by Ash Parsons
I should go look at the mausoleum where the blurred shadow was. And see the layout of the area, the weeping willow, just check it out. Maybe I’ll find something there.
Joshua’s memorial, for example. With its completed plaque.
It wasn’t there at the funeral. The etched portion was delivered later. Artie sent me a photo of it. But I haven’t actually seen it.
What if it can tell me something?
“Actually,” I say, “could we take a detour?”
“You want to see the Hollywood sign?” Sasha asks, smiling. Indulging a tourist.
“No. I mean, yes, but I’d like to go to the cemetery first, please. The Hollywood Forever Cemetery?”
There’s a time-stutter moment of silence, and immediately I know that Sasha won’t take me.
“Well, sweetie, people will be waiting for you—they might have wrapped up early?”
“Yeah, I don’t think so,” I said. “Please, I just want to visit his memorial site. I was his girlfriend. His real-life one.”
“I’m supposed to take you to Mephisto’s,” Sasha says, no longer meeting my eyes in the rearview.
“I’m sure Ty’s good for any extra mileage.” I can feel the edge in my voice, a driving bass line of insistence.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I was asked to take you to the restaurant. And I need this job.”
“Fine. Pull over, please.” I push up the lock and crack open the door.
Sasha curses.
The door alarm chimes like a demented elevator. The road swoops by below my feet. I push the door farther open.
Sasha pulls to the curb. Blaring horns sound as cars swoop around us.
My safety belt is off before we come to a stop. I’m out the door before Sasha can put it in park.
“Wait! What do I tell them?”
“Tell them that you wouldn’t take me where I asked to go, and so I got out.”
“Wait! Okay! I’ll take you, just let me call—”
“No.”
“Just—” Sasha looks at me like I’ve grown a hand from the top of my head and that hand is giving her the finger.
Like she thinks I’m crazy, and dangerous.
“I really don’t want to lose my job,” she says, gesturing at me in an easy, there move. “How about this: I drive you, and I don’t call in until we’ve left the cemetery. I’ll give you at least ten minutes in there. Cool?”
I consider for a moment, because I’m not even sure why I suddenly need to go and why I want to go alone.
“Sure,” I say. “Sure let’s do that.”
I’d be slower walking, and she’d call it in, anyway, to save her job.
I get back in the car. Sasha pulls out and U-turns against traffic. It’s a short drive, a few turns, past storefronts and down wide-canyon roads before she turns down an unlikely-looking side street.
“Here we are,” she says, unnecessarily.
The gates are open. A few tourists stroll over the lushly manicured lawn, brochures or phones out to find their favorite dead celebrities.
The final resting place of the stars.
When stars flame out, they fall.
We drive slowly on narrow roads, past monuments, around mourners and tourists.
“That’s got Valentino in there. You know him? A bunch of kids today don’t.” Sasha gestures ahead of us to a large, churchlike mausoleum across the road from a moat. “The original heartthrob.”
My head is split in half with the small talk, my heart accelerating as we draw closer to Joshua’s memorial.
A stone with no body beneath it. Just one more empty home Joshua paid for.
What a strange thought.
Sasha waits while a young couple cross the road. One of the girls peers directly at us, trying to see who sits behind the dark windows.
Sasha drives slowly forward, pulling around the moat. “There was bedlam when Valentino died. A bona fide riot in New York. Publicity stunts in the funeral service, the whole deal.”
More small talk. I take the bait this time. “He must have died young,” I say.
“He did—thirty-one. Not as young as some—” Sasha cuts herself off, and I can feel the moment when she realizes what she’s said, and to whom.
“I’m so sorry,” she says. “I just love history.”
“It’s okay. I get it.”
This place. It’s all history now.
How will Joshua be remembered?
I reach into my pocket and touch the folded application. He’s alive, I tell myself. He has to be.
Sasha drives me the rest of the way in silence. Yet as we pull to a stop, I suddenly wish she would talk about some long-dead star of the silver screen. Anything. For all my hope, I know it’s just that: hope. And hopes are often dashed.
It’s what they are made for: flying or falling.
My heart feels fragile, exposed. As if a knife tip hovers above it.
“You know what?” I say. “You can go. I need more time, and I’d rather be alone. Go ahead and tell Ty or Artie or whoever. I’m not hungry anyway. I’ll see him back at the house tonight.”
Sasha opens and closes her mouth at me like a confused animated fish with ridiculous va-va-voom lips.
“Here, I’ll take care of it.” I text Ty. Telling him I went sightseeing and that I look forward to meeting him later tonight. I show her the screen.
“I’ll get myself home. Thanks.”
I don’t want an audience watching me look for something that may not exist. It’s enough that I think I may be crazy. I don’t need someone else making me feel that way.
She’s already picked up her phone by the time I shut the door. Just doing her job, I remind myself.
A small breeze blows across my face, warm like a breath. I push away from the car and wait for it to turn around and slowly drive away.
When I’m sure she’s gone, I walk through the headstones. There’s no one else in this part of the cemetery, but Birdies have left a trail of flowers and messages to the marker. It’s not exactly hard to locate.
I read his name, the dates, surprised that there is no beloved son and brother or other such designation of family ties, just a quote from one of his songs.
One of his lyrics that was rewritten.
It’s that more than anything else that makes me doubt my hope. That makes the tears rise. If Joshua were alive, if he faked his death, he wouldn’t allow this. He wouldn’t quote one of his songs at all.
That’s Artie. Maybe Livie . . . but definitely not Joshua.
Tears blur my vision.
No.
I fight off the haze of grief. Deny it. Bury it in my heart.
There has to be something here.
I walk around the memorial. In my memory I place the white folding chairs and canopy, the officiant at the front, someone Artie found. And in the back there was a classical guitarist, Quinn’s friend. None of the band could play—they were all in such shock.
I move to where my chair had rested, close to the front. Looking up across the cemetery I see the weeping willow in the distance. Whoever stood under its sheltering branches could likely see most of what was happening.
I walk around to the other side of the memorial and look back toward the cemetery wall. See where the paparazzi propped their giant zoom lenses. See the jacaranda tree where the cell phone picture was probably taken.
There’s a crop of smaller mausoleums, to the right and back, between me and the exterior wall. It’s hard at first to see the one from the other photo. The one with the shadow of legs projecting from behind it.
Then I see it, because I see the legs.
Two large stone cylinders stand to the side of one of the mausoleum. They must be for ornate floral arrangements, the type with giant stems and massive blossoms, like lilies.
I walk closer and study them. There was no one lingering here. No legs. Just the sun casting the cylinder shadows out from the edge of the mausoleum, making it look like someone was standing beside it, hiding in the shade.
Quashing the disappointment, I pivot and start the long walk to the weeping willow.
I duck under the willow branches and face Joshua’s memorial. Although it’s not exactly close, it would be possible to stand here and observe almost every element of the service.
I laugh, a short burst of sound, at the futility of being here.
Even if Joshua is dead, he’s not here. He wouldn’t be here even if we had found his body and buried it under his memorial.
It’s why I’ve never made this pilgrimage before now.
A blade of grass is connected to the others all around it, multiple blades pressed close, connected at the root, touching above it.
Joshua’s absence is like that. It spreads through me and touches every thought.
I walk out of the cemetery without looking back.
22
THE FURTHER I GO
I use my phone to hail a car and ride to the studio in silence. I tell the driver to let me out in the parking lot of the fancy sushi restaurant next door. I get out and walk across the pavement, over a little divider of manicured landscaping, and up to the front of Aepolis Studios.
I know the layout well. Joshua recorded some tracks here when it all first started.
Back then, we went to producers instead of them coming to us.
In the front are several parking spaces marked RESERVED. There are no lights on behind the tinted glass front door.
I don’t intend to knock.
I walk around to the side of the studio. A stone pathway leads to a heavy steel door with no features other than a small spy hole. Cigarette butts litter the ground. I pick one up.
All I have to do is wait.
It doesn’t take long for the door to crack open. A young woman in a tight plaid jumper dress and thick-soled leather booties darts out. A cigarette is already dangling from her lip as she brings a lighter up.
I catch the door.
“Ha! Perfect timing,” I say with a big smile. I flick the cigarette butt away. “Thanks!” I walk in as though I’m supposed to be there. Look like you belong, and people think you do.
I’m in the studio and down the delivery entrance hall in a matter of seconds.
I hear a drum set thumping, rattles and crashes. Then laughter. I follow the noise slowly, letting my eyes get accustomed to the dim light inside.
The studio feels more like a somewhat creepy theme park than a business. The hall leads to a lounge with brightly polished tin ceilings and dark magenta walls. Giant surreal artwork dominates the space. Contrasting colors spark on accent rails, furniture, rugs. There are driftwood tables, vintage Victorian and 1950s furnishings, overplush chairs, brass and silver and chrome, a riot of sensory delights—ornate, gilded, crowded. Velvet-flocked wallpaper to help soften the sound.
I keep walking. A woman’s voice cuts through the silence. “It’s been a long day, everyone. One final take and we’re done. Give me your best and let’s get out of here.”
There’s an open door just ahead and to my left.
It’s a darkened room, an empty lounge with overstuffed zebra-hide furniture. Speakers line the wall. The only light comes from a massive window that looks onto the booth where the Ty and the band are recording.
In person Ty’s makeover is no less jarring. His hair falls across his eyes in styled layers. It makes him look older. More artistic. Less dirt bike, more rock-and-roll.
I’m still not sure I like it.
His clothes match his hair—dark pants, gray T-shirt, heavy boots. Joshua 2.0.
Across the lounge there’s a connecting door to a second room. Through beveled glass I see a massive mixing deck.
A beautiful older woman sits next to a man at the board. They are both intent over their slide toggles, making minute adjustments as Tyler steps forward to the mic.
I walk into the darkened lounge, feeling like a ghost of the past, watching through the studio window.
The drummer and bassist work together, a muted beat, the brushes on the snare and cymbal, countering the climbing, falling, repetitive slow bass, heavy like a tired heartbeat.
Ty closes his eyes, stepping up to the mic. He sings, just a normal voice, steady and clean.
Girl up in the air
Spinning without care,
The eyes of those below you
Know they cannot touch you.
Know they’d never touch you.
I let you fly away
I wanted you to stay
What the hell is going on? Lillian Leitzel. Again.
Ty wrote this? It doesn’t fit him. But, again, only three people really knew about my obsession with her. Two of them are in that studio. Speed doesn’t write lyrics; he couldn’t care less about them. Never has. That just leaves Ty.
Or Joshua.
First, the college essay. Now a song about Lillian Leitzel.
Ty’s eyes stay closed as he continues.
Once there was a kingdom
Not quite by the sea,
But you will always be
My Annabel Lee—
My Annabel Lee.
Something catches in my mind, like the flex and pull of worn metal. Subtle, but audible if you have ears to hear.
Annabel Lee? Ty hates poetry. I remember our sporadic phone conversations and overhearing his calls to Joshua after Livie put him in that fancy private school. He complained about everything. The uniform, the food, the classes, the teachers.
English was the subject he hated most, especially during the poetry units. He said it was b.s., a foreign language he could never translate.
The bass and drums stop, a split-second pause indicating the shift to the chorus. Ty pulls three simple chords from Joshua’s guitar and sings higher, voice climbing and holding on the end notes of each line.
The further I go, the closer it becomes
More I look, the quicker I succumb
Stolen kisses—by the tree, a swing
Your armored heart, the love you bring
It will all be gone . . . someday
It’s gone, my love, it’s leaving now,
I would go, I would stay, I would—
Go back somehow
My heart catches and flexes, like the metal hinge loop of Leitzel’s cuff, opening, fit to crack under the strain, the knowledge.
Joshua.
The swing is the towrope. The stolen kisses, referencing our first kiss and all that came after. The tree—is it as we left it? I have never gone back.
Joshua wished he could go back.
I don’t need to hear another word, another note. All doubt has left my mind. I’m not crazy after all.
Holy hell.
Joshua Blackbird is alive.
23
FLYING OR FALLING
I step forward, into the light from the window.
Ty steps back from the mic and, turning to look at Quinn, sees me instead.
He freezes, abruptly stopping the chords climbing out of his brother’s guitar.
Around him, the band members stop playing. They glance around in confusion.
How dare he hide this from me?
Behind the drum kit, Speed sees me, and his dark eyebrows lift in surprise even as he smiles.
“What’s wrong? That was good.” The woman sitting at the mixing deck speaks into her mic.
I hear her voice through the speakers. Just as I heard Ty’s song.
Ty looks down, then he steps back, his fingers tightening on the neck of his guitar. His head is tipped down, deliberately causing hair to fall in front of his eyes.
H
e’s caught, and he knows it.
I glare at him. Words and feelings burn in my throat. I force my hands open and cross my arms over my chest, feeling a shaking starting in my shoulders. I tell myself it’s not tears.
It’s anger.
“Rox?” Ty’s voice trails up. He glances up at me, leaning slightly away from the window where I stand, like I am a sparking bottle rocket, half held in his hand.
I could go off. I could take off his thumb.
“Okay, that’s enough for today.” The woman’s voice. “We’ll pick it back up tomorrow.”
“Everyone give me a minute.” Ty’s voice lacks the authority that Joshua’s had, but the musicians appear only too eager to escape the studio.
Even Speed, though he gives me another smile and a little wave before he follows the others out.
Ty turns and faces the booth. “You as well, please,” he says to the sound engineers.
“That’s okay. I’ll stay,” the man begins, oblivious to the pain and accusation radiating from me to Ty. “There’s still a buzz under the—”
“We’ll go.” The woman grabs his arm and hauls him up. She gives me a quick glance, then propels him out of the studio.
Ty props his brother’s guitar on its stand and pushes through the connecting door into the booth and then into the lounge.
“Roxy, why didn’t you tell me you were coming? I could have—”
I shove him, forcing him to take a step back. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I can’t keep the tremble from my voice. “That song . . . no way you wrote that.”
Ty doesn’t look into my eyes. He looks at my mouth, at my hands.
It tips in my head like ball bearings sliding across one of those old-fashioned tabletop-tipping games: turn the dials, slant the board, roll the ball around the numbered yawning holes in the deck.
Where will I land? What’s the truth?
“Say something, Ty. Say. Something.”
He pulls his hand through his hair, dragging it back from his face.
I told myself I’d know. If I asked the question and looked at him, I would know.
Did I think I was psychic? That I could simply look at him and see the truth?