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"my love will follow you, baby"
i'm watching from the hallway in my salvation army coat, spying, as you light john's cigarette. i like the way you two look together. he's all caught up and you're inching forward, shirt tight and low. your exhale fills the backstage and when the smoke clears, john's eyes are on me.
a light glitters inside and i smile, broad and wide. my pastel stockings, prickled with electricity, sizzle as i walk forward and open my arms for him. to bury him in perfume and faux fur.
"where've you been?" john asks, his voice near my throat.
"here. there," i say and kiss him in the middle of his mouth. you're quick to catch on from behind. your arms link around me, pulling me away so i face you instead.
"she goes where the wind blows. doesn't she?" you're taking me, fully, my hands laced around your neck, and my lips already pecking your jaw. lip gloss turns your new beard sticky.
john watches with a hawk's gaze. each brush of my body with yours is a shiv to his side.
"how are you now?"
"oh, fine," i say, back from home and silly-headed to be with the band again. two years since i've been so fresh and green. two years since john and i became drunkards and lovers. a year since you set in between us, bare-footed hippie. behind your back, we made fun of you. that's when he told me about you wrapping your legs around a column onstage. his mother banned him from ever playing with you again. "i missed you, john."
he smiles, his eyes low. from his pocket, he pulls out his cigarettes and a folded piece of paper. he holds them in the air and waits until i break from your strong arms.
"i wrote this," he mumbles. sober and shy, he hasn't yet cured his stage-fright. there's a smudge of blue ink on the outside of the hotel memo, and inside, his hurried writing.
"bummed you didn't see the show last night. it was a hoot." your words ring off the wall.
i'm reading, half-listening, as john's notes of love and longing bury deep in my lungs. he missed me too, thought of me at every city, wondering when i'd turn up. he'd started to think i rejected him. "a hoot," i repeat, coming to the final line.
john's waiting. i reach up and thumb his cheek. he gives me a puff of his cigarette and when that's done, lights another. in the sun, his eyes look a dark, cooked honey gold. but here they're just brown.
your warm hand grabs my waist and tugs. "come with me. i have something to show you."
"robert - " i object, but you're already taking me. i look over my shoulder and it's john's back that faces me.
against the wall, you kiss me with my head in your hands, reddening my cheeks as your face rubs mine. "you taste like mint." another kiss, this time where your mouth lingers along my neck. "so who's it gonna be?"
my breath fans your hair. "what do you mean?"
"don't tease. bonzo or me?"
"i'm not playing this with you." i knock your hands away and you move, wide-eyed. "i came back for him, anyway."
indignation spreads across your face, your forehead wrinkling. "yeah, huh?"
"yeah, robert. i think that if you cared about me you wouldn't make me choose."
"make you choose? what do you want, two lovers at once?"
"that's what you have, don't you? maureen, me, who knows who else."
i clench my jaw and feel my heartbeat claim my body. your face falls and it's just enough for me to walk past you and into the dressing rooms. i've never talked back to you before; sudden fear of absence creeps into my skin.
as jimmy smiles and invites me to sit with him, i give a plastic grin and bury my face into the fabric of his shirt. selfish me. selfish and needy.
