Tenerife

Riley

It's been seventy-tour hours since I've known for sure where Row is and who she is with. With the exception of her recent trip to London for her hand therapy...the very last time I didn't know exactly where she was? She was doing lines of coke in Mosteller's bed.

Even after we were divorced, I still knew. She was my artist, my responsibility. Her panic bracelet has the tracking device. I could ping her location with with three thumb presses on my phone. If she took it off, well, there were the trackers on her cars. She never asked me to remove them, and I never did.

I'm staring at the locater app, my thumb hovering. It would be so simple to ping her panic button. Then I would know for sure if she was tucked up in her hotel bed in London, safe and sound, or if she's out somewhere, with AJ half-ass watching out for her like last time she was there and got battered in a bathroom stall. And if she were out, well then. I could call up AJ and remind him of his last mistake, and the one before that when he took the night off she gave him, and he she ended up kidnapped, terrorized and stabbed.

I pause, my thumb still over the button.

I don't know what I'm expecting. Priscilla, I think, to scold me for even considering a return to such controlling ways.

But Priscilla isn't talking to me. She's as disappointed in me as Row, I suppose.

I sigh, text my living lover instead.

Hello there. Just checking in. Still pissed?

Her reply is immediate: Do you mean drunk or angry?

Me: Angry.

Her: Then, no.

Which means she's drunk, of course.

Me: Bloody glad to hear that, though I'd much prefer you were drunk with me, darling. Here. Now. I miss you.

Her: I prefer it when you sing with me.

Me: When you get home, I shall. In our bed. With the wine and candles and guitars and hopefully, a bit more than that.

Her: I don't know how you can say no to this THING between us on stage, and expect that we're okay.

Me: So you are still angry.

Her: No, Riley. I'm fucking devastated.

In less than a second I've dialed her. She answers, says nothing. I have the distinct feeling she's crying.

"Rowan, I love you. I want to spend my life with you." I say the words as tenderly as I can. "You make me happy, and I want to make you happy. In all things, darling. Please believe me."

"Then...make me.... Happy. Make...yerself." Her words are are slurry, anguished, and terrifying to me.

Where is she? Is she somewhere safe? Is she somewhere crying and oblivious and completely vulnerable because we are apart and arguing?

I want simply, more than anything, to just say yes. Alright darling, let's shop a demo. Muscle Shoals is the place for us to find the right producer don't you think?

But I can't.

What if I agree to this and we fail? What if I can't deliver as an artist? What if I let her down? What if I'm the reason her dreams don't come true? What if the reality of being in a band together with me is a nightmare instead?

How much might we argue if we tried to make a marriage of our hearts and minds and song-writing souls? If the pressures of albums and tours and creative decisions were born equally between us? We failed to keep our balance act in separate arenas of her career. That is nothing to the passion of trying to create art together. What might happen the first time we disagree about on a song to put on an album, a set list to play, a backing musician's performance? Will she does this—kick me out, get wasted—every time we have a creative disagreement?

And that's only the beginning of my worries.

What if I agree to this and our music is a success? The life of a musician is stressful, even more stressful than mine. Artists give of themselves, every time they perform.

What if I don't have enough to give? What if my pain and injuries are too costly, energetically, and I can't keep up with Row? What if I get caught in the old cycles of dosing for performance, for partying, for sleep? What if we both get lost to drugs? What if I wake from a haze one day to find Row does not?

I fight the memory by snatching of my glasses, rubbing them violently. Despite the activity, I can feel the stiffness of Priscilla, cold in my arms. I remember her unseeing eyes. Death is dull at the start, in the eyes. It takes some long, awful moments for death to become horror in the brain and the breath of the left-behind living.

And all that—all of those fears—I might find the courage to combat, if not for one simple thing.

I made a vow to Priscilla. I buried our microphone—the one we shared—with her. And the voice in my head? It can never release me from that.

I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to put all this in words that the drunken, sobbing love of my life can hear right now. "I can't be happy unless I can protect you. And I can't protect you if my sight is blinded by spotlights."

"I don't believe you, Riley," she whispers. "I think I've never been me."

"What's that, love?" She's drunk, and I'm patient. It is my fault, for hurting her, and for always sharing this practice with her—using drink to dull pain.

"I've never been me, to you. I've always been just a replacement for her."

It's not true. The truth is, I had three scattered, depraved, wild teenage years with Priscilla. I loved her madly, because it was that kind of mad love, in a mad life. The love I feel for Row is so much richer, and sometimes more frightening than I felt for Sil.

I can't afford to fail Rowan, and there's a good chance if I do what she thinks she wants right now, I will fail her.

"You wont' even deny it," Rowan whispers, snapping me back into the conversation.

"You are my bigger, better, brighter, love. There is nothing in this world that could ever replace you in my heart. If you were to leave me, I would cease to be me. You know it's true, you saw it nearly happen. Be angry with me that I can't give you what you want right now, be sad in the disappointment, but don't doubt my love, darling. We have loved each other through so much."

She lets out a frustrated cry. "I'm not giving up, Riley. When I get home, we're having this out."

"When you get home, we're going to Hawaii for my birthday and del Marco Christmas. We are certainly not getting into this there."

"You tell yourself that," she hangs up on me.

I dial right back.

"What?" she snaps.

"Don't hang up on me. I'm sorry I can't give you what you want, but we have to find a way to work this out, because...I love you and you love me."

"Riley...I do, but it's so hard."

"I know, darling. I'm sorry."

"You don't know! I can't stop thinking about what you said. That you talk to her."

I sigh. I shouldn't have told her that. She keeps coming back to Priscilla.

"Rowan, if she were here before me, I would choose you." My voice is low, strained, filled with guilt at this truth, but it is truth.

"No you wouldn't, Riley. There would never have been a me. There would have been you and her and a whole other life."

Well, I can't argue with that. She's right. If Priscilla were alive, we'd have probably gotten off the hard stuff at some point, and if we had, it's quite possible we'd still be together. Perhaps I'd be working in a bar right now, and her a waitress or shop girl of some sort. Maybe playing a gig down at the local pub now and then. Some perfectly ordinary life, our small stressors as equally important to us as the big stresses of this much bigger life. Would we be happy?

Perhaps. Or perhaps we'd be simply existing, youthful love long gone and nothing but daily drudgery and mutual obligation remaining.

Being with Row is no drudgery. Being with her is inspirational.

"Darling, what more can I say on this subject? I love you with all my heart. There is nothing else that matters."

"Except your vow to her." She cries. She cries and cries and I hang on the line, present in her pain, but powerless to take it from her.

To do so, might tempt fate. If I break my vow, what might the consequences be?

Eventually her sobs subside and she is silent, too. "Are you in your room?" I ask her.

"Yeah."

"Where's Chili?" I know they've been constant companions since New York.

More silence. I'm not sure she's aware how much time is passing between her comments now.

"Rowan, where's Chili?" Surely AJ wouldn't have left her behind, but if Chili was with Row, I doubt Row would be so upset. Chili has been bolstering her anger the last few days.

"I left Chili with Dev and Bridge at Heaven," she says, referencing a trendy club.

More silence.

"Rowan."

She makes an indecipherable noise now.

"Where's AJ?"

More silence.

"Rowan," I say more sternly. "Where's AJ?"

"In his room, prolly."

"He has a separate room?"

"No, I meant, across the suite. I'm gonna go. I'm tired."

"Rowan, you've only been drinking, right? Just drinking?"

Silence.

"Darling?"

"I had a couple gummies."

"From who? From Dev?"

"Yeah. Just two. From Dev."

I take a long breath. She's fine. I know she's fine. Two gummies is nothing. Two gummies is practically medicinal. AJ is there, just across the suite. She's fine.

"All right. Get some rest. I love you."

"Good night. Love you. Don't tell her goodnight, Riley. Say goodnight to me—now, and go to bed."

I shake my head. My drunk, beautiful heathen is jealous of a dead girl. It's ridiculous. It's adorable. It's heart-breaking, actually.

"I swear to you, I'm done talking to ghosts, okay?"

"'Kay. Good night."

"Good night darling."

I play guitar long past LA twilight, picturing Row's her in slumber in the London early morn, wishing we weren't so far apart in time and in our future.

#

Dev's ring tone trickles through my brain. I slap around on the bed, find my phone. It's three am here which means it's 11am there. Dev is well aware of the time difference, and well aware that Ari is his point person for his lunacy. He's not calling me because he's in jail. I sit straight up without even thinking of the pain it's going to cause me to move so quickly. I gasp against it and reach for my glasses.

"What's wrong?" I say at once.

Dev lets out a shaky—almost frightened?—gasp on the other end.

"Bad drugs, brother. Very, very bad drugs."

"Who? Row? What the fuck did you give her, Devlin?"

"Row's fine. Bridge too. Chili—they are all fine."

My heart had boomed big three times, but settles as Dev assures me they are brunching together.

"Then who has bad drugs?"

"Me. I have bad drugs, Riley! Very very bad!" he yells. "Or at least—I hope to bloody hell it's the drugs!"

"What did you do last night, for Chrissakes!?!?!"

"I haven't done anything. I'm not in hospital, nor jail. It was perfectly reasonable evening. We went round the manor, had a few drinks, took a couple of gummies from a reliable source, danced at Heaven, came back to my place. I was fully prepared to give Bridge her own taste of Heaven and then, all hell broke loose."

Dev sounds agitated as fuck, but he does not sound the least bit high.

"Be more specific, Mate."

"I'm hearing a voice in my head," he whispers dramatically.

Oh good Christ, isn't Dev a little bit old for the onset of schizophrenia?

"Dev, are joking right now, or are you actually serious?"

"I'm quite serious. It's your girl, mate. Priscilla. She's fucking haunting me, and it's creeping me the hell out. She says you won't listen to her, so I have to make you. You better haul arse over here. Bring a priest and a Marley because I'm either possessed or barking mad, alright?"

He hangs up on me.

For one brief second I fight the urge to laugh.

But I do not, because then I think about how unusually devoid of chit-chat my own inner monologue has been.

No. No bloody fucking way.

The Priscilla in my head is, well... in my head.

She's not really a ghost.

Is she?

No bloody fucking way.

Priscilla? I ask, gently testing.

No answer.

Sil. Talk to me, love. Dev is really freaking me out.

Silence.

Priscilla!!! I bellow in my head.

Not so much as a fucking Boo.

Apparently, she can't be in two places at once.

I call Dev back.

"Ask her the name of the song we wrote in Tenerife!" I yell at him.

"Fucking what?"

"If she's real, just fucking ask her! Go on, out loud!"

"I feel like an idiot," he mutters, then, "Hey. Ghost Girl. What was the name of the song you and Riley wrote in Tenerife?"

A long pause.

"She says you're a fucking arsehole to choose that particular challenge question because you two never wrote a song in Tenerife. You were far too poor for a holiday, but you always talked of going there. Howling at the moon, working your way through a pack of Sterlings."

Bloody Christ on a cross. It's true. We'd lie on the roof and share a smoke and dream of Tenerife.

"Oh dear God," I mutter. "I've been haunted all this time, I can't fucking believe it!!!"

"Oh, you've been haunted? All this time you say? We're talking about you, are we? Because look, mate— I seem to be the one with a complete and insistent stranger in my brain, suggesting inappropriate rhymes to the word plimsolls. I'd do just about anything for you, Riley, but this a shade too far. Get.Your.Fucking.Dead.Girl.Out.My.Fucking.Brain.Mate."

"I bite my lip. "Perhaps, ask her nicely to go? She's really a lovely person, you know. Wise. Supportive. Especially now, on the other side. Without the drugs and daily stressors and all. I'm sure she doesn't mean to—"

"Get on a fucking plane, Riley!!!" Dev shouts. "She says get on a fucking plane!!!"

"Alright! On it!"

"Not soon enough!"

Dev hangs up, and I scramble.

Within two hours, I get on the fucking plane.