Spinning

Chapter 18: Throw me out with the garbage

There's a coffee shop across the street. Eddie hesitates before leading us through its doors, struggling with some thought. We find a private booth next to the windows.

"Well look who it is. Eddie! Where you been?" An older Hispanic woman with a plump face and sweet voice sets waters down on the table. She reminds me of The Oracle from the Matrix.

"Hi Rosa," Eddie responds with a genuine smile but a blush on his cheeks. Rosa looks at me curiously, looks back at Eddie, who is studying the pattern in the linoleum tiles, before deciding to swallow whatever is on the tip of her tongue. She takes our order and leaves us alone. I stare Eddie down, waiting for an explanation. I know he can feel my gaze, but he keeps picking at the corner of the table.

"Eddie..."

"I know. I know..." He takes a deep breath, and without looking up from the table, without pausing, without any change in expression except the movement of his eyebrows, he tells me his story in a low, deep voice.

"Yes, I have an apartment, but no I don't sleep there. I barely go in there. I moved in there a while ago with Angela. We dated for many years before, dated since we were young and stupid and immature... it was a long time. Too long probably. We were alone in our thoughts, together, ignoring the outside world, comfortable in our snow globe.

"Before... this... I worked at a gas station. A fucking gas station. She had a good gig at Rikem Records. It was just me and my surfboard and Angela, until I got the audition for Pearl Jam, and then the permanent gig, and our little snow globe shattered, with the little snow-pieces of our life leaking out faster than we could plug the holes.

"We moved here so I could join Pearl Jam. She left her family, friends, job, all for me. How can anyone ever repay that type of generosity? I was going to marry her. I was. No one ever loved me like that. No one ever needed me like that. Can you imagine? Someone needing me... but she didn't like it here. Our apartment was smaller, the land was smaller, the ocean was farther and she didn't like it—," Eddie is cut off by Rosa setting down our food.

"Enjoy you two." The food was completely ignored.

"...anyways, I couldn't tell anything was wrong. I only had sporadic free moments with her between the band and my nights at EnVision, but I convinced her it was temporary. I was so happy. And I'm never happy. I was making music that actually felt good, felt right. We met Chris and Susan; Chris and I were close, Angela and Susan became close, and she told me she made some new friends as well. So she would slip off into the night, and I was happy for her for acclimating so quickly."

Eddie pauses and his expression shifts. He looks up at me. Well, not at me but past me. His eyes are dead, just how they looked after our first kiss. But there is a hint of something else... disgust?

"It was probably our first month here, and I was out at the park. It was deep in the night but I was alone and my solitary comforted me. But I should've been home. When I got home, there was a message from Stone. Angela was in the hospital. Heroin overdose. I rushed to the hospital and there she was, unconscious but alive. Heroin, for Christ's sake. Goddamn heroin. I never saw it coming. She never touched that shit before we moved. I took her home and we talked and cried and laughed and I made her promise me she would never shoot up again. She promised. She promised, but even with her grave words, I stayed home more, I watched her more, and I could tell it was getting on her nerves. Christ, it was getting on my nerves. But I had a duty. A duty to keep her safe; a duty I neglected.

"I just needed one night to myself. Just one night. I went on a walk again, out into the bowels of the city, out with the rats, out where I felt comfortable, where I belong, at peace. But of course, as history could've predicted, I come back to the same message from Stone. I head to the hospital, again, and there is Angela, again. Only they're doing a ul—," Eddie clears his throat. Is he crying? No, there's no moisture in his eyes. But he's fighting some internal struggle...