by Solace Ames
When Emanuel saw me, he looked up...and then half a second later, toward me. I’d gotten used to that quirk of his vision. His eyes, without melanin, focused in eccentric ways. I’d always had perfect vision, so I didn’t know what it felt like to strain after an image. Was he frustrated I didn’t leap into view sooner? If so, he’d hide it. He was good at hiding without lying. Miraculously good at it.
See me now. Don’t just look at me. See me. See how I’m here for you.
I caught hold of my racing emotions and set the laptop down in front of him. Like a gift. Which I suppose, in a way, it was. “I need to show you something.”
He scanned the information I offered and sighed wearily. He sounded a lot like Miles in that moment. I’ve done this before, his slumped shoulders seemed to say. His reaction encouraged me and let me know this wasn’t an emergency. A routine irritation only.
“Let’s go for a walk, Amy.”
We said goodbye to Xiomara and Isabel, and I left my laptop on the table and walked down to the beach, following Emanuel. He grabbed his hat and sunglasses and suit jacket on the way out. I felt informal in comparison in my sundress with no makeup, hair loose. I hadn’t left the house much recently, not even to surf. I hadn’t felt the need.
“I know who sent that,” Emanuel said once we’d reached the bottom of the stairs. “He’s the same journalist we encountered at the party.”
I could barely remember his face. A medium-sized guy with a shaggy brown haircut, that was all. Or maybe the problem was that I was looking straight into Emanuel’s much more memorable face. I hovered on the lowest step, level with him, our heights equal. “The charmer who kept taking flash photos of my friend? Is that a coincidence or not?”
“You’re very perceptive. No. Not a coincidence. He must have tracked you down.”
“Why? I mean, it’s not like you guys are politicians. People get sex and drug scandals from rock stars for free. They don’t need to pay money for it.”
He smiled and leaned against the railing, drawing the thin jacket tight against his shoulder but maintaining the geometry of the cut. I was in awe of his suits and how well he wore them. “True. And I’m not even a rock star. Not my role. Miles will be front and central in all the promotional materials. The journalist—Lewis is his name—has to wait until we’re famous again to make his move, and even then, he greatly overestimates the rewards. Miles’s life is already an open book, and mine has many secrets, but the worst are all locked away in my home country. The people here, in my adopted country, care more for the state of Middle Earth and Narnia than they do for Colombia.”
“I know what you mean. It’s kind of the same way for the Philippines. So I should just ignore him?”
“Yes. If he offers you money, feel free to take it in exchange for false promises. I advised Xiomara to do the same, when he came to her.”
“Oh.” I didn’t feel as lost as I usually did, now that I understood the workings of his family. They were a loyal bunch. “So you’re on top of the situation.”
He shrugged. “I improvise and adapt, in life as in music. I see the same quality in you.”
Every compliment he gave me was worse than the last, and this one hit me like a punch. I must have flinched. He raised an eyebrow.
“I’m still not quite right,” I told him by way of apology. “If I ever was. You’re very good to me. I’m not upset.”
“I had an idea that you and Miles could achieve a kind of permanency.” His eyes were mercifully shaded, so I didn’t have to see the pity.
“You wanted to turn me into a rock wife? Like, as a project?” I’d just about reached my limit. The pain was highly specific, piercing, like someone had just stabbed me through the chest with a knitting needle. My jaw trembled and I couldn’t hold back what came next. “Are you being cruel to me on purpose?”
“Yes. It’s unavoidable. Better than lying. I was wrong. You’re not for him.”
You’re for me, I wanted him to say.
“You are your own,” he said.
Fuck that hollow truth.
“I already know that. Thanks for the life coach advice. I appreciate it. I don’t really feel like a walk now, so I’m going back up. I’ll keep you in the loop if I get another email.” I turned around and walked quickly up the stairs. I was all ragged edges inside, bent and broken and torn. He knew. He knew what I felt for him, and he was pushing me away with such relentless kindness...
I stumbled upward in a daze.
“Are you all right?” Xiomara asked. She leaned against the railing at the top of the stairs, looking out toward the ocean.
“I’m an idiot.”
“Oh, honey.” She took me in her arms and hugged me tight. I wasn’t comfortable—I’m just not a hug-it-out kind of person. I patted her on the back, a tentative rhythm that meant thank you, now please let me go, and she did.
“How are the songs going?” I asked.
“They’re beautiful. Beautiful and really, really sad. Emanuel says we need some brighter songs too. I do what I can, but the bass line is a heartbeat, not the heart itself, know what I mean?”
“Yes.” I wasn’t sure if I understood. Anything to keep the topic away from my dismal failure at...God, I couldn’t even call it seduction. All I could do was vomit emotions. My entire existence was fucking pointless.
“We’re going to a party tomorrow night. We’ll play a few songs, old ones and new ones. Can you make sure Miles doesn’t stumble there in pajamas?”
Focus. Focus was good and helpful. I had a job to do. “I’ll go shopping with him tomorrow. I can’t promise a miracle. Black jeans and a T-shirt is probably the safest, as long as they fit well, what do you think?”
“Let’s talk about it, Amy. We’ll go look up some stuff online together.”
I liked the sound of together. I didn’t want to be alone right now, not with the voice in my head that kept knocking me down.
That night, Miles slept deeply, as if he had a clear conscience, while I tossed and turned beside him, tormented by nightmares. Monsters crawled out of the ocean and scaled the cliff, leaving a trail of fish-slime behind them. They plucked off the terra-cotta roof tiles to gleefully eat the flesh of the house, our sleeping bodies.
I woke up, went to the bathroom, drained a glass of water, all with no lights on, too scared to look at my own reflection.
I went back to bed.
Gabriel rose onto his hind legs and trotted after me, a gun in his paw.
I ran for years.
I was dying of a plague, and some cold future authority had quarantined me behind a plastic curtain that ran with constant rivulets of transparent disinfectant. On the other side of the soft barrier, a man came and pressed his palm up the plastic. I tried to focus even as the disinfectant stung my eyes. The hand was white as snow. Emanuel. Touch me before I die. I touched his palm with my own, almost felt the heat before I woke up gasping, cold sweat crawling down between my shoulder blades.
I couldn’t take much more of this, or I’d run faster than Miles.
And when I ran, no one ever, ever caught me.
* * *
We found Miles a pair of black jeans and a black button-up shirt. I had him roll up the cuffs so that they were tight around his upper arms, a look we agreed was pure sex on a slim man. Miles didn’t care. I doubted he was ever even conscious of his clothes, as long as he didn’t trip over them.
He shaved, slathered on hair gel and scrawled black eyeliner on so crudely I begged him to let me fix it. The unevenness suited him—in the end, I didn’t make it too perfect.
Xiomara wore burgundy leather pants and a purple velvet halter top, feathery false eyelashes and indigo lipstick. The colors melded without being garish, like a collection of precious stones carefully arranged over dark velvet.
I wore a s
imple black sheath dress and sandals, since the party was at a beach house and I always loved to walk on the sand. The host was a studio executive, and the party would be more Hollywood than music industry.
I’d get Miles to the patio, where the instruments were. Keep anyone from getting high with him. I’d execute my goals with military precision, no matter how I felt.
And I felt nauseous, itchy, anxious. I was about to hear Avert play for the first time, and my younger self would have been screaming with primal joy. Tonight, there was too much at stake, too many factors to weigh. What if Miles choked? What if the new songs were just a sad, dull echo of the old ones, the ones that were urgent enough to burn a hole through your mind?
I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to hear Emanuel play. I’d always imagined his guitar lines as a second language meant only for me, and they weren’t. Of course they weren’t. I’d been lied to. Well, I’d lied to myself, and now I needed to learn to live with the truth.
I’d only seen snatches of him in videos, hat tipped down, guitar slung lightly and easily across his body, standing like a pillar as the sound churned around him.
He regulated.
“Are you worried about anything?” I asked Miles once we’d gotten to the highway. I was driving him in a separate car from the rest of the band. He was rubbing at the back of his neck and wincing.
“This fucking headache. It comes and goes. Look, Amy, I’m not ready to be social or talk business. Keep them away from me, okay?”
“Sure. So if it’s business, send them to Emanuel?”
“That’s a tricky one. He might have sued a few people there tonight. If they choke when they hear his name, tell them to talk to Xiomara or Fausto or one of the lawyers.”
“I just have one question left.”
“Shoot.” Miles was in an amazingly good mood. He must be looking forward to a return to the spotlight. Maybe he was finally getting tired of generating gloom and doom like a human smoke machine with the gothic dial turned all the way up to eleven.
“What the fuck does El Tigre do?” I’d been wondering for weeks.
“Eats a lot of food, works out, plays games on his phone and kills people Emanuel tells him to.”
“Really?”
“I’m halfway serious. He used to be a roadie and bodyguard, now he’s just a bodyguard. If anyone doesn’t pay attention when you tell them to go away, call him over. He’s like seven foot tall. We weren’t introduced under the best of circumstances—that’s a euphemism for ‘I was chained to a fucking radiator’—but I get along with him.”
I turned off onto a pebbled driveway. Sculptures lined the way, upended wicker baskets higher than human height, their edges frayed and decayed. They were too ugly to be anything but sculptures. “Those baskets look familiar,” I mused out loud.
“They’re props from a movie about giant killer bowerbirds. I have no idea how the fuck that movie got made. Money laundering, probably. Nobody knows how anyone makes a living in Hollywood.”
Paying money to waste money. We lived in a messed-up world.
The house was modern, low-slung and built in a confusing style where you couldn’t really tell where it started and stopped. It had fluid, circular features and a warren of trellised walkways in the courtyard. We wandered down one of the walkways until a valet found us and told us to go around the right side of the house and down to the patio overlooking the beach.
A cascade of rumbling notes electrified the air—an unfamiliar bass line. I remembered what Xiomara said about the heartbeat. There she was on the patio, and Fausto as well, arranging his drum kit with unhurried precision.
“Oh my God. Miles Morrison! You’re alive!”
“I get that a lot,” Miles said to the guy in the leopard-trimmed jacket who’d jumped into our path.
“Shit, sorry, I didn’t mean it that way. You look great, man. Really great. Can’t wait to see you play tonight. Can I get a selfie with you?”
“Sure.” Miles let the guy bump shoulders, grinned and gave the middle finger into the face of the upheld phone. Miles wasn’t looking at his own image, though—I could tell his gaze was fixed on Xiomara.
“Fuckin’ A, kick-ass rock ‘n’ roll!” said the guy. “Thanks.” He backed away, staring in delight at the photo on his phone.
“That’s a good attitude,” I told Miles. “I mean, a sense of humor about it. In the future, you’re going to have a constant stream of people affirming the fact that you’re alive.”
“I like you more when you take your job less seriously.”
I shrugged. “Too bad. You’re getting my power of positive thinking speechlets whether you like it or not. ’Cause they cheer me up too.”
Xiomara hugged me but not Miles. Miles only got a shoulder pat. He didn’t react. The closer he got to her, the less able he was to look at her, it seemed.
A caterer brought us shrimp cocktails and sparkling water. I found a seat on a bench by the railing, where I could watch the setup from the side without blocking the view from the higher level of the patio. The ocean whispered soothingly at my back. My anxiety wasn’t flavored with the usual social insecurity, which was nice for a change. I didn’t have anything to prove. Unlike the party at Bel Air, my brain wasn’t working overtime at calculating my place on a scale.
Did that mean I was getting stronger?
I hoped so.
Emanuel walked out of the house, followed by El Tigre and a middle-aged white guy with a biker beard. “That’s one of the lawyers he works with,” Xiomara told me. She and Fausto were absolutely serene, trading easy smiles as they tuned and tweaked and shifted the instruments. El Tigre stationed himself at the corner of the house, scooped up a bowl of shrimp and ate them as he...bodyguarded, I guess.
Emanuel’s suit was immaculate as always, and so aggressively classic and timeless that it drew more attention to him than rainbow leather. His hat was tipped down over his shaded eyes. He nodded to us. All of us. A warm and glowing feeling curled inside me. Everything would be perfect. How could it not be perfect?
He took up position just in front of the drums, slung his guitar over his shoulder and planted himself. Pillared himself. Performed whatever subtle body language phrases made him look unmovable and hurricane-unstoppable.
Miles tapped the mic, got a pop and hiss. “Testing, one two. Not. Dead. Yet. Sibilance. Ready?”
The patio above had filled with the crowd from the house, at least thirty people, leopard-trim selfie guy conspicuously at the front, grinning slack-jawed.
Fausto flicked his drumsticks and marked a beat.
The music exploded. No other word for it. My shoulders shivered and my thighs jerked, sending me rocketing upward from the bench. When loud music started after a long period of waiting, the shock wasn’t just mental, it set the blood in your head vibrating, knocked you in the skull—I’d bet it did violence on the microscopic level, scrambled your atoms and shit.
And it felt so good.
Miles stalked back and forth in front of the small set, his motions restless, palm rubbing at his forehead. The intricately thumping bass line, the pounding drumbeat, the controlled screaming-sizzling-slashing of Emanuel’s guitar—I’d never heard this song before and it was dazzling brilliant...no, dark brilliant, like a river of magma rolling underground.
Miles crouched on the ground, covered his head with his forearm and sang.
A howl of primitive rage was what I expected, what the song set us up for. What erupted from his throat was melodic and smoothly menacing. Avert was always tricky like that.
He sang about flying at night. Searching for children. Maybe it was the monster song he wrote for me. I couldn’t string the words together, they came too fast, and my body shook in time to the music way too hard. Like someone had set off a metronome inside me.
Miles rose
to his full height, leaned backward a little as if the music were a headwind, and kept on singing. He still had it. Jesus fucking Christ, did he have it. He turned from left to right and back again, pointing as he was singing, making eye contact with every single person, the sorcery of a true performer.
Emanuel took the guitar line to another level of screaming insanity, a style completely different from the cumbia I’d heard him gently coax from an acoustic guitar, but just as laden with intense emotion.
The malevolent guitar line told me, in unmistakable words, you will die. But somehow, I’d never felt more alive.
When the song ended, it veered into a different melody and trailed off, leaving Miles crouched on his knees, frozen in sacrificial offering.
I forced myself to look away from the band and at the audience. I don’t think a single person had their mouths closed all the way. They were too stunned to clap or shout. Just when a few of them—the younger and maybe more drunk ones—started to let loose, Emanuel said, “Second skin.” And the music exploded all over again.
Now, this song I knew by heart. Every note, every word. It lifted me up and made me think everything I’d suffered would, someday, be made right. When Miles sang, “tighten your laces, brighten your faces and pull off your second skin,” I couldn’t help the burst of sheer hope that pulsed through my heart, a million times fuller than the hollow self-affirmation phrases I clung to only because I didn’t have anything else.
The audience was screaming long before the last notes faded. They sounded like another instrument the band was playing—a mass of human throats. Controlled. Willingly controlled.
I realized I was screaming myself.
Emanuel lifted his hands from the strings and made a chopping motion.
Miles, on his knees again (Avert fans liked to joke he wore holes through more pants than a Pentecostal preacher) nodded in response. “That’s it. Two songs. Stay alive.” He dropped the mic and wandered away from the crowd, down toward the beach.
