Just a Girl (8 page)

“Yeah, sorry. Something just hurt.”

“Do we need to stop?”

“Nope, I’m good,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Paul…” She was hesitant.

“I’m. Good.” He said more clearly.

I wondered what they weren’t saying here. She seemed more worried than him, that’s for sure. Like she was afraid of setting him off somehow. Maybe he just really didn’t like pain.

Kenzie frowned but went back to work. I wanted to reach out and hold Paul’s hand, or stroke his hair, but something restrained me. He seemed almost too tense to be comforted.

Although I would never have guessed so much time had passed, Kenzie worked on Paul for an hour. I spent much of it simply watching, although I didn’t again make the mistake of standing up to see the needle firing repeatedly into his skin. Whatever it was that had made him so tense had seemed to pass, and by the end he was very quiet, as if he’d gone into a meditative state. Did I belong in this private moment? I wasn’t sure, but I found it fascinating.

Eventually Kenzie declared that she was done. After cleaning up the collected blood, she let Paul sit up and inspect the site. His skin was lit up with angry red all around the new musical notes, but the tattoo looked complete now. It was even more beautiful with the rest of the complicated music filled in.

“Is it done?” Paul asked her.

“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “For now.”

He wrapped her in a one-armed hug that resembled a headlock. “Thank you.”

“Erch,” she grunted. “Stop it.”

He laughed, releasing her and turning to show me the new ink more clearly.

“It looks amazing,” I said. “Thanks for bringing me along.”

Kenzie went to work covering the site with salve and gauze. “So, did you see anything that appealed to you?” she asked me, shifting her eyes to the portfolio once more.

“You work is…gorgeous.” I didn’t have adequate adjectives. “I just don’t know what I want.”

She put a final piece of tape on Paul’s side, then contemplated me. “Hmm. You can’t just pick something off the wall. There needs to be a reason for this, right?”

I nodded.

“Do you mind if I take some pictures? I want to think about this.”

“Go ahead.” I traded places with Paul so Kenzie could use her phone to get some brightly lit shots of my barely-there ink. I’d been so sure of this one when I’d gotten it. Now that I hated it, it was almost hard to imagine getting another one to fix it. What if I hated the new one down the line too?

Kenzie was making thoughtful noises and muttering to herself. She put a hand on my back to bend me forward, then explored the edges of the tattoo with her fingertips.

“Something more…personal,” she said under her breath. “We can do better than this.”

“Did you get what you need?” I asked, suddenly very ready to be out of her chair. The way she was talking, I could almost imagine her taking up the machine and setting to work on my skin then and there.

She didn’t answer, but I felt her move away from me. I looked up and caught Paul’s eye. He nodded at me and I hopped out of the chair.

“I’ll get some drawings for you,” Kenzie said. “I need to think more. Are you coming to the show tonight?”

“That fast?” The idea that she would have plans for me in just a few hours was too much.

“No.” She shook her head, looking confused. “No, I was just wondering.”

“Oh.” The nerves settled down in my chest. “I—I don’t know.”

“Come,” she instructed. “You can hang out with me.”

“Well…” I sought Paul’s eyes again. His reaction last night had been intense. I didn’t want to upset him. “I, uh…”

Paul shoved his hands in his pockets, then winced when his arm banged into the fresh tattoo. With a grimace, he took that hand back out. “You can come if you want,” he said, looking at the floor.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement. I was paralyzed. What the hell was I supposed to do with that?

“You’re coming,” Kenzie declared. “Tell you what, I’ll come pick you up.”

“Okay.” It was easier to go along with the more forceful personality between these two. Plus, I had to admit I was curious about Jukebox Bleu. And Paul’s stage fright.

Kenzie and I exchanged phone numbers and I gave her my parents’ address so she could pick me up later. Paul didn’t say anything more about it.

When we got back to his car, I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer. “Is it me? I mean, is it that you don’t want
me
there?”

He sighed. “No, it’s not you at all. You should. I mean, if you’re willing.” Finally he made eye contact once again. “It would be cool if you did.”

“Is it the stage fright thing?” I hoped he remembered telling me that as we’d drifted off to sleep last night.

He nodded. “It’s…bad.”

“But you’re so good!” I said. “Everybody gets nervous, I promise. Music is supposed to be fun. You just have to relax and go for it.”

“The music’s great,” he said. “It’s the damn audience I have trouble with.”

I wanted to launch into a pep talk. The words were already accumulating in my mind. I could tell him that there were plenty of famous musicians who had stage fright. Barbra Streisand, Adele, Brian Wilson—hell, Ella Fitzgerald only sang at her first audition because she was too nervous to do the dance she’d intended. But looking at his profile, the tension in his shoulders and the set of his jaw, I was pretty certain he’d heard it all before. And I was willing to bet none of it meant a damn when it came time to step onto the stage.

Maybe I really shouldn’t go to the show.

An afternoon of waffling eventually led to me getting picked up by Kenzie at seven o’clock that night. I’d considered canceling on her a number of times, but my base curiosity finally got the better of me.

“Hey! You look great!” she said when I came down the walk to meet her.

“Thanks.” I had to admit I’d put a bit of effort into myself for the night. The black minidress I chose was one I’d never had a chance to wear before I left L.A. It had a high neckline and a delicate floral pattern along the edges. The sheer fabric and shift cut were feminine, but the high hem and my favorite tall black boots gave it the tough-girl edge I like. I had enough time in the afternoon to run a color eraser through my hair, so most of the reddish orange was gone, though I was stuck with the generic brassy undertone that erasers left behind. Still, I felt more like myself. Plus I’d taken the time to do full eye makeup, including a glorious set of thick lash extensions I hadn’t worn in months. I wasn’t sure where I stood with Paul, and I wanted to tip the scales in my favor.

I’d intended to probe Kenzie a bit about him, but I didn’t have to contrive a way to ask. She dove in as soon as we were both buckled into the car.

“So, you probably caught on that my brother is a total freak show about performing.”

“Yeah, I kind of got that feeling.” Was that casual enough?

“I just don’t want you to take it personally. Like, if he doesn’t talk to you when we get there. It’s not you, it’s one hundred percent him.”

“Has it always been like that?”

“Always.” She glanced away from the road to look at me with a dramatic eye roll. “He had a panic attack when he had to play his first violin concert in first grade. It was both heartbreaking and adorable. Don’t tell him I said that. Actually, don’t tell him I told you any of this.”

“Oh wow.” I’d known plenty of people who had a little performance anxiety, but not usually when they were that young. “That’s so sad.”

“I know. It’s like the ultimate irony that the only thing he has ever loved in life is music.”

“God.”

“Right? Our moms worked so hard with him, but it’s pretty serious.”

“So, is it worse with people he knows in the audience or strangers?”

“Mmm, hard to say exactly. Like, he’s pretty much over it when me or our moms are in the audience. It’s like we don’t count anymore. But then if it’s someone he knows, but still counts, like a girlfriend or something, it’s, like, really bad.”

“Oh.”

“You’ll see.”

I was nervous on Paul’s behalf as we approached the Drafthouse. Kenzie gave our names at the door and the bouncer let us in. The bar wasn’t very crowded yet; it was too early for that. But there was activity on the stage. I recognized James, running a length of cable from an amp to a keyboard set on a stand. There were a few other guys working on and around the stage that had that musician vibe about them. I figured this must be the rest of the band. But there was no Paul in sight.

Kenzie beelined for the stage, so I followed, unsure what else to do.

“Hey, baby!” she called to James when we were up against the knee-height risers of the stage.

James stopped what he was doing to come to the edge of the stand and bend over to kiss Kenzie’s upturned face. The stage lights weren’t even on yet, and he already had sweat trickling down his forehead. “Glad you made it,” he said to me.

“Where’s Paul?” Kenzie asked.

“I think he’s out back.”

“Uh-oh,” she said.

“Yeah.”

She sighed. “All right. I’m on it.”

“Take Presley with you,” James said.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Kenzie spoke softly, but she had to know I could hear her—I was standing right there.

“Might as well get it over with,” James reasoned.

Kenzie considered for a moment, then squared her shoulders. “Fine.” She looked at me and nodded toward the rear of the bar. “Come on.”

Her strides across the room were so determined I had to run a few steps to catch up. “You said this is a bad idea,” I said. “I shouldn’t be here.”

“No, James is right.”

Every instinct in my body told me I should stop right where I was—call a cab and head back to my parents’ house. But Kenzie caught me by the elbow as we moved into a dark hallway. There was no escape.

We passed the restrooms and two unmarked doors before Kenzie pushed open a heavy metal door with a tiny meshed window in the top. The door opened onto a damp alley that smelled like Dumpsters. It could have been the alley behind any club I’d ever played in my life, right down to the large aluminum can full of cigarette butts set next to the door. The smell of pot hit my nose a second later like a sucker punch to the medulla oblongata.

“Paulie?” Kenzie asked the alley.

“Here,” came the answer from the right.

Our heels clicked on the concrete as we skirted a Dumpster to find Paul perched on the edge of a wooden crate, elbows propped on his knees, a joint pinched in his right hand.

“You cool?” Kenzie asked.

“Mmm-hmm.” He nodded twice, his gaze fixed on the ground, before he looked up at her. I could tell the moment he caught sight of me, because he twitched, just enough that I couldn’t miss it. “Hey, Presley. You came.”

“Hi.” I didn’t know what else to say.

“Didn’t you take your Xanax?” Kenzie asked, reaching for his joint. It was half-smoked already. I half-expected her to stub it out like an angry older sister in a made-for-TV movie, but instead she tried to take a hit off it. The thing was barely lit, though, and she frowned at it, holding it out to her brother.

Paul gave her a dark look before taking it back. “Not yet.” He produced a lighter from its hiding place in his left hand and relit the joint before taking a pull. “Does this bother you?” he asked me.

I shook my head. “Not if you share.”

He smirked and held it out to me. I hadn’t gotten high since L.A. Brendan was a relentless stoner, and I’d pretty much been avoiding anything to do with him since. Of course, now I found myself in the back of a club, sharing a joint with yet another musician, so maybe I was only fooling myself about the whole avoiding thing.

The heat of the smoke going into my lungs was familiar, but it had been so long that I felt the urge to cough. It was intense enough to make my eyes water, but I managed to hold it in for a few extra seconds. Then it burst out of my chest in a cloud and I winced.

Kenzie laughed. “Nice one, noob.”

“I’m out of practice,” I admitted, handing the joint back to Paul. “My ex used a vaporizer.”

“You didn’t forget your meds, did you?” Kenzie asked him.

“No. It’s too early. Can you just—I’ve got enough moms already, okay?”

Kenzie frowned, crossing her arms, but all she said was, “Fine. Do you need anything?”

“I just need a few minutes.”

She looked him over. “Okay. We’ll be inside.”

I started to step away, but Paul hooked two fingers around mine. “Hold up a second.”

Kenzie hesitated, then went back inside, leaving us alone in the alley.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“I didn’t…you must think I’m crazy.”

“No.” I shook my head. “I don’t.”

He didn’t say anything, but produced his lighter to take another hit from the once again unlit joint, before offering it to me. I stepped close enough to stand between his knees and bent to smoke it directly from his hand rather than hold it myself.

After holding the smoke for longer this time, I exhaled and looked down at him. “Does it help? Smoking, I mean.”

“A little,” he said. “Xanax helps, too, but I gotta take that closer to showtime.”

“Anything else?”

“Not really. And don’t tell me to picture the audience in their underwear.”

I laughed. “I wasn’t going to. Though if you want to picture me in mine, I’m okay with that.”

He looked up to meet my eyes. “Is it still a helpful technique if you’ve already seen someone in their underwear?”

“I don’t know. Let me try it.” I made a show of closing my eyes and screwing up my face in concentration. It wasn’t hard to picture Paul in his underwear, though I did spend a few moments trying to fill in the details of his four-seasons tree. Opening my eyes, I pronounced, “Not relaxing, exactly, but not at all unpleasant.”

Paul’s answering laugh was a breathy thing. The child of nervous laughter and pot-induced giggles. He squinted at me through one eye as he took another pull from the joint. “You’re right.” When he exhaled this time, he said, “You changed your hair again.”

“I was tired of the red.”

“That’s cool. You look…great, by the way. Distractingly great.”

I leaned closer and kissed him. Gently, and staying close when I was done so that it was hard to focus on his face. “Would it be better if I went home?”

“No.” He sighed. “Maybe. But don’t go.”

“Good.” I straightened up. “I won’t.”

His face went thoughtful for a moment, and he took a deep breath. “Okay…okay.” Then he gave a nervous laugh and looked at the burned-down joint in his hand. “I might need another one of these.”

I bit my lip, wanting to ask if he was really sure, but fairly certain that wasn’t the right thing to do. His obvious anxiety made me anxious, too—for him, and for myself, because I was at such a loss. Nothing seemed exactly right, but nothing seemed exactly wrong.

“Sit,” Paul said suddenly. “You’re making me nervous.” He reached down to turn another wooden crate onto its end beside his own, then patted it.

I sat, and we passed his joint back and forth until it was too small to hold safely. Then he tapped it carefully out and put it into a battered orange prescription bottle with no label he produced from his pocket. There was another one in the bottle, which he pulled halfway out a number of times, before shaking his head and putting the top back on. A distinctive rattle told me there were a few pills at the bottom of the bottle as well. He was quite the mobile pharmacy.

I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. That seemed okay with him, though, and we sat side by side for a few minutes of silence.

Finally he took a deep breath. “I should go help set up.”

“Yes, you should,” I agreed. There was nothing worse than a bandmate who thought they didn’t have to do the work.

“Thanks for not giving me a pep talk.”

“Hey, whatever I can not do for you…” I teased.

We got up, leaving the crates in place, and Paul led the way back into the Drafthouse. It was so tempting to tell him the show was going to be great, and he would be fine, but that was clearly not what he wanted. So I settled on the showbiz classic, “Break a leg,” before I left him at the stage and went to find Kenzie.

The bar filled up, as they always do, and the noise level rose. The band moved on and around the stage like carpenter ants, adjusting this and that until they were satisfied. I tried not to watch Paul like he was some kind of wild animal and I was a documentarian, but it was hard not to let my eyes drift to him. He helped set up, as he’d said he would, but I noticed he tended to keep his back to the uninterested crowd. Even when he checked the tuning on his guitars, he did it in the shadow, near his amp.

All of this seemed a bit distant, however, as the pot went to work on me. I hadn’t smoked much, but evidently, Paul liked some very premium shit, because I was feeling very very good. Kenzie and I got beer and some nachos to munch on, and she laughed at me while I closed my eyes in near-ecstasy with each bite.

We chatted while we waited for the show to start, and as it had the night before, the conversation came easily. She told me funny stories about herself, and James, and Paul. She listened attentively when I talked about my parents’ store, and my ridiculous number of musician godparents.

Finally, later than the advertised start time, of course, all the members of Jukebox Bleu were on the stage. I was surprised to find out there were eight of them. It had been hard to get a handle on how many there were as they’d all hopped on and off the stage. All assembled, their group nerdiness was much more apparent. Paul was the closest thing they had to a typical rock star, with his tattoos and good looks and the electric guitar strapped to him. James almost pulled off the rocker vibe, except for the thick-framed glasses he wore. The others were a mishmash. The two horn players looked more like marching band geeks than rock stars. The drummer and bass player wore the distinct air of guys you might have sat next to in science class or ridden the bus with every day without really noticing them. There was another musician onstage as well, though I wasn’t sure what his role was yet. He was tall and gangly with large muttonchops, making him look like he might have arrived on one of those bikes with the enormous front wheel. He seemed like a jack-of-all-trades, with an assortment of percussion instruments around him, but also a music stand and a violin, as well as a large squat instrument case of some type at his feet. Fascinating.

The audience didn’t seem to realize what was happening at first, as only sustained organ notes came from James’s keyboard. He barely appeared to be moving. It didn’t help when Paul joined in. He had his back mostly to the crowd, and the song started quietly.

I couldn’t hear over the collective murmur of bar chatter until he’d been playing for a few bars. Then it was clear that he was doing the intro to U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name.”

I nodded approvingly at Kenzie. “Good choice to start the show.”

She smiled. “Took them forever to get Paul to agree to be first. Hilarious.”

As the bass and drums kicked in, I found my head bobbing in time. The classic song was one of those that I loved to sing. It wasn’t particularly challenging, but you could really dig into it as a singer. Bono’s soaring vocals on the chorus were nearly irresistible sing-along fodder to me. I was on the edge of my seat waiting for their lead singer to let loose after the long intro.

At last the singer stepped up to the mic and began to sing. He was on the short side, with floppy ash-brown hair that hung over a high forehead. He looked more like the kind of guy who knew his way around an electronics store than a rock star, but when he opened his mouth, I had to give him credit. He could sing.