Six Feet Under the Stars

In the silver light of the lobby doorway everything seemed reminiscent of a 1930s black and white film. It gave just the right amount of visibility to catch the tortured look Alex was giving me as rain unforgivingly pelted the foggy glass of the lobby door.

It was the same expression he’d been flashing me with for the past fifteen minutes after I told him that Caitlyn was the right choice for him. It was a look that said, ‘I’m really sad right now. Please feel sorry for me and forgive me.’ But I wasn’t buying into any of that.

I sighed loudly, “Maybe you should just head back upstairs.”

The depressing bubble surrounding him was stifling me in a storm cloud of my very own. My mind urged me to stay strong and stick to the road I had begun to go down. No U-turns allowed. But my heart was communicating very different things; with every beat, it hurt a little.

Alex looked offended and huffily said, “I’m not going anywhere. Not until you admit what you said back there was bullshit.”

“Not going to happen,” I warned him while charging ahead towards the gift shop.

Glass doors were closed over the entrance with a crooked sign announcing, ‘Back in ten minutes.’ However, peering through the glass a sales clerk was plainly visible, kicking his feet on top of a desk full of receipts and bopping his head along to a portable CD player straight from the 90s. With an easy push, the doors swung inwards and I ventured forth confidently into the stuffy room.

“Sir?” I asked loudly over the blaring sounds of ‘Another Saturday Night’ by Sam Cooke. The sales clerk didn’t move. Slowly, I touched a hand to his arm and he ripped the headphones off of his ears in an instant looking quite startled.

The balding man was angry being caught in the vulnerable position and spoke acidly, “Can’t you read? The sign out front says we’re closed.”

“Hey, don’t talk to her like that,” Alex came out of nowhere and took a united front with me on the other side of the cashier station. Crossing his arms over his chest, I was surprised how intimidating the singer could look with the flashes of lightning behind him.

The clerk looked flustered, “Sorry, sorry. You scared me is all.” With a stubby index finger, he pushed the off button on the CD player and the music cut off abruptly. “Gotta love some good ol’ Sam Cooke. His voice is as smooth as butter.”

Preferring a gruffer lead vocalist myself, I only continued on to the problem at hand, “We’re looking for some batteries for a flashlight. I think I saw some down here the other day. Maybe you can steer me in the right direction.”

“Sure, sure.” He pushed back his chair and his large belly rubbed the side of the front desk as he side-stepped a trash can over flowing with papers and Doritos bags. “They’re right… here.” The plastic packs of batteries were hidden close to the ground on the left side of the desk. “I have to warn you in advance that our register system is down because of the damn storm. It’s like Hell itself is trying to swallow the Earth out there. Haven’t seen a storm this bad around here in years and I’ve been at this for a long while.”

“This is my first time in Seattle,” I told the man conversationally as I gratefully took the double A batteries he held out for me.

“Sorry the city isn’t treating you so well.” His statement was more true than he would ever know. “This should clear up in a matter of time. The storm just has to scream and yell before it wears itself out and fades away. Oh, and I’m Hank by the way.”

“Melanie,” I introduced shaking the hand he offered me. “That’s Alex over there.” The band member was busy studying the pink fabric of a rabbit shaped doll wearing a T-shirt advertising the Space Needle.

Hank let out a long breath and then wheezily chuckled near the end, “He seems like a piece of work.”

“You’re telling me,” I answered dryly.

The store clerk laughed again, “That boy has the protective nature of a good dog. I swear he was about to rip me to shreds earlier when he thought I was getting rude with you. Just the look in his eyes. Loyalty like that,” Hank shook his head in amazement, “is hard to come by these days. Nearly damn impossible with the two divorces I’ve been through.”

“Sorry to hear about that,” I told him sympathetically though I couldn’t very well relate to divorce at any level. My parents were still going strong and I had never been put through the trials of splitting a marriage.

Hank shrugged, “It happens. Life goes on. Honestly, it’s good to have some freedom even if it took me fifty-six years to get it.”

His obvious relief made me smile. “Well, hopefully you’ll have another fifty-six ahead of you.”

“That’s optimistic of you, sweetheart. But I’m nearly an old man myself probably with only a good twenty left in me. If I can tell you something while you’re still young, it would be to not let someone that comes in your life and makes a difference go. Wish someone told me that early on.”

It was sad seeing the wistful yearning of youth in the elder’s eyes. It was like he was transported back into a simpler time and place, somewhere of great familiarity. I wasn’t sure how to relate to the pining of younger years, being only twenty-one myself. Someday I figured I would know what the store clerk was talking about.

After a few moments, Alex came up to the two of us and broke Hank out of his reverie, “How much are the batteries? I only have a twenty on me so don’t try to pull anything over on me.”

Surprisingly, Hank rolled his eyes and lumbered back behind the counter. “It’s on the house.”

Before any of us could thank him, Hank had put on the headphones again and the next song on the CD, another Sam Cooke number called ‘You Send Me.’ And I left the shop thinking that maybe his voice wasn’t so bad after all.

“That guy seemed a little on edge,” spoke Alex once we were back in the gloomy lobby. “Mood swings or something.”

“I thought he seemed pretty nice,” I disagreed. “It seems like you were more interested in that bunny toy then talking to him anyway.”

“Well, they’re trying to sell that for fifteen dollars. It probably took less than a dollar to make in some crummy factory somewhere in the world. That’s just ridiculous.”

“Hey, you can use All Time Low for this. Just get to writing some material on the outrage of plush rabbit toys being made in Thailand. I think you have a good start.”

It was surprising when Alex laughed because I hadn’t heard the sound in a long while. “You always come up with the best band ideas. You should be our manager or something and get a start on this.”

“Maybe later,” I said sarcastically. Snatching the flashlight from his hands, I strolled to the sitting area of the lobby which was filled to the brim with fancy violet chairs arranged in separate communities. I plopped down in the nearest one and worked to hollow out the inside so the fresh batteries could go in.

Sighing dramatically, Alex sank down in another chair next to and the playful atmosphere of the previous few minutes vanished in an instant. The two of us were plunged back into the angry-awkward feelings settling back down. Softly, the singer asked, “If I start talking will you listen to me?”

“It depends.” I answered without meeting his eyes, focusing solely on finding the little plus and minus signs in the flashlight. It never made sense why they made the symbols so difficult to locate in the first place.

“On what?”

“What you’re talking about.”

Alex outstretched his legs to kick at a loose brochure that had fluttered to the carpet, “Well, if we don’t say anything we won’t get anywhere.”

“We already did talk,” I reminded him, finally popping the new batteries into position.

“But you didn’t hear what I had to say,” protested Alex defiantly. “You always seem to jump to decisions too fast without finding out all of the facts. It’s not good.”

“Here’s me jumping up again,” I said standing up and testing out the new batteries; they worked and the lobby flooded to light in a narrow stream. “Let’s go.”

Without further protest, Alex angrily stomped beside me to the stairwell and slammed his feet on every step as we ascended back to the fourteenth floor. I knew I was being an ass by not letting him speak, but I really wasn’t in the mood to be swayed in opinion. I needed the stability of my thoughts right now and couldn’t risk Alex taking that away from me.

The return journey seemed much longer than the first one. Maybe it was the climbing up that made the difference. But I thought it was the anger radiating off of Alex that seemed to slow the trek down as if we were on the twentieth floor, and not the fourteenth.

Relief flushed through my system as we walked back into the hotel room and saw our friends huddled together. Unsurprisingly, Jack had pulled out his stack of playing cards and had a heated game of poker going. Caitlyn sat off to the side huddled in Zack’s sweatshirt surveying the illegal activity with hard eyes.

When Alex entered, she immediately forced a smiled and ran a smoothing hand over her hair to fix mistakes that weren’t there. Alex and I immediately took spots on the opposite sides of the room, hoping that the rest of the group wouldn’t notice. Self-consciously, I sat next to Jack on the floor and tried not to flush pink; after Alex had pointed out something was going on between Jack and I in the stairwell, I felt strange having the two best friends in the same room with me.

However, Jack didn’t know that Alex was clued in to all this and shimmied closer to me on the floor. Knocking his knee against mine, he flashed me a wide smile and then ended up making a terrible play while distracted. Rian chuckled and took the pot of money gladly. “Better luck next time, Jackie.”

Jack scrunched his eyebrows, “I thought I had you for sure that time.”

“Shouldn’t have passed,” Zack told him while collecting the deck of cards and shuffling it quickly but efficiently. “You in Alex? Melanie?”

I turned down the offer, but Alex jumped at the chance and immediately threw his only twenty in the middle of the group saying it’d be a ‘high stakes’ game. As Zack dealt out the cards, the singer left for a minute or two and returned with a bottle of wine.

“Party night?” Rian questioned.

Caitlyn glared at him for obvious reasons; she was pregnant and couldn’t partake in any of the drinking fun. However, it was soon obvious that Alex was going to take things too far that not. By the end of the next poker game, he had already polished off a bottle of red wine and was well into another bottle of the white variety.

Like true pals, his friends kept refilling his glass trying to get him as drunk as possible by the end of the second round. Actually while playing poker, they were simultaneously taking bets for how much Alex could drink before puking. The singer was oblivious to it all and kept guzzling down the alcohol.

I wasn’t sure if the behavior was linked to our early conversation but I didn’t like how much Alex was drinking. He was getting more and more boisterous as time went on, throwing cards and knocking unlit lamps over. At some point, Caitlyn got tired of the childish drama and turned to me, “Hey, you wanna leave the boys to be idiots and go on the balcony with me?”

I was surprised she asked me, but agreed nonetheless after Alex shouted ‘penis’ at the top of his lungs for the fifth time. The two of us walked outside unnoticed. The rain was a heavy drizzle and the overhang kept us dry for the most part as we took a seat on the patio furniture provided by the hotel. The metal chair legs made a loud scrape as I pushed it closer to the Seattle skyline.

Wrapping her arms around herself, Caitlyn gave me a small smile, “It’s nice to have some girl time. Back in Baltimore I don’t really have too many girl friends. This is nice.”

Somehow I wasn’t shocked at the lack of female friends in Caitlyn’s life. But it took me a moment to realize that I hadn’t been around another woman in a while either. I had been hanging out with the rowdy band and fixing equipment with the male roadies for the past month. I was long overdue for some girl time.

I responded with a grin of my own, “It is nice. There’s so much testosterone around me these days that it’s hard to fit in time for girl things. You know, Gilmore Girls and nail polish.” I held up my chipped red painted nails to show the injustice of it all.

She laughed, “I never liked Gilmore Girls.”

“Me neither actually.” I admitted, and the two of us laughed once more. After a moment of silence, I asked cautiously, “Are you ready to have a baby?”

“No,” she answered honestly. “I’m trying to though. I ordered a crib the other day and am starting to stock up on some diapers. It all doesn’t feel real though. I mean, I still can’t believe I’m pregnant. It won’t hit home until I’m holding the baby.”

“Wow.” That was all I could think to say.

Caitlyn nodded minutely, “It’ll all work out. I have to believe that.”

“I’m sure it will,” I told the mother-to-be encouragingly.

She grinned a thanks in my direction, “You know, you’re really nice.” I made no response because I wasn’t really sure what to say. After a moment, Caitlyn continued, “Usually girls are really bitchy to me. I think it’ll make this easier.”

“What easier?” I asked suspiciously.

“Talking to you.” Caitlyn told me, “I didn’t just come out here to get away from the children back in there though it is a good perk to it all. I just really wanted to talk to you.”

“About what?” The question came out though I already knew the answer.

“About Alex.”