The Gift (8 page)

The band felt like things were going very well. There
were plenty of steady gigs locally, and they had a short tour coming up in the
Northeast in September. They felt creative, productive and positive about their
future.

One afternoon, Zak answered the phone and it was a club
owner from Nashville.  He told Zak that he had played their tape for Tucker
Travis, a friend of his who was a popular country star. Tucker had liked
Maggie’s voice and was hoping that she might consider singing as a backup
vocalist with his band for a short tour. Zak said he would mention it to Maggie
and she would get back to him. Zak didn’t like the idea however. He didn’t want
Maggie to tour without him and he felt that she should focus on the Bayou
Blasters as it looked like things were starting to take off for them.

Later that evening, Zak brought up the subject with
Maggie. He tried to seem noncommittal, but wasn’t happy when Maggie said she
wanted to take the job. She felt they could use the money, and she could
arrange the two tours so that they didn’t conflict. Tucker would be out on the
road for the month of June, so she didn’t think that it would impact the Bayou
Blasters too much. They could continue their regular gigs in Louisiana and they
could leave for their tour in the Northeast when she got back

Zak was unhappy about Maggie leaving to go on tour. They
hadn’t been apart for more than a day since they had first met, and he would
miss her incredibly. But Maggie ignored his objections. She really needed the
money, and singing with Tucker might be an opportunity for her to get some
exposure as a singer. Zak finally agreed that she could go. He would try to
meet up with her occasionally when the tour came south, otherwise they would
have to be content with calling each other every day.

.

Chapter 10

Maggie found the tour grueling. They played a
different city every night and the days were spent pounding the roads in a tour
bus. If the idea of the tour had seemed glamorous initially, the reality was
completely different. She was more exhausted than she thought possible and
excruciatingly lonely. She missed Zak and realized that she would never be able
to live without being with him every day. The couple times that he had met her
in cities like Memphis and Atlanta, just made it worse. She found it almost
impossible to leave him to return to the tour.

So, Maggie was exuberant when Tucker was forced to
cancel the last week of the tour due to an intractable case of laryngitis. She
decided to fly home immediately without telling Zak, thinking he would be
pleasantly surprised.

She flew into New Orleans, rented a car and drove up the
I-10 to their house. She could barely wait to get home and see Zak. As she
turned the last bend down the road to the house, she saw that the Lincoln wasn’t in the driveway, instead there was another car and it looked like
Jacqueline’s brown Chevette. Maggie slammed on the brakes and the wheels of her
car squealed loudly as they spun in the gravel. Maggie got out of the car, her
heart racing, her stomach starting to feel queasy. She stomped up the back
steps to the kitchen, walked in the open door and went right back to the
bedroom that she shared with Zak. She flung open the door to see Zak sliding on
his jeans hurriedly while Jacqueline stretched out languidly on the bed,
completely naked. Jacqueline had a look of triumph on her face. Zak was having
trouble getting his pants on, Maggie could tell that he was drunk. She looked
on the table and saw a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels and a small mirror
with the remnants of some lines of coke.

Maggie was shocked. She stood completely still for a
moment as she took in the scene, and then she started screaming at Zak.

“What the hell are you doing? Jackie told me that you
couldn’t be trusted and I guess she was right. I want the both of you to get
out right now.”

She fled the bedroom and went into the kitchen, sobbing
uncontrollably. Her face was red and distorted with rage. Zak followed her and
tried to tell her that he was sorry, but she wouldn’t listen to him. She just
kept screaming for him to get out. He tried to put his arms around her, but she
shook him off. Suddenly she opened the door to the hutch and started throwing
the new dishes at Zak one by one. They crashed against the wall and on the
floor forcing Zak to retreat back into the bedroom.

When Maggie ran out of ammunition, Zak reappeared
pushing a now dressed Jacqueline out the back door. Zak tried to appease Maggie
again, but she said  “Get the hell out of this house or I will kill you.”

Zak could tell by the look in her hard, glittering eyes
that she meant what she said. He told her again that he was sorry, and then he
got into the driver’s side of Jacqueline’s car and screeched out of the driveway.
When Justin came home half an hour later, Maggie was crying in the living room.
He saw the broken dishes on the floor of the kitchen and realized that
something terrible had happened. He sat down next to her on the couch and held
her close to him while she sobbed on his chest. He kissed her hair and tried to
soothe her, but she was having a hard time getting herself under control.

Suddenly the phone rang, and Justin let go of Maggie for
a moment so that he could answer it. It was Zak. He tried to explain to Justin
what had occurred but Justin had trouble understanding him because he was
slurring his words. Zak told Justin that he wanted to talk to Maggie, but she
refused, only sobbing even louder. Justin recommended that Zak try again after
Maggie calmed down, and then he hung up the phone and went back to holding
Maggie.

Eventually her crying diminished, she seemed to have run
out of tears. Maggie’s eyes were swollen and red and her face was blotchy.
Justin thought that he had never seen her look so unattractive. He realized
that she was in extreme pain though, so he opened a bottle of white wine and
poured her a glass. Then he sat with his arms around her while she slowly
sipped her wine like it was a bitter medicine. She started to quiet down, so Justin
decided to roll a joint. He thought that maybe she needed to reach a state of
total numbness because she couldn’t seem to handle what had happened in a state
of sobriety. Maggie smoked a large joint with him and then snuggled up against
him. Justin started stroking her arms and whispered reassurances into her ear.

Maggie was extremely stoned and drunk and then she
suddenly asked Justin if he had any coke. He asked her if she was sure, but she
said yes, so he went into his bedroom and got a small vial. He laid out a
couple of lines on a small plate and then handed her a rolled up dollar bill.
She snorted some and then lay down with her head in Justin’s lap. She was
completely wasted and liked it because it erased the thought of Zak and
Jacqueline lying together naked in her bed. Maggie and Justin finished the
bottle of wine and then opened another one.

“I’m so sorry, Maggie,” Justin said. “I don’t know what
Zak was thinking. Jackie has been after him for months trying to get back
together with him. I know that Zak would never have slept with her if he hadn’t
been drunk and doing coke. Zak loves you, Maggie. He would never want to hurt
you.”

This made Maggie cry again. Justin couldn’t bear to hear
this, so he put his arms even more tightly around Maggie and started to kiss
her gently. Next thing he knew, Maggie was kissing him back. She was so sad,
and needed some kind of love and reassurance. Justin had always been a little
bit in love with Maggie. He would have gone after her that first night in New Orleans if Zak hadn’t beaten him to it. It had been driving him crazy all these months,
listening to Zak and Maggie make love in the little house. He had often wished
that it was him, that was one reason he had been thinking about moving out. So
when Maggie started kissing him, Justin couldn’t resist any longer. He helped
her undo her pants, and then he undid his and then he made love to her very
gently on the living room couch.

Afterwards, he covered Maggie with a blanket and held
her while she slept. She looked so sad and vulnerable lying in his arms, it
almost broke his heart. Justin started feeling tremendous guilt for having
betrayed his friend Zak. He knew that Zak would never have slept with
Jacqueline of his own conscious volition. She had undoubtedly gotten him drunk
and high and then seduced him. He didn’t really blame Zak, especially now that
he and Maggie were also proof of what could happen when inhibitions were
lowered due to alcohol and drugs. He lay awake for some time overwhelmed with
remorse until he finally drifted off into an uneasy sleep.

Maggie and Justin woke up the next morning feeling hung
over and depressed. They both regretted their behavior from the night before,
but also understood why they had ended up making love. Maggie had needed Justin
to comfort her and so he had. She asked him to never mention it to Zak which he
agreed was a good idea. He knew if he told Zak that he had slept with Maggie
then they could never be friends again. Maggie asked Justin if he could still
be her friend, and he said “Yes of course, we’ll just forget that last night
ever happened.”

Maggie was feeling sick to her stomach from the wine
from the previous night, so Justin made her some dry toast. He encouraged her
to drink a lot of water because he knew she was dehydrated.

Suddenly the phone rang. Justin got up from the table to
answer it. It was Zak’s brother Caleb. He was calling to tell Justin and Maggie
that Zak had been in a car accident and was in the hospital. He had tried to
drive back to talk to Maggie after dropping Jacqueline off at her apartment,
but was still too drunk and high to negotiate a corner. He had slammed the
Chevette into a tree and was lucky to be alive. Zak was unconscious, but had
come to briefly and asked for Maggie. Caleb asked Justin if he would drive her
over to the hospital because Zak had insisted that he had to talk to her.

Maggie could tell from Justin’s sober face that the
phone call was extremely serious. Justin put his arms around her and told her
that Zak had been in a car accident and was in the hospital asking for her.
Maggie burst into tears and started shaking. Justin picked up her handbag and
took her hand and led her out to the Lincoln. Inside the car, he squeezed her
hand reassuringly and told her that Zak was going to be all right. He said that
they needed to do everything they could to help him recover.

When they got to the hospital, Caleb, and Zak’s mother were
there. They were relieved to see Maggie and Justin. Zak had been agitated the
night before and had insisted on seeing Maggie. The nurse told them that Maggie
could go in to see Zak but only for a couple minutes.  Maggie went into the
small room and was terrified to see Zak’s inert body in the hospital bed. His
face was white and he had a large bandage wrapped around his head. The seatbelt
in the Chevette had broken from the impact of the crash, and Zak had hit his
head on the windshield. His left leg was in a cast and was elevated in some
sort of sling.

Maggie thought that he was unconscious. She stood next to
the bed and reached out and took Zak’s hand. She held it for about half an
hour, stroking it gently. Then she started to sing quietly to Zak, a Townes Van
Zandt song that they had been working on together as a duet in the studio.

 “If I needed you, would you come to me

Would you come to me, for to ease my pain,

If you needed me, I would come to you.

I would swim the seas for to ease your pain.”

Zak stirred and then slowly opened his eyes.

“Maggie” he murmured. He winced in pain at the effort to
talk.

“Maggie, I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.”

 “Zak, you need to rest now. I love you,” she said.

 Zak smiled slightly and then fell back asleep. Maggie
couldn’t tell him that she would never forgive him for sleeping with
Jacqueline. And she wasn’t sure that if he knew about her and Justin that he
would forgive her either.

Maggie went back out into the waiting room and after
talking briefly to Zak’s mother and brother, asked Justin to take her home.
Justin thought she wanted to go back to the bungalow so he took her there, but
Maggie had meant she wanted to go home to Boston. She was completely
overwhelmed, and needed to get away to think.

She didn’t want to stay at the bungalow because
everything there reminded her of what had happened. She especially couldn’t
bear to go into Zak’s bedroom, so she spent the next couple nights sleeping on
the couch. The dog Chère sensed that something was wrong and tried to comfort
her. She would lie on the floor next to Maggie, but the dog would keep getting
up and whine and pace restlessly, looking for Zak. Maggie didn’t think she
would be able to continue to live in the house, the memories were just too
disturbing. She stayed a couple more days to make sure that Zak was going to be
o.k., but then insisted that Justin take her to the airport so she could fly
back to Boston.

They stopped at the hospital on their way to the airport
in New Orleans. Maggie needed to say goodbye to Zak. She sat on Zak’s bed and
held his hand.

“Zak,” she began hesitantly. “I’ve decided that I’m going
to go home to Boston.”

“Are you coming back?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“Maggie, please forgive me. I love you so much,” Zak
started to cry. “I’ll give you some time to figure things out, but then I’m
going to come bring you home.”

Tears spilled from Maggie’s eyes and she found that she
was too choked up to talk. She kissed Zak and whispered “I love you.” Then she
quickly walked out of his room and left the hospital. Justin drove her to the
airport and walked with her to the terminal. As he watched her board the plane,
he wondered if he would ever see her again. Maggie looked out the window as the
plane took off. Tears filled her eyes as she wondered whether she would ever be
back.