Wild Licks

by Cecilia Tan

  As it was, I had lied to the band about how I’d done it. Burned myself while cooking, I’d said. Grabbed the handle of a hot cast-iron pan. It burned my pride more than anything to make myself sound incompetent in the kitchen. I’d worked hard to learn to cook after all those years of having every meal prepared for me. And it felt sickening to lie to my bandmates. But I could not even begin to explain the situation with Gwen. I could imagine Axel’s reaction: You’ve been fucking my girlfriend’s sister in secret so you could do what to her? You kept it a secret because you knew you were going to go too far and then you did? Never mind trying to explain the whole thing about how I didn’t even know it was her at first…

  Never mind about the entire affair. I should have known better, full stop.

  I tried to keep the conversation to business because if I let myself think about Gwen, then I really was going to insist he turn around and leave me at home. “Will Marcus or any of our team be at this party tonight?”

  “I expect so, since Breakwater is one of Marcus’s bands,” Axel said. “Are they playing at this or is tonight ‘booze and schmooze’ only?”

  “I have no idea.” Christina had given me no details beyond that we were expected to be there to add hype to the event. Grammy-winning, chart-topping blah blah blah. Breakwater had opened for us on the western leg of our U.S. tour and they were a good band who deserved success. I wanted to help them. I simply wished I didn’t have to leave the house to do it.

  “Help me look for the place,” Axel said as we eased our way up Sunset Boulevard. “I think it’s in the block coming up.”

  The nightclub was actually quite easy to find, a large stand-alone building with a billboard advertising its name. Not exactly a speakeasy. There was a line of people outside waiting to get in.

  We parked the car and walked around to the door. There was a bottleneck of people on the guest list being approved to go in.

  There were also some fans behind a set of sawhorses near the entrance, not trying to get in but merely there to see who they could see. At first I assumed they must be Breakwater fans, but then I recognized Aurora. I nudged Axel as we drew close. “My stalker is here,” I said, only half joking.

  We paused to take some pictures with them and sign autographs. Aurora was again over the moon that I spoke to her by name, perhaps taking it as a sign that I had forgiven her for showing up at our rehearsal space.

  It’s a strange thing to have so much power over another person’s happiness. I took it as a good sign, though, that no other fans had appeared at our rehearsal space since then. It restored my trust in them somewhat.

  “Sorry, I haven’t been able to help you find that girl you’ve been looking for,” she said just as we were about to rejoin the line.

  I had forgotten I had enlisted her help in trying to track down the red-haired temptress from the LA Forum. “Ah. Thank you.” Best to keep that Pandora’s box of emotions firmly shut while in public. “I did eventually get her e-mail. Mission accomplished.”

  “Oh, good,” she said with smile. If she had any curiosity about why I had wanted to find her or what had happened when I did, Aurora kept it to herself. Perhaps she sensed my reticence. “Well, have fun in there tonight.”

  “I’ll try,” I said with a not-entirely-fake scowl that made her giggle.

  Once we were inside the venue, it became obvious there would be live music because a stage at one end of the dance floor was set with instruments. The place had a faux posh feel, with gold-colored banquettes and lit-from-beneath promotional vodka displays. Many people were already there, and a shaven-headed disk jockey in a prominent booth was spinning unobtrusive tunes; this crowd was there to schmooze, not dance. People were clustered near the bar, where they were pouring free vodka cocktails as part of the promotion while another small mob pressed around a catering table. I circulated until I was able to extend my congratulations to the members of Breakwater, the last being their singer, Killian. His hair was fire-engine red tonight. We gave each other one-armed backslaps.

  “Oh, a photo, a photo please,” said a photographer who was roaming the event. He was a large man with multiple cameras, and as someone bumped him from behind, he motioned for us to get closer together.

  I put my arm around Kill and he gave a thumbs-up toward the camera. The flash went off multiple times.

  “One more, one more,” the photographer exhorted. He motioned to some people crowded right behind us to get out of the picture and then snapped a few more.

  Killian was then pulled away by an assistant, presumably to get ready to perform, and the photographer mopped his bald spot with a handkerchief. I wondered why he carried so many cameras when surely these days they were all digital. With them hanging off him as they were, making movement difficult, I supposed there must be some professional reason.

  Suddenly he was in my face again, one hand on my arm. “Oh, here, here,” he urged. “The happy couple.”

  “What?”

  With his other hand he had seized a slim blonde from within a knot of people and pulled her next to me.

  Gwen.

  She plastered her public smile on her face. “Mal.”

  I merely cleared my throat and turned toward the camera, trying not to scowl too hard. Wouldn’t do for it to look like Gwen and I were fighting.

  However, I couldn’t help but look sideways at her, checking to see if the mark on her cheek had healed. Perhaps it had? I quashed that flare of optimism as quickly as I could. They could do wonders with makeup these days. Maybe I simply couldn’t see how well hidden it was in the few moments of bright flash, especially since I was trying not to look like I was looking. She put a hand on my chest in a classic “couples photo” pose and I caught the gentle, enticing fragrance of her skin.

  I needed to get away from her before we descended into rehashing our previous argument or I did some other rash thing. The guy took another dozen or so photos of us and then I tried to make my escape. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to get a drink.”

  “Bring me one, too?” Gwen said.

  The photographer was too close for comfort—close enough that if we bickered he would notice. “Of course,” I said, falling back on etiquette. “What would you like?”

  I was expecting to see a triumphant light in her eye but she was giving me an entreating sort of look. No, Gwen, not here. We’re not doing this, I thought.

  “A club soda with a twist of lime,” she said.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I said, and then pushed my way through the crowd.

  * * *

  GWEN

  My heart sank as Mal disappeared into the thicket of people on the dance floor. Well, not disappeared completely since he was tall and I could still make out his head as he made a beeline for the bar. I was trying to keep my attention on him and not on the photographer, who was giving me a creepster vibe. Maybe it was how he’d just grabbed me by the arm but something about him made me feel like I didn’t want to be stuck talking to him.

  Maybe if I ignored him he’d move on to other people to photograph. But no, he was still standing there a few feet from me.

  I should have told Mal I’d go with him, but he would probably think I was being clingy.

  I hadn’t even known he was going to be here tonight. I was only here because Simon had suggested I come.

  The photographer finally stopped staring and came forward. “Er, Ms. Hamilton? Sorry to bother you,” he said, edging close to me as the crowd around us pressed in, “but I’ve been trying to get in touch with you. Ms. Rashan said she’d give you a message from me?”

  No wonder he’d looked unsure how to approach me. He must have thought I ignored him on purpose. “Oh my goodness, I’m sorry!” I said. “She did give me your card but I lost it before I could e-mail you.” Which was true: I’d forgotten to e-mail him and now I had no idea where the card was. Maybe it was among the things Mal had “cleaned up” after our last scene. “You had some photos, you said?”

>   “Um, yes. I wanted to send them to you directly, you know. Not to a…a shared address.” He seemed nervous all of a sudden and I started to wonder: Were they upskirt shots or something? I felt goose bumps go across my back as I thought about how the fire scene had been in the open air. But wait, this guy had been trying to get in touch with me before that. So it wasn’t that. Maybe he was just socially awkward around women?

  I really didn’t want to give him my personal e-mail, but I also didn’t want to piss off a member of the media unnecessarily. “I don’t actually read my e-mail that often because my assistant does it for me,” I lied, since I didn’t have an assistant. I just wanted to get away from the guy. I had a sudden idea. “I do have a personal address I rarely use, though.” An address I wasn’t planning to use at all anymore. “Here, I’ll write it for you.”

  It felt like an interminable wait while he dug a pen out of his pocket from under the straps of the cameras and a small notepad. I wrote out my “Excrucia” address and handed it back, thinking that would be the end of it and he would go away.

  But he was still standing there, only looking at the floor instead of at me. “Ms. Hamilton, I want you to know, you’re one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen.”

  “Why thank you, that’s very nice of you to say!” I enthused, but I was thinking underneath it all, Jeez this is getting more uncomfortable by the second. Where was Mal?

  Thankfully, Simon Gabriel came to my rescue. “Gwen, here you are. Come meet some of the other folks from the agency.”

  “Oh, of course!” I gave a little wave good-bye to the photographer. “Bye, um, Beau.”

  After we got a little ways away, I breathed a sigh of relief. I wondered if I should tell Simon thank you or that I was creeped out by the guy, but I didn’t want to seem like a problem client so early in our working relationship. If I couldn’t handle one socially awkward photographer, how would I handle a whole press conference? I decided to keep quiet.

  I felt much less awkward a short while later when I was able to introduce Christina, manager of The Rough, to Simon, and they seemed to hit it off really well. See? I’m not completely dead weight at an entertainment industry function even if I’m not the power schmoozer that my sister is.

  * * *

  MAL

  I accepted two plastic cups of soda water from the harried-looking bartender and retreated from the bar, feeling rather mortified that I did not have a few small bills to jam into his tip jar. I’d gotten used to using my credit card for everything lately, and the only cash I had was the well-folded “emergency” hundred-dollar bill in my wallet. It hadn’t occurred to me I’d need cash at a function like this and I wasn’t about to try to interrupt the poor fellow to break a hundred so I could give him back a buck or two when there was a crowd clamoring for attention. He hadn’t even made eye contact as he’d plopped the cups down in front of me and moved on.

  Now all I wanted to do was give Gwen her drink, find Axel, and leave. We’d done our penance at the temple of publicity. But before I could find either of them, a young woman I recognized as an employee of our record company found me. She had dark hair and glasses, with her hair in a bun, giving her a bit of a librarian look despite her sharp business clothes.

  “Mal? I’m Penny, Marcus’s assistant.”

  “Ah, Penny, right. I’d shake hands but they’re full,” I said.

  She smiled, humoring me. “No worries. Kill wanted me to ask you to come backstage.”

  I gave a last glance around for Gwen, didn’t see her, and said, “Lead the way.”

  Penny brought me to a VIP room in the back, where I wasn’t surprised to find most of my bandmates hanging around with Breakwater. Killian accosted me the moment he saw me. “Hey! I have an idea I wanted to run by you.”

  Axel often looked at me with that same mixture of eagerness and mischief. Perhaps it’s a lead singer trait. I responded with my usual skepticism. “Idea?”

  “You guys get up and jam with us. Tonight.”

  “Ah.” As lead-singer brainstorms go, that wasn’t a bad one. Unfortunately, I had to decline. “The others are better candidates for that than me at the moment.” I held up my bandaged hand.

  “Whoa, I didn’t even notice that before!”

  “It’s nothing major, but I can’t play until it heals.”

  “Dude, that sucks.” Kill pushed cherry-red hair out of his eyes and looked like he was about to ask me how I hurt myself when Axel jumped in.

  “Did you know Ford plays the mandolin?” he asked me.

  “I am under the impression Ford will play anything with strings,” I said seriously. I had never seen him with a mandolin before, but I can’t say I was surprised.

  “He showed me a little while we were on tour,” Killian said. “Perfect for the kind of rootsy vibe we’re going for tonight.”

  So that is how it turned out that our quiet blond bass player was tabbed to get onstage with Breakwater to do a punk-folk acoustic rendition of one of their songs. Which meant we had to stay for the set. I suppose it would have been rude to leave before it regardless, but I especially did not want Ford to think I was being dismissive of his talent. I’d known him the shortest amount of time compared to the others in the band. We’d first gelled when Axel and I had met Chino, and the three of us had recorded a demo album where Axel and I had traded off dubbing in the bass and keyboard parts. Thank goodness most of those original tracks were binned. After Marcus signed us, he’d played matchmaker, hooking us up first with Samson, and after we’d auditioned a few bass players and hated them, Sam had suggested he knew a guy and, voilà, along came Ford.

  Ford was the son of a well-known rock-blues musician and I was still unsure about his true ambitions. Or maybe it was Ford who was unsure. Like with that song he’d brought us a couple weeks back, sometimes he seemed hesitant about us actually playing what he wrote. Granted, the last thing we needed in the band was another strong ego vying for expression, but I sometimes wondered if he didn’t yearn for a little more time in the spotlight. If so, it was good that tonight he would get some.

  I made my way back into the main room to try once more to find Gwen and deliver her now-somewhat-lukewarm drink. Amazingly, I managed to find her near the poorly lit entrance to the restrooms. I caught sight of her blond head and made a beeline for her. The mere sight of her sent my emotions simmering.

  She saw me coming and bit her lip for a moment before she composed her face into a neutral, friendly look. “Thank you,” she said as she took the plastic cup from my hand, a small, bemused smile bending her lips.

  “You’re welcome.” Now that I had found her and she seemed unhurt, unscarred, I gave vent to the annoyance that had been brewing in the back of my mind since I’d seen her the first time: “I don’t appreciate being stalked.”

  The smile disappeared. “Stalked? Who’s stalking you?”

  “Y-you,” I sputtered, trying to say more. “You’re…you’re…What are you doing here, anyway? I don’t appreciate you using your sister’s connections to create opportunities to run into me.”

  Her eyebrow was sharp as she frowned. “Mal. Hate to break it to you, but I’m not here to stalk you.”

  “What are you—”

  “In fact, Ricki wasn’t even invited so far as I know. My agent invited me. I didn’t know you would be here. Why are you here, anyway?”

  “I…because…” I forced myself to slow down or my explanation was going to come out defensive and angry. How had she put me on the defensive so quickly? “We’re friends of Breakwater.”

  “Ah.” She sipped her drink through the tiny red straw and continued to regard me critically. “Well. That was pretty low of you to sneak out the other night.”

  “It was pretty low of you to deceive me,” I said, but I could feel myself losing ground. That cannon had already been emptied.

  “We have a saying in America—Two wrongs don’t make a right. Do you know it?” She looked…disappointed. “If you thin
k you’re doing the ‘mature and responsible’ thing by breaking things off, maybe you should think about that.”

  “So noted,” I said, and looked around for an escape from the argument. “Perhaps that’s merely another tally in the evidence against my suitability. Since I clearly am no judge of what counts as mature and responsible.”

  “So you should just stay home like a monk or something?”

  “Just so. Now if you’ll pardon me, this monk needs to answer the call of nature.” I hurried past her into the men’s room, my head a maelstrom of thoughts and feelings.

  She’s right, you’re right, you’re no judge of these things and that is exactly why you shouldn’t even try. But you know you’re going to…How long until you give in to the Need? How long until you go on another search for a woman who will let you have your way?

  You are deeply, deeply, deeply fucked up, my friend, if you truly believe the only women you should be allowed to fuck are those you’ll never have to look in the eye again.

  “Hey, big guy,” came a familiar voice behind me. “You okay?”

  I realized I was leaning against the wall with my head on my arm above the hand dryers. I looked up at Chino, who was giving me a wry smile.

  “I’m fine.”

  He shrugged and looked around the restroom. “Coulda fooled me.”

  All right, I conceded it looked bad to be hiding in the men’s room. “Female trouble,” I admitted, hoping that would put an end to it.

  “Isn’t it always?” he said with a shrug. “You want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t mean now. Let’s grab a bite to eat later. Something other than this rabbit food. Just you and me.” He gave a vague wave toward the door. “I get the feeling Axel’s getting sucked into an after-party with the Breakwater guys and I’d rather eat than drink.”

  I considered this plan of action.

  “Come on. I heard you complaining there’s no good food in this town. You just don’t know where to go.”