"I don't know . . . I would have thought maybe you would have wanted me to come with you."
"I've got it under control . . . I don't need you here."
"Okay," she says. "I just thought . . . I thought you'd maybe at least tell me you were leaving."
"I didn't tell you last time either," I say in a monotone. "You just happened to find out because you opened my mail. By the way, have I missed anything good this week?"
"I'm serious, Brady," she says. "I was worried!"
"Well, don't. I'm not yours to worry about. And you're not mine."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means you do whatever you want, and you don't bother explaining to anyone. So don't expect it to be any different for me. I don't owe you anything. I don't need to get your permission to leave town."
"Fine," she says in the smallest voice I've ever heard. She sounds so hurt, and it breaks my heart.
"Good," I say back, because I can't fall under her spell right now. I need to stay focused.
"Well . . . how's the band?"
"Great. Almost done."
"I can't wait to hear it," she says.
"Yeah. Anyway, I gotta get going."
"Don't you want to hear what I've been doing?"
"Sure." I exhale.
"I got the LLC set up, and Dead at 27 is officially in business."
"That's great, Heaven. I'm happy for you."
"Well, since Zach told me you were back on, all I've been doing is Superhero stuff," she says. "And I already have a lot of things in the works. You're gonna love it. I can't wait for you to see it, in fact-"
"Brady, listen to this playback," the sound engineer says.
"I gotta run," I say to Heaven, and I hang up the phone. I didn't even want to give her the chance to ask when we'd speak next because I just can't deal. I know I did the right thing . . . for me. She's hung up on her ex, or back together with him for all I know. I definitely did the right thing. So why do I feel so awful?
When the engineer plays back the last mix, I'm blown away. Everyone, including the band, thinks it sounds better than expected. Phil and I hug each other, then hug the band, and it's a fucking lovefest. We do everything short of holding hands and breaking into "Kumbaya."
A couple days later I'm driving with Phil down Sunset, and I see all of these posters plastered on buildings, lampposts, boarded-up windows along the way. They look like tricked-up old-time comic book pop art, and each one says only one thing, like SPLAT! or KAPOW! or BAM! I take it as a sign. Those are the kinds of things that you'd find in Superhero comic books. I point them out to Phil, and he smiles.
"Ever think that God is sending you little messages to let you know you're on the right track?" I ask.
"All the time," Phil says.
We're sitting in El Compadre, celebrating with the band, when Sam looks up and says one of my least favorite things, "Hey, Darren!" I look up and see that horse-faced motherfucker. I can't seem to escape him no matter what coast I'm on. He puts out his hand to me.
"Hey, Brady, how's it goin'?"
I change my mind. He's not horse-faced. More like a mule. But either way, still a motherfucker. "Good, man. Just finishing up the record."
"Can't wait to hear it," he says. "You know I'm their biggest fan. Seems you and I have very similar tastes," he says. It takes every bit of my strength not to crush him. But then . . . then . . . this fake-titted blond ditz walks up behind him and puts her arms around his waist.
"We'll float you a copy of the record," Sam says to Darren.
"Cool," Darren says.
"Come on, baby, I'm hungry," the blonde says. "Hi, I'm Charity," she says. She smiles a perfect, cap-toothed, pearly smile, then flips her hair. If there were a pole in the middle of this restaurant, I promise you she'd be writhing around it.
Suddenly I'm feeling like a father who's just caught his daughter's first boyfriend cheating on her.
Now, I am not a man of violence. I'm not. In fact, I'm generally against it and have never been one to start a fight. But when I see Darren with this fucking bimbo, and think that he's fucking around on Heaven . . . again . . . I can't help myself. Without even thinking, I stand up and punch him in the face. He stumbles backwards, and then blood starts pouring out of the nose on his really confused face. People gasp, and Charity shrieks. And I thought all she was capable of doing was flipping her hair.
"Dude, what the fuck?" Darren says. Charity reaches into her pocketbook and pulls out one of those mini o.b. tampon things. She rips open the little packet and shoves the thing up into his nose.
"Here, baby," she says.
"Why'd you fucking hit me?" Darren asks.
"Why do you think, dumbass?" I say, shaking like a ride cymbal but still full of testosterone. "Because you're fucking around on Heaven . . . again."
"What the fuck are you talking about?" he says.
"You're an asshole!" I shout. And I storm out of the restaurant because my hands are getting clammy, and I'm feeling about ten thousand different emotions. I can't tell if I want to pass out or do a cartwheel, but in case it's the former I don't want to do it in front of the band-and least of all, Darren. If it's the latter, I'll need the room.
I get outside and just walk. I walk up Sunset and breathe. I breathe and I think. And I shake my hand out a bit because it fucking hurts. I'm a few blocks away when my cell phone rings. It's Heaven. This time I answer it.
"Hi," I say.
"You're an asshole," she says. "Darren just called me."
"And I'm the asshole? I did it for you. That prick is with another girl!"
"Good," she practically yells. "He has every right to be! Nothing happened between me and him that night! You know why? Because of you!" She growls, "God, you're an idiot." And then she hangs up on me. I stand there trying to figure out what just happened. I replay the conversation in my head, and even though she just called me an idiot . . . it's the best thing I've heard all week.
I start walking back toward El Compadre, and I come across another one of those expletive flyers. POW! it says. But as I get closer I see something else it says at the bottom, and I do a double take. It says: "Superhero . . . they're about to save music."
Are you kidding me? She's the mastermind behind this? All of these posters and flyers are Heaven's doing. It's perfect. Almost all superheroes have a secret identity. Rather than go with cheesy costumes, she's using their anonymity as the hook. She's a genius. And she's not with Darren. BAM! My heart feels like it's going to explode.
When I walk back into the restaurant Darren is sitting at the bar with blood on his face. The tampon is stuck up in his nose with the little string dangling from it.
"I'm so sorry," I say to him. "It was a stupid thing to do."
"Yeah it was," he says. "Believe me, I've done my share of stupid shit. But be careful . . . that's how I lost her in the first place."
I remember watching Bruce Springsteen get interviewed on 60 Minutes, and he said something I'll never forget. He said, "A time comes when you need to stop waiting for the man you want to become and start being the man you want to be."
Thinking back on it now, this minute, I believe that's the most profound thing Springsteen has said since: "We learned more from a three-minute record than we ever learned in school." (Certainly more profound than: "Just wrap your legs 'round these velvet rims and strap your hands across my engines.") And curiously, the two lines come together for me now as I think about two things I haven't thought quite this much about ever before in my life. Two things I can't stop thinking about. And they're both Heaven.
Suddenly that statement is the most relevant thing in my life. It's time for me to step up. It's not like I ever came out and expressed my feelings to Heaven. I just got pissed off at her when she didn't read my mind.
Heaven.
The New York Post reported a new study this morning, revealing that "poets die young-younger than novelists, playwrights, and other writers, because they're often tortured souls prone to self-destruction." It says that on average, poets live sixty-two years, playwrights sixty-three, novelists sixty-six, and nonfiction writers sixty-eight years. So says the Learning Research Institute at California State University at San Bernardino, at least. It says nothing about PR writers, so I don't know where I stand. This bothers me for the better part of the morning. Then I go downstairs to get the mail.
I get a Citibank bill, a Valpak, and a letter for Brady, who still has yet to change his stupid forwarding address. It's addressed in a handwriting that I don't recognize, and there's no return address.
I stand in my lobby, and for the first time I wrestle with whether or not I should open it. And then I do.
"Dear Heaven," it says. I look at the envelope again to make sure I'm not going crazy. It's addressed to Brady. And then I look at who it's from, and it's from Brady. Pretty clever, Brady.
There's also a little envelope-like one you'd get from a florist-stapled to the letter, which says: "Open when instructed to do so." I read the letter: Hi, it's me. First of all you really need to stop opening other people's mail. I needed to say some things to you, and I thought it best to write them down so I would get it right.
Once you read this, things will have to change one way or the other, so you might want to pause right about now and take one last look around at what you consider to be our current relationship. It's good, right? Maybe even great.
The problem is that I can't be your friend anymore. You've come to mean so much more to me in such a short amount of time. I can't remember what life was like before you, and I can't bear to think of what it would be like without you.
It's not that I can't be your friend, it's that I can't be just your friend. I want more. I want it all. I want you. Now and forever, 'til death do us part.
I pray to God that you feel the same way, because if you don't, the dinner I have planned for us tonight is really going to be awkward. Now you can open the little envelope.
I open it up and inside is a pull-tab ring from a soda can. I continue to read, but tears have welled up in my eyes.
If you feel the same way, please put this on your finger so I'll know. If not . . . make believe you do, and then when I'm not looking, kill me.
Love,
Brady.
I'm standing here speechless, just staring at the pull tab.
"Are you going to put that on or not?" I hear someone say from behind me, and my heart starts beating a million times a minute. I turn around, and Brady's standing there, leaning up against the elevator. He walks over to me, takes the pull tab, and puts it on my finger.
"Brady . . ." I say.
"I forgot to do something before I left," he says.
"What's that?" I ask, and he grabs my shoulders and kisses me. He kisses me like I've never been kissed before. And it's not necessarily that the kiss is any different than any other kiss. On its own merits, it's not that remarkable-two pairs of lips slightly parted, easing together, eyes drifting shut. But what makes this kiss the most impossibly, incredibly, stupendously magnificent chocolate-covered sun-ripened heaven-blessed fresh-squeezed brain freeze of a kiss-the second helping of glorious when you thought there was no more glory left undiscovered in the art of the kiss-is simply this: Those lips are Brady's, and these lips are mine. And now they're together. Parting only occasionally for meals and conversation and yawning and that stuff.
And I kiss him back. I kiss him like I want him to be the last person I ever kiss again and the only person I kiss for the rest of my life. And I can feel both of our hearts pounding out of our chests. I pull back from our embrace and look at him.
"And you'd think that would be something you'd remember to do," I say with a smile that could swallow the whole world.
"I'll never do it again."
"You better do it again," I whisper.
"I meant the forgetting part . . ." he says, and he plants another one on me. "This part I plan on doing with regularity."
"So I'm like fiber now?"
"Stop talking," he says, and he pushes me into the elevator. "And by the way," he says, squeezing the hand with the pull-tab ring, "just because you're not 'most girls' doesn't mean you're not getting a real one."
Heaven.
My name is Heaven Albright. And I'm back in PR. And this time my boss isn't a complete asshole, just sometimes a pain in the neck. Me. Hyping people I want to work with (mostly anyway), and working my tail off.
There's Superhero-you know about them. But not about the three other bands I'm pimping, or about the hip-hop artist whose clothing line just debuted at the most talked-about show at Fashion Week, or about EnerJewce, "The Chosen Juice," a brand new low-carb, kosher beverage line I just signed on. And you don't yet know about my own version of Heaven, my assistant Heidi, who shows every sign of turning out way better than I did. Or about the happy ending for Marco and Sydney. Let's not call it wedded bliss . . . but we'll call it the ultimate marriage of convenience: America gained a new citizen, and Sydney gained two cup sizes.
If I sound different-like a chirpy chorus girl with a face-splitting smile-it's because I am. Maybe it's because this is my first break in a spastic year. And maybe it's because I'm sitting on a plane next to my fiance, wearing the most gorgeous Tiffany engagement ring ever. Superhero? They're on the cover of Spin magazine, and Brady and I are on our way to Vegas, where they'll be playing at our wedding. Everything is perfect.
Brady.
My name is Brady Gilbert, and I just gave up the aisle seat. Willingly.
Brady's Answering Machine.