How to Kill a Rock Star (35 page)

Not surprisingly, they al came down to money.

“Do you have any idea how much we’d lose?” he said, looking straight at me and clearly relishing his domination over my life.

Winkle said that between rehearsals, flying us over there, the buses, the gigs, the merchandise, they’d be spending ten times as much as they earned.

“Hel ,” he said, “even a mid-level band has a hard time breaking even on the road.”

Whah, Whah, Whah. He’d started to sound like Charlie Brown’s teacher.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and pretended Eliza’s hand was on my chest. This soothed me for about half a second, and then made my heart feel like it was being ripped apart by a grizzly bear.

Even now it hurts to think about.

I didn’t refocus until Winkle announced he had a big surprise for me, a proposition that was going to make up for al the disappointments.

“The Gap,” he said.

I could tel by the look on Feldman’s face he already knew about this. He had that “Please, just listen, Paul” expression going on.

Turns out my ex-employer wants to use me and one of my songs in a commercial. It’s a “white” campaign: White jeans, white shirts, white denim jackets. Some kind of upcoming winter holiday thing. They think “Avalanche” and I would be perfect.

Winkle said the Gap pays musicians out the ass and clearly thought this was al it would take to convince me. Meanwhile, How to Kil _internals.rev 2/22/08 5:00 PM Page 307

I couldn’t figure out how the guy had gotten as far as he had in life, being that he was so goddamn stupid.

I informed Winkle and Feldman that the campaign would have to be white and red if they put me in it, because they’d have to fucking shoot me first.

I think that was the straw that broke Winkle’s back. He threatened to shoot me himself. And after realizing that nothing he said was going to change my mind, he shifted back to the new record. He wanted to know how many songs I had in the can.

The whole time he was talking I felt myself retreating from reality. Like in the movies when the camera zooms away from the character on the screen, and the character keeps getting smal er and smal er until he’s final y nothing but an unde-tectable little blip. I was that blip.

Winkle snap-yel ed my name and shouted, “Are you listening to me? How many songs have you got?” I told him I had thirty thousand songs. Then I laughed so hard my eyes watered. It was my only defense. My way of spitting in Winkle’s face without having to hock up a lugie.

Winkle asked Feldman what the hel I was on and I told him I was high on life. This is the honest-to-God truth—I’m real y trying hard. I haven’t smoked pot in three months. And seeing a roadie talk Ian Lessing down from a trip just so he could finish a set was enough to keep me away from the rough stuff forever.

So there I was, sitting at that table. On my left I had Winkle looking like he wanted to kil me. Across from me there’s Feldman, probably wondering if John, Paul, George, and Ringo ever gave Brian Epstein this much trouble. My pancreas was burning like a son of a bitch, my career was slipping through my hands, and al I could think about was Eliza.

Pitiful.

I wanted to run out and find her and tel her how much I hated her. And I do. Because I’m sure I could make it through How to Kil _internals.rev 2/22/08 5:00 PM Page 308

30these cataclysms and survive my undoing with genuine amuse-ment if only she were down on Ludlow Street waiting for me.

You know what else real y kil s me? If I didn’t know me, and just sort of happened upon myself, I’d think: Wow, man, that guy’s got it made. He’s got a nice fat advance in the bank. He’s traveled the country. Women want to fuck him. He’s been on MTV once or twice, and Doug Blackman knows his name.

Sounds like a pretty fucking great life, doesn’t it?

The reality is that I stil live in a shithole apartment I’m too sentimental to move out of, I smoke too much, I don’t take care of myself like I should, I’ve sold my soul to a devil with cocoon eyebrows, and I’m probably going to spend the rest of my life pining for the girl who left me for the son of my hero.

Pitiful.

No joke, the next sentence I threw at Winkle was this:

“Jeeze, Louise, it must be humid outside.” The reason I said that was because Winkle’s eyebrows were fluffier than usual—the cocoon was about to pop and I was ready to lay ten bucks on the table, with the odds on precipi-tation by mid-afternoon. Actual y, I did lay ten bucks on the table. I even verbalized the offer. Twice.

“Come on,” I said. “Who’s with me? Who wants to wager a bet? Rain or no rain?” I smiled like a harum-scarum career gambler and nodded for Winkle to ante up. By then he was making steamy, hissing sounds like an old radiator. I had a notion he might try to grab me so I stood up just in case.

He cal ed me an asshole and said, “I’l bury you!” like some comic book vil ain.

I wanted to fucking scream my head off—I’m not your toy!

Your puppet! Your whore! I’m a human goddamn being and I expect to be treated as such!

Instead I told him I didn’t want to be buried, I want to be cremated. And I want my ashes stored in a disco bal he can hang over his desk.

Something possessed me to walk over to the guy, grip his face, and kiss him. It was a good one too, right on the mouth.

I even twisted my head left to right like the old-time thespians used to do before they were al owed to suck face for real.

I might have been losing it. I might have been having the time of my life. I’l never know.

I left the room, got in the elevator, and rode it down to the lobby. A husky female security guard with the happiest face I’d ever seen opened the giant glass door for me. She wished me a nice afternoon and I kissed her too.

Now comes the sickest part of the whole day. I left the building and walked north. I live south and east but I walked al the way up Broadway, fol owed the traffic around Columbus Circle, merged onto Central Park West and didn’t turn again until I was on 77th Street.

I’m stil here.

That’s right. This is WP Hudson coming to you live from 77th and Central Park West.

It’s not like I can run into her or anything. I overheard Vera say she and The Thief are in Vermont. Probably on some goddamn love retreat, having sex in the woods, hopeful y catching Lyme disease or getting poison ivy on their asses.

I’m just looking at the building. I want to feel close to the woman whose guts I hate. I want to imagine what her life is like in there without me. I want to stumble across something on the sidewalk and pretend she dropped it: a flower petal, a scarf. And then I want to set it on fire.

One thing that did slip my mind—the ex-wife. I parked myself on this goddamn bench with my tape recorder, right in front of the south entrance to the Natural History museum, directly across from Loring’s building, and never gave a second thought to Justine Blackman. Ten minutes later, guess who walks out the front door? Justine goddamn Blackman, with a twin on each side. They were al holding hands and I couldn’t How to Kil _internals.rev 2/22/08 5:00 PM Page 310

31tel which kid was Sean and which was the other one.

Justine’s hair was in a ponytail and when she glanced around for a cab it played peek-a-boo with me from behind her head.

I saw her look across the street sort of nonchalantly, then she started to bend down toward one of the boys but she straightened back up, put her hand to her forehead like she was going to salute someone, and peered at me. I probably should’ve turned away or ducked but I didn’t see the goddamn point.

I waved.

Justine waved back, but it was a weak half-wave, like she thought I looked familiar but couldn’t place my face. Before she glanced away I saw the recognition hit her. And then the pity.

Holy Hel , more pity. Like I don’t already have enough self pity—

I certainly don’t need everyone else’s. I folded my arms across my chest, slouched down so that my head could rest against the back of the bench, and waited for her to walk over and offer me an apology, or at least invite me in for coffee. Part of me thinks she should shoulder some of the blame for my maladies.

Holy Hel , if she could have learned to appreciate life on tour, if she could have kept her goddamn marriage together, her husband never would’ve stolen the love of my life, and I wouldn’t be sitting in front of her house like the pathetic stalker-freak she probably thinks I am.

For a second it looked like she was going to come over, but the doorman hailed her a cab, she and the kids hopped in, and off they went.

Bye, bye little Blackmans! I waved like crazy. Bye, bye!

That was a couple hours ago. It’s completely dark now and I want to get up and go home, but the longer I stay, the less sure I am about where or what home is. I don’t even know who I am anymore. Who the fuck is Paul Hudson, anyway? I can’t get a grip on how I arrived at this place. This street is alien.

These strange uptown Martians offer me nothing but vigilance and hostility as they shuffle their kids to the other side of the How to Kil _internals.rev 2/22/08 5:00 PM Page 311

sidewalk so they aren’t permanently damaged by the weird guy yel ing into a tape recorder.

Yeah, I’m talking to you, lady. What, you’ve never seen a man in ruins before? Open your goddamn eyes. This is New York. They’re everywhere.

I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. That’s the only explanation I can figure. I veered left when I should’ve gone right, but instead of stopping to turn around I just kept going and now I’m so fucking lost I don’t think I could get back on track if my life depended on it.

Problem is my life does depend on it.

This is what’s going through my head right now: Getting the fuck out. Ending it al . As I sit on this bench trying to figure out which window lets sunlight into Eliza’s bedroom, the urge to let go is wiggling itself out from the womb of my psyche, being born into the chaos that is my pitiful goddamn existence.

And you know what? If Eliza was inside that building instead of on a holiday in Vermont, if I could go up to her penthouse and have a five-minute conversation with her, if I could tel her what I’m thinking, even if she doesn’t love me anymore, I’m positive she would lower her chin, blink like an angel, and tel me I’m acting like a bastard. Or else she would just kick the notion right out of me. She might even rest her hand on my heart and give me one of her crazy goddamn lectures about being a savior.

As usual, no one’s ever around when you need them.

Roger that.

Over.

Doug Blackman turning sixty was big news. Apparently nobody thought he would make it and, accordingly, Loring was putting together a celebration, despite the apathetic cooperation he was getting from the guest of honor.

“Dad, sit down.”

Loring was at the kitchen table in the townhouse where he’d lived for the first eighteen years of his life and he didn’t recognize any of it. His mother had just redecorated al four floors and it was as if he’d never been there, as if someone had dug up al his roots and planted a shabby chic field where the funky, familiar, mid-century modern fur-rows had once been.

There was something outrageously disturbing to Loring about no longer recognizing his childhood home.

“Please,” Loring begged. “Sit.”

Doug had been trying to empty his ashtray into the trash compactor but he couldn’t get it open. “Everything’s new in here. I don’t know how to work a damn thing.” He put the dirty ashtray back on the table, then sat down and let Loring explain the details of the birthday bash— smal venue, astronomical ticket prices, the proceeds going to three charities to be determined.

Doug lit another cigarette. His third in half an hour.

That’s one every ten minutes, Loring calculated. Six an hour.

At this rate, his father would go through a pack every three
and a half hours. Even if Doug only smoked for six waking hours, which was doubtful, that stil equaled close to two packs a day.

Loring watched a trail of smoke bil ow out of his father’s nostrils and then evaporate. He observed his father’s hand as it brought cigarette to mouth.

He saw thick blue lines running below the knuckles like cold tributaries flowing down into his father’s arm. The hands were see-through gray, the same filmy color as the smoke.

Sometime in the last decade, when Loring wasn’t paying attention, his father had acquired the hands of an old man.

And when one of his father’s old-man hands once again lifted that third cigarette to the waiting lips, Loring fol owed the hand upward and noticed a face that looked as if it had been left out in a cold wind for thirty years.

In a weird way, his father had always seemed immortal.

Doug Blackman was more than a patriarch, more than the man who sat at the head of the table, more than the guy who cheered his son at track meets. He was a legend. A storytel er whose imitable songs had changed lives and histories.

He was also a figure that represented something Loring had been born too inside of to ful y understand, and felt too overshadowed by to truly appreciate.

For the first time in his life, it occurred to Loring that someday, probably sooner than later, his father was going to die. He couldn’t imagine what a world without Doug Blackman was going to feel like, and he resented the fact that al of America would claim the loss as their own and thus, for Loring, losing his father would be completely incidental to the country losing an icon.

“Tel me how this whole thing is going to work,” Doug said. “What the hel am I going to have to do?”

“For the tenth time, nothing.”

“I’m not performing. I’m retired, remember?”
31Doug had promised Lily that the world tour he’d wrapped up in 2000 had been his last, and he hadn’t performed live since. But Loring knew there was no way his father would leave the theater that night without singing at least one song. At any rate, he kept this prediction to himself to insure its occurrence.

“Al you have to do is get up and thank everybody at the end. Meanwhile, a dozen of your peers wil sing your songs, and maybe some of their own as wel .”