Sofia said, “What’s it about?”
“That’s a surprise. I could tell you, but then I’d have to edit you out of the world’s fabric.”
Isabel opened her eyes. I thumbed through screens on my phone and navigated to the website. Both girls leaned a little closer to the illuminated screen in the darkness.
The episode began with my fight with Leyla and proceeded apace to the fight with Chad over Jeremy.
“What a jerk,” Sofia said.
“Doesn’t he know Jeremy was married to you first?” Isabel added hollowly. I knew she was saying it for Sofia, to sound like she was into the video-watching and to be forgiven for being mean earlier. It worked, too, because Sofia badly wanted to forgive her.
After I secured Jeremy, the three of us headed to the address Isabel had given me. It was the wedding of a super-fan in Echo Park. Well, according to Isabel it was a super-fan. A lot was resting on Isabel’s ability to both play me on the Internet and also know how to do her research. Because if this turned out to be just a normal person’s wedding or a casual fan’s wedding, we were heading to disaster. Timing was tight, and the Saturn mysteriously ran out of gas on the way. We were forced to walk for gas to a station where the attendant just happened to recognize me.
I paused the video. “So this is the part where I got to find out if Isabel really did know everything.”
Sofia said, “Why?”
“She’s the one who found the wedding.”
Sofia’s giant eyes turned to Isabel.
Isabel said, “Good thing for me I know everything.”
And she did. We eventually made it to Echo Park, where both the bride and the groom turned out to be super-fans, and the bride fainted wonderfully and mostly on camera when she saw me and Jeremy climb out of the car. Much to the horror of all of the parents involved, we jammed and played the couple down the aisle. Leyla wasn’t even terrible on the drums. It really was a fine bit of television.
Sofia sighed happily. “It’s so romantic. Was it that romantic in real life?”
“Sure,” I said.
Isabel was scrolling through the video comments on my Virtual Me phone. There were a lot. Too many to read all of them, even if you wanted to. Isabel squinted at the most recent one. It was a paragraph long, full of love for NARKOTIKA and weddings and asking if I would ever write another song like “Villain.”
As we were both looking, another comment came in.
Comment number 1,362, and just one line:
cole st clair facedown is how I remember him Isabel pursed her lips. She didn’t look at me. I felt trapped between that comment and the confrontations in the sushi restaurant and with Chad. It felt like my past was getting closer and closer instead of the other way around.
Sofia was still in rapture from the glib ending of our episode.
“Do you think you’d have a rock band at your wedding, Isabel?”
“I’m not getting married,” Isabel said, clicking off the work phone and putting it away. She still wasn’t looking at me or at the house or at anything. “I don’t believe in happy endings.”
Later, in the empty apartment, that was all I could remember clearly. The aborted dinner with Baby was a blur of humiliation and anger. The conversation with Chad a smear of doubt. The smiles of the wedding guests: forgotten.
I just remembered the one person I wanted to be with saying she didn’t believe in happy endings.
When I got into the Saturn late that night or early that morning, the radio was playing “Villain.” My voice snarled at me as I backed it out into the alley:
Didn’t you always want me this way?
On-sale late-night going-out-of-business
I’m so much cheaper.
The roads were eerie and deserted. Even the bars were closed. The lack of people and sun somehow emphasized the lack of grass and foliage beside the sidewalk. This place was carved from concrete. On the radio, my voice was still bitter. I didn’t turn it off.
Don’t pretend you like me
The beach parking lot was empty, and when I opened the car door, the air was frigid.
That this is about me
Frigid was good. It would make this last longer.
I’ ll be just a story in your wild youth
I took my things and padded barefoot across the sand toward the ocean. I stripped down. There was no one to see me except for the black, starless sky, and the blacker silhouettes of the palms at the edge of the parking lot. I put the needle into my skin.
God you’re a villain a villain
I could be caught, of course. Someone might see me as I ran through the surf as a wolf. Or someone might see me in nine or fifteen or twenty-two minutes when I had turned back into a na**d human. Or possibly, very possibly, someone could see the very moment of transformation.
But they wouldn’t. Statistically, they wouldn’t.
And the threat wasn’t enough to stop me. I waited as my veins began to howl and my nerves started to shudder. If there was a way to make my thoughts go before the pain, the screaming pain of the shift, this would be the perfect escape. The cleanest drug, the sanest mental vacation.
Sometimes I forgot how filthy the drugs had made me. But it was like Baby said. I was pretty now.
Villain villain villain
And then, finally, I was a wolf. The sand on my paws, cool and damp and endless. No colors to miss on the night beach.
Just sound and smell and wind hissing past my ears as I ran.
Every thought was an image.
I came to crouching in the freezing surf. There was no one around. The beach was still empty. I had gotten away with it, which somehow made me feel worse. It was only me who knew the truth about me, but that was enough. Everyone else had already guessed.
I was always him, always Cole St. Clair.
And I could still hear Isabel’s voice as she said, I don’t believe in happy endings.
Chapter Twenty-Six
· isabel ·
internet: Hey, Cole St. Clair, is it true you got kicked out of Yuzu?
virtual cole: for being awesome internet: My buddy said it was because you were shooting up in their bathroom.
virtual cole: you need new buddies internet: LOLOL love you man virtual cole: really who doesn’t internet: Will you ever do another song like “Villain”?
internet: Who is that girl we saw on the last episode?
virtual cole: superhot alien internet: dump her! I luv u cole!
virtual cole: superhot alien would destroy planet virtual cole: really im saving the world (no really) virtual cole: thank me now internet: she wouldnt have 2 know haha lol internet: Are we ever going to see Victor again?
NARKOTIKA rocked!
virtual cole:
internet: Great to see you and Jeremy playing together!
How about Victor?
virtual cole:
internet: OK let’s have Victor now!!!!!!
virtual cole: you guys are going to give leyla a vegan breakdown
internet: hahaha no but really NARKOTIKA 4EVER
internet: What do you want for your birthday?
virtual cole: to stay young forever Cole texted me:
Actually I want you
Chapter Twenty-Seven
· cole ·
Baby called me and said, “Happy birthday. Are you ready for your surprise?”
I was standing in the rental house next door to my apartment; I’d broken in right after I’d had breakfast. And by breakfast, I mean a banana lying in a hot dog bun, and by breaking in, I mean I found out that one of the rear sliding doors was unlocked. I wasn’t thrilled with the idea that it was my birthday, even though I couldn’t say exactly why. I said, “Am I going to like it?”
“I worked very hard on it.”
“Can I get a hint?”
“Just enjoy the ride,” Baby said. “You might want to put on pants for this. I hope you’ve been writing some music.”
The first surprise arrived on my doorstep at ten a.m. Actually, it didn’t quite arrive on my doorstep. It arrived in the alley behind the house and made really loud noises until I climbed up onto the roof deck to see what was happening.
Down below was a brilliant cerulean Lamborghini revving its engine repeatedly. For a brief moment, I thought, That’s quite a present, and then I realized that the present was actually sitting behind the driver’s wheel in the form of a small, gorgeous Latina with white aviator sunglasses on. She looked both richer and more famous than me, because she was. My heart gave an involuntary lurch.
Oh, Baby, you clever bastard, I thought.
“Magdalene,” I called down. “How nice of you to stop by.”
When I had first met Magdalene, she had just been discovered in some small town in Arkansas or Georgia or South Carolina, the daughter of a sometime mechanic who entertained herself joyriding and singing in shopping malls. She’d just graduated from high school and released her first EP and was looking for some exposure.
She recorded “Spacebar” with us and then we went our separate ways. By which I mean, I went on to make NARKOTIKA famous in a few different countries and then pass out in my own drool. And she went on to record one of the top five selling dance albums of the decade, marry and divorce two actors and one actress in two years, lose and regain her driving license for running a street-racing ring, and star in one of the movies in the Clutch franchise — the only one that made any money. I still had a poster she sent me. With a metallic blue marker, she’d written on it: Shut up (and Drive), Cole
I understood that she had the largest collection of sky blue supercars in North America.
She was also the nicest drunk I’d ever known. Once upon a dangerous time, I’d had the biggest crush on her. I was quite certain Baby knew both of these things. I wondered what she was hoping I’d do with this episode.
“Happy birthday, Cole St. Clair!” Magdalene gave the Lambo another rev. Wind came from somewhere and lifted her black hair. The ripple of the strands suggested that they had been constructed by a team of specialists. “Get in this car before I run out of gas!”
I leaned over the railing, taking in the blueness of the car. I noticed that T was parked behind her in a van, recording every second. Also, Magdalene had a tactful little mic clipped on her glittery tank top.
“Where are we going?” I asked loudly.
“Baby told me we were recording a song?”
“Oh, did she.”
“I only record in my place. I hope you’ve got something that’s gonna make me sound good.”
“My drummer’s not going to fit in that car.”
“She can take that,” Magdalene said. Contempt oozed off her voice and pooled around the tires of the Saturn.
The image of Leyla being forced to drive the Saturn again was a powerful motivator. I pushed off the railing. As I headed for the stairs, I texted Isabel. Virtual Me might heat up.
Episode is happening.
Isabel texted back. The internet never sleeps I shot back: you could come Isabel: damn class til late I texted: tell them it’s my birthday She didn’t reply, but I didn’t expect her to. I called Jeremy.
“I’m sending a car for you. An episode’s happening.”
Jeremy asked, “What’s the way?”
I said, “I have no idea.”
· · ·
Magdalene took me down to her studio space in Long Beach. I couldn’t even call it studio space. I didn’t know what to call it.
It was a warehouse near the Long Beach Airport, all concrete floors and giant doors meant for driving semitrucks through. It was big enough to fit an entire Venice block. Half of it was lined with sky blue supercars. I didn’t know what most of them were.
Flat cars with big engines and spoilers that looked like torture devices. The concrete floor between them was marked with big loops of tire marks, some smeared sideways.
The other half was a studio. It was the biggest, fanciest studio I’d ever seen, and I’d seen some pretty big and fancy studios.
There were isolation booths for singers and isolation booths for drum kits and a piano and an upright hipster piano and a rack of synthesizers and an array of guitars and bass guitars and cellos all propped up in stands, waiting to be used. The walls were covered with acoustic padding and the ceilings were hung with microphones on tracks. For a second, I thought I smelled a hint of wolf among the mixing consoles, but then it was gone and maybe it had just been me. Above me, a huge pair of shiny 3-D lips, complete with lip ring, hung on the wall. They were larger than any of the cars and red as the blood in my beating heart.
It was excessive even for excess. I turned to Magdalene. She was already drinking something out of a tiny little glass.
Quick tip: Things in tiny little glasses punch harder than things in big ones.
She smiled at me. It was a smile that had seen ten thousand cameras. Two of the ten thousand were already trained on her.
“You want something? I probably have something that will interest you.”
“I’m clean,” I told Magdalene.
“Good for you.” Magdalene laughed, and her laugh was a little hoarse, like mine was when I’d been touring a lot. “The world needs more priests.”
I wondered if Baby was hoping we’d fight. I let it pass.
“Look at all these toys you have here.”
The most insane part was that this place was clearly a concrete manifestation of her imagination. She was so over the top — huge hair, huge eyes, tight sparkly tank top, elaborate belly-button piercing, belt wider than my hand, bell bottoms, and combat boots — that she fit right in.
“Wait till the boys get here,” she said. “Play me something.”
She gestured to the piano. It was a ninefoot Steinway.
Because seven-foot Steinways are for posers.
There is only one option if you are presented with a ninefoot concert grand Steinway, especially if it is sky blue, as this one was.