This Is How It Really Sounds by Stuart Archer Cohen Page A

that they had left behind, the light in the window, the little cloud of darkness beneath the tree, the horse snorting, the grass breaking, the old man dreaming of a life he’d never lived, the trucker passing northbound on the turnpike strung with towns reaching for his thermos, thinking Six hundred miles . Six hundred miles. Six hundred miles … The best ones always got away.

 
    2
    Thanks for Your Support
    The problem, he thought, was that you only had one life, when really you needed three or four. You should be able to say, okay, boss: done being me! Ready to be, say, the president, or maybe this guy in the liquor ad sailing out into space on a couple strips of fiberglass. That looked insane! Hanging with the snow bunny by the roaring fire, sipping a … what was it … Hennessy cognac? A gig he could handle!
    He sensed the waitress beside him with the tray and he draped the copy of Vanity Fair over his laptop. He hadn’t gotten any songs written, but he’d probably work better after breakfast, with better blood sugar. It was only eleven, and he had plenty of time.
    â€œHere you go, Pete. One ‘Healthy Choices Breakfast.’ One double vodka and mango juice.” She said it without irony: she’d been on the scene that long. Pete Harrington looked up at her over his red-tinted reading glasses and smiled. “Thank you, gorgeous.” He remembered her bartending at the Whisky twenty years ago, when she was young and hot, and, though he couldn’t place it exactly, it seemed like he’d fucked her in a closet during one of his gigs there, unless that was some other blond chick. He always wondered about it when he saw her in here, but he hadn’t figured out a good way to ask. She’s still not bad: a tad heavier at the waist, but a nice rack to make up for it. Face a little harder, but he’d come to like that in a woman. Live this life, and your face damn well better be a little harder, or you haven’t learned a thing.
    Reading the fan mail that came in through his Web site. On a good day he’d get twenty letters, anything from fortysomething women sending naked pictures of themselves to hard-core fans asking about the drum kit used on the East Coast leg of the Wreckage tour, after Cory fucking offed himself by drinking a bottle of 151 in one gulp. Sometimes he got letters from China; he could always tell by the bad English and the little chicken tracks along the bottom of the page. Bobby said they still remembered him from that whole crazy tour in 1992, but it was all pirated, so who cared? Some letters asked prying personal questions. How many women have you slept with, Pete? When was your first sexual experience? Yeah, like I’d tell you. A lot of them were still cheering him on about the thing that happened with the bassist from Uncle Sam’s Erection. He had an antenna for the losers, the ones who were way too into him. Others looked like pretty well-balanced people who just liked his music. “When’s your next release coming out?” Or, better, “I saw you in Detroit on your last tour, and, man, you’ve still got it!” He usually didn’t answer them himself: Bobby said it lessened his mystique, but once in a while, when someone sent something that really made him feel good, like someone who said they really liked one of his later albums, or maybe if the woman in the picture looked young and pretty, he’d send a short little reply, like, “Thanks for your support. Keep rockin! Pete.”
    He looked down at the oatmeal and the packet of green tea beside the mug, then took a long sip of the cocktail. Fifteen minutes to eat breakfast, then he’d get to work. The tour was in three or four months, so he had to write the songs, get a band together, and nail them down, not to mention rehearsing his classics, which is what everybody came to hear, anyway. Bobby’d been pretty clear about that fact, over