Haranguing Dante by Jillian Mandelkern
I
gazed at my sleep-deprived face reflected in the bus window. There was something delicious
about being a road-weary traveler. Streetlights streaked by as the Greyhound whizzed
through the rain at midnight. The bus finally let out an exhausted sigh and stopped at the
vacant terminal.
"Janine,"
I said pulling off the jacket draped over her face, "we're in Seattle now."
Janine woke up and shaded her eyes from the florescent light. "How
long was I asleep?" she asked.
"Like three hours. I've been staring out the window forever."
We grabbed our bags and inhaled the fresh night air outside the bus as
we walked in silence to the Marina Motel. Janine
and I, Fiona, had come to Seattle in search of our new god, Dante Duguay. We had found his
low-budget acoustic album
Safire at a small record store and bought it just because he looked hot on the
cover with messy dark hair, freckled brown
eyes and paint-splattered corduroys on his skinny legs. It turned out that we loved the
actual music, too, and burned copies
to keep everywhere there was a CD player.
Although Dante wasn't nationally known, Janine and I figured he was
pretty popular around Seattle because he had a slick, frequently-updated website and
appeared in a few guitar magazines, most specifically Acoustic World, in which he posed
shirtless, but still in those cords, on an empty California beach with his guitar prone
beside him, as if it were his lover.
Everyone at school knew about our passion for Dante. It was basically
all we talked about during our senior year. Even in our yearbooks people wrote messages
like "Good luck hanging out with Dante this summer. Have fun in Seattle!"
Really, we had only made preliminary plans to go to Seattle and even to
me it seemed like talk, but nevertheless I bragged about it to everyone in my path. So I
was definitely happy when we stepped off the bus. We were in Seattle. Everyone was going
to know about it too.
Janine dug out the Acoustic World article from her backpack and taped
it on the streaky mirror of the motel room. The room had one double bed covered in a green
afghan, and a TV without a remote control stood in the corner. We
immediately unrolled our sleeping bags and threw them on the bed. As we laid with the TV
flashing for company, Janine gushed, "I can't believe we're seeing Dante tomorrow.
After all this time being stuck like, a million miles away from him in Illinois, we
finally get to see him. It's so crazy."
"I know. What if he like, picks us out of the crowd and takes us
out on the town or something?" I rolled over and laughed.
"I am so glad I finally convinced you to go."
Janine smiled. We had intentions of saying more, but after months of
trying to get to Washington, we just fell asleep.
The next day we woke up around noon. I looked in the phone book and
located a pancake house down the street from the Marina Motel. We eased into the day with
chocolate chip pancakes and chocolate milk. We spent the rest of the time doing our best
to get a tan, despite the cloudy weather, and getting ready for the show. I wore a
stretchy blank tank top, faded jeans, and platform sandals. Simple yet hot. Janine wore a
knee-length flouncy skirt with a tight pink T-shirt. She hoped to attract
Dante with the Cyndi Lauper look.
We called a cab to take us to Wax, the small club where Dante got his
start.
We got into Wax with no problem since it was an eighteen and over club.
It was totally dark except for candles in the middle of the tables. Dante's CD played over
the speakers. About thirty people were posed throughout the place, but they were all
shrouded by shadows.
Janine slapped
my arm. "Fiona, I think that's him," she whispered. I looked to the small stage.
It was definitely Dante. He took a swig from a water bottle and donned his guitar. He was
wearing the corduroys. His hair was messier than ever. He wiped his nose with his forearm.
Janine and I scurried to one of the front tables.
Dante
straightened out the microphone and launched into his song "Last Day of My
Life." I actually had a tear running down my cheek. I just couldn't believe we were
there. Dante was singing softer than usual but he was still beautiful. But when he got to
the chorus, he let out a monumental sneeze that echoed from the microphone. Janine and I
looked at each other wide-eyed.
Dante just quit. He looked around calmly, then took another drink from
his water bottle. He swung his guitar over his body and walked off the stage but no one
seemed to notice except Janine and I.
"Do you think he's okay?" was the first thing Janine said.
All I could think about was how he gypped us. We took a damn Greyhound
bus all the way from Illinois to Seattle to see this dude and he just left the stage
without even playing a full song. "Dante!" I yelled, but he didn't hear me. He
was already out the door. I picked up my purse and charged after him. "Come on,"
I said sternly to Janine, who was just staring at the empty stage in awe.
I pushed open the heavy wooden door. It smacked against the side of the
building. I ran down the stairs when I spotted Dante sitting in the passenger seat of an
IROC with a smashed right headlight. "Hey, Dante! Aren't you going to finish your
set? We came a long way just to see you!" I called.
He was doing something else in his car and didn't look up. I walked up
to the driver's side window which was part of the way down.
"What are you doing?" Janine whispered.
I pulled her along. I stuck my face right inside the car. When I got a
closer look I saw that Dante was lining up perfect little rows of cocaine on the
dashboard. I didn't care if I was interrupting. "We're huge fans of yours, Dante. We
seriously came all the way from a crappy town in Illinois to see you. So if you're not
going to perform, can you please just sign this?" I dug through my purse to find the
Acoustic World picture and a pen.
"We really love you," Janine piped up from behind. I'm sure
she probably already formulated an intervention plan to get him into rehab.
Dante laughed. "Well, I'm sorry to hear that." He snorted a
line and using a razor blade, scraped the rest of the powder back into a plastic bag and
climbed over to the driver's seat. He put the keys in the ignition, gave a little taunting
wave, and sped off. And that was that.
Janine and I were left standing as if we were still leaning over his
car. "Screw you!" I screamed after him, my voice reaching a dangerously childish
decibel. Janine was crying and draped herself over my shoulder. I instinctively started
walking a brisk pace back to the Marina Motel, although it was about twenty blocks away.
It wasn't raining, but it was a misty night and my feet started sliding in my sandals.
Janine was blowing jets of snot all over my neck. "Why would he do
that?" she wailed. "I mean, he just left. How could he
do that?"
"Because he's a frickin crackhead," I said. I was really
stomping down the sidewalk.
By the time we got back to the motel I had broken blisters on my heel
and my littlest toe so I went to soak my feet in the tub. I rolled up my pants and gasped
at the pain when I immersed my feet in the hot water. Damn Dante Duguay.
I heard Janine sniffling in the room. It was driving me insane.
"Hey, why don't you call for some pizza or something?" I called sweetly. I was
doing my best to keep from slapping her and telling her to get a grip.
"I can't call for anything." Janine sobbed, "Listen to
me. They'll think I'm crazy."
I dried off my feet, located Pizza Hut in the phone book, and ordered a
medium cheese pizza without even asking Janine what she wanted.
As we waited
for the pizza to arrive, I threw my clothes into my gym bag. Janine watched an 80s B movie
on TV as mascara-laced tears streaked her face. "Everyone's going to laugh at
us," she said. "After we made that huge deal about seeing Dante and how we all
laughed in everyone's face, like we were going on some great vacation and hooking up with
a rock star and they couldn't go."
"I don't
care," I shot back. "I just want to leave. I'm serious. I am definitely catching
the first bus out of here tomorrow, whether you decide to join me or not." I shoved
my makeup in my bag. I ripped one of my Dante pictures in half, crumpled it and plunged it
into the trashcan. Janine looked mortified. She grabbed her pictures and guarded them from
my wrath.
Then her cell
phone rang. It was Maria, her best friend before she met me. Maria hated me. I can't say I
really cared for her either. She fought with me about every decision we made in student
council just for the sake of argument. Her ideas sucked anyway. She called to see
how it was going with Dante. Janine cried out the whole story, which pissed me off because
I knew Maria would tell the entire world and it would be shoved in my face that we failed.
Janine wasn't swift enough to pick up on that so she told Maria every single detail. I sat
on the bed, glaring at her.
I wasn't going to leave that city without some satisfaction. I grabbed
the phone book again and found Dante's number. I dialed it on the rotary phone. He
answered on the fifth ring.
"I hope you die a horrible death, you bastard!" I yelled, and
slammed the phone back on the hook. It made a faint ding noise. I laid back on the bed and
stared at the ceiling with my arms crossed over my chest. Janine was still talking to
Maria.
But by that time she had crawled into the closet.
We left the next morning at eight o'clock. The sun was out and the air
smelled pleasant. I had calmed down since the night before, but Janine and I weren't
talking. Somewhere in Colorado I broke the tense silence. "You know, I'm sorry I made
a scene or whatever I did last night."
Janine nodded slowly. "It's okay. So what are you going to tell
everyone?" She had a skeptical tone to her voice. She knew what she was going to say,
but she wondered if I could ever drop the bravado.
I looked out the window at the snowcapped mountains, then turned back
to Janine with a smile. "I'm going to be straight about it. It's a pretty funny story
anyway. I think I can handle telling the truth for once."
Janine dug through her bag and produced the shredded picture of Dante.
She had patched it with Scotch tape. I wanted to laugh but I suppressed it. "Think
he's going to be okay?" I asked.
She examined the photo. "Eh, he doesn't deserve to be okay."
She re-crumpled the picture and tossed it into the trashcan at the front of the bus. We
looked at each other for a second, then laughed.
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