“There’s nothing to tell,” Hence said. “I’ve always wanted to come to New York to see The Underground. I’ve read about the seventies punk scene, and the place is legendary…. But you know that already.” And he stopped, as though that’s all I could possibly have needed to know about him.
If I hadn’t been worried about the time, I would have pressed further. I needed to get him safely outside, but I didn’t want to let him disappear into the night, not before I at least tried to help him. I reached out—slowly, so I wouldn’t startle him—and tugged his jacket sleeve. “I have an idea.”
I sent Hence out, telling him to return around six thirty. Less than ten minutes later, Quentin burst through the front door without so much as a hello. A bag of fast food in his arms, he took the stairs up to his room two at a time and locked the door behind him. Q had been cranky a lot lately and, judging by the expression on his face as he blew past me, that night was no exception. Good thing I’d gotten Hence out in time.
Twenty minutes later Dad turned up, and—surprise, surprise—he was in a bad mood, too, after a long, frustrating meeting with his investment broker. He lumbered into the kitchen, kissed me on the cheek, loosened his tie, and tossed his jacket over a chair.
“I started a nightclub so I’d never have to deal with money-grubbers again, and look at me now.” He opened the refrigerator and stared absently at the shelves as if something delicious would magically appear in front of him. “Completely at their mercy.”
“I’m making pizza,” I told him. “Pepperoni and mushroom. Your favorite. I’ll have it ready in ten minutes if you’ll sit down and get out of my way.”
He grabbed a can of club soda and shut the door. “I don’t deserve you, Cupcake.” Dad had called me that for as long as I could remember, and despite being too old for it I didn’t have the heart to make him stop. Though he was busy almost all the time and could be a bit distracted, he still had the softest heart imaginable.
While I cut the pizza and shoveled slice after slice onto his plate, I told him about the nice guy who had come to the club looking for a job as a busboy or janitor because he’d read books about The Underground and wanted to see it for himself. Of course, Dad wasn’t a total pushover. He took hiring very seriously, so I made a big point of saying how trustworthy Hence seemed, and how honored he would be to work even the most menial job, to the point where I was worried I was laying it on too thick, but Dad just kept nodding, with that faraway look that meant he was either listening thoughtfully or musing about something else completely.
Luckily, it turned out he was listening, and by the time Hence knocked on the front door, Dad was completely primed. After introducing the two of them, I ducked into the hallway and hovered nearby, ready to pretend I was on my way upstairs if Dad noticed me. All Hence had to do was shake hands and talk music, and the job of busboy/janitor was his. The other part was trickier. Hence thanked Dad, then looked so uncomfortable I started to worry he’d get all the way out the door without mentioning he had no place to sleep. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore: I stuck my head into the club and gave him a pointed look.
“There’s one other thing, sir….” he began.
“Sir? I’m not royalty, Hence. Call me Jim, the way everybody else does.”
“I don’t have any place to sleep, Jim,” Hence blurted out. “Can you, um, recommend a place nearby—a hostel, maybe, or a boarding house?”
Dad did just what I hoped he’d do—he said if Hence was willing to clean out the basement, he could stay here. We’d taken in stray musicians before, so I had a feeling he’d be cool about it, and I was right. Before long, Hence, his guitar, and his duffel bag were in the basement. I would have slipped downstairs to say congratulations and help him shift crates around and set up the metal folding cot, but as Dad helped me load the dishwasher, he seemed to be watching me more closely than usual.
“Why are you so interested in this boy, Cathy?” he finally asked, a bemused smile on his lips. “It’s not like he’s the first ragtag guitarist to come knocking on our door.”
“He’s so intense. I feel like he wants the job more than any of the others did.” I paused. “Plus, he desperately needs our help, don’t you think?”
Dad threw an arm around my shoulders, squeezed, and kissed the top of my head. “That’s my Cupcake,” he said. “Kind to a fault.” Satisfied, he let the subject drop, eager to settle into his favorite armchair with the day’s newspapers and to let me go off and do my homework.
Another father might have hesitated to let a good-looking stranger move in under his roof. As I rearranged my backpack, emptying out the heavy books I wouldn’t need to lug all the way over to Jackie’s, I thought about how great my dad was—and how much he trusted me. What intrigued me about Hence wasn’t his good looks—I’d been burned by one too many gorgeous musicians. It was his intensity—that dark hunger in his eyes—coupled with that hurt look of his, the way he had of averting his glance as though he’d been kicked hard by someone he trusted and didn’t dare let down his guard. I knew he must have stories to tell about the past he was fleeing and the future he’d planned for himself. I’ve always liked mysteries, and now one had landed on my doorstep, just begging to be solved.
Chelsea
The club was busier than before. A burly guy was unloading crates from a dolly and whistling to himself in the kitchen, and a woman with a shaved head fussed with a coil of electrical wires. I followed Cooper to the end of the hallway, into a long room with a stage at one end and a curved and gleaming bar at the rear. The walls were rough, exposed brick, bare but for a blue stripe of neon light that shot down their length, giving the space a watery glow.
By the time I noticed the man lurking in a patch of shadow we were almost on top of him. He stood at the bar with his back toward us, pouring himself a shot of Jack Daniel’s. He wore a businessman’s jacket, and his dark hair was cut short. Though he must have heard our footsteps, he didn’t turn or move. His stance was casual, commanding, like he owned the place. This had to be Hence.
Coop drew to a halt a few feet away, his arm out to keep me from getting any closer. The man finished pouring, then downed his shot in one gulp before turning to face us, an ironic smile—actually, more of a smirk—on his face. When his eyes landed on me, the smile vanished.
We gaped at each other. His dark hair was silver at the temples, and his skin was the color of caramel. He was scruffier than I’d expected, with a two-day beard. As older men’s faces go, his was handsome, but it wasn’t friendly or nice.
When he finally spoke, his voice sounded choked. “My God. You look just like…” Then he seemed to collect himself. “There’s nothing of your father in you at all.”
I stood up a little straighter. All the people who had known my mother—my father, my grandmother and aunts—liked to tell me how much alike we looked, but never in this tone of voice: a mixture of disbelief and wonder, and then, in that crack about my father, something like disdain. I struggled to keep my tone even. “So you did know my mother,” I said.
He chuckled. “I knew her, all right.” His tone implied he’d known her in ways I’d rather not have to think about. “A long time ago. What do you want from me, little girl?” He poured himself another shot.
Who did this guy think he was? “I only wanted to ask you a few questions. About her.” From the corner of my eye, I could see Cooper hovering anxiously nearby, as though he thought I might need rescuing from his boss. Or maybe he was flat-out eavesdropping.
Hence smiled, but not nicely. “Okay, what do you want to know?”
What didn’t I want to know? This guy might not stand still for a whole lot of questions, so I decided to start with the most important one: “Do you know how I can find her?”
He was silent for a moment, something like sadness crossing his face. “She’s not buried around here. Her body was never recovered.”
“But she’s not dead!” I insisted. “I mean, I found this letter she wrote,
and there’s a good chance she might be alive. She sent it from here.”
His eyes bugged. “A letter? Written when? Sent from here?” He took several steps forward and, involuntarily, I backed up. Hence was starting to scare me.
“Fourteen years ago.”
“Fourteen years ago?” He ran a hand through his hair and gaped at me. “You think she’s been in hiding for fourteen years?”
“The police investigators think so,” I said.
“They’re incompetent fools.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “That’s why I’m looking for her myself.” I reached into my hoodie’s pocket for the envelope.
He practically grabbed it from my hand, pulling the letter out so roughly I was worried he would rip it. I watched his face as he read, trying to decipher the emotions that passed across it. Surprise? Sadness? Hope? I thought I saw all three, but they vanished so quickly I couldn’t be sure.
“Chelsea…” he said finally. “So that’s your name. Just like Catherine, to name you after her favorite neighborhood.” Was that really where my name had come from? “She and I used to spend time together there.”
“Who are you, anyway?” I asked. “Who were you to my mother?”
“Sit down.” He gestured to a barstool, and I complied. “And you”—he motioned to Cooper—“get back to work.”
Cooper retreated.
“How did you get here? You don’t look old enough to drive.” He looked me over appraisingly and a vertical line deepened between his brows.
“I’m seventeen,” I told him. “I took a bus.”
“Does your father know you’re here?” Hence pulled up a barstool and lowered himself onto it. “Never mind. There’s no way in hell he would let you come here to see me.” He held the letter out, grudgingly, I thought, and turned back to the bar, as if he was completely done with me.
When I couldn’t stand the silence anymore, I broke it. “My dad kept this letter hidden from me. He told me my mother was dead.”
Hence turned to face me again. “I guess it goes without saying he never mentioned me.” He looked at the letter in my hand, hungrily, as if he was thinking about taking it back. I slipped it into my pocket.
“Maybe for you,” I said. “Nothing goes without saying for me. I grew up thinking my mother died when I was three. This letter tells me she’s still alive.”
“That letter is fourteen years old. It doesn’t tell you anything.”
“For all I know, there might be others. I read a story in the newspaper that said she’d sent letters. Plural.”
He looked at me with new interest.
“My dad and I moved around a lot, and our phone number has always been unlisted. Even if my mother had wanted to reach me, she couldn’t have.”
“Isn’t your father some kind of philosophy professor? She couldn’t find him online?”
“He teaches economics.” Hence had a point… but he didn’t know everything. “Maybe she didn’t want to talk to him. Or maybe she did call. Maybe he didn’t tell me… or the police.” I felt a pang of guilt; what was I accusing my father of, exactly? “She could have been trying to reach me for years. Maybe after a while she decided I was angry at her and just gave up.” In a way, that was my worst fear—that my mother thought I’d gotten her letters and hadn’t cared enough to write back.
We fell silent for a moment. The woman I’d seen untangling wires before strode into the room looking like she was going to say something to Hence, then caught the expression on his face, spun around, and was gone. For a while, Hence and I continued to sit side by side in a silence that was only slightly less hostile than before.
Finally, I dared another question. “Can you tell me about her? What she was like?”
“I can’t talk about her,” he said. “Don’t ask me to.”
This was a strange and disappointing response. Still, if he wouldn’t talk about her, maybe I could at least learn something about the rest of my family. “What about Quentin Eversole? He must be my uncle, right? Does he still live around here?”
Hence snorted. “After he sold me this place, he moved upstate. For all I know he could be dead. But you didn’t miss much; he was an idiot of the first order.” He poured himself yet another shot. “Quentin.” He spit the word out.
I waited for more.
“He despised me. Thought I wasn’t good enough to hang around with any sister of his.” He sneered down at my sneakers. “Jim—your grandfather—was a rich man. Did you know that?”
I shook my head, realizing how ridiculously little I knew.
“He inherited this building and turned it into a club in the late seventies. Didn’t that father of yours tell you anything? A lot of acts cut their teeth here. The Chokehold. Toxic Cake. Steamtrunk.” I nodded, as though those names meant something to me. “Between CBGB and The Underground, the Bowery was the epicenter of the punk movement. Bands were falling all over themselves for the chance to play here….”
I kept nodding, trying to get on his good side.
“Your grandfather turned this place from a kitchen-supply warehouse into a music mecca. I always admired him for that—the old bastard.”
Uh, okay. I kept my smile frozen in place. “So what happened to him?”
“Heart attack. At fifty-eight. Then Quentin got hold of the club and ran it into the ground. It was his worst nightmare, having the club fall into my hands, but by the time he hit bottom, he didn’t have a choice. It was sell out or go bankrupt. And I’ve built The Underground back up to what it used to be—even better. You know who played here last week?” He paused for emphasis. “The Starving Artists. Rolling Stone profiled them a month ago. They could be playing arenas. But they chose to come here for a victory lap because we’re the venue that broke them.” I looked up from my hands and caught him studying me. “Not that you care. What bands do you listen to?”
I shrugged. I don’t care who’s hot or edgy. I like what I like—but I wasn’t about to tell that to a professional music snob. “I came here to learn about my mother, not to chitchat about obscure bands.” Something about Hence was bringing out the ugly in me.
He mimed shock. “My mistake. What else do you want to know?”
“Do you have any ideas about where she went? After she left me and my dad and came here?”
His black eyes bored straight into mine. “When she arrived here, I was in Liverpool. By the time I got to New York she had vanished. And believe me, if I had even the slightest clue about where she had gone, I would have followed her there. I would have…” His voice trailed off. “If she were still alive, I’d know.” Another long moment of silence. “I, of all people, would know.”
Was he claiming he was closer to my mother than I had been? Than Dad was? This struck me as deeply unfair. “You of all people?”
He inspected me, cocked his head to one side, leaned in a little, and changed the subject. “It’s spooky how much you look like her. But I was wrong. You do have some of him in you, too. Around the mouth. Not that I’ve ever met him. I’ve seen his picture. Professor Max Price.” He made a face like he’d bitten into a lemon.
But I’m not that easy to distract. “What do you mean, you of all people?”
He laughed. Then he rubbed his eyes and was silent for a while. When he finally spoke again, his tone was cold. “Are you planning to take the bus back to Massachusetts tonight?”
I drew myself up as straight as I could. “I’m staying here until I learn about my mother,” I said. “Until I figure out where she is.”
“You might not like what you learn,” he said, rising and rubbing his hands on his jeans.
“I’ll take that risk.” Anything had to be better than nothing.
Hence chuckled. “Well, okay then. I’ve got work to do.” He started off into the hallway, but paused at the door and looked at me over his shoulder. “It’s rash of you to barge into my home like this. But since you’re here…” He paused for a moment before shouting, “Cooper! Get in he
re.” His voice boomed through the empty space, and Coop appeared in the doorway, out of breath. “Take little Miss Price upstairs. She’ll be spending the night.”
“Should I put her in the spare apartment? You know… the one…”
“Yes, I know the one.” Hence’s voice was sour with impatience. “That’s the perfect place for her.” And he stalked out of the room without another word.
Cooper and I looked at each other. For a long moment, I fumed. “What’s wrong with him?” I asked, when I could find the words. “Is he that rude with everyone? I don’t know how you can stand working for him. And what did he mean when he said it’s the perfect place for me?”
But Cooper just sighed and vanished. A minute later, he reappeared with my backpack and beckoned me toward the elevator. All I could do was follow.
Catherine
Between classes, Jackie asked if I wanted to come hang out at her place after school. I told her our fridge was almost empty and I’d promised Dad I’d bring home groceries, but she wasn’t having any of it. She poked her lower lip out and crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s that new waiter, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Annoyed, I fumbled my locker combination and had to start over. “And he’s not a waiter.” Lately I’d been spending more time around the club, going straight home from school, hoping for a chance to really talk with Hence. He’d been living in our house for almost two weeks, and I still hadn’t begun to unravel the mystery of where he was from and why he’d left. When he was in The Underground, he always seemed to be scrubbing the walk-in freezer or helping the bands unload their gear; either that or he was down in his basement room, playing his guitar, the amp turned up loud enough for me to hear it whenever I passed the closed door. On his days off, he would disappear completely, taking his guitar and amp with him, then return with his spine a bit straighter, looking confident and exhilarated—almost like a different person.