“Stronger?” I repeat. “You want me to getstronger? Do you even—”
I cut myself off when I realize how loud I’m getting. I won’t explode like this. Not at Monroe. Not at anyone. I’ve been holding it all in for weeks. It’s not getting out now.
“She...was my life, Monroe.” I force myself to say the words quietly, evenly. “I can’t just build myself a new life in one day.”
“Not in one day, but...you couldtry, Cole. She was never your whole life, no matter how much it felt that way. Nobody is ever anyone’sentirelife. What else do you want? Besides her, what else have you always wanted?”
This is getting way too Doctor Philfor me, but before I can even really think about, my eyes slide towards my bass on its stand. Monroe follows my gaze.
“Music,” she says simply. “That’s what you want?”
“I can barely play anymore,” I admit. “Not here, in this city...She’s everywhere here.”
“So leave.”
My beer sloshes around in the bottle as I jerk my head to face her.
“Huh?”
“You said you have a few weeks. Leave. Go somewhere. Anywhere. Go...I don’t know, make some kind of sick solo bass project with a famous producer. You’re a rock star, Cole. You can do shit like that.”
“Hilarious,” I deadpan.
“I’m serious!” she protests. “Roxanne left because she had things she needed to fix on her own. You can do the same thing. To put it very frankly, if she was your life and she’s gone now, then looks like it’s time to get a new life, my friend.”
She salutes me with her beer.
“Yep,” I tell her, “that was pretty damn frank.”
She grins at me. “Look, I know you hate conversations like this. I know you kind of hate conversations in general, so I’ll let it go, but just think about it, okay?”
I can at least give her that. “Okay.”
Turns out I do think about it. Turns out I can’tstopthinking about it. The longer I mull it over, the longer it starts to seem like a real option. By the time a few days have passed, I’ve realized it’s myonlyoption.
Other than what I had with Roxanne, the only thing I’ve poured years of my life into is music. It’s my salvation, my holy calling. It’s the thing that makes me feel like I’m a part of this world, like I’m reallylivinghere and not just passing through. Sherbrooke Station isn’t just a band anymore—not to me or any of the other guys. It’s almost scary, the power we all feel when we’re playing, when we’re up there in front of thousands of people shouting the same words and clapping to the same beat. We’re making moments people will carry with them to their graves.
And I’m on the path to losing all of it.
Sherbrooke Station isn’t going to stop for me. The guys are my brothers; from the start, they took me in for what I was. They won’t blame me for needing time, but they won’t wait for me either. This ride we’re on is too powerful for us to stop and too important to consider bailing off of. If one of us falls, the rest will salute him and keep on going.
I don’t want to be the one falling. I can’t be. When Roxanne left, I felt like she took all the colour out of my world and packed it in the bag she brought to Toronto. I spent so long trying to shape myself around her that I forgot what it felt like to stand up straight, but I want to learn again. I want to plant my feet on the ground and put my hands on my bass and play until the colour seeps back into my vision and saves me from living as this damn shadow of a man.
So I got Mona, our manager, to do her ‘my people will talk to your people’ thing and managed to get an email through to James Stepper—James Stepper, bassist of The Whirlpools, the band whose poster is hanging over my couch. It was a fucking sappy message about how much his career has meant to me and how much it’s inspired me in my own, but I knew it would probably be my only chance to contact him and that I better make it count. I was told not to expect a reply, that he doesn’t have much to do with the industry anymore, and after a few days went by without any news, I was ready to give up hope.
Then word came from one of his ‘people’: he’d invited me to come spend some time with him at his place in Miami.
I talked it over with Mona and the band, who were all fine with me missing pre-Australia rehearsals so I could go. They nearly pushed me out the door, actually. I think they may have been bracing themselves for me to announce I was quitting. After triple-checking that Auntie and the family would be okay without me, I bought my ticket. Twenty-four hours after the message came through, I was on a redeye flight to Florida.
I step out of the terminal and blink in the blinding sun. We’ve never played anywhere in the state before, and I’ve never travelled here on my own—the trip down was actually my first time on a plane by myself—but I don’t head for the beaches or the boardwalks. The taxi from the airport takes me straight to an address out in the suburbs, where we pull up in front of a small, Spanish-looking house with an overgrown lawn.
I shoulder my duffel bag and grab my bass’s case before shutting the door and watching the cab pull away. I have no idea what I’m walking into. James Stepper must be pushing eighty by now, and the invitation described him as being in a ‘stable but delicate condition.’
I walk the stone path up to the front door and wait while the bell rings. A very mom-ish middle-aged woman in scrubs answers, but she doesn’t have time to say anything before an aged voice coming from somewhere down the hall behind her starts shouting.
“I said I could get it, Camilla! It’s the kid from Canada. Let me see him.”
The woman gives me an exasperated look and steps back to reveal a thin, weather-beaten old man with salt and pepper hair shuffling towards me with the help of a cane. He walks like every bone in his body is stiff. The sight is enough to make you want to take his arm or offer him a chair, but there’s a trace of defiance to him too. I’ve only known him for a second, but I can already tell he’d stomp your foot with that cane if you tried to help him out.
