A Fistful of Rain Page 14

  “My interpretation is that this is one fucked-up world,” I said.

  “I’m not sure I disagree. The third single off Scandal, what was that one called?”

  “ ‘Lie Life.’ ”

  “Was that written about Tommy?”

  “I was riffing off ‘Lush Life’ by Billy Strayhorn. Van had this idea for a song about this asshole she’d been seeing, he was also a musician in town. So she wanted a breakup song where she could get angry and kick and growl, and I wanted to play with an old standard. That’s all it is.”

  “There’s a lot of death imagery in the song. It’s getting play now, too.”

  “It’s about how this relationship was bleeding her dry,” I said. “The single didn’t do very well.”

  “That may be, but it’s getting play now.”

  “If you tell me the label’s released a Greatest Hits compilation, I may have to kill myself.”

  “Don’t do that.”

  “It was a joke.”

  “It wasn’t funny.”

  The way he said it told me I should just shut up now.

  There was no sign of the police, or the press, or even of Burchett’s people. The lawn beneath the trees had been chewed by footprints, and pockets of mud slopped over the sides of the path. Copies of the last couple issues of the Oregonian were still on my porch, too, but those were the only real indications that I’d been gone. I unlocked the door and switched off the alarm, and Chapel told me he’d talk to me if he had more news later.

  “You’ll be at the funeral?” I asked.

  “I wasn’t planning on it,” he said. “You don’t need me there.”

  That disappointed me for a moment, and then I realized that he’d never known Mikel, and that he really didn’t know me. I wasn’t his friend. I was his client.

  He got back in his Audi and pulled away, and I locked up and looked at the clock, and it wasn’t even a quarter past six. I put on a pot of coffee, cleared my voice mail while it brewed, and drank a cup while smoking a cigarette, feeling oddly empty inside. The sun came up, and from the backyard it looked like the day would be clear and cold. At least it would be beautiful at the cemetery.

  I fixed a bowl of shredded wheat and opened the copy of today’s paper, heading for the funnies. When I finished the comics, I searched out the obituaries, finding them paradoxically at the back of the “Living” section. Chapel must have gotten something to the paper, because there was a notice about Mikel’s passing. It was short, and didn’t really say much about who he had been. There were no details included about where the service would be, or when, and the only connection between my brother and my celebrity was in our last name. I was simply his surviving sister, Miriam.

  I decided I’d read the rest of the paper, too, mostly to see exactly how bad things were looking for me, personally. The story was still on the front page, but now below the fold for only two paragraphs before jumping to the end of the section.

  That’s how I learned that Tommy had been released.

  I wasn’t sure what I could conclude from that, if it meant that the cops didn’t think he’d done it, or they did and just didn’t have enough evidence to charge him. If Chapel had known, he hadn’t bothered to tell me for some reason. If he didn’t know, then calling him would be pointless.

  I could call the cops and ask them, but that seemed to me to be asking for trouble.

  Tommy had been released.

  I realized, with some alarm, that I was relieved. When I looked at the feeling harder, I realized why.

  Tommy hadn’t killed Mikel. It had to have been someone else.

  Fuck if I knew who.

  Upstairs, I went through my closet, looking for something to wear to the funeral. Everything I had in black was inappropriate. Even my dresses, all of them too formal or too ratty or too sexy. There’d been a phase of Tailhook where we’d all gone for the Man in Black look, Van and I in short black skirts and black nylons—Van had gone with garters—and black suit coats and blindingly white blouses, and Click in the complementary suit. I had black jeans, black tanks, black tees, black shoes, black boots, black undies.

  Nothing I could wear to my brother’s funeral.

  So I took my car to the Nordstrom at the Lloyd Center, the mall that got dropped in the Northeast by mistake. It’s an indoor mall, with an ice skating rink at its heart, and I got there just as they were opening the doors, making straight to the east end for my shopping, dodging mall walkers and professional consumers. Fifteen minutes got me three outfits that looked like they would fit, and I thought about trying them on, but shoppers and salespeople had begun to recognize me, and the thought of getting trapped in a dressing room made me want to spit. I got out as fast as I could, was back home only forty-nine minutes after I’d left, and felt that at least I’d managed the shopping successfully.

  I laid out my outfits on my bed, but the silence of the house started to grate on my nerves, so I hit the remote and switched on the television. I was picking out shoes and stockings with no holes when MTV News came on the screen, and Gideon Yago ran down the bullet points, and then he hit the tragedy in Portland.

  I stopped what I was doing and turned to watch him. He said my brother’s name, and my own, and the band’s. He talked about how Tommy had been questioned and then released. A picture of me that I had never seen before came up on the screen behind his head, somewhere sunny, me smiling broadly at the camera.

  He offered me MTV’s deepest condolences.

  I turned the television off, threw the remote across the room.

  The last drink I’d taken had been in the wee hours Friday morning, just before I’d earned myself handcuffs. I’d been dry for over two days.

  This seemed as good a reason as any to break the fast.

  CHAPTER 20

  The service was well attended, if small. Van and Click and Graham were there, and Joan. A handful of other people who had known my brother, including a couple women, one of whom I took to be Avery, his newest. Marcus and Hoffman were there, too, but stayed clear of the crowd, at the back.

  Tommy stayed in the back, wearing a suit that must have come from Goodwill or St. Vincent de Paul. He was there when I arrived, and he tried to speak to me, but I moved away before he could. I had Joan on one arm and Van on the other, and they provided insulation. After that, he kept his distance.

  But not out of sight, and at the grave, when we were finished and moving to the cars, I looked back to see him standing beside where the marker would go. He looked hunched, and I realized he was sobbing.

  Maybe if I hadn’t been so drunk, I’d have gone to him.

  Joan had found Van at my door when she came to get me for the service, and they came in together to discover me upstairs, in a corner of my bedroom, crying hysterically. I’d finished the bottle of Jack when I’d told myself I was only going to have one drink, and I was really worked up because I couldn’t decide which of the three outfits I was going to wear. Van got the shower running and Joan got me undressed, and the two of them cleaned me up under the ice-cold water, washing vomit off my chin and out of my hair. I fought them a little, spitting and yelling.

  “Knock it the fuck off!” Van finally snarled at me. She was in black, not too expensive, not too flashy, and she’d only put on a little bit of makeup. I thought she looked jet-lagged and she was certainly angry. She’d taken the coat off to keep it from getting wet. “Jesus Christ, Mim, it’s your goddamn brother! Couldn’t you just give it a fucking rest?”

  “I hate you,” I told her.

  Together, they got me sober enough to stand, and dressed me. I was back in my head enough to exert some will, and that made it easier on them when I was willing to do what they said, and harder on them when I wasn’t. Once they finally had my clothes in place, Joan sat me on the edge of the bed and held me while Van got my shoes on me, then went back into the bathroom for some makeup. She did my eyes and my lips, and when she was finished, they helped me down the stairs. Van put me in Joan’
s car, got me buckled in, and then went to her Beemer to follow us.

  Joan didn’t look at me once as she drove to the funeral home.

  The service was blurry and went by fast, and there was a guy named Damien who was about Mikel’s age and who gave the eulogy. Mikel had brought him along to a couple of the shows we’d played in town, and he was nice, and he spoke nicely, and he said all of the nice things, and I wondered if maybe he knew about pinhole video cameras and wireless broadband transmission.

  I sat with Joan, and Van, Click, and Graham filled out the rest of our pew. I spent most of the time biting my tongue, trying to keep the drunk from making me soggy. The coffin was open, and Mr. Colby of the Colby Funeral Home had done a good job, because Mikel didn’t look like he had when I’d found him, hurting and scared. He looked like he was faking sleep, that was all.

  When the service finished, Click and Graham joined the pallbearers, and the rest of us followed them out. I walked between Joan and Van, following the coffin, and once it was loaded in the hearse we turned to our vehicles and got a face full of flashbulbs and hot spots mounted on television cameras.

  It must have been every local affiliate, all of them out to catch the show, and there were even a couple out-of-towners trying to make their own coverage. Faces I recognized from television screens and studio interviews dimly remembered, all of them nonetheless strangers.

  Most kept their distance, due in part to the six Portland police officers positioned around the entrance and on the curb. But there was one bitch who launched herself forward with microphone leading, cameraman over her shoulder, looking for the kill.

  “Mim! Mim! Did you know that the Portland PD hasn’t ruled you out as a suspect?”

  I kept my head down, remembering Chapel’s warning, but mostly because I was afraid I’d throw up again.

  The Bitch pressed, “Is it possible your brother’s murder is related to your own drug problems? Or to the pornography of you that’s been released on the Net?”

  Van let go of me, moving to block. “Hey, bugfuck, leave her be or we’ll be planting two bodies at the cemetery.”

  “Excuse me, I’m talking to Mi—”

  Van grabbed the mike from her hand, then used it to hit the end of the cameraman’s rig. There was shouting. The police officers started trying to separate Van and the woman, and Hoffman waded in and put herself between the camera and us.

  “Trouble with that?” Van was shouting. “My friend has no goddamn comment, okay?”

  She threw the microphone overhand into the street, where it bounced off the side of a parked news van. Then she seized my arm so hard it hurt, and helped me again into the Colby Funeral Home’s complimentary limousine, and I was on my way to the cemetery.

  Joan had insisted on holding the reception at her house, and I skirted the fringes, not wanting to mingle with the other mourners. Damien tried to corner me twice, and I retreated farther into the house, trying to find a quiet space to be alone.

  I ended up finding Click, Van, and Graham in Steven’s old music room. Click and Graham had both worn sensible, somber suits, and neither of them looked comfortable or even correct in them. Graham looked like his tie was going to choke him to death, and there was just no way Click could sell mainstream with his tattoos and piercings.

  Steven had collected instruments, a lot of them drums. Most were busted, ones he’d intended to repair. Before we’d signed with the label, he’d even worked over Click’s kit a few times. He had two Ghanaian tribal drums resting next to a mismatched collection of snares, even a steel drum he’d made himself.

  “No Clay, huh?” I asked.

  “He thought it’d be presumptuous,” Click said. “Considering how you barely know him. Offers his deepest sympathies.”

  I nodded, and there was a beat that threatened to become an awkward pause, and then Graham asked, “How you holding up, Mimser? You good? Given the circumstances?”

  “Not so good. I’m sorry about all this press.”

  “Ink is ink. You just got to ride it out. Really sorry about that craptroll at the funeral home.” Graham’s face twisted alarmingly with sudden hatred. “Fucking E!, I hate them, I fucking hate them.”

  “Van shut that down.”

  “I spoke to Fred. He says things don’t look that bad for you.”

  “Depends from where you’re looking.”

  “He’s good at his job, Mimser, he’ll do his best for you. You’ve got to give the man some credit, he’s managed to keep things pretty level on this end.”

  It sounded like he was talking as much about the pictures as Mikel’s murder, but I wasn’t certain. So far, none of them had told me they’d as much as heard about the images, and it added yet another tension, because now I wasn’t certain if I should be embarrassed, or just should anticipate embarrassment.

  “He seems more interested in the fact that Nothing for Free might break the Top Ten,” I said.

  “Ink is ink, like I said. Not to be a total dickwad, but that’s kind of an upside, maybe, for a darkness, huh?”

  I just stared at him. Every sale was more money in the pocket, and if Mikel was now serving to further promote Tailhook, well, there was really no way that Graham or the label could see his death as an entirely bad thing. It was the way it was, and there was nothing to be done about it. For that instant, though, I hated them all so much I wanted to scream their dead hearts to life.

  “That was the first time I’d ever seen your dad,” Van said. “At the service.”

  “Tommy,” I said. “Call him Tommy.”

  “I didn’t know about your mom.”

  “Now everyone does.”

  “I thought I knew just about every one of your dark secrets.”

  “I don’t write about that one.”

  “You will,” she said.

  “No I won’t. I can’t.”

  She shook her head. “Clay’s temp, I’d have you back in a heartbeat. But you’ve got to deal with this thing.”

  I held up my glass. “Mineral water.”

  “Not this morning it wasn’t.”

  I tried to change the subject. “How long you guys back?”

  Van looked annoyed, but Click cut her off. “Couple more days, time to see family and pay bills. Graham figured if we were going to have to cancel one date, might as well cancel three.”

  “Where to next?”

  “Glasgow, then Dublin.”

  “It’ll be cold,” I said. “Bundle up.”

  “Our shit is squared away,” Van said, pointedly. “Look after your own, Miriam.”

  The reception, such as it was, started breaking up before five, and I wandered upstairs as people began to leave, to get away from the platitudes, eventually reaching my old bedroom. Tommy was sitting at my desk, looking out the window. The room faced west, and the sunset was starting to fade, and that was the only light in there.

  He caught me staring at him, got up hastily from the desk, trying to straighten his awful suit. Maybe it was the shadows, but he looked a lot worse for wear, and he hadn’t looked all that good when I’d seen him on Thursday morning.

  The silence got awkward fast, so I spoke, told him the first thing that came to mind.

  “I used to live here.”

  He nodded. “I spoke to Mrs. Beckerman when I arrived. She told me . . . she told me where your room was.”

  “How long you been here?”

  “Only a half hour. I didn’t . . . I didn’t know if I should come or not.”

  “Tell me you didn’t do it.”

  He grimaced, slowly, as if feeling heartburn. “I didn’t, Miriam. You’ve got to believe me.”

  “Do you know how it happened?”

  He shook his head. “I’d been drinking. . . .”

  “You said you’d stopped.”

  “I had.”

  “You know about these pictures? About this fucker who was taping me in my own home?”

  He flinched, nodded as if hoping he could get by with only
the barest of confirmations.

  “Do you know who did that? Was it one of Mikel’s buddies? Damien?”

  “I don’t know anything about that.” Tommy ran his hand over the top of the old stereo, disturbing the light dust. “You were drunk at the service.”

  “It would be you who could tell.”

  “I wasn’t the only one who could tell.” When I didn’t say anything, he added, “You need to stop doing that. Need to stop drinking like that.”

  “I don’t need this kind of advice from you.”

  Tommy took a step forward suddenly, grabbing my arm. I felt his grip tightening on me. My insides fell to liquid, seemed to foam up and fill my lungs, flooding them and forcing away my breath. I was eleven again, small and scared.

  “Listen.” He hit both syllables evenly, equally. “Listen to me, Miriam. You don’t know how dangerous this is. You don’t know what could happen.”

  I tried to pull away, to back away, but his grip just tightened. I suppose I could have kicked or punched or screamed, but I didn’t think of it, I didn’t even consider those actions as options.

  He was my father. His anger, his power, all over again, inescapable.

  It froze me in place, and it terrified me.

  All I could manage was, “Please.”

  The word was enough, the effect was enormous. Tommy dropped my arm like I was a hot wire, backing away, and his expression changed from anger to alarm, and then to something else. He seemed confused, as if he’d lost his bearings.

  “Oh, God,” Tommy said. “Oh, Mim. I’m so sorry.”

  Then he pushed his way past me, going for the stairs, taking them quickly, double, triple steps at a time.

  When I got downstairs, he had gone, and the party was over.