was all drowned out by a feeling of safety and joy. I had to admit, as feelings went, those were pretty good.
* * * *
The parking lot of the Kentucky cemetery was empty but for a few beat-up trucks. Our shiny black Audi was the brightest object for miles. Drew had parked it in the middle of the lot, away from the wooden poles poking out from the earth at odd angles. The rusted chains between them were shaped like kudzu-wrapped smiles, one after the other on the edge of the rectangle—smile, smile, smile. The sky was the color of the asphalt, and the freight train clacking at the river’s edge lumbered slowly, as if showing off its eternal length like a peacock showing off his blues.
I’d passed the New York bar six months after passing the California bar. I threatened to rack up forty-eight more states for fun, and Drew threatened to tie me to the bed.
That had worked out well.
Everything had worked out well. I was leaving. Maybe for a few years, maybe for good, but I was going. I never imagined I’d leave Los Angeles, but the thought of such freedom made me feel silly and lighthearted.
Me. Margaret Drazen.
I got goofy in the weeks before we finally left. Daddy hadn’t been happy when we told him, and he eyed Drew as if maybe he remembered him from twelve years before, when a young man had shown up at the door asking for his oldest daughter.
But, you know, tough shit.
When Drew insisted we take 70 (apparently, I wasn’t supposed to say the 70. Just 70 without the article), I didn’t think anything of it. But he swung off the interstate and went south into Kentucky.
“Six-oh-six E-Y-E-B-R-O-W,” I said from the passenger seat.
He glanced over. “I need to.”
“I know.”
We stopped at a light and he put his hand over mine. “I went to the funeral, but I didn’t visit the… you know. The thing.” He looked away.
“There’s a florist up ahead. You don’t want to show up empty-handed.”
He’d bought a bunch of yellow flowers because they looked fresher than any of the others. Stillness shrouded us on the way to the cemetery. I pressed my hand on his, rubbing the rough patch on his fingertip where guitar strings had calloused the skin.
I took his hand again in the parking lot, and we walked down the gravel path, counting lanes and ways against our printed map.
We found the grave exactly where it was supposed to be. Just another stitch in the houndstooth pattern of grey stones on the grassy hill. It said what it was supposed to say. His name. The relevant dates. Where the others had their defining roles—Father, Wife, Mother, Son, Baby—Stratford Gilliam had a clef like the one on his neck, short five-line staff and a quarter note tucked between the two lowest lines.
“I feel stupid,” he said. “It’s just a rock and dirt.”
“Yeah. It’s stupid.”
That was why we were together. We shared a cold, calculating cynicism. We were immune to sentiment.
“I like the musical note,” I said. “It’s cute.”
“I picked it. I drew it for his dad and faxed it over.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. It’s…” He swallowed hard. “It’s F. The note.” He blinked. Smiled with his lips tight in a thin line. “It’s so dumb.” His voice cracked.
“I bet.”
He looked away from the grave and shut his eyes. “I picked F for…” He shook his head, shot a little laugh that was sticky with sadness. “Friend. I needed it to be F for friend. Like I was in kindergarten.”
I put my hand on his cheek, thumb under his eye, ready to catch the tears that I knew were coming. “I’m embarrassed for you.”
He opened his eyes. So blue. Bluer than the cloud-masked sky that day. He wasn’t the man I’d met so long ago. The musician on the edge of fame. So close to the dream. So close he could save the world with it.
But he was. That man was still in him. Sometimes I forgot about that twenty-year-old with the potential he had a lifetime to fulfill.
He laid the flowers down. I rubbed his guitar callouses as we walked back to the car.
“You should play music again,” I said.
“No.”
“You’re not doing him any favors.”
“It’s not about Strat.”
That was a lie, but I couldn’t prove it.
“You’re right. The world is better off without you making music.”
He laughed a little and wrapped his arm around my neck, pulling me close and kissing the top of my head.
“I mean it,” I said. “You’re sexy with a guitar. Chicks dig it.”
“You sure you could stand the competition?”
“Have you met me? I don’t have competition.” I walked backward in front of him, each of my hands in his. “You don’t have to be a rock star. Just write some songs. See how it sounds. You might like it.” I bit my lower lip. “I might like it. I could be your groupie all over again. I’ll let you fuck me if you play.”
He pulled me to him. “You’re going to let me fuck you whether I play or not.”
“I hear South Dakota has the easiest bar exam in the country.”
“I’m not moving to South Dakota.”
“Then you better get that guitar out, Indiana McCaffrey.”
“You’re threatening me,” he growled with a smile. “You know what that does to me.”
“What?” I reached between his legs, and we laughed.
I ran back to the car, and he chased me, pinning me to the driver’s side door with his kiss. I pushed my fingers through his hair, pulling him closer. I wanted to crawl inside him and live there forever.
He ripped his face away from mine long enough to speak. “I love you, Cinnamon. You’re too precocious. Too smart. Too much of a pain in the ass, and I love you.”
“Even in South Dakota?”
“I’ll play again!” He laughed. “I’ll play if you love me.”
“You bet your ass I love you.”
“Case closed.” He kissed me again, pushing me hard against the car with the force of his erection pressed against me.
I groaned into his mouth.
“There was a hotel behind that florist.” He spoke in gasps. “Wanna go make the bed squeak?”
“Yes.”
We kissed again with an urgency that defied logic, as it should.
The freight train finally lumbered away, the bell on the last car dinging in victory. On the other side of the tracks, the rolling hills dissolved into infinity, and we drove right into it.
THE END