The little cab sped away from the hotel and down towards 42nd Street. That’s where the boys had been recording all day. It would be good to see Steven again, and not just when he was slinking into bed late at night, or while he was asleep, or when we were able to pencil in some time to make love. We hadn’t had a “date” since we had left Boston last month.
I paid the driver quickly, throwing a bill at him. We rushed out to meet the guys, who were standing in front of the theater. Tom held our tickets to him like they were a bouquet of flowers. I saw that a body was missing. Elyssa, Terry, Me, Joe, Tom, Joey, Brad and Jack. My heart sank. Steven wasn’t there. “Where’s Steven?” I asked Brad as we shuffled into the theater.
“Oh, he’s just pouting because we didn’t want to believe that he wrote all the words to a new song. He’s always putting it off and putting it off. So he’s over at the Record Plant trying to write them down.”
“I’m gonna call him,” I said flatly.
“What?” Brad said. “The show starts in five minutes!”
“You guys can go in without me. I’ll be right back.”
They all milled about the entrance to the screening room. Joey went to the bathroom, Tom bought popcorn and candy and Elyssa bullied Joe to the counter to get her some M&Ms. They didn’t want to leave me, so I didn’t want to keep them waiting.
The payphone was next to the ladies’ restroom. I dropped in my dime and waited. It rang once, twice…seven times, eight times…ten times before some surly voice picked up the receiver and snapped “What?”
“Steven, it’s Mia. Why aren’t you coming to the movie? It’ll take your mind off work.”
“No,” he said, pouting. “I don’t wanna talk to them right now. Especially Joe. Fuck him! Fuck him! And tell him that!”
“Come on, Steven. Don’t be like that. Just come on over. It hasn’t even started yet. You guys won’t even have to talk to each other.”
“No. Fuck that,” he protested. “If they don’t believe me, then I’m gonna sit here and finish it. That’ll prove ‘em wrong.”
“Fine,” I whined. “I’ll bring you back a sandwich from the Carnegie.”
“Alright,” he pouted. He was happy I was bringing him something back.
“Come on Mia!” yelled Joe, “It’s gonna start!”
“I gotta go Steve. See you later. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
I slammed the receiver down and ran towards Tom, who held the door open for me. “Wanna Red Vine?” he asked.
I came into the suite like a lion, expecting to sit down and watch Johnny Carson while noisily noshing a hot pastrami on rye. Instead I found Steven already in bed and asleep. I couldn’t help but feel a little distant. I mean, we had been here for about a week, and he was always in the studio while I was moping around the hotel or shopping and eating with Terry. We’d spent so little time together. Like the term “So close and yet so far”, ya know? I just sighed and placed the sandwich inside the small refrigerator and crawled into bed next to him. I missed him already. I’d talk to him tomorrow about maybe taking a day off or something. Something to make us feel a little closer. Until then, I went into our bathroom and slipped on my little black nightdress, then held him in a spoon position until I fell asleep.
The next day, Terry and I had decided to go on a little shopping spree. Any girl knows that there’s nothing like shopping to make a girl feel better. But we thought we should drop in on the boys first; see how things were going with the new record. We had both heard good things and bad things from the ‘front lines’ of the recording. Terry and I were both fans of the band, and the chance to see what they were doing as we spoke was too exciting to pass up. Terry brought a box of warm donuts for the boys. She thought it would be a nice gesture.
Once we were inside, and had the security guards convinced that we were indeed with the band, we were escorted behind the large and imposing front desk to the studios in the back.
Their studio was small and boxy. I had taken a photography class in high school and it reminded me of a darkroom. The light was brighter, though, and there was no chemical smell. But it was small and tight, with no windows or doors. I guess if you were going to spend hours on end in a box you didn’t want to be bothered with silly little things like passing time. Several of Joe’s guitars were there, along with two of Tom’s basses, two of Brad’s guitars, and Joey’s drum set in the back. We walked in quietly, as the red light was glowing inside the recording room. Inside, the rest of the guys waited with their instruments at the ready as Steven sat at his piano. “You see me cryin’…don’t let it get you down…” When Steven wasn’t singing in his usual scratchy-screech voice, it could sound low and beautiful and almost haunting. I closed my eyes and was swept away by the sounds coming from the piano, and then by the metallic and powerful riffs that flew from Joe’s guitar as the song faded away into musical oblivion.
“That was great!” Jack cried. “Perfect!”
“You sure?” Steven said. “I think that maybe if we…”
Joe stopped him short. “Fuck Steven, if he says it’s perfect than it’s fuckin’ perfect. Leave it alone!”
“I’ve been doing studio work since before you copped your first feel motherfucker, so don’t tell me when something needs work, all right?”
“Shut the fuck up, you two!” Joey growled. I’m getting’ sick and fuckin’ tired of you two arguing all the time! If he’s says it’s perfect it’s perfect! Shut the fuck up!”
Terry and I looked at each other. Mayyyybe we had come at a bad time. We had turned to exit when Steven said “Mia?”
We both turned sharply to see Steven stepping out of the glass-encased room. He swept me up in a big hug as Terry walked past us to see Tom.
“What are you doing here?” he said with a smile, “I thought you were going shopping.”
“We are,” I said. “We just wanted to see what you were up to, that’s all.,” I said. “Is it a bad time?”
Joey laughed as he walked past us to a table with donuts and coffee. He crammed a jelly donut in his mouth. “There aren’t any good times around here!”
Joe walked past Steven and purposely hit him with his elbow. The two sneered at each other. For being such good friends, they did argue a lot. I knew I would never understand the delicate balance of love and hate that kept them from killing each other.
“Don’t mind him,” he said, still giving a dirty look to Joe. “He had a bit of a spat with Elyssa and now she’s off at her friend’s apartment pouting about it.”
“Not again,” Terry whined. Joe shot her an annoyed look. Tom, the eternal peacemaker, gave Joe a look that could make your blood run cold. Whoa, this was too much tension for me.
“Anyway,” I began, trying to wrap things up, “We just wanted to stop by and say hi. So think we’re gonna go now.”
“Oh, we’re gonna be late again tonight, honeypot,” he said. “Columbia’s busting our balls again.”
“Waah,” I pouted. “You’ve been late for the past week. I hardly ever see you.”
“Okay, let me stay tonight, I’ll talk to David and I’ll get tomorrow off. We’ll see some sights, we’ll go out to dinner, and we’ll spend a little time alone. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said, cheered a little bit by this.
“You coming Mia?” Terry chimed.
“Yeah,” I shouted back to her. I turned to face Steven again. “See you tonight.”
He smiled and kissed me gently. “Have fun.”
“I will.” I kissed him again before following Terry out the door.
With our mens’ credit cards in our hands, Terry and I hailed the first cab we saw and took it straight to Bloomingdale’s. We giggled like schoolgirls as we bought piles of shoes in every color that fit our feet. We bought matching cashmere sweaters. I was always friendly with Terry. Lori was fairly indifferent, sort of a ghost that was married to Brad. Joey was too fond of bachelorhood to really settle down at the time. I think I had been forever soured on Elyssa since the moment I met her. She never seemed to turn off and be good; really, she just had lighter shades of black. Not that I didn’t try. I mean, I wanted to try to be at least cordial to her. But Elyssa always got in the way somehow. Terry and I would be catty behind her back. Especially about the way she treated poor Joe. The man was so sick in love with her, and she only seemed to care about getting a ring on her finger, her hand in his pockets, and getting some action when she wanted it.
“What’s worse,” Terry said, “Is that Joe either doesn’t know or just doesn’t care what we all think of her.”
“He has to know. I mean, Steve’s written all these lyrics about her.”
“Oh?” she asked.
“Uh-huh. ‘S.O.S’ from the last album is about her. Steve’s always said that Elyssa pulls Joe around by the balls.”
“That she does,” she snapped. “She pulls his balls, his heartstrings, his purse strings...”
“Yeah, and I mean, even the first night I saw them all looking at her like they just despised her. And they’ve made no bones about it, ever. You know Steve’s bluntness.”
“Well, I know Elyssa surely doesn’t care either way,” said Terry crossly. “I mean, as long as she’s got Joe’s money and her little friend Cy...”
“Cy?” I asked.
“Speak of the devil,” she said, pasting on a phony smile that made me ill. “Cyrinda,” she said, talking through her smile. “Cyrinda is Elyssa’s little friend from New York. Those two are impossibly bitchy together. Watch out you don’t get your face scratched.” Cyrinda. ‘What a name,’ I thought. It sounded so exotic. Different. I rolled the name over my tongue silently. Cyrinda.
Cyrinda was a shortish girl, hair bleached platinum blonde and lips painted full and red. She looked like Marilyn Monroe had came back to life and decided to make herself the epitome of New York City fashion. There was a cockiness in her step that seemed egotistical. She was beautiful, no doubt. Her pedal pushers were tight around her legs, and her shirt clung to her torso for dear life. In her red-nailed hands she carried bags from Saks and Tiffany’s. She managed the whole load on a pair of black slut mules with a red-painted toe hanging out the front.
Terry kept her artificial smile on as we stopped on the sidewalk to chat.
“How’s the shopping today, girls?” Terry chimed, trying to be nice.
“We haven’t been to Bloomie’s yet,” Elyssa said slyly. “We’ve been out at Neman Marcus spending big money.”
Terry’s smile grew from chipper and cheery to sarcastic in milliseconds. “Well, I’d like Tom to be able to spend some of his own cash,” she said with just a hint of cattiness.
“Why bother?” Elyssa said. “If it just goes up his nose anyway?”
“Well I wouldn’t like it all his hard work to be in vain,” Terry said, accenting the last word. It put Elyssa on the defensive. Her walls crumbled, her attack ruined.
“Cyrinda,” she said, turning, “I don’t think you’ve met Mia.”
Cyrinda removed her sunglasses. The look in her eyes made me bristle all over. She gave me a not nice feeling inside. “Nice to meet you,” she said, moving her burdensome bags to her left hand.
“Mia is Steven’s girlfriend.” Elyssa said this to Cyrinda like it was some insult.
“Oh,” she said. “Well, you’re very lucky.”
“Yes, I know,” I shot back. MEOW!
Elyssa waved her hand in the air and a huge black limousine stopped in the middle of traffic. Elyssa pushed her sunglasses up her nose. "Well, we really must be going,” she said curtly. Cyrinda followed suit, shifting her bags into her hand and disappearing into the cavernous limo. Elyssa shut the door behind them.
“What was that all about?” I asked after the long black car was halfway down the street. “What did you say to her?”
“I think she didn’t like the in vain crack. I know what she’s into.”
“In vain?” It took me a minute to register the biting product of Terry’s wit. “She’s into heroin?” I asked, my jaw nearly on the floor.
“Her and Joe,” she said to me, a hint of disgust in her voice.
Heroin was the big one to me. Adventurous as I was, the big H seemed the most
forbidden drug, a Pandora’s box of affliction. Even in my Frisco days the encouragement of William Burroughs’ books and the confessions of jazz musicians never got me to try it. I’d heard too much about the horrid death of Janis Joplin, with a needle and a bottle of Southern Comfort by her side.
“Wow,” I whispered.
“Uh-huh,” Terry said. “And I bet it’s that Cyrinda chick that gives it to them, too. She’s married to David Johansen from The New York Dolls, and they’re all into that stuff.”
“Wow,” I said again.
The conversation died for a while then. We were all smiles up and down Fifth Avenue afterward. But even when eating, while spending hundreds of dollars of Steven’s money at one whack, I couldn’t help but think of Elyssa and Joe. I pictured him with a tourniquet, searching for a new vein. Dirty spoons and cotton, lighters. It saddened me later to hear about Steven and Joe and their awful drug habits. I saw them during their “Toxic Twins” days, and my thoughts and prayers were always with them.
Later that night, I curled myself into a little fetal position and thought to myself. Maybe I should quit. I mean, we had seen the Dolls around and they were a mess. They would snort, inject, drink or smoke anything. Johnny Thunders was a wreck of a man. Would that be me? Messy makeup, walking around stoned on heels, barely keeping himself upright...his only care was where his next high was coming from...but that could never be me. I could resist temptation. I resisted Joe, hadn’t I? I was a strong person. Everyone told me that. I would be okay. And I mean, everyone was doing it. What was gonna happen with a little cocaine?
The door opened and a light from the hallway cast a shadow on the floor.
“You still awake, Mia?” Steven asked. “It’s almost four.”
“I couldn’t sleep. Come here and keep me company.”
Steven shut the door and locked it. He made his way to the bed while unbuttoning his jeans and pulling down his zipper. He left his pants in a pile by the bedside and left his shirt on top of it. He was cold and naked when he wrapped his arms around me.
“How do you like New York so far?” he said.
I wanted to tell him that I felt almost afraid. Afraid of this place that was so unfriendly and so cold. That it was cold because it was unfriendly. That everything was expensive but the food was great.
"It’s pretty cool.” The words fell from my lips like water from a tap. More of a leak of feeling than the true capacity that the words could have.
“I thought you’d like it,” he smiled. “How was shopping with Terry?”
“Good. I bought a nice sweater. Pretty shoes.”
“Good.”
“And something that I think you’ll enjoy.”
His ears perked up. “Rowwwwrrrrrrr.” He made a growling animal noise.
I rolled over to face him. “I’ll wear it for you tomorrow, I promise.”
“Okay,” he said contentedly. He kissed me on the lips. I closed my eyes and allowed myself to fall into the new warmth of Steven’s embrace.
“Promise me that we’ll do something tomorrow,” I said. “I miss being with you."
He kissed me softly. “Me too.”