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It’s only when my hands come in contact with the cool wooden balustrade that I realise just where I am. Stained glass windows, stars of David, exposed beams lining the ceiling; I haven’t been inside a religious monument for so long, especially a synagogue. I don’t think I’ve ever been inside a synagogue, actually. Churches, cathedrals, temples, sure. Synagogues are new. This, this is new.
I run my fingers on the polished material, its smoothness helping steady my frantic heart. I let my eyes wander in the room to distract myself from the fact that being here is, all things considered, making a terrible mistake. When it comes to him, I seem to make nothing but mistakes. It’s hard to deny that now.
On the wall across from me is a big wooden arch, housing two levels. A beautiful organ stands on the top part, its coppery pipes rising behind the body of the instrument. I can see the black and white keys from here and wonder if playing that is a lot different from playing the piano. I should ask Sarah about getting one for our place. I can picture the exact face she’d make, and it makes me smile. I’m sure I could use an organ for the next album.
Downstairs, people are flooding in, and most of the pews are already occupied. A girl in a dark brown dress leans towards her friend and whispers something into her ear. They both squeal.
The room is buzzing with nervous energy. Everyone under twenty-five looks like they’re on the cusp of freaking out, but it’s different from when kids come to Panic shows. There’s no running, no pushing other people around. There’s respect. This is a sacred place after all. God’s probably watching us. Hell, He’s probably grabbed popcorn and is busy staining His holy fingers with butter, waiting for my next fuckup.
A big Z is affixed to the middle of the organ’s balcony, the lightbulbs behind the red plastic drawing the eye to it like a halogen lamp would a moth.
Z, as in Z Berg. Ross wrangler extraordinaire. She must have one hell of a personality to have convinced him to play not only one, but three shows. The thought that he might actually be the one wanting to do this crosses my mind, but I push it away. There’s no way. If Ryan could live alone on an island and survive for more than twenty-four hours, he would. He’s the polar opposite of a people person.
The show starts, and I recognise Z as she lounges on the balcony right across from me, clad in white. She brings the microphone to her lips, smiling as she thanks everyone for coming out. It’s common courtesy, to acknowledge the people who moved their asses to make sure the show has an audience. Without them, we’re nothing. We’re dancing monkeys with no one to dance for.
She’s hypnotising. She reigns over the room like a preacher would, only in this scenario, there are no eight-year-olds whose mother forced them to be here. Everyone is exactly where they’re supposed to be. That girl in the sixth row. That guy standing next to the pews, hands shoved in his pockets. Z, avenging angel at risk of falling down a synagogue balcony. And, somewhere behind that wooden door to the right of the stage, him. I wonder if he’s still fidgeting, like he used to before our first shows. It was barely visible, a tremor in his hands, an unusual restlessness in his eyes. Both of these things disappeared as our lifestyle got hectic, stringing shows and interviews together, one after the other, again and again. There was no more space for all of that.
But it died down. He retreated with his music and his dogs, hid himself away from the woes of the jet-set life. And so, maybe, just maybe, that slight apprehension found its way back, too. Like a new beginning, a new chapter. A piece of his nineteen-year-old self he digs back up, like an old journal you find in your parent’s attic. Dust it off, and dive back into what you used to feel.
I look at the four guitars standing onstage and wonder which one he’ll play. If he’ll play any of these at all. If he’ll cancel last second and let God laugh at me with his butter-stained fingers.
The performers – friends, as the show officially calls them – follow one another, all under Z’s watchful eye. She introduces each of them, but I can barely hear anything. I’m trying to remember what the last time I saw Ryan felt like. I try to remember whether it hurt like it did when the band split, but I can’t. My brain’s wiped that memory clean, the only spared bits being of the half-smile he deigned cast my way when I asked him how he was doing. And he said, I’m doing good, thanks.
I’m doing good, thanks.
And that’s all I remember. Probably for the best.
Z looks straight at me as she introduces the next performer, Pearl something, and my heart freezes in my chest. I take a step back, pulling on my hood to make sure my face is hidden. If she recognises me, I’m fucked.
I glance back at the cordon barring the entrance to the balcony where I’m standing. I’m not allowed here, no one is, and maybe that’s why the lights are off up here. With a little luck, she doesn’t know that. Mistakes me for a shadow, a trick of the light.
But even if she did spot me, she doesn’t miss a beat and lets Pearl play her songs to everyone’s delight.
Someone else follows her, but I zone out.
“Is there a young Alex Greenwald in the house?” Z’s amused voice fills the room again, snapping me awake. I feel my insides knot, not because I know the name Greenwald, but because behind the guy climbing onstage, is a face I’ll never be ready enough to see. Z adds something as the guy – Alex? – takes his place in front of the mic, but I’m incapable of tearing my eyes from Ryan. He’s here. He’s onstage, picking up the semi-acoustic and cracking an uneasy smile in response to the screams he’s so obviously caused.
He looks good. Dressed in black from head to toe, just like I am. He’s a pale shadow slinging the guitar strap over his head and waving to the crowd, but he barely looks at them as he does. If I didn’t know him better, I’d assume it’s disdain, but it’s anything but that. He’s still shy, and it makes me smile. The attention makes him uncomfortable, it always has. And as always, he’s terrible at hiding it. The irony resides in the fact that half of the people here are because of him.
Someone screams, I love you, Ryan.
Funnily enough, it’s not me.
Greenwald makes a remark about it, just sarcastic enough to let everyone know he’s the one front and centre. For this song, anyway.
Someone yells, I love all of you.
Ryan sits down on an amp on the side of the stage, a graceful attempt at directing the attention towards his friend. It doesn’t work, but they launch into the song regardless.
He’s mesmerising, just sitting there, head bent over his guitar in concentration, a strand of hair falling across his forehead. It was so easy to become entranced by him, back then, at any moment of the day or night. Looking like that, who wouldn’t be? Whenever he was writing, reading, playing, anything he put his heart into made him look like he was always meant to do just that. Nothing could prove that he hadn’t just come straight out of a Roman painting, leaving his crown of golden leaves and toga behind to fit into our frantic world.
I don’t even realise the song’s ended until I see him stand up and set the instrument down, my heart sinking at the idea that it’s already over. I’m a fucking idiot.
But he doesn’t walk off stage. No, he grabs the mic with his right hand and cranes his head towards Z, who’s still towering over them all.
She says, “Hello, boys,” the smile on her face unable to conceal the affection she clearly has for the two men standing underneath her feet. Ryan chuckles, and the mic picks it up. I shove my fists into my hoodie’s pockets. He sounds the exact same.
And then he leans forward a little. Shoves one hand into his pocket, because he never knows what to do with his hands when they’re not on an instrument. Looks out at the crowd. “How’re you guys doin’?”
Incoherent shouts fill the room, and God has to turn the volume down a little.
Ryan looks to his left where Alex stands, guitar ready. That used to be my spot. Just a couple feet to his left is where I stood, once. Blue tape marking where we’d spend two hours, every night.
They introduce the next song, a collaboration between the two of them. Ryan makes some joke about how they wrote it in 1825, and it reminds me of how we used to say he was a vampire. Stays up until ungodly hours and sleeps until the sun sets. Likes chandeliers better than neon lamps. He had to be a nineteenth-century bloodsucker, there was no doubt in that.
I look at him. “It’s called Lonely Moonlight.”
I know that song. I’ve heard it, once, but I didn’t know he’d co-written it with Mister Intruder, there.
They launch into it before I can think too much. Some guy’s behind the drums, but I keep my eyes on Ryan. An earring dangles from his left lobe, reflecting the stage lights, and so do the few rings around his slender fingers as he grabs the mic stand. The room is quieter than it has been for the entire night. My heart hammers against my ribcage, and I know coming here was wrong, but I’m frozen in place, listening as he soldiers through. I get through the first part okay, focusing on the melody and on his movements. Not the words. Never the words. The words are what’s most dangerous about his songs.
Without warning, my brain switches back to understanding-lyrics mode, and I hear him.
Shine on a broken heart, he sings, ‘cause I am down here in the dark,
lonely moonlight.
lonely moonlight.
And there it is. The big surprise of the night, the irony that wraps around my throat like some sort of tropical python. He’s down there, bathed in blue lights and adoration, for one night only. I’m up here, clandestine, blending in with the shadows of God’s wooden home. Nursing a fragment of dilapidated hope that he’ll want to see me after this is all over.
I turn around and close my eyes, leaning back against the balustrade and letting myself slide to the ground. There’s no strength in my arms or legs, and I couldn’t walk away now if I wanted to. So I pull my knees up to my chest and listen, and wait.
I don’t know what I’m waiting for, but I’m waiting.
I hear Z’s voice. I hear a multitude of other voices. I make out his, and time flies by along with the guitar strings and the harmonies.
When I finally find the energy to stand back up, the stage is packed with what must be all the performers, all the friends. They’re laughing, they’re singing, they’re clapping. I spot the lover, shoulder to shoulder with someone who looks like Jackson Browne and some other guy. He’s smiling. He’s clapping. He wants to be here, I realise.
I haven’t seen him this happy onstage in years. Our last shows together were tense, devoid of enjoyment or complicity. It was mechanical, a well oiled but outdated machine. Nothing to do with the relaxed set of his shoulders as he watches his best friend sing her song.
Soon enough, though, it clears out. Z, now wearing a long black dress, says she’s ready and willing to meet everyone. She also speaks for Ryan, I know. Kids migrate from their pews to the back of the room. The two stars of the night disappear behind that fated, side stage wooden door.
The crowd is amassed beneath my feet, and though I can’t see them, I can hear the excited chatter from the young girls who are about to meet the man who saved their lives, the man who wrote better words than they ever will. The guy who fashioned his own teenage anger and pain into sentences, wrapping them up in melodies and allowing us to throw them at whoever would listen.
He walks back out, resolutely making his way from the side of the stage to the other end of the room, ready to brave the masses, ready to smile and talk and nod to whatever whoever is saying. I know the drill all too well.
He used to hate it. He loved the fans, loved to hear their words, but it was always too much. There was always some girl who didn’t know or care about physical boundaries, always a guy trying to get eight CDs signed just to sell them on the internet. People who abuse of the system, of our patience and kindness. That was unbearable. To all of us, but to him above all.
And so I know just how much self-discipline hides behind those eyes of his. I know that he would probably rather be home, right now, but he isn’t. He’s here and he’s ready to meet all of them. Accept their gifts and their hugs. Tell them not to cry. Sign a thousand different things. He never would’ve done that ten years ago.
That’s how I know it’s time to go. Because it’s not ten years ago anymore, and I don’t know why I thought I could see him and talk to him.
Fuck, it’s almost been ten years since Panic lost two of its treasured members. Ten years and I haven’t made my peace with it. Talk about a grudge.
So I turn away once again, only this time I step over the cord and find my way out of here.
To my greatest frustration, the fresh evening air doesn’t help with the thoughts or the gloom at all. The street is empty and silent, but I know it’ll soon be flooded by teary teens on their way home. I need to get away from here.
A little further down the road is what looks like a parking lot. It’s deserted, apart from one abandoned car. Seems like the perfect place to reminisce. Gather these overwhelming thoughts before going back to my regularly scheduled life.
He’s grown. He’s changed. He’s a thirty-two-year-old in a black suit, looking as sharp as ever. Happier than ever. He’s over it.
He’s over it, and I’m not. Proof is, I’m here, in a parking lot at quarter to one in the morning. Pathetic.
God’s laughing at me.
I wonder what Spencer would say if he saw me here. If he’d yell at me or give me a pitiful pat on the back. Probably some Spenceresque combination of both. Tell me it’s time to go home to my wife and dogs. To stop hurting myself looking for closure I don’t need. Worst is, he’s probably right.
“Can I help you?”
The voice pulls me out of my reflection and my eyes shoot up, focusing on the figure who’s appeared beneath the dim light coming from the lamp affixed to the building by the parking lot.
He stops in his tracks and I stand perfectly still, paralysed, as we realise exactly what’s happening. Standing six feet away, Ryan blinks and exhales, as though he’s trying to wake up from some nightmarish dream he just found himself in.
He seems to decide it can’t be, though, because he says,
“You – What are you doing here?”
I was curious, I shrug and tell him. People wouldn’t stop spamming me with this show. I had to come and see for myself.
“That’s so very noble of you,” he says, fists stuck deep in his pockets. Looks at his feet. My heart lies on the ground between us, as do my lungs, but he doesn’t see them. He’s too busy not knowing what to say.
I click my tongue and finally find a breath. “Aren’t you supposed to be in there?” I gesture towards what has to be the synagogue’s back door. Funny, even holy places have a back door leading to disreputable places. In this case, it seems to be a parking lot where you meet your ex-bandmate-slash-unrequited-love instead of the Grim Reaper. “Meeting the kids, all that jazz.”
He huffs. “Yeah. I need a break, the hugs are asphyxiating me.”
I chuckle as I think about the number of strangers I’ve hugged in the past ten years. God, the germs. The bacteria. My immune system must be as sturdy as that of an ox by now.
“I know how you feel, trust me.”
He finally looks at me, straight at me, and my heart twists at the memory of us sitting in the tour bus in the middle of the night, letting our drunken minds pour out the secrets we would never dare to say sober. I used to know those eyes of his. He used to know me, inside and out. “How do you do it?”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“The press, the tours, the fans.” He sighs, and for a second he looks utterly defeated. “Everything. How are you still doing it, Brendon? How do you not, I don’t know, wanna retreat into a little house in Southern France and grow old there?”
Southern France. That would be nice. We played Lyon, once, together. I remember, and wonder what it would be like to live there. He’d forget to water his plants and visit the village where Van Gogh died. I’d keep the pool clean and drive us wherever he wants to go. The dogs would run around in our backyard.
“They keep me grounded, those kids in there,” I say. “I – I don’t know. It feels right.”
“They’d lose their shit if they knew you were here, you know.”
I smile. “I know.”
Him and I, we could create utter chaos. We could push away everything we know and paint a new world to call ours. It’d be so easy.
But I don’t even step closer to him. I listen to him as he tells me he needs to get back inside. My mouth wishes him good luck but the rest of me wants to pull him against my chest and never ever let him go. Not again.
He walks back towards the door, pulls it open, and turns around, hand on the handle.
“You, ah, you should text me. We should get coffee sometime.”
I nod and smile. Coffee. Like adults. Like friends. “Sounds good.”
He smiles back, relieved, the silvery earring catching the light again. “Thanks for coming, Bren. It means a lot.”
It means a lot.
I know he’s sincere, and so I give that sincerity thing a shot, too.
“You were amazing.”
He doesn’t answer, but the smile is still on his face. He disappears back into the building, and I’m left alone, gathering my thoughts and my heart, a feeling I’d like to call hope in the pit of my stomach.