| Stay |
| by Chandrah |
| Chapter 5 |
| Part I |
| The second week was the hardest.
My first week back from David’s farm was hectic, filled with work and events. The article was complete, but went to editing that resulted in non-stop arguments. The fact checkers couldn’t get in contact with any member of Unit and wouldn’t take my word as to validity. I wouldn’t give up phone numbers; wouldn’t allow them the intrusion into the process the band had thrown itself into, which was all the Calliope editors were looking to do. I had known better. I had been an intrusion myself. I spent long hours at the office, making every detail of how my article would be presented the sum total of my life. It wasn’t hard for me to sift through pictures and slides, to find the right photo to go on the right page. It wasn’t hard for me to harp and nag, rant or rave. I wanted my article to be the homage it was intended to be. I wanted it to reflect what I knew, and hide what I knew. I don’t recall being in my boxed in little condo much other than to collapse for a few hours sleep before getting up and starting all over. It was the second week, when I’d mollified the checkers, settled on the format, and handed in the clean copy that I pretty much fell apart. My work on the article was over, the thin connection to David on a professional level severed. I didn’t think anyone noticed; no one dared make mention of my odd, erratic behavior; of finding me asleep at all hours on the sofa in the ‘crash’ room, of hearing me sobbing in the bathrooms, of my reddened eyes, my foul moods. I didn’t work that week, not that I recall. I walked through life like a zombie, coming alive for those few moments in the late afternoons or early mornings when my cell phone might ring and I would hear David’s voice on the other end. Desperate, whispered conversations where I tried to remain charmed and happy, where I didn’t let my voice crack. And his promise, his promise to come to me, to be here with me as soon as he could. I clung to that for my sanity. Days passed. Then weeks. I took on new assignments while I waited for summer and my article to hit newsstands. A month drifted by where I would find myself fondling the beads at my neck all the time, praying that something I had wouldn’t be lost, praying that he would come, that his album would wrap. June approached, and the phone calls stopped. Not abruptly, but in a steady trickle until I made myself realize that they weren’t happening. I threw myself into another extensive article, flew to Madrid and interviewed members of the Rolling Stones, a prime, raucous bit of business that I wouldn’t have otherwise had the opportunity to do if I didn’t sense that the Unit article was about to hit and hit big. I left Madrid this morning, left the heated, dusty city that smelled of oranges and roasted meat and rich red wine to catch a flight home. My first stop isn’t even my condo, which depresses me more and more, but the office, which is neutral territory. The plane is landing, the part of flying I look forward to the most. There will be a car waiting for me, an air conditioned car that will weave me into New York City. There was a time I wouldn’t have rated a car. David Phillips and Unit rated me a car. They were now an underlying tone to my entire life, coloring it in ways subtle and not. I look out the window at that ordered urban landscape before me and my fingers go to my throat without a conscious thought on my part. I think of David, outright, on purpose, something I don’t allow myself to do. Surprisingly to me, it doesn’t kill me. It doesn’t slice through me the way it did in the beginning. It makes me relieved and sad all at the same time, but maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe this is the way it’s supposed to be. Maybe I’m meant to be here, and he, he’s forever meant to be there in that bucolic Eden of a landscape I can bring up in my mind; sight, smell and sound. Maybe I was fooling myself in my unutterable loneliness. Maybe a lot of things, but now is now. The wheels touch down, skid on the tarmac, roll to a halt. I, like the rest of the impatient passengers, rise out of my seat well before the announcement to do so is made, pull my overnight bag from the compartment above me, and jostle my way from first class out into the airport. There’s a hot, muggy tunnel to go through before we’re actually in the terminal. There are no people waiting in the small lobby, they’re beyond it, kept at bay by restrictions and rules. I break through the waiting throng and there he is. David. Everywhere. In every news rack dotting the long and winding corridors. Calliope has released the article. I go up to a random stand and take a copy with shaking hands. The cover art is nothing I have ever seen before, nothing I was a party to choosing. It is a picture of the band, a mélange of arms and legs and heads rising from the water of the large pond on the farm, with David in the middle of it all, surrounded by the men he works with. It’s a riot of color, skin colors ranging from pink to pale, to cocoa to black. Hair that runs the gamut from shorn to long, from dreadlocked, to braided, to clipped close to the skull. I note that somewhere, sometime, Tyler’s dyed his hair platinum blond. David, he looks like he usually looks, with his close cropped brown hair, sleepy brown eyes, and his twisted, teasing grin. Dripping wet, the lot of them, shirts plastered to skin, some without shirts at all. The picture is so clear and well defined I can see drops of water on David’s lashes. Seeing this is something akin to a hammer blow to the precarious sanity I’ve been holding onto. I want to cry. I need to sit down. From somewhere I pull a crumpled handful of dollars out and slap it down on a counter, hoping it’s enough, not caring if it’s too much for this purchase. I look for a seat, anywhere, and perch myself on the lip of a huge tub that holds a potted plant and start to read. I read my words and I’m back there in the mild Carolina spring. I hear the sounds from the woods and running water and the music, always the music. Worse, I hear him, David, and his laughs, the low rumble, the high cackle, the little boy giggle, full of mischief. Then the worst, I hear his whispered voice. The one from all those desperate hours of loving making, yes, it was love, love, love, and there’s nothing a soul could say to convince me it was anything less. I hear that voice and remember him, close, intimate, and then I remember him walking, all that incessant walking we did, and the view of him from behind, where I usually was, following him. His straight back, his straight shoulders, the tilt of his head, the way his feet moved. A tear drops onto the page and I blot it away. The article has altered. Not much, slightly. There’s a preamble to my writing that I had nothing to do with. A short introduction, but it catches my eye. The album’s been scrapped. I read those unfamiliar lines over and over. The album’s been scrapped. They started over fresh, unhappy with the original material. I turn a page. Another picture I don’t know. David, shot from above, supine on the water with only the support of the band members arms. His own arms are flung out, his eyes are enraptured as they stare up beyond the camera, and it looks, for all the world, like a baptism. The religious imagery is full blown to me, without a hint of subtlety, and I’m shocked by it. I can’t believe this might have been his choice, and wonder if he’s angered by this, but quickly realize he was part and parcel of the photo shoot that created the image, and he never does much without a purpose. I quickly leaf through the rest of the pages and nothing else seems altered or rearranged until the very end of the article. Again, there is an addendum, something of a disclaimer, which explains the new Unit album will have been released by the time this article has gone to press. It makes no sense. Nothing makes sense. I close the magazine and study the cover once more. That pond, I know it. I know where the frogs hide, where the fish huddle. I know the slippery feel of the muddy bottom between my toes. I know the slippery feel of David’s wet skin on mine. Damn him. Damn me. **~~***~~****~~***~~** The office is buzzing when I get there, and people without faces, these disembodied voices, are congratulating me for a successful issue. What that constitutes I have no idea at the moment; I just want the sanctity of my cramped little office, another step up from the outcome of my adventure with Unit. It’s been my refuge for months and I need it. I suppose I’m polite, no one looks at me like I’m being the complete wretch I can be lately, so I smile and nod and hear nothing of what they’re saying as I barrel down the corridors made by so many cubicles, and head for my door. My editor, Shelia, distracts me from my beeline route. “Elizabeth, you’re back!” I hear her say, and she steps from the doorway of her much more luxurious, much more spacious office and gestures for me to ‘come’ with a well manicured hand. “Just in time.” And he’s there, stepping out of the office behind her, towering a foot above her perfectly coiffed head. My first thought is that I’m hallucinating. That the plane ride, the pace of my life, the shock of seeing David’s face throughout the airport, maybe the sum of all those things, has finally culminated in this latest bit of madness, and I’ve created him out of air because this is what I want. This is what has been teasing the back of my mind for days and weeks and months. “David has brought us the first pressing of his CD.” “Hello, Elizabeth,” he says, all formal, and my mind reels, lurches into some oblivion. I stumble over my dropped bags, because I’ve dropped them right there on the floor, and I’m seeing carpet. The carpet needs cleaning. That is my only lucid thought before I close my eyes and think of nothing. “David, please, there’s no need to fuss.” It’s the first sound I hear, the fawning bray of Shelia’s voice. What I feel is something soft under my head and a pat, pat, patting on my hand. What’s under my head is a mystery. The patting, that’s a touch I recognize. “No fuss,” I hear, and I open my eyes. Shelia is bending over David, her arms crossed, looking thoroughly annoyed. David is bending over me, and after a cursory glance back at Shelia, it’s only him I see. He’s white, making his brown eyes browner and his morning stubble stand out. “There you are,” he says under his breath, then louder, “How’re you doin’, girl?” “I… I think I tripped,” I croak. My eyes dart away, it’s almost painful to look at him and know that I can’t do what I want, which is to reach out and touch him. Hold him. Have him hold me. “You were trippin’ all right,” he says, another half whispered comment that’s delivered with a vestige of his usual mirth and something else. “Everything feel all right? Ankle? Knees?” he asks a little more loudly. It’s then I notice others, office staff, surrounding the little tableaux created by me, David and Shelia. “I’m f…fine,” I stutter. Fine. The only thing that hurts is my heart. “Maybe you wanna try sittin’ up,” David says, and, without asking, snakes an arm around me and slowly helps me up. “Better?” I feel the squeeze of his hand on my waist, feel him pull me close. Better? Heaven and hell, all in one little gesture. “Really, I’m fine.” “Just take a breath,” he instructs, and his hand moves from my waist to my back, rubbing it gently. “I…,” I begin, but David cuts me off. “You took some spill there. Give yourself a minute.” “Back to work, people,” I hear Shelia say and look up for a second to see her turn and begin to shoo those who’ve been milling around back to desks, cubicles, and offices. It gives me the briefest of moments to look at David and I find him looking back, still pale, but smiling a little. “This ain’t what I meant when I said I wanted to trip out with you, love,” he murmurs under the noise of Shelia and others. “Did I knock you down?” I ask him, not sure why, not getting his joke right away. “Honey, you knock me out just lookin’ at you… damn this woman… Shelia, could you maybe find some water here?” he asks, turning his attention to her as she stalks back to where I’m sitting in the middle of the corridor. “I… of course,” she says, looking outright angry at not being able to deny the request of someone whose favor it’s her life’s mission to court by having to fetch something for someone who is usually the fetcher. “Betts are you all right?” he asks me as soon as Shelia and the rest of the free world is out of earshot. “Yes, yes… I… I’m fine,” I lie. I look at him, and see he sees right through my words. I see that it doesn’t matter, as well. “C’mon, stand up,” he says, and he lifts me, literally lifts me up onto my feet and holds me steady. “How’s that?” “Good.” “Can we be alone?” “Probably not.” I shake my head; widen my eyes as Shelia approaches with a chilled bottle of water in her hand. “Thanks,” he says, taking it from her and handing it to me. “Here, have some.” I take a sip. I follow, David’s arm as a guide, as Shelia leads us into her office. I sit on her comfortable sofa, David beside me, and suffer Shelia’s false concern. All the while, David’s arm never leaves me, gives me an anchor. “Shelia told me that you’re just comin’ back from Spain,” David says. “Yes. Just interviewed the Rolling Stones.” “Rolling Stones? Heavy,” he babbles. “It was certainly an experience,” I agree in the same mindless vein. “David came by to drop off the CD, Elizabeth.” Shelia reaches a jewel case across the coffee table between us, but David takes it from her before I can. “I thought it only… appropriate… after you bein’ with us and all, that you have one of the first of these.” He hands it to me and I stare dumbly at it. The pond. A woman, naked, hip deep in the water, arms above her head in a languorous stretch, her back to the camera. Her hair, water-darkened, drapes down her spine. It’s evening, just before it goes dark there, and it’s just as I remember it. I should. It’s my back. It’s my wet hair. When and how he took this, I don’t recall. I’m… I’m speechless and have lost my ability to process thought. I’m only a conduit for emotion. The title is scrawled across the top of the scene, ‘My Lady of the Lake’. “Hope you like it, there’s nothin’ on it that started out to be there. The guys and me, we tried to make a go of some of the stuff you heard, but, you know, there was all that other shit I wrote when we were at the farm, and it was just… better.” “Th…th…thank you,” I tell him, and I make myself be composed as I force myself to look at him. “It’s my pleasure,” he says. Our eyes lock and there’s nothing else. “I’m sure Shelia won’t mind, would you, Sheila, if I took this lady out to breakfast, or lunch, or whatever today? Thought we might catch up while I’m in town. Thought I could drop another interview on her, now that the CD has released, if that’s all right with the both of you.” He smiles as her, gives the full force of his charm, and there’s nothing Shelia can do but nod. I know the feeling. **~~***~~****~~***~~** “You scared the shit outta me,” David hisses in the elevator as we descend to the garage below the building I work in where his car is waiting. “Right. Like you didn’t do the same?” “You went down so fast, I couldn’t catch you.” “What are you doing here? HERE?” When I stress the second ‘here’ people in the elevator turn their heads. The last thing I want is attention from strangers. And I’m rattled. I’m rattled by my reaction to David, by the fall I’ve taken, by simply seeing him again. He leans against me a little, and the body contact is an apology of a sorts. The elevator empties into the lobby of the building before the door shuts on its final descent. We’re still not alone; there are a few people with us who must be heading for their cars, too. Some still steal glances at us, and I know they know who David is, but are being artfully New York about it; ignoring the obvious. When the elevator stops there are a large man and a driver waiting by a black Mercedes. “I was just about to come and get you, man,” the large gentleman says, approaching us. “Took a little longer than I thought it would. Could you take these bags and stow ‘em, please, Tim?” “Sure.” “This is Ms. Kettler. She’s joinin’ me for lunch at the hotel. She’s the writer who did the big piece on Unit for Calliope. Betts, this is Tim. He’s my New York tour guide,” he says, and they laugh as Tim holds out a hand for me to shake. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” he says with a smile and nod, taking my bags from David and putting them in the trunk of the car. David guides me to the back of the Mercedes, Tim and the driver sit in the front. Without a word, David raises the dark glass between us and the front seat before the car starts to move slowly from the parking garage. His hand holds mine on the cool leather seat. “I’m sorry I took you by surprise, truly, I am.” “I didn’t mean to… to react… to…” “Hush, girl, just hush,” he says in a whisper to fill the whole of the back of the car. He leans over and his lips touch mine and its spring again, spring in Carolina and the air around us is warm, sweet with the smell of cut grass and new leaves. That’s what he smells like to me, this man; he smells like the earth amid a sea of leather and new car and air freshener fragrances. Our mouths part and I nuzzle his neck, push my face against him to smell him more, to make sure that he’s really real, really here with me when a few short hours ago I was mourning his absence. “I just came. I didn’t want to wait any more. Did what I had to do for this record. Did what I had to do and came here. I didn’t think.” “It’s okay.” “Hell, it was stupid. I should’ve called.” “David, you haven’t called in so long…” “Yeah, and we need to talk about that, too, ‘cause damn it, woman, I’m not the only person who knows how to dial a phone. Ya know that, don’t you?” “I… I thought you needed to be alone… I thought…” “You think too goddamn much,” he tells me, but his voice is low and laughing now, the voice I know. No more admonishing, no rough edges. Just his drawl, the ‘not-quite-southern’ accent of his deep, deep tones. “I don’t have a lotta time right now, Betts, ‘coupla days. But they’re all for you. I’ll square it with that bitch back at your office, damn, she’s god-awful.” “That’s my boss.” “Then you need to change jobs,” he chuckles. I feel him rub his face in my hair; hear a small, moaning hum come from him. “I got this thing I absolutely have to do some damn time this afternoon. It’s press, so you can come and be press. After that, it’s all ours.” “What’s all ours?” “The day, the night, tomorrow. The next day.” A sigh. “I gotta get to rehearsals then. The tour starts soon.” “Where are you going to be rehearsing?” I ask. “Down in Virginia.” “Oh.” Oh. A little bite of reality. Virginia is another place where David owns several large tracts of land. It’s his thing, this buying up and cultivating of the land. Odd for a rock and roller, although he wouldn’t see himself as a rock and roller or as odd. David has a house there. David has a home there. Without him having to say it outright, I know that his family, usually ensconced in another home on a vineyard in Oregon, will be with him in Virginia. The boy, the girl, the wife. I know their names, have seen photographs of them, know what they do, and where they do, as David was very forthcoming about his life with me. Some of it, what we agreed to share with the public, is in the article. Some of it is not. But it’s all very real and all really happening and he must feel me stiffen, or change, or pull back, because he holds onto me more tightly. Not hard, just closer. “They’ll be time enough to talk about it, Betts,” he says, his voice pitched low. “I don’t want to talk about it,” I find myself saying, and I’m not sure why. Maybe many reasons. Maybe because I’m exhausted from my flight and the day that preceded it; I can’t remember when I last slept. Maybe it’s the shock I’m still feeling at seeing David’s face all over the airport, or the even bigger shock of seeing him in my office. Maybe I don’t want to ruin these moments with him, because they’re so few. Maybe I don’t care right now about Miranda, his wife, or Faith, his daughter, or Julian, his son. Maybe I want to pretend that they don’t really exist and that this time we have together is ours and ours alone, and that there would be no harm in walking down the streets of Manhattan hand in hand today, or tonight, or tomorrow, or anytime, so that any one of a million paparazzi might snap a picture of us and it be splashed all over a million gossip sheets with some catchy caption: “D.J. Phillips and Elizabeth Kettler, out for a stroll”. Maybe that’s what I really want from this man, my shot at fame and notoriety and now I know that I’m overtired, because David, he wants nothing to do with any of that and has become the most elusive interview in all of Christendom and beyond. Which is why my name on the byline in Calliope this month is the notorious one; today, I’m more infamous than he is. “God David, I think I’m losing my mind.” “Some days are like that, sweetheart. In fact, some years are like that, too.” **~~***~~****~~***~~** **~~***~~****~~***~~** © 2006 Chandrah, Inc. © 2006 (*> Baby Bird Productions |