Hitchers

CHAPTER 34

When I finally regained control of my body two days later I was shaving in a room at the Hilton, and I had a raging hangover. I put the razor down and toweled off my face. Grandpa hadn’t finished, so parts of my face would be whiskery, other parts smooth, but finishing was a waste of my precious time. I grabbed my phone and keys, and ran. Running made my head pound even worse.

When I had watched that Bears game, when I had chatted with Grandma about the weather, I hadn’t understood just how little time I had, just how precious every minute was, how I should make every one count. Now that I was aware, I wondered how I should spend my precious moments.

I was no closer to shaking Grandpa than I’d been the first time he took possession of me. There was nothing in Deadland to help me. During my latest internment I’d considered one crazy plot after another: drag another soul in with me to oust Grandpa (only one ghost to a customer, after all), or lure a soul eater who would somehow eat Grandpa instead of me. Fantasy. Pure fantasy. There was only one way to exorcize the dead, and that was to take away their drive to return. With Grandpa that wasn’t possible.

Maybe I could save Mick, or Summer, though. I could think of no better use of the precious moments I had left than to help my friends.

Friends. Was Summer just my friend? If so, why was the worst part of this the thought of never seeing her again?

I had loved Lorena, had lost her and mourned her and finally let her go and moved on. The memory of love is not the same as love. Summer had been right all those weeks ago: we weren’t meant to speak to our loved ones again once they leave this world.

I dialed Summer’s number as I cast about in the parking lot under the Hilton, trying to remember where Grandpa had parked.

“Where are you?” It was Lorena.

“Just leaving the Hilton.” I tried to mask the disappointment in my voice. “What’s going on there?”

“Gilly is working. I’ve been trying to find you, waiting by the phone, worrying.”

“How long has Mick been gone?”

“I haven’t been keeping track, but almost as long as you.”

“How is Gilly doing on the album?” I finally spotted the Maserati, tucked behind a minivan. I dragged the key along the side of it, really grinding it, before getting in.

I caught pieces of her muffled conversation with Gilly before Lorena came back on the line. “Gilly says he’s about halfway through ‘Love Two Sizes Too Small,’ then he’s got ‘The Winds of Change.’ But he’s stuck, because he feels rushed to finish before Mick disappears and there’s no longer any point in working on it, and he doesn’t work well under pressure.”

The Maserati’s tires squealed as I backed out of the space. “Well that’s just terrific. Can’t he just cut the last song? It’s a double-CD, for God’s sake. What difference does one song make?”

Another pause and muffled conversation.

“It’s a themed composition. It all links together, and the final song is crucial.”

I muttered curses under my breath. “If Mick comes out, don’t let him go anywhere,” I said. “I’m on my way. I’ll see you in a couple of minutes.” God dammit, Mick needed to help him. I had to find some way to make that happen.

As I sped to Mick’s I tuned to the news on the radio. It made me crazy that Grandpa had no interest in knowing what was going on in the rest of the city. Maybe he was afraid they would discover a way to exorcise hitchers and didn’t want me to hear it.

More people were massing outside the perimeter, and a lot of them were armed. NPR reported it as a loosely organized group; at least three people claimed to be leading it. More people were arriving every hour; the National Guard was getting uneasy.

When I got to Mick’s I brought Gilly some iced tea from the fridge and made him a sandwich, gave him a pat of encouragement, and left him alone to work.

Lorena and I talked quietly on the couch until we heard Mick curse softly and rise.

“All right, Mick?” I said.

“Yeh,” Mick said noncommittally as he pulled a beer from the fridge. The top popped with an angry hiss as Mick went out of his way to avoid going near Gilly’s work.

I didn’t understand him. He was acting like Gilly’s project was radioactive. “Come on, Mick, you’ve got to help him finish.” I went over and checked Gilly’s compositions. It didn’t look like he’d made any further progress. I swept up the pages from the table and held them up to Mick. “He’s down to two damned songs! One and a half, really.”

Mick shook his head slowly. He looked awful, his eyes half-closed and ringed with red, his skin grey.

I didn’t know what else to do, so I shoved him in the chest. Beer splashed over his wrist as he was jolted backward.

“Hey, piss off!” Mick flung his bottle sidearmed, sending it spinning over my head spitting beer in a wide arc. “I already told you, but it didn’t get through your thick skull.” He poked savagely at his own temple. “I can’t write any more. My brain is a bleeding fried egg. Gilly had to write ninety-nine percent of my last album, and that was twenty bloody years ago. I’m done. Washed up.”

That’s what all his foot-dragging was about? I put my hands on my head, shook it in disbelief. “Can’t you at least try? I think you’ve got a fighting chance to get out of this alive.” I put Gilly’s work back on the table. “That’s more than I can say for myself. I wish I had a chance. I’d do anything, if someone would just tell me what I needed to do.”

Mick just stared at his feet.

“Why can’t you at least try?”

Slowly, he raised his head to look at me. “Because it’s fucking brilliant, that’s why.” He lowered his voice. “Can’t you see that? It’s—” His eyes teared up; he shook his head, not able to find the words. “It’s fucking genius. It’s Sgt. Pepper. Anything I add will spoil it.”

Summer was back. She’d been standing quietly by the couch; now she spoke up, her voice gentle. “But it’s meant for you. He’s writing this for you, as much a gesture of friendship as anything. If you’re gone, and you don’t perform it, everyone loses. You heard him—he’s freezing up.”

Mick picked up a guitar leaning against the dining table, studied it as if he’d never seen one before. “If he finishes in time, I’ll sing it.” He plucked a string. “If not, tell Gilly he’s got my vocal cords now; he can bloody well learn to use them.” He looked at me. “Whatever you do, don’t let him overeat and turn me into a bloody Elvis. Make him take me a few laps on a stationary bike once in a while. He can go out on tour as me. My big comeback.” Silent, Mick replaced the guitar, stared down at Gilly’s work. He shook his head in disbelief, marveling. “Fucking brilliant.”

As if on cue, Summer and I approached from either side until we were at his shoulders, as if corralling a skittish mustang. Summer put a hand on Mick’s shoulder; as gently as I could I pulled out the chair Gilly had been using.

“He can always erase it,” I said, offering Mick a pencil. “If it sucks I’ll make sure Gilly chucks it. I swear.”

Mick appraised me, then looked at Summer. He pulled one side of his mouth into a dry half-smile, reached and plucked the pencil out of my hand. “Fine. You want to see how washed up I am? What an empty shell I am? I’ll write some bloody music. I’ll take a dump on Gilly’s bloody Mona Lisa.”

As he pulled up the chair and retrieved the pair of reading glasses from his shirt pocket, Summer and I retreated. We grabbed our jackets and kept going right out the front door.

We tried to step through the narrow door into the elevator at the same time, bumped and stumbled in like a couple of stooges.

Laughing, Summer nudged me with her shoulder. “Klutz.”

I laughed, put my arm across her shoulders for a minute, drinking in the electricity of that touch. I wanted to wrap my arms around her. Maybe I would have, if Grandpa hadn’t taken over at that moment.