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 —”