How to Kill a Rock Star

  The girl went into the cafe and sat at a table next to the window; Loring waited for a truck to go by and then crossed the street.

  “Small world,” he said with a level of comfort I wasn't expecting. “You weren't even going to wave, were you?”

  “You looked busy.”

  He studied me like a scientist would study a specimen. “How is everything?”

  “Everything's good,” I lied. “How's everything with you?”

  “Good.”

  He sounded like he meant it, and I was unable to hide my smirk. “Wow. So, who is she?”

  “A friend,” he mumbled, as if he feared saying any more would hurt me.

  “It's okay, you can tell me.”

  He kicked at the ground, but his warm, bashful eyes divulged most of what he wouldn't say.

  “Good for you.” I laughed and elbowed him playfully. “At least tell me where you met her.”

  “Believe it or not, I've know her since I was a kid. Her dad's been Doug's lawyer for years. I've had a crush on her since I was twelve.”

  “Are you sleeping with her?”

  He rolled his eyes, and I suddenly remembered how much fun it was to torture Loring with personal questions.

  “No kidding,” I said, “it would be the best news I've had in months. I'm begging you, tell me you're madly in love and having the best sex of your life, because knowing you're happy would mean one less person I have to feel guilty about hurting.”

  Loring glanced back at the girl. She looked up almost at the same time, as if she could feel his eyes. She smiled at him in the way you would smile at someone if they'd saved your life.

  “Good for you,” I said again, although it hurt a little that time.

  With his thumb, Loring drew a cross on my forehead like priests do on Ash Wednesday. “Consider yourself absolved,” he said.

  Through the cafe window, I watched the girl take out a little spiral notebook from her purse. “Uh-oh, don't tell me she's a writer.”

  Loring laughed. “No. She's an artist, actually. She makes jewelry.”

  I couldn't have been happier for Loring. Really. But being witness to the beauty of burgeoning love was making me feel hopelessly, impenetrably alone.

  “I have to go.” I shifted my grocery bag to my opposite hip. “Tell your friend I said she's the luckiest girl in Manhattan, okay?”

  He smiled. “Take care of yourself, Eliza.”

  “Yeah. You, too.”

  The prospect of spending the rest of the afternoon alone in the apartment was too much to bear, but Vera was busy studying, and I was trying hard to simulate normalcy in front of Michael so I couldn't go to him.

  I dropped off my groceries, walked to Houston Street, and reluctantly entered Rings of Saturn for the first time in months.

  John the Baptist was busy watching a NASCAR race on the new TV that had been installed above the bar. He didn't notice me right away, but when he finally turned around and spotted me, he smiled the gentlest, saddest smile I'd ever seen.

  He shut off the TV and went about fixing me a drink, putting seven olives in my glass. As he slid the goblet across the bar, all he could say was, “Man, oh, man…”

  My eyes filled with tears.

  “You wanna talk about him or not?” John said. “'Cause I can talk about him all day if you so desire.”

  I shook my head and John seemed to acquiesce, but seconds later he said, “How about I tell you a story about a friend of mine? Skinny guy with a big nose.”

  I lowered my chin and peered at him.

  “Helluva guy, my friend Saul.” John's fake eye was askew. The iris seemed too far to the left. “Saul was here the night before he—well, he had an accident.”

  “John…”

  “Pardon me a sec.” He turned his head and adjusted the off-kilter eye. I couldn't figure out how he knew it was crooked, being that he couldn't see out of it. “Last time I saw Saul, he'd just come from a doctor's appointment.”

  This sparked my curiosity. “Was Saul sick?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why did he go to the doctor?”

  “He thought he was sick. Claimed he'd been experiencing some chronic pain in the pancreatic region.”

  I almost laughed. “And to what did the doctor attribute this pain?”

  “Anxiety. Stress. Completely psychosomatic. ‘Course I could have saved Saul a couple hundred bucks if he would've listened to me—I gave him the same diagnosis a few days before when he came in here with his hand on his hip, moaning like a cow in labor.”

  That time I did laugh, albeit with difficulty.

  “Know what else?” John said. “I saw a lot of Saul before his accident. He spent a lot of time in the seat right next to the one you're sitting on, and let me tell you, there was an uncharacteristic aura of calm about him.” John served himself cranberry juice in a glass that matched mine. It looked silly and out-of-place in his hand. “That is, except when he talked about the girl.”

  I let the tears fall. It was stupid to try and pretend under these circumstances. “What girl?”

  “Apparently Saul had developed a bad habit of walking by the building where this one girl lived. Somewhere up in the nosebleed section of town, if you know what I mean. Not a place he felt particularly at home, but he made the sacrifice because he was nuts about her, even though she'd tossed him by the side of the curb like an old piss-stained couch, and was shacking up with some larcenist, as Saul put it.”

  I sighed. “Please don't bring Loring into this.”

  “Who the hell is Loring?” John was a good actor. Not a great one, but a good one. “Anyway, Saul contemplated trying to get this girl back.”

  I felt like I had a ten pound rock in the pit of my stomach. “You're telling me he wanted her back?”

  “I just said he was crazy about her.”

  “Is that so? Then why, right before his accident, did he tell her he wished she were dead?”

  “Obviously he was hurt. Maybe he wanted to hurt her back, I don't know. Last I'd heard, old Saul had decided the girl was better off with the other guy.”

  “Jesus, John. Didn't you tell Saul he was wrong?”

  “Yes ma'am, I did. But Saul could be pretty stubborn. And a funny thing about Saul, he could talk a cock ‘n’ bull talk, but he could also walk a scaredy-cat walk.”

  I took a long, deep breath, and tried to convert my sorrow into something more practical, like anger. It wasn't working. “Did he seem happy to you? The last time you saw him, I mean.”

  “I'm glad you asked that.” John narrowed in on me. “Do you have any idea how many people have sat in the chair you're in right now, wearing the mask of death?”

  “The what?”

  “I can see it, plain as day. They come in here pondering the end, thinking maybe they're ready for that big old barstool in the sky.” John made a fist and pounded the bar three times like a judge demanding order in the court. “All of them have come back for another drink. And I like to think I had a hand in that. I like to think my wisdom helped talk them out of it.”

  My heart hurt. So did my head. “Why didn't you talk Saul out of it?”

  “You're not listening. Saul wasn't wearing the mask.”

  “I don't get it,” I said, poking at the olives in my glass.

  John dropped the Saul jive. He suddenly seemed exasperated. “For Christ's sake, did you know Paul had quit smoking?”

  “So he said.”

  “He'd been running, too. At night. He liked to run right as it was getting dark.”

  “So?”

  “You're not listening, Miss American Pie.”

  “Please don't call me that.”

  “Pay attention because I'm only going to say this once.” John leaned in so close I could smell a mustiness emanating from his clothes. “I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure that if I were planning on taking a short walk off a tall bridge, I'd be doing all the things I gave up twenty years ago. I'd be smoking up a storm, eating
hot dogs at every meal, tossing back the whiskey, I might even be shooting smack in my arm, and I sure as hell wouldn't be watching sunsets at a 10k pace.”

  I shook my head. “You lost me.”

  “Good Lord.” John made his way to the corner of the bar and began rummaging through the leather jacket that hung beside the cash register.

  I was wishing I hadn't come. I wanted to be home, lonely apartment or not. I wasn't in the mood for John's nonsensical barroom Zen. I slid a couple dollars under my glass, hopped off the stool, and tried to slip out.

  “Come back here,” John said.

  I returned to stand beside the seat I'd just vacated. John handed me a small news clipping. “Have you read that?”

  It was an obituary that had appeared in one of the local alternative music papers after Paul's death. “Of course,” I said. “I saw it weeks ago.”

  “I didn't ask if you saw it, I asked if you read it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Humor me, Miss American Pie. Read it again.”

  It took me less than a minute to scan the three-paragraph piece of nothing. Basically, the blurb mentioned Paul's name and occupation, and had a short list of his accomplishments, but it was written in a way that thoroughly diminished their scope. There was a quote from Feldman, the same one from the police report. And a quote from the eyewitness, also lifted from the police report. That was it.

  I handed it back to John and resumed my trek to the exit.

  “See ya ‘round, Miss American Pie.”

  “Please,” I said, halfway out the door. “I asked you not to call me that.”

  “I know you're in mourning,” Lucy said over the phone. “But a deadline is a deadline.”

  Sonica had thrown in two quick sentences about Paul's death in the previous issue. My more in-depth article on his life was now a week overdue, and despite the tremendous urge I had to slam the receiver down hard enough to cause permanent damage to Lucy's hearing, I assured her that the assignment would be finished by Monday—the last possible day to make publication—and then I politely hung up.

  It was Saturday night and I hadn't written a word. I turned on my laptop and spread the contents of the Paul folder across my bedroom floor. With Bananafish's CD as background music, I read the transcripts from my lunch with Jack Stone, the chorus to “Death as a Spectator Sport” a disturbingly appropriate soundtrack. Before the song ended, I jotted down a few points and questions on which to focus:

  Don't paint him as a quitter, a loser, or a rock star.

  Don't glorify his death.

  Has talent become irrelevant?

  Has the industry done to music what McDonald's has done to eating?

  Specifics of the suicide?

  That last one was going to require an examination of the autopsy report, which was adjacent to my right foot, just out of reach, and still hadn't been opened, chiefly because the last thing I wanted was a vision of Paul's body as nothing more than a broken vestige of the sublime life it once held.

  I stared at the envelope and it stared back like an enemy. Eventually I dragged it in using my heel, removed the eleven-page document, and lifted the cover sheet with a loud exhale as if I were ripping a band-aid from a fresh wound.

  The first page contained basic information: the name, address, sex, and age of the decedent. Underneath that was an anatomical diagnosis listing severe trauma to the spine, a crushed skull, and a broken femur as injuries suffered on impact. Below that was a line where the medical examiner had to fill in the cause of death. He'd written: SUICIDE.

  My skin felt prickly, my eyes were changing from solids to liquid, and Paul's voice was still bouncing off the walls as I moved on to the next page—a pathological diagnosis that included blood-alcohol and drug test results, both of which were negative. Despite the rumors that circulated around the Lower East Side after Paul's death, one of which had him brandishing a bottle of red wine in his hand and wailing “Bohemian Rhapsody” as he jumped, he had been neither high nor drunk nor singing. I made a note to include this in the piece.

  On the following page there were two simple outlines of a male figure, one front-facing, the other back-facing. The examiner had drawn lines to various body parts connecting physical descriptions of markings found on the decedent's body to their specific locations, presumably for identification purposes.

  From the figure's left shoulder, a line had been extended out to the middle of the page, next to which the examiner had written: TATTOO ON UPPER ARM. In parenthesis he'd added: SKULL AND CROSSBONES.

  I supposed that, prior to his death, Paul had gotten inked again. The choice of a skull and crossbones seemed morbid and cliché, but so did jumping off the bridge, and for this reason I didn't give it a second thought.

  Then I resumed scanning the page. Something was wrong. Paul's other tattoos—the man/boy cherub hanging from the butterfly and the Chinese symbol—had gone unnoted by the examiner.

  My chest tightened. Small gasping sounds were coming from my throat. And although I could only imagine one fantastic explanation, I was too frightened, too shocked, and too gutless to name it.

  I studied the drawings until I could trace every line without looking, but they made no sense beyond the context of the page.

  After weighing my options for a long time, I forced myself to call the only person I knew who had gotten a look at the corpse.

  “Did you or did you not see Paul's body before it was cremated?”

  Feldman paused. “Eliza?” Another pause. “Christ, do I hear Bananafish?”

  I turned off the music. “Please, this is important.”

  “You sound strange,” he said.

  “Just tell me you're sure it was Paul. You recognized him.”

  ” We went over all this when you interviewed me.”

  But we hadn't. I had deliberately refrained from asking Feldman about the body for the same reason I hadn't looked at the autopsy report—I didn't want to know.

  “I'm trying to finish this Sonica piece. There are a couple things that aren't adding up and I—”

  “Peepers,” Feldman said, “this hardly needs an in-depth investigation. Paul jumped, he croaked, they fished him out of the river. The end.”

  I wanted to shove a pile of shit down Feldman's throat until he croaked. “What about dental records? Don't they use those? Did they ever check to see if—”

  “Wasn't necessary,” Feldman said quickly. “Paul hadn't been in the water long enough. I was able to identify his face. And he had a picture ID on him.”

  “You're telling me you're positive, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the body you saw was Paul's?”

  “One hundred percent.” His voice was like a snake slithering down my spine. “Now how about you tell me what's got your panties in such an uproar.”

  “Forget it,” I said, suddenly terrified. “I don't know what I'm talking about.”

  I hung up wondering why it hadn't dawned on me before.

  Didn't matter. It was clear to me now.

  Feldman was lying.

  For the next two days I hardly spoke to anybody, one exception being the call I made to Lucy Enfield, to explain that writing about Paul's death had proven much more emotionally draining than I'd imagined. I told Lucy I wasn't going to be able to do it, and furthermore, I wouldn't be coming back to work.

  Lucy sounded satisfied, like she and I had been playing a game all along, one in which she had finally emerged the victor.

  Terry called within the hour and tried to get me to reconsider. When I told him I'd made up my mind, he said, “Good luck, Mags. We'll miss you.”

  Fortunately, Loring had refused to accept rent money from me during the nine months I lived with him, so getting another job wasn't something I had to worry about right away. I could concentrate all my energies on Paul.

  The floor was still covered in my notes and I scrutinized every page for hours, but with the exception of the discrepancy in the autopsy report, I couldn't find anything else that s
truck me as even remotely suspicious.

  I needed to talk to someone, but Vera was too sensible, and I couldn't turn to Michael without more evidence. He was liable to have me committed.

  John the Baptist was rinsing out glasses in the sink when I walked in.

  “Miss American Pie,” he said, a dish towel tucked into his pants, his tone implying he knew I was there for purposes having nothing to do with hydration.

  I stood on my toes and leaned over the bar. “What were you trying to tell me the other night?”

  He went to the corner, rifled through his coat pocket as he'd done before, pulled out the same news clipping he'd shown me then, and slapped it onto the bar like he was dealing me the ace I needed for blackjack.

  I picked it up and glanced over the three paragraphs. Once again, nothing struck me as unusual.

  “Jesus, do you have to be half-blind to see it?” John grabbed the clipping, marked a few sentences, and slid it back my way. “One more time,” he said. “And when you get to the part I circled, try using a soft, arrogant-yet-bashful sort of voice, why don't you?”

  I eyed him curiously.

  “Do it,” he said.

  John had circled the account of Paul's suicide as described by Will Lucien, who was referred to by name in the police report, but in print was known simply as “the eyewitness.”

  According to the police, there was an eyewitness who had been driving westbound at approximately 3 a.m. the morning of October 12 and saw the events unfold. The eyewitness, who was described by the first officer on the scene as “visibly shaken,” corroborated Mr. Feldman's story.

  The eyewitness said he noticed Mr. Hudson walking toward the side of the bridge and slowed down to see if the man needed help. Allegedly the eyewitness called out to Mr. Hudson, who never turned around.

  “He stepped over the railing and, without looking back, did a swan dive right off the bridge and into the water,” the eyewitness was quoted as saying. “A goddamn swan dive right off the bridge.”

  I reread the last line three more times and couldn't get a solid breath. Then I met John's eyes, wanting to say what I was thinking, but knowing that to do so could be perilous.