“It’s a good thing I kept my old passport and renewed it. Tanner Davenport is definitely not Asher Blackwell. At least, the press and people don’t know that yet. They only know my face and stage name.” He deftly puts on the wig, adjusts it, and hurries to the escalator. “Wait here. I beg you, Tucks. Wait!” The last part sounds like a plea, and I nod.
Obviously, I’ll wait. Of course, I won’t run away. I always do what he says.
A short while later, he returns and grabs my fingers while pulling the wig and sunglasses off with his other hand. “My family won’t find us here; no one will suspect that we’re at Caesars of all places.” He opens a heavy door that separates the hotel’sshopping center from the hotel rooms, and we walk down a corridor. The air conditioning blows a mixture of cinnamon and eucalyptus into the hallways, a combination that increases my nausea. “Sam posted a photo of me online, so everyone suddenly recognizes me. The photo spread like the bubonic plague, Tucks. He didn’t mention my real name, but Chester or someone must have discovered this photo.”
I nod.My brother is Mr. Spock, I type on my phone.That’s how they knew where we were. I wrote to him because he said he wanted to end his life. I’m sorry.
“You shouldn’t be sorry. Just imagine if Mr. Spock hadn’t been your brother. You did the right thing, even if it turned out badly for us.” He glances at me and smiles. He seems so normal—not sick at all.
We study the arrows with the room numbers and continue toward four hundred and five.
“Your brother must have been scared when he heard about the girls from my family,” River says darkly. “Zozoo told Ches and my father... after the photo was made public and my father called him.”
I stop.I don’t understand any of this!
“That’s why we’re here. So I can explain it to you in peace.” He pulls me along. “Sam and Zozoo wanted to get me into a psychiatric hospital. I was really sick. We were booked for gigs, but they knew that I wouldn’t be able to sing. Too many drugs... too much alcohol. I always need it...”
During those phases, I add quietly.
We stop in front of room four hundred and five and River holds the key card against the locking mechanism. A green light lights up, and the door opens.
“Come in.” He shows me in like a gentleman.
When you’ve spent weeks in run-down motels, every nice hotel room seems like the most luxurious suite. I turn onthe light, and ceiling spotlights illuminate everything like stage lights: a black king-size bed, a kidney-shaped black couch, and gleaming stainless steel accents.
Click. Suddenly, it’s dark again, except for the colorful lights of the city shining through the window. “Love me like my demons do,” I hear River say. “Akif Kichloo. You can write that in your Kansas’s Strange & Beautiful Words: A Collection,Tucks. Do you like it?”
I nod in the blackness and suddenly feel infinitely vulnerable. I remember a quote from Hemingway that I never fully understood:The things of the night cannot be explained in the day. Because they do not then exist.
I write it down, and River reads it. “Oh yes,” he says seriously. “It would be the time to make a good song out of it... but you know, with you, things always looked the same. Day or night, light or dark, it didn’t make any difference. Maybe that’s the secret of love.”
I feel blind and deaf because I understand so little of what he feels. Besides, he’s speaking in past tense even though we’re still together.Tell me everything, I type and hold the phone out to him.I don’t understand anything. Nothing at all.
He reads it. For a moment, he looks at me intently, as if trying to assess something, and I feel stupid and naive. This is Asher Blackwell. Every girl wants to sleep with him, and here I am, alone with him in a hotel room, wanting only one thing; to know who he truly is and if I mean anything to him. As if I could ever have meant anything to Asher Blackwell!
Without saying anything, he strolls to the minibar and pulls out a few bottles. Then he drinks two shots in a row and wipes his face. “Zozoo is our guitarist, Sam plays the bass, and Jasper the drums. They said it was so bad, they had to tell my family. They were afraid I would...” He pauses.Jump, I add in my mind. He looks past me for a moment, then back at me. “They knew Ihate, hate, hate my family.” He slams the mini-fridge door shut. “I rue the day I told them about my parents.”
I nod, and he takes a third shot that he had put on the minibar earlier. He is sick, I think now, even though he seems so normal sometimes. While I was waiting for him, I googled and found out that people with bipolar disorder often numb their mania and depression with alcohol.
To calm down!
“Don’t look at me like that, Tucks, I’ve got it under control!”
Is that why you jumped into the river three years ago? Because you had it under control?
He stares at me in disbelief and then slowly shakes his head. “My family wanted me admitted to the clinic immediately in the spring. Right after Zozoo, Sam, and Jasper took me to Cottage Grove. I was in such a miserable state it didn’t even register. I think it was the drugs. Cut. Blackout. The next morning, I woke up in my old room. My parents had locked me in, so I climbed down the rose trellis like I was a teenager again and walked to the clinic alone. If you admit yourself, you can leave at any time. The day I met you, I had just been discharged. There’s nothing anyone can do about that if you’re clever... and I’m pretty good at that, Tucks, pretty good.” He pulls out his cigarettes, and in the darkness of the room, the lighter flares up like a sparkler. Cigarette smoke fills the air. There’s something familiar about it, something utterly comforting, but my hands are still ice cold. I look at him, not knowing who he is anymore.The things of the night cannot be explained in the day. Because they do not then exist.
River McFarley. Tanner Davenport. Asher Blackwell.
Maybe he’s none of them. Or maybe they’re all one in heart.
“Tucks, don’t look at me like I’m a stranger, please,” he suddenly whispers, wrapping his arm around my neck. He pulls me close, wanting to kiss me, but I turn my head away.
“Hey, baby.” He presses his cheek to mine without letting go. “I’m still River. Still the same. We can be anything we want.” I silently shake my head without looking at him, although I would love nothing more than to kiss him. River sighs as he lets go of me and wanders over to the window. In keeping with building codes, the windows on this floor can only be cracked open. “Afterward, I wrote to Zozoo and the others that I needed time alone. Time to think about myself and my life and Demons ’N Saints. Above all, I didn’t want to take any more pills. The pills are hell... they make...” He falls silent.
A zombie out of you?
He nods several times. “You don’t feel like yourself anymore. It’s more like you’re walking through a fog. They shut everything down. I can’t really explain it... Zozoo and Sam called me and urged me to come back, so I made a pact with them. If they always knew where I was, it would be okay for a few weeks. They wanted to meet up with me every now and then to see how I was doing.” He inhales and stares at the artificial volcano in front of the neighboring hotel, which is throwing fake lava into the air. “Well, since you were with me, I had to cancel the first meeting—that’s when they suspected.” He casually stubs out the cigarette butt in a decorative vase.
