Rock All Night

98




I awoke in a grimy hotel room with the worst hangover I’d ever had, to the sound of my cell phone blaring loud as a trumpet.

At first I didn’t know where the hell I was. Grey light was filtering through an open window. I was lying on a lumpy queen-sized bed with stained, threadbare sheets. The yellowed wallpaper was peeling off here and there in strips, and the furniture was so shabby that I doubt even Goodwill would have wanted it.

The previous night came back in a blur. Shots… lots of shots… lesbian bar… dancing…

…Riley…

…unfamiliar hotel room…

I looked over in panic. There was a person-sized, rumpled spot next to me – but no Riley.

Next I looked down, checking my clothes – but I was fully dressed, with everything on but my boots. Jeans, blouse, jacket. My underwear seemed untouched: no funky bunching of my bra, no uncomfortably skewed panties.

My phone was still blaring like the 1812 Overture, though.

I leaned over the bed, half-blind and nauseated, and fumbled in my purse for my phone. When I hit the ‘Answer’ button and spoke, my froggy, one-octave-deeper-than-normal voice took me by surprise.

“…hello…?”

“Kaitlyn – are you okay?!”

Derek.

I squinted around the empty room. “…I… think so…”

“Jesus, you scared the shit out of me when you didn’t come home.”

Awwwww… he cared.

I felt a tiny bit better – which meant I felt like I might die in thirty minutes instead of the next five.

“…I was out drinking with Riley…”

“I know. Why does your voice sound so weird?”

I tried to think of an answer, but the easiest was the one I’d just given.

“…I was out drinking with Riley.”

“Okay, stupid question. You sure you’re alright?”

“…I’m alive,” I croaked.

He laughed. “That’s something, I guess. If you survived a night out with Riley, count yourself lucky. Where is she?”

I looked around the room, then slowly got to my feet and wobbled over to look into the dingy, horrifying bathroom. Nobody was there.

“…I don’t know…”

Derek’s voice became angry. “She better not have ditched you, or I’m going to f*cking KILL her – ”

I winced. “…not so loud…”

“Sorry. Do you need me to come get you?”

And this was the guy Riley had said was an a*shole. Pfff. What the hell did she know.

“…I… maybe…?”

Then, from outside the room, there was a familiar laugh.

“…uh… let me call you back…” I mumbled.

“Okay, talk to you – ”

I didn’t realize until he reprimanded me later, but I hung up on him.

Then I stumbled to the door and opened it.

Outside was nearly as grim as inside.

It was some cheap, by-the-hour motel, the type prostitutes use for tricks on TV cop shows. The parking lot was mostly empty except for a few battered junkers, a dozen withered, used condoms, and a shitload of cigarette butts and broken crack vials. The main office was way on the other end of the building. The metal bars over its windows made it look like a prison, and the second ‘A’ in its neon ‘Vacancy’ sign was burned out.

Riley was standing on the patio walkway outside our motel room with a cigarette, blowing smoke into the misty Seattle morning. She was wearing her thrift shop parka from the night before as protection from the chill in the air. She held a cell-phone to her ear, and her crumpled Mohawk jutted out over it like a protective shelter.

“…yeah, that’s awesome… I’m really proud of you… I knew you could do it.”

She heard the door open, looked around at me, and raised one finger in a hold on kind of way. Then she turned back to the conversation.

“What, are you f*ckin’ kidding me? Of course I don’t mind. Bitch, please, I got so much cash laying around I don’t know what the f*ck to do with it. No, it’s totally cool. Just think of it as payback for all those years you took care of me. Yeah. No, it’s cool. I’ll get Ryan to handle it for me right away. It might take a day or two, but I’ll get it to you. Yeah. Okay. No, don’t even worry about it. I gotta go – I’ll talk to you later. Yeah… you too. Congratulations again.”

When she hung up the phone, she was smiling bigger than I’d ever seen before.

I can’t say I shared her elation.

“Jesus, Blondie, you look like you got plowed over by a steamroller.”

I glared at her. “…thanks.”

“And you sound like you gargled a razor blade.”

“…yeah. Thanks for that, too.”

“No problem.”

“…how can you not have a hangover? You drank, like, four times as much as I did… and I’m gonna die any second now.”

“Oh, I got a hangover. I just don’t wear it as bad as you.”

“…great.” I looked around. “Where are we?”

“Oh. Yeah, you were pretty trashed, and it was pretty f*ckin’ late, so I just got us a place around the corner.”

My skin crawled as I looked back into the room at the faded stains on the bed sheets. “…I hope I didn’t catch anything…”

“Give me a f*ckin’ break, Blondie. Don’t be such a p-ssy. This place is better than half the places I grew up in.”

That gave me a whole new appreciation for certain aspects of our conversation last night.

At least you were fully clothed while you slept, I reminded myself.

Too bad you weren’t wearing a hoodie.

I wanted to ask her about her phone conversation, but this was the second time I’d unintentionally eavesdropped on her.

However, as I stood there in a world of pain and heebie-jeebies – all thanks to Riley and her Night of a Thousand Shots – I decided I didn’t give a f*ck about feeling guilty.

“…who was that on the phone?”

“Hm? Oh.” Her earlier smile came back full-force. “That was my sister.”

“…Megan?”

“Mm-hm. She just found out she got into med school. Georgetown.”

My eyes opened a couple of millimeters wider – which, for me at that moment, was practically bug-eyed. “…holy shit… that’s awesome, Riley…”

She absolutely could not have looked prouder. “I know – isn’t it?”

“…sorry to be so personal” (no I wasn’t) “but… did I hear you’re gonna pay for it?”

“F*ck yeah. Once the band took off, I made sure she didn’t have to work anymore so she could go to school fulltime. She transferred to NYU, graduated with a 3.9. I paid for that, too.” She nodded slowly, somberly, but the smile on her face was pure joy. “She’s gonna be a doctor. She’s gonna be somebody important.”


At first I smiled with her, because she seemed so damn happy.

But something in what she’d said sounded… off.

“Riley… you know you’re important too, right?”

Her smile faded, and she looked away as she took a drag on her cigarette. Shrugged. “I’m just some chick in a band, that’s all.”

I couldn’t believe my ears.

“Riley, you’re a female drummer in the biggest band in the world. You’re one of the most famous women musicians alive, doing a job normally only men do – and you’re better than all of them. And you’re doing it without shaking your ass, or wearing skimpy little costumes onstage – you’re doing it your way. There are millions of little girls who’re watching what you’re doing… and they know that if you can do it your way, they can do it their way, too. That’s important.”

She stared off into the distance with a sad, resigned look on her face. For a second I saw her the way she must have appeared to her foster sister so many years ago: a tiny child with delicate features, alone and lonely in the world.

“Nobody’s ever gonna remember me,” she murmured.

“What are you talking about?! Of course they are!”

She shook her head slowly, never taking her eyes off the horizon. “They only remember the ones who die. John Bonham… Keith Moon…”

Her words sent a shiver down my spine.

They only remember the ones who die.

We had just officially crossed over into a Very Dark Place.

But I didn’t want to go there. I didn’t want to ask her about that. I couldn’t. Not now. Not the way I was feeling, like my insides were about to come up any second.

So I struggled to think of another famous drummer everybody knew. “What about – what about Ringo Starr?”

She finally gave me a look, and it was a withering one. “Okay, number one, not one of the greatest drummers of all time. Number two, he’s a f*ckin’ Beatle, Blondie. Of course everybody’s gonna f*ckin’ remember him. Jesus.”

“Well, then… just get as big as the Beatles,” I joked.

She snorted. “Yeah, right.”

But the old Riley was back. The dark spell was broken.

…I thought.

But there was one more moment of melancholy as she flicked her cigarette over the railing and into the empty parking lot. She watched it spark briefly on the pavement, then roll and die away.

When she spoke, she did it without looking at me again.

“C’mon, Blondie, I’m starving. Let’s go get some breakfast.”

We had eggs and bacon at a nearby greasy spoon. She was somber and pensive the entire time. I tried to get her talking about her past, the way we had last night, but she wouldn’t go there again.

The interview was over.