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“…yeah,” I admitted.
He grinned. “Good.”
63
“Hey, I want to ask you a question,” I said as we walked along.
“What?” Ryan asked.
“What’s Killian’s deal?”
“What do you mean, ‘what’s his deal’?”
“The only questions he wouldn’t answer in the car were about his love life.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So, is he straight? Is he gay? What is he?”
“He told you about those two girls.”
“Yeah, but he might as well have said they were playing tiddlywinks. I know about Derek… and you told me about some of your adventures – ”
“Is that what they were?” he joked. “Not misadventures?”
“Call them what you like, but at least you had them. And I’ve seen Riley in action – which is something I wish I hadn’t seen. But the entire time I’ve been here, Killian hasn’t so much as made a pass at anybody. The most I’ve seen him do is share a joint.”
Ryan was quiet for a moment.
“Maybe you ought to ask him,” he suggested.
“I did, remember?”
Ryan sighed. “I didn’t tell you this, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Seriously, this is off the record.”
“Of course.”
“I’m not sure Killian has a ‘thing.’”
I was quiet for a few seconds.
Then I whispered, “He doesn’t have a penis?”
Ryan burst out laughing. “NO, no, that’s not what I meant! I mean… I’m not sure he’s interested in anybody. Not like that.”
“So he’s asexual?”
“Maybe. I’m not really sure.”
“But you haven’t seen anything, either?”
“You mean, have I ever seen him make out with somebody, or take them to bed?”
“Yeah.”
“No, I haven’t. He mostly just keeps to himself.”
“Huh…”
“But you can’t print that without his consent,” Ryan cautioned.
“I won’t,” I promised. “Is there anything else you can tell me about him?”
“Like what?”
“Wellll… he’s kind of… odd.”
“You noticed that, did you?” Ryan teased me.
“Ha ha,” I said, not laughing. “What’s with the always playing the guitar thing? I mean, it’s non-stop. And even for a rock star, his pot smoking seems a little bit excessive, don’t you think?”
Ryan was silent again for a few seconds.
“Again, off the record,” he said quietly.
“Of course.”
“I tend to think people self-medicate with drugs and alcohol.”
“Like… they’re easing their pain?”
“Or treating conditions that a psychiatrist would give them a prescription for. It’s just that they find something that works for them, and they use it to dull the pain, or help them cope, or whatever.”
“You think Killian is coping with something?”
“We’re all coping with something. Riley? There’s so much pain there I can’t even begin to describe it. That’s why she stays smashed half the time.”
“Really?” I asked, intrigued. It was the first hint I’d had that she wasn’t just a drunk horndog.
Actually, no, that wasn’t true. I suddenly recalled what she’d said when Ryan’s parents came to watch his concert:
It’d be cool if somebody came across the country to watch ME like that.
“You’ll have to ask her if you want to know more,” Ryan said. “I can’t betray confidences.”
“She confides in you?”
He shifted uncomfortably. “…yeah. Kind of.”
“You two are really close, aren’t you?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I guess we are. For being two totally, completely different people.”
“Yeah, you’re from Mars, she’s from Pluto.”
He laughed. “I think she’s actually from another galaxy.”
“What about Killian?”
“He doesn’t really open up that much to the rest of us. He’s a total genius at what he does, but he keeps everything else locked away. I learned more about him on the car ride over here than I ever knew about him before.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“But you said you think he’s self-medicating.”
“Absolutely.”
“For what?”
“OCD, for one thing.”
“Obsessive compulsive disorder?”
“I don’t know that for sure… but have you ever seen anybody do something repeatedly, non-stop, the way he constantly plays the guitar?”
I considered. “No… no, I guess I haven’t.”
“I mean, don’t get me wrong. He’s a musical genius, there’s no question about that. He’s constantly coming up with new material for songs, and we’ve incorporated a lot of stuff that he came up with when he was sitting around stoned… but seriously, he never stops.”
“What happens when he does stop?”
“He doesn’t.”
“But what if he can’t get to his guitar? What if you took it away from him?”
“Then watch out, ‘cause it’s not pretty. What’s even worse is if you take his weed away.”
“Why? What happens then?”
“It’s like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
“Really.”
“We played a short tour of Asia one time. And by short, I mean we had to cut it short. The problem was that in some of those countries, you can get thrown in prison for life for smuggling drugs. So we absolutely would not let Killian take weed with him. Miles packed Killian’s luggage himself, and inspected all his guitar cases, even stripped him down to his underwear and had the roadies search him. Getting caught with pot in the US or Canada is one thing… but Thailand? Singapore? Malaysia? Unh-unh.”
“I thought Thailand was pretty permissive.”
“Not about smuggling in drugs, they’re not.”
“So what happened when he went cold turkey?”
Ryan gave a baleful little laugh. “He turned into the most ornery S.O.B. I’ve ever met.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“No. He was cranky, and angry, and short-tempered, and mean. Just an all-around a-hole.”
“Holy shit…”
That did not sound like the Killian Lee I knew.
“Yeah,” Ryan said. “And he doesn’t play nearly as well sober, either.”
“He plays better stoned?”
“Well, yeah… because he’s always stoned.”
It made sense. I knew a girl in college who was a big pothead, and always smoked out when she did her homework. She said that when she took her tests sober, she would always bomb them. It wasn’t until she got baked before a test and aced it that she figured out what the problem was: she studied when she was high as a kite, so she needed to be high as a kite to take the tests, too. Her state of mind had to match up.
“We all agreed to cancel the rest of the tour because he was just a monster to deal with,” Ryan continued.
“Worse than Riley?”
“Ten times worse.”
“That doesn’t seem possible.”
“At least Riley is basically fun-loving and playful. When Killian’s sober, all he is is miserable… and he makes everybody else around him miserable, too.”
I tried to wrap my head around that one. Tried to imagine the placid, easy-going guitarist a hundred feet down the road as a raging asshole.
Couldn’t quite do it.
“After we canceled the tour, we had a long layover in Amsterdam on the way back. The first thing he did was to go out and score some pot in the Red Light District. Within five minutes he was back to the kind, sweet-natured Killian we all know and love. It was bizarre – a 180-degree turn, just like that,” Ryan said, snapping his fingers.
“So Killian has OCD… Riley has issues you don’t want to talk about…”
“That I can’t talk about.”
“What about Derek?”
“What about him?”
“What’s he trying to deal with?”
Ryan shrugged. “His parents’ divorce… his dad… his step-dad… a whole bunch of stuff.”
“So Killian uses pot, and Riley uses booze. What does Derek use?”
Ryan looked uncomfortable. “…booze… mostly.”
I could tell he was evading the question. “Mostly?”
He looked at me like he wasn’t sure how much he wanted to say. “And attention.”
I nodded. “He is kind of an attention whore.”
Ryan laughed. “I wouldn’t have put it that way, exactly, but yeah.”
“You just wouldn’t use the word ‘whore.’”
Ryan grinned. “I suppose that’s part of it.”
I was quiet for a moment. Then I asked, “By ‘attention,’ did you mean women?”
He took a long time to answer.
“…kind of,” he finally said.
My stomach twisted a little.
“But I’m sure that’s all changed now,” he added hurriedly.
I wanted to say, I know.
Of course it has.
But the truth was, I wasn’t one hundred percent sure.
Either way, I didn’t want to dwell on it. So I moved on.
