la la land

adrift in the city of the fallen angels
But when the suppers are planned
and the freeways are crammed
and the mountains erupt
and the valley is sucked
into cracks in the earth
will I finally be heard by you.
- “L.A.” (Young)


I: don’t hang your hopes on a crack in the fault line

I left work this afternoon and walked out into a perfect day. I was truly amazed. No smog (a momentous event in and of itself), blue sky, balmy breeze wending its’ way from the ocean, I stood in the parking lot and took several deep breaths. My first thought was to call Dre and babble at him about how I felt fortunate to be alive. I should have remembered that moment better, because it could be helpful knowledge at this juncture.

We’re sitting in McDonalds’ again. Dre looks blurry-eyed and guilty.

I remind myself that I’m not in a position to make demands of anyone, let alone The Troublemaker, but I am experiencing that sense of free-falling dread that kills my appetite, a weird metallic taste in my mouth.

“I’m sorry,” is all he says.

Sorry for what? I wonder. But I have ascertained that this is the end of the line. Though I have a feeling akin to being let out of the car before it goes off the cliff, rather than the typical metaphor of being shot through the heart.

(And who’s to blame?)

“I should have known it wouldn’t work. I’m too old for you, too vanilla.”

“Don’t say that,” he rejoins, and his sad face is almost too agonizing to behold.

“It’s true, though. Sometimes cultures mesh, sometimes they collide. I’m just glad you thought it was possible, at all.”

And he cries, just puts his head in his hands and cries, right in front of all the welfare mommas and the homeless people and the minimum wage slaves. Tears fall onto his French Fries and into his ice cream sundae, disturbing the perfect swirling pattern of the soft serve.

“I’m dropping the class.” He wipes his face with a pile of napkins.

“Don’t do it on my account,” I say, and I don’t mean that with any discernable malice. I just wouldn’t want him to waste his money, is all.

“No, it’s not that. I have a new job, I’m going to be moving soon.”

“Oh.”

I’ve always envied people who can drop everything and sail off into the unknown. Many times I feel as though if I left this city, I’d die. I experience panic attacks whenever I drive to Alhambra to visit my aunt, even. I want my ten-mile radius of concrete and birdshit and traffic and smog and decaying cultural landmarks. Dying palm trees.

I want the glitter. I want the dirt.

I want everything; but love, it appears, is going to continue to elude me.

* * *
One could say the sun was threatening to make an appearance the morning that Terry actually drove up to Malibu, but the accompanying glare from its’ efforts was bad enough, and he had a headache. Insomnia, night terrors, and other assorted psychosomatic ailments were wearing him down, but Terry plodded on, motivated by the promise of actual work, courtesy of a friend.

It was all about connections in LA, people liked to keep their friends employed for the cache factor more than a conscious seeding of the artistic landscape with quality product. And Terry was thankful that at least a few of his childhood friends had made it to the point where they could grant him the occasional favor. Of course, this meant he had to endure the socialization process: wherein he sat around for several hours marveling at the newest acquisitions, murmuring admiration for the latest piece of hollow entertainment they produced, gibing with barely-disguised envy at the surrounding rewards. . .but that was how one played the game.

He had browbeat the girl into lending him her car – he couldn’t afford a taxi all the way to Malibu, nor could his pride withstand the thought of a public reminder of his last spectacular screw-up - but in retrospect he had forgotten how nervewracking it was to drive in this city. He was glad to get on PCH and crawl behind a delivery truck, gathering both his thoughts and his dignity – but neither one would probably be of much use in this situation. Waiting in line to get through the security gate which violated federal statues regarding coastline public domain, Terry kept an eye out for any stray celebrities, but no one was jogging on the beach, nor ambling down the road to the convenience store, ostensibly to buy the junk food their personal trainers did not allow in the house. He thought about how nice it would be to have a beer, never mind that it wasn’t even noon. The guard looked askance at Terry, as if he didn’t believe he belonged with the car. True, the car was new, a gift from the girl’s parents, who could certainly afford it, but nor did he look completely destitute. He had actually showered, shaved, and dressed himself in a reasonably presentable fashion only an hour ago. But Terry was on the list, so he finally got waved through and carefully drove down the narrow accessway to James’ obscenely-priced redwood hovel. A pallet full of sandbags blocked the driveway so he was forced to park half in the landscaping, the absence of a real road precluding parking concerns.

He rang the bell four times and was ready to begin pounding on the door, regardless of the fact that some electronic thumpa-thumpa was seeping through the very foundation of the house, but then finally his friend Don answered the door, looking sleepy and debauched.

Nothing unusual there.

“Jesus, is that music loud enough, ya think?” Terry berated him.

“Oh fuck off, Biel. You’re such a party pooper now.” He left the door open and wandered back within, thankfully muting the source to a dull hiss.

“It’s nice to see you too, Don. Christ, don’t you guys ever clean?” He wrinkled his nose upon entering the foyer, it smelled of rancid pot smoke, equally rancid grease, and cat piss.

“We had to buy off our cleaning lady when she accidentally ate some of my peyote.”

Without asking, Terry had walked through the living room into the dining area and opened the patio door. Fresh sea air, straight from the Pacific, blew into the room, chilling him. He then took a deep breath and closed the door 3/4ths of the way.

“C’mon dude, it’s cold out there!”

“And it stinks in here, so bundle up, you fuckin’ drunk assbag!”

“Assbag, oooh I like that!” James came down the stairs leading a disheveled blonde to the front door. Terry nodded in response, then looked at the floor. He didn’t want any random civilians recognizing him. Fortunately, either the girl couldn’t see him or he didn’t register on her cultural trends radar. She departed without incident and James returned to the living room looking handsome and chipper, as always. James was the polar opposite of Don: he never looked bad, which had caused a mutual friend to admit while under the influence of tequila and ecstasy ”Dude, I’m a dude, but I’d totally fuck him.”

While it continued to be difficult for Terry to believe that James and Don probably represented as close to a pinnacle of success as could be obtained in the film industry, the wastrel and the control freak had produced five action movies that had grossed over 30 million worldwide, though neither the financial success nor the pop culture cache had elevated their lifestyle above its’ current White Trash Wins Lotto mentality. Yet they had all come from good homes, but as Terry learned in rehab, Hollywood means never having to grow up if you really don’t want to.

“Dude, you’re looking good,” James said as he passed him on his way to the refrigerator. “You did something with your hair, right?”

“Yeah. Uh, James, my agent really wants to know –“

“No details right now. Right now, coffee.”

So Terry wandered around the house while James made coffee, which, given his obsessive attention to detail, generally took at least half an hour. He spent some time in James’ office, the walls plastered with the one sheets of his films, self-congratulatory photos of himself with various celebrities and on the red carpet at premieres and award shows. It made him a bit queasy, so then he moved upstairs to Don’s lair. They had knocked down the wall between two of the bedrooms so that he could crawl right from his bed to his desk whenever he needed to crank out a revision.

“Hey, it’s the clichéd drunken writer!” Terry cracked, at the sight of Don splayed on his bed, watching The View while sipping a Rum and Coke.

“Fuck you, douchebag. What the hell are you doing here, anyway? I thought you weren’t supposed to associate with our kind anymore.”

“James says there’s a pilot he can get me on. Something on HBO.”

“You’ll have to show your ass, then. But you’re pretty, you can swing it.”

“Prettier than you, anyway. Speaking of ass, I heard about that sex tape thing –“

He knew he was going to have to duck for that comment, and sidestepped instinctively as Don sent a glass ashtray flying in his direction. It hit the opposite wall, barely missing a window and due to its’ mass did not break but upended upon the carpeting, ashes falling around Terry like snow.

“Guess you don’t want to talk about it, huh?”

Don flipped him off, scowling: hungover and miserable. Terry didn’t have the heart to tell him that Jack had already obtained a copy of the tape and they watched his pasty flabby body flopping around as he had sex with semi-renowned starlet Amie Jerome, professing his deep and unwavering desire in comically flowery dialogue. Don had never written anything so chick-lit in any of his scripts; just another example of how men would do almost anything for pussy. Especially high-end pussy.

“Why don’t you go 12-step your ass out of my room, ‘kay?”

The tone was flat, and Terry knew Don was truly pissed. He was borderline sociopathic so when he started to act like a robot, that’s when things got ugly.

“Whatever.” Terry replied, and studied Don’s face for a moment, bearded and pouting, as it looked at the television screen. They were all the same age, class of ’83, but Don looked a good five years older because he was losing his hair and gaining a paunch. He liked to pass himself off as a bad boy with a beard and tattoos but Terry knew that every time he wound up in the County drunk tank his one phone call was to James’ legal staff, whining that he couldn’t spend the night in jail because he had deadlines. James thought incarceration might do wonders for Don’s character, but Terry feared it would only reinforce the delusion of his outlaw status.

James appeared to be satisfied with the results of his coffee brewing and they sat across from each other at the dining table, which Terry could tell James had quickly cleaned, catching a whiff of 409 as he lowered himself into a chair.

“So, are you up for this part?” James stared at him, his model-worthy blue eyes and carefully cultivated three-day growth accentuating the finely-chiseled planes of his face, and Terry had to remember to close his mouth, to resist being hypnotized.

“I don’t even know what it is!”

“It’s you.”

“What?”

“Okay, it’s somebody like you. The script is about these three guys who are just trying to get by in this town, you know, struggling actors and stuff.”

“Uh, there’s already a show about that.”

“This one is better because it really reminded me of us, you know? Back in the day?”

“I’m a little too old to be portraying someone struggling, don’t you think?”

James reached over and held one of Terry’s hands. He turned on that charming gaze, again, totally sincere and meaningful. Terry sighed, it would be rude to look away when it was so obviously proffered.

“That’s the pathos of it all,” James said, his voice a hushed throb that Terry knew he used to sell the suits on whatever half-assed high concept Don managed to come up with once every two years. “You know, you’re struggling, but you’re going to win because you’re older, wiser. People can relate to that.”

Terry wanted to say maybe, but I don’t want to relate to it, and I’m the one living it, but simply nodded, attempting humility. A certain I sure have learned my lesson!, he hoped.

“So my company is producing. I can get you attached, no questions asked.”

“But I have questions!”

“And I think the primary one is: can I afford to turn down a job?”

They both knew the answer to that, and Terry decided it wouldn’t be so bad to let James be the Good Samaritan, although it meant that they’d have to do something stupid and male bonding-like to seal the deal.

Maybe Jack could take him golfing, and leave Terry out of it altogether.

“Drink your coffee, sport,” James commanded. “Then we’re going to go buy me a car.”

There were days when Terry hated Hollywood with the vengeance of an action hero horribly wronged.


They exited the house and stood in the driveway. James whistled in the direction of the borrowed ride.

“Where’d you get the Merc?” he asked, eyebrow cocked with either envy or disbelief.

“It’s my girlfriend’s car.”

“Who is she? Do I know her?”

“No, she’s just a girl.”

James gave Terry another searching look, but Terry was implacable.

“How are you going to get your car out of the garage?” he pointed a toe at the pallet.

“Oh I don’t park there. Don’s car is in there and he can’t drive anyway. I park next door – the people who own that house are never there – so I pay them to use their garage.”

“Did Don get his license suspended?”

“Dude, that happened, like, six months ago. Don’t you read the Reporter?”

“No!” Terry exclaimed.

“No wonder you never know what’s going on,” James commented as they walked to the house on the immediate right and James opened the garage door by way of some kind of keyless remote. The interior was revealed, housing three cars and four motorcycles, all parked precariously close to one another. “Hmm,” he murmured, putting his index finger on his lips, considering. “Let’s take the ‘Vette.”

Terry pulled the tarp off another car, a 60s-era ragtop Karmann Ghia painted a particularly arresting shade of orange.

“You still have this piece of shit?”

“Shut up!” James went over to the car and put his arms around the front, resting his cheek against the windshield. “He didn’t mean it baby, you know he’s always hated you.”

Terry rolled his eyes and wandered over to the Corvette. He tried to keep his tone casual, but the lessons of his own life colored his speech a more somber shade.

“Don’s killing himself, you know.”

“Yeah, but I figure I can get another three or four years out of him before he kicks.”

“I’m serious! And you may not have that long.”

“So am I. But how does it happen, anyway? I mean, that’s what you were doing, right?”

Terry knew James expected him to be defensive, but he had left his pride back in his apartment.

“Does he drink every day?”

“Yeah.”

“Does he drink to excess every day?”

“Like, falling down drunk? No. Some days he might just have a couple beers, and then the next day he drinks all day. It varies.”

“It sneaks up on you. If he does any binge drinking it’s just going to get worse. Dude, we know a lot of functional alcoholics, you know we do. People who drink every day, but not enough to be totally plastered. But if you have to get completely bombed at least once a week, then you move from functional to raging. That’s exactly what I did, and you know what? I’m alive, but my pancreas is messed up and I’ll be lucky to make it to 50. Don’s a prick, but does he really deserve to die like that? Does anybody?”

James looked at the ceiling, twirling a set of car keys around his finger.

“I get you. Trust me, it’s not like I don’t know. But we’re not talking about this right now, okay?”

Terry again heard his inner voice reply If we don’t talk about this now, then we’ve both got a funeral to attend later., but said nothing aloud. After all, neither of them had been there when he had reached rock bottom, and he seriously doubted James would do anything for Don, even though they were partners. There was an unspoken code in the industry that people were responsible for their own problems, that it was unseemly to intervene in the course of self-destruction.


“So why do you need another car?” Terry shouted to James as they sped towards Santa Monica in James’ Corvette, with the top down.

“Have you seen the new Porsches? They’re totally sweet!”

A reluctant slamming of brakes brought them to a red light.

“My sponsor’s got a Turbo, it’s nice.”

“Yeah? One of the new ones?”

“No, it’s a few years old. But it still kicks ass.”

The light turned green and James overeagerly ground his gears.

“Dude, easy on the tranny there.” Terry teased.

“So who’s your sponsor?” James yelled.

“His name is Jack Perris.”

“The drummer for Aubergine? Seriously?!”

“Yeah.”

“Dude, that’s awesome!” James screeched, and Terry was suddenly sorry he brought it up at all.

“Yeah, he’s a cool guy,” was all he could think to say.

“Can I meet him? Like, right now?”

“Well, I know where he lives, but. . .”

“Please? Dude, I’d owe you big time.”

“If this series get picked up I guess we can call it even.”

James had already cut across three lanes of traffic and barreled onto the nearest onramp for the 10.

“Where does he live? Can I get there from here?”

“In Burbank. You’re gonna have to get on the 405 so we can double back to the 134, or something.”

“I’m on it!” James exclaimed and executed a number of maneuvers he must have learned at stunt driving school, Terry thought queasily as he hung on for dear life.


When they pulled up in front of Murph’s house Jack was playing one-on-one in the driveway with a black kid who looked to be about sixteen. The kid had Jack sweating, his navy blue sleeveless t-shirt was almost completely darkened with perspiration. He also wore Lakers’ replica shorts and a pair of Air Jordans which had seen better days, duct tape keeping the right toe connected to the rest of the shoe. Jack often complained that even if he could afford new shoes, Nike’s latest models were too narrow across the instep for his already enormous feet. He paused in the middle of a block when he saw Terry emerge from the car.

“Hold up,” he said to the kid, placing a hand on his head. The kid shrugged and grabbed a nearby bottle of Gatorade, chugging down the liquid inside.

“Hey man,” he greeted Terry, grinning. “What’s up?”

“My friend here wanted to meet you,” Terry replied, gesturing toward James.

The kid butted in. “Ain’t I seen you on TV?” he asked Terry.

“Probably,” Terry admitted, shrugging slightly. “But did you see Desperate Men?”

“Aww yeah, that shit was bangin!’”

“Well this guy directed it!” he said, pointing at his companion.

“For real?” the kid exclaimed. James nodded, trying to look nonchalant, but Terry knew his day had just been made. “James Ford,” he said, holding out his hand.

“You make some cool movies, man!”

“This is Chauncey,” Jack said, putting his hands on the kid’s shoulders. “He lives down the block from us, and he should probably be in school right now, but I won’t tell if you don’t.”

The two men laughed and shook their heads.

“Well now that I beat your old stanky ass I guess I’ll go in. Fifth period is my favorite, anyway.”

“You keep talkin’ shit, dude, but I’ma smoke ya one of these days.”

“Naw, check it man, you’se too slow!” And to prove his point Chauncey took a jumper from the bottom of the driveway, half a foot at least out of the range of three-point territory, which Jack attempted to block but the ball sailed right through the gap between his arms and sank into the basket mounted above the garage door with seemingly smug finality. The boy threw up his arms and let out with a kind of battle cry, as Jack came over to him, palm extended up.

“And it’s Chauncey in the clutch!” he exclaimed. They touched palms, touched fists, and the kid grabbed a nearby gym bag and walked down to the street.

“Nice to meet y’all. Later, Jack.”

“Later, C. So you’re the director, huh? Nice to meet you.” He held out his hand and James grabbed it, pumping vehemently.

“Jack, I gotta tell you, you’re an amazing musician.” James was close to babbling, as his words came out in a rushed stream.

“Well thanks, that’s nice of you to say.” Jack smiled, but his eyes caught Terry’s and their expression was one he could read succinctly. You bring a fanboy to my house?! Jack didn’t distinguish between levels of fandom, they were all ultimately distasteful to the sense of normalcy he attempted to create, in his current state of notoriety. “So how do you guys know each other?”

“We grew up in the same town: me, James and Don Thompson. We all dropped out of college at the same time and came out here to be stars.”

“That worked out pretty good, then,” Jack said, a sly glint in his eyes directed at Terry.

“Yeah, pretty much,” James agreed. “But you, you’re a legend!”

Jack looked down at his shoes, and Terry could see him biting his lower lip, a sarcastic retort probably ready to literally fall out of his mouth.

“So Terry tells me you’ve got a Porsche Turbo,” James said.

“My baby! Yeah, you wanna see?”

“Definitely. I’m thinking of getting a 996.”

Jack opened the garage door, and looked lovingly at LILIA. “Hey beautiful,” he said softly, then looked over at James. “996? Dude, the remod of the 911 totally smokes the rest of the new line. Sex on wheels!”

Terry, already bored with the conversational tack, entered the house and called out into the gloom.

“Hey Murph!”

“Oh hey Terry, what brings you here?” Murph came to the kitchen doorway, wiping his hands on a dishtowel. “You hungry? I made French Toast this morning, but Jack and Chauncey ate it all. I can make more if you like, with some bacon?”

“Nah, it’s okay, thanks. My friend wanted to meet Jack, and I owed him because he’s getting me a job.”

“Yeah? Well that’s good. What’s it for, a movie?”

“TV show.”

“Ah, well that would be nice, wouldn’t it? Steady source of income and all that.”

“Oh yeah,” He poured himself some grapefruit juice from a bottle on the table. “So what’s with the kid?”

“Chauncey? His mother lives on this block, lived here longer than I have. When Jack moved in, one day he had LILIA up on blocks in the driveway, working on her, and Chauncey came right up and offered to help, bold as anything. He’s a nice kid, I think Jack believes he’s doing good by being a big brother, since his own family won’t talk to him now.”

“Funny how people are just drawn to him.”

“Yeah. I call it ‘stealth charisma.’”

Terry chuckled, choking slightly on his swallow. “Why?”

“Because it sneaks up on you, doesn’t it?”


Terry figured that half an hour was long enough for James to be starstruck, so he reluctantly went back out to the garage, where James was waxing eloquent about staging explosions and Jack was following along, slightly frowning, which Terry interpreted to be his expression of polite disdain.

“Hey, where’ve you been?” he asked.

“Oh Murph and I were just shooting the shit. So did Jack talk you into buying a Turbo?”

“Well, I’m gonna have to give the 911 a shot, that’s for sure. We’d better go, dude, I need to stop in at the office too.”

“I just need to talk to Jack for a minute, okay?”

James said his goodbyes with a surfeit of handclasps, and Jack was gracious, though it appeared he was gritting his teeth, such was the counterfeit quality of his smile. James walked down to his car and climbed inside.

“Dude, you grew up with that guy? He’s such a tool!”

“Oh I know. Believe me, if it weren’t for the fact that he just got me a job, I would have never agreed to bring him over here.”

“Don’t do that anymore, okay? Please.”

“I’m sorry. Hey, I had to leave the girl’s car at James’ place. Do you think Murph would be up to driving me out there so I can pick it up? I really don’t want to go car shopping with him.”

“I’ll drive you.”

“What are you doing?”

“With my life, you mean?” Jack asked, giving his friend a sardonic grin.

“No, I mean, what do you have to do today?”

“Tonight’s the show, but I don’t have to be at the Key Club ‘til three.”

“Tonight?”

“Yeah dude, I told you at least three times!”

“Sorry, I’ve had insomnia for three nights now and I’m just screwed up. Okay, let me go tell James.”

Terry walked down to the car and had a brief, heated discussion with his other friend. The car sped off with a distinct screech shortly thereafter.

“What did you tell him?” Jack asked, closing the garage door and locking it.

“I told him you needed me for something and I couldn’t say no because you’re my sponsor.”

“Thank you, AA!” Jack replied, throwing his hands in the air in mock gratitude. “Okay, let me take a shower and then we’ll see how fast I can get there.”

“I’ll be sure to bring a garbage bag – James nearly had me blowing chunks on the way over here.”

“Oh no, don’t even think of vomiting on my baby. I made Sandy stop being friends with this chick who spilled coffee in the backseat one time. That’s just wrong.”

“Oh please, you guys and your cars, I can’t take anymore today!”

“See, you’re such a pussy, Biel, I guess that’s why you’re an actor,” Jack sniped as they went into the house.

“Yeah, you’ve got me totally reduced to a cliché, thanks Perris. Are you charming the new guys the same way?”

“Not yet, but it’s only been two weeks, after all.”

“Knowing you, it won’t be long now.”

Murph had diplomatically allowed Jack to occupy the master bedroom with attached bathroom, and Terry busied himself by looking through various magazines while Jack undressed and readied himself for a shower. Taking a piss he called out to Terry, “Don’t even think about stealing any of my shit, okay?”

“Why would I want your crappy stuff, loser?”

“Hey, the last eBay auction of a drumhead signed by me closed at over $200! I’m still a collectible!”

“And so is a Hummel figurine, but who actually wants that shit in their house?”

Jack nailed him right in the face with his t-shirt.

“I bet James would buy this,” Terry said, holding it up and sniffing at it.

“Fuck off, homo!” Anything else was lost to the roar of the water.


* * *
Miranda considered it a personal failure that the only numbers Pete had managed to program into his phone at the office were Eli’s and his stockbroker.

“What do I pay you for, then?” he would ask, his dark eyes betraying a certain merry derision.

“I would hope it’s not merely for making your phone calls. That would be a definite waste of my talents.”

“You give good phone, mademoiselle.”

“I owe it all to you, the original mindfucker.”

That appellation would make him laugh uproariously. Pete thought of it now as he hit the first speed dial button on his phone. Eli, ever efficient, answered the call before the second ring.

“Benefits, this is Elizabeth Marita.”

“Is this Liz?” he asked loudly, doing his best impression of Jack’s flat-voweled intonation.

“Peter, you never fool me with that shtick, and yet I find it oddly adorable.”

“I have to resist the urge to start breathing heavily; you know I love it when you use that ‘strictly business’ tone.”

“So are you giving yourself a handjob for lunch or was there an actual reason for your call?”

“Can’t I just call, proclaim my love, that sort of thing?”

“You’re not in the doghouse, you don’t have to kiss my ass.”

“Oh yes I do. But okay, I’m reminding you that you need to meet me here after work.”

“Ah, right. Now why the hell are they playing a midweek gig, again?”

“To discourage the tourists from attending. And Gordo thinks it will place less pressure on Jack.”

“If anything I’d think a club full of rabid drooling fans would mean enormous pressure. The kind they make diamonds out of coal with.”

“That’s an especially astute metaphor, my darling.”

“Enough!” But she was laughing, always a good sign. He smiled at the phone, as if it actually contained something of his wife.

“Gordo promised us good seats in the VIP balcony. We can count how many people are wearing Aubergine shirts.”

“See, that is why I hate this town. People have no sense of appropriateness here.”

“But honey, you’re a Valley Girl, remember?”

“Do we actually have a doghouse? Because you might be bunking there tonight.”

Pete laughed. “I love you, Eli.”

“Love you too. See you around 6:30 or so.”

Miranda waited a few minutes before taking his messages in. Pete had a tendency to space on his surroundings after a conversation with Eli, no doubt engaged in some romantic daydream. Though the two most important women in his life disliked each other, they honored their respective positions and the rituals involved with each.

“Sorry to intrude on your erotic reverie, boss, but duty calls,” she announced, entering his office with a handful of message slips. Pete looked through them, throwing several over his shoulder. They fluttered to the floor behind his chair.

“I can’t believe people are calling in favors to come to the show. You’d think they’d save something like that for when they want me to keep their latest disgrace out of the Times.”

“Putting a gag on scandal is nothing compared to the drama of seeing the phoenix rise reborn from the ashes of his downfall.”

“Everybody is so friggin’ poetic today, what’s up with that?” Pete exclaimed.

“Maybe an earthquake is coming. You know: animals get restless, and the great glittering uncultured start waxing grandiloquent.”

Pete grunted, continuing to look through his messages. “Only in L.A.”

* * *
Jack was amazed the route had become so ingrained after only a few weeks – as he generally had difficulty remembering times and places even within the context of daily routine. But as he positioned LILIA in front of the gate bordering Pier 11 he couldn’t help but be impressed by his own determination.

Getting out to unlock the gate, Jack took a moment to examine the landscape closely before fully emerging. Only a week earlier a couple of wharfrats had attempted an ambush to divest him of his beloved automobile, and he responded by grabbing a G10 from behind the driver’s seat (having long arms was a definite advantage in life, not just drumming) and taking his best swing at someone’s head. He was vaguely aware that one of them was mostly likely armed, but in such moments those distant points of situational logic were as unreal as any concept that might possess a physical explanation, like starlight.

When he related the episode to his new bandmates, Gordon’s response, after a moment of deadpan scrutiny, was:

“What the hell do you need a golf club that heavy for?”

The eyes of everyone in the room turned to Jack’s face, awaiting the reply. As the alpha male of the enterprise, Gordon was very rarely challenged when it came to sardonic replies, and Jack was puzzled by the number of sotto voce retorts to his cutting jibes. In Aubergine, the collective had prided themselves on their dry-as-a-Gin-Martini wit and would spend hours playfully sniping at one another. Outsiders tended to see it as passive aggression, but they viewed it as spirited competition: a decidedly masculine sort of pastime.

“Well Gordo, there’s two reasons: one is to kill gophers, because as you know, the gopher is an enemy of the sacred fields of play.”

“And the other?” his questioner prompted, unsuccessfully attempting to hide a smirk.

“Pete said I should use clubs that are at least as heavy as my dick.”

The room echoed with laughter, and although Gordon didn’t join in, he did give Jack a glance that expressed a sentiment along the lines of well played. A begrudging admiration.

His first rehearsal had the aura of being in a roomful of puppies – eager upturned faces – and he felt they were going easy on him. But then Gordon, ever sly, suggested playing the raga-like “Silicone Sunlight,” a track from the EP they had produced themselves and sold at shows. When it eventually ended up in the hands of various A&R representatives, a frenzied bidding war erupted faster than you can say next big thing.

“Dude, what time signature is that in, anyway? I’m likely to go into a coma.”

“I dunno, 12/8 I think.”

“Sounds like a job for Mr. Click.”

Dex snickered, but Gordon’s expression was unchanging. “My idea, however, is when we do this live, we will play progressively faster each measure.”

“Until. . .what? Our arms fall off?”

“Or my fingers start to bleed, whichever comes first.”

“It’s really hard to clean blood out of the neck, have you noticed that?” Marco asked aloud, rhetorically.

“Okay, let’s see whatcha got there, Gordo. You start, I’ll drop in.”

The two of them played for fifteen minutes until Gordon caved because his right hand began to cramp. Applause and scattered chuckles filled the space the music had previously occupied, as Jack grinned and played a paradiddle on the rim of his snare.

He was winded, but managed to keep his breathing even while teasing the other.

“Damn Gordo, you’ve been listening to Egg!”

He nodded in response as the others puzzled. Gordon responded with a breath between each word.

“Obscure. Prog. Band.”

“That’s all he ever listens to,” Jeff groused, taking a moment to adjust the tuning of his bass yet again. He claimed the ambient humidity of the harbor was forever rendering his guitar out of tune, despite the repeated claims of his bandmates that he just couldn’t play worth a damn. He knew that really wasn’t true, as Gordon would never tolerate someone who couldn’t keep up with the rest of them. Especially the leader.

“You know what blows my mind about that band?” Gordon asked Jack, ignoring the others, “They were totally contrapuntal, like a rock version of Sly and the Family Stone.”

“See now, except for the horns, I mostly think of Sly as rock, you know? It’s not really funk like Stax or Motown was at that time.” Jack responded, warming to the topic.

“That’s true, but still, it was pretty daring for a rock band to use that type of arrangement. What I was trying to do with what we just played was my own take on that mid-section of ‘Long Piece #3,’ have you heard that one?”

“Yeah, I’ve got that record.”

“You know how in the second part it’s all spacey and then it builds back up to the groove? Then it gets all fusion-like in the third part?”

Jack nodded, thoroughly engaged.

“I was aiming for something like that.”

“Works for me, dude.”

Marco leaned over to Dex and murmured, “Who would have thought Jack Perris would turn out to be a geek just like Gordo?”

“Dude, that’s why Gordo never wanted anybody else.”


Some time mid-evening they would stop to take a dinner break, generally burritos from Los Hermanos delivered by Dre, who would then hang around for a while, reminiscing with his former bandmates.

“Sounds like you guys had some wild times back in the day,” Jack finally remarked to Dre as he nursed a faux lager and went through ergonomic exercises on his wrists.

“Eh, you know how it is in Hollywood – things can get as crazy as you want them to –“

“- or become as boring as you let them.” Dex concluded.

“Boredom is a direct cause of stupidity, that’s for sure.”

“What’s the stupidest thing you guys ever did because you were bored?” Marco asked. The others gave him impatient looks, but Jack grinned and drawled in response.

“Domestically, or abroad?” He then chuckled and seemed to consider a reply, his forehead creasing slightly. “Hmm, well this goes back to the beginning. I used to live on the second floor of this converted warehouse, off of Fairfax. It was just one big room, with a bathroom, and James and I were the only ones who were gainfully employed at the time – we hadn’t even started playing gigs yet - so everybody was living in my loft. I actually had to put Tony in a chokehold most of the time to get him out of my bed.”

“You made everyone sleep on the floor?” Gordon asked, incredulous.

“Well shit, it was my place! I was about ready to just move into our rehearsal space and sleep behind my kit – at least it was quiet there, most of the time. Anyway, one night nobody was in the mood to do anything but fuck around so we came back to the loft and James had the idea to make paper mache people and put them all outside.”

“What?”

“Yeah, you know he’s an artist, so he thought it would be funny to freak people out – like someone goes to take out the trash and there’s a dumpster diver – but he’s only paper mache!”

Dre choked on his drink with laughter. Gordon gave him a strange look.

“Dude, don’t you remember that one episode of The Twilight Zone where that guy and his wife wake up in a deserted town? Everything is fake and at one point he’s all, ‘It’s only paper mache!’” This brought forth a fresh burst of laughter. Dex joined in.

“I remember that one – they turn out to be dolls or something, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” Jack continued, “so James says, ‘We need newspaper, flour, and chicken wire.’ And we’re all ‘Where the hell are we gonna get chicken wire after midnight?’ And Tony says, ‘Why don’t we borrow it from your work?’ Right away I knew it was going to turn out to be a bad idea.”

“Where did James work?” Dex asked.

Gordon gave his partner a disgusted look. “Dude, everybody knows he worked for Disney!”

“Well not me, fanboy!”

Jack laughed heartily at the exchange. “Yeah well, you can imagine the scrutiny the security guard gave us: a bunch of long-haired scruffy hooligans showing up in Culver City at one in the morning. James flashes his employee badge at the guy and he’s all, ‘And who are your associates, if you don’t mind my asking, Mr. Hughes?’”

Jack did his best to imitate the patrician tone of the rent-a-cop and the assemblage was rolling. Even Gordon was laughing by the point in the story.

“James says, ‘Uh, this is my effects crew.’ And we’re all trying to look serious, you know, like we actually know what we’re doing. So the guy asks to see our IDs and James says, ‘They’re independent contractors.’ Then Tony says, ‘Look, we’ve got a deadline, do you want to go into Eisner’s office tomorrow and explain why we didn’t get the effects done on time?’ And we’re all trying not to die laughing at that point; Tony was really good at getting in people’s faces and yelling at them, like he was someone important. He wanted to be an actor, so he was always doing that, inventing personalities to intimidate people.”

“Yeah I saw him in that one indie movie, the one where he plays a priest or something? That was trippy.” Jeff commented.

“Yeah, so we’re totally running a scam on this security guard, and he ends up letting us in. We go over to this one warehouse and find some chicken wire. Then Tony wanders into the costume department and the next thing we know he and Todd are playing dress-up and I’m getting all paranoid ‘cause the coke was kicking in. I keep grabbing James by the shirt going, ‘The cops are gonna show up, man, they’re coming!’ James is looking at me like I need to be in a rubber room, T and T are dressed up like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and everything is getting more surreal by the minute.”

Jack paused at this moment to join the hilarity. “Then, James had one of those moments he’s famous for, where he just stops and sits down and starts doing something totally unrelated to whatever it is we’re supposed to be doing. He looks at me and says, ‘Have you ever thought about dyeing your hair?’ And I’m all, ‘What?!’”

It was a good five minutes or so before Jack could finally finish the story.

“So I finally get him to focus on the moment –“

“But why did he want you to dye your hair?”

“I dunno, he said I looked too Germanic or something. I’m all, ‘Fuck no, I’m not dyeing my hair!’ And he tried to talk me into it as I’m pushing him back into my truck and we leave. As we stop at the gate I realize that Tony is still wearing the goddamn costume and he looks at the guard and says ‘Don’t you know who I am?’”

His audience began to literally scream with laughter.

“Dude, I just fucking floored it. I was convinced that the police were gonna show up. For days every time the bell rang I thought it was going to be somebody from Disney. I was terrified of fucking Disney, man.”

“So what happened with the paper mache people?” Gordon asked.

“Oh god, we put them out and the homeless people stole them. Just fucking carted them away. After all that we were seriously pissed. We managed to save one, though.” He looked around the room. “Do you have a copy of Dessicated?”

Gordon went to fetch the disc from his collection, and Jack opened the case to reveal a strange-looking blue figure on the back of the booklet.

“That’s him. James made him anatomically correct, but some chick broke it off when she tried to use it for real. Then James painted him that ugly color and I couldn’t stand to look at it anymore so I put it in the hall closet. Gave me a fucking heart attack the night James got it out to photograph for the artwork – he left it in the bathroom and I went to take a piss – I remember screaming. Tony’s all, ‘Did your dick finally fall off, Perris?’”

Only snickering at this portion of the anecdote, but by all in attendance.

“Yeah, so that was pretty stupid, all things considered.”

“Well Jackson, I can honestly say that we’ve never attempted to steal anything from a major corporation nor resorted to bizarre arts and crafts as a result of being bored.” Gordon attested, his sarcastic manner returning.

“And that’s why we were the rock stars, Gordon.”

Jack sat back and folded his hands behind his head, looking smug.

“Right on, big man,” Dre said, nodding.

“Could you be more sycophantic?” Gordon sniped.

“Oh I’m sure I could try,” Dre countered.

“He’s got you there, Gordo. Just shut up and go get us some ice cream,” Dex said, consciously fey. Gordon held his gaze in reply for a few seconds, then relented. Jack winked at him and Gordon figured he wasn’t attempting to override his authority, merely provide entertaining fodder to ingratiate himself. Jack demurred on the offer of sweets, murmuring something about needing to go check in with his sponsor. They walked outside together and by their respective cars Jack put a hand on Gordon’s shoulder.

“Dude, I totally respect your authority, but if you call me Jackson again I’m going to have to crush your nuts. My mother named me, so only she gets to call me that.”

Gordon laughed, really laughed, for the first time in at least a week and nodded his head.


But of course, he planned to do it again anyway. Because a strong leader never took physical threats seriously, and although Gordon knew of the infamous Perris temper, he also knew Jack wanted to prove he could be a rock star again more than he wanted to save face.


II: the empowerment of inequality
If you meet the Buddha in the road, kill him.
- paraphrase of proverb by Lin Chi

He had not left his condo in five days when Brendan sent The Buddha over to visit. This was an unprecedented event, as The Buddha rarely left his own house over in Beverly Hills. Clients who wished to avail themselves of his services used the recording studio on the grounds of his mansion: a converted guest house in the back by the swimming pool. Jon had encountered The Buddha at various stages in his career, and found him unerringly creepy. He radiated the type of calm that most people would attribute to large doses of chemical assistance, but those who knew The Buddha best said it was the result of disciplined meditation.

When the doorbell rang, Jon was on the couch watching reruns of Melrose Place and eating two-day-old cold pizza. He froze at the sound, then made a stabbing motion at the television with his remote. He checked the display of his cell phone, picking it up from the coffee table in front of the couch. No one had called since he last spoke with Brendan the day before. Who had assured him that all involved parties were perfectly okay with him taking a little time off, since Leanna’s record was essentially complete. Slightly confused, hungover, and more than a little sheepish, Jon opened his front door.

The Buddha gave him a closed-mouth smile and held out his hand, mala beads clicking on his right wrist as it grasped Jon’s.

“Hello Jon, may I come in?” he asked. His voice was deep, yet gentle. Jon recalled that about him from previous meetings. In crowded, noisy rooms one had to strain to hear him, to the extent that every paparazzi shot showed him murmuring into someone’s ear in an almost seductive fashion.

Almost, because The Buddha wasn’t a person anyone would consider seductive. His influence and fortune were considered very erotic to the porn starlets he carried around town like accessories, but his true desire was exerting his influence on musicians to the extent that many of them grew pale at the thought of working with any other producer. The Buddha encouraged codependency like no other, an ability that most in the field considered essential to job security.

Jon’s first thought was Oh Christ, someone thinks I’ve lost my fucking mind.

His second thought: Brendan, I’m going to kill you.

“Uh, sure Dave.” He gestured behind him with one hand.

Once The Buddha had moved past him into the murk of his living room, Jon stood for a moment squinting in the sunlight. A group of kids were playing baseball in the street a few units down, so he figured it must be past midday, but had no idea of the actual hour.

Turning around, he noticed Dave was looking at the small pile of books on his dusty, mostly unused bookcase, where his Grammy was prominently on display. He closed the door and opened the curtains of one of the large front windows.

“Do you read much, Jon?” The Buddha asked him, setting down of the resident books, a Michael Crichton novel.

“Don’t really have time, no.”

“We make time for the things that matter, don’t you think?”

“I guess, yeah. Would you like something to drink? I have some bottled water – I remember you don’t drink soda or booze. Or some juice, maybe?”

“Water would be fine, thank you.”

The Buddha sat himself in Jon’s plush recliner and put his feet up. When Jon returned, bearing two bottles of Dasani, he noticed The Buddha had shed his flip-flops and his bare feet were remarkably clean. He wore a white t-shirt and roomy, faded jeans. If one saw him wandering the Venice boardwalk – or even the Strip, for that matter – they would be hard-pressed to recognize one of the most successful figures of the recording industry. And Jon was certain The Buddha wanted it that way. Everyone in the limelight was torn between the need for validation and the desire for invisibility. But The Buddha had outgrown his lust for recognition decades ago, though no one really knew how it happened, only that it had; and now he was hermetically ensconced in a drafty, aging pile of bricks on a hill (reportedly haunted by the ghosts of various movie stars), coaxing music out of spoiled willful musicians by means alternately non-confrontational and demanding.

“So how have you been, Dave? It’s been a while.”

“Last time we met was at Iovine’s party, wasn’t it; at the Tropicana?”

“Yeah, I’m thinking. Are you still dating that blonde chick, the one who’s a friend of Catherine Shaw?”

The Buddha chuckled, a sound that encouraged a certain licentiousness be applied to the interpretation.

“She is still in the circle of my acquaintance, yes. But you haven’t been out on a Sunday in a while.”

“I work on Sundays, Buddha.”

Jon caught himself just as the sobriquet escaped his lips, but his guest seemed not to have noticed. Sipping from his bottle of water, his gaze turned towards the award on the shelf, glinting in the daylight. People always thought Grammys were heavier and shinier than they really were, although the marble base could be said to be weighty enough, even if the faux gramophone on top was not. Brendan quipped that a commentary on the industry surely had to be inherent in its’ design, but Jon wasn’t certain what that meant.

“First time out of the park, quite a pleasant feeling, I imagine.”

Jon made a murmured sound of acquiescence, taking a moment to reflect on the meaning. Most producers had to be nominated at least a few times before winning, as their peers were meant to judge them on the body of their work as far as that particular award was concerned, though it was meant strictly to refer to a 12-month period of time. As such, the most successful nominees could claim more than one work applied, and neither of them was an exception to that rule. However, The Buddha had been nominated three times, but had never won. It was said to pain him, as very few things in the material world pained him, because many of the works he was responsible for bringing forth from artists were also nominated and awarded thus - and the distinction was troubling. Surely he was worthy of recognition, on equal footing with the end result of his collaborations. Did his peers call him The Buddha to acknowledge his wisdom, or to mock his seemingly harmless affectations?

“The doors are open now, to everything you could want. And a few things you don’t.”

Jon took a sudden swallow of water, the thought of a serious discussion caused his saliva to retreat self-consciously.

”Yeah well, it doesn’t seem like anything has changed.”

“It will be gradual. Rather like the way the sun sets. Shadows lengthen. The sky darkens. And then, night falls. But a thousand lights are everywhere, and things look different than they do in the daytime.”

And there it was: the legendary advice, phrased in his idiosyncratic way of speaking, slightly formal, on the order of a proverb or koan.

“Dave, did Brendan ask you to come out here? Did you drive yourself?” Jon went over to the window and sure enough, Dave’s infamous black Rolls Royce Corniche was sitting at the curb. But in this neighborhood it wasn’t apt to draw an undue amount of attention: his neighbor commuted in a Lotus and the accountant down the block drove a ’62 Austin Healey 3000 Mark II, in the original Primrose Yellow.

“Brendan and I had a discussion the other day about you, but no, I took the initiative. He is worried about you. He considers you a close friend.”

“And I appreciate the concern, really. But I’m okay.”

“I wonder if perhaps you are censoring yourself.” The Buddha’s eyes were half-closed and his hands rested atop his ponderous stomach. He seemed not to move, even as he spoke. A stillness to his outward appearance like a Zen deity. But that was how he obtained his nickname – that sense of infinite calm that would either placate or frustrate those that dealt with him, that trusted their careers and their profits to his arbitrations of taste.

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“I’m telling you that anything is possible. Anything. Perhaps some time spent considering what that means could help you walk through the door.”

“Yeah well. . .not all of us are spiritual like you, Dave.”

“People tend to focus on that side of my nature, but everyone – including you – should recognize that the truly spiritual person accepts both the sacred and the profane.”

“You mean porn stars and stained glass windows?” This was a reference to one of the celebrated décor points of his mansion – a reproduction of the famous window in the Chartres cathedral depicting the Virgin, also known as “the Rose of France.”

A slowly-forming smile was given as affirmation.

“I don’t think you realize just how profane I can be.”

A full-bodied laugh, then: deep and riotous. Jon found himself blushing at the ridicule contained within.

“Uh, a lot of wild stories go around this town, you know that, Dave. About everybody. Believe only half of what you hear -”

“- and none of what you see. Yes, I know. All I wanted to impart to you is that I understand how it feels to hit a wall. But you can walk away from anything as long as you remember to walk. Don’t allow these trivial considerations to destroy what is valuable about you.”

“And what is that?”

“Your ability to manipulate.”

“I thought it was the ability to listen.”

The Buddha stroked his chest-length beard and smiled again, this one slightly more wolfen. Jon ran a hand over his mostly clean-shaven face and tousled hair. He was much better-looking than Dave, but The Buddha was the one who could most easily command the attentions of every female within ten feet of his personage. Jon had previously attributed the ability strictly to the power of celebrity, but now, up close, he knew there was something more to it.

“The ability to listen is not what makes a great producer. Rather, it is the ability to manipulate circumstances and relationships to create what you wish to hear. And most are merely demanding, rather than manipulative. This is what makes them mediocre. But you, you have the touch. Use it.”

The conversation turned towards more ordinary topics: gossip, opinion, pussy. Jon appreciated that Dave did not say word one about Leanna, though he imagined scores of industry sycophants twittering over drinks around town. Damage control was going to be difficult, but necessary. After a time, during which the sky became that washed-out shade of blue-gray that heralded the dusk in Los Angeles, Dave answering his jangling Blackberry and declared he was late for a meeting with yet another overly-anxious denizen of the pop charts.

It came to Jon as he was walking Dave out to his car, running a hand over the glossy finish. He was reflected within: a black apparition.

“You really look iconic now, you know? I never thought of it that way, but there’s something in it that’s strictly you, and no one else.”

“Jon, I never look in a mirror.”


Brendan Morris received a call from Dave Meyer just as he was setting down to dinner at Madre’s with his agent, a celebrity-watching geek.

“You’re not going to see J-Lo here, you know that.”

“You never know, bubaleh!”

“You need to stop talking like that, you’re not even Jewish.”

When his phone rang, Marty scowled at him, but Brendan was impassive.

“It’s The Buddha, I need to take this call.”

He waved the waitress away while concurrently greeting his caller, leaving his agent to peruse the dining room for anyone interesting, while visibly sulking.

“Hello Brendan, how are you?”

“I’m fine, Dave, and you?”

“I’m fine. I’m going to Cinnabar to meet some clients. Are you in the area?”

“No, I’m out in Pasadena with Marty. We’re eating at Madre’s.”

“She wanted to work with me, but I was booked for the year. What do you think that would have been like?”

“Very distracting, I imagine. And frustrating, because she can’t sing.”

“I’m not familiar with her work, actually.”

“So how is Sabbron?”

“He’s fine.”

“Really?”

“Yes Brendan, he’ll be fine. But different, I think, from now on. I’m an agent of change, that’s the price you pay for seeking my advice.”

Brendan snickered as he studied the menu and wondered what these concoctions had to do with Cuban food, which he had eaten many times in Little Havana and wasn’t nearly as haute as the choices displayed before him.

“I know you never venture East of Glendale, but don’t ever eat here, no matter what anyone says.”

“No vegetarian choices?”

“No honesty. This is about as Cuban as my left nut, and as we both know, my testicles are strictly Anglo-Saxon.”

Brendan liked the sound of The Buddha’s laughter, which he had been privy to for many years. Privy to other things as well, but he had powerful friends because he knew how to keep a secret. After desolately settling on black bean soup and fricase de pollo, he dialed Jon’s number and was startled to hear the sound of breaking glass when the call connected.

“What’s going on?”

“I broke the mirror by the front door.” A burst of static startled him.

“Did you use the phone to do it? You’re breaking up.”

“No, the base of my Grammy. That fucker weighs a ton.”

“Put some shoes on when you clean it up.”

“You’re not gonna tell me it’s bad luck?”

“Eh, what do I know from luck?”

“You must be having dinner with Marty again.”

And they laughed longer than they should have – it’s not as if their repartee was especially witty. But as with many a life-altering experience, it was all in the timing.

* * *
Gordon was worried about having to travel around the city on the day of their show, so courtesy of Pete, Brendan Morris had offered the use of his house on Doheny Drive. A week before, the two had paid him a visit at home on the way back from a meeting regarding their publicity schedule while on tour.

The house in question possessed an impressive view of greater Hollywood and the surrounding hills; they learned from their host it had once belonged to Stevie Nicks.

“See,” he said, leading them inside across wood flooring and past wrought-iron accents, “here’s the room where she wrote ‘Gypsy.’”

The two gave him a simultaneous quizzical glance.

So I’m back
to the velvet underground.
Back to the floor that I love.
To a room, with some lace and paper flowers.
Back to the gypsy that I was. . . he sang.

“Look, it’s just as she had it then: a mattress on the floor, the same flowered wallpaper and lace curtains,” he then enthused.

“Oh,” breathed Dex, looking around. “I see!”

“We’ve never really listened to Fleetwood Mac,” Gordon said, somewhat apologetically.

“That’s okay. I’m just a sucker for rock history. Let me show you the rest of the house.”

As he led the way out of the room, Gordon grabbed Dex by the shoulder.

“Maybe we should. . .change our minds.”

“Why, because he’s obsessed with Stevie Nicks? So what?”

Gordon shrugged and followed along, though he felt odd, once again, at Brendan’s slightly fey demeanor. Pete had assured him that Morris had more pussy then he knew what to do with, but it wouldn’t be the first time that a guy had gotten stupid over Dex. Even Jack had confided to him the other night that when it came to hero worship, people became ambiguous and confused as to their particular orientations, sexual or otherwise.

”I remember this one time, some guy cornered me after a show. I was sloshed and had gotten lost trying to find the bus. He wanted me to sign his ass or some shit like that. I was all, ‘Look dude, I’m trashed, it’s nice to meet you but I need to find the bus before I pass out.’ Then he started crying, I swear to God, said he’d suck my dick for an autograph. I mean, at the time I was horrified, but in retrospect I realize that some people just don’t know how to act when they meet the person they idolize above all.”

Gordon had shuddered then, as he did now, certain memories coming to the forefront too easily.

The living room had a marble floor and strange-looking French provincial furniture. Dex had paused before a large mirror on the right side of the room, naturally. He could never resist looking at himself. Gordon came to stand beside him and looked at his partner rather than his own reflection, which he wasn’t particularly fond of. Dex always prepared him for photo shoots, fussing with his hair and making sure he didn’t wear something too clueless or unintentionally ironic. But the two looked enough alike to be related, although Gordon was never convinced that anyone mistook him for being from the same family that could produce such a flawless being as Dex.

“So did she – “ he paused, waving a hand outward to indicate the décor “- own this furniture too?”

“Who, Stevie?” Brendan asked, laughing. “No. Actually my mom gave me all this, and I decided to just go with it rather than be embarrassed by her weird taste.”

Dex giggled, looking at Brendan from the vantage point of the mirror, and the gaze was returned, a game where each could look at the other without seeming to look directly at anything at all.

The last place he showed them was the solarium: a pretty little box of a room at the back of the house, looking out upon frenzied landscaping and the gentle slope of a brush-covered hill.

“Nice acoustics in here,” he commented. “It’s the tile, expands the sound.”

It was Dex’s turn to sing, the refrain from “Sliced Thin:”
Puzzled
that was all I had to look forward to
perishing
in the snowballing altitude
carried
by my own vanishing verisimilitude
sliced thin
by razors of unexpected gratitude.

Gordon felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle as Dex drew out the words, as the melody dictated he should, going up a full octave on the last line. He thought one of his best production tricks on the track was the way the word “gratitude” echoed as if it were being shouted off the side of a mountain, the sky swallowing the notes and leaving only a muffled rush of air.

But he was onto him, what he was doing, the brat. The seduction that never failed, that siren song. Catching his eye he mouthed the word showoff. Dex pouted and fluttered his eyelids: the guile of a coquette.

“We appreciate this, but we don’t want to put you out,” Gordon finally said, attempting a humility he did not truly possess.

“Oh it’s no problem, I’ll just crash at Sabbron’s maybe, or with The Buddha. Speaking of, I’m going over there now, do you guys wanna tag along?”

“And meet Dave Meyer?” Dex asked, incredulous. “Really?”

“Uh, we’ve got stuff to do, but thanks,” Gordon interjected, cutting off any possible acceptance.

“Sure, I know you guys are swamped. Some other time, then.”

Brendan walked them all the way down the driveway to where the SUV sat, high and menacing. Gordon half-listened to him prattle on about keys, and groceries, and how it was okay for them to have their friends over after the show if they wanted to. He noticed that Brendan wasn’t really talking to him at all, but to his situationally-captive audience of Dex, who responded emphatically, dark curls shimmering with every movement of his head. Then, the dazzling smile, beatific in its’ gratitude. His own smile was slight; Gordon felt that his face might crack at any moment.

He drove in silence down the hill to Sunset, but just before reaching the intersection he pulled over to the right and parked the car, shutting off the engine.

“Why are we stopping?” Dex asked.

“So I have your attention, finally?” Gordon’s voice was heavy with sarcasm.

Dex sighed, turning an impatient green gaze towards him.

“What’s wrong now?”

“You’re gonna totally buy into all this Hollywood bullshit, aren’t you?”

Dramatic gestures followed the question, though Dex could tell by Gordon’s tone of voice that he wasn’t being merely argumentative or cynical. . .there was genuine concern in the inquiry.

“Of course not! Do you think I really care about all of that? But there’s nothing wrong with wanting to meet people, especially someone like Dave Meyer. I mean, c’mon Gordo, he’s worked with so many great musicians over the years!”

“I don’t want to be anyone’s pet, do you understand me? We’ve seen it happen before, someone famous latches onto someone at the bottom, someone who makes them feel special, and proceeds to suck that person dry. If I choose to associate with someone it’s on my terms, they can ride my goddamn coattails, not the other way around.”

“Dude, Brendan Morris is not gay.”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with sexual orientation, you pendejo! It’s like he wants to collect you, he’s treating you like a pretty little toy, and that’s bullshit!”

“You are such a fucking arthropod, dude, of course I’m not going to let Brendan Morris hit on me – but hey, if he can introduce us to anybody useful, well, I’ll let him think he can tap my ass all he wants.”

“Yeah well you think you can manipulate people but then you always end up getting played.”

Gordon was almost sorry he made that last statement when he saw the shadow of pain pass across Dex’s face in the form of a tightening of the mouth, deepened wrinkles around his eyes. He was always getting his heart broken. Gordon did not specifically believe in astrology like Dex did, but he had conceded long ago to the idea that they embodied their sun signs almost to the T: Dex was a Pisces - dreamy and vague, romantic and Quixotic. Gordon was a Scorpio: determined and passionate, intensely focused and jealous. His specific jealousy had nothing to do with sex but everything to do with love. He truly believed the only person capable of loving Dex more than he did was the woman who gave birth to him. Gordon had trust issues with everyone, even his best friend, his twin brother of a different mother.

“I’m not as immature as you think I am,” Dex finally said, quietly. Gordon heard the threat of tears behind the words.

“No, you’re not immature, you’re just too trusting.”

They stared at each other for several minutes, while in the background the sounds of the city engulfed them: car engines, car radios, airplanes diving down towards LAX, people yelling at one another on the Boulevard. . .while the burden of their collective past weighed them down, regrets unvoiced and arguments long buried, poisoning the groundwater of their relationship.

But it was necessary, this avoidance of certain memories, in order to get to whatever bright future they envisioned for themselves and were determined, almost desperately, to achieve.

* * *
I like slow days at the salon because Marcus (his name isn’t really Marcus, it’s Brett, but he says Marcus is his nom de salon) and I can load up the CD jukebox with music we like and sing and dance around while we clean up, which the owner expects us all to do between heads but of course everyone says fuck that shit and goes out for coffee instead. And it was a slow day like that, with just Lyn and Marcus and me in the shop, when she came in.

It was a strange day.

First Terry had a nightmare around four in the morning and he woke up screaming. Though it’s happened several times now it still scares the shit out of me. I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I decided to go home and shower and get ready for work and then he cried and we had sex and I ended up dragging my ass in late. Not that it matters on a slow day.

The next weird thing was when Marcus was flipping through the channels on the TV, looking for Bravo, and he paused at Fox Sports West.

“Isn’t that your ex?” he asked me.

I was cleaning my booth, not paying attention, but the way he said it made me think Terry had gone and done something stupid. I turned around very slowly, I didn’t know my eyes were screwed shut until I realized that I couldn’t see anything. When I opened them, Rammer was doing the one trick he created, a Hot Grease, on a show called Legends of the Deck. The trick was called “Hot Grease” because it looked like grease sputtering in a pan. It’s a vert trick: you do a two-handed gymnast plant on the lip of the ramp and bounce the deck on your feet. You have to bounce it at least twice for it to count as a Hot Grease. Rammer could do it up to six times, which none of the other Encinitas crowd could manage. It takes a good sense of balance and arm strength. Most professional skateboarders have really strong legs but no upper body strength. He looked about 20 in the video, back in the glory days. He always placed in the top five during competitions, but as the narrator was commenting, Sean Addison had the technical skills to be a serious threat, but lacked the drive to skate his way into the upper echelon. Ah, he had Rammer down cold: always impressive, and forever halfassed.

But I still loved him, because he was my fuck-up.

“Yeah,” I said, when the program moved onto to another troubled skater. It must have been the “bad boys” section, or some such bullshit. I remember what Rammer said to me after we watched Stoked, a documentary about an 80s-era pro who ended up on drugs, raping and killing a girl.

It’s so refreshing to see your whole life reduced to a cliché. It really puts things into perspective.

And I didn’t have anything to say to that which sounded even remotely positive. That is to say, the opposite of cynical and jaded, which we both are, deep down.

But I try to be positive, most of the time.

“So what’s wrong with him?” Marcus asked. I could tell he was in a gossipy mood. He had spent the last hour flipping through all the rags, making catty comments about everyone.

“Why is he ‘troubled,’ you mean? Because he took a really bad fall last year and had to retire. Everyone thinks it was because he was loaded at the time.”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I think he was really hurting, like, hungover. But not drunk. Rammer would never skate drunk, or high, anything like that. There’s plenty of guys who do, but mostly they save it for after the demo, whatever.”

Already bored, Marcus continued to change channels. I went back to cleaning up. Lyn was on the phone with someone, talking in whispers. Then Eva came in, Lyn’s friend the high-class escort. He told me she charged $1000 an hour to let guys hurt her, that was her specialty. Marcus let out a gasp because he knew also. We were forever asking when Eva was scheduled for an appointment. She gave us a little smile. Outside I could see her bodyguard putting change in the parking meter. A girl like that couldn’t operate without protection. Lyn hung up the phone in a hurry and led her to his chair, fussing and cooing.

“Well she walks just fine for someone who gets the shit beat out of them on a regular basis,” Marcus murmured.

“Sshhh!” I cautioned.

Lyn sent us out to get coffee. On our way back we saw a very infamous redhead enter the shop and that was an even stranger thing, an even bigger shock, than anything else that day.

It was Cheri Gilbert. The widow of the Voice of a Generation.

“Oh fuck!” Marcus cried, and hid behind me.

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked, surprised and annoyed. I almost dropped four skinny lattes onto the sidewalk.

“Cheri’s looking for me, I just know it!” he hissed.

Marcus liked to play both sides of the fence, maybe he thought it got him bigger tips. At the suggestion that he did not perceive women in a sexual manner he’d place his hands on his hips and give the client a suggestive glance.

“Honey, I’m not completely gay, hello?!”

This would generally result in shocked laughter and a completely new perspective on his personality. So I gathered that he had done more for the Widow Gilbert than just cut and color her hair.

“C’mon dude, Lyn is going to ask where you are and blow your cover anyway. Suck it up.”

“That’s exactly the problem,” he quipped. But he came inside with me.

Marcus is pretty, no doubt. Some of the female clients say he looks like Keanu Reeves if Keanu wore his hair in a fuck-me shag and was 20 pounds lighter with a high ass. So I could understand why the Widow Gilbert turned to him for comfort, even if it could be construed as fucking below her station. But if the tales about Chris Gilbert’s sexual appetites that circulated after his death were even slightly true, sleeping with the Voice of a Generation would probably be considered slumming as well.

”Girl, if the Dark Side needed a poster boy, it would be Chris Gilbert.”

I couldn’t remember who told me that.

We entered the shop to find Cheri and Eva staring at one another, their faces frozen with distaste. I looked at Lyn, confused, who raised an eyebrow clearly replying Don’t go there, girlfriend. Cheri saw Marcus and grabbed his arm, jostling and pulling him aside to the waiting area. I was trapped in the tableau, afraid to disturb the tension hovering somewhere above our heads.

“I have a party tonight,” I heard her whisper to him. “Can you. . .do something?” She tugged at her hair.

“Sure,” he replied slowly. He set down his tray of cups on the reception desk and walked her over to his station. I passed out coffee to everyone and the room was silent for the next hour, as Lyn and Marcus worked on both women and no one said a word. Finally, after Marcus had spritzed Cheri’s hair, trimmed the ends, experimented with up-dos, and finally composed something she could manage herself later on, she walked out, grimly determined to make us feel the force of her snub. We were all staring out the front window, watching the street, when Eva finally spoke. Her voice was low and sort of dry, but not like an old woman’s voice – creaky - more like someone who uses the same emotional response for every situation.

“She looks good, doesn’t she? Money will do that.”

Lyn was flustered, something I don’t think I’d ever seen in all the time I’d known him.

“Eva, sweetie, I didn’t know –“

“It’s alright, love,” she replied, placing a hand on his arm. “Isn’t it funny I’d run into her here, though? I would have thought she could afford her own stylist.”

“I’ve been her stylist for years,” Marcus countered, tossing his head. “But I don’t do house calls anymore.”

“And who could blame you?” she sniped, a mischievous smirk forming upon her lips.


A new tale to tell, the reason why this particular collision was unwanted by either party. Hollywood is a fairly small city, after all, you can’t avoid your enemies, but you can outshine them, or outlive them. It’s hard to tell sometimes which is more preferred.


“I used to provide a sole service. I was spoiled, one client. Now I have about five. I can’t have too many, it takes longer to recover than it used to. But my mom’s Social Security only goes so far.”

Lyn was doing bialiage, coating pieces of foil and carefully wrapping them around strands of her dark hair. He was using about five different shades, I was interested to see how it would turn out.

“My one client, who was much more than that to me, was Chris Gilbert.”

We knew the revelation was coming, but Marcus and I exchanged a surprised glance. Though in retrospect one could say that the clues were obvious. I recalled one Dharma song I knew very well. I had it on the mix disc I listened to in the car this morning.

Blue like that bruise
slowly forming
blue like those eyes
wetly shining
just like before, pushed out the door
my mood is so blue and just like that stain
born of my strain
baby, there’s always one more.

I thought about all the media reports, thought about how even now people could remember exactly where they were when they heard about his death. One high-profile pundit who eulogized Musically Chris Gilbert could compose the perfect pop song with a raucous metallic shell. Dharma teetered on the edge of musical anarchy at all times, sheer noise threatening to overwhelm the sweetness of the melody. Lyrically, Gilbert was literate, cynical, and darkly humorous. He made pain, obsession, and depression wholly attractive goals.

“Chris liked to hurt people. Physically, emotionally. I’m sure Cheri got more than her fair share. But he didn’t touch her at all after the miscarriage, up until he died. Though that was probably just a response to the guilt he felt, thinking he had caused it.”

“Did he?” Lyn inquired.

“It’s possible. One night things got. . .a little carried away, shall we say. Her doctor wanted to report him to the police until Cheri explained the concept of consensual rape.”

“Why didn’t she just leave him?” Marcus asked. We all gave him that look. The one which exclaims Oh naïve child!

“Leave Chris Gilbert, Voice of a Generation?” She snorted derisively. Lyn and I nodded. Some things are simply meant to be endured. “But let’s take a moment to reflect on how fucked up Generation X is if someone like Chris Gilbert, one of the most depraved people I’ve ever known, is considered to be the pinnacle of its’ expression.”

We nodded again, surrendering to her wisdom. Then she was silent for a while and we watched a program on E! about celebrity vacation spots. Eva began talking again during a commercial break.

“I realize I’m making him sound like a monster. And he was. But Chris also had a lighter side: he was funny, and smart. . .oh he was so smart. I think that’s why he hated people, hated himself, so much. His brain would never stop. He could be silly, but he could never be stupid. He realized what he was doing, but he couldn’t stop. There was nothing left but to keep going into the darkness. To this day, I don’t believe he OD’ed. He used drugs, sure, it’s not like that was any big surprise. But unless he got ahold of something that was too pure, or cut with something bad, I don’t think it could have been the reason. He always knew what he was doing when it came to drugs. But his obsessions, that was what he didn’t have any control over. There are some things more addictive than any controlled substance, and one of them is danger. To look over the edge of the cliff right into the maw of death, then walk away, that is a dizzying height. That is what it means to be high.”

She looked at me, and I recoiled slightly.

“Your boyfriend, the actor.”

“Terry?”

“He ran with Chris. They were drinking buddies. I don’t know whether they shared any other. . .hobbies.”

All of a sudden I felt like I didn’t know Terry at all.

What are those nightmares about, Terry?

He never wanted to tell me.


Eva laughed, apropos of some thought. She shook her head.

“He was such a snob. He said Lou Reed never made a good record after Berlin and that Paul McCartney never made a good record at all after The Beatles. But he was the only one I allowed in my life. He practically lived with me. I saw him the day he died. He used to take me to Compton for waffles in the middle of the night. He bought my mother presents on her birthday, on Mother’s Day, he sang her show tunes over the phone –“

She paused, and Lyn handed her a tissue. She dabbed at her eyes, breathing deeply to regain control.

“In the culture,” she said, beginning a new tangent (and by culture we knew she meant BDSM), “there is a very strict adherence to rules and an even stricter hierarchy. If you’re a bottom, you’re always a bottom. If you’re a top you remain a top. If you top someone above your station then you’re a Service Top but you remember your place. You don’t talk out of turn, you don’t step out of line, and you definitely do not damage people. They take it very seriously, but at the end of the night it’s still just a scenario, a fantasy. Chris wanted it to be real, to leave his mark. So there was no place for him in the scene. But he had money, and that will get you whatever you want. I was a Service Top for him sometimes. He taught me how to choke, showed me how to do the knots: how big, how tight to pull the rope, where it needed to be, and for how long. We had it timed to the second. I didn’t like doing it, I was scared, which only shows how unprofessional I was at the time. I said, ‘Why can’t you do it?’ and he said ‘Don’t be stupid, that’s how people snuff it.’”

“So –“ Lyn began, but she raised a manicured hand in response.

“I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I’m just a masochistic sub who charges others for the privilege. I know nothing. I have nothing. I am nothing.”


And when Terry asked me how my day was, I was considering what I would say. Would I confess that I had spent the day engaged in lurid gossip? Some of which I proffered, but most I merely absorbed. And with whom? Terry actively despised gossip, being the target of so much of it. But many of us considered it the prime medium of information exchange.


The last thing I remembered hearing, before I went to the bathroom and when I came out Eva was gone, was this:

“Everyone who knew must think I hate her. But I don’t. She was smart, she was lucky, she ended up with everything. And that’s the way to do it. Don’t ever sell yourself cheap, because if you’re going on the market, you only get one chance. And if you blow it, then you’ll end up like me. Nobody wants to be me.”

I knew that wasn’t true. Every day we saw at least one girl who wanted to live that charmed life. Who believed it was easier to admit that we all sell ourselves, whatever the price, than to pretend that there was any kind of reward to be won through determined effort.

But I try to be positive, most of the time. Really I do.


III: exploding egos in the night

The publicist had booked a room at the Chateau Marmont for the foreign press interviews. Dave spent four hours answering inane questions, and when his cell rang as he was sipping lukewarm coffee, staring out the window at the traffic on Sunset, he was relieved. But the ID was blocked, no telling who it was.

“Hello?”

“Dave, it’s Tariq.”

“Hey! How are you?”

“Fine, good. I’m in town to do financial stuff, and I knew you would bitch me out later if I didn’t call.”

“Yeah, you wanna go have a beer, or something?”

“I guess. I’m leaving tomorrow afternoon, so. . .”

“Are you staying at the Union Grand?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll meet you at the bar in an hour.”

During the drive he wondered if Tariq’s hairline had receded any further. He constantly made jokes about it, but he also remembered Chris’ remark that all the metal guys hated T for being the only one who could grow his hair down to his ass. His friend waited for him at a table by the windowed wall. He spoke to Dave without turning his gaze from the view.

“Let’s go up to my room. I’ve got pizza and beer. And a balcony, so we can smoke. Fucking California.”

Dave snickered and began walking towards the elevator. T wasn’t one for physical displays of fraternity, like hugs or handshakes, and was also a bit of a germophobe. They did not speak again until they were seated in the living room of the suite, eating meat-laden slices of pizza and drinking Budweiser.

“So New Guy, why do you keep sending me your CDs?” Tariq asked, between bites. That was T for you – the smartass gambit right out of the gate. “New Guy,” or the variant “Fucking New Guy,” had been Dave’s nickname in Dharma. He was the last person to join.

“I swear if I have to hire another drummer I’m going to shoot myself,” Chris told him during the fateful phone call. Dave never brought up that story again after he died, it sounded too prophetic, despite the fact that Chris had OD’ed, rather than shot himself.

“You didn’t like it?” This question a tease, the answer already known.

“Fuck no.”

“Don’t spare my feelings T, tell me the truth.”

Tariq drained his beer with a long swallow and opened another. “Now you know I think your stuff is formulaic crap and yet you continue to push it on me. Then you insist we socialize whenever we’re within 20 miles of each other. You’re clearly a masochist.”

“Yeah, I know I should have told you to fuck off the moment we met, but I’m strange that way.”

Saying that brought to mind the memory of their meeting. A few days after Chris had invited Dave to join Dharma and they had played together every night at the rehearsal space in the industrial area out by the Embarcadero, his new bandmate had asked him to drop by the art gallery where Tariq worked and pick up an effects pedal his friend had borrowed. Walking into the space on Hyde, he was faced with an odd sight: within the blonde wood flooring and white-washed walls was a tall, somewhat thickly built East Asian guy with hair past his waist, ripped jeans, and Doc Martens. He also wore a black shirt missing its’ sleeves, decorated with a skull and crossbones and bearing the name of his band: Die Trying. He paused in his task of hanging a new painting and eyed Dave with disdain.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“Chris told me to come by and pick up his Echoplex.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.” He folded his arms across his chest and continued to glare at the other. The full beard he possessed made it easy for him to look menacing, Dave thought.

“I’m Dave, I’m their drummer.”

“Whose drummer?”

“Dharma’s.”

Tariq burst out laughing. “So you’re the new guy, huh? You’re a skinny motherfucker, are you sure you can play?”

“Apparently well enough to be in Dharma.”

That response was also met with laughter. “Chris isn’t a good judge of anything, frankly. Why do you think that position has been a revolving door?”

“He said you guys were friends.”

“We are. I’m a lot harder on my friends than my enemies.”

Back in the moment, Tariq shook his head and sprinkled another slice of pizza with Frank’s Red Hot. “You’re still such a puppy, Dave.”

“And you don’t look any different. You haven’t gone bald yet.”

“Yet. But do you see this?” Tariq tilted his head down and showed him a burgeoning bald spot on the back of the part in his hair.

“Big fuckin’ deal, dude. You always wear a hat anyway.”

“Getting old sucks.”

“Jesus, you’re gonna be 45 and you act like the friggin’ world is coming to an end.”

“It might as well be. I mean really, what is there to look forward to?”

Dave laughed and shook his head. “Oh no, T. You’re not pulling me into another metaphysical debate.”

“And what would you rather talk about, the old days? Fuck that.”

After they had disposed of two large pizzas, Tariq brought the remains of the twelve-pack out on the balcony and they put their feet up on the railing, staring out at the mad rush of a pocket of Tinsel Town through the smog, smoking.

“There’s something perverse about smoking outside when the air quality index is this bad, don’t you think?” Tariq mused.

“There’s something perverse about indulging any vice when you know more people who are dead than alive.” Dave answered.

“Goddamn, that’s almost philosophical. Has Shawn got you doing yoga and shit?”

“Fuck off.”

“So how is that, married life and all?”

“Fine. Are you still with Janine?”

“Janice. No, she moved out the day after New Year’s upon informing me that she was too old to be someone’s girlfriend. Like that was gonna make me reevaluate our relationship.”

“Sorry.”

“Eh, don’t be. I’d rather be committed than commit. And I’ll meet someone else, eventually. I always do.”

“Yeah, how do you do that, anyway? I mean, you’re ugly, for one, and you’re an asshole.”

“You know Dave, you’re the worst kind of homo. I understand that you and Madland will have to suppress your love for each other forever, but that doesn’t mean you have to be hurtful to everyone else. I get email every week from women who tell me I’m gorgeous.”

“Hoping that you’ll introduce them to the good-looking people in your old band. You’re supposed to be a fucking genius, Durai. You must be getting old and senile if you think any of those broads are really after you.”

“No, I’m just delusional as usual,” Tariq answered, opening another beer.

“I love that song.”

“Shut up, I said I wasn’t going to talk about that stuff.”

“Too bad, because it’s not going to stop me.”

Tariq was unresponsive, examining the coal of his cigarette.

“I see Jamie is gushing about his new trophy wife now,” Dave commented.

“Like I would know. I don’t watch TV or read magazines like that. The only reason I have the Internet is so I don’t have to talk on the phone.”

“Have you talked to him lately?”

“Not in the last year.”

“Seriously? Why not?”

“Jamie decided that his ‘problem,’ –“ Tariq emphasized this by making quotation marks with his fingers, “ – was that his old life, all of his old friends, were enabling him to destroy himself. So he cut us all out of his life. He doesn’t even live in this country anymore, what does that tell you? The only thing is, I don’t understand how it can be our fault when none of us – not me, not Len or Drew – became a fuckin’ wastecase. Jamie had been doing drugs of one kind or another, and drinking, since he was 12; don’t you think someone would have figured out that he was just an addictive personality?”

“It does seem pretty drastic.”

Tariq laughed, a sharp bark. “Yeah, that’s a good way of putting it. Anyway, fuck him and his trophy wife and his new band, and all that bullshit.”

“You liked the guitar player, though, didn’t you? I remember you said something nice about him once.”

“Yeah, when he didn’t suck. Now that he’s opted to be Jamie’s little bitch and play all those pretty melodies it’s just fuckin’ sad.”

“Hey, have you talked to Mir lately? Pete was worried that he couldn’t get ahold of him.”

“Like anyone wants to talk to Pete Marita.”

Dave chuckled. “You don’t like Pete because you guys are too much alike.”

Tariq sat up in his chair, grimacing at Dave.

“Don’t even compare me to that amoral, bottom-feeding, ambulance-chasing shyster!”

“He’s not an ambulance chaser. I don’t think you can do that in Entertainment law.”

“You know what I mean. That guy pretends like he cares about all of us, but lawyers only care about their billable hours and how many windows they can have in their office.”

“Nah man – Pete’s not like that.”

“Says the cog in the machine.”

“I don’t have to defend myself to you, T. What do you have against him anyway? Seems to me he’s done right by all of us.”

“He’s helped you make a lot of money, sure. And that’s fine if that’s what you want.” Tariq rose from the deck chair and braced his arms against the edge of the balcony, looking out over Universal City.

“There’s no one left in the city now. I get lonely sometimes.”

Dave took a swallow of beer in lieu of reply. He had expected Tariq to be funny and caustic – a surety on the same order as the sunrise – but not lonely. His need for solitude was what led to the demise of his own band, and Dave had always believed T was happy now that the expectations of success and public scrutiny had been divested from his future.

“It’s a different world, up there. People gravitate to what makes them feel safe.”

“Haven’t recent events proven that no one is safe, anywhere?”

Dave sighed, rubbing a hand across his recognizable face. “Not literally safe, dude. Just in terms of what you know. You always ask too much of people.”

“Oh how do I do that?” Tariq asked, turning around with an exasperated look for his friend.

“You ask them to be like you.”

“More people should be like me.”

It was Dave’s turn to laugh. During the time his mirth bubbled out, Tariq had returned to his seat and opened another beer.

“People can’t be like you down here. That’s why you’re up there.”

And Tariq knew with an intuitiveness borne from experience and acquaintance that Dave was referring to more than just his relative geographic location. In that moment, he was able to glimpse his friend’s equally desolate standpoint, and had one of those thoughts like people tend to have when watching tragic scenes on the television news.

There, but for the grace of popular opinion, go I.

* * *
Gordon woke up every night at 3am, during the week they had all decided to attempt the best behavior they could: no heavy drinking, no recreational drugs of any kind, watching what they ate and getting as much rest as possible. But old studio habits died hard and at 3am his eyes would snap open and music swirled around his brain.

Awake, he waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness and then looked over at the other bed. It was empty, the covers an imposing lump at the foot. He heard a faint murmuring, and knew where Dex had gone. Knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep the night before their triumphant return.

Sure enough, he was sitting in front of the television, watching reruns of Dark Shadows on the Sci-Fi channel. A box of Cheerios and a container of vanilla soy milk sat on the coffee table, as he shoveled cereal into his mouth, hypnotized by the program.

“Hey,” his partner whispered, placing a cold hand on the back of his neck. “Don’t eat all the Cheerios, mijo.”

Dex shook his head in response. He was going the silent route to save his voice, only speaking when he felt it was absolutely necessary. Gordon settled in beside him and Dex offered a spoonful, droplets of liquid falling on his nearly-bare legs.

They chewed in tandem, they had that habit of synchronizing even their unconscious actions to one another. Dex ate another spoonful then handed the half-full bowl to Gordon. During the commercial break Gordon heard a slight rumbling and saw that Dex had fallen asleep, his head resting on the back of the couch. He appreciated moments like these, reminded of a day when he had dismissed everyone from the studio during the vocal mix. He had wanted to be alone with the multitracked glory of Dex, the voice enfolding him in its’ terrible purity.

“What’s this?” he heard a voice ask, and looked over his shoulder at Isaiah, who had wandered into the room, yawning and running his hands though his hair. He was a brown-eyed clone of Dex, a consideration not lost on the female half of Nebulae fandom.

“Go back to bed,” Gordon commanded.

“But I’m hungry!”

Gordon handed him the bowl of cereal. “Go back to bed.”

Isaiah accepted the bowl, but rolled his eyes as he did so. Then he shuffled off down the hallway.

Gordon got up and fetched the comforter off of Dex’s bed, covered him with it, and channel-surfed until he found a halfway decent movie to watch. But his mind was more taken with the sound of Dex’s snoring, calculating how many nights he had sat awake listening to that nasal slurring, which to him was the sound of complete security.


If asked to describe the racial mélange which made him so indefinably attractive, as he often was, Gary Jones would answer that he was Haitian, Mexican, and Irish, in that order. All of it was the truth, even if rather simply stated. He kept his afro closely cropped, even bleaching it at times, to throw people off the path of their reflexive stereotypes. Even in the new millennium most Angelinos believed it was weird for a black guy to be in a rock band.

And today he was going deep into enemy territory, if for no other reason than to satisfy his own obsession; to view his primary professional idol in action closer than he ever had before. But at great personal risk, recalling the last conversation with Gordon: filled with deep recriminations, vague death threats, and flat-out invectives. Gary had known Gordon since he and Dex first moved to LA, scrounging around the fringes of the scene, putting together Chingon as an alternative to the cookie-cutter mallcore bands crowding the clubs at the time, following along and enduring their turbulent history, building his chops when Gordon unveiled his ultimate concept for Nebulae; despite the years of being under his thumb both artistically and socially.

Gordon was a despot; that was the polite way of putting it, to Gary’s mind.

However, no one in Aubergine was particularly interested in hearing the history, of how Gordon had forced him to move out of the warehouse because Gary, in Gordon’s words, “played the drums as a hobby and fucked anything that moved as a vocation.”

“I’m in a band, you asshole.”

“Oh so you did figure that out, then? I was beginning to wonder.”

“Just because you can’t be bothered to have sex for whatever reason,” and at that emphasis he could literally feel the entire room cringe, as admirers in general were a sore subject with Gordon, but females in particular.

“It’s none of your fucking business what I do, but whatever I do, it doesn’t interfere with the band! You, on the other hand, are too busy chasing tail to pay attention to business and I’m sick of it. Fuck around on your own time.”

Although Aubergine’s management company paid him a more than generous salary for what amounted to six days a week of 10-hour rehearsals, Gary had decided to keep his crappy apartment on Highland and his dinged-up Bronco as a point of independent pride. Aware that there was no disguising himself to the hoards of true believers he might encounter, he attempted anonymity with a Dodgers cap, sunglasses, and generic attire (suppressing a specific urge to wear his Aubergine jersey from the ’98 tour). A core crowd of about 50 people awaited entry when he strolled up the street, around 6:45pm. He took his place at the tail end of the line, smoking a cigarette as he waited and trying not to giggle at the various speculative and highly inaccurate conversations that took place within earshot.

He had called in a big favor to get a ticket, and when he entered the lobby he couldn’t help but desire to harass the source of that favor, setting up the merch booth in her own indomitably prissy fashion.

Shelly was living the dream, the source of much envy and sycophancy from the hardcore fanbase, whom she politely disdained because Gordon told her to. But Gary knew that other than a supposed unlimited access fantasy, projected by the legions, Shelly worked harder than anyone, under Gordon’s constant vigilance. He kept her on because he had known her from the Chingon days as an uberfan, and because she could always be counted on to do what she was told. There was nothing glamorous about schlepping heavy boxes of t-shirts around, reading ridiculous fanmail, running innumerable errands, and dealing with all the minor annoyances of a small business strictly out of dedication to the mission of an entity that, truth be told, didn’t really care about much of anything but themselves. Ultimately that was what made Shelly a better person than the people she worked for, Gary decided, because she did what she did out of love. Even if that love was mostly unrequited.

“Hey Shellbelle,” he greeted her, almost whispering.

Shelly looked up at him, her myopic blue eyes widening in panic.

“Get out of here!” she hissed at him. “If anybody sees me with you I’m fucked!”

“Girl, it’s early. I bet the guys aren’t even here right now.”

She sighed. “Well, that’s true. They’re all at some big shot’s house on Doheny, they already did soundcheck hours ago.”

“Ain’t nothin’ but a thang. So have you met Jack yet?”

“Yeah, I’ve talked to him a couple times. He’s nice.”

“That’s all you’ve got to say? It’s fuckin’ Jack Perris, dude!”

“I never listened to Aubergine,” she replied, a pile of t-shirts growing before her, folded with military precision.

“How are they?”

“Fine.” Her tone grew more clipped as she sensed he was fishing for acknowledgement that his departure had thrown them all into a panic.

“Do you miss me?” At this he leaned on the counter and fixed her with a stare. She was entranced, it never failed, her hands frozen in an odd position, one of them holding a black sleeve.

”So Shell, whose eyes are more green?”
Four eyes, pinning her down, making her heart pound painfully.
Two eyes, remembering when she had looked into them for hours, one night, not tiring of the combined magnificence of the personage in her bed. Taking refuge from “the labor camp of the damned,” as he called it.
Two eyes, that she had loved so achingly much, in her own blushing way; that she could hide nothing from: not her reactions, her feelings, nor her pain. And he was ever sweet with her, in his calm, distant way.
Hazel eyes: green mingling with brown, like the color of Greek olives.
Honest-to-God green eyes: like sunlight on the leaves of a plant.
How to choose when faced with such obvious perfection?

“No,” Shelly answered, though to Gary’s ears her response was too defensive.

“Have you gone back to being a nun, Shell? That’s why you’re so tightly wound, you know.”

“Stop being such a jerk!” she hissed again. Various random people were hovering near the booth and she was deathly afraid someone was going to recognize Gary.

“I’ll leave you alone now. But hey, when we go back on tour I’ll hook you up like you did me.”

“I don’t need you, Pete could get us tickets.”

“Nuh-uh, they bought out his contract and replaced him with someone from another firm. Tony was pissed that he sided with Jack.”

Shelly scowled at him, pulling a handful of booklets out of a nearby box. She was looking more attractive than Gary remembered: she had lost some weight and let her hair grow out, tight brown-blonde curls dangling to the middle of her back. She wore one of the new t-shirts, he remembered thinking the design (of a mountain, which, if one looked closely, revealed itself to be a giant brain) to be rather pretentious. He flipped through the booklet, noticing that every mention of him had been expunged save a few details, a few photos.

“You’re never going to be anything but a hired hand.”

“Well sweetie, you can tell me what that’s like, right?”

“Your motivations are impure. You’re going to suffer.”

“Would you listen to yourself? You sound like a cult member.” He looked around, alerted by various whispers that his cover was probably blown. “Can you get me upstairs?” he asked. “I don’t want to cause a scene.”

Shelly let out with a small cry of disbelief. “You should have kept your ass home and waited for the DVD.”

“Okay, it’s your turn to stop being a bitch. C’mon Shell, you owe me. The last time you had an orgasm that wasn’t by your own hand was probably when I gave you several. Pay up!”

She quickly and quietly snapped a wristband onto his right arm.

“We’re even. Now go away!” she whispered, avoiding his eyes.

As he maneuvered through the gathering crowd he heard at least one smartass remark.

“That couldn’t be Gary Jones, could it? He wouldn’t dare show his face anywhere near Nebulae now, would he?”

He held his tongue, which was getting easier, having signed a mountain of non-disclosure agreements of late. But he missed the easy intimacy he used to cultivate with fans – oftentimes he was the only one who hung around after gigs talking to people, getting a feel for what the fans loved about the band. But he couldn’t admit to anyone – least of all Shelly – that he was more lonely now being a part of something larger than himself, than he had been as a part of something he never really understood.


After dropping off Terry in Malibu, too hyper to do anything in particular, Jack returned directly to Hollywood and his ultimate destination for the night. He had entered through the back door of the Key Club, propped open, and almost knocked over one of the bouncers, who glared at him suspiciously.

“We closed, man,” the guy informed him. He reminded Jack of Mike Tyson: massive, bald, and mean-looking. He figured he had at least five inches on the guy, but that wasn’t necessarily an advantage in this case.

“I’m with the band playing tonight. Jack Perris.”

“I’ma go check the list, but you better be here when I come back, understand?”

“Completely.” Jack gave him the dazzling grin, more out of perversity than any real belief it would actually work on the guy.

Waiting, he could hear the murmur of canned music on the PA, and various loud noises which he attributed to load-in. He had spied Murph’s car down the alleyway and wondered if he was finished with set-up, although it would take him a couple hours to fine-tune the kit to Jack’s liking. He had drifted into a recollection of how the guys used to berate him for constantly fiddling with things during a show, screwing up the pacing, when the bouncer returned.

“Can I see some ID?” he was asked.

Jack showed him his drivers’ license, which was scrutinized for over a minute, then the guy handed it back to him along with a laminated pass on a lanyard.

“Here you go. You can park ‘round back if you want.”

“Thanks, man.” He ambled down the hallway, moving in the direction of the ambient sounds. A few twists and turns brought him to a doorway on stage right, where he saw Murph stretched out on the rug they used for padding, puzzling over the placement of the microphones.

“Goddamn it, Murph, aren’t you finished yet?” he razzed.

“Fuck off, Perris. You’re lucky I’m here at all.”

“Hey, could you not bother the drum tech, please?” a voice called out, and Jack peered into the shadows to see Gordon seated at one of the tables just beyond the floor area.

“Gordo!” He jumped down from the stage and came over to the table. Gordon had several pieces of plain paper and a Sharpie in front of him, along with a Coke and a bowl of peanuts. “You still haven’t figured out the setlist?” Scanning the sheets he saw that most of the items were crossed out, and several had arrows attached, criss-crossing the paper.

“I’m trying to figure out how many covers we should do. We normally save them for the end, although we always open with ‘Hocus Pocus.’ But I’m wondering if maybe we should put some in the middle, or something, between the new songs.”

“From what you were saying, though, doesn’t sound like the new songs are really new for this crowd.”

Gordon leaned forward on the table, palm against his forehead, and crossed out another line. “No, but that’s the thing about what we do. The framework of a song is always recognizable to the diehards, but what happens during the song isn’t always the same.”

“I get it, that’s the nature of a jamband.”

“God I hate that word,” Gordon muttered.

“Only because it makes you think of hippies. Back in the day it used to be more meaningful.”

“Every label has some connotation that doesn’t even come close to describing what we do.”

Jack looked over at one of the kitchen staff who was stocking the main bar.

“Can I get one of these?” he asked, holding up Gordon’s soda.

The man gestured over to the other end of the bar, “Get whatever you’d like, dude.”

Jack got up and walked over to one of the built-in refrigerators. “Never tell a drunk he can have full reign of the bar.”

Gordon chuckled, crossing out another song from the list.

Jack returned with a glass of grapefruit juice. He looked over one of Gordon’s lists.

“Are you taking requests?” he asked.

Gordon snickered, running a hand over his hair. He kept it fairly short, but it was so thick that even clipped it was still a noticeable feature, though he considered it a foil to Dex’s long curls.

“Not tonight, dude, but we can probably learn a song or two that you want before we go on the road.”

“Most of the songs you guys cover are songs I like too, so that’s good. I dunno. . .I always wanted to play ‘I Saw The Light,’ for example.”

“The Todd Rundgren song?”

“Yeah, it’s got sort of an odd time signature to it, I can’t really describe it, but it’s always intrigued me.”

“I think I know what you mean. Everything sounds like it’s behind the beat, somehow.”

“Yeah, exactly. But I guess it’s not something you guys would normally do.”

“Oh Dex would love it – he loves anything from the ‘70s. I guess I’d be more inclined to play something like ‘Just Another Onionhead,’ you know? A little more strange.”

“Oh I’ll get you. . .I’ll come up with something so obscure and bizarre it will make you come in your pants.”

That same chuckle, indulgent and reserved. Jack wondered if Gordon would ever have a moment where he did not act so tightly wound. He noticed two girls had come into the main room from the front of the club and made a beeline for the bandleader.

“Gordon!” one of them called out. She was a slightly more organic version of the Hollywood girl: a little less makeup and trendy clothes, but just as beautiful as any in the pack of females Jack saw at most of the major clubs every night of the week. They were always on the prowl, looking for amusement and attention.

“Hey. . .” he replied, his voice trailing off with discernable annoyance. “Are you guys here to help Shelly?”

“Oh c’mon, you know we know Lester!” the other chided. Both girls had hair that was somewhere between brown and blonde, too streaked to be one or the other in total.

“I must have forgotten. Yeah, so you’ll be around later, right?” Gordon had stood up, looking to guide them out, Jack thought.

“Of course!” the first one exclaimed. “Oh hey, Jack, I’m Marissa. I have a friend, Chloe? She says she knows you?”

“Ah, Chloe, femme fatale of the Strip. Tell her I said hi.”

The two giggled and batted their eyes at him. The speaker then threw her arms around Gordon and hugged him tightly.

“You won’t duck out on us this time, Gordo?”

“Oh, no. . .we’ll hang out after, you know.”

“Okay,” she said, putting her nose up against his. “You better!”

They departed without being asked, trailing a cloud of vanilla perfume and estrogen. Gordon sat down again, sighing heavily.

“You know Gordo, there are a few things about being in a band you could allow yourself to enjoy.”

He looked up at Jack, smirking. “So I guess we’re going to have to buy you a case of condoms when we go out?”

Jack grinned. “I’ll split it with Dex.”

He noticed Gordon’s jaw visibly tightened at that statement and thought now that’s interesting but filed it away for future reference. He had observed that the others liked to mock the duo behind their collective backs, which he initially attributed to normal band dynamics, but he couldn’t ignore the subtext of their taunts, which seemed to err on the side of portraying the two as quarrelling lovers rather than best friends. Jack also knew that the passage of time and heightened proximity was enough to warp any relationship into something completely outside most societal paradigms. He recalled one of Tony’s favorite comebacks, when someone even jokingly referred to him as a queer or a faggot, because of his preening nature and overly-sensitive personality. He would respond thus in a completely deadpan tone:

“Yes. I’m totally gay for you.”

Which would normally result in the person responsible for the taunt cringing or exiting in a hurry. Sometimes Tony would pull a gun instead, and more than once between the two of them this resulted in a standoff because Jack would draw at the same time. The first time it happened, James and Todd just ran from the room without a word. He laughed at the memory.

“No girls on the bus,” Gordon said a moment later.

“We had that rule too. Well, for any trip longer than five hours. I was so glad when we got more than one bus, because Tony would insist on listening to such depressing shit every night.”

“Like?”

“All that gloom-and-doom art music from the ‘80s. Ugh.”

“We’re all nostalgic for the music of our youth, you know.” Gordon cracked.

“Yeah, well, you start callin’ me ‘Gramps’ or some shit like that and I’ll have to hurt you. But how did you get into jazz, anyway?”

“Not without help,” Gordon said, smiling. He put down his pen and took a drink from the can. “My parents weren’t really into music, except for my mom, but she loved Jose Jose –“

“Who’s that?” Jack asked.

“He’s like the Mexican Frank Sinatra. Now I think a lot of his stuff isn’t so bad, but when I was a kid I couldn’t stand it. Dex and I listened to skatepunk, rap, and some metal. But my uncle Ernesto, he loved all kinds of music. He had a huge record collection and I’ll never forget one day I came over to help out with picking oranges – he owned one of the few remaining orange groves in Pomona – and he put on a Deodato album.”

“Oooh, was it the first record?”

“Either the first or the second, I can’t remember now.”

“You know who played on those records?”

Gordon chimed in because he knew the answer. “Billy Cobham!” They high-fived each other in admittance of their musical geekery.

“Yeah, he had this really complicated setup, and a PA out in the grove so we could listen to music while we picked oranges. I spent a whole day listening to Latin jazz and I asked him to make me tapes. Then I stopped listening to anything else. And he turned me on to all the great Latin rock of that era. Not just Santana, but Malo, El Chicano, Macondo, Tierra, Tango, Azteca. Bands that nobody knows now except on the oldies circuit.”

“That’s great. Everything I learned about music mostly came from my older brother. Then from teachers.”

“See, I never took any music lessons, except in school. My parents couldn’t afford it.”

“James never took lessons either. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Oh I’m not.” He looked over at the stage. “Ray,” he called out, “is all the gear in?”

A distant voice, its’ owner not immediately discernable, answered. “Yes boss.”

“I don’t see everything out here.”

“Some of it is still in the back. But it’s all here.”

“Okay, I’m trusting you, you hear me?”

“Not to worry, boss.”

Jack began to muse about the last two weeks, noting that Gordon’s micromanaging notwithstanding, he was actually happy with both the style and the direction of the entity, and was excited with the thought of what he could bring to the table.

Gordon was careful not to short Jack on any direction, and in allowing Gordon to be bossy and overbearing, Jack was careful not to take it personally.
“On ‘Epicaricacy,’ we always have three distinct parts. The beginning is normal 4/4 for the most part. The movement that leads to the bridge, you have to play as fast as you possibly can for ten bars. Then rest. When I nod, we start back into the beginning again.”
“Okay.”
“But at the end, you just have to fall apart.”
Jack gave him a skeptical look.
“You’ve never done that before?”
“Not on purpose.”
“It sounds pretty cool, “ Dex offered. “There was this one time we did it where everybody decided to just start playing as slow as possible. It went on, for like, ten minutes.”
“By that time, the audience was all, All right already!” Marco added.
“I have to say though, that our audience is fairly tolerant. But the way we play, they have to be.” Gordon surmised.
“I guess I’ve never fallen apart for the same reason I’ve never played while drunk – you could get hurt doing that.”
“That’s why we save that song for the end,” said Dex.

“So we’re doing ‘Space Is Deep,’ but that’s on the record. What else?”

Gordon sighed, and started over again with a clean sheet of paper. “I’ve been thinking since yesterday we should do ‘Joy and Pleasure,’ but frankly, Jeff has never gotten the hang of Popol Vuh.”

“I can get him to follow me, that should be good enough.”

“Okay then, so also. . .’Yours Is No Disgrace,’ or ‘Starship Trooper?’”

“You’re asking me? Well then it’s obvious.”

“It’s going to make the first set a little top-heavy. Maybe we’ll open with that second set.”

“And not ‘Deliverance Dive?’ I’ve read the boards, they’ll be a riot!”

Gordon grimaced. “And you should also know by now that I don’t give a shit about people’s wishlists.”

“So what’s left?”

“You listened to that Iconoclasta record I gave you, right?”

“Yes sir! I’m going to predict that we’re doing ‘Etude 6.’”

Gordon made a buzzer noise. “Wrong! ‘Fuera de Casa.’ Did you like it, though? The record?”

“Oh yeah. When you told me they were the only Mexican prog band I was immediately interested.”

“Good. Other guys I’ve known who were into prog say they’re too cheesy. But they’re not really English prog-based, they’re influenced primarily by Italian progressive, which is more dramatic.”

“Aubergine was big in Italy. I mean, they probably still are, but I can remember when we toured there, every time there would be this huge crowd.”

“If all goes well maybe we can finally go to Europe. I’d really love to, actually.”

“It’s great, I totally recommend it.”

“You would, though,” Gordon said, snickering.

“Yeah, you gotta promise me: if we go to Europe don’t let me bring any women home this time, okay?”

Gordon wasn’t sure if he should laugh at that statement, but when Jack did he figured it was acceptable.


The house was noisy: Marco was making sandwiches for anyone interested, Dex was in the shower, wailing at the top of his register, or so Jack thought. At the very least he was drowning out the King Crimson record playing on the expensive stereo.

“Oh no, he can go higher than that. Into the whistle range.” Gordon informed him.

“Wow.”

“We think sustain is more important, though. There’s a lot of long notes in our stuff.”

“Yeah I noticed that. This is a nice place,” he noted, looking around. “Although that living room is kinda scary.”

“Your old house this big?” Jeff asked him.

“Yeah, I guess. It doesn’t sprawl like this, though. It has a lot of little rooms all connected together by stairways. And a basement.”

“I still can’t believe he’s just letting us camp out here.” Gordon muttered.

“What do you think he wants?” Jack asked, attempting to make the question sound merely casual. And Gordon’s expression was one of obvious rhetorical response.

“Yeah well, they just don’t know how stubborn you are, do they?”

They grinned at one another as Dex came down the stairs, shaking a head full of wet ringlets and humming to himself. He was dressed for the show : tight, low-slung black jeans and a French-cut t-shirt, also black, bearing a vaguely metallic silkscreen. Jack squinted and could make out some kind of fantasy-inspired design. A dragon, perhaps. Or a fairy.

Always gotta provoke, don’t they? Can’t just sing pretty and leave it at that.

He recalled that piece of observant wisdom from Aubergine’s rigger, a guy from Texas named Marley who himself was a failed country crooner, chewed up and spat out by Nashville before he even knew what hit him. His tales of running with the singer-songwriter coterie of hellraisers were twenty times more shocking than any third-hand rumor of debauchery from the mouths of rock n’roll has-been hangers-on.

“Dude, are those girls’ jeans?” Jack inquired, looking slightly incredulous. The rest of the band broke out in derisive catcalls.

“And he’s too much of a pussy to buy them himself, he sends Shelly to get them.” Jeff said.

“You know, when you think of credibility. . .Dex’s ass never comes to mind,” Marco sniped.

“Yeah go ahead and talk trash, but I know I look good in these.” He swiveled to examine his posterior in a nearby mirror.

“Oh you’ve definitely got a case of LSD!” Jack teased.

“What?” Dex asked, confused.

“Lead Singers’ Disease,” Gordon cut in. “which you were born with.”

Dex threw his recently discarded underwear at his partner, which Gordon caught with one hand and tossed into an open duffle bag. Everyone but Jack put their hands over their eyes, groaning loudly.

“Oh shut the hell up, I know somebody’s waiting for me to forget the laundry so they can sell this shit on eBay.”

More groaning, but Dex looked curious.

“Do you really think someone would buy my underwear?”

Jack began laughing and Gordon’s grim look at everyone else stopped the speculation cold.


Eli had insisted on spending her own money on two t-shirts, a poster, and a limited edition booklet - made by the girl who ran the fanclub - in lieu of an actual tour program. Pete sat at the main bar of the Key Club waiting for Eli to finish talking to Shelly, who also handled the merchandise sales. He had no idea what they were talking about, but from their incredibly animated manner it had to be about the band.

“Honey,” he said to her once she joined him, “you know I can get you any merch you want for free.”

“That’s not the point of being a fan. I should contribute like everyone else does.”

“Are you ready to go upstairs?”

“Yeah. I’m hungry, though, can we eat here?”

“We could go backstage and see what they’ve got.”

“No!” she exclaimed, taking a swipe at his shoulder. “Leave them alone!”

“You’re scaring me, Eli. You really are.”

After inquiring with the bartender and finding out she could order food upstairs from the kitchen, Eli gave her husband a curt nod and they climbed upwards to the VIP area, flashing their wristbands which Gordon had brought to Pete personally that afternoon.

“Gotta love the perks,” he murmured to her as they went up the stairs, catching the eyes of a few envious fans who were standing in the lobby.

“They probably think we’re somebody’s parents,” Eli quipped.

For the next hour they ate, drank, and watched the club fill up, as devoutly loyal fans approached the stage with the reverence given to an altar: discussing the minutiae involved with the arrangement of Gordon’s effects pedals, and Jack’s drum kit. Pete chuckled as a pair of boys, no older than 19 probably, rushed into the room and immediately pushed their way to the front.

“No fuckin’ way dude, it’s really true!” one of them exclaimed, practically crowing with delight.

Gordon had insisted on absolute secrecy about Jack’s status until five days before the show, running an ad in the L.A. Weekly in the same manner the band had always advertised its’ shows: against the backdrop of a swirling psychedelic design, only the pertinent details were listed.

Nebulae is:
Gordon Ojonos
Dex
Jeff Tremant
Marco Luna
Isaiah Darraidou
. . .and introducing. . .
Jack Perris

This was followed by the date, name of the venue, and time of entry. Pete imagined he could hear the squealing of fans across the city as soon as the issue hit the streets. The rabid ones had known months in advance about the show, as Gordon normally posted terse updates to the news section of the band’s website. But that was all he could be bothered to do, leaving the rest to a computer-savvy friend who ran the site strictly for the glory-by-proxy. Jeff and Marco loved to read the message board and laugh at some of the more strange and embarrassing topics that the fans came up with; printing out entire threads for the band’s amusement. But Gordon and Dex refused to allow themselves involvement at any level of fandom which involved mass intimate contact.

“I don’t have time for that bullshit,” was Gordon’s typical reply.

“I don’t like knowing what people really think of me,” Dex often remarked, “it makes me inhibited.”

“Rather an odd opinion for a frontman to have, don’t you think?” Pete had asked.

“When I get on stage, then it’s okay, I love that. But in life I tend to be shy.”

“Mmm hmm,” was the response, but a rather skeptical one. Pete believed it was merely a way for Dex to create a persona empowered with the weight of mystery. He knew Dex was more savvy regarding the manipulation of his image than he let on.

Perhaps the most valuable piece of publicity was printed the same day, in the same magazine. The critics at the Weekly generally despaired that there was nothing particularly new and fresh about the pool of bands in the Basin, that the Industry dominated everything and sucked all the adventure out of just being in the race for The Fun Of It. However, they did have their favorites, and Arnie Bertram got a chance to write about his once again:

For those in the Indie musical stratosphere who like to split genre distinctions finer than the hair fluffing up their naughty bits, Nebulae must be a compartmentalizing nightmare: they’re the band who can’t decide if they’re Latin rock, progressive rock, vaguely dark ambient wedded to some seriously bizarre notion of electroclash, post-speed metal drumming fetishists, or just incredibly overthinking riff rockers who like their vocals emo and their time signatures strictly fourth-dimensional.
Whatever they are, in my book they’re the greatest cult band you’ve never heard. Custodians of a halcyon era of weighty guitars, chilly synth embellishments, a chorus of unearthly angelic trilling, and drumming that your heart races to keep up with. Their live performances are decidedly elastic events, with the band harassing each other and the audience in between mind-melding musical noodling that delivers every dish tastily al dente. Jams stretch out, freak out, and even peter out, but never bore. And lead singer Dex has a voice that for every comparison to other yelping icons both respected and reviled is still astoundingly male even as it soars to a register somewhere above the dog-whistling of Mariah Carey, possessed equally of silk and steel.
Those who have been on board since the independently produced-and-distributed EP realize that the major-label debut, Triangulum, is more of the same frenzied dancing across the universe, with added time and money to allow the production to buff every performance to a high gloss while still retaining that old school warm glow.
See them now before everyone else finds out how awesome they are and the trendy herd makes it impossible to get tickets.
Addendum at Press Time: In what can only be considered as an incredibly bizarre and incestuous turn of events, Gary Jones recently departed from Nebulae to join the prog-metal monolith known as Aubergine. His replacement? Drumming legend Jack Perris…formerly of Aubergine.

When Pete saw Gary Jones making a beeline for him he had to suppress the urge to yell out Oh fuck! but he wasn’t surprised. Gary was a huge fan of Jack’s and one of the people Pete had to keep away from his problem child, because he definitely possessed the potential to become annoyingly fanboy-ish.

“Hey dude,” Gary said, quietly.

“G, how the hell did you manage an invite?”

“I’m not at liberty to disclose that information.”

“Mmm hmm. You remember my wife, Eli?”

“Yeah, how you doin?’”

“Fine, thanks.” Eli’s response was icy, which told both men that she was strictly in the fandom mindset, whatever her actual opinion of the recent personnel changes. Pete pulled a chair from another table and placed it next to him, so Eli wouldn’t feel obliged to engage in small talk.

“Have you ever seen Jack play?” he asked.

Gary pushed his sunglasses up to the top of his head. “Not this close. By the time I could afford to go to shows they were playing arenas.”

“Yeah, this is pretty spectacular. You’re gonna have a room full of air drummers tonight.”

“No shit; I’m right there, brother!”

Eli gave Pete a curious look.

“Honey, there’s a entire section of the fanbase that has never listened to anything but the drums on an Aubergine record.”

“Like you?” she teased. He rolled his eyes, but chuckled.

“No, not like me. But Gary here, I bet he’s done that.”

“Oh hell yeah. I mean, that’s how I got the job. I was the one who could play the songs the best. But every guy they auditioned, they were all like that.”

“How can you listen to just the drums?”

“I messed around with my equalizer. I just isolated the drums as best I could. The bass is always in there, though, Jack and Todd usually doubled up on the riffs.”

“How is your new job?” Pete asked.

“I can play ‘Apocalypse in 7/4’ in my sleep now, what’s that tell ya?”

“That they’re working you like a dog but it don’t mean shit unless they actually do something.”

“They can’t – you know that.”

“Kinda makes you wonder if you made the right choice, doesn’t it?”

Gary stared at him, squinting his eyes in annoyance. Pete excused himself to go outside to smoke and Eli watched Gary wander around the big room for a little while, which was still mostly empty. Finally he seated himself at the other end of the balcony, pulling a chair into the corner and wedging himself between the railing and wall. The intern assigned to watch Jack approached her and she begrudgingly offered him a seat.

“Thanks, I saw Pete outside and he said it was okay to sit with you guys.”

“Did he?” He always gathers up all the strays. she thought to herself.

“Hey so, do you guys have any kids?” he asked, apropos of nothing.

“No.”

“Oh, I kept thinking you had a kid, for some reason. But I bet they’d be great, I mean with Pete being –“

“Being what?”

“Biracial.”

“I suppose,” she replied. When Pete returned, she gave him a peeved glance and leaned forward to speak quietly.

“What, princess?”

“Do you want kids?”

“What?”

“This lackey thinks we have a kid. Where did he get that idea?”

“I don’t know, honey.”

“Are you going around telling everyone you can’t wait to make Heinz 57 babies with me?”

“What? No!”

“Because it’s bad enough having to deal with Jack Perris, much less a kid of our own.”

“Honey, I told you, it’s up to you. Personally, I think we would make beautiful Japanese-Pakistani-Welsh-Italian babies, but I’m not the one who has to push one out.”

“You’re damn right you don’t. And I’d appreciate it if people didn’t ask me such socially inept questions.”

Pete knew he was a good husband because he declined to argue the point any further. But he did wonder where the kid got the idea. Not that it was a bad idea. Personally, he wanted a girl who would grow up to be just like Eli. He thought that would be a much better legacy to leave the world than any of the facilitation he lent to the starmaker machinery, to paraphrase Joni Mitchell. Not that he would ever admit to anyone that there was anything more important than rock n’roll. He would be flayed alive for even suggesting such a thing.

“So can we at least practice making a baby?” he asked, slyly smiling.

“Shut up Peter,” she replied, flipping through the booklet.

“That’s my girl,” he replied, smiling at their guest’s confused glance. Some people just didn’t get true love at all, and he pitied them.


Gordon heard a high-pitched squeal of annoyance coming from the bathroom and knew exactly who it was. He pushed open the door.

“What’s wrong,” he said to Dex, more resigned than inquiring.

“I can’t get my hair right!” Dex exclaimed, sounding panic-stricken. “I need Shelly!”

Dex rolled his eyes, but unclipped his two-way phone from his belt and pushed the talk button. “Ray,” he said.

“Yeah boss,” came the crackling reply.

“Send Cricket out to merch to tell Shelly to come back here. He can watch the booth for a few minutes.”

“Okay boss.”

”Now,” Gordon said with added emphasis. “The Diva is having a crisis.”

“Pendejo!” Dex hissed at him. Gordon smirked. Despite a lifetime of exposure to Spanglish, as well as more proper forms of Spanish, Dex still managed to sound more than a little ridiculous because he often forgot to roll his Rs, or make a J sound like an H when necessary.

“Do you really think I want to deal with your drama queen hysterics now? Hell, I’m nervous too, okay?!”

“Okay! Just shut up already!” Dex was unusually pale, which made his eyes that much brighter. And his hair was a bit unruly in that back, a cowlick causing a bunch of curls to stick up on the left side. At that moment Shelly came in and Gordon leaned against the wall, watching.

“Oh what’s wrong, sweetie?” she inquired, placing her hands on his shoulders and surveying the landscape in question.

“Look at the back!” Dex whined in response. “It’s all poufy!”

“Okay, we can fix it,” she soothed, reaching towards a bag that sat on the counter enclosing the sink. It contained a number of personal care products which Dex refused to share with anyone, and the consensus within the rest of the band seemed to be that they didn’t want to know what Dex really needed to get ready for a show. Shelly extracted a can of mousse and a wide-toothed comb. As she tended to the problem Dex looked at Gordon from the perspective of the mirror.

“You can go now,” he snapped.

“No.” Gordon struggled to keep his voice calm, he never liked to lose his temper in front of Shelly. “I need to talk to you when she’s done.”

Dex shrugged slightly and sipped from a ceramic mug. Gordon wondered how many times they would have to vamp a jam because Dex would need to piss. But he insisted that he needed to drink as much Throat Coat tea as possible before a show, no matter how “warm” his voice sounded to anyone’s ears, let alone his own.

“If you need –“ Shelly began.

“No!” the two exclaimed in unison, and she smiled, slightly. Just enough that Gordon knew exactly what she was thinking. Although he was aware that the fanbase often referred to the two as “Team Brainiac,” in response to their generally intellectually oblique interviews, Shelly’s nickname was “The Twins.” When Dex caught her using it he was mock indignant.

“I’m eight months older!” he protested. “And way better-looking.”

But she only smiled in response, just like she was smiling now as she performed an enviable task to some, he imagined, getting paid to play with Dex’s hair.

“How’s the house look, Shell?” Gordon asked her.

“Nearly full now,” she replied, running the comb carefully through Dex’s tresses, taming any further rebellion. “There now,” she proclaimed in a maternal tone. “Better?”

Dex looked at his hair from several different angles, with the help of a hand-held mirror, before assenting in kind. He kissed her on the forehead in thanks. She then looked at his shirt.

“Are you sure?” Her expression was decidedly less unsure.

“What?” Dex looked down. “Oh. Really? No?”

They took a moment to look through the alternatives, hanging in a nearby roadcase, before deciding that the shirt he had picked was indeed the best choice.

“Have fun out there, guys,” she said, departing. Gordon’s phone beeped from his pocket with the two-way page tone.

“Yeah?” he said, answering.

“I need Shelly,” Ray informed him.

Gordon handed the phone to Shelly. “Go ahead, Ray,” she prompted.

“What’s the status?” he asked. “Cricket’s not too good at making change.”

“The Twins are a go, I’m on my way.”

“Roger.”

She gave the phone back to Gordon and he raised an eyebrow. She gave him a guileless look and pushed through the door.

“Hey,” he said to Dex, who was now applying eyeliner – just a faint line – to the lower rim of his eyes. A sound of inquiry issued from his open mouth. But Gordon was content to watch him for the moment, and the next, in which he applied a coat of clear mascara to his already naturally long eyelashes.

“What?” he finally asked, clearing away the implements of his stage persona.

Gordon put a hand on his shoulder. “Every night, is it going to be this way?”

Dex sighed. “Of course not! But we haven’t played in six months.”

“I just, I don’t know –“

“Hey, zuri, stop, okay?” Dex put his hands onto Gordon’s arms and his forehead against his partner’s. “I’m sorry.”

“No you’re not.”

A giggle. “No, I’m not. Are you going to tell me if my ass hangs out?”

“Not right away,” Gordon said, and the look between them was one of resigned union. In response, Dex kissed him: just a faint brush of softness, the vague flavor of cherry ChapStick, and the scent of licorice from the tea.

“Nice try, but you’re still a brat.” Make me as stone, impervious as the centuries.

“I’m just me, Gordo. Now let’s get this damn thing over with.”


The members of Nebulae filed down the hallway, Dex peeking through the doorway at the crowd in front of the stage. He spoke to those behind him but did not turn his head. Ray had begun playing their introductory music over the PA, Deodato’s version of “Thus Spake Zaruthustra.”

“Aw man, it’s all people we know. I hate that.” But it comforted him to see the same amps and instruments, the same rug, all the implements of their vocation. If every stage was supposed to be like home, then it helped that the furnishings were always the same. Gordon made a fist and held it out in front of him, vertically. “Do your job and nobody gets hurt,” he proclaimed. The others put their fists on top of his, except for Jack, who was jumping rope in front of the doorway which led to the dressing room. Gordon thought Jack looked out of character with the rest of them - all dressed in jeans and t-shirts - but he dressed in the way he would be most comfortable, wearing a tank top and basketball shorts, as well as a pair of cycling shorts underneath.

“I have to keep my thighs warm or my legs will cramp. It takes a lot of strength to play the double bass at my age,” he explained in a moment of candor which was entirely unexpected. His shoes were another point of oddity: they reminded Gordon of shoes he had seen on the side of the freeway sometimes, simply discarded. But his Adidas weren’t in much better shape, and he was superstitious: they were the shoes he had worn the first time he played in front of an audience, and now that was their primary role as footwear. He put his hand on Dex’s shoulder.

“Hey,” he said. It was a ritual, but it never lost its’ power to amuse him.

“What?”

“You suck.”

Dex made a pfft sound and rolled his eyes. “You wish.”

The others chimed in. “You suck!”

“Would you assholes get on stage already? Jesus!”

Jack paused beside him, as Dex cracked his knuckles and cleared his throat.

“I don’t think you suck,” he said, trading the jump rope for a pair of drumsticks.

“No, I do. We bag on each other the whole show, otherwise it’s too nervewracking. You’ll see. Just go with it.”

“Okay.” He held out his fist like Gordon had previously. “Are you ready, chignon?”

Dex grinned and tapped Jack’s fist with his own. “Are you?”

“Well it’s too late to change our minds now, isn’t it?”

When Jack walked out on stage the entire building seemed to let out a deafening roar. The other members of Nebulae grinned, but the principles stared at one another, slightly stunned. Jack raised a hand at the crowd and sat down behind the kit, doing a few fills to get settled, which set off an even louder clamor.

Holy crap, Gordon thought. Now they expect us to be really good, I bet.

But Dex was relieved, and realized that the pressure was off because it was clear that most of the scrutiny would be for the guy at the back of the stage.

“Too bad, you could have worn some real pants this time,” Gordon whispered to him just before the first song. Dex watched the crowd and with the exception of a pocket of Gordon’s devoted following, most were completely focused on Jack. When he appeared to do the first yodeling break, only a few of the girls in front screamed in welcome.


Although their habit was to make comments throughout the set, Gordon and Dex normally saved the introductions and commentary for just before the end of the first set. Gordon bowed to expectations and decided to end the first set with “Starship Trooper,” leaving “Deliverance Dive” as the traditional second set opener.

After Gordon strapped on his vintage Gibson E series, which set the fanboys at his feet buzzing with speculation as to what Yes song they were going to hear, he stepped up to his mic and looked out into the back of the room. It was always easier than looking at specific faces.

“Hey,” he began, and he knew the crowd was hometown when instead of cheering they all called out “Hey Gordo!” in response. He cracked the slightest of smiles.

“So here we are, again, and thanks for coming, but all of you who complained about actually having to buy a ticket, fuck you.”

Laughter, and applause.

“We’ve got a new record out, and you better have bought it or I will kick your ass. We’re going on tour for the next year, to places that have never heard of us, and will probably act like you guys used to do, but we’re okay with that, because we suck. C’mon now, let’s hear it.”

The audience dutifully shouted out, “You suck!”

Gordon looked over at Marco. “Did you get that, dude?”

Marco hit the “playback” button on his Kurzweil, as he had set it in sequencer mode, and the crowd response was played back for their amusement.

“Good. Loop and burn that – Jeff needs a copy.”

More laughter. Jeff rolled his eyes but retained his look of long-suffering patience.

“For the benefit of you hipsters who’d heard we were the next big thing, we are: Jeff Tremant, bass.”

Loud applause.

“No, no, don’t encourage him! He still sucks!”

Jeff flipped him off, but with a smile.

“The terrorist of my family, my cousin Marco, on keyboards.”

Applause, and catcalls. Marco pretended to shoot the crowd.

“Young Isaiah doing various things. He’s actually pretty good at most of them.”

Laughter, scattered applause, whistling from the girls. Isaiah nodded, shyly.

”Y el hombre grande, Jackson Douglas Perris!” This last in the manner of a lucha libre announcer, his voice booming and his Rs rolling.

“His middle name is Douglas?” Eli remarked to Pete.

“It’s a good thing Jack really wants this gig,” Pete answered. “Otherwise Gordo would be waking up in the hospital.” He was yelling, because again the applause had become deafening. Once it had died down Jack looked over his drums at Gordon and smiled that famous dazzling smile.

“You’re a dead man, Gordo,” he said, but he was teasing.

“Oh snap!” Dex exclaimed, stepping up to his own mic. “Well, because this fucker isn’t going to introduce me –“

“Who are you, anyway?” Gordon asked, furrowing his brow.

Dex threw his arm around his partner’s shoulders and mugged. “You might have heard of us? Team Brainiac?”

Finally, the raucous recognition he had been expecting all evening. It would have gone on forever if Gordon had not waved a protesting hand at the assemblage.

“No, no – all of you nickname-giving Internet assholes can fuck off, okay? Seriously, you guys come up with some stupid shit!”

A woman standing center stage in the crowd piped up, “We love you too, Gordo!”

More laughter and cheering. He frowned and looked down at her specifically.

“Oh look, it’s Elaine. Just for that you have to buy five copies of the CD.”

Dex attempted a sympathetic defense. “Aw man, see how you are? Don’t be mean, Gordo.”

“No, no – I have spoken!”

As he bent down to do some final tuning adjustments, Eli leaned over to Pete again. “Are they high?”

He chuckled. “No babe, they do this all the time. It’s hilarious.”

Dex noticed them talking and pointed upwards to their position. “Look, our lawyer is here. Hi Pete!”

Pete good-naturedly waved back. “Hi Dex!”

Dex then looked at Eli. “Hey Eli, how you doin,’ sexy? Listen, if you want to dump that loser and come on the bus with us, call me, okay?” He blew her a kiss and took a perverse delight in her embarrassment. Most of the crowd had turned to look, and she buried her bright red face in her hands, shaking with equal parts laughter and mortification.

“Dex, I can see your asscrack,” Gordon said, and Jack began cracking up, loud enough for the crowd to hear. His partner nominally tugged at the waistband of his jeans.

“It’s tough being a half-assed sex symbol, folks,” Marco quipped.

“You’re just jealous because you’re all asshole, no ass.” Dex retorted. Some of the crowd made sympathetic noises and Gordon spoke up.

“No it’s true. He was just this big. . .anus. . .when he was born, and he finally grew into it.”

By then everyone, even Marco, was laughing on the edge of full-on hysteria. Pete wiped tears from his cheeks and looked over at his wife.

“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this red. Not even that time we tried Tantric sex.”

“Remind me to build you a doghouse when we get home tonight.”

“Home Depot will be closed by that time, honey.”

“Well you’re not sleeping in the same zip code with me, bucko.”

“Oh c’mon now, any other man would have been consumed with jealousy at that remark!”

“You put him up to it, I know you did.”

“No, it’s not like I told him to say that.”

“What did you do, exactly?”

“Well, I did tell him you think he’s extremely desirable.”

“Oh my god, Peter!” She smacked his arm vehemently. “I can’t believe you!”

“Well, I thought it would be helpful for his self-esteem.”

“Ah!” she cried out, continuing to hit him.

“Honey, please! You can beat me when we get home.”

She turned red again, and even though he knew she would be furious for at least the rest of the evening, it did have the added effect of stopping the abuse. Eli could really pack a wallop when she was pissed.


Security had been rigorous in clearing out everyone who did not belong in the venue. Lester, the Key Club’s GM, had allowed the band to use the VIP lounge downstairs immediately after the second set as sort of a clearinghouse for dealing with everyone the band did not wish to bring back to Morris’ house. And the room was filled with chattering; Gordon had a headache. Dex kept moving around, never pausing too long beside any one person, until he spotted his target and led him into a hallway behind the dance floor, a bouncer shutting the access door behind them.

“Hey,” is all Dre says, an off-kilter smile creasing his face. Dex thinks he’s high on something, but is more curious about something else.

“Where is she?” he asks. He had seen her once, entirely by accident. The last time he had seen Dre before the show was a week earlier, outside Los Hermanos, arguing with a white woman. From the tenor of their conflict he figured she was the novia but she didn’t resemble his expectations at all. If anything, she looked exactly the opposite of the type of woman he figured Dre would be attracted to, completely nondescript. But Dre was notoriously perverse, and Dex could believe he would date someone who could engender equal amounts of repulsion and attraction. And his suspicions were confirmed as soon as he saw the guilt in Dre’s eyes.

“We broke up.”

“Why?”

“What do you care?”

“Because I think it’s weird that you broke up with this woman and the next thing I know, there you are with Dar again.”

“What? We hang out all the time.”

“And you lie. What are you really doing?”

“You know what? I’m not in the band anymore, so you can’t run my fuckin’ life now, okay?!”

“You’re not bringing Dar and Catherine over, I’ll tell you that right now.”

“Like I care. Besides, Gordo wanted to talk to him afterwards.”

“He can do it now. I don’t want him anywhere near me.”

“He’s not gonna do anything, that’s all ancient history.”

“Is it? ‘Cause I thought you guys were ancient history too.”

Dre refused to meet his stare, and Dex knew in that moment what his line of questioning was unlikely to uncover.

“You know, Dex, it’s easy for you now, to just stand there and say I’m fucking up my life, but look where you are.”

“That’s what I mean, how do you think we got here, anyway? Don’t tell me I’m any better than you –“

“ – but you are, you’ve always been, okay? Why can’t you just leave it alone?”

“Think about what he’s done. Really think about it, instead of just conveniently blocking it out of your mind. You think he’s the easy way out, but the first time he wants you to do something you don’t want to do you’re going to be in trouble. Because he never takes no for an answer.”

“I don’t care anymore.”

“Yeah I can see that.”

“Just cut me loose.”

Dex stared at him, and all of a sudden Dre started sweating, standing on that precipice of actions one cannot reverse once they are put into motion.

“Andreas,” he said, and he put his hand on Dre’s cheek. Dre moved away from him, his eyes cast towards the floor, and Dex knew it was too late.

“No, you can’t do this! You can’t magically appear to save me, because you’re not even going to be around! Don’t start caring now, okay, it’s really insulting.”

“I can’t undo any of it. All I’m trying to tell you is that you should make better choices.”

“Like you, right? You made the better choice.”

“I’m sorry that you’re unhappy with me, but you can’t blame me for everything.”

“It works for me. Besides, what does it matter if I hate you? You’ve got the love of hundreds, possibly thousands of people now, Michael.” A more harsh emphasis on the given name than Dex had used to implore his friend in kind.

“Don’t call –“

“I know, I know – you’re not a Michael anymore – and it’s true. You’re Gordon’s creation, to the core.”

Dre turned away, quickly, before Dex could even formulate a response. He pushed through the crowd and then he was gone. At that moment Isaiah approached his brother in the habit he had of just appearing. Dex wondered how he was able to walk so quietly.

“You okay, chango?” he asked, casually.

“Yeah, can you go get me a Coke?”

Because Dex rarely drank soda, Isaiah knew he really meant “with rum,” but the two of them had developed a code over the years to keep certain things from Gordon’s scrutiny, because blood really was thicker than anything.

“Sure. You want anything else? Shelly says they’re gonna close the kitchen in half an hour.”

“No.”

“You want me to go get Mom? She rode with Gaby but they haven’t left yet.”

“No, I’m okay. I just need a drink.”

No, you’re not okay if you need a drink, Isaiah countered, silently, but did his brother’s bidding, as always.

Dre returned to the bar, skirting close to a group of women gathered around Catherine. They were all of the augmented-within-an-inch-of-their-lives type which classified them as adult entertainers, and he was heartened by the fact that Leticia didn’t quite fit in, visually speaking. A couple of the girls looked at him hungrily, and they were only encouraged by his selection of the seat at the bar next to Darshan. The two drank without speaking, listening instead to the cackle of the hens.

“Oooh girl, I swear I’ll never have another Brazilian wax ever! It feels like there’s fire ants underneath my skin,” one blonde remarked.

“I’ll never go Hollywood down there,” Catherine declared. “Anyone who doesn’t like it can go fuck themselves ‘cause they sure as hell won’t be fucking me.”

“What about Dar?” asked another, whose hair color reminded Dre of a dog his mother once had, a poodle whose fur was dyed “champagne” on a regular basis.

Catherine tossed her head dismissively. “Dar’s a freak. He’ll eat the shit out of my ass if I tell him to.”

Dre looked over at Darshan, who shrugged.

“She’s just saying that; she’s not really into scat.”

“Are you?”

He chuckled and raised his shot of tequila in a thoughtful motion. “Hell, I’ll try anything once.”


Shelly was pushing through the crowd standing outside of the entrance to the VIP room, holding onto her lanyard for dear life, as someone had already tried pulling it off her neck earlier in the post-show crush in the lobby, and was amused to see Jeff at the edge of the crowd, signing various items for those savvy enough to recognize him in their midst.

“Shellbelle,” he hailed her as she was granted entry by one of the bouncers, “who were those girls you were talking to earlier?”

“When?” she asked, vaguely distracted by others attempting to get her attention. They always screeched her name: Shellleeee! She had nightmares about being chased by zombies screaming her name, and they sounded just like the fangirls.

“Between sets. There were two blonde girls hanging at the booth. I don’t think they bought anything.”

“I dunno, Jeff. Just random girls.”

“Shit. Isn’t there anyone you know who came tonight? That we can invite back to Brendan’s?”

“And suffer the wrath of Gordo? I don’t think so!”

“C’mon, dude! I need to get laid!!”

“Jesus Christ, find some girl who will suck your dick in the alleyway and get it over with! I don’t have time for this bullshit, okay?!” She turned to one of the girls waiting for an autograph. “Like you, you wanna blow Jeff? Or Marco? They’re clean, I had to have them tested for insurance purposes.”

The girl giggled, but gave Jeff an appraising look, and he flushed.

“Goddamn it Shelly!”

In a rare display of pique, she turned on him to retort.

“Listen up asshole, finding trim is not, I repeat, not my fucking job, and if you’ve got a problem with me, take it up with Gordon. But if you do, of course he’s going to find out exactly why you’re pissed with me, and then you’ll have an even bigger problem. Am I clear?”

“Crystal, bitch.”

She leaned in to whisper in his ear. “That’s right, I am a bitch. So don’t fuck with me.”

Shelly turned to venture backstage, and Jeff looked at the hopeful in front of him, clearing his throat.

“Sorry about that, she’s –“

“So yeah,” she said, running a finger along the top of the hand that signed the booklet. “Did you wanna, like, go somewhere private?”

“Uh, well –“ And all he could think was, Damnit, I wish Gary was here. He’d know what to do.


Dre went outside with Darshan, the irony of obtaining fresh air while standing in a group of smokers was not lost on him. Scanning the animated crowd around him, he saw a vaguely familiar face.

“Oh, there’s your doppelganger,” Dre said, nodding towards his right side.

“Who is that guy?” Darshan asked.

“I don’t know his name, but he’s their lawyer.”

“Hmm. I could use one of those.”

“You already have one.”

“Yeah, but he’s not inspiring much confidence of late.” He paused to take a drag, then continued. “I don’t feel like he’s working hard enough for what I’m paying.”

“This guy’s legit, though. He works for some big entertainment law firm.”

“Hey, I’m a businessman, and it’s a business that makes more than any of the others combined.”

“You know money doesn’t buy credibility.”

“Fuck, I can buy everything else, so what do I need credibility for?”

“You know it’s funny that our work is legal, but our hobbies are not.”

“Nobody is going to have you arrested for fucking your cousin.”

“Do you have to announce it to the fucking world? What is wrong with you?!”

“I’m serious. As long as you guys stay out of the old neighborhood it doesn’t matter what you do. But shit, waiting around like this is boring. We need to find some drugs.”

“Not here you won’t. The dealers never come to the gigs because Gordo has a habit of dropping a dime on their asses.”

“Oh that’s typical,” Dar cracked, looking around. He took a final inhale and crushed out the butt under a steel-toed boot. “Well chignon, let’s go have some fun; unless you need to slobber all over Dex some more.”

“Fuck you. But didn’t you want to talk to Gordo?”

“Nah. He’s just going to pretend not to be so disappointed in me, and besides, I know Dex is looking for an excuse to rat me out. Damn, you dose someone once, like, seven years ago, and they act like you tried to kill them. He’s such a baby. You were there, was it so bad?”

“No, but I had done acid before that. He’d never done anything at that point.”

“That’s why I had to get the hell out of there; he used to look at me like I’d raped him, or something.”

“Uh –“

Darshan stared him down and Dre felt a figurative sliver of fear prod him in the balls.

Oh great, now I’ve got a boner too? Fuck me.

As if he knew the script of Dre’s internal monologue, Darshan’s scowl became a quicksilver smile. “Are you ready to go?” he asked.

I’m already gone.


Terry felt distinctly uncomfortable, as he normally did at parties, knowing hardly anyone and now with the added restriction of not being able to drink until it no longer mattered. But Jack was careful to keep him at his side as he talked to various people, debating everything from the best type of electronic drum pad to who should win the AFC division that year. He envied Jack for more than a few things, but primarily for his sense of self-awareness, that he had no issues with merely being himself.

They had wandered into the kitchen where Marco was now making nachos and the guys were all discussing music, as usual. Terry sat down on one of the stools around the enormous marble-topped island in the center of the room and Marco immediately put a cheese-and-chip-laden platter in front of him.

“Careful,” he warned, “they’re right out of the oven.”

Jack immediately leaned over and started pulling a few off the plate. “Marco how do you always end up with KP?”

“His parents run a taco shop, dude. Marco’s been cooking since he was old enough to hold a knife without cutting his finger off.” Dex informed him, sharing a portion with his brother.

“Hell, younger than that – look at this.” He held out his left hand to reveal a particularly painful scar on his index finger, just below the fingernail.

“Ouch,” Jack observed.

“Yeah, that nearly put an end to the classical pianist aspirations of my mom. But she threatened to have the doctor at the ER fired if he didn’t fix me right. My mom is a bitch on wheels, man, truly.”

“So you’ve been together all your lives?” Jack asked Dex.

“It certainly feels that way,” Marco quipped.

“The four of us,” Dex elaborated. “We all grew up in Chino. We didn’t know Jeff until high school. Although Marco didn’t go to our high school for all four years.”

“Why?”

“Gordo and me, we were total geeks growing up. We were in the honors classes in our school. We went to the Catholic school because you could get a discount if you went to the Church that ran it, which we did.”

“Were you altar boys?” Jack teased.

“Oh hell no! We were in the youth choir, though, all of us. But anyway, Marco was a prodigy, you know, he never had to learn to play the piano, he could just, like, do it. So when we finished with junior high our music teacher finds out about this scholarship he could get to some conservatory in Ojai, up north. He goes, but by the end of the year they tell him not to come back.”

“Dude, what did you do?” Jack asked.

“Something they all wish they could have done,” Marco replied, putting another plate under the broiler.

“Dude, just put those in the microwave already, I’m hungry!” Jeff whined.

“The cheese gets too oily if you do it that way. Make some yourself if you’re going be halfassed.”

“So what happened?” Jack asked Dex.

“He totally pulled a letourneau, man.”

“Okay, first of all, I was older than that kid. And second: she was way hotter than Mary Kay Letourneau. Everyone at that damn school wanted that ass. I didn’t even have to do anything – she took me to the symphony one Sunday afternoon and she’s all over me in the parking lot.” Marco elaborated.

“You were older by one year, dude, like that makes any difference. But she was, what, 25?”

“Twenty-three.”

“Damn, I never had anything like that happen to me until I was infamous!” Jack exclaimed.

“Neither did we,” Dex continued. “We had to be goody-two-shoes because of Casanova there. Gordo’s parents didn’t want him hanging out with us, but his mom begged them, she’s all, ‘Marco has no friends, he needs a good example!’” At that last he had made his voice female and simpering. Marco threw a dishtowel in his direction with vehemence.

“Fuck you, carbon. I was the one who didn’t want to hang out with you because you mulas were too busy with Madrigals to do anything normal, much less interesting.”

“Yeah, so Marco throws away a promising career over some hot-for-teacher fantasy and we’re the ones who have to pay for it by being watched like convicts for our entire adolescence.” Gordon surmised. “That’s fair.”

“Your parents are mental, pendejo. They were like that when were we little, even. Tia Inez has never liked me because I was born before you.”

“Dude, that’s just fuckin’ retarded. It’s because you’ve been a chilito mayate all your damn life.”

“Duuuude!” Dex and Isaiah exclaimed in unison.

“Oh I’m a faggot? That’s fuckin’ hysterical, Gordo.” It wasn’t obvious if Marco was especially offended by the slur, as his response was couched in the normal deadpan way he said most things.

“I figured the way you’re slingin’ shit you might as well eat some too.” Gordon shot back, his face impressively impassive.

“Okaaay,” Jack cut in, attempting to defuse the situation, but Dex put a hand on his arm.

“Don’t sweat it. They do this about once a month and then Gordo gets drunk and forgets about it by the next day. He’s more pissed about being called a pencil dick anyway.”

“Gordo actually gets wasted?”

“Yeah, it only seems like he’s got a stick up his ass all the time.”

“More like your dick,” Marco murmured, but Gordon heard him anyway and started yelling at him in what Jack assumed was Mexican profanity.

“Oh shut up already!” Jeff yelled. “Okay, so we’re playing dead rock stars. Who do you wanna be?”

“Huh? Oh, nobody,” Jack replied. He began eating the rest of the nachos on Terry’s plate. “Dude, you need to eat something.”

“I’ll wait till the next round, thanks,” Terry deadpanned.

“No? Okay, I’ve got dibs on Jaco Pastorius.”

“Ha, you wish could play half as good as him from beyond the fuckin’ grave!” Gordon snapped.

“Didn’t I tell you to shut up, maldito? Goddamn!”

“This game is so fuckin’ lame, but I guess I’d be Chris Gilbert without the embarrassing personal life.” Gordon opined.

“Did you know him?” Isaiah asked, and Jack was shocked, he hadn’t heard Dex’s brother speak more than five words since they’d met.

“No, actually. I know Dave and Mir, but not that well. But this guy,” he said, elbowing Terry, “he knew Chris. Tell them how you met – it’s hilarious.”

“It’s not that funny,” Terry said, cursing internally that Jack would call attention to the one aspect of his life he really didn’t enjoy talking about.

“It is! C’mon now,” he coaxed.

“Okay, we met back in the early Nineties at Madonna’s house.”

“You know Madonna?” Dex asked, incredulous.

“Yeah, I was in Dangerous Game with her. It was a birthday party for her brother, she invited a whole bunch of people, mostly New York artfags and the like, but she also invited everybody who worked on the movie, we had just wrapped a week before.”

“So how did Chris Gilbert know her?”

“I guess she wanted him to work on her next record. He was doing songwriter demos for her, and she had already paid him.”

“Which is the stupidest thing you can do,” Jack cut in.

“And since he really didn’t want to work with her he was going to write something so offensively awful she’d totally fire his ass and at least he’d have some money to show for it.”

Everyone laughed, but Jack raised a hand.

“No, that’s the not the funny part.”

“That is funny, though.” Terry countered. “He was whispering when he said it, like, ’Dude, don’t tell her, but it’s totally gonna suck!’”

Marco put out another platter of nachos and this time Terry grabbed a few before Jack could get to the plate.

“Jesus,” he teased, “it’s like sitting next to a hoard of locusts!”

“We’ve already agreed to start a food bank fund for Jack, because per diem ain’t gonna cut it,” Gordon said, smirking.

“Anyway, this party was at her house when she lived on Mulholland, in that castle, I forget what it’s called, and I’d gone to the bathroom, then I got lost trying to find the backyard again, and I heard someone playing the piano. She had one of those stupid ‘music rooms,’ like with statues and shit. Concert grand piano. And there he was, playing some classical piece, like Bach or Mozart, I don’t know. But he looked ridiculous, you know, in this ripped sweater, and his hair was dyed really weird and it looked like someone cut it with a hedge clipper. But he’s playing totally professional, not screwing around. I stood there in the doorway and listened until he was done, then I clapped. He was like a little kid, big cheesy grin, and he said, ‘All those piano lessons paid off, Mom!’”

“I always thought he couldn’t play worth shit,” Gordon said, apparently completely unaware of an absence of tact. Dex looked at him wide-eyed and open-mouthed, but he wasn’t paying attention.

“The guitar, no. He just picked it up one day and thought he’d be in a rock band. I mean, I think he played okay for someone who didn’t take any lessons, who only had a vague idea of what guitar chords were supposed to sound like, but yeah, the truth was that Dave was a better guitar player than Chris was. Their producer usually had Dave go back and overdub his tracks so they’d sound halfway decent. At this party, though, we wandered around getting shitfaced, he threw up on something, I remember. . .sorta. I mean, I remember that he puked, just not on what. But then it was, like, after three and most everyone was gone, and we found the karaoke machine. Back then, the only way you could get one of those was to have it shipped from Japan. Chris thought it was the greatest thing ever. So here he is, singing ‘Nasty Girl’ and dancing like a fuckin’ stripper. He actually started taking off his clothes. I pissed my pants, I was laughing so hard.”

“You were drunk, dude,” Jack reminded him.

“Yeah, but that was funny.”

“’Nasty Girl?’” Dex asked.

“You know, that Vanity 6 song.”

“You guys have been to at least one strip club, right?” Jack queried.

“Oh sure, yeah,” Jeff said, trying not to look like a greenhorn. “What’s that place on Central Avenue in Chino we went to, Marco?”

“Platinum Showgirls,” Marco answered, without a trace of self-consciousness. “But they don’t play any dance music there.”

“So what do the girls dance to, then?” Jack asked, looking humorously puzzled.

“Rock, mostly. Like hair metal.”

“I can see it was a favorite hangout for you,” Jack teased, and Marco fixed him with a sardonic expression, giving the next plate of nachos to Gordon instead.

“So tell me again, what is the appeal of going to a skank factory?” Gordon asked.

“You can look at naked women you don’t actually have to talk to,” Jack responded.

“You can’t touch them either,” he shot back.

“I can if I want to. Guys who run strip clubs always recognize me.”

“Are you sure that’s something you want to brag about?”

“I don’t like to brag about anything, Gordo. The reason the press stopped wanting to talk to me was because I never wanted to talk about drumming at all.”

Jeff laughed. “Dude, that one interview where you took the guy fishing and he was pissed because he’s trying to talk to you over the noise of the boat engine and you kept saying, ‘What?!’ Man, that was hysterical.”

“Yeah, our publicist hated me. She used to leave death threats on my voicemail. I’ve always said that if I ever had my own website I’d devote a section to the most interesting messages people have left on the machine. I think Murph has an entire CD full, like, over an hour of people just cussing me out.”

Gordon moved over to the sink where Shelly was scraping and stacking plates.

“Hey, you know Jack’s not really a Neanderthal, right? I mean, I don’t think he is.”

She smiled. “It’s okay, I know he went through a bad divorce. Besides, even when he says really offensive things he’s still adorable.”

“Yeah, I’m not quite sure how he manages that.”

Shelly gave him an incredulous look he didn’t quite comprehend.


After an hour of snacking, Jack looked across the kitchen at Marco, who had taken several items out of the refrigerator, pondering a new concoction.

“I think you can hang it up now, Chef.”

Marco answered while still examining the food. “Man, this is nothing. Nobody’s even gotten trashed yet.”

Terry was still talking about Chris Gilbert, now that they had gotten him on the subject he found it hard to veer away.

“Sometimes I think he’s haunting me,” he told them.

“I told you he was,” Jack said, separating a piece of melted cheese from its’ chip bed.

“How?” Jeff wanted to know.

“He gave me this knickknack, I guess he got it in Asia somewhere on tour, it was a guy with a sword. Maybe it was Indonesia, Micronesia, one of those places. Anyway, after he died, I kept finding it in the refrigerator.”

“Really? Like, in the butter compartment?”

“No, it was always right on the top shelf, in the middle. Same place every time. I was in a pretty bad way, for a while I thought I was doing it and just didn’t remember, but then when I had to go to rehab I put it on the endtable in my bedroom, right next to the clock radio. When I got released it was back in the fridge. And no one had been in the apartment while I was gone. My girlfriend doesn’t even have a key.”

“So what did you do, just leave it there?”

“Nah, I keep moving it to different places to see how long it takes him to figure out where it is. And I say, ‘C, ain’t you got nothin’ better to do in the afterlife than fuck with me?’”

“Oh, tell ‘em what Tariq Durai said to you at the wake.” Jack urged.

“Yeah so, Chris wrote this codicil to his Will that he wanted Cheri to throw a wake and everyone there had to get up and say something, no matter what. Even if people were pissed off they had to make a little speech, tell a story, whatever. So this had happened a couple times before the wake and when it was my turn I just said, like I was talking to him, ‘Dude, I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me, but I’ll tell you that I miss you, and I’m so angry at you. But I still love you.’ And Tariq stood up, you know he’s a mean-lookin’ motherfucker, and he said really loud, ‘I’ll tell you what he’s trying to say, Biel, you’re gonna end up on a fuckin’ refrigerator slab just like he did. But you’re too stupid to figure it out, as usual.’”

“Aw dude, that’s harsh!” Jeff exclaimed.

“That’s T for you. He never liked me. But Chris liked him because he said, ‘Tariq is the only guy I know who’s a bigger asshole than me.’”

“Yeah, his band could have been much bigger if he hadn’t alienated everyone he knew, especially Jamie.” Jack observed.

“Anyway, I’ll probably go home tonight and there it will be, all alone on the shelf. I started putting everything else down below so I don’t knock it over when I’m trying to get something.”

Everyone was silent for a moment, then Terry swatted at his hair and grinned slightly.

“Hey guys, great gig. I’m gonna bail, I’ve gotta try and get some sleep before going to over to this production office tomorrow. I’m gonna be in the pilot for a new show.”

After various murmured congratulations and farewells, Jack walked Terry out and waited with him after calling a taxi.

“You were really great,” Terry told him, quietly.

“Yeah, I was, wasn’t I?” He laughed as Terry smacked him on the arm.

“That’ll teach me to be honest with you.”

“You know I’m just kidding. But yeah, I feel like I can do this again. It’s pretty cool.”

When the taxi pulled up they touched fists.

“Call me tomorrow night, tell me how the meeting went, okay?”

“Yeah dude.”

“And tell Chris he should start haunting Dave instead of you.”

“Oh he’s probably bugging the shit out of him in a completely different way.”

They laughed, and waved goodbye.


Jack was unable to stop smiling as he returned to the kitchen. “I’ll answer any question, no matter how ridiculous,” he announced, and Gordon smiled at the joy inherent in his declaration.

“Here’s a question for you,” he said, remembering something he had puzzled over recently. “If your car’s name is LILIA, then why isn’t it purple?”

Jack gave him an open-mouthed mock-serious look. “Dude, that would just be stupid.”

Everyone began laughing a little too loudly, due to a combination of exhaustion, elation, and just the slightest hint of intoxication, as the night was still fairly young.

“I got one,” piped up Jeff. “How come you never did any solo stuff, like the others did?”

“Are you kidding? That would have seriously cut in on my drinkin’ time!”

More laughter, but slightly embarrassed. No one wanted to say That bad, eh? so Jack just went on as if someone had.

“Yeah, I’d come off the road, sleep for three days, then get down to it. I’d drink until someone came over and told me to get ready for. . .whatever. Another tour, recording session, whatever.”

“You must have had some epic hangovers, dude.” Jeff said.

“Oh yeah. The sad thing was, though, towards the end, before all the shit hit the fan, I was throwing up when I wasn’t drinking. That was pretty fuckin’ sad.”

“So listen up, kids! Don’t be a Jack!” Dex boomed, sounding more game show than public service. He got everyone to laugh, Jack especially. He then returned to his task of extracting all the marshmallow pieces out of a freshly-opened box of Lucky Charms.

“Hey Dex, are you sure those are vegan?” Jeff teased him. Dex flipped him off and poured some cereal into a nearby bowl, handing it to Isaiah, who then began combing it for marshmallows.

“So you two act alike too, eh? Freaky.” Jack grinned.

“Not exactly,” Marco said, as they moved into the living room and availed themselves of a “present” from their host. “At least Ike has the good sense to keep his mouth shut and wear normal pants.”

The four of them sat down on Morris’ couch and looked up at Jack somewhat guiltily. It finally occurred to him that they were afraid to get stoned in front of him. But Gordon came to the rescue, bearing a couple bottles, and grabbed Jack by the wrist.

“C’mon dude, I need to talk to you.”

Jack couldn’t help but notice that the others looked relieved, and realized what it was like to be on the other side of the mirror, or at least what it was like to be Murph the minder. It didn’t bother him so much as made him vaguely embarrassed for the memory of appearing as desperate as they seemed to be at that moment, awaiting the reward of oblivion for the task of enduring public scrutiny and the weight of expectations that could never be fully satisfied for good and all. Music was supposed to be fun, and it was, but performing was also fraught with enormous pressure that asserted itself anew every night, every show.

And the miserable irony of it was that without it, the surreal spectacle of mass adoration, he was only a shadow, unreal and mythic, though mythic in the sense that his acolytes had stopped believing in him as he was now. Merely a rumor of ascendancy, the throne empty, its’ occupant sent to exile.

With the chance to stand up there again, the roaring too distant to discern as applause or merely the wind, the altitude dizzying, Jack planned to dig in this time. But self-analysis was never his strong point, and he had to laugh at himself for the pondering. It was getting easier, he noticed, being able to laugh at his foibles, and by association, everything else.


Gordon took a long drink and then wiped at his face sloppily. Jack was enjoying watching him attempt the same amount of control he normally possessed and failing miserably.

“Oh man,” he said softly, looking out at the lights in the hills.

“What?” Jack asked in response, taking a drink of his own.

“I’m bummed. I just realized Aubergine is going to totally suck now.”

Jack cackled. “Well of course they will –“

“No let me tell you why!” Gordon cut in.

“Okay Gordo, tell me why.”

“Now you know I love that band. I love your band.”

Jack sighed, with a wistful look. “Me too.”

“And Gary is good, I mean, I have to give him props.”

“Oh yeah. When I first heard the EP I thought to myself, ‘this kid’s got chops.’ I can totally see why you kept him after Chingon.”

Gordon looked at him, suddenly, his expression deadly serious. “But he’s got no soul.”

Jack smirked. “I don’t have much of one either.”

Gordon reached over and drunkenly smacked him on the thigh. Jack yelped slightly. “That’s bullshit! I know you fucked up your life, man, but what’s it say in the Bible about gaining the world and losing your soul? It’s like you did the opposite of that.”

Jack tilted his head and gave Gordon a teasing look. “You’re not gonna go all Afterschool Special on me now, are you?”

Gordon paused slightly open-mouthed. “Fuck you!” he finally said.

Jack laughed raucously for several minutes, and Gordon drank, looking hurt. Finally Jack reached over and put his arm around Gordon’s shoulders.

“I like you, Gordo. You remind me of my brother.”

“Really?” he asked, an upbeat inquiry.

“Yeah, he’s a tight-ass just like you.”

“Goddamn it, I’m telling you what’s in my heart, man! This is serious!”

“Okay, okay! You know I can’t go more than 20 seconds without being a smartass. But if you tell anybody –“

“ – you’ll have to hurt me. Yeah, whatever.”

“You know what’s in my heart?”

“What?”

“Hope.”

“I’ll fuckin’ drink to that, carnal.”

“And here’s to ya,” Jack said, clinking his bottle of grapefruit juice against Gordon’s beer bottle. “Here’s to Nebulae, the world’s greatest cult band-to-be.”

“I wanted to tell you, man,” here Gordon paused to wipe his eyes, and Jack tried not to chuckle at the gesture, it made Gordon look like a kid, instead of a guy approaching the third decade of his life. “It’s an honor working with you. It’s like, if anyone could have asked me to pick anything, anything at all, it would have been this.”

“Really? I thought it would have been, you know, you and Dex –“

“Okay, besides that. Sometimes I forget that maybe things might have been different.”

“Things get different, whether you want them to or not. The only constant is change.”

Gordon stood up, swaying. Besides the ambient glow of the interior lighting, behind the curtains of the sliding glass door, all Jack could see was the shadow of his body and the fireflies of the city, faux as they might be. He raised his bottle to the sky, and he looked so iconic in that moment Jack forgot that there was an entire section of the population who had no idea who he was.

“We’re not just gonna change, man. We’re gonna evolve. And it’s gonna be awesome.”

Hope is the thing with feathers. Jack felt that way at the moment, weightless. He wasn’t entirely sure if he had been lifted, or simply shed some earthbound anchor and gained a little altitude. But it didn’t matter now, and when it did he hoped (oh that word again, such a dangerous concept) that he was able to look at the horizon rather than up or down, as it was a far more realistic view.