Sam: chapter2

Stephano’s was a coffee shop built out of a night club which went out of business in 1993. Stephano got the building for cheap and fixed it up with a vision in his head. It was a cool place, live music and poetry, books and cd’s for sale, sometimes there was even dancing on the old dance floor. And the coffee was excellent. 

We had been traveling a lot: too much. Scott, the director, was pitching us an idea and I was absorbed in cup number four when Christina stepped on stage. 

She was incredible. She lifted me out of my drowsy, coffee-buzz stupor. Most people paid no attention, they were regulars, focussed on their laptop computers, numb to her lovely voice. She played some folk songs, she took requests, she played Somewhere Over the Rainbow and Message in a Bottle. But best of all, she played a song she wrote herself, it was simple, had no title, but it was sweet. Her voice was like breaking glass. Every word was a plea. 

“Our springs were long and make-believe. Strong and serene, I was your queen. By winter I was broken clean. You were just one more trusted no one. I wasted away on my throne.”

Somber and addictive. 

When she got off stage I went to talk to her, without consenting the other band members. I was sporting hangover sunglasses, a horrible new haircut, and five o’clock shadow, so she didn’t recognize me at first. 

I told her she had a beautiful voice. She smiled, thanked me, and offered to sign my coffee cup. 

As she sharpied her name on the styrofoam exterior I stumbled over my words asking her if she wanted to try recording a little with my band and I. 

“I don’t know, I’ve never done anything like that before.” She said, dismissively. “Who should I make this out to?”

“Uhm, Samuel Keystone. We could really use your voice. . .”

She looked up at me, slowly, mouth hanging open. “Samuel Keystone?” She had stopped halfway through writing “Samuel.”

I slipped my sunglasses down a little so she could see my eyes. “That’s me. Why don’t you come meet the band tonight?”

Needless to say, she did. Christina had been listening to us since she was in high school. (That makes me feel old.) Meeting us was like a dream. She was nervous at first, but we got her calmed down and within the month we were recording together in New York. She was exactly what we needed, that special something that was always sort of missing. 

We started out doing just one song, but one turned into two, and two turned into three, etc. Christina was cool, after a day of recording, the six of us would sometimes go out for a much-needed, well-deserved victory burger. On one such occasion I asked Christina where she had been living, and she confessed that she had been living in her car for almost three years by then. 

I insisted she come stay with us on the tour bus. She resisted, told me her car was spacious and comfortable. She was “fine,” I was relentless, though. We had plenty of room, a refrigerator, cable TV. It was Richard who got her in the end. 

“What you guys talking about over here?”

“I was just telling Christina she should come stay with us for a while. We have an empty bunk, don’t we?” I watched her as I gave him my reply. 

“Oh yea. It’s pretty bitchin’. The only reason no one sleeps there now is because it’s next to Keith, and he snores like a bear. You can trade with me though, I don’t sleep well anyway.” 

She smiled, “Really, I don’t want to be an imposition. . .”

“Pfft, whatever, James is more of an imposition than you’ll ever be.” Richard waved his hand in dismissal of her comment. 

Keith wandered over, he looked at the three of us, “Sup?”

“Christina’s gonna’ come stay in the spare bunk!”

“Really? Alright! These guys are lying, I don’t snore.”

Just like that Christina went from fan, to friend, to roommate. Three weeks later we were working on our new album. She was pretty much completely assimilated, she helped write lyrics, she made fun of James, she named a track, she even got horribly sick from Keith’s cooking one night.

She was with me the night Mandy died. It was midnight and everyone else had already gone back to the bus. Christina and I had been stuck on the chorus, unable to quit working on it until we got it just right, we were trapped there. When we were both satisfied with it we took our time getting our stuff together, then the phone rang. The phone in the studio hardly ever received calls. I picked it up, tentatively. The voice on the other end was calculating and solemn. 

“Hello, is Samuel Keystone there?”

“Speaking.” Christina watched me from the other side of the studio. 

There was a pause, a deep breathe on the other end, “This is Doctor Lawrence Grandalle, of Peachwood Hospital in Hartford Connecticut. There’s been an accident. . . Your wife, Amanda Keystone, was killed on impact.”

My head started to spin as this information washed over me. There was silence except for my heart pounding in my chest.

“Sir?”

“Yea, sorry. I, I’ll be there as soon as possible.” I didn’t know what else to say.

Doctor Grandalle told me to get in touch with my in-laws for burial information. They were moving her to a funeral home the following morning. 

Funeral home. That’s when I started to cry. Amanda and I never got to have a home together. I was always on the road. And now we never would. 

Doctor Grandalle told me he was sorry for my loss, and hung up. Christina had come to my side. I sank into a dark, hollow space in my chest where it was quiet except for a blaring car horn and the screech of tires swerving a little too late. 

Christina put her hand on my shoulder, “What happened, Sam?” Her voice barely penetrated the walls of my chest, it was warm and distant. 

“I loved her. . . So much.” My pathetic, disembodied voice whimpered the only reply I could think of. 

Christina pulled me into her arms and I surfaced for a moment. The studio was bathed in dim yellow light, Christina smelled like peaches. Her hair is auburn, and somehow, looking through it, I was reminded that I would never hold my Mandy again, and I re-submerged. 

After I had cried on her shoulder for a long time Christina told me “she’s in a better place now.”

I stepped back. I chewed her out. Christina stared at her feet. She apologized, called me Samuel. Looking back I was in a lot of pain, but I shouldn’t have been so hard on Chris. A lot of people said things they couldn’t back up when they found out Mandy had passed on. “At least she didn’t suffer.” and “It was her time.” Christina’s words were different somehow, though. She really believed what she said. 

The next morning I woke up early, packed, and dressed for mourning. Everyone but Christina was gathered around the tiny tour bus table for breakfast when I came out with my bags. I told them what happened. Everyone was really sympathetic, I just nodded and limply returned the “sorry, man”’s and heartfelt hugs. “So, I gotta’ go to Connecticut for a while.” I was up all night crying, so that was all I had left to say. 

My wife’s funeral sucked more than funerals normally do, because I was alone. Mandy’s friends were all squares, her sister is a psychopath, and her parents never liked me. Maybe they had heard too many gay, stage-kissing stories, maybe they read about my drug addiction and didn’t trust that I was done with it, or maybe they had always pictured their daughter with that nice young boy down the street. Whatever the reason, I almost kissed the ground when I finally got back to New York. 

In spite of my entire life, what Christina had said really stuck in my mind. I thought about it almost every day. Christina was probably the most religious person I had ever met. She prayed every night, like a seven year old, on her knees by her bedside. She got up to go to church every Sunday morning at seven. She even tried to avoid eating meet on Fridays, splitting something with Keith, who’s a vegetarian, instead. There’s a lot of people like this in the world, I knew that. But I always assumed that those people had easy lives. I know too much about Christina to think that now. 

She grew up in Louisiana, raised by her awful mother and her Catholic aunt. Christina shrugged off her bad past. She smiled when she told me her aunt was the only one who ever saw the bruises. When she graduated from high school, and her aunt died suddenly in her sleep, Christina moved to New Jersey to try to forget. She told me she was blessed, because she survived. 

I thought about all of this when I was in Connecticut, and for a short time when I got back. Maybe Christina helped speed up my recovery, just knowing that she wasn’t living in spite of her past, she was living above it. One night when I was sick of thinking about it I went to Christina’s bunk, not at all sure what I was going to do or say. 

Christina looked up at me, and smiled. “Hey, Sam, what’s up?”

I swore her to secrecy before I said anything. 

“My lips are sealed.” She laughed, twisting the key at the corner of her mouth. 

I shut the door behind me and asked her, stuttering awkwardly as I did, to tell me about God. 

Christina smiled, and didn’t tease me. She asked me what I wanted to know, and smiled bigger when I said “everything”. Life was a string of busy activity from then on. Days and nights were a seamless, cluttered blur of recording, performances, and catechism lessons. Usually I just listened, especially in the first couple weeks. I wanted Chris to know I was making an effort to try to understand, and I was being open-minded. When I did ask questions she answered them with grace and clarity, just like her aunt had taught her. 

By now, of course, we had invited Christina to join us on stage, which was weird, she was such a mild-mannered stage presence compared to the rest of us. She settled into it pretty well though, she even did a few songs solo. Christina didn’t have to do anything crazy to get people’s attention, all she had to do was sing. She was like a sister to us. 

Author's Note

hey stuff actually happens in this one!