Chapter 1

As a youngster growing up poor and ambitious, I would lump myself among the many who found it untenable to hear the sob stories of the rich and famous. Whining about their lives deprived of privacy or feeling so intensely they got away with something that they commit suicide. I mean, Jesus H Christ, take a look at where you're standing and what you're holding! You're standing above the rest of us unwashed nobodies and holding a fuck load of money. Girls, and I mean beautiful, luscious, sexy girls ripe for the picking, want to fuck you and glory in it. And boys want to be you far more than they want to be themselves. What could be better than that?

Randy Newman sarcastically jibed, "Oh it's lonely at the top!" Simon and Garfunkel sang irony when the town's leading rich guy, Richard Corey, the owner of the factory and the man living in the mansion on the hill "put a bullet in his head." So the notion of achieving success has been thoroughly proclaimed to have a downside. I found my own to my ironic, embarrassing surprise.

It came from working my butt off, both the success and the escape. Being a renaissance man, I had diverse talents and spread myself thin reaping the rewards of those talents. In order to achieve the greatness my ambitiousness demanded I became estranged.

My wife illustrated it. Closed off in my study after months on the road—a season in hell--with my band, she crept into my sanctuary. "Joe," she repeated, getting louder and louder until she stood beside me and yelled.

"What!" I yelled back.

She grumbled, "Motherfucker," and began to retreat when I grabbed her arm and pulled her into my lap. Married for twenty years, the woman whom I had gotten so used to I had to gaze through the haze of familiarity to remind myself of her beauty and her sexy body, even when we battled through jealousy both imagined and justified, she never felt so rigid.

"What?" I inquired quietly through clenched jaw infected by her disturbing tightness.

Her hard eyes stared into mine. Those eyes, a hazel that swung from green to brown, which fascinated me and thrilled me from our earliest passion when our bodies yearned to be joined in ecstasy and our hearts beat the same deep tattoo and our voices intermingled in loving conversations and our loins produced Henry, our first son, while still freshmen at the University and we got married without hesitation because of him; those eyes had never been cold before.

"Who the fuck are you?"

I couldn't help it. I laughed. If she didn't know me, nobody did. When she stood above me and reared back and slapped me hard, I wondered if I knew her.

"Ow! What's going on?"

She seethed, "You don't even know, you fucking asshole!" She took a breath and quieted, but the seething remained. "I haven't seen you in months. During that time, I had to call you if I wanted to find out if you were alright. Then you fucking come home, give me a fucking peck on the cheek, demand dinner and hide out in here. Did you fucking miss me at all? Did you miss your daughter Cheryl who you couldn't deign to watch graduate from high school?"

"Don't start," I replied. Wrong response, but things had been terrible on the road. My band, the Sin Drones, had toured the world, a reunion tour although it had only been three years since we decided to disband. The reason we decided became all too clear, clearer than when we broke up, crystal clear, and the crystals had nasty edges that cut deep and through any remnants of past friendship and respect. We loathed each other. We kept our distance in the confines of a tour bus. Big and lavish, it still had no room for the flailing egos inside. In other words, torture.

Not only that, but my agent, a renaissance woman herself, able to move into the corporate media worlds of music and film and television and books with remarkable skill and get indecent contracts for my work, had gone overboard. I had chapters and outlines for my third mystery novel due in less than a week. I had to generate the sketches for a score to a movie which started shooting in less than three months and which I had a major role. And most burdensome because it happened to be my dream project, Cinemax had green lighted an autobiographical series in which I scripted a couple episodes, kind of like "Entourage" but with music, focusing on my rise to fame and those young friends who surrounded me, including, ironically, my wife. I would produce and compose the music and have a recurring role as a curmudgeon poet. It wouldn't start shooting for several months, but preliminary work as well as gathering talent and so forth needed time which I had little of.

A shitty, too busy husband and father, I said to my bitter spouse, "I just spent three months of my life with three of the worst excuses for humans ever allowed to exist who used to be my friends. I thought I found refuge here so I could take a break, reinvigorate and get done what I couldn't get done with those backbiting assholes driving me crazy. I thought I finally returned to the place I could finally be myself again without suffering the consequences. I guess not!"

Saving the little I'd done onto the rewritable ROM, I didn't wait for it to reconfigure. Dodging my wife, I exited my ex-sanctuary and headed to my room, our room, the place for sex, though its occurrence had become rare, and conversations, even rarer, and sleep, the best sleep in the comfort of my bed in my home. I hadn't unpacked. I dumped my clothes and refilled with whatever I grabbed from drawers and closet. If I missed anything, I could afford to buy it.

Midway through, my wife, beautiful, sexy, the love of my life, stood in the doorway watching me. I glanced quickly and saw the shine of unshed tears. She stood, arms crossed, resolute, yet the eyes told the truth. "I want..." she finally began, but could say no more.