Scar Girl (17 page)

“Has Harry seemed distant lately?” Johnny asked when there was a lull in the conversation.

“What do you mean?”

“I don't know. It's like his heart hasn't really been in the band lately.”

I couldn't tell if Johnny was upset, worried, or just curious about Harry, but I didn't really care. Talk of Harry was going to ruin the mood, so I steered the conversation in a different direction.

“Thanks for the pick.” I was wearing the pick he'd given me for Christmas on a silver chain around my neck, and I showed him. Johnny leaned over and gave me a slow and gentle kiss on the cheek, letting his lips linger for just an extra second. He pulled back and smiled. It was a beautiful smile.

I don't know how long we were sitting there, but I saw that my glass was empty, while Johnny's was mostly full. I flagged the bartender, and she poured me another.

We kept talking, the beer and Johnny both giving me a warm feeling inside. We talked about how well he had done with his physical therapy. We talked about my new job at the bookstore and how much I liked it.

“You know, you never told me why you decided to get a job,” he said.

I couldn't tell him the real reason, so I just said, “I was bored.” I guess the answer was good enough, because he nodded.

Johnny was about a third done with his beer when my glass was empty again. Now I was feeling great. I waved my hand, and another pint appeared in front of me. The buzz in the room was starting to build as the clock crept toward midnight.

We talked some more, except now I think I was doing most of the talking. I honestly don't remember what I said, but when I looked up again, Johnny still had some beer in his glass and I was on my fourth. Or was it my fifth?

“Chey?” Johnny asked. And now the room was starting to spin a bit. “I think maybe you've had enough.”

That was classic Johnny. Not
don't
you
think maybe you've had enough?
No.
I
think you've had enough.

I just waved my hand like I was literally brushing him off. “Lighten up, Johnny. I'm fine.”

He let it drop until the bartender was putting yet another beer in front of me. This time, Johnny talked to her.

“Don't you think she's had enough?” The bartender, a skinny white girl barely able to keep up with all the people ordering drinks, stopped and looked at me.

“You okay, sugar?” she asked.

“I'm fine,” I said, though I wasn't sure that either of those words came out as something another human being could understand. I think they might've sounded more like whale song.

The bartender shrugged her shoulders and turned to the next customer. I wasn't her sister or her daughter or her girlfriend, so I wasn't her problem.

I stuck my tongue out at Johnny, trying, I thought, to be playful.

He looked at me, shook his head, and mumbled, “Happy New Year, Cheyenne Belle.” Then he walked away.

HARBINGER JONES

I was leaning against the outside wall of the club, smoking, when I heard the New Year's countdown begin. I'm big on symbolism, and I felt like the whole world was counting down to the beginning of my new life. It reminded me of the day of the thunderstorm. That day, I was counting Mississippis after each flash of lightning, trying to figure out how far away the storm was. A part of me thought that this new countdown would finally wipe that one away. Stupid, I know, but I thought it just the same.

“Ten!” came the muffled shout, from not only inside the club but from half the apartments in earshot.

“Nine!” I closed my eyes and tried to picture where I would be in twelve months.

“Eight!” Would I be standing outside some bar, waiting for another gig?

“Seven!” Would I be home from college for the Christmas break and watching the ball drop on TV with my parents?

“Six!” The door to the club slammed open, and a drunk girl came stumbling out, landing both hands on a car parked right in front of me.

“Five!” She hurled. Right on the car.

“Four!” I tried to go back to actualizing my future, but the damage was done and I was pulled out of the moment.

“Three!”

“Oh, shit!” the girl said. She looked around in a panic, like something was wrong. “You!”

“Two!” She took a step forward and grabbed me by the collar.

“Prepare to be kissed,” she slurred in my face.

“One!” And the girl planted a big, sloppy, vomit-ridden kiss on me. What is it about girls and me and throw-up? She took a step back and looked at me for the first time. “Whoa,” she said. “I must be more drunk than I thought.”

There were two obvious choices: One, I could just push the girl away and go back inside, thoroughly disgusted. Or, two, I could make out with her.

I did the only thing I was wired to do. Option three, try to be the nice guy.

“Are you okay?” I asked. “Can I help you?”

She mumbled the words
New Year's
and staggered back to the party raging inside the club.

RICHIE MCGILL

When the clock struck midnight, I was hanging with this crowd of fans and we all clanked glasses, high-fived, and hugged. It was pretty cool. Then, out of nowhere, this drunk chick stumbled in from outside and planted a big nasty kiss on me. I say nasty because she tasted like puke. It was pretty gross.

“Happy New Year's,” she muttered, and stumbled away. I found out only later that it was probably the same girl who'd kissed Harry outside. I like to freak him out by telling him that when she kissed me right after kissing him, it was like me and him kissing. The dude is such a prude. Cracks me up every time.

HARBINGER JONES

When I went back inside a few minutes after midnight—my impromptu date thankfully nowhere to be seen—I found Johnny sitting alone at a table near the front, nursing a beer. Richie was at the bar with a bunch of people, and Chey wasn't anywhere in my line of sight.

“Happy New Year,” I said. Johnny just nodded in response.

“You okay?” I asked.

“I don't know,” Johnny answered, looking at his shoes. “I'm just so tired, Harry.”

I figured he meant tired of the ups and downs with Cheyenne, or maybe that the long night was too much strain on his leg. Whatever it was, he just seemed so sad.

After a minute, Johnny let out a big sigh and pushed himself up from the table. “Let's go tune your guitar to the keyboard.”

And we did.

CHEYENNE BELLE

I don't want to talk about the actual gig.

I don't remember a lot. And what I do remember, I don't want to talk about. The other guys can give you what you need on that one.

HARBINGER JONES

It was the worst gig we ever played, or ever would play, mostly because Chey was falling-down drunk. And by falling-down drunk, I mean that she couldn't stand up.

When the band before us started breaking down equipment, we gathered by the side of the stage, ready to move our gear up quickly. Johnny was motionless, lost in his own thoughts. Richie was a ball of nervous energy, rat-a-tat-tatting his sticks against his thigh. I had my guitar slung over my back and my hat pulled low, trying, but failing, to look cool.

I figured Chey was in the bathroom and didn't pay it much mind until we had all our equipment—including her bass and her amp—on the stage.

“Where is she?” I asked. Johnny was just about to answer, a look of resignation on his face, when Chey stumbled up the stairs on the side of the stage. I reached out and caught her before she nose-dived into Richie's mounted toms.

When she looked up at me, her eyes were sparkling, but not the kind of sparkling that made me fall for her. Maybe
glassy
would be a better word. Her eyes were glassy. Or maybe
swimming
would be the best word. Her eyes were swimming.

“Are you high?” I asked.

“No,” Johnny offered from his seat on the cramped stage behind me. “She's drunk.”

“Oh, shit,” I mumbled. “Can you play?” I talked to her like she was an imbecile, and that made Chey laugh.

“A courz Icahn play,” she slurred. She gained her footing, found her bass, and put it on. The weight of the instrument against her small frame was too much, and Chey fell backward onto her amp. She caught herself so she landed on her butt, and it looked more like she sat down roughly than anything else. She giggled.

“Johnny,” I asked, turning to him, “what do we do?”

He looked at me, looked at Cheyenne, and shook his head. “We play.”

Richie shrugged and played the opening drum fill to the first song on our set list: tonight, a cover of the Beatles' “Birthday” with
New Year
substituted for
birthday
each time the word came up in the song. It was a short drum fill and ended with all of the instruments crashing in together. And that's just what Cheyenne did. She crashed in.

She was late with the riff and was playing the wrong key. I tried to shout to her, but her eyes were closed and she was lost in the music, hearing, I guess, what her beer-soaked brain wanted her to hear.

Each song after that was worse than the one that came before.

At the end of the fifth song, Johnny said, “Thanks, and Happy New Year, everyone,” and walked off the stage.

“Pussy!” Cheyenne yelled after him, and she launched into “Girl in the Band.”

I had no idea what to do, and I don't think Richie did, either. There were really only two choices. Follow Johnny off the stage, or stay and play.

We stayed and played with me singing lead. We got through two more songs, sort of, before it became clear that Cheyenne was done.

There was a smattering of polite applause, with a couple of “You guys suck” chants thrown in for good measure. Luckily, people didn't need the Scar Boys to feel good that night. Or at least they did a pretty good job of pretending to feel good. I have a theory that everyone secretly hates New Year's Eve as much as I do, but that no one will admit it. Mandated pleasure is an oxymoron.

We left the stage, and that was that. I was pretty sure it was the end of the Scar Boys.

RICHIE MCGILL

New Year's Eve was brutal. I mean, fucking brutal.

Cheyenne was, like, ten sheets to the wind, Johnny was being a whiny bitch, and Harry was just Harry. Definitely the worst gig we ever had. I mean, Johnny walked offstage halfway through.

But you know what? I still would've rather been playing that God-awful gig than doing just about anything else. That's how much I love this band.

HARBINGER JONES

It was two weeks before we all saw each other again.

I spent most of that time lying low and trying to put the finishing touches on my essay. The focus of the piece was the Scar Boys and what a life-changing experience that had been, but I didn't want to end it on the down note of the New Year's Eve gig. I was up to the part where Johnny lost his leg and didn't know where to go next.

When the phone rang, I was lying on my bed reading and rereading what I'd written, figuring this must be what people call writer's block. It was Jeff; he was summoning the entire band to a diner on the west side of New York City the following day. He was brief, he was matter-of-fact, and he hung up.

All thoughts of the essay went temporarily out of my head.

RICHIE MCGILL

I figured the band was toast, so I was surprised when Jeff called me. “Come to such-and-such diner tomorrow,” he said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Why not?” he answered. “What have you got to lose?”

Dude had a point, so I went.

HARBINGER JONES

Richie, Johnny, and I drove downtown in silence, only the sound of the Replacements'
Let It Be
keeping us company. I'd chosen that record on purpose. The title of the album came from the Beatles record of the same name, the latter an unintended chronicle of the demise of the greatest rock band of all time. Since I was pretty sure I was going to a funeral—not a wake; there's too much laughing at wakes, and this was not a day for laughing—it seemed fitting. The choice of music was a pretty subtle inside joke that I think was lost on the other guys.

Honestly, I didn't think Cheyenne would show up, but there she was, sitting in the booth with Jeff when we arrived. She looked awful. She was bundled in a winter coat, her hair was a rat's nest, and the sunglasses on her face couldn't hide the bags under her eyes or the sallow look of her cheeks. Johnny and I both slid in the booth next to Jeff, wanting, each for our own reasons, to put distance between us and Cheyenne, as if that hadn't happened already.

Jeff stayed mostly quiet until after we ordered and our food had arrived. He was polite, making small talk, chitchat. Then, just as I was sinking my teeth into a French fry smothered in brown gravy, a Maryland delicacy that had followed me home from the road, he let loose.

“What the fuck were you little knuckleheads thinking?” Jeff had never talked to us like this before. He was always in sales mode, in teaching mode, in wise-mature-adult mode. Not today.

“Don't look at us,” Johnny said. “Look at her.” He nodded his chin in Cheyenne's direction. She didn't respond in any way. She simply had a sip of her coffee and kept her head down.

“Oh, I know,” he continued. “Chey got drunk. Which was really stupid,” he added, turning to her. “She and I have discussed this at length, and I'm confident it won't happen again. Right, Cheyenne?”

“Right,” she answered. Her voice was thin, weak.

“But maybe Cheyenne wouldn't be getting drunk at gigs if you boys didn't shit where you eat.”

“Huh?” Richie was sincerely confused.

“It means don't diddle your fellow bandmates.”

“Hey, man, I'm not really sure what you mean by
diddle
, but I ain't never—”

“Put a sock in it, drummer boy. You all know what I'm talking about. I have no idea who has relationships with who in this band, and I don't want to know. What I do know is that all this behind-the-scenes shit is fucking everything up. So, from today forward, you're no longer friends; you're business partners. Understand?”