All our lives

Chapter 7

Armed with a glass of whiskey and his phone, he was more than ready to start his investigation. He was in a much better state, probably due to that sleeping pill that had made him sleep like a baby for the whole night. Part of the morning too. Eventually, the key he had given to Matt proved useful as for a half an hour his brother had called him in vain on his phone and for another five agonizing minutes he and Tico had knocked not very subtly on his door. He hadn't heard a thing.

Maybe like a baby was not the correct description. Like a log was definitely more suitable. Babies never slept more than three hours in a row and they always woke up crying because they were hungry, or wet, or scared of being alone in the dark. Whoever had come up with that saying clearly had never taken care of a baby in his life. According To Matt, they had struggled for a good ten minutes to wake him up or bring him to his senses. They had literally thought he had passed out. He had woken up confused by the buzz, but fresher than a spring flower. And, surprisingly, in quite a good mood. Hopeful. He had to admit that that pill was good shit, but maybe next time, if a next time existed, he would take only half of it. He didn't want the SWAT team storming into his room again.

Anyway, he had an investigation to conduct. He couldn't just ask people around him about what had happened in the last six years without drawing unwanted attention on himself, so he had to rely on the most unreliable source that was out there. The internet. They were on their way to Helsinki - why exactly their current tour schedule looked like an inept darts player had thrown arrows towards Europe's map he could not tell - and that meant he had almost two hours to surf the web. Surf the web...was that still a thing? He hadn't heard that expression in a while. Kids today were probably as baffled as older people had been in the mid-90s about that saying.

He sank into his seat and took a sip from his glass. It felt awkwardly early even for an eye-opener, but what he was about to do was asking for a little reinforcement. Wine, his poison of choice, could not offer him the needed kick. Before being courageous enough, he would be joyfully drunk, and he couldn't afford to be like that. He was on a mission. He had even saved some pages for offline viewing, just in case the WIFI on board didn't work, a precautionary measure he was quite proud of, but one that proved unnecessary. The WIFI was just fine. All he had to do was to start already. Maybe finding those missing pieces of information - how Richie had died, why everyone insisted on that 'Saturday nights' song, why the fuck they were putting themselves through hell at every concert - would make his mind accept this universe. It was his only hope anyway. He took another sip and unlocked his phone.

"Let's see...what brought your end, my friend? Besides being in this...whatever this is." 'Richard Stephen Sambora was...', he read again. God, he hated that word. 'Was'. So formal, so definitive. He sighed and moved on. 'American rock guitarist...'. "Blah, blah." 'Best known for ...'. Whatever. He knew better than Wikipedia what Richie was. '...died in a car accident...'. "Oh no!" He suddenly felt cold shivers down his spine as his mind raced back to when Richie had been arrested for drunk driving. "Please tell me you were alone in the car!"

Impatiently and with a heavy heart, he read the rest of the paragraph but he didn't find any mention of another victim. He still couldn't be sure that that poorly documented description was accurate enough. He typed in Ava's name and only when the page loaded and no death year appeared, he was able to let out a relieved breath. "Oh, kiddo, what a scare!" He looked for a few more seconds at the picture of a smiling Ava. She looked like him. Everybody was saying she looked just like her mother, but if you had the chance - and he had had it - to see baby pictures of him, you'd see the resemblance was beyond question. How was she in this madness? If it was so hard for him, how was it for her?

He reached for his glass and almost emptied it. His little reinforcement looked like it needed some reinforcement of its own. "OK, so a car accident...let's see what we can find out about this one." To his surprise, not much. So this is how people felt when they didn't find the desired details about their idols. "Being secretive came back to bite my ass, huh?" No mention of booze, or drugs, or even speeding. Not from Richie's part, anyway. By all appearances, it seemed the mere definition of an accident. Another driver had lost control and had directly hit his side of the car. Bang! Dead on the spot. His body aggressively shuddered at that thought. One second you were and the next you were not. He drank the rest of whiskey in one big gulp, then let himself sink back into the chair and for a while he stared into space.