A thousand thank-yous to AliceJericho who devoted far more of her personal time than was probably reasonable or fair to making this chapter not-grammatically-suck (even though I just butchered those hyphens, never mind) ;-) and to Nattiebroskette, who also beta'ed me wonderfully and prevented me from going thermonuclear at various points throughout this process. I have three chapters stacked back to back, for those of you who have been wondering where the hell the pretty pretty wordies went. Please do go read Fade To Black and Can You Help Me Heal? if you haven't already; both my friends are tremendous authors in their own right, and have a plethora of stories for you to choose from.
To everyone who's stuck with me, THAAAAANK YOOOOOOOU! I look forward to hearing from you!
And, welcome to my newest literary buddies, darkcloud77 and Willow Edmond! Willow has just started a new work, The Girl Who Lived (it will tug at your heartstrings like mad), and shoutouts to Idabrat and ChelleLew! Idabrat, if you write anything much hotter (Picture Perfect, I'm looking at you!) my keyboard may just melt. Entirely. Or short out from drool. And, ChelleLew's work Behind The Badge is spectacular.
ONWARD!
(I'm gonna ask that you all...temporarily believe in the Magic Of Meg, for a bit. I can't write ALL doom and gloom, now can I?)
Randy wasn't surprised to find their suite empty when he came back to it; it concerned him more that Meg wasn't wearing her boots or Ace wrap, that her Concierge bag had been pawed through and left behind, and that she hadn't left him a note. They'd been annoyed, irked, or downright angry with each other a dozen times before, but they'd always left a note, even if it was just "At the bar. Fuck off. Love you."
That concern overrode his anger and it blanked his mind, worse than any bender he'd set himself on. Much like every suite they'd ever been in, a small stack of note cards was placed on the corner desk, and Randy sat down heavily in the chair that faced them. Scanning the desk for the obligatory hotel pen, he slid it end for end in his fingers, unsure of how to begin, still blank, trying to force himself to put words together in fragments that became segments, then segments that built up into sentences.
'What did you do, Meg? I don't know where you are, but I don't think you really left-left, since your shit's still in the room. So that's good. Did you think I wasn't coming back? I'm still...blank. Angry? Yeah. You were so fucking stupid. Then again, so was I. Scared? No. Terrified. Beyond terrified. I didn't think you could still do shit like that...that we were past it, or that you could...tell me, somehow? Let me slow you down? I shouldn't be asking what you did. I should be asking what I did – or didn't – because you couldn't let me help you. You didn't. Something's all fucked up now, and I hope this makes it right. Jon says this is dumb, but it's his fuckin' idea, anyway, so here goes.'
Randy uncapped the pen, touched the tip to a notecard, lifted it away, sighed, and touched the tip down again, firmly, beginning to write in earnest.
'I needed to leave. I'm sorry. Love you.'
Tapping the pen on the card a few more times, Randy eventually dropped it on the table, grabbed his suitcase, and called Remy.
"Allo, c'est Remy."
"Remy! Hey, it's Randy. Uh, we haven't talked in a while, but-"
"Non, non, I remember. How is Meg?"
"Not so good right now. I was wondering...uh...if I came down to New Orleans, could you help me out with something? Like...kinda on short notice?"
"How do you mean, short notice?" Remy sounded thoroughly confused.
"I'm headed to the airport now, Meg doesn't know I'm going, and I only have tomorrow – well, half of tomorrow – to get this done."
Remy hung his head. "Mon dieu. Randy. What sort of foolishness are you playing at?"
"I just need help. I really fucked up, and I'm trying to fix it, and I think – I hope – this is part of what's gonna make it right."
"Mon dieu. It is good you two found each other." Remy shook his head. "First she runs, now you run."
"I'll get a hotel room, and then I just need you to help me figure out..." Randy sighed. "You still work nights, like when you got Meg out of that wreck? Can we get breakfast or something tomorrow, and I'll explain? I literally only have a day."
"Oui, but non. The work, yes, I mean. But no, no hotel room. And of course, I assume I should not tell your Meg what you are up to?"
"Please, no. I'm trying to...figure her out. Her and that city. I'm trying to get her a gift – we're both just dumb and sentimental, sometimes – but I feel like it's only gonna work if it comes from there. I want to fix it. Fix something, I guess." 'Maybe I should I talk more and make less sense, too.'
"I will get you from the airport. There are rooms in the Quarter, or around it, that go by the night; you would do best to stay there if you want the...experience. Her experience. I have friends who can help you. But you cannot fix anything that has happened here, Randy. Do not think that."
"Anything you tell me to do. I need all the help I can get...I'm lost already and I'm not even out of the hotel."
"As you outsiders would say, no shit." Remy laughed. "Send me a message when you land; I will pick you up and take you to your room. Please, have cash. Things do not work so well by plastic in these places."
"You're a lifesaver. I so owe you for this." Randy, having elbowed his way first onto, then off of, the elevator without slamming into anyone with his suitcase or seeing anyone he knew, made it into a taxi and breathed a sigh of relief.
"Non, non. I am curious about what you are up to, and of course I am glad to see a friend. Adieu, Randy. Until later tonight.
Hearing Randy begin to punch numbers into an ATM outside the hotel, talking to himself about needing cash for the trip, making sure Meg would like everything, Remy ended the call and sighed defeatedly into the heavy night air, before offering a half-smile to the sky and shaking his head. "Whatever you are planning, you are probably creating more of a disaster than you are solving. I am hoping you stopped to think, but it seems neither of you ever stop to breathe, much less think. Baise-moi."
Show over, at least two valium in her system, and no messages from Dave indicating he'd discovered the missing bottle yet, Meg rolled the bottle of vicodin back and forth between her palms in the restroom of the coffee shop. Shrugging, she dry swallowed only one, deciding she had to be able to walk back to the hotel without looking like a target for a mugging, and staggering wouldn't help matters. 'And once I'm back, fuck him. I'm drinking til I'm numb. I don't even know where to start with him, so I'm either going through the liquor til I pass out, or til I can scream it out of me and into him.'
Her phone hadn't stopped buzzing. After clearing Randy's calls from her queue, she saw a few more from Dave, and then a stretch that alternated between Renee and Tenille. Listening to a few of their voicemails, she could tell Renee was beginning to move from worried to scared that Meg had just walked off and gotten quiet, but Meg didn't call her back. 'Doesn't everyone have the right to a little privacy? Quiet time? Space to think?' Meg had to double-back; she'd walked straight past the hotel while checking her messages. Even Jon had texted her – a simple message saying only, "be careful." Meg couldn't help but smile. No requests to call, no warnings, not begging for anything, not accusing her or chastising her, just telling her to look out for herself. 'Fair enough.'
Feeling her legs getting thick and uncoordinated, Meg forced herself to stay upright through the lobby before pitching heavily into the back of an elevator, heading up to the floor for their suite after missing the button several times. She had to lean on the wall to get down the hallway, and the door to their room almost got the best of her, but she managed well enough. She fell straight through once it was open and landed hard on her knees, the door slamming back into her ankles before she tucked up enough to let it close behind her, her leg screaming at her from the constant walking, hard landing, and general abuse it had taken without a brace that night..
'Gonna leave a mark. Am I sure I only took two valium? Or was it two valium with each coffee? Oh well. Doesn't hurt, anyway.' Her eyes were slow to adjust to the dim light of the room, and she groped around the floor to make sure the bottles of alcohol hadn't broken when she landed. "Thank God. You guys made it!" Rolling onto her back, Meg lapsed into quiet, wheezy giggles, before realizing she heard nothing else in the room. No water, no noise from the balcony, nothing from the television – it was completely devoid of sound.
'He prolly went out with Jon. Still pissed at me, so out getting his drink on. Can't blame him for that.' "Okay, Meg, up we go. One foot, two foot, walksy walksy." Once she made it to vertical, she saw a pen laying across a hotel note card at the writing desk, along with a desk chair displaced just enough to have once accommodated Randy's long frame. Meg staggered her way over to the desk, leaving her bag behind, trying to hold onto her phone while cracking open a bottle of SoCo as she went. Slugging back a shot's worth of alcohol as she stumbled, capping the bottle and thumping it down on the desk, she had to adjust the position of the note several times before her eyes would focus on Randy's small, boxy print.
"I needed to leave..."
That was all Meg needed to see; never mind that he wrote he loved her, never mind that he wrote he was sorry, no clues as to whether or not he was coming back, just that he left, and she whirled around to see that his suitcase really was gone, shoes gone, bathroom empty of anything he might have showered with, nothing in the closets, he truly had disappeared. He'd left her.
Quick blurs followed. She knew the floor threw her into the table, and she knew the table threw her into the chair, and though the lamp told her to try to grab onto its cord to slow the world down, it wasn't strong enough to stop the spinning and only ended up spinning down to the floor with her, crashing into her left shoulder, which was enough pain to get her to stop screaming. Her collarbone made sure of that. The SoCo hadn't fallen with her; her phone had, the screen now sporting deep cracks from the impact of the chair, made heavier by Meg's weight hanging over it.
'Get up, Meg. You read it wrong. You're stupid when you're drunk and you had to read it wrong. He needed to leave with Jon, or with Dave, or whatever, but he didn't just leave.' Using her right arm to pull herself up the table leg, Meg grabbed the alcohol first and drank mightily, then pawed around the surface of the table for the note. Reading it a second time, Meg dragged her phone out from under the chair – a task made more difficult by the fact she was half-laying over it.
"I needed to leave..."
'It's over. And you fucked up your collarbone, Meg. Get your meds.' Not remembering, or caring, what she'd taken prior, Meg crawled her way back to her messenger bag near the door, phone and note in one hand, alcohol in the other, stopping several times to catch her breath and wait for her vision to go from pinpoints to full focus. By the time she got to her bag, opening the bottle of pills was impossible. It felt like years passed; her vision was beginning to double. 'Because you fucked up your shoulder. You used to see triple when Jackson hit you hard enough; what did you think this would do? Take your goddamned pills, Meg.'
Unable to wrestle the bottle open, Meg screamed and threw it at the wall, digging her fingers into her scalp, trying to cover her ears to shut out the hissing and Jackson's sticky breathing. 'He left. Randy left. He finally got sick of me like they all do, and he left. Well, Jackson never got sick of me. I just fucked that up. The one guy that actually wanted me, and I was the dumbass who ruined that. If I just did like he said and acted right, I wouldn't be here now. Great room, shitty company: me, myself, and I. And maybe Jackson, if it keeps on. At least he would be company. I can feel him; maybe if I ask for him to be here, he'd really show up. I can smell him. He's gonna have his fingers under the door in a minute. He'll climb out of the armoire. Come in from the balcony. Maybe I should go out on the balcony and just keep going. Who the fuck would care, anymore?'
Meg kept glancing at the bottle of vicodin as it lay near the bathroom that, up til a few hours ago, she'd shared with Randy, their toothbrushes bumping against each other, his washcloths hanging over the edge of the hamper while her towels were folded neatly and stacked properly. It seemed that the bottle never stopped rocking back and forth; at times, even rolled itself nearer to her, daring her to crawl over and try to open it one more time. Meg was convinced she could hear the pills slowly tick and shift against the plastic of the bottle, almost whispering to her to come get them, promising to make it painless and cold, perfectly gentle, just give the cap one more try. The pills rattled again, making sure she latched her focus onto them, then promised her they'd all fall into her hands easily. Their suggestion of taking them with the Southern Comfort sounded like going home, going back to all her memories, and she'd simply drift off to sleep but without all the painful sunlight and cold sheets in the morning to prove she was alone.
It took several minutes of internal warring, Meg's mind trying to force the hissing away and convince herself she wouldn't be able to get the cap off anyway. 'Where's my valium? Dave's valium. My nerves. Whatever. I don't want to think about it. I don't want to see him. Any of them.' Fumbling for the other small orange bottle, Meg managed that cap open and left it off, secretly grateful that Dave's nearly-arthritic fingers meant the pharmacy had provided him with an Easy-Off lid, picking out another unknown number of pills and holding them up in the air between her fingers. "I dare you, Jackson!" 'And...I kinda wish you would, Jackson.' She threw them into her mouth and chewed, swishing the SoCo around afterward. Her tongue was so numb it didn't matter. The number she took at the coffee shop didn't matter. Randy was gone, there was no indication he was coming back, so what did any of it matter?
Meg's phone lit up near her messenger bag, and the cracks in the screen made the colors bleed into prismatic rainbows. 'That's really pretty. My phone didn't do that before...it's kinda neat to watch.' Dropping the valium to her side but treating the alcohol with much more care, she reached for her phone. Rubbing her fingers over the glass, trying to feel the colors, she didn't realize she'd accidentally picked up the line, Renee's voice urgent on the other end.
"Meg? Meg! Thank God, we've all been trying to – Meg?"
Nothing came across the line but a lilting, sing-song ramble about the pretty colors on the pretty screen, hissed dares to Jackson to come back, and small hooks and catches in Meg's voice about why and how Randy left.
A chill broke out over Renee. "Jon? C'mere. Something's wrong with this."
"The fuck do I know about phones?" He continued to tick through channels while he lay on their bed, slowly peeling the label off a bottle of beer.
"Nothing, but you know a lot about fucked up people. Listen to this." Renee passed her phone to Jon, who listened to Meg's voice with mild interest before passing the phone back.
"Huh. Dumb motherfucker. He really did leave." Jon tore the label from the beer bottle, suddenly interested in turning it over and over in his fingers. "She'll be okay, Renee. Call her back in a few. At least you know she's picking up her phone now."
Meg's slight frame was blocking the door, just in case any of her friends decided to stop by to check on her. There were too many messages from Renee and Tenille not to expect some sort of intervention on their part, and she couldn't remember if she'd given out any duplicate keys to their – well, her – suite to any of her friends. She'd simply sat down where her messenger bag was and slammed back an entire fifth of the SoCo, with a decent start on the second one, before splaying out across the doorway and tracing her fingers over the writing on Randy's note again and again, trying to see if more meaning would conjure up from the words. He'd pressed hard enough to leave an imprint firmly in the note card, leaving Meg wondering how angry he was when he'd decided to write his few words and walk out.
When nothing came to her, just as it hadn't come to Randy, she pulled out her rainbow-glassed phone again, struggling through the shattered contact list, trying to find his number even though she knew it by heart. 'Would you even pick up, if I called? Could you tell me why? Please?' Taking a shaky breath, not realizing how tired she was until that moment, how physically worn she felt, she pressed blindly at what she hoped would be his number.
Finally off the plane and waiting for his single bag, Randy reflexively reached for his phone when he felt it buzz against his leg. Without looking – his first mistake – he answered the call.
"Yeah, it's Randy."
'Oh...oh. Uh...wow.' Meg struggled to bring a dry whisper up from her throat; the valium had disoriented and dehydrated her, and in a brief moment of clarity she was glad she continued to be unable and unwilling to tamper further with the vicodin, no matter how much the pills continued to rattle at her from a distance. 'Try something, Meg. Anything.' "Uh...Ran...it's Meg."
"Look...Meg...we'll talk about this, but it's two in the morning. I'm trying to find my ride, I'm really tired, it's-"
"You left me." 'Please pass the salt. At least I didn't get emotional.' Her voice was nothing more than a deflated whisper, the last worthwhile breath to leave her body before she knew everything else in her life would simply become mechanical and rote until she found another way to run or disappear. 'Preferably disappear.'
"Understand that I have a reason, okay?" Remy caught his eye, waving at him from a distance. "Listen, I gotta go, my ride is here. We'll talk later."
"Yeah. Okay." She pushed the phone away from her on the carpet, never having moved from her position on the floor, not hearing Randy's words before he hung up.
"Meg, I love you. In a couple days this'll all make sense. I'm fixing it."
Renee called back moments later, Meg dragging herself to her phone. 'It's gotta be him. Please, God, let it be him. I swear, I'll do anything, just let it be him, I don't want to lose anyone else. I can't. I'm gonna throw up. Where are the valium? I need to calm down. Get the valium and calm down and answer the fucking phone.' Chewing another two pills and using the SoCo to rinse the bitter dust out of her teeth, she slapped her hand around until she connected with her phone, trying desperately to pick up the call before whoever was on the other end either went to voicemail or hung up.
"H'lo?"
"Meg, oh my God, are you okay?" Renee was terrified, every ounce of her horror coming across the line.
"You. Y'told 'im to do this. You. Jon. I heard y'in the car. Thanks, Renee. Jon, too." 'Is this what I was like when I was chasing after Joe? Is this why his wife hates me? Why she feels the way she does? Suprise, I stole your man, and then he walked out? Because I would hate me, too.' Meg ended the call and balled up on the floor, curled around her bottle of alcohol, debating taking all the remaining valium and then chewing the bottle of vicodin open if she had to.
Randy, fidgeting in Remy's smallish car, wasn't sure where to begin, though it was clear the man expected some sort of explanation. 'How exactly do you explain to someone that you ditched your girlfriend without telling her, even though you knew she wasn't gonna take it well, just to get her a present?'
Which, of course, was the first thing Remy wanted to know.
"Remy...I don't know. I just know it's something she would like., and..."
"Yes, and?" Remy's eyebrows were raised, and he tapped his thumbs against the steering wheel as he wove in and out of highway traffic. The car swayed madly, and Randy found it harder and harder to think.
"And...I, uh...I thought..." Randy swallowed hard. 'She sounded...scared, on the phone. It didn't sound like anyone was with her.' "I thought I could make her like it here again. I could fix it." Remy started to open his mouth, but Randy plowed ahead blindly. "No, Remy, wait. When – before – all this shit happened, Meg would always talk about being here. She said she never had a home, but she had here. It was...I could see it, the way she talked about it."
Randy looked out the window, for a split-second seeing Jackson's car sliding down the highway next to them, Meg banging around the inside of it – and then just as quickly, the image was gone. "All the places were that real, the way she'd tell stories. She had all these friends that were so wild they couldn't be real, but they just had to be, because it was Meg. That asshole broke this whole city for her, and if I can find one good thing here and bring it back to her, then I want to do it, I just don't have any...plan. I don't know how to do it. I remember the bookstore she liked, but not the name. I remember how she liked her coffee, and that the place had a cat, but not where it was. I can describe the church she went to, but I can't tell you what saint it was for. That's why I called you. I thought if I told you, maybe you would know where and what, and then I could find other people who would remember her, too. Maybe someone would know if there was an antique store she liked. I just want to have someone take some necklace charms apart and put the stones back together in a rose. That's all."
"Mon Dieu, Randy!" Remy swerved out of his lane entirely, and firmly swerved right back into it, to the tune of several car horns. "You cannot just...you are mad to think...you want to simply...after everything...you just expect people to...and she has no idea you are here?"
"Remy, you're getting iffy about it. Drop me at a hotel and I'll figure something else out." Randy sighed and rubbed his hands over his face. 'Meg would say figure it out. You had this brilliant fucking idea, now make it work. Do something that makes this work. Get a room, get some sleep, and get some help from Concierge about where to go for custom jewelry. Or antiques. Or something. It's New Orleans, they've probably heard it all. Take apart a couple of charms, have the stones reset in a rose.'
"Roll your window down." It was as though Remy hadn't heard a single word Randy said. "Breathe. You want to know this place? Get started." He took an off-ramp near a residential neighborhood, and after navigating endless loops of one-way streets, parked in front of what appeared to be a bookstore, Randy trying to untangle the swampy, wet-earth smell that he could feel settling over him like a damp net. Crickets called to each other, the occasional frog let a sticky croak out into the night, and the startled silence that followed after Randy closed his car door was unsettling. 'It's like the world shut down. This place needs...gentle? Slow? Everything spooked way too easy. Chill out, Randy. Try not to scare anyone. Anything.'
"Not that I was supposed to, but I looked up your Meg's last address. Working so closely with the police lets us...use favors. Not the bar, I mean her last real address. Your Meg lived a few blocks over from here."
Very, very quietly, Randy lifted his suitcase and walked timidly after Remy toward the door, unsure of what might reach out from the black night air and touch him. 'Meg comes by it honestly...I get it...how you could get used to the idea of ghosts around here. The idea of home, too.'
Dave threw his hands in the air. "I'm going out on the balcony for a minute." 'I'm calling his dumb ass. Where the fuck is he and what does she mean he left?'
For the better part of an hour, Dave had been walking Renee through a near-panic attack, Jon having called Dave for help when Renee started crying and hyperventilating over Meg's general condition and the fact she blamed them both for Randy's leaving. When nothing Dave said worked – and when Dave discovered his valium was missing – he'd had a small fit of his own, but had been unable to get Meg to answer her phone, either.
They'd all gone up to Meg's room, long before Dave called time out for himself on the balcony – at least they could hear her mumbling behind the door – and Dave was relatively sure there wasn't enough valium in his bottle for her to OD on, so his suggestion was just to leave her alone for the night and let her stew in her own medicated juices. This, of course, was not enough of a solution for Renee, who took to banging on the door and demanding to be let in.
"You tol'im to leave me!" Meg's last words came out as a scream and blew Renee back from the door, her hands coming up to cover her mouth. Even Jon winced; Dave merely cocked an eyebrow.
"If she can scream, she's fine. Let's go before she wakes up everyone on the floor."
"Meg, I swear to God, it wasn't like that. In the car, it was just some stupid plan he had to-"
"An' you tol'im TO GO!" Something thumped against the door, hard, earning a chuckle from Dave, which in turn earned a dirty look from Jon.
"What? It sounded like she punched the door. Or tried. Been a while since I've seen Meg ass-kickingly drunk. The valium is disinhibiting her. Let's just go, seriously. This isn't going to help anything." Dave turned and began to head to the elevator.
Renee kept trying to talk to Meg through the door, with Jon eventually wrapping his arms around her and gently pulling her back, forcing her to turn down the hallway and follow Dave.
"Renee..." Dave's tone was somewhere between fatherly and exhausted. "I have no idea what Meg's told you, or what she hasn't. But this is just...Meg. Either you sign up for the ride with her, or you don't. And honestly, this is better than it used to be."
"You don't understand, Dave!" Renee, still gasping for air between tears, wasn't buying a word of it. "She thinks we made Randy leave. Maybe she heard me arguing with him at the arena. I know she heard us both talking to him when we were driving – we thought she was asleep. And now he actually left."
Jon rolled his eyes. "Renee, knock it off. I used to pull the same shit Meg's doin'. Randy left because I basically gave him the idea – Dave, hold on before you lose your shit on me – but we both told him not tonight. Her stupid shit is on her, right now. She'll be fine – ten bucks says she throws up, anyhow, and then kicks his ass tomorrow.."
"And my twenty is on you being right about the puking but wrong about kicking his ass," Dave said, flatly. "Meg's so used to being the throwaway in relationships – and this'll be her third embarrassment in the company, at least through her eyes – that she's just gonna avoid him. It won't be awkward, it just won't...be. Odds are good she'll avoid the two of you, too, because she's gonna think she pissed you off."
"Why doesn't she...I dunno. Why is it always the worst, with her?" Jon asked.
"That," Dave rolled his eyes, "is a question for the ages. And why the fuck did you tell Randy to leave, idiot?"
"Because I'm an asshole. I thought...I figured, Meg ran off on him so fuckin' many times, it would be kinda even if he took half a fuckin' day for himself, 'specially since he was doin' it for her. He wanted to go down to New Orleans to get her somethin' – some necklace or some shit. He – we – tried doin' it the same day she went dress shoppin' but he didn't like the jewelry store, or somethin'. I still don't really get what went wrong there, but he didn't like it. Then he got it in his head that it just had to be from New Orleans. Wouldn't let it go."
"Jesus. And the only time we were close to NOLA was-"
"Right now," Renee cut in, still panting. "He wanted – I was – I didn't -"
"She means," Jon translated, "Randy wanted Renee to get info from Meg about what stores she liked in New Orleans, or if she had a favorite jewelry place. Which doesn't even sound like Meg; all she wears is that little God-dude thing. But Renee didn't get a chance to talk to her, and Randy just took off."
"So this actually was your plan," Dave pointed to Jon, "and you actually did agree to help?" He finished by pointing to Renee. "You know under any other circumstance, I'd say it's a really cool idea and would have been a really awesome surprise, but...Meg's about as stable as a fault line in a volcanic zone. The fuck were you thinking? And I'm including him in that statement."
The elevator ride down from Meg's floor was silent, save for Renee's high-speed breathing.
Meanwhile, Remy was speaking rapid-fire French with his friend, the owner of the bookstore, while Randy settled into the bed that was to be his in the upstairs apartment. The room smelled of dust and dry paper from the books downstairs, and the wallpaper could have been the original textured layer from the 1800's – he'd touched it, not sure if he was supposed to, but also never having seen anything so oddly intricate or shiveringly delicate used as a wall covering. The floor creaked, and the bed verged on being too short, but with the windows open and the salt air coming in off the water, along with something that smelled buttery and baked and vaguely like coffee, he could picture Meg sitting in the high-backed wire chair at the corner vanity, brushing out her hair before dabbing on her rose-oil and leaning out over the tiny balcony to look into the street. 'It does feel like her. I can see how she said she had this place.' He wondered how much sun the room would catch in the morning, and how close morning was.
None of it mattered once he again reflexively reached for and answered his phone.
"Randy, where the fuck are you?" Dave's voice, incinerating Randy through the airwaves, set every nerve in his body on edge.
'Something went wrong. Oh, fuck...' "Dave, you're gonna think it's stupid, but I'm trying to get Meg a surprise before the gala – just don't tell her, okay? I left her a note – shit, shit! – I didn't tell her when I'd be back, but she called and I'm gonna b-"
"She's drunk, she stole my valium, she won't answer her phone, and she blames Renee and Jon for coming up with a plan – with you – to get you to leave her. Wanna tell me what that's about, or should I just plan on asking Joe to beat you to death when you get back?"
"Jesus Christ. I'm in New Orleans because I wanted to get her a fucking necklace. That's it. I didn't want to give away the surprise, and Jon said it'd be...like...fair, I guess, if I left for half a day. It was just bad because we spent the whole morning arguing with each other over stupid shit, so it was a really shitty day to pick to leave. This was just the only day we were gonna be anywhere near NOLA, so it was now or not at all. I thought this-"
"You didn't fucking think at all!" Dave was screaming into his phone. "You didn't tell her you were coming back, did you? Did you? Did you even say it on the phone? And why the fuck would you go to New-Fucking-Orleans? After everything she went through there?"
"To take her to church, Dave, and you're not gonna get that, but when I tell her that she's gonna understand. I promise. I'll be at the arena in the morning, I can tell her it was my fault, I just can't tell her what I was up to."
"Right, and she's not gonna ask?"
"I'll say I needed a day to think. To calm down, stop being an asshole – which is the truth – and get my shit together. I took a flight to a connecting city, pulled my head out of my ass, and there I am. The next show."
"You're a fucking terrible liar. You're never gonna-"
"Dave, this necklace I'm getting her for the gala...she's gonna know what I mean. She hates rings."
"Are you fucking kidding me?" Incredulous, Dave pulled his phone away from his face and stared at it, dumbfounded. "You're gonna be lucky if she can even make eye contact with you, forget say-"
From inside the room, Renee sent up another howl, and Jon threw the Gideon bible at the sliding glass door to the balcony, to get Dave's attention. "Look. I have to go. Renee is going to hyperventilate, and I need to get another script of valium since your soon-to-maybe-be-whatever-you-call it stole mine and is probably doing lines off the back of the toilet in between shots."
"I'm back tomorrow, Dave. Just keep her together for me."
"I can't even get in your fucking room, Randy. You're on your own." Dave ended the call and went back to Renee, trying to help her slow her breathing and sip some water.
Staring stupidly at his now-dark phone, Randy nearly slipped off the end of his bed when the door to his room banged open and Remy flew in. "Randy, you would not believe our luck! My friend, downstairs – he remembers your Magdalena! Not from her last time here at the bar, but before. When she lived here, ah...differently. She lived several blocks from here, but...Randy? Mon dieu, are you alright?" Randy was still silent, trying to breathe, trying to make his fingers work to call Meg.
"No...no. It's about Meg. We argued before I left, and I thought this would help fix it, but I left all fucked up, and she thought I really left. Walked out on her."
"And Meg being Meg, she has overreacted?"
"It's bad."
"Then we will hurry so you can go back and set things right. Get some rest now, I will be back in the morning to get you. Breakfast, and then we will see if we can find a few of her usual haunts. Bonne nuit, Randy. Put your phone to bed, as well. It will do you no good. Let it all rest, tonight."
Tossing his phone to the bedside table, and sensing a certain logic in Remy's words, Randy nodded. "Yeah. Morning. Thanks, Remy."
"Bien. Adieu. Oh, merde. Before I go. The closet is the door on the right, the bathroom is the door on the left. My friend, he always forgets to tell guests." Smiling, Remy closed the door, and Randy waited until he was sure he was gone before locking the door and pulling one of the shirts Meg had slept in from his suitcase. Pulling it over his head, he breathed her rose scent in deeply, the salt and the dust and the butter all mixing together with her perfume in his head, and while he knew he was right, he also knew he was so very, very wrong.