A Fistful of Rain

come and get me.

I took another shower and put a real bandage on the cut in my palm. The laceration didn’t seem to have been so deep as to require much more than that, but once I had the bandage in place, I curled my hand, as if I was holding my pick, just to see if I could still do it. It ached, but I could still play.

I got dressed in clothes I hadn’t worn for over a year, and discovered that I’d lost more weight than I’d thought. It’s hard to eat well on the road, and I hadn’t been nearly as religious about it as Van had, so it was kind of surprising. As I was tightening my belt, I realized that I was famished.

Back downstairs, I looked in the pantry again, at the shelves freshly stocked with boxes and cans I’d purchased with Mikel, and I didn’t see anything I wanted to cook, let alone eat. I dug through the drawers and cabinets in the kitchen until I found the Yellow Pages, then found the listing for Kwan Ying’s, picked up the phone to dial. The voice mail tone was active, but I ignored it and ordered dinner. I ordered Szechwan chicken, veggie lo mein, veggie spring rolls, hot and sour soup, won ton soup, and an extra side of white rice. The guy who took my order asked if I was entertaining.

“I used to be,” I said.

After he confirmed that I’d be paying in cash, he hung up, and I did, too, then picked up the phone again and called the number to retrieve my voice mail. Voice mail makes getting messages easy when you’re on the road, and I’d used it a lot in the past year.

The recorded lady told me that I had seventy-eight messages.

Just for kicks, I played the first one. The recording said it had been left “yesterday,” which didn’t tell me when today was, but made me nervous.

“Hi, Miriam, this is Jamie Rich, I don’t know if you remember me. I did the piece on Tailhook for Spin last April, we had dinner at Canter’s in L.A. I’m calling to see if you have anything to add to the statement Vanessa Parada and Click released this morning regarding your hiatus from the band. You can call me back at—”

I fast-forwarded through the rest of it, deleted it, and then hung up again.

Only seventy-seven of those left to go.

I ate my dinner, such as it was, in the front room, listening to Mark Knopfler’s Sailing to Philadelphia. All I could really manage was half of the hot and sour soup, and a little white rice. I finished with a cigarette, listening to the whole album through, then hoisted myself and put the food in the fridge before returning to the stereo. I swapped discs and loaded all five slots with Dire Straits, the albums in chronological order up to Brothers in Arms, then climbed back on the couch and shut my eyes.

I started crying sometime during Telegraph Road.

I fell asleep somewhere in the middle of Making Movies.

I woke up to the doorbell ringing, and new sunlight coming through the blinds to warm me. I tumbled off the couch and stubbed my toe on the coffee table and swore and hopped into the hall, and the doorbell sounded off again as I was trying to disarm the alarm.

“Hold your fucking horses,” I shouted, and punched the last digit and heard the cheerful bleat and yanked the front door open, ready to tell whoever it was to go to hell.

Which worked out fine, because it was Tommy.

CHAPTER 9

“Hello, Miriam,” Tommy said. When I didn’t respond, he added, “I was hoping we could talk.”

He’d been almost my brother’s age now when he’d been sent away to prison, and he was still so big I had to look up to see his face, even though I’d grown and he seemed to have shrunk. His black hair had taken on a lot of gray, and it was in his stubble, too, along his jaw and chin and above his mouth. His eyes seemed smaller, heavier, and there were a lot more wrinkles and creases on him, but they didn’t sag, as if he’d earned them while on a diet. He was wearing canvas work pants, and work boots, and three shirts; a white T-shirt visible under a half-buttoned Pendleton flannel, covered by a thicker, quilted flannel, open. A pair of leather work gloves were stuck through his belt, riding at his hip, and a pack of Camels was resting in his T-shirt pocket.

I stared at him, the surprise already drowning in my anger, then stepped back and pushed the door open the rest of the way, gesturing to let him inside. He hesitated, then stepped over the threshold. After I closed the door, I put my back to him and made for the kitchen.

Tommy followed, looking around as he came. I ignored him, set to making coffee, measuring grounds and adding water. The clock on the microwave said it was 8:11 A.M.

“I didn’t wake you, did I? I didn’t mean to wake you.”

My cigarettes were on the counter, so I shook one out and got it going, turning to keep an eye on him. He’d made it as far as the kitchen table, and was looking out the window into the backyard.

“You’ve got a nice home.” It sounded a little cracked when he said it, as if his throat was parched. He turned his head to look at me, to see if he could get a visual response since I wasn’t giving him an audible one. When I still didn’t speak, he added, “This is a very nice place. Nice neighborhood, too.”

I took some more smoke off my cigarette, staring at him. The coffeepot was nearly full, the pump inside wheezing the last hot water into the basket. I turned away to get myself a mug.

“Mikel told me that I shouldn’t come by without calling first, that it probably wouldn’t be a good idea,” my father said. “I left you a message, but I guess you didn’t get it.”

The coffeemaker gave a dying gasp, pushing out the rest of the water, then rattled. I flicked some ash into the sink, then poured myself a cup. When I looked again, he’d taken the same seat Mikel had on Tuesday, his hands in front of him on the tabletop, one cupping the other.

“It’s just that I was nearby. I got a job today, starts at nine, this construction site on Sandy. They’re doing a renovation. Since I was in the neighborhood, I thought it wouldn’t be too bad if I stopped by. To say hello. To see my girl.”

My cigarette had died, and I ran the tap to kill the last of the embers, then dropped it in the trash under the sink. I lit another one.

“No ashtrays, huh?”

I drank some of my coffee.

The chair squeaked as he turned in it, dropping his hands back into his lap. He drew himself up with a breath, as if strengthening a resolve.

“I’ve heard your music, you know,” he said. “Mikel has both of your albums—”

“There are three albums,” I said.

The surprise was visible on his face, not that there was an album he didn’t know about, but that I’d bothered to speak in the first place.

“I don’t . . . I never imagined that you would have a gift like that.” He raised his hands slightly, as if showing their potential, as if they weren’t his but were mine. “You remember that Silvertone we got from Sears? I guess that wasn’t a good guitar, but you did like it, you’d sit on the couch and pluck on it for hours.”

“It was a piece of shit,” I said.

“We ran it through the hi-fi, you remember that? To get it to sound through the speakers, because you wanted an amp. The noise was awful. I thought your mother was going to throw us both out of the house.”

I glared at him, trying to make him see that he’d crossed a line, that he’d crossed it a while back. Tommy lowered his hands, looked away.

“I just didn’t know,” he said. “That you could play those instruments and write those songs. And sing, too. You sing.”

“Van sings. I do backup.”

“Yes, I understand that, but there are a couple of songs where you’re singing, and she—Vanessa?—is backing you up, too. I like those songs a lot.”