And at that thought I know where she is. She’s where her music has lain as if dead all these months. She’s gone to join it.
So I find her down in the studio, sitting cross-legged on the floor. She’s plinking on a Guild acoustic, but the notes are random. She’s staring at the carpet, paying no attention to what she’s playing. I sit down facing her. She looks like a toad.
No, she’s beautiful. Look at her fingers. They’re slender, but strong. Dangerous. Can’t you see that?
Sure. But seeing it isn’t enough.
She’s still alive. That’s enough for me.
“I don’t think you should kill yourself,” I tell her. The gray egg-crate foam on the walls and ceiling makes my voice sound flat and unconvincing.
“Why not?” she asks without looking at me. Her hair is tied back, but some of it has come loose and is hanging against her cheek, curling up to touch her nose. I’m close enough to smell the sweat on her neck, and I want to kiss it away.
If you touch her now, she’ll go ballistic.
“Why not?” Lydia asks again.
“Because you wouldn’t like being dead,” I say. “It’s boring.”
“So’s being alive.”
She has a point there.
Quiet. “It doesn’t have to be.”
Lydia’s shoulders hunch, as if she’s trying to shrink into herself. “Yes, it does,” she says. “Life and death are really the same thing, except that life is more work.”
She’s still plinking on the Guild, but I notice that the notes aren’t random anymore. They’re starting to punctuate and echo her words. They sound familiar.
It’s the progression for “Love in Flames,” but she’s playing it a lot bluesier than on the album.
It sounds good, though. It gives me an idea.
“I think you should do some gigs,” I say.
Lydia looks up at me now. Her eyes are like stones. “I don’t have anything new.”
And except for the India concert, she’s always refused to perform unless she has new material.
Well, there’s a first time for everything. “So play your old stuff,” I say, “only do something different with it, like you are now. Play it like it was the blues. See if it gets your juices flowing—”
I’m just able to duck out of the way as she swings the Guild at my head. Then she stands up and smashes the guitar against the floor over and over again.
I could have told you that she doesn’t like being given advice.
So why didn’t you?
Because I thought it was good advice.
Thanks, Christopher.
You are Christopher.
Whatever.
When the guitar is little more than splinters and strings, Lydia flings the neck away and glares down at me.
“I’ll call Danny Daniels and have him schedule some dates,” she says. “Small clubs, I think. And then I’m going to bed. See you there.” She goes out, and the studio’s padded steel door swings shut behind her with a solid click.
Now you’ve done it. When this doesn’t work out, it’ll be our fault. She likes it when it’s our fault.
I thought you said it was good advice.
But good advice isn’t enough. Nothing is. Not for Lydia Love.
Apparently not for you either, Christopher.
You are Christopher.
We’re at a blues club on Guadalupe Street in Austin on a Wednesday night, and it’s jam-packed even though there’s been no advertising. Word spreads fast. I’m in the backstage lounge with Lydia, and it’s jam-packed back here too. The cigarette smoke is thick. We’re sitting on the old vinyl couch under the Muddy Waters poster, and I’m trying not to be afraid of being crushed by the mob. CCA has sent a dozen beefy dudes to provide security, and I can tell that they’re itching for someone to try something.
But Lydia, dressed in faded jeans and a black T-shirt, doesn’t seem to be aware that anyone else is in the room. She’s picking away on a pale green Telecaster, eyes focused on the frets. The guitar isn’t plugged in, so in all of this cacophony she can’t possibly hear what she’s playing. But she plays anyway. She hears it in her head.
A spot between my eyes gets hot, as if a laser-beam gunsight has focused on me, and I look across the room and see Danny Daniels in the doorway. He’s giving me a glare like the Wicked Witch gave Dorothy. When he jerks his head backward, I know it’s a signal to me to get over there.
He’s got our career in his pocket. Better see what he wants.
Why? You scared of him?
Up yours.
That’s no way to talk to yourself.
I lean close to Lydia and yell that I’m going to the john. She nods but doesn’t look up. Her music matters to her again, so screw CCA and their shrinks.
I squeeze through the throng to Daniels, and he yanks me toward the fire exit. My new black-and-white cowboy hat gets knocked askew.
Out in the alley behind the club, I pull away and straighten my hat. “You grab some guys like that,” I say, “and you’d get your ass kicked.”
Daniels’ face is pale in the white glow of the mercury lamp on the back wall. “You haven’t been doing your job,” he says.
I take a deep breath of the humid night air. “How do you figure?”
As if we didn’t know.
I’ll handle this. “I’m supposed to be Lydia Love’s boyfriend, right? Well, that’s what I’m doing.”
Daniels tugs at his leather necktie. “You’re supposed to behave as Christopher would behave so that she’ll go berserk and kick you out. But you’re obviously ignoring the Christopher chip’s instructions.”
I can’t help chuckling. “The chip hasn’t been handing out many instructions lately. It’s been making comments, but not giving orders. So I must be behaving as Christopher would. After all, I’m him, right?”
Daniels shakes his balding head. “Not according to CCA’s psychs. Christopher wouldn’t reason with Lydia when she goes wacko. He gave up on reasoning with her a long time ago.”
Never really tried.
Guess you should have.
Guess so.
“If the chip’s lying down on the job,” I say, “that’s not my fault. I’m holding up my end of the contract.”
Daniels grins.
Watch out when the son of a bitch does that.
“Our contract,” Daniels says, “is with Willie Todd. But if you were Willie, you’d be behaving more like Christopher even without the chip. That’s why we picked Willie in the first place. You, however, seem to be a third party with whom CCA has no arrangement whatsoever.” He sighs. “And if Willie has disappeared, there’s no point in releasing his album.”
This is bullshit.
“This is bullshit.”
Daniels shrugs. “Maybe so, Willie-Chris, Chris-Willie, or whoever you are. But it’s legal bullshit, the most potent kind.”
My back teeth are aching. “So if I have to be Willie for you to honor his contract,” I say, “how can I be Christopher?”
You can beat his ugly face into sausage, that’s how.
“Chris and Willie are interchangeable,” Daniels says. “Both are working-class dullards who think they deserve better because they know a few chords. Any superficial differences can be wiped out by the chip. So I say again: Listen to the chip as if it were your conscience.”
If I listened to the chip, Danny, you’d have blood running out your nose.
If he was lucky.
“I know you’re getting attached to Lydia,” Daniels continues, his tone now one of false sympathy, “but sooner or later she’ll dump you. That’s just what she does. It wasn’t until Christopher’s death that we realized she trashes her boyfriends for inspiration, but then it became obvious. So we brought Christopher back to life so she could get on with it. The only variable is how long it takes, and that’s up to you. If you drag things out until CCA loses patience, Willie’s songs will never be heard. And he won’t get his own face back, either, because
we won’t throw good money after bad. He might not even be able to regain his legal identity. He’ll have lost his very existence.”
There are worse things.
“Willie’s existence wasn’t much to begin with,” I say.
Daniels puts a hand on my shoulder, and I resist the urge to break his fingers. “Something is always better than nothing, Christopher. And if you go on the way you’ve been going, nothing is what you’ll be.”
Big deal.
“So what do you want me to do?” I ask.
“Only what the chip and I tell you,” Daniels says. “If you don’t like my conscience metaphor, then think of CCA, me, and the chip as the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Mess with any one of us, and you get slapped down with heavenly wrath. Mess with all of us, and you go straight to hell.” He gestures at the club’s back wall. “See, this kind of crap can’t continue. Neither Lydia nor CCA makes real money from a gig like this. So your current directive from the Son of God is as follows: Go and spend thee the night in a motel. You still have that cash card?”
“Yeah, but—”
Daniels gives me a shove. “You, whoever you are, talked her into doing this gig. So she’ll expect you to be here for it. But you won’t be. So saith the Son.”
No. We can’t leave now. Not with Lydia about to go on stage for the first time since India. She’d hate me. Us.
Yeah. But that might be what she wants. She thrives on being treated like dirt. That’s why she goes for guys like us. But we’ve been too nice lately, and it’s screwed her up.
That’s sick.
That’s Lydia.
“All right,” I tell Daniels. “I’m going. But I don’t like it.”
Daniels grins again. “Shit, neither do I. But it’s for her own good, and yours too. If you weren’t fucked in the head right now, you’d know that.”
Come on. Let’s get out of here.
I turn away from Daniels and walk off down the dark alley, abandoning Lydia to herself. My boots crunch on the broken asphalt. A bat flies past my—our—face, coming so close that we feel a puff of air from its wings.
Is Daniels right? Am I fucked in the head?
In the soul, Christopher. In the soul.
The stained-glass eye has become an open mouth surrounded by jagged teeth. Blue shards cover the front step, and they make snapping sounds as I come up to the door. I smell something burning. The stereo in the front room is blaring an old thrash-metal number about a murder-suicide. My back teeth begin to ache again.
As I cross the foyer into the front room, I see what Lydia has done. The picture windows have been broken, and the walls are pockmarked with holes. Some of the holes seem to be the results of shotgun blasts, and some have been punched with free-weight bars from the gym. The bars are still sticking out of some of these.
All of the furniture has been torn to pieces. The only things left intact are the AV components, which are stacked on the floor in front of the fireplace. But the cabinet that housed them is with everything else from the room—with everything else from the entire house, I think. Everything has been broken, shredded, crumpled, melted, or twisted, and then piled in the center of the room. A misshapen pyramid reaches three-quarters of the way up to the ceiling.
Lydia, wearing the jeans and T-shirt from last night’s gig, is sitting atop the pyramid and using a fireplace-lighter to burn holes into white cloth that used to be drapes. She doesn’t notice me until I cross the room and turn off the stereo.
“Christopher,” she says, glancing at me with a distracted expression. “You’re back.” Her voice is thick. I wonder if she’s taken pills.
No. Her eyes are clear. She knows what she’s doing. If the shotgun’s handy, she might kill us now.
“I’m sorry I left last night,” I say, trying to think of a lie to explain myself. “Daniels told me it was my fault that you were playing a joint instead of an arena, and I was afraid that if I stuck around I was gonna pop him. So I went for a walk, but when I got back, you and the truck were gone. I tried to call, but my card wouldn’t work. And I couldn’t find a cab that would bring me out here at night. So I stayed in a motel.”
Too much. She won’t buy it.
“I thought your card didn’t work,” Lydia says.
We’re meat.
Not if you back off and let me deal with this.
“It didn’t work in the phone,” I say. “But the motel took it.”
“So why didn’t you call from the motel?”
Told you.
Piss on it, then. I’m going to tell her the truth, including who I am.
Who’s that?
“Don’t answer,” Lydia says. “Just turn on the VCR and watch the monitor.”
So I do as she says. The monitor flashes on as the tape starts, and there I am, doing it with a brown-haired girl I’ve never seen before.
Yee-oww. Where was I when this was going on?
This never went on. I know that’s the motel room we stayed in last night, because I recognize the bent corner on the picture frame over the bed. But I don’t know that girl. So that can’t be me.
Looks like us.
So it must be you. It’s Christopher before the crash.
You are Christopher.
Yeah, but I’m Christopher after the crash.
Check out the hat on the floor. We were wearing it last night. We’re wearing it right now. And it didn’t belong to Christopher before the crash. It’s brand new.
But I don’t have a chance to figure out what that means, because Lydia has succeeded in setting the white drapery on fire. She waves it like a flag, bringing its flames close to her hair, so I move to yank it away from her. But she tosses it away before I can reach for it, and it snags on a chair leg sticking out of the pyramid. To my relief, the flames start to die down.
Lydia is staring at me now. “Tell me what happened last night,” she says. “Tell me where you found that girl while I was sweating in front of all those people. Tell me whether you started with her while I was singing, or whether you waited until you knew I’d be on my way home. Tell me whether she can suck the chrome off a trailer hitch.” She points the fireplace-lighter at me. “Tell me the truth, Christopher.”
I look at the video monitor. The brown-haired girl and I are still going at it. The clothes on the floor are the ones I’m wearing now. The stamp on my left hand is the one that was put on at the club last night, the one that’s still here on my skin. But that man is not me. I didn’t do those things. We’re watching an imaginary past with false faces and artificial voices.
Whoa. Sounds familiar.
Danny Daniels. CCA.
“Where’d the tape come from?” I ask, turning back toward Lydia. But if there’s an answer I don’t hear it, because the fire, instead of dying, has jumped to some paper and plastic in the pyramid. I can still smother it with the drapery if I hurry.
But Lydia jumps down partway and jabs her lighter at my face, stopping me. The yellow flame at the end of the barrel is two inches from my nose. The brim of my hat scorches.
“Tell me the truth,” Lydia says.
A wisp of black smoke rises to the ceiling.
All right, then. The truth. Or as close as I can get.
“I’ve never seen that girl before,” I say. “Daniels faked that tape to split us up.”
Just doing his job.
Right. This is the way things are supposed to be, and I’m supposed to help them along.
But I don’t want to anymore, and I don’t care if it costs me my album or my face or my name. Looking at her now, I realize that I only care about one thing: I love Lydia Love.
I know. So do I. But loving her isn’t enough.
Lydia’s upper lip pulls back from her teeth. “Why should Danny care who I’m with? He doesn’t have a thing for me.” The flame waves before my eyes.
“No,” I say, “but CCA does.”
“What—” Lydia begins, and then a deafening buzz buries her words.
; It’s the smoke alarm. The pyramid shudders with the sound, and Lydia loses her balance and pitches forward. My hat gets knocked off, and Lydia’s flame burns across my cheek as I catch her and fall backward. We hit the floor as pieces of the pyramid crash down around us.
The video monitor is right before our eyes. The brown-haired girl’s lips are forming a name over and over again.
Christopher, she says. Christopher, Christopher.
But that’s not my name.
No. You are Willie.
But we are Christopher.
Sprinkler nozzles pop out of the ceiling hissing and begin drenching us. The fireplace-lighter sputters out, and Lydia drops it. Then she pushes away from us, snatches up a pump shotgun from behind the AV components, and runs from the room. The fire in the pyramid dies, but the alarm keeps buzzing and the sprinklers keep spraying.
We struggle up and go after her. The door to the studio slams shut as we come down the stairs. A glimpse before it closes shows us that the sprinklers aren’t on in there. We try the door but it won’t open, so we pound on it and try to shout through the noise of the alarm. The door isn’t padded on this side, and the steel is cold and hard. We tell Lydia our names and the truth of why we put on this face and came back to her. We tell her about CCA wanting to get its money’s worth, about the surgery and the chip, about everything we can think of. The burn on our cheek stings as the water hits it.
She wouldn’t believe anything we said now. Even if she could hear us.
But we have to try. She has the shotgun. And last week she said she was going to kill herself—
The alarm stops, and we shout Lydia’s name as loud as we can.
There are two quick explosions, and circular patterns of bumps appear in the door’s metal skin. From the other side, Lydia’s muffled voice tells us to go back to the dead where we belong.
Then comes the sound of an electric guitar, and of a scream fueled by betrayal and anger.
Lydia Love is writing songs again.
And we know what that means. It means that our name, or whether we even have a name, doesn’t matter anymore.
We are—
Shut up. It doesn’t matter.
No. We guess not.
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