“You bastard,” Chad said. It was unclear if he meant me or Jeremy. He clarified, “You no-talent boy-band wannabe.”

I saluted at him with two fingers.

Jeremy joined me with his bass case. We performed a lengthy handshake, which helped ease my tremendous, painful joy. In a rather perfunctory way, I hooked my foot into the garden hose and twisted the sprinkler round. Artificial rain blasted into the garage’s interior. Now the guitarist and drummer made some noises.

Chad knew a lot of swearwords.

I turned with Jeremy and headed back to the Saturn to where Leyla waited. T was filming everything. I imagined the shot framed gloriously, soaking wet musicians in the background like a car explosion in an action movie.

“That was nearly reasonable of you,” Jeremy said. He added confidently, “They’ll call me.”

A drumstick hurtled by my head. It rattled on the concrete as it landed.

Jeremy leaned to pick it up. “But probably not you.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

· cole ·

After we’d done the episode but before Isabel was off work, I hung out with Jeremy in his old beat-up pickup truck, parked in the middle of a beach lot. It was just the two of us. I’d sent Leyla back with the Saturn because I didn’t want to see either of them ever again.

The sounds were traffic and someone else’s boom box and the surf and the slap of arms on a volleyball. I lay in the truck bed on a dry, crinkly tarp, and Jeremy sat on a tire, looking at me and the ocean. Overhead, the sun pierced the jet trails, baking cracks into the asphalt down below. I was still wound up from performing and now would’ve been a good time for a beer.

Jeremy offered me some unsweetened iced tea.

“I don’t want your witches’ brew,” I told him, but I took it anyway and set the jar down by my head. For several long companionable minutes we did nothing together. Jeremy leaned his head back and watched the sky, looking like a wizened Australian guy in the full sun. I closed my eyes and let the heat bake my eyelids. Here with Jeremy, it would be easy to pretend the last three years of my life hadn’t happened, and I could restart without any of my sins. Only then I wouldn’t have met Isabel, and I wouldn’t be here in California. I wondered if there had ever been a more direct route to this place. Maybe I’d been on it and ruined it. Maybe if I’d just stayed on the straight and narrow all along, I would’ve met Isabel at a show.

No, because she didn’t like concerts, and neither did I.

I thought of those three topless girls in my apartment and how they would never be Isabel and Isabel would have never been them.

I couldn’t keep my eyes closed because my brain was moving faster and faster instead of slower and slower. I opened them and said, “All of the girls look old now. When did that start? All I can see when I look at them is what they’re going to look like when they’re forty. It’s like the worst superpower ever.”

Thoughtfully, Jeremy replied, “Really? I always see people as kids. Since I was in, like, middle school. It doesn’t matter how they’re acting or how old they are, I can’t not imagine them as kids.”

“How awful. How can you possibly flip someone off if you’re imagining them as a toddler?”

“Exactly,” Jeremy said.

“Tell me. Why is Leyla so unacceptable?”

“You know I don’t like to judge people.”

“We all do things we don’t like.”

He picked a nub of rubber off the tire and flicked it onto my chest. “She’s not really our thing. Style-wise.”

“Musically or ethically?”

Jeremy said, “I’d rather not perjure myself.”

“Do you even know what perjure means?” I wasn’t 100

percent

on it myself. I had a very specialized knowledge base. “I want to fire her. I really do. But what’s the alternative?”

I regretted saying it as soon as it was out of my mouth.

Because the alternative was dead, and I didn’t want to talk about it. Don’t say anything, Jeremy. Don’t say his name.

So you ready to do this thing?

— What?

NARKOTIKA.

I didn’t give Jeremy time to answer. “You wouldn’t be with me if it wasn’t about the music, right? I mean, you wouldn’t be doing this with me if it was just about me jerking off on camera as a loser, right?”

“Is this about what Chad said?”

“Who’s Chad?” I asked, as if I couldn’t remember.

“Oh, him. No. I was just thinking because of . . . maybe.

Possibly. I’m on a road of self-evaluation. This is one of the side streets.”

Jeremy thought about it. He thought about it for so long that the sun moved a little overhead. A family went by us on their way to the beach. One dad was in a wet suit with a surfboard under his arm. The other dad was in the world’s geekiest swim trunks. The children trotted behind them making gleeful supersonic noises and punching each other.

“Jeremy,” I prompted, because I couldn’t take it anymore.

He said, “What we just did wasn’t about the music. The way’s never been about the music. The way is about the show.

The gig. This is just another gig. The studio was about the music.”

“Can I do the music without the way? Like, and still sell anything?”

“I think you like the way too well for that.”

“Hey.”

Jeremy said, “I’m not saying it’s bad. You’re good at it. But sometimes I think you’ve forgotten how to stop doing it. Do you think maybe you should get out of the city for a little bit?”

“Is that a suggestion or a question?”

“Just to get your head back together.”

I rocked my head to look at him. I could feel the knob at the back of my skull grinding and crackling against the tarp and the ridges of the pickup bed. It was sort of satisfying. I shook my head back and forth. Not disagreeing with Jeremy, just feeling the crunching on my head. “What makes you think my head is not entire already? What a glorious time I’m having in this state.”

Jeremy took a drink of unsweetened iced tea. He said, “Chip died.”

“Who the hell is Chip?”

“Chip Mac.”

“Are you even using words, man? Or are you just communicating with a series of clicks and whistles?”