“Are we never going to tell anyone?” she said.
Clay hesitated. “About?”
“About being the reason Karney started the fire.”
Oh, that, Clay thought. And their erotic interlude in Room 1034 seemed all the more impossible, pure fantasy brought on by smoke inhalation and emotional overload. After a moment, Clay realized he hadn’t replied. “I don’t see a point in confessing. We didn’t do anything wrong.”
“If we’d only saved that tape,” Savy said, “we could’ve proven what happened to Rocco and Deidre. Changed their fates forever.”
“It’s gone though. And no one would believe it exists except you and me and Rocco.”
“And Karney. Who’s apparently still—”
“I heard.”
“And The Hailmaker.”
“Yes, The Hailmaker. Whatever he is—”
“The devil,” she reminded him. Her words landed flatly on the bathroom tiles.
Fiasco banged the door, making them both jump. “Yo!”
Clay and Savy laughed nervously in each other’s faces. Finally, Clay just said it: “That room in The Knickerbocker—I think I might have lost my mind.”
“Why’s that?”
“I don’t know. I was having some… very… vivid dreams.”
“Must’ve been the smoke,” Savy told him. “It messes with your head.”
Clay hoped the disappointment wasn’t obvious on his face. “A dream.”
“Sure. A vivid, naughty dream that brought us back from the dead.” A moment passed, as Fiasco’s banging escalated to a gorilla pounding. “A dream’s all it was, though, and all it can ever be.”
Her lips found the corner of his mouth and seemed to linger, even as Savy left the room.
Ten minutes later they took the stage. There were just over five hundred people in attendance, but in the years to follow there would be thousands who swore they were there the night Farewell Ghost played its first club gig.
Their sound was tighter than the night before. Their performance unrelenting. The shock of the day’s events finally releasing them. Or setting in deeper still. Clay’s lungs felt like they ended in his toes. He sang with his whole body, expelled every word—every syllable—as hard as he could, while Savy shredded through solos and snapped her B and high E strings and Spider and Fiasco did all they could to match their fury.
Halfway through the show, a followspot illuminated Clay. He stared out over the fascinated crowd, no longer afraid, no longer himself. What had possessed him to think he could ever give this up? It was better than pure, life-restoring oxygen. And for people like him, like Savy, the desire to play was rooted too deep. He couldn’t live without it, wouldn’t live without it.
Even if it meant ending up like Boyle or Karney? Or like Bennington or Staley?
Yes, he realized. Even if it means dying in some random bathtub.
Even if it meant having to face that figure in the dark again?
To this, Clay’s mind had no reply. He stood there on the lip of the stage, sweating and mute, a dozen hands reaching for his legs. The Queen Bitch. The Hailmaker. The Man. Where the fuck was The Man?
Karney’s croak answered him back. Let’s state the obvious though: He’s no man.
He/She/It could have been here, in the club, and how would they know? Starkly lit, Clay brought the microphone to his mouth. “If Mr. Death and Doom, who snuffs candles with his long fingers, is in the audience tonight, we’ve got a message for you…” Clay paused, feeling Savy’s curiosity two feet to his right and the collective audience stare from the dark below. Slowly he lifted his middle finger to the ceiling. “Fuck! Off! We’ve no use for you. We are not afraid of you. Tonight, all of us, we live forever!”
The darkness filled with screams. Savy launched into “Voices” and Clay lost himself in it.
17
THINGS THAT SCARE ME
It had been a long day, unquestionably the longest of Clay’s life, and it wasn’t over yet. There was only one real way to end an odyssey like this and so, after they’d watched The Jerks’ set, after they’d been pulled onstage to sing backups for the encore (“Hey, what a beautiful neck tattoo. You ugly! Let’s screw!”), Savy returned the Jeep’s keys to Clay’s pocket and, despite the growing suspicions of their bandmates, they drove off together, just the two of them.
Lights were blazing downstairs in the main house and Peter and Essie were still awake, flopped on the couch, drunk on Merlot and laughing uproariously over some inane romantic comedy. “Where have you kids been?” Peter asked, jovially enough.
“Playing a show,” Clay told him, his frog-throat the proof, and because he was in no mood for a parental cross-examination from a guy voluntarily watching Julia Roberts, he went on the offensive: “We missed your face in the crowd.”
“I thought that was yesterday. You said it was a private party.”
“Tonight was our first club show. I left the address with your secretary.”
“Shoot,” Peter said without conviction.
It was Essie who played the better diplomat. “When’s your next gig? We’ll be there.”
Savy told her it wouldn’t be for some time, after they recorded their demo and passed it around town, but they would keep everyone posted. Onscreen Julia crossed her eyes and Peter almost dumped his popcorn cracking up.
“Anyway,” Clay said, “it’s been a long day so…”
Peter gulped his wine, cleared his throat, and made a point of standing up. Oh, shit in my hat, Clay thought. What now? “Son, I want you to hear this right away—and I hope you don’t mind me saying it in front of your… um, band buddy. Essie is going to be moving in with us. We’re very much in love and I hope that can be respected.”
If Peter was anticipating a fight, he had chosen an opportune moment to strike; Clay was too distracted, too spent, to call bullshit on his impulsiveness. “Mortal love,” he heard himself say. “So foolish and fleeting.”
Savy gave him a sharp look, and Clay hurried on: “You
