A Fistful of Rain

Then I saw the picture they were using.

I wasn’t certain it was me at all for a couple of seconds. I just didn’t think I looked like that, that I could ever look like that. The second thing was that I had no memory of it being taken, no recall of the moment when the camera turned on me to catch me in the pose.

It wasn’t a studio shot, it was a candid, probably taken during the two weeks the interviewer had been in our shadow, and it looked like I was backstage someplace, alone, sitting on one of the metal gear boxes. Before a show, or maybe after, because I had my concert clothes on, the cargo pants and the tank top. The Tele in my hands, eyes closed, my head back, not exerting myself, just relaxed, just playing, maybe even singing. Light on me and shadow all around.

I’d never looked that good, that sexy, in all my life.

“Pretty hot,” Graham said. “Pretty hot, indeed.”

“You look three seconds from orgasm,” Click observed.

“You’ve never seen me three seconds from orgasm. How would you know?” I told him.

“My imagination is active. It looks entirely sexual, it looks like you’re getting off.”

“Were it that easy.”

“You’ve had a long-term relationship for a while now, haven’t you?”

I held up my right hand. “Yes, the five of us are very happy together.”

“That is a picture that will be on lockers,” Graham told me. “That is a picture that gets reprinted, Mimser. That is a picture that immortalizes a rock star.”

I wasn’t sure what I felt about that.

From the look on Van’s face, she wasn’t, either.

The second night in Sydney, all of us—the band, the crew, everyone—went to a party at a club called Home. The party was thrown by the label, celebrating not just the Rolling Stone cover, but also the debut of our new single. “Queen of Swords.” It had entered the Billboard Top Fifty at twenty-two, as they say, with a bullet, and it was a big fucking deal, because it meant we’d finally smashed out of the alt-rock circle, and now had a genuine mainstream hit on our hands.

I was drunk when I arrived at the party, having polished off the second fifth of Jack in the limo on the way over, and Graham had to shepherd me across the floor and to the VIP room before he could get to the serious business of glad-handing the reps. I stayed on a couch, watching pretty girls and handsome men and avoiding conversation, and at some point someone handed me another bottle, and I got to work on that until I couldn’t work on anything anymore.

Sometime later, Graham helped me into my hotel room, got me onto my bed and the boots off my feet and the wastebasket by my head.

“Just put it in the goal, baby,” he told me.

The next day was hell.

We had a live set to be played on local radio, and that had to be canceled, but there were two television appearances to do, and there was no way out of those. Graham had slept in my room, dozing in the easy chair by the desk, and every time I’d woken to vomit or use the bathroom, he’d been there.

The first television spot was live, for an audience, and when I saw myself on the monitors, I knew the makeup chair hadn’t been enough. I looked awful, and even though my hands knew what to do, Van froze me out during the set, and even Click kept his distance. The worst part was that after we’d finished playing “Queen of Swords,” the host wanted time with Van in the chair, and that meant that Click and I had to stay on the stage, beneath the lights. It took supreme effort to keep from being sick again.

Then we changed studios and did another set. This one went a little better, but not much.

As soon as we were finished, Graham carted me back to the hotel, and put me back to bed. The good news was that we had the night off. The bad was that we were flying to New York in the morning, to do an MTV gig, and that we were all supposed to meet in the lobby at six.

I thought that maybe, just maybe, I might be sober by then.

I was, but not enough that I realized what I was seeing when I reached the lobby the next morning. I had my bags and my flight case for the Tele, and I came out of the elevator and into the lobby with the dawn just starting to stream in through the hotel’s windows, bouncing harsh off the marble floor. Beyond the service counter there was a little sitting area, and they were all already there, Van, Click, and Graham, seated around a little coffee table.

Click saw me making toward them first, and he reached out and tapped Van’s bare knee through her torn Levi’s, said something. She and Graham both looked my way, standing up, and Click followed to his feet a second later, slower.

None of them had any bags visible, and I supposed it could have meant that they’d already loaded them, but even as I thought that, I knew it wasn’t the case. A weird tightness crawled across my chest, as if trying to squeeze, but from the inside, and I could feel my heart beating, not like it was faster, but as if it had suddenly grown larger, as if each pulse threatened to rupture my chest.

Van had one of her trademark tank tops on, a black one with a silver logo in its center. The logo was an image of a stylized, almost Art Deco, woman, standing in a swirling G, and beneath the letter was the word “Girlfiend.” It was the name of a lesbian boutique in Los Angeles, on La Cienega, though Van didn’t wear the shirt because she was advertising a preference; she wore it because it made the boys crazy. Her skin was clear and her eyes were bright, and her hair professionally unruly. She hadn’t bothered with makeup, and when she smiled, her lips seemed to almost pale away against her face.

“Mim,” she said, and for a moment I thought that I could get forgiveness without asking. Then the smile went away, and I wasn’t going to see it again.

“This is ominous.” I tried to make it sound flip. It didn’t.

“We’ve got to talk about some changes.” She was watching me closely, not quite staring, but really focusing. Then she gestured at the seat that Click had vacated and added, “You want to sit down?”

I looked at Graham, but Graham wasn’t having any, focusing instead on the leather portfolio he was holding in his hands. Click barely gave me eye contact before looking away to Vanessa.

“You’re canning me?” I directed it at Van, trying to keep my voice strong. It came out too loud, and bounced around the lobby. Early risers glanced our way.

“Why don’t you sit down?” Van motioned at the chair again, then fell back into hers.

I stared at her, but she was only giving me her profile now, facing the empty seat. Neither Graham nor Click made a move or a sound.

I had to set down my bags to take the chair, and it was clumsy, and humiliating.

Van waited for me to get settled. “You were really fucked-up yesterday.”

“Are you canning me?” I asked again.

Van shook her head slightly, as if to say that I had her wrong, that wasn’t what this was about at all. “Been a long tour, Mim.”

“Why won’t you give me an answer?”

“Gonna be even longer, now that we’ve added all those European dates.” She glanced past me, around the lobby. Out the windows, you could see the harbor and the opera house. “I’m not sure you’re up to it.”

“What—I don’t even understand what . . . what are you saying, Van?”

She focused on me again. “Your drinking’s way out of control.”

Heat flared in my cheeks and neck, and I realized the humiliation I’d been feeling had simply been the orchestra tuning up, going through their scales. We’d hit the overture now. I opened my mouth and couldn’t find my voice enough to respond.

“We’re worried about you.”

“You bitch,” I said.

“Mim, you were so drunk the second night in Melbourne you barely made it through the encore.”

“My playing stands,” I said. “My playing is solid, this is not about my fucking playing!”

“You don’t need to shout.”