Rock Chick Redemption (Rock Chick #3)(44)

“Please, Uncle Tex, don’t.”

I felt my nostrils quiver.

He stil ignored me.

“This life is made of good turns and bad turns. Few months ago, I did a good turn. I took a bul et for Indy. The last three days, Lee paid me back.”

I closed my eyes.

“Look at me, darlin’ girl.”

I opened my eyes.

“Lee’d put himself in front of a bul et for his brother, make no mistake. Hank was f**kin’ beside himself when he came home to find you gone. I thought he’d tear Denver apart lookin’ for you. Lee nearly had to lock him in his safe room to keep him from comin’ after you.”

“Please, stop.”

“You had your bad turn, Roxie. Open your f**kin’ heart and let Hank be the good.”

We stared at each other awhile. Somehow, I didn’t cry.

Then, I nodded and opened my phone.

With shaking hands, I went to my received cal s, my heart beating, hoping it was Hank.

It wasn’t, it was my friend Annette, from Chicago.

“Annette,” I told Uncle Tex.

His hands left my knees.

“Not Hank?” he asked, openly surprised.

I shook my head.

He got up and sat down beside me.

“He’l cal ,” he said.

* * * * *

I lay on the bed in Uncle Tex’s extra bedroom and listened to Joni Mitchel on my MP3 player while I stared at the ceiling. Independence Day was over, Eddie had cal ed again and so had Stevie. I didn’t talk to either of them.

Hank had not cal ed.

Uncle Tex was down at Kumar’s buying stuff to make pigs in a blanket and macaroni and cheese for dinner.

I shut down Joni singing about drinking a case of you because I knew I was just torturing myself. I picked up my cel and cal ed Annette.

Annette had given up web design to open a head shop in Chicago cal ed, appropriately, “Head”. She sold bongs, pipes, incense, blankets with Celtic knots and pictures of Jimi Hendrix printed on them, psychedelic posters, tie-dyed t-shirts and hemp clothing. To her surprise, it was a huge success, most likely because she was a nut the caliber of Tex and it made her store fun to hang out in, just like Fortnum’s. After she got too busy and couldn’t do it anymore, she hired me to run the website. She sold bongs on five continents.

She had curly, ash-blonde hair, milky green eyes and She had curly, ash-blonde hair, milky green eyes and was tal , tal er even than me. She was a good friend. She was nice to Bil y’s face, never letting on that she’d once gotten so angry on my behalf (yes, after my recounting the sledgehammer incident), she threw a yard glass at a wal , smashing it to smithereens.

“Yo, bitch!” she answered on the second ring (nothing to be alarmed about, this was how Annette answered the phone al the time).

“Hey,” I said, quietly.

Then I burst into tears.

Then I told her my story, all of my story.

“Holy f**king Jesus H. Christ,” she said when I was done.

“I know.”

“He hasn’t called? ”

“Annette! Bil y kidnapped me and beat me up. This is not about Hank!”

“Bil y’s probably been whacked and his worthless, dead body is being eaten by red ants on some sand dune in Utah, goddess wil ing. Bil y’s the f**king past, this Hank dude is the future, baby.”

I told you Annette was a nut.

“I’m coming home, as soon as I get my tires fixed,” I said, skirting the issue of Hank.

“When’s that gonna be?”

“Uncle Tex has a friend who’s picking up the car tomorrow. It can’t take that long to change four tires. I figure I’l be on the road tomorrow night. Then, I’l pick my stuff up from your place and if you and Jason can come with me to the loft, just to make sure it’s safe, I’l close it up. Then I’m going to Mexico.”

“Fuck that shit,” Annette said. “Jason and I were going on a long weekend camping in Michigan. We’l make it a longer weekend and bring your shit to Colorado. We’l leave tomorrow. What do you want from the loft?”

“Annette,” I said low. “I’ve made up my mind.” She ignored my warning tone.

“Wel , I’m un-making it up.”

“You can’t come out to Colorado! What about Head?”

“I have to beg my staff to leave at the end of the day. I got no problems with Head coasting along. I could join a commune for six months and they wouldn’t even know I was gone.”

This was true. Annette’s staff was like the staff in Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity. Their whole life was Head. If someone threw a live grenade into Head, they’d fight each other for the opportunity to throw themselves on it. It was scary.

“You aren’t talking me out of this,” I told her.

“Sure I am. That’s what friends do when their friends turn into idiots and make stupid decisions on the fly,” she retorted. Then she shouted, “Road trip!” and disconnected before I could say another word.

I flipped my phone shut and stared at the ceiling.

I realized I lived on a smal island of sanity while al else around me was bedlam.

I was about to torture myself with “Both Sides Now” or real y go for the gusto and switch to Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic” when a knock came at the door.