“Can we both sleep in the bed?” asked Shane. “I took the pills already, so sex is out, anyway.”
“Uh...” said Lark. “Okay.”
* * *
Whitney dropped several more ice cubes into her now-empty rocks glass while cradling her phone between her shoulder and her ear. She was on hold. She was drinking. Well. Okay. She was drunk. She hadn’t meant to get drunk. Not exactly. It was just that she kept finishing the drinks she was mixing for herself. And once she finished one, she wanted another one. Now, she poured the glass full of rum. She opened the refrigerator door to get out the half-empty two liter of coke inside. She stared at the coke bottle. She shut the refrigerator door.
The hold music was annoying. It was repetitive. She wondered if they’d forgotten that she was on hold. How long had she been on hold anyway? She checked her watch. Five minutes? Seven? God. Any sane person would just hang up now. But Whitney wasn’t feeling exactly sane right now. She was feeling drunk. Drunk and determined.
She picked up her glass and took a sip. Rum and ice. Yum.
Whitney headed back into her office. Sat down at her desk. Returned to the solitaire game she was playing on her computer screen. She’d been getting good at solitaire lately, what with all the time she’d been spending on hold. She guessed she could be doing other things. More productive things. Like lining up interviews with bands. Or writing interview questions. Or doing her damned job. But. Solitaire could very well become a marketable skill for her. It was possible.
“Whitney?” said a voice in her ear.
Whitney jumped, spilling her drink. “Yes?” she said. She sat up straight.
“Listen, I never got the story you sent.”
Whitney was on the phone with the editor at Crunch Magazine, Tim O’Doole. She wasn’t surprised that he was saying what he was saying. She’d heard the same thing from more editors than she could count. “You mean it got lost?” she said.
“Must have,” said Tim. “I don’t know how that happened.”
“This story seems to have a tendency to get lost,” said Whitney.
“It’s an exclusive with Shane Adams?” Tim asked.
“Among other things,” said Whitney. “Did you know that members of the Entourage have been disappearing? And that Shane Adams is telling all his fans to go home so that they’ll be safe?”
“No,” said Tim. “I haven’t heard anything like that.”
“It’s in the story,” said Whitney. “Do you want to look at it?”
“Well...”
Fuck. What was this? Whitney had been sending the newly worked Shane Adams story out to every major market she could think of. And she hadn’t been getting any responses at all. Finally frustrated, Whitney had started calling editors. Sure, it wasn’t conventional, but she was Whitney Eros, for God’s sake. This was a good story. She wanted it out there.
“There really isn’t room in this issue,” said Tim.
And on top of everything else, the editors weren’t biting. Whitney didn’t get it. Wasn’t this a hot story? Didn’t she have an awesome angle? Why wasn’t anyone willing to publish it? “So you don’t even want to read it?” Whitney asked.
“I...” Tim hesitated. “Look, I just got the word from the top that stories on The Wrenching are out.”
“You’re kidding. Their sales are just as good as they ever have been. They’re in the middle of a major U.S. tour. You’re telling me that a story like this wouldn’t sell magazines?” She simply could not believe this. She felt as if something were conspiring against her, keeping her from publishing this story. What was wrong with the world?
Tim sighed. “Yeah,” he said. “I know.”
Well. That was farther than she’d gotten with any of the other editors. Their responses had generally been sympathetic, but firm. Then they’d tried to interest her in writing another piece for them on someone else. Anyone else. Tim O’Doole was the only guy so far who admitted anything a little strange was going on. Of course, this was the first time she’d been drunk enough to challenge any of the editors in quite this way.
“Send me a proposal, okay?”
“I already sent you one,” said Whitney.
“Did we reject it?”
“You didn’t respond.”
“Well, can you send it again?”
Whitney sighed. “If you’re never going to publish it, just tell me. I won’t waste anymore of your time or mine.”
“Do you have the proposal?” asked Tim. “On your hard drive?”
“Yes.”
“Well, send it to me right now then. While we’re on the phone.”
Huh. While they were on the phone? That was a little more promising than simply telling her they weren’t interested. “Okay,” said Whitney. She pulled up her email and attached the proposal. She sent the message. She waited. “Did you get it?”
“Not yet,” said Tim. “Oh. Wait. Yeah. I’ve got it.”
They were quiet for a few minutes, while Tim read the proposal. Finally, Tim said quietly, “This sounds awesome.”
“Really?” Whitney couldn’t keep the hope out of her voice.
“Don’t get excited. I’m not promising anything. But send me the article, okay? I promise to look at it. If it’s good, I’ll fight for it. You know me. You can trust me to do that.”
“Okay,” said Whitney.
“I just...I don’t get it. Why aren’t you shopping this to Rolling Stone?”
“I did.”
“They passed on it?”
“Yeah.”
“Weird,” said Tim.
Whitney’s thoughts exactly.
Chapter Six
Shane awoke to Chris standing over him, pouring cold water all over his face. He sat up straight in his bed, swearing. “What the fuck was that?” he demanded. It was dark outside the bus, the dark stillness of early morning.
Chris crossed his arms over his chest. “You aren’t answering your phone.”
“What time is it?” Shane wanted to know.
“We were supposed to be on the road an hour ago.” Chris didn’t look happy. “Mandy’s been calling you and calling you. You aren’t picking up your phone.”
“Sorry,” muttered Shane. He scooted off the end of the bed, picking up a pair of jeans from the floor and wriggling into them. “I think I turned my phone off last night.”
“Great,” said Chris.
“Is Mandy pissed?”
“Everybody’s pissed,” said Chris. “Including me. I don’t know what the fuck is going on with you, Shane.”
“Well, I’m up now. I’ll drive the damned bus.” Shane rubbed his eyes and felt in his pockets for some coke. He thought he had a bag in these jeans...
“Good,” said Chris. He turned to go.
“Should I call Mandy?” asked Shane.
“Dude, no one is going to talk to you right now except me,” said Chris, without turning around.
Shane’s pockets were empty. “Damn it,” he muttered. “I need a bump.”
Chris turned. He fished a vial with a small spoon in it out of his pocket.
“Thanks,” said Shane, unscrewing the lid to the vial and snorting a little of the white powder.
“Who’s the chick?” Chris asked.
Shane turned. He’d practically forgotten Lark was there. She was curled into a ball on one side of the bed, her long black hair tangled around her face. She was still wearing her clothes. Apparently, she was still asleep. “She’s a chick,” said Shane. He sure as fuck wasn’t about to explain the situation to Chris.
“Well,” said Chris. “Don’t you need to wake her up and get her off the bus?”
Shane just stared at Lark. She was a pretty girl. He guessed there were worse things than being stuck living with a pretty girl. He did think it was kind of weird that she didn’t want to have sex. But it was okay. Shane hadn’t really had a lot of interest in sex lately. It had started to seem like a chore. So he’d stopped doing it.
“You want
me to wake her up and tell her?” Chris asked.
This was a courtesy the two used to perform for each other, when they’d made a particularly bad drunken decision the night before. It dated all the way back to when they lived in Tennessee and were just local musicians trying to get laid. The girls seemed to take the message to get lost better from someone who hadn’t slept with them the night before. Shane smiled, remembering the kind of camaraderie he and Chris used to share.
“No,” he said to Chris. “No, it’s cool. Let her sleep.”
“You’re taking her to the next city?”
“She follows us. She’s going there anyway,” said Shane.
Chris looked at him as if he were crazy.
“What?” asked Shane. “It’s not like she’s ugly or something.”
Chris shrugged.
Shane handed him back the vial of coke. “Maybe I wouldn’t mind some company,” he said.
“Company? I thought that was exactly what you didn’t want.”
Shane shook his head. Why would Chris think that? Of course, now that he thought about it, he had spent a lot of time isolating himself lately. Ditching the groupies was just part of it. When The Wrenching had first gotten popular, he used to live in the tour bus with the rest of the band. He used to go out with Chris. They’d get trashed, scam on women. Hell, he and Chris used to write songs together. None of that had been happening lately. But...that was before the rats. Before he’d understood what was going on. Still, he missed Chris. He didn’t realize how empty things were. “Look,” he said, “we should hang out sometime. You and me. We haven’t—”
“Dude, whatever,” said Chris. “Just fucking get the bus going, and let’s get the hell out of this city.”
He’d forgotten that Chris was pissed off at him. Well, maybe he’d have to try to mend the bridges he’d burned later. Obviously, his old shit wasn’t going to fly anymore. “Sure,” he said. “Let’s get on the road.”
Chris left the bus, and Shane started it up. They got “the hell out of this city.” Shane didn’t want to disappoint people. Hell, part of the reason he’d become a rock star was that he lived for making people happy. He loved being able to play for people, take them away from their lives for a while, pull them into the world he’d created and entertain them. He got drunk on applause. He existed for it. And in his personal life, he’d always been a pretty affable guy. He didn’t like to rock the boat or piss people off. At least, he’d never used to. Lately, not much had seemed to matter to him. He’d begun to feel trapped by his life. He couldn’t do the things he wanted to do, because he was Shane Adams, the lead singer of The Wrenching. Okay, that wasn’t exactly true. This was all he’d ever wanted to do. And he still wanted to do it. It was just that what he was doing was getting people killed. And Shane didn’t really want any part of it anymore. But it was as if he couldn’t get out of it. He didn’t know how to stop. When he tried, he seemed to hurt the people he cared the most about.
Chris, for example. When they were kids, he and Chris had been inseparable. They’d played music together. They’d partied together. They’d made plans together. They’d spent three-quarters of their lives in each other’s presence. If anyone asked him who mattered most to him, he would say Chris, without much thought. Sure, he loved his family, but he and Chris had a bond. And he knew that Chris wasn’t at all happy about the way he was behaving. He knew that Chris thought he’d lost his mind. Maybe he had. Maybe he’d just done too many drugs and they’d warped his brain. After all, there wasn’t any rational reason to believe what he believed about his music. But Shane believed it anyway. He knew what he’d done. He knew what was going on. If he weren’t so weak, he’d stop playing, whether it made Chris hate him or not. Whether it made people think he was letting them down or not. But he was weak. He was so weak. And he couldn’t. He didn’t know what he’d do if he weren’t doing this.
Outside the windows of the bus, the interstate flew past him. Exit signs. Billboard advertisements. Other cars, their rear lights red like blood. Shane sniffled, wishing for more cocaine. The sunrise splintered the sky, and Shane drove on.
It was hours before Lark woke up. When she did, they were more than a hundred miles away from the previous venue. Shane told her that. Told her she could watch DVDs on the TV if she wanted. Then he remembered that normal people usually wanted to eat when they woke up, and he asked if she were hungry. Lark wasn’t. She’d been following a rock band around on tour for quite some time. Food wasn’t any more a priority for drugged-up fans than it was for those they were fans of. Shane mentioned that he’d thought he had some cocaine somewhere, but that he couldn’t find it, and so Lark said she’d look for it. She was in the bedroom for a really long time, but came back empty handed. Then she started to search the living area of the bus. It was then that Shane realized that while Lark searched, she was also cleaning. When she had finished, she had not only found the cocaine, but had turned the bus into a halfway decent place to live.
Lark and Shane both did a line of coke.
“Thanks,” he said. “For finding it and for cleaning the place up. You didn’t have to do that, you know.”
“Actually, I was hoping it wouldn’t bug you,” she said. “It makes me feel more comfortable this way. So I hope it’s okay.”
“It’s awesome,” he said.
The coke had made Lark chatty. She settled in, sitting cross-legged on one of the seats in the bus, and started asking questions. “How come you dress up as Death Man?” she asked.
“Um, I guess I just like the idea of not always having to be Shane Adams all the time. It gives me freedom. It’s like an escape.”
“I guess I can see that. But why are you telling all your fans to go home?”
Boy, she really went for the jugular, didn’t she? But for some reason, Shane didn’t feel as if he had to hide things from Lark. He liked having her around. He liked her, even if he didn’t know much about her. She was different than other fans he’d encountered. More grounded, he guessed. “It’s not safe for people to keep following me around,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that kids from the Entourage keep disappearing.”
“Like Tina?”
“Who?”
“A girl I know. She went out for a walk one night and never came back. Her boyfriend was really freaked out.”
“Yeah,” said Shane. “That sounds about like what’s happening. It’s my fault. If I stopped playing...”
“Well, I don’t think so. It’s not your fault. Besides, she probably decided to go home or something. Or she ran into some people she knew and decided to ride with them. Or...anything. We don’t even know if anything bad happened to her.”
“Something bad happened to her.”
“How do you know that?”
Well. He couldn’t tell her that. Not exactly. Because she’d think he was nuts. “I just know.”
“So, what is it you think happened to her?”
“She’s dead. And it’s my fault. So I have to tell people. I have to warn people.”
“Are you going out and killing people in the Entourage or something?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Then it’s not your fault. And I don’t think you have any proof that anyone is dead.”
“There have been more disappearances than your friend.”
“And they found bodies?”
“There aren’t bodies to find.”
“Again. How do you know that?”
“I...can’t tell you,” he said. Because he liked Lark. He wanted her to like him. So, he needed to keep as quiet about all of this as he could. He tried to change the subject. “Why don’t you have someplace to stay?”
“Why can’t you tell me? Do you have something to do with the disappearances?”
“I...” He trailed off. He did have something to do with it. He was the reason it was happening. But even if he told her what had happened, she wouldn’t believe him. She’
d try to reassure him. Tell him he wasn’t thinking clearly. Tell him it was all a coincidence. All a hallucination. And he knew differently. He didn’t need empty reassurances. He needed to find the guts to stop playing. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.
Lark was quiet. “Okay,” she said finally.
“So why did you need someplace to stay?” he asked. “Did it have something to do with that guy who was calling you names last night?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.
Fair enough. “Are...are a lot of the guys that follow us around like that?” he asked. “Do we have a bunch of asshole fans? Because I don’t think it’s cool to treat women that way. To treat humans that way.”
“I think,” said Lark, “that there are a lot of guys that are like that period.”
Whoa. She sounded pretty bitter. Shane wondered what had happened to her in the past. He’d bet even money she didn’t want to talk about that either. Shane knew what kind of kids liked to listen to his music. He’d never written what anyone might classify as cheery music. So he knew that most of his fans were, well, melancholy. But it had never really occurred to him that many of them probably had better reasons to be melancholy than he did. And for a group of kids to start following his band around, it probably meant that they didn’t really have much of anything better going on in their lives. “Yeah,” he said. “Well, not all guys are like that.”
“I know,” Lark said.
“I’m not like that,” said Shane.
Lark didn’t say anything.
“What? You don’t believe me?”
“I don’t know you,” said Lark. “It’s just that you haven’t had a string of really healthy relationships exactly.”
Wow. That was kind of harsh. Shane didn’t think he’d had unhealthy relationships. Well. Now that he thought about it. In the first flush of fame, there had been several models and an actress. All of which had been awful relationships. Shane had soon discovered that he couldn’t handle hanging out with women that were more insecure than he was. People who also lived to entertain other people. Those women weren’t happy unless they were making him happy. And he wasn’t happy if he wasn’t making them happy. So it didn’t work. “I’ve been busy,” Shane said. “I don’t have time to be...serious. Besides—” He couldn’t resist— “it doesn’t sound as if your relationships have been so healthy either.”
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