It’s only your second day here, I remind myself. Of course you weren’t going to find her within two days, that would be a miracle.

It’ll be a miracle if you find her at all.

A chilly wind blows down the street, rattling the few leaves left on the trees, scattering a fast food cup and wrapper across the sidewalk. I shove my hands into the pockets of my pea coat and put my head down against the wind, wishing I’d brought my scarf on this particular outing.

For some reason, I always think that America is all warm and sunny, all the time. Los Angeles mostly is, but I do tend to forget that New York is a drastically different place, as far from L.A. as Moscow is from London. Farther, probably.

I did manage to come up with a plan besides walk the entire city until you find Frankie, because that’s not a plan at all. I’ve got a list of all the movie, television, and commercial shoots that are currently happening in New York, and systematically, I’m visiting as many as I can per day.

I can’t get to them all, obviously. Particularly since my budget is quite tight, meaning I’ve got to take public transit. God knows the New York system is baffling at first, but I did live in London for several years. I can manage.

The wind blows again. It’s not even that cold, but there’s something about it that cuts straight through my coat. I’m passing by a neighborhood diner on my left, the sort of place that serves coffee and milkshakes. It’s mid-afternoon but I haven’t eaten lunch yet, telling myself I’ll make a sandwich in the room I’ve sublet from a lovely Russian woman for the week.

Some tea would be lovely, though.

Lovely? Who the fuck am I, my Nonna?

Besides, it’ll be American tea. Not worth the price.

I put my head back down against the wind, stop contemplating the plate glass windows of the diner, when a voice jolts me from my thoughts.

“Liam!” a woman calls.

I turn, looking for the source, slightly baffled. True, I used to be in a famous band, but no one ever recognizes drummers out of context. Besides, I don’t look anything like I used to.

“Liam, come back here,” the woman calls again, and a child in a bright blue puffy jacket races past me, toward the woman. I finally spot her, a tired-looking mum-type, another child in a stroller.

“Don’t you dare just run off like that,” she admonishes the kid, and I turn back into the wind.

See? Not famous.

Just some bloke.

* * *

I do the same thing, every day, for two weeks. I walk around New York City by day, trying to frequent the places where I think Frankie might be, and by the time I’m finished I feel as if my feet have been worn down to icy stumps.

I lurk outside commercial and movie shoots. I go into every museum I can find, since she seems like the curious sort. I go to art openings, I ride every subway that goes into or out of Brooklyn, I compile a list of fabric stores in the city of New York and visit them all.

It’s for nothing. Deep down, I knew it would be, like finding hay in a haystack. You can’t just go to a massive city, wander the streets for two weeks, and expect to find someone.

But it’s disappointing. Fuck me, is it disappointing, because it’s easy to know that something is logically near-impossible while still believing that, despite every single odd, it’ll happen anyway. And deep down, I think I did believe. I had repeated visions of rounding a corner and seeing her, walking toward me.

Of getting onto the subway, glancing right, and seeing her freckled face staring back. Of finding her on the set of a commercial. I’d shout her name, she’d look around, and the instant she saw me she’d come sprinting over and leap into my arms.

Like a movie or some shit. Of course it didn’t happen. All the self-delusion in the world wasn’t going to make the impossible come true, and now I’ve spent two weeks and several thousand dollars that I ought to have saved on this fruitless, stupid search.

The night before I fly to Los Angeles for Gavin’s wedding, I do something new. Clearly my search isn’t working, and a band that I used to know, the Deep Sea Divers, are playing a show at an old theater in Brooklyn.

It’s strange to simply go to a show. I can’t remember the last time I did it the normal way, buying a ticket and showing it to the doorman. Back when I was in Dirtshine, we never had to go in the front like this — we always got to go in the back entrance at least, usually hung out in the green room or the VIP area, and for good reason.

Back when people still recognized me, I got mobbed. It was impossible to pay attention to the music for all the people coming up to us, poking their friends in the ribs, drunkenly wanting to tell us how much they loved our music and how great Lucid Dream was, how it changed their lives.

Looking back, I ought to have been a bit nicer. I ought not have flipped off a thousand fans who just wanted photos, or been such a shit to so many of them who took video, because Christ knows that all ended up on the internet.

So when the doorman asks for my ID, I hand it over. I skip the bar and lean against the back wall of the theater. I feel a bit like an alien, like an old man watching a playground from outside the fence, even though I’m the same age as most of the people here.

But I’m not them anymore. Now I’m someone who lives in a cottage in north England, who works at a bookshop and rides a bicycle around and yearns for a girl he can’t have and leads the very definition of a normal, quiet life.

After the show’s over, ears still ringing, I’m ready to make my way back out into the cold when two girls come up to me, both wearing leather jackets. One’s wearing jeans torn so badly I don’t even see the point in her wearing them, and the other’s got a poodle skirt on, her t-shirt tied around her waist and showing a thin sliver of skin.

Poodle Skirt nudges Torn Jeans in the ribs. Torn Jeans nudges back, and Poodle Skirt rolls her eyes.

“Hey, uh, sorry,” she starts. “But did you used to be the drummer for Dirtshine?”

It’s literally the first time in six months anyone has recognized me, though of course it would be here if anywhere.

“I did,” I say.

“Shut up,” says Torn Jeans, and I raise my eyebrows. “Did you really?”

“Yes,” I confirm, wondering how this is going to play out.

“I loved Lucid Dream,” Poodle Skirt gushes. “And, I mean, that last song, Starglow? It’s fucking amazing.”

“Thanks,” I say. “Glad you like it.”

They exchange a glance.

“Listen,” says Torn Jeans. “We’re actually heading out to a party, if you want to come? The guy who’s throwing it usually has some pretty good stuff, you know.”

I try not to laugh in their faces. I can’t quite believe this, that — if I’m correct in my assessment, which I’m near certain I am — I’m being offered drugs by two fairly cute girls who can’t be over twenty-one.

“I mean, it’s all totally pure, nothing hinky or whatever,” Poodle Skirt rushes in. “I don’t know if you still do that stuff, I remember some stuff happened?”

“Do you mean when I overdosed and someone else died?” I ask, folding my arms in front of myself.

They exchange another wide-eyed glance, and I nearly laugh again, because it’s the most charming, adorable offer for drugs I think I’ve ever gotten. Formerly, by now, I’d have been smoking something or shooting up in the back room along with Gavin and whoever else was partaking that night.

Nothing hinky. God, it’s cute.

“Right, maybe you don’t still party after that?” Torn Jeans says.

And yet, despite the cuteness and the wide-eyed nature of their inquiry, I’m fucking tempted. Getting high right now — not even on heroin, on coke or X or even just weed, something a little less demanding — sounds fucking lovely.

It always sounds fucking lovely. I think it always will, but at the moment my feet hurt and my heart feels like it’s dissolving in my chest, running through my veins like ice breaking up in a river. I’d fucking love to go with these cute girls and get high enough to forget that I didn’t find her and now my chance is over. I’d love to forget that the reason everything is tits-up right now is because of me.

Yes is on the tip of my tongue. Even just a drink, a hit from a joint, anything so I don’t have to go back to the tiny bedroom I’m renting and face up to the fact that I’ve fucked up things once again.

Poodle Skirt tilts her head to one side. She smiles, and then I realize something I’ve also not realized in a long, long time: I could have this girl if I wanted.

I could have them both, fucking undoubtedly.

Wouldn’t that be a way to forget about Frankie, forget her stupid freckles and her stupid wiggle and the stupid way her warm skin felt against mine? I could go to Gavin’s wedding this weekend with the memory of someone else’s lips on mine for the first time in nearly two months, the sound of someone else’s voice ringing in my ears.

“It’s not far,” Poodle Skirt says. “Just a couple of blocks, and they’d love to have you, I’m sure.”

Just once, I think. Get properly wasted and balls-deep in some other girl, that’s how you sort yourself out. How you always have done.

“You don’t mind bringing some washed-up drummer with you?” I ask.

Torn Jeans shoves her hands into her pocket, looks at me through her eyeliner.

“You don’t look washed-up.”

“You’d be quite surprised.”

“Then you look good for being washed-up.”

“Now you’re just flattering me.”

Torn Jeans smiles and shrugs, and I look from her to Poodle Skirt and back, arms still folded in front of me.

No reason to say no. Have fun for once, you’re living like a bloody monk. Let loose. You’re not going to find Frankie, no sense wanking about it until your bollocks fall off.

“All right then,” I say.

* * *

As we walk along the street the sky is just beginning to spit snow, the air dry and bone-chilling. I get the feeling that Poodle Skirt and Torn Jeans are expecting me to pay for a cab or something, but joke’s on them because cabs aren’t in my shit budget.

They don’t know that. They probably think I’ve got a mansion somewhere in Los Angeles and a Manhattan penthouse a few miles away.

“So what’s it like being a rock star?” Poodle Skirt asks, walking next to me.

Since coming outside into the cold, I’ve realized she’s not wearing a bra, her nipples practically poking through her thin t-shirt, totally visible since she refuses to close her coat despite the cold.

“Sometimes it’s lovely and sometimes it’s terrible,” I say. “There’s nothing quite like being on stage in front of a few thousand people who are all screaming for you and there’s also nothing quite like being faced with barrage of cameras and brightly flashing lights every time you drunkenly stumble over a curb.”

I look down at her. I try to imagine her naked, helped by the way her breasts bounce against her shirt. I try to imagine them both wriggling out of their coats, one of either side of me.

That first drink in ages, the first hit from a joint and then that lovely sensation that I’m moving slowly through the air, both girls a whirlpool. One of them, wearing just her knickers, leading me into a back room, the other following.

I try. It’s not fucking working.

We get to an apartment building finally, several stories tall and brick, and Torn Jeans has to call whoever lives there to come down and get us. I can’t even hear the party from the street, I can’t even get hard thinking about them naked, I can’t even excited for the thought of a shot.

Then the door opens, and a mane of curly brown hair pops out.

My heart fucking stops, I swear it.

“Hey! Come on in,” she says, and it’s not Frankie.

She turns and looks at me, a long discerning glance, and it’s still not Frankie, it’s some other girl.

And I can’t. The door opens and I can’t go in, because I can’t fucking shake it. I glance down the street and imagine that Frankie’s walking toward me, yelling to hold the door.

“Come on!” calls Torn Jeans from inside. “The super always gets annoyed if we hold the door open too long.”

I swallow. I do my fucking best to summon the old Liam, the Liam who didn’t give a shit about anyone or anything including himself, the Liam who’d already be upstairs with a bottle in his hand and something up his nose. Probably a half-dressed girl on his lap as well, but he’s fucking gone. Not a trace.

“Actually, I just remembered,” I start, sounding lame even to myself. “I’ve got to catch a flight early tomorrow morning, so I’d better get back, pack up my things, get some rest...”

I sound like an old man. Get some rest, who the fucking Christ am I?

“You don’t have to stay long,” the girl says. “It’s only one-fifteen right now.”

I don’t answer her. I just let the door swing closed on the three of them, standing in the dirty lobby of the apartment complex where none of them is her, and I walk away down the New York street as the snow starts to fall faster and faster.

I didn’t find her. I think that means I might not ever find her and I might have to move on with my life at some point.

But not now. Not yet.

I look up at an orange streetlight, walking as fast as I can, snow swirling above me. I think about how I just turned down two girls and probably a boatload of chemicals, and for the first time in ages, I feel good about something I’ve done.