deadly nightshade | fever in, fever out

chapter 43: "chuck, there's a worm in your soup"

Sam hung up the phone and ran her fingers through her dark hair. She had waited until five days following the announcement in order to tell her parents about the accident as she had no other means to do so. She knew that they would not react to it well, even if she was thousands of miles away. Add to this, she never liked the idea of one of her parents being in an exorbitant amount of pain.
The tears in Ruben's voice and his telling Esmé what had happened: she bawled off in the background. She had invited them to the funeral over in the Bay Area, but he told her that they had too much to do with themselves.
"It's not really a funeral, though," she clarified, "we're just scattering his ashes at Maxwell Ranch near Vacaville. But—I'll be out there this weekend, though."
"Okay," he had told her with a shuddered sigh, "be safe—I'm so sorry, sweetie."
She poured herself a cup of coffee and, before she could pour in the cream, a knock on the door caught her attention. She padded into the living room, past the vase of yellow tulips, which still stood strong and high even well after Cliff had picked them out for her.
Aurora stood there before her with a glass square covered with a sheet of tin foil and a deep violet velvety sweater about her body.
"Hey, Aurora," she greeted her, and she eyed the little square dish cradled in her hands. "Thank you. What's this?"
"Blondies courtesy of Emile," she said in a low voice. "And I told him I'm going to have to spend a lot more time with you, though."
"Thank you," Sam repeated as Aurora handed her the blondies which then allowed her to put her arms around her best friend.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered into her ear. Sam sighed through her nose and then she stepped back for a better look at the blondies: she took off the foil and she revealed the square of that soft yellow top, complete with bits of white chocolate mixed in.
"So when do we go back out to San Francisco?" she asked Aurora, who strode into the apartment.
"Friday, in two days—we leave the day of, too, real early. Jon gave me the week off, though. It's getting kind of stressful, you know?"
"Oh, yeah. I couldn't hardly focus in class this week so far. I'm glad we're leaving on Friday, too—I don't know how much more I can take it. I just want to get it over with."
"Well, as you know, it's not a technical funeral," she pointed out.
"Right, they brought him home over the weekend and then they had him cremated," Sam recalled as she strode into the kitchen and she put the blondies in the fridge. "Ray and Jan said they want him scattered over Maxwell Ranch near Vacaville. I actually had to look that up because I didn't know where that was."
"Really?"
"Yeah." Sam surfaced from the kitchen to find Aurora had stuffed her hands into her sweater pockets. "By the way, what're Metallica gonna do now?"
"Look for a new bassist," she replied with a shrug. "Even though they're on a different label now, I'm going to oversee it with them. Speaking of which—did you get a copy of their new album?"
"I haven't, no."
"We'll have to do that when we go out there," Aurora vowed, and Sam sighed through her nose again and she lowered her gaze to the floor. Aurora padded over to her with her arms wide open and she held her close: she lay her head against Sam's chest.
"I don't like seeing friends in pain," she said in a muffled voice. "Especially if it's my best friend." She lifted her head for a better look at her. "My parents endured a lot of it when they were back in Korea."
"I can imagine," Sam confessed with a break in her voice. Her eyes burned with tears again.
"They were almost separated at the demilitarized zone—the mines were activated and my father almost lost his legs to an explosion. Had my mother not held his hand and ran away from there with him, he would've been a goner and I wouldn't be here right now."
Sam brushed away a tear as it burgeoned from her right eye.
"My father had a death wish then, too. He believed there was no way they could run away from Korea, especially the North. But they managed to escape. My mother and the grip of her hand saved him, from the line of fire and from himself."
"If we were there in Sweden, Cliff would still be here," Sam recalled those words from that night.
"I have no doubt about it." Aurora lay the side of her head against her chest again and Sam closed her eyes to keep the tears at bay. She knew it was going to be a difficult weekend, especially when she still couldn't hardly focus in class the next day. She expected Cliff to be there on the sidewalk upon her emergence from the school building, but she took the subway alone, and with that hat rested upon the crown of her head. Every so often, she caught a whiff of the way his hair used to smell once she removed the hat. If only there was a way in which to preserve it for eternity.
She and Aurora left for the airport at four o'clock in the morning: any homework that she had would have to wait a few days because there were more pressing matters to tend to. She thought of Cliff during the whole flight: it didn't help matters that they were seated at the front of coach class as well, two rows behind first class. She sat there for the first hour of the flight with her arms folded across her chest, such that when Aurora woke up from her nap, she peered over at her with her tired eyes in a daze.
"Is everything alright?" she asked her.
"Just thinking," Sam replied in a soft voice. "When we visited my parents, we sat near first class."
"Oh, damn," Aurora muttered and she cleared her throat.
"Yeah. We can't move, though." She sighed through her nose yet again, and they landed San Francisco before the sun even rose there, right through that thick bank of fog from the Bay itself. They were greeted by Lars, who had showed up to the airport in a long black overcoat and a pair of black leather boots.
"I like this," Aurora told him with a gesture all about his body. "I like this a lot."
"Something a little a propos, dare I say," he told her as he guided them out to his car.
"Thank you for picking us up, by the way," she continued.
"There was no way I was going to let the two of you stay in a dingy hotel," he said, but Sam tuned out their words. She gazed out the window to the thick dark fog as it blacked out the inlets: off in the distance, she noticed the dim lights of the Golden Gate Bridge. It almost didn't seem right, that Cliff had died in a place so far away and yet he was so staunch on staying in the Bay Area. He even put a bet on something that felt as far away as Sweden itself in order to be with her, which meant if it didn't happen, there was no way it would last.
And yet she couldn't stay angry at Cliff for that.
This was his home. This was where he needed to be, away from the darkness of Scandinavia and on his own soil. If it was to be long distance until she finished school, then she could make it happen. But that was the belief, and it had vanished into the blackness of the Bay fog as it greeted them outside in the dim parking lot.
Lars drove them to his small house up in Sausalito, and Sam wondered when Marla and Zelda would be there with Anthrax given she didn't see either of them on the plane. She even brought this up to him.
"They got here late last night," he told her as he served her and Aurora fresh cups of coffee. "Well, Charlie and Marla did, anyways. He called me last night and said they had checked into their hotel at around eleven o'clock last night. No idea about the others, though."
"Thank you, by the way," she said to him as she took a sip of the coffee. Like a warm gentle hug from the inside. She thought about what he had told her in that room. Even though she couldn't hardly focus on class, she did however feel an itch to draw something in her journal, something outside of class. That time around, it was a mistake for her to not take her journal or any of her paper along with her. She thought about the ink drawings she had made the last October and she made a mental note to do it again at some point.
But by the time the ceremony came about, she knew there was no way she could focus on anything that needed to be drawn up on paper.
The fog had cleared out to pure blue sky but it straddled the Golden Gate Bridge as well as the inlet there before Maxwell Ranch. A small stretch of land fitted by a handful of lush green trees and a small building that made Sam think of a church given there was a small painting of Jesus next to the front door when they walked inside. Everyone had donned themselves in solid black: she peered across the room to find Legacy had showed up themselves, as did Exodus given she recognized Zetro's head of hair next to Chuck's long black smooth curls. Alex towered next Eric, Greg, and Louie, complete with a yarmulke on his head: that little gray sliver poked out over his forehead.
Meanwhile, five more unfamiliar men congregated at the far end of the room and they looked as though they had just come from a nearby high school.
"Nice to see Death Angel here," Lars declared right next to her as he took off his sunglasses. "Kind of expected them to be, but it's always nice to see them, though. Armored Saint, too. And Metal Church. And Exodus and Legacy—everyone's here! Well, not everyone, I don't see Dave or Slayer."
"Brought the whole Bay Area scene here with us," Zelda's voice crackled from their left: she emerged from the corridor in a fitted black dress with white polka dots and a black silk bolero over her shoulders. Her short bob of black hair had been combed and styled back with a bit of gel.
Sam then felt a tap on her shoulder and she turned around only to be met with another head of black curls piled atop a round head and a slender body wrapped in black leather. His face had grown fuller with the extensive touring but she knew it was him by the soft brown tone to his skin alone.
"Hi, Joey," she greeted him and he put his arms around her and he held her close to his slender little body.
"Remember if you need anything—absolutely anything at all—you can call me," he told her, and he ran his fingers through his thick inky black curls. "I'll always be there, rain or shine, day or night, on tour or not. Call me regardless of the barrier."
"Yeah, me and Marla, too," Charlie joined in behind them, and he greeted her with an embrace as well, so did Frank, Dan, Scott, and of course Marla.
James and Kirk emerged from the corridor on the left, in black shirts and matching pants: the latter had a small black lace band around his upper arm. He gestured for Lars to join them there at the corner of the room. Sam, Aurora, and Zelda gathered on the wall adjacent to the door; Joey and Dan stood right behind them. The latter set a hand on Sam's shoulder to comfort her and she showed him a warm smile in return.
"Thank you, Danny," she told him.
"We've got each other, you know," he said with a wink. She returned her attention to that corner of the room, and she noticed a little gray urn in between James and Kirk. The room fell silent, even with Ray, Jan, and Connie not even being there. She wondered about them if they were doing alright with it all.
Joey rested his chin on her shoulder, and she caught a small whiff of his soft soapy cologne on the side of his neck. Oh, the smells. Cliff still riddled in her memory but she knew Joey would never be too far away from that point onward.
"Can't believe we're here right now," Kirk started with a little break in his voice and his hands clasped together before his toned stomach. "I mean, if anything, we should still be over in Europe right now. But—here we are. Back home."
"That bus sucked, though," Lars added. "The beds were hard as a rock and they were uncomfortable. It was why Cliff and Kirk drew cards in the first place."
"They were small, too," James continued, "they were even small for you. And—you know, if it's small for Lars—you know it sucks."
"As everyone might notice, Cliff's family couldn't make it," Kirk said, "even being his biggest fans and everything. They just—they just couldn't do it. I mean, it's hard on the three of us, but they pretty much broke down, though. So—we have to act as his family." He flashed Sam a small but sad smile and she could feel her eyes burning with tears yet again. She gazed out the window with Joey's chin still rested upon her shoulder. She tuned out their eulogies as she thought about Cliff's family. She pictured the three of them congregated in their living room together. They didn't have much, but they had each other.
She knew he and his older brother had been reunited somewhere beyond the window, somewhere beyond those low pale yellow hills, somewhere beyond the vast blue.
Somewhere beyond the veil.
She knew she had to pay attention because she was the grieving girlfriend but she couldn't. All she could think about were his parents and his sister.
"He was like 'we should just kill 'em all, man,'" Kirk pressed on and he brushed away a tear from his eye. "And the bunch of us were like, hey, let's make that our album name!"
She had to get her hands on that album that Aurora had told her about. If she had to go to a nearby record shop for a copy, then she could do it for herself.
"Sam?"
Lars' high pitched voice caught her offguard. She glanced over at his holding the urn in both hands.
"Would you like the final word before we release him to the earth?" he asked her, and she nodded her head. Frank set a hand on her shoulder and she could tell that he held back the tears, even as she ambled up to the corner of the room. She held the pale cold urn in her hands, about the size of a coffee mug.
He was in there. She had to set him free. She had to let him go.
Her bottom lip trembled as she brought the stone closer to her face. She closed her eyes.
"I love you," she whispered into the crack between the urn itself and the lid. Kirk set a hand on her upper back and leaned in closer to her. She then handed James the urn to do the duty.
He led them outside to the cool crisp October afternoon, around the building to a stretch of flat field lined with tall scraggly dark trees. Two evergreens stood near the back door, and she wondered if that was the reception area. She spotted two large black speakers near there and she wondered what was about to happen once James let the ashes fly.
"Alright, Lars," he called out to his left. They all congregated there under the cold sun and a gentle breeze from the ocean made them all huddle together like a bunch of penguins. Lars knelt down before one of the speakers and he pushed a button. Against the wind, Sam could hear music.
The hard, rising riffs emerged from the speakers from complete silence: it made her think of the depths of space, or the depths of the ocean behind her.
"This was his favorite," Kirk told her in a low voice, "from our new album. It's called 'Orion'." She thought of the little indent on Cliff's hip, which made her think of a true belt. And with that, Joey put his arm around her again. Sam watched James hold up the urn, and he turned away from the winds. When the music picked up, he unscrewed the lid and he tilted the urn on its side. Some of Cliff's ashes billowed out in a cloud against the wind and towards the field.
He became part of the earth yet again. Orion's belt.
Sam bowed her head but she couldn't bring herself to cry. Joey rubbed his hand upon her shoulder.
It was a long song, one that included a small section where Cliff's bass stood alone, and another plume of ashes billowed out in light wisps. It made her think of fire flies, or fairy dust, especially when Chuck muttered, "ashes to ashes, dust to dust—until we meet again, Cliff" right behind her.
It faded out as James gave the urn one last shake and the rest of the ashes scattered about the earth before him with the wind. He lowered the urn and screwed the lid back on, and bowed his head. Lars ambled over to him as he brought a hand to his face.
Some soft acoustic guitar played out right then.
"'Fight Fire with Fire'!" Zelda declared from Sam and Aurora's right. "I love this song!"
"This was Cliff's last song," Kirk told her. "The very last song he played." She brought a hand to her chest and her face softened. That was the softest Sam ever saw Zelda, given she was always in such a punk rock mood and a mood for trouble.
"Alright, who wants lunch?" Lars called out as he let go of James.
They all doubled back inside, through that back door into a vast rec room that smelled as though it was just cleaned. Sam and Aurora took their seats at a table on the far side of the room, and Lars joined the two of them with a pair of plates absolutely full with potatoes au gratin, baked ham, and steamed vegetables.
"There's a big quiche Lorraine and some pho over there, if you'd like, Aurora," he said as he took his seat next to Sam and he handed her the plate in his right hand. "Both courtesy of our friends in Death Angel."
"Oh, thank you!" said Sam. With a little nod, Aurora climbed to her feet right then, and the two of them were left alone. Lars handed Sam a fork.
"So what happens now?" he asked her with a grave look on his round face.
"Don't know," she confessed as she dug into the potatoes. "I go back to New York and continue being the artist."
"You know how Joey and Charlie both said to call them if you needed anything?" His green eyes wandered over to the neighboring table, and she spotted Charlie, Frank, and Scott clustered together with their backs to them. Scott burst out laughing about something: Sam spotted a comic book plunked in front of Charlie. Of course!
"Yeah," she replied.
"Well, I extend that to myself," Lars told her, "especially if it has to do with art."
"That's right, you're the art guy."
"I can perhaps help you out if you wish," he quipped with a raise of an eyebrow, and he picked up a potato medallion.
"Aw, that's so sweet!" And then she had an idea. "Would you like something from me?"
"Would I like something from you—yes, please!"
"It can be totally on me, too."
"Oh, no, I don't want to do that to you, Sam," he said as he brought a forkful of broccoli up to his little lips.
"No, I insist!" she said with her mouth full. She swallowed before she spoke again. "What would you like? What medium would you like?"
"What do you feel most comfortable with?"
"Ink."
"Ink! Like—black ink?"
"Yeah."
"Okay." He paused. "I don't believe I have a photograph of my parents with me, but I do have one at home, though. You might find it interesting when we get back there..." His voice trailed off and the two of them ate in silence, given Aurora had taken a bowl of soup for herself and found herself distracted by the men of Exodus as well as Zelda on the other side of the room. Sam lifted her head at one point and she watched Zelda pick something up from the floor. She turned to her right, away from them, and she raised it over her head, clenched inside of her fist.
Charlie muttered something about the comic book store there in San Francisco being expensive, but he was interrupted by Zelda's strident shout.
"Hey, Louie! Catch!"
Louie's smooth head of hair emerged on the side of the room, about ten feet from Sam and Lars' table, and he extended his hands out before him. Zelda threw the thing at him, a glimmer of silver across the room. The guys from Legacy cheered out when he caught it.
"What even was that?" Lars asked Sam.
"Looked like a spoon."
"A spoon or a knife. What better place to play 'catch the knife'!" And Sam burst out laughing at that.
She and Lars both helped themselves to seconds, as well as plates full of desserts, a slice of cake, a blondie, and a handful of cookies. She was amazed by how much she had eaten right there, but then again, she had put on a bit of weight over the course of that year and she needed to move on from Cliff. It was time to tend to herself, and to nourish herself, even if it meant eating a great deal.
"Chuck, there's a worm in your soup," she overheard Zelda say, and it made Scott almost fall out of his chair from laughing so hard. Frank caught him and Louie clapped his hands with laughter; she turned to Lars, who picked at his teeth.
"Have you seen where Joey went?" she asked him.
"I was just gonna ask you that," he admitted. He turned his attention to the other side of the room. James and Kirk sat with Aurora and Marla and they had their backs towards them. There was something else about that otherwise joyful room. Something else missing, and it didn't help matters that he knitted his eyebrows at it, either.
"I'm going to sit with Alex for a second," Lars told her.
"Where is he?"
"Right over there." She followed his point to the door on the other side of the room, and Alex had taken his seat outside on the step. All she could see was that thick blanket of jet black curls at the back of his head: some of them sprawled down his shoulders and his upper back. He had moved the yarmulke more on top of his head but it still stood strong and high like a crown.
"Just going to check on him, you know?" She nodded her head and Lars stood to his feet with his free hand on his stomach. He strode across the floor and slipped his plate into the trash can next to the wall. He then stood next to Alex, who then lifted his head and gazed up at him. Lars said something, but Chuck and Zelda bickering about something drowned him out. Alex nodded his head and Lars took a seat next to him on the step.
Sam peered behind her to another door. Perhaps it was from merely all the food she had eaten, but that room felt so much warmer than when they first arrived there. She slid out of the chair with her empty plate in her left hand. She adjusted the band of her dress slacks and she walked out through the other door, to the clear and crisp afternoon that awaited her. The sun hung high in the school still, despite it being fall. The air was so fresh and the sky was so blue. For a split second, she missed California right there, but she knew her life was back in New York City. She stuck the plate in another trash can next to the door and, careful not to upset her stomach, she walked at a slow pace around the side of the building.
She caught the sound of Lars' laughter on the other side, near those evergreen trees. Alex's big striking voice followed. She rounded the corner and there the two of them were on the step, with the sunshine on their heads.
"Not really how I wanted to celebrate my eighteenth birthday," Alex was confessing, and he gave Lars a shrug of his slender shoulders. Those loose tendrils near the base of his head brushed against his shirt. He turned his head into her direction and the cold sun shone upon the side of his face: it accentuated his aquiline nose and the round soft shape of his face. Sam thought about one of the dreams she had had about the mysterious man with the streak in his hair, the one with the plane crash and the fire. Maybe it was the way in which his face was shaped, how he looked a little rounder from the last time she saw him over Christmas, but she couldn't help but think of that man.
Those deep eyes wandered into her direction. Deep and cold. Lars followed his gaze in her direction and he grinned at her.
"Samantha!" he called to her with his arm extended out for her, and Alex raised his eyebrows.
"Samantha?"
"Yeah. Cliff's girlfriend."
Alex hesitated, and then his face lit up.
"Oh, Samantha!" He wagged his finger at that. "I remember now. I made that thing for you by Cliff's request!"
She fetched up a sigh and she ambled closer to them with her arms behind her back; she lingered right next to Lars. He adjusted the yarmulke on the crown of his head. She swore she had seen him a few times in New York City, off in the background, and he seemed like such a shadow to her all the while. But here he sat before her, wrapped in that little black velvet jacket, and with that little yarmulke upon his head as well. He looked as though he needed to attend a bar mitzvah rather than a funeral.
"How do you like that, by the way?" he asked her, and she never realized how soft spoken he was until he spoke to her up close and personal like that.
"I love it to death," she told him as the tears welled up again. "I put it in a safe place so the graphite doesn't fade away."
"That's good." And she brushed a tear away from her eye. Lars caressed her hand and Alex showed her a small smile but it also looked like he wasn't smiling at all. He took the yarmulke off of his head and he shook it about: the little sliver of gray over his forehead shone in the hazy sunlight so it actually resembled to a little pearl. She was so close to that little sliver, such that she couldn't stop looking at it. Lars turned his head in his direction.
"So you were talking to Greg a little bit ago?" he asked Alex. "You guys' Greg?"
"Oh, yeah—I was talking to him and he told me he might audition for Cliff's position."
"Hope he can get it," Sam blurted out. "I think he'd kick ass with that position."
"Yeah, but also understand we'd need a new bassist if he got the part, though," Alex pointed out with a blank expression on his face.
"He can pull double duties, though," Lars quipped. "Ronnie James Dio did it. I can envision Greg putting his horns down and going crazy with it."
"You're just saying that 'cause I do that," Alex scoffed.
"You're quite the worker bee, Alex," Lars assured him, and he shrugged in response to that. Sam frowned at his body language. "You are, though!"
"I got out of school by the skin of my teeth, though," he declared.
"Hey, at least you graduated. I practically dropped out to become a tennis player."
"Yeah, and I had to take a break for a little bit afterwards," Sam joined in. Alex stared up at her: those deep eyes swallowed her whole. He seemed so much colder than she had imagined, and so much more distant in comparison to when Cliff got that rice paper from him over Christmas. She figured it was because Cliff himself was gone.
"I still wanna be the best, though," he told them in a low voice. "I knew from the very second I picked up a guitar when I was eight years old that it was for me. My brother told me to run with it once I got out of school."
"Playing since you were eight?" Sam was stunned by that.
"Yeah, but my parents were rather reticent towards it, though. My parents are older than that of my friends so—they don't really understand it."
He never smiled once, such that it made her squirm in that spot next to Lars. She knew it wasn't from the loss; as cool as a cucumber and those deep eyes seemed to stare right into her foggy mind.
"Complete diametric opposite of Cliff's parents," Lars remarked, and the sound of Cliff's name made the tears well up again.
"Hey, little man!" James called from inside the reception hall, and Alex scoffed at the sound of that. But he turned around and clutched onto the yarmulke as if it was about to get away from him. Sam leaned forward for a look at Kirk and the slice of birthday cake cradled in his hands. Zetro stood next to him with a lighter in hand.
"Oh," he breathed out with a raise of his eyebrows.
"I see a candle," Lars told him; Zetro left a tiny flicker of a flame on the little blue candle on top of the layer of white frosting.
"I do, too—happy birthday," Sam said with a sniffle.
"Thank you." Alex showed her another small smile. Those deep eyes resembled to the sliver of ocean near there. He was cold, much colder than what she remembered from that show over Christmas break. Maybe it was his being so young and already having a band around him that made him mature with such haste, but the whole feeling made her grimace a bit, especially when he doubled back into the building for the cake. Kirk gazed on at her and gestured to the cake, and she shook her head. He pouted and cocked his head to the side as if she upset him.
"Maybe later," she mouthed to him as she patted her stomach, and he nodded at that.
"Me, too," said Lars, "so unlike me, though. I'm like you, I like to eat."
And she watched them all congregate around Alex, the birthday boy, like one big family. Cliff had omitted so much from her. Maybe he really was that out of touch with the rest of them, more so than he had originally told her. And she knew from that point on out that Zelda was right. They needed to act in order to be a bigger part of the whole community.
He would have wanted her to move on. In the brief pocket of time in which they knew each other, she knew that he would have wanted her to. And if it meant she had to be more forth going like with Kirk there, then she would do it for him. She would do it for him in her words, and her art as well.