Public Secrets

would. Maybe it’s Hendrix and Joplin dying the way they did. Such a waste. Then the Beatles breaking up. It’s like the end of something, and I haven’t finished.”
“Not the end.” She laid a hand on his shoulder, automatically kneading the tense muscles. “Just a change.”

“If we’re not moving forward, we’re moving back, don’t you see?” But he knew she couldn’t, and tried to put his feelings into more understandable words. “Maybe it’s Pete pressuring us to tour again, or talking Stevie into sitting in with other groups in studio sessions, and doing that movie score. All I know is, it’s not just the four of us getting together and playing from the heart anymore. It’s image and bloody marketing, it’s brokers and tax shelters.”
Emma rolled over, murmuring.
“And I guess it’s worrying about Emma going to school, and Darren going off one day. What’s it going to be like for them? Will people start picking at them, wanting pieces of them because of what I am? I don’t want them to have the filthy childhood I did, but am I doing any better by them, making them a part of something that’s gotten bigger than all of us? And hungrier-”
“You think too much.” She turned to take his face in her hands. “That’s what I love most about you. The children are fine. You’ve only got to look at them to see. Maybe their childhood isn’t normal, but they’re happy. We’re going to keep them happy, and safe. Whatever you are, whoever you are, you’re their da. We’ll work out the rest.”
“I love you, Bev. I must be daft, worrying about all this. We’ve got everything.” He brought her closer, to rest his head on her hair. He wished he could understand why everything had turned out to be too much.

B RIAN’S DISCONTENT VANISHED after a couple of joints. The house was full of people Brian felt understood him, what he wanted to do, where he wanted to go. The music was loud, the drugs were plentiful and varied. Snow, grass, Turkish hash, speed, bennies. The grinding, soul-wrenching rock of Janis Joplin poured out as his guests took their pick. He wanted to listen to her, again and again, to hear her belt out “Ball and Chain.” Somehow it helped him grab onto the fact that he was alive, he still had a chance to make it matter.

He watched Stevie dance with a redhead in a purple miniskirt. Stevie didn’t worry about being a figurehead or turning into a poster for some girl’s wall, Brian mused as he washed down pretzels with smooth Irish whiskey. Stevie gleefully jumped from woman to woman without a care in his head. Of course, he was stoned most of the time. With a half-laugh, Brian picked another joint out of the bowl and decided it was time to get stoned himself.
From across the room, Johnno watched Brian settle back. Distancing himself, Johnno reflected as he chose a Gauloise over grass. It had been happening more and more recently. Perhaps because Johnno was closest to Brian, he had been the only one to notice. He thought now that the only time Brian seemed truly in tune was when the two of them sat down to write. Melody, countermelody, phrases, bridges.
He knew Brian had been upset by the deaths of Hendrix and Joplin. So had he. In its way, it had been as devastating as the Kennedy assassinations. People were supposed to grow old and decrepit before they died. But though he’d been shaken, he hadn’t mourned as Brian was mourning. Then, Brian always cared more, needed more.
Like Brian, he glanced over at Stevie. He didn’t like what he saw. It didn’t matter a damn if Stevie screwed every woman on the continent, though he felt it lacked a certain finesse. It was the drugs, and the fact that Stevie was rapidly losing control over them, that concerned Johnno. He didn’t care for the image they were beginning to project. The stoned-out rockers.
Shifting his gaze, he looked at P.M. There was a bit of a problem there as well. Oh, not with drugs. Poor old P.M. could barely function after one toke. It was the busty blond bimbo that had attached herself to the drummer two months before. P.M. didn’t appear to be making any attempt to shake her off.
Johnno watched her now, the long-faced, sloe-eyed blonde—all legs and tits in a tight red dress. She wasn’t as softheaded as she made out to be, Johnno mused. She was sharp as a tack, and knew how to play the tune P.M. wanted to hear. If they didn’t watch themselves, she’d get him to marry her. And she wouldn’t stay