Chapter 11

Corey considered taking the T from Logan to her condo in Cambridge, but the adrenaline of catching the flight had long since faded, and the lack of sleep finally caught up to her. She hailed a taxi instead and felt a pang of guilt at the extra expense.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen, she thought.

She had a hard time keeping her eyes open in the back of the cab, but when the driver took her west on Storrow Drive, she always perked up. There was nothing like coming home, especially after a tour. Boston was gray and overcast and the snow along the rim of the road was blackened and there were chunks of dirty ice floating down Charles River, but there was nothing like that drive along the river. On spring days, students walked along both banks of the Charles, narrow crew shells sliced through the water.

How many drunken summer nights had she spent in the back of a cab, the red triangle in the white square of the massive glowing CITGO sign beckoning her home? When she and The Toddlers were the heirs apparent of the alternative music scene, and Boston was their playground and a launching pad to stardom? When all things seemed possible?

Now it felt more like a refuge. Boston held her condo, which was paid off, her cat, her stuff, and a lot of memories. And just enough clubs where she could play and earn without a lot of advance planning or hassle. Where her name still mattered.

The cab dropped her at her building on Brookline Street. She had bought the unit after Damsel. She was able to buy the loft space outright and had some money left over for a car, which was now scrap somewhere. She wasn’t sure where the rest of the money was or what she had spent it on, but thank God she had the foresight to buy the condo. In the post-Damsel years, the thrill of having it faded. It seemed pretty myopic to buy a place in the heart of Boston when the world beckoned, but what did she know of the world in 1999? Now it seemed prescient. She hadn’t really anticipated a time when the sun would set on The Toddlers, on Damsel Underdressed, on alternative music, but it all happened in the span of a few short years: file sharing and the implosion of the music industry, labels collapsing, record deals evaporating, CDs becoming artifacts, changing fads, changing tastes.

In a medium based on an ephemeral collection of moments—the pop song—she should have known better. There was that summer when swing music was all the rage. Then it was the Latin explosion. Then the plague of the boy bands. Jesus, you couldn’t swing a dead cat in late 90’s and early 2000’s without hitting a pre-packaged, market-tested, interchangeable boy band. And hip hop was ever on the rise, always grabbing more and more “market share” as Lou would say. Rock music seemed to make a comeback in the mid-aughts, but it was niche and all eyes were on New York, with no room for earnest singer-songwriters out of Boston. By then, MTV didn’t even bother with music videos anymore and VH1 was asking “Where Are They Now?” And now we’re so far gone, she thought, where the hell is VH1 now?

So instead of buying a tiny villa in Tuscany or the south of France, she purchased a top floor, two-bedroom loft on Brookline Street with huge windows that revealed the Charles. It had 14-foot ceilings, exposed pipes, and a skylight. Steps away from parks, clubs, and campuses, it was her favorite place to be miserable.

She thought about picking up Iggy first, but she couldn’t knock on Josh and Kincaid’s door in her current state. Josh would want to hear all about the tour and catch up, and boy would she would have a tale to tell, but she wanted to tell it, not have Josh smell it on her.

She took the elevator to the top floor, fit her key in the lock, and was greeted by the light from the huge windows. It never failed to put a smile on her face. She dropped her bag and guitar case—she was surprised at the slight echo whenever she entered after a long absence—and headed straight for the shower. She would have taken a bath, but thought of Iggy and felt guilty. The bath could wait, so she stripped, and walked into the shower. She put her hands on the tile as if she was being frisked and let the hot water cascade down her back for several minutes, taking deep cleansing breaths, and more than washing last night off, let the tour roll off her back.

Tomorrow, she would meet with Lou, who would add her two cents about this latest expedition’s merit. As her manager, she got fifteen percent of everything, and Corey feared that two cents was about all Lou’s cut would be. After twenty years, Corey had an innate sense of where things would end up by the size of the crowds, the amount of merch moved, radio play, and what she might clear as a result. Despite the nice bump she had to pry out of Dungeon Dick, she feared the tour would be pretty flat, without a good sense of which direction it would ultimately tilt, toward the red or the black. After all these years, she could never remember which one was the good one.

But that was for tomorrow. After weeks, she was back in her home. And if she was going to fixate on anything, why not fixate on the guy? As she lathered herself, she thought it had been a long time since she’d had a night like that. Whatever her superficial taste in men, she had to admit he was undeniably gorgeous to the eye of any beholder. And he was sweet and funny and…what was the word she was looking for? She remembered an old Hanna Barbera cartoon when a character made a trail of broken white lines with their fingers.

He was square, but in a cute way.

No, a part of her rebelled. You’re being shitty because you feel stupid he saw you break.

Gallant is the word I believe you’re looking for.

She fought the urge to wallow in the worst possible moment to the night before. The water and the steam relaxed her muscles and, though she had fantasized about her shower all day long, her mind summoned that hotel room, that bed. She closed her eyes. It was more than that he was fit or handsome or good in the sack. With some of her hook-ups, she felt as if she was playing a role, and she had summoned a little of her public persona in the bar with him, as a confidence booster. Some men withered in bed at that. Others felt the need to overcompensate and it became a game of one-upping the other, sacrificing any intimacy for cardio. But there had been no zero artifice with Kyle. He wanted to be there and she wanted to be there. It wasn’t just the sex, which left her gasping. She felt reassured. Cared for.

No good can come of it, she thought, but God help her, she wanted to see him again.

When she opened her eyes, she didn’t know how long she had been in the shower and the hot water was thinning. She stepped out, dried off, and found a pair of fresh jeans and a Bruce Springsteen tee shirt. Before slipping out the door, she grabbed her phone and checked her Twitter mentions. The usual suspects. She made a face, then stuffed the phone in her back pocket. Clean and now certain that no scent of sex or the tour remained, she walked next door and knocked.

Josh saw her and threw up his arms. “The prodigal returns!” 

She gave her neighbor a hug. Over Josh’s shoulder, she spied Kincaid on the couch.

“Hello, Kinky,” she said, with the enthusiasm of a robot.

“Welcome home,” he responded in the same tone, not bothering to turn around.

Josh grabbed her by the arms. “I want to hear all about it. I’m making dinner.”

He led her to the dining room table and she felt at home, almost as at home than her own place. It was warm and cozy and the aroma of basil and tomato sauce wafted from the kitchen. She looked around for her cat and called out for him. “Iggy!”

The tabby leapt from over the couch and padded over to her, rubbing up against her leg and purring. She scooped him up and buried her face in his side, listening to him motor away. She looked toward the back of Kincaid’s head on the couch, his face toward the evening news on the television, and looked back toward Josh. She jutted her head toward the couch. Josh made a face.

“Hey,” called Corey. “He’s fat.”

Without turning around, Kincaid said, “Get a job where you don’t have to go on tour, then you can feed him however you like.”

Kincaid pushed himself up from the couch and grabbed his coat.

“Where are you going?” asked Josh.

“To watch the game at Shay’s. I’ll let you girls catch up.”

Once the door closed, Corey asked, “What’s up Kinky’s ass?”

She’d met Josh first and he was warm and effusive and loved music, but Kincaid was his polar opposite. That was fine for the two of them. When it’s lovers, it’s “opposites attract.” When it’s just two different people, it’s oil and water. She felt she had tried with him over the years, but nothing seemed to penetrate. She couldn’t recall him asking her a single question about her music career, and if anything, he rolled his eyes when she and Josh talked about it. In fairness, she had no idea what he did for a living, but at least she wasn’t a dick about it.

Josh made a face toward the door his husband had just walked out of. “He’s so full of shit. Always whines about taking the cat, then after forty-five minutes, he follows him everywhere. ‘Iggy this, Iggy that, hey Iggy come here.’ The cat completely ignores me and spends every night in his lap. Kincaid is probably going to cry in his beer somewhere and he’ll be cranky for days.

Corey found it difficult to picture that and shrugged.

“Crankier,” she said.

“Cheers to that,” said Josh. “Wine?”

“I’ll pass out,” said Corey. “I barely got any sleep as it is last night.”

Over his shoulder, Josh joked, “Oh yeah, what was his name?”

“Kyle.” She said it without thinking, but now that it was out, she couldn’t keep herself from smiling.

Josh spun on his heel. “Shut. Up.”

She hid her reddening face in her hands.

“Spill,” said Josh, taking a seat at the table. “Right now.”

Corey told him everything and it was the most fun she had had since the actual sex. Reunited with her cat and dishing with her best friend. This felt good, normal. Home. Josh’s mouth hung open for most of it and he gasped intermittently.

“A military man?”

“Once upon a time. The Coast Guard. Not anymore. He does something with risk now.”

“I picture him ramrod straight up and down. All ‘Yes, ma’am’ and and ‘thank you, ma’am.’”

Corey laughed. “A little, yeah. But really funny. And so sweet.”

“Oh thank God,” said Josh. “No one needed a jolly rogering more than you.”

“I do okay.”

“Please. Scuzzy little punks…”

“Hey!”

“How many of them would’ve driven you to the airport? How many even own a car? Hell, how many could afford a tank of gas?”

“Okay, okay…”

“Has he called yet?”

“Um, I never gave him my number.”

“What?”

“There was no time.”

“No time? Are you fucking crazy?”

“It was a weird scene. We were in the Arrivals lane, there was the Airport Imperial Guard, I was flustered. I told him to Tweet me. I don’t know, it’s kind of like a test.”

“He rescues you from two drunken assholes at a bar, breaks your back but good, picks up your skanky, blubbering ass at the curb—after you scald him with hot coffee—then ditches his own gig to drive you an hour out of his way to the airport? The only test that needs to be administered is for your brain.”  

“When you put it like that…”

“I love you, Core, but I’d have told you to fuck all the way off.”

“You had to be there.”

Josh raised a wine glass in her direction and made a sour face. “Well, you’ll always have Kansas.”

“He’ll Tweet,” she said, firmly. “Right? Oh my God, he’s not even on Twitter.”

“That would explain why he’s so polite. It’s like you discovered a patch of virginal rain forest, unspoiled by man, and then were cunty to it.” 

“I was not cunty.”

“Jolly Roger ain’t Tweeting, babe.”