One Last Thing Before I Go

the event that you do.”
    “I understand. Can I at least drive you home?”
    “You don’t have a car.”
    “I use Jack’s.”
    “It’s OK. I have my own wheels.”
    “Since when?”
    “Mom and Rich got me a G35 for my graduation.”
    “That was nice of them.”
    “Mom’s still compensating for you. I milk it a little.”
    “I would. Can I ask you something?”
    “Sure.”
    “Why’d you come to me?”
    “Really?”
    “Yeah.”
    “I care less about letting you down.”

CHAPTER 7
    W hen she’sgone, he sits there, gutted like a fish. Casey has always been like that, so quick with the blade that only after she’s gone does the blood start to flow. They’d been sitting in Champs, the small coffee/sundry shop shoehorned into a kidney-shaped alcove in the back of the lobby. The shop is run by Pearl, a buxom Hungarian widow in her fifties who applies her makeup with a paintbrush and whose every move is punctuated by the rustle of nylons rubbing together and the Christmas jingle of a thousand golden bangles.
    “Your daughter,” Pearl says in her almost comically accented English as she rearranges the inventory of headache remedies behind the counter. Aspirin is a big seller at the Versailles.
    “Yes.”
    “Beautiful girl. Nice legs. She’s going to get herself in trouble with those legs. My Rafi, he was more of a tit man.” She pauses to indicate her own massive cleavage, bolstered by an unseen system of pulleys and straps that must have long since carved permanent tracks into her back. “But fashions change. Now it’s all about skinny girls with the legs. You better watch out. A boy sees those legs, all he thinks about is spreading them. Right?”
    “I’ll watch out.”
    She shrugs. “Nothing you can do. Kids going to do what they want, right?”
    “Right.”
    Through a quirk they could never trace, instead of calling him “Daddy,” Casey called him “My Daddy” when she first learned to speak. He can see her now, marching joyously across his and Denise’s bed in nothing but her diaper, her small, round belly poking out like the world’s tiniest beer gut, saying “My Daddy!” over and over again, her high, excited voice pealing with laughter when he made a grab for her ankles.
    “Hey, Silver. You okay?” Pearl asks him.
    Even if he could suck in enough oxygen to speak, he would have no idea how to answer.
    * * *
    He has lost so many things: his wife, his home, his dignity, and, most famously, his job as drummer and co-songwriter for the Bent Daisies. Pat, Ray, Danny, and he had begun playing together after high school; punk, post-punk, and then something a bit more full-throated, skating up to the edge of pop. They played the rock clubs up and down the East Coast, cutting demos whenever they could scrape the money together for studio time.
    Silver couldn’t remember a time he hadn’t been drumming. His mother always said she’d been able to feel him banging out beats in her womb. When he was four, he built himself a drum set out of buckets and boxes, setting it up next to his father’s stereo speakers, and he would drum along to the Beatles and Crosby, Stills & Nash using chicken skewers. They bought him a drum set when he was six, and started him on drum lessons, figuring he’d move on to something else within a few years. But the drums, it turned out, was the single lifelong commitment Silver would make. When he sat behind his kit all the restless parts of him—his throbbing legs, his fluttering heart, his racing mind—all came together under one unifying rhythm. It wasn’t something he understood consciously, but drumming was the only time Silver was at rest.
    After Casey was born, there was a noticeable change in Silver’s songwriting. His ballads became grittier, more passionate. He was seeing the world differently. The Bent Daisies began to mature, and the roving A&R guys they’d been meeting for years took note. A year or so later, they were finally signed, in a small deal with a major label. Their first single, “Rest in Pieces,” rode one of those perfect accidental waves up the charts, and they were international rock stars for a few weeks, as these things go. Long enough to taste it and never forget.
    Then Pat McReedy came down with a fatal case of front man’s disease and decided he would do better with a solo career. The three remaining Daisies, Danny Baptiste, Ray Dobbs, and Silver met for drinks to decide their next move, but they could see the truth in