Page 46 of Marley
“You’ve had no problem singing any of the other songs I’ve written about your sister, and you’ve had no problem living off the royalties either.”
I didn’t hesitate for a second. I swung a punch that caught him square on the chin. Luckily, he hit a chair on his way down, preventing his head from cracking open on the concrete floor.
“Marley!” Jimmie screamed my name from the doorway. She dumped the brown paper bag onto the first table she saw and came rushing towards us. Len followed her through the doors, carrying coffees and a carrier bag.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” She screeched, the sound echoed around the quiet warehouse.
“Me, me?” I actually pointed at myself as I paced in front of where she had Maca’s head in her lap. Now that his eyes were open, any concerns I may have had that I’d actually hurt him were gone.
“Read this before you start accusing me of wrongdoing, and tell me you or Len wouldn’t have done the same.” I shoved the pieces of paper at her and she started to read.
“What the fucks going on ... what’s that? Why’s he on the floor?” Len fires off.
“Marley knocked Maca out.” Jim held the paper up to him before moving and letting Maca’s head hit the concrete. He gave a groan of complaint.
“Now it’s your turn,” she told Len. “And when you’re done, I want first dibs before Bailey finishes him off.”
Len read the words to the song, looking up at me and laughing a couple of times, then down at Maca, who was sitting up on his own.
“Wh-what is this?” Len laughed nervously as he asked.
“That’s this pricks latest offering. He expectsmeto come up with a tune for this. He expectsmeto perform and record it. A song abouthimtaking my sisters virginity, about someotherbloke fucking her.” Jimmie put her hand on my chest as I stepped toward the fucker again.
“Have you finally lost the plot, Maca? Stand the fuck up.” Len shouted. Maca stood, still rubbing at his jaw. “What the fuck is going on with you, boy?” Apparently, Len turns into my dad when he’s angry.
“It’s just a song.”
“Just a song? And you really expect him to get up on stage and sing a song like that, knowing it’s aimed athis sister? You really think that I want to be the manager of a band who sings a song like that, aboutmylittle sister?”
“So as long as I write songs about how much I love and miss your sister, we’re all good, but if I write something honest, if I write about how she shut me out with no chance to explain or apologise, or I write about how she let me shag her when she was just fifteen, that’s—”
He didn’t get a chance to finish before Len flew at him, knocking Jimmie over in the process.
“He seriously has a death wish.” Jim said as I was helping her up. We stood back and watched as Len and Maca rolled around on the floor for a few minutes before Tom and Billy separated them.
They were both breathing heavy, bleeding from the nose, and had split lips. Surprisingly, it was Maca that was trying to break free from Billy’s grip and get at Len again.
“This is bullshit, fucking bullshit. How much money did you all make out of the songs I’ve written about her the past couple of years, ay?” He looked around like a crazy man, still breathing hard. His white T-shirt was ripped at the neck with blood stains.
“She broke my fucking heart. She’s a cold-hearted bitch who won’t answer my calls or reply to my letters.” He’d actually gone beyond shouting and was screaming at us.
Jimmie stepped up. “Howdareyou. How fucking dare you.Youbrokeherheart—You.” She punched him, like a girl, with the flat side of her bunched hands on his arms and chest. “You broke her heart, you stupid fucker, and you almost broke her mind. She’s shut you out because that’s the only way she can survive. You’ve no idea, you have no idea what she’s been through. She’s hurt and humiliated. They wrote horrible things about her in the papers and she didn’t ask for any of it. She gave you her virginity when she was just fifteen because she’s loved you since she was eleven years old, since that very first day we set eyes on you intheirback garden. She loved and trusted you and what did you do, Maca? You went off to a hotel room with that slut, that fucking oxygen thief of a human being. Just a few days after proposing to George, you go into a hotel room and snort blow from Haley Whites tits. Of all the people in the world Maca, it was with her? Why her? Have you any idea what you’ve done to my best friend?”
Jim’s was breathing heavy through her tears. Len, Billy, and Tom were watching in stunned silence while Maca and I both cried.
Fucking tears. They just come from nowhere.
Guilt sat like acid in the bottom of my stomach, in my chest, and pumped through my veins, burning me from the inside out.
“It wasn’t his fault,” I said quietly. Jimmie’s head turned quickly and her brown eyes were on me, sweat glistening on her light cocoa coloured skin. I’ve never seen Jim so angry.
“Fuck off, Marley.” She spat. “He went to that room willingly, knowing all the while that he had a girlfriend, an unofficial fiancé. He asked your sister to marry him and just a few days later, he’s in a hotel room with the one and only person I’ve ever known George to hate. Yeah, you’re as much to blame as he is, but he was the one with a girlfriend. He was the one that should have stayed away from that conniving little cunt, but he didn’t.” Her face crumbles as she looks at Maca.
“You broke my beautiful friend, you broke her sixteen-year-old heart and I don’t know if I’ll ever get her back. So don’t you dare stand there telling me that she’s a cold-hearted bitch. Don’t you fucking dare stand there spitting the dummy because she shut you out. What you did was shut her down.”
“So why won’t she just talk to me? Why won’t she just let me explain?” He pleaded. His voice was full of desperation. It hurt my heart so bad to watch him, to hear all of this and know that I was to blame.
“Because she’s not ready to see you. You hurt her so much that she can’t bear to even hear your name.” She stood in the middle of all of us, but faced Maca, shaking her head. “She’s just doing what she needs to do to get by, but never have I heard her say such spiteful things about you. Why would you want to do that to her? Why, after everything you’ve put her through, would you want to cause her any more hurt and humiliation? Just get over it, Maca. Move on and stop acting like a lovesick kid.”
