by Cory Barclay
“So, it’s like Earth only . . . magical?”
“I suppose you could say that. You’d have to be there to understand.”
“And how can I do that?” Steve asked, speaking more to himself than anyone else. He leaned forward in his seat and rested his elbow on his knee and his chin on his fist, in the classic Philosopher pose.
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out, isn’t it?” Annabel answered.
Steve snorted.
“Until I met you, I was minding my own business. I never realized how busy Terrus was until I came here. There are much fewer people from where I’m from.”
“That makes sense,” Dale said, “seeing as how our planet is hellbent on humping and breeding like bunnies.”
Steve turned to Annabel. “Wait, are you saying you could only see your people—the Mythics, I mean—when you were in your world?”
Annabel nodded.
“You couldn’t see me?”
“Not until you came up and talked to me.”
Steve frowned. “That’s strange. Does that mean . . . something I did screwed up the space-time continuum or something?”
Dale glanced at the computer, took something out of the CD Drive, and twirled it between two fingers.
Annabel nodded. “It did seem to rip me into your world—without me even knowing it at first. Then when I looked up from my guitar and saw your funeral party across the way, I started to freak out a little.”
Dale rolled the commander’s chair over to where Steve was sitting and thrust the CD in his chest. “You have an appointment with John in twenty minutes, Steve-o. You’d better get moving. We can talk about your theoretical physics later, yeah?”
“This seems more important, Fats . . .”
“Money is important too. Know why? Because it pays bills. And I think that song there has the potential to pay a lot of bills.” Dale nodded sagely. “Go meet up with your agent and do your job.”
It was the first time Dale had sounded serious in . . . as long as Steve could remember, actually. Because of Dale’s tone, Steve nodded glumly and stood from his seat, the CD in hand. “I still don’t know why we can’t just e-mail it to him,” he complained.
“Like every other schmuck?” Dale said, incredulous. “Bollocks, Steve-o. Use your charm! Your winning smile! You got this! This could be our ticket out of here!” Dale looked like he was about to espouse more pep talk clichés, so Steve simply nodded and turned to leave.
Before he left, he said, “I think John is uncharmable, Fats, but I’ll give it my best.” Then, to Annabel: “And this conversation is not over, young lady.”
STEVE ARRIVED AT IMMINENT Records at 9:58 a.m.—two minutes before his scheduled appointment with John Levi, his agent. John had been part of his “group” ever since his old days in the band, when John had been the manager. Because of his good job booking gigs and tours for Steve’s band, John had gone on to greener pastures once the band called it quits.
John was a former lawyer. He’d lost his practicing license after being disbarred for some sexual advance he’d made on an intern. Then he changed his last name to ‘Levi,’ to sound more Jewish, since “everyone in this business is Jewish,” according to him, moved onto music, and Steve reluctantly took him on board. He was a smart guy, so despite his failings as a human being, he seemed to thrive in business.
And despite being part of Steve’s “group,” he was one of the people Steve disliked the most. And it had nothing to do with the sexual harassment allegations, though that had put a damper on their relationship, too.
No, even while John meandered across the room to greet his client, Steve remembered why he disliked him so much.
It was because John was the physical embodiment of milquetoast. His two favorite food groups: milk and toast. He had a generic comb-over haircut that employees at Wal-Mart across the land were probably forced to imitate. He was the plainest bagel in the shop. He could have had any Biblical name in the Good Book, but of course it had to be John. He didn’t look like he’d had a radical idea in his life, and “spur of the moment” was a phrase not found in his lexicon. He probably drove a Prius—for the good gas mileage—went to sleep before 10:00 every night and ate cereal like cheerios—combining his love for milk and toast—try Lucky Charms, man! Be the change! Start the revolution! He probably considered salt a spice. The porn he watched was strictly missionary. No one ever gave him a nickname. You could say John Levi was lackluster, but he had no luster to lack.
Steve didn’t know if any of these things were true, but this was the story he liked to make up about John Levi. It all came flooding back to him as John smartly stepped across the linoleum floor to greet Steve, and Steve couldn’t help but smile. Clearly, though, John thought the smile was directed at him, so he attempted to smile back, but instead just looked a bit sickly.
During the band days, Steve had made John look like an actual human being, rather than a cardboard cutout of one. Steve had acted as John’s wild side, his charisma, his “spur of the moment.”
Now John had joined the business side of music—management, artist and repertoire, and publishing—he’d clearly reverted back to his old ways.
“Hello, Steven,” John said in a voice so vanilla it could sour milk. He stuck out his hand.
“John, how goes it?” Steve asked, shaking John’s hand. It was clammy, and Steve inwardly groaned.
“Dale said you have something presentable for me?”
I sincerely doubt Dale used the word “presentable.”
“Yeah, we both think we’ve got a winner here.” Steve reached into his jacket and pulled out the unmarked, burned CD. It didn’t look professional, of course, but that was not the point. This was a preliminary step, to see if John liked the song, first. From there, other details and ideas could be hashed out . . .
For whatever reason, and despite being a man of mediocre averages, John Levi had a good sense for what sounded good and what would sell. John having that knack was one of the Great Mysteries of the World, Steve thought.
So, the first step was to hope John Levi liked the tune.
“What is it?” John asked.
Steve shrugged. “A little bit rock ‘n’ roll, a little bit blues, and a whole lot of attitude.” His smile vanished as he shook his head, How lame do I sound? Ah . . . the beauty of trying to sell yourself.
The truth was, Steve didn’t really know how to explain Annabel’s music. Dale would have been better suited for the job, but Dale and John weren’t friends, or even acquaintances. Steve and John were . . . at least close to one of those things.
“Angsty attitude? Emo attitude? What are we talking about here? It is not like the last thing you sent me, I hope.” John also didn’t like to use contractions, for whatever reason.
Steve waved his hands in the air. “No, no, nothing like that.” He punched the CD toward John, all but forcing him to take it. “Just give it a listen, man. It’s only one song.”
John frowned. Or, rather, his lips crinkled weirdly. He said, “That is it? Do you have any more?”
Nodding, Steve said, “Of course. But we just want to make sure you like that one before we waste time building up a whole EP, y’know?”
“That seems like an adequate usage of your time, and a good way to allocate resources. I keep telling you—”
“Okay, John, it’s been good chatting. I have another meeting on the other side of town, though,” Steve was already backing away, trying to escape before John got into a spiel or bored him to death with business-minded rhetoric.
John tilted his head and looked at the fleeing Steve like a sad cyborg might look at his creator.
“Let me know what you think!” Steve called from across the way.
Then he was gone from the building.
BACK AT THE STUDIO, before interacting with either Annabel or Dale, who were both replaying a new, vocal-less track in the recording room, Steve sprang up to his bedroom and grabbed his computer. He had an idea, one
he wanted to keep to himself for the time being.
He took the laptop out into the brisk Sunday afternoon, grabbed a copy of the Union Tribune from a newspaper kiosk, and went next door to Buddy’s Diner. There he ordered soup and a sandwich and tore open the newspaper, until he found a small section with news of the crash from the day before. There were two small pictures—of faces, not the actual crash—near the headline.
Steve snaked Buddy’s Wi-Fi and went onto Facebook which, as everyone in the modern era knew, was the contemporary equivalent of the yellow pages, if you wanted it to be.
He typed in “Shannon Barton” and did some cyberstalking. Within minutes he’d found a person with a profile picture that seemed to match the little picture in the daily newspaper.
He clicked on her profile and looked at some pictures, read up on some info, and came to this conclusion:
Shannon Barton was a widow living in La Jolla, originally from Wisconsin. She’d moved with her husband, who had been in the Navy, but he’d been killed in action in Iraq in 2008. Steve frowned at that tidbit—her life was already marred with tragedy, and now she seemed to face another heavy obstacle with this car crash and killing a homeless person.
She still had pictures with her husband on her Facebook wall.
Finding out her history made Steve feel more than a little guilty.
But it didn’t take him too long to find her home address, either.
And he had questions.
He hopped back in his car and headed toward La Jolla.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was time for Steve to put on his Sherlock hat and do a little sleuthing. He’d always considered himself somewhat of a detective, and now was the chance to put some of what he’d learned binge-watching police procedurals into action. In his earlier years, he’d figured that if this music thing didn’t pay off, perhaps he’d become an investigator.
He also clearly watched too many Law & Order marathons.
And so, the years dragged on and he never fulfilled that dream, instead entrenching himself deeper in the music business despite all the failures and hardships. You could say Steve Remington was nothing if not persistent. When he hit bottom, he dug deeper to see how far the bottom really went.
He pulled his ratty Lexus up next to a nice little house in the La Jolla hillsides, off Pearl Street. Most of the street names in La Jolla were cute little Mexican phrases like Avenida de la Playa and Playa del Norte, save for Pearl Street. La Jolla was the most upper class district in San Diego, complete with its own town council and rules. If Pacific Beach was where new money went to party, La Jolla was where old money retired. Pacific Beach was do-it-yourself, health-conscious, cosmopolitan; La Jolla was trust fund babies, upturned-noses, segregated.
Needless to say, Steve didn’t have the greatest opinion on residents of La Jolla, nor did he expect to learn much from Mrs. Shannon Barton. But he had to at least try, if only to save himself from a mental breakdown.
Plus, it felt good to be away from Annabel for a while. He was starting to grow unusually close to her, but at the same time she was the personification of everything that was going wrong in Steve’s head. He was in quite a pickle.
The house Shannon Barton stayed at was a midsized, single-story white house with a classic white picket fence. It was dwarfed by its neighboring houses, which resembled castles and contemporary art museums more than houses. The La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Arts was actually just down the street. He realized he’d never learned what Mrs. Barton did for a living, but clearly her neighbors were doing something better, which, given the location, they would surely let her know about on a daily basis.
Steve stood from his car, inhaled sharply, and marched toward the front door. Along the stucco wall around the door were little plaques that read “HOPE” and “LOVE” and “PASSION.”
Typical, Steve thought, unsure where his anger sprouted from. Had La Jolla really ever wronged him so? No, he decided. He was just in one of his moods.
He knocked on the door.
A moment later, a voice came from the other side. “Who is it?”
It was a female voice, which was a good start, but it didn’t sound pleased to have visitors.
“Mrs. Shannon Barton? My name is Steve Remington. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.”
Dammit, I already sound like Detective Stabler, Steve thought, realizing his Law & Order chops were showing too strongly.
“About what?”
“About your car accident yesterday afternoon.”
A pause. Then, “Are you the cops? I already told them everything I could remember.”
“No, ma’am, I’m not the police.” Everything she could remember? That doesn’t sound promising.
“Are you the media? You know . . . the news?”
“No, ma’am.”
Another pause. “Then what do you want? Who are you?”
“The man you killed was my friend.”
Steve heard a yelp come from the other side of the door. “Oh, G-God, I’m . . . I’m very sorry, sir, but I don’t think there’s anything to discuss.”
She sounded frightened now and, Steve realized, for good reason. Retribution was a common trait amongst Americans—she’d probably seen a few SVU episodes herself. Steve realized his error in mentioning Tumbleweed had been his friend.
And really, could Steve even call Tumbleweed his friend? He didn’t even know the guy’s real name—their relationship amounted to the few conversations they’d had while the guy was bumming cigarettes from Steve.
He tried a different approach. He took three steps back so he’d be visible in the door’s peephole. Then he held his hands up in surrender.
“No, no, Mrs. Barton, I’m not here for revenge or anything like that. If you’ll look, I’m unarmed . . . I have no wish to harm you . . . I’ll stay back here, off your stoop . . . I mean he wasn’t really that much my friend—”
Now I just sound like an asshole, he thought, realizing he was rambling.
Then the door swung open.
The woman’s eyebrows were arched and angry. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Steve put on his best pleading look. “I’m sorry, ma’am . . . I just . . . I just want to talk. I’ve had a rough couple of days.” He was about to tell the woman his father had just been buried, but he was growing tired of using that as an excuse for his melodrama and emotional outbursts.
“What is it?”
Steve was struck by how pretty she was—blonde and curvy, a low-cut, flowery dress—even though she had tired lines around her eyes. She was visibly upset. Steve thought he probably would be too if he’d just accidentally killed someone.
Steve was somewhat tongue-tied at her abrupt appearance. He stuttered for a moment, then gathered his thoughts. More calmly, he said, “I was wondering how you got released from the hospital so quickly.”
Shannon shrugged. “I wasn’t very injured in the crash. So they let me go.”
“Even though you ki—” he paused and restarted. “Even though there was a . . . fatality?”
Shannon just stared at him, her eyes narrowing a bit.
“And you knew the man who signed your discharge papers and took you home? Aiden O’Shaunessy?”
Shannon nodded. “I work at Barona as a waitress. He’s a regular there—always tips me nicely.”
Ah, Steve thought, now we’re getting somewhere. Mister Gingerbread Man is a gambler as well as an alcoholic. But how did he find out Shannon was in a crash? Hmm, maybe I’ll get to that later . . .
Seeing that Steve now stared blankly at her, ruminating, Shannon said, “Is that all?”
Steve snapped back to reality. He shook his head profusely, like he was clearing his mind of cobwebs. “Are you not under investigation?” Steve looked around the property. “I don’t see any policemen keeping you locked up here.”
Shannon shrugged. “They said not to go anywhere, that I might be charged for Dangerous and Reckless Driving. But th
ey also said since the guy was homeless, no initial charges were pressed. Maybe if he’d had a home, or friends—people who cared . . .”
Steve frowned deeply. He bowed his head a little.
Shannon must have seen the genuine sadness overtake Steve’s face, for her own face softened for the first time. She looked ashamed and said, “I-I’m sorry, that was terrible. I’ve just been going crazy—I can’t believe what happened.”
Steve nodded his understanding. “And do you . . . know what happened?” he asked slowly.
She shook her head. “I truly don’t. It’s the weirdest thing. One minute I was driving, the next minute I was being interrogated in the hospital. But since I wasn’t impaired or under the influence, the cops let me go. I’m not sure how much Mister O’Shaunessy paid them to let him take me.”
Steve cocked his head at the last sentence. That was a strange thing to say. Why would Carrot Top pay them anything if she was okay to leave on her own? To keep quiet about something? Steve’s police-procedural-brain started going apeshit at the possibilities.
He’d heard enough. He’d learned a little, but unfortunately the ultimate question—what happened, and how—had gone unanswered. He blamed the possible concussion she was suffering from.
As if reading his mind, she said, “It’s not the concussion. I don’t think—that’s not why I don’t remember, I mean.”
“What do you mean by that, Mrs. Barton?” Steve asked, leaning forward a bit in anticipation.
“Well, there’s one thing that keeps popping up in my head—about the crash, I mean. How it happened, or why. I don’t know.” She was getting flustered, staring at the ground with the veins around her temples protruding.
“What is it?” Steve asked as gently as he could.
“I haven’t told the cops or the press . . .” she said, trailing off. Then she looked up from the ground, stared into Steve’s eyes. “And if I tell you, you can’t either.”
Steve nodded imperceptibly. “You have my word.”
“It’s a phrase that keeps rising to the top of my brain, like it’s a justification for what happened . . .”