Part 6 … Nick

I heard the door close and made my way back downstairs, expecting to find it empty. What I didn’t expect to find was Lori, sitting on my sofa rocking back and forth with her arms wrapped tightly around her knees.

“Lori?” This isn’t good, not good at all. The whole scenario is fast turning into a bad B-movie. “Lori, baby, talk to me. Where’s Howie?”

“Gone.” She never looked up, she never stopped rocking.

“Gone.” No, he wouldn’t. “He’s coming back for you later, right?”

“Mama D and Polly are going to call everyone.”

She wasn’t even making sense. “Call everyone? Why?”

“About the wedding Nick. That’s so nice of them, isn’t it? That way I don’t have to keep explaining it over and over again. It was Howie’s idea, isn’t he sweet?”

Sweet? Yeah, Sweet fuckin’ D. That’s what he was. And if the bastard was here right now I’d kill him, or at least take great satisfaction about beating the crap out of the little fucker. “He let you call off the wedding?” I asked her quietly, trying so damn hard to control my temper, but my knuckles hurt from the way I had my fists clenched at my side.

“It’s for the best,” she recited stoically. “Really, it is. I’m so glad he understood, Nick.”

Lori was pale, too pale, and the haunted look on her face was scaring the shit out of me. All that stuff about going into shock? I’m thinking maybe this is it. I sat down beside her, and even two feet away I could feel her begin to tremble. I grabbed the afghan my mother’d given me last Christmas and wrapped it around her back and her shoulders. I had to get her calmed down, and I really needed to talk to Howie again, but I couldn’t leave her.

“Nick, I’m tired,” she whispered, and as I looked at her eyes, I saw the dullness begin to give way to something else. Grief maybe? I wasn’t sure. I remembered some Tylenol 3 that was left over from some dental work I’d had done last year, and I knew how it had knocked me on my ass, so I thought it might help her sleep. Hoping like hell it hadn’t expired, I grabbed her a couple and tried to get her back upstairs.

“No, wanta stay here,” she mumbled and leaned over to rest her head on the arm of the sofa.

“Baby, I gotta go out for a while, will you be okay?”

“Uh huh,” she yawned, “just wanta sleep.”

Against my better judgment, I tucked a pillow beneath her head, wrote down my cell phone number for her and drove off to find Howie. I think, other than last night, I made record time getting to Orlando. The cops must have had better things to do with their time than chase down speeding pop stars. Just like I thought, as I pulled down Orange Drive, he’s at the club.

Orange Drive is spooky as hell on rainy Saturday afternoons, because everyone else in town is usually out doing Disney or something, so I parked right in front of Tabu. Taking the fire escape steps two at a time, I made excellent use of the key he’d given me ages ago and most likely forgotten about. Howie was all alone in the VIP section of the balcony, lining up glasses and setting things up for the evening crowd. He must have known it was me, because he spoke without even turning around.

“What can I get you, Nick?”

“An explanation, for starters.”

“This is between me and Lori, Nick.” He placed a cold beer in front of me, still avoiding my eyes. “Thanks for your concern, but it really is none of your business.”

“None of my business?” I asked, absolutely floored by his attitude. “None of my business? How do you figure that one, Howie?”

“Lori and I made a decision today, and that’s the end it.” He turned away from me and went back to polishing the damned highball glasses.

“Fuck that, Howie. It became my business when I picked Lori up last night because she couldn’t find you. It became my business when she puked on my shoes. It became my business when I held her as she cried …” Dammit, I wanted to add, it became my business when we made love this morning. But the joke is on you, asshole, because you weren’t there and I was. I felt almost like a triumphant third grader who’d just bested the playground bully and gotten away with it.

“Look, I already talked to Lori about this, Nick. She’s in no condition to go ahead with the wedding. She’s got a lot of stuff to deal with right now, and to go through a big, drawn out ceremony and reception just wouldn’t be right.”

Whoa. Okay, so maybe I misunderstood Lori? Maybe they’d only postponed it? I had to know for sure.

“So what you’re saying is that you’re only postponing it? Damn, Howie, from the way you and Lori were talking, I thought you’d called it off completely.” I was all set to apologize to him when he opened his mouth and confirmed all my earlier suspicions.

“It’s for the best Nick, and I’m sure Lori realizes that. She’s the one that called it off, and I have to respect her wishes.”

“No, back up man. You really DID call it off?”

“It’s for the best.”

“For WHO?” I was on my feet so fast that the bar stool I’d been sitting on tumbled over the first railing and landed against the glass partition at the edge of the balcony. “Answer me that, Howie. WHO is this better for? Lori? Lori, who’s now facing god knows what kind of treatments and more testing, and a future filled with what? More of the same?” I couldn’t fucking believe it. This was not the Howie I’d grown up with, this was some Bizarro World impersonation of the man I’d thought was one of my best friends.

“Nick, you don’t understand-“

“Fucking right, I don’t understand. Clue me in, Howie. Tell me how this is better for YOU, because it damn well has nothing to do with what Lori needs. Who’s going to be there for her on the days she can’t get out of bed by herself? Who’s going to sweep up the broken glass from the floor when she can’t hold onto a dish on a bad day?” I was practically in tears because of this insensitive sonofabitch. My voice broke as I whispered one last question. “Who’s going to hold her and love her no matter what?”

Howie looked at me, his own eyes wet, and what he said blew me away. “Sounds like maybe it will be you, Nick. Seems like you’re already filling in quite nicely. Be happy.”

And with that, he turned his back on me and went back to cleaning the damn bar. I guess I was dismissed, and as my heart pounded and tears of outrage began to stream down my face, I turned and walked away. What I didn’t know was that his face was a mirror image of my own. As the door to Tabu closed, he picked up his framed picture of Caroline, his late sister. Tracing her smiling face with his index finger he began to sob.

In a broken voice he whispered, over and over, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”