Chapter Text
Late November, San Francisco, 1976
One more attempt at love.
Levon booked his hotel room an extra week, Robbie kicked around with his family for a few days, sent them home, and moved in with Levon.
One more attempt to do things right and to do right by each other.
They slept late, woke to cream sheets, noon sunlight, warm skin, hungry pink mouths and white wet teeth. They ordered gluttonous amounts of breakfast just because they could, even if neither of them had much of an appetite these days. Hot coffee out of china cups and cocaine off each other’s bodies.
Walking in the afternoons, where you could lean a little closer than normal and still they were left alone, roaming, anonymous. Wasn’t San Francisco a marvelous thing?
Robbie indulged and bought an overcoat on Fillmore Street; dark with a sable trim, and Levon said it made him look like a gangster when he wore his hat, too, and smoked in the cold nearly-Christmas weather.
Gangsters? Robbie said, and laughed and pointed out Alcatraz Island, occupied from ‘69 to ‘71, and said the effort, the disobedience, made him want to call Dolly and thank her. For what, he didn’t know.
Levon took his picture by the Bay Bridge and promised to hide the film and get it developed years from now, when they were both much older and nostalgic for sweet secret love. They bought cherries and South American peaches at a market by their hotel and ate the fruit in bed, stained the sheets, licking sticky fingers, smearing red sugar over flesh like rubbing around in fresh blood.
An evening ride when the sun went down, rock me baby, and Robbie was just a dark shape against the sunset window, head back, crying out, enraptured.
Mirrors again. Stare at yourself, stare at me, towel down, intertwined, naked and pressing together, kissing, just shy of drunk off the champagne they ordered every evening.
Mirrors made them vain. Weren’t usually. Or rather pretended not to be, preening in private. These days, here in a city far from their lives, they were whatever monsters lurked beneath the politeness they were raised on.
Dusted deep brown underneath browner eyes, at the outer corner to pull a high gaze even higher. Levon trims his beard meticulously, combs his hair seventeen different ways. Robbie watches him affectionately, then goes and dresses alone. More tricks up his sleeve. The bathroom reeks of smoke and sex and hairspray, and they leave a messy bed and broken champagne coupes for the glimmer of the Castro.
They end up on a dance floor, soaked in drugs and sweat and the love of the hundreds of moving bodies around them.
Surprising one another and themselves, never had they felt so far from the soft country of Woodstock or the brilliant heat of Arkansas. Who were they now, these long nights? Letting people slip pills under their tongues and feeling each other up in the neon lights.
Was this backsliding? Falling in love again, heedlessly? Or something senseless, where they came in already turned on, hot and heavy, hard from the music and not each other?
Robbie led a boy on for what seemed like hours. Danced up to him, and the walls bled the color of Big Pink, and a man next to Levon had fifteen hands, and as he watched Robbie’s mating dance, bold in intent, hollow in promise, a halo bloomed around his head.
Snarl, and pull him back into your orbit, a hand on his hip, crush your souls together. Laughing at the possessiveness, Robbie slings his arms around Levon’s neck, and holds him close.
Donna said she felt love, take me I’m yours, and Santa Esmeralda, that’s right, if I seem edgy I want you to know I never meant to take it out on you, never ever, baby, you got that? I'm sorry. Let’s try again. Cristal and white cake for another sixteen years, didn’t mean to take it out on your sweet face. If I had a ring, I’d give it to you. You’d wear it then, wouldn’t you?
The tile hurts Robbie’s knees. It’s wet, too. Soaks through his pant legs. With what, he doesn’t wanna know.
Walls pulse with sound, here it’s so dim, and underneath the stall is a window of bare feet and boots and heels. His legs aren’t nice enough for that.
Last thing he ate was ice cream in bed, to finish off the evening meal of liquor and smokes, waiting to go out, impatient, Levon had been taking too long to get ready.
Now Levon doesn’t take long at all, and Robbie’s mascara runs. Nose going, too. God, when had this ever been enjoyable?
Lemme do you, I wanna, baby, c’mon, so Robbie stands and unzips and—
“Holy hell, whose are those?”
“Dominique’s…” Nervous, unsure if he’d taken it a step too far.
“And they fit?”
“Surprised as you are. A bit tight up the back, but I guess that’s just the cut.”
“She knows you took ‘em?”
“No.”
“Shit...same color as your scarf...hell.”
“So you don’t hate it?”
“Baby, you should’ve done this years ago.”
Lick him through the lace, slip a thumb under the satin string on the side, rub his hip. Shirt unbuttoned, clinging to his skin with sweat, and then his stomach is being kissed, until all parts of him grow interested, and there’s something to suck down.
The molly blinds him. Bends his sight, and shakes the air, and the walls are leaning and deep blue and Levon glows. Robbie grips his arm, under his shirt, where his collar has opened even wider, purple glitter on his shoulder, half-hidden, sweeping down his chest. How had he not noticed it before? Painted on. Shining. It comes off on his fingers like fairy dust, better than the powder up his nose.
Release is falling, plummeting downward, and Levon catches him before he can crash. They gotta go, other boys want the stall now, and so they end up in a corner, watching the dance floor and smoking.
A leather outfit takes center stage, doing wicked things that don’t seem legal to do in public, on a crowded floor, and it finally offends Robbie’s sensibilities, he has children, and so they leave, out into the cool early morning air, stumbling and spent, heading for home.
“I think I’m in love with Emmylou.”
“Who isn’t.”
Four-thirty in the morning and cheap styrofoam cup coffee, staring at each other in the elevator. They’d walked all the way back from the Castro through the fog, too restless for an easy cab. Robbie’s new coat is already dirty, and Levon looks taut and irritable without mother’s milk.
“You regret not asking her out?” Robbie asked.
“What, for a drink? She’s married.”
“Saw you go up to her after.” He smiled. “You’re charming enough. Besides, since when has marriage stopped you?”
They got out on their floor.
“Ain’t nothing wrong with talking about music, Duke. She sang the hell out of Evangeline. Since you don’t sing…”
“She did.” Robbie rubbed his mouth, staring out at the carpet, putting each foot in front of the other and wondering if it was possible to feel the tick of his watch against his wrist as he did now. He examined a button on his coat, and swiped a bit of lint off the sleeve. His nose and ears were frozen from the December air yet still burning up from the club. Sweating out the drugs and gin. “That she did…” He downed the last of his coffee.
“And you played the hell out of it, too.”
“We all did.” Diplomatic. Robbie got the key out and unlocked their door. Levon trailed in right behind him, already getting handsy. “You really do it all, don’t you?”
“Hm?”
“Singing and playing guitar and mandolin and drums—”
“Can bang a few chords out on the piano, too.”
“See what I’m saying?”
“Oh, don’t play modest.”
“Eh?”
“Acting like we’re all so special to you.”
“She sang the hell out of Evangeline,” Robbie said finally. Repeating. “Given the circumstances.”
He hung his coat up and kicked off his shoes. The bed was unmade, unwelcoming, cold, and the bathroom was a mess of glass and glitter and general chaos, boys who couldn’t clean their rooms properly, not having any mothers or wives around to pick up after them.
Levon took the easy route and swept the counter clean with his arm, all their shit right into the tub, where more stuff clattered and shattered and Robbie just laughed because possessions were nothing, unlike obsessions, and they liked getting messy and childish anyways.
He went to wash his face, but Levon stopped him and kissed the dirty tracks of makeup down his cheeks.
“Leave it. Like it that way.”
“S’dirty.”
“You bet it is, baby.”
“That’s not how I meant it. Can I at least brush my teeth?”
“Be my guest.” Levon handed him the toothpaste. “You really write that the day of?”
“What?”
“Evangeline.” He arched an eyebrow. “Well...ain’t all you. You swiped it off that Henry—”
“Wadsworth Longfellow?”
“That.”
“Oh, not entirely.”
“Do tell.”
Silence for a long time as they brushed their teeth, and something about bristles over enamel, that wet soaped up sound of foam, the ache in his shoulders and greater ache in his knees made Robbie uncomfortable. Searching for a comfort that just wasn’t there anymore, as much as they tried to deny it. Gave themselves shows to play and little daily dalliances, car rides and still sitting next to one another when it was expected. Whispering, hushed, because people expected them to laugh about things, like brothers, even when there wasn’t anything left to say.
This whole trip. The hotel, the shagged out bed, how Levon had held Robbie’s hand on the walk home, fully confident here, in a city like this, that they were safe doing so. All of it, a ruse, stalling, in denial of what had just defined them. A last waltz if there had ever been one. Curtain down and bed made, and God, sometimes you make me feel so deep, so unendingly, and it’s exciting and scary, and what scares me more is how much I’m in love with the sadness of knowing that you and I aren’t supposed to go on forever, that we gotta part ways sometimes, and why do I like crying myself to sleep thinking of you leaving me? Damn you. Goddamn you.
“S’one thing to pull something fake out of thin air. I don’t know.” Robbie shrugged and spat out more toothpaste. “Real life isn’t that difficult.”
“Real life is the hardest shit there is.”
All finished and clean, Robbie kissed him softly, kept his eyes as open as he could, and took good time to separate, watching their connectedness in the mirror. Then he turned Levon’s head forward, too, so they had no choice but to stare at themselves.
“You’re too sullen. When did you get so mad?”
“Always been.”
“Nah,” Robbie nipped his ear. “I don’t believe it.”
“A man ain’t mad until he’s mad at you.”
A misstep, quick as flight. Robbie’s eyes went dark. Embarrassed. He let Levon go and went and climbed into bed.
“I didn’t make Evangeline up.”
“Got that part.” Levon climbed in next to him and took his hand. “Baby, I’m too fuckin’ tired...you wore me out tonight. Jus’ go and say what you mean.”
Robbie stared at their clasped hands, unmoving, unblinking. At last he said, “Evangeline and Sam had it good, you know? And then Sam gets swept up. On the boat, his gambling, maybe even a woman, I don’t know. Something way greater than him, something he got no control over, and he gets pulled away, drowning, dying, and all Evangeline can do is stand and watch, just slowly going insane. I can’t make this up, Levon. You’re…”
Robbie finally looked at him. He was so so tired, face-fucked and strung out. Something pretty in the night had melted down to exhaustion and abuse: the man hidden underneath all his disguises and different names and suave deflections.
“I don’t know what to do, Levon. I don’t know what to do. I’ve tried everything, and begged and pled and reasoned, and I don’t know what to do anymore. You’re gonna die, and I can’t do anything to stop it.”
He put his hands over his face, beyond ashamed, and was so pitifully pulled close, held like a child.
“Don’t die on me, don’t die, don’t leave me. Don’t leave me like you did before. S’all anyone does, an’ I can’t—” It broke into a sob.
Levon wished he couldn’t hear the pain, the raw ugliness of it, echoing into the stagnant morning. Primal and broken, calling for whatever lurked in the darkness outside like it might howl back.
Did he have a scar? Along the bridge of his sloping nose, so often hidden by shades and frames and wire rims.
So Levon went looking for it, and found it and said nothing about it, and kissed the space between Robbie's brows, and promised him eternity.
Summer, Los Angeles, 1975
The sounds outside are muddied in the night.
Cars on the road, cars even farther off on the 1, Sara in the living room playing the piano, children upstairs all tucked in and asleep. Ocean at the porch door. All blended together underneath the scratch of pen on paper, and Bob got up to refill his cup and fix himself a few slices of toast, and it occurred to him that this only used to happen on a typewriter and amphetamines. In lonelier places than these.
A car swung into the driveway. At this hour? He heard it and then heard Sara get up to answer the door.
“Bobby, Bobby, get in here.”
Robbie stood there, half held up in Sara’s arms. It took Bob a second to recognize the thing that had rolled up to the door tonight. Robbie’s entire face was covered in blood, crusted in some spots, fresh and glistening in others. Even his hair; the fringe was matted. Blood ran stark down his neck, too, over the sternum and slipping below where his shirt was buttoned, a few spatters on the cotton.
The hands that clutched onto Sara for support were stained, too.
“Jesus Christ.”
“Bobby, he needs help.”
“Hey, Robbie, I got you. C’mon with me, and Sara’s gonna be right back alright?”
She rushed upstairs to get the first aid kit. Bob took Robbie into his arms and led him to a waiting chair in the kitchen. Robbie leaned into the touch like it was the only thing keeping him going, but simultaneously recoiled from it, like any hand was too heavy.
“Jesus Christ, Robbie. Jesus, Jesus.” It was the only thing Bob could say. Robbie, dazed and smothered in blood, watched him dumbly.
“Here,” and Sara brought him the kit, gave Robbie one sad-eyed look of her own, and left them be.
“Holy hell,” Bob whispered. “What happened to you?”
Get a towel, run it soaking under the tap, pat the skin clean. Except when Bob did, to expose the source of such horrid, murky bleeding, Robbie yelled.
“What? What?” Bob knelt, panicking.
“The glass.”
“Glass?”
“Bathroom?”
“Yep, c’mon,” and Bob took him and the kit down the hall.
“There’s glass.”
“Where?”
Robbie’s fingers fluttered over the space between his eyebrows. Bob caught it now. He turned them into the light, got out the tweezers, and combed for any glittering bits.
“Some on your cheeks, too. Oh, Robbie, what happened?” When he was silent, Bob continued. “Your eyes alright?”
Robbie nodded. “Miracle,” he said quietly.
Bob still didn’t know what had transpired to have such gruesomeness be standing before him now.
“Okay, let’s try this again. We should get you in the tub.”
“No.”
“I can’t see where the blood’s even coming from. And I don’t want to make it worse. We gotta rinse it out.”
“No.” Less sure now, crumpling.
Bob unbuttoned Robbie’s shirt. And Robbie let him. He stood there passively, staring anywhere but Bob’s eyes, but brittle, like he could break at any moment. His own eyes were bloodshot.
It was like all the times Jesse and Jakob got hurt and Bob had to clean them up and they just stood there, unsure, incapable, letting him fix it.
“And your shoes.”
“Oh.” Robbie kicked them off. Bob knelt. Pants unbuttoned, dropped to his ankles. Bob helped him step out each pant leg. Then his underwear. His shirt slid off his shoulders like losing wings.
“There you go.”
“Thank you.” Just a whisper.
“Of course.”
“Gimme your hand”
He helped Robbie, still bleeding, get in.
“Okay, turning the tap on. Can you bend to it? Get your face…”
Slowly, the water ran, and Robbie let it cover him.
“There, mmhm, there you go…” Bob cradled his head under the stream. When Robbie pulled away and brushed back his wet hair, the blood was all but gone, and he was clean.
Bob saw it now. A thin gash between his eyebrows. Could’ve been worse. Could’ve easily been a lot worse, deeper, deadlier.
“Robbie.”
“Hm?”
“Who did this?”
“What?”
“Who did this to you?”
“Nah, s’my fault.” He drew his legs up.
“Robbie,” and Bob took his chin and twisted so he would look. Then he saw that Robbie was crying. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
“Please, please, don’t…”
“What?”
“You can’t tell anyone. You can’t.” He cried harder. “Bobby.”
“Robbie.”
“You can’t tell anyone or say something or…” Robbie grabbed his arm, dug in like it was the only last thing in the whole world to hold. Absolutely terrified. “Because if he finds out that you did…”
“Jesus Christ.”
“I’m so sorry.” Then he bent to the water, head in his hands, and his whole body shook.
For a long time, they sat that way. Robbie cried, and Bob rubbed his back. Cupping handfuls of water, drawing it up over his spine and neck, thumbs digging at the spot of the back and skin just above the surface line, again, even softer this time, the water a soothing mantle, it’s own rhythm. Outside, there was a quiet patter of footsteps. But Sara must have heard their sounds, because the footsteps left soon after that. Then it was just them again.
“Robbie, you need to leave.”
“No.”
“I will help you.”
“S’all anyone says to me. That I gotta go. Dominique says it, and you’re saying it, but you don’t…”
“Don’t what? Understand? I don’t think there’s much to figure out.”
“I can’t.” Crying again.
Bob immediately regretted getting him worked up. But Christ, it was some of the most sickening shit he’d seen in a long while. All of it.
“Call Dominique,” Robbie said suddenly.
“What?”
“She’s waiting for me. She doesn’t know what happened. Tell her I’ll be home soon.”
“Robbie, you aren’t going home like this.”
“Call her.” He was quietly furious.
So Bob went and got Sara and made her call and when he returned to the bathroom, Robbie was still sitting there, staring at his feet.
“Bobby, I can’t leave and you know it.”
Bob said nothing. He leaned against the door, hands behind his back, watching Robbie impartially.
“‘Cause it’s not just leaving him. It’s leaving the Band, the whole fucking thing, and if I’m not around to keep an eye on him, then—”
“Jesus Christ, why do you care!”
Robbie turned his head to face Bob, and was suddenly, for a single lingering moment, so severe and scowling and sure of himself that Bob was scared.
“Bobby, I wish it was a choice. I wish.”
“I think almost anything is a choice.”
“Was Sara a choice, then? Falling in love with her? Could you control that?”
“What are you admitting, Robbie?”
“As if you don’t already know. I go, I leave that fucking mess, and they all go. Over the edge. Gone.”
“Then end it. For everyone.”
“I’ve tried.”
“Then clearly you haven’t tried hard enough.”
Robbie hugged his knees to his chest and looked down, away from Bob’s face.
“You’re sleeping here tonight. Told Dominique you were. And she doesn’t know,” Bob added quickly.
“I don’t know why I keep coming to you. I know how you feel, and how I feel…”
“Because you know how you feel differs from what you should feel. And I’m on the other side of that fence, watching you nearly get yourself killed to save another man, and it pains me like nothing else, man. So you come here for the truth, no matter how much it hurts. No matter how much you don’t wanna see it.” Bob came and knelt by the bath’s edge, got his arms up and leaned close enough to see each of Robbie’s eyelashes and the lighter amber flecks in those deep dark eyes, those sad exhausted eyes, and how the lines around them had grown deeper than they were nearly thirteen years ago since they’d first met. And the ugly split between his brows, and Bob stared and stared until Robbie couldn’t take the scrutiny anymore and looked away.
“I’ll hold the mirror up, then. For you. Want you seeing yourself the way I gotta suffer it. What’s it gonna take, huh?” Bob ducked in and kissed the shell of Robbie’s ear. “What’s it gonna take for you to leave?”
In the end, the answer is absolutely nothing.
Sunday, December fifth, 1976, and the bright noon sun has burned the fog clean off the skyline, but San Francisco remains cold.
Robbie wakes up alone. Goes looking for his love in the other room of the suite and then the bathroom, and only then does he realize that all of Levon’s things are gone, too. Even the other side of the bed is neatly made.
Blind optimism, desperation, is looking for a note, and by the time Robbie finishes scouring and climbs back into bed, naked and shivering and sad, he feels foolish.
He has made it to the morning.
White walls, white sheets, asleep, naked and breathing alone. He has made it to the morning, and the light that comes in the bedroom window is bright and brilliant, and Robbie half-wishes he hadn’t woken at all.
So he lights a smoke and lays back on the big bed and opens the gates for whatever tears want to come, but nothing happens, as hard as he tries. Before he can stop himself, he’s picking up the bedside phone and dialing. It rings a while, and for a second, he’s terrified the other end won’t pick up. But Bob answers.
“Hello?”
“Hey.”
“Hey there. And to what do I owe the pleasure?”
Bob doesn’t seem to understand the severity of the call. Or rather, the stagnation of it. Robbie wonders how deep a person can feel until such depth becomes a void.
“Where are you now?” Robbie asks. “Home?”
“Yes. Alone. And you?” An arched brow, leaning salacious, and Robbie realizes again Bob doesn’t understand the call. How could he?
“Still up in San Francisco.”
“Oh, you stayed?”
“Yeah, I stayed.”
“With who?”
“My family.”
“And?” The enticing tone in Bob’s voice has disappeared.
“Oh, come off it.”
“Please.”
“Him. I stayed with him. We stayed. Together.”
“He there now?”
Robbie takes a deep drag and pushes at his left temple. “No.”
“Oh. I see. Well, did you at least enjoy yourself?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Did he?” Insistent, following a long silence. “Did he?”
“God, I don’t know!” Robbie snaps. “I don’t know! It’s torture. Absolute torture, you understand? Day and night, I’m in complete agony. I can’t tell.”
The brief silence on the other end says his outburst surprises them both. Finally, Bob asks, “You can’t?”
“No! No, I can’t. I can’t ever tell.” Still half-shouting. “Whether I mean something to him, if he still loves me, or if I’m something else. Something dumb. A plaything. Entertainment.” By the end, he’s run-out. Breathless and quiet again.
“I always thought it was pretty clear what you were.”
“And what might that be, if it’s so clear to you, oh Enlightened One?”
“You can’t be that upset if you’re still taking cracks at me.”
“I’ve always time to be funny.” Unseen, Robbie draws one bare leg up to his chest like armor. “Please, if it’s so obvious to everyone, just tell me.”
“Robbie, honey, did something happen? What’s going on?”
“I don’t wanna talk about it.”
“You calling says otherwise.”
“Christ, just answer. Does he care?”
“Well, he certainly cares to a degree, if you’re both still at this nonsense two decades out. You’re not a walk in the park, man. And why are you asking me? Ask him.”
“Sixteen years out, I’m not ancient.”
“I just don’t know if…” Bob pauses and bites his lip. “I don’t know if this is how you show someone you love ‘em.”
“What?”
“I don’t know if what he does is him loving you.”
“He got a really nice room,” Robbie glances around the place, at the gilded molding and the dirty bed sheets and the expansive view of the city. He cut his finger a few days ago, on a shattered rim of a champagne glass full of expensive champagne, the scars of pleasure, and Levon had pushed him back onto the mattress and licked the blood up until Robbie was squirming and hard under him.
“...and we did plenty of enjoyable things. Took my picture by the Bay Bridge, and we went out every night, until we couldn’t stand straight enough to walk home. There was this wonderful market down the street from our hotel and everyday we’d buy a bag of fruit, these South American peaches, and…” He falters and lights another cigarette. His fingers shake when he brings them to his mouth.
“Yes, but was he kind?”
“Kind?”
“Yes. Kind. You know, how we are to one another, and how you are to Dominique and your daughters and your mom and—”
“You can’t be kind all the time.”
For a long, painful moment, neither speak.
“Robbie, my heart breaks for you.”
“Hey, I got a question.”
“And that would be?”
“When you crashed your bike...were you trying to kill yourself?”
“What?”
“When you wrecked your motorcycle, was it on purpose?”
“Robbie, I don’t think you want me to answer that.”
“And I think I do want you to. I think you already did, anyways. What’s the matter, then, with saying it aloud? God knows you’ve said everything else.”
“Yes, then. If you want an answer, an honest one. I was trying to kill myself. To end the misery, the heartache…”
“And the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.”
Bob laughs. It shouldn’t be funny.
“Zelda Fitzgerald tried it, too,” Robbie says absently.
“Killing herself?” Bob whispers the ‘killing’ as if that softens any blows and makes sensitive a subject already well and broached. “Robbie, are you alone right now? I don’t if I like—”
“Threw herself down a flight of stairs. Took too many pills.”
“Both?”
“Well, the first part wasn’t that. Fitzgerald was notoriously vocal about cheating on her. Antagonizing, you know? So absolutely bastardly to her that I suppose she didn’t know what else to do.”
“She ended up in an institution, didn’t she?”
Robbie stares at his nails, grimaces at his cuticles and says around his cigarette, “I don’t think that was justified. I don’t think she was crazy. I think she just felt a lot, a bit too much, for him, and most of the time, people don’t know how to handle that. So they slapped a big old ‘crazy’ sign on her and called it.”
“And this has got to do with what?”
“The place burned down in the end, the hospital she was in. They only identified her by her teeth and one of her slippers. How’s that for happily ever after?”
“When Shakespeare said that, you think he meant literally?”
“Huh?” Robbie raises his head. “Happily ever after?”
“No. The shocks that flesh is heir to. You think it was, you know, mental pain? Watching your mom fuck your uncle or having your dad die? Or more like being hit?”
“Why not both?”
“You’d have some dual experience, then,” and what is so pithy in his head comes out cruel and cold. Immediately, he regrets it. “Sorry.”
Robbie says nothing at first. Then finally, “Get thee to a nunnery…” he mumbles. “Had a point, I guess, telling Ophelia that. She was desperate about him and no matter what he did to tell her it was over, he couldn’t shake her. He thrashed her around a bit, and what did she go do? Goodnight, sweet ladies. Goodnight.”
Bob is a bit surprised at the unoriginal melancholy. “So sad we’re using Hamlet as our crutch, now?”
“Not a crutch, a mirror.”
“Yes, honey, I know. I’d be happy to be your Horatio. Laertes, even. Besides, I thought she drowned herself over Polonius dying.”
“Are you just adding to some list you got on me?” Robbie sneers. “Ugh.” He presses the ball of his palm to his forehead. There should’ve been a headache rattling around in there. After the night before. “You ever disappoint even yourself, Bobby?”
“All the time.”
“You were right.”
“Usually am. What was I correct about this time?”
“I should’ve left. Like you said. Last year. I….” He scrubs his face again. “That’s no way to live your life, you know.”
“Easier said than done, man.”
“Yeah, well, he beat me to it.”
“He left? You mean, with you? Had to go home sometime, right?”
Another uncomfortable silence, where Robbie fidgets on the bed a bit more. “You think it’s over? Really truly over?”
“You want it to be?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then I can’t answer that. You won’t really tell me what happened.”
“I tried, too. After what he did.”
“Tried what?”
“You and your motorbike.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“A call from Dominique. About Alex.”
“Something bad?”
“No. Not at all. She needed a ride home.”
“So you stayed.”
“I wanted to give her all the rides home that Alexander never gave me. Or Jim, even. Lee was always complaining about being a shit dad, anyways. So I never crashed my bike. Figured it was the least I could do for my children.”
“Well, I did crash my bike and I’m still here. You are, too. And that’s good.”
“Doesn’t entirely feel that way now.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t wanna talk about it. They’re buried together, you know.”
“Who is?”
“Zelda and Fitzgerald. Even after death, they’re still together, no matter how much they would’ve wanted something else or exactly that.”
“You still thinking about that?”
Robbie closes his eyes and leans his head back on the headboard. For a moment, he wishes he weren’t so alone. Solitude is so private, but in this moment he feels remarkably lonely. And not just because he’s woken to no one but himself. Even Bob will do, all pale skin and curled hair and bright mouth, just someone anyone, in this bed right now. Where he can be held compassionately.
He wants a body atop his or to smell Bob’s scent, strongest and sweetest right under his ear, a place Robbie has kissed many times, when they're completely alone or making love.
“You never scared me.” Robbie finally says.
“I never what?”
“You never did anything to make me afraid of you. Thank you.”
“Robbie, I don’t know what to say to that.”
“I used to think that’s what taking something for granted was. Not worrying or being scared. I don’t know.” He shrugs. “Maybe it’s the other way around.”
Love shouldn’t ever have him looking over his shoulder and locked up in some dirty bathroom and trying to figure out how Dominique will put the kids to bed by herself, because he isn’t there to do it, or how she’ll explain he never will be again.
He carries the scars of losing Alexander and the things Jim has done to him and the things many others have done, too, and he’s happy to carry all that if in doing so, he can shelter his children. Protect them the way no one has protected him. In fact, he wishes now, as a father himself, a man perhaps past the pinnacle of his career, that he could've gone back and protected himself, when he was nothing but a boy.
That boy, the bright-eyed one, on his back in a green field in Arkansas, under a sky as boundless as his heart and what it had to give, and whoever was atop him, whatever hands held his body, did so with only love and care. When Robbie had let himself be cradled that way, when he’d given up everything because he never thought anything bad could happen if he did.
“Robbie, you still there?”
“Yeah, sorry. I should go.”
“No, it’s alright. Just, um, just call me when you get home to Malibu, alright? So I know you’re home.”
“Why would I—”
Before either of them understand fully, Robbie breaks. Bob stays quiet. Best, even, if he doesn't mention it at all. The cries sound muffled on the other end, as if in an attempt to keep them hidden. But he isn’t surprised. Robbie has been holding back tears since “I Shall Be Released”, and a man can only hold on for so long.
“I’m sorry, sorry, I gotta go.”
“Yes, yes, of course. Call when you’re home?”
“Yeah.”
Robbie hangs up. Oh, how he hates this. All of it. And the true loneliness of everyone around him not-quite-understanding his pain. How deep it runs. How much he loves it. How he worries that painlessness isn’t feeling at all, and maybe that’s why he's never truly developed a good solid knock-you-out-numb addiction. The hurt is agony, but it’s real and something to stand on as proof of his being here. Proof of his existence. Proof he wasn’t some mistake, no matter what Levon has said.
Robbie wants to keep crying, indulgently. But that feels privileged, spoiled, and besides, the tears are gone as soon as they come. Like passing rain. Or a flash flood. He knows he is still a bit drunk, weepy, wet and masochistic.
He is tired and sore, too, embarrassingly bruised on the knees. He showers, scrubs the old makeup off his face until he thinks he’ll bleed and digs his fingers into his skin until it stings. Suddenly he feels so ashamed and disgusting, and he wants to smash something, cut himself open, and go digging for whatever perversion has run his life for the past sixteen years. He aches, in more than just the heart, from where he’d let Levon in last night, let himself be laid down and fucked.
Look what you love right in the eye and don’t be surprised if they’re looking the other way.
Maybe the love will come back. The admiration. Give it time, a place to come back to it’s right shade and intensity. Or maybe it won’t this time. Maybe it’ll stick. Maybe you’re finally dumb enough to get hurt so bad you get smart.
Robbie leaves the glass mess in the tub, and makes up his side of the bed, straightening himself in the full length mirror by the door. Home to his wife and children. A different man. Hopefully, someone new.
He pitches the coat. Bumped up in the elevator, alone, impulsive, and when he spies a full luggage cart in the lobby, unattended, he tosses the coat atop every other case, Castro slush and gravel matted in the coat’s sable hem.
Christ, let somebody else deal with it.
He’s done going insane.