The Heart Rate of a Mouse [Prologue]
I should never be trusted to drive a vehicle of any kind; not because I am a lousy driver, but because I tighten my grip of the wheel with every passing truck. I look in the newspaper every day for that one headline of a car crash where they simply don’t know what happened. Maybe the driver lost control of the car. Suffered a seizure. Was trying to dodge a child running across the street. Something to explain why his car and insides ended up painting the front of a Canadian frozen goods truck on its way from Montreal to Detroit.
I drove from Portland to Los Angeles once. It was a pleasant trip, heading south, the air getting warmer and the people more tanned. It took me four days to drive because I kept getting distracted and took a small detour in Nevada where I got drunk as hell with a guy who had worked as a circus clown all of his life. We were exactly alike, me and him. It’s easy to distract me because I never know what I should be paying attention to. Is it a new guitar model, the glimpse of something better and more dignified, a pair of brown eyes that always amplified the smile on perfectly shaped lips? During my West Coast road trip, I lost count of the times I saw an oncoming car and considered twisting the wheel to the left. Crash. Bang. Smoke.
I don’t know if anyone else has these thoughts when they drive. I’ve never asked. When I crashed the tour bus back in ’74, I found myself wondering if it was on purpose or not. I didn’t mean to do it, but maybe I subconsciously wanted to.
For a while, we thought Joe would never walk again.
Now I’m driving in a Chevy rental, navigating from O’Hare to an address scribbled on a napkin in messy handwriting that isn’t mine. The car is brown, a light brown that resembles baby shit. It was the only one they had left. The wipers make a wheezing sound as they try to battle away the heavy, wet snowfall.
“Are you nervous?”
I don’t bother looking at the kid on the passenger seat. “No.”
“Brent said,” he begins, launching into yet another lie someone has said about me. People love to talk and talk and talk about me, “that, during Jackie, you were so nervous that you got drunk before every show.”
“He flatters me,” I note, annoyed that this one isn’t a lie at all – the only way I could deal with the pressure of a ten thousand-headed crowd was alcohol. Thanks, Brent, that one will make me look good. No. It will make me look like a victim. Maybe that’s a good thing.
“He also said that it got better during the second leg. You drank less, were more focused. You know, after you met him,” he points out obnoxiously. I resist the urge to steer the car off the road just to shut him up, and when he takes in his dying breath, mouthing an anguished ‘Why?’, I’ll tell him why: because he couldn’t hold his damn tongue. The white snow turns an ugly shade of traffic fume black when it hits the ground, making the surface of the road slippery, but I keep us on the road for now. “Now Gabe. He said that you were never nervous during the Pearl tour. I suppose you changed.”
“You love the sound of your own voice, huh?”
“Yup,” he beams, light brown locks falling in front of his enthusiastic eyes. He has got a young, good-natured face he tries to mature with stubble, but it’s still irrevocably made childlike by the bright energy that’s always there in his words and actions. He’s got slightly hollow cheeks and narrow line-like lips, and a forehead just a fraction tall enough to look like a mismatch. I concentrate on driving, and he falls silent for a while. When he speaks, he sounds troubled. “What if he’s forgotten? Or what if he’s still mad at you?”
“What if I’m still mad at him?”
“You’re not,” he says knowingly. I hate it when he’s right. The snowfall is slowing down, and I shift in my seat uncomfortably and feel the seatbelt scraping the side of my neck. “I’m nervous for you,” he concludes, the excitement now back. I don’t need his nerves, support or shoulder to cry on. He has no idea how much his enthusiasm wears me out. He looks at the map in his lap. “Take the next left,” he commands, and I change lanes. “You know, I wonder what he’s like. I’ve heard so much about him. It’s slightly surreal to meet a stranger that you’ve pictured naked a dozen times. Well, actually, I found this one picture in your house where he was in the nude, so –”
I pull up to the curb, coming to a fast stop. He tenses up, eyes wild as he looks around. “What are you doing?”
“I’ve told you not to touch my fucking stuff,” I say again. Again. The nosy little bastard. “Here, your stop,” I tell him and point out of his window to a shop door that has green, cursive letters: C-A-F-É. “Go get yourself coffee.” Like he needs to be more hyper.
His mouth drops open dramatically. “I’m coming with you!”
I grit my teeth and smile. “No, you’re not.” I glare at him, and he glares back. “Out, Sisky! Out!”
Sisky throws his hands up into the air. “You’re seriously not letting me witness the reunion that would make Romeo and Juliet seem like –”
“There was no reunion for those two – they died.”
“Oh.” Sisky pulls on his bottom lip uncertainly, but recovers quickly. “I never finished the movie, truth be told. They spoke English in such a weird way.”
I unbuckle myself and get out of the car. Chicago is cold, snowflakes landing on my black coat and melting into it. I round the Chevy and open Sisky’s door.
“Okay, okay!” the kid shouts, lifting up his hands. “I’m out! See! Look at how out I am!” He scrunches his nose at the cold, looking more comic than hurt as he shoots me a nasty look.
“I’ll come get you later,” I promise.
“If you don’t, I know where he lives!” He has taken out his black leather notebook and is scribbling in it furiously, completely ignoring the sleet.
I stop at my open door and give him a disbelieving look. “Don’t take notes now.”
“As the infamous Ryan Ross nervously re-entered the car, dumping his devoted and loyal companion by the side of the road like yet another groupie he had loved then abandoned like an unwanted kitten –”
I don’t hear the rest as the door slams shut and I take off. Sisky’s reflection sulks into the café in the rear-view mirror, and I glance at the map on his now empty seat. It doesn’t take me long to get where I’m going.
The car on the driveway is black and classy, this year’s model, a ‘79. It’s much more tasteful than what I park in front of the house, and for a wild moment, I hope none of the Chicagoans living on Brendon’s street notice the has-been rock star arriving in such a tacky excuse of four tyres and a wheel. If it is Brendon’s house, which I have my doubts about. A young man with a guitar case is coming down the street, and I wait for him to pass. It’s paranoia to fear he’d recognise me, but I never did know what to say to the fans to begin with.
Music is not about the man behind it, and therefore any interest people have in me is unwarranted. All they need to know, all they should want to know, is already there in the music. And no one ever understood that apart from me. They never –
But I don’t want to think about it anymore.
I take my bag to the door with me. It’s presumptuous, but with the final shows being local, I’m assuming Brendon is staying at home. I shouldn’t assume anything when it comes to him. I learned that the hard way.
The door opens on the fifth ring.
“Ye –”
The rest of Brendon’s sentence fades away as his eyes land on me. Brendon looks a little older, which makes me realise how overdue I am. He has a slightly off look that comes with his line of work, bags under his brown eyes. I would know how that life throws anyone off balance. But if anything, he looks more like a man, more mature. He keeps doing that to me. I don’t mind.
“Heard you’re shacking up in Chicago now,” I explain and state it like a fact I have as much interest in as the heart rate of a mouse, the melting point of silver. None at all.
“Yeah,” he nods tiredly, eyes averting, the cornered prey after an exhausting hunt where he is the deer and I am the wolf. After a long, long time, neither one of us seems to be running. Brendon doesn’t look surprised to see me. I am not a predictable man; he could at least gasp a little. The tiniest bit. Just to amuse me. I’m fucking surprised that I’m here.
“So much for being old friends,” I note and don’t give him a chance to reply. “Invite me in for a beer.”
Brendon shakes his head. “I’m busy.”
Sisky was right. He is still mad.
“I’m busy too, but here I am anyway.”
I stare him down. My stomach curls up now that I am in his presence, but he doesn’t sense it.
Brendon sighs and holds the door open, and I step into the living room, throw my bag onto the couch. Being here, travelling across the country for the one guy, the only guy who ever came out to look at the night sky with me and invent new constellations, and I – Fucking hell. I will stand my ground and act my best to convince myself that it means nothing to me. I lick my lips, remember what he tastes like.
“One beer, but then I have to go,” Brendon mutters and heads for the kitchen, and I stare after him quietly. He slows down and turns back around, a hesitating look on his face. “Are you coming to the show tonight?”
“I was counting on it.”
He looks straight at me, and I am right back there in Ottawa, outside Civic Center where we kissed next to the tour bus that I had not yet smashed. I’m in the cabin up in Bismarck where I handed him some part of me that he politely declined. I’m in San Francisco picking a fight with him, in New York watching him go through records he doesn’t plan on buying as he sneaks glances at me working behind the counter, and then we are on the backroom floor, hoping to god Eric doesn’t come early for his shift. Brendon says, “I can get you a backstage pass.”
“Could you get two? I came with this kid.”
“What kid?” His voice is tense.
“My stalker.”
He makes a disbelieving ‘tut’ with his tongue. “You sure know how to pick your friends.”
“And lovers, though he’s not one of those,” I say calculatedly.
Brendon doesn’t deny that that’s what he was asking. “I can get two.”
“Thanks.”
He points at my bag. “You staying here tonight?”
“Sure,” I shrug. He nods nervously and heads for the kitchen.
I have swerved my car onto his lane, and we have collided yet again.
Crash.
Bang.
Smoke.