Disclaimer: That '70s Show copyright The Carsey-Werner Company, LLC and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, LLC. The fictional band Degenerate Matter, their albums Vagabondage, Ultrarelativistic, WIMPs and MACHOs, Frozen Stars, the songs "Sagittarius A*," "Planetary Dust," "(This Isn't) A Bedtime Story," "Point of No Return," and all the lyrics contained therein copyright to the author of this story (username: MistyMountainHop, maker of Those '70s Comics).
CHAPTER 60
SAGITTARIUS A*
May 1, 1995
St. Paul, Minnesota
Forman's Basement Sound
…
Hyde's recording studio in St. Paul rang with violence. Degenerate Matter was set up in the large isolation room, splattering sound on the angled walls. Ro thrashed her guitar at the center of the sonic fracas, bled her voice into the mic as she provided a guide vocal for the song.
"For a temp track, she's really giving it to us," Dave Falken said in the control room. The band had hired him to produce its fourth album, after a positive experience with him producing WIMPs and MACHOs. He was a pusher without being pushy, a trait Hyde appreciated. "Hope she doesn't burn out her voice."
"She won't," Frankie Branch said as his hands hovered over the soundboard. His mind was likely conjuring a half-dozen ways to mix this song. He had an innate musicality, passed down from his dad, renowned black jazz percussionist Clarence Branch. He was the studio's in-house mixing engineer, and Hyde had trusted him with all of Degenerate Matter's records, as well as those of the Spasms'. "Ro knows how much she can give."
Hyde stood back from the soundboard and clutched his belt buckle. He had a definite opinion about this song, "Sagittarius A*," but he remained a silent observer. Every now and then, Ro eyed him through the window separating the isolation room from the control room. Outside the studio, she acted as if all was cool between them. Inside, however, the mask fell, and her true feelings kicked Hyde in the face.
The band had been recording for three weeks, the same amount of time he'd abstained from sex. In private, in secret, he read books on sexual abuse and recovery. The frequency of his flashbacks had decreased, lifting the fog of fear they caused. That gave him access to deeper emotions, which he put into music, into lyrics. Ro wouldn't listen to him any other way.
But the more days that passed, the harder he fought to keep silent. In private, in not-so-secret, Ro wrote music in their jam room. "Sagittarius A*" was the result of her latest musical therapy session, and it was all about him.
"We're doing that again," Ro said at the end of the first take. Her voice wasn't hoarse, but she put down her guitar. "Rick," she said, glancing up at the balcony encircling the isolation room, and her guitar tech emerged from a room upstairs. "Get me the twelve-string. The Strat's not doing it for me."
"One Rick from Rick, comin' right up."
Five minutes later, Rick had set up Ro's twelve-string Rickenbacker. She banged out the riffs of "Sagittarius A*" a few times, her deft fingers having no trouble maneuvering the double-stringed fretboard.
"Good instinct," Dave said into the control room's mic, his white, freckled cheeks flushing slightly. "The Rick's tone will contrast nicely with your voice."
Ro smiled for the first time in a while, and Hyde exhaled through his nose. She was relaxing. Maybe playing this song all day would give him the opening he'd been waiting for.
Frankie gave the band the ready-to-record signal. Lee began the song by coaxing melodic noise from his '56 Gibson Les Paul. Nate created white-noise with his hi-hat before blasting into the main pounding rhythm. Lee and Ro joined forces on the verse's riff, an emotional assault in G-sharp, B-flat, F-sharp, and C-sharp minor. "I keep changing the station, but I'm picking up your static on every channel," Ro sang. The Rickenbacker's rich, warm tone simultaneously battled the rawness of her voice and complimented it. "You're the heart of the galaxy, sending out signals to draw me into you."
The tension in the music, in her words, infected Hyde's bones and stretched the marrow thin. Secrets had amputated parts of himself, vital to his survival, but the missing pieces were growing back. His silence was a choice, one he could change at will.
The band charged into the chorus, and Hyde flinched as the lyrics collided into the control room: "Fuck you, I won't tear apart. Fuck you, I won't go extinct. Fuck you. Fuck you, Hyde. Fuck me—"
His fists clenched. Ro's eyes were on him, and her lip curled as she continued to sing. "I'm coming at you with my rockets. I'm coming with my instinct, and I'll take you inside, or I'll sever my heart. I'll rip you out, scattering the stars."
"Shit," he said soundlessly. His blood harassed him for a cigarette, and his fingers twitched. A pack of gum was in his pocket, but moving might distract Ro and ruin the take. He focused on her hand as it birthed chord after chord. His gaze moved up her forearm, following the trail of tattooed musical notes.
Silence could be just as sharp as a tattoo needle … or a razor. She'd told him repeatedly to stop cutting himself with his past, with his guilt. But here she was, screaming her truth at him while she expected him to keep his trap shut.
The take ended with an entropic jam and a surge of activity inside the isolation room. The studio's in-house equipment engineer and her assistant entered. They checked over the monitors, microphones, and—with Nate's tech, Hank—the drums. Assistants came in with towels and water. The band liked experimenting during its takes. It had a few more versions of "Sagittarius A*" to try out. Lee would record his solo afterward, and Ro would record her vocals.
"Goin' out," Hyde said to Dave and Frankie. He wasn't actually needed in the studio today. Except for inspiring the lyrics, he had nothing to do with "Sagittarius A*". His influence on the song would occur during the mixing process, if at all.
A twenty-minute walk from the studio found him wandering Oakland Cemetery. Surrounding the graves were hundreds of trees. The sun shone through their green canopies, a testament to life among so much death. He sped his pace until he was jogging, had to expend his pent-up energy. Gravestones skimmed the periphery of his vision. They marked the one guarantee every person had: an end.
He stopped in front of an ornately carved monument. It stood tall in the grass, like a sentry to the underworld. MARLOWE was the name chiseled on the granite. Below that, on the monument's base, was an epitaph celebrating Charles Peter Marlowe's loving and determined spirit.
Hyde ran his hand over the letters of Marlowe's name, and they reformed into into his own name.
He touched the letters again. They hadn't actually changed, but damn if he didn't feel his name in the stone. He patted the monument, apologizing to Marlowe for appropriating his grave site, and each word of his own epitaph carved itself into his mind: Dead before he died.
May 2, 1995
San Francisco, California
Nightingale Bar and Grill
…
Jackie poked at her shrimp cocktail and envied each shrimp's fetal position. Ann-Marie had insisted Jackie meet her at the Nightingale Bar and Grill for dinner. The rest of the Blonde Brigade was here, too, and if Jackie could've curled up on the floor like a shrimp—without being hauled off to a mental hospital—she would have.
A copy of Celebritude was spread open on the table. The headline, "JACKIE BURKHART CORIN ABORTED MY BABY!" topped a two-page article in red. The article's text perverted her miscarriage into a sensationalist lie and flowed like a river around a blurry picture of herself and Ralph.
"I'm telling you," Brie said, seated to Jackie's right, "Scotty didn't give this interview. Look at all the attributions: 'A source close to the ex-couple,' 'a friend of Jackie who chose not to be identified'. It's transparent."
"Even so, the details are quite specific," Ann-Marie said. Her normally golden blond hair had been lightened beyond platinum. She claimed it was a shade called ice blond, a new trend, but it was gray like an old woman's. Her tight chignon and squinting eyes added to the affect, as did her matronly dress suit. "The best lies are told with as much truth as possible, darling."
Across the table, Deborah slapped both hands on the tabloid and leaned toward Jackie like a hungry lion. "So which lies are true?" Her newly surgically-enhanced breasts pressed into her bread plate, coating her blouse in crumbs. "Come on, Jackie. We're your friends. If you can't tell us, who can you tell?"
June's slender fingers wrapped around her water glass. "This is ridiculous. Jackie, you're getting so much press for doing nothing. I played a major role in a Seinfeld episode this year, and I booked the latest GUESS campaign. Plus, my second independent film is coming out this summer, and no one's writing stories about me!"
She stuck out her bottom lip in a camera-ready pout. Her every facial expression was modelesque, as if she expected the paparazzi to snap her picture any second. But Jackie's security team had secured the restaurant. This meal would remain out of the tabloids.
"Our whole conversation is ridiculous," Brie said and yanked the copy of Celebritude from under Deborah's hands. "Jackie, you don't have to tell us anything."
Jackie smiled at her gratefully. Brie was the only member of the Blonde Brigade who'd shown any understanding or sympathy. She'd also been the one who recommended Sheila's all-woman security company. Maybe she was playing the long game, hoping to get an in with Steven or Ro Skirving, but Jackie appreciated her help nonetheless.
"Actually, she does," Ann-Marie said. She was pointing at Jackie's shrimp cocktail. "Aren't you going to eat your appetizer, dear? I'm not paying for you to waste food."
"Are you implying you'd like to eat it?" Jackie's burn had a second part, but she held it in and shoved the plate toward Ann-Marie. "Be my guest."
"No." Ann-Marie pushed the plate back toward Jackie. "But if we're to continue being seen with you, we must know what to say to reporters." She gestured to Brie for the copy of Celebritude. Brie gave it to her with an air of annoyance, and Ann-Marie flipped to the vilifying article. "What parts should we confirm? What do we deny?"
Jackie stabbed a shrimp with her fork. "How about saying, 'No comment'?"
Ann-Marie laughed as if Jackie's suggestion were nonsense, and Deborah joined her.
"The sidebar," June said, interrupting them. "That's the most interesting part."
It was the worst part. The sidebar, inset with a small picture of Steven, said, "Is Jackie at it again?"
"'Sources say Jackie wants to get pregnant with Hyde's baby,'" Ann-Marie read from the tabloid. She kept her voice low, and Deborah, June, and even Brie angled their heads toward her. "'But, unlike many men, he refuses not to use a condom. Jackie, our sources say, believes getting pregnant will force Hyde to dump Ro Skirving once and for all."
Jackie inhaled a deep, steadying breath, but Brie's citrus perfume irritated her nose and throat. The scent was one her mom often wore, and this article had to be her doing. Just like the one in MYOB Magazine last week and the pictures in The Meddler the week before that. Anders might've been involved, too, but she'd begun to doubt that theory. According to Anders's last answering machine message, he was filing for divorce.
"Are you and Steven Hyde fucking?" Deborah said with a neon-white grin. Her teeth had been over-bleached during her last dentist's visit. "Because that scheme sounds exactly like you."
Jackie ceased all pretensions of eating. "It sounds exactly like me?" She slammed her fork onto the table, and it bounced wildly toward June. June screamed and ducked, but Jackie shouted, "It sounds exactly like me?" She stood up and gripped the table, to prevent herself from squeezing Deborah's throat. "You have no idea who I am!"
Deborah's grin turned into a neon-white sneer. "Jackie, take a pill. I'm just kidding."
"You're full of shit!" Jackie's shout drew the attention of the restaurant's other patrons, but their eyes were on her anyway. A third of them had probably bought this week's Celebritude. "Here's what really happened, Deborah." She touched the bridge of her nose and ran her finger down its curve. "Ralph smashed his fist into my face after the miscarriage. You want to sell that one to the tabloids? Go ahead."
"Oh, God, Jackie—" Brie reached up and rubbed Jackie's arm, but Jackie shrank from her.
"He broke your nose?" June went paler than usual. "I thought that curve was from a bad rhinoplasty."
"It's a travesty you allowed Scot to mar your face," Ann-Marie said. "You could have asked me for a reference. I know the best plastic surgeons in Beverly Hills."
Deborah held the copy of Celebritude again. She was peering down at the article and shaking her head. "Poor Scotty. If I'd aborted Daisy or Morrison in secret, I don't know what Robert would've done—"
Jackie snatched the tabloid from Deborah's fingers. Her impulse was to strike Deborah across the face with it, but she redirected her energy at the table. She hit it repeatedly, trapping a scream behind her teeth.
She was letting years of built-up rage loose, same as she did about Dale Fischer and others in therapy—only now for the Blonde Brigade and a restaurant full of strangers to see. Humiliation should've strangled her dead, but the release felt far too satisfying to kill her.
Time tore through her senses when she tossed the tabloid to the floor, but it slowed outside the restaurant. Her security team gave her cover as she got into her Miata, and Sheila drove her back to Foster City.
From the passenger-side window, Jackie stared at the San Francisco Bay. She drowned her thoughts in the dark blue water, but she remained present to her body, to the furious rhythm of her pulse.
The Miata sped past the San Francisco International Airport. A plane soared into the sky, and it flew higher and higher until it resembled a vulture searching for prey. "I'm done with them, Sheila," Jackie said as her gaze followed the plane. "I am done."
May 3, 1995
St. Paul, Minnesota
Forman's Basement Sound
…
Ro leaned against Hyde during Frankie's playback of "Sagittarius A*". Her closeness was welcome in the crowded control room. Often, the places most packed with people felt the loneliest. He draped his arm loosely around her back, and his hand cupped her hip. They were the only two standing. Frankie, Dave, and everyone else in Degenerate Matter were seated around the mixing board.
"That's the one," Dave said when Lee's solo twisted from the speakers. "Matches Ro's voice in emotional rawness."
Lee's fingers twitched with each note of the solo. He was comparing the melody and mood of his recorded efforts to his internal vision of the music. He'd explained this once to Hyde, and Hyde had to admire his dedication.
"Supermassive darkness holding me together," Ro's recorded voice sang plaintively at a pause in the solo. "Supermassive energy swallowing this love affair."
Ro's arm snaked around Hyde's waist, and her hand slithered into his jeans pocket. Usually, she'd sneak a feel of his dick, but her fingers balled into a fist. Her warmth and hard-knuckled presence on his thigh was a question. He cleared his throat, unable to answer.
On the playback, Sherry's bassline hit a funky groove at the beginning of Ro's final verse. Nate's drum beat complimented it, and together they ushered the music into an explosive final chorus. Nate lightly punched Sherry's shoulder in triumph, and she grinned at him. They had a right to be proud. Their rhythm burrowed into Hyde's stomach, and it would likely have a similar effect on anyone else who heard it.
The control room broke into the white noise of applause once the playback finished. "That's exactly what I was looking for," Dave said to Frankie. "A hard-edged but lush sound. Great job."
Ro extricated herself from Hyde and said, "That mix really claws you in the face."
Lee nodded with a smirk. "Dave has an evil streak." His eyes flicked to Hyde. "Told you producers crawled out of hell."
Hyde shrugged. Lee could say whatever crap he wanted. It had no bearing on Hyde's involvement with the band or with Ro. That guitar string broke years ago.
"Let's try the fuck-you version of the vocals," Ro said to Frankie. "Could be an alternate mix we give to the fan club."
"Sure." Frankie turned a few knobs on the mixing board, and "Sagittarius A*" pumped through the speakers with a hoarser, angrier vocal. This mixing session had been scheduled for yesterday, Tuesday, but the band's jam at the end of the song altered those plans. The jam had evolved into its own track. The band spent the rest of Monday's recording session getting the new idea on tape. Lee recorded his solo for "Sagittarius A*" yesterday, and Ro laid down her vocals, and the mixing session was moved to today.
"Fuck you, I won't tear apart. Fuck you, I won't go extinct," Ro's recorded voice snarled. "Fuck you. Fuck you—fuck me!"
Hyde had held his breath while listening but let it out. Ro hadn't sung his name. Hadn't put their business on the vocal, although her feelings about it kicked him in the stones.
Dave tapped his goateed chin. "Love the ferocity, but the vocal scrapes against the ears. You sound strained." His fingers went from tapping to stroking the goatee, and he didn't speak for a long twenty seconds. "You need to do another take. Same rage, same lyrics, but filtered through the normal control you have over your voice. You up for that today?"
Ro met Hyde's gaze, and his shoulders stiffened. She was reading him.
"In an hour," she said. "Hyde and I have private business to discuss upstairs."
"More like privates business," Nate whispered to Sherry, and she slapped his arm with the back of her hand. "What?
"Keep it professional, Stack," she said.
Dave waved Hyde and Ro off. "Do what you have to do. I'll see you back here in an hour."
Ro tugged on Hyde's short sleeve but stopped short of dragging him. He followed her down the hall to the kitchen, where she grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. From there, they went into the isolation room and up the stairs to the second floor. She pulled him into the soundproofed guest room. The bed had fresh sheets and fluffed pillows, thanks to the studio's in-house assistants.
"Do you want me or not?" she said, pressing her back into the door. She opened her bottle of water, took a sip, licked her lips. "Or are we done?"
Curtains covered the windows looking into the studio and the outside. Neither pair was completely closed, but he fixed that. "Yeah, I want you," he said. She'd made him hard plenty the last three weeks, without her even trying, but acting on it wouldn't do them any good. "Shit, Spark..."
He dragged his palm across his cheek and peered up at the guitars on the walls. Manuel Barcilon, the Spasms' lead guitarist, had given him a 1965 Mosrite Ventures in candy-apple red. Scotty Roxx's '83 Gibson Flying V, used on Wildebeest's third album, also had a place of honor in the room. Hyde needed to take it down and return it.
"Are we done, Steven?"
Ro's use of his first name pulled his focus back to her. She rarely ever used it.
"Wanting doesn't always mean getting," he said. Nestled at the corner of the room was a Marshall amp. He plugged it in and removed the '65 Mosrite from the wall. Ro's vocal from "Sagittarius A*" was vibrating in his skin. It had transfused her truth into his blood, but his own truth was pooling around his boots, pouring from a wound he had to close. "If your impatience means we're done, then what the hell can I do about it?"
He plugged the guitar into the amp and sat on the bed. Then he strummed a riff he'd been working on, in B-major.
"That's new," she said.
"So am I." His riff transitioned easily into the bridge of "Planetary Dust". He hummed along with the melody, to warm up his voice. Then he sang softly, "If I gave you the truth, would I be giving you up?"
Ro pushed herself from the door and strode toward him. "What are you doing?"
"Because honesty could make you give up..." He returned to his new riff. "I want to touch you," he sang. "I've got to touch you, but not where you think—"
"What the hell are you doing?" She was standing over him now, and her water bottle crackled under the force of her grip.
"Singing," he said. "I've got one story on credit from our a deal a month ago. Time for us to settle up. But since you always say, 'Put your stories into music,' I'm doin' that as a courtesy."
His strumming became faster, rougher, but his voice retained the melody: "Twelve-years-old, and my soul was sold. Ma made a deal that swallowed me whole: trade in your virginity for a ten-ton load."
He shifted his fingers on the fretboard, somewhat clumsily, but found the chords of "Point of No Return".
"Don't—" Ro said.
But he was too far in to stop. "Swallowed me whole with both pair lips," he sang with his eyes wide open. Blood rushed into Ro's face, but his silence had grown too heavy to carry. "Sucked out my joy, turned it into shit" He returned again to his new riff. "No escape. No escape. What she did was rape—"
The amp buzzed and popped, and his guitar went mute. Ro had yanked the power cord from the wall. She threw down her water bottle, and it hit the toe of his boot. "How could you do that to me?" she said.
He put the guitar down on the bed. "Do what?"
"Tell me what that song's story is, you fucking bampot!" She was trembling, filled with more energy than she seemed able to contain. He rolled off the bed as she sprang at him. His knee knocked into the floor wrong, sending a tingling burn up his leg. He gave himself a second to recover, but pain bit into his back.
Her nails. She must have grasped his T-Shirt.
"Ro—" He tried to stand, but she'd become a living supernova. Her arms and legs ensnared him, weighing him down. Something moist mashed into the nape of his neck.
"You're an asshole!" she screamed into his skin. He winced at the volume, at the violence inside her, but he wouldn't retaliate.
"You had to get it," he said, lifting her with him as he stood. Her ankles were locked around his abdomen, and her fists pressed into his windpipe. He coughed before prying her hands off him. "This celibacy thing ain't about you. It's not you—"
She reasserted her grip, this time around his chest. She used her new position to smash her heels into his thighs. She'd kicked dangerously close to his stones, and he cursed. Falling for chicks who tried to beat the crap out of him was a habit he couldn't freakin' shake.
He grasped her wrists, with more force than he felt comfortable using, but it was necessary. He tore her off him, planting her feet firmly on the floor.
"It's not you," he repeated, and her knuckles collided with his face. His cheek throbbed, inside and out. His flesh had scraped his molars, and he touched his nose. Heat seared the side of it. His finger came away dotted with red, but his lie to them both had struck him harder than Ro's punch. Not having sex was because of her, at least in part.
She covered her left fist and pressed it to her lips. She was breathing heavily and edging toward the door, but his pain was reflected in her eyes. "I didn't need to know," she whispered.
"I needed you to know." He rubbed his cheek. She'd slugged him with her non-dominant hand, a calculated move. It smashed less of her fury into his face, but her engagement ring had cut him. "You've got to get why the rules between us have to change," he said and pointed to his bleeding nose. "This right here? This is what I've got to risk to tell you the truth. I've played by your rules for so damn long I forgot what mine were."
Her water bottle had rolled to a corner of the room. He picked it up and held its cold surface against his stinging cheek. "Love shouldn't mean fuckin' bleeding," he said, trying to capture her gaze, but she was staring at the wall. "If I matter how you claim I do to you, you'll start listening—and don't give me that B.S. about seein' a shrink. I might just do that, but I don't need you to 'fix' me, man. I just need to be heard."
She clenched her jaw, and her temple pulsed. Her eyes were wet, but no tears fell. "Well, I can't hear you right now."
"How long?" he said. She was asking him to leave, not just the room but their house.
"A week. Maybe two."
He had no problem with that. He already had a place to go, but the band would be pissed. His absence and Ro's inner chaos meant recording would be on hold that long, too.
"Do you have any idea what you did?" she said.
"I've got a six-hour drive to think about it." He tossed the water bottle onto the bed. He grabbed the '65 Mosrite guitar and placed it back on its hanger. "You gonna apologize?"
"You betrayed me, so I betrayed you. Any apology would be empty."
His whole body ached, sore from more than her physical attack on him. She was like an earlier version of himself, operating from insecurity and suspicion. "I didn't betray you, Spark," he said quietly, "but if that's the story you want to tell yourself, I've got no more to say."
He trudged past her. His limbs were leaden with exhaustion, but he opened the door. Nothing would stop him from escaping this city ... except the right words from Ro. He waited two heartbeats, but she chose silence. The door closed between them, and he left without looking back.