Free How to Kill a Rock Star by Tiffanie Debartolo

that almost every cent Michael makes at the restaurant goes into the band? We’re living paycheck to paycheck. My paycheck. I can’t do it anymore.” I couldn’t argue with her. The situation was unfortunate for al involved. But someone had to feign hope and I decided that someone would be me. “I have a feeling things are going to start happening for Bananafish.” I crushed up my piece of cookie, tossed the crumbs onto the ground, and half a dozen pigeons swarmed the bench.
    “E li za,” Vera said. “If a rat scurried up to you right now, would you feed it?”
    “No.”
    “Pigeons are rats with wings.”
    I wished she wouldn’t have said that. I had enough to worry about and didn’t need to add flying rats to the list.
    Vera gazed over her shoulder at the New York Public Library. “I applied to Columbia,” she said. “If I get in, I’l start in January. If the band isn’t signed by then, Michael understands he has to quit.” She looked directly at me. “This is what I want.”
    I had to laugh. The phrase what I want struck me. It contains so much entitlement, so many complications, but encompasses only what a person doesn’t have.
    It made me ponder what I wanted. I fingered the note in my pocket and felt emptiness in the pit of my stomach— like I hadn’t eaten for three years. Then I thought about Adam. I thought about al the things I’d wanted from him, things I knew he never could’ve given me, and I whittled al of them down to one juvenile, esoteric wish.
    “A song,” I said aloud.
    “What?”
    “The whole time Adam and I were together, he never wrote one song for me.”
    Vera looked like she was trying to think of an appropriate response to such a stupid desire. “He was a drummer. You hate it when drummers sing.”
    This is true. I say, down with the Romantics, Don Henley, Phil Col ins! Down with songs like “Yel ow Submarine” and “Love Stinks.” Drummers have enough to do behind their equipment. Half the time nobody can see them. And fans should be able to make eye contact with singers. It’s sexier that way. But Vera was missing the point.
    “I’d be a sucker for a guy who wrote me a song,” I said.
    “Like Beth or Rosanna or Sara. Or Sharona. Is that too much to ask? To be somebody’s Sharona?”
    “Aim high,” Vera said.
    I hadn’t left the office before eight al week, but my conversation with Vera had left me feeling heavy, and I didn’t want to spend al evening alone in the apartment, stuck under the burden that was my thousand-pound heart.
    I snuck out of work early, went home, and had just gotten dressed when I heard Paul bounding up the stairs. A second later he was in my doorway.
    “You’re here.” He grinned. “ Finally .”
    “ I’m here? That’s funny considering your bed hasn’t been slept in for days.”
    Paul let out a laugh. “Oh, Eliza. Sweet Eliza. You do like me, don’t you?”
    6Maybe I’m weak for music men. Maybe I’m weak, period. But I couldn’t deny I was charmed by his arrogant, fool-ish guise. And since I hadn’t been charmed by anyone in a long time, I couldn’t just write that off.
    Paul looked weird, col egiate. It took me a few seconds to figure out why. He was dressed, head to toe, in Gap clothes.
    “I know,” he said. “Let me change and then we’l go.” He reappeared in the hal a minute later, bright as a sun-beam, wearing the pants to his green suit and a yel ow Tshirt that said: My Jive Limo ~ A ride you’ll never forget .
    “We match,” he said, pointing first at his shirt and then at my chest.
    “Excuse me?”
    “Your bra,” he said, which he could see through my dress.
    “Yel ow. Nice.”
    I cal ed him a bastard and he laughed with a sense of accomplishment, as if he’d been trying to get me to insult him. “Do you like to gamble?” he asked, furiously opening and closing drawers in the kitchen, a guitar pick sticking out the side of his mouth.
    “Why?”
    “Don’t be so suspicious. Just answer the