Purgatory Blues (2013), page 12
“What are you doing with that?” he asked.
“I took it off some kids last night at Sink, they were doing it in a stall”.
Lee took the bag and gave it a better look, then looked back at Andy. “I know what this is, but the better question is, do you know what this is?”
“Look”, Andy said impatiently, “Dennis told me that there’s something new on the street and no one knows where it’s coming from. Is this it?” He wondered why Lee was being so cryptic.
“Yeah, this is it. You tell Jack that he’s out of favors. He’s got one week to put his house in order or I’m going to do it for him, and he’s not going to like my way”.
“Yeah. I’ll tell him”, Andy said, somewhat disgruntled. He snatched the bag from Lee’s hand and walked of. The conversation had left him with more questions than answers, but he had to appreciate the latitude that Lee was giving him by allowing a civilian to walk out of a police station with contraband.
Andy looked around and saw that they’d been kind enough to drive his car in to the parking lot for him. “Hungry?” Melissa asked as they walked to his BMW.
“Starving”. He really was, he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d eaten anything.
“Let me buy you breakfast”, she said. “For yesterday”, she added when Andy failed to reply.
He turned away in thought, he was tired and Melissa was the last person that he wanted to talk to just then. On the other hand, she had just bailed him out of jail. Breakfast couldn’t hurt. He knew she was trying to make a gesture of good will and it would’ve been pure malice to shoot down the effort.
“Okay”, Andy said, “I’ll follow you out”.
They left in convoy for the ten-minute drive. Melissa led him to a nice little restaurant in the suburbs with a sign outside that read “Veronica’s”. It was a leafy area with an art gallery next door. It was not the sort of establishment that he frequented. It was more like the kind of place that couples went to for brunch on Sundays.
It was a quiet neighborhood where people drove sports utility vehicles, had enough free time to walk in the park, exercise and play with their kids…the quintessential suburb. Strangely enough, it wasn’t too far from Andy’s apartment and he’d been to Veronica’s with Elsa a few times.
When he stepped out of his car he recalled the first time that they’d been there. It was the morning after they’d first spent the night together at his place. Elsa argued with him because he’d been engaged in conversation with an aspiring film student who was waitressing there.
Her complaint was that he shouldn’t have taken her out if he was going to spend the time talking to someone else. It was less of an argument than it was Elsa coaching Andy on courtship. They’d only known each other for a week at that point. He thought that he’d give anything to be walking in there with her, at that exact moment, to have that same talk…and he knew that there wasn’t a thing he’d do differently.
Melissa and Andy walked toward to the entrance. “Interesting choice”, he said to her dispassionately as they crossed the road.
“Mmm”, she agreed, “it’s peaceful and they open early. Also nice to go somewhere where your friends aren’t interrupting us every three minutes”.
They were greeted at the entrance by a smiling waiter, “table for…oh my”, he said, catching sight of Andy. Andy looked exactly like someone who’d spent the night in jail, hadn’t showered and eaten in days, been beaten up, ground up and schooled for survival on post-apocalyptic earth.
Andy gave the waiter a blank stare.
“Yes, two”, Melissa said, politely intercepting, “we’re doing a photo shoot for the retro column just down the road, it’s a grunge thing”.
“Ah yes”, the waiter said, a smile returning to his face, “right this way”. He led them to a shady table and pulled out their chairs.
“Six chocolate tequilas, two beers and menus please”, Melissa said to the waiter.
“We don’t serve alcohol until after ten, miss”, the waiter replied judgmentally.
Melissa gave him a look that indicated she had no problem ripping his throat out if he didn’t do as he was told.
“Coming up”, he said.
Andy was just as surprised by Melissa’s order, “someone’s getting an early start”, he said to her.
“I figured if I didn’t do it, you would have”. Melissa’s reluctance to make eye contact made it look like she was holding something back, Andy knew her well enough to know that there was something she wanted to say but she was waiting for the right time or the right words. She was silent. Andy sat there, hiding his eyes behind his sunglasses, having a smoke and enjoying the sound of the breeze wafting through the trees.
He could guess what it was she wanted to say but he wouldn’t be the one to bring it up. The waiter returned and set out three tequilas each, then placed their beer in front of them along with some menus. He departed as silently as he’d arrived.
Melissa sucked down her tequilas one after the other without a word. When she was done she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, took a sip of her beer and lit up a smoke. Andy took a sip of his beer and waited.
She took a deep breath and exhaled. “I ended things with Allen yesterday”. She threw out the words like she was delivering the heads of slain kings after a glorious battle. Andy wondered if she was waiting for him to say “good job” or give her a pat on the back.
He picked up a shot, drank it down slowly and then quietly placed the glass on the table. He hadn’t seen it coming. He knew that she’d told Allen about them spending the previous night together, but he wasn’t prepared to hear that she’d left him. He was trying to think of something to say, but nothing other than the obvious sprang from him.
“What happened?” Andy asked calmly.
“What do you mean what happened?” She asked in annoyance, “we…” she stopped abruptly. “Take those off”, she said as she reached over the table and took off his glasses, folded the arms and placed them on the table.
The sudden light hurt Andy’s eyes, he squinted and cringed like a vampire at dawn.
“Look, it’s been coming for a long time, I haven’t been happy with Allen for a while, not that I think I ever was. I don’t know. It was more like he was just there. You’ve got your faults, lord knows you do, but at least you were always there for me and we’ve got all this history”. Melissa sounded to Andy like she was making an impassioned plea for a life raft. Her argument didn’t sound convincing and he felt bad for her that she was foolish enough to try. “After the other night…I thought that we could give it another try, I thought it could be different this time”.
Andy picked up another shot, drank it slowly and placed the empty glass down. He took another sip of his beer and lit up a smoke while he considered what to say.
The silence was starting to get to her, she didn’t know what was going on in Andy’s mind and the thought frightened her. She took his hand in hers and looked at him. “What do you say?” There was love in her eyes.
Andy still had no words, but he involuntarily grimaced and made a slight throaty growling noise.
“It’s you and me Andy, it’s always been you and me”.
He wondered if she’d heard that line in a movie because to him it sounded cheesy as fuck. After last night her confession was too much for him to deal with. The arrival of their waiter saved him.
“I’m really hungry”, Andy said, he squeezed her hand lightly and then pulled away.
“Have you decided?” The waiter asked.
“Just give me a good, full breakfast, the works”, Andy said to him.
“And for madam?” The waiter enquired.
“Scones and a pot of tea”, Melissa answered, she loved ordering things that contradicted her appearance.
The waiter nodded and took his leave. Andy wished that he could’ve gone with him. He put his glasses back on and turned into the breeze. He didn’t know how to deal with Melissa without crushing her. He didn’t even know how he felt about the subject. They might not have been perfect together, but they worked, he felt like the whole thing was incredibly bad timing.
He wondered if he could find it in himself to look past the past. After what’d happened with them he decided that men and women really did look at relationships very differently…or at least he thought they did. After all, he could only ever be certain of one person’s feelings at any given moment, and those were his.
The cynical part of him was thinking that human beings were all whiny bitches for thinking that they were entitled to such lofty choices. “If someone wants to be with you, why not let them? Life is too short to pick and choose, it’s too short to hold out for a better deal, everybody has baggage don’t they?”
“Hey”, Melissa said, but Andy ignored her, he was lost in thought.
With Melissa, the problem was that he couldn’t tell if she was just so afraid of being alone that she’d come running back to him, rewriting their history in the process, eliminating the bad times and over inflating the good, all because she was so scared that she didn’t know who she was if she wasn’t with someone else. But, he knew that she really did love him.
His experience had taught him that ex’s had a habit of doing the retroactive continuity thing whenever they wanted to justify their decisions for coming back. Then again, did she really believe that they were meant for each other? Andy thought about how people sprouted bullshit about everybody deserving a second chance, but he didn’t agree with that, he thought that people did that only when it suited them. He believed that some things were important enough for you to know not to fuck it up in the first place.
His relationship with Melissa had been one of those things. He could never really trust her again, not the way he used to. Some kinds of betrayal cut too deep to ever really heal and he didn’t know if he could ever look at her the same way.
“You in there?” Melissa asked. Still, there was no reply.
In his mind the outcome was that she’d be with him till he died or she found someone better. After being betrayed once already he felt like the latter would always take precedence with Melissa. He just didn’t know if this instinct was the product of his “glass half full” attitude or his unwillingness to forgive. It would only end like a self-fulfilling prophecy, and he knew he’d create the world around him based on his own perspective of it. If he got back together with her and expected her to cheat, his mistrust would lead her to do exactly that.
It was too complicated and he didn’t want to have to think about any of it, he came back to the conversation with a jolt. There was something else that he really wanted to know.
“How did Allen know where I was last night?” He asked the question with complete neutrality and without incrimination.
Melissa had a look of complete surprise on her face, “I didn’t even know he’d seen you? Where? What happened?”
“That’s not important, I was somewhere where he shouldn’t have known to find me, but somehow he did. What did you tell him exactly?” Andy didn’t want to tell Melissa the name of the place and what had happened there. She was just crazy enough to visit the Sink and get in to it with Sharon. Something like that wouldn’t just rock the boat, it’d sink it.
“Well, after I left Firk, I went home to wait for Al, when he got back I made him some dinner and we sat down to talk. I told him that it was over. That’s it. I only told him what happened with us because he kept trying to come up with ways to fix things. I knew if I told him that I was with someone else, especially you…that’d be the end of it. After that he said he had to run some errands. He left, and I went to the clubhouse to stay there for the night. That’s why I came to the station this morning, when Dennis called I was the one who answered”.
“Uh huh”, Andy knew that wasn’t the whole story but he’d gleaned the relevant facts of the situation, “did he mention what these errands were?”
“We don’t really talk about his business, he always says not to ask so I gave up on it. He makes it sound like he’s in the mafia instead of construction”, Melissa said, her contempt was obvious. “I mean, I’m in the club too, surely he can tell me right?”
There was a short pause while Andy considered what to do next. “M, I’m really tired, I don’t think I’ve got any fuel left in the tank, why don’t we pick this up later”, he said and passed her his last shot of tequila. “I’ll just get that breakfast to go, call you later”. As Andy walked away he gave Melissa a light squeeze on the shoulder.
“Fine”, she said, almost recoiling from his touch.
Andy walked over to the kitchen, collected his breakfast from the chef with those little polystyrene boxes that they use and he hit the road.
As he unlocked his car, he turned to see Melissa sitting at their table. Her face was in her hands and he could only assume that she was crying. “Two for two”, he thought to himself.
The drive up to his apartment was every bit as unpleasant as it should’ve been with only his thoughts for company. He wondered why he’d come back in to everyone’s lives, all he did was spread misery. “Do I have some kind of special talent for completely fucking up everything that I touch?” He was beginning to think that he did indeed.
When he arrived home he opened the door to find that his apartment was exactly the war zone that he’d left it. The difference was that this was the first time that he’d realized exactly how bad it was. Most likely because this was the most sober he’d been in months.
The filth had finally reached a disturbing level. “The product of ten months without giving a shit”, he thought. He put on some tunes, “Florence and the machine”, he needed something soothing to calm down to.
He noticed the light on his answering machine going crazy. He took his food over to the desk and ate while he listened to the messages.
“Andy, we need to talk, give me a call when you get this”. It was his agent. “Andy give me a call, it’s urgent, it’s Barry”. “Andy, It’s Barry, it’s Saturday night, I’ve been trying you all day, can you please call me?” There were three more like it, “Andy, Barry here, call me”. “Andy, where are you? It’s Sunday afternoon, we need to talk, some major stuff is going on here, call me the minute you get this”. “Andy, where the fuck are you?”
There was one more message, “Andy, I don’t know if you’re getting these or what’s going on but we’re in trouble here. The publishers pulled your advance, you’re six months over deadline, I did my best to try and buy you more time but they weren’t having any of it. They’re cutting you from their roster. I’m sorry. Give me a call when you decide what you want to do, I’ll be here”.
Andy felt the blood drain out of him. This was one last nail in the coffin. He turned off the music, took a deep breath and held his head in his hands as he exhaled. He didn’t have the energy to be angry. He knew that he was probably close to broke just then. “So this is what it feels like when your life is falling apart”, he thought to himself.
He pulled out a cigarette and lit up as he walked out on to the balcony. He took in the view of the city. At this time of day it was beautiful, deceptively so. The sun was out and there was a cooling breeze. On the surface everything appeared to be so normal, so wholesome and sane. In reality Andy knew that the city was as insidious as it was inviting. Over the last few years it had gradually chewed him up and it was finally ready to spit him out.
It had taken everything from him and it still wanted more, but he had nothing left to give. He felt hollow, though he was loathe to admit it, he thought that he might just be ready to throw in the towel. Suddenly from somewhere deep inside him rage began to boil. He held it back for as long as he could…till he couldn’t anymore and it burst forth violently. He turned and slammed his fist in to wall with all his strength, releasing a primal roar in the process. He split several of his knuckles but he didn’t care. He continued to hammer the wall till he heard booms echo through the brick.
When the pain finally became too much for him he fell to his knees cradling his hand. The blood on the wall was a painting that spoke a thousand words, but the pain felt good. He knew that if he felt pain then he was still alive. “Better to feel pain than nothing at all”, he reminded himself.
Andy picked himself up and went inside. He slumped onto the couch and took stock of his hand. It was beginning to swell but nothing was broken. “Idiot”, he said to himself. He was exhausted, every part of him hurt, he needed rest.
He noticed the video box under the television was still running. He turned on the TV and there was Elsa. It was a recording he’d made of her doing her makeup the night they were to meet her parents. She’d just made a joke and he heard himself laugh on the recording. It was an unfamiliar sound.
He lay down on the couch and closed his eyes to the sound of her voice. As sleep approached he hoped that maybe, just maybe, this time he wouldn’t have to wake up.
Chapter 8
It was dark when Andy finally woke to the sound of his cell phone’s ring tone. It took him a while to get his bearings and come to his senses. He knocked over several empty bottles as he reached for the source of the noise.
The caller ID read “Eddie”, an old band mate and currently a prospect with the Reapers. He hadn’t seen Eddie in over a year. Andy answered on autopilot. He was still half asleep and didn’t yet have the presence of mind to know whether he wanted to or not, he just did what people do with a ringing phone.
“Hello?” he said, sounding as though he’d just been revived from stasis.
“Hey bro, it’d Eddie, did I wake you up?”
“Nah, it’s fine, what’s up?”
“Good to hear your voice again dude, I bumped in to Dennis earlier today and he told me that you’re out and about, and, like, me and Cat are in your neck of the woods, why don’t you come join us for a few man, haven’t seen you in ages bro”.
Eddie had a funny way of talking, it was slow and methodical, but articulate, most of the time it sounded like he was high, but he spoke that way even when he was stone cold sober. At first it had annoyed Andy because every time Eddie told a story, it took forever to get to the point. Over the years it had become an endearing quality.
