deadly nightshade | fever in, fever out

chapter 62: a different kind of affair

Sam wondered if she could make it to one of Testament's tour dates when she thought about what Marla had suggested to her. There was so much to consider and carry out, between them and Aurora's wedding that it made it hard to focus on her school work. Add to this, there was the new venture with the Bristol paper that Ruben had given her. So much to do and yet it felt as though twenty four hours in a day wasn't enough to satisfy it all. There had to be a way out of it all at some point, and there was so much to think about as well.
Given it was a clear day out that morning, and a break from the mid winter snows, she decided to put her boots and her coat back on and head out for a walk. She had called Belinda before hand, given she had no idea if or when she would be able to come on down to Hell's Kitchen that day, but she wanted to see how things were with Marla nearby once again. That time around, she left the black hat behind on the coffee table. If she was to let Cliff rest, then she had to let the hat rest for a bit.
It was so weird having to spend Valentine's Day by herself, but she knew that Marla did as well. It wasn't as bad as it could be, especially once she knew that the Bronx was in fact a hard place to live for a lot of people there.
Indeed, it was a rather tight borough to live in, especially once she made her way down towards the corner, and the pale gray brick of the apartment complexes sent a shiver down her spine more than the very snow that piled up about the sidewalks. And yet it was one that she felt comfortable with: when she stood at the corner for a second with her hands tucked into her coat pockets, and she breathed in the cold crisp New York air around her, she knew she was home there in the city.
A change of pace and a good look around and there was no need to leave from there.
She had no idea if Marla had already moved back down to Hell's Kitchen, but she seemed rather urgent about it when she left the apartment after they came back to New York City. And when she stood right before Charlie's building, right before those cold stone front steps, she knew that things were going to be different there. She need not let that throw a damper onto her friendship with him, however: she gazed up to the windows, especially up to his floor, and she could see that his drapes were pulled over the pane. It was still rather early, about ten thirty in the morning, but she wondered if he slept well the night before. He and Frank were her best friends after all.
A little black car drove past her and she thought about Joey. She thought about the kiss she had given him so her mother would take her eyes off of him, but in retrospect, she felt a bit of something there. The smoothness and softness of those dark lips. The way in which his body felt when she held him close to her. There was something there between them, but she couldn't exactly describe it.
She looked down the block at the wrought iron fence around the subway entrance. She only went to Belinda's place once before but she knew of the way. With the cold wind at her back, she made her way down there and paid the fare before she stepped on the train. It felt so strange to ride the subway without her hat on and without her school bag on hand, but she held onto the rung over her head all the way down to the heart of Manhattan and to that funky neighborhood in Hell's Kitchen.
All she recalled was the fact that her building stood near the cold and icy Hudson River, about a block away from the harbor.
"I mean, you can literally throw a rock from the harbor and you'll be in New Jersey," as Belinda herself put it for her.
But once she reached that cold, stony terminal, and she made her way up the stairs to the street, the memory of it was as clear as day. She gazed across the street to the little alleyway, and she knew that was it there. Sam adjusted the strap on her purse as she stood there on the curb for a second. Not too far from there was Central Park. If nothing, they could make their way up there once the snows cleared away for the fresh flowers and green grass around them.
Just standing there, it hit her: the city was art. Every part of it was a piece of art, even the places that weren't as attractive or crowded with the homeless. It all too much of a soul. Too much of a soul that she never got to see in Los Angeles, or in Reno or even San Francisco. There was no way she could leave it. There was no way she could leave when her heart was too filled to the brim with art.
She crossed the street and then, once she reached the alleway, she peered up to the two buildings on either side. Belinda's apartment had a balcony: she knew that much. Sam fixed the strap on her purse yet again as she made her way towards the stairs. Joey and those bowls of pho came to mind right then. That was it!
She knocked on the door twice and Belinda immediately answered, complete with her blonde hair done up in an extra neat and nice bun rested upon the crown of her head and her body wrapped in a school sweatshirt.
"Hey! I was wondering when you'd get here. C'mon in—"
"Just wanted to see life with Marla near to you again," Sam admitted once she had stepped inside of the warm cozy apartment. The faint but pungent smell of turpentine in the front room there made her wrinkle her nose a bit. "Have you been painting?"
"I have, yes! Just finished one that I plan on giving to the Zazulas—it's just a painting of some sunflowers, but Marsha told me that anything light is good, though. It's drying right now so I can't really show it off just yet."
"Right on, Bel! By the way, is Marla coming over?"
"She should, yeah—like she called about ten minutes ago, but I dunno entirely as to when she'll be here."
"Besides, I want to know more about Hell's Kitchen," Sam started as the thought of painting with oils made her heart skip a few beats.
"Well, this place used to be real poor—not even that long ago, either. Real poor and filled with a lot of Irish workers, like my dad was one, and I think both her father and grandfather were of the same class, too. But things have really turned around while we—Marla and I, were growing up, though. There's a lot of aspiring actors here, especially. Our parents wanted us to have a good life and do what we loved. So, we inadvertently helped rebuild this place from the ground up into a more artsy type neighborhood." Belinda then froze and she tilted her head to the side. "What's on your mind right now?"
"Marla suggested I move down here so I'm closer to you, and so I'm in a more artist's type setting," Sam replied in a single breath, and Belinda's face lit up and she clapped her hands at the sound of that.
"Would you? We can help you move into your new place!"
"Well, I have to find a new place 'round here first, though. But now that I'm here, I kinda like the idea of doing that. It'd be easier on me to get to and from school—you know, I wouldn't have to ride the subway so much. And I'll be closer to my friends, too."
"And you can fit right in with all of us artists here, too!"
"And—exactly. I'll be in an artist's neighborhood, too. The pieces just fit perfectly, Bel."
A knock on the door caught their attention.
"That must be Marla," Belinda said, and she opened the door to find Aurora right at the front step.
"Oh, hey future bride," she greeted her, to which Aurora laughed at that.
"I just wanted to give you this," she explained as she handed Belinda a little sheet of white paper. "Hey, Sam!"
"Mrs. St. Vitus," Sam teased her, and that coaxed another laugh out of her.
"Oh, jeez, so there's a lot of things going on right now that my passport is going to be voided?" Belinda groaned in a single breath.
"No, it's just over in Lebanon," Aurora explained. "So we can't travel to Lebanon with the boys if we wish to do so. You can go anywhere if you wish."
"You've got your passport?" Sam asked her.
"Just got it," Belinda replied as she tucked the paper into her jeans pocket. "Real simple to get if you haven't already."
"That might be a good idea..." Something caught her eye, and Sam turned to the shelf on the wall to her left. A series of ceramic sake cups stood right there, already glazed in earthy colors, and Sam suddenly had the idea to make some herself: she could tell that Belinda had made them in one of her classes at some point.
Someone catching their breath emerged in the doorway right behind Aurora, and Marla reached the top for herself.
"There's the lady of the hour," Sam remarked.
"I'm here, I'm here... I guess I can get the old apartment back for a thousand bucks," she informed them, out of breath.
"A thousand!" Belinda and Sam proclaimed in unison.
"Yeah. Stunned me, too." Marla then shook her head at that. "I have the first month's rent but it's gonna be brutal getting that grand, though. I want my place back, too. There was a couple who lived in there and I guess it was just too small for their huge asses." She then turned to Belinda.
"You wanna stay here with me for a bit?" she asked her.
"If it's not too much trouble," Marla replied as she let out a long low whistle. "I don't really have much option, Bel. My dad's sick and my mom's disappointed in me right now."
"For what?" Aurora asked her as she stepped into the apartment to let her inside.
"For breaking up with Charlie. I told her that he broke up with me, not the other way around. But, she's still disappointed in me about it, though." She then turned to Belinda. "I don't have a lot of stuff, but I do have Genie—the cat we found down at Montana that one time."
"I can live with a cat for a bit," Belinda declared with a nod of her head. "I like Genie, too. But the only drawback is we'll have to split the rent, though."
"That's okay, I can do that," Marla assured her.
Sam sighed through her nose as she stood with her back to the wall. She hoped it wouldn't be too much trouble to look for a place for herself there in Hell's Kitchen. She returned to the shelf on the wall to the left.
"Not to change the subject or anything," she started again, "but Bel, what's the story behind these little cups here?"
"Oh, those?" Belinda brought her hand to the shelf. "I made these in high school. And Frankie came over just the other day and he took them down to Montana and shared them with the people down there."
"Aw, that was sweet of him!" Marla declared.
"Yeah, I know! He was like 'that's actually pretty good, Belinda—mind if I share it at all?' And I said, 'not at all.' So he took the cups with him up to their new space and he shared them with everyone who works there. They work perfectly as regular cups as much as they are sake cups."
"I'm just thinking of all the things you could make with ceramic," Sam confessed.
"There's so much," Belinda replied with a shake of her head, "—the world of physical art is endless, Sam I am." She then bowed into the kitchen, and Marla had made her way in there for something for herself. Sam turned to Aurora, who was adjusting the light purple engagement ring on her left finger as if it was stuck. She then gestured for Sam to come in closer to her.
"We've narrowed it down to either the middle of May or June first," she told her.
"What, the wedding?"
"Yeah. And—" Aurora shifted her weight right there. "—we want you to be a part of it."
"Oh?"
She nodded her head.
"Yeah. Since you're my best friend, and I'm an only child, I want you to be my maid of honor."
"I'd be honored!" Sam told her; so the walk was a good idea after all.
"I'm just gonna say this right now, though," Aurora continued, "Anthrax are going to Japan next month for four dates, I think—they just got home from Britain, like their flight should be coming in at any second. And I have to talk to Charlie and Joey about something."
"Anthrax are home?" Marla asked her, concerned.
"Yeah—I think they are. Why?"
"Charlie and Marla just broke up and she's got nowhere to go at the moment," Sam told her in a single breath.
"Oh, shit!"
"Yeah, you're definitely staying with me for a bit," Belinda quipped.
"And yeah, I better get my things out of the car..." Marla downed the glass of water right then and she bowed past them to the front door.
"Here, I'll help you," Sam offered, and the two girls made their way back outside to Marla's car parked down the sidewalk, which Sam herself had never seen before but she knew it was hers.
"Again, it's not a lot," Marla assured her as she unlocked the doors, "but I'm still moving, though."
"I know how hard it is," she replied with a flash back to when she first moved to New York. She took the first suitcase out while Marla took the other two for herself; Sam offered to lock the doors again, but she talked her out of it when she said that she had to run back up to the Bronx to fetch Genie. Belinda took her things and helped lug them back up the stairs.
Sam then turned to the rest of the complex there in the alleyway, and no sooner had she done so, when she recognized that lush dark hair and those fine bangs over a black leather jacket and a knit scarf. She grinned at the sight of him.
"Hey, Frankie!" she declared and he nodded his head at her.
"Hey, you! I was just thinking about you!" She threw her arms around him and he held her close to his body.
"What's been going on?" Sam asked him with a glance up at his face. "I feel like I haven't seen you in a million years."
"Little bit of touring plus recording the new things, and then Charlie and I have to talk about some important things there at the studio," Frank explained in a single breath. "I just swung by here because I heard about him and Marla, and I wondered if she was here at all."
"She is—and where's Joey at?" Sam asked him.
"He's up there right now, too. I'm just kinda on break at the moment. Having just gotten home from a final date in beautiful Tokyo and whatnot." He then looked on at her with a twinkle in his eye, and the little piece of white gum rested against the side of his lower row of teeth.
"Our new album should be out in the middle of March, you know," he told her with an excited tone to his voice. "It's been a long road to hoe, but I think we've got it all together now."
"Oh, excellent!" And she realized that she still had yet to listen to Spreading the Disease on Dan's record player. She stopped herself right then. "Wait a minute, you guys didn't record it in upstate New York?"
"Nah, we pulled out of there like last minute. We went all way the down to Miami to get it together. Our engineers kept trying to make us sound like Def Leppard the first couple of days there at Pyramid so we were like, 'okay, what do we do?' and we started going down to Florida as a result."
Marla and Belinda emerged from the apartment right then.
"Thought I heard Frankie's voice," the former declared.
"I'm here!" he retorted with a laugh. "Hey, you girls wanna get some pizza or something? I'm kinda hungry myself."
"Absolutely!" Belinda said. "Just let me grab my key..."
"I have to get my cat," Marla stated as she made her way back down the alleyway and back towards her car, "but I'll catch you guys later, though—"
Aurora emerged from the apartment right then, and then the four of them made their way down the block to a small pizza parlor, which Marla declared was the best in Hell's Kitchen.
"In town, though, you've gotta go over to Joe's," Frank insisted as they walked inside there.
"Oh, definitely, nothin' beats Joe's," Belinda followed up.
"And there's Alex!" Aurora pointed across the room, where they spotted Alex himself near the counter with his face rested in the palm of his hand, as if he waited for someone; Sam spotted the knit yarmulke on top of his black hair so it actually resembled to a crown.
"Is he here by himself?" Frank asked her.
"Dunno—" Meanwhile, Sam and Belinda took their seats there at the table closest to the door and right underneath a little television suspended over the front counter. The hard wooden bench felt like sitting at a picnic table; Sam turned her attention to Belinda.
"You gonna be okay with Marla living with you for a bit?"
"Oh, yeah! Mar and I have been friends forever, Sam. She's my best friend from childhood. It's just—kind of sudden is all. You know, with the focus on school and whatnot."
"I think if we all lived in the same place, we'll be better with communication," Sam suggested.
"I think so, too—because when we lived upstairs from each other, we talked all the time. Her living in the Bronx really threw a damper on that between us. But—I think with her being right across the hallway from my bedroom, we can rekindle things."
Alex then strode over to them with a serious expression on his face. Sam thought about that mess left behind at the villa following Kirk's wedding and she realized that she hadn't spoken to him since then.
"Hey, Mr. Skolnick," she greeted him.
"Samantha," he said in a soft voice. He took off the yarmulke and set it down on the table before him: Sam spotted a little gray Star of David around his neck and a big black and silver stone ring on his right ring finger. Just sitting there alone on the other side of the table, she could feel his power. It was amazing how one young man could make such a statement with his silence.
"D'you get Frankie's note?" Belinda asked him with a snap of her fingers.
"I did, yes."
"That was courtesy of me, actually," she quipped in a rush.
"Well, Miss Grimes, I have to hand to you," he said with a raise of his eyebrows.
"Whoa—" Frank's voice caught their attention right then, and the three of them turned their attention to him and his gaze fixed on the television. A bit of breaking news from the Middle East. Something happened in Iran, much to Alex's shock. He gaped at the sight before him, to which Sam and Belinda were taken aback by him.
"That's—dude, what the hell."
"What?" Belinda asked him. "You're pissed about that?"
"I am—really pissed off about it," he confessed with a stern look on his face. "Like—how could our own country do that? How could they all lie to us like that? Not just Reagan, but everyone else in particular?"
Sam and Belinda glanced at one another, both of them at a loss for words. The former never really paid much to the news, and she couldn't given she didn't even have a television at her place, but it was obviously something that Alex strongly felt about. He turned his attention back to the television with a disgusted look upon his round boyish face. Sam watched as his deep eyes locked onto the screen over them, and she thought about that one song that Testament recorded, "Over the Wall". She thought back to the words written before her.
Of course. Alex kept his eye on everything and he wanted to be heard as a result of it. He fumed at the sight of the crawler and selling weapons to Iran, Sam wondered what was going through his mind right then.
"Letting it all go into the wrong hands?" Belinda followed along.
"And how," he told her as he never took his eyes off of the screen.
"There's so much more they could be doing, and here at home, too."
"And so soon after Chernobyl, no less," he added in a low voice. He rubbed the tip of his nose and then he stood to his feet and made his way over to the counter for a red cup. Belinda glanced over at Sam once again, that time with an unimpressed look upon her face.
"What?" Sam asked her, and Belinda looked over at him by the counter again. All they could see was his long curled black hair as it cascaded down to the halfway point of his back. He may have covered that sliver upon the crown of his head, but he let his hair grow out as long as possible.
"He's so precocious," Belinda finally whispered to her, to which Sam shrugged at that.
"So? What's wrong with that?"
"Don't you think it's kind of unsettling?"
Sam shook her head.
"No, I kinda like how he's got his finger on the pulse of the world." Alex took his seat there again, and he kept his attention fixed on the television screen over them. Neither of the two girls could see his face except for the very tip of his nose.
"...but I can see how it gets annoying, though," she continued in a whisper right into Belinda's ear, to which she nodded at that with her eyes large and annoyed. He then lowered his gaze to across the room but neither of them had any idea as to what he was looking at right then. Sam took yet another glimpse over at Belinda, and then she cleared her throat.
"I got Testament's letter, by the way," she told him, and he turned his attention back towards her. That was one of a couple of times she had seen his face lighten up at anything.
"Oh, good! I had a feeling you did. Do you know if Marla did, too?"
"I dunno. I forgot she was part of the club, too."
"Does she at least know about our tour this summer?"
"Yes, she does!"
He turned his head again and then Sam realized he was looking on at Aurora on the other side of the room. He raised a finger towards the two girls and then he strode away from there.
"Jesus," Belinda whispered with a hand clasped to her chest.
"What?" Sam stifled a bout of laughter.
"He's intimidating!"
"Nah, he's just focused is all."
The two of them sat there in silence for a moment as they watched Alex linger there at the counter with the red cup before him.
"By the way, what note?" Sam asked her.
"Huh?"
"You said Frankie gave him a note courtesy of you."
"Oh, it was a thank you note 'cause he helped Charlie clean up his apartment after Marla moved out. That was just something I wrote to Frankie to give to him."
"Oh, I see." She then fetched up a sigh. "Yeah, I really have to move down to Hell's Kitchen. I'll be closer to my friends and I'll be more so in the know of things, too."
"Oh, yeah, for sure. I kinda feel bad for not letting you know about certain things, Sam. You're one of our friends—you should know about us more."
Aurora then strode up to Alex with an excited look on her face. He turned for a look at her. She told him something right then and he nodded his head in response to it. Sam looked over at Belinda again and she did, too, that time with a look of determination on her face; the former wondered what was going on over there when Alex doubled back to them with his deep set eyes bright as they had ever been up to that point.
"The Cherry Suicides are joining us," he told her at a fast clip. "Aurora just told me."
"Oh, Zelda's gonna be happy 'bout that." She noticed his hands clasped to the lapels of his jacket. "Where you goin'?"
"She also told me to get my ass back up to Montana," he replied, "apparently it's kinda important."
He ran his fingers through his black hair once again and then he picked up his yarmulke and he doubled back towards the door. Frank bowed towards them with a small white box tucked under his arm.
"Pizza's comin' for you girls," he promised them with a wink, "in like a couple of minutes. I gotta drive the little man back up to Montana."
"Catch you later?" Sam asked him.
"Of course!" He blew them a kiss and he bowed out of there after Alex. Sam let out a low whistle right then.
"Anthrax and Testament and the Cherry Suicides all together?" Belinda echoed it.
"Yeah, that's, um... that's gonna be awkward. But holy hell, does that pizza smell good, though."