by Solace Ames
“The fans wouldn’t accept me in place of Miles. It doesn’t work like that.”
“It’s happened before.”
“You’re crazy.”
“So are you. You’ve got music in your blood. Don’t be scared of drugs. You know what you should be worried about more? Courtney Love said everyone forgives you for being a junkie, but no one forgives you for getting fat. If I were you, that’d be the deciding factor. You’ve got to believe in yourself, believe in your body, believe you’re already beautiful, or they’ll make you hate yourself.”
Cruel advice, but I couldn’t figure any other way around it. The pressure would be outrageous. Much worse than anything Miles would ever face.
She looked angry and hopeful all at once, eyebrows writhing, her hands trembling around the coffee cup.
“I’m going to call Emanuel,” I said, bringing out my phone. My hand was trembling too. “Let’s talk about it with him.”
Her head cocked in a strange broken way, as if she’d violently interrupted a shake of her head no.
I’d hooked her.
Even worse, I’d hooked myself.
* * *
Two weeks later, his contracted time cut short due to arcane negotiations, Emanuel flew home from Heathrow.
Everyone wanted to meet him at the airport. He asked them to wait, and to meet at a Colombian restaurant in Westlake for a private homecoming dinner.
Amy will pick me up.
Amy. Just me.
I wore a sleeveless black velvet dress with pointy-toed witch shoes and dark plum lipstick. My schedule was way too busy for a haircut, so I’d slipped on a silvery headband to hold back my puffy hair. I liked the way it framed my face. As I waited by the baggage claim, I wondered nervously how Emanuel would see me at first, and from which direction, and how my present image would compare against our vivid past.
But I saw him first, of course. Even slump-shouldered, he stood above the crowd, hat tilted at just the right angle, dark sunglasses making his face coolly unreadable.
I ran to him, not caring how I looked anymore.
“You,” he said, and gathered me in and held me up. We kissed. I was so hungry I wanted to steal the very breath from his lungs. He answered my hunger with his own, slower and more evenly paced, until he took full control, had me bent back with his tongue between my trembling teeth. The second we touched, I was destroyed. And I loved it. I never wanted it to stop, never wanted to be myself again.
Eventually, we had to stop. Someone driving a motorized luggage cart honked the horn at us. We linked arms and moved out of the way.
“You’ve got purple lipstick all over your face now.” I took out a wet nap from my purse and went to work, reaching up and wiping off the traces.
He kissed me again after I was done, so I had to start the job all over. My spirits spiraled upward like a flock of birds, a multitude of wings lifting me higher and higher.
I heard a scream.
It wasn’t a loud, bad, scared scream—it was an I saw someone famous scream. I turned to see three tough women bristling with body piercings, one of them with a violin case.
They were Avert fans, and in a band of their own. Emanuel took pictures with his arms around their shoulders, and autographed the violin. In the meantime, I grabbed his guitar off the carousel.
“Can we take a picture of you too?” a woman asked me.
I shook my head shyly. My lipstick was too smeared. “Sorry, I’d rather not.”
She put her phone back in her pocket immediately, which I appreciated. “Can you tell us any news about the reunion? Please please please?”
Emanuel had already made his decision, and he cut right to the point. “There’ll be a song release within the month. A new album by the end of the year, self-released in coordination with a label service. Miles Morrison and Xiomara de la Isla are both singing on the album, and if there’s a tour, it will be with Xiomara only.”
They hung on his every word, every mouth open, one so astonished her chin spike wobbled.
“Xiomara!”
“Wow!”
“What’s wrong with Miles?”
I thought Emanuel would sigh and shake his head, the typical reaction to Miles-drama. God knows I’d done it enough myself.
He only smiled. “I don’t know. I thought I knew, but I was wrong about him...”
When he paused, they all sucked in an expectant breath, their chests puffing up like birds perched on a wire.
“He’ll set the story right one day. Another day. I have an appointment now, ladies, but it was truly a pleasure to meet you.” He slung the guitar case over his shoulder in one smooth motion, held my hand and led me away, leaving them groaning.
Teasing fans like that was cruel, sure, but it was the kind of cruelty we’d all happily signed up for. The frustration only increased the thrill.
“I think it’s going to work,” I said. “It’s not just that she can sing. She’s got a presence. And she likes the attention. I mean, she wouldn’t name herself something like Xiomara if she wasn’t extroverted, right?”
“That’s her grandmother’s name,” Emanuel said. Oops. “But I agree with you. As long as she believes in herself, we can make this work.”
“Where are we going?” He was leading me deeper into the airport.
“The appointment I mentioned.”
“What’s going on?”
He stopped in front of a store window, stepping out of the stream of hurried humans. A riot of luxury scarves in all colors bloomed behind his head. We still held hands, so I stood right beside him.
“Do you like to dance?” I asked him, because that movement had felt a lot like dancing.
“Yes. I’m not very skilled at it, but I like to dance. I also like to roller-skate.”
“I would love to do that with you.” Roller-skating to funk music was the best.
“I’m meeting our unfriend the journalist at the bar around the corner,” Emanuel said. I wished he’d taken off his sunglasses, his face was so forbidding, but the light in the airport was harsh and inconsistent, so I just nodded tensely in response.
“Do you want me come with you or wait here?”
“That’s entirely up to you. He’s a very unpleasant person. We both know that already. He’ll probably show you the photograph. I don’t think he’s dangerous. You can sit by my side while I handle this and make him go away, or you can wait here while I handle this and make him go away.”
“I’d rather be with you, then.”
He smiled. I didn’t need to see his eyes to know he was happy with my decision. “Let’s go, then.”
I didn’t remember the man’s face, but he was the only man in the bar without a suitcase, nursing an amber-colored drink in a corner booth. We slid next to him without saying hello, Emanuel’s body separating me from...Lewis. Yes, that was his name. I tried to look haughty, untouchable. I caught a glimpse of myself in Emanuel’s sunglasses, and was satisfied with my attempt.
“This is it,” Lewis said, and put down a portrait photo in a plastic sleeve. “I’ve got a copy, of course.”
We looked down at the photograph.
Harsh sunlight shone down on a muddy hillside. I counted the figures posing for the camera and came up with seven in all. Emanuel was in the center, holding a machete in one hand and a pistol in the other. A severed human hand hung on a cord around his neck.
A girl who looked a lot like a younger Xiomara held an umbrella over him, shading him from the sun. She was heavily pregnant, and looked barely out of puberty. I don’t think anyone in the picture could have been over sixteen. The biggest one had the softest, youngest face, and I recognized him as El Tigre, an assault rifle slung across his gawky shoulders.
“This is what I thought it would be,” E
manuel said. “Go ahead. Sell it for what you think it’s worth.” His voice was perfectly flat and even.
I tried to still my racing thoughts and not fill in the blanks, but the photo had so many incomplete stories in it, so many sad, interrupted stories. The hand was dark against Emanuel’s white chest, and mottled and livid. The poses, the dramatic scowls on their faces, were just like children playing at war.
Except they weren’t playing.
And most of them had never grown up.
“I’m not going to sell it,” Lewis said. “I’m going to mail a copy to your daughters.”
I wanted to grab a fork and stab the bastard. My fists clenched below the table.
“My ex-wife would intervene,” Emanuel said. “And in any case, my life back then is not...relevant.” That was the closest he came to tripping up, breaking his mask of dreadful calm—that little pause before the word relevant. I don’t know how he did it. “Is this your last move, Lewis? If so, proceed. And then wait for mine.”
He worked his mouth as if he was chewing at the inside of his lip. “You could be arrested.”
I could hear an edge of panic there. Good.
“A photograph from another country, another time. Items that might have been props. No. I don’t think so. Your move.”
“Ten thousand dollars and I’ll give you all the copies.”
“No.”
He turned to stare at me, although I knew he really didn’t see me. I was a thing to him. “Ten minutes with her, then.”
I thought about it for a second. I’d fucked men more hateful than this, and if it would save Emanuel from any pain...
“No,” Emanuel repeated. “And if you’re trying to provoke me, I wouldn’t make my own move in public. Expect it later. I will destroy you legally. And then, perhaps, I’ll call in another survivor from that photo to pay you a visit.”
Well, that was that.
I couldn’t say I wasn’t relieved.
“I’ll put a hundred dollars on your bar tab for that photo,” I said. “The one right there. That’s my own offer. Take it or leave it. I’m going now.” I touched Emanuel on the shoulder, gathered my dress to leave the booth.
“Fuck it.” Lewis snarled and pushed the photo at us.
Emanuel left with me, without another word. I rolled the photo into my purse, stopped at the bar, and just like I’d promised, put a hundred dollars on his tab. The bartender was smooth, efficient, and within a minute we were walking back out.
“Do you want the photo now?” I asked him, once we’d gotten enough distance from the bar. The exit to the curbside looked as tempting as the door out of hell, and I reminded myself not to look behind me.
“You can hold it for me. I’ll decide later. Some of those people, their relatives have never seen them. If I cut myself out, I could show them.”
“Xiomara’s aunt? Her mother’s twin sister—that was her?”
“Yes. She held the umbrella and died a week later.”
I lived my life in a fever dream, he’d told Miles.
“I’m sorry.” I imagined Emanuel’s central figure and all the weapons cut out of the picture, and crudely, with nail scissors instead of Photoshop. Too many white spaces. Maybe it would be better to cut the children out one by one, and paste them back into the fishing village where they should have grown up, the village at the lost island.
“I’m sorry you had to hear him.” We slipped out of the door into sunlight and car exhaust, surfacing out of hell-slash-LAX, and I inhaled deeply, because it still smelled cleaner out here in the open air. “I also needed to prove something important to you. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” I hugged him, the guitar case banging against my ribs, but of course I didn’t care. “Yes. Yes.” We’d stuck together in there. I hadn’t held him back. He hadn’t lost control. I understood—he’d passed the test.
“If you tell me to walk away, I’ll walk away. If you tell me to fight, I’ll fight. When it comes to your honor, I’ll be your faithful servant, not your master.”
“Thank you.” I was crying very softly, but I’d anticipated this surge of emotion from the very beginning, so at least I didn’t have any eye makeup to mess up. “When you left, when you told me why—that it was because of me, what those people might say because of me—it hurt so much. I thought I was going to die.”
“I was wrong.”
I could trust him. I could finally trust him. “Do you love me? Because I love you.”
He answered without a second’s pause, like he’d been waiting for just that question. “I love you with all my heart.”
“Don’t you ever let me go for my own good,” I choked out. I could hardly speak anymore. My throat closed painfully around the words. I let his arms hold me up and swayed against him in rhythm to the harsh music of the engines all around us and over us, throbbing along the road or screaming through the air.
“No. I’ll be selfish for your sake, cariño. An easy promise to make, because my need for you is beyond any measure.”
“Don’t let me go.”
“No.”
“Don’t. Just don’t.”
“Wherever we go, it will be together.”
* * *
Xiomara sang that night at Emanuel’s welcome home party. The melody haunted me, dragging me back to the mansion even though I’d never heard the song before, until I remembered that yes, I’d heard strains of it coming from the studio garage.
She sang it all, gripping the microphone fiercely and bending back like the music was a whirlwind trying to whip her into shreds. It was a liminal moment, and half of me thrilled and wanted to scream along in wordless affirmation, while the other half hung back and thought, She’s still a little stiff, but this is good, this is like Miles but not like him, oh yes this is good.
Emanuel hunched into the right back corner of the tiny stage, playing his guitar in shadow, only inches away from Fausto’s stripped-down drum kit and its ruthless rhythm. Juan Carlos leaned to the left, pounding out a bass line so dirty and organic it practically slithered from his fretless bass.
I shifted in my seat, rocked back and forth, and tried helplessly to stop my tricky little body motions, because this was the kind of music that demanded total stillness or frantic thrashing. Anything in between felt insulting.
It was a performance to either love or hate, but not ignore. Some of the relatives—a table of old men with shoddy clothes but terribly stylish hats—weren’t into the whole postpunk vibe, and actually stuck their fingers in their ears, impatient for the cumbia and salsa to return.
When the last notes died down, Xiomara passed the microphone to Emanuel. He spoke for a while in Spanish, fast and rumbling like a freight train, way too fast for me to even guess at the topic. But some heads at other tables turned to look at me. Oh God. I put my hand over the lower half of my face and gave them a halfhearted wave with my other hand. Hello. I hope you don’t know who I am.
Then Emanuel switched to English, speaking much more slowly and deliberately, like he was linking every word into a magic spell. “I promised Amy I would write her a song. Amy, mi reina, forgive me that this song is only half-written.”
I forgive you, I mouthed at him.
“I will always keep my promises to you.”
The band began to play. No, not just “the band,” Avert, in all its bizarre, chaotic glory. Fragments of the song burst out of separate instruments and from Xiomara’s quavering throat, fought with each other, formed a truce and surged into a melody, crested, and dissolved into a harsh white noise underlaid with an eerie, wailing hook.
The city bleeds from neon wounds, Xiomara sang. Her voice was so big, the restaurant’s stage might as well have been a stadium.
I only caught fragments of the lyrics. Little pieces of fractured stories. Some
of the pieces were unmistakably mine. My story, inlaid into everything.
The music, for all its roughness, cradled me tenderly. I loved things that were raw and true more than things that were polished and perfect. That was why I loved this song. I almost didn’t want Emanuel to ever finish it.
Her needles tear the sky
Fausto let the beat die, got up from behind the drum kit and walked off.
Grinding bone on bone
The bass line’s anchor vanished as Juan Carlos laid his bass down and stepped away.
The light that guides me home
Xiomara froze in profile for one aching second, twisted one hand in a fluid gesture of farewell, and drifted down from the stage.
All that was left was Emanuel’s wall of sound. He stood in the center of the stage now, swallowing up all the space, the diagonal line of the guitar slashing across the pillar of his body. The hook surfaced out of the noise, growing in volume and power, turning into something new and strong and absolutely fucking tear-your-eyes-out beautiful.
He spoke to me with every chord.
I hadn’t lied to myself, all those years ago. He’d been there with me all along.
And I never had to be alone again.
When he let the last note fade and stepped carefully down from the stage, no one clapped or made a single sound. So I heard him walk toward me through the silence, heavy footsteps ringing against the wooden floor.
I waited in a daze.
He sank down beside me and rested his head on my shoulder, which considering how much bigger he was, took a hell of a lot of skill.
“Thank you for the song,” I murmured, and kissed his forehead.
“My God, I haven’t slept in three days.”
“Let’s get you to bed, then, baby.”
He hummed gratefully, too tired for words.
We’ll be together whatever happens. He’d only said the words once, and they still kept ringing in my ears, soft like wind chimes whenever the noise of the world died down and I really listened.
* * *
A few days later, Miles uploaded a three-minute video, the first report from his new life. According to the report, he was living in his mother’s basement, going to meetings, had been allowed visits with his daughter every weekend, and was weirdly proud that he’d learned how to change diapers.
