They finish with “Kickstart My Heart,” during which Nikki Sixx spits fake blood all over the people in the front rows before he and Tommy Lee throw buckets of fake blood into the crowd and then call it a night.
When the lights go up, Portia turns toward me and says, “As a feminist, I know I should absolutely hate Mötley Crüe, but I can’t deny it. They scratch the primal itch within us all.”
“It’s only rock and roll. Just a show,” I say, loudly, because my ears are ringing now.
“I wish you could talk to Nikki Sixx,” she says, yelling too, as we make our way to the exit. “Even though he spits blood on people, I bet he’d be cool to you. I bet he’d be proud of you for cleaning up. I wish I could get you backstage.”
“Yeah, me too. Except you’d probably try to fuck Vince Neil.”
“Jealous much? Your phone,” she says.
“What?” I say. Everyone exiting the concert is talking very loudly, because no one can hear now.
“Your phone! It’s ringing!”
I pull it from my pocket. It’s not ringing anymore.
There are fourteen messages.
I jump out of line and make my way to the center of an empty row.
Portia follows and says, “What’s wrong?”
I punch in my code and listen to the first few messages.
My mind starts spinning.
I feel as though I may vomit.
“I fucked up bad, Portia. I fucked up really bad.”
“What’s wrong? Tell me, Chuck. You’re freaking me out.”
I hold up my finger and listen to the rest of the messages.
I’m punching my thigh hard now, as I hear how scared my nephew is and mentally put together the pieces.
“Stop hitting yourself, Chuck. Stop that! Tell me what’s wrong. WHAT’S WRONG?”
When I hear the message from Lisa at the Manor, saying that Tommy is safe with her, I look at Portia. “Danielle shot up in the apartment.”
“Shot up?”
“Heroin. I’m not sure, but I think she might have OD’d. Tommy found her passed out with the needle in her arm. He’s been calling me all night. I have to call him.”
“Call him!”
I get Lisa.
She tells me that she’s managed to get Tommy to fall asleep at her home, but that he was very upset.
Then she says, “It’s bad, Chuck, really bad. I don’t want to be the one to tell you.”
“Just fucking say it!” I scream.
Lisa starts crying as she tries to get out all the words. “Tommy came into the bar, screaming and crying. We went to the apartment. Found Danielle on the floor. We called an ambulance, but it was too late. She’s gone. I’m not sure that Tommy understands that yet, and I didn’t know what you’d want me to tell him, so . . .”
I black out for a while, although I continue to move somehow, and when I come to, I’m in my truck, trying to get it to start, but the engine won’t turn over, and then I’m punching the steering wheel, cursing incoherently, kicking the floor and screaming and crying, and Portia is telling me it’s going to be okay.
“I let Tommy down,” I keep saying. “I should have been there for him. I should have answered the phone when he called. My fucking father never was there for me, and now Tommy is going to think that—”
“Shhhh,” she says, and then I’m sobbing into her chest like a baby for what feels like forever, moaning and completely losing my shit, before I’m overcome with it all and I pass out with my head in her lap.
When I wake up, my neck hurts, and Portia’s looking down at me.
“Shit! We have to go home!” I say.
“It’s okay. Tommy’s with Lisa. We’ll be home soon.”
“How long was I out?” I say.
“Only a half hour or so,” she says, and tries to smile.
Her eyes are red.
“What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to check out of the hotel and rent a car. I’m going to drive. We’ll pick up Tommy and bring him to our place, where he’ll live from now on. We’ll make sure Tommy is okay, and then we’ll figure it out.”
“Figure what out?” I say.
“Everything.”
CHAPTER 29
The diary under Danielle’s pillow tells us everything we need to know. Her boyfriend wasn’t collecting for bookies. He was a full-time drug dealer more than willing to supply my sister, provided that she screwed him on a regular basis, of course. The worst part is this: she loved him, and yet she was afraid the feeling wasn’t mutual. And I think she did drugs with him at first as a way to prove her love for him—sharing his interests, so to speak. But his product was a bit stronger than what she remembered from our days, and therefore the cravings were more intense. Everything happened quicker than she could handle. And her new boyfriend didn’t like girls who couldn’t handle their highs. That was the gist, anyway.
Johnny Rotten doesn’t show at the memorial service—which is good, because my plan is to punch his face into a bloody pulp whenever I see him next—but Portia’s mother miraculously does, and she even wears the dress Portia purchased for her, shedding the old stained pink sweat suit for a day. The Crab and all of my teacher friends attend, which touches me deeply. Danielle’s hairy boss and a few other waitresses pay their respects, along with a bunch of people from the Manor. Wearing the black suit, black tie, white dress shirt, and black shoes and belt Portia picked out for me at Men’s Wearhouse, I mumble a bunch of gibberish in front of the small crowd at the funeral home, mostly about growing up with Danielle and watching cartoons when we were little and then falling in love with metal in the 1980s, and how maybe I wished we were into classical music instead because classical music fans tend to avoid heroin and live longer, and what a good mom she was—how she loved Tommy so much—which is when I lose it and break down crying, maybe because I feel like it’s all bullshit.