The Companion Contract

by Solace Ames

  The band was back together.

  I waited a few minutes outside, but I didn’t hear any disaster-type noises, so I hoped for the best and went to install the curtains in our room. The newly muted light brought a sense of peace. I get interrogated pretty much everywhere I go—who are you, what are you, what do you speak, what’s wrong with you and why don’t you respect yourself—so I take advantage of the shadows whenever I can.

  I rested in the dim light until, well...until I got restless. The ocean called to me. What if I was needed here, though? I decided to wait. This job was going to involve marathon waiting sessions. That was fine—I had my music and my books and the memory of much worse jobs.

  I wandered downstairs, out the front door and over to the ocelot side of the house. Faint music pulsed from the studio, a melody I remembered from Avert’s first album. I couldn’t separate the instruments, couldn’t hear a voice, not yet.

  Gabriel was sunbathing in his aviary, a picture of slinky feline grace. I snapped a photo and sent it to Chiho.

  She called me a minute later. “We went to a Korean spa,” she whispered. “I am waiting for mother. Very bored. That cat is fucking crazy. Show me his car!”

  “The cat doesn’t have a car, you doofus. Anyway, they’re not the kind of rock stars that have cool cars.” I peeked in the unconverted garage. “Um, a rental subcompact and a cargo van. But they’re all fine as hell, and Miles is kind of a dick but he could be a lot worse. I can deal with him.”

  We chatted until her mother was done with her body scrub. God, I hoped Chiho could stay off the cocaine. Maybe she’d have more of a chance than Miles, if she left the life.

  I didn’t think Miles would ever leave his version of the life. Not headfirst, at least.

  The caretaker came to the aviary. He was an older man with seamed brown skin and a gray mustache. I put my phone away and we introduced ourselves. His name was Arturo, he’d been working for the mysterious owner for decades, and he held a deep affection for the ocelot.

  “Gabriel is not so bad,” Arturo said. “Just misunderstood. He lost his mama when he was too young.”

  Arturo opened the aviary, clipped a harness onto a compliant Gabriel, then led him down into the empty swimming pool and turned the water hose on him. Gabriel screamed in raucous pleasure and splashed in joyful circles.

  Arturo beamed at me through a spray of rainbow mist. “He loves water. He is like a little tiger.”

  I was glad for both of them, but I couldn’t help wishing that Gabriel could play like that in his own home river, free. I agreed with Emanuel. Wild animals belonged in the wild.

  Emanuel regretted the chains he’d put on Miles. I don’t know why I was so sure of that, but somehow, I knew.

  * * *

  The band left the studio when the sun went down, and we all had dinner together in the outdoor kitchen, simple food that Arturo’s wife had cooked earlier, baked chicken and black beans and rice and cucumber salad. Miles seemed in a decent mood but barely ate, poking his chicken around suspiciously.

  I was expecting to hear a few lurid stories tonight. Instead, everyone talked about kids except Fausto, who didn’t talk at all.

  Juan Carlos had left a pregnant girlfriend in Prague and wanted to send for her soon.

  Emanuel had two children with an ex-wife. I knew about them, and now I saw the pictures on the phone he passed around. His ex-wife was dark and pretty, with a complicated braided crown of hair. I remembered her being American, or at least she had an American name: Toni. The youngest daughter, in her arms, looked like her. The oldest, hugging her hip, was an albino like Emanuel. Her form of it wasn’t as harsh, though, more cream-and-copper than Emanuel’s marble-and-snow. Both daughters were equally adorable.

  “And yours?” Emanuel asked Miles. There wasn’t any trick to the question that I sensed. The whole table went quiet, though.

  “I don’t have any pictures,” Miles said. “I don’t have a phone. I don’t even have a fucking—let’s change the subject, okay?”

  “I enjoy talking about my children.” This time there was a warning in Emanuel’s voice. “We can change the subject. For now.”

  Miles couldn’t make eye contact with Emanuel. Then again, making eye contact with Emanuel had to be intimidating as hell, whether you knew him for a few days or ten years, so I felt a little sympathy for Miles.

  I wasn’t prejudiced against deadbeat dads, even with my history. I couldn’t afford to be prejudiced. They were everywhere.

  Juan Carlos slammed his beer bottle down on the wooden table, breaking the tension. “Amy! We have half a song,” he bragged. “Emanuel wrote the bones. And Miles, he sing...what is it about?”

  “Ego dissolution,” Miles answered. “Yearning for death. Fun stuff.” He grinned, showing teeth.

  “Reminiscent of Bataille,” Fausto said unexpectedly, his English nearly as perfect as Emanuel’s.

  “I’ve heard that name, but I don’t know who that is,” I said.

  Bataille turned out to be a French philosopher. Fausto and Emanuel gave me the rundown on him, reeling off ideas about sex and violence that reminded me of a scene I’d filmed in a dungeon in Reno. I didn’t talk about that. I could have, I almost did, but I wanted to keep my ears open.

  Miles wandered off, leaving his half-eaten plate behind.

  Juan Carlos mentioned his experiences being psychoanalyzed, which were hilariously dirty instead of being pretentious. That led to an interchange about the cultural superiority of Colombia to Argentina, and a joke about an Argentine running outside during a thunderstorm to talk to God that was probably a lot funnier in the original Spanish and still left us all gasping with laughter while Juan Carlos made rude gestures.

  I was having a wonderful time.

  I still didn’t forget about Miles.

  When I looked to Emanuel, the connection was shockingly easy. I flicked my eyes to the left. He nodded. We didn’t need to say a word. I got up and went to find Miles.

  Now that the house was lived in, it fully welcomed me. I wouldn’t want to be the mistress of this house—the ratio of secrets per square foot had to be fucking ridiculous—but I liked being a guest. Passing through. Sweeping my bare feet over the cool tiles, trailing my fingertips over the rough, ancient wood of the furniture.

  Miles was in the living room, tapping at the piano aimlessly. Like he was writing a letter with the keys, but he’d forgotten how to type. The plink plink sounds made me think of cool water dripping in a cave.

  “Don’t worry about me, Amy.”

  “That’s kind of my job. I’ll leave you alone, if you want your privacy.”

  “He sees his daughters three times a year. Like clockwork.”

  “There’s no reason you can’t do the same. You just need to get your life in gear.”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “I can see that. There’s a hole inside you, and you’re fighting it. You’re healing it around the edges.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far, Amy,” he said, his voice tight, fingers frozen over silent keys. “Those kind of metaphors don’t motivate me, they just burrow under my fucking skin.”

  “Write that down in your book, then.”

  He slammed the lid down over the keys and took a deep breath through clenched teeth. I was losing him.

  “Play a song for her,” Emanuel said.

  I startled. Turned. He stood in the hallway, larger than life and almost glowing in the dim light. That tightening, electric sensation along my spine and the back of my neck hit me a heartbeat later. I was angry at him for not trusting me to handle Miles...No, I wasn’t angry. Or maybe I was angry at myself for feeling this way. It wasn’t fair.

  “I don’t want to sing anymore today,” Miles said.

  “Play ‘Hallelujah,’” Emanuel said. “She
’s never heard you, has she?”

  I shook my head.

  “That song’s been beat to death by ten thousand shitty covers,” Miles said. “Cliché anguish. Sentimental crap. Cartoonish, even.”

  Emanuel’s response was measured and patient. “Popularity isn’t always the mark of low value. We can flout the law of supply and demand.”

  “It’s a pretty song,” I said. I wish I could have said something more profound and intellectual. I wanted to impress both of them, but at the same time, I didn’t want to have to lie, to project a false image. Emanuel already accepted me as I was. He’d proved that.

  “Play it for Amy,” Emanuel told Miles, and the deep voice of command he used would have made a skeleton rise from the grave and play its own ribs.

  “Well then,” Miles said. “If that’s how it’s going to be...” He pulled the cover back up, and even though his fingers were shaking, he hit the first notes.

  He was good. Not a brilliant piano player, but very good, the notes flowing sweet and easy.

  And then he sang.

  The words shrank distance, made the world small and my heart big. They didn’t travel through the air, they just jumped directly into my mind, vibrating their meanings as if his voice could fucking teleport.

  Miles had his eyes closed and his chin held high. He called up a force from deep inside himself, and it hurt to watch him. It must have hurt him even more. I understood the dagger at his throat now.

  He was talking to me. He was talking to Emanuel.

  He was talking to God.

  It was impossible not to hear him.

  I was shaking by the end and closer to crying than I’d been in a long time.

  Emanuel moved beside me, touched my shoulder. He was the one who’d given me this gift. I leaned into him, resting my head against his shoulder.

  “Thank you,” I whispered.

  “Thank you,” Emanuel said quietly.

  Miles opened his eyes, sighed and narrowed his eyes again, until he looked as deviant and handsomely clownish as usual. “You’re welcome. You should play for her too, you know.”

  “Oh, I will.”

  The promise in those words drove me out of my mind. I swear the world went soft around the edges, and Emanuel’s hold on me suddenly wasn’t nearly tight enough. His arm draped loosely around my shoulder might as well have been torture, because the body language was all wrong and I didn’t want to be protected, didn’t want to feel his cool regard—I wanted him to hold me down and fucking claim me.

  Miles could watch. Watch or play. God, I was burning from the inside.

  “I’d like that,” I murmured into Emanuel’s shoulder, and the heat in my stomach sank lower and built higher at the same time. The song still echoed in my ears and in my mind and in my veins. I’m dying, I thought, and then, If this is what dying feels like, let me die.

  An abrupt shout in Spanish sounded from the open door to the outside.

  “That’s one of the lawyers,” Emanuel said. “I’ll have to take the call.” I heard a hint of regret in his tone—not the impatient kind of regret, though. He was rich in time and patience.

  “Amy can come upstairs with me.” Miles closed the piano cover for the last time. He sounded a lot less patient. Hungry. But on Miles, hungry was a good look.

  “Another time.” Emanuel’s hand cupped the curve of my hip, then slid away.

  The ghost of his touch lingered as Miles hurried me upstairs.

  “I don’t know how he does it,” he said. “And by the way, Amy, I think I’ll start with your ass tonight.”

  “How Emanuel does it? I don’t know what you mean.” I let out a soft sigh as he tangled his hand in my hair. “Whatever it is, you can take it out on me.”

  “I love you,” he said with a laugh. “You know that, right? I fucking love you.”

  “Show me.”

  He tightened his fingers into a fist around my hair and pushed me through the doorway.

  We ended the night with my face shoved down into the mattress, sobbing and screaming and not caring who was doing this to me.

  He gave me what I needed.

  What I wanted was even more terrifying.

  Chapter Six

  I opened the curtains and let the morning sunlight blast Miles in the face.

  He recoiled like a vampire, threw his forearm over his eyes and yelled for the nurse again.

  “I’ve been out surfing,” I said cheerfully. “There’s a nice break out there.” I’d brought traces of the ocean’s beauty into the room with me: a rounded piece of driftglass on the nightstand, a dusting of sand by the bathroom door where I’d undressed for the shower. I wrung fresh water out of my hair and into the damp towel. Maybe if I whacked Miles with it, I could get him out of bed. I gave it an experimental twist.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you,” he groaned.

  “Nothing. It’s called healthy living. All I need is seven hours of sleep. I’ve got straight edge, baby.” I snapped the towel-whip against the side of the bed, producing a satisfying crack.

  “Don’t call me baby. And don’t hit me, not unless you’re going to tie me down before and fuck me after. It’s rude.”

  “Well, don’t call me nurse then. It’s creepy.”

  He growled at me.

  Of course Miles didn’t really love me, and I didn’t love him, but I liked him, and that was the most surprising of all.

  He said he was sick of Colombian food, so I drove him to a sushi restaurant for lunch. He ordered a frou-frou roll that anyone even one-tenth Japanese would giggle at—I certainly did. I stuck with tempura and tuna sashimi.

  “We toured Japan on our second album,” he said. “Good times. For me at least. Emanuel’s marriage was falling apart.”

  I was torn between loyalty to Emanuel and curiosity. Curiosity won. I made a hmm noise, raised my eyebrows and took another sip of green tea.

  He picked up my cue. “The breakup story isn’t very exciting. She’s an academic, he was a touring musician, they had to spend a lot of time apart. I was the one neck-deep in groupies back then. Emanuel was on the phone to Toni all the damn time.”

  I liked hearing Emanuel was good to his ex. I wanted her to be bad for him too, out of a petty sense of jealousy, so that he was better off without her. And I felt immensely guilty for wanting that. I was the last person in the world who ought to be jealous of anyone. My emotions were so confusing, I decided to steer the conversation back to the safer topic of sex and Miles Morrison.

  “What kind of groupies did you go for?”

  He grinned, the tip of his tongue showing, and sprawled back in his chair, a picture of decadence, elegant at the core but rough around the edges. “Whoever fought their way to the front first. I’d let any woman suck my dick. Or anyone wearing eyeliner, really.”

  “Ever fall in love?”

  “A few times. It never seems to end well.”

  I knew his wife was in prison for prescription drug fraud. She’d had her baby there this year, a girl, who’d been taken away to a temporary foster home. Everyone, including Miles and his soon-to-be-ex-wife, wanted the baby to go live with the only two responsible people in the picture: Miles’s parents. The money from the reunion was supposed to help make that happen.

  Our food arrived, and it was good for what it was. The tempura must have been brimming with oil and carbs. Delicious oil and carbs.

  “You’ve got a good appetite,” Miles remarked.

  “I’m letting my diet go a bit. It’s usually scary strict. I lied a little about that healthy living. If I ate three solid meals a day, I wouldn’t have a waist. That’s just not the way my body’s built.”

  “We’ve already established I’m not picky about things like waist-to-hip ratio.”

 
I would have called him an insufferably arrogant bastard, but we’d already established that as well. “It’s not you, it’s my career. You don’t need big boobs in porn anymore, although they can definitely help. Being thin is way more important. It’s another reason I’m tired of my job. I’d like to get out before I get an eating disorder.”

  “I never thought of that. But I guess the women in videos are all...unless they’re...” For once, he seemed at a loss for words. The oddest details of the business sometimes freak out the hardest men.

  Or maybe it was because he saw me pop the deep-fried shrimp tail in my mouth and crunch it down. “We eat everything from the sea,” I said. “Everything.”

  “I ate some lobster brains once.”

  “Wow, I’m so impressed.” I circled the fingers of my right hand and made a jerk-off motion over my lap.

  Miles laughed so hard he almost fell off his chair.

  God, I wanted this thing to work. If they toured, I’d see Japan for the first time in my life, and I’d go there like a fucking rockstar queen, not as a bar hostess, or gutting fish in a factory like my dad. I couldn’t imagine ever going, otherwise. It would be too painful.

  Emanuel had given me the dream of a passport no longer blank and white inside, but filled with a riot of color. It was a good dream, and it was so close.

  I drove Miles back to the house, gave him a pat on the back and a push toward the studio. Toward the end of the drive, he’d gotten a distracted look in his eyes, a certain tightness in his shoulders, and I was optimistic that creative inspiration was the cause.

  I set up my laptop in the outdoor kitchen where I could look out on the ocean, and poured myself a cup of rich-smelling coffee, a nice perk of living in a Colombian household. When I checked my Serena Sakamoto accounts, a welcome sense of detachment armored me. I didn’t get depressed, and I only flicked off the screen a couple times. A few emails whined about how I’d supposedly skipped out on webcam appearances, the same appearances I’d sent out multiple notices canceling in advance. And it turned out Snap did have a rich girlfriend now, a porn star under exclusive contract, and was “managing her career,” which meant he’d become a suitcase pimp, one of the poorly regarded men who carried their girlfriend’s suitcases from set to set and gently wiped off the come.