Choke

May 24, 2010
Exhausted, Talena grabbed her keys and her purse and bid goodbye to her coworkers at the University. Even though she was tired, she couldn’t help but feel so incredibly proud of herself and her life. Tattoos covered her arms, shoulders, and chest—most of them beautiful flowers without any particular meaning to them, other than how beautiful they looked. And that was how Talena liked her life as well as her tattoos—simple, uncomplicated by stories or hidden meanings or the past.

She got in her car and turned the radio to one of the few good rock stations in Toronto. She thought about what she would make for dinner that night, but tried not to think too much. Her first craving was for Thai. Thai sounded good. Her fiancé liked Thai food, too. She stepped into her apartment building, got in the elevator.

Her fiancé greeted her at the door, his auburn curls in a messy tangle like always. She looked up at him; he grabbed her around the waist, lifted her off her feet, and spun her around. They ate their dinner with a single tall candle unlighted between them on their tiny, room-for-two table. Afterward, they sat cuddling on their couch, watching the History channel reflect in each other’s eyes. On the coffee table, Talena’s phone vibrated furiously, displaying an American number that Talena had never seen before. She sighed. It was probably a business call from a museum on the other side of the border in New York.

She kissed her fiancé, took her phone into their quiet bedroom, and answered, “Hello?”

“Talena?” The voice on the other end was male, almost whispering. Music played in the background—her best guess was Metallica.

“Yes, this is her. Excuse me, but who is this?”

A quick, breathy laugh followed by a sniffle. He spoke more loudly this time, “Look, I don’t know if news has reached you yet, but I thought I’d tell you myself, since you knew him, too.” His voice cracked to a squeak as he said: “Paul Gray is dead.”

Talena froze, her chest hitching in sudden agony. She lowered her voice to a whisper so her fiancé wouldn’t hear. “Joey? H—how did you get my number?”

He laughed that wet, broken laughter that only comes with tears. “I tell you my best friend is dead and you ask me how I got your number,” he spat. “I went through a lot of shit, that’s how. I called our A&R guy at Roadrunner, did some pathetic begging and crying. They found your number easily.”

Tears filled her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she breathed. She really was sorry.

“It’s been a really long time. Eight fucking years.” She heard him choke one loud sob before he turned his face away from the phone to prevent her from hearing any more.

Talena bit her fingernail to keep herself from breaking down alongside him. “Joey.” It felt bizarre saying his name again. “Joey, listen to me. How did he…?”

He sucked in a deep, shaky breath to compose himself. “They don’t know yet, but they’re gonna do a—you know, an autopsy—but we all pretty much know what they’ll find. He OD’d and no one was there to help.” He started crying all over again. “Talena,” he sniffed. “I know—I know how I fucked everything up and you stopped talking to me for a reason, but can you just talk? Right now, just say stuff. Whatever. I need to hear you talk.”

“Joey, I don’t—” She looked up. Her fiancé poked his head through the door, a concerned look on his face. He mouthed to her, What’s going on? “I’m sorry, I can’t. I—I’ll call you back later, okay? I promise. Just wait. I have to go now. I’m sorry. Goodbye.”

“Talena? Wait—” was the last she heard before she ended the call.

She buried her face in her hands and sobbed. Her fiancé rushed to her side, collected her in his arms. “What happened, baby, what happened?” he cooed.

“It’s just—a person I once was friends with passed away.”

“In your band?”

“No, no, not them. It’s just really old shit that I’ve avoided for a long time. People I would have rather forgotten about. It’s nothing, really. Nothing. I’m just shocked is all.” She wriggled out of his embrace and wiped her face. She felt terrible for saying that: Paul’s death was much more than nothing.

Her fiancé knew nothing about her days as a musician, just that she’d been in a band called Kittie for a few years. He did not know about Slipknot, the European tour, the vacations and near-death experiences that followed. They never talked about her “past life.” Because it was just that: the past. He’d not been a part of it, and she no longer wished to think about it, even though it haunted her and even held her hostage at times.

---

His phone went straight to voicemail the next two days. She tried every morning, every lunch break, after work, after dinner, every evening before she went to bed. Sometimes she even woke up during the night and snuck her phone into the bathroom, and tried to call him. She chewed her fingernails down until she finally tasted blood. If it weren’t for Joey, no one would have called her about Paul. Who, then, would call her if Joey had died?

She swallowed a sick feeling on the afternoon of May 26, and typed his name into Google. She found no articles about his tragic suicide, and for that she let out a sigh of relief. Instead she found a video of the press conference the band had done the previous day. She pressed play. She recognized them all—Joey, Corey, Shawn, Jim, even Chris and Craig. They’d aged some. Corey’s hair was shaved, Shawn’s slightly gray. Joey looked nearly the same, which broke her heart. They all spoke in the same broken, devastated voice.

She couldn’t imagine. A band with so many people that had stayed together for so long—they really loved one other, no matter how much they pissed one another off. She admittedly knew little about the rest of the band, but Joey, all those years ago, once told her he’d met Paul while still in high school. Two decades of friendship.

Why, then, was he not answering her calls? She knew she’d snubbed him and hung up on him in the cruelest way at the cruelest time. But she’d promised to call him back. She was trying to keep her promise.

She tried again. And again. She went to the bathroom, then fixed herself a snack. She ate while pacing around the house. Then, she tried again.

At long, long last, he picked up. “Yeah?”

“Joey, what the hell happened? I’ve been trying to call you for two days and I’m so, so sorry I hung up on you—I just hope you’re okay.”

“A lot of shit happened, Talena,” he said flatly. “But the reason I didn’t answer is, um, I broke my phone. I just got my new one set up literally ten minutes ago.”

“You broke it?”

“Yes. I sort of chucked it at the wall. The wall is fine but the phone was busted.”

“I’m so sorry, Joey,” she repeated, knowing in her heart that he broke his phone because of her. “Do you still feel like talking?”

“I never felt like talking. I just wanted to listen.”

“I don’t know what to say. I don’t know where to begin.”

His voice grew quiet and shaky again: “Well, how do you spend your days?”

“Um, I’m an archaeological anthropologist and I work at my alma mater, the University of Toronto. We study human culture, specifically the Native tribes of the area. Sometimes we dig for artifacts they left behind. And then, well, after work I go home to my fiancé. I like to cook and do yoga, and on weekends I go hiking.”

Very softly, he chuckled. She didn’t know where he was, but she imagined him at home, laying down, balancing his phone on his face. “I always knew you were smarter than everyone around you.” There was a long pause. Neither of them knew what to say. Until Joey took in a trembling breath like he had so many times at that press conference, and said, “I miss you sometimes.”

Talena sighed through her nose. She’d had a feeling it would come to this, the moment she recognized his voice on the phone two days ago. “I’m engaged now,” she said. How many women had he seduced into cheating on their significant others? She knew she would not be one of them; she’d had her taste of him long ago.

“Congratulations,” he said. “I still miss you sometimes.”

“And, um, I’m faithful to him.”

“Good on you. I had a girlfriend cheat on me once. I was suicidal. It wasn’t fun. I missed you really, really bad then, but I got over it. I just miss you normally now.”

They used to have battles of wits like this all the time when they were together. Except they would be smiling as opposed to on the verge of tears. Talena let out a breath in resolve. “I miss you, too, sometimes. But I try not to think about back then. My fiancé doesn’t even know I toured with Slipknot.”

“Oh. Okay. I gotta go now,” he said, his voice choked. And he hung up.

Perhaps he had, indeed, called her hoping to rekindle their relationship or, at least, the sexual aspect of it. But all she’d done was hurt his feelings. That’s what always happened when Joey Jordison and Talena Atfield spoke to each other: someone got hurt. She supposed he had a right to feel that way, this time. He still thought about her, while she’d done her best to erase him from her conscience. What he didn’t know was how hard he was to actually erase. She’d spent years—the better part of a decade—trying to forget him but he still lingered. She went to the University pool and all she could smell was the chlorine on his skin the day they defiled the magazine. She saw kids wearing Slipknot shirts all the time. Sometimes ‘Duality’ came on the radio and she was forced to recognize that her breaking his heart did not ruin his career. Then came the guilt. His voice followed her and taunted her when she was alone in the peaceful serenity of her weekly hikes. She could never run away from him.

That was the thing about goth boys: they were each so enthralling and unique that they were impossible to forget.

---

The following day, Talena rubbed the sleep from her eyes as she walked into work, a giant thermos filled with black tea in tow. Her lack of sleep was finally catching up to her. She stuffed all her worries in a locked box in her brain; she then joined her colleagues in mapping out an area for future excavation. Things went well. She was doing fine. She could get through this.

Later that morning, however, her threshold came crumbling down:

Her department director approached her and her coworkers, and motioned for Talena to join her in the hallway. The director appeared befuddled and a bit perturbed as she told Talena, “You have a visitor in the front offices. Your older cousin. We told him to wait until lunch but he won’t leave—says it’s urgent.”

A heavy, cantaloupe-sized pit formed in Talena’s stomach. She didn’t have an older male cousin.

She near-jogged to the front offices. She stopped abruptly when she saw him. He leaned against the department secretary’s desk, hands in his pockets, fidgeting with his dogtag necklaces. He wore his black leather jacket though it was a warm spring day in Toronto. He looked up and saw her, then dropped his posture and looked back down like a guilty puppy accused of chewing the furniture.

“What the hell are you doing here?” She tried to sound firm, but failed. Her voice trembled. She grabbed his jacket sleeve and tugged him to the other side of the hallway for privacy.

He stared up at her, as short as she remembered him. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

“What do you mean? You should be with your band, with your family, with Paul’s family.”

He shrugged. “I don’t think they want me around.”

“Jo-ey,” she sighed, like she always used to. “Of course they want you.”

He closed his eyes and shook his head. “No, they don’t. Because it’s my fault.”

Talena held her breath. She leaned against the wall, trying to maintain her composure. “What do you want from me?” she exhaled at last.

“I—I don’t know.” His eyes filled with tears, and he hid his face in his hands. His strength was faltering; he couldn’t hold onto his emotions much longer.

“Joey.” She grabbed his wrists and yanked his hands away from his face, forcing him to look at her. “Joey. Listen. I know you’re hurting, but you can’t just show up at my fucking workplace after eight years and expect me to—” She stopped suddenly, unable to go on. She felt his tiny, fragile but strong wrists grasped tightly in her hands. “I’m sorry. I just can’t leave work for this.”

Joey rolled his watery eyes. He was always an enthusiastic eye-roller, even when sad. “Fine,” he spat in a broken voice, then pushed past her and started to walk down the hallway in the wrong direction from the exit.

“Wait.”

He stopped, spun on his heel to face her again. He no longer looked sad—only angry.

“If it’ll make you feel any better…” she paused for the courage to spit out the next words. “I’ll leave work at lunch, which is at 12:30. We’ll get some coffee or something and catch up. Then I’ll drive you to the airport and you can go home.”

He didn’t appear completely satisfied, but he agreed to it anyway.

Talena motioned for him to follow her. “I’ll show you the way out of here. And I’ll call you a cab. Do you have a hotel you’re staying at?”

“Yeah, the Hyatt.”

“Fancy.” She glared at him.

“Hey, you never know.” He winced, then laughed. Some cold leftover tears spilled down his cheeks.
Talena waited outside with Joey until his cab showed up. They said nothing, and she bid him goodbye with merely a wave. “I’ll pick you up at one,” she promised.