The Russos 1 Read online

  It was just like Drake to play the big brother, even now. Frank nodded. "Don't worry. I'll take care of him. Your mother is coming in later, you know. I've made sure she's being put up at one of the finest hotels."

  Drake sighed. "Poor mama. Try to reassure her, okay? Tell her I'm okay. And Angelo, how's he taking it?"

  "I don't think he knows yet. He'll catch it on the news, wherever he is. I assume he'll come home as soon as he..."

  Drake winced. He hated the thought of his son hearing about all this on the news.

  Just then the female police officer stepped forward and said, "Five more minutes."

  Drake nodded. "That's okay, I'm ready now."

  Pepi came over to him as he stood up. "Drake, I know you can't say much, but...can you just tell me that you didn't shoot Johnny, or at least you didn't mean to?"

  He looked so desperate. Drake knew he was trying not to cry, but there was nothing he could say to ease his mind. "Try not to worry about me, Pep. Just take care of Johnny, okay?" Drake's voice deepened and he started to shake. "Don't you let anything happen to Johnny, Pepi."

  Pepi opened his mouth to say something, but Drake turned away from him. The female police officer led him out of the room.

  Back in the cell, Drake sat on the side of his cot and lowered his head. With the cuffs off, he could reach back and rub his neck. Whenever he was exhausted, tense, this is where it got him, right in the back of neck and the shoulders. Only Johnny knew how to work the tension out of him there. After a concert, in the dressing room, he would lie on his back with his shirt off and Johnny would massage his neck and his shoulders. Sometimes it would relax him so much, he would fall asleep.

  Drake closed his eyes. Oh, to sleep, to really sleep.

  He hadn't really slept properly in years. In fact, he went through stages where he barely slept at all. He was either frantically writing music all night, or disturbed by something or another that was going on in his life at the time, or too exhausted from touring to sleep.

  Johnny.

  He was afraid to close his eyes. He didn't want to sleep. He would see it all again and again, and then he'd wish he had that gun so that he could just end it.

  If he had ended it years ago, it would have set Johnny free, allowed him to live a normal life. But how could he have? He hadn't really even allowed himself to acknowledge the truth until last night.

  Last night, what was real moved up from his stomach, where it had lain all these years, and landed in his throat. He had looked at Johnny and there was no more reprieve, no more time in which to deny, or repress it. He had no choice. The gun was there.

  But he had managed to live with it, to hide it even from himself, although Johnny had known it all along. Since they were teenagers, he had spent his time denying that there was a problem, while Johnny had openly struggled with it. Cocaine dulled Johnny's pain for years until it had almost killed him. A series of different lovers, men, women, always gave them both periods of distraction but none of them ever lasted. It was true that neither one of them ever made the other's lover feel welcome, but in all fairness, it wasn't always their fault that lovers came and went.

  More often than not, some of them were more in love with the fame and the excitement of rock and roll than with him or his brother. Good ones were rare and when they did appear, they always ended up heartbroken, feeling rejected. Eventually, they were gone.

  All these years of hiding and pretending that all was as it should be...blaming everything on something else. He and Johnny had talked and fought about almost everything...except the truth. Johnny was the one who tried over and over to talk about it, but he put up a wall every time. To actually say it wouldn't take away the pain, or make it all right. It wasn't all right. It would never be all right.

  Last night, Johnny had told him that someone must have played a cruel joke on them. Drake thought of it more as a cosmic curse from hell. Deep down, he had tried to rationalize it in his mind many different ways.

  They could simply be crazy, but Johnny had gone the psychotherapy route and he found no comfort there.

  Perhaps they were reincarnated and had done something terrible in a former life, or maybe someone had made a mistake and they were not meant to be brothers at all.

  At one time, Drake was convinced it was because they had spent too much time together as kids and somehow they had become too attached, overly bonded. The jealousy, the rage, the fights, people around them watched silently and said nothing, as if talking about it was the first step to hell. Everyone just hoped it would all go away. But it didn't go away.

  Finally one night late last summer, passion exploded between them. There was no way to stop it, even if they had wanted to. It was like someone pulled up the door of an overly filled dam, and the water came rushing at a most powerful and unstoppable speed. He had turned off his mind. He remembered how Johnny had held him, and they cried. The answer to the reasons for all those years of emptiness was there. Never in his entire life had he experienced such pleasure, such love, but it frightened him.

  In the cold light of morning, he couldn't even look at him. Johnny was there, his heart on his sleeve, wanting him again, and he got out of that bed and dressed without speaking.

  Johnny pleaded. This was beyond their control.

  They had no choice but to just give in to it. They couldn't live without one another. It was destroying them, and destroying the lives of others who loved them.

  Drake knew he was right, and even though a part of him wanted to hold him like that again, he couldn't get past the shame. They were brothers, and brothers had no right to be lovers. He couldn't just forget the taboo that said that incest was morally wrong. To have shared such exquisite pleasure with his brother was unforgivable; and if there was a hell, surely they would burn in it.

  He told Johnny that it could never happen again. In fact, it should have never happened at all. That night, so beautiful, so erotic, had done such irrefutable damage to their relationship as brothers that nothing seemed the same after that. He felt guilty. Johnny was hurt at the rejection, and sought to hurt him by flaunting his lovers in front of him. Drake hated him for that. It hurt even more than before to imagine him making love with this one and that one, and he worried about Johnny getting sick from AIDS. Johnny didn't seem to care much about anything after that, including himself.

  Now it had come full circle. Last night, everything had happened so fast. They were angry at each other, but that was nothing new. He regretted buying that gun now. He had never liked guns. Frank had convinced him to keep it in his nightstand after a fan had broken into his house last month when he was on tour. It wasn't meant to shoot anyone, except maybe himself when he could no longer take it anymore.

  None of this was supposed to happen, but here he was in jail for shooting the last person on earth he would ever harm, not even able to be with him as he lay in critical condition miles away.

  Tears rolled down his cheeks. He heard a sound, and looked down the hall to see the guards checking him out to make sure he wasn't trying to do away with himself or something. He knew the warden had him on suicide watch, which was kind of stupid, because he couldn't have killed himself in here even if he'd wanted to. Last night, they had even taken his sheets out of the cell. Drake gave the guards a mocking wave and they pretended not to be looking at him. A freak in the circus, that's what he felt like.

  Although he was used to people staring at him, he had never imagined it would be under these circumstances. He couldn't blame them, really, for staring. He was a celebrity who had shot his own brother. These guards were celebrities themselves now, just by the very fact that they were here with him.

  Drake wiped the tears off his cheeks and stood up.

  He paced, wishing he had a cigarette. The craving would pass. He had given up smoking years ago. It was playing havoc with his voice.

  He sighed and sat down. If only they'd let him see his brother, just once. "Oh, Johnny," he whispered, lowering his head, "
You can't die, because that bullet last night wasn't meant for you, it was meant for me."

  * * * * * *

  Janet took Mac's hand in hers as she sat down beside him in the waiting room. She looked around for a no-smoking sign, and then to be sure, she asked Mac if she could smoke.

  "I don't see why not," he shrugged. "There's an ashtray over there." He withdrew his hand, got up and walked across the black and white tile floor to retrieve the ashtray for her.

  She thanked him and offered him a cigarette, which he took with a murmured, "Thanks." She lit them both and met his eyes. She had often wondered what it would have been like if she had married Mac.

  He had asked her once, years ago but she'd turned him down. They had a brief affair, which began when her son was a teenager and started spending summers with the band. Although Drake teased her, calling her a 'mother hen', she would often join up with the band so that she could check on Angelo. She had been friends with Mac since high school. He was Drake's best friend, and the best man at their wedding.

  It wasn't that she didn't find him attractive. He was a little on the husky side, but not fat. He had beautiful long blond hair and the nicest blue eyes. He was a great drummer. He was sweet and always kind, but never had she seen him as a potential love interest until that time.

  To this day, she wasn't sure whether Drake ever knew about that thing between her and Mac that summer. If he did, he never mentioned it. When Mac later confessed to her that he had been infatuated with her since high school and that he would have asked her out if Drake hadn't done so first, she started to distance herself from him. He was too nice a guy and she was still in love with Drake. It was her cross to bear, to be in love with a man she could never have.

  She sighed. It was funny how tied together they all were, how one life affected so many other lives. She looked around the room, puffing on her cigarette.

  Leather sofas and chairs, the latest magazines, fresh-brewed coffee in the corner with doughnuts that did look a little stale, copies of Monet and Picasso on the white stucco walls, this was not a hospital room for ordinary folk. The loved ones of poor people were sitting on hard chairs and subjected to bawling brats and vending-machine coffee, while she smoked here in luxury. That's what fame bought. But in the end, everyone died. Death was death, be it in satin sheets or on a bed of asphalt.

  Mac was talking to her now, asking her if she wanted coffee. Janet smiled at him and shook her head. She hadn't seen Mac for at least four months, and it felt good to be with him now. He just had this way about him. God, I wished I could have loved you, she thought.

  "How's Kate?" she asked, shaking herself out of that state she sometimes got herself into, that 'what if...should of...' state.

  Mac got married two years ago. It was a beautiful wedding, not only because Mac looked so happy, but because it was the first time in a long time that both her men had been by her side. Drake had been the best man, and he looked so handsome in his tux. Her son Johnny and Pepi had been ushers, red carnations in their pockets. They had sat together as a family at the wedding table. Even Johnny and Drake got along that night.

  Mac was saying something about Kate, and Janet leaned forward to hear him. Unfortunately she had never got to know Kate that well. She thought she heard him say something about it being over. "Over? What do you mean? Oh, Mac, I'm sorry, I had no idea that..."

  Mac nodded and then smiled. "It's okay. She couldn't take the life. She was never much of a traveler. She came on the road for a while and hated it. I can't say I blame her. I never had much time to be with her. She wants to live the American dream; home, family, nine to five. I can't live like that. I couldn't give up music. It's my life. She deserves better. Our divorce came through last week."

  "I'm sorry, Mac," she told him again.

  "Hell, life's a bitch and then you die. What do ya want?" He looked around, and then sighed. "I've never had much luck with women. You know," he said with a noticeable change in his voice, "they could come and tell us something about how Johnny is doing in this bloody hole."

  "Well, they say no news is good news, right?" Janet smiled at him. "I guess Pep is with Drake."

  Mac reached over and squeezed her hand tight.

  "Drake never meant to hurt Johnny. I know that, and he's not going to prison." Mac squeezed her hand again for emphasis.

  Janet swallowed. "Mac, there is something else. I mean with everything...I...what if...should I...?" It had been so long she was almost afraid to talk about it. In fact, she no longer knew how to talk about it.

  Mac wondered when it was going to come up. He too had been thinking about it when Johnny was in surgery. He wanted to discuss it with Pepi, but Pepi already had too much to handle. Mac folded his hands together in his lap. He didn't know what to say. "Suppose she's told him by now?" he managed.

  "I doubt it." Janet sighed. "Look, for sure she knows about it. She didn't try to call me or anything."

  Janet searched in her purse for another cigarette.

  "You're shaking," Mac said, taking her purse out of her hands. He found her cigarettes buried in a sea of wallets, keys and lipstick. "It's a terrible thing to have gone all these years, and..." He broke off, handing her the pack.

  Janet took them, shaking one out and placing it between her lips. He lit it. She took a drag and closed her eyes. They had said some terrible things to each other the last time they spoke. God, that had been over seventeen years ago. They had completely different ideas on things. She could forgive her for her bitterness, although Janet never felt that it was right to use a child as a weapon. She couldn't believe how far she was actually willing to go in order to keep the truth hidden. They had been so close at one time, to have completely shut her off was hard enough to bear, let alone forgive. Seventeen years. For seventeen years, they hadn't spoken, or seen each other.

  "Would she even know how to reach you?" Mac was asking now, shaking her out of her daydream.

  "I've had the same address and phone number for the last sixteen years, Mac. If she wanted me, she's always known where I am. I've been so tempted to call her sometimes, but she told me that she didn't want to hear from me ever again so...what can I do? She was my best friend in the whole world, we were like sisters."

  "Do you think you should call her now?" Mac raised an eyebrow. "Maybe she wants to..."

  Janet shook her head. "No. She'd only hang up on me, Mac. You know I..." Janet began, then paused.

  Her head went up, her eyes riveted to the two individuals which were suddenly walking toward them, two individuals in white coats.

  Mac sucked in air and stood up. He wished Pepi was here, and then he suddenly wished that he wasn't. He was afraid to hear what they were going to tell him.

  Janet also rose out of her chair, letting her eyes settle on the two men. One doctor had a ginger-colored brush cut and bright, bulging green eyes. He looked like he ought to wear glasses. He was tall and lanky, and Janet thought he must have been real skinny as a boy, the skinny boy on the beach that gets sand kicked in his face. He introduced himself as Doctor Monroe and the other man, a short, stubby bald guy, as Doctor Sandborn. They all shook hands while Mac introduced Janet as Johnny's sister-in-law.

  Technically, she wasn't anymore, but she was grateful for being included.

  Doctor Monroe was clearly in charge. He invited them to sit down. Mac and Janet retook their chairs and Doctor Monroe sat across from them, Doctor Sandborn standing at his side.

  "I'm sorry it has taken so long to get back to you. We haven't been able to address the press either, and you know how they are," Doctor Monroe wiped some imaginary lint off his grey flannels. "I assume, Mr. Russo, the patient's brother is not here?"

  Mac shook his head. "He should be back shortly."

  "Well, Mr. Hayes, I know that you are like family and you, Miss, are family. Mr. Russo did tell us that if he were absent, we were to speak to you."

  Mac nodded, swallowing. "Yes," he managed.

  "We removed the bul
let from the brain. It took seven hours. It was a very delicate operation. We have had him under observation for the past four hours. We..." he paused. "We are under a great deal of pressure here, because..." he was perspiring. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. "The problem is...we don't know what to tell you. At first, we wanted to be able to say whether there was any brain damage or not...you know...."

  Mac closed his eyes.

  Janet leaned forward anxiously. "Is there...brain damage?"

  "That's just it, we can't tell you...we don't know because he doesn't...he hasn't woken up."

  There was a silence. Mac opened his eyes. "What? You mean...he's...he's not...?" Mac ran a trembling hand through his hair. He stood up. Janet touched his sleeve.

  "He's not dead." Doctor Sandborn was speaking.

  He met Mac's eyes. "What we are trying to tell you, Mr. Hayes is that Mr. Russo is in a coma, and we have no idea when or if he will come out of it. And even if he does, there is a fifty percent chance that he will have some brain damage and a twenty percent chance that his brain will be severely...."

  "I don't want to hear anymore, Goddamn it!" Mac threw up his hands. "Twenty percent chance of this and fifty percent chance of...Goddamn it...damn it..."

  Janet tried to take his arm, but he jerked away from her and stalked off down the hallway. He stopped at one point and hit the wall.

  Janet didn't bother to apologize for him. They all knew what he was feeling. Both doctors issued Janet a sympathetic look.

  "When can we see him?" she asked.

  "In a few hours," Dr. Monroe replied, standing up.

  He took her hand. "There is no easy way to..."

  "I understand. Is he on a life support machine?"

  "No, the good news is that he seems to be breathing on his own. We will have to insert a feeding tube if he doesn't wake up soon. I.V. will do for now. Look, once we get him all settled in his room down the hall here, the nurse will let you know."