Daron's Guitar Chronicles Volume 12

1087 Kings Highway

Kings Highway (Saturday post!)

I borrowed the phone at the host stand and then we said hasty goodbyes to Patty with many apologies for having to rush back to the hospital. She gave us back just as many apologies for having pulled us away, thanked us again for coming, etc etc.

I practically ran to the car, though I knew that probably wouldn't make any difference given that we had at least an hour's drive ahead of us. I was sweating bullets mostly from the summer heat, I think. Ziggy carried the doggy bag with my left over steak frite in it and didn't say much until we got to the car.

"Do you want me to drive?" he asked.

"No. I'm fine." I unlocked the driver side door.

"But do you want me to drive," he asked again.

"No, it's better that I have something to do." I got in and he didn't argue the point.

He did wait until we were on the highway to ask, "What did they say on the phone?"

Right. "Remember the last scare, with the bowel perforation? This is probably that again, except worse, because her condition's so deteriorated."

"Probably?"

"That's all they would tell me on the phone other than, well, hurry back. In case."

In case.

I was probably not in the best frame of mind to rehash the discussion we'd just had with Patty, but it was kind of hard not to. "I can't tell if I like her or not."

"I like her," Ziggy said. "But I don't know if I can trust her."

"Yeah, same. But I can't tell if that's something about her or if I'm just never going to trust someone from BNC again."

"I think she was trying to get you excited about Mutt Lange."

"Ha." Wasn't Mutt Lange in the UK? Or Switzerland? Maybe he'd go wherever. It wasn't like it mattered. "If she wants us to catch the grunge wave or whatever she should be hooking us up with Steve Albini."

"Nah, too indie. Too alternative."

"I guess. I get the feeling the rules on what's alternative and what's mainstream are turning upside down right now." Even the radio stations in Tennessee made that clear to me.

"Yeah, but does the BNC hierarchy know that?" Ziggy asked with a shrug.

The industry talk kept my mind from spinning around and around with what might or might not be happening at the hospital, but I couldn't keep from thinking about Claire entirely. "You know, this is so much like her."

"What, the second we leave town for more than an hour, she crashes?" He hugged his knees in the front seat. "I feel like we should've expected it."

"I think I kind of did. It was like my anxiety spiked before the page came. Like I knew."

"Maybe you did." He shrugged and did not elaborate on that.

"Well, I mean, some things are inevitable." I gripped the steering wheel tightly then and felt a twinge of my old-old-old thumb injury. I hadn't meant to make a commentary on Ziggy's album situation or BNC, but I suddenly felt like I had, unintentionally. "Um, I mean, shit."

He stayed quiet, waiting to see if I'd brush it off or what. Shit shit shit. Now was not the time–and I should have known better given the argument we had in the car on the way to the airport that time in the winter–but now that I'd opened my big mouth I felt I had to try to express my feelings. "She–Patty, I mean–doesn't know she's getting right in the middle of a thing between you and me."