Upstairs, I went through my closet, looking for something to wear to the funeral. Everything I had in black was inappropriate. Even my dresses, all of them too formal or too ratty or too sexy. There’d been a phase of Tailhook where we’d all gone for the Man in Black look, Van and I in short black skirts and black nylons—Van had gone with garters—and black suit coats and blindingly white blouses, and Click in the complementary suit. I had black jeans, black tanks, black tees, black shoes, black boots, black undies.
Nothing I could wear to my brother’s funeral.
So I took my car to the Nordstrom at the Lloyd Center, the mall that got dropped in the Northeast by mistake. It’s an indoor mall, with an ice skating rink at its heart, and I got there just as they were opening the doors, making straight to the east end for my shopping, dodging mall walkers and professional consumers. Fifteen minutes got me three outfits that looked like they would fit, and I thought about trying them on, but shoppers and salespeople had begun to recognize me, and the thought of getting trapped in a dressing room made me want to spit. I got out as fast as I could, was back home only forty-nine minutes after I’d left, and felt that at least I’d managed the shopping successfully.
I laid out my outfits on my bed, but the silence of the house started to grate on my nerves, so I hit the remote and switched on the television. I was picking out shoes and stockings with no holes when MTV News came on the screen, and Gideon Yago ran down the bullet points, and then he hit the tragedy in Portland.
I stopped what I was doing and turned to watch him. He said my brother’s name, and my own, and the band’s. He talked about how Tommy had been questioned and then released. A picture of me that I had never seen before came up on the screen behind his head, somewhere sunny, me smiling broadly at the camera.
He offered me MTV’s deepest condolences.
I turned the television off, threw the remote across the room.
The last drink I’d taken had been in the wee hours Friday morning, just before I’d earned myself handcuffs. I’d been dry for over two days.
This seemed as good a reason as any to break the fast.
CHAPTER 20
The service was well attended, if small. Van and Click and Graham were there, and Joan. A handful of other people who had known my brother, including a couple women, one of whom I took to be Avery, his newest. Marcus and Hoffman were there, too, but stayed clear of the crowd, at the back.
Tommy stayed in the back, wearing a suit that must have come from Goodwill or St. Vincent de Paul. He was there when I arrived, and he tried to speak to me, but I moved away before he could. I had Joan on one arm and Van on the other, and they provided insulation. After that, he kept his distance.
But not out of sight, and at the grave, when we were finished and moving to the cars, I looked back to see him standing beside where the marker would go. He looked hunched, and I realized he was sobbing.
Maybe if I hadn’t been so drunk, I’d have gone to him.
Joan had found Van at my door when she came to get me for the service, and they came in together to discover me upstairs, in a corner of my bedroom, crying hysterically. I’d finished the bottle of Jack when I’d told myself I was only going to have one drink, and I was really worked up because I couldn’t decide which of the three outfits I was going to wear. Van got the shower running and Joan got me undressed, and the two of them cleaned me up under the ice-cold water, washing vomit off my chin and out of my hair. I fought them a little, spitting and yelling.
“Knock it the fuck off!” Van finally snarled at me. She was in black, not too expensive, not too flashy, and she’d only put on a little bit of makeup. I thought she looked jet-lagged and she was certainly angry. She’d taken the coat off to keep it from getting wet. “Jesus Christ, Mim, it’s your goddamn
“I hate you,” I told her.
Together, they got me sober enough to stand, and dressed me. I was back in my head enough to exert some will, and that made it easier on them when I was willing to do what they said, and harder on them when I wasn’t. Once they finally had my clothes in place, Joan sat me on the edge of the bed and held me while Van got my shoes on me, then went back into the bathroom for some makeup. She did my eyes and my lips, and when she was finished, they helped me down the stairs. Van put me in Joan’s car, got me buckled in, and then went to her Beemer to follow us.
Joan didn’t look at me once as she drove to the funeral home.
The service was blurry and went by fast, and there was a guy named Damien who was about Mikel’s age and who gave the eulogy. Mikel had brought him along to a couple of the shows we’d played in town, and he was nice, and he spoke nicely, and he said all of the nice things, and I wondered if maybe he knew about pinhole video cameras and wireless broadband transmission.
I sat with Joan, and Van, Click, and Graham filled out the rest of our pew. I spent most of the time biting my tongue, trying to keep the drunk from making me soggy. The coffin was open, and Mr. Colby of the Colby Funeral Home had done a good job, because Mikel didn’t look like he had when I’d found him, hurting and scared. He looked like he was faking sleep, that was all.
When the service finished, Click and Graham joined the pallbearers, and the rest of us followed them out. I walked between Joan and Van, following the coffin, and once it was loaded in the hearse we turned to our vehicles and got a face full of flashbulbs and hot spots mounted on television cameras.
It must have been every local affiliate, all of them out to catch the show, and there were even a couple out- of-towners trying to make their own coverage. Faces I recognized from television screens and studio interviews dimly remembered, all of them nonetheless strangers.
Most kept their distance, due in part to the six Portland police officers positioned around the entrance and on the curb. But there was one bitch who launched herself forward with microphone leading, cameraman over her shoulder, looking for the kill.
“Mim! Mim! Did you know that the Portland PD hasn’t ruled you out as a suspect?”
I kept my head down, remembering Chapel’s warning, but mostly because I was afraid I’d throw up again.
The Bitch pressed, “Is it possible your brother’s murder is related to your own drug problems? Or to the pornography of you that’s been released on the Net?”
Van let go of me, moving to block. “Hey, bugfuck, leave her be or we’ll be planting two bodies at the cemetery.”
“Excuse me, I’m talking to Mi—”
Van grabbed the mike from her hand, then used it to hit the end of the cameraman’s rig. There was shouting. The police officers started trying to separate Van and the woman, and Hoffman waded in and put herself between the camera and us.
“Trouble with that?” Van was shouting. “My friend has no goddamn comment, okay?”
She threw the microphone overhand into the street, where it bounced off the side of a parked news van. Then she seized my arm so hard it hurt, and helped me again into the Colby Funeral Home’s complimentary limousine, and I was on my way to the cemetery.
Joan had insisted on holding the reception at her house, and I skirted the fringes, not wanting to mingle with the other mourners. Damien tried to corner me twice, and I retreated farther into the house, trying to find a quiet space to be alone.
I ended up finding Click, Van, and Graham in Steven’s old music room. Click and Graham had both worn sensible, somber suits, and neither of them looked comfortable or even correct in them. Graham looked like his tie was going to choke him to death, and there was just no way Click could sell mainstream with his tattoos and piercings.
