by Lamar Giles
It wasn’t a big apartment. Were hiding places ever big? Dark wood floors over a short corridor led to a single bathroom. I flipped the wall switch, revealing a set of mismatched towels draping the rack, and a clear plastic shower liner that gave full view of the hardly used tub. The mirror over the sink was hinged. The only thing inside the cabinet, a small bundle of Q-tips. “How’s it looking out there?”
Kya yelled back, “More spoiled food in the fridge. I’m looking for a knife to cut these boxes open. You?”
“Bathroom’s a bathroom. Going to check the bedroom now.”
Ninety percent of the room I searched in a glance. The bed was made. I got on my knees, peeled the comforter back for a peek underneath. Loose sneakers and a hard-shell suitcase rested beneath the bed frame. I grabbed the suitcase handle, dragged it out, but could tell from the hollow lightness that it was empty. My eyes flicked to the folding closet doors. Pulling them back, I found more near emptiness. Clothes dangled, not enough to take up even half the closet rack. On the shelf above the garments were stacked shoeboxes, two rows of five.
I rose on my tiptoes, my fingers only grazed a bright orange Nike box on the bottom row. I’d have to jump to tip it, or call Kya. #ShortGirlProblems
Only, Kya called me first. “Fuse. Come here a sec.”
She stood over a freshly opened cardboard box. Not one of the moving boxes, one with a shipping label. The flaps spread like wings. Some loose Styrofoam packing peanuts spilled to the floor from Kya freeing cups, a bag of keychains, and T-shirts. Cheap promo swag branded with a logo I recognized—the stylized, interlocking VSZ of a company called VenueShowZ. Why was a whole box of it here, though?
Having lost interest in the VSZ swag, Kya focused on a letter slipped into the box.
“Hey, Paris,” she read aloud. “Welcome to the VenueShowZ team, enjoy some promotional goodies courtesy of the marketing team. Here’s to world domination over fire beats. First Earth, then the galaxy. We’ll be in touch about a press release soon! Much love, the VenueShowZ promo squad.” She frowned. “ ‘First Earth, then the galaxy.’ This mean anything to you?”
I’d been stuck on Welcome to the VenueShowZ team.
“It means Paula Klein was out. At some point, ParSec fired her. At some point after that, ParSec was killed. I’d say that means a lot.”
Fuse talked fast, with barely a space between words, pacing, explaining to me in not-quite-succinct terms what VenueShowZ was. There were phrases like one-stop shop and top-to-bottom show production and other things that might require she bust out a whiteboard before we were done. Thankfully this particular continent of the entertainment world wasn’t completely foreign to me. I cut her off midway through the monologue.
“They’re managers. They manage musicians.”
Fuse’s mouth became a flat line. “In the way that Apple manages a few small tech stores. If ParSec signed with VenueShowZ, that meant she no longer needed Paula Klein.” Fuse chuffed, “If you ask me, she never needed that hag, but you get what I’m saying? ParSec was, by far, the best thing to happen in that woman’s career in years.”
I said, “Paris would’ve told Paula she’d no longer need her services.”
“Does Paula strike you as the type to take that news well?” Fuse dug through the box I opened, spilling packing nuggets all over the floor while excavating more promotional items. Coffee cups and knit caps for winter. Bumper magnets, and onesies for babies—wow, they really would put a logo on anything.
There were two more boxes beneath it. Fuse toppled the first box, unstacked the second and third, and sliced the sealing tape with the knife I’d located. “Is there a date on the letter?”
“No,” I said, rereading. “Check the shipping labels, though.”
She examined the flap on one box. “Two weeks ago.” Fuse was elbow deep in VSZ promotional hoodies and tote bags. “There’s got to be more in here. Something.”
While she searched, I kept working it over. “So she got these boxes, brought them in, but never got the chance to open them herself? She might’ve received these—”
“On the day she died.” Fuse punched the side of the last box.
I paced toward the balcony door, thinking aloud. “Paris tells Paula Klein she’s fired. Paula snaps, does what she does. Then tries to mislead everyone by planning that memorial service? And helping Shameik with his concert? Why?”
Fuse said, “Make everyone think it’s all good. If Paula was grieving too, heartbroken like us, she can’t be a low-down, raisin-faced, nicotine-yellow-toothed monster. It’s a fake-out.”
“Maybe. What about Shameik?”
“It’s not him.”
Her certainty threw me, and I faced her. “How can you be so sure?”
“I’ll show you when we get back to our phones.”
Um, okay? I turned back toward the balcony, glimpsed down toward her car, where our phones were snug in the glove box. My blood crystallized.
I slid the balcony door aside, stepped out into the gusty breeze, to be sure.
Three hooded figures circled the vehicle. Still, like robots with the batteries removed. One found some juice, turned slowly in the general direction of the Savant. Even from this height, I could see his mask, a white smudge on his outfit, and on our day.
“Fuse, they found us.”
Kya barreled back inside, not bothering to shut the balcony door behind her, the greasy stink of that rotten trash following her. She seemed in a full-on panic. I cut off her path to the door, hands raised. “Wait.”
She wasn’t trying to hear it, sidestepping.
Leaping back into her path, I clapped my hands an inch from her nose. “Wait!” That broke her trance, though I worried another punch was in my future. “Calm down. Tell me what you saw.”
Kya talked with her hands. “They’re by the car, Fuse. Three of them. They looked in this direction.”
“Looked in this direction, or looked at you?”
A slight head shake. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does. They can’t know where we are. We never talked about this apartment near the phones. Remember?”
If she had a rebuttal, she did not voice it.
“See, makes sense. If we stay put, we can wait them out.” My confidence in this plan was paramount.
Someone knocked on the door.
Uh-oh.
We went silent, communicating with SEAL-Team-Six-special-forces-soldiers-type hand signals, except we never discussed or practiced ours, so it looked more like terrified voguing that we still managed to interpret. You look. No, you look. No, you—
I chopped the air. Fine, I’ll look.
Creeping to the peephole, I went on tiptoes. The fish-eye lens presented a warped man shape, his back turned toward me. I recognized the close-cropped hair and blue blazer of the Savant’s doorman. Tension sloughed off my spine; my fingers grazed the dead bolt, a number of excuses for whatever questions he might have coming to mind. Top dumb thought: Maybe he could help us.
He twisted slightly, knocked again. His distorted profile visible now. As was his mask.
The doorman was Dark Nation. Awesome.
Backing away from the peephole slowly, I detected Kya’s reanimated hand motions. She mouthed: Who?
I raised a single, halting finger. Calmly approached the kitchen area and retrieved the knife. Her frown deepened when I mouthed, Get the trash bag.
She did as told, though, grabbing that funky bag from the balcony. Drawing closer to her, I motioned for her to lean, whispered in her ear, “When I open the door, I want you to throw that trash bag as hard as you can. Got it?”
A ragged sigh and a nod were good enough confirmation for me. I cut a gash along the bag’s flank above where a puddle of trash water pooled blister dark and visible through the stretched white plastic.
Leaving the knife on the couch, I returned to the dead bolt latch. The doorman knocked harder, said, “Come on, ladies. We know you’re in there.”
I rais
ed three fingers on my right hand, rested my left on the lock. Lowered one finger. Kya positioned herself so the door was straight on. Lowered two, turned the lock slow and silent. She got the bag in a two-hand grip, ready to propel. Lowered my third finger and snatched the door open.
“Smart,” the doorman said, right before rancid garbage exploded in his face.
Brownish liquid, a color between hot chocolate and horrific baby diapers, splattered his mask and the wall behind him. The man squeed.
I lowered my shoulder, speared him in the gut, knocking him back. Kya zipped past, dipped through the door below a blazing red Exit sign, and I followed her into the staircase.
Fact, it’s easier to go down stairs than up. Also fact, easier doesn’t mean easy. By the time we hit the eighth floor, we were wiped, sucking air like asthma pros. Apparently, not a ton of cardio in either of our lives pre- or post-ParSec.
“We gotta”—I gulped oxygen—“keep …”
She nodded, forced her legs in motion. I let her be the engine dragging me along.
The final floor opened on a parking garage. Daylight lit an exit ramp, where a bright red Corvette thumped over a speed bump, escaping the Savant like we thought we would.
We were wrong.
As the Corvette’s taillights vanished into the street traffic, a couple of Dark Nation members entered the deck from the sidewalk, silhouetted by the sun beyond so their masks stood out beneath their hoods like reaper skulls. Only two of them, but given how exhausted we were from our descent, their appearance was as grim and effective as a steel gate clacking down and locking us in.
We whipped back toward the stairway, but the doorman emerged, garbage stained with flecks of I-didn’t-want-to-know clinging to his jacket. There was a third option, thirty yards to our left, a door leading to the building lobby. We started that way, but another mask emerged from the lobby door, cutting off our last escape route.
“Kya”—too winded to fight, I still managed a weak—“SoundChek needs some work.”
I flopped against the nearest car and awaited whatever came next.
My body tingled with adrenaline. They’d nudged us into the elevator, a ride back to the fourteenth floor, where three more masks were already inside Paris’s apartment. They wandered, plain white faces panning over everything, getting close to Paris’s posters and boxes in a way that was skittish, hesitant. I’d seen this sort of thing before.
On a seventh-grade field trip, we’d gone to the Smithsonian. Mr. Montgomery, our teacher, was the same way about the Civil War exhibits—Lincoln’s hat and some old rifles.
“Of course he want to time-travel to the Civil War,” Paris said, then convinced me to sneak to the hip-hop exhibit. She promised DJ Grandmaster Flash’s Kangol cap was way better than what Lincoln rocked. She wasn’t wrong.
I imagined Paris’s stuff on display in the Smithsonian a hundred years from now, and a sense of awe and possibility dampened my fear, but only for a second. A petite mask made her way from the bedroom, her cartoon-stenciled sneakers squeaking.
Her command: “Put them on their knees.”
Rough hands weighted our shoulders. Fuse strained against the force, as did I, but our legs gave at roughly the same moment, and we knelt before her.
“No updates on your progress. Ditching your phones.” She angled on me. “I swear you were about to go running your mouth to that cop, Kya. We already told you—”
“They don’t care! But you don’t either, right?” I spat, defiant. Tired of being scared. Before, I thought the worst thing ever was being at the mercy of Paris’s fans. No. This was relief. They were here, in front of me. Not waiting in some dark parked vehicle. Not lurking in the next bathroom stall, forcing me to speed-pee. Here. Now. I was taller than most of them. “You’re a bunch of fake scary-movie wannabes letting us do all the work. You can crack phones and do ninja appearance stuff but won’t get off your butts and actually help? Paris would’ve clowned you.”
Fuse said, “Kya. Maybe you shouldn’t.”
“Shouldn’t what? Call them out on their crap? We’re in her secret apartment. Instead of asking the questions we’re asking—why would she need a secret apartment?—they want to mess with us. For all we know, they killed her.” I elbowed the one holding my left shoulder in the meaty part of his thigh. He yelped and hopped away.
I aimed my venom at Elmyra Fudd, electric with the buzzing release of so much bottled rage. “What? You know I’m right, don’t you. Say something!”
Elmyra Fudd pulled a pair of small garden shears from the pouch on her hoodie. Squeezed and unsqueezed the handle, making the blades open and close like chomping teeth. “For that disrespect,” she said, “we’re going to have to cut your pinkie off.”
My electric buzz shorted out.
Uh … what?
Two goons forced Kya’s arm into a stretched position, one roughly pried at her fingers. Those shears kept clacking. Kya’s face went slack, the color shifting to a gray that, I’ll be honest, I didn’t know black folks were capable of.
“Wait!” I shouted, pausing the room. “You’re not serious. ParSec Nation—even the Dark variation—always acted in DJ ParSec’s interests. For the music. This, hurting Kya, doesn’t do anything for her legacy.”
Kya’s eyes stretched, her chest heaved like she was hyperventilating. A new flash of panic hit me too. I realized, for the first time, how much I cared, genuinely, about Kya. This Dark Nation was a creature of my own making, and that I couldn’t control them, that I maybe couldn’t stop them from hurting her, was terrifying. Searching all I knew about ParSec Nation, all I’d built them to be before this cell splintered off, I made a gamble. “I’ll give you something.”
“Like what?” Cartoon Shoes said, her head cresting from side to side, a surgeon puzzled over how to start a procedure.
“Insider scoop. You loved ParSec so much, but what did you know about her? Really?”
The doorman, rank from garbage water, spoke through his stained mask. “She was a very private person. She only discussed music in her interviews.”
“Exactly. Wouldn’t it be dope if you knew what she talked about when she wasn’t being interviewed? No recorders. No cameras. Kya and I can give you that. Not if you hurt us, though. Right, Kya?”
Whimpering, she nodded. Good. Be smart here. We can get out of this, K.
Cartoon Shoes backed off, lowered the shears. “Fine. Talk.”
“Awesome,” I said. “Absolutely. Did you know—?”
“Quiet,” said Cartoon Shoes. “I want to hear something from her”—she aimed her shears at Kya’s eye—“since she’s so mouthy.”
Kya gathered herself, stuttering at first, “Th-th-there’s a cloud account filled with old music. In some cases it’s just bass, or a random sample Paris looped. In others, there are whole songs. Pre-‘Calm Down, Turn Up!’ stuff, when she was just getting good.”
All the masks circled Kya, postures relaxed, children hearing a bedtime story.
“You,” one of the goons began, his voice airy and reverent, “have access to more music?”
Reluctant, Kya said, “Yeah. I do.”
The room erupted. “Ohhhhh!” the masks hooted, hollered, high-fived—their favorite team just scored a touchdown. It was freaky, man. My skin began to crawl right off my body when I considered something horrible.
What if Kya was bluffing? Because I knew what was coming next.
Cartoon Shoes snapped her fingers, silencing her crew. “Fine. Let’s hear.”
Her tablet was delivered to her hand, and she held it toward Kya. Who said, “Nope.”
Now, that was going to cause problems. “Kya.”
“I can’t get it from here.” The shears drew closer, and inch from Kya’s hand, snip-snip-snip.
I yelled, “Can’t you see she’s not lying? If she could, she would. Right, Kya?”
“Yes!”
I said, “We will give you something off the drive, something good. I promise. Only if you let
us go right now.”
Before I finished, most of the masks became children asking their mom for a toy in Walmart. Pleading through their posture if not words. They wanted new, exclusive DJ ParSec. Music fiends needed their hit.
Cartoon Shoes pushed the others away with palms and forearms, reclaiming her personal space. She stroked her mask’s plastic chin with her shears, producing a thin scraping reverb that set my teeth grinding. “You already tried snaking us once with that phone in the car nonsense. How do we know you’ll keep your word?”
I said, “Because y’all are some scary, Big Brother lunatics. We’ve learned our lesson. If we don’t comply, you’ll do this all over again. Right? So we’re going to do what I say”—I hesitated slightly, knowing just how wrong this next part might go, the thought of shears against my skin wringing my insides—“and you’ll meet my demands.”
Cartoon Shoes’s mask canted to the side. “Excuse me? Demands? What makes you think you have any leverage here?”
I was channeling my dad, one of his Business Deals 101 lessons. When they want something from you, ask for something from them. “Not leverage. Mutual benefit. You don’t really want to be chasing us and threatening us. You want more DJ ParSec, which we will provide.”
“For?”
“We all walk out of here, and … none of you ever come back to this apartment again—it doesn’t belong to you. You don’t get to crawl all over her stuff like lice.”
That snatched a portion of jubilance from the masks; knees softened and shoulders slumped. They must’ve already had designs on whatever was loose and portable.
“What would you rather have? Kya’s blood on the floor, or more music from the artist you worship?”
I let it simmer. Masks angled toward each other, shoulder shrugs and hand gestures. Should they or shouldn’t they? I was 80 percent confident they would. That 20 percent margin of error made me feel like I was having a heart attack, though I forced my face still, emotionless.
The music was what they really cared about. Not who took ParSec from us. It was all about the legend of her demise and what trinkets they could collect after. Not surprising. I think I’ve always known fan love was the most selfish kind.
