by Solace Ames
A lot of people came rushing up to the couch at that point, and I almost started pushing them away before I recognized they were paramedics. A brace of security guards grabbed the photographer and led him off. I sincerely hoped they were going to throw him into a tar pit. There was no way paparazzi were welcome here.
“I assume your friend is being taken care of,” Emanuel said.
He wouldn’t make eye contact with me. He just stared right over my head. I looked into his strange blue eyes and realized...
He couldn’t see me at all.
“Are you okay?” I asked. I wasn’t angry anymore, but my body still buzzed with adrenaline. The medics were loading Chiho’s frail, shivering body onto a stretcher and fixing some kind of mask to her face. I edged out of their way.
“I will be. My eyes are photosensitive.”
I still couldn’t place his accent, not even the continent, but the sounds of the words were mesmerizing. “So you stopped that guy while you were dead blind? Wow. Thanks. And I—I really like your music. It got me through some tough times.” What a cliché thing to say, and how young of me. But God, it was true. Even though I’m not happy today, I’ll take “not happy” over lying facedown on a concrete garage floor, crying all night.
I had a pretty normal life in San Diego until I was thirteen. That was when my entire family got deported back to the Philippines. I was the only one young enough to be born a citizen, and my mother wanted me to stay, for the good of my education, so I ended up living with a distant family friend who shouldn’t have been trusted to raise a spider plant, much less a young girl. I wanted to explain all of that to Emanuel. I wanted to tell him how lonely I’d been, locked in that garage, and how I’d listened to hidden music for so long it felt like the music was listening right back. Talking to me. Telling me there was more than this. Miles Morrison’s unearthly voice would croon to me, and I’d never quite understand the deeper message, even though he promised the key to unlock everything, but when it came to the guitar line...we’d have long conversations, me and the guitar line.
That was what Emanuel played—lead guitar, although he hung back in the shadows in all the promo photos I’d seen, dark glasses covering his eyes.
The light blinded him. So it made sense now.
“Can you ride with us?”
I startled. What the fuck was wrong with me? I’d forgotten Chiho. “Yes, of course,” I answered the paramedic. I had to ride with her.
Emanuel.
Without thinking, my hand dove into my purse, plucked a business card and waved it toward him. No, he couldn’t see, I’d have to slip it into his hand, and quickly—
I took a step forward. God, he was big, and waiting so solid and still. The white of his suit was glowing brilliantly at the center of my wounded vision. I held the card out, my hand trembling. Why was I doing this? What was I trying to prove? Was he even the kind of man who’d have a use for a woman like me?
A figure with flame-colored hair interceded and deftly plucked the card out of my hand. Jacinth, the brightest star here tonight. She wore something made out of metal mesh and crystal that looked like it had been spun around her by science-fiction spiders.
“Serena Sakamoto,” she read, her voice pitched high and venomously playful. “Model, dancer and entertainer. Do you charge by the night or the hour or the minute, darling?”
I wasn’t a fan of hers, and after that dig, I wasn’t going to lie and say I was. “Have your agent call mine,” I said, in a breathy sweetheart whisper. “I’m easy to work with. I might even show you a thing or two.”
It was hard not to admire the long, regal lines of her famous face, hard not to compare the reality to the images and find the reality ten times as charismatic and compelling.
But then I looked higher to see Emanuel smiling sardonically behind her, one corner of his lips curled a little higher than the other, and I didn’t care about famous faces anymore. Because I remembered him speaking to me. Long ago, in that garage, and now...
Before your time.
“Go on, little porn trash, and try not to leak any come along the way,” Jacinth snarled.
“Goodbye,” I said to Emanuel. Then I turned to follow the stretcher, and ran after my friend.
Somehow it didn’t feel like I was running away.
We piled into the ambulance. A lawyer type climbed in after me, forcing papers into my hands. Liability shit. I read everything before I signed it, which took a long time. I always read my contracts.
Chiho’s body pulled some scary tricks on us, but her heart never gave out, and by two in the morning, I was waiting for her to be moved out of intensive care, tapping my foot softly on the floor to the rhythm of an old Avert song and smiling to myself. A real true smile.
Chapter Two
The next day I’d planned on heading out to Malibu to catch some waves. I had to babysit Chiho instead.
Well, I didn’t really have to. But I wanted to. I stayed over at her apartment, slept on the couch, even cleaned up a little. I swear I’m not a codependent doormat, I just don’t like being alone. In fact, I laid down some lines with Chiho (boundary lines, not the white powder kind) as soon as she crawled out of bed.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a small voice. “I don’t deserve friend like you.”
“It doesn’t matter what you think you deserve. I’m still here.” I rubbed my eyes and sighed. “I called your mother. She’s flying over on Tuesday.”
Chiho made a noise between a howl and a gargle and fell to her knees. Her mother was a sweet old lady. Chiho didn’t like her coming to L.A. and seeing how she lived. Too bad.
“I have a shoot on Tuesday,” she moaned.
“Your agent canceled it for you already.” At my suggestion, although I left that out. “I’m not going to be around. I’m leaving on Monday for some feature dancing in Nevada. You can use the time in between to fall apart again or hold on, it’s up to you, but I really hope I can see both of you when I get back, okay? Don’t die on me.”
She cried for a while. I made some soup, and we sat down at her tiny folding breakfast table and ate it noisily together, her tears vanishing into the salty steam.
“I’ll sleep here tonight,” I reassured her. I’m more or less homeless, in a weird well-off way. I take out short-term leases on cheaper vacation homes, one or two weeks at a time, or stay in hotels, and live out of the suitcases in my car. Sometimes I tell myself I’m on tour, pretending I have a known goal or destination, when I’m really just drifting from strip club to porn set to strip club to porn set.
After lunch, Chiho took a shower, and she must have taken a Valium in the bathroom, because she passed out on the couch with a towel still wrapped around her hair. Should I have gone through her bathroom cabinet? No, that wasn’t my job. I had to draw lines somewhere.
I opened her laptop, set it up on the kitchen table and pulled up the Avert video for “Second Skin.” The comments at the top were the typical the music of today is garbage versus STFU you were a baby when Second Skin dropped and I bet you were a fucking ugly whiny ass titty baby too, but one comment jumped out because of its length—an essay on the lyrics. I absorbed every word as the familiar notes pulsed (way too softly for my taste) through tinny laptop speakers.
I listened to the song a second time through, and then almost a third, before I caught myself and got down to work. I turned off the music entirely, otherwise I’d never be able to focus. The music called up memories of last night, intense emotions and nightmarish images. Smeared blood, flashes of light, strange eyes.
My email was mostly garbage. I deleted a bunch, then clicked over to check my most active forum thread. Someone had been badmouthing me this weekend, criticizing my tan lines. I have to get inside the heads of these men and figure out what they like, and it’s such a chore, because most of the time
they’re dirt stupid and hung up on ridiculous shit like tattoos and tan lines. I had someone try to explain it to me once—they worked hard to project a fantasy, and certain markings messed with the fantasy.
She’s so dark anyway, I don’t see why she has to tan. She should at least go to a salon so the lines are even. It looks trashy.
I flicked my middle finger at the screen. I wasn’t going to give up surfing for nitpickers who probably pirated most of their porn anyway. That’s why I didn’t have fake tits, either. If a wave punched my chest into the sand, I didn’t want to worry about springing a leak.
Next time I went out, I should wear a wetsuit and be more careful about the sunscreen. It was a little thing, but the little things added up and weighed down the upward trajectory of a career.
I felt bad, thinking of those stupid tan lines, sick down to my stomach all of a sudden. I pressed my knees together, rested my forehead against my knees, and rocked myself until the bad feeling slipped away.
Then I went back to email. Delete, delete...
Oh my God.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
We met last night in Bel Air. Is your friend recovering? I was impressed with your grace under fire, and I have a job opening that might be of interest to you...interesting, and rewarding at a professional level. I’m available to meet at any Malibu location tomorrow afternoon. I suggest Cary’s Sunset Grill.
Cordially,
Emanuel de la Isla
I slammed the laptop shut and took a deep breath.
Who signed emails Cordially? Emanuel did, obviously.
Oh my God. I stared down at my palms, remembering the weight of the camera, and how his hand had swallowed it up and crushed it.
I decided to wait before replying. I’d do it, of course. I didn’t sense any danger, especially if we met in a public place and people knew where I was going. Sure, I wanted to be needed, but not pathologically—at least I hoped so—and I was a good judge of character, and the look he’d given me...and and and my brain kept hopscotching.
I opened the laptop back up, minimized the email from Emanuel, and tried to settle myself by going through the rest of the inbox. I hit a nasty landmine right at the end from a girl who’d seen me in Whoriental Heat. Her white boyfriend said she was too fat to get him off, so he had to watch porn of a better-looking Asian so he could come while he was fucking her. She just wanted to let me know. Because she was finally breaking up with him. Also, she was drunk. And crying. The email deteriorated into keyboard smashing by the end.
I have a cold heart. Grace under fire—oh, that’s a nicer way to put it. If it wasn’t me, it’d be some other girl. We’re interchangeable to them, after all. I emailed her back, said he was scum and for whatever it was worth, I wished her nothing but the best.
Chiho stirred. Maybe I was wrong about the Valium.
“Jesus, Chiho, I just got the most depressing email.”
“Ugh, tell me.” She unwound the towel from her head, shook down her long black hair, combed it out with her fingers. She looked so alive I couldn’t help smiling tearily. Stay that way for me. Please.
I told her about the girl. “I felt really bad for her. I’m not going to apologize for making a living, but I sympathize, you know? I feel sorry in a general way. I emailed her back and congratulated her on dumping him.”
“Well, that girl has learned a good lesson.”
“What?”
Chiho saw the world in a very eccentric way. She said she came from a normal family, but she’d always been too mentally ill to do any other kind of job. Our line of work tolerates more eccentricity than most.
She clarified. “Lesson is, don’t trust white men. They all stab you in the ass.”
“I think you mean, stab you in the back. That’s the idiom. Backstabbing.”
“No, I mean ass.”
“O-kay. Anyway, I just got a job offer from a musician who’s...well, he’s sort of white. He’s an albino. But I think he’s actually black. Black as in African. And he has a Spanish name. I thought that was rare, but I looked it up and it turns out there are millions of Afro-Colombians, and did you know albinos don’t really have red eyes, their irises are usually a really pale color? I know his band, and—”
“Does he have a cool car?”
“I don’t know.”
I could see Chiho rapidly losing interest. Her first priority in men was the speed of their cars, and second was whether or not they had a good body. Her dream in life was to fuck every lead in the Fast and Furious franchise, and she wrote erotic self-insert fan fiction of herself in threesomes with Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez. I had no idea if the stuff was good or not, because it was all in Japanese and I don’t read Japanese.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Yes, she’s doing well now, and thanks for asking. Thank you for what you did last night too. Here’s my number, and 1 p.m. at Cary’s works for me.
I kind of wanted to sign it Cordially, but ended up typing a smiley face instead.
He needed something from me...
* * *
The café had a veranda in the back overlooking the beach. I wondered if he’d be out there, given his eyes, but when I walked hesitantly out of the main restroom, I saw him, surrounded by sunlight.
He wore a Panama hat, dark glasses with smoky round lenses and a gray suit that must have been tailored. I don’t know much about high fashion, I just know a good fit. The look reminded me of old Hollywood. Most men look silly to me in hats, but the effortless elegance of the tilt—the way it angled and contrasted with the level line of his shoulders—seemed totally organic. Like he could walk into a hurricane and come out the other side with his hat exactly the same angle.
“Miss Sakamoto,” he said, in a rasp that harmonized with the faint growl of the ocean at his back. “Good afternoon.”
He rose. For a second I thought he was going to kiss me hello, on the cheek, like they do in a lot of Latin countries. The thought stirred up a not entirely unpleasant panicky sensation in my chest. I kept stepping toward him, face tilted upward, smiling and determined to carry out whatever ritual greeting the time called for.
He leaned down, blocking out the sun, and lightly touched my shoulder without kissing me on the cheek, and then moved a chair and gestured toward it. The hand that gestured was as large as I remembered and thickened at the fingertips with what must be guitar calluses. I noticed, but I didn’t stare, and I definitely didn’t flinch.
“Nice to meet you again, Mr. de la Isla.”
“Call me Emanuel, please. What would you prefer to be called?”
“Amy,” I said, without thinking. “Serena’s my stage name, but I go by Amy with friends.” I didn’t give my legal last name. Just plain Amy still felt like...me. Amy Mendoza, on the other hand, was a paper ghost who haunted tax forms and the few family members who haven’t consigned me to hell yet.
“Thank you for sharing that with me, then. I’ve looked you up. I assume you’ve done the same for me. Would you like a drink? They’re known for margaritas here.”
“Water is fine. Yeah, I looked you up.” Now that we were both sitting, I could look right at his face, which was simultaneously ugly and astonishingly beautiful. If only his skin was darker, I could place him, the bold line of his jaw and broad plane of his cheekbones, but he wouldn’t fit in any standard I was familiar with. He was all on his own. Like an alien. Or a translucent angel. I felt guilty for thinking of him as not fully human, even in awe, but then I reminded myself it was just how this terrible world raised us to read faces, and I could train myself to read between the lines if I kept trying.
“Do you have any questions?” His eyebrows were barely visible, but one of them might
have raised a bit. Was he amused? He was fully aware of the effect he had on people, that much I could tell.
“Are you always this formal? Not that I’m complaining. But I’ve met a few rock stars, and they’re usually not this formal.” I could be bold when I was out of my depth. In fact, I didn’t really know any other way. I could brazen it out or run like hell, that was all.
His lips curled into the same sardonic smile he’d flashed me over Jacinth’s shoulder. “My job proposal is about as informal as it gets. I thought I’d better set the stage in advance. Do you have any plans this summer?”
“The usual. Some shoots lined up, some dancing in and out of town. I’m independent, not contracted. I don’t know how much you know about the industry.”
“Reasonably informed. I’m not an insider. I’m not a rock star, either. Maybe I was ten years ago, but not today.”
I silently disagreed. Avert had rarely played stadiums, but they still had a huge cult following. “You’re a producer now, right?”
“Yes. I like the work, and for the most part, it pays steadily.” His smile broadened so that he showed some teeth—which were, like everything else about him, perfectly white. Then he templed his hands, tapped his fingers, and said, “I’m getting the band back together,” with the kind of somber glee that fully acknowledged the cliché, that fucking embraced it.
“Wow.” My mouth dropped open and went dry right away, so I covered up my shock with sips of ice water and tried not to breathe any faster. Something truly epic was happening, and I was a part of it, right here, right now. Cliché or not, I didn’t care. “So Miles Morrison is still alive and kicking?”
“Amazingly, yes. He even went clean for about five years. The past two, on the other hand—” He shook his head and sighed.
“Heroin?”
“And cocaine.”
“At the same time? Oh boy.”
“He’s just graduated from a long stay in rehab. If we’re going to record a new album this summer, I need him to stay sober. That’s where you might come in, Amy.”
