Plush (20 page)

Somebody knocks. “Hay, you up?” Annie.

I open the door. She’s so stunning, so thin, and so powerful looking. Sometimes I wish I could exude all the strength she does. She hands me a Subway sand wich, and I put it down. I inhale deep. She picks up some hand puppets I bought the twins and puts them on, waving them in my face. Everything is irritating this morning. My liver, my heart, everything is screaming inside. I take them from her hands – so soft and gentle; I don’t want to break them – and put them down. Annie: “Here, Hayze; you know you need to eat” Yeah. I need to do a lot of things. Fast food though? Seriously? She never brings me that crap. I joke that sales must be pretty bad if we are eating this crap while chewing the nails on my chipped-polish hands. Annie sits down next to me, groaning. Her silence is a big fat yes. Why is everything so rotten so true?

“How bad…?” Me.

She says I don’t want to know. FUCK HER!

“HOW BAD? HOW BAD? HOW BAD? I need to know!” Nothing.

I stand up and pace and pull at the skin on my ever-evaporating hand. “ANNIE! WILL IT COVER THE ADVANCE? WILL THE LABEL DROP ME? AM I A FAILURE? IS THIS A FLOP?!” I sigh and force down my insanity and pain. The mouse is coming back; I need a drink. I light another cigarette. Annie’s hair is long and down and flowey. Her manicure is always perfectly together. All her phones and things are buzzing like crazy, making me even more crazy. Annie grabs her Blackberry – fingers punching so fast like this is the only way she can react. They are like a sewing machine, fast and furious, trying to stitch together whatever is left of my career. XANAX. I need Xanax… Where are they? I purse dig for the gold that makes my holes grow. I pop a pill and try not to cry. I wish I could lay in Jack’s arms.

“Annie, Annie, what can I do to fix it….” And I’m growing smaller and smaller as she breaks it down for me
–blah blah blah
– the fans think it’s too soft, and I need a hit song with edge. More edge. Less whine. Harder. Stronger.
Blah, blah, blah
. Fuck edge. I need an edge of a blade to my arm… or even better, my throat. I see the blades tearing apart my songs and my soul like a stuffed animal in the mouths of two Rottweilers, shaking their heads violently for the kill. My stuffings, my insides, fall everywhere and get blown away in the wind.

Her phone is buzzing non-stop. She’s punching away. I go to the mini-bar. Mini-vodkas save the day. I dated this one Russian boy; he told me whenever he got a cold or a flu he would drink tons of vodka and he would be cured. Annie: “The label guy is relentless. Wow. Want me to book a massage for you? I’m getting one for myself.” Fuck no. Shit. Not after last night.

I’m spinning, spinning away in a washing machine filled with water that drains out to the sewer, then to the toxic sea
. I need something real, something concrete, something outside of me. I need to change my view and discard whatever I don’t like about me in the woods. “Annie, hike with me.”

Her eyes don’t lift off her phone: “I don’t do nature; you know that; I gotta deal with this stuff. The driver will hike with you, okay? I’m texting him. Be back by five; we’re leaving for the theatre at six.” Annie walks toward the door: ‘And while you’re out there hugging trees, write a great song! I just closed on a condo.” Fuck her. I’m her fucking career. I made her rich.

I open the door for her so that she knows to leave now.

Pace, pace, pace. I pour raw sugar packets in my mouth – rip them open and down them. Fuck. I better write. I try. I really try. I pull my poetry book out.

Enzo. Enzo is so fucking hot. But I know it’s a pattern. I’m trying to solve the pain of running from one boy by running towards another. I’m just filling the void. I need to write a hit.

meet me in the backroom

take off all your clothes

tell me all your secrets

    then oh, oh, oh

I’ve got a sickness

only you can quell ( /cure )

  meet me in the back room

    then oh, oh, oh

I pick up the guitar and try to sing it. It’s fucking
awful
. I sound fucking awful, so incomplete. I try to make up a line while strumming.
I’ve got a sickness
– Fuck. I’m nothing. Hayley is fucking nothing. I need Xanax. I need boys. I need something to fill this ever growing void. Enzo. Can’t you just sweep me away? No, not Enzo. Fuck it. I’m such a whore in my heart. I throw the guitar on the bed:
BRANG!
Xanax down. When you don’t have a magic wand, this will have to fucking do!

I need a big fucking change and NOW! I don’t need months of waiting to cure myself. I open the window – fuck, the sun is bright. I rip open another sugar packet – rip open my soul – and down the sugar. I down it, mother-fucker. Shit – this shit is going to make me fat, and all I have left right now are my looks. Nobody wants what’s in my heart or soul, and nobody wants my art or my words. Sit-ups. Lots of sit-ups.
1 – 2 – 3:
Crunch harder, Hayley… Come one! Get fitter. Get prettier. Up. Down. Up. No, I need to write a song…

Alright, the guitar is in my hand. HIT, COME OUT NOW!
La, la, la
. Strum. Nothing. Fucking nothing is coming. FUCK you JACK for leaving me here. Mini bar. RedBull vodka – check!

Hiking boots. I lace them up, brown knots in my fingers. I’m all tied up in the craze of my head. Suitcase. Sports bottle. I fill it with tap water like the good ol’ bad south Texas days. No matter how shitty childhood was, it doesn’t compare to this; at least then I had Jack.

Bang
. I’m out the fucking door.

Out, out, and more out.

Hayley is fucking out!

49

I storm down the hotel hallway, an ugly, paisley, 70’s carpet under my stomping, hiking boots. I’m almost at the elevator. No one is here but me. I double and triple check –
KREEEEEEOOOOOOOOHHH… KAWAWAWAWAWAHHHHH!

Huh? Is that Enzo’s guitar? Oh, oh, oh. Such twisted and beautiful sounds. Room 1477. It’s cracked open. Enzo’s back is to the door, open leather vest, tight black jeans, and no shirt. He’s a tall, alien king. Uh, my heart is sinking into the stinks of desire. Ugh. But Carter. What can I say? He was the love of my life until you came along…?

His hand slides up the neck in a sinking speed and bends – soars – into the high note; it moans. His room in so neat, so perfect. We are yin and yang, Enzo and me. I want those fingers to play me. You’re the type of boy I could really lose myself to. You’re the type of boy that could break my heart, the type of boy that breaks a girl like me. I know this more than I’ve ever known anything. We would be bad so bad for each other if I –

The music stops.

He turns and stares at me as if he knew I’d come, as if he left his door open on purpose to lure me over. I must break this moment before I crawl into his bed.

“Come with me.” Me.

Limo ride.

I look behind us – stare behind us – so I don’t stare at him. There’s a strange, purple low-rider following, making every turn that we do. I don’t want to seem fucking paranoid,
but I AM FUCKING PARANOID
. Is that the fan? I mean, who the fuck drives lowriders in Austin? I can’t take my eyes off the road behind us. White lines lead from under our car to his.

We stop; that car stops. We go; he goes. We get on the freeway, and he fucking pulls into a Mcdonalds. Ok, Hayley, you need to chill the fuck out.

The limo driver drops us at the bottom of the River Place trail. Trees. A car pulls in behind us, but it doesn’t look weird. Enzo steps out, and I notice a sharp Bowie knife dangling from his belt. We get out, his electric guitar strapped to his back, and his hand brushes mine.

A couple in the full-on lesbo Patagonia outfits pass us and scoff, “guyliner in a forest?” Enzo shakes his head. I feel bad for him. Me: “I wasn’t into the whole hiking thing till Carter.” Ugh, Carter. What am I doing? I look all around. I don’t see any creepy fans. Ok.

Enzo: “You guys go on a lot of hikes, like a family thing?” I can hear he’s jealous of Carter, and this makes me sad and ecstatic and guilty…

Me: “Um, well I didn’t want a family yet; the whole thing was an accident. I mean, I just met him, and…”

The trail gets steeper, full of flowers and wild grasses and turtles.

“Well, he had a kid already with another lady – he kinda fucked-up – so he wanted to step up, and I was really into how nice he was and hot and all that, but I…”

Rocks under my feet. Rocks in my gut.
Hummingbird heart
. I mean, that’s only partially true. I really needed somebody to save me from myself, and I was turning into something I didn’t like. He did save me – from me.

“He sounds pretty noble.” Enzo. I love his voice. So mysterious. Enzo is my drug of choice.

He steps ahead. I want to kiss him. His shoulders are so strong but on a small delicate frame. I could stare at him all day or forever. I want to know him at his core, to understand what lies beneath his beauty. I want him to tell me EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING. Tell me. Tell me. Tell me, oh, tell me you’re broken like me. Tell me there’s too much sadness that you can’t understand and inside everything’s a mess. Oh, what’s wrong with me? Stop thinking like this, Hayley. But I want to crawl around his insides and fix his broken light bulbs.

Enzo: “Dad was super alpha male and tried to beat the weirdness out of me. Wanted a jock, you know, a real man.”

“My parents were far from saints…” Me.

And boy, do I know about not living up to expectations. Jack’s. Annie’s. I’m forever letting Carter down, and now apparently my fans.

Enzo grabs a long, sharp stick and car-freeway-speed slams it against the trunk of the tree. Bark flies. I step back. Such aggression.

Me: “Did your mom or siblings get you?”

He pulls the stick back again, his hand clenched in the fury of lost youth, and it blurs forward as he slams it again, knocking bark off flying everywhere. “NOPE! Not my fucking sister. She was a daddy’s girl and he gave her EVERYTHING she wanted. And I mean
EVERYTHING
. Dance classes, private vocal coach, any clothes she dreamed up. She was nothing like your brother. At least you guys had each other. You were a team.”

He makes the stick still. His hands are trembling, so it shakes just a little.

“Yeah, we were.” Me.

His stick drops – my heart drops. I want to hold him.

“I envied you guys.” Enzo.

“Yeah, we had it bad, but at least we had us… What about your mom?” He wipes away some tears mixed with dirt on his face. “She was my guardian angel. When Dad would lock me in the basement, she’d bring me food and a guitar and an old laptop she bought. As bad as he was – was as good as she was.” He looks lighter.

“Well maybe your dad is proud of you now playing with a big famous band… hehe?” Me. This apparently was the wrong thing to say. His face went from sun to storm again, dark clouds looming in his eyes ready to strike.

“He died in a car accident – went over a ridge. Flames and all…” It hurts me to see him so down. I touch his arm. Enzo looks torn and won’t look at me.
I want to save you, and I want you to save me.

“Let’s go this way,” Enzo says -- straight like nothing just happened with all the red-velvet-curtain-up revealing of the darkness that secretly consumes us. I follow him; the path he’s taking me isn’t even a real path; it’s rocks and gnarled-up trees, disappointed broken dried-up flowers and leaves. It’s darker here and a little scary. I slip on a rock and all of a sudden –

CRRRRR RR RRRKKKKKKK
– rocks drop down from above, rolling towards us!

Enzo jerks me out of the way and looks up to see what’s there and yells, “WHO THE FUCK IS THERE?!” Does he see somebody? Maybe it’s the weird fan following us. I saw a car pull up behind us in the parking lot… Didn’t I?

Enzo whips out his knife, one arm holding me back: “Mother-fucker just you try. I’ll FUCK you UP!
I’m FROM THE STREETS!”
He’s shaking in fury, and his face is contorted like evil-demon-circus-freak contorted, like a witch swallowed his face and possessed him to be a serpent. His jaws are dropped, ready to kill. And it’s making me feel sick and weird – I mean, weirder than usual. I don’t know who to be
more
scared of: what’s up there or what’s inside of Enzo.

I look up again. I see bushes – large bushes – and leaves and rocks and… come on, what’s up there? AH! Antlers brush past the top of a bush. It’s just a big buck deer. “Hey city slicker… You see that? It’s a harmless animal.” He puts his knife away, and his voice and face instant-coffee switches back to cool and calm and collected. “Ya never know. maybe it’s a zombie deer.” He laughs.
Haha
.

We are next to a clearing near a stream. I’m fucking tired. Booze and the all-holy X has made me weak. We sit. I pull out my Jack flask of Jack and the sandwich Annie left me and give it to him. He’s a shadow – a perfect shadow.