Catherine (4 page)

“I’m making pizza,” I told him. “Pepperoni and mushroom. Your favorite. I’ll have
it ready in ten minutes if you’ll sit down and get out of my way.”

He grabbed a can of club soda and shut the door. “I don’t deserve you, Cupcake.” Dad
had called me that for as long as I could remember, and despite being too old for
it I didn’t have the heart to make him stop. Though he was busy almost all the time
and could be a bit distracted, he still had the softest heart imaginable.

While I cut the pizza and shoveled slice after slice onto his plate, I told him about
the nice guy who had come to the club looking for a job as a busboy or janitor because
he’d read books about The Underground and wanted to see it for himself. Of course,
Dad wasn’t a total pushover. He took hiring very seriously, so I made a big point
of saying how trustworthy Hence seemed, and how honored he would be to work even the
most menial job, to the point where I was worried I was laying it on too thick, but
Dad just kept nodding, with that faraway look that meant he was either listening thoughtfully
or musing about something else completely.

Luckily, it turned out he was listening, and by the time Hence knocked on the front
door, Dad was completely primed. After introducing the two of them, I ducked into
the hallway and hovered nearby, ready to pretend I was on my way upstairs if Dad noticed
me. All Hence had to do was shake hands and talk music, and the job of busboy/janitor
was his. The other part was trickier. Hence thanked Dad, then looked so uncomfortable
I started to worry he’d get all the way out the door without mentioning he had no
place to sleep. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore: I stuck my head into the club
and gave him a pointed look.

“There’s one other thing, sir….” he began.

“Sir? I’m not royalty, Hence. Call me Jim, the way everybody else does.”

“I don’t have any place to sleep, Jim,” Hence blurted out. “Can you, um, recommend
a place nearby—a hostel, maybe, or a boarding house?”

Dad did just what I hoped he’d do—he said if Hence was willing to clean out the basement,
he could stay here. We’d taken in stray musicians before, so I had a feeling he’d
be cool about it, and I was right. Before long, Hence, his guitar, and his duffel
bag were in the basement. I would have slipped downstairs to say congratulations and
help him shift crates around and set up the metal folding cot, but as Dad helped me
load the dishwasher, he seemed to be watching me more closely than usual.

“Why are you so interested in this boy, Cathy?” he finally asked, a bemused smile
on his lips. “It’s not like he’s the first ragtag guitarist to come knocking on our
door.”

“He’s so intense. I feel like he wants the job more than any of the others did.” I
paused. “Plus, he desperately needs our help, don’t you think?”

Dad threw an arm around my shoulders, squeezed, and kissed the top of my head. “That’s
my Cupcake,” he said. “Kind to a fault.” Satisfied, he let the subject drop, eager
to settle into his favorite armchair with the day’s newspapers and to let me go off
and do my homework.

Another father might have hesitated to let a good-looking stranger move in under his
roof. As I rearranged my backpack, emptying out the heavy books I wouldn’t need to
lug all the way
over to Jackie’s, I thought about how great my dad was—and how much he trusted me.
What intrigued me about Hence wasn’t his good looks—I’d been burned by one too many
gorgeous musicians. It was his intensity—that dark hunger in his eyes—coupled with
that hurt look of his, the way he had of averting his glance as though he’d been kicked
hard by someone he trusted and didn’t dare let down his guard. I knew he must have
stories to tell about the past he was fleeing and the future he’d planned for himself.
I’ve always liked mysteries, and now one had landed on my doorstep, just begging to
be solved.

The club was busier than before. A burly guy was unloading crates from a dolly and
whistling to himself in the kitchen, and a woman with a shaved head fussed with a
coil of electrical wires. I followed Cooper to the end of the hallway, into a long
room with a stage at one end and a curved and gleaming bar at the rear. The walls
were rough, exposed brick, bare but for a blue stripe of neon light that shot down
their length, giving the space a watery glow.

By the time I noticed the man lurking in a patch of shadow we were almost on top of
him. He stood at the bar with his back toward us, pouring himself a shot of Jack Daniel’s.
He wore a businessman’s jacket, and his dark hair was cut short. Though he must have
heard our footsteps, he didn’t turn or move. His stance was casual, commanding, like
he owned the place. This had to be Hence.

Coop drew to a halt a few feet away, his arm out to keep me from getting any closer.
The man finished pouring, then downed his shot in one gulp before turning to face
us, an ironic smile—actually, more of a smirk—on his face. When his eyes landed on
me, the smile vanished.

We gaped at each other. His dark hair was silver at the temples, and his skin was
the color of caramel. He was scruffier than I’d expected, with a two-day beard. As
older men’s faces go, his was handsome, but it wasn’t friendly or nice.

When he finally spoke, his voice sounded choked. “My God. You look just like…” Then
he seemed to collect himself. “There’s nothing of your father in you at all.”

I stood up a little straighter. All the people who had known my mother—my father,
my grandmother and aunts—liked to tell me how much alike we looked, but never in this
tone of voice: a mixture of disbelief and wonder, and then, in that crack about my
father, something like disdain. I struggled to keep my tone even. “So you did know
my mother,” I said.

He chuckled. “I knew her, all right.” His tone implied he’d known her in ways I’d
rather not have to think about. “A long time ago. What do you want from me, little
girl?” He poured himself another shot.

Who did this guy think he was? “I only wanted to ask you a few questions. About her.”
From the corner of my eye, I could see Cooper hovering anxiously nearby, as though
he thought I might need rescuing from his boss. Or maybe he was flat-out eavesdropping.

Hence smiled, but not nicely. “Okay, what do you want to know?”

What didn’t I want to know? This guy might not stand still for a whole lot of questions,
so I decided to start with the most important one: “Do you know how I can find her?”

He was silent for a moment, something like sadness crossing his face. “She’s not buried
around here. Her body was never recovered.”

“But she’s not dead!” I insisted. “I mean, I found this letter she wrote, and there’s
a good chance she might be alive. She sent it from here.”

His eyes bugged. “A letter? Written when? Sent from here?” He took several steps forward
and, involuntarily, I backed up. Hence was starting to scare me.

“Fourteen years ago.”

“Fourteen years ago?” He ran a hand through his hair and gaped at me. “You think she’s
been in hiding for
fourteen
years?”

“The police investigators think so,” I said.

“They’re incompetent fools.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “That’s why I’m looking for her myself.” I reached into
my hoodie’s pocket for the envelope.

He practically grabbed it from my hand, pulling the letter out so roughly I was worried
he would rip it. I watched his face as he read, trying to decipher the emotions that
passed across it. Surprise? Sadness? Hope? I thought I saw all three, but they vanished
so quickly I couldn’t be sure.

“Chelsea…” he said finally. “So that’s your name. Just like Catherine, to name you
after her favorite neighborhood.” Was that really where my name had come from? “She
and I used to spend time together there.”

“Who are you, anyway?” I asked. “Who were you to my mother?”

“Sit down.” He gestured to a barstool, and I complied. “And you”—he motioned to Cooper—“get
back to work.”

Cooper retreated.

“How did you get here? You don’t look old enough to drive.” He looked me over appraisingly
and a vertical line deepened between his brows.

“I’m
seventeen
,” I told him. “I took a bus.”

“Does your father know you’re here?” Hence pulled up a barstool and lowered himself
onto it. “Never mind. There’s no way in hell he would let you come here to see me.”
He held the letter out, grudgingly, I thought, and turned back to the bar, as if he
was completely done with me.

When I couldn’t stand the silence anymore, I broke it. “My dad kept this letter hidden
from me. He told me my mother was dead.”

Hence turned to face me again. “I guess it goes without saying he never mentioned
me.” He looked at the letter in my hand, hungrily, as if he was thinking about taking
it back. I slipped it into my pocket.

“Maybe for you,” I said. “
Nothing
goes without saying for me. I grew up thinking my mother died when I was three. This
letter tells me she’s still alive.”

“That letter is fourteen years old. It doesn’t tell you anything.”

“For all I know, there might be others. I read a story in the newspaper that said
she’d sent letters. Plural.”

He looked at me with new interest.

“My dad and I moved around a lot, and our phone number has always been unlisted. Even
if my mother had wanted to reach me, she couldn’t have.”

“Isn’t your father some kind of philosophy professor? She couldn’t find him online?”

“He teaches
economics
.” Hence had a point… but he didn’t know everything. “Maybe she didn’t want to talk
to
him
. Or maybe she
did
call. Maybe he didn’t tell me… or the police.” I felt a pang of guilt; what was I
accusing my father of, exactly? “She could have been trying to reach me for years.
Maybe after a while she decided I was angry at her and just gave up.” In a way, that
was my worst fear—that my mother thought I’d gotten her letters and hadn’t cared enough
to write back.

We fell silent for a moment. The woman I’d seen untangling wires before strode into
the room looking like she was going to say something to Hence, then caught the expression
on his face, spun around, and was gone. For a while, Hence and I continued to sit
side by side in a silence that was only slightly less hostile than before.

Finally, I dared another question. “Can you tell me about her? What she was like?”

“I can’t talk about her,” he said. “Don’t ask me to.”

This was a strange and disappointing response. Still, if he wouldn’t talk about her,
maybe I could at least learn something about the rest of my family. “What about Quentin
Eversole? He must be my uncle, right? Does he still live around here?”

Hence snorted. “After he sold me this place, he moved upstate. For all I know he could
be dead. But you didn’t miss much; he was
an idiot of the first order.” He poured himself yet another shot. “Quentin.” He spit
the word out.

I waited for more.

“He despised me. Thought I wasn’t good enough to hang around with any sister of his.”
He sneered down at my sneakers. “Jim—your grandfather—was a rich man. Did you know
that?”

I shook my head, realizing how ridiculously little I knew.

“He inherited this building and turned it into a club in the late seventies. Didn’t
that father of yours tell you anything? A lot of acts cut their teeth here. The Chokehold.
Toxic Cake. Steamtrunk.” I nodded, as though those names meant something to me. “Between
CBGB and The Underground, the Bowery was the epicenter of the punk movement. Bands
were falling all over themselves for the chance to play here….”

I kept nodding, trying to get on his good side.

“Your grandfather turned this place from a kitchen-supply warehouse into a music mecca.
I always admired him for that—the old bastard.”

Uh, okay. I kept my smile frozen in place. “So what happened to him?”

“Heart attack. At fifty-eight. Then Quentin got hold of the club and ran it into the
ground. It was his worst nightmare, having the club fall into my hands, but by the
time he hit bottom, he didn’t have a choice. It was sell out or go bankrupt. And I’ve
built The Underground back up to what it used to be—even better. You know who played
here last week?” He paused for emphasis. “The Starving Artists.
Rolling Stone
profiled them a month ago. They could be playing arenas. But they chose to come
here for a victory lap because we’re the venue that broke them.” I looked up from
my hands and caught him studying me. “Not that you care. What bands do you listen
to?”

I shrugged. I don’t care who’s hot or edgy. I like what I like—but I wasn’t about
to tell that to a professional music snob. “I came here to learn about my mother,
not to chitchat about obscure bands.” Something about Hence was bringing out the ugly
in me.

He mimed shock. “My mistake. What else do you want to know?”

“Do you have any ideas about where she went? After she left me and my dad and came
here?”