by Roxie Noir
“Would you believe yourself?” I ask, still on the floor.
“Not likely,” he says, half-smiling. “And with good reason.”
“Okay,” I say. I feel like I’m adrift in this conversation, because we’ve had it before and it went differently then. “Last time I said that, you got weird and started acting like I was Big Brother.”
“I thought you were someone else,” he says.
I wait in silence for him to finish explaining. There’s still no book and I’m not in the mood for games. He sighs.
“I thought the record label had sent you in secret to keep tabs on me because you’re dressed as if you’re going to a job interview,” he says. “They’ve not been too happy with me lately.”
I stretch my legs out and lean against a table leg. I don’t think I’m ever getting Contemporary Issues in American Asylum Law back, and I need to figure out a way to do the reading and come up with $200.
But right now, I’m going to sit here and talk to this famous, hot rock star for five minutes. Everything’s already screwed up, so why not?
“What did you do?” I ask.
He leans forward, his elbows on his knees, and rubs his hands together slowly.
“You can sit on the couch, you know,” he says.
“I’d rather sit here than stand in these shoes again,” I say. “Answer the question.”
He grins at me instead.
“Law school, right?”
“I’m not going to forget I asked.”
“You know you haven’t told me your name?”
“Marisol. Tell me.”
“Marisol. Three syllables, tripping off the tongue...”
He stops, eyes narrowing, then looks at me and laughs.
“That’s all I can remember.”
It sounds familiar, but I can’t place it.
“Is that...”
“Lolita,” he says, leaning back onto the couch. “Not only do I know what a book is, I’ve read one before.”
“That’s an odd choice to read if you’ve only read one,” I say.
“All right, more than one,” he says. “And I read Lolita during my one year of college when it was assigned, I don’t seek out books on pedophiles.”
“So your record label must be pissed for some other reason,” I say. I’m trying not to smile, but I can’t help it. “What did you do?”
Gavin laughs again, and the sound makes me laugh, because it’s warm and friendly and even if he’s kind of a jerk who apparently behaves badly enough to piss off record labels, I kind of like him.
Also, he’s hot and I’m tipsy.
“Where does one start?” he asks, putting his hands behind his head and looking at the ceiling. “I guess Crumble City first got angry a few years ago, when—”
There’s a crash, somewhere far away, a crunchy, squealing crash. A shriek. Something slamming against a wall, yelling, footsteps running around.
Gavin’s already to the door by the time I’m on my feet, briefcase in hand because I am not losing anything else, and I follow him as he rushes through the hall, between the wall and the curtain, to a huge double door that leads to the outside.
It’s open, people rushing back and forth. As I get closer I can hear someone shouting at the top of his lungs with a British accent so thick I can barely understand it.
“Fassroit!” I think he says. “Got meunshoo nae.”
Maybe it’s not English.
“Jesus Christ,” mutters Gavin. “Fuck me fucking bloody, that fucking twatheaded fuck.”
He charges through the door. I’m not sure if I should follow him, so I slow down. Before I can see through the doors I can hear him.
“What the Christ?” Gavin shouts. “The shit have you done now, you fucking lunatic?”
I stop, back against the opposite wall, and peer through the big double doors onto the Whiskey Room’s parking lot.
There’s a large van, its nose crunched against a concrete post, steaming from under the hood. The driver’s side door is wide open, the interior light on, one front tire flat.
Between the building and the van is a loose circle of people, all standing and staring, the drunken British shouting coming from the center. They give Gavin a wide berth as they let him through, still shouting.
“—Can’t just come here and nearly run people over, you madman, you almost killed the valet you fucking idiot, and then what — JAYSUS what the fuck is that thing?”
Gavin practically leaps away as everyone in the circle takes a step back all at once, a quick flash of orange lighting up the parking lot. I keep lingering inside the building, curious, but not terribly interested in getting involved.
“Yoocin geh’ ennufing ‘ere,” the drunk guy says. He laughs. There’s another flash of orange.
I realize that there’s a faint trail of smoke coming from the center of the circle, and I step to my left, then my right, trying to see around the people blocking me.
“Give me that,” Gavin commands. “Goddamn it, Liam.”
The drunk guy — Liam, I guess — just laughs again and holds something up in one hand. Six inches of flame shoot out of it, and I involuntarily step back, pressed against the wall.
I think the smoking thing on the ground is a pillow, not burning but smoldering. Liam says something back to Gavin and now they’re arguing, both shouting, and I can’t understand anything either of them is saying.
I should go before this gets too crazy, I think, though there’s already a drunk man burning pillows in a parking lot.
Liam kicks the pillow. He picks up something from beneath it, still shouting back and forth with Gavin, backing away, shooting his mini-flamethrower or whatever the fuck that thing is, and laughing maniacally.
Then, just as I’m about to turn away, he holds something up.
A light blue, hardcover book.
“HEY!” I bellow, already through the door before I can think. “Put that DOWN!”
I shove past the people standing around, but I feel like I’m moving in slow motion, much too slow.
Liam holds the book up by the spine. The pages fan out. He turns on the tiny flamethrower.
“NO!” I shout.
He’s holding the flames to the pages, and they go up like that.
“What the fuck?” I shout, and I lunge for it.
A strong hand grabs my arm and pulls me back before I can actually grab the flaming book.
“You motherfucker!” I shout, trying to wrest my arm away. “What’s fucking wrong with you? That’s mine!”
Liam just laughs, still holding the burning book.
“Finders keep— fuck,” he says, dropping it onto the ground, shaking his hand.
“Move!” A female voice bellows, and seconds later someone’s there with a fire extinguisher, dousing Contemporary Issues in American Asylum Law, the pillow, and Liam, spraying Gavin and I some in the process.
I’m just staring at my book, half-burnt and doused in white foam. Tears are pricking at my eyeballs, and I think I’ve got about three seconds before I start sobbing from pure rage.
Liam’s still laughing.
“Iss joost some—”
“FUCK YOU!” I scream.
“Marisol, I’m—” Gavin starts.
“FUCK YOU TOO!” I shout. I turn in a circle, taking in all the wide eyes and alarmed faces. “Fuck all of you! FUCK!”
I storm away, across the parking lot. Someone shouts after me and I ignore them, sobbing by the time I reach the street.
No one comes after me.
7
Gavin
“FUCK!” Marisol shouts, tears glittering in her eyes, and before I can do or say anything, she’s hightailing it through the parking lot.
Liam shouts after her.
“It’s a sodding book, you posh cu—”
I grab his shirt and heave him backwards, up against the side of the equipment van he stole, silencing him mid-sentence. The modified lighter drops to the ground, his head bounces o
ff the sheet metal, and he just laughs.
I guess I should have done this in the first place.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I shout in his face. “You can’t do this, crash cars and burn people’s things—”
“You can’t have a band without me!” he shouts, our faces inches apart. “This was supposed to be us, not you and three American wankers!”
His speech is slurred, his accent thick as mud though I can still understand it. He reeks of cheap tequila, the stuff practically oozing from his pores, and his pupils are pinpricks. Alcohol, coke, and God only knows what else.
“You think this’ll get you back? Showing up at a gig with a stolen van and a bleeding homemade flamethrower?”
“Least I’m still living a little,” he says, his eyes focusing and unfocusing on my face. “Better than being some stupid boring twat who goes home and puts his feet up by the fireplace every night.”
“And who’s the stupid twat when I’m alive and you’re dead in the gutter, Liam?” I shout.
I slam him against the van again, his head bobbing slightly like it’s come loose. I want to rip it off his neck, partly because of what he did and partly because he’s bloody right, this was supposed to be us.
But only one of us got clean enough to carry on, and it wasn’t him.
“Is that what you want, both of us rotting in our graves by thirty?” I yell. “Because that’s the end you’re coming to, you—”
Sirens wail, and I stop shouting. Blue lights flash across the parking lots as we both turn our heads and see two black and white cop cars screech to a halt, officers running out, leaving the doors open.
I unhand Liam. He stumbles, nearly falls, then rolls his eyes and puts his hands over his head as the cops shout for him to get on the ground.
I back away and nearly trip over the burned wreckage of Contemporary Issues in American Asylum Law.
Shit. Marisol.
I turn and push past a security guard, standing there with his mouth open, then jog through the parking lot in the direction she went, the night air cool against my skin.
What if she’s gone, I think. She can’t have gone far, and I need to—
Well, that part I don’t know since it’s fucking unclear how I could possibly improve this situation. I take a guess and jog left when I get to the sidewalk, scanning the busy Sunset Strip for someone in black and white, carrying a briefcase.
Nothing. No one. I stop at a corner, wondering if I should have gone the other direction, trying to pick out one form from the hundreds along the street.
Then I spot her. She’s across the street, sitting on a bus bench, glaring at me.
There’s a bus a block away. Of course.
I wave at her. Marisol looks away, and even in the light of the street lamps I can see her face is pink and puffy. The traffic on Sunset right now is heavy and fast, all the drivers probably half-drunk and texting while also shouting at their mates and fiddling with the radio.
There’s a very small break in traffic. I step out, tentatively, as the bus pulls up wheezing. I’m on the double yellow line in the middle of Sunset, cars hurtling past me on both sides, honking and flashing their lights but not a single one slows.
I hate Los Angeles drivers, I think.
Marisol gets on the bus, and through the windows I watch her pay her fare and then walk down the aisle, not looking at me again. Another tiny break in traffic and I sprint across three lanes, the bus already lumbering away even as I’m waving my hands for it to stop.
The driver just honks. I pound on the door as it passes me only for him to ignore me as the bus slides past with all the grace of a skier in the mud.
I look at the windows, searching for Marisol, and for a fleeting second, there she is: head against the window, staring into space. She doesn’t even see me.
“Fuck!” I shout, and kick the ugly green bench, an advertisement for a real estate agent smiling back.
I rub my eyes. I pace back and forth, trying to get a handle on things, trying to figure out why I’m so upset about this one book, this one girl who’s had a bad night.
Beautiful as hell with an arse made for grabbing, yeah, but that’s not it.
She’s the first person in weeks, months maybe, who’s interested me. Who I want to talk to again, even if I never get to see her naked. Marisol’s woken up some part of me that I thought was dead, snuffed out by booze and smack and an endless supply of women.
I take a deep breath. I shake my head, and I turn to walk back to the corner and cross Sunset properly when I realize there’s a line of people standing there, staring at me, half of them with their phones out.
I pause a moment, staring back at them. It’s not as if I was doing something shameful or wrong, but I feel like I’ve been caught in a private moment, one I’d prefer not to share with the gossip-hungry world.
“Cheers,” I say, and half wave.
Then I walk to the traffic light and wait patiently for it to change.
The police take Liam off to jail on charges of driving under the influence, reckless driving, attempted arson, public drunkenness, and probably ten other things. They hang around for a bit, but it’s not as if there’s some great mystery to unravel: a good twenty people saw everything that happened.
As I’m standing around, waiting to be questioned, I get out my phone and find Contemporary Issues in American Asylum Law on Amazon.
It’s two hundred dollars. Christ, no wonder Marisol was upset.
I put the book in my cart and email Larry to get her address, the least I can do. Then I sit there, on the steps into the Whiskey Room’s back door.
Liam’s headed to jail again, probably pissing himself in the back of a cop car right now, no doubt to have a miserable night in a holding cell. Darcy and Trent are going to be angry at me again when they find out what’s happened here, and when video of me trying to chase down some girl surfaces tomorrow, because no doubt it’ll have some asinine caption like BACK TO SMACK? GAVIN LOCKWOOD SIGHTED IN HOLLYWOOD CHASING THE DRAGON!
Maybe I ought to fake-date Daisy Fields, I think. There are far worse punishments than trying to talk to a vapid young starlet for an hour once a week.
God, the thought makes me shudder. It’s not me. I don’t date young starlets and smile for cameras, I’m some bloke from so far north in England it’s almost Scotland who played the guitar a lot and got lucky.
But I don’t think I can lose Darcy and Trent, or even Eddie. Liam’s already out of the band, and since I’m clean and he’s not, it’s nearly impossible for me to be around him.
It feels as if I’ve gotten divorced, my family split in half, and I ought to bite the bullet and take Daisy out, but I desperately don’t want to.
Then I have an idea.
It’s probably not a good one. It’s not likely to work, but it does make me smile and that’s got to be worth something, yeah?
I pull out my phone and dial up Valerie, because I know she’s still awake near one a.m. on Friday night, probably telling someone else how they ought to behave.
“What’s wrong?” she answers her phone.
Lots, but I don’t go into that with her.
“Nothing, I’ve had a thought,” I say, watching a tow truck pull the crashed van away.
There’s a moment of silence while she waits.
“And?” she finally responds.
“What if I pretended to date someone besides Daisy Fields?”
Valerie sighs into the phone. I can hear noise and thumping bass behind her. She’s probably out somewhere, bossing around another famous person.
“Do you have someone in mind?” she asks.
“I do,” I say.
8
Marisol
“Next!” calls the lady behind the register. The girl in front of me heads up, handing over a physics textbook practically the size of a cinderblock.
I tighten my grip on Contemporary Issues in American Asylum Law, Second Edition. It showed up at my door m
id-day Saturday, and after I gawked at it for a full minute, like it was a rainbow unicorn offering me a box full of rubies, I cried with relief.
And then I felt guilty.
I left it backstage in the first place, and yeah, Liam shouldn’t have lit it on fire, but I’m almost positive he isn’t the one who sent me another copy the very next morning. My only problem now is that my receipt was sandwiched inside that copy, so it’s also a small pile of ashes in a club parking lot.
“Next,” the lady says again.
I walk to the counter and hand over the book. She holds it up, examining it, and I hold my breath, even though I know it’s in mint condition.
Finally she nods and sets it on the counter.
“Receipt?” she asks.
I clear my throat.
“I don’t actually have it with me,” I say, as apologetically as I can. “There was an accident and it got… destroyed.”
She raises one eyebrow.
“We don’t usually take returns without a receipt,” she says.
I use the sincerest, most hopeful tone I’ve got.
“I know, and I’m so, so sorry,” I say. “I’ve got my credit card with me, is there any way you could look up the transaction history instead? It’s just that it’s a two hundred dollar book and it turns out I don’t even need it for class, and… that’s a lot of money.”
She sighs. I look down. At least I got the reading done and participated hard in class this afternoon.
I can always sell it some other way, I remind myself. I probably won’t get the full price for it, but one-fifty is better than nothing.
“And I could really use the two hundred dollars,” I say, my voice quieter now.
She taps her finger on the counter and looks at me for a long moment.
“All right,” she says at last. “Don’t tell my manager.”
I thank her again and again, then practically dance my way out of the bookstore, mentally promising to never, ever try to cheat the system like this again.
As I walk across campus toward my bus stop, I’m almost giddy. Like the weight of the past week is finally off my shoulders and I can relax again, just a little.