The idea of getting out of Oregon, away from the rest of the band, from all that history, a fresh start, a house full of windows and light, a future with Bryn—it had felt so right at the time.
So that’s how I became one half of a celebrity couple. Now I get my picture snapped with Bryn as we do stuff as mundane as grab a coffee from Starbucks or take a walk through Runyon Canyon.
I should be happy. I should be grateful. But the problem is, I never can get away from feeling that my fame isn’t about me; it’s about them. Collateral Damage was written with Mia’s blood on my hands, and that was the record that launched me. And when I became really famous, it was for being with Bryn, so it had less to do with the music I was making than the girl I was with.
And the girl. She’s great. Any guy would kill to be with her, would be proud to knock her up.
Except even at the start, when we were in that can’t-get-enough-of-you phase, there was like some invisible wall between us. At first I tried to take it down, but it took so much effort to even make cracks. And then I got tired of trying. Then I justified it. This was just how adult relationships were, how love felt once you had a few battle scars.
Maybe that’s why I can’t let myself enjoy what we have. Why, in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep, I go outside to listen to the lapping of the pool filter and obsess about the shit about Bryn that drives me crazy. Even as I’m doing it, I’m aware that it’s minor league—the way she sleeps with a BlackBerry next to her pillow, the way she works out hours a day and catalogs every little thing she eats, the way she refuses to deviate from a plan or a schedule. And I know that there’s plenty of great stuff to balance out the bad. She’s generous as an oil baron and loyal as a pit bull.
I know I’m not easy to live with. Bryn tells me I’m withdrawn, evasive, cold. She accuses me—depending on her mood—of being jealous of her career, of being with her by accident, of cheating on her. It’s not true. I haven’t touched a groupie since we’ve been together; I haven’t wanted to.
I always tell her that part of the problem is that we’re hardly ever in the same place. If I’m not recording or touring, then Bryn’s on location or off on one of her endless press junkets. What I don’t tell her is that I can’t imagine us being together more of the time. Because it’s not like when we’re in the same room everything’s so great.
Sometimes, after Bryn’s had a couple of glasses of wine, she’ll claim that Mia’s what’s between us. “Why don’t you just go back to your ghost?” she’ll say. “I’m tired of competing with her.”
“Nobody can compete with you,” I tell her, kissing her on the forehead. And I’m not lying. Nobody can compete with Bryn. And then I tell her it’s not Mia; it’s not any girl. Bryn and I live in a bubble, a spotlight, a pressure cooker. It would be hard on any couple.
But I think we both know I’m lying. And the truth is, there isn’t any avoiding Mia’s ghost. Bryn and I wouldn’t even be together if it weren’t for her. In that twisted, incestuous way of fate, Mia’s a part of our history, and we’re among the shards of her legacy.
EIGHT
The clothes are packed off to Goodwill
I said my good-byes up on that hill
The house is empty, the furniture sold
Soon your smells will decay to mold
Don’t know why I bother calling, ain’t nobody answering
Don’t know why I bother singing, ain’t nobody listening
“DISCONNECT”
COLLATERAL DAMAGE, TRACK 10
Ever hear the one about that dog that spent its life chasing cars and finally caught one—and had no idea what to do with it?
I’m that dog.
Because here I am, alone with Mia Hall, something I’ve fantasized about now for more than three years, and it’s like, now what?
We’re at the diner that was apparently her destination, some random place way over on the west side of town. “It has a parking lot,” Mia tells me when we arrive.
“Uh-huh,” is all I can think to answer.
“I’d never seen a Manhattan restaurant with a parking lot before, which is why I first stopped in. Then I noticed that all the cabbies ate here and cabbies are usually excellent judges of good food, but then I wasn’t sure because there is a parking lot, and free parking is a hotter commodity than good, cheap food.”
Mia’s babbling now. And I’m thinking: Are we really talking about parking? When neither of us, as far as I can tell, owns a car here. I’m hit again by how I don’t know anything about her anymore, not the smallest detail.
The host takes us to a booth and Mia suddenly grimaces. “I shouldn’t have brought you here. You probably never eat in places like this anymore.”
She’s right, actually, not because I prefer darkened, overpriced, exclusive eateries but because those are the ones I get taken to and those are the ones I generally get left alone in. But this place is full of old grizzled New Yorkers and cabbies, no one who’d recognize me. “No, this place is good,” I say.
We sit down in a booth by the window, next to the vaunted parking lot. Two seconds later, a short, squat hairy guy is upon us. “Maestro,” he calls to Mia. “Long time no see.”
“Hi, Stavros.”
Stavros plops down our menus and turns to me. He raises a bushy eyebrow. “So, you finally bring your boyfriend for us to meet!”
Mia goes scarlet and, even though there’s something insulting in her being so embarrassed by being tagged as my girlfriend, there’s something comforting in seeing her blush. This uncomfortable girl is more like the person I knew, the kind who would never have hushed conversations on cell phones.
“He’s an old friend,” Mia says.
Old friend? Is that a demotion or a promotion?
“Old friend, huh? You never come in here with anyone before. Pretty, talented girl like you. Euphemia!” he bellows. “Come out here. The maestro has a fellow!”
Mia’s face has practically turned purple. When she looks up, she mouths: “The wife.”
Out of the kitchen trundles the female equivalent of Stavros, a short, square-shaped woman with a face full of makeup, half of which seems to have melted onto her jowly neck. She wipes her hands on her greasy white apron and smiles at Mia, showing off a gold tooth. “I knew it!” she exclaims. “I knew you had a boyfriend you were hiding. Pretty girl like you. Now I see why you don’t want to date my Georgie.”
Mia purses her lips and raises her eyebrow at me; she gives Euphemia a faux-guilty smile. Caught me.
“Now, come on, leave them be,” Stavros interjects, swatting Euphemia on the hip and edging in front of her. “Maestro, you want your usual?”
Mia nods.
“And your boyfriend?”
Mia actually cringes, and the silence at the table lengthens like dead air you still sometimes hear on college radio stations. “I’ll have a burger, fries, and a beer,” I say finally.
“Marvelous,” Stavros says, clapping his hands together like I’ve just given him the cure for cancer. “Cheeseburger Deluxe. Side of onion rings. Your young man is too skinny. Just like you.”
“You’ll never have healthy kids if you don’t put some meat on your bones,” Euphemia adds.
Mia cradles her head in her hands, as though she’s literally trying to disappear into her own body. After they leave, she peeks up. “God, that was, just, awkward. Clearly, they didn’t recognize you.”
“But they knew who you were. Wouldn’t have pegged them as classical music buffs.” Then I look down at my jeans, my black T-shirt, my beat-up sneaks. Once upon a time I’d been a classical music fan, too, so there’s no telling.
Mia laughs. “Oh, they’re not. Euphemia knows me from playing in the subway.”
“You busked in the subway? Times that tough?” And then I realize what I just said and want to hit rewind. You don’t ask someone like Mia if times are tough, even though I knew, financially, they weren’t. Denny had taken out a supplemental life insurance policy in addition to the one he had through the teachers’ union and that had left Mia pretty comfortable, although no one knew about the second policy right away. It was one of the reasons that, after the accident, a bunch of the musicians in town had played a series of benefit concerts and raised close to five thousand dollars for Mia’s Juilliard fund. The outpouring had moved her grandparents—and me, too—but it had infuriated Mia. She’d refused to take the donation, calling it blood money, and when her grandfather had suggested that accepting other people’s generosity was itself an act of generosity that might help people in the community feel better, she’d scoffed that it wasn’t her job to make other people feel better.
But Mia just smiles. “It was a blast. And surprisingly lucrative. Euphemia saw me and when I came here to eat, she remembered me from the Columbus Circle station. She proudly informed me that she’d put a whole dollar into my case.”
Mia’s phone rings. We both stop to listen to the tinny melody. Beethoven plays on and on.
“Are you going to get that?” I ask.
She shakes her head, looking vaguely guilty.
No sooner does the ringing stop then it pipes up again.
“You’re popular tonight.”
“Not so much popular as in trouble. I was supposed to be at this dinner after the concert. Lots of bigwigs. Agents. Donors. I’m pretty sure that’s either a Juilliard professor, someone from Young Concert Artists, or my management calling to yell at me.”
“Or Ernesto?” I say as lightly as humanly possible. Because Stavros and Euphemia may have been on to something about Mia having some fancy-pants boyfriend—one that she doesn’t drag into Greek diners. He just isn’t me.
Mia looks uncomfortable again. “Could be.”
“If you have people to talk to, or, you know, business to attend to, don’t let me stand in your way.”
“No. I should just turn this off.” She reaches into her bag and powers down the phone.
Stavros comes by with an iced coffee for Mia and a Budweiser for me and leaves another awkward pause in his wake.
“So,” I begin.
“So,” Mia repeats.
“So, you have a usual at this place. This like your regular spot?”
“I come for the spanakopita and nagging. It’s close to campus, so I used to come here a lot.”
Used to? For like the twentieth time tonight, I do the math. It’s been three years since Mia left for Juilliard. That would make her a senior this fall. But she’s playing Carnegie Hall? She has management? I’m suddenly wishing I’d paid more attention to that article.
“Why not anymore?” My frustration echoes through the din.
Mia’s face prickles up to attention, and a little caterpillar of anxiety bunches up above the bridge of her nose. “What?” she says quickly.
“Aren’t you still in school?”
“Oh, that,” she says, relief unfurling her brow. “I should’ve explained it before. I graduated in the spring. Juilliard has a three-year-degree option for . . .”