by Rae, Nikki
“Yeah.” I open my bag, already anxious to get this whole money situation squared away. “It’s really awesome here. I can’t thank you enough for the opportunity.”
Evan looks up now, smiling politely. “That is good to hear.”
Before any more small talk can be made, I say, “I did have a question though.”
“About what?” He sets whatever he’s been working on aside and folds his hands on the dark oak desk in front of him.
I take the folded check out of my bag. “When we agreed to play here, Myles told us that we’d be paid, and that we got free room and board.”
He blinks a few times. “That is correct.”
“Well, here’s the thing,” I say, unfolding the paper in my lap. “We only played five songs on opening night. I think this is wrong.” I hold my check out to him, but he doesn’t move to take it. He doesn’t even unclasp his hands.
Evan just stares, his eyes glued to the side of my head. Suddenly, like he’s just remembered I’m in the room, he says, “You think it is not enough?”
“No.” I almost laugh. I let the check fall to his desk, giving it a little push so maybe he’ll look at the numbers written there. “I think it’s too much,” I say. ”Way too much.”
Evan doesn’t so glance at the paper between us. He only looks at me. “You each received five hundred dollars for showcase night,” he says. “Yes?”
I nod.
“That is what everyone decided.”
I have to fight the urge to draw my eyebrows together. “Who is everyone?”
“Me, Myles, Jamie.” He shrugs, but it looks like it’s more for my benefit, to tell me this is no big deal. But it is.
“Jamie didn’t seem too happy about it,” I say without thinking.
Evan cocks his head to the side like he finds it amusing. “He was out-voted.”
I pause for a second to take all of this in, then I ask, “Why does Myles get to decide too?”
“He is part owner,” he says simply.
I decide on keeping up with the conversation rather than getting immediately fixated on this information. I’ll save that for later.
“Look, I don’t want any special treatment because Myles is my boyfriend,” I say.
“It is not special treatment.” He smiles a little. “Actually, Myles thought your band deserved more.”
I take a deep breath.
“I know this is probably new to you,” he says. “But trust me, that money was earned.”
I don’t know what else to say, so I keep quiet.
“Now for the reason why I wanted to see you.” Evan says, deeming our conversation over. He stands and slowly walks around to the front of the desk and leans against it. “I have a favor to ask you.”
I take the check back and fold it up. “Okay…”
“Ava is a difficult time here.” He crosses his arms in front of him. “She has been for a while.”
This isn’t where I saw this conversation heading. I thought he was going to ask me to stay late or something. “Okay.”
“I feel like both of you have a lot in common,” he continues. “And she has a hard time talking to people.” Evan uncrosses his arms so he can fold his hands in front of him. “She is afraid of most of them.”
“So…” I say when he doesn’t go on. “What do you want from me?”
He smiles slightly, like he knew he was beating around the bush. “I want you to spend some time with her,” he says. “Nothing serious. Just be a friend.”
“I don’t think I understand,” I say. “You just want me to hang out with her?”
“Exactly.”
He stares at me and I honestly don’t know what I’m supposed to say besides, “Uhm.”
When he still does nothing to dig us out of this awkward exchange, I say, “Well, does she have a phone number or something?”
Evan raises his eyebrow like he rarely gets asked a question like this. “Yes,” he says, bending over the desk again and scribbling it down for me.
“So what do you want us to do?” I ask, once the paper is in my hand.
“Anything you want,” he says, seeming satisfied with how this transaction has gone. “She has been wanting to get a haircut. Can you do that together?”
I simultaneously stand, fold up the number, and shove it in my pocket. ”Uh, yeah. I guess so.”
Evan nods to himself, clearly pleased. “Great.”
That’s it. End of weird conversation. Now we’re both standing and not saying anything.
“Well,” I say. “I’ll text her, I guess.”
He looks a little put off by the word ‘text’, like it’s something he’s only heard of a few times, but then he says, “Thank you, Sophie.” And he follows me to the door so he can shut it behind me.
Compared to how the night started out, the rest of it is pretty uneventful. I watch Kelly and Dana kill it on stage and then I sell their merchandise to fans afterward. I’m so busy that I barely think about how basically Evan and Myles made it so my band earned a combined fifteen hundred dollars. I leave the club around one, sticking to a crowd of other people who live in the apartments until I’m at my own.
Myles is waiting there. The look on his face says that he already knows about what happened in Evan’s office, but I prolong the inevitable for a few seconds longer, taking my time finding my keys in the depths of my bag.
He speaks first.”Hey,” he says. “How did your day go?”
I glance up for a second.”Interesting,” I say flatly.
Myles places an arm around me, and he starts turning me away from my apartment.
“What are you doing?” I ask, but my feet don’t stop moving.
He smiles. “We’re going to my apartment,” he says. “I have something for you that I’m not sure you’ll like.”
“So you’re going to bribe me in order to make me forget about the money?” I say as we’re climbing the stairs.
“That wasn’t the plan,” he says, “But if it works, that’s cool.”
“You’re joking? Seriously?” I cross my arms in front of me.
“Okay,” he says. “I’m sorry. We can talk and then I can bribe you.” We stop at the landing and Myles unhooks his keys from his back belt loop. “Plus the thing’s kind of heavy, so I didn’t want to bring it downstairs unless you like it.” He smiles for a second. “Especially if you’re too mad to accept it.”
“Oh…kay.” I say. “But don’t think this gets you a change the subject card.”
He smiles wide this time. “Of course not.”
Myles opens the door and we step inside. He acts like it’s no big deal that I haven’t ventured up here yet, but I have to take a deep breath and try to push paranoid Sophie down.
Myles’ apartment doesn’t look much different than mine. It’s the same basic layout. The only difference is the way his furniture is arranged. And the fact that it’s way neater and cleaner than my apartment.
“Okay, sit down,” Myles says, gesturing to a black sofa.
I do as he says, not forgetting that we need to talk for a second as the backs of my legs rest on the couch. I take a look around as he disappears down the hall, I’m guessing to his bedroom.
Most of his apartment is grey, black, and blue. He has the same TV as me, the same shelving built into the walls on either side of it.
When I hear the door of his room open, I also hear the jingling of Malakhi’s dog tags, and soon he’s panting over to me, tongue hanging out. I run my hands through the thick, white fur of his face. He blinks his one brown and one blue eye. I haven’t seen him in a while, but I’m smart enough to know when someone’s trying to soften the blow with cute animals.
Myles comes back out carrying a large, heavy looking, newspaper-wrapped rectangle. It’s so big that he has to stretch the full length of his arms around it in order to hold on. Malakhi moves out of the way, finding the armchair in the corner and curling up on it. Myles sets the huge thing down against the coffee table in fr
ont of me, leaning it against its edge.
“What is that?” I ask.
“It’s for you,” he states, sitting down next to me.
I stare at the mass of black and white paper. “What is it?”
Myles laughs a little. “Open it.”
I shake my head. “Bribe me later.”
He sighs, but he doesn’t seem mad. “Evan told me he wanted to ask you to hang out with Ava today,” Myles says. “I was hoping he would put it off until tomorrow so I could tell you about it first.” He wraps an arm around my shoulder and I lean into him. “I also asked Jamie not to give you the checks yet.”
“Why did you never tell me that you co-owned the club?” I ask. “Is that how we got on the band list? How we got paid so much money?”
His hand is in my hair. “I was going to tell you,” he says. “I held off because I thought you would draw those exact conclusions.”
“Well, are there any truth in them?” I want to look at him, but I don’t.
Myles shakes his head. “It’s not in my control who plays here anymore. It used to be, when we first formed it, but now it’s mainly up to the other bands. It works out better that way.”
“So they what, vote or something?”
“Pretty much,” he says. “Everyone listens to demos, then they vote.”
“Okay,” I say. ”You’re going to have to explain to me how everything works.”
“Alright,” he says, readjusting his position so we’re facing each other. “There are owners, like me and Evan. Then there are the people below him that handle the bands’ days and times, like Jaime,” he waits to see if I have questions. I don’t, so he continues. “Then there are the bands that have been playing here for a long time, like Honus, and bands that come through once in a while when they’re on tour, for example.”
“Okay…”
“The higher up bands—if you will—get to be more involved in how the club functions. They get to decide who will play, how often, and how much they’ll be paid.”
“So,” I say. “It wasn’t just you and Evan out-voting Jamie?”
Myles laughs a little. “I guess it may have seemed that way,” he says. “We three have final say, but no.” He pauses, thinking. “A lot of the bands sell T-shirts and CDs at their shows,” he glances at me. “As you already know. That also factors into how much they get paid.”
“But we don’t have merch.”
Myles grins. “Not yet,” he says. “But when you do, you’ll get paid more.”
“So what does the club get out of it?” I have to ask.
“The club gets a percentage, but trust me, most of it goes to the bands. Vampires don’t often need a lot of money. Especially older ones.”
Whoa. I thought we were talking about the club, not this.
“Wait. So are you telling me…”
“That we’re like stereotypical rich vampires?” he asks. “Some of us. Kind of.” He shrugs.
I sigh, not wanting to believe it. “Why didn’t you tell me that either?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t want to A—overload you with information, or B—make it seem like I was a different person, or that I was,” He runs a hand through his hair, “I don’t know, bragging?”
I just sit back on the couch, soaking it in and nodding. “Okay.”
We’re quiet for a few moments. I’m trying to take everything in and I’m guessing he’s trying to figure out what I think of all of this.
“Do you want to know anything else?” Myles asks.
“Is Ava Evan’s donor?” I blurt out. I wasn’t even aware that I was thinking it, but there it is.
Myles’ face becomes more serious. He was expecting more questions about Midnight. Not this. “No.”
“I wouldn’t ask, but. . .”
Myles shakes his head. “Ava’s blood can’t be used in that way.”
“What?”
He takes in a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “Michael’s blood,” he says. “It’s still in her system.”
I swallow hard.
I remember what it felt like. An electric eel in my brain.
“Wait,” I say. “How is that possible? How is she not in pain all the time?”
“She is,” he says. “It’s…complicated.”
Myles doesn’t look uncomfortable so I wait patiently for him to continue.
“There aren’t many ways to get rid of the infection once it’s in a human bloodstream,” he explains. “The way I treated you,” Myles places a hand to my temple and then lets it drop between us. “And the way Evan takes care of Ava.”
“How’s that?” I ask.
“He bites her whenever she’s in pain.” Myles shrugs, not able to find a better way to explain.
“That doesn’t make sense to me. Why would he have to keep doing it if she’s okay?”
“Because she isn’t,” Myles says softly. His gaze has switched from me to the newspaper-covered object in front of us. For all I know, he’s reading the funnies section.
“Michael’s blood was in her body too long,” he says after some time. “If Evan doesn’t take it out of her system every time it emerges, she’ll die.”
“I…” I say. “I don’t think I get it.”
Myles takes in another breath. “Michael’s blood infects healthy blood cells, destroys them, and brings them back as infected ones,” he says. He’s now switched to staring at the coffee table in front of us. “We don’t even know how it works, but taking out the infected blood in increments like that, when it’s most painful, it helps a little.”
Something occurs to me that hadn’t before. “So what does his blood do to you guys?” I ask.
“I was sick for a little bit. You and I evenly exchanged blood, so there are no long term side effects for me. Evan doesn’t do that with Ava. He’s infected too now.”
“And that means…”
“It means that there is no cure for him.” He pauses. “Either of them. He’ll eventually get very sick and die.”
“Oh my God.”
Myles shrugs. “It was his choice.” Then he smiles for a split second. “It won’t happen for a long time.”
I don’t know what else I’m supposed to say.
Thankfully, Myles takes care of that for me. “This isn’t how I imagined this night’s conversation going.”
“Yeah. Let’s fix that.”
Myles stands up and rests his arm on the huge paper-covered present. “Will you open this now?”
“I guess so,” I tease.
I try to grab a hold of the material from where I’m sitting, but I soon find that I can’t get a good enough grip. So I kneel in front of it, and Myles steps aside as I search for the seam where the newspaper has to be taped down in the back. I find familiar blue material there.
“Painter’s tape?” I ask.
Myles shrugs.
I turn my attention back to the enormous present and start to tear away the newspaper.
The first rip only reveals more layers of paper underneath, so I have to shred through them. At first, I just see a black surface, but it takes me less than a second to recognize that it’s canvas beneath my fingertips, canvas with layers of thick paint over it.
I glance at Myles for a moment and he’s still standing, staring intently at me, waiting for me to keep going. So I turn and continue to pull the wrapping apart, each torn piece revealing something new. Some color that wasn’t there before, a pattern or shape.
I don’t realize what it is until the entire thing is in front of me.
The only detail giving away that it’s me is the shock of magenta hair flying wildly around, blocking the view of my face and mingling with the rest of the painting. I’m sitting at a piano, my hands blurred in movement. The line of the piano’s glossy edge turns into a house, the shiny black fading into dark wood grain, then lighter shades of the same wooden pattern, my hair trailing a vine up around the side of the building, weaving in and out of the windows and the busted open ro
of, where a flood of colors erupts. Blue, green, red, white, yellow. I trace the imploded rainbow with my fingers, aware of how much work must have gone into it. The layers of paint are thick, yet smooth in some areas and rough in others. Everything looks so realistic, yet dreamlike and surreal at the same time.
“Do you like it?” Myles asks softly, like he doesn’t want to interrupt.
“Who did this?” I ask, not taking my eyes off of the me in the painting. My head is thrown back in passion, yet I cannot see the expression on my face.
“I did.”
I shoot my gaze to him. “What?”
He smiles, almost sheepishly. “I’ve been working on it for a while.”
I glance back at the painting, then to him, back and forth, trying to make the connection.
Myles inches closer, kneeling next to me in the small space between the painting and the couch. “It’s you,” he says like I can’t see that. “This is how I see you. When you play.”
“How long have you been working on it?”
“Since I saw you play for the first time,” he says, brushing some of my hair out of my face. “Every time I tried to capture you, it never seemed quite right.” He shrugs, inclining his head toward his work. “This was the closest I could get.”
“I didn’t even know you could paint. I mean, you were in my art class, but I never saw…” I motion to the painting. “Anything like this.”
Myles gives a small grin, the dimple near his mouth appearing. “I couldn’t find the right time to give it to you. I wanted to give it to you for your birthday, but it didn’t seem right.”
I nod. Yeah. Nothing was right then.
“That’s when I added the house.” He indicates with his hand, and I touch the hard grains painted into the canvas.
“You really thought this through.”
He smiles again. “I had a lot of time.”
“Is this all you’ve painted?” I ask.
“No,” he says simply. “Just the only one I like.” He grazes his hand at the crown of my painted head. “It’s kind of an outlet for me,” he says. “Having peoples’ feelings, thoughts, and emotions running through your head can get tough. Your image of people can get blurry. So I paint to sort of remind myself of how things really look, even if it looks somewhat…exaggerated.”