AnCatKatie
Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
Edgy is not mine, neither does anything else in this belong to me. I have heard the Teen Commandments, however...on an mp3, haha...and The Atrix.
Mostly Edge angst in this. A little less happened than I planned, but ah well.
Pay attention to those earrings! They're going to show up in interesting places throughout the story.
And post-punk, yum. Pleasant indeed.
***
Edge’s mind was plagued with Cath: he saw, when he closed his eyes, Cath standing with her bag in the middle of an abandoned road somewhere far away, the unrecognizable city streets beckoning. He hoped she wouldn’t leave—he was still unsure, however, about what she would choose to do.
He needed some way to keep Bono in check so he wouldn’t do anything rash and scare her away. Edge sighed, running a hand through his hair—keeping Bono in check probably would not involve saying anything about the growing bundle of cells with half his genes. Edge suddenly wondered how Paul would handle the news—would he react like a scared child, cling onto Cath and regret it for the rest of his life, Edge watching and unable to change what happened? Or would Paul Hewson do something unforeseen, mature and intelligent? That was one of two ways most things went with the boy; Edge sometimes saw the real Paul, the one who knew perfectly well how the world went and perfectly handled it, who had insight behind even the movement of the sun across the sky. That aspect was beginning to emerge from the chaos before Paul was changed by Cath suddenly being in his life again. Edge had been so wrapped up in the problems that he had no idea if Paul was changing or reverting back to his own self.
He went to the studio, not realizing that was where he was headed, and scrawled lyrics across a piece of paper until the early morning of the next day, the thoughts inside of him still burning bright when the lights everywhere else had dimmed, with sleep. Most of the lyrics devolved into unintelligible thoughts, but the rest became guitar chords and enough words for the song to develop. He left the paper where Bono would see and fell straight asleep when he hit the couch, echoes of Cath’s words ringing through his head.
Ali came home grinning and shaking her head when she opened the door. Paul saw a glimpse of Cath asleep on the couch, through the open door, and asked in a low voice whether she was alright. Ali gave some reassuring answer then rolled her eyes at Bono’s goodbye; he’d leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek, saying, “Friends?”
Cath closed her eyes tighter and eased out of sleep, finally opening them. Ali was still shaking her head.
“He tries, but it’s not going to work,” she said.
“Hmm?” Cath asked sleepily, brushing wet hair out of her face. In fact—she looked like she had put her clothes on straight after showering or something; they clung to her wetly and made the couch damp.
“I have to put all thoughts of me out of his head,” Ali explained. “He says he wants us to be friends, but I don’t know.” She looked over at Cath then, who looked weary but oddly energized, her eyes burning with a sort of excitement though she had slept for hours.
“What were you and Edge doing?” Ali asked curiously, wondering about Cath’s clothes and the expression on her face.
“I showed him the way to a beach I used to go to with my mom,” Cath said, smiling. That other expression had crept back into her eyes, however, the one that washed away all happiness. Something difficult was on Cath’s mind.
“And you went swimming? It must have been freezing! How in hell did Edge agree to let you do that?”
“I convinced him. I had things on my mind I wanted to talk to him about and I wasn’t saying anything until we went.”
“Hmm,” Ali mused softly. “He seems concerned about you.” That wasn’t all, it had been plain, by the way Edge had been silent when he saw Cath the other night in her red dress, unable to speak from worry and something else. But Ali sensed that was Edge’s business and he was able to take care of it.
Shit, Ali realized: I just spent half the night making Bono forget he was anything attracted to me…and I have no idea whether Cath even wants to be near him.
I mean, she’s been curled up like this and swimming with Edge instead of facing Bono and telling him the truth.
But Ali could also tell there was some other reason behind Cath’s hiding from Paul. She couldn’t for the life of her tell what the reason was, just that it was significant.
Cath nodded in response to Ali’s question. “He was with me at the hospital…”
Oh. That must have been hell. He hadn’t known anything about what was going on with Cath—none of them had—but to suddenly know all of it at once…no wonder he had practically attacked Bono when he saw him next.
“How was the band?” Cath was asking. Ali put the other thoughts out of her mind, laughing.
“They were pretty good, actually. They’re called the Teen Commandments.”
“Maybe I should check them out sometime,” Cath said, “when this is all over.” She looked a little tired still.
“You have plenty of time…Cath?”
The girl looked up, dark eyes unreadable. “Yes?”
“Do you mind if I ask something…about Paul?”
“Go ahead,” Cath replied quietly.
“Is there a reason you don’t want to see him? Did he do anything?” It had been a weight on Ali’s mind, another thing that kept that solid foot of space between her and her ex-boyfriend: a small part of her still blamed him for the unknown harm done to Cath.
Cath smiled again. “Except knocking me up, no. He’s a wonderful boy, one of the first really good people I’ve met. I didn’t know him for very long though.” Only a few hours between afternoon and morning, though it felt I’d known him longer. Cath felt faintly the odd aching thought again that ran through her head sometimes, of another Cath, happier, who life had treated a little differently. Things would have been very different if she’d known Paul Hewson a little earlier in her life…if she had left home…
Ali breathed out in relief. “Okay. I think I can stand him, then.”
She went upstairs to listen to some records; the sound of post-punk drifted pleasantly downstairs. Cath sat up on the couch, crossing her legs, and took out her earrings, looking at the tiny crosses and thinking.
The Teen Commandments were having another performance, closing for The Atrix, today. Edge was free, and he and Bono simultaneously thought they, Ali, and Cath should go see the bands. “Get you thinking about the record,” Edge said in support of the idea. When they called Ali’s house, Ali watched Cath thoughtfully, who was playing absently with her wet hair, the spark having returned to her eyes.
In Cath’s memory was the ocean, and what in its isolation she answered to herself…a different path emerging.
Cath, in the bar the bands were playing in, was brought back to the time she had heard Paul singing, and something tore within her as she thought of Paul. Those thoughts were dashed away by the difference between U2 and The Atrix; they had some discordant guitar in their first song, ‘Treasure on the Wasteland,’ which nonetheless had a good back beat. Edge, beside Cath, found parallels between the discord and the notes of the guitar that he’d been working on when Ali invited him over, the day he met Cath…
It was dark, where they all sat, a little ways away from the lights on the stage. A few people stood, and threw further cool shadows back that compounded Edge’s distraction. The stage lights reflected blue, scrawled across his eyes, the music at the back of his mind.
Ali was sitting on the other side of Paul, trying unsuccessfully to put space between them and eventually forgetting. Paul kept making comments about the music to Edge, who responded in a sort of daze, on autopilot. He was keenly aware of Cath’s light body on his other side, tense with energy and thought. She pulled at him like the ocean, concern whispering in the back of his mind but being ignored in a mounting stubbornness within Edge. He could be afraid for Cath, but not afraid about everything; he had worried about the wrong things…most of the worry rose to his thoughts now and then, and hid in the odd back chord that had grown in his mind, what he felt to be a faint connection between them. Or perhaps the fact that he could only think of Cath—her and music.
He was instantly aware when his right side felt suddenly cool and abandoned. A faint alarm rose within him as the thoughts ran through his mind of why Cath had left so suddenly…
“Edge? What’s going on?” Paul was asking, grabbing the back of his friend’s shirt to make him face him. Edge’s eyes were sparks, his face tight with some emotion, and he abruptly came loose.
Edge would return, Paul knew, and probably explain everything. The darkness all around, and the absence of Edge’s tension—the man had been short on words recently and slightly agitated, which disturbed Bono on some basic level—was relieving and served to make Bono forget his friend’s absence. Almost: it hummed faintly at the back of his mind…
*
The light of a passing car punched across Cath’s vision, which wavered a little as she shut her eyes hard, leaning her hands on her knees. She reeled, wincing further at the increasing sound of a motorcycle passing, ripping violently through the night. Something about the press of the bodies inside had made the music rise within her ears to become a ringing noise that she couldn’t get rid of: her eyes watered and, trying to breathe, she left the bar, the cool air merciful.
And in that moment before she left and shoved past Paul with no explanation, the feeling of his body as she passed it was sickening. He grew featureless and different, just a man, a different man from her memory. The nausea rose, outside, as she identified that man as Isaac—and the thoughts of his sweaty force made her stumble to the edge of the sidewalk and grip the knees of her jeans in her fists white-knuckled. She shook her head, moved her legs, and retched into the road, heat stinging her eyes.
Someone had come up behind her and drew her hair away from her face, cool hands steadying her as she was violently sick again. Cath rose and felt arms around her, twisted, recognizing them as Edge’s. He smoothed a stray hair from her forehead, when she faced him.
“I’m sorry,” she told him, feeling terrible. “You must have thought something worse was happening. You didn’t need to leave to see what was going on.”
“I’ve heard them before and will probably hear them again,” Edge said seriously, his eyes made luminous by the lights of Dublin, given depths Cath hadn’t noticed before. “And Bono and Ali will be fine by themselves.”
She smiled shakily. “Thank you. I just…feel kind of sick. It’s to be expected.”
They began to make their way back towards Ali’s house, Edge with a steadying arm across Cath’s shoulder. Cath looked over him and saw he was laughing silently.
“What is it?” she asked curiously.
“Just…the look on Bono’s face when he realizes we’ve both taken off…he’ll probably assume all the wrong things.”
She grinned wickedly. “Stealing his girl, are you?” Her grin was replaced by a surprised expression: something fluttered in Cath’s stomach—oh. Oh my. She smiled faintly, looking down.
Edge tilted his head boyishly in question.
“I felt something,” Cath said, the corner of her mouth turning up. Edge’s thoughts ached: she looked beautiful in the soft darkness, little pieces of her hair falling across her face and past her shining eyes. Cath caught an open look on his face, and was silent.
They had reached Ali’s house. Cath opened the door—everyone else was out, the house dark—looking up at Edge in question. “What are you going to do?” she asked.
“Go to the studio, probably. I have guitar chords racing through my mind.”
She turned, about to go inside, then notice he still stood there.
“Edge?”
“Yes?” he responded softly.
“Thank you. For caring whether everything’s alright, and…you haven’t been like the other men I’ve known. You know, insistent, typical men. Though in Bono’s defense, his hormones were raging.”
Edge’s hormones were raging, he wanted to say. They were tempered by the fact that he, well, honestly cared what happened to Cath and knew if he made any move it could potentially be harm.
He smiled a smile she did not see the pain in, and made for the studio.
*
It had been four, maybe eight songs since Bono noticed Edge was gone. A fact he was suddenly reminded of as the lights brightened and he saw the two empty seats to his right.
“Ali?” he asked. Ali looked over, noticing the empty seats grimly. “Where’s Edge? And Cath?”
Ali sighed. “Cath’s probably sick. She was just in the hospital, you know.”
“But that doesn’t explain Edge…”
“Maybe he went out to find out what was going on.”
“And didn’t come back?” Paul thought.
He hoped Edge was at the studio, or something explicable. He had a sudden, sinking thought he hoped was not true.
“Fuck,” Bono swore, as they exited the bar and Cath and Edge were nowhere to be seen. Ali gave him a questioning look, trying to hide the way her heart thudded when she realized also that Cath and Edge were absent. Had something gone wrong? Or…
He didn’t give any explanation for his reaction, but rather was angrily silent as he walked back with Ali. The anger subsided, and he thought instead of the unfinished song.
Edge was at the studio, Bono found with relief when he came there the next morning: the musician was sprawled out on the floor, one hand over his guitar, and fast asleep. It struck Bono how young Edge still looked, face somewhere still between boy and man, edging far away from boy.
How many times had Paul fallen asleep in this very same studio, feeling even younger than Edge looked, the process of making a record exhilarating in its sheer heady impossibility, the lyrics waiting beyond his sleeping thoughts?
“Edge.” Paul shook the other boy’s shoulder, and Edge popped awake, blinking. “What happened last night?”
“Cath got sick and I walked her home.” Edge looked really tired; there were dark circles under his eyes.
“Oh.” Bono thought he’d heard something in Edge’s voice, and put that at the back of his mind. Some difference in the room caught at Bono’s eye, mainly the piece of paper placed to grab his attention. He walked over and looked at the words scrawled on it, tapping his fingers against his side as he silently matched them to music. “Edge, you have terrible handwriting,” he winced, to which Edge scowled and told him to look at the words, not the handwriting.
“I thought they’d make a good second verse,” Edge explained.
“They’re not really…accurate, but maybe that’s good, so we don’t make things too awkward for Cath.”
Edge didn’t mention how yes they were accurate, just not with what Bono knew.
The singer squinted at the words again, Edge starting up his guitar. The notes rippled and tore across the room, oddly riveting in their discord, and the energy within Bono clawed out as he sang, testing.
“And in the daylight…”
It conjured the fragile morning that had been…what? four months ago?…when he woke up to see Cath asleep beside him. But the rest took a darker turn, hinting at some of Cath’s past, perhaps, or something Edge knew that Bono did not—
“a blackbird makes a violent sight…”
He looked at Edge, something beginning to connect in his mind, with the next lyrics, that he changed ever so slightly. The energy that pulled the words came from the vague anger Bono had felt last night, assuming…
“And when she is done,
she sleeps beside the one…”
The image came to him, again, he lost in a different morning. The same aching lost and found feeling found its way into wordless vocals before he continued with something Edge had made into a chorus…
Thoughtfully, Bono ended,
“yes, and I know
the truth
about you…
she-cat,” falling silent at last as the guitar’s eager discord subsided.
“We probably need more of it. And Adam and Larry, obviously. Good work, though.”
The doubt he felt when he thought of the empty seats—Edge’s absence—wore away, the lyrics instead running circles in Bono’s mind. But a seed of curiosity had started in Bono: why Edge? What did Edge know, and what had he done?
Mostly Edge angst in this. A little less happened than I planned, but ah well.
Pay attention to those earrings! They're going to show up in interesting places throughout the story.
And post-punk, yum. Pleasant indeed.
***
Edge’s mind was plagued with Cath: he saw, when he closed his eyes, Cath standing with her bag in the middle of an abandoned road somewhere far away, the unrecognizable city streets beckoning. He hoped she wouldn’t leave—he was still unsure, however, about what she would choose to do.
He needed some way to keep Bono in check so he wouldn’t do anything rash and scare her away. Edge sighed, running a hand through his hair—keeping Bono in check probably would not involve saying anything about the growing bundle of cells with half his genes. Edge suddenly wondered how Paul would handle the news—would he react like a scared child, cling onto Cath and regret it for the rest of his life, Edge watching and unable to change what happened? Or would Paul Hewson do something unforeseen, mature and intelligent? That was one of two ways most things went with the boy; Edge sometimes saw the real Paul, the one who knew perfectly well how the world went and perfectly handled it, who had insight behind even the movement of the sun across the sky. That aspect was beginning to emerge from the chaos before Paul was changed by Cath suddenly being in his life again. Edge had been so wrapped up in the problems that he had no idea if Paul was changing or reverting back to his own self.
He went to the studio, not realizing that was where he was headed, and scrawled lyrics across a piece of paper until the early morning of the next day, the thoughts inside of him still burning bright when the lights everywhere else had dimmed, with sleep. Most of the lyrics devolved into unintelligible thoughts, but the rest became guitar chords and enough words for the song to develop. He left the paper where Bono would see and fell straight asleep when he hit the couch, echoes of Cath’s words ringing through his head.
Ali came home grinning and shaking her head when she opened the door. Paul saw a glimpse of Cath asleep on the couch, through the open door, and asked in a low voice whether she was alright. Ali gave some reassuring answer then rolled her eyes at Bono’s goodbye; he’d leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek, saying, “Friends?”
Cath closed her eyes tighter and eased out of sleep, finally opening them. Ali was still shaking her head.
“He tries, but it’s not going to work,” she said.
“Hmm?” Cath asked sleepily, brushing wet hair out of her face. In fact—she looked like she had put her clothes on straight after showering or something; they clung to her wetly and made the couch damp.
“I have to put all thoughts of me out of his head,” Ali explained. “He says he wants us to be friends, but I don’t know.” She looked over at Cath then, who looked weary but oddly energized, her eyes burning with a sort of excitement though she had slept for hours.
“What were you and Edge doing?” Ali asked curiously, wondering about Cath’s clothes and the expression on her face.
“I showed him the way to a beach I used to go to with my mom,” Cath said, smiling. That other expression had crept back into her eyes, however, the one that washed away all happiness. Something difficult was on Cath’s mind.
“And you went swimming? It must have been freezing! How in hell did Edge agree to let you do that?”
“I convinced him. I had things on my mind I wanted to talk to him about and I wasn’t saying anything until we went.”
“Hmm,” Ali mused softly. “He seems concerned about you.” That wasn’t all, it had been plain, by the way Edge had been silent when he saw Cath the other night in her red dress, unable to speak from worry and something else. But Ali sensed that was Edge’s business and he was able to take care of it.
Shit, Ali realized: I just spent half the night making Bono forget he was anything attracted to me…and I have no idea whether Cath even wants to be near him.
I mean, she’s been curled up like this and swimming with Edge instead of facing Bono and telling him the truth.
But Ali could also tell there was some other reason behind Cath’s hiding from Paul. She couldn’t for the life of her tell what the reason was, just that it was significant.
Cath nodded in response to Ali’s question. “He was with me at the hospital…”
Oh. That must have been hell. He hadn’t known anything about what was going on with Cath—none of them had—but to suddenly know all of it at once…no wonder he had practically attacked Bono when he saw him next.
“How was the band?” Cath was asking. Ali put the other thoughts out of her mind, laughing.
“They were pretty good, actually. They’re called the Teen Commandments.”
“Maybe I should check them out sometime,” Cath said, “when this is all over.” She looked a little tired still.
“You have plenty of time…Cath?”
The girl looked up, dark eyes unreadable. “Yes?”
“Do you mind if I ask something…about Paul?”
“Go ahead,” Cath replied quietly.
“Is there a reason you don’t want to see him? Did he do anything?” It had been a weight on Ali’s mind, another thing that kept that solid foot of space between her and her ex-boyfriend: a small part of her still blamed him for the unknown harm done to Cath.
Cath smiled again. “Except knocking me up, no. He’s a wonderful boy, one of the first really good people I’ve met. I didn’t know him for very long though.” Only a few hours between afternoon and morning, though it felt I’d known him longer. Cath felt faintly the odd aching thought again that ran through her head sometimes, of another Cath, happier, who life had treated a little differently. Things would have been very different if she’d known Paul Hewson a little earlier in her life…if she had left home…
Ali breathed out in relief. “Okay. I think I can stand him, then.”
She went upstairs to listen to some records; the sound of post-punk drifted pleasantly downstairs. Cath sat up on the couch, crossing her legs, and took out her earrings, looking at the tiny crosses and thinking.
The Teen Commandments were having another performance, closing for The Atrix, today. Edge was free, and he and Bono simultaneously thought they, Ali, and Cath should go see the bands. “Get you thinking about the record,” Edge said in support of the idea. When they called Ali’s house, Ali watched Cath thoughtfully, who was playing absently with her wet hair, the spark having returned to her eyes.
In Cath’s memory was the ocean, and what in its isolation she answered to herself…a different path emerging.
Cath, in the bar the bands were playing in, was brought back to the time she had heard Paul singing, and something tore within her as she thought of Paul. Those thoughts were dashed away by the difference between U2 and The Atrix; they had some discordant guitar in their first song, ‘Treasure on the Wasteland,’ which nonetheless had a good back beat. Edge, beside Cath, found parallels between the discord and the notes of the guitar that he’d been working on when Ali invited him over, the day he met Cath…
It was dark, where they all sat, a little ways away from the lights on the stage. A few people stood, and threw further cool shadows back that compounded Edge’s distraction. The stage lights reflected blue, scrawled across his eyes, the music at the back of his mind.
Ali was sitting on the other side of Paul, trying unsuccessfully to put space between them and eventually forgetting. Paul kept making comments about the music to Edge, who responded in a sort of daze, on autopilot. He was keenly aware of Cath’s light body on his other side, tense with energy and thought. She pulled at him like the ocean, concern whispering in the back of his mind but being ignored in a mounting stubbornness within Edge. He could be afraid for Cath, but not afraid about everything; he had worried about the wrong things…most of the worry rose to his thoughts now and then, and hid in the odd back chord that had grown in his mind, what he felt to be a faint connection between them. Or perhaps the fact that he could only think of Cath—her and music.
He was instantly aware when his right side felt suddenly cool and abandoned. A faint alarm rose within him as the thoughts ran through his mind of why Cath had left so suddenly…
“Edge? What’s going on?” Paul was asking, grabbing the back of his friend’s shirt to make him face him. Edge’s eyes were sparks, his face tight with some emotion, and he abruptly came loose.
Edge would return, Paul knew, and probably explain everything. The darkness all around, and the absence of Edge’s tension—the man had been short on words recently and slightly agitated, which disturbed Bono on some basic level—was relieving and served to make Bono forget his friend’s absence. Almost: it hummed faintly at the back of his mind…
*
The light of a passing car punched across Cath’s vision, which wavered a little as she shut her eyes hard, leaning her hands on her knees. She reeled, wincing further at the increasing sound of a motorcycle passing, ripping violently through the night. Something about the press of the bodies inside had made the music rise within her ears to become a ringing noise that she couldn’t get rid of: her eyes watered and, trying to breathe, she left the bar, the cool air merciful.
And in that moment before she left and shoved past Paul with no explanation, the feeling of his body as she passed it was sickening. He grew featureless and different, just a man, a different man from her memory. The nausea rose, outside, as she identified that man as Isaac—and the thoughts of his sweaty force made her stumble to the edge of the sidewalk and grip the knees of her jeans in her fists white-knuckled. She shook her head, moved her legs, and retched into the road, heat stinging her eyes.
Someone had come up behind her and drew her hair away from her face, cool hands steadying her as she was violently sick again. Cath rose and felt arms around her, twisted, recognizing them as Edge’s. He smoothed a stray hair from her forehead, when she faced him.
“I’m sorry,” she told him, feeling terrible. “You must have thought something worse was happening. You didn’t need to leave to see what was going on.”
“I’ve heard them before and will probably hear them again,” Edge said seriously, his eyes made luminous by the lights of Dublin, given depths Cath hadn’t noticed before. “And Bono and Ali will be fine by themselves.”
She smiled shakily. “Thank you. I just…feel kind of sick. It’s to be expected.”
They began to make their way back towards Ali’s house, Edge with a steadying arm across Cath’s shoulder. Cath looked over him and saw he was laughing silently.
“What is it?” she asked curiously.
“Just…the look on Bono’s face when he realizes we’ve both taken off…he’ll probably assume all the wrong things.”
She grinned wickedly. “Stealing his girl, are you?” Her grin was replaced by a surprised expression: something fluttered in Cath’s stomach—oh. Oh my. She smiled faintly, looking down.
Edge tilted his head boyishly in question.
“I felt something,” Cath said, the corner of her mouth turning up. Edge’s thoughts ached: she looked beautiful in the soft darkness, little pieces of her hair falling across her face and past her shining eyes. Cath caught an open look on his face, and was silent.
They had reached Ali’s house. Cath opened the door—everyone else was out, the house dark—looking up at Edge in question. “What are you going to do?” she asked.
“Go to the studio, probably. I have guitar chords racing through my mind.”
She turned, about to go inside, then notice he still stood there.
“Edge?”
“Yes?” he responded softly.
“Thank you. For caring whether everything’s alright, and…you haven’t been like the other men I’ve known. You know, insistent, typical men. Though in Bono’s defense, his hormones were raging.”
Edge’s hormones were raging, he wanted to say. They were tempered by the fact that he, well, honestly cared what happened to Cath and knew if he made any move it could potentially be harm.
He smiled a smile she did not see the pain in, and made for the studio.
*
It had been four, maybe eight songs since Bono noticed Edge was gone. A fact he was suddenly reminded of as the lights brightened and he saw the two empty seats to his right.
“Ali?” he asked. Ali looked over, noticing the empty seats grimly. “Where’s Edge? And Cath?”
Ali sighed. “Cath’s probably sick. She was just in the hospital, you know.”
“But that doesn’t explain Edge…”
“Maybe he went out to find out what was going on.”
“And didn’t come back?” Paul thought.
He hoped Edge was at the studio, or something explicable. He had a sudden, sinking thought he hoped was not true.
“Fuck,” Bono swore, as they exited the bar and Cath and Edge were nowhere to be seen. Ali gave him a questioning look, trying to hide the way her heart thudded when she realized also that Cath and Edge were absent. Had something gone wrong? Or…
He didn’t give any explanation for his reaction, but rather was angrily silent as he walked back with Ali. The anger subsided, and he thought instead of the unfinished song.
Edge was at the studio, Bono found with relief when he came there the next morning: the musician was sprawled out on the floor, one hand over his guitar, and fast asleep. It struck Bono how young Edge still looked, face somewhere still between boy and man, edging far away from boy.
How many times had Paul fallen asleep in this very same studio, feeling even younger than Edge looked, the process of making a record exhilarating in its sheer heady impossibility, the lyrics waiting beyond his sleeping thoughts?
“Edge.” Paul shook the other boy’s shoulder, and Edge popped awake, blinking. “What happened last night?”
“Cath got sick and I walked her home.” Edge looked really tired; there were dark circles under his eyes.
“Oh.” Bono thought he’d heard something in Edge’s voice, and put that at the back of his mind. Some difference in the room caught at Bono’s eye, mainly the piece of paper placed to grab his attention. He walked over and looked at the words scrawled on it, tapping his fingers against his side as he silently matched them to music. “Edge, you have terrible handwriting,” he winced, to which Edge scowled and told him to look at the words, not the handwriting.
“I thought they’d make a good second verse,” Edge explained.
“They’re not really…accurate, but maybe that’s good, so we don’t make things too awkward for Cath.”
Edge didn’t mention how yes they were accurate, just not with what Bono knew.
The singer squinted at the words again, Edge starting up his guitar. The notes rippled and tore across the room, oddly riveting in their discord, and the energy within Bono clawed out as he sang, testing.
“And in the daylight…”
It conjured the fragile morning that had been…what? four months ago?…when he woke up to see Cath asleep beside him. But the rest took a darker turn, hinting at some of Cath’s past, perhaps, or something Edge knew that Bono did not—
“a blackbird makes a violent sight…”
He looked at Edge, something beginning to connect in his mind, with the next lyrics, that he changed ever so slightly. The energy that pulled the words came from the vague anger Bono had felt last night, assuming…
“And when she is done,
she sleeps beside the one…”
The image came to him, again, he lost in a different morning. The same aching lost and found feeling found its way into wordless vocals before he continued with something Edge had made into a chorus…
Thoughtfully, Bono ended,
“yes, and I know
the truth
about you…
she-cat,” falling silent at last as the guitar’s eager discord subsided.
“We probably need more of it. And Adam and Larry, obviously. Good work, though.”
The doubt he felt when he thought of the empty seats—Edge’s absence—wore away, the lyrics instead running circles in Bono’s mind. But a seed of curiosity had started in Bono: why Edge? What did Edge know, and what had he done?
