Chapter 27

Fox

It was days, or maybe even a week, after my talk with Talia. I couldn’t be sure. My brain was addled, unable to concentrate on hours or minutes or seconds. I was always in between coke, or speed, or ecstasy, and my electrolytes were depleted. I sat at the edge of Rhett’s leather couch with a blonde woman beside me. Her legs were long and thin, and she was rolling a cigarette with lithe fingers. She chatted me up, bouncing her leg against my knee. Her tongue flicked out as she spoke, and her breasts snuck from her white t-shirt, something that would have made my groin stir years before. But now, I felt hollow.

“That’s why I came to Los Angeles, you know. I heard that song of yours, on the radio? God, I must have been sixteen years old. And I felt like, damn. This is the only life we have, you know? I better fucking reach for my dreams.”

She put her cigarette between her lips and lit it, filling the air with smoke. She passed it to me, and I sucked it. My eyes felt glazed.

“What was your name again?” I asked her. It wasn’t out of interest. I just sensed I was meant to say something next.

“Tiffany,” she said, her voice snappy. “Tiffany Rosenthal. I know, I know. The blonde hair makes me seem not so Jewish, but I swear I am. They called me a Jewish princess back at home. In Jersey. But like I said, I felt so stifled back there.”

“All right,” I sighed. I stood up from the couch, rising to full height. I towered over her. With another blink, I recognized that I was probably a full ten years older than her. Had we fucked? I was pretty sure we hadn’t. I was sure I hadn’t been near a bed in days. She was something the old Fox would have wanted. But now, between each heavy breath, I felt myself aching for Talia.

“Have you seen Rhett?” I asked her. She was far too stoned herself to note that I wasn’t paying any real attention to her. The sound of my voice was enough. “I’ve got to draw up another line,” I said. And as soon as possible. I felt wild with this realization, like I couldn’t control myself.

“Ohh, I like where your head’s at,” Tiffany said, giggling. She eased up from the couch, trying to brush her tits against my bicep. I leaned away, not wanting to feel a single inch of her. “Let me check the kitchen. He was in there with Marty a few minutes ago, when I went to pee.”

I followed Tiffany down the dank hallway, thick with cigarette smoke. I continued to puff the one she’d passed me, filling my lungs with darkness. At the end of the hallway, a lightbulb swung back and forth in the kitchen. Rhett had his back toward us and was leaning against the counter. It was clear he too hadn’t bathed in days. His hair was greasy and slicked back and glinted with the light from the bulb above. He was cutting the white powder before him with a credit card, drawing lines while talking to Marty in a guttural voice. Marty was the same drug dealer we’d had since before I’d even fucking met Marissa. Marissa had never liked him. Always said that scar above his eyebrow showed he’d been a creep once, and deserved a punch.

“…thinks he can come back in here, strut around, do drugs and be back on top of the world, don’t he?” Rhett was saying.

I stopped dead in my tracks; Tiffany stopped as well, her eyes turned toward mine. She was thinking a million thoughts that I couldn’t muster. She was no longer hearing the words from the next room. Rather, she yearned to hang upon mine.

“I mean, the man’s had a rough time,” Marty said to Rhett, coughing slightly as he spoke. “His wife being murdered right in front of him? Just seeing her that night was enough to take me off the drugs for a few—”

“Days only, Marty. Let’s be real. He let her die. He let her loose that night. He didn’t really give a shit about her, man.”

“Shut the fuck up!” Rhett said in a raised whisper. “You can’t say that out loud around here. You know if he heard you—”

“What’s he going to do? Punch me? He knows it’s his fault. It’s part of the reason he skipped town. Couldn’t take the shame of knowing.”

I felt my heart burning in my chest. Pushing myself against the wall, panic raced through me. What was this? This… this bullshit they were speaking to one another? It was all true. It was my fault. I’d shown her darkness and she’d died for it. I coughed, tasting blood.

“Just, fuck it, man. You know he’s on the verge of a breakdown or some shit. So just keep feeding him booze, drugs. He’ll burn out. We’ll have to drive him to the insane asylum at some point, and you know it. He’ll be turning around in his little white room in just a few days, with no memory of this. You know, I heard him saying that he wants to get the band back together? Like he actually thinks people would come out to see you guys on tour,” Marty scoffed.

I turned away from the kitchen with Tiffany right behind me, my mind racing. The band, this Los Angeles life… how had I thought I could just return to it? I turned my eyes toward Tiffany, who seemed to be laughing at me. Her teeth were far too bright, glinting in the light. She was too young, almost made of porcelain. I wanted to rip my fist through her skull. This anger, it was linked to my father’s. I couldn’t extract myself from it.

I’d been a fool. I staggered to the couch, my breathing coming in staggers. My heart told me I was having a heart attack. In the back of my mind, some voice called out to me: Calm down. Don’t prove those assholes right! I knew that if I did give over to this attack, they would stand over me, cackling. They would pat one another on the back. “He never should have come back. He doesn’t belong anywhere. What a sad, fucking loser.”

God, what the fuck was I doing?

Tiffany reached toward me on the couch, her long fingers tracing my wrist. She cooed at me, sounding more and more like a child. “Fox? Fox, can you hear me?” she giggled. “Fox, weren’t you going to get us another line? You know you’ll feel better if you just take another line. If you just…”

But I couldn’t take it anymore. I reached toward the couch armrest, yanking myself back up. Sweat poured down my forehead. All I could think, in the strange racing parts of my brain, was that I wanted to collapse in Talia’s arms. All those years, as a teenager, she’d been my saving grace, my reason to keep going.

It had mattered. And god, it still mattered, now.

“Did you hear what they were saying about your wife?” Tiffany asked me from behind. Her voice was oddly fluffy; it swept in one ear, then out the other. I heard her call my name another time, before her voice headed in the direction of the kitchen. “Hey. I think your friend out there is going crazy,” she told them. She was showing off, proving she could hang. “I think he’s going all crazy again, don’t you? Haha! You said it would happen, Rhett. I remember.”

I staggered down the steps of the porch into the Los Angeles heat. It was the first week of August during the longest year of my life. I felt no sense that I would live through this year. Thanksgiving? Christmas? They were abstract concepts. Nothing I could strive for.

I had to get back to her. I’d never felt it more clearly before. Not during those first lonely nights in Los Angeles, when I’d been nothing but a kid, flirting with a drug problem. Not when I’d been achingly lonely over the next few years. And certainly not back in Bilkington, wondering what steps to take next, yet wanting to be alone. Alone in the caverns of my mind, out in the wilderness.

When Talia had opened her arms wide to me. When no one else in the community had.

But why should they have? I wondered for the first time. Why should anyone have opened themselves to me? I had proven myself to be nothing but a drug addict rock star, an all-out bad boy, looking to ruin the world and everyone I’d ever met.

Now, it all felt different. Like I was being given a second chance. Was it possible?

“Talia,” I muttered to myself, my eyes turning toward the stars. “I need this. I need you.”

Suddenly, I bolted toward the sidewalk, my arm waving up in the air. A yellow taxi yanked toward me, halting beside me. Pressing my hands against the glass, I waited till the driver brought the window down. “How fast can you get me to the airport?” I asked him. I sensed that my eyes were burning in my skull, making me look half-crazed.

But the taxi driver just nodded. “As fast as I can, man,” he told me. “Get in. I’ll get you there.”

Suddenly, I was blasting from that shoddy house on the east end of Los Angeles, south toward LAX. The world spun around me, its lights swirling. The downtown buildings spiked into the dark night sky. Already, I was forcing thoughts of Rhett from my mind.

I brought my phone from my pocket. For the first time in months, I turned to old photos of Marissa I knew I’d been lying to myself for the many months just before her death. I’d pretended we were happy, that my habit wouldn’t affect her and the purity. She’d been so pale then. Almost frail. Had she known about the baby? Had she been too afraid to tell me?

It was why I didn’t bring thoughts of Marissa to mind very often. I liked to remember the happy things: the way she smelled of lavender; her smooth skin, silky and white. I liked to remember how when I’d first met her, I thought she was my saving grace and I was hers. But that was a lie. I was the reason her light had gone out.

Talia. Talia. The word sounded so comfortable in my ears. I wrapped my arms tightly around my chest as the taxi hurried me closer and closer to the airport, and where I would soon be whisked back to a home I so suddenly knew I wanted. Perhaps, I thought, it took running as far away as I could to make me discover just exactly what I needed—or where, precisely, I was needed.