The Forbidden Muse (Inferno Falls #2)

by Aubrey Parker

  I don’t think there actually was a question, but I should move to intercept now rather than later. Lisa isn’t great at letting things go, and she obviously thinks she’s being hilarious. I can see her trying to keep a straight face, but she’s clearly got the pot giggles.

  “He was a total asshole last night.”

  “Gavin?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t realize who he was until he was already onstage. And then, as he started playing, he looked right at me. Like, right in my eyes.”

  Lisa has put her chin on her palm, but her sweet look is ruined by the way her jaw keeps chewing. She sighs anyway, making an “Aww.”

  “And he did seem … touching, I guess? Onstage. I’ll admit it; I got kind of eager to talk to him again. But then afterward, all these slutty groupies swarmed him.”

  “A man can’t be blamed for his groupies.” Lisa says it like a Zen koan.

  “But you should have seen him up there.” I mimic an exaggerated version of Gavin Adams, making my face like a cocky rock star’s, pantomiming the signing of autographs. “He was totally into it. He wasn’t exactly fighting them off.”

  “So he gets groupies. You said he seemed nice.”

  I think about that. He did seem nice. And, in fact, that’s part of what hurts me a little: The man at the Nosh Pit yesterday afternoon was an entirely different man from the one who took the stage (or at least left the stage) last night. Even the phony who came over and tried to talk to me was a different man. That one seemed so fake, so on despite pretending to be casual. Gavin is different one on one, and I’ll bet he’s different when you get him totally in private, too.

  It’s how Brian was, so my alarms are all blaring. Brian was a charismatic showman, wooing friends and acquaintances the way he wooed clients. But he wasn’t as confident when we were alone, or as nice as everyone seemed to think. He was like two people. One reeled people in with over-the-top personality. The other — the real Brian, insecure and petty — lied to his fiancée about the other’s many, many boisterous dalliances.

  “Well, he’s not. He was just putting on an act like he probably does for all sorts of women, and I fell for it.”

  “So you didn’t even talk to him?”

  “I had to wait hours for his gaggle of admirers to disperse.”

  “But after?”

  “I didn’t want to talk to him after. He hung out with these slutty women forever. Just plunked down and did his I’m-a-hot-music-guy-and-bitches-throw-themselves-at-me thing. All kicked back, like … ” And I do a bit more pantomime that I didn’t actually see Gavin do, but that I’m sure he does all the time because he’s an asshole. “Then when he was done with them, he decided to move in on me again.”

  “What, did he try and take you home?” Lisa says this in a way that could be good or bad. Scandal or jackpot. She’s been a groupie a time or two, for sure.

  “No, he just — ”

  “Did he throw those other girls at you? Come over with one of them and act like an ass?”

  “Well, no … ”

  “So what did he do?”

  “He just kind of talked.” I realize I need to say something else because there was so much more to it. “But you could tell, he was all cocky and full of himself! Like, I guess I was just supposed to jump into his arms now that he’d finished up and finally had time for me.”

  “What did he say?”

  Dammit. Lisa isn’t getting it. Gavin was a superior asshole. I’m just having trouble conveying it because it was subtle, all between the lines.

  “He’s all, Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow.” I’m sure to deliver the line with proper vocal swagger.

  “You’re working tonight, right?”

  “Well, yeah. But — ”

  “So you will see him tomorrow.”

  “I don’t want to see him!”

  “Because he predicted it, you mean?”

  I sigh dramatically and stand up. Where is my coffee? I need caffeine to counteract all the nitrates and cannabis.

  “You’re always like this,” Lisa says.

  I turn to face her.

  “Brian ruined you. You think every guy is working an angle.”

  “Every guy is working an angle!”

  “Well, yes. Okay. They are. They all want the pussy. But if you want to give it to him, then it’s a wash and everyone wins, right?”

  “I do not want to give him ‘the pussy.’”

  “Keep it for yourself, too, of course,” she says, as if I may have misunderstood.

  “I doubt he’s into me. Everyone in that club was his best friend. He was even all rock star with the guys. He was all smarmy and networking with everyone.”

  “But you said he was sweet when it was just the two of you.”

  “Which makes it worse. It means he’s two people. I hate phonies.”

  “Maybe he’s just nervous, and this is how he covers it.”

  “Like a boy on the playground? He likes me, so he throws rocks?”

  “Did he throw any rocks at you, Abigail?”

  I turn fully away and pour my coffee. It’s not ready, and I’m a stickler about waiting until a pot is fully brewed before taking any, but my need to turn from Lisa trumps it.

  “He left with some girl,” I’m surprised to hear my voice. It’s angry — a shock because I have no right to be. But it’s also a little quiet, like the idea makes me sad. “Some slutty girl who was all over him at the end.”

  “After he tried to talk to you and you blew him off?”

  I don’t say anything. We just kind of lock eyes.

  “Eat more bacon,” Lisa finally says.

  CHAPTER 10

  Gavin

  I wake up with the new chord progression dogging my mind, feeling like a dieter facing post-binge regret. The girl is still in my bed, but to me she looks like a big piece of chocolate cake. In the moment, I couldn’t resist. In the moment, I only considered pleasure and release. But now I want her gone because she’s guilty crumbs on last night’s plate. In retrospect, it’s easy to know what I shouldn’t have done. But at the time, it’s always harder to see.

  After Abigail’s cold shoulder, the girl seemed like something I deserved. Only now am I seeing her as a person. Only now, with the satisfaction behind me, is it starting to bother me.

  If only Abigail had been the least bit responsive, maybe I’d be here with her instead.

  Except the moment I think it, the idea feels wrong. Worse than wrong. If it were Abigail’s surely-freckled shoulder I was seeing as I grab my guitar, I’d have even more dieter’s regret … and that’s strange, considering I think I like her. Abigail seems nice, funny, smart, innocent, and sweet. The opposite of the single-serving sexual fantasy in my bed right now.

  It’s hard to square the sensations. So I stop trying. I head out to the living room in my boxers then sit on the couch and start to noodle.

  There’s the ghost of a verse.

  The specter of a chorus.

  And definitely the beginning of a hook, though I only have half of it.

  Even though the music came to me in the night, I can tell there are lyrics here. I just don’t know what they are. Lyrics were always Grace’s job, or sometimes Charlie’s. But instead of those notions bothering me, I begin to work out a few lyrics, too. They’re shit, but for once, I’m able to try.

  I’m still playing with the music in my head when the girl enters the living room in last night’s clothes. I’m bothered — but not at all surprised — to realize I don’t even know her name. I stop playing, certain that whatever I have here, it’s not for her ears. It wasn’t inspired by her. I wouldn’t play it about her. I hate how cold I feel, knowing my thoughts make me a bastard. But it’s easier to turn my head than face what I feel looming.

  “That’s pretty,” she says.

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you know where my shoes ended up?”

  “They’re over there.” I point. I’m keeping my voice light: polite enough, but bare
ly helpful. I don’t make eye contact. Fortunately, she knows what all of this was. In the past, girls have come out in my shirts, seemingly ready to spend the morning together, cuddling. That’s always harder. This girl is fully dressed, her hair smoothed but still messy. She’s quiet, but I don’t think she’s embarrassed. I suspect I’m more embarrassed than she is. She’ll be taking the walk of shame, but shame is mostly what I feel, too.

  She puts her shoes on, then her hand is on the knob.

  “See you around, Gavin.”

  “See you … ” There’s a pause there for her name, but I still don’t have it and won’t insult her further by making something up.

  She gives me a little smile then leaves.

  I try to noodle the melody a bit longer. It feels important to try. Usually, I compose in one of two ways: I either wake up in the middle of the night and work in a fugue, creating pages and pages of what seems great but turns out, in daylight, to be awful. Or sometimes, I think I have something new — something I could actually play and sing in public — before realizing it’s one of our old songs turned inside-out and hiding. And I obviously can’t play those.

  But it’s no good. I set the guitar aside.

  I’m a bastard.

  I’m worthless. I’m worse than useless. I’m a user. A predator, perhaps. It’s a good thing that Abigail blew me off. If she’d come here, I might have done to her what I’d just done to that nameless girl. Somehow, I doubt things would have worked out that way, but doubting it makes me feel worse, like I don’t even want to think about Abigail at all. There’s a dichotomy somewhere inside, and she doesn’t fit either side of it. Either Abigail is one of my conquests, which makes me hate myself, or she’s … whatever else I don’t want to face. The latter feels like a black place. A place I don’t even want to consider, lest I fall back into the abyss.

  I remember the abyss. Oh sweet God, do I remember.

  Before those dark memories can grab me, I shake myself out of position, lay the guitar back in its stand, and head to the bathroom to splash water on my face. The water merely makes me wet, so I turn it as cold as the faucet will go and try again. It’s still not cold enough, because I’m a few floors up and it’s summertime. All I can get is mildly chilly. I want ice cubes. I want a shock, just to see if I can still feel it.

  When things were bad, I used to get into fights. Not many, but enough to remember. I didn’t even want to win. I wanted to see what it felt like to be hit. I look into the mirror. None of those brawls scarred my face. It’s like they didn’t happen, as if I’m immovable, immutable, horribly eternal.

  It never ends.

  There are just endless days of nothing.

  No new songs. No respite from the old ones. The same thoughts, the same arguments. Hooks that come back to me from forgotten snippets, and I’ll try to use them before recalling a memory out of the blue, sharp as knives: Grace humming a tune while she watered the plants that used to fill my place. Grace noodling tunes on her own guitar, which she was never any good at playing.

  I look back into the bedroom. The shame is gone because it was barely there to begin with.

  I’m worse than a monster because I don’t even truly regret what I’ve done.

  I’m not sad. Or angry. Or resentful. Or regretful. Or hurt. Or inspired. There’s no new creation, only old wounds. I’m not happy. I don’t want to die.

  There’s just … nothing.

  And when I think of Abigail, the waitress who’s entered my life twice, I don’t know where I’d put her. It’s like I’m split down the middle. Part of me is drawn to whatever light I sense inside her — something I doubt she even knows is there — and the other part of me wants to run away.

  If she came here, things would be different.

  If she came here, there would be things I’d need to face.

  I wish she’d have talked to me.

  But really, maybe it’s best that she didn’t, and that she sees me for what I’ve become.

  CHAPTER 11

  Abigail

  He doesn’t show up at the Nosh Pit. Thank God.

  I spent the entire morning imaging what I’d say to Gavin if he plopped into my section again, his fake grin wide, one of his two faces happy in spite of all the ice I gave him last night. Then I spent my entire shift mapping scenarios, working out how I’d deal with every possible instance. The first few, at the start of the shift, were sensible situations.

  He might come in happy and/or horny, trying to work me like an angle.

  He might come in angry, having regained the balls I snipped last night.

  He might come in apologetic, having worked out what he’d done.

  The last was the hardest to riddle. If he playacted sad well enough, I was afraid I might cave. I might bring him pie. I might let myself smile when I spoke to him, failing to convey that I’d seen right through him, and knew what he was like beneath his beautiful blue eyes and charisma. So I talked to Maya, gave her the ten-cent version of yesterday, and asked her to help steel me. Maya is feisty, just like her daughter. She’d be happy to help.

  But after a few hours, it became harder to hold my guard. After other scenarios snuck in. When I started to imagine grand gestures that would obviously never occur. I didn’t tell Maya about those because most of me knew I was being stupid.

  When my shift ended — Ed ogling Maya’s too-far-unbuttoned uniform top and Roxanne still giving me yesterday’s stink eye — I was relieved.

  I think.

  Because I didn’t want Gavin to come in. That’s what all the scenarios were for — to help me repel him in a way that would keep my dignity and knock his down a peg. He’s a narcissist, and the worst thing you can do around a narcissist is encourage them or feed their ego. Maybe that’s why most of my more outrageous imagined rebukes involved asking him to fuck himself as I sauntered off with swinging hips. I could never do that in real life, but nothing kicks a guy’s dick out from under him like female swagger.

  But as my shift ended, I felt a bit hollow, too. Disappointed. It was ridiculous to assume Gavin would show up seeing as he’s never been in my section before, but in the past twenty-four hours I’d started to imagine him as a pathetic little puppy. He wanted to make nice for some reason, and I kind of felt the need to bat him away.

  I couldn’t refuse him if he never showed up.

  If he didn’t come at me with unwanted affections, I couldn’t tell him how unwanted his attention was.

  It should have equaled out in the end. The final result was supposed to be that I didn’t have to deal with him, and the fact that he never showed up — despite a hint last night that he might — meant that I didn’t have to deal with him.

  Why did he ask if I was working here tomorrow? Why did he say he might stop by?

  Just who the hell does he think he is, to threaten an appearance and then stay home?

  On my way out, Roxanne tried to tell me I didn’t sufficiently wipe my tables. I stopped her with a look, and that’s something because Roxanne is like a train, usually impossible to stop.

  And now I’m here, at the Overlook, two hours earlier for the prep shift to scrape gum from under the tables and shit, per Danny’s apparently normal protocol. Dreading the moment when Gavin shows up. Dreading it so much, in fact, that I can’t concentrate. I keep looking at the doors. I even ask that little wiry guy, Richard, a few times.

  Has Gavin Adams shown up yet? No? Good. Because I don’t want him here. Let me know when he comes.

  And by 6, I’m pretty sure Gavin is waiting longer just to mess with me. He should be here. He needs to prep or warm up or rehearse or whatever they do. Performers don’t clean like the wait staff, but they should still be early.

  The doors open at 7, so after a while of no-show, Gavin is just being disrespectful. I point this out to Chloe, a young pretty singer with platinum-blonde hair. She’s soft spoken and from what I hear, nobody knows much about her. But I find her friendly, and after thirty seconds I’m wondering if I
can tell her how annoying Gavin is being, not being around when responsible people like her are.

  After talking to Chloe in the back room, now ten minutes after six and another ten of Gavin not taking his job seriously, I head to the front and start turning the liquor bottles label out. I hear strumming behind me and realize that Gavin has finally arrived.

  He’s on a stool in the stages’s middle, just like last night. He’s monopolizing the entire thing, plopping down, acting like the place is his personal studio.

  He looks up. I don’t have time to look away, and our eyes meet. Now that I’m trapped, I refuse to look away first. I got the upper hand at the end of last night, I think, but Gavin ran off with his skank, so it’s possible he thinks he won. If I’m weak, he might come over and talk to me again, and I don’t want that. So I hold his gaze, and eventually he looks down. Not shamefully, though. He puts his fingers on the strings and strums, as if I barely warrant notice, or a nod, or a smile, or a hello, or any kind of acknowledgement at all.

  I turn back to my bottle chore, but now and again I sneak glances at Gavin. His bearing is obnoxious. The way he’s sitting, the way he’s holding the guitar, the brooding way he refuses to look up and seems lost in the soul of the music — it’s all so obvious. A show. Nothing but posturing.

  I’ll bet he even works on this — not the music he plays, but the way he uses his body to convey an image of the tortured artist. His floppy, vaguely hipster sweater hangs down over faded blue jeans. He’s still unshaven, but the stubble looks exactly the same length as yesterday. His hair is still a mess, but again it strikes me as a contrived mess, like he’s mussed it for effect.

  He probably takes video of himself then plays it back like a coach reviewing past games.

  Was I moody enough? Or could I lift an eyebrow or shake my head slowly, to be more sultry, to get more girls excited?

  It’s not working on me, that’s for sure.

  I look back. Gavin’s head comes up. Again, he looks right at me as he plays. It’s a mock-sad look. Or maybe a dirty look. Something designed to manipulate me.