Sinner

  Now the long-haired bassist played a riff from one of our songs. I couldn’t remember the name of it. Damn, I felt old all of a sudden. Pimpled kid adoringly playing an old riff of Jeremy’s from a song I couldn’t recall.

  “Not that one,” I said. “Something I haven’t heard.”

  He played something else. It was funky and very acceptably skilled and like nothing I ever wanted to hear in one of my songs, ever. I didn’t even really want it in the room with me. It might get some of its funk on me.

  “Thanks, Charlie, but no,” I told him. I couldn’t believe how this night had gone. I should’ve been out with Isabel right now.

  “My name’s not —”

  “He can go sit in the car, too,” I said. “Have a good night, all. I’m out.” I left them there. As I climbed up the deck stairs, I wondered if I should call Isabel. Maybe I should send her something. Not flowers. That was boring. She’d never be convinced by flowers. A midget jumping out of a card or something.

  “What a dick,” said the bassist, loud enough for me to hear. He didn’t know my reputation at all if he thought that was anywhere near enough to offend me.

  “Cole, come on,” T called up. “What am I going to tell Baby?”

  “It bothers me that you call your sister baby,” I told him. “Tell her that auditions start tomorrow. I’ll do it myself. Bring your camera and a clean pair of shorts.”

  The other cameraperson — Jane? Joan? — spoke for the first time. She asked peevishly, “Are you going to fire Leyla, too?”

  I glanced back at where she sat, still smoking contentedly. I wanted my band. I didn’t want all of these jokers.

  “Not yet.”

  In the bathroom, I double-checked for cameras, turned on the shower for white noise, and then I took out the things I needed to become a wolf for five or seven or nine minutes.

  It was a small sin in the relative scheme of things. At the height of NARKOTIKA’s fame, I had been known for my chemical fearlessness — there was no drug I wouldn’t try at least once. Some of them had incredibly gross and complicated side effects, but I hadn’t been very interested in my body at that point. Really what I had wanted was to get out of life entirely, but I was too much of a coward.

  I set my stuff on the edge of the sink and stripped. My mad-scientist father, an ardent fan of the scientific process, would have been proud of the steps that had brought me to this moment. Several months of self-experimentation had brought me to my proprietary blend for stress-free werewolfing: epinephrine to start the process, a vasodilator to make the process more streamlined, a beta-blocker to keep my head from actually exploding, and an aspirin to keep my head from feeling like it was actually exploding.

  It was so much tidier than any substance I’d ever done. It was no messier than getting a beer from the fridge. No, cleaner than even that. Because there was no hangover.

  So there was nothing to feel guilty about.

  But I did, a little. Probably because of association. I’d only become a werewolf because every other drug’s purported kicks had ceased to kick and I needed something that wouldn’t let me down. Because I’d hit the absolute bottom. Because I just wanted out and was a coward, always a coward.

  But that wasn’t the point tonight.

  Tonight it was no different than a beer. Just something to restart my brain, convince me to sleep, tide me over until L.A.’s sun could heal me. Five or seven or nine minutes.

  I injected, swallowed, waited. I looked at the little things they had put into this bathroom that had nothing to do with bathrooms: the orchid on the windowsill, the fake street sign hanging above the mirror, the concrete statue of a giraffe in the corner. It had been weeks since I’d shifted. Sometimes shifting a lot seemed to make me more likely to turn, and I hadn’t wanted any surprises in the Minneapolis airport.

  The shower hissed on the small pebbly tiles. I could smell the iron in the water, like the blood in my veins. I heard my pulse in my ears. I couldn’t believe that Baby had hired me a guitarist and that bass player. I couldn’t believe that if everything hadn’t gone to absolute crap, my dinner date would have started an hour ago.

  Isabel —

  My pulse suddenly surged through my body’s crumpling infrastructure.

  My thoughts vanished with my human skin.

  That night I lay in my soulless bedroom with my laptop on my stomach and I watched early videos of Cole performing with NARKOTIKA. In these, he looked young and bright and on fire with something so volatile that it ignited everyone in the audience. His smile was the most brilliant thing in the place.

  As the videos got newer, Cole changed. His eyes deadened. It was a model of Cole, thrown up onto the stage, propped behind the keyboard, a rock-star-shaped sack of meat. Sometimes you could actually see him shaking with the ferocity of whatever he’d taken before the show. Destroying himself like he’d destroyed the crowd in those early shows, all the fire turned inside.

  I knew this was what Baby North wanted out of him. She knew how to pick them, the sure bets, the certain losers.

  Aunt Lauren’s cat jumped on the end of my bed. I hissed at her. She jumped down, but she didn’t look upset. She’d been here long enough that all of her feelings had been replaced with high-end linoleum. As I let her out of my room and started to shut the door, I heard the front door open: my mother back from her shift. She had just enough time for a little HBO and maybe some brief weeping over her dead son and estranged husband.

  Here’s a secret, though: Crying doesn’t bring back the dead or the missing.

  I quickly closed my bedroom door.

  I sank back onto the bed and found videos of Cole’s last show as NARKOTIKA. The one where he fell down and didn’t get back up. A thousand unblinking camera phones had captured the wail of his synthesizer as he grabbed for it and missed on his way down. No one was close enough to catch him. In the end, the only thing that stopped his fall was the ground.

  He was terrible to look at in this video. Not in a chic, slick way. In a sweaty, singed, rotting way. I kept playing it over and over again, every time I thought about how much I wanted to call him.

  He wasn’t here for just me. And this was who he had been. This was who he might be again. But I didn’t know if that mattered. Enough to stop me, that is.

  I hated crying.

  I hit PLAY again. This time I watched his bandmates, hovering at the edges of the video screen. Jeremy, mouth parted in concern. Victor, withering.

  Like, not again.

  Through my thin bedroom wall, I heard my mother fighting with my father on the telephone.

  MY MOTHER, OVERHEARD: My permission? You want my permission to come see me? If you had really wanted to see me, you’d already be here. Don’t play games.

  MY FATHER, ASSUMED: Teresa, games are for children. We are not children. We are educated professionals. We both attended decades of schooling to ensure we never had to play games again.

  MY MOTHER, OVERHEARD: It is my work, Tom. I can’t change my schedule. You could at least move clients.

  MY FATHER, ASSUMED: Moving clients sounds a lot like a game, and you and I both know my feelings on that, Teresa, as I just said them.

  MY MOTHER, OVERHEARD: Act like you heard what I just said.

  MY FATHER, ASSUMED: Act like you heard what I just said.

  MY MOTHER, OVERHEARD: This is what I heard: “LaLaLa The Tom Culpeper Life Story Is About Him.” Do you think you’re the only one with feelings?

  MY FATHER, ASSUMED: Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t have feelings. Feelings are for wimmin and children.

  MY MOTHER, OVERHEARD: You’re such an asshole.

  MY FATHER, ASSUMED: Are you crying again? God, I thought they sold out of tears at Crate & Barrel. Are you ordering them online again? We’re not made of money.

  MY MOTHER, OVERHEARD: This was the best decision I ever made.

  She hung up.

  This place. What a hole. I could feel it tugging at the edges of my soul, trying to worr
y a piece free.

  I pressed PLAY on the video of Cole passing out on the stage of Club Josephine.

  Then I called him.

  At once he picked up. “Da?”

  My cruel and hating heart beat faster. On my laptop, Cole’s eyes vacated. The music faltered, but you could only really tell that after you’d watched it forty times.

  “Are you still on Minnesota time?” I asked.

  “I am on whatever time makes this call last longer,” he said.

  “What’s the next meal from now?”

  Cole in the video grabbed for the keyboard. His fingers slid from the keys.

  “Breakfast, I think. That’s the first one, right? The morning one?”

  In the video, his face hit the ground. He was utterly still.

  I was so tired of the missing and the dead.

  I wouldn’t get in too deep. I wasn’t going to fall in love with him again. I could always walk away again.

  “Let’s do that one.”

  Everything was all right after Isabel called.

  I ordered delivery falafel and sat in the apartment and watched music videos in my underwear. Someone had once asked me after a show, “Don’t you think music videos are dead?” There is no way for music videos to die. As long as there is a song and a person left alive, someone will sing it, and as long as there is a song and two people left alive, one person will sing it and the other will film it.

  The music video will die when we all go blind, and music will never die, because even when you can’t hear it, you can feel it.

  Now that I was alone and washed out with relief and a far way away from anything like home, it felt like the only thing that could fill me back up was music. I started with bands I knew, and then I let comments and referrals and Wikipedia pages guide me down endless sonic wormholes. I listened to Swedish folk rock and Elvis and Austropop and Krautrock and dubstep and things they hadn’t invented names for.

  Back before I was anyone, back when I was just a kid with a keyboard and a strange last name, this had been my drug.

  I was a shapeshifter.

  I lay back in my bed with my headphones on and the window open, and as the moon rose and striped over my eyes and car lights made a metronome pattern on the ceiling and the California smells washed over my remade wolf nostrils, I fell into song after song. The chords buoyed and buffered me. Down below was the crappy world full of insubstantial people, but here in this sound was nothing but perfection.

  Later, I woke up and I was wide-awake and my headphones were hot on my ears and I was tired of sleeping and it was too early to get up.

  The music that had carried me only hours before now felt too sluggish. I sat there for a few minutes, listening to it anyway. Part of me knew that if I stayed still long enough, the music would work its sleepy magic on me again.

  But the rest of me was awake and gnawing.

  I stood up. The closeness of the apartment, the domesticity of it, the four walls of it, pinched like a shoe.

  I went outside.

  In the cool night air, I was sharply alive, my heartbeat a guillotine.

  The stucco house opposite was dark and still as I let myself out of the gate. In the alley behind the house, I stood on the concrete pad and grimaced at the car Baby had secured for me. In the dim streetlight, I couldn’t tell what it was until I walked around it and stared at the badge, and even then, the fact of its brand meant nothing to me. It was an invisible car from the early 2000s. I unlocked the door and opened it. Inside, the seats were made of cloth the color of orphans’ rags.

  I stood outside it, the door hanging open, and dialed my phone. After a long space, Baby’s voice answered, sounding sharper than it had in person. “St. Clair?” Then she corrected: “Cole.”

  “This car isn’t going to do,” I said. “No one wants to watch a show about a rock star who drives around in a — what is this? Saturn. You know, I have seen Saturn, and it is much more impressive than this car. Also, Saturn is yellow, and this car is more like … menstrual.”

  “Cole, it’s three twenty-three.”

  “Twenty-four,” I corrected warmly. “How those minutes fly as we age. I want my Mustang.”

  I hadn’t, actually, until I got to the end of the sentence. But now I wanted it in an all-consuming way that was going to ruin easy sleep for days.

  “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.”

  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?”