One night, I was with Chris Hansen at his place in Echo Park, far, far away from Orange County, fake English accents, brittle macaroons, and nice college girls. The phone screamed out a few times before Chris picked up. I didn’t like the look that crossed his face.
“It’s for you, Bob.”
“Who is it?”
“That girl, Colleen.”
“No, no, no, man. Tell her I just left or something.”
“Dude. She knows you’re here.”
He held out the receiver to me like it was a pistol and I needed to do the honorable thing. If he had been a better host, he also would have offered me a blindfold and a last cigarette. I took the receiver from Chris and tentatively said, “Hi, Colleen.”
Her voice was calm, like always. “I’m pregnant, Bob. It’s your baby.”
I was drunk. “Well, what do you expect me to do about it?” A real asshole move, but I was scared. Panicked.
I could hear her start to cry. I hung up the phone. I poured another drink. “I’m going to be a father,” I told Chris. As those words sank into my addled brain, I thought that none of this would be too bad. Colleen would have the baby and I’d be a rock star. And I wouldn’t have a thing to do with raising a child. Everything would be cool once Colleen got used to the idea.
Her dad had other ideas. While I had convinced myself that Colleen was a college student who lived with her brother and I had constructed this whole backstory about her that I never bothered to verify because I thought I knew it all, that wasn’t the case. Not at all.
She was sixteen and a junior in high school.
That house she shared with her brother? It was their parents’ place, and Mom and Dad had been on vacation when I visited. I probably should have recognized that two kids wouldn’t—couldn’t—live in a house like that. And there’s no way two kids would have had that kind of taste in furnishings. I had lied to myself because that’s what addicts and drunks do. It was a pattern that I tended to repeat.
Just a few months before the Viper Room tragedy I had been on tour and did a series of dates in Europe. They were club shows, and there was no pressure. The band played tight and I loved the good reviews we got from the music press. I sat on the train between France and Belgium with the black briefcase that held my money, passport, and drugs and caught the eye of a beautiful, young European girl. “Hi, I’m Bob,” I said.
“Françoise,” she answered back. We made small talk as the train rattled its way to Antwerp.
“You’ve never been to Antwerp?” she asked, incredulous.
“No, never.”
“You must allow me to give you a tour of the city,” she said. “It’s so beautiful and has much history.”
We crossed the flat expanse of the lowlands and pulled into the city and said our good-byes. I promised to call her and then made my way to the hall, where we did our sound check and, later, the show. She was backstage.
“Allo, Bob,” she said in her accented English. “Shall we go for a walk?”
I went into the bathroom and did a dose of heroin. I met her outside. We walked and talked almost all night, with frequent pub stops for me. She was a fascinating girl and knew everything about her city. She guided me through cobblestone lanes and wide avenues. We watched the city lights waver in the reflection of the Scheldt River. At a statue in front of the ornate city hall, she told me the story of Antigoon and Brabo, the two characters depicted in the sculpture.
“Antigoon, Bob, was a giant. A terrible giant. And he demanded payment from those who wished to cross the river. Those who could not pay would lose their right hand to Antigoon. Until one day, a hero, Brabo, challenged the giant and killed him. And then he cut off Antigoon’s right hand and tossed it as far as he could into the river. Look.” She pointed at the statue and there, one in victory and the other in death, both characters were frozen at the dramatic end of her tale. I stumbled a little. “You have maybe had too much to drink, yes? Walk me home and you can stay with me.”
This wasn’t about sleeping with her, even though she was certainly beautiful. I walked along with her to a quaint street in the heart of the city’s diamond district. She led me up the stairs of a beautiful three-story house. I collapsed on the bed, where I dreamed about this flat, lowland country and the tales she had told me weaved in and out of the images. “Bob? Bob?” I heard someone call my name. It took me a moment to realize that I wasn’t in a hotel or back in Los Angeles. Françoise scurried around the room as she got dressed. From the light that filtered in through the brocade curtain, I could tell it was early morning. My head hurt and there was the unpleasant taste of last night’s booze and cigarettes in my mouth. I groaned and rolled back over and hoped to reenter the dream state. Françoise disapproved of that plan. She shook me. “Bob! You must get up! You cannot stay here! You have to take me to school.”
“School?” That jolted me. And as I sat up and fought the rush of nausea that came with the effort, I had a bigger shock. It was hard not to notice that Françoise, this worldly young woman who had given me such an in-depth tour of her city a few hours earlier, was now dressed in a plaid schoolgirl uniform. “What kind of school do you go to?” I asked while the voice in my head screamed, Please say college. Please say college!
“Why, I go to the finishing school, silly.”
What the fuck is a finishing school?
