Page 34 of Beneath the Stain

With that the boy pushed past them, through the living room, and out the door.

“Bye, faggot,” Kell muttered under his breath as the front door closed, and Trav sighed. His jaw—that was right. Break hisjaw, not his fingers.

The boy had left the door open a little. Trav looked at Jefferson, deciding the guy didn’t look too scary—a little red-eyed and sleepy, but not scary—and said, “’Kay. You wake him up, I’ll throw away whatever he’s getting stoned on, okay?”

Jefferson looked away. “Man, I wouldn’t want to be you.”

Together they ventured into the room.

At first all Trav saw was the pharmacy and the mirror with the powder on it next to the king-size bed. His first thought wasThank God no pipes!The coke mirror was nasty enough.

His second thought wasWhere the hell is Mackey?

The bed was rumpled and well used, with little spots of blood on the far side. The trash can by the bathroom held dime bags, used condoms, an empty bottle of gin, a bloody needle, and a dirty spoon with a sponge in it, but no Mackey. No Mackey in the bed, no Mackey in the bathroom, no Mackey in the closet. Trav made himself busy, pulling housecleaning gloves from his back pocket and using them to pick up the coke mirror and two mostly empty bottles of vodka, all of which he threw away, while Jefferson looked in the bathtub and under the bed. He started going through the pill bottles, surprised when he saw that about half of them hadMcKay James Sanderson the side.

“Xanax, Percocet, Valium… and look. Three different doctors.”

“Huh?”

Trav looked over to where Jefferson was rooting through the comforter that was stuffed between the bed and the wall. “The prescription drugs,” Trav said. “They’re not legit—”

“Sure they are,” Jefferson said, nodding. “Gerry got those for him. He got real wound up when we had to perform, and the traveling—couldn’t sleep, couldn’t sit still. That shit helped. Isn’t that right, Mackey?”

To Trav’s surprise, the wad of comforter started to move. “Yeah, Gerry got that.” The comforter moved some more and Trav got his first look at the elusive Mackey Sanders.

He looked about twelve years old—an underfed twelve at that.

Messy hair, bleached blond at the ends and growing out from sandy-brown roots, fell in his eyes and across his mouth. He was wearing a pair of plain white briefs, the kind you bought at Walmart, and they didn’t look all that clean. His chest was narrow and his arms were stringy. His skin was marked with sex, and grimy, like maybe sweat and come were the only liquids that had touched it in the past couple of days. Trav could smell his unwashed body from the far side of the bed. He had a few red marks on his arms, Trav noted clinically, but no hardened track marks—not yet.

Who needed needles when you had all those lovely pills?

“What’d you do with the coke?” Mackey asked, squinting at Trav. “Who are you, and what’d you do with the coke?”

“I threw it away,” Trav said patiently. “I’m your new manager, this band is officially drug-free, and the coke’s in the trash can.”

Mackey squinted some more and stumbled to his feet, holding the once-white comforter over his shoulders like a cloak. “If you’re our manager, don’t we have to go to the studio today?”

Trav nodded patiently, figuring that with the state of the room and Mackey’s bloodshot eyes, he was probablywaytoo stoned to make any sense. “You’ll have to go tomorrow,” he said, his voice short. “Today we’re going to lay down some ground rules.”

Mackey grunted again. “No coke?” he asked, like he was making sure. He glared at Trav again, but his eyes were covered by hair and barely open. Trav couldn’t have recognized him on the street if he saw him awake and sober. “So I don’t have to get up and do anything? And I can’t have any drugs?”

He was staring at Trav like maybe Trav just made this up for fun, so Trav kept his asshole teacher voice. “No, Mackey. Youcan’thave any drugs.”

“Okay,” Mackey mumbled. “Jeff, move. I’m going back to sleep.”

“’Kay, Mackey. We’ll shut the light off when we’re done cleaning up.”

“We’ll dowhat?” Trav’s chin actually dropped, even more so when Jeff held his finger up to his lips.

While Trav was standing there, wishing for a breath mask so he didn’t have to smell Mackey’s unwashed body and the stench of sex and drugs and booze, jaw unhinged, Mackey sank down into the soiled comforter, curled up into a little ball, and covered himself with that once-fluffy blanket. Jeff walked to the end of the bed and stripped it, then shoved the sheets and the clothes that littered the floor—mostly jeans and T-shirts, no store brand, like Kell—into a fabric laundry hamper, which he dragged to the door.

“Bring the trash out,” Jefferson said. “We can ask for maid service and a new comforter—he’ll sleep right through it. Gerry used to do it all the time.”

“But we need to wake him up! Dammit, he can’t—”

Jefferson sighed and looked around the room, his eyes unfocused. For the first time, Trav noticed the stack of notebooks—the cheap spiral kind—sitting on top of the desk in the corner of the room and the well-used acoustic guitar leaning against the wall. A few empty cans littered the area—soda, not beer—and the occasional cheeseburger wrapper. It was like the room was divided in two parts: Mackey the hardworking musician, and Mackey the hard-partying rock star.

“What’re the notebooks for?” he asked after a moment.