by Roxie Noir
We lock eyes. She smiles, just barely.
I take a deep breath, shut out everything else, and sing to her.
18
Marisol
The auditorium hushes, and suddenly the only sound is the click of my heels as I half-walk, half jog along the ugly backstage hallway.
Shit, they’re starting, I think. Crap. CRAP.
After the immigration clinic, I got rushed to a salon, where there was an entire team of people waiting to do my hair, buff my skin, paint my face, polish my nails, tell me I should drink more water and probably do a juice cleanse as well, and finally stuff me into the little black cocktail dress that Valerie and I agreed on earlier this week.
When they were done, I barely even recognized myself in the mirror. In my regular life I wear lip gloss, mascara and maybe a little eyeliner at most, but now?
Hello Marisol, Rock and Roll Girlfriend.
I turn a corner in the backstage hall, and a guy in a black suit and an earpiece holds up one hand.
“Badge?” he asks.
Out on stage, the bass line starts, and a spike of urgency flashes through me because I’m missing it. I fight the urge to sprint past this guy, and instead I open my clutch and grab the very last-minute VIP pass Valerie got me.
As I hand it over, I see that she’s texted me a few minutes ago: I NEED LIP-ON-LIP TONIGHT!!!
I switch my phone off. The guard looks at my pass skeptically. He looks at me.
“Please?” I say.
He squints at it again in the near-dark. The guitar part starts. I grit my teeth together, and tell myself I’ve still got time. Finally the guy looks over his shoulder, then shrugs.
“Don’t cause any trouble,” he says, and hands me my pass back.
“Thank you!” I whisper.
From there it’s chaos, but I can see the curtains that make up the back of the stage. There are people running and talking into headsets everywhere, but I dodge around them as I make for the side of the stage, and they don’t even seem to notice me.
I dart in front of someone pushing a light and then I’m there, standing in the wings of the stage between two dark velvet curtains, watching Dirtshine play.
It’s different than the Whiskey Room. Different crowd, different song, I’m at a different angle, but the thrall feels the same. The music wraps itself around me like a snake, sensuous and dangerous but I’m totally transfixed.
I don’t think I could leave unless someone dragged me away.
I stand there for their entire set without moving. I can’t tear my eyes away from Gavin, the way he sings, the way he plays, the way his body moves with the music like he’s a part of it. He’s always hot, but when he plays? He’s practically a god, all of us enthralled by him.
Now I get why girls throw their panties on stage. I’m half thinking about it myself, since I did wear a nice pair.
They finish with a final, sonic roar. The stage lights all shut off at once, throwing them into near-total darkness and the crowd goes insane, shouting and clapping and stomping their feet, even the well-dressed celebrities standing. I’m grinning and clapping too, swept away in the energy, giddy that my fake boyfriend’s done so well.
Even so, there’s a kernel of anxiety jammed deep inside my chest as the band walks off the stage toward me, because Gavin doesn’t know I’m here.
Quit it, I tell myself. He’ll be happy to see you and you know it.
Then the four of them are coming through, their faces hard to see in the dark, but Eddie and Trent just nod at me. Darcy glances at me, looks away, looks back, and narrows her eyes quizzically, like she recognizes me but can’t quite place my face.
“Is that Marisol?” Gavin’s voice says as he materializes.
He’s grinning.
“Hey,” I say, my heartbeat speeding up again. “I got done with stuff early so I wanted to come—”
He picks me up in a hug and before I know it I’m spinning around in a circle, Gavin laughing as I yelp, then dissolve into laughter myself.
Someone with a headset shushes us, and he puts me back down, grinning.
“I thought you weren’t going to make it,” he says. “Thanks.”
Now I’m blushing, heat creeping up my cheeks. Everyone backstage is acting like they don’t notice what’s going on, but I can see sideways glances, eyes gazing up from clipboards.
“Of course,” I say, smoothing down my hair, trying to compose myself after flying through the air. “I didn’t want to miss it.”
“Wait, is this the... you know, that girl?” someone whispers, and I realize that Darcy, Trent, and Eddie are all standing nearby, in a line, watching us.
“Eddie, be cool,” Trent mutters.
“Right, sorry,” Gavin says, and turns to the rest of Dirtshine, one hand on my back. “Guys, this is Marisol. Marisol, this is Darcy, Trent, and Eddie.”
“Great show,” I say, nerves fluttering again. I have no idea if they know our deal or not. “It was really—”
“And here’s Dirtshine, fresh off their big comeback show! Let’s go see what they think,” a woman says, very loudly, stomping her way into the middle of our little circle.
She’s wearing a formal dress, holding a microphone, talking into a camera, and nearly runs poor Eddie over before he moves.
“Hi there!” she says, smiling hugely. “I’m Peyton Donovich with MTV’s Undercover Backstage All-Access Camera! How’d the show go tonight?”
The band looks at each other, and after a moment, Gavin answers.
“It’s really great to be back out there,” he says.
She keeps going, asking them questions that are all variations on isn’t this wonderful and how cool is everything while I just stand there at Gavin’s side, his hand still on my back, and try to stay off her radar. Really, that’s what I’m here for: to look like a nice, normal girl who doesn’t like drugs and who’s a good influence on Gavin.
Just as Peyton’s wrapping up, putting everyone on edge with her manic energy, she locks her crazy eyes on me.
Please no, I think, but I’m stuck and helpless.
“Now, you must be Gavin’s mystery girlfriend!” she says.
I force myself to smile, even though I feel like the black hole of the camera lens is trying to swallow me.
“I didn’t know I was a mystery,” I say.
Peyton laughs way, way too hard.
“This is my girlfriend, Marisol,” Gavin interjects. He’s still got his hand on my back and he’s stroking my spine gently with his thumb, almost absent-mindedly.
“Well, I’m glad you made it,” Peyton says, half-turning to the camera. “Because welcome to the BACKSTAGE KISS CAM!”
She’s going to kiss me?! I think in terror.
Then Gavin pretends to laugh, and I realize: she means me and Gavin.
Valerie’s text flashes in my head: LIP-ON-LIP.
Gavin looks down at me, smiling, and I try to smile back.
LIP-ON-LIP, LIP-ON-LIP, my brain screams at me.
And then our faces mash together.
There’s not another way to put it. I thought he was going to my left so I move my head that way but I half-miss his mouth, so really, our lips are only partly touching. I turn my head and try to save it, scrunching my face towards his, but now somehow my teeth are on his lip, his nose is squashed against his face funny, and the camera’s getting all of this.
For a long moment, Gavin doesn’t move. I don’t move. Then we both back away, and he turns to smile at the camera.
“Beautiful!” shouts Peyton, and she keeps shouting but I can’t pay any attention.
That was terrible. Absolutely the worst kiss I’ve ever experienced, hands down. Worst than my first kiss, worse than the guy who had braces, worse than the guy who shoved his tongue into my mouth and just let it flop there.
I’m reeling. Thunderstruck. I’ve thought about kissing Gavin at least a thousand times, fantasized about it, but... the reality was awful. Bad.
Ma
ybe I’ve been wrong this whole time, I think. Maybe there’s really nothing between us, and we’re just going to kiss like awkward adolescents and that’s all.
Plus, now it’s going to be on TV, so that’s extra great.
“Earth to Marisol?” Gavin’s voice says, breaking through my mental whirlpool.
“Hi,” I answer, blinking.
“Hi,” he says. “Come on, we’ve got to get changed and then go to this party.”
“Right,” I say, and follow the band.
The dressing room for the band is a lounge area, with couches and snacks, and a couple of smaller changing rooms branching off. The band heads off to change, and I wander over to the snack table, my mind totally elsewhere.
It was an awkward kiss in front of a camera, I tell myself. You weren’t prepared. It happens. It doesn’t mean anything.
But it was bad, and if two people are compatible shouldn’t kissing be good? How hard is it to kiss well? It’s not as though either of us had never done it before.
Maybe you should stick to planning things like this, I think. Talk about it beforehand, script it out.
Planning a kiss on the lips so it’s good enough isn’t the most enticing thought I’d had. Shouldn’t that kind of thing be, you know, spontaneous? Spur of the moment?
You’re overthinking this, Gomez, I tell myself. Quit it. Have some candy and then go party.
The snack table is mostly junk food — chips and packaged cookies and candy. There’s a whole bowl of M&Ms, along with fun-sized candy, Twizzlers, and two bowls of gummi bears, a small one and a big one. I don’t know why. Rock and roll stuff, I guess.
I grab a small handful from each bowl, just to compare. Gummi candies are my weakness, especially when I’m stressed.
“You know the story about Van Halen and brown M&Ms, right?” Darcy’s voice says behind me.
I turn, mouth full of gummi candy, and swallow quickly.
“I don’t think so,” I say.
“They got a reputation as prima donnas because, in their concert rider, they specified that they needed a big bowl of M&Ms backstage, but with all the brown M&Ms removed,” she says, grabbing a handful of candy.
“Did they just hate brown?” I ask.
She shakes her head, chewing.
“Years later, David Lee Roth explained it,” she says. “When they went into their dressing room, if there were no brown M&Ms, they knew the venue had actually read their whole concert rider, and the important stuff — like lights and sound and everything — were probably set up right. But if there were brown M&Ms, everything needed to be double-checked.”
I pop another few gummi bears into my mouth. They taste a little strange, but I figure they must be gourmet gummi bears or something.
“That’s actually pretty smart,” I say.
“And now every venue has M&Ms, just because,” she says, popping more into her mouth. “So, what kind of law are you studying?”
The party house is gorgeous. It’s up in the hills above Los Angeles, and the terraced back yard has a view of nearly the whole city, from the skyscrapers downtown all the way to the spinning lit circle of the Ferris wheel on the Santa Monica Pier.
There’s a camera set up with a backdrop near the front door, since the party’s thrown by a music magazine, but it’s mercifully fast, and there’s no insane, toothy reporter demanding that we kiss for show. Inside is crowded but not jam-packed, and in few minutes, I’m drinking a glass of champagne while Gavin has club soda with lime as we talk to another musician he knows.
“I think it’s an awful remaster,” the other guy — Billy? — is saying. “The originals are just so gritty sounding and real, you know? You can’t remaster demos. It’s like showing videotape in high definition, you just see the scratches better.”
“That’s the thing, though,” Gavin says. “I rather like hearing all of that stuff, the pops and the scratches. Makes me feel as if I’m in the basement with Dylan, not listening to him in the car.”
Billy laughs.
“I like feeling as though I’m listening to them in the car,” he says. “Reminds me of being nineteen and having snagged a bootleg tape that I could drive around all night and listen to.”
A waiter with a tray passes by, taking my champagne glass and offering me another. I glance sideways at Gavin and his club soda, his other hand protectively on my back.
Despite myself, I think about the awful kiss again, my teeth mashed against Gavin’s lip.
And I take another glass of champagne.
“I admit to getting precious few bootlegs myself,” Gavin says. “There were quite a lot of very loud shows in very dirty bars, though, where you really could hear each and every flaw in the wiring.”
I’m still listening, but I haven’t got all that much to contribute. Besides, the two of them somehow seem really far away, and it’s making it hard to pay attention to them, almost like I’m looking at them through a telescope and a microscope at the same time. Like they’re really close but also far away, and it’s weird.
Billy laughs. Gavin laughs. I look from one to the other.
Laugh, I think. You should probably laugh right now because you’re being a little weird and you don’t want them to know you’re weird, act normal, are you acting normal now? Come on.
I laugh. Reflexively, I take another sip of champagne, then look down into my glass at the bubbles rising slowly to the top. It’s really cool.
“Well, everyone’s only listening through headphones now is the problem,” Billy’s saying, but now he feels extra far away and something about him seems off, like I’m looking through a kaleidoscope I can’t actually see.
Crap, I’m drunk. Am I drunk? Is this what drunk feels like?
I touch Gavin’s arm, and he looks down at me.
“I’ll be right back,” I hear myself say, as though I’m visiting the ladies’ room.
“Sure,” he says.
I smile. I nod. These are actions I am supposed to do, and then I walk away thinking right foot, left foot, right foot.
I don’t head for the bathroom. Instead I head outside, because I think I might need fresh air. I’ve only had one drink — the second glass is still full — but maybe I’m locking my knees or something as I stand, which I know you’re not supposed to do because the blood flow from your feet to your brain is very important, even though it’s really weird that the same blood is in your feet and your brain because they’re really different, you know? Feet and brains?
I reach the edge of the terraced back yard. There’s a stone wall, and I rest my champagne glass on it, looking out over Los Angeles.
These lights are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, I think, looking at the buildings, watching the slow crawl of headlights on the freeway.
They just keep going, like stars on the ground or like snakes with stars on them. There’s so many people here, and they’ve all got their own individual lives, every one of those lights down there, and—
I have a quick, bright moment of clarity.
I’m not drunk. This isn’t what drunk feels like, not at all.
I didn’t lock my knees, I’m not hyperventilating.
Nope. I’m stoned.
Really, really stoned.
19
Gavin
“I know it’s cliché but I really did like their first album better,” Billy says.
I drain the rest of the club soda from my glass, the lime hitting my upper lip.
“It’s cliché for a reason,” I say. “The first album is five, ten years in the making sometimes, the stuff you’ve been working on for ages. The second album you’ve got two, maybe three years and everyone expects it to be genius.”
“True,” he says, looking thoughtful.
I glance around the room again, looking for Marisol. She’s been gone for a few minutes now, and I’m starting to hope she hasn’t gotten lost or something.
I’m not exactly worried — she’s an adult, I trust her ability to na
vigate a party perfectly well — but if she’s gotten sucked into a tedious conversation with some executive’s wife or someone’s trying to quiz her about me, I should probably go rescue her.
After all, good boyfriends don’t just leave their girlfriends to fend for themselves around wolves. Or vultures, for that matter.
“I’m going to go make sure Marisol’s not trapped in conversation with that bloke Titus or something,” I say.
Billy laughs. Titus is a drummer for a band called Black Acid Rain, and he’s known for cornering people and simply listing different types of drumming equipment. Impossible to escape.
“I’ll catch you around,” Billy says, and we walk in separate directions.
I’m taller than most people here, but there’s still no sign of Marisol as I glance through different rooms, looking for curly hair and a black dress. Nothing, anywhere.
It’s odd. It’s very odd.
She ran off because of your dreadful kiss, I think.
It’s a rubbish thought, but it still stings. I know she wouldn’t just leave without telling me, but for the past hour or so she’s seemed a bit quiet, a bit distant.
I can’t help but think it’s because we kissed like a couple of toddlers imitating adults.
It caught me off-guard, and it caught her off-guard, and I doubt that kissing for a camera is ever a particularly enjoyable or natural thing to do, but still. I hate it. I knew that we’d have to get to lip-on-lip, as Valerie’s increasingly urgent communiqués call it, but I hadn’t meant it to be like that.
I didn’t want our first kiss to be for the cameras. That’s half the reason I haven’t done it yet, because I’ve kissed dozens of women but I wanted it to be right when I kiss Marisol.
And, well, I buggered that up.
I head through room after room, but she’s nowhere at all. Not outside, not near the bathrooms, not in any of the massive house’s half-dozen rooms filled with well-dressed people and lounge furniture, so I start asking people if they’ve seen her.
