Turn My Page | Led Zeppelin

Heartbreaker

  Vicky began crying in the car as Robert drove to a hotel on the border of Pennsylvania and New York, having finished visiting his mother. As it turned out, his mother was moving to San Diego and had gave the three some horrible news:

  Robert had to move to San Diego, too, or else they would leave him out of the will. His parent's were rich, so this was a big problem. No one knew why he had to move, but Jackie was going with him.

  Vicky alone could not pay for their beautiful house, so it seemed that everyone had to move to California. They already had a house near the ocean, and even if the moving did break Vicky's heart, she had to admit that the warm weather would beat Maryland's rain. Robert's mother had taken rash actions and bought it.

  Vicky didn't want to move, but she was too poor to do anything about it. She laid down in the back seat and rested her head against the door. Jackie turned on the radio and a man was speaking.

  "...Zeppelin concert in Uniondale, New York tomorrow night, as well as the night after--"

  Vicky's head shot up. "Where's Uniondale?" she asked.

  "Right outside of Roosevelt," Robert replied steadily. "Why?"

  She could never get tickets fast enough.... Unless she bought one from a reseller....

  As the boys and I prepared for the concert tonight back stage, talking about things that where neither here nor there, ladies rushed around fixing our hair and skin. I sneaked a flask of Jack Daniels to my lips and took a swig.

  "Jimmy, are you drinking?" one of the ladies asked. I looked over at her as she collected some powder off the vanity desk in front of me.

  "I don't drink, love," I laughed. She rolled her eyes as she prepared me.

  "You don't drink?" Robert asked. "Well than I guess we shouldn't  have gone on that bender last night!" He began to laugh violently and the lady preparing him groaned as he hunched over in vicious laughter. I couldn't help but chuckle a little.

  My mind was on other things, more important things. After tomorrow night, we would be going to California, on a whole other side of the country. California farther away from You-Know-Who (I dare not speak her name or the image of her beautiful face might make me melt in that chair, and who wants to go out on stage with a boner, vulgar as is was?)

  The image of her face swept across my mind and I instantly looked over at Bonzo, thinking all the while that if Bonzo could see my thoughts and intentions at the moment, he would be offended at what he saw.

  "What's wrong with you, Jimmy?" John asked in a sudden burst of curiousity. "You've been quiet for almost twenty minutes. You're normally the life of the party."

  I was surprised by how long I had been in thought. I turned to my friend and replied, "Just thinking is all."

  "About that lovely bird you picked up some time back?" he laughed.

  I groaned. "Please don't talk about her right now."

  "Does Jimmy love her?" Robert teased. "Does Jimmy love that spicy red-head?"

  Bonzo laughed, bringing my attention to him. "Those stone-cold eyes?" he added.

  "Fuck off," I growled as I jumped up and walked to the bathroom. Robert, John, and Bonzo were left to stare at each other in confusion.

  "Led Zeppelin ticket here!" a poor man shouted on the side of the street as Vicky walked by on her way to a store in town, on the hunt for a pink purse she had seen on the way into the town. She glanced at the man with her nose tucked under the collar of her black pea-coat. "Forty bucks, concert tonight!"

   "That's over-kill," an Indian man yelled while walking past. "I got a ticket for eight dollars!"

  Vicky felt around in her pocket to find that she had exactly fifty dollars for that purse. Selfishness and need tugged at her. On one hand, she'd finally have a place to keep her money, check book, credit cards, and trinkets.

  On the other hand, she'd see Jimmy, the handsomely mysterious man she has almost had a one-night-stand with. Part of her wished she'd gone through with it. She composed a compromise: If the tickets had good seats, she'd go.

  "Here!" a lady in the near distance shouted. She ran up to the ticket seller. "I have thirty-five bucks."

  Vicky watched, wide-eyed, as the unknown lady paid the man and walked away with a ticket. That solved her problem.

  Night had fallen and still Vicky hadn't returned from her time in the small town of Roosevelt. She had been buying time by eating slowing at every cafe and eventually visiting every store twice until they had either closed or kicked her out for loitering. She had swindled her money supply down to thirty bucks, and was sure to save five bucks for gas when she got back home.

  Home! How could she move to California? She should just ask a friend to stay at their house-- but one problem: the only real friends she had were moving to California and she had to go with them. She sighed and stood at the side of the road, her thumb pointed in the direction she wanted to go.

  In no time at all, a van slowed down and offered her a ride. She told the man driving that she wanted to go to Uniondale, and it seemed like the man was going there, anyway. She thanked him as she ran a hand through her hair, then hopped into the passenger seat.

  My whole body shook in delight as I heard the crowd cheering in the distance.  Robert, the goldy-locks god, stood with his side to the wall, attached to some sleazy groupie by the mouth. He was constantly touching his own hair, pulling it back, playing with it; anything but hold the bird he was snogging, God forbid.

  I  was jealous of Rob. It seemed that I had lost all of my groupies, so all I was left with now was my thoughts of Vicky-- and here we go again with the party-in-my-pants thing.

  Two more minutes and we would be going on stage to preform, then there would be a twenty-five minute intermission, and we would play a final time.

  Peter had estimated leaving at three in the morning. Richard, our tour managers, ran over to us, waving a rolled-up paper like a fly swatter. I rolled my eyes and groaned, hating being here more and more.

  "You've got to get on stage, all of you," Richard rasped in his outer-London-maybe-Birmingham accent. "I don't need a cockamamie story about-- Robert... Robert, get off of that poor lass, you're choking her."

  Robert flipped Richard off as he and the lady separated. He whispered something to her as she glided off into the darkness of backstage. Richard turned and began to yell at Rob about messing around back stage with an unknown girl while John Paul and I discussed musical things.

  "One minute," Peter spoke, stepping out of the darkness in a sudden, ultimately scaring Bonzo. "One minute, then you play, then a break, got it?"

  "Can we leave during the break?" Bonzo asked, recovering from his fright.

  "No."

  Then I will, I thought.