About an hour later, we descend upon a favorite bar of Kammie’s, not far from the studio. Kammie rang a band called Frog Snout and asked them to meet us for a late lunch, which they’ve agreed to. Griffin wanted to bring the Ibenza to the bar with him; I can’t help thinking that’s a good sign, but ultimately, we convinced him to leave it behind.
Outside of the bar, which looks almost as rundown as the studio, a girl runs up to us and says, “Griffin! Griffin Valentino!” and asks Griffin to sign a piece of paper she digs out of her pocket. He obliges with a hammy smile. She takes a few pictures with him on her cell phone, before stepping aside and staring at him in silent, open-mouthed amazement.
“We should get inside,” Devon says to Griffin, loud enough that I can hear, and tugs on Griffin’s arm. We all walk into the bar together just in time to hear Griffin’s song playing.
I shoot Griffin an inquiring look. “I thought you couldn’t do the…?”
“It’s playing,” he whispers. “It’s actually playing. I’m not doing it!” His face lights up so much that I think he might start levitating. Come to think of it, he’s an alien, so that would be possible. “Dev, do you hear it? Dev. Dev! D’ya hear it, Devon?”
Though Devon remains quiet, I can tell by his smile that he’s proud, too. He pats Griffin on the back and then motions for me, speaking in an undertone, “You said you have a way for us to make announcements without giving away our location, right?”
“Yeah, Twitter.”
“I’ve no idea what that is, but that sounds like a good idea.” He glances over at Griffin, who’s dancing wildly to his song, jumping up and down. “We just heard that the other visitor may be in America now. We need to keep things moving along.”
I can hear the nerves in his voice, so I nod. “Yeah, no problem. I’ll set up the Twitter account now.”
“Thanks, Daisy.”
I fish my phone out of my purse as we choose a table in the back corner, setting up a Twitter account in Griffin’s name, connected to one of my old email addresses.
“What do you want to say to your fans, Griffin? On Twitter, I mean?” I ask, and he rambles off about a thousand sentences at once, still flushed and bright-eyed from his excitement. “No, no, it has to be a bit shorter. Maybe a sentence.”
“A sentence?” Griffin whistles. His whistle sounds odd and sends shivers down my spine, though I can’t quite explain why. He sits down next to Devon, prodding him in the shoulder with one finger. “Hmm, Dev, what should I say? You’re my manager.”
“You should tell everyone about your concert.”
“I’ll tell them about my concert!” he says, as if he just got the idea, and dodges Devon’s elbow with a laugh. “Alright, where do I say it? Into your phone?”
“No, it’s typed. I type what you say, and then everyone can read it online.”
“Fine, you type it then. Say, ‘I’m planning a concert like the world has never seen and you’re all invited to attend for free.’ How’s that sound?”
“Sounds good.” I type his message in and send it.
Kammie, who had disappeared off to the bathroom as soon as we arrived, joins us at the table. “Just got a message from the band boys. They’re running a bit late, but they’ll be here as soon as they can. We should order without them, though, and let them have their own tab. They’re bad about not paying for things.”
So Griffin’s band will be made up of pirates from Queens. Fantastic.
A waitress approaches us and Devon flashes his trademark toothy smile, ordering bar food off the menu like a professional. “And I’d love a vodka cranberry,” he adds, handing his menu off to Griffin.
“I want whatever Wanda’s having,” Griffin says, without even looking at the menu.
“May I see your ID, sir?” the waitress asks Devon, and Devon’s eyes widen a little.
“Oh, I don’t… I don’t have it on me. Why do I need it?”
“We ID anyone who appears to be under the age of thirty. Unfortunately, I can’t serve you alcohol if you don’t have identification,” the waitress says, tapping her pen against her notebook.
I hurriedly put in a food order for Griffin and myself, and then let Kammie order her food, waiting until the waitress is gone to say, “They sort of forgot their passports.”
Kammie seems a bit suspicious, but she nods.
My phone buzzes on the table and then just keeps on buzzing until I finally pick it up and check the notifications. Griffin’s Twitter account already has almost a hundred followers and a few tweets from fans.
“They think you look young,” Griffin says, elbowing Dev. “You know that, right? That’s what it means. Guess all your years avoiding the red stones and black dust has finally paid off, eh?”
“Black dust?” Kammie repeats.
“They mean coal,” I say quickly. “You know, England’s all about coal!”
Kammie glances between Devon and Griffin from her spot at my side, and then looks at the bodyguards standing around our table. “Why do you have so much security?”
“Someone’s trying to kill me,” Griffin says. “I’m not joking; someone is actually trying to kill me. I’m sort of important back home, and there are certain groups who have conspired to bump me off, you know?”
Dev clears his throat, an uncomfortable smile on his face. “It’s a precaution more than anything, Kammie. We hope we won’t have any trouble during our stay here.”
The doors to the bar open, loud enough that all of us jump in our seats from fresh paranoia about our topic of conversation. Thankfully, it turns out to just be a few young women making a dramatic entrance. They eyeball us from across the room and station themselves at the bar, shooting glances over their shoulders at us.
“Wow,” Kammie whispers. “English musicians have such a crazy life. Are you afraid?”
Griffin shrugs. “I’m used to it by now, I suppose. I’m more worried they’ll try to hurt Devon or something, since he’s my best friend.”
“Don’t worry,” Devon says. “With any luck, it’s all just fine. And they’re not going to come after you, since you’re… American.”
Kammie hesitates, still looking back and forth between Griffin and Devon. “You’re secret agents, aren’t you?” she asks, narrowing her gaze. “You have to be. I mean, you’re English, you won’t show anyone your IDs. You’re both really attractive, you have a ton of money, someone’s trying to kill you, and you need help pretending to be musicians. This is like James Bond.” She nods a few times. “It’s okay, though. You can use my studio. I like James Bond.”
“Yes,” I say. “They… actually may be secret agents. But we can’t tell you anything else about it, Kammie, so you need to stop asking. Pretend we never had this conversation.”
“Wow, your names are probably fake too! I knew Devon London seemed like an odd name for an Englishman. Do you carry a gun to bed, Dev?” she asks, wiggling her eyebrows.
“Kammie. You have to stop asking. They can’t tell you anything more. It’s all classified, okay? You have a big secret to keep now, so please… please just help us out.”
With a few more enthusiastic nods, Kammie sits back in her chair. “You can count on me. I knew there was something weird about you two. My skin tingled when you walked in the room, and the lights flickered a little. I should have known.”
“Kammie.”
“I won’t tell a soul, I swear.”
With that, I redirect everyone’s attention to the Twitter account, which gains new followers with every passing second. Griffin’s first tweet has been retweeted by a few major celebrity gossip sites, which means fans and followers are pouring in.
“What are they saying?” Griffin asks, moving so he can stand behind me and peer over my shoulder at the phone. “Wow, they really like my song, don’t they? Ha! Someone wants to marry me. What’s that one? What’s that mean, Wanda? No, never mind; look at that one! Below it. That person says, ‘your song is out of this world.’” Griffin laughs uproar
iously at this, and Devon laughs, too, though quieter. “Now, what’s this one? ‘Wave to us. We’re sitting at the bar.’”
Wait.
We all glance over at the bar and realize the three young women are expectantly smiling at us. One of them waves to Griffin, and he waves back.
Only seconds later, the door opens again and a few more girls spill inside. Like the others, they head to the bar, but these giggle and shoot glances at us with a bit less subtlety.
I run a search for Griffin’s name on Twitter and find a tweet from the girl we met outside the bar, telling everyone she’d just met Griffin and tagging our location. “We might have quite a few fans show up,” I say, more to Devon than anyone else. Griffin has already started easing in the direction of the fans, with a couple of his bodyguards in tow. “The girl we met outside told everyone where we are, before I even set up Griffin’s Twitter.”
Devon sits up straighter, his eyes darting around. “Can we hide what she said?”
“No, she’s the one who posted it, so there’s nothing I can do.”
Several pictures and a lot of laughter later, Griffin says goodbye to the fans and rejoins us at the table, just in time for the food to arrive.
“None of them are assassins in disguise, are they?” Kammie whispers across the table to Devon.
“I should certainly hope not.”
“Nah, they’re fans! I have loads of fans,” Griffin says, poking at the burger I’ve ordered him. “Everyone likes me a lot better here than they do back home. It’s nice. Sort of makes me want to stay forever.”
“Oh, do you have to go back home soon?” Kammie asks.
“Eventually, yes,” Griffin says. At the same time, Devon says, “Soon.”
We eat in silence after that, even as more fans arrive and station themselves at the bar. Eventually, after what feels like forever, three young men arrive. All of them are rather tall and sport shoulder-length hair of varying degrees of shagginess. Even at a distance, I can tell they must be related, and up close, they look remarkably similar. They introduce themselves as Frog Snout, a stupid band name if I’ve ever heard one.
Griffin stands up to shake their hands, looking quite small in comparison to them.
“Wow, man, do you have a lot of lawyers…?” one of them asks, motioning at the bodyguards.
“Don’t ask questions!” Kammie says. “No questions at all, unless they relate to the upcoming concert that Griffin and Devon are putting on.”
“Yeah, yeah,” the guy says, looking down at Griffin. “What’s this about a concert? We haven’t really booked for anything since the fire in that club in Chinatown. Which we didn’t start, by the way.”
I resist saying anything to Kammie about these people, though barely.
“We’re going to put together a massive concert and invite everyone in the world to watch it for free,” Griffin says with a humble shrug.
“Oh.” Frog Snout exchanges a meaningful look and then collectively nods, curtains of shiny, light brown hair bobbing along. The one who seems to be the spokesman clears his throat and says, “I suppose we can do that. It won’t be early in the morning, though, right? We’re kinda rock n’ roll, man. We don’t wake up until two pm. Sometimes three. But usually two. Well, two thirty, to be safe.”
Thankfully, Griffin doesn’t seem to be fazed by them, not even when they sit down and help themselves to some of the food at our table without asking. They ask very few questions, which is good, and we set up a time the next afternoon for them to meet us at the studio for practice.
“We’ll be there, man, barring alien invasion,” the spokesman says, shaking Griffin’s hand again. Griffin stares blankly back at him. “Oh, you saw the news, right? We’re like probably getting invaded by aliens. I knew this day would come! My friend thinks there’s like some hierarchy of ancient beings ruling us and giving us nightmares, but I think it’s aliens. And if it is, the first place they’ll go is New York City. We’re like the epicenter for all things cool and weird.”
“Maybe they’d come here to look for David Bowie,” Griffin says. “None of you know David Bowie, do you…?” This time, he doesn’t seem as surprised to hear that they don’t.
As we exit the bar, my mind is busy calculating how exactly we’re going to manage this concert. We’ll need a proper venue, although Kammie swears she can arrange something. We’ll also need to promote it beforehand. Somehow, it will need to be filmed and broadcasted, although Griffin swears he can arrange something. That’s assuming anyone in this ‘band’ can actually play music worth a damn, and that Griffin can write a bunch of songs in the meantime.
We’re greeted by a crowd of people standing outside the bar, mostly girls, all of them eagerly waiting for Griffin. One of them is even wearing a shirt with Griffin’s face screen-printed on it. They all chirp for him, voices rising like a chorus of excited birds, saying, “Griffin, Griffin, Griffin, Griffin!”
“Now, now, you need to make an orderly line,” Dev says, nearly shouting to be heard over the noise. He grabs hold of Griffin, stopping him from diving right into the center of the crowd. “If you want to speak to Griffin, you’ll need to get in line.”
“Don’t be silly, Dev, they don’t want to hurt me,” Griffin murmurs, pulling away from his friend. “They love me.” He smiles at his audience, holding his arms wide, and then saunters toward them.
Dev bounces about, his hands curling in and out of fists, barely able to stay in one place for more than a second, as Griff meets the fans. The bodyguards stand close by, although they don’t seem quite as nervous as Dev.
“Alright, alright,” Dev says, after some pictures have been taken and Griffin has signed a lot of items and body parts. “Come on, Griff, we need to get going.”
“You all must come to my show!” Griffin says. “Twitter. I’ll tell you about it on Twitter! Who wants to come? I want everyone to come!”
He gets a lot of cheers, but Dev finally drags him away, arm flung around his shoulders to keep him close. I say goodbye to Kammie, who seems genuinely impressed by the crowd of fans.
“I like those boys,” Kammie says. “Especially Devon. He’s a tiger! I’d like to take that tiger back to my place.”
Of course.
“Alright, Kammie, talk tomorrow!”
“Be careful, though, okay? I mean it. If you’re friends with them, you might be in danger. You know what happens to the girls in the Bond movies!” she says, and then I have to run to catch up with my alien friends, all the while wondering if Kammie’s right.
Maybe I’m in danger, too.
Dating an Alien Pop Star Page 19
