Every Little Piece of Me Page 33

  “That doesn’t sound like you.”

  Antonio gave a short laugh. “I honestly didn’t think I would get this far. I thought you’d punch me or something.”

  “Yeah, well,” she said. Her mouth dry. “I still might.”

  “I’d better say something good, then.”

  “You should have written something down.”

  He patted his pocket. “I did, but I’m not going to read it. It’s unreadable. Seriously. It’s ten pages.”

  Ava smiled. It was so easy with him. To fall into the same banter, to backslide into the same roles. Then, in a sudden flood of memory it came back to her, all the reasons why she had left.

  “Go fuck yourself, Antonio.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I was wondering when that was coming.”

  “No, seriously,” said Ava. “Take a long, sharp, jagged object and swiftly and thoroughly fuck yourself with it. Then get back to me and tell me how it feels.”

  Antonio moved closer to her. “I didn’t do this,” he said. “You have to believe me. The van was broken into. Someone stole the camera. I need you to know I didn’t do this.”

  “But you did.” Ava took a step back. She couldn’t risk him getting too close to her, close enough to touch, close enough to hurt. “Maybe you didn’t release the tape, Antonio, but everything else—that was you.”

  “You’re right.” His voice bent under the weight of his breath.

  “I gave you everything.”

  “I know, all right?” he shouted. “I know. I know. I know.” He leaned against a telephone pole, letting his head fall back briefly. “This is bad for me too, Ava. Molly is leaving me. I think I’m about to be fired. And if anyone finds out how long this has been going on, I’m screwed.”

  “Are you here to cover your own ass, Antonio? Is that it? You want to make sure I don’t tell anyone about how you took me to a pub and had your hands on me when I was fifteen? Or about how after I left the hospital, you came back to the house, knowing I’d be alone and confused?”

  Silence. Then: “You’re not going to, are you?”

  Ava closed her eyes. “Get the hell away from me.”

  “No!” She felt his hand on her arm, and her eyes flew open. “Look, if that were the only thing I wanted, would I have driven all this way? I slept the whole night in my car, Ava, waiting for you to come back here.”

  “You’re only here because you want to make sure I keep all your secrets. Every time I turned around, there you were, telling me the things you knew I wanted to hear, making me think that you cared about me. But you didn’t give a shit about me then and you don’t now.”

  “That’s not true.” His face was inches from hers, his eyes dark and pleading. “I miss you. I want you to come back. Not for the show. For me. I want us to be together, like a real couple. I want to be good for you.” He lowered his eyes. “I want to be better.”

  Ava didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. It was such a perfectly calibrated performance, so desperate in its Hollywood earnestness, a rom-com cliché. And yet, somehow, it was working. She felt as though she were on the brink of falling, without anything to grab on to, without any safe place to land.

  But then, miraculously, something caught her. “She isn’t going back to New York.” Mags stood in the doorway of her apartment building, in bare feet and pajama pants, her hair wrapped in a towel, an unlit cigarette pinched between her fingers. “For the show, or for you.”

  “I think I’d like to hear that from Ava,” Antonio said, keeping his eyes focused on her.

  “Okay,” Ava said, without hesitation. “I’m not going back to New York. For the show or for you.”

  He clenched his fists by his sides, and she briefly feared that he was going to hit her. She remembered how she used to love to try to make him angry, to crack that impenetrable exterior. It never worked. He had always stayed calm, in control, no matter what she threw at him. But now, the exterior wasn’t only cracked, it was split open, and she could see everything—every last dark corner of his soul, frantically clawing for purchase now that everything around it had shattered.

  “What are you going to do, Ava?” he asked, stepping away from her and putting his hands in his pockets. “You can’t do anything. You have nothing without us.”

  When you lose everything, she thought, all you have left is yourself. She knew she would be all right. She couldn’t say the same for him.

  “Us? Who is us?” she asked. “You don’t have anyone left. You are the one who has nothing.” She stepped up onto the stoop next to Mags. “Goodbye, Antonio. If you ever come near me or my family again, I promise you I will be on the phone to TMI and Zoe Conrad and The Cynthia Show so fast you won’t even know what happened. And if you think you have nothing now, wait until you see how much more you can lose.”

  Antonio stood there, glaring at them, the anger on his face never wavering. Then he turned and walked back to his car. Ava watched him go, her entire body growing lighter with each step he took away from her. She knew she wouldn’t see him again, but instead of the pain she expected, all she felt was relief.

  Mags lit the cigarette and leaned against the doorway. “You didn’t get very far.”

  “No, I didn’t.” Ava paused. “Thanks for saving me. Again.”

  Mags smiled at her. “You saved yourself.”

  She held out her cigarette. Ava shook her head, but then took it anyway, letting the smoke fill her lungs, waiting for the dizziness, the head rush. But it didn’t come. That was how she knew. She really was a different person.

  * * *

  They went across the street for breakfast, some faux-’50s rockabilly diner with a jukebox at every table and eggs served on plates shaped like different states. Ava ordered the two-egg breakfast with a side of pancakes, which came served on Montana. She couldn’t remember the last time she had eaten a real meal.

  Mags watched her devour the pancake stack with bemusement. “Where do you put it all?” she asked. She had only ordered a bagel, plain and untoasted on a saucer-sized Rhode Island, and had barely touched it beyond a couple of unenthusiastic nibbles.

  “Existential angst makes me hungry,” Ava said, shoving a piece of bacon into her mouth, whole. “I am filling the void inside me with breakfast foods.”

  Cocking her head to the side, Mags regarded her with tired eyes. “You’re not letting that toolbox get to you, are you? There are plenty of things you’re good at.”

  Ava wiped some bacon grease from her chin with her hand. “Name one.”

  Mags gestured to the window, where a girl with a platinum pixie cut was walking by, oblivious to her style guru sitting on the other side of the glass. “Well, you inspired the hairstyle of a generation. That’s something.”

  Ava touched her hair. “I didn’t plan it. I just cut off all my hair on a whim and everyone did the same thing.”

  Mags laughed. “Seriously?”

  “Yup.”

  “Jesus.” Mags began picking creamers out of their bowl and stacking them on top of one another. “Was it a breakdown or something? Some kind of Britney Spears head-shaving thing?”

  Ava pulled on a lock of her hair, remembering the hospital room, the man with the scissors. “Actually, a stranger cut it for me. In the hospital. The night my sister tried to drown me.”

  There was a brief flash of shock on Mags’s face, there and gone before Ava could even be sure she had seen it. Then Mags reached forward and tucked a loose tendril of Ava’s hair behind her ear. “Well, whoever it was, he did a good job.”

  Ava flushed, and cleared her throat. “It felt like it was weighing on me. I guess I thought that if I could cut away the hair, maybe I could cut away what happened with Eden. It’s stupid, I know.”

  “Do you ever talk to Eden?”

  Ava shook her head. “I didn’t hear from her the whole time she was in rehab. And then yesterday she texted me, and that’s why I smashed my phone.” She traced her finger through a drop of syrup on the table
top. “I was so mad at her for so long. I mean, she tried to drown me. But now, when I think about all the ways I wasn’t there for her…” She trailed off, licking the syrup from her finger. “Well, I would have tried to drown me too.”

  The creamer stack was now as high as Mags’s chin. She balanced another one on top, steadying it as it wobbled. “I have a sister,” she said.

  “Really?” Ava couldn’t remember Mags ever talking about a sister. “What’s she like?”

  “Stubborn, angry, lost. A lot like me, I suppose.” She let the creamer go and suddenly the entire pyramid came crashing down, scattering over the table.

  Heads turned at the sound, but no one seemed to have recognized them. Still, Ava leaned in toward the wall, shielding her face with her hands. “You’re not lost. You’re just sad, Mags. There’s a difference.” She pulled a creamer out of her coffee and took a sip. “I’ve never met anyone with as clear a sense of purpose as you. You’re not lost.”

  “Yeah, well. Frankie is. We haven’t spoken in years.” Mags swept the creamers back into the bowl, and then straightened up. “I would kill to get a text from her. Even after everything she’s done.”

  “What would you say to her?” Ava asked.

  Mags focused her eyes on a spot on the table. “I’d tell her that I know how she feels, why she’s angry all the time,” she said. “I’d tell her she fucked me up really good, but I’m going to get help, and I’m going to get better.” She paused. “I’d tell her that I forgive her even if she doesn’t forgive me.”

  Ava tried out the words in her mind. I forgive you even if you don’t forgive me. “That seems about right.” she said. She raised her eyebrow. “Does this mean you’re not going to Europe?”

  “No, I’m not.” Mags lifted her gaze to meet Ava’s, bringing her coffee to her lips. Even though her hands were trembling, for the first time since Ava had been with her in Toronto, she seemed clearheaded, sure of herself. “I’m going to check myself into rehab. I promised someone I could look after myself, and now I have to prove it.” Her eyes flicked to the next booth, where someone had left a copy of the National Chronicle open on the table. She reached over and grabbed it, pushing it across the table toward Ava. “But there’s something I have to do first.”

  That Thing She Does

  Align Above’s Mags Kovach

  By Jack Francis

  It’s a Saturday afternoon, and I’m sitting in a pub in Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood waiting for Mags Kovach, the enigmatic frontwoman of the nation’s new indie rock darlings, Align Above. Outside it is snowing, and the floor of the pub is covered in a grimy slush, and parka-wearing patrons are slumped over their stouts at the bar, looking like they might stay there all winter.

  Kovach is late and I’m nervous. It’s my first time meeting the singer, and we’re on her home turf. We’re meeting at the Nest, a place where she and her band played frequently when they first moved to Toronto in 2013, and a few blocks from the apartment she shared with her late husband, Sam Cole, Align Above’s long-time bassist. Cole passed away on July 22, 2014, from complications from bone cancer, at the age of twenty-one. As if that weren’t tragic enough, while Cole was able to complete recording the band’s first major label record, Nothingview, sadly, he didn’t live long enough to see its release. After years of moderate indie success, with Nothingview, Align Above has had a meteoric rise to fame. The album was an instant success, and broke the band into the U.S. market, with the title track hitting number 5 on the Billboard charts and landing them a rotation of performances on late-night talk shows, including Late Night with Zoe Conrad, as well as a musical guest spot on Saturday Night Live.

  It sounds like a terrible thing to say, but it’s what many have been thinking: ultimately, the tragedy of Cole’s death has been a boon to Align Above’s career and to Kovach’s fame.

  But although rumours have been swirling about Kovach’s struggles performing many of the songs from the new record, many of which she cowrote with Cole, the band has just wrapped up a successful three-month North American tour, with Josh Falco, formerly of Roofpuppy, filling in on bass. The band is on a brief hiatus before jumping across the pond for several tour dates in Europe. It’s during this break that Kovach agreed to speak to me.

  I’m also nervous because, well, it’s Mags Kovach. Known to most as just “Mags,” she is a bona fide rock star, and—I’m sure my wife won’t mind me saying this, because it’s true—she’s hot as hell. The first time I saw Align Above perform, it was in a dingy basement bar in Halifax known for breaking local bands, and the bar was packed—I mean packed—with local scenesters, many of whom had been following the band since their first EP in 2010. There were at least two forgettable opening acts, both of whom the crowd tolerated, but by the time Align Above came out, the crowd was tired of waiting, and ready for the main act. As soon as Kovach stepped onstage, wearing a tight black dress and thigh-high black boots, her hair a red flame around her head, the crowd lost their minds. I somehow made my way to the front of the stage, and at one point Kovach looked right at me and flashed me a peace sign. We had what I like to call a “moment,” one unlike I’ve ever had in my 20 years of music journalism. Of course, the rational part of my brain told me that I wasn’t special, that it wasn’t a “moment,” that she was out there making every man in the audience feel like the only man in the room. I didn’t care. I was instantly in love. And that was when she slowly and seductively pulled her scarf off from around her neck and dropped it into my hands. It was like she was dropping manna from heaven.

  I still have that scarf, hanging on the wall in my study. I had considered bringing it to the interview, but I was selfish and I didn’t want to have to give it back. I’m wondering whether Kovach would remember this encounter as the door to the bar opens and the singer herself appears, stamping her boots in the doorway and pushing back her hood. All the heads in the bar turn toward her. She’s a regular here, but she still manages to cause a stir. She’s wearing a grey coat and fur-lined black winter boots that look like something one might wear on an Arctic expedition, but I can tell that underneath it all she is quite petite, much smaller than she appears onstage. With her hair pulled back into a ponytail and no makeup, she still looks gorgeous. Personal tragedy or not, whatever she has been doing in the past few months looks good on her.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she breathes, in that trademark husky voice. “A fight broke out on the streetcar and I had to walk.”

  And this, right here, is what sets Kovach apart from all her other teeny-bopper counterparts: a bona fide rock star, and the girl still takes public transit.

  She orders a gin and tonic, even though it’s mid-afternoon, and sits down across from me. The first thing I notice when I make eye contact with her is that she holds it—she’s not one to shy away from intensity. Eventually it’s me who looks away, and I can feel myself blushing. In that instant, my mind is full of all kinds of fantasies, most of them variations on the idea of us running off together, starting a new life on a beach somewhere in Jamaica. But when I look back, I see that Kovach is blithely checking her phone, the straw of her drink nestled between her pillowy lips, and I realize that the sexual tension I felt between us was possibly all in my imagination. But what can I say. Kovach has that effect on people. And now that she is newly widowed, the allure only grows—clearly something that she has made work to her advantage in the past few weeks of touring.

  Her manager has already warned me to stay off the topic of Cole, so instead I ask Kovach about their two-night stint in Toronto. “I was there for the first show, which was incredible. But I heard the show last night was, well, pretty epic,” I say.

  Kovach’s eyes grow distant. “Yeah,” she said. “I mean, I love playing in my hometown, of course.” She tosses her straw around in her drink. “I wasn’t feeling well, so…I was worried. But it turned out to be great.” She smiles behind her phone, a secret smile that makes me wonder what she means by “great.”

  �
�The success, it’s been pretty overwhelming,” she says, and I wonder if I am catching a slight waver in her voice. “But it’s what I was meant to do. This is what I was meant to do.”

  Thinking back to that show in Halifax, I ask her if she remembers it. But my details are fuzzy, and it’s clear she has many blurry memories of dingy basement shows in Halifax to sift through. “Maybe you remember me,” I say. “I was standing near the front. You caught my eye at one point and flashed me a peace sign.”

  “Oh,” Kovach says. “Yeah, I remember.” She holds my gaze for another long moment, still sipping her drink. And it occurs to me that I will never know if she does remember, or if this is just something she says to everyone, if this is just that thing she does that makes every man feel like the most important man in the room. And I realize I don’t care. This is part of the mystique of Mags Kovach. This is what we keep coming back for. And this is what will keep taking her band to the top of the charts.

  Mags

  Sunday, 4:45 p.m.

  It didn’t take them long to figure out where Jack Francis lived. He was in the phone book, for Christ’s sake. Some cul-de-sac in Scarborough, where all sad old scenesters go to die, apparently. They took public transit, huddled in the back in hoodies and sunglasses and toques, the newspaper still clutched in Mags’s hand.

  “He didn’t even get the details right,” Ava had said, at the diner. They’d spread the paper out on the table, and Mags had watched Ava’s face as she read it, her eyes growing darker as the words sunk in. “What is even the point of making up stuff about your drink?”

  “I guess it fits better with his idea of me.” This was the part that killed Mags—that to people like Jack Francis, her life was just fuel for their fantasies, something to manipulate however it suited them. “Why do people think they can say whatever they want about us?”