STARGAZER LUZ: Well, right off I should say that’s not my real name. I wish! Stargazer is how everyone around here knows me. First I was known as Robard Reed’s daughter. Now I’m known as Lincoln Reed’s sister. But down here in the Keys, I’m more of my own person.
I drove down here after I dropped out of school. I failed math every year. But you don’t need to know algebra to sing. That’s what I do now, I sing at the Crystal Room at the La Dee Dah. It’s the only supper club in Key West.
Lincoln and I have different moms, but I wasn’t surprised when he took up with Addison Stone. Lincoln grew up in Sag Harbor, around artists. I’m five years older, so I sort of knew our dad. In fact, I’d seen Dad the hour before he drowned himself. He’d been dismal, all out of kilter for weeks, and everyone knew it.
Addison Stone had that same blank thing her eyes. Like, really intense but also spaced out. You’ve had to have seen it to recognize it.
“She’s got a piece of Dad in her. And I didn’t need to notice her wrists first,” I told Lincoln.
And he said, “Maybe so, but I can save her. We couldn’t save Robard, but I can save her.”
“If you say so,” I told him. I’m not proud to admit this, but it made me hate Addison. Just a little bit. I guess I hated the doom she dragged in, those memories she woke up in me of Robard. And I hated that she had so much power over my kid brother.
LUCY LIM: Addy told me she wasn’t coming to Rhode Island for the Christmas holidays, but I was bummed when she and Lincoln decided to go to Key West, out where his sister lived. Mom and I saw Addy’s mom and her O’Hare grandparents at church on Christmas. None of them had a teaspoonful of information on Addy. They didn’t even know where she was. Her brother, Charlie, wasn’t home for the holidays, either. He’d gone skiing with friends in New Hampshire. I never liked Addy’s folks much, but I felt sorry for them on Christmas Day. These sad old people, sharing a hymnal, singing without any thread of joy in their voices.
From: Addison Stone <[email protected]
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Date: Dec 27 at 6:53 PM
Subject: wish you wuz here
To: Lucy Lim <[email protected]
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Lulu, Key West is the freaks.
It’s full of the most rando people-trees-flowers.
All the creepiest-crawliest species stretching-reaching-flying as far down the coast as they can go.
This description also includes “Stargazer Luz.” That’s Linc’s big sister.
I am not fan-zoning this chick.
Stargazer strolls around the bungalow, blonde and burnt, drinking green slop for her throat, and telling us about guys who come to her cabaret act and fall madly in love with her and download all her songs.
We went to see her sing last night.
I’m surprised that she’s got that gig at all.
Marilyn Monroe with extra helium.
But I’m happy!! I might be catching Keys Disease. Time ain’t nothing here.
All day Lincoln basks in the sun like a lizard.
I am losing hours of my life to staring at him.
His skin is already tawny.
He smells like sex and soap.
We’re hardly ever apart. I swear I get sad when he leaves to go to the toilet.
This note is making any sense? I’m dwunk.
Mojitos is the Key drink of Key West & they go down a leetle 2 EZ.
We’re coming back to NYC for Eve.
Gonna be the sicccest party and you need to train for it.
Fall was the big real, huh? The deep end.
I hope next year I can take a few more calm breaths.
& enjoy Enjoy ENJOY.
x!o! & I’m so glad you liked your bracelet!
Addison in Key West, courtesy of Lincoln Reed.
Gil Cheba and Addison Stone at MXP Studio opening, courtesy of Cormac Mulvaney.
VIII.
“HE’S JUST SO STICKY AND USELESS.”
GIL CHEBA, a.k.a “DJ Generate”: I’m the DJ at Bembe, a club lounge in Williamsburg. I was born and raised in London, and I moved to New York about five years ago, when I was eighteen. When I first met Addison that night on New Year’s Eve, I’d just returned from a stint in Ibiza, where I thought I might live and DJ happily for a while. As it happened, while I was over there, I f**ked myself up rather badly on X. To the point where I knew I’d have to walk away from my entire life in Ibiza, and all the people in it, if I wanted to sort myself out.
So off I popped to rehab. Ah, rehab. It saved this poor sod’s life. And once I was saved, I came back to New York City only slightly worse for my time away.
I’ve always thought myself a lucky chap, and I quickly got some bookings at Webster Hall, and then at the downtown Hotel Quest on New Year’s Eve, which had set up two events. General party in their dining lounge, and the VIP invite-only gig was up on the rooftop around the pool. They wanted me downstairs till midnight at the general party, then zzzzp! up the elevator to spin for the VIP set till sunrise.
Addison Stone was the first VIP I noticed. Stunning, slinky as a mongoose, wearing a frock made of some sort of aluminum foil, violet feathers in her hair. You’d have reckoned that she was “somebody” just by the way she stood in the room. But I knew who she was. Most people did. I’d spun at countless gigs, but that night was a standout crowd. And Addison was a standout in that crowd. I remember peering down from the booth at her and thinking, You brilliant, cheeky girl, don’t you just have the world at your feet?
LUCY LIM: Addy’d invited me to tag along at this scene-y New Year’s Eve party at Quest. So intimidating! So many famous people, I was blown away. Addy was at the center of everything, and she was so on. She was being paid to wear a metallic dress of a young new designer, Kimber Jalloh—everyone knows what a Jalloh bag is now but I’d never heard of him then.
Addy kept telling me that she got to keep the dress. She was so excited about that. Not that she could ever wear it again. It was too fragile, like tinsel! It was falling apart. “Do NOT try this at home!” was Addy’s whole style that night. She had thick silver sparkle smeared on her eyes and her trademark purple with a pair of gloves she’d dyed herself, and eight-inch platforms so she was taller than all the women and most of the men. She’d stolen a bunch of long red proteas from the hotel lobby vase and was handing them out. Proteas are a mean-looking flower, long and heavy like a sword. We were having the best time, dancing and laughing and mugging it up, and she was introducing me to a zillion people. It was all so good, till Zach Frat showed up with Sophie.