(Giant Septic Tank, by the way, is a great name for a band.)
I looked from Johnny, Richie, and Chey back to the cars on Central Avenue. All those people living all those complicated, mysterious, uncertain lives out there, my best friends in here, and I wasn’t sure I knew one group any better than the other. It made me wonder if you can ever really get to know someone.
“So,” Johnny said, wrapping up, “I vote that we sign, but maybe only for six months. If this guy turns out to be a bust, then at least we can have a quick out. This is a big decision, so let’s vote. Richie?”
“I’m in.”
“Chey?”
“Me, too.”
“Harry?”
And there it was, my conundrum.
Was I supposed to tell them that I’d been planning to move on, to give them a chance to replace me in the band, or to maybe rethink their decision? Or was I supposed to abandon the notion of college and refocus my energy and my industry on the only dream I’d ever really had, especially now that it had a better chance of coming true, even if that meant having to deal with the Johnny and Cheyenne Show, in all likelihood, ratcheted up to another level?
My brain was still telling me to leave the Scar Boys, my dad’s voice—“It’s a million-to-one shot that your band can ever make it big”—floating in the air around me. But I still couldn’t bring myself to quit.
See? Once a coward, always a coward. I would go along with it for now and figure it all out when the time was right.
I signed.
PART SIX,
LATE DECEMBER 1986
I used to jog, but the ice cubes kept falling out of my glass.
—David Lee Roth
Choose one word to define each of your bandmates.
CHEYENNE BELLE
For Richie, that’s easy; I’d say rhythm. For Harry, I don’t know. It’s a lot harder because he’s a more complicated guy. Oh, wait, there you go. I’d say complicated.
HARBINGER JONES
One word? I think we’ve already established that I don’t do well with word counts, and one word is like the mother of all word counts. That said, for Cheyenne it would have to be magical, and for Richie, true friend.
Yes, that’s two words. Deal with it.
RICHIE MCGILL
One word for Cheyenne? Feisty, I guess.
For Harry, that’s a snap. Harbinger. I didn’t even know that was a word other than his name until I’d known him for, like, two years, but, holy shit, it fits. Whether his parents just got it right or whether it forced him to be who he is, I have no idea. But, man, that name fits the dude to a T.
CHEYENNE BELLE
The next couple of weeks passed in a blur.
The mental scars from the miscarriage weren’t healing. I kept seeing that baby’s face, a little, miniature Johnny, its eyes always closed, like it was sleeping. I lived in terror that it would wake up and start talking to me.
I started drinking more and more to keep the image away. The more time I spent out of it, the less time I had to think about everything that’d happened.
Hold on, that’s not really right. It’s not like I was drinking and doing other stuff because I knew it would make things better. It was more the other way; that being drunk was the only feeling I liked, or maybe not liked, but that I could deal with.
Thanks to my dad, my house was like a training ground for budding alcoholics. A local liquor store, Mallas Wines and Spirits, delivered a quart of Christian Brothers brandy twice a week. I wonder why they call liquor spirits? Maybe because when you’re drunk all the time you fade away a little, turning into a kind of ghost.
Anyway, it was easy to sneak shots when my dad fell asleep (by which I mean passed out) on the La-Z-Boy. When the bottles started emptying sooner than they used to, he just figured he was drinking more and ordered his brandy more often. And like I said, my mother had a blind spot when it came to my father’s drinking, so she didn’t say a word when the kid from the liquor store started coming three times a week.
I spent a lot of that holiday season fucked up, and no one knew. I got really good at hiding it.
Johnny had called and invited me to Christmas dinner at his house. Even though rehearsals were going well, he still hadn’t apologized for the whole “fuck you” thing, and we still weren’t really talking outside of the band. I think the dinner invitation was him extending an olive branch. While I think I was ready for us to try to get back together, I really didn’t like his parents, and the thought of spending Christmas with them wasn’t my idea of fun. Besides, just like we did every year, the Belle family was going to Rockland County to my aunt Kathy’s house—my dad’s sister—for Christmas dinner. I loved my aunt and really wanted to see her.