Sinner Read online

  “At a closing,” Sofia replied. “She said she’d be home before Teresa.”

  Teresa was my mother. When Sofia said it, she sounded neither snotty nor cold. She sounded respectful and fond. What ferocious magic that was.

  The doorbell rang. Sofia looked martyred. “I’ll get it.”

  She did not want to get it. Getting it meant she might have to speak to whoever was behind the door, and if she spoke to them, they might judge her clothing or hair or face or skills and find any of these things wanting.

  “Oh, stop,” I said. “Seriously. I’ll get it.”

  Only it was a celebrity at the door. Before my brother died, he used to say that things came in threes. Three celebrities in one day. Not bad, even for the greater Los Angeles area. This one was a petite woman with a heavy brunette fringe half covering her sleepy green eyes. She was beautiful in a casual, vintage way that looked so effortless that it must have taken a long time to achieve. She was not a woman. She was a picture of a woman. It took me a moment to place her, because she was one of those third-tier celebrities who got featured in interior tabloid pages and on slow-news days on gossip blogs. Her name was something strange, I remembered. It was —

  “Hi, I’m Baby North,” she said. “Are you Isabel?”

  She clearly thought I would be shocked into something by hearing my name, but I made it a point of pride to not be shocked by anything. Especially after my sense of surprise had pretty much been broken by the appearance of Cole St. Clair earlier in the day. I could feel Sofia behind me, though, and I could just tell that her mouth was ever so slightly open.

  “Sofia,” I said, stepping out onto the too-bright front stair, “would you go check the oven? I think I left it on.”

  There was a pause, and then Sofia vanished. She was not stupid.

  “What’s this about?” I asked. I didn’t realize it wasn’t polite until it came out of my mouth.

  “An opportunity. If you’d give me a moment, I can introduce myself, tell you who I am, what I do —”

  “I know who you are,” I said. She was a very pretty vulture who reanimated corpses for web TV, but I didn’t add that part, since I figured she already knew. I had an uncomfortable feeling inside me, a sense of why she was here, and some part of me knew I wasn’t going to like it.

  “Good!” she said, and she smiled hugely. I didn’t trust that smile, because it was so great. It was wide and dimpled and symmetrical, a pinup girl from the past. “Can I come in?”

  I surveyed her. She surveyed me. Her car sat on the curb behind my SUV. It was very chrome-y.

  “No,” I said.

  Her mouth changed and became something much more real. “Well, okay.”

  Now manners were starting to catch up, so I added, with as much icy congeniality as I could manage, “It’s not my house. I wouldn’t want to compromise their privacy. And like I said, I know who you are.”

  “Clever,” Baby said, like she really thought so. “Well, I’ll make this quick, then: Are you dating Cole St. Clair?”

  I tried to keep my face blank, but surprise robbed me of my secrecy. I knew my expression had given me away for half a second. “I don’t think dating is a word I would use,” I said.

  “Right,” she replied. “I’d like to ask you if you’d like to be on a show with him. Cool, right? It wouldn’t take a lot of your time, and it can open up a lot of opportunities. ’Specially for a beautiful girl like you.”

  The uncomfortable feeling inside me grew and solidified. I held the doorknob. “What sort of show?”

  “We’re just doing a quick little show following him and his band around while they record their next album.”

  Quick

  little

  show

  I knew he wasn’t here for me. I had known from the beginning.

  But my foolish heart hadn’t. It had wanted so badly to believe him. Now it was crushed up against my ribs by the growing terrible feeling inside me.

  “I’m not interested,” I said. “Like I said, we’re not really dating.”

  “But even as a friend —”

  “We’re not even really friends,” I said. I needed to shut this door right now, so that I could go scream or cry or smash something. “I just knew him for a while.”

  She studied my face, looking for the true answer, but I had gotten ahold of myself now, and I just gazed dead-eyed out at her from behind my eyeliner.

  “If you change your mind,” she said, and flicked out a card from the pocket of her linen smock.

  I didn’t change my expression, but I took it. I needed something to burn.

  “It would be cool,” Baby said. “The sort of thing you’d always remember. Just think about it.”

  She retreated down the sidewalk. I retreated back into the House of Dismay and Ruin. As I shut the door behind me, the house took another piece of my soul and transformed it into a piece of semi-custom cabinetry. My brain was exploding.

  Sofia stood at the door to the living room. “Was that really —”

  “Yes.” I snatched my phone out. Punched in a number.

  “What did she —”

  I clawed my hand through the air and pointed at the phone. I heard a little tap as someone picked up on the other end.

  “I thought you said you were here for me,” I snarled.

  “Hello,” Cole replied. “I was just putting pants on. Unless you’d prefer me to leave them off.”

  “Act like you heard what I said.”

  “But I didn’t.”

  “You said you were here for me. You lied.”

  There was a pause. The thing about a phone call is that you can’t tell what is happening in the pause. I couldn’t tell if it was a find-a-way-to-make-this-better pause or an I-am-genuinely-confused pause.

  “What?” he asked finally.

  “You’re recording an album? You’re going to be on television. Those things are not me.”

  Another pause.

  “Say something.”

  “Something.”

  “Oh, ha. Well, listen. The problem is that you made me feel as if you came here just for me, and actually you came here to be on TV. You didn’t come for me. You came here to be Cole St. Clair.”

  Exasperated, he replied, “That is backward.”

  “Funny how you didn’t mention it before,” I snapped. “Forget about dinner. Forget about it all.”

  “It’s no —”

  “Don’t talk. In fact,” I said, “drop dead.”

  I hung up.

  When I was a wolf, I didn’t remember anything about being me. I was reduced to my very basic self, solved for x. I was nothing more or less extraordinary than an animal.

  It was what every other drug I had ever used was trying to be.

  All I could think about after Isabel called was how if I was a wolf, this feeling would go away, at least for a little bit.

  Instead I stood on the wire-strung balcony of the Venice house and looked out at the nighttime glitter of the city. The moon was a huge, round Hollywood set piece at the end of Abbot Kinney. Palm trees were exotic silhouettes against its face — movie-perfect, L.A.-perfect. This place: Were movies Hollywood-perfect because this place was, or had they built this place to perfection because of the movies?

  Standing on the balcony, a silhouette myself against the purple sky, my depression was just another glamorous thing.

  What should I have told her?

  I was aware of the tiny camera pointed at my back. It was attached to the roofline and was one of several positioned throughout the compound — compound was really not the right word for it. My studio apartment, bright and wide-eyed and sky-lighted, occupied the second floor of a concrete block house. The first-floor apartment was slated for another band member. A wide deck led to a third apartment in a flat stucco house on the other side of the block. In between was a tiny yard full of plants that looked unrealistic to my foreign eyes.

  Six weeks suddenly spooled out. I didn’t understand how
I’d ever thought that forty-two days was a short time.

  I rocked my weight against the edge of the balcony. I wished for a beer; I wished for a needle to push into my skin.

  No, those weren’t me anymore. I was straight, clean, brand-new. Baby had hired me to fail, but I wasn’t going to fail.

  Isabel hadn’t even given me a chance.

  I thought about how quickly I could be a wolf. How completely it would empty my mind. Just for a few minutes. And unlike any of my other chemical salves, it left no marks and demanded nothing more from me. It wasn’t an addiction.

  But I didn’t move.

  Crossing my arms on the balcony, I laid my head on them, my chest slowly filling with black. My face was buried into the place where track marks had been before the wolf in me had erased them.

  What was the point of being here, if not for her? What was the point of anything if I couldn’t even work out this one thing. It was just dinner. It was just —

  Isabel —

  In the alley behind my apartment, I heard a car pull up and stop. A car door opened and closed. A trunk opened and closed. The gate to the courtyard rattled.

  I flicked my gaze up to an indistinct figure with a light-colored hat struggling at the gate. He/she/it spotted me. A female voice, probably, called, “A little help, man?”

  I didn’t move. I watched her/him/it work at the lock for another minute until the lockbox was persuaded to give up its key.

  This had all seemed like such a fun game earlier when I’d been standing in Baby’s house. But now? Drop dead.

  It felt like I’d never stopped arguing with Isabel, way back in Minnesota.

  It was impossible how fast everything had gone to shit in my heart.

  Down below, the figure entered the courtyard. She had a bag. It didn’t seem to have wheels but she dragged it anyway. Pushing past an intrusive fig tree, she stood directly beneath me, her lanky shadow diffuse and multiheaded from the streetlights and porch lights and moon. I could see now that what I’d thought was a hat were actually massive blond dreadlocks. Tipping her head back, she said, “Thanks for that, man.”

  When I still didn’t reply, she dragged the bag a few more feet. Then she dropped beside the house and lit up a cigarette or a joint.

  Slowly, I dragged myself into performer mode. Cole St. Clair mode. It was a thing to wear, a familiar shirt, but it took a moment to get on.

  I clomped down the stairs. In the dark, the faint glow at the end of her joint illuminated the smoke around her. Her face was very long and very thin and a lot like Ichabod Crane, if Ichabod had blond dreadlocks, which he might have. The eighteenth century was a bad time for hair.

  “Hi, why are you here?” I asked.

  “I’m your drummer,” she replied.

  There were no fireworks or parades or signs raining from the heavens to announce her, the first of the musicians assembled around the musical feet of Cole St. Clair, ex-frontman of NARKOTIKA.

  This girl was not my band. My band was one-third Buddhist and one-third dead.

  I said, “That isn’t a fancy way of saying you’re a hooker, is it? Because I’m really not in the mood.”

  She blew smoke out at me. In a slow, nasal voice that seemed like it had to be cultivated, she said, “Don’t harsh my buzz, man.”

  She closed her eyes. She looked utterly at peace with the entire world. Marijuana had never had that effect on me. I got super funny, and then I got sad. The entire process had only ever been a good time for onlookers.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it. I thought you were coming tomorrow. If you aren’t familiar, that’s the day after today.”

  Girl Ichabod opened her eyes. Her dreadlocks were massive. They needed a zip code. I had seen some great dreads in my time, but these looked like they had been made with the ruins of abandoned third-world villages. “Buzz. Harshing.”

  “Sorry. I’m Cole.”

  “Leyla.” She offered me her joint.

  “I’m straight,” I said, although once upon a time I had considered pot the most minor of an array of sins available to me. It was the first time I had said I’m straight out loud, and the words had a glorious nobility to them.

  “Might want to take the edge off,” she told me. “Before the rest of them get here.”

  “The rest of them?”

  As if on cue, lights flooded the backyard. I threw a hand up to shield my eyes. Four people walked through the gate, easy as you please, all dark and ghoulish at the yard’s edge. Two of them carried cameras. The other two carried instrument cases. The former was pointed at the latter, but when they caught a whiff of Leyla and me, the lenses instantly swung to us.

  I felt like I’d been thrown onstage without a set list. This is the show, I told myself. It starts now.

  “Like I said,” Leyla said, indifferent.

  “Cole, hey,” said the camera guy. I could see half of his face, and it reminded me strikingly of Baby. The same heavy lids, the same brown fringe of hair, the same feeling that he’d stepped out of a vintage ’70s photograph. “I thought you’d be sleeping. Sorry for the surprise. Everyone got in early and we thought we’d shoot a couple minutes of them walking in.” He stuck out his hand at me, camera still in his other hand. He was wearing about four hundred hemp bracelets. I instantly made at least three judgment calls about him based upon the bracelets alone. “I’m Tee. Just the letter.”

  “Which letter?”

  “T. My name. Just T.”

  I made another judgment call, and then I shook his hand. “You have Baby’s face.”

  “Ha, I know. I’m her twin brother.”

  “Kinky.”

  “Yeah, I know, right? I’m going to be one of the camera crew.” I could tell right off that he was one of those pliable guys who just liked being around celebrities of all sorts. Not a fan of anyone specific, just a fanboy of anyone who’d ever been anyone in general. Still, I immediately liked him better than Baby. He was more straightforward. “Joan’s the other one you’ll see all the time. That’s her.” He pointed. “So if you see us around, you won’t freak out.”

  Part of my attention was on him, but the better part of my mind was working over how his parents had collectively named their children Baby T.

  “Anyway, we’ll just, like, get a quick shot of them walking into the house, and then we’ll get out of your way,” T said. “We’ll try to be as, you know, unobtrusive as possible.”

  “Do what you gotta do,” I said.

  T and Joan backed up, pointing cameras hither and thither, looking for the best possible lighting. Joan nearly stepped on Leyla, who reclined in the grass. I caught a glimpse of the scene through Joan’s viewfinder and it looked like one of those lion documentaries after dark. All that was missing was the fender of a Land Rover and the half-eaten corpse of a wildebeest.

  I focused on the two musicians at the same time that Joan’s camera did.

  “Why are there two of them?” I asked.

  T, eager and amiable, immediately stopped what he was doing and turned to me. “Two of what? Cameras? Differ —”

  “No, them.”

  “It’s your band, man,” T said. He wore the same wide smile as Baby. “Guitarist and bassist.”

  “Which one is the guitarist?”

  T looked at the two guys with their two similar instrument cases. He didn’t have half a clue. One of the musicians lifted his hand.

  I said, “You can go.”

  T’s sleepy eyes got unsleepier. “Hey, wait a second.”

  “The door’s over there,” I told the guitarist, who was staring at me with an expression I’d forgotten — disbelief mingled with indignation. “Nice to meet you, da svidaniya, etc., etc.” I turned to the bassist, who swallowed. “And y —”

  “Hey, wait,” T interrupted. He was still smiling, but his eyes looked a little alarmed. “Baby handpicked these guys. I don’t think she’ll be so happy if you just send one packing before we eve —”

  “I didn’t ask for a
guitarist,” I said. “Why would I need a guitarist? This isn’t the Beatles.” I pointed. “Bassist. Drummer. Me. Done.”

  T clearly wanted to keep the peace. “Why don’t you just keep him to see how it goes? Then you’re happy, Baby’s happy, Chip’s happy.”

  I presumed Chip was the guitarist I was going to have to forcibly eject from my life. The most annoying thing about all of this was that I was certain Baby hadn’t forgotten that I didn’t want a guitarist. Someone who remembered a notepad didn’t misremember an extra band member.

  “If he wants to sit around, whatever,” I replied. “But that thing’s not coming out of the case. I don’t write for guitar. He can keep the plants company.”

  T held my gaze, waiting for it to waver. But it wasn’t going to. If nothing else in the world went right, I was going to at least keep this: I was recording the album my way.

  Finally, T said, “Chip, why don’t you wait in the car?”

  Leyla blew a puff of smoke into the lion-documentary lights.

  Chip pushed his way out of the yard.

  “Well,” said T.

  I turned to the bassist. He was a tall, lanky kid with long hair. He had fingers like insect legs. I said, “Are you any good? Let’s hear you.”

  The bassist’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.

  T was no fool. He saw the writing on the wall from a million miles away. “Right now? I thought we’d jus —”

  I interrupted, “No time like the present, T. We’re not getting any younger, and youth, they tell me, is where it’s at. Pop that sucker out, dude. Let’s hear what you’re made of.”

  The bassist, realizing immediately that I, and not T, was in charge, scrambled to retrieve his bass. “It’s, uh, better, amplified.”

  “I’ll use my imagination.”

  “What should I play?” he asked.

  “You tell me.”

  Jeremy, NARKOTIKA’s bassist, hadn’t been the greatest player in the world, but he’d had a sort of relentless energy about him. He’d have to study each song for days before he worked out even the most basic riff, but when that riff appeared — oh, man, hold on to something or sit down. It hadn’t ever mattered that it took him so much time to get there. All that mattered was that he got there in the end.