Chapter 2: Conversations with Other Men

I manage to dodge the actual 'conversation as people' for a few good days. They also are a very odd few days.

I'm not used to having someone in the house, not used to the constant presence of another person. Not that it's constant because I send him out to find the perfect shell to put on the kitchen sill or to cycle into town for more beer or something to get him off my back because he doesn't understand much about breathing space. But sometimes he stops talking, asks me to recommend a book, and then we sit in the living room reading late into the evening, and then he asks why I recommended the book that he's reading.

He's not taking notes. I hated that. Made me feel like a specimen to be examined.

Clifton doesn't get it at all when he picks me up on Thursday as usual. Sisky squeezes into the pickup truck with us, and Clifton peers at him in confusion and asks, "Who's the kid?"

Sisky leans over, smiling madly (he's gotten those grins back now). "Sisky. Ryan's biographer!"

"His what?"

"Goddammit Sisky, I thought we agreed –"

"Ooh, can I change the radio station?"

Sisky twists the knob, looking for another frequency. Clifton stares at me, eyebrow disbelievingly arched, and I feel slightly embarrassed because I know that he thinks my fame is a worthless commodity.

"He's not my biographer," I tell Clifton, not looking him in the eye.

"Sure," Clifton says, but the sarcasm rolls off his tongue, and it's an awkward ride into town.

In the grocery store, Sisky goes crazy. I usually buy canned foods, cigarettes and alcohol. He, however, pulls out a shopping list and asks if I prefer Pink Ladies to Granny Smiths. I dig out cash from my pocket, hand him bills and tell him to just remember the booze and cigarettes, and then opt out and go to Tommy's bar with Clifton.

"So who is that kid?" Clifton asks as we drink beer in our usual table.

"Some fan, you know."

"And you're letting him stay with you? God, that's self-absorbed." He rolls his eyes.

But he doesn't get it. He doesn't understand the power of music, how Sisky and I are connected in some messed up way. Because Sisky was right – I wanted someone to hear what I had to say. Now, I'm not saying that Sisky understood anything of what I had to say, but he thought he got it. And maybe that's what matters.

"Maybe in my next life I'll be an underachiever," I tell Clifton. "I'll be a mechanic in some dead ass northeastern town and never mingle with celebrities in exclusive New York clubs as fans line up for twelve hours to see me on stage."

He scoffs. He's the kind of guy who'll bite easily but never follows through.

Sisky asks Clifton all kinds of questions on the way home – essentially interviewing him. How long have we known each other, how did we meet, what he thinks of me. Clifton looks beyond uncomfortable and says that he met me some six months ago, shortly after I bought the house, and he seems happy when we're back at the house and Sisky gets out of the car.

Sisky takes grocery bags from the truck bed and hurries inside from the cold. We watch him go.

"He's a handful," Clifton observes. "Does he even shut up long enough to sleep?"

"He does. He sleeps in the guest room."

"Right." He rubs his nose slightly. "Not coming in for a beer, I don't think. But maybe next week. Will he be gone by next week?"

"I don't know. I'll call you."

"You do that."

I get out of the car, but Clifton says, "Hey," pointing at the latest issue of Rolling Stone that's now on the passenger seat. I grab it quickly before slamming the door shut. I'm surprised the shop had the magazine – probably the only copy they send to Machias. The cover promises to reveal the secret life of Steve Martin – but he's an actor, what the hell – and to shed light on Keith Richards. I roll it up as I get into the house, where Sisky is banging the cupboards in the kitchen. He said that he's cooking tonight (like he does every night, to be fair), so I drop the magazine onto the living room coffee table and head upstairs to listen to music.

I keep the record player in my bedroom, not the living room, and Sisky's got enough sense to realise that my bedroom is my kingdom and he's not invited. He did go through my record collection, however, under my very watchful eye. He knew almost all of them, even the obscure blues records. I was impressed, I have to admit.

I lie down in bed and listen to Muddy Waters and how he just wants to make love to his girl. Or boy. Hell, it's not like he specifies, and god knows you can make love to both. But I don't want to follow that thought any further because it'd do me no good, so I focus on the music, my eyes closing. It's like escaping to another world, Muddy's world, and I visualise myself by the Mississippi River in the forties, humid night air, darkness all around us and insects buzzing in our ears, and we're gathered on the porch of some sad little house with our guitars out, singing the blues.

I wonder if I could have been happy in that world. If I would have been different. Happier. Better.

I think so. Sisky said something yesterday, that a childhood of neglect has made me despise the attention that I crave for. That was just one of those pseudo-intellectual psychological observations that he says to seem smart, and I don't think he even bought what he said, but... In this dream blues world of my own Mississippi and my huge family – where I'm a tall, lean, handsome black man – being so rooted to that place and those people and singing out on the porch about my baby girl who left town.

I could have been happy there.

I could have been happy in a dozen different versions of life.

But this is the one I got. The one I cannot change.

And when I realise that this is it, I nearly panic. Feel so guilty. Trace my steps and think what a damn mess I've made of it. Some people have changed the world for the better by the time they're twenty-eight, you know. They have families and children and they got a PhD on some electric impulse in the brain that causes some kind of a horrible syndrome but because of their research it's now cured. They can die tomorrow without that dread of a failure.

Whereas me... If I died tomorrow, people would mourn. Fans like Sisky would mourn. My old bandmates would mourn, and all the radio stations would play my songs and the record sales would skyrocket and then they'd show documentaries of my life on TV for the next fifty years – they're already doing that with Jimi – and I would not be forgotten, no. But would I have truly earned it? Dying here, in this house that's just a place of refuge, with silly, distant hopes of being repatriated someday when I've gotten over it? Over him? Having alienated most of my friends and lovers with only the most patient and understanding ones left?

Would that give me glory?

And the funeral would be awkward as everyone would struggle to put two nice words of me together. They'd say, "He changed the world with his music," but did I? Can music truly change the world? Because we sing songs of protest and we sing songs of defiance, but as far as I can see, the same shit keeps happening.

So sometimes I do wonder if all this music is just a new form of painkillers. Doesn't get rid of the source, but lets us think that it will get better.

"Knockity knock!" Sisky chirps from the now open door. "Dinner's ready." He smiles at me brightly. The record's stopped playing at some point. I sigh and get up.

He's made us a relatively simple meal of chicken and rice with some sweet corn on the side, but it's still the most refined and tastiest meal I've had in months. I don't tell him that, though, even when he stares at me from across the table with expectant eyes. "It's alright," I grant, and he relaxes and seems happy.

The Rolling Stone is on the table, and I know he's been reading it because he points at the cover and says, "You know The Sex Pistols?"

"I know of them."

"You know that Sid Vicious killed his girlfriend?"

"No shit." I think I did hear about that, Vicky or Spencer mentioned it. Bad press for rebellious musicians in general.

"It happened just recently in the Chelsea Hotel. It's in New York."

A piece of chicken gets stuck in my throat, and I cough to get it down. I look at the magazine like it's just offended me, but in my mind's eye I see the long corridors with their Oriental styled carpets, and then the rooms with the expensive furniture, with a bit of Victorian fireplace, a bit of art deco armchair, and then the bed, the big bed with those soft sheets and a headboard to hold onto when –

"You lived there, didn't you?" Sisky asks while casually popping rice into his mouth, but I freeze. Stare at him.

"How do you know that?" I ask, alarmed. He shrugs. "No. How do you know that?"

No one knew that. No one except Brendon and Vicky, and I think Gabe knew, and later Keltie found out. Sisky is not supposed to know that. No one is.

Sisky grins at me sheepishly. "I talked to a girl who worked as a receptionist in the recording studio when you were working on Wolf's Teeth. She told me that sometimes she had to pass on messages left for you to the Chelsea Hotel. Vicky's orders, she said." He cuts another piece of chicken. "So why did you stay there? I mean, your SoHo apartment was closer to the studio than the hotel."

I take in a calming sip of beer, soothed by his ignorance. He doesn't know how close he is to knowing all the worst secrets I've got.

"There's something comforting about hotel rooms," I say eventually. I'm not even lying to him. "They're so... artificial. You don't need to be a real person when you stay there. You can forget about yourself. About the world outside." But you need to be damn careful that you don't forget too much.

I go back to eating, but thinking of Sid ending his girlfriend's life in that hotel has made me lose my appetite. Somehow it feels personal. How dare he do something like that in a place that was so significant to me? How dare he taint it with death and violence?

"A lot of loving and fighting and fucking goes on in that hotel. Murder, though. Fuck the kids these days. Murder. Is that the new definition of rock 'n roll? Is that the ultimate manifestation of punk? Fuck them. Fuck that arrogance. How dare they?"

Sisky looks incomprehensive but nods like he fully agrees, anyway. He's almost done with his food now, eating quickly like he always does. He flips through the pages of the magazine with his other hand while I push rice around the plate, feeling angered. That something so evil happened in a place where my best memories took place. Because they still are the best ones, even with all the blood on them.

"Here," Sisky now says, pointing at a spreading. "I bought it for this." He turns the magazine around and pushes it across the table. His Side At Our Sideand, beneath the poor pun title, Ryan Ross's disciple band take on North America on their first ever tour. There's a large picture of the band, five people in it: there's Jon in the left corner, smiling contently, next to him is a good-looking, tall guy with brown hair and a confident grin, then in the middle is Brendon, standing slightly closer to the camera than the rest but I don't look at him, can't bring myself to, and so I look at Ian on his right, his messy brown curls still all over, and on Ian's other side is some well-built blond guy that I don't know either. I hum to let Sisky know that I've seen the article and then push the magazine back across the table. Sisky frowns. "Aren't you going to read it?"

"No."

Sisky huffs but then busies himself reading it. I focus on finishing my dinner.

"Oh, cool!" he says soon like he really wants me to ask what's cool, but I don't take the bait. "They're covering you on their tour," he informs me. "They do Miranda's Dream."

Brendon is covering a Followers song?

I feel at a loss from the news, something setting in hard at the pit of my stomach. Brendon on stage, singing my song. My words. His voice replacing mine. I didn't know that. Why would he do that? To push the link between his band and mine even further? For appreciation? As a fuck you? As a 'I forgive you'? Does it mean something? Does it mean nothing?

"You know they're playing in Boston in two nights. Canada after that. Far out. They've got the tour dates here." He points at the page again. Then he giggles. Giggles. "Listen to this! 'Brendon Roscoe's stage presence is sexual,'" he quotes. "'The screaming girls make as much noise as the band does. The screaming boys beat both.'" He giggles some more. His Side is a new band, but the dubious sexual aura around them is already making parents object. It's all good press.

"You know, if I wanted to read that, I would."

The few pictures I've seen of the band always show Brendon off. It makes sense: he's the lead singer, the frontman, and he's fucking gorgeous. It's hard for me to recognise him in those pictures, however. It's like I'm looking at someone else. He looks fierce, confident, sure of himself. He looks cocky, sexual, alluring. Smirking at the camera with a knowing look.

They're selling Brendon. Sexualising him.

I didn't think he'd be into that, but he is. Didn't know him at all, did I? No, of course not. He's loving every bit of his newfound fame, shedding off his old skin. Transforming into a stranger.

"'Ryan taught me everything I know about the music business,'" Sisky reads out and then looks at me. "Brendon said that. And then, oh, they get asked if they keep in touch with you. Jon says that they don't."

"Stop," I say quietly. A sudden, sharp pain fills me.

"Oh, then –"

"Sisky!" I snap. He looks up with innocent puppy eyes. "I don't want to know. Respect that, will you?" I sigh restlessly and stand up, grabbing my beer bottle. "It fucks with my head."

I walk out into the living room where I plop down onto my armchair. Sisky's put a fire on in the fireplace, and the flames flicker and radiate warmth. I glare at the dancing flames as Sisky walks into the room, hesitating.

"Um. Sorry."

I don't respond. I don't want to acknowledge Sisky's existence right now.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck. Brendon said that? In an interview?

God, I didn't want to know.

What gives Brendon the right to talk about me? Playing my song, mentioning me in interviews? What gives him the damn right to be the one who is okay enough to talk about it? About what the world thinks our relationship is: Ryan Ross discovering the musical talent of a roadie and getting him a record deal. They thank me in the liner notes of their album. His Side thanks... so and so, so and so... and Ryan Ross. Just one name on the list. Vicky told me that. But they saved my name last. To give it impact.

Sure, it made sense. I discovered Brendon and Jon is my old bandmate. Sure, I am connected to His Side, so it'd look weirder if they didn't thank me. And maybe it's not their fault that all the interviewers ask them about me, it's such a well publicised fact by now, but...

I had no idea that he was talking about me.

I hate it. Knowing that he says my name. Sings my words. I hate not knowing what that means to him, what it makes him think and feel, and then I drive myself insane trying to find meaning in some stupid interview, read between the lines, tell me, tell me, god, don't you miss it? Baby. Don't you miss what we had?

But he doesn't or he wouldn't because he fucked me over. He let me down.

I don't want to know.

"Could I interview you tomorrow? About The Followers."

"Yeah. Sure."

"Not about His Side," Sisky then adds as if to pacify me. It kind of works.

Hey, I liked The Followers.

We were amazing.

I loved that band. Man. What good times.

"It was the worst time of my life."

He's gotten his notes out, which I've granted because he needs the references to ask his questions. He is also taking notes, although I told him he wasn't allowed, but somehow he's talked me into it. I'm armed with a Scotch and a full cigarette pack with the ashtray on the rest of the armchair.

He doesn't flinch, really.

"Well, maybe also the best." I rub my left temple and then suck in cigarette smoke.

"What went wrong?"

"We were too young, I guess. The fame got to our heads. I mean, we didn't even start getting that famous until Her House. Our self-titled got a decent, cult-like following, but Her House made the charts and created a lot of buzz and made us semi-famous, and by the time Boneless came out, it was like everything was ready to explode. Like a kettle at a boiling point and then it bubbled over. But it went wrong before that. Maybe when we signed to Capitol. I don't know. Maybe it was wrong from the start, when we sat down at Chuck's around the corner from the shitty one bedroom apartment Brent, Spencer and I shared. Maybe it was a mismatch of personalities. It wasn't like... one day we were friends. And the next day we weren't. It was gradual." I blow out smoke nervously. "We were just too young to handle being rockstars. Joe and Brent were jealous that I got more attention."

"Spencer wasn't jealous?"

"No." I eye Sisky carefully. "You know about the Haley business, right?"

"Yeah. Jac told me about that. Pretty harsh, right?"

"Pretty harsh." I roll the cigarette between two fingers. "I suppose... that can be pinpointed, at least. Spencer and me. I suppose I lost Spencer the day he met her. And not because he now had a girlfriend and not because he fell in love but because now someone else was saying their two cents on what was best for him. And she didn't agree with me on any of it."

"They're divorced now."

"Yeah, but... Spencer's a dad. He's a divorcee. Haley will always have him. It's not like it once was with him and me, we'll never be friends like we once were. A lot of our phone conversations feel like apologies. I just don't really know what we're apologising for. Maybe we're just nostalgic."

"I think you're being too cynical. And underestimating Spencer."

I want to say that 'well, you don't know him like I do, do you now?', but he's probably right. I know Spencer is trying a lot, but I just can't quite bring myself to embrace it. Can't accept what he's offering.

"Anyway, the band," I say, trying to get this back on track.

"Joe and Brent got jealous that you were more famous," he recaps, and I nod. They did. Started resenting me.

"Joe had all these grand ideas of his fame. He became more and more disillusioned the further we got. But people like you, you don't get it. What it's like when everyone treats you like a god. What it's like when it's all easy. We spent practically all of 1972 on tour, and when we got home, Joe calls me. This is a true story, so listen. He calls me the day after we get back to LA and goes, 'Ryan, I need milk.' Milk, you know, okay. I tell him to go buy some. But he says, 'How?' He doesn't know. He's forgotten. I tell him to get some change and go to the shop and buy some milk, but he's so fucking confused by it that I have to go over there to remind him how buying groceries works. Because when we're on tour, people just bring us whatever we need. We forget what it's like to be normal. That's the bubble. That's the illusion. Joe seemed slightly embarrassed by it afterwards, but that was the last time I saw him embarrassed by anything. He stopped making excuses shortly after."

"And I remember this other night that felt significant even then. We played a few shows the summer before Boneless came out, just to keep ourselves in shape a little, and... Joe saw this girl in the crowd. Thought she was hot, which she was, to be fair. So he had her brought backstage, but it turned out that she was there with her boyfriend. She wasn't a groupie. And Joe couldn't quite get that either. He assumed she'd want to sleep with him. So he had the boyfriend thrown out and he got her to come to the club with us, and then he got her really drunk and high and – I'm not saying that he raped her, she was into it at that stage, I suppose, or she didn't protest in any case, but... She staggered out of the club bathroom in tears, didn't even know where she was. And that night wasn't the change, but it was then when I began to realise that Joe and I would never be friends again. Not because of her honour or anything, but because of him. He had just become this unlikeable guy. Obsessed with sex and his ego. He started fighting me on everything. I'd say, 'It's sunny', he'd say, 'It's raining'. Like that Beatles song. I say yes, he says no, he says goodbye, I say hello. It's draining, putting up with that every day. But we used to be friends before that. Way before that. In another lifetime."

He writes something down and then looks at his notes. "You guys lived together, didn't you?"

"For this one summer, yeah. God, was it... summer of..." I try to trace back years. "1970. Almost nine damn years ago. That was a good summer."

"Oh?" he asks, quirking an eyebrow, and somehow it loosens my tongue.

"We were writing songs. It felt like something new, like we were discovering something. It was exciting. Joe might be... an asshole, but he is talented. We kept challenging each other to write better music. We managed to get shows playing in shitty LA clubs, we went about trying to get laid, we were rubbing elbows with anyone even slightly famous. It was so carefree back then. We'd hit on girls with 'I'm in a band' and 'Remember that name, you'll hear it again.' Most of the time it didn't work, but well," I shrug. "And then we got signed by the end of summer. Back then I thought that Joe had become one of my best friends. I'd see us thirty years from then, still doing the same shit: music, booze and girls, night after night. But I was young. I was goddamned nineteen, nineteen when we got signed. Spencer, hell, he was eighteen. And I thought that even after that, things wouldn't have to change so much. That we could just fuck about indefinitely. But that's not why I got into music. No, the music was always serious. But I didn't expect things to get heavy. And it was such a buzz and it all happened so quickly, and soon enough we owed a shitload of money to the label. Too much studio time, you know? And you gotta sell. Sell, sell, sell. What a dream. Because let me tell you, and you better write this down, kid: the music industry isn't looking for talent. It's looking for merchandise."

"The band became a product."

"Precisely," I say, still bitter that we got sent back to the studio for Boneless to write a song that would make a better single than what we already had. "Very few can break away from that cycle of profit. I suppose I can now. Hell, I could make two calls to book myself a studio to – I don't know, record a concept country album based on fucking Snow White, and they'd let me. But getting that freedom is hard. I'm lucky. I'm lucky they all think I'm some kind of a fucking genius."

"But you are," he says matter-of-factly.

I only shrug. Who am I to take away other people's flawed notions?

"Anyway, that tour – Jackie, Me and This Lady – we're all ready to call it quits. We hate each other. Joe and I barely talk. I hate the band, I hate the tour, I hate the fans –"

"You hate us?" he interrupts sharply.

"Well, no, I – I'm not saying I hate you specifically. I just hate what it's become, this circus of adoration. No one ever says no to me. Kids keep asking me the meaning of life, and I don't know what it is." I suck on my cigarette again, blowing out smoke. "But, say, if I came out and said, 'Man, I don't know the meaning of life', would you listen? Hell no. You'd say I'm bluffing. Because you want to adore me, see? You don't want to know I'm just me. So we live in this bubble. And when we do something shitty, people let it slide. We start to think we're invincible, above law and morals, but we're not. And I begin to feel that people are there for the wrong reasons. Not for the music, but for this... artificial commotion. To sleep with me or Joe or, you know, something else. And it's disappointing to me. It's frustrating. Like I'm trying to communicate but everyone misinterprets me. Wilfully." I stub the cigarette into the ashtray. "I guess everything finally came to heads that summer."

"So it wasn't the bus crash that caused you to break up?" he asks quietly and smiles a sad little smile. "We always thought it was the bus crash. Shook you so hard that it broke off the foundations."

"No. We were already done."

This makes him sad, I can tell. He writes something down with a melancholy air.

"Bands aren't... predestined," I tell him. "We weren't meant to find each other. Spence and I just happened to bump into Brent in Woodstock, we were all high, we thought we bonded. And then Joe, I found him in a Burbank bar one night, roughly a month into us having moved to LA. A bar. In Burbank. I mean, who the hell would you ever expect to find in a shitty place like that? They refused to serve me, I had no ID, but Joe bought me a drink. But that doesn't mean that it was destiny. It doesn't make us into a magical unit of soulmates or comrades. It doesn't necessarily mean that we even love or like each other. We're just people. In a band. And if it doesn't work out, if it stops working out two, three, twenty years down the line... It happens. If we don't expect marriages to last, why do people insist that bands have to last? It's a lot more bitching and a lot less apple fucking pie."

"I suppose it just..." He clears his throat. Avoids eye contact. "When four people create something that amazing. Something that life-changing. Maybe fans do idealise it, but... it makes us feel good."

"And then it makes you feel like crap when your idealised concepts fall to pieces."

"Yeah," he admits. I wonder if his tiny heart broke when he heard that The Followers were done for. "So the bus hit that car, and you guys decided that was that?"

"Essentially."

He goes through his notes, looking for something. He makes an 'ah' sound and then looks up. "Was it because you became a communist?" He sounds sympathising.

"What the fuck?" I ask.

"Brent said –"

"I'm not a commie," I object. "Brent said that?"

"He insinuated it. He said Brendon's a communist too. Is he?"

"No. Brendon's political policies are along the lines of 'here I am and fuck all of you'."

Or used to be, anyway. Before he conformed. I blame Shane for that. Not me, not that I broke his spirit that summer we met. I blame Shane. Brendon was all for giving the world the middle finger and doing whatever he pleased, and then Shane came along and tried to tame him. And what's worse is that Brendon forgot that he was meant to be wild, playing house with Shane.

Well. Maybe that explains the cocky promotion pictures of His Side.

Maybe Brendon's remembered who he is now.

Sisky looks at his notes again, seemingly very confused. "Um. Maybe I... Wait. So what did you and Brendon get up to that summer? I thought it –" He frowns. "I got something mixed up, then. But you did meet Brendon that summer, didn't you?"

"Yeah. But I didn't really discover him or his musical talent until a few years later when I bumped into him in New York, so," I say, artfully directing the conversation elsewhere, and Sisky buys it.

"So can you tell me about the bus crash?" He must see something flicker on my face because he says, "It's just become a very... momentous part of your history. There are conspiracy theories about it, like, maybe there was no crash at all or –"

"There was one," I cut him off. "I don't really want to talk about it."

"Why?"

"Because someone could've died. We were lucky no one did."

"But –"

"Look, it was dark, it was raining like hell. The bus slipped onto the wrong lane, we hit an oncoming car, the bus tilted to its side and kept going for another hundred feet before coming to a stop. I mean, what more do you want? You'll find it all in a police report or even a tabloid article. I really don't remember anything of it. I was asleep in my bed when it happened."

"You broke your arm." He is eyeing my left arm accurately.

"My elbow got pretty badly smashed. It was in a cast." I finish the Scotch quickly and pour myself another. "But I don't want to talk about the crash. What matters is that we all knew it was over, already that night. As we got discharged, we all just went different ways. It took a month or so to make it official, let the press know. And that was that. That was The Followers done, from four guys drinking cheap beer at Chuck's and discussing band names and how far out it'd be to be famous, to four guys with money and big houses and adoring fans, four guys who couldn't stand the sight of each other. You know, that's life. We learned something. I'd like to think."

"Post-Followers, then –"

"Haven't we talked enough for one night?" I ask, looking at the ticking grandfather clock. None of the furniture is actually mine – it was already here. I did have a lot of my shit from New York brought here, though, books and records and rugs. "We can keep going tomorrow. I swear."

He looks sceptical, but I will keep talking another time. My mind is just full of ghosts right now, ghosts of the people I used to be, and it's draining.

"Sure," he says. "Alright. Almost dinner time, anyway. I'm making a casserole, my mom's recipe. I think you'll like it!"

This morning, when I came down, he had made scrambled eggs. It's like suddenly I'm a guest in my own house.

He puts all of his notes away, places them in neat piles. He hums under his breath – Better Lost, the opening track of the Followers debut – and he is clearly mulling things over in his head, putting my comments into a constantly growing narrative. I'm glad I don't know what he's thinking.

I stay in the living room, drinking Scotch and smoking, unwinding from the session as he goes into the kitchen and starts cooking.

I don't talk about this stuff to anyone. It's weird how, now that I am, I find myself having a lot to say. I didn't know that I had something to get off my chest, and if I had, I would not have expected the audience to be Sisky.

Joe bugs me more. Brent, well, I have no regrets waving that cunt goodbye. He hated me and fucked my girlfriend. No, I have no regrets with anything that went down with him and me. We were friends, but I never felt close to him. Not the way I once did with Joe. And that's why Joe will always sting somehow. I don't wish him well because he wouldn't wish me well either. In fact, he'd love to see me here. In this house. Hiding. He'd buy everyone in the bar a round, but he doesn't know where I am. He is just as mystified by my retirement as the rest of the world. Good.

"Shit!" I hear from the kitchen, and Sisky comes back out. His shirt is dripping tomato sauce. He looks unhappy. "Do you have anything I could borrow? I'm out of clean clothes."

"Sure. We can put a wash on later. There should be some old clothes in the second drawer of the chest of drawers." I motion upstairs.

"Thanks."

He hurries upstairs. The domesticity that we've fallen into in such a short time almost bothers me. Here he is, cooking for me, then we'll wash some clothes and sort out the laundry and go grocery shopping and read books in the living room –

Jesus Christ, I want to gag.

But then I find it really hard to mind this.

He comes downstairs soon after, now wearing a black t-shirt. "Okay, so, do you like garlic?" he asks happily, back in chef mode.

But I can only stare at him. "Take that off."

He frowns. "What?" He glances at his t-shirt: Old No. 7, Tennessee Whiskey.

"Take that off," I snap, unnerved, standing up quickly, my heart suddenly racing.

He looks alarmed, reaching for the hem and pulling the shirt up his skinny form. I've reached him by the time it comes off of him, and I snatch the t-shirt and ball it up. The fabric is soft in my hands. Familiar. Old. Worn out. "Not this one." Like some paranoid fear that it'll smell different if Sisky uses it when it doesn't even smell like anything anymore – just fabric. "It's not yours to use."

I push past him and hurry upstairs, not looking back although I know he's watching me with confusion and that never-ending curiosity. But I will not explain this.

I slam the door of my bedroom behind myself and then fold the t-shirt again and put it on my bed. And then I just look at it lying there.

Like the body of a memory.

"See, I knew it'd end up badly," Spencer says knowingly.

"Wait. Wait a minute. First you complain about me living in this bubble and news block – What did you call it? 'A hermitage of ignorance', that was it. And now that I'm trying to catch up with the world, that's a bad thing too?"

"It is when you're asking about Brendon again."

Point. Sure. But did I ever really stop asking?

"Look, this is different. I knew that I got name-dropped in their interviews, but I didn't know that he was talking about me. Have you seen Rolling Stone? Have you read that? He's talking about me."

"I've read it," he says in this bored tone, but he's not really bored, he's just trying to constrain me.

"It's all happening at once, man. I don't hear from Jon in... I don't know, eight months? And then he's sending me a ticket to their show. And I haven't seen or heard from Brendon in over a year and a half, but here he is, talking about me in black ink. And I thought this thing had been put to rest. In some way. But we're colliding, we're not going separate ways. I live in the middle of fucking nowhere, but still I feel like we're colliding. Like I'm getting called out." I stop to take a breath, almost embarrassed by my outburst. Thank god Sisky's out of the house.

"Ryan, people try to call you out of your hiding every day. Just because it's Jon or, I don't know, Brendon doesn't make it any different. And Brendon is just answering questions in interviews. He's the only posthumous link to you since you vanished. People are bound to ask him questions."

"But no one told me that he was talking about me," I argue again, feebly. It changes everything. Doesn't it? That Brendon is saying that I taught him all he knows about the music business. That he's thinking about me. But Spencer doesn't seem to think that changes anything.

"Is that such a surprise? I mean, do you think that he's forgotten you?" Spencer points out sharply, and no. After the number I pulled on him, he certainly wouldn't forget me. "Look, I don't – I don't know what went down between you two. I mean I know, but I know facts, not feelings. It's just been a long time, man. And you get so riled up about things like this, it's not good for you."

"So am I supposed to pretend I'm fine?"

"Ryan, dude. You live in Maine. Of course you're not fucking fine. But you just... have to distance yourself. It's water under the bridge and all that metaphorical crap. And you know what interviews are like, you say whatever needs to be said."

It might be water under the bridge, but the water's rising and then flooding and then on this metaphorical bridge, and if I'm standing on it, then it'll wash me away with it, won't it?

"It might still hurt," he then concedes, "but it takes a while before these things stop hurting. Trust me, I know. Pain doesn't change the fact that it's history."

But it's history that feels all too present. History that I've never questioned, but now... "Do you think..." I begin slowly, chewing on my bottom lip nervously. "Do you think if I hadn't met Brendon that summer that the band would have lasted longer? I mean. I know it wasn't just because of Brendon and me, but things with Joe, for instance, deteriorated so quickly. Especially because of us."

"That's a useless 'what if'," he says, accurately. "Why do you ask? I mean... we've never really talked about that."

"I know."

"So why are you asking now?"

It's hard to explain to him how all of these memories are suddenly stirring up. That maybe the painful parts do need to be addressed.

I hear a cheerful "Hey!" from the hallway and the front door closing. Boots against the floorboards to shake snow off, and then Sisky appears in the doorway, cheeks pink from the chill, snowflakes in his hair, and a whole bunch of cut off spruce branches in his arms.

I blink. "What are those?"

"Christmas decorations!"

"Is that the kid?" Spencer's voice asks, the receiver still pressed to my ear.

"Yeah."

"Who's that?" Sisky asks.

"Spencer."

"Spencer Smith?!"

"No, the other Spencer," I say with a roll of my eyes.

Sisky rushes into the room, spruce branches and all, almost jumping from one leg to the other. "Can I talk to him?" he asks eagerly, and I stare him down. His face falls. "Well, can you give him a message?" I roll my eyes again but nod. "Say... Say hi." He smiles widely, excited.

"The kid says hi."

Spencer snorts. "Cute."

"Uh huh," I say in agreement and shoo Sisky away. "He's murdered some trees for Christmas decorations."

Sisky is now obediently heading to the kitchen, but he calls out, "What's Spencer doing for Christmas?"

"He'll be with his daughter. Stop being so inane."

Sisky sticks his tongue out, and I wonder how much more of his good spirits I can stomach. Christmas in itself has not occurred to me at all – the days all blur together out here. And it's not even here yet, although Sisky keeps saying that it's only a week and a half away. I swear tomorrow he'll ask me if I've written to Santa yet.

"Actually," Spencer now says, having heard me, and I focus on him again. "Haley's going up to Illinois and is taking Suzie with her. I mean, she can do that, she gets Suzie this Christmas. And Haley's parents want to see Suzie, of course, so..."

"Oh."

Spencer sounds oddly hollow saying that he won't see his little girl this Christmas. I don't know what I'm supposed to say to that except 'well you knocked up Haley and then you married her and then you did get your heart broken, and I told you, didn't I? But no, no, we didn't listen to Ryan at all, and now you've got a kid, Spence, you'll never make a clean break, you'll always be an absent father to your child. Well done.' But he knows all of that and it'd be too cruel to start calling him out on it. "You going to Vegas, then, to see your mother?"

"Nah. Staying here."

"Oh."

"You?"

"Just staying here," I admit, looking around the living room.

"Who cares, though, right? Christmas isn't that big a thing. Not like I'm even religious."

"Me neither." An awkward pause lands on the line, and I recall what I said to Sisky. That oftentimes these calls feel like conversations of apologies, conversations with other men. Not the people Spencer and I used to be. "Anyway, thanks for listening," I say to cut off the silence before it gets too weird. It's not often that I call him and just start rambling and asking questions. Usually we stick to polite conversation that doesn't cause emotional havoc.

"No problem," he says, however, and he sounds like he means it. "But don't let that kid stir up shit that's ancient history. Don't let him fuck with your head."

"Sisky or Brendon?"

He pauses, as if to consider this. "Both."

Sisky keeps craning his neck and looking my way with big 'notice me' eyes. I choose to ignore him, resting the notepad on my raised knees as I'm curled up in the armchair. I brush over the lead on the page with my pinkie before going back to sketching. He's been reading a Hemingway book that I recommended him, and the radio is on in the kitchen, playing morning news. I've read all of Hemingway's books by now. He's not even my favourite writer, but I just keep going back to him.

"What are you drawing?" Sisky asks eventually.

I don't look up. "A drawing."

"Of what?"

"Of what I am drawing."

He sighs dramatically. He's fidgeting slightly. He's not good at being ignored. Then, "Can I see what you're drawing?"

I try to remain patient and look up at him at last. He's sitting on the couch, the book now abandoned, and he has said a farewell to A Farewell to Arms. He's batting his eyelashes at me. "Sure," I give in. Of course the relatively cosy silent co-existence couldn't last. He hurries over and takes my notepad from me.

"Oh. Oh, far out!" he says, taking in the drawing, and he starts flipping through the pages. "Hey, you're not half bad. I didn't know you drew. I mean, these aren't... life-like or, you know –"

"Good?"

"Or good, yeah, but they're interesting!" He smiles at me supportively. "So who's the little boy you keep drawing?" He squints at a page and peers at it intently. "He looks familiar. In a way. I've never seen him befo – Oh. Oh, do you have a son?"

"No," I sigh. "I have no bastard children."

"Oh. Huh." Then, "Would you like to?"

I stare at him blankly. "I'd make a horrible father."

He looks somehow upset by this, but it's only the truth. Maybe most people just have that awakening parental instinct, that subconscious urge to pass on their genes when they hit twenty-five or however old they are. I do not have that urge. I'm not paternal. It's something I've never pictured for myself. I don't need to have a child to make myself feel like I am doing something worthy with my life, to give it meaning.

And besides. The chances of me meeting a woman I'd fall in love with seem to be becoming increasingly slimmer. And besides, besides. I was ready to choose him. And everything that went with it. He would have given my life enough meaning. Ten times over.

The latter thought hurts, of course it does, and it's all because of Sisky and how he keeps reminding me of painful memories.

"Can I have that back?" I ask impatiently, holding out my hand and then snatching the notepad from him. He looks sad and idle and then just kind of lingers. "You know, I have some Followers demos that we never did anything with," I then tell him, and his expression instantly lights up. "On cassette. They're upstairs."

"Oh my god. Oh god. Can I? Ryan? Ryan, can I?" He's looking towards the stairs with huge eyes. Jackpot.

"Sure," I shrug. "The black shoebox full of tapes next to the cassette player." For whatever reason, I dug them out after our Followers talk and listened to some of them while Sisky was out. Heard myself laughing with Brent, Joe and Spencer in between takes, banter and good humour and excitement and all that stuff that vanished so quickly.

"Thank you!" Sisky beams, and then he's already rushing up the stairs two steps at a time. A minute later, I hear music from my bedroom and a kind of squeal that usually only female fans make.

There. That should keep him out of my hair for a few hours.

Huh. You know, maybe I wouldn't have made a completely horrible father if Sisky is anything to go by. But no, that ship has sailed. My family tree has one branch and that's it. I don't feel upset by it. If anything, it's freeing. Less people to disappoint and to hurt.

If you don't count the thousands who feel betrayed by my decision to retire.

I am still writing music. Of course I am. I could never stop. I've been writing songs, but it hasn't been that manic habit like it was before. I have no forty new songs hanging around. No, I have... maybe ten. Or seven. And I'm not writing them for anyone or anything. I just need to write like I need to breathe. It's soothing, almost, knowing that I don't have to do anything with the songs. The pressure of an audience's reaction is gone.

But I retired in the sense of leaving behind the music world. Vicky persistently said that I could stay in New York, but I couldn't. I needed to get out. It was getting too ugly.

I manage to tune out the Followers demos well, but Sisky's yelling and cheering is more difficult to ignore. He sounds like he's in a football game and is cheering on his team. Some of those demos are not half-bad, in all honesty. At times he gets suspiciously quiet, but then he makes some random noise again, and I feel reassured.

I sketch my mystery boy, ten years old. My bastard son, but he doesn't look like me. I can't get him right, though, his eyes or – Maybe his nose, it's not quite right, and I end up frustrated and angry, and the picture isn't even very good.

Eventually I give up. Music is still playing upstairs, bad quality, fuck ups and retakes and all. It's almost time for an early lunch, so Sisky should make us something. I have needs.

The door to my bedroom is ajar, a song just coming to an end and Brent saying, "Hey, can we change that bridge part where –" and then the tape finishes. Just in time for me to avoid my past.

I walk in. "So should we –" I start but then I stop. Sisky's not ogling at the cassette player dreamily like I thought he would be, but instead he is staring at the wardrobe mirror in concentration, his hands on his neck. The tape shoe box is on the floor with tapes everywhere. But so is another shoe box that I keep under the bed and then choose to ignore. The lid is off, the top layer a handful of pictures of Spencer and Gabe and Greta and Brendon. It looks like it's been searched through. "What are you doing?"

Sisky turns to me. The light catches the silver chain around his neck. My heart plummets and then stops working altogether.

"I found this!" He smiles excitedly. "This is the one you always used to wear, isn't it? It's lighter than I thought." He fiddles with the chain, rotates it to get it to sit perfectly. I feel sick.

"Take that off."

He frowns. "What?"

"Goddammit, Sisky, take that off!" I bark, now rushing over, apparently quickly enough to scare him because he's hurrying to unlock it. I run out of patience and grab it, pulling it from his neck the second it becomes unlocked. It's cold against my hand, not very heavy. I enclose it in my fist, my mind reeling. How fucking dare he? I look at the shoe box that he decided to look at without permission. "What the hell do you think you're doing?!"

"Well, I – I thought there'd be more tapes, I –" He's stuttering on his words.

"Don't touch my stuff!"

"But you told me to –"

"No! I did not! You don't fucking touch this, you don't fucking wear it!" I yell at him, squeezing my fist around the chain further. "Have you any idea?! Any at all?! First the t-shirt and now this, and – You fucking idiot! Don't you ever touch my stuff!"

I quickly go over to the shoebox, throwing the lid back on and picking it up, possessively placing it under my arm. Sisky looks at me in a way he hasn't before. He looks scared. So am I.

"I don't need you here, reminding me of all this shit I don't want to remember! I'm fucking indulging you, and you're just helping yourself to my life! Well, it's mine! It's not for public consumption, it's not for some fucking book!"

"I'm sorry I t-took the chain –"

"Too fucking late!" I yell at him and point at the door. "Get out. Right now." He doesn't budge. "Get the fuck out!"

"Ryan, I'm sorry."

"Out of my fucking house, you selfish, self-absorbed prick! I owe my fans? I owe you?! Fuck every single one of you!"

I place the shoebox on the bed, strategically making sure that I am between it and Sisky, and then I approach Sisky as if to kick his ass right now, and this seems to have the desired effect because he hurries out the door like a scared child. I come to a stop, don't follow. Breathe unevenly. Pull my hair with one hand. I'm wrecked. My hands are shaking. The chain is still in my fist. Something rattles so deep inside me that it feels like building blocks changing location, tearing up sutures.

I feel heartbroken all over again.

When I get downstairs, Sisky is sheepishly sitting on the couch, like him being still and quiet is what's needed. I throw him his coat. He looks confused.

"Put that on and get the fuck out," I hiss, my tone pained even to my own ears. I leave no room for objections. The chain is now in my pocket, and it burns against the fabric, I swear that it does. Sisky looks so shocked that he actually obeys, standing up and putting the coat on, but he stares at me like any second now I'll say I am kidding.

I'm not.

He crossed the line.

He's out of here.

"But what about... what about my stuff?" he asks uncertainly, like he still can't believe this.

"I think I'll help myself to it without permission," I spit out, and then I am pushing him out of the house just like I was when he first arrived.

"Ryan –"

"Fuck you," I say, my head and heart and everything still a painful mess in a way they haven't been in months. Because I've been learning. That answers his fucking questions, that's what I've been doing: learning how to make it stop hurting.

And he just wrecks it like that.

"Fuck you," I repeat again, more venomously, and then he's out on the porch, looking shaken to the bone and confused and sorry. "I never want to see you again," I clarify, and then the door slams in his face.

I step away from the door, thinking that now the cause is gone, now everything will click back into place. But it doesn't. The thoughts don't stop. They keep spinning and spinning, creating a spiral right at the very core of me.

I take out the chain and look at it, breathing hard. Such a stupid thing, and I hate it, fucking hate it, and I snarl at it, and I throw it across the room and it hits the hallway wall and doesn't make much of a sound as it just drops onto the floor. I step on it on my way upstairs, and then I'm by the shoebox, going through pictures and backstage passes and memories, useless goddamned memories, and I find a random picture of Brendon there, taken during the recording of Wolf's Teeth when Shane had that fucking grand idea of giving everyone Polaroid cameras. And it's Brendon, and he's in my father's cabin in Bismarck – my cabin, mine, I mean – in the living room, and he's looking the other way with his arm outstretched like he's reaching for a beer someone is handing him – me? Shane? Jon? Gabe? Patrick? – and he is smiling and looks beautiful, is beautiful, and I stare at the picture of him and then I rip it in two and drop the pieces onto the floor, and I think of Sisky outside in the cold, and I think of Brendon singing my song on stage, and I'm too tired for this life and –

I just can't.

Downstairs, everything is quiet. Sisky isn't banging on the door and I can't see him through the window, but that's fine. He's gone. We can go back now, back to the status quo. Not thinking about it. History. Dead and buried. Water under the bridge.

I sink into my armchair, accidentally sitting on my sketchpad. I pull it from beneath me, the pages now wrinkled. I smooth them out with a shaking hand, nauseating sickness swelling up in me. And the kid on the page, this anonymous little boy, has a big mouth. Has got these big lips. They fit with the picture I just tore in two. And I look at another page. Same kid. Same lips. And another sketch. And another. And another.

And it doesn't even click until then that I've been drawing figures with his features for the past seven months, during the time I've been living here. Women with his eyes or men with his nose or boys with his mouth, it's all the fucking same, and yet I never put the eyes and the nose and the mouth in one picture to bring the obvious features together.

In shock and mild embarrassment, I throw the sketchpad away from me. No wonder Sisky thought the kid looked familiar.

Brendon is torn in two on my bedroom floor. He's in the hallway, cold silver. He's on the living room floor in bad drawings, caricatures by someone who could never capture his beauty. Who could never capture him, period.

He is everywhere. He hasn't set foot in this house, but I carried him in. Even when I was saying that I was leaving him behind.

He follows me.

It's not over.

It cannot be over because the corpse still has a pulse. It's unfinished. Unresolved. And it will never go away just because I refuse to think about it. It'll never go away if I keep wondering what the hell is going on, if what the magazines say is true, if I have to sit here trying to figure out what it all means to him now.

The Rolling Stone is still in the kitchen, and I find the right page but still can't look at Brendon's glossy paper face. I still find what I'm looking for.

The late morning sun is high up when I walk out of the house, armed with my coat, a scarf, gloves and my wallet and nothing else. The sun is over the sea, and the waves wash onto the shore, and the air is brisk and light, and it's the first beautiful day in a while. I have not left this town since I moved here.

I have not left this place in seven months.

Sisky is nowhere to be seen.

I start to walk fast down the road, away from the house and the beach, towards the woods and the bigger road. It takes a while to catch up with Sisky who is slouching towards town with his head hung low.

"Hey!" I call out, slightly out of breath. He stops and turns around. His eyes go wide, like he's expecting me to be armed with a baseball bat. "Hey." I stop when I reach him, lean forwards slightly, sucking in cold air. He waits as I catch my breath. I stand up straight, pull myself together. "We've got a show to go to."

He blinks. Stares at me in confusion. "What?"

"Yeah. In Montreal. It's far away. We should hurry."

"We're what...?" he starts, voice faint.

"Get with the program, kid," I say, nudging him as I pass and start walking towards town. "Can you drive?"

He blinks. It seems to click. He dashes after me, eyes bright. "Yeah!"

And that's all I need.