Hell in a Handbasket
SHE TAKES ONE LAST LONG DRAG FROM HER CIGARETTE. She pushes the smoke past her gleaming teeth and full lips and crushes the thing beneath her boot. Her black coffee has finally cooled to a barely drinkable temperature. She takes a sip as she enters the radio station. Another fucking morning show. This one in San Francisco. It’s still dark out and, between the cigarette and the coffee and all of the whiskey she drank last night, she has the worst morning breath in recorded human history.
She didn’t have time to brush her teeth. She overslept and was rushed out of her hotel room by Gavin the tour manager. The clothes she had worn at last night’s show were strewn across the floor. Gavin threw the jeans and Superman t-shirt at her as she struggled to get her naked body out of bed. She didn’t have to fuss with makeup or her hair; she looks the same at five in the morning in the grips of a hangover as she does at eleven at night when she’s in the grips of stage lights and adoring fans.
Way back before she was famous and had dreams of being interviewed by radio deejays, it didn’t matter what you looked like as much. The listeners couldn’t see you and the deejays looked just barely put together themselves. But today, everything is visual, and if this show is anything like all of the others, they’ll be recording the interview for the radio station’s YouTube page. She hates the beautification and objectification of women in the entertainment industry. However, she sees nothing wrong with not wanting to look like hammered rat shit, which is exactly how she feels. This morning, as she has been most mornings this past year, she’s self-aware enough to be thankful for her easy-to-manage looks.
Gavin makes the introductions in the studio. She smiles her big, brilliant smile—the one that makes men and women fall in love with her—and begins to charm the three morning show hosts.
“Good morning. I’m really happy to be here,” she says into the microphone. Her mouth is dry and it tastes like a circus floor. She reaches for the bottle of water one of the hosts handed her when she walked in. She thinks she should have had a piece of gum instead of that cigarette.
“You’re wearing a Superman t-shirt,” the fatter of the hosts says. “Are you a fan of the comics?”
“This isn’t a Superman t-shirt,” she says. “It’s a Supergirl t-shirt.”
“Hear, hear, sister!” says the woman host.
“And yes, I’m a fan of the comics.”
“For those of you just tuning in, we’ve got Jane Hadley in the studio with us this morning,” the thin host says in a well-rehearsed broadcaster’s voice. “If you’re not familiar with Jane Hadley then you’ve likely been in a coma trapped in a mine shaft for the past year. Her debut album, Hell in a Handbasket, is this year’s runaway hit and iTunes’ most downloaded album ever. Right now, Jane Hadley is a bigger deal than Taylor, Adele and Beyoncé.”
“Combined,” Fat Host says.
“And she’s performing a sold-out show at Decker Hall tonight,” Thin Host continues.
“But don’t worry,” Lady Host says, “if you didn’t get tickets for the show, we’ll be giving a pair away a little later on this morning. And I think—Jane, correct me if I’m wrong—that these tickets also include a backstage meet and greet.”
“They do,” Jane says. “I’ve even got my Selfie-Stick for photos.”
“Did you bring that Selfie-Stick with you this morning?” Fat Host asks. “I’d love to get a photo with you. You have to be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen this early in the morning.”
Jane smiles and laughs a hearty laugh that not even the most high-tech lie detector test could determine its authenticity one way or the other. “I didn’t bring it but I’m sure we’ll find a way to take a photo without it.”
“And you’re going to play a few songs for us this morning, too, right?” Lady Host asks.
“I brought my guitar and will even take requests.”
The three hosts celebrate over this surprise. Thin Host says, “You hear that, K–POP listeners? The beautiful and talented, Goddess of Rock Jane Hadley will be taking your requests for a live, in-studio acoustic session! Don’t go anywhere. You’re listening to the Manic Morning Show on 97.1, K–POP.”
Thin Hosts glances at Fat Host who taps a series of buttons on the control board and clicks a wireless mouse linked to the monitors. A station bump plays followed by a commercial break beginning with an ad for a local diamond dealer. The hosts take their headphones off.
“Do people actually listen this early?” Jane asks as she also removes her headphones.
“Not anymore,” Thin Host says.
“We’ll replay everything with you in the eight o’clock hour,” Lady Host says.
This is not how Jane saw her life. For one thing, she never thought she’d be a smoker. But divorce can promote bad habits as diversions from the heartache. And for another thing, she never thought she’d be divorced at thirty-seven years old, though she was only thirty-five when it all happened, which only makes it worse. She is too young to be divorced and too old to only now find herself at rockstar status. Unfortunately, without the divorce, the fame and fortune—and morning radio show interviews—would have continued to elude her.
Before she was Jane Hadley, the rock ’n’ roll singer/songwriter—the Goddess of Rock, bigger than Taylor, Adele, and Beyoncé combined, she was Jane Hadley, the folk ’n’ roll singer/songwriter who never sold more than a thousand albums and a few hundred t-shirts. Before she had a #1 album flying off the shelves and being downloaded to the Cloud by millions, and an entire merchandising department, she was just a girl who played in a few bands: the Stargazers, Rosie’s Dream Catcher, Jane and the Jaded Cowboys.
None of these were good band names and she knew it. But she liked the music they made. Sweet, folky, only as loud as the all-acoustic gear would allow. All her bands looked the same. Jane played rhythm guitar and sang lead. The lead guitar, keyboard, upright bass and percussion were played by men. This wasn’t intentional, it’s just how things played out. They sounded similar, too, although each incarnation sounded more practiced than the last, a byproduct of age and gig experience.
The Stargazers was her high school band. It lasted long enough to play mostly Simon & Garfunkel covers at a few garage shows and the school’s Battle of the Bands. She formed Rosie’s Dream Catcher in college with her then boyfriend, keyboardist Matt. They recorded one CD of ten original songs. They sold all one hundred copies for two bucks a piece by the time the band, and Jane and Matt, split three years later.
She wonders why they are waxing intellectual about Kurt Cobain and the meaning of “Smells Like Teen Spirit?” She just wants to plug tonight’s show, play a few songs, maybe answer a call and give vague, recycled answers about what inspired her to write the album. Instead, she’s bemoaning about the trappings of fame and denying any intention of making an album that will last the test of time. How Gen X of her. How Fiona Apple of her. How awful of her.
Jane always figured that if success in the music business was ever going to come to her it would have been with Jane and the Jaded Cowboys. It took her a little while to become comfortable with her name being segregated from the band name. She didn’t want to be a Diana Ross or Gloria Estefan but Adam, the guitarist, thought they should capitalize on the gender difference and put their radiant leader out front while her boys backed her up. Adam was a marketing major in college and while he was a gifted guitarist, his real talent was in hype.
Jane and the Jaded Cowboys were prolific. Their songwriting was a science. Jane would come to practice with lyrics ripped from her many tattered Moleskin journals and a tune she thought worked with the words. From there, all five would flesh the thing out until they had a nice little folky pop song. They were a good team and their musical tastes and abilities complemented each other well.
With the freedom provided by quarter-life adulthood, they toured a lot in the sixteen years they were together. They earned fans but none who would bleed for them, really. They played the festivals and a few of the storied concert halls spread throughout the country. They headlined some shows and shared the bill with acts that would go on to the kind of fame and success that Jane and the Jaded Cowboys were chasing but never caught up to.
Because being in the band didn’t pay a livable wage, everyone had real jobs. Jane tended bar at Queen Lizzie, a hipster hotspot in Chicago where the drinks are overpriced and the customers happily overpay. She hated the place and the customers but the money was too good to walk away from. She was able to afford the necessities: instruments, rent, food, clothes, tour van, gas money for the tour van and Moleskin journals. She even managed to save a fair amount and really hack away at her student loans. Not that her degree in art history was worth more than the paper the degree was printed on.
The songs she wrote reflected her life. They featured themes of loneliness, desire, road trips and regret. The songs weren’t bad. But they weren’t great either. Their most popular song among their few loyal fans is called “Photographic Art History.” It’s about wasting time and energy. One critic, writing for an online publication about the lineup of a summer festival in Chicago, described Jane and the Jaded Cowboys as, “a band that makes perfect background music for the perfect lazy day of napping.” On the band’s Facebook page, Adam spun the opinion by posting the review and writing, “IndieRock.com says ‘Jane and the Jaded Cowboys makes perfect music for the perfect day!’”
Jane hated the hype. But it was the best her band ever got.
And speaking of hype…
“Rolling Stone called you the voice of women of this generation,” Thin Host says. They are back from commercial break. “That seems like it could come with a lot of responsibility. Do you feel responsible to speak for your generation?”
Since Hell in a Handbasket dropped, many critics had echoed Rolling Stone’s claim. Jane used to see herself as a Joni Mitchell type, or Carole King or Carly Simon. Women from a very different generation. And one that isn’t hers. She isn’t even sure which generation the critics are talking about. At thirty-seven years old, she’s no longer part of the youth culture but she’s too young, still, and new to fame, to be a music veteran. And in the entertainment industry, the young and the old were the major markets. Everyone in the middle is white noise. Jane feels that if she’s the voice of any generation right now, it’s the White Noise Generation. But she can’t say that.
“First of all, it’s an insanely flattering thing to say about someone,” Jane answers. “But it’s also an insanely broad generalization and a little presumptuous. I didn’t make this record to be a statement about women or for all women or anything like that. And if we look at music history, we don’t ever really know how representative a musician was or wasn’t to her generation—or his—until the music has had time to mature and that generation, or whatever, has adapted from it in some way.”
“Well, take Kurt Cobain. In a way, your situation is similar to Cobain’s,” Thin Host says. “He was considered the voice of Generation X right out of the gate. And he was dead before his music and his generation really even had a chance to—what did you call it?—mature. But everyone was right. Kurt Cobain was, and still is considered to be, the voice of his generation.”
“So if you don’t already have a heroin addiction, you better get on that,” Fat Host says.
“No, then she’d just be compared to Courtney Love. And no woman wants to be compared to Courtney Love,” Lady Host says.
“Yikes. God no. That’s even worse than being compared to Yoko Ono,” Jane says.
“There are so many awful women in rock ’n’ roll,” Fat Host says.
“You named two,” Jane says. “The awful men in rock ’n’ roll still outweigh us twenty-to-one.”
“And that’s why she wears that t-shirt,” Lady Host says.
They all have a laugh as Jane glances at the clock on the studio wall. She’s booked for an hour. It’s only been eleven minutes. She wants to go back to sleep. The coffee isn’t working. She considers what it would be like if she did start using heroin. It’s cheaper than booze, cigarettes and even coffee. And on the road, it’s often easier to get.
“Okay, I understand that you’re reluctant to accept your influential role in today’s culture,” Thin Host says.
“It’s not a reluctance,” she says.
“A rejection then,” he says.
“No. I mean, they’re just songs.”
“But don’t you want your songs to mean something? Isn’t that what every artist wants?”
“Sure. In a way. This album means what it means to me. I can’t control what it means to anyone else. It’s nice that it’s been so well received. I’m touched that people are finding their own meanings in the songs.”
“So you’re saying that the song, the first single, ‘Onward,’ isn’t symbolic of the woman’s place in today’s society.”
“I think Hemingway said something about the foolishness of trying to include symbols in your work on purpose,” Jane says.
“So no.”
“‘Onward’ is a song about my ex-husband moving out of our apartment and me, a woman, having to make sense of what he, a man, had left behind. If that is perceived as anything other than that—”
“I understood it as a break-up song,” Lady Host says.
“But things can be perceived by any number of people in any number of ways. That’s the great thing about art. Let me ask you guys a question. Since you brought him up, what does ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ mean to you? What’s that song about?”
“Making trouble,” Thin Host says.
“Cheerleaders,” Fat Host says.
“Disaffected youth,” Lady Host says.
“All I ever think about when I hear that song is deodorant. That song is a deodorant jingle to me. Because when that song came out, I was eleven years old and Teen Spirit was the brand of deodorant I used.”
“Commerce,” Fat Host says. “Cobain is rolling over in his grave.”
“Nah,” Jane says. “He knew damn well what he was doing when he titled that song. He was being funny—Oh crap, can I say the ‘D’ word?”
The hosts laugh. “Yes, ‘damn’ is allowed. ‘Crap,’ is not,” Thin Host says. They laugh some more then he presses on. “Symbols or not, this album is incredible.”
“Thank you.”
“I doubt that you’d call it a concept album.”
“Not in the traditional meaning of concept album, no. I mean, it’s not The Wall. But it was conceived by specific events. There’s a theme.”
“It’s a break up album,” Lady Host says.
“It is indeed a break up album. A break up and all of the, um, crap, that comes with it.”
She knows she sounds like a pedantic blowhard. They are baiting her into it and she is too strung out on exhaustion and weak coffee to resist. She wonders why they are waxing intellectual about Kurt Cobain and the meaning of “Smells Like Teen Spirit?” She just wants to plug tonight’s show, play a few songs, maybe answer a call and give vague, recycled answers about what inspired her to write the album. Instead, she’s bemoaning about the trappings of fame and denying any intention of making an album that will last the test of time. How Gen X of her. How Fiona Apple of her. How awful of her.
But after two weeks of horrendous heartbreak, isolation, and alcoholism, Jane had come to one conclusion: right or not, fuck Keith.
She is saved from falling deeper into these asinine rock critic musings when the hosts go to break again. They’ve cued listeners to call in with questions and requests. The first three callers request “Onward,” to no one’s surprise. Jane pulls her guitar from its case and gives it a gentle tuning. She gets the familiar sinking knot in her stomach as she does.
Her departure from acoustic folk to electric rock was the best way for her to get through the pain of her divorce. It allowed her to turn the deafening sadness into rollicking anger. And every time she plays these songs with an electric guitar and her banging, thrumming, clanging tour band alongside her, she becomes more and more removed from the origin of the source material. She’s healed each night. And in quieter moments in between cities on the bus, when she finds herself descending toward that sadness and regret, she can listen to the album at top volume through her headphones and relive the anger and gravitate toward getting over the goddamn thing.
But there’s no escaping the raw bones of truth when she plays the songs acoustically on radio shows like this. She wanted to bring the band with her and at least have a bigger sound so the songs weren’t so stripped down and she didn’t feel so naked. But her management vetoed it. The fans wanted Jane Hadley naked. And that’s what they were getting. And every time she tunes the guitar to play “Onward,” she is rocketed into a wretched reverie of when she first tuned the guitar to write the song.
Keith had just closed the door of the apartment with his last box of stuff under his arm. It had been the first time they’d seen each other since he asked for a divorce two weeks before and fled to wherever he had been staying. Jane spent those two weeks crying, substituting alcohol and cigarettes for meals, sleeping on the living room floor because she couldn’t bear the thought of sleeping alone in their bed and didn’t feel that she deserved the comfort of the couch. She was emotionally destroyed and she thought it best to destroy herself physically, too.
He said some pretty nasty things when he left. There were accusations of infidelity because she played songs that weren’t about him. He blamed her for his inability to secure a steady and well-paying gig because she was not supportive enough. He called her a manipulator and a user and chastised her for having more friends than he had.
None of these accusations were true and he was clearly taking his own self-loathing out on her. How could someone’s likability make her unlikable? Keith had found a way. The two therapists they had seen every week since getting married eight months before, called it projecting. Keith denied it and Jane believed everything he said.
But after two weeks of horrendous heartbreak, isolation, and alcoholism, Jane had come to one conclusion: right or not, fuck Keith. Watching him leave with a box of his mother’s old stained Tupperware was enough to pull her off of the floor and begin writing music again. “Onward” became Jane’s life’s statement of purpose. And as the first single and the album’s first track, it became the album’s statement of purpose, too. And thus, it became a generation of women’s statement of purpose.
She didn’t even have to write the lyrics down and work them out in her notebook like usual. She just played and sang and it all came together. She scribbled it down once she was done and the song, at first, resembled every other song she had written. Soft, slow, melancholy. She didn’t want that. She wanted something different. Because the same old song hadn’t done her much good for her career or her internal struggle. She didn’t feel soft, slow or melancholy. She felt hard, fast and fucking pissed. She dusted off her electric Gibson and amp and played the song faster and louder. She felt alive again. She felt angry. She felt inspired.
She lit a cigarette and played it again. She recorded it and upon listening back, she heard a voice she didn’t recognize but loved. The chorus made her smile, even though it felt strange on her face.
You took my love
And let it burn
Scorched and ashen
I move onward
✶
SHE MET KEITH LESTINGHOUSE AT A SHOW IN PEORIA, ILLINOIS. He was a videographer and had been hired to document the headlining band, the Dandelions, who a year later would win the Grammy Award for Best New Artist. Keith’s art direction in the documentary was lauded for its grit, the way it “captured the essence of budding rock ’n’ roll success,” according to some well-respected blogger somewhere online.
She found Keith smart and funny, and thought his patchy beard and thin, lanky body made him handsome. He seemed to genuinely like Jane’s music and her band. And he seemed to like her. By the end of their first date, they realized that they had been a match on each other’s online dating profiles.
“Why didn’t you ever send me a message?” she asked him.
“Why didn’t you ever send me one?” he replied.
He was a feminist and she liked that about him, too.
Six months in, they were engaged. Two months after that, they were married. It was a small ceremony held in her parents’ barn at their farm in Dowagiac, Michigan. She wore cowboy boots with her consignment wedding dress, he wore black Chuck Taylor sneakers with his new suit from an online custom clothier. An hour before the wedding, Jane cried all of her makeup away when Keith requested that her father not walk her down the aisle. Well, he didn’t have any family at the wedding, therefore, her father’s obvious presence was her way of rubbing it in that he was an estranged son. Jane conceded. Then Keith decided that it was okay for her dad to walk her down the aisle after all. This was the first crack in the façade of perfection Jane had placed Keith behind. Then, at the reception, Jane and the Jaded Cowboys played a song she wrote just for Keith, just for their wedding. Drunk, he mistook it for a song about some other guy and stormed off into the Dowagiac fields. Jane—the consummate professional—finished the song then ran into the fields after her husband. When she found him, he continued accusing her of infidelity until she managed to convince him otherwise and they screwed right there in rows of soybeans.
He moved into her place. His video equipment crowded and nearly ousted her music equipment. Space in the small Chicago apartment was the crux of their Cold War—Keith acting like Reagan with his finger constantly on he Button and Jane acting as Gorbachev, desperate for some kind of peaceful and reasonable resolution.
Two weeks later, they were in therapy. The only discussion they could have without Keith’s demanding a therapist’s intervention was about what they’d have for dinner. It helped that Keith’s veganism limited their dining options. Keith was a volunteer for Greenpeace and convinced Jane to sell her 1967 Pontiac GTO. It was left to her in her grandfather’s will. It was her grandfather who taught her to play guitar and encouraged her to pursue a career in music. He was a sound tech for bands like the Byrds, Leslie Gore, the Lovin’ Spoonful and even the Beatles once. Anywhere she had to be, Keith told her, she could ride a bike, walk, run or use public transportation, if she must. And that inspired the second song on the album, “Red Meat Wishes and Gasoline Car Dreams.”
You’re sidewalk stalking
Good people on God’s green earth
I honk and rev my motor
And slide back a Quarter Pounder
Still, Jane loved him. But what Jane loved more than Keith was love itself. Though she was never far from her friends or family and had an incredible bond and unwavering trust with her bandmates, Jane feared being alone. Alone in that romantic sense. It was that fear that empowered her to stay with Keith, which left her otherwise powerless. And that’s where “Distracted by Loneliness,” the album’s third song, came from.
Covered in hearts
Well wishes from friends and family
Their undying love can’t compare to the misery you give to me
I’d rather be lonely with you than never alone again
✶
WHEN THEY RETURN FROM THE BREAK, JANE PLAYS “ONWARD.” Fat Host cues up another recorded caller and the conversation they had with her during the break.
“Hi, Jane. I’m Claire. I think you are so talented.”
“Hi, Claire. Thank you.”
“I just broke up with my boyfriend of three years.”
“This ought to be good,” Fat Host says.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Claire,” Jane says.
“No, please, it’s for the best. I was miserable. We both were. Your album inspired me to leave him. Funny thing was, it was his record. He bought the album.”
“Men love her, too,” Thin Host says. “Is there a song you’d like Jane Hadley to play?”
“I’d love to hear ‘Two Week’s Notice,’” says Claire. “I quit my job last week, too. This song inspired me to do that.”
“This song isn’t about quitting a job,” Jane says. “It’s about the abortion I had.” The studio goes quiet—never a good thing in radio. Jane recognizes the silence and quickly readjusts her response. “But, uh, sure thing, Claire. Let me know if you need a reference or anything.”
The recording ends and Lady Host throws her finger at Jane like a stage manager would on the set of a live news show. Jane plays the first chord and sings “Two Week’s Notice.”
It’s not something I am ready for
I’m sure neither are you
I’ve already got a child
I can’t raise two
It makes no sense to drag this out
It’s the right thing to do
I’ve already got a child
That child is you
“I’m not really sure how that song would inspire someone to quit their job,” Thin Host says when Jane is done playing. “I bet you get a lot of that. You know, people mistaking the intentions of your songs for something else.”
“Like we were saying earlier, that’s what happens with music and art,” Jane says. “People listen to music in different ways. Claire, I guess, doesn’t listen to the lyrics all that closely. And that’s fine. I just hope she find a new job soon and lands on her feet.”
“Guess you can’t judge a song by its title,” Fat Host says.
“We’re going to take another quick break and we’ll be right back with more music by request from our in-studio guest Jane Hadley, who is performing at Decker Hall tonight and we’ll be giving away that pair of tickets to see her. You’re listening to the Manic Morning Show on 97.1 K–WOW.”
There it is, the missing piece to Jane and Keith’s old fight, his calm condescension. Finding herself in familiar territory, she habitually lights a cigarette in her mouth.
They never take calls live on-air. It’s a recipe for disaster. You could get a Baba Booey or a suicide or someone who just wants to yell “Fuck” on the radio. Answering calls off-air lets the hosts screen and edit the calls for the best possible radio. Fat Host takes the next caller.
“Hi, Jane. Since you’re single, maybe we can hook up after your show tonight. I’m hung.”
Fat Host immediately hangs up on the caller.
“Hey, wait a minute,” Jane says. “Maybe he was cute.”
She’s joking but only a little bit. Among the whiskey and cigarettes, her after-show parties have been filled with men. Lots of men. At least one every night. The show in L.A. had two, the one in Salt Lake had three.
Two more calls, both women, both requesting “Onward.” The third call is a man.
“97.1, Manic Morning Show,” Lady Host says.
“Jane?” the caller asks like he was calling Jane directly and not a San Francisco morning radio show.
“Hi, do you have a request for Jane Hadley?” Lady Host tries again.
“Jane. Are you there?”
“Okay, weirdo, goodbye,” Lady Host says as she signals Fat Host to drop the call.
“Wait,” Jane says. Lady Host looks at Thin Host who nods as a sign to let Jane play this one out. “Keith?”
The three hosts look at each other with confusion before Thin Host chimes in, “Jane, you’ve got a friend here in San Francisco. And a K-WOW listener to boot!”
“Keith is my ex-husband.” The three hosts drop their jaws and sit back in their chairs like they’re ready to watch the unbelievable, certain shit show commence. “Keith, what are you doing?”
“I was listening to the radio and heard you.”
“What are you doing in San Francisco?”
“I’m living with my brother.”
“You have a brother?”
“I have three brothers.”
“Three!? Why didn’t you ever say anything? Why weren’t they at the wedding?”
“My family is complicated.”
Jane is stunned. She, too, is now sitting with her mouth agape in disbelief. “So you’re living here now?”
“For the moment. There was a job, so…”
“What’s the job?”
“It’s a documentary about San Francisco suicides that don’t take place on the Golden Gate. There’s a large population of suicidals that is overlooked because of the attention that the Bridge gets. It’s tragic. And these people aren’t even polluting the bay when they kill themselves. It’s an important topic.”
Thin Host jumps in again. “So, Keith—Keith, right?—would you like to hear a song by Jane Hadley?” Jane shoots Thin Host a look that says, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Let’s hear that one about abortion again.”
Jane cringes. She is no longer stunned, now she’s pissed. Of course she never told him about the pregnancy. By their third date, it was clear that he had baby fever. Because Keith had such a foul and complicated relationship with his own family, he was desperate to build a new one. And though Jane wasn’t opposed to being a parent someday, she was in no immediate rush, but also knew, deep in her gut, that Keith would make a terrible father. That having a child would provide him with another person to manipulate and break down until nothing was left but a desiccated husk of a human. He would do to his child what his parents did to him and what he had nearly done to Jane.
Jane and the hosts are frozen but the digital phone recorder rolls along.
“Can I hear it? Can I hear the song about you killing my child?”
“Whoa!” Thin Host says as Fat Host laughs in shock.
“She didn’t kill your child,” Lady Host says. “She’s the mother and she has the right to make any decision she wants related to her body.”
“I agree,” Keith says. “But in the interest of true sexual and gender fairness and whatever, doesn’t the father have a right to know and at least be part of the discussion? When were you pregnant, Jane? Were we married? Because if so, then you absolutely owed me that.”
Lady Host defends her. “She doesn’t owe you anything.”
“No, he’s right,” Jane says. “I probably should have said something. I agonized over telling you about it for two weeks before.”
“Oh, you agonized, did you? That was my child.”
She can hear his special brand of angry panic in his voice. She knows she should have the deejays hang up. But that anger and panic of his was always delicious bait to her. She can’t help herself from engaging. “It wasn’t a child, Keith. And if it had been, it would have been ours. And that, that right there is why I didn’t tell you. I mean, I knew I couldn’t keep it because of your selfishness and controlling impulses. I would have had the abortion twenty minutes after I peed on the stick but I held off, debating if you should be there with me. But I knew that you’d never agree to it and that the idea of it would only lead to this.”
“And what’s this?”
“You accusing me of killing your child.”
Thin Host speaks up. “So Keith, what do you think about the rest of the album?”
“I didn’t know she could play electric guitar.”
There it is, the missing piece to Jane and Keith’s old fight, his calm condescension. Finding herself in familiar territory, she habitually lights a cigarette in her mouth.
“Uh, Jane, you can’t smoke that in here,” Fat Host says.
She exhales a large cloud of smoke emphasizing it with two small rings at the end. “I’ll make you a deal,” she says, “you promise not to air this and I’ll put it out.”
“It’s just that, well, it’s a federal regulation that you can’t smoke inside of buildings. It’s nothing personal. Hell, we all smoke,” Fat Host says.
“Promise me.”
Fat Host looks at Lady Host and Thin Host. Thin Host nods and fat Host says, “Promise.” Jane snuffs the cigarette out on the bottom of her boot. She walks to the small trashcan across the studio, drops the cigarette in and pours a few ounces of coffee on it for safety. She returns back to her microphone and puts her headphones back on.
“What do you want, Keith?” she asks.
Silence.
“Keith? Are you still with us, Keith?” Thin Host asks.
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“What is it you want, Keith?” Thin Host asks again as if Jane’s voice was the problem the first time.
“I want you back,” Keith says.
Jane bursts out in laughter. “Are you fucking kidding me!?” The hosts are shocked. “Sorry,” she says to them.
“It’s okay, we’re not live,” Lady Host says. She leans over to Fat Host and whispers, “Bleep it out.”
“Duh,” Fat Host whispers back.
“I’ve missed you and I have a new therapist out here who says that I’m ready to be in a relationship with you again.”
“Then sue your therapist for malpractice,” Jane says, “because he’s a fucking quack.”
Fat Host holds up his arm to grab attention and says, “We are coming out of break.” He turns on his microphone, does a quick station I.D. and lets the audience know that Jane Hadley is in the studio and that they’ll be back with more from her, then plays music. As he finishes and the red ON-AIR light outside of the studio door turns off, Gavin, Jane’s tour manager storms in.
“I think we’re done here,” he says. Everyone ignores him. This is something he’s used to so he shrinks back out of the studio.
“Jane, I—”
“Shut up, Keith. It’s not happening. But I’ll put your name on the will call list at the door tonight if you want to come see the show.” She looks at Fat Host. “Hang up on him.”
Fat Host again looks around at his co-hosts for a confirmation. They both deny her request. Jane sees this and as Keith begins pleading to her in a breathy panic, she stands up, throws her headphones on the console, walks around to the control board where Fat Host is sitting and rummages around with her eyes for the phone. “Hang up. Where is it? Hang up on him. There’s nothing more to say.” Fat Host uses his bulk to keep her away. “Okay then, I guess you don’t want those backstage tickets to my sold out show tonight for your listeners. I guess you’d rather fuck with me than keep a promise to your listeners. Fine then.”
She walks back around to her guitar and coffee, puts the guitar in its case, throws the nearly empty coffee cup into the trashcan. She lights another cigarette before storming out of the studio, the station, and into the parking lot where Gavin is waiting.
“I need a drink,” she says.
It’s barely past six-thirty in the morning so Gavin suggests hotel room service. Jane agrees. She admits that after a few mini bottles of Dewar’s and Tanqueray she’ll be ready for a nap.
✶
IN THE HOTEL ROOM, GAVIN SLEEPS IN THE DESK CHAIR WITH HIS FEET PROPPED UP ON THE DESK, a small bottle of gin delicately rests in his curved fingers of his dangling arm. It’s eight-thirty and Jane lays drunk in bed. She’s tuned the nightstand clock radio to 97.1 FM, K–WOW. The idiots are playing the phone call with Keith. They’ve bleeped out her cursing. They’ve edited it to make her seem more erratic than she thought she had been. She’s pissed about it but she knows that this is only going to help her reputation and lead to more album and concert ticket sales.
She fumbles for her phone and calls Keith. After recording Hell in a Handbasket, Jane set out to remove any traces of him from her life. She built a fire in the alley behind her apartment next to the dumpster burning anything associated with their time together. Photos, a pair of his socks she loved to sleep in, the Dandelions t-shirt she bought at the show the night they met, that stupid crystal duck he gave to her on their first Christmas together. She never understood the significance of it. He was so excited to give it to her, so proud of himself that she never bothered to ask him why he thought she might like it. Of course, the crystal duck didn’t burn, so Jane smashed it to pieces with a hammer. The one thing she didn’t do during her Keith purge was delete his contact information from her phone. He answered her call before the first ring finished.
“Come to the show tonight,” she says to him.
“Do you want to get back together?”
“No. But I want to see you. Actually, if you can, come to my hotel right now. I’ll text you the address.”
She hangs up before he can respond and sends the text. She knows she has made a destructive decision and that there is no way any of this will end well. But that’s not what Jane wants. Keith has reopened her wounds as easily as if they’d never healed at all. Jane wants to bask in the familiarity of the disrespect and jealousy and anger that defined their relationship. One more chug of the poison, she tells herself, then she’ll be done. She’ll even delete him from her phone.
Keith texts back that he’s on his way. Jane wakes Gavin up and kicks him out of her room.
“You called Keith, didn’t you?” Gavin asks.
“I’ll see you later,” she says, closing the door in his face.
She picks up her guitar and writes a new song. It comes to her as easily as “Onward” did. Maybe even easier. She realizes that Keith is her muse. The thought of that is a good reason to open another mini bottle of whiskey. Maybe she won’t delete him from her phone. Just in case her creativity ever runs dry.
This is not the type of musician or person she thought she’d be but it’s the one the music industry needs, the one her generation needs—whatever generation that is. And certainly, it is the one she needs to be in order to remain being anything at all.
