Wherever Nina Lies

  Sean nods. “We’ve been treated to some triple-X live Jamie-on-Jamie action.”

  The girl reaches out her monster hands and puts her hand on his shoulder. “Oh, you poor dears,” she says. But she’s looking only at him.

  I feel a hot prickle of jealousy creeping up the back of my neck. A warm wind blows and ruffles her silky hair.

  “So where are you guys from?” the girl asks.

  “Awfully far away,” Sean says.

  They keep talking as we work our way up to the front of the line. They’re chatting it up like long-lost best friends and I feel completely invisible, which I don’t mind at the moment, because I sort of wish I were. Fifteen minutes pass and we’re only a few feet away from the doorway now. The girl in front of us flashes her ID and heads inside. And that’s when I spot a big sign 21+ for entry. No IDs, No Entry, No exceptions! I nudge Sean, who takes something out of his wallet and shows it to the bouncer. A fake ID. I’m standing at the front counter, paralyzed. “Come on, Nina,” Sean says, standing just past me inside the doorway. I look at him. Of course. I have her passport. I take it out and hand it to the very hairy guy who’s sitting on top of a tiny wooden chair. He barely glances at it before stamping the inside of my wrist with the face of a tiny monster and ushering me inside.

  Spit Pavilion is one giant room with scuffed wood floors and super high industrial-looking ceilings. There’s a stage straight back and a bar off to the left with dozens of people crowded in front of it and hung up behind it is a giant white-horned animal skull, the kind of thing you’d see tied to the front of a truck. The place smells like a mix of beer and wood smoke. I glance at Sean. His hands are in his pockets and he’s looking around, maybe trying to find the monster hands girl? I force myself to turn away and remind myself why I’m here.

  An opening band is playing: two guys on drums and a girl in lederhosen and combat boots singing:

  Nein nein nein! No no no! Nein nein nein I shoot you with crossbow.

  And then, finally, the lederhosen girl stops singing, and a guy in a bright red suit comes onstage and takes the mic.

  “That was Lady Bratvoorst direct from Germantown, Maryland. Give it up for Lady Bratvoorst everyone!” The crowd lets out a weak cheer. “And now, The Spit Pavilion could not be more fucking thrilled to bring back one of our very favorite bands of all time. We love them. You love them. Your momma loved them last night. Put your gray rubber hands together foooooor Monster Hands!” The crowd goes insane, cheering, screaming, making loud growly monster noises while two guys run out onstage and a third cartwheels out behind them. A moment later the music starts and the bar explodes in even louder cheers. All around me, people start dancing. I feel something inside me beginning to lift.

  And then I feel something cold and wet splashing on my leg.

  “Oh shit! I’m sorry!” I turn to my right, there’s a great big guy about one-and-a-half times the size of a regular person, with curly blond hair and giant rubber monster hands, standing there grinning apologetically. “Gravity!” he calls out. “It’s particularly strong over here I think!” I look down, there’s an empty beer glass tipped over on its side, pouring out around my flip-flops.

  “It’s okay,” I call back.

  “No one likes beer-feet! Let me get something to dry you off at least.” The guy takes one of my hands in his monster hand and drags me toward the bar. I turn back to look at Sean, but the spot he was standing in just seconds ago is now empty.

  “Hey, Eddie! Big clumsy idiot over here spilled all over this girl! Hook me up with some napkins!”

  The bartender smirks as he pours two different bottles simultaneously into a glass. “Spilling on a girl so you get to mop her? Oldest trick in the book!” He turns toward me. “Watch out for Danny over here!”

  The bartender hands Danny a big stack of napkins which Danny promptly hands to me. “Lest you think I am not a gentleman, I will not attempt to dry you.”

  I bend over and dry myself off, and when I stand back up, Danny is still there smiling.

  “I swear I didn’t spill on you on purpose just so I’d get to talk to you,” Danny says. “But if I’d seen you before I spilled…I might have!”

  “Thanks?” I say. “I think?” Danny’s smiling a big goofy grin, more funny than flirty. I crane my neck looking for Sean again. Where is he?

  “Shall we dance?” Danny says. He sticks out his hand.

  I keep looking around. No Sean. I feel a stab of disappointment. But then remind myself of that thing I seem to keep having occasion to need to remember—I’m not here for Sean, I’m here for Nina. He’s not my boyfriend, he’s just a friend, and we were drunk, and it didn’t mean anything, so if Sean wants to go off and do whatever else with whoever else, well that is not my concern, that’s his business…now if only I could really believe this.

  For the next hour, Danny and I dance like crazy. We do the Shopping Cart, the Roger Rabbit, the Moonwalk, the Lawnmower, and then a bunch of dances we make up—the Time Keeper, the Tooth Brusher, the Hair Comber, the Sandwich Eater. As we dance I can feel myself sweating out the hangover sadness. Whenever I start to think about Sean, about last night, or about the weirdness today, I just dance harder, dance sillier. And by the time Monster Hands plays the final chord of their encore, “Cupcake Battle Dome,” I am feeling kind of okay.

  “Thanks for the dancing,” I say to Danny. And then I excuse myself. It’s time to do what I came here for.

  “I’ll never forget you, beer-shoe girl!” Danny calls out behind me. “I’m going to get these dirty napkins framed!” I turn back and he smiles, and I wave. And that’s it. There’s a shiny black door next to the stage blocked by a giant guy with waist-length curly hair and a giant brown leather jacket. I watch as two girls in tiny matching gray dresses approach the door. They’re saying something to the guy. He’s shaking his head. They’re pouting. He crosses his arms. One of the girls pulls down the front of her dress and shakes her boobs at him. He’s barely even looking. Finally the girls give up, give the guy the finger, and walk away.

  I take a deep breath. And as I walk forward, I try and channel my inner Nina. I close my eyes and I suddenly remember something Nina had told me the night before my first day of middle school: If you’re going somewhere where you feel like you might not belong, the only person you need to work to convince is yourself. Everyone else is easy.

  I stand up a little straighter and walk toward the door. I’m not a groupie. I’m friends with the band. They’ ll be thrilled to see me. When I get to the door, the big guy is holding it open while a little guy walks through with a giant amp. I look the big guy straight in the eye and smile my biggest Nina-est smile.

  “I’m here to see Monster Hands,” I say.

  The guy just stares at me.

  “I’m friends with them,” I smile again, bigger this time.

  “Sure you are, honey.” He shakes his head and lets go of the door.

  “I’m serious!” I say.

  “Well, I’ll tell you the same thing I told Tits McGee over there.” He motions to where the girls in the gray dresses are standing by the bar doing shots. “The boys in the band didn’t tell me about any special guests tonight, and until I hear it from them, you’re not getting backstage.”

  “Well, then go ask them!” I say. “Tell them…tell them Nina Wrigley is here to see them. They’ll be happy to see me. I’m positive.”

  The guy looks at me again and tips his head to the side.

  “Seriously, they’ll be really upset if they find out I was here and they didn’t get to see me. I’m the girl who tattooed Ian’s stomach!”

  “Alright, alright, I’ll go and ask them.”

  The guy disappears behind the heavy metal door and reappears a few minutes later, smiling and looking a little embarrassed.

  “Sorry ‘bout that, Nina. We’ve just had a string of crazy fans trying to get back lately so I’ve just had to be kind of a jerk about it. They’re really excited you’re here, they
said to send you in. Go all the way back.”

  And then he winks and steps aside. I’m inside looking down a crowded hallway lined with guitars and amps and a dozen or so people are hanging out drinking beers. A guy in a charcoal gray suit is standing in front of a doorway at the end of the hall yelling “this is not a negotiable issue” over and over into his phone, emphasizing different words each time. “This is not a negotiable issue, this is not a negotiable issue.” I walk past him into the room.

  It’s strangely quiet, as though all the noise of the hallway died at the entrance. The two red-haired guys are sitting cross-legged on the couch eating bowls of cereal. The black-haired guy is standing by an open window, shirtless in a pair of pajama pants with kittens printed on them, smoking a cigarette. They all look up when I walk in.

  “Who the feck are you?” the kitten-pajama guy says in a thick Irish accent. He’s smiling.

  “You’re not Nina,” says one of the guys on the couch. He sounds very disappointed. I recognize him from the picture, he’s the one who had his arm around her. “Where’s Nina?”

  “You here for some cereal?” asks the guy on the other side of the couch. He has a short red beard, and a tiny milk mustache. He’s smiling. “We’ve got Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Lucky Charms, which I realize as I say it is a somewhat ironic cereal choice for us. You’d think a real Irishman wouldn’t want them.”

  “Don’t offer her cereal,” says Kitten Pajamas. “She lied to big Jimmy. She’s a Nina impersonator! She could be a crazed fan here to kill us!”

  “We’re not famous enough yet for that, Ian,” says Milk Mustache.

  “Like hell we’re not! So, I would like to restate my previous question, who the feck are you?”

  “I’m Ellie Wrigley,” I say. “Nina is my sister.”

  Ian narrows his eyes. I hold out her passport.

  Kitten Pajamas takes it, holds it up to his face. He looks at the picture, then at me, then at the picture, almost like he doesn’t believe it. “This is really her.” And then nods some more. “Peter, you want to see this.” He holds the passport out to the guy on the couch. Peter’s the one who had his arm around Nina in the picture.

  “Well, would you have a look at that,” Peter says. He puts his bowl of cereal down on the floor and holds the passport with two hands. “Jaysus.” He shakes his head. His mouth drops open a little bit. He was in love with her. I can tell just from looking at his face.

  “You alright?” Milk Mustache says. He wipes the mustache off his face.

  “How’s she doing?” Peter looks up at me.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I haven’t seen her in two years, which is why I’m here.”

  Peter just shakes his head.

  “So you guys did know her then,” I say. “And you knew her pretty well?”

  “Not as well as he would have liked,” says Ian.

  “I knew her,” Peter says. “Or at least I thought I did.” He looks up at me. There’s tension around his eyes, like he’s in pain but trying not to show it. “So she’s your own sister and you don’t know where she is then?”

  “She disappeared two years ago,” I tell them.

  “We kind of figured something was up with that girl,” Ian says. “Why’d she go?”

  “Don’t know,” I say. “I’m looking for her now. And I saw a photograph of you all standing with her at Bijoux Ink, or, well, I stole it actually. And then I saw a drawing she did that someone told me is going to be on your new album.”

  “And whoever told you that?” Ian asks. But he looks amused, not annoyed.

  “A really big fan of yours,” I say. “Well, two actually.”

  And Ian just shakes his head smiling. “Ah, the mad redheads, I presume?”

  I nod.

  “Well, that’s not a surprise, I don’t suppose, although I have a hard time imagining you associating with the likes of them. Then again, now what’s this you said about stealing from Bijoux?”

  “Um.” I look down at the floor. Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned this part, but it’s too late now. “The woman who worked there said she didn’t even know Nina, but I could tell that she did and then I got into the back room and when I saw the picture of you guys with my sister…I just took it and hid it under my shirt and snuck out.”

  Ian looks at me, and then at his bandmates, and they all burst out laughing. “Good on ya then,” Ian says. “God love her but Eden deserves something like that, now and again. Ah, Bijoux,” Ian smiles. “Favorite tattoo place in our old hometown, well, our second hometown after Galway, Ireland. Bijoux is the site of my greatest shame.” He stands up. “I bet Peter and Marc here I could toss eight balled-up napkins in the trash without missing one. I was sure I could do it!” He pulls his kitten pajamas down slightly; there on his stomach is a picture of the two other guys’ faces, inked in black. “Turns out I couldn’t.”

  “Now whenever a young lady so happens to be spending time down there,” Milk Mustache, aka Marc, grins, “she’s staring me and Peter in the face!”

  “So far I haven’t had any complaints,” Ian says.

  “Well why would you?” Marc lifts his cereal bowl to his lips and drains the last of the milk. “We’re gorgeous!”

  Ian adjusts his pajama pants. “If I won, they were going to have to get my face on their arses.”

  “You should consider yourself lucky to have that,” Peter says, and then looks at me. “Your sister was a genius. A true artist.”

  “Nina was only in Denver for a couple of weeks,” Marc says. “But poor Peter fell in love with your sister straight away. Wrote a song about her and everything, but never had the balls to tell the girl.”

  “He’s shy,” says Ian.

  “We were younger then and he didn’t yet realize that being a big famous rock star means you can have any girl you want,” Marc says.

  “That’s enough, boys,” Peter says, shaking his head. “She just wasn’t interested, alright?” He looks down at his lap. It’s sort of insane to think that this is the same guy who was doing handstands on stage only a few minutes ago.

  “I think she had a boyfriend,” I say. “I thought maybe she left with him.”

  “Well, not when we knew her she didn’t.” Ian says. “Or if she did, he certainly wasn’t with her when she left with us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She hitched a ride with us out of Denver. Poor Peter was so excited when she asked if she could come.” Ian sits down cross-legged on the floor, staring at the kittens dancing on his knees. “She was only with us for a few days, though. She left us when we got to Big Sur.”

  “Why there?” I ask.

  “Dunno,” Ian shakes his head. “She had us drive her up to this big house. She said she had to say good-bye to someone there, but we never found out who or why. And then that was it. My last memory of her was her standing in front of this giant house holding her little overnight bag and this giant snowboard, waving.”

  “Why did she have a snowboard?” Something clicks in my head suddenly. The other charge on her credit card bill, Edgebridge Sports. I’d almost forgotten.

  “To go snowboarding, I assumed.” Ian shrugs. “She was a mystery, your sister. And not too fond of questions. We asked her to get in touch but she never did. She left that drawing behind though, the one on our new album cover.”

  Peter leans over, reaches into a brown box, and pulls out a record and hands it to me. “Our label thought it would be cool to release a proper vinyl record. And this is it,” he says. “This is an advance copy they’re mostly just sending out to radio stations.” On the cover is Nina’s drawing, the one Jamie-girl showed me yesterday. “She never even got to see the album,” Peter says. “Never even knew that we put her drawing on there, actually. Will you take this and give it to her when you find her?”

  “Of course,” I say. And hearing him phrase it like that, when, not if, when, makes me smile. “Is there anything else you can tell me about your time with her? Anyth
ing she might have said about what she was doing or where she was going or…anything?”

  “Well, like I said, we dropped her off at a big house in Big Sur,” Ian says. “I bet you Peter remembers. He made us go back a couple months later on the way back to Denver.”

  “It was on our way,” Peter says. “Sort of…” Peter picks a green notebook up off the floor and pulls a pen out of the spine. He tears out a little sheet of paper and scribbles on it. “There,” he says, handing it to me. “That’s the address. Don’t know how much good that’ll do you, though. When we went back the place was all deserted-like except for this lonely looking groundskeeper fella who was wandering around trimming the hedges. Said no one had been there in months.”

  “It’s worth a try at least,” I say.

  “Do you want a bowl of cereal?” Marc has stood up and is pouring himself another bowl. “I’ll rinse a spoon for you and everything!”

  “I should go back out there.” I motion toward the door. “But thank you.”

  “She was a lovely girl, your sister was,” Peter says. “When you see her, would you give her this, too, for me?” Peter scribbles something else on a piece of paper and hands it to me, looking ever so slightly embarrassed. I look down. It’s his phone number.

  “I will,” I say.

  “And if you’re ever in a pinch,” Ian calls out after me, “you could always sell that album on eBay!”

  Twenty-five

  Back out in Spit Pavilion, the music is softer and no one is dancing. There’s a girl onstage in a baby blue dress with a flower pot balanced on her head, singing along with her acoustic guitar. And I am wandering through the quickly thinning crowd looking for Sean. I let the questions swirl through my head as I walk. So if Nina was single, then who exactly is J? And what happened with him? Did they run away together, and then break up? And why didn’t she just come back then? Or did they break up and then get back together? Is she living with this guy somewhere?