by Nicole Fox
I wonder, as I often do, if I’m attractive enough to make it big—or semi-big—as a rock star. It’s a thought I try to avoid but one that arises anyway, like a tenacious hound, dogging me endlessly like Skoll chasing the sun. I have funky shoulder-length brown hair, hacked here and there for an uneven look, with bright green eyes and high cheekbones. Men often find me attractive, but then some men look at me and see nothing more than a punk girl with Viking tattoos on her neck and thumb. I look down at the rune on my thumb now, the rune which means a need not yet fulfilled—ᚾ—and I think of that need, my desire to do more than work a job I don’t enjoy, to live in an apartment I don’t care about, to fund hobbies I have no interest in. Perhaps that’s a nihilistic way of looking at things.
I stand up and walk around the room, a place that’s falling apart, the couch covered in holes and the wallpaper chipping and flaking. I think of my house growing up. Crash Collins, my father, was a wealthy man, an old-money man, the sort of man who could buy estates and think nothing of it. We had staff and grounds and all the rest of it: the American dream gifted to a girl who knew no different. That would have been fine if he also wasn’t an old-fashioned man who believed that family trumped all, that family was everything and if a girl didn’t wear dresses and learn to knit she wasn’t a girl; she was a monster.
I pace around the room, listening to the drummer tear away on his own, the lead guitarist struggling to keep up, the crowd cheering, but not loudly. There would need to be more than fifty people for the crowd to cheer loudly. I drop onto the hole-ridden couch and stretch my legs out. I’m wearing black jeans and black boots with silver carvings of wolves on the side. They were the last thing I took from the house after Dad died and the will executor arrived with his cronies to tell me I wasn’t entitled to anything, that I had to leave unless I fulfilled the terms of the contract.
I laugh grimly to myself.
“The terms of the contract,” I whisper beneath the music pounding through the walls. “Sure, why don’t I just lie on my back and open my legs and wait for the first man who wanders by to deposit a nice load of spunk in my belly, and once the baby’s born he’ll put a ring on my finger and everything will be perfect.”
I hate waiting in the green room. It’d be different if I had a band, people to shoot the shit with, but I’m more of a solo kind of woman. In all my twenty-three years I can’t remember ever having a close friend. Boys were intimidated by me because I wasn’t intimidated by them, and girls didn’t like me because I never fit in with them. I tried to. I had a period in my teenage years when I’d dress pretty and try and force myself to care about prom, but I’d always end up back with the outcasts smoking and drinking. And I never even felt close to the outcasts, because none of them cared about making something of their lives. They just wanted to smoke and drink until the end of the world.
I pick idly at the couch cushion, rolling a piece of thread between my forefinger and thumb. That was a cruel thing for Dad to do, I reflect. He knew what sort of person I was. He knew I didn’t want to settle down early. He knew that when I read the Old Norse poems I wanted to be the shield-maiden, not the wife, waiting for her man while sitting at the loom. I wonder, when he wrote that I could only come into my inheritance when I am married with children, did he feel guilty? Did his pen pause, or did he scrawl it out rashly as he did with everything else? Crash was a man of action, a man who rarely thought before he did things. Maybe that was why he was so successful. I don’t know. What I do know is that it didn’t make him a good father. Still, I’ve paid tribute to him in my own way. I’m Cora Ash now, Melissa Collins reinvented.
“Crash, Cora Ash, Crash, Cora Ash, Cora Ash, Crash.”
I’m muttering to myself like a madwoman—and really, I can’t deny that charge—when the manager walks in. He’s a big man, but not strong-looking. He’s big in all the wrong places, big at the lower legs and forearms, big at the belly, big at the neck. He’s around forty years old with a slick gray comb-over and dark brown eyes. His first name is Charles. I forget his second.
I stand up. “Is it time?” I say, eager.
The drummer is still pounding away, drowning out the other instruments and the screaming voice, but maybe I can crowd backstage, watching and waiting like a raven over a battle. It’d be better than sitting here stewing on my past, anyway.
Maybe I seem too eager because Charles licks his lips and steps forward, and I see in his face that he thinks he has me. He sees me as the tortured little tattooed girl, snake-necked, oh-so-vulnerable.
“Not quite yet,” he says, nudging the door closed behind him.
“Okay …”
I wait. I need this gig, as sad as that is. I need every gig, no matter how small.
“I’ve been thinking, Cora. You like playing this place, don’t you?”
“Like,” I repeat, leaving it up to him to decide if that’s a positive or a negative.
“You haven’t been doing this for very long. Just a couple of years. Isn’t that right?”
“Just a couple of years.” I swallow a grim laugh. It’s easy to say something’s only been a couple of years; it’s much different to live it, going from low-paid or unpaid gig to gig, trying to convince myself that I’m not wasting my time.
“What are you, a parrot?” He cackles loudly, resting his hands on his belly, and then letting his hands drop as though the action is a reflex he’d rather do without. He takes another step forward, this one much larger, so that he’s only a few paces away from me. “You need a break in this business, don’t you? You’re always reading about some big star who played the same venue for months before getting their break. A lot of talent spotters come in this place, you know. That’s one of the things we’re most proud of here.”
“I didn’t know that,” I say. It’s a lie, I’m sure. He has that look in his eyes men sometimes get: the look of ownership, the look of psyching himself up to do something, like a kid trying to get enough courage to ask a girl out but with much less innocence.
“Oh, yeah.” He moves forward again, this time less than a foot from me. “It’s true.” I smell him. I can’t not smell him. He reeks of whisky and cigarettes and old stale sweat. “That’s what you need. Someone in your corner. I’ve seen you coming and going from this place. You never have a man with you, or a friend, or anybody. Not even a band. Just Cora Ash, all alone.” He shrugs. “It makes me quite worried, you know? Call me old-fashioned but—”
“I need to leave. It’ll be my slot soon.”
I move around him, being as tactful as I can when all I want to do is head-butt him so hard his nose becomes a pancake.
He steps into my path. “You’ve got a minute,” he says, voice rising. He looks way more excited than he needs to be. “Don’t you have a minute? What’s your problem? Why are you such a loner?”
Because I changed my name a while back, and in doing so I severed every connection with casual acquaintances and half-friends. I moved from LA to this quaint seaside town an hour’s drive out of LA. That’s why.
“Some people just like being alone,” I say, taking a step back. It’s either that or feel his bulging sweaty belly against me, which is not an option.
“Look.” He pauses, eyes squinting, and then blurts, “I could make life easier for you. A regular gig. Well-paid. All you’d need to do is give me a chance. Come by my place. I’d treat you right.”
I close my eyes, hoping that when I open them he’s disappeared. He hasn’t, so I place my hands on my hips and look at him like he’s the lowliest slug I’ve ever encountered, a look designed to wither. It works. He shrinks under my gaze.
“You want me to fuck you so I can keep playing in this shithole? That’s your grand plan?”
The drummer winds down. A final guitar note rings through the building. The singer clears his throat.
“Move,” I say. I bow my head sarcastically. “Please.”
He looks like he might hit me. He wants to. He’s scanning me for weakness,
any sign that I’m prey and he can became a predator. I spent my teenage years reading about Nordic men, about blood feuds and hammer-wielding gods and giants. This man is a joke.
When he doesn’t find any weakness, he steps aside.
I push past him quickly, shaken, though I won’t show it, and wrench the green room door open. Walking down the hallway, I fight my trembling lips, my clenched fists. I’ll have to put the rage into my performance.
Chapter Three
Logan
The bar is called The Devil, with a faded picture of a demon on the wooden banner, neon letters proclaiming T e D il to the Californian twilight. Metal music plays from inside and if I look down the street I can see the ocean, just about, a tiny blue pinprick nestled in between two buildings. I used to love the sea when I was a kid, when the Demon Riders were based on the land-side of LA and Mom’d bring me and her friends’ kids down here, and we’d splash around like we were children and not outlaws-in-waiting. It’s probably bad for me to reminisce about a time when I didn’t have any responsibility, when pretty soon I’m going to have all the responsibility, so I go inside.
I nod to the bouncer, a man I recognize from a bar on the other side of town, and who probably recognizes me as a bastard who gets shitfaced when he’s tired of dealing with his problems. I’ve got my leather folded up in my hand. I don’t want to be a Demon Rider right now, just a man in a T-shirt. I walk across the dance floor, where around fifty or so people mosh and rage to the band, a guy with dyed green hair trying to scream over the drummer. It sounds like shit, but it’s better than listening to my own thoughts. That’s one of the reasons I come to clubs like these. The music is bad but that can be a good thing, because bad music means I don’t have to live in my head.
I go to the bar and take a corner seat where I can see the TV and the stage. The TV is playing football, which I’ve never cared much about, so I idly watch the stage instead. I order a bottle of whisky and a glass and drink slowly and with determination. I’m getting drunk. That’s my mission.
I’m three drinks deep when some punk woman spots me across the bar. Women are always drawn to me, have been ever since I was a teenager. My nickname was Pretty Boy for a while in high school (which Mom made me finish because she said I wouldn’t be a grunter like the rest of the MC). Maybe it’s my longish sand-blond hair or my blue eyes, or maybe it’s the fact that I’ve never tried too hard with women. They seem to like that.
She’s okay-looking, with pink hair and dark-rimmed eyes, but she has that slightly desperate look about her that is turning me off more and more lately. I haven’t been with a club girl in months because of that look. It’s a look that says they’ll do anything for you, do any damn thing you please, but it will mean nothing to them. They’ll do it because they’ve always done it, because they don’t know how else to make a man like them. Maybe I’m getting too sensitive. Maybe a man who’s killed and beaten and robbed and fought shouldn’t care about shit like this. But I can’t help it. Even men like me have feelings. That’s the truth we can never admit.
I sip my drink as she comes over, walking unsteadily and nervously, looking at me shyly under her pink fringe. It’s a look meant to entice me in, and it would have once upon a time. It was right around the time Dad got really sick that I stopped being enticed by these women. I don’t know what that says about me. The screamer on stage finishes up, thanking the crowd, and the band starts to get ready for the next performer.
The woman leans against the bar directly next to me, waiting for me to initiate something. It would be so easy to get this woman into bed. It’d be the easiest, cheapest thing in the world. And then, the morning after, both of us’d feel dirty and pointless, two pieces of flesh slapping against each other. That’s it, I reckon; looking at her, I can’t distinguish her from any of the other dozen punky women I’ve fucked in my life. When I don’t say anything, she turns her head.
“Hey,” she says.
I sip my whisky.
“I said hey.”
“Hi.” I take another sip.
“So …” She trails off, waiting for me to fill the gap. I don’t.
“Are you having a good night?” she asks.
“It’s pretty good.”
“Isn’t this music just so lame?”
“It’s pretty lame,” I agree.
She spreads her arms as if saying, “I’m standing right here, ready to be fucked, and you won’t even talk to me?”
I see it in her eyes: the need to exert some kind of influence over me. It’s her identity. That’s the sick part, the fucked-up part I usually ignore. They get something out of it, too. They get plenty of pleasure. I always treat my women right. But after Dad, and all this talk of family, and everything … I don’t know what’s going on inside of me. I have to admit that. What I know for sure, though, is that I don’t want this woman.
“Um.” She hesitates. “Did you have a good day?”
I smile, a smile of derision I quickly kill unless she misinterprets it. It’s clear she’s never had to initiate things before.
I look past her at the stage as the next act walks on. I feel like the barstool drops out from underneath me. The whisky sits on my tongue before I remember to swallow. The chatter of the woman and the general chatter around us dies down to a whisper, and this woman’s footsteps become louder, the loudest sound of all. She’s hot, with her neck tattoo I can’t quite make out from here and a smudge on her hand I can only assume is a tattoo, her leather jacket and her black skinny jeans. But it’s not just that she’s hot. It’s the way she carries herself, confident but not aggressive, self-assured but not arrogant.
She leans into the microphone, and her voice is like heaven: raspy, mid-pitched, not girlish but not mannish. She sounds like a real goddamn lady. “My name is Cora Ash, and this is ‘Sayings of the Low One’.”
She turns to the band, nods, says something to the drummer—don’t be so loud, I’m guessing—and then launches into the song. She sings about how a person has to be strong but must also bridle their strength, how a person must remember that the end of the world is always around the corner, how a person must be brave and never show fear. I watch, captivated, feeling like something truly new is happening inside of me.
Then the punk woman pokes her head up. “Hello?” she snaps. “I said, did you like the band?”
The contrast of the woman on stage—Cora Ash—with this hungry-for-attention punk is so drastic, it’s difficult to believe that they’re the same species. She moves around the stage as she sings, but not madly or frantically, though her singing is metal through and through. She moves around the stage like a water snake, fluid movement after fluid movement, drawing my eyes to her legs and her arms and her ass when she turns just right. I’ve never been so enthralled by a woman in all my life; I never dreamed it was possible, even.
“Have I done something to offend you?” the punk asks, her voice full of outrage.
“What?” I say, barely aware of her. Cora Ash launches into the chorus, her rasp the buffer against the sweetness of her voice, the two combining into a firm, elongated note.
“Why won’t you look at me?”
“I don’t know you, sweetheart,” I say. “And I’m enjoying the show.”
“You’re dribbling all over that skinny bitch? Look at her. She’s a freak. She moves around like a freak.”
She moves like something unearthly, I want to say. But I don’t. Outlaws and bikers don’t say things like that.
The song enters its second half, Cora Ash spinning around the stage, her jagged brown hair whipping around her, singing of people whose names I don’t recognize. They sound like old names, the kind I’d hear in history and forget by math. The crowd doesn’t seem as stunned as me, just moshing and headbanging when they should be standing in awe, dumbstruck.
“You’ve blown it with me,” the punk says. “I just want you to know that. You’ve really blown it!”
I don’t take my eyes off Cora as the
song comes to an end. She moves to the edge of the stage with the grace of a ballerina and the ferocity of a tigress. I’ve never seen those two aspects brought together. She looks fierce and delicate at the same time, somebody I want to protect and run from. She bangs her head, screaming the last part of the song so that her rasping voice echoes around the room. When the song ends, she leaps back and punches the air, making a war-like whooping sound. It’s the same kind of sound I’ve heard from outlaws after some killing, but it isn’t manly at all.
She launches into another song and all I think is: I need to speak to this woman. If it kills me, I need to speak with her. I take a sip of whisky and then turn when I notice a pink blob moving up and down. It’s the punk. She’s still there, ranting.
I tune into her. “… what you’re missing. You really don’t. I’m a bad bitch and you want that—who even is she?”