Charlie Dibenidetto had made it big. That’s what we’d say in the days before any of us ever gave anything a real try, except for Charlie, who was always plucking and strumming away at a guitar when we were kids. His family lived the next block over, on the top floor of a roughly aged three-tenement apartment stack, one of scores that lined the streets of our town, once a textile-mill mecca, now municipal sinkhole. Charlie was just a little older than me, so we spent the better part of three pre-adolescent summers hanging out constantly, attempting to tolerate the long hours of humidity and scorching heat by creatively making something to do out of absolutely nothing. Neither of us had any money nor were we big athletes, me passably, Charlie, hell no, and when wiffle ball teams excluded us, we headed to the garbage dump because that’s where lost souls go to feel found.
Charlie always led the two-mile trek to the dumping grounds, but it was a different route each time, cutting through yards, cemeteries, any sacred or fenced-in acreage was a temptation to his mildly destructive spirit. Meanwhile, as a church-going innocent, I breathlessly prayed for both of us as Charlie danced across the flower beds and vaulted over headstones. Once at the dump, we’d pass up the tantalizing magazine stacks piled by the incinerator, there were always a few racy ones in there and at times an all-out disgusting publication, but the feverish shuffling of pages consistently came second to our main destination, which was the woodpile.
Based on some sort of flammable logic, the keepers of the dump set aside spent instruments along with rotted timber and decayed boards to be burned over the weekend. We’d inspect the pile every Friday, most times coming up empty but on occasion scoring a busted banjo or acoustic guitar. Charlie would restring them with fishing wire or mend a cracked bar with duct tape allowing a good few weeks of playing before we returned to the town dump to search for the next instrument of passion for my friend and junkyard luthier. But here’s the thing, not only did Charlie teach himself how to play guitar on taped-up pieces of wood and wire, he got good, then he went off and got really good, and for a long stretch of time, he was great. I never offer, but on the random occasion that an acquaintance mentions being a fan of his band, Total Annihilation, crudely acronymized into T & A, I do share some warm memories from the long, uncomplicated days of my adolescence spent with the stormy lead guitarist, Cha Dibo, as Charlie began calling himself in high school which drew bullying and later fame and fortune. Back then, it was just me and Charlie learning songs from the radio. I was the audience, and he was the player, but we were both the self-proclaimed kings of the garbage dump, growing up slowly in a shared impoverished bliss.
So, when my cell phone began buzzing just before midnight, I figured it was my ex-wife calling to cancel on me. I was to pick my kids up early the next morning and kick off fishing season at the freshly stocked reservoir, followed by the cramming of a nine-year-old boy, ten-year-old girl, and fastly-pushing fifty father into my studio apartment for a night of take-out Chinese food and movies. Twice a month, as best that I can, I get to act like dad again for two days, and it gets canceled on a regular basis by the woman with whom I once shared a marriage.
“What the hell,” I murmured into the phone, too tired to conjure hostility.
Only it wasn’t Kaitlin, it was Charlie.
“Hell is what I’m all about, son.”
“You got the wrong number,” I grumbled and rolled over, thumb searching the dimly lit pad to kill the call.
“Frank-iiiiiieeeeeeee,” the shrieking voice on the line sent a shiver through me.
“Who is this?” I asked in a more alert tone, although even through the background din of a chattering crowd, I could hear the young voice underneath the aged rasp.
“It’s Cha Di … sorry … it’s Charlie … Dibenedetto. Dude, it’s Charlie! You got a second?”
I was groggy but my gut twinged with the mix of interest and caution.
“Charlie?”
“Dude, I’m … your number’s on the website so …” he explained before backhanding one in classic Charlie fashion, “Frankie the ambulance chaser, go, man, go!”
That goddamn website. I spent almost five grand on it, pushing my credit cards to razor-thin balances, and although it has brought in some business, it’s often the kind that Charlie is ribbing me about. Too many questionable malpractice suits and dubious wrongful injuries, most all of them acrimoniously settled out of court but each one leaving a worse taste in my mouth, the spoiled smack of money not quite earned through barratry but close enough that it’s difficult to make eye-contact with opposing attorneys. The perky jet-black-haired girl with a skull tattoo on her wrist who led the design team insisted on the image of an ambulance and although I initially objected, there it was, placed in the lower corner of every page and shrunk to the size of a quarter. Its star of life bursting in such a deep, concerning shade of red that in a fraction of a second one’s eyes are forced to it, minimalism meets shock advertising.
“Why are you calling me?” I blurted out not exactly what I wanted to say.
“Sorry, dude,” he said after a long sigh, “We played Boston and … I don’t mean to wake … forget it, just …”
“Wait, hold on,” I sat up in bed as the inherent sense of trouble was overwhelmed by curiosity or maybe something else, “Where are you?”
“Beats me. I had to split after the …” his voice trailed off and then he shouted, “Hey, what’s the name of this hole?”
After a brief mumbled exchange with someone followed by a bit of laughter, he was back on the line.
“Guy said it’s ‘Grendel’s Den’, but he may be jerkin’ me. Hey, meathead, don’t go messin’ with …” he was off shouting at someone now.
“No!” I spoke loudly as if I were able to break up whatever shit my ancient friend was in the middle of, “I know the place, you’re in Cambridge. I used to work near there.”
“I got a problem, dude” he slowly breathed out after a loud sip of something, “I don’t mean to wake your family up, it’s … we had a gig andddddd … there was a big scrap, so now I’m… where am I?”
“Cambridge. Harvard Square.”
“Yeh, right! That’s why everybody’s a square. Where are you?”
“I’m in …” I almost said Newton, where my wife and kids were fast asleep in my former castle, but I choked on it and finally spit out the reply, “Woburn…right on the Winchester line.”
“Can I come over? I had a car ... might still be around, driver was a jag-off though…”
I snapped on the little lamp by my bed, illuminating the tiny, cluttered room. Since the divorce, I downsized to a one-bedroom apartment whose lease I had to break to further belt-tighten into a cramped studio stuffed with painstakingly assembled Ikea furniture leaving little space to move about.
“Noooo,” I stretched the negation as if I were unable to entertain due to my staff having the night off, “I can get to you in a half-hour. I mean…if it’s important.”
“Life or death, dude. Wolves at the door.”
Charlie then let out a long howl and hung up the line. I looked at the recent call list but the number was local so he must have used the phone at the bar. Two choices, go back to bed like a dependable parent and be somewhat rested for fishing with the kids or meet up with my rock star friend for likely many drinks as if a trace of my youth still existed. Within minutes, I was dressed and warming up my car.
I fully expected to be overwhelmed with saccharin memories of an ill-spent childhood during the trip, but as my route to Cambridge began with the same ride down the interstate that I take to Newton, my head spun with petty yet acrimonious thoughts of Kaitlin. The latest collateral damage from our disturbingly speedy divorce was her demand that we send our daughter to private school. Apparently, the poor kid was having a lot of issues with boys, not entirely unlike her mother, but these problems were schoolyard teasing and clumsy crushes gone bad, not detonating an affair bomb in the middle of a not-happy but at least stable family. I countered the private school idea with the bald reality of finances, hers sparingly funded by a filthy rich son-of-a-bitch father and mine presently on life support, adding to it the direct question of whether her live-in boyfriend might want to donate a few bucks, which ended the battle but not the war.
After a short circling of Harvard Square for free parking and a brisk walk to the bar in the unseasonably cold spring air, I walked up and flashed a grin at the tall, heavy-set man with sleepy eyes who was checking IDs outside of the bar and he simply waved me in and went to work scratching at his gnarly bush of beard. The stairs leading down to the Den were crowded with smokers of various substances and my feet landed in a puddle of something as I pulled open the big oak door and stepped inside. As I wiped my shoes on the hardwood floor in case it had been urine pooling out there, the dazzling sights and sounds of the crowded barroom bathed me in its unique glow. Only the charmed buzz of one’s very first step into a candy store as a child can rival the rush of appetite and desire that permeate a packed tavern’s chatter of excited voices, proximity of bodies, strong, fresh odor of beer on tap, and a kitchen in the back supplying the place with the steady aroma of fried everything. I stood and took it in for a few moments as this was Friday night near closing time, the joints don’t jump higher than this.
One half of the bar had a small dance floor, and it was jammed with a large group of Havard students, my assumption based on the near-proximity of the school and their well-dressed obliviousness. On the other side, were a scattering of pub tables holding a smaller crowd of grad students blowing off quiet steam and elderly regulars communing on the stools at the bar with their faces glued to the TV sets or Keeno games. When a roaring laugh erupted from somewhere within the youthful gang on the dance floor, it gave me a start and brought a slight smile to my face.
“Charlie?”
I began to bump and apologize my way through the mass of people, slightly upsetting a glass of beer whose owner simply smiled as most of it had spilled on my arm. After pressing into a female body for the first time in a year, I came up behind the source of the raucous humor, an imposing figure amidst the crowd of young adults, towering over everyone on thick-heeled boots, a bandana covering a mane of jet-black hair, and the wide shoulders, long arms, and thin legs decked out fully in leather, draped in scarves, and tightly grasping the attention of everyone.
“Charlie!” I shouted this time.
As he cut off his guffawing, so too did the crowd around him, and all turned to face the interloper, which is the precise moment that I wished I hadn’t dressed like I was going to court.
“There he is!” Charlie screamed and before I knew it, I was suffocating in a bear hug of old leather that reeked of sweat and liquor.
After he let me go, I took a step back and caught a brief glimpse of little Charlie’s face under the haggard imprints of life yet also covered in traces of make-up, but who cares, it was there.
“Hey, Charlie,” I smiled.
“Heavy metal guy, finish the story!” was a loud yet kind demand from a plain-faced, crop-haired young man who was terribly drunk.
The other revelers concurred, applause rose and more laughter.
“OK, but real fast. I got an important guy here I gotta meet with.”
“Yah! Important guy! Important guy!” another highly-educated drunkard called out.
Soon the large group was repeating the call, and someone handed me a huge mug of cold beer so, for the moment, I was good.
“Sooooo… I was doin’ like the officer said,'' Charlie spoke in between sips from a glass full of something brown, “Got my arms spread over the hood, cop’s goosin’ and pinchin’ me all over tryin’ to find drugs or whatever but there’s two things he don’t know. Numero uno bein’ I was at the tail end of six weeks gettin’ clean for a tour of Japan. Damn! You shoulda seen the freakin’ blowouts when we got back from there. Days, weeks. And clue number dos was the two gals in the car bouncin’ round all bug-eyed and kooky cause the reason I’m drivin’ their piece of crap Chevy in the first place is they’d been partyin’ since we left the stadium like they was in Amsterdam on a Saturday night or… L.A. on a rainy day!”
The crowd around us cackled and smiled at one another as if in the company of this once wildly and now still sort-of-famous musician then they, too, are temporary rock stars. Charlie shot me a couple of playful looks as he continued.
“Then ‘bam’ the car door flies open and the two of em tumble out and start runnin’ off to the woods like a couple of chickens tryin’ to save their necks. Cop’s screamin’, you know, ‘halt’ and they ain’t haltin’, so he takes off after em but first he looks me right in the eye and says, ‘stay here!’ So, I say ‘you have my word, officer’. As soon as he hits the woodline, I’m off that hood and ready to fly but first I’m lookin’ at the Chevy, kind of ride you buy when you ain’t got no choice. Then I look at that police car. Real beauty of a machine, dark, sleek, real cop-ish, right? So, to make a long story short, I got that thing up to 135 miles an hour with the lights blazin’ and had me out of that state in thirteen minutes!!”
A raucous round of laughter was interrupted by Charlie’s screeching final words.
“Found myself a biker-bar and traded those dudes straight up for a sweet Chieftain! Rode that baby all the way to Chicago!!”
Charlie pretended to climb on a motorcycle and loudly roared in circles through the jubilant crowd. As he got to me, he slowed down.
“Climb on, buddy!” he shouted.
I didn’t outright pretend to ride but sort of sidled behind him as he roared off toward the other side of the bar to a round of applause and one excited woman grabbing at his collar until she could plant a kiss on his cheek and lodge an elbow into my shoulder. After we escaped further fondling and physical violence, Charlie led us toward a set of stairs that were cut off by a red velvet rope hanging from two hooks on either wall. There was a waitress just coming by when we got there.
“Excuse me, miss,” Charlie asked sweetly, “Can we go upstairs?”
“Nope. Restaurant closed at 10. You can get food at the bar, though,” she pointed across the room with purple-painted fingernails that looked like weapons.
“We’re just gonna sit and talk…and how ‘bout a bottle of something dark from Kentucky,” Charlie spoke in a calm tone and stuffed a big lump of cash in her hand.
In a few minutes, we had the upstairs dining room to ourselves. A couple of candles at our table lent an unstable yet soothing light to the dark corner, and, sure enough, a bottle of Maker’s Mark soon delivered by our lovely hostess to which she added a basket of bread.
“You’re the best,” Charlie grinned.
“You just tipped me more than I make in a month,” she replied and expertly pulled off the red wax from the bottle top before exiting back downstairs.
As Charlie poured our glasses full of whiskey, we started off touching upon customary points that old pals do when uncomfortably coming together after many years. Do you ever get back there? No. Do you ever see anyone? No. What about … no. Still, it didn’t take long for the spark of old friendship to reignite, and we ditched the familiarities as bullshit.
“This is bizarre, man,” I chuckled and forced down a sizable sip, “Everything OK with you?”
“Wwwwhhhh …” Charlie blew out the heat of his own oversized gulp, “OK’s about right. My health’s so-so. Got crooks handlin’ my money. Tryin’ like livin’ hell to stay away from cigarettes and coke. This doctor, a therapist, you know? She made me quit swearin’. Says it keeps my brain busy. And it’s been a bi-… you see? Long story short, I’m pretty beat, dude.”
“How can you be ...”
I was about to wonder at the incredulity of a rock star’s claims of bad luck and depression when I thought about how fast I had fallen on hard times in the last year and that was without a cocaine problem.
“I mean,” I was maneuvering around an insult, “You guys were huge for a while there.”
“Yeh, we had a run,” Charlie knocked out the rest of his glass in a gulp, “I should be sittin’ in a mansion, right?”
“Your videos were on all the time. It wasn’t my…I was more yacht rock than heavy metal back then but … you were cool, man. A real star.”
“Wanna see the only real thing left of me from those days?”
He looked back at the stairs leading to the bar and then turned his gaze across the room before he leaned his head down toward his lap and brought his hands up, digging fingers hard into his scalp with tips disappearing into the bandana and its captive dark mass of locks. My first thought was that he was removing his head from his body and I jolted upright in my seat, not sure exactly what to do other than be there to console my headless friend, but after pulling hard at the top he let his hands slide behind his ears and began to yank forward as he let out a low growl and pulled off his hair. Once it was in his hands, a magnificent piece, in fact, which was somehow expertly secured to the bandana, he laid it on the table and we both stared at it. For some reason, I was waiting for it to move.
“Saved it all in a bag when it started fallin’ out, got myself a wig guy, and bam,” Charlie seemed proud of it and then he whispered loudly, “I call it ‘Precious’.”
When I looked up at him and saw the thin tawny hair, widely streaked in gray and cut short to the very top of his pale forehead, and unobstructed Charlie eyes of chocolate brown, he looked much more like a grown, battered version of the pal I remembered from those young years, and it made me giddy. We broke into a long peel of belly laughs, causing a waitress to step up the stairs to peek in and Charlie’s wild motion to put his mop back on his head set us into another round of breathless laughter. After the waitress left, he set the wig back down.
“I know, man. I wear it all the time. Probably shouldn’t but…” he muttered, oddly bitter after such a good laugh, “Everybody’s got a camera nowadays and…”
“What…why did you call me? We haven’t…”
“I need a lawyer. And you’re one, right?”
“Yes but…how did you know?”
“Hell, I'm online 24/7. We go five, six months straight playin’ gigs, you end up either on drugs or web surfin’. I google everybody! And you’re doin’ better’n all them other slobs from high school. My man’s a lawyer and you’re married with two….”
“Divorced.”
“You gotta update your social media, dude. So, divorced. That good or bad?” Charlie squinted at me as he poured and sipped.
“Both. More bad, I guess. We’re trying to split time with the kids and…she kind of follows the King Solomon manual of parenting…”
“See!” Charlie pounded an open hand down on the table, “I don’t know who the f-...hell King Salmon is. That’s why I called you. I need a lawyer with some brains that ain’t tryin’ to shake me down for…and look! I’m back in town. It’s a sign, man.”
“Are you in trouble?” I finally got out the most important question.
“Hell, yeh. Born into it with you. But, yeh…I’m sloggin’ in some serious crap.”
My head had begun to cloud with the late-night liquor and my stomach felt empty despite an early evening’s repast of Kraft singles, crackers, and left-over potato salad. Charlie had a desperate yet excited energy about him and although he slugged shot after shot, he was sober. I’d swear to it.
“I had it out with the f-...freakin’ jerks!” he gripped his glass, and I thought he was going to throw it against the wall but instead he tipped in more whiskey, “It’s rock bottom, man. Used to be, we’d come to Boston and play the Garden. There might a’ been six hundred in that club tonight. Then after a piss-poor show, my pinhead buddies tell me how they cooked up a farewell tour. Original lineup. Glory-days setlist. All that crap. Get the old farts back out to see us for one last big payday. Sound good? Nope! First off, we got to fire half the band, and these are good dudes. But that’s nothin’. Cause original lineup means Barry Torch comes back…”
“Was that the guy with the swords?”
“That’s him!” Charlie swatted the breadbasket spilling its contents to the floor, “Try bein’ on stage with a psycho swingin’ a machete. It’s stressful, man! Plus, he’s a dick.”
“Hey,” I calmly picked up the scattered bread but was now talking with the whiskey instead of against it, “It’s so great to meet up again after…but what the hell do you want me to do?”
After I placed the basket on the table, he looked at me with the same starkly serious look as the one he’d given me when we were kids, the day he told me that his dog had died.
“Kill me.”
Our very brief silence was interrupted by a roar of voices from below as some sort of closing-time ritual was playing out and it struck me how incredibly free from anxiety those drunken youths were at that moment. It made me hatefully jealous.
“What?”
“Dude,” Charlie let his head drop nearly to the table and I actually felt honored to bear witness to his bald spot, “I’m done. I’m half-dead already.”
He then looked up with an angry sort of grimace.
“I need the money. It ain’t about nothin’ else no more. But Torch is a…I hate him! And this is my band! It’s my band!!”
This time he did throw the glass. It bounced off the wall but then smashed against the parquet floor and broke into pieces. Fortunately, the drunken tumult below covered the outburst and Charlie stood up and clumsily began pulling his hair onto his head.
“I gotta get out.”
By the time we hit the stairs, he had his rock and roll hairdo secured pretty well, and he was pulling on his jacket as we got into the basement, which was when the grabbing began. Some of the revelers who had enjoyed his wild tale-telling earlier saw him coming and began urging him to have a drink and give them another story, more than urging really, more like sloppy groping. Of course, Charlie let them have it.
“Get off me, ya country club rats!” he shouted and took a couple of young men who had playfully put their hands on his shoulders and knocked their heads together.
Charlie’s unexpected physicality looked, rather than a move taught in self-defense training, more like a tactic learned by watching too many episodes of The Three Stooges. A few catcalls were overwhelmed by the cheers and strewn beer that patrons let fly as I grabbed Charlie by the arm and got him speedily out into the cold night air before he could do anything more bizarre. They may be spoiled rich kids, but it doesn’t mean they can’t beat the shit out of an angry, glammed-out drunk.
“What’s the matter with you?” I complained more than inquired as he sat and laughed his ass off on a bench in the small park outside of the bar.
I stepped out to the sidewalk and looked around for a cab to dump him into. He then began executing a slow, unsteady shuffle toward me.
“Didn’t you say you took a car here? Give me your phone, I’ll…”
“Lost it,” he grumbled.
“Well, where are you staying?” I asked in annoyance as at this point my mind was calculating how much sleep could be had before the kids woke up and my phone started to explode.
“I’m nowhere, man.”
Charlie began to climb a lamp post while singing The Beatles ‘Nowhere Man’. The climbing was terrible, but the singing was really good.
“The cops will pull you in for that,” I warned, looking around for them, perhaps hopefully.
“See,” he panted, giving up on the mounting serenade, “That’s legal advice. You’re hired. Come on, counselor, I need candy.”
We left the park and he seemed to somewhat regain his faculties as we crossed the street and ducked into a convenience store, passing a lone customer who was on the way out. Charlie managed to bump into the exiting patron and knock over a standing display of sunglasses, which the thin, bug-eyed kid behind the counter made no move to clean up. Otherwise, it was a quick selection of a six-pack of Bud and numerous candy bars.
“I gotta go to Philadelphia,” Charlie offered as he checked out and I simply nodded as the young clerk looked to me to decipher the statement.
We got out of the store and Charlie instantly dug into his bag of tricks.
“Hold on, man,” I said in my best drunk-side manner, but Charlie was insistent on popping open a beer, “Cops will pull you in for that, I promise. And I don’t need the hassle.”
“Damn, you sound like an old man, Frankie.”
Although a toss-away comment, his words delivered a sting loaded with the poison of truth.
“Come on, goddamn it.”
I started walking briskly, not waiting as Charlie unwrapped a candy bar, and I didn’t look back for a few blocks. Turning off down a wide gravel path near some hotels, I could hear his big boots on the sidewalk across the street, so I slowed and ultimately stopped and waited outside one of the few structures in the vicinity not yet gobbled up by Harvard. Among the building’s varied residents is a software company where I worked for a couple of years reviewing contracts. I was single in those days, saddled by student loans but just beginning to make some money, young enough to abuse my body all night with intoxicants and still appear respectable in the morning, lots of work and lots of fun. Then I met Kaitlin, who was also lots of work and lots of fun, one of my better jobs, I guess. But instead of hopping to a more lucrative opportunity like I did after the software gig, the termination of our marriage has led to a drastic career switch, inconceivable downsizing in living standards, basically an all-around existence within a ring of hell, very far from the bottom but not near enough to the top that I can recognize the surface world as my own.
“Where ya goin’, dude? Stop. Have a beer.”
“I used to work here.”
“Oh, yeh?” Charlie looked up, the night was dark, and we were on a walkway in between
the office building and the hotel, completely enveloped in midnight shadows, “Hell you do here?”
“Find mistakes.”
“Oh,” Charlie started unwrapping another bar, “Shoulda called me. I make em every day.”
“What the hell do you mean by ‘kill me’, Charlie? Seriously.”
“I can’t do it myself.”
He offered nothing else, just stood there looking as despondent as someone can be while munching candy and nursing a can of beer.
“We can sit down for a minute, all right? So, you can … explain,” I offered, quickly veering from annoyed to consoling and motioning for him to follow, “Over here.”
For the short walk up the pathway and out onto the wide stretch of grass and trees that faced the sparse traffic on Memorial Drive, Charlie went on about how when slowly coming up as a musician he used to play small clubs in Boston and Cambridge that were now either coffee shops or clothing stores. The breeze off the river carried an odor of its damp, earthy banks, and the cold air sank into my neck and face as I buttoned up the poor-choice-of-an-old-blazer and pulled the collar tight. I sat down on the grass underneath a tree with my back to the river, and Charlie plopped himself near me, unfazed by the elements. He tossed over a beer, and I opened it.
“Look at us,” he chuckled.
“I’d rather not,” I responded plainly and took a long sip, welcoming the sudsy burn at the
back of my throat, there’s nothing like cheap beer, liquid comfort.
“OK. Cut to the chase, right?” Charlie threw me a candy bar, which I left lying on the grass, “I’m gonna quit the band. They can stuff the farewell tour up their … anyway, I’ll still be on the board, so none of em can …”
“Is this a band or a corporation?” I chided.
“It’s a big smokin’ mess, dude. Our drummer, Cagney, this guy let me tell ya … he comes to us, I don’t know, five, six years ago. Says we make the band a company, go public, double, triple our money. Ever since we been losin’ our shirts. Doin’ 100 shows a year just to pay the bills ...”
“I know a guy who can help you. He does mergers mostly but first thing tomorrow, I …”
“Why won’t you help me, man?”
“I’m not that kind of lawyer,” my words had no weight behind them, “Charlie, if you need a place to crash … my apartment’s too small but the hotel back there is nice, let’s ...”
“You tryin’ to get away from me?”
“I have to take my kids fishing in the …”
“Screw your kids!”
I reached out and seized him by the arm of his jacket. I’m not quite sure what I was ready to do next, but my beer spilled on my pants and shot me back to the moment. I stood up and shouted.
“Don’t talk shit about my kids!”
“I didn’t mean …”
“They’re the only good thing I have left! So shut up about them! Shit, Charlie!” I wanted that to be enough, but I went on, “Do you want to know why I’m here? In the middle of the goddamn night? My long-lost best buddy calls, I go help, right? But what really got me out of bed is money. I figured I’d talk for a bit, refer you to someone, and get my cut at the end for doing an hour’s work. That’s the friend you called, Charlie. That’s who I am now!”
I chugged down what was left of the beer, threw the can aside, and then went and picked it up.
“Dude,” Charlie struggled to his feet for what I was unsure to be a fight or more talk, “Do I look like a f-...freakin’ judge? I didn’t mean nothin’ about your kids. But let me lay it out, OK?”
“Please hurry up. I’m cold. And tired.”
“I don’t want you to kill me,” his voice now carried a clearer edge, “I want Cha Dibo to die. Get it?”
He stopped and gave me a hopeful look.
“I don’t … offer that kind of service.”
“You know people. You said so yourself. I can’t trust no one! The band’s infested. Leeches, vampires …” Charlie picked up the candy bar from the grass and tore it open, “I gotta lawyer up. Killin’ off Cha Dibo’s gonna be a mess’a paperwork and prolly get dragged into court with everybody screamin’ their asses off but whatever! Screw em! We drop the bomb in Philly tomorrow night. Gives em no time to get that freak Torch a …”
“They’ll sue the shit out of you, Charlie. And if you quit, they …”
Charlie laughed and took a big bite of the candy, and as he chewed, he laughed some more.
“T&A’s been round a long time. More albums than I can count. And Cha Dibo never wrote a single song on any of em.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Nope. It’s fu-… freakin’ brilliant. Every last track except for one crappy Kinks cover is music and lyrics by Charles Dibenidetto,” he tossed the last piece of candy in his mouth, sucking on it, “Music’s mine, songs are mine. Get it? Company or not, those jerks work for me. And I say we’re gonna finish this tour for the fans, and then I’m takin’ my ball and goin’ home. So … you my new lawyer or what, Frankie?”
“Charlie, I have a business. Bills to pay. I can’t just …”
“I got this account with ‘bout thirty-nine grand in it. Used to be the Cha Dibo drug fund. I’ll shoot it to you tomorrow.”
Charlie saw my body twitch at the mention of the former narcotic nest egg, and he came right up to me and put a hand on my shoulder.
“Thirty-nine grand in your pocket. And say another … twenty once we get me outta this hole. How’s that? Not bad for a few months of travelin’ the country and partyin’ your ass off with …”
“No. I can’t.”
I took a step back, but my voice had such a tenor of timidity because even just thirty-nine grand could help a lot … a lot. And over fifty is a year's worth of slip-and-falls. My mind began conjuring images of a bigger apartment, new suits, and health insurance that doctors actually take. Charlie began detailing the vacation that he had planned for us. More shows this week in Philly, Atlanta, and Miami, and then dozens of West Coast gigs before a month of performances in one of the worst casinos in Las Vegas. As he spoke, I stared at the red and white stone footbridge across the street that led to the Boston side of the Charles River, its throwback brass lamp posts casting small half-circles of light on the choppy water that from a distance looked black as oil.
“My wife would flip out,” I interrupted, “If I don’t take Liv and Tommy every other weekend, she’d…”
“We’ll talk to her. Come on. Take the money,” Charlie deadpanned, “I mean it don’t sound like you’re doin’ so hot and … listen…I’ve been all over, man. Everywhere. Met all kinds’a people. Ain’t none of them was real. Not like us, Frankie. Remember?”
“We were kids.”
“I know but … geez … I need that feelin’ again.”
An uncomfortable silence settled between us that was only broken by a faraway voice calling out from near the river and, in a few seconds, the return of a more distant shout.
“I just hit a wall, man,” Charlie yawned, “Say we go back there and grab a room. Finish this beer and crash. Catch a plane in the mornin’ to Philly. Show ain’t until night.”
“Crazy,” is all I offered in return.
Charlie helped me gather the trash and in a few minutes, we were in the lobby of the hotel. It was smartly lit and decorated in fashionable, hard-edged furniture, deep-cushioned leather couches, and the place was entirely empty except for two night-staffers behind the front desk. Both looked Charlie up and down as we approached.
“You got a room?” he barked with a voice finally showing the bounty of liquor in his system.
“Ah,” the older of the two men answered slowly as he typed on a keyboard below our view, “There … seems to be, yes … um, they start at $500 a night.”
“Deal!” Charlie put his beer and last two candy bars up on the counter and then fished out and flipped a credit card onto the desk, which the man took and began to process, only changing his cautious attitude when the charge went through “Perfect, then! Welcome, Mr. Dibo.”
When the man handed the credit card back to Charlie, he tossed it to me, and I just barely caught it.
“That’s for expenses,” he winked, “Don’t worry. I got a whole stack.”
“How many keys will you be needing?” the younger clerk asked.
“I gotta go,” I said.
Charlie spun around instantly.
“What? Why? You ain’t gonna do it? Come on. Want me to get you the money right now? I will!”
I noticed the glances that the two men exchanged but I was too tired to tell them to go to hell.
“I’ll … come back in the morning. I have to think this out. I mean … this has been a lot to process, you know? I have to … to think.”
“At least come up for a drink,” Charlie dangled the beers by the empty plastic rings as he took the keycard and then pointed at me and spoke to the guys behind the desk, “I grew up with this dude. Two kids who had nothin’, freakin’ nothin’. Now look at us.”
After an awkward pause, the younger clerk responded.
“Wow.”
Charlie gave me his room number, and we agreed that I’d be back by nine the next morning with clothes to last me at least a week. I walked him to the elevator where he gave me a giant, uncomfortable hug.
“I love you, man,” he growled into my ear.
As he shuffled onto the elevator, he tripped over virtually nothing, and while the doors were closing, he stuck his face out.
“Life’s gonna be different tomorrow! Get ready, dude!”
The doors closed shut, leaving only the sound of the gears working the lift upward, ascending Charlie as close to the heavens as I imagined he’d ever want to get. I walked out of the hotel, ignoring the looks of the staffers, and found my car. There was hardly any traffic on the roads, and soon I was back in bed. It took me a long time to get to sleep.
I got up early and made coffee in the narrow galley kitchen, then got dressed. Still half-asleep and somewhat hungover, I threw clothes into a suitcase and set it by the door. Then I sat on the bed and drank two cups of coffee while considering my options. It was eerily similar to the morning that my marriage had come apart. Back then, Kaitlin and I had been fighting endlessly, the kids were suffering, and the choice seemed crystal clear but the hole that it tore in my heart made life almost impossible to endure for a long time, maybe even still. The coffee suddenly seemed bitter, so I dumped it in the sink and then turned and stared some more at the luggage by the door.
By the time I was in the car, my chest began to tighten, and breathing was difficult. On the road, my throat began to tense, and a tear tried to escape down my cheek, but I destroyed it with my thumb as I put on sunglasses. All the way down the interstate and then at each stoplight, I covered my nose and delivered honking blows into the old napkins from the glove box. Screw it, I kept repeating, screw it. After the difficult drive, I found a parking spot and gave my face one last wipe down before getting out and walking slowly with feet that weren’t at all getting along with my brain until finally, I arrived. My head pounded with dehydration and remorse, and my heart beat furiously because the choice was still there, suspended in the air between my knuckles and the door, it could be done, it couldn’t be done. In the end, survival isn’t just about staying alive, it’s also about living with yourself.
I knocked hard a few times until I heard a rustling inside. When the door opened, a sleepy yet excited face peeked around the door, greeting me with a smile that seemed misplaced at such an early hour.
“Go get your brother, sweetie,” I whispered, “We don’t want the big fish to get away.”