by Eden Butler
“Papi,” she said, her voice coming out in a gravel-soaked rasp. She sounded congested, tired, and fell against me when I stood in front of her. “Ay nino, I knew you’d see me. I knew you’d take care of your mama.”
But this wasn’t like her forgetting a parent/teacher conference in junior high or sending me to school in dirty jeans with an empty belly and no lunch money. Her being here, following me to Chicago and sneaking backstage, went further than even hocking my Gibson or stealing a hundred bucks from my wallet because she needed to score blow. Now she was threatening the only thing I had left in life—my music.
“No,” I said, pushing her away from me when she tried resting all of her body weight against me—as though just my presence, my solid form, gave her relief. “I’m not taking care of you. Not this time.”
“Jamie, I’m…I’m your mama…” she tried, managing to steady herself with one hand on the doorknob when I held her back, my arms stiff and straight to put distance between us. “It’s your job…you have to…”
“No,” I repeated, not hiding the disgust I knew moved my mouth into a curl when I looked down at her. Those heavy-lidded black eyes blinked slow, as though it took effort for her to keep them open. The whites were yellowed and streaked with red. “My only job is to handle my business out on that stage.” When she started to wobble, I stepped back, pushing down the instinct to reach for her and keep her upright. “I don’t owe you a fucking thing.”
The dulled features went sharp then, transforming into something I recognized as anger. I’d seen that expression more than any other on her face, and now it was back, telling me in seconds that she would lash out—that she was ready for a fight. I didn’t have time for that shit.
“Listen to me, you pendejo…” she hissed.
“No, I don’t think I will.” The crowd beyond that dressing room had gone loud again, the small lull between the first act and the intermission dying a bit more with the stretch of minutes. I didn’t have time for my mother or her anger, and I was well past letting her bully or guilt me. She reached out, attempting to slap me, and I caught her wrist. “And hell no to that, too. I’m not some little punk you get to slap around anymore. I’m not gonna run after you because you’ve fucked up yet another relationship, and you can’t be bothered to handle your own shit. I told you that night at Hector’s, and I’ll tell you again now, I am so fucking done with you. Done, Juanita.”
She made a noise then, something rough and angry. She never did like me calling her by her first name. “Don’t you…”
“Mierda, no. Don’t you. Don’t you come chasing after me while I’m on tour. Don’t you dare expect me to clean up your messes. Don’t you fucking ask for money or a place to crash or bail money. You won’t get shit from me. Not anymore. Not ever again.”
“You’re just as selfish as your father…”
I blinked, surprise making me pause. She’d never once mentioned my father. God only knew who he was, because I was pretty damn sure even my mother didn’t know. But I also knew it was a tactic. She was trying to bait me. She always did when things weren’t going her way.
“Yeah, well,” I started, ignoring her taunt about whoever the bastard was that made me, “if he was anything like the other pendejos you let in your bed, then I’m not surprised.”
“I am your mama, Jamie. You can’t…”
“No. You’re just the woman I got landed with. You were just the warden. I’ve done my time, and now, I’m done with you.” The crowd was louder still now, the shouts and chants stirring into a frenzy, and I felt my pulse race and my fingertips itch to play. I looked out into the hallway, catching the gaze of one of Ronnie’s security guards, nodding for him to come my way. My mother’s stare was cold—steady—and I could nearly feel it on my skin, like a frozen breath as biting as her tongue, as frigid as her heart.
“You owe me, papi. You can’t deny that.” She sounded sober now, not as weak, and the difference in her tone had me glancing down at her. It only took that glance to make her grin, and it was a sick, venomous gesture that held no warmth. “I’m in your blood, breathing inside your veins. You can’t extract me, no matter who you become.” One long, red nail scratched against my temple when she poked at me. “I go deep and won’t ever leave you, hijo. Trust that.”
Two large guards stood behind my mother as she stared at me. Her expression never changed, even with the promise she made, but I didn’t let her see me upset. She didn’t deserve to know that she could still affect me. Instead, I nodded to the guards, stepping back when the largest one tugged her into the hallway. “No,” I said, arms folded. “Trust that when I say I’m done, I mean it. I’m done with you, mama.” One quick nod and the guards pulled her out of the dressing room.
I walked back to the dressing table, trying to ignore my mother’s rattling screams, cursing me and my father, shrieking promises of vengeance and payback and that she’d never be gone from me completely. She was a battle I had to fight, and sometimes I thought I’d never get a break from the carnage. She wanted me to be a soldier and never stop fighting.
Scrubbing my face, I glanced in the mirror, a little disgusted at how gaunt I looked, how my skin had gone nearly as pale as my mother’s, and I wondered if it was the road or the circumstance of my life the past year that had made me look so different. I wasn’t dark anymore. I wasn’t as fit as I’d been just a year before when I finished up high school. So much of what my mother had given me—the cheekbones, the eyes, the curl of my full mouth—all of it was a reminder of her, the woman who made me and would never stop reminding me that she had.
I lowered my head, gripping the back of the chair in front of me as I inhaled, trying to focus on the crowd out in that auditorium and the energy I felt them radiating.
My mother was right about one thing: she was in my blood. They all were. Isaiah, Hector, Willow Heights and, as much as I hated to admit it, Iris was, too. They made me who I was. They built me like I was brick and mortar. Every lie, every deception, every wasted hope, they stacked them inside me, one by one, until I ended up here, in an empty dressing room, angry that my mother could still get under my skin.
“They ain’t ever gonna leave,” I whispered, head shaking as I tightened my grip onto the chair.
Ronnie had sworn that’s what I needed. Grit. Experience. All the shit leveled at me by my own blood, by the girl who’d owned my soul, it was mine. I needed to own it. I needed to claim it, even though I wanted to forget. My lungs felt tight when I inhaled, trying to keep my breath level. All I wanted was to erase that shit and become something…someone else…It was then that I realized I was the only one standing in my way.
To my right, The Plebes’s stylist had stashed her large bag with a collection of makeup and shit she used to fix their pockmarks and guy-line their eyes. Above that table was an assortment of posters, all bands who’d showcased at the venue. There was Green Day, and The Pillocks, and, the smallest of all, set off to the right of the mirror, was a modest poster of a man dressed in priest’s robes. Some Swedish band just making waves, but they had theatrics and style that got them attention. The lead wore a cardinal’s hat and face paint that gave him a skeletal feel. An instant glimmer of an idea formed.
I stood in front of the mirror, digging into the makeup bag, slathering white over my face, smearing black around my eyes and down the curve of my cheeks, liking how a few layers of paint gave me the anonymity I wanted. Fingers in the black, I smudged and smeared until I looked wasted, until I looked like a demon from someone’s nightmare. Until someone else stared back in that mirror—someone dark and free of the burden of memory. Someone strong. Someone vicious, void of anything that mattered. Blank and ready to run, cut loose from the past and anything that filled him up inside. I wanted empty. I wanted nothing and liked how this someone made me feel. Like someone else…someone I decided, right then and there, I’d call Dash.
Chapter One
Willow Heights, Christmas Eve, Present day
Whisky remembered.
Didn’t matter who you were, or how you thought you could handle your liquor; one way or another, even the biggest pendejo got his ass handed to him by whisky. It would show itself in the lines on your face the morning after a bender, or that rank, fuzzy hint of heat that still radiated from your mouth no matter how many times you brushed your teeth. Whisky remembered, and it made you remember, too.
At the moment, the pounding, throbbing rumba in my head was memory enough. “Fuck you, Jack Daniels.” It didn’t respond, leaving me as I’d been all night—alone, bitter, and a little stinky.
I’d become a rock and roll cliché. All show, no go, but that was my shtick. It’s what I’d done the last ten years. Show ‘em, wow ‘em, but never let them see the real me. Hadn’t bothered to let a soul see my face. Even the groupies I entertained got Dash Justice in the dark, or Dash with stage paint, or, lamest of all, Dash in shades so big half my face was obscured. No one wanted the real me. No one but her.
The thought had me automatically reaching for the bottle at my side. It was warm, and tasted watered down, likely from how long I’d held it, doing nothing for hours but staring at the ceiling in a drunken stupor that still lingered some five hours later.
Six months. This had been my life. Looking had gone nowhere. Flowers, letters, cards, all sent to last known addresses when we couldn’t find Iris outside of the venue in Indy. I’d humiliated her, and she took off. Anyone would, but she’d gone off-grid. Vanished from me completely. I’d sent everything I could think of to everywhere I thought she might be: her New York apartment, her cousin’s place in Arizona, even her mother’s downtown cottage here in Willow Heights. I’d even contacted the punk editor at the music blog where she’d last worked. She’d vanished completely despite how hard we looked. And there had been a lot of looking to do. Isaiah, Jose, looked online, and around Indiana. Jose called in favors from his inmate friends and Arizona crew. I even called Clay, the bodyguard she’d been friendly with to see if he’d heard from her. He hadn’t but did have a few lengthy insults and curses to throw my way and a warning to stay clear of her. He wasn’t the only one giving me that warning. But no one knew where Iris had gone, or if they did, they were keeping that shit to themselves.
Six fucking months.
“The thing about losing everything is that you become a little fearless,” she’d promised, telling me honestly how my stupidity, my vain greed, had ruined her, but that had only been a song. Her name off my lips, a line in the song that announced to the world what a good fuck she’d been. But that hadn’t been the worst of it. Not by a long shot.
She’d always been fearless. Hell, she took on Gunnar Blood, a six-foot four-inch Norwegian shock rocker we used to tour with. The guy made me look like the Pope, and everyone knew it. That asshole went after Iris’s young editor, Dean, a few years back. It had been all over the news, this petite woman attacking Gunnar when he beat the smaller guy to nearly a pulp after some stupid argument about a bad review Dean published on his blog. Iris had given Gunnar four stitches, and the jackass lied that he’d fallen off the stage because he’d been piss drunk.
She’d always been real, the realest person I’d ever known, and I destroyed her. I destroyed us, because I didn’t trust her. Because I was weak.
The back of my sofa was slick with sweat when I sat up to rest against it, just enough to get the bottle back to my mouth. Just enough that I only had to move my chin up to keep the whisky in my mouth. It burned all the way down. I shut my eyes against the sting, and like always, these past six months, when I was stupid drunk and wanting to keep twisted on the guilt, I remembered her face the night of that Indy concert. The night I showed ten thousand fans what Iris Daine looked like while I fucked her.
Iris under me, reaching, bucking against my cock, gripping me, head flung back as I grabbed her tits. She met me stroke for stroke, that tight, sweet body all mine again. Mine for the moment. Mine for the camera I hid behind the two candlesticks on the hotel mantel. Iris coming, screaming my name and me…ragged hair obscuring much of my face, eyes shining through the tangled waves, that stupid grin, the greedy smirk, performing even as she promised she loved me.
“Tell Lager to go fuck himself,” I’d told her, so fucking sure she’d been scheming with my birth father, the man we’d both idolized as kids, to save his life. “You can, too.”
I’d ignored the tears, told myself they warmed my chest. Told myself that the slow crawl of dread I felt was nothing because she was nothing to me anymore.
But those tears didn’t hide her horror or humiliation. They didn’t pour over her face because she was embarrassed. Even in my arrogant rage, I saw deep emotion burning behind her eyes. I saw the hurt. I saw betrayal, and it gutted me; even though I tried to ignore it, it gutted me all the same, and then it destroyed me.
“I never touched her.” Isaiah had never lied to me, save that big one. All those years, all that time, he let me believe he and Iris betrayed me. It had fueled my hatred for her. It had kept us apart, but that night, I’d learned the truth. After I humiliated her, after I’d embarrassed myself right on that stage, I’d finally gotten to the truth. My cousin and my girl had pretended to betray me to get me back to what I wanted and who I’d always dreamt of being. They’d saved me from myself.
“Coño.”
The bottle was empty now and rolled from my fingers as I rubbed the heel of my palms into my eyes, doing a piss-poor job of eradicating the memory of the look on Iris’s face. It didn’t work. It hadn’t in six months. I doubted it ever would.
Overhead, the old record player wobbled and skipped, coming to the end of the record, vinyl scratching against the needle as the last song on The Plebes’s first album went silent. I staggered to my feet, vision blurry, head throbbing like a sore tooth, but I managed to get to the player and click off the power button before my stomach rebuked the slow-moving travel from the floor. I barely made it to the bathroom. The floor was hard on my knees, and the impact, after hours of lying around like a corpse, hit me straight in my gut. Everything I’d put down my throat came up, most of it whisky.
Iris’s voice shot through my mind, all those years she fussed at me for being a reckless kid. “Don’t drink so much all at once, Jamie,” and “everything in moderation.” Hell, nothing in my life had been moderate since I walked away from her. Why would now be any different?
“You called me a whore.”
That reminder stung because it was true. All of them were, but that stupid song, the one that brought Iris back to me, the one that led to me humiliating her even more, had started it all.
“1221,” I muttered, through sick, punk-ass moans.
It hurt her to hear me make light of what we’d been. Every time that song played, every time someone mentioned it, the same stung, betrayed look came across her pretty face.
The heat radiating from the shower didn’t help much, once I’d finished getting rid of all that Jack, but it at least lessened the pounding in my head. I stood under the spray, trying to drown myself, trying like hell to ignore the flash of memory that ran in my head. Every night. Every time I went over and over all the fucked-up things I’d done to her. She’d been the only person who truly knew me. My first fan. My first friend. My only love, and I’d ripped apart everything because I’d been stupid and blind.
The last time I saw Iris, her skin had gone pale, her hurt real and present on those soft features of hers. I’d spent five hours running around Indy looking for her, trying like hell to somehow make all I’d done right. Five hours, and no sign of her. Then those hours became days. Then weeks. Then months. And I realized Iris didn’t want to be found.
“Fuck me,” I muttered, scrubbing my thick hair harder, as though I could scrub enough to clean up the mess I’d made. Like it could make me forget the shit show I’d made of my career. After that night in Indy, the tour went from bad to worse.
Dash Justice Bombs in Cincinnati. That particular headline was the first
of its kind in my ten-year career, but it wasn’t unfair. Iris going dark put me in a tailspin, and I couldn’t get out of it. The shows got worse. My label got nervous. The promoters got pissed, and when some asshole in L.A. asked me about the last time I’d bent Iris over and I jumped him, bypassing my bodyguards and a slew of hungry paparazzi in the process, that was enough. The promoters backed out, and my label canceled the tour.
Then the fans turned on me.
Apparently you can’t jump some asshole for being an asshole, especially when that asshole has close to half a million followers on Twitter. And a music blog.
I finished trying to drown myself in the shower, drying off as I fought to keep the sharp criticism out of my head, but it was never far away. As a distraction, I shoved into a pair of clean Levis and flipped on the TV, not paying attention to anything as I moved through the channels, pausing long enough to see some blonde chica mentioning Wills Lager and the most recent gossip about the penedjo who made me.
“Lager’s management won’t comment on his health, but sources close to the rocker indicate that time is running short. The health issues no one is talking about seem to be taking their toll. Wills was spotted just last week in San Francisco leaving the University of California Medical Center, and witnesses claim he needed assistance getting into his car.” They ran a loop of Lager performing, from ten years before, then images of him from last year’s Grammy awards took up most of the screen.
“Last month when shock rock legend Dash Justice was a no-show for a CNN interview with Justice and Lager, following the former’s confirmation that he fathered Justice, Wills admitted he was trying to settle his affairs, both personal and professional. Just before the interview was scheduled to begin, the Hawthorne fan site In Blue released the full-length video of the explicit encounter between Justice and former girlfriend Iris Dane after Justice’s Cloud account had been hacked. Those close to the shock rocker say the release of the video sent Justice into seclusion and no one has heard from him since.”