My friend, Kammie, has a recording studio in Greenwich Village; the studio is cramped, ugly, and cheap because someone was murdered there about ten years ago, or maybe it’s cheap because the walls are painted a sick sort of pink and green color, but whatever. It works.
Kammie meets us on the third floor, at the top of a set of narrow, death-threatening stairs, and opens a door that looks like it should belong to a bathroom in a building that’s been bombed. The misspelled neon graffiti on the door is actually the most attractive part of the entrance, no exaggeration. But Kammie’s all smiles, her curly, red hair pinned on top of her head, and she radiates early morning coffee-fueled energy as she bounces around us.
“There’s this place downstairs that sells coffee for fifty cents,” she says as a greeting. She eyeballs Griffin and Devon, and then smiles at me. “If you want to go get some, you’ll probably puke, but it shakes you up. I didn’t sleep last night. It’s stronger than my medicinal energy-boosting tea.”
“Well, I think you look very refreshed for not sleeping,” Devon says, his English drawl a bit more pronounced and even posher than usual. “I might take you up on that coffee, if you’d show me where it is…?”
Kammie’s nervous energy crashes to a halt as she meets Dev’s gaze. “Sure, sure, of course. I’d love to show you.”
Griffin snorts loudly and pats his best friend on the shoulder once before wheeling away to poke around the tiny studio. He picks up a guitar, bass, and drumstick in turn, as if to weigh each one and decide which he likes best.
“Oh!” Kammie says. “Daisy, you won’t believe who stopped by this morning.” She doesn’t wait for me to guess. “Lillian Gale! Lillian Gale stopped by, looked at the studio, and said she might rent it out for a couple of days for a project she’s working on with Leonidas Bondi. Do you even know what I’d do if Lillian Gale of Juicy Bed decided to record something here?” She pauses and snickers. “Well, I’d be able to pay the rent, for one thing. Speaking of, you’re going to be able to throw a bit in the jar, right? I wouldn’t think of charging you a full fee, of course, but a few bucks would be great.”
“Griffin’s going to pay for it,” I say, and Griffin just removes a small wad of bills from his pocket and tosses them absentmindedly in my direction. The money falls at my feet, so I quickly scoop it up and hand it over to Kammie. “See?”
Kammie stares at the money, fanning it out and gazing at the hundred dollar bills as if she’s never seen them before. “So who are you two, anyway? Daisy said you’re a new band.”
“Oh, well, actually, Griffin here is the star,” Dev says, twirling a pen though his fingers. I’ve never seen him do this before… or smile so mischievously. “I’m his manager. The brains and business side of the thing, you know.”
“Yeah, we’re sort of in need of a band,” I add, noting the sexual tension radiating between Kammie and Dev. Not a good time, when there’s so much to do. “Think you can help us, Kammie?”
“What do you need? Bassist? Drummer?”
Griffin chooses that moment to clatter around on one of the snare drums, sounding a bit like a little boy on Christmas morning with his first drum kit.
“Uhhh… actually, I’m not sure yet. Depends on what he decides he’s best at.”
Kammie narrows her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest. “This seems a bit odd. He’s a musician and you want to use the studio, but I have to be secretive about it and he doesn’t even know what instrument he’s good at yet? And there’s a bunch of scary guys in suits standing around outside the door?”
Dev and I exchange a glance. “Griffin’s a recovering pop singer,” I say. “He wants to be a proper rock star, though, so I’ve encouraged him to learn an instrument and get a real band. Before this, he was playing with all… uhhh… synth. You know, piping music in.”
I’ve known Kammie for a few years, having connected with her through the Internet and then later meeting her in person when I moved to the city. I know she, like me, respects artists who write and play their own music, but I also know she has a particular aversion for what she considers to be ‘pop crap,’ so her distaste for the artificial in music will outweigh her inquisitive nature. Thankfully, I’m right, and she just waltzes toward the door, crooking a finger in Dev’s direction.
“Why don’t you come with me, manager, and we’ll go get that coffee,” she says.
As much as I like Kammie, I’m all right with the idea of her leaving, especially if she’s going to get all lovey-dovey on Dev. I need to be able to concentrate on finding out if Griffin has any musical ability in that skinny little alien body of his.
“Get some coffee for me too!” I say. “Oh, and for Griffin! Take however long you need!” I push Dev toward Kammie, and he shoots me a huge grin just before disappearing with my friend.
Huh. Even aliens love redheads.
Griffin, meanwhile, stations himself behind the drum kit and makes a terrible clattering while twisting his face into what he probably considers to be serious rock expressions. I shake my head as I approach him and reach out for one of his slender wrists. “Stop, stop. I don’t think you’re a drummer.”
“But I like it!”
I want to say he’s god-awful at it, but that might cause a scene. “You’ll have a hard time singing from behind a drum kit,” I hedge. “Besides, don’t you want everyone to be able to see your great clothes? You shouldn’t hide fashion sense like yours behind a drum.”
Griffin vaults out from behind the set, drumsticks flying haphazardly over his shoulder in his wake.
His attempts on a keyboard are promising, but he seems to give up on that rather quickly. “What’s this?” he asks, picking up a banjo. “Why does this guitar look so strange?”
“That’s a banjo. You should try this instead.” I pick up a blue Ibanez electric guitar and offer it to him. He stares at it for a few seconds before abandoning the banjo and snatching the guitar away from me. At first, I think we might really be screwed, but then I hear something remotely music-like coming from the guitar. “Do you want a pick?”
He shakes his head and continues noodling about on the guitar.
Maybe he’ll be an unnatural guitar genius. Maybe he’ll turn into full-blown rock star after only a few moments of thoughtful concentration and alien magic. Maybe I won’t even have to look up instructional videos on the Internet or embarrass myself with my minimal guitar knowledge.
After about fifteen minutes of him playing around with the guitar, I realize that’s not going to happen. He’s got some natural talent, but it’s definitely going to need nurturing and instructional videos on YouTube. Oh well.
“All the best rock stars play guitar,” Griffin says without looking up.
“Most of them, yeah.”
He fishes his small, phone-like device out of his back pocket. “Here, take a holopic.” I turn it around and around in my hands, trying to find anything like a power button. “How does this work? What is this thing, anyway?”
Griffin impatiently taps the top of it, and then presses his finger against the screen. It lights up and I see a fuzzy, moving image on the screen, something that looks like a field of glowing flowers, all of them swaying gently back and forth. Before I can ask him about it, Griffin hits a small, pink spot in the center of the screen. All at once, the display switches to what appears to be camera mode. “There now, take the holopic. Make it a good one.”
Surprisingly, his device is quite similar to a cell phone, complete with a clicking noise once the photo’s been taken. Of course, once it shows up as a preview, I realize the differences in our technology. His ‘photo’ is more like a 3D gif, rising off the device and playing in a loop.
“That one’s alright, I suppose,” he says, taking it away and turning it around on me. Before I know what’s happening, he takes a picture of me. “Hmmm. That’s better. Very nice, Wanda.”
I watch as a little holographic gif of my surprised face floats above his device. “You wanted a picture of me?�
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Griffin pushes the device back into his pocket and returns to playing around with the guitar. “Of course I do; don’t be daft. You’re my friend, aren’t you?”
Warmth creeps up my neck and into my face. I have to smile a little, even though I try to hide it from him. “Errr, speaking of friends, I wonder where Kammie and Dev are? They’ve been gone a long time.”
“Probably in the stairwell, snogging,” Griffin says with an amused snort. “He fancies her, I can tell. He’s never very subtle about it when he’s got his eye on a woman.”
Great. “Maybe we should go find them? I need to ask Kammie about finding you a band.”
With immense reluctance, Griffin lays the guitar down and follows me out of the studio, then rushes in front of me so he can walk first. He trails his fingers along the cool, graffiti-splattered wall during our descent back to the first level of the building, casting a few half smiles over his shoulder at me here and there.
Griffin’s bodyguards fall into step behind us, their loud footsteps making them sound like an army.
“Kammie?” I call out as we reach the bottom of the last staircase. The first floor of the building looks a bit like a murder scene, but thankfully, Kammie and Dev are very much alive, standing close together by an oversized coffee machine. It’s the sort of coffee machine you might find in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
“Daisy, Daisy! Come get a cup of this stuff! There’s a little jar, and you just leave your money in it. Make sure to leave your money in it, though, or else a leprechaun or a thug might beat you up,” she says, waving me over. As I approach, I can’t help noticing her dark pink lipstick has migrated all over Dev’s neck and shirt collar. “I was just telling Devy about how you can pour coffee grounds on soil, and it’s like magic.”
I shake my head with a little sigh. “Kammie.”
“No, it’s true! This isn’t a myth; it’s a scientific fact. Some of my friends conducted a big experiment with coffee grounds and determined that the whole thing is completely true.” She takes a sip of coffee, and then waves her cup around in Dev’s direction. “So, Devy tells me that you guys were on Johnny Bardo’s show last night! I’m gonna have to look it up when I get home tonight. Daisy, I told you that you’d get a really great job in the music industry, if you tried hard enough! Good thing you happened to be at that swanky party with them and introduced yourself.”
Ah, so this must be the version Devon has told her. I force a smile and nod. “So lucky, right? Almost like aliens orchestrated it.”
Griffin pokes a finger into my back just hard enough to hurt, and then shoots me a thin-lipped warning smile as he takes his place at my side.
“We’ll need to use your studio for a few days,” Griffin says to Kammie. “Don’t worry about compensation. I have a lot of money.”
“I noticed that. So, are you an heir or something? Oooh, or a runaway duke? Do you still have dukes in England? Earls? Do you know Prince Harry? Do you know Tom Hiddleston?”
“We also request your assistance in acquiring a band. I need the best of the best, because we’re going to put on a concert event like the universe has never seen. If you can contact David Bowie, that would be helpful.”
Kammie laughs. “David Bowie? Look, the most famous thing about my studio is that someone got stabbed eight times in it. I don’t know David Bowie. I know a lot of second-rate bands from Queens.”
“Doesn’t anyone know David Bowie?” Griffin demands, but after rolling his eyes dramatically, he sighs and continues. “Anyway, I suppose we’ll accept whoever you can find us, then, in substitute of David Bowie.”
“Maybe I could get you a second-rate band from Queens,” Kammie says.
Griffin and I exchange a look. A second-rate band from Queens is better than no band at all.
Dating an Alien Pop Star Page 18
