Missing Parts

The wind was getting up and the fog was descending, hovering over the water like a thick, creamy blanket. Billie Joe could hear the water sloshing against the wooden boardwalk and the seagulls crowing overhead. A furious yell drifted across from the yacht club and he turned to see a crew of sailors struggling to moor their boat in the wind, hauling ropes and swearing as the white-water thrashed against their hull.

He turned his head to look at Mike. The bassist hadn’t said anything for what felt like a very long time, but then he hadn’t spoken a word himself either. He rested his chin against his knees and looked back out at the water.

It hadn’t taken Mike long to find him. Only half an hour after storming across the studio parking lot and screeching out onto the highway, there were four missed calls demanding attention on the screen of his phone. He knew he had to talk to them sometime, he’d told Sherlock the same, but the moment the detective walked out of that door he felt incapable of even thinking straight, cold and alone on the bench in the lobby with Sherlock’s handkerchief wrapped around his fingers.

One text message later and Mike was on his way. Berkeley Marina. He didn’t suppose it was any surprise that his best friend of twenty years had known exactly where to find him without any further instructions – this was one of their best smoking spots as teenagers, after all. Concealed by trees, dropped down from the road, just out of sight of the few passing cars and the wanderers on the Municipal Pier. It was one of their favourite hangouts back in the day, when all the crazy in that damn Berkeley house got a little too much.

“You still want to do this?” he heard himself ask. It was the question he should have had the balls to ask months ago and it had been sticking on his tongue for the past ten minutes. Throwing it out there, finally, made him a little dizzy.

“Yeah,” Mike told him, without a second of hesitation, but his eyes were hard, as he turned them away from the water to look at Billie Joe. “I do. But not like this. We need to figure this shit out and start wanting to… be together again.”

Mike sighed, leaning back on his elbows and stretching his long legs out in front of him.

“We had some great nights here, y’know? You and me. I… I thought that would be forever, that… we’d be old dudes, hangin’ out and… jamming in our bedrooms and… writing shitty sappy songs about girls that we were crazy in love with for, like, five minutes at a time. I never even imagined a time when I couldn’t just say whatever dumb thought popped into my head to you or… a time when I’d worry that you’d be mad at me for feeling badly about something… you know what I mean?”

Billie Joe nodded, swallowing back tears. Mike sighed, then continued.

“So I guess… look, I can deal with whatever, Bill, just… you and I need to start being straight-up with each other again. Cut the bullshit. If you’re finding things tough, man, just tell me, just… don’t make me feel like whatever shit’s goin’ down with you is my fault.”

Billie Joe lowered his head, resting his forehead on his arms.

“I know,” he murmured, in a small broken voice, “I know and I… you’re right. None of this is your fault. I’m sorry, I just…”

Mike reached out to tangle a hand into Billie Joe’s unkempt hair.

“I’m sorry, too,” he assured him, “Look, I’ve been a dick to you lately because I was mad at you. Let’s just… quit being dicks to each other. Yeah?”

“What about the music?” Billie Joe questioned, raising his head to look at Mike with emotional green eyes. “… I meant what I said back at the studio, Mike, I… I just can’t do it anymore, can’t write like I used to, it’s… it’s gone…”

Mike shook his head.

“It isn’t gone. You’re stressed out… and maybe a little depressed. It’s tough to be creative when your mind is under so much strain. We just need to take our time, man, and relax a little. Seriously, Billie, because… shit. If I was even half as good a bass player as you are a songwriter, I’d….”

Mike trailed off, his eyes narrowing in confusion for a moment.

“Fuck, man. Y’know, I’d still be in Green Day… because it’s the greatest fucking band in the world.”

Billie Joe grinned.

The bandmates were quiet again after that, but it was a good quiet, a peaceful, accepting kind of quiet that neither of them had felt in far, far too long. Billie Joe lit his last cigarette, took a long drag, then passed it to Mike and the two friends continued to stare out at that Bay Area fog that had always been a part of home.

Then there was a third voice, flung out into the calm.

“We haven’t sat here in a while.”

They both started a little at the sound of his voice, high and a little nervous but unmistakable all the same, and two heads turned to see Tre standing on the grass bank, hands stuffed into the pockets of his blue jeans, sneakers scuffing the dirt.

“No…” Mike murmured, after a hesitation that had left an uneasy silence between the three. “I guess it’s overdue.”

Billie Joe scratched his heel in the ground, wondering if he should even admit he still came here as often as ever. Tre hovered on the bank, keeping his distance, and he could tell he was weighing up which of his band mates it would be safest to sit beside, if either of them. He ended up staying right where he was.

“M’sorry I hit you.”

Billie Joe raised his eyes to meet Tre’s, but the drummer was staring at the ground, his arms folded, protectively, across his chest. He looked small and lost standing there alone, watched by the two people who had thought they knew him better than anyone in the world.

“I hit you first,” Billie Joe shrugged, listlessly, and it was true. The angry, bruising evidence was beginning to darken across Tre’s cheekbone and he wasn’t ready to issue any apologies about that.

Tre swallowed.

“Yeah… guess I asked for it. I forgot you could pack a punch like that though.”

Billie Joe frowned, as he tried to remember the last time Tre had been on the receiving end of his fist. He drew a blank. The last person he could remember planting a shiner like that on was Derrick Howey, that asshole that stole his girlfriend at a garage show back in Rodeo. In fact, he was almost sure Tre had helped.

They were silent again and, this time, it was Mike that stepped up to break it, doing so with a long sigh.

“Remember when we were recording that first EP? In that shitty little studio that smelled like stale pot and B.O… where none of the headphones fucking worked properly and we had to hold that mixer cable in with electrical tape? Look at where we’re at now… we got everything we ever wanted and we stopped caring if what we were making did it justice. We have the coolest fucking job in the world, you guys and… we’ve been turning up to work like it’s a fucking chore.”

Billie Joe nodded, glumly, because he knew Mike was right.

“Listen, Tre,” Mike continued, his voice a little softer, so much that his bandmates had to strain to hear him over the crashing of the water and the thrashing wind. “If… if you don’t want to do this anymore, then… I mean, I’ll be… it’ll break my fucking heart but it’s your call and I’ll respect your decision. I just… I don’t want anyone in this band that don’t want to be here. Actually, I don’t want anyone in this band that don’t live it and breathe it and go to sleep and fucking dream about it and… want it to stay that way for at least as long as they can imagine.”

Billie Joe bowed his head, feeling the back of his throat begin to burn with emotion, as he was transported back to an afternoon almost twelve years ago when he had huddled between Mike and Tre on a couch that was really only big enough for two and signed his name on a record executive’s dotted line for the very first time, dizzy and elated and absolutely knowing - knowing beyond any flicker of doubt – that he was going to be a fucking star and that he didn’t want to do it with anybody else at his side.

“I still want this,” Tre told them, his voice soft but firm, and Billie Joe felt relief flood his bones, wrenching the emotion from his body, as he let his forehead drop onto his knees. He knew he wouldn’t ever have wanted to hear him say anything else. “But… the way it used to be, back when it was fun and the best part of all was just getting to hang out with each other all day. I’m sorry for what I did… really. It was a shitty-ass thing to do. But I knew it would either make us look at ourselves and, I dunno, fix what was wrong or break us to pieces and… I figured it was worth it.”

Tre came a little closer, then stared out at the choppy whitecaps skipping on the water for a moment. He waited for Billie Joe or Mike to say something in response, but neither of them did, so he carried on.

“I didn’t get any fucking joy out of this, you guys. I wasn’t clapping myself on the back and congratulating myself on my criminal genius. It was fucking awful watching how upset you got when you found out and… lying to you guys isn’t something I ever want to do again. You were so wound up I… I was gonna come clean about the whole thing and then… the next thing I knew there’s fucking detectives on their way from London and… there were two more people I was gonna look like a total douche in front of. I guess I thought I’d take my chances but, shit. There’s no fooling that Holmes dude.”

The pair remained silent and Tre bit his lip, continuing to hover for a moment, before moving to take a seat on the other side of Billie Joe, settling tentatively a foot away. Billie Joe turned to look at him, his eyes searching Tre’s for a moment and seeing nothing but barefaced sorrow and regret. He turned back to the water.

“You did look like a fucking douche.”

Mike snorted, then, and Tre let out a breath, not having realised he had been holding it until Billie Joe had spoken. He nodded, because there really wasn’t any contesting his band mates on that score, then reached into the inside pocket of his jacket.

Billie Joe’s eyes widened in surprise, when Tre placed a hard, flat object into his hand and he felt his heart speed up, as he closed his fingers around cold plastic. He recognised his own black scrawl across the paper inlay, but he would have known what it was without it.

880 Studios 6/30/2003
‘Cigarettes and Valentines’
Green Day

“Shit…” Mike mumbled and, as Tre bowed his head, Billie Joe had to agree. The trouble that this piece of plastic had managed to stir up in the last month, it seemed almost impossible to believe he could be holding it in the palm of one hand. A week ago, he thought he would have done anything to have it in his possession again. Now, though, it felt like it was burning a hole right through his skin.

“Jesus…” he murmured, “Please tell me it hasn’t been in your fucking pocket this whole damn time, Tre.”

Tre shook his head, smiling awkwardly.

“Seriously? With your detective sniffing around? I kept it in a safe place… it’s been under my mattress for three weeks.”

Billie Joe and Mike stared at him incredulously for a moment, then Mike let out a chuckle of disbelief.

“Safe fucking place! Oh my God, Tre, you asshole. Like either of us would have looked there… I know what else you keep under your fucking mattress.”

That made Billie Joe grin, too, before the three of them dissolved into nervous titters that gave way to the kind of laughs they hadn’t shared in much too long. Billie Joe gave a worldly sigh, letting his head drop into one hand, as he stared down at the recording he still held in the other.

“So, what do I do now?” he croaked.

Tre shrugged.

“It’s up to you,” he insisted, quietly. “Whatever you want, man, I’ll… I still want to be in this band and I’ve told you how I feel but … I think I’ve kind of signed away any rights to make the decisions right now.”

Billie Joe nodded, then turned to Mike, who shook his head.

“Fuck it, man… just… I’ll do whatever you want to do. I know you’ll do the right thing.”

Billie Joe turned the plastic casing around in his hands a few times, his mouth skewed in careful thought. He licked his lips, then got to his feet, and Tre and Mike watched him in confusion.
“Bill…” Mike frowned, “What are you…”

He didn’t have time to get the rest of his question out, before Billie Joe had taken a step forward with one foot, drawn back his arm, and launched the tape into the air so hard he almost fell over completely.

“Fuck…” Tre gasped, his jaw dropping, as he and Mike scrambled to their feet just in time to see the fruits of their bleak, dispiriting labour sail through the fog and splash, almost silently, into the San Francisco Bay.

The three of them stared at the choppy water for a moment, almost as if they expected it to make some kind of reappearance, before turning to look at each other with expressions of shell-shocked disbelief.

“You were right, Tre,” Billie Joe shrugged, by way of shaky explanation. “It wasn’t horseshit. But it wasn’t our fuckin’ White Album, neither… and I don’t think I’d ever have been able to listen to it without hearing this whole shitstorm play out again.”

Mike reached out to slide his arm around Billie Joe’s shoulders, giving him a reassuring little shake, his eyes remaining on the water.

“It’s alright,” he told him, “This isn’t the end, it’s… it’s a new beginning. Just… let’s not rush into anything. I know you aren’t finding things easy right now and… I think we all need to work our own shit out before we get in the studio and start throwing all our fuckin’ baggage at each other again, y’know?”

Tre echoed Mike with a murmur of agreement and Billie Joe nodded, rubbing his hands over his eyes.

“I’m just sick of all the shit, you guys,” he muttered, “I’m sick of fighting with you, taking bullshit pressure from record execs who know jack shit about music. I’m sick of trying to be a good parent and listen to my kids when I’ve got lyrics flying round my head that won’t come out the second I try and write them down and… I can’t sleep, even though that’s all I ever want to do and I’m sick of Adie looking at me like she doesn’t know whether to feel bad for me or be fucking disappointed. Being in my own house makes me stir crazy because every time someone switches on the damn TV, it reminds me that, y’know, the country is in the hands of a fucking nutjob soaked in oil money leading us into a war that scares the shit out of me and… now people aren’t supposed to eat carbs anymore because some fuckin’ quack decided they were killing everybody and… y’know, all of a sudden, kids are listening to music on their computers that they don’t even need to pay for and… our fans used to hang out in garages and record stores and now they talk on, like… Myspace and I don’t even understand what they’re even’ saying anymore and… I’m fuckin’ terrified of what my eight-year-old is looking at on the Internet because the TV keeps telling me he’s probably cybering with middle-aged weirdos that wanna-”

“- Billie Joe…” Tre laughed, tangling a hand in his friend’s hair and giving his head a playful shove. “Jesus fucking Christ, man. All Joey does on your computer is play Tomb Raider and watch skateboarding accidents on YouTube. You need to chill the fuck out and stop thinking about everything all at once. Just do some deep breaths and take in one thing at a time.”

“Or,” Mike countered, with a sidelong smirk, “Stop bottling all this shit up and acting like a crabby fucker and do something with all this anger and resentment. If you don’t like something, do something about it, right? Didn’t you always say that?”

“Yeah…” Billie Joe mumbled, scratching his foot in the dirt again.

“Well, then. You want something to write about? Sounds like you have plenty to me. And you’re right, the world’s fucking screwed. It’s time there was something other than vacuous bullshit on the radio and someone actually said something about all the shit that’s going down in our own damn country. So instead of moping around and sniping at each other, let’s channel how fucking pissed we are into something worthwhile and make a record that’s way fucking darker and more dangerous than anything Tre has under his mattress.”

Billie Joe looked up at Mike, then grinned, and Mike watched his eyes light up, briefly, in a way he didn’t remember seeing for a long while. He smiled, when Billie Joe wound one arm up around his neck and one around Tre’s and pulled them both close to his side for a moment as he looked, silently, out at the Bay that had swallowed up what he hoped was the last trace of a time in their lives he didn’t ever want to go back to. He grinned, when Billie Joe turned his head and pressed a warm kiss against first his cheek, then Tre’s.

“I love you guys,” he whispered.