Nick did not sleep dreamlessly this time. He tossed and turned in the bed while his psyche churned up all the crap from his life and tried to sort it out, throwing up bizarre images and sounds.
At one point, Nick woke up and sat up suddenly. He hit his head on the slanted wall above the bed. It took him a couple of moments to figure out where he was.
“Man!” he said to himself. “What was all that about?” He was soaked in sweat, and the duvet was tangled around his legs. He looked at the clock. 2:38.
Nick tried to recall the dream, but he couldn’t. That was probably for the best, he figured. All he could remember was a feeling of being terrified.
He got off the bed and made his way to the head. While he was relieving himself, he scratched his chest and breathed deeply, letting his heart settle back down from his throat into his chest.
Nick went back to the bedroom and picked the duvet up off the floor. He fluffed it up into the air and settled it on the bed. Then he slid between the sheets and grabbed his pillow again. He lay in the dark, afraid to close his eyes, afraid to fall back into the dream.
He played with the song he’d been messing with earlier in the day. I’m Cool. He hummed the melody and ran some words together. He tried to think of all the words he could that rhymed with ‘cool’. Pool…fool…drool…ghoul…
Nick’s eyes drifted shut.
In the morning, he woke up at 6:30 and couldn’t go back to sleep. He’d had more dreams during the night, but they weren’t scary…just confusing. Nick had dreamt he was running, and when he woke up, he was exhausted.
A glance out the window did nothing to improve his outlook. The sky was overcast and grey. It was going to rain at some point today, Nick was sure.
Nick made coffee and went up on deck. His plan the night before had been to try for Georgia today. Savannah, maybe. Mile 583. That wasn’t really a long trek. Not even fifty miles. There were lots of creeks and inlets en route that might be worth a look.
The rain might change all those plans. Nick checked the guidebook for anchorages. If it started to rain, he was going to anchor the boat and wait it out. It wasn’t that he was afraid of storms, he just didn’t want to get wet. And it was still May, so the rain would be chilly.
Nick wrote a list on his notepad of various anchorages along his planned route. He tore off the paper and put it with the carefully folded navigation chart.
He got another cup of coffee and thought about breakfast. He didn’t feel like cereal today. He opened all the cupboards and the refrigerator. Nothing really piqued his interest so he had Froot Loops again. He made a note to himself that he needed to get milk before he could have another bowl of cereal.
Then he went topside and cast off.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The rain started at ten o’clock. The sky had become darker and darker, the clouds more and more threatening. Nick was just coming up on Broad Creek. The guidebook recommended this anchorage as being sheltered. Nick followed the directions, turning east past Opossum Point. There was a marina there, but Nick didn’t go to it. He dropped anchor and waited out the rain.
Before the rain started, he’d been traveling slowly, checking out various spots along the route. Skull Creek turned out to be nothing special, and Nick didn’t spend a lot of time there. There didn’t seem to be a lot of traffic today…maybe because it was a weekday. Nick looked carefully at every boat that he passed that was lying at anchor or tied up to a dock. He tried to tell himself that he wasn’t looking for the Sunset Voyager.
At Broad Creek, after making sure that everything was fastened down, Nick went below to wait out the rain. He started to play a video game, but the drumming of the rain on the deck overhead and the restless sleep of the night before combined to make him very sleepy.
Jeez, I’m napping at 10:30 in the morning, he said to himself. What a wild and crazy life I lead!!
Nevertheless, he pulled the duvet over his legs and was asleep in seconds. He slept soundly and dreamlessly for two hours and woke refreshed and ready to move on.
The weather had cleared somewhat. The rain had stopped although the sky was still heavy with dark clouds.
Decision time, thought Nick. Move on, or stay here? He tossed the choices around his head.
Lunch was the decision he came up with. He made himself a couple of sandwiches. He took a good look at his groceries. Since he was uncertain where he would end up today, he might want to think about dinner. He didn’t want to eat another frozen pasta dish, that was for sure.
Nick spotted the styrofoam container holding the remains of the supper from Vincenzo’s. He counted the days on his fingers. Nope, he didn’t want to eat that, didn’t even want to look at it. He threw the container in the garbage. Then he tied the plastic bag up tight to keep in any smells, and he put it in another bag. He picked up the notepad and wrote ‘garbage’ under ‘milk’.
Nick still hadn’t made a decision about dinner by the time he finished the second sandwich. He grabbed a bottle of water and went topside, telling himself that it would all work out. He wouldn’t starve to death, even if he did have to defrost and nuke his way to Florida.
“I’m cool,” he hummed to himself, as he checked the gauges and switches. “I’m cool…didn’t go to high school…don’t follow the rules…but I’m cool…”
Nick laughed. This was a pretty dumb song, he figured, but it kept flitting around his head. He started the engine and headed back up Broad Creek to the Waterway.
“I’m cool…I ain’t no fool…”
Maybe that’s what he could name the boat. I’m Cool.
Yeah, right! No arrogance there, Nicky!
Suddenly, Nick’s thoughts sailed off the boat and into his past. Cool? Nope, never. Not once. Nick remembered his years in middle school. He was the skinny kid who was often absent because of auditions. He wasn’t a jock. He was a geek.
Singing and dancing didn’t make you cool in the eyes of your classmates. It made you ‘gay’. And not necessarily in a sexual sense…twelve year olds didn’t really understand all the ramifications of homosexuality. No, ‘gay’ meant uncool, sissified, girlie…
And even though trying out for a spot on the Mickey Mouse Club was a big deal in the entertainment world, it was like painting a target on your back on the school playground.
Trevor Barker.
The name jumped up in front of Nick. Trevor Barker, the school bully. Nick could see his face even now. And he could hear his voice.
“Hey, Gay Boy!”
Nick shivered at the helm. He knew it wasn’t the weather that made him do that. It was the memory of the harassment that he’d suffered from the bigger, meaner boy. Nick had been under strict orders from his mother that he was not to get in any fights. He couldn’t go to an audition with a black eye or his hand in a cast. So he couldn’t stand his ground and take on the bully even if he’d wanted to. He hadn’t wanted to. He was afraid of Trevor. But he was more afraid of disappointing his mother.
Nick had foolishly confided to another classmate, another victim of Trevor's cruel streak, that he couldn’t fight Trevor because he had auditions and performances and he couldn’t afford to get hurt. In a desperate attempt at getting off the bully’s hit list, the classmate had shared Nick’s confidence with Trevor's best friend.
Trevor had been merciless from that point on. He had taunted Nick constantly, calling him a wimp, a girl, a pussy…
Nick smiled wryly to himself. He remembered that the first time Trevor had called him that, Nick hadn’t even known what he meant. He’d thought Trevor meant ‘a cat’.
The final auditions for the Backstreet Boys had come just in time. Nick didn’t think he could have survived much more formal schooling.
Nick turned the wheel, moving the Lenore into a slight bend in the Waterway. He wondered where Trevor Barker was now. Prison, probably. Nick had never heard from him again.
That wasn’t true of all of his classmates. Nick had heard from several of his former middle school colleagues who all seemed to remember being Nick’s best friend at the time. He’d had requests for money, offers of sex and demands for his time. He had turned them all down.
The rain started again, and Nick turned into Elba Island Cut. He dropped anchor in the river and went below. He threw in a DVD and watched people shooting each other for 90 minutes. When the movie ended, so did the rain, and Nick went topside.
He looked at the charts and realized that he was less than ten miles from Thunderbolt, the marina he had chosen from the guidebook for tonight’s stay. The guidebook warned that calling ahead for docking instructions was advisable due to the tidal currents and that there were people on site to help with fenders etc.
The guidebook also pointed out that there was a complete yacht repair and refit yard. Nick sure hoped he wouldn’t have to make use of that. He was also going to try and resist the daily delivery of Krispy Kreme donuts to every boat. The recommendation of an excellent restaurant just ¼ mile away was good news to Nick. It meant he wouldn’t have to microwave plastic food for dinner.
Nick got on the radio and called Channel 16. He arranged for an overnight mooring. Will do, said the dockmaster. He gave Nick specific instructions on how to approach the marina. Nick listened carefully and did exactly what he was told. It was tricky working his way through all the channels to the Wilmington River, and it took him over an hour.
When he was safely moored, he went up to the office to pay the dockage rate. He listened as the clerk listed off the facilities, apologizing that there was no cable or internet access.
Nick shrugged. He didn’t care about that. There was fuel and a store where he could buy milk. That was pretty much all he wanted or needed. He got directions to the restaurant and assured the clerk that he would come back and arrange for a taxi if he wanted to see historic Savannah. He did not inquire about anyone else’s reservation.
Nick went back to the Lenore and studied the brochure. Maybe he should take a look. He had lots of time to get to Florida, and it wouldn’t kill him to get a little culture along the way. Maybe tomorrow, he’d check the city out.
Nick looked at his watch. Then he looked out the window at the sky. He figured the rain was done for the day. It would be okay to go for a walk.
He’d save Downtown Savannah for the next day, if indeed he were in the mood for “sultry ambiance, striking beauty and old-world charm”. Nick didn’t know if he would want to spend time “enjoying the warm hospitality and relaxed pace of the Old South”. And he wasn’t really sure he was the type of guy to stroll down “cobblestone streets where century-old live oaks shade magnificent homes, winsome gardens and picturesque squares”.
At the moment, Nick was thinking about the picturesque golden arches again. He rubbed his stomach and told himself, ‘NO!’ The restaurant near the marina, Teeple’s…Nick giggled at the name…would have much better food than McDonald’s. And plates and knives and forks…all the stuff grownups used to eat!
Nick forced himself up off the leather sofa. Let’s get going, he told himself. He checked the boat carefully, making sure all the moorings were secure. He debated about locking the cabin and decided against it. There was a fraternity among boatmen. You didn’t enter anyone else’s boat uninvited. And security seemed pretty good here. And other than his guitar, Nick didn’t have anything on board that anyone would want to steal. His underwear used to fetch big dollars on eBay, but he wasn’t sure it still would.
None of them was sure of that anymore. It had been a long time…their Up Close and Personal tour had been a great success from their viewpoint, but who knew really how much of an indicator that was. Sure, they could sell a couple of thousand tickets in any given city, but what if that was all they could sell?
Opinions were divided on it…certainly among their handlers, but also amongst the Boys themselves. Nick tried really hard not to say anything, not to express any opinion at all. He’d learned pretty quickly that they all considered his solo effort to be a failure, and his dating Paris was just the “mistake of a lifetime”. Nick didn’t believe either of these to be true. But he wasn’t in the position to argue with them. Or the mood. He was just happy to be back with the guys making music.
He knew that the early leaks of the music had led to two camps being formed among the fans…the first was Too Much Nick, the second was OMIGOD Nick!! That sure put him between a rock and a hard place with the fellas. There had been some hard feelings with the other guys over his solo tour. Hell, there’d been hard feelings with the guys over everything near the end of Black and Blue.
When they came back to record together, post-Oprah, post-solo tour, post-lawsuit…they were ready to record again. But they weren’t sure they were ready to be friends again. And they were a long, long way from being brothers again. The Paris situation hadn’t helped with that.
Or maybe it had, thought Nick. It sure had put the other four on the same page in a hell of a hurry!
Then they stated recording, and it all seemed to be about Nick and AJ. The first few songs that were leaked were ones where Nick and AJ seemed to have all the leads. Except that they didn’t. Yeah, it sounded that way, but when you really listened to it, you heard that it was rarely only one person singing.
Except Brian. When he sang lead, he sang lead!
But he wasn’t much in evidence on the first couple that got out there. It was all Nick and AJ, according to the fans. AJ’s clean and sober voice was miraculous. It made shivers run down Nick’s spine. Everyone wanted to hear it. But they didn’t want to hear so much of Nick apparently. And where was Brian?
Nick knew that everyone would feel better about it when the album came out. Even the Kevin and Howie fans. There was something there for everyone. Nick knew that Safest Place to Hide was going to sneak up on the fans and blow them away. They were all proud of the fact that only a snippet had got out there. The fans had no idea that it was this album’s Drowning…a solo performance by all of them.
Nick couldn’t understand why they didn’t want to make it part of the show in the tour. After all, it showcased all their voices perfectly. It was a beautiful song. They could do it a cappella or with instruments. But somehow, it didn’t seem to be making the cut.
And Nick wasn’t going to argue for it. He wasn’t going to argue about anything. He knew that the way they were mapping out the show, there were going to be two opinions…Too Much Nick and OMIGOD, Nick!
Enough of this, he thought, go get some dinner. Worry about something you can do something about. What was that old saying? God give me the sense to change the things I can and ignore the things I can’t. Something like that, thought Nick.
Nick stepped off the boat and started up the dock. As he passed the marina office, he could see a covered garbage dumpster out by the road. Nick made a mental note to remember to bring the garbage bag out to that before he left the next day.
Nope, he thought, suddenly turning back to the Lenore. Do something about the things you can do something…oh, whatever…get the garbage now while you’re thinking of it. By morning, you’ll have other things on your mind.
Nick retrieved the plastic bag from the garbage can under the kitchen sink. He looked around but didn’t see anything else. He had quite a collection of plastic bottles, and he reminded himself to look for a recycling bin.
He stepped off the boat and headed for the marina office once again. Just past it, he stepped carefully over a join with a dock that ran perpendicular to the main one. Nick looked to his left. A few boats down…was that the…yeah, maybe that was the Sunset Voyager.
Nick walked a couple of steps down the dock. He didn’t know if he would be welcome there. He didn’t know what he would say to either of them. He looked around but didn’t see anyone. He went a little closer. There was no one up on deck.
He could hear something, though. Someone was down below.
Nick stepped to the side of the boat and listened. Then he grimaced.
Someone was throwing up.
Jo.
