1001 Dark Nights: Bundle Seven

by Shayla Black

  Nadia, Theresa’s nanny, would be up because she didn’t sleep. Hector, the groundskeeper, was probably already working. Maria, Graciella, and Gloria. Definitely rousing Carrie, Sheila, and Fiona for school. Dressing them. Making sure homework was done. Deirdre, Leanne, and Theresa would be causing havoc. If I got right in the shower, there was a pretty good chance no one would notice I had even been out.

  Except Mom. She was a wild card. She usually slept until eight, but if she drank the night before, she actually woke up earlier. And if she caught me out, she was unpredictable. She’d been pregnant six times since I was born, so she always seemed to be in a constant state of flux. Big. Little. Tired. Energized. Horizontal. Running. One person. Two. She was as likely to lock me out and act as if everything was normal as tell my father, which would be bad. Very bad. All bad. He did not like losing control. He seemed to have two emotions: cold calculation and satisfaction.

  I loved him. I loved both of them. But I never knew what to make of them. In the end, I realized they didn’t go on and on about how they felt but concerned themselves with actions. I respected that. It was what I thought it meant to be an adult.

  I knew I’d pushed it. Playing strip poker with two guys in a semi-famous rock band in a semi-luxurious hotel room? And telling them my name?

  My God. I didn’t know what my parents would do to me, but everything about it was trouble. Dad cared about what people thought. He cared about appearances and chastity. Even if he wasn’t in town, he had the nannies dress us all up and take us to church on Sunday. He made sure we had ashes on our forehead and palm crosses in our hands. He never mentioned God at all, but the Catholic Church always loomed as the ultimate authority.

  I’d asked him why, and he said something odd.

  He said, “Invisible gods are ineffective.”

  I had to hope that Strat and Drew had no reason to find out who the Drazens were. How old their money was. They wouldn’t. I wasn’t anyone to them. I made myself invisible in my mind when the cab got to my house. I gave the cabbie one of Drew’s hundreds, ran into the side door, and made it into the bathroom without being seen.

  I washed the night away with scalding water.

  Six-oh-six eyebrow.

  Go over pre-calc in the car.

  History

  Comp

  Stupid’s not a verb, asshole.

  Forty minutes to memorize a hundred Latin conjugations

  Tennis

  Photography

  Eat something

  What’s your name?

  Catholic Women’s Club

  Chess Strategy Club

  Then?

  Then?

  Then…

  Chapter 7

  1994

  “I know everything comes pretty easily to me compared,” I whispered to Drew/Indiana in the hall before swiveling into my cubicle. I had to pick up my things before doing Ellen’s donut run. “But I put some work into being here. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention we knew each other eleven plus years ago.”

  “Am I so embarrassing?” He smirked as if he had me over a barrel.

  Typical man, thinking it was all about hard work now/today/this week. If word of our history got out, I’d be a slut and he’d be a hero. I’d be fending off advances in the copy room, getting censured for shit I did a decade ago, wondering why I never got the good cases, and he’d fly back to New York and get promoted.

  “It’s not shame and never was.”

  “That’s my Cinnamon.”

  “It’s Margie now.” I spun to face him, my back to my desk and spoke quietly. Terry, the other clerk, was a foot away through the grey half-wall. “Full-time. This is my life. Like I said. I have plenty of privilege but no dick.”

  “It’s 1994.”

  He said it as if we had entered the modern era and his dick didn’t make a damned bit of difference in the workplace. Only a man could think something so utterly incorrect.

  He must have seen me boil, because he put a hand up before I could explode. “I’m just giving you a hard time. I never intended to say a word about anything, but I’m in town for the week.”

  I opened the bottom drawer of my desk and got my purse out. “Fine.” I slapped the drawer shut.

  “Fine?”

  “I have no feelings about it one way or the other.”

  “Good to see you haven’t changed.” He winked and slipped out.

  Chapter 8

  1982 – BEFORE THE NIGHT OF THE QUAALUDE

  I didn’t have to remember E-Y-E-B-R-O-W or six-oh-six, which I happened to know was a Kentucky number from a friend at Carlton Prep. I got a beep in the middle of chess strategy with a Nashville call back number. An hour later, I was in the passenger seat of a Monte Carlo driving into Pacific Palisades. Strat was behind the wheel, and Indiana was in the back with Lynn and Yoni.

  I had no idea why I was there. I wasn’t the prettiest girl who hung around them. I hadn’t screwed either one of them, though apparently Yoni and Lynn had had a fine time with Strat before the poker game had gotten under way. I didn’t understand why I was there because I didn’t understand men.

  Yet.

  It came to me many years later, while reading Rolling Stone. During the interview, Indy was sitting in front of a mixing board they’d installed in the Palihood House (He was “producing” because that was always the story arc. Small-town beginnings>cohesion of the group>artistic satisfaction>commercial success>drug use>break up>The Bottom>redemption>rebuilding/branding). His hair was scraggly but intentionally so. His shirt was clean. He’d lost the puff around the eyes, and he was talking about Strat.

  “He was like a brother to me, but more. A partner. And when he died, man, it was like someone ripped me open.”

  In the passenger seat of the Monte Carlo, with the two of them still poker-playing strangers, I didn’t know they were like brothers. Years later, reading the Rolling Stone article, that Monte Carlo ride came back to me.

  I’d been so clueless about how close they were and how lonely they were.

  I always assumed I was brought into this world fully formed. Maybe I wasn’t. Maybe I didn’t understand people the way I thought I did. I chewed on that then forgot it, because it only turned up the heat on a cauldron of stew that had everything and nothing to do with the Bullets and Blood boys.

  Indy leaned forward and pointed at a locked gate closing off a road into the foothills of the Palisades. “Up here. Code’s fifty-one-fifty.” He turned to me, and I could feel his breath on my cheek. “Wait until you see this place.”

  “It’s nice up here,” Lynn said before cracking her gum. She was in a black lace corset and tiered skirt. Red, red lips and black, black eyeliner.

  “This is the ass-end though,” Yoni chimed in. “It’s the Palihood.”

  “Yeah, anything east of the park.”

  “South.”

  “East.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  Strat ignored them. “He can’t afford it.”

  “We just got a quarter-million dollar contract.” Indy leaned back and kicked Strat’s seat.

  Strat shook his head. “Have you read it?”

  “You don’t read Greek either.”

  Driving up the hill under the clear spring sky, the fact that he’d read the contract and understood it made me look at Strat’s arms, his music tattoos, the muscles of his legs, and respect him with a sexual heat.

  We pulled up to a house made of glass and overhung with trees and surrounded by tall bushes. When we got out of the car, the shade was a welcome respite from the blasting sun, and the birds cut through the white noise of the freeway.

  “It’s nice,” I said.

  “And I can afford it.” Indy pointed at Strat as he headed for the front door.

  “Fuck you can,” Strat muttered.

  Yoni and Lynn had no interest. They’d started bantering about the coyotes in the hills, bouncing with excitement, as we went up the cracked steps onto the pocked flagstones.


  “Ye of little faith.” Indy opened the door. “I have the down payment next week. Made escrow already.”

  The black linoleum floors shined, and the sightline went through the house, over the west side, and to the ocean. Yoni and Lynn were already checking out the bean-shaped pool in the back.

  You’d think a musician on the cusp of fame wouldn’t want to be tied down to a house. He’d want to ride the tour bus and fuck a few hundred girls. That was the norm. But Indy stood in the empty space between the front door and the horizon and lit two cigarettes before handing me one.

  “I can move in next week.”

  “Dude,” Strat said.

  “Dude,” Indy snapped.

  Strat turned to me, hands out, pleading. On the whole ride up, I’d wondered why they brought me, and I feared at that moment that they’d gone to the library or talked to their lawyers and found out who I was. Now they were going to ask me for money, and I couldn’t give it to them. There was no other reason to put me in that car.

  I liked them, but that house had to cost two hundred grand.

  Would they threaten to tell Daddy things? The poker? The bra? The smoking? Would they tell him I drank and I kissed? Or that I was a cocktease?

  When I brought the cigarette to my lips, my hand was shaking. I didn’t know which scenario terrified me most. I inhaled the nicotine and blew out rings as if I had control of this. Whatever this was. It was my first cigarette of the day, and it made my palms tingle.

  “Why the fuck am I here?” I asked.

  Strat stepped forward, finger pointing at me then Indy. “Keep me from killing him.”

  “Fuck you,” Indy retorted.

  I didn’t have anything much more intelligent to offer. “It’s a nice house. Needs work. Get an accountant to tell him if he can afford it.”

  “Let me give you the short version.” Strat’s comment was directed at me but meant for Indy. “Two fifty minus fifteen percent to WDE. Two twelve and a half. Eighty-three grand. Minus three points to our producer. Two-oh-five. And by the way, we, you and me and Gary—the band—we have to recoup their points.”

  “We will. I’m telling you.”

  “Two-oh-five divided by three? Sixty-eight thousand dollars for a three-year contract. And you haven’t even paid your taxes yet.”

  I rolled my eyes and looked at the ceiling. If Strat and/or Indy noticed me acting my age, they didn’t say anything.

  “There’s income, fucktard.” Indy patted his pockets and found a thick marker best suited to sniffing and writing graff. “I need a napkin. Fucking find me a napkin. An envelope. I gotta write on the back of it.”

  “Fifty grand for the studio we gotta pay back,” said Strat the Sensible. “Recoupable. Producer. Recoupable. Equipment rental. Re—”

  “Stop it!” I shouted.

  I’d had it with the two of them. I didn’t know much of anything. I didn’t know how to run a business or how to make money, but I knew how to think like a rich person. Maybe that was why they’d brought me.

  “You guys. You’re so cute with your middle-class shitsense. You act as if it’s money to spend. It’s not. It’s money to make more money. You.” I pointed at Strat. “You move in here with Indy. You take your sixty grand, and you set up a studio in the garage or the living room. I don’t care where. You.” I pointed at Indy. “Get a commercial loan. You lay down the next record here and collect the fifty grand instead of paying it in recoupable expenses. You rent it out to your other musician friends and let them pay your mortgage, and you pay down that fucker because at eighteen percent interest, you’re getting killed.”

  I took a pull on my cigarette. It was so close to the filter that my fingers got hot. Jesus, figuring that out felt good. Whether they did what I said or not, putting it together had been damn near orgasmic. “I need a fucking beer.”

  Chapter 9

  1994

  The San Fernando Valley, Van Nuys in particular, was a hell of parking lots and freeway-width avenues. Everything looked new yet coated over in beige dust. Drew and I had split right after the meeting, slipping down the back elevator. It was like the old days when I had a ten o’clock curfew I ignored.

  We pulled into the back of Audio City, where the entrance was. Drew put the car into park and leaned back.

  “You gonna open the door?” I asked.

  “I haven’t seen these guys in a long time. Give me a minute to think.”

  “Get back into your rocker head?”

  He smiled, and something about that made me feel really good. “Yeah.”

  I switched my position so I was kneeling on the seat, facing him. I yanked on his lapel. “Take this off. You look like a fucking lawyer.”

  “Right. Okay.” He wrestled out of his jacket and tossed it in the back. His shirt had light blue stripes and a white collar, and his tie was just skinny enough to be stylish without crossing the line into new wave.

  I grabbed it and let it go so it flopped. “Come on, take this off.”

  He undid it. “I forgot how bossy you are.”

  “I still can’t believe you even remember me.”

  “You’re not forgettable.”

  “Please,” I said. “There were hundreds of girls.”

  He yanked at the tie, slipping it through the knot. “I was obsessed with you the second you opened your mouth. You scared the fuck out of Strat. He thought he was going to lose me to you.”

  He leaned his head back on the seat, raising his hand languidly and touching my chin. My eyes fluttered closed, because I’d been too busy to let a man touch me in years, and this man knew how to touch. He ran his finger along the edge of my jaw, down my neck, and I grabbed it before it could move lower.

  “We’re working.”

  “What happened to you?” he asked in a whisper.

  “I went to law school.”

  “Before that. You split. We couldn’t find you. Strat hung out outside your house. We went to all the clubs. Your friends didn’t know where you were.”

  He didn’t know what he was asking. He thought he was going to get some reasonable, sane answer, but there wasn’t one.

  “It had nothing to do with you,” I lied. It had everything to do with him. Every single thing.

  “What did it have to do with, Cin?” His voice dripped sex and music, and I wondered if that was just his way of getting back into character.

  I reached for his collar and ran my finger under it, revealing the stand of tiny white buttons. “The collar comes off.”

  “You need to tell me where you went.”

  “I took a trip.”

  “We waited, and you never showed up.”

  He moved his fingertip down my shirt. My breath got short, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of his lips.

  “Sorry. I flaked. You guys were too intense for me.” I didn’t know why I had to make it obvious that it was more than that. I could have kept my voice flat and subtext-free, but my inflection got away from me. If he couldn’t tell I was hiding something, he was an idiot.

  And he wasn’t an idiot. That was shit-sure.

  “You’re not going to tell me, are you?” he said.

  “No.”

  He took his hand away. Relief and disappointment fought for dominance inside me as he flipped his stiff collar up and unbuttoned it.

  “We had a good time,” he said. “Good coupla months.”

  “Seven weeks.”

  “I wasn’t even thinking about how long it was going to last. But I was so fucking stupid anyway. Strat was smart. He played at being a reckless musician, but man, he was sharp and fifty years older in his mind. He told me to chill out. He told me the thing we were doing was temporary, and I argued with him like a moron.” He shook his head at his stupidity and got the last button undone, snapping the collar away from his neck.

  “Looks better,” I said, smoothing down the Mandarin.

  He took my wrist and sucked me in with the tractor beam of his gaze. “I thought I’d be the
one to lose my shit when it ended. But it was him.”

  I pulled my hand away. I couldn’t pretend I didn’t care for another second. “What happened?”

  “I could ask you the same thing.”

  “You could.”

  But he didn’t, and I opened the door to end the conversation.

  Chapter 10

  1982 – AFTER THE NIGHT OF THE QUAALUDE

  Rich family. Pig rich. Six nannies, two cooks, and a cleaning staff rich. Multiple estates. We were our own economy. My dad wouldn’t experiment with losing a chunk of it for another twenty-plus years.

  My father had two brothers, and my mother had a sister she barely spoke to. She’d never said why. She never said much that was worth listening to. She hadn’t seemed young to me until the autumn of Bullets and Blood.

  This realization happened at a party. We had two hundred people in the house for my parents’ anniversary. String quartet. Black tie staff. Open doors to our swimming pool with lotus blossoms and candles floating in it. Attendance was mandatory, so I had to tell Indy and Strat to get their laughs elsewhere.

  All the family and business partners were there, all the wives clustered around the couches and most of the men hovering around the bar. Except Aunt Maureen. She never hung around the women. She was my “cool aunt” who ran a business and told the guy she’d been with for the past ten years that she saw no point in getting married. She was talking to my dad and a few guys in suits I knew by sight but not name. I was close by, hanging on every word, when I heard her say something about negotiations with a blue chip company. It was a bunch of numbers and percentages I understood because I remembered everything the adults in my family said about business. But at the end, she laughed.

  The sound had a clear, tinkling quality her voice usually lacked. She sounded so young.

  Wait. She was young.

  She was eighteen years older than me. A little less, give or take. And that made my mother fifteen and change when she’d had me.