“I’m not getting you a Mustang,” Baby said. “I don’t have the budget for that.”
“Don’t be silly. I already have one. It’s in Phoenix, New York.”
In my parents’ garage, next to my old bicycle, covered in dust. Paid for with my advance, driven by no one. “People would watch a show about a rock star in a black Mustang.”
“Three twenty-five,” Baby said.
The image of that car was worming its way into my brain: a solution to all of the problems that unending nights presented.
I wondered if I was willing to call my parents in order to get it.
No. I was not willing.
“I don’t see how I can continue without it, the more I think about it.”
“Three twenty-six.”
“Six twenty-six in Phoenix,” I replied. “And that Mustang looks good in the morning light. Think about it.”
I clicked end. The Saturn was still there. I was still awake.
It was still three twenty-six, although that seemed impossible.
I stood there, trying to think of my next course of action.
Before, I probably would’ve driven to Crenshaw or something to score, not for now, saving it for later, just for something to do, something to stop my insides from gnawing away at me. But now, I’d just been a wolf; I’d just spoken to Isabel; I’d just slept.
I was relieved to feel like it was only a dull muscle ache. A memory. It was okay. I was okay. History of substance abuse. Key word: history.
And Isabel —
I considered calling her, but I was enjoying the fact of her taking my calls too much to risk ruining it with an early morning phone call.
Still three twenty-six. It was never going to be morning.
I dialed another number and waited.
This reply was wary but polite. “Hello?”
“Leon,” I said broadly. “Did I wake you?” I knew I hadn’t.
Leon wasn’t sleeping nights. He wasn’t sleeping days. He was too sad for sleeping. “This is Cole St. Clair. I’m one of the rock stars you were driving around yesterday. Do you remember? I was the most charming of them. With the saxophone track.”
“I — I remember. What can I do for you?”
“I’d like to get food, I think. Nothing heavy. Popcorn. Ice cream. Sardines. Something like that. More like the idea of food than anything else.”
Leon took a long time to answer. “And you need car service?”
I picked a fleck of anemic red paint from the fender of the Saturn. “Oh, no, no. I have a car. I thought you might want to come with me.”
An even longer pause. “Mr. St. Clair, is this some sort of prank?”
“Leon,” I replied sternly, “I am always serious. I’m going out to get something. I’m awake. You’re awake. It seems like good sense to be companionable. Follow up and see how you’re liking that track. No pressure. Also, it’s Cole. There’s no Mr. at three twenty-eight a.m. Night is the great equalizer.”
“And this is for real. Not for your show.”
“I hadn’t even considered it. What a thought! But no. Even the cameramen lie sleeping now, Leon.”
I heard a rustling sound, but he didn’t answer. I was depressed by the knowledge that if Leon didn’t agree to go out, I would have to go out by myself. With nothing but the Saturn to remind me of my humanity, I’d surely make poor decisions.
Leon said, “It’ll take twenty minutes for me to get to Venice.”
Chapter Nine
· cole ·
It turned out that Leon, in his spare time, didn’t drive a black Cadillac, but instead a rather pristine and stately Ford Five Hundred. He permitted me to twiddle with the radio knobs as we drove up and down Abbott Kinney looking for something that was open late and wasn’t a bar. A bar would be fine, except I’d be recognized, and seeing people drinking would remind me of how glorious and friendly I got when I drank, and it would all be over.
No, in retrospect, a bar would not be fine.
Leon drove us both a total of two miles to the beachfront.
Climbing out of the car, he said, “Not far now.” He sounded kind, puzzled, bewildered. He wore black slacks and a blue dress shirt, neither of them rumpled. A tasteful watch. He was the sort of man people trusted without thinking about it. He was the sort of man people didn’t think about, period.
I let my gaze eat the world. My wolf-sharpened sense of smell caught the scent of ice-cream cones, of asphalt, of churning ocean, of swirling beer, of first kisses and last kisses. The diagonal street parking was full of rust-free cars that had never existed outside summer. The girls were all legs, and the boys were all teeth. That moon was closer than before. The empty shops were still bright with aqua and pink and yellow paint. I tripped on the curb, my eyes on a pair of guys flying a kite on the night beach, its tail rippling silver in the moonlight. My chest felt full with the images.
There was no place for a wolf to hide here.
“You aren’t from here,” Leon said, and I knew he was watching me watch everything else. I knew he knew I liked it, but I didn’t mind.
This whitewashed place sang my name to me, over and over.
“New York,” I replied. And added, “State.”
I couldn’t remember when I’d first clarified state, not city, but I remembered the distinction had felt a lot more important then. Where was I from now? Not here.
“You aren’t from here, either,” I reminded him. “Cincinnati.”
“I can’t believe you remember that.”
He had brought us to a café that reminded me of the restaurants in Italy — a small, dark interior, most of the dining space underneath an open-air awning. Although I hadn’t expressed any concern over being recognized, Leon stood in front of me, blocking my face from the hostess, and said, “Two, please. By the sidewalk, maybe?”
I felt intensely validated. I’d judged him right. Decent was decent.
The hostess sat us at a tiny table. Across the sidewalk was the beach, and beyond it, the black ocean. I felt dreamy and drunk.
We nearly knocked heads as we sat, and I thought about writing some lyrics down in my tiny notebook (Like lovers or lawyers/biting and smiling). Instead I watched some skateboarders sail by us. “Do you like it here?”
There was too long of a pause, and when I looked at Leon, he smiled ruefully and cut his eyes down to the table. He gently unfolded his napkin. He had sturdy hands, blunt and sure.
“I’ve been here a long time.”
“Did you like it when you first came?”
Leon said, “What is it you see when you look at it?”
“Magic,” I replied.
He pushed the menu toward me. “If you tell me what you want, I’ll order for you. While you enjoy the ocean.”
He meant so that I wouldn’t have to talk to the waitress with my famous voice, or look at her with my famous face. Now I really looked at him. He must’ve been a handsome bastard when he was my age. He’d still be handsome, now, if he squared his shoulders and acted like he had some testicles. “You drive around a lot of famous people?”
“A few.”
“You didn’t even know who I was when I got into your car, and now you’re protecting me from waitresses?”
Leon said, “I Googled you after you got out.”
It was warming to hear I still had some currency on the Internet.
He continued, “The news stories about when you disappeared were . . . Do you mind me mentioning it?”
I shrugged. Everything was cool as long as he didn’t say Victor’s name. As long as he didn’t ask me where Victor was.
“Well, it caused a big fuss.”
“I’m really not that famous,” I said, although I was a little all that famous. “Most people can’t recognize me on sight. And if they do, they either think I’m just someone who looks like me, or they don’t have the guts to talk to me, or they don’t care that it’s me.”
Really, it wasn’t exhausting to be recognized. It was exhausting to feel alone in a crowd.
Leon studied me pensively. I could tell that he, in any case, did not like being recognized as Leon the driver. He dreaded the supermarket line chitchat. He waited until the postal service lady had knocked on the door, left the package, and gotten in her vehicle to open his door. His dog dying had been bad, I could tell, but the worst part for him had been trying to figure out how to handle the pity of the vet assistants.
“I know what you’re saying,” I told Leon, and by you, I meant your face. “You hate small talk. It makes everything seem irrelevant. I agree. It’s ridiculous. We should only talk about big things, you and I.”
“I’m not good at small talk.” Leon downgraded hate to something slightly kinder, but didn’t disagree. “Do I have big things to talk about?”
“You told me your life story in the car. That’s big.”
“You asked me for that.”
“Did I? That doesn’t sound like me.”
The waitress returned. I ordered a BLT without incident.
Leon ordered a milk shake without incident. When his shake arrived, he cradled it in his hands, savoring it. He seemed to regard it as a guilty indulgence, something only permitted in the middle of the night with a stranger.
He looked glum, which wasn’t the point of this exercise, so I asked, “So, Leon. I know you’re not a fan of this city, but where would you tell me to go, as a tourist?”
“Haven’t you been here before?”
I had been here before. “I was on tour.”
“No time to explore?”
There had been time to explore. I’d explored a few streets in Koreatown and one in Echo Park and another in Long Beach, and then I’d explored a Rite Aid for some syringes, and then I’d explored my hotel balcony and my hotel floor and, finally, the tile of the hotel bathroom. Then Victor had come got me out of my own puke and cleaned me up for the show.
I’d been in Los Angeles before, but it hadn’t mattered.
Really, I’d never left my own head.
“The Pier, I guess,” Leon said, but dubiously, like he was repeating advice he’d heard from someone else. “That’s supposed to be nice at sundown. Malibu? That’s about forty-five minutes up the coast.”
“Malibu is not L.A., Leon,” I said sternly. I looked out at the purple-skinned beach. I imagined running on that sand with paws instead of feet. It would be just as good on my own feet, I thought. “I think you should visit your own city.”
“Maybe I will,” Leon said, in a kind way that meant that he wouldn’t. Our food arrived. Leon accepted the tomato from my BLT.
“Seems strange to order a lettuce and bacon sandwich. But she would’ve held the tomato if you’d asked.” He shook salt on the slice. He looked as happy as he ever had as he put it in his mouth.
“I forgot I didn’t like them,” I replied. “They’re a member of the deadly nightshade family, did you know? Slightly poisonous to dogs.”
And wolves. Just enough to give me a stomachache.
“Chocolate, too,” Leon said, looking at his milk shake, and I remembered that his dog had died. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
“All questions are personal.”
“I . . .”
“That means, yes, Leon, ask it.”
Just as long as it wasn’t about Victor.
“Why did you come back?”
It felt like a trick question. My hard-won hermitage — begun by me, secured by Jeremy — was no small thing. It was a chance to be someone else, and how many of those do you get?
And yet I’d left it behind.
I came back because I had to. Because there was nothing wrong in the world except that I was getting older in it. Because Sam and Grace had told me I should go if that was what I wanted.
What I wanted was:
I wanted.
Isabel —
I wanted to make something. At the beginning of all of this, I had just been a kid with a keyboard. It was less the game of it, and more those hours I spent falling from song to song.
“I want to make an album,” I said. “I miss making music.”
I could tell he approved of my answer. The waitress brought the check.
Leon said, “I liked that song.”
“Which — oh? Yeah?”
“You were right. Jazzy.” Leon made the subtlest jazz hands ever and I reflected them back at him, but bigger. “Did you ever do anything else with the lady who sang?”
Lady was not how I would have referred to Magdalene.
I’d had the hardest crush on her back then. I said, “She’s too famous for that now. You haven’t heard of her? She’s in the movies.”
He shrugged. Probably not his sorts of movies. “I bought one of your albums, too.”
“Which one?”
He considered. “It had a lady’s undergarments on the front?”
He seemed uncomfortable, so I told him, “If it makes you feel any better, it was our bassist, Jeremy, wearing them.”
Nostalgia chewed on me. No, not chewed. Nibbled. Just nibbled.
“Well,” Leon said, eyes on our combined funds by the check, “I guess that’s that. I better get you back.”
I pointed at the ocean.
“Pacific,” Leon said, with no smile, but a glint in his eyes.
“I think we should take off our shoes.”
Leon frowned. “I’m not really that kind of person.”
I knew that he wasn’t. At least, I knew he wasn’t the sort of person to abandon a car in the middle of the L.A. freeway. And that seemed to lead naturally to the sort of person who wouldn’t roll up their pants and take their shoes off with an unfamiliar rock star at five a.m.