Lasting Damage Read online

  “You’re kidding.” Alice let out a high pitched squeal as she picked up her bag setting it down in her lap. “You should’ve come out to get me so I could meet her. Dad says she’s a hot shit.”

  “Tin Bird’s real name is Harper Merrick.” Jane stared at Lily whose eyes went wide with realization.

  “You are fucking kidding me.” Lily gasped.

  “No,” Jane answered. “I’m not.”

  Alice watched the two of them as they exchanged looks across the coffee table before asking, “Why do I get the feeling I’m missing something?”

  “Because you are,” Lily put the joint to her lips and lit the far end, inhaling until it glowed dark orange. “Jane and Harper had a date this afternoon. It was very long brunch date.”

  “You’re shitting me?” Alice leaned forward, her eyes brightening with the news. “You’re shitting me, right?”

  “I do not shit about these kinds of things,” Lily announced as she passed the joint across the table to Alice. “This girl’s totally into her.”

  “She’s a liar.” Jane announced. “She never told me about working with Riley.”

  “Weren’t you the one who coined the phrase ‘creative truth telling’?” Lily reminded her with a sideways glance as Alice handed the joint to Jane.

  “That’s different,” she replied before taking a hit.

  “How is your lying different than her lying?” Alice asked.

  “I have to go see Sammi tomorrow.” She exhaled the smoke from her strained lungs before they started to ache. “Either one of you want to come with me?”

  “Oh!” Alice raised her hand and started waving it around like a maniacal marionette. “Me! I wanna go see Sammi!”

  “How about you, chief?” Jane handed the joint back to Lily.

  “I’ve got to so see my mom tomorrow but I appreciate your attempt to distract me.” Lily nodded. “It was a good defensive maneuver on your part.”

  “I wasn’t trying to distract you,”

  “And there you go,” Lily coughed. “You open your mouth and out comes another lie.”

  “Can you stop being a twatwaffle for one second?” Jane pressed her fingers to her temples and counted the beating of her pulse as it raced.

  “Why?” Lily draped an arm over the edge of the couch and rolled her eyes in dramatic fashion.

  “Because, you have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Really?” Lily scoffed. “I have no idea why you do the things you do?”

  “Whoa, bitch fight in process.” Alice announced before taking a long drag off the joint and offering it to Jane.

  “I’m good,” she said, waving it away. “Which one of you has something that will knock me out for a few hours?”

  “It’s probably just as well that you’re ending things with her,” Alice grabbed a large bottle of pills from her purse and tossed it at her. “That chick is used to dating hot models and actresses. You’re kind of a downgrade.”

  Jane turned the bottle over in her hand. She was stuck between saying something equally as mean to Alice and taking the high road. She decided it was best if she stuck to the familiar ground in between. “I am aware of my physical shortcomings. You don't have to point them out every time you breeze into town.”

  “And speaking of breezing into town,” Lily began. “Why are you here?”

  “That’s between me and my therapist.” Alice answered with a curt shake of her filthy head.

  “I see you and your therapist haven’t been working on your hygiene problems.” Jane popped the top off the bottle, shook three codeine tablets out into her hand and hesitated. She wasn’t the biggest fan of this particular drug, she always regretted taking it since it never did much more than make her skin feel hot and give her weird dreams of furry animals all night long. “Do you have any valium?”

  “How many do you need?” Alice asked and started pawing through her purse again.

  “How many can you spare?” Jane leaned back and closed her eyes. There wasn’t one good reason she should be this upset. She’d had a few flirtatious moments and a brunch date. People did it every day and survived.

  “Why don’t you just open the pharmacy so we can all have a look?” Lily asked as she stubbed out the joint and tossed it into the small metal box on the coffee table where she kept her discarded roaches.

  “Okay.” Alice laughed, flipped the bag upside down and let the contents spill out all over the coffee table. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

  “Score!” Lily laughed as she started picking up bottles and placing them on the coffee table in a tidy row. “I love it when Bad Alice comes to town. You’re stocked better than the local Walgreens.”

  “Jesus, how much doctor shopping you doing?” Jane peered down the table and tried to work up some enthusiasm for glorious stash but it was a wasted effort. She was too emotionally conflicted to appreciate Alice’s hoard.

  “Less than Rush Limbaugh.” Alice she picked up a bottle, read the label, and carefully placed it back in line.

  “Just promise me you won't get cornered by the cop in a hotel room with seven hookers and a forged prescription for Viagra.” Lily chuckled. “I’ll bail you out but I’m not dealing with your mother.”

  “I make no promises.”Alice held up a small bottle filled with wafer thin pills and shook it. “And who knows? Maybe if I get arrested Jane will finally get to meet Rachel Maddow and profess her undying love.”

  “You're gonna be the death of me, you know that?” Jane replied.

  Alice wrapped her hand around another bottle and grinned. “You're not the first person to tell me that,” she sighed dramatically and she tossed the bottle into Jane’s lap. “There you go.”

  “Thanks.” Jane popped the top and shook two pills out into her hand.

  “Got a nasty headache?”

  “Working on it.” Jane lied. It seemed easier than admitting how fragile she felt at the moment. “Why don't you use the shower?”

  “Is it me?”

  “If you’re talking about the smell, then the answer is most definitely ‘yes’?” Lily announced as she snatched her own bottle.

  “I meant the headache.” Alice placed her hands on both cheeks and brought her elbows to her knees. “I seem to have that effect on people.”

  “It’s the smell, Alice. You really need to clean up.” Jane picked up a bottle and inspected the label for a second. “And how did you get a prescription for Xanax?”

  “My shrink told my doctor about my anxiety attacks.” She shrugged.

  “Ambien?” Jane picked up another bottle and shook is. “Since when have you had problems falling asleep?”

  She took the bottle out of Jane’s hands and stared at it with a sad look on her face. “I'm a very complicated person.”

  “You're not taking them all at the same time are you?” Lily asked carefully. “You’ve got a schedule for the stuff you have to take every day, right?”

  “I'm not stupid.” Alice rolled her eyes. “I'm careful. I know what I'm doing.”

  “Famous last words.” Lily muttered.

  Alice opened her mouth to say something but stopped when she realized both women were staring at her.

  “Alice?” Jane said her sister’s name with as much weight as she could muster. “You need to be careful.”

  “I am,” she said as she looked from one set of eyes to the other. “I won’t get in over my head.”

  Jane tossed the pills into her mouth and swallowed them down without water. It was a trick she’d mastered by the time she turned thirteen that never failed to impress all the wrong people. She wanted to say something to Alice about how you never really realized you were in over your head until you were already drowning but she knew she’d just come off sounding like a hypocrite since she’d been trying to come up for air for as long as she could remember.

  7.

  “You look like crap,”

  Harper looked up to see Riley, his arms wrapped around a car
dboard box, and a perplexed look on his face.

  “Thanks,” Harper smiled at him. She’d been sitting in the studio staring at her computer so long she risked growing sloth algae on her skin. After Jane left she’d made a few pathetic attempts to pull her head out of her ass but nothing seemed to work. She was incapable of gaining momentum, and with every second that passed the mess she’d made sank deeper into her skin.

  Things with Jane were fucked up, her album was a stinking pile of shit, her agent was already emailing her upcoming tour dates and her tour manager was on her ass to tighten up the riders ahead of schedule.

  “I didn’t sleep much last night,” she muttered.

  “I figured.” He sat down in the chair next to her, put the box on the floor feet and fished out a long, double ended cable. “Jane called me. She sounded pretty icy.”

  “Sorry about that.” Harper stared into her coffee cup and wished she had the ability make things better. It seemed like such a good superpower to have now that she was faced with the prospect of everything in her life turning to shit.

  Riley unwound the cable and stretched it out on the tabletop before fishing a new adapter out of his shirt pocket. “Not that it’s any of my business but what’s going on between the two of you?” He asked while he started unscrewing the old plug in from one end of the cable.

  “Nothing now,” she shrugged. “I screwed up.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I was an asshole.” Harper wondered how she could explain that it wasn’t what she did that sent Jane running for the hills but what she hadn’t done. A lie of omission was just as nasty as any other lie but much easier to swallow when you’re the one committing the offense.

  “Not exactly the word I’d use to describe you.” Riley put the new adapter on the end of the cable and promptly began winding the whole thing back up.

  “I didn’t tell her about knowing you and she came in here and saw me,” Harper paused to take a sip of her coffee. “I didn’t have a good excuse ready.”

  “That’s probably a good thing.” Riley replied.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because Jane has this weird ability to see through people’s excuses and call them on their bullshit.” He eyed her carefully before dropping the cable into the box at his feet and grabbing another. “And you do not want that happening to you.”

  “Maybe you could’ve warned me before you sent me over to there?”

  “I told you she wasn’t an easy person to deal with.” He sat back and started examining the cable. “Jane’s been through a lot. She was a girl growing up on a tour bus. She had to learn to be tough and not take shit from anyone. I’ve seen her crack a few heads when she has to. She doesn’t trust many people so she doesn’t have a lot of friends, but the ones she does have are damn lucky because she takes care of them. Just don’t piss her off unless you’re willing to run very far and very fast.”

  “I’ll have to remember that.” Harper resisted the temptation to close her computer and head to bed. As tired as she was, and as miserable as she was, giving up wasn’t an option. Jane might be a lost cause but she had to get the album finished. “So, what’s the story with Kara? Were you able to work something out?”

  “She’s got some time at the beginning of next week.” He picked up his coffee cup and took a healthy swig. “Her manager’s going to put in a call tomorrow when he gets back to his office.”

  Harper’s brain immediately started spinning again. She knew her ex-girlfriend needed the work as much as she needed her singing ability but dealing with Kara felt like adding more complication to her growing list of complications

  *****

  “Did you Google her yet?”

  “No.” Jane answered. She’d hoped Alice would find some new distraction on the way to Sammi’s but she was wrong. For half the night, and the better part of the morning Alice had bothered her about Harper and Jane was starting to entertain murderous thoughts.

  Alice turned, shooting her a dirty look before she asked, “Why the hell not?”

  “Because I'm not interested.”

  “You might be the stupidest person on the face of the earth.” Alice announced as they walked through the dining room.

  “Thanks.”

  Alice rolled her eyes. “Chloe and Lily say that she really likes you and seeing as how you’re basically a very unlikable person-”

  “Shut up Alice,” Jane interrupted, pushing her sister past the tables and toward the bar. “I am perfectly likable.”

  “Said no one ever.” Alice hopped up on a barstool and proceeded to make herself at home.

  “Hey Danny.” Jane motioned to the sulky looking hipster behind the bar. “Is Sammi around?”

  The disinterested bartender with the pale blond beard stared at her for a long, silent moment before shrugging his bony shoulders and letting out a deep sigh. “She'll be out in a minute. I think she’s putting her lipstick on.”

  “That could take a while.” Alice chuckled.

  “Be nice.” Jane warned. “Sammi’s still trying to get a handle on her daytime makeup routine.”

  “Someone has told her that less is more, right?”

  “That’s really funny coming from you.” Jane folded her arms on the bar and glared at her little sister. “Sammi’s happy for the first time in her life and I’m not having you turn into a heteronormative assnugget because you don’t understand what she’s been through.”

  Alice rolled her eyes. “Can we talk about Harper now?”

  “Nope,” answered Jane.

  “Are we allowed to talk about Mom?” she asked. “She hasn't gotten arrested or flashed her tits for a while. I’m beginning to wonder if she isn’t losing her touch.”

  “She’s gone soft in her old age.”

  “Dad said she's working her biography again.”

  “That should be interesting,” Jane mumbled. “I’ve always wanted to have all my family secrets put on display for her fans.”

  “Do you know if she’s got a title yet?” Alice slid her hand over the smooth bartop as her eyes moved along the rows and rows of neatly placed bottles behind the bar. Her mother, and her autobiography were two subjects Jane never wanted to think about. She’d already lived through most of it once so the idea of putting it into print made her head pound.

  “Not yet,” Jane replied, she felt a sudden thirst for something strong and sharp.”Can I get a dirty martini.”

  “Sure.” Danny nodded.

  “Make it with IDÔL.” She instructed. “I don’t have the head for drinking gin right now.”

  “Sure.”

  “Me too.” Alice chimed in. “Only make mine a double since Sami's footing the bill.”

  “Is she?” Danny raised a suspicious eyebrow.

  “We’re here at Sammi’s request so we’re drinking for free,” replied Alice.

  “I’m here at Sammi’s request.” Jane reminded her while she watched Danny make the martinis. “You’re just tagging along.”

  Alice stared straight ahead and didn’t say anything, she simply flipped her big sister the bird.

  “You know what I miss?” Alice mused when Danny slid both glasses in front of them and promptly moved to the far end of the bar where there was less noise and prettier females.

  “Having me around full time?” Alice put the glass to her lips and winced after she took the first sip. “God, why do you drink these?”

  “I like the taste.” Jane shot back. “And no, I don’t miss having you around full time.”

  “Fine, what do you miss?” Alice slid her drink toward Jane and signaled to Danny who was now at the far end of the bar chatting up a sun burnt blonde with pale lips and a see through top.

  “Cigarettes,” Jane answered

  “Seriously?”

  “Every once in a while.” She shrugged. “Just when I'm drinking. Maybe I'll grab a bottle of Russian Standard and a pack of Turkish Gold’s on my way home. I can sit on the porch smoking and drinking til
l I pass out.”

  “That sounds like a hell of a way to spend a Monday.” Alice signaled again and got no response from Danny.

  “Hey, Barboy!” Jane slapped her hand on the bar, raising her voice past the point of politeness to get the bad bartender’s attention. “Sissypants here needs a new drink.”

  “You know, you could just come behind here and do it yourself since it’s what you’re here to talk to Sammi about.” He suggested without turning around.

  “Fine.” She hopped off her stool and made her way to the other side of the bar. Normally Jane wouldn’t step behind a bar that someone else was tending, but seeing as how the guy was being a complete dick she figured she’d forgo the normal rites of polite bartending, and make her sister something decent for a change. “What are you in the mood for?”

  “Something that makes me think of summer in New England?” She rested her chin in the palm of her hand and sighed. “Something that reminds me of being at the beach in Nantucket. Like when we used to go hang out at Lily’s grandparent’s house and watch all the fancy, rich people get drunk.”

  It was a tall order but Jane was just happy Alice hadn’t requested one of the six drinks most people in their early twenties ask for when they belly up to the bar. “How about a nice refreshing Cape Codder to take the edge off?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Vodka and lime with cranberry juice.” Jane told her. “It’s like a screwdriver for aged preppies.”

  “Okay but do it up fancy.” She nodded and blinked her big blues eyes. “Put a lot of vodka in it.”

  “You know, Alice, sometimes the trick to a good drink is simplicity.” Jane picked up her martini glass and took a sip. “You were right about this one, though. That guy does not know how to make a decent martini.”

  “Told you it was gross.”

  “It’s not supposed to taste like that,” Jane grabbed a highball glass from the rack and started measuring the cranberry juice into the chilled shaker while Alice watched. “He’s too heavy handed with the vermouth.”

  “Jane?”