Page 19 of Vespertine
Nicky chuckled. “Me either. It has a happy ending, though.Sez admitted that a dude could be tough despite a flower tattoo.”
He’d actually said “tough and pretty.” It was a descriptionNicky heard a lot about himself. Magazines especially liked to describe him asa pretty little bad boy, because, while he wasn’t anywhere near as small asMiriam, he was still shorter, more lithe, and finer boned than the other guysin the band.
Miriam laughed softly, and Nicky rubbed his fingers over thescratch marks until they faded, leaving unblemished bright blue and violetbehind. He carefully kept his arm rolled in, though, so his mother wouldn’t seethe scars and healing track marks there.
“I usually just say I got the blue flowers because of, youknow—Nico Blue.”
She shook her head and went back to the pancake batter. “Okay,go ahead and break your mother’s heart all at once. How many tattoos do youhave?”
Nicky laughed. “A lot.”
She nodded and began ladling the batter onto the griddle. “Five?Twenty-five?”
“I lost count.”
“Silly boy.” She rolled her eyes and waved her hand at him,dismissing his comment as foolishness, and Nicky yawned and stretched. “Fifty?”
“Ten. My lucky number.”
He stood and headed across the room, grabbing his father’sTakamine acoustic guitar resting on the side of the sofa where he’d left it thenight before. It was the instrument he’d learned on, and he was grateful tohave it in his hands. His mother’s piano in the fancy living room next to thedining room was also calling to him, but nothing beat the soothing portabilityof a guitar.
Testing the tuning, his mind went to his babies—thethirty-eight guitars back in his rental house in Santa Monica. His lease wasrunning out this fall on the three-bedroom Spanish Colonial Revival home he’drented for the past five years. He’d put off making any decision about whetheror not to renew until after the tour. He didn’t love the house, but he didn’thate it either. Its main attractions when he’d taken it had been the guarded,gated neighborhood and the private back yard. But he’d used a lot of drugsthere, shot a lot of heroin, fucked a lot of guys and snorted a lot of coke.Just thinking about going back there made him feel ashamed and sick to hisstomach. When he was well, he needed to figure out what to do with the houseand everything in it.
But first he needed to decide how he wanted to live. Hisstomach tensed, and he let those thoughts slide right out of his mind alongwith all the residual anger from the phone call. That was all too much to dealwith right now. Instead, he’d play guitar until the pancakes were done, andthen he’d figure out what to do with the rest of his day.
He sat back down at the table, shoving out far enough thathe could play easily. He didn’t think about it, just let the fingers of hisleft hand press down on the strings and the fingers of his right pick out thenotes that lived somewhere inside him and always had.
Miriam sighed tenderly. “I remember you were only three whenyou climbed up on my piano bench and started playing like you’d been bornknowing how.”
“You always make it sound like I plunked my tiny butt downand played a concerto.”
Miriam laughed. “Oh, heavens, no. I guess I do, don’t I? I’mjust so proud of you, Nicky.”
He swallowed and looked away from the back of her dark headand her small shoulders.Was she really? Why?
“But no, it wasn’t a concerto. It was amazing, though. Yousat there and poked at the keys again and again, like you were memorizing them.”Her smile was dreamy and far away. “Then you used your fat little fingers toplunk out something that, hand to God, sounded like the kind of thing you’dhear on the radio.”
“So, three or four chords over and over, basically?”
Miriam chuckled. “I honestly don’t remember. But you wereobsessed after that. Until Jazz’s family moved in next door, and the two of yougot close, that piano was your best friend. You spent hours every day with it.”
Nicky smiled a little bit at hearing his mom call the localpriestJazzagain. Apparently old habits did diehard. He changed from picking to strumming and watched as Miriam stacked thepancakes and turned off the electric griddle before pulling out plates. Heshould ask if he could help, but being doted on was too good to let go of yet,so he let her do the work for now. He suspected she liked doing it for himanyway.
“It looks like your dad is taking his usual ninety-minuteshower,” Miriam said, laying plates at each of their traditional spots. “Oh,and here. I got this out of your car this morning.” She grabbed Nicky’s blackleather backpack from the cubby by the back door and placed it on the table infront of him. “I thought you might need it?” She nodded toward the smallflesh-colored patch on his left bicep.
Nicky slid the guitar down to lean against his leg and thenopened his haul of medication and vitamins. Aside from his wallet, it was allhe’d had on him when he’d left the private detox facility he, Sez, and Mick hadbeen dropped off at forty-five minutes after their last show.
It’d been a fast exit from Red Rocks. Management had arrangedroadies as decoys and sent them along with Ramona back to their hotel to keepthe paparazzi off their asses. Then the three of them had been hustled into anondescript sedan and onto a chartered jet. It’d been explained to them in nouncertain terms what was expected: get sober, get sane enough to work, thenmake a fucking hit record, or face the consequences.
Nicky wondered what those consequences looked like. Afterall, he’d never been one to back away from a bad choice.
When he’d arrived at the detox clinic, he’d still beenwearing the sweat-slick leather pants he’d had on for weeks. It was a blurafter that, though they’d started him on the maintenance medication right awayto keep theDTs from being too brutal. Then, oncethe three of them were stable, detoxed, and hooked up with some L.A.-based drugcounselors, they’d been burped back out again into the waiting arms of theirmanagement. And Ramona. Who’d somehow been the only one to think to bring themall fresh clothes and small backpacks for the array of pill bottles they’d needto collect from the facility’s private pharmacy. From there they’d gone theirseparate ways, with Sez going to his ‘health spa,’ Mick to a full-on rehabunit, and Nicky, well, he’d chosen to come home.
He should give Ramona an actual call later. He wondered whatshe was up to while her bandmates tried to get their shit together. Probablyfending off other bands’ attempts to poach her. Though he didn’t know why shebothered with loyalty. She’d be better off, probably, with another group withmembers who were far less fucked up than them.
“So, that conversation with your management seemed tense,”Miriam said eventually.
“Yep.”
