TROY

The concierge at the Gargoyle drove me to the Frycast Theater herself. The press found out where Clown Irruption was holed up in record time, so I couldn’t take my own ride. It’d be an understatement to say Troll was unhappy with my leaving.

“You sure you don’t want me to wait? I have time,” the concierge says, peeking at me over gold-rimmed glasses. “I could call the manager too. It’s no problem to let them know you’re here.”

“I appreciate it… Marqueseena,” I read off her nametag, “but it’s a surprise visit. Ta-dah, etcetera.”

“I understand, Mr. Armstrong.”

I get out of the car, stretch, and look around. We’re in a back alley behind the theater. Sunset just happened, and only a few stray cats saunter around in the waning heat of the city. I seriously hope I don’t have to go to the front and bang on the doors.

We played this room years ago, at the tail end of Bo’s guitar clinic in L.A. Their load-in area is crammed, but I see activity over there. It’s where I’m going to slip in.

“Hey, man,” someone says as I walk past him up the ramp. He takes a break from the monitor he’s pushing. “Audience entrance’s around the corner— Holy shit.” Dropping his arms along his thighs, he adds, “Troy Armstrong. Clown Irruption fucking shreds, man. Can I help you with something?”

“Thanks, man.” I clasp his outstretched hand. His name is Bob something. Seriously sounds like Builder when he says it, but probably not.

“I’m good, though. Just heading in to see a friend.”

“Damn. Well, go right ahead—make yourself at home. The Thalias aren’t on until later, if that’s who you’re seeing?”

“Show’s in a couple of hours, right?”

“At nine, yeah.” He nods and keeps nodding while I wave and amble inside.

Dark red corridors in the backstage area. With haphazardly painted drywall, they’re the pajamas version of the shiny wallpaper in the main room. I remember it felt epic to play here even though it’s not a prestigious venue. There were killer acoustics and an old-world elegance to the theater itself.

I quickly orient myself. The shortest corridor ends onstage, but the one to the right should go to the dressing rooms. I’ll check them first. She should be there by now, getting shit ready for the band.

Passing a closed door with “THREE” written out in block letters, I aim at “TWO” because it’s cracked open. Nobody’s there, just tons of makeup on the vanity. The lightbulbs framing the mirror are lit, waiting for the act. A row of Halloween costumes lines the wall cattycorner from it. I duck my head far enough in to check behind the door too. As I do, a rustling escapes from the next room. Two strides, and I’m there, knocking on the door.

“Just a minute.” One of The Thalias opens the door. She’s got her mouth full, chewing, and her eyes widen at seeing me.

“Hey, Troy Armstrong.” She holds up a finger, swallowing. Then takes a sip of a Cherry Coke from the dresser, flushing the food down. “Look at that. Here’s the man of the hour. Speak of the devil, as they say.”

I lift my eyes to the ceiling in a thanks-for-nothing-God. “Hey, Libby. Fun at the Bahamas gig, huh?”

“Right. That’s where we lost our guitar tech. You might remember Shandor, Aishe’s cousin? I belie-e-ve he took off with some of your friends, Tracing Holland, leaving us in the dust.”

“And I believe you stole him from us first,” I say, crossing my arms.

She puts her sandwich down and crosses hers too. “And I believe they only came to us because of something you did.”

“Yeah?” I lift my chin, staring down at her. My defiance is paper-thin, though, because damn is she right.

“So what can I do you for?” Faux jovial, she cocks her head as she asks it. “Your visit has nothing to do with a leaked video, now, does it?”

Shit. “Where’s Aishe?”

“Judging by the sound, in the vestibule. This is wonderful timing, Troy. We just started a two-week gig here at the Frycast, and it’s just an hour a day. Mariana was inspired. She was composing, and in the nick of time too, because we need songs delivered to our record label in eight weeks. That’s a lot of pressure on her when she only has a handful done. Thanks to you, that’s not going to happen, now, is it?”

“Is that Mariana yelling?” I ask.

“Definitely sounds like her. From the vestibule,” she repeats. Libby grabs her soda and chugs it like it’s whiskey.

I stalk up the stairs to the first floor. As I turn left for the lobby, a small body smacks right into me. Her forehead hits my nose, and for a moment, I’m blinded with pain. I groan, cupping my nose, blood already oozing into my hand.

A pained yelp, clearly female, escapes her, and I steady the body in front of me, blinking to regain focus. “Aishe?”

“Oh my God, not you.” Covering an eye, she stares at me with the other, chest heaving with agitation.

“Are you okay?”

“Do I look okay?” Her glare flows from my eyes to my nose and back again. “You’re dripping.” She juts her chin toward my nose.

“I know.”

Behind her stands Mariana, a silhouette of wrath against the latticed windows of the theater entrance. “You. How dare you come here? Do you not see what you’ve done?”

“It wasn’t his fault,” Aishe says. “It was my decision to be a part of it.”

“Which makes you what, exactly?” Mariana barks.

“Stupid? I don’t know, Mariana. You tell me. If I’d known what could happen…” She stumbles as she turns, letting go of her eye to support her head with both hands. “Goddamn, this hurts.”

I grab her shoulders to steady her, but she jerks free of me. The abrupt move causes my blood to streak down the sleeve of her shirt. “You might have a concussion. Let me take you to the ER,” I say.

“Let’s set things straight, Aishe,” Mariana cuts in. “I can’t do this. You’ve breached your contract harder than anyone I’ve ever worked with, and you’ve put me in quite a pickle. What am I to do now?”

“No one needs to know I work for you,” Aishe whispers. “I’m behind the curtains anyway.”

“You’re saying I should keep you on? That doesn’t make any sense.” Mariana gets comfortable, setting high-heeled stilettoes apart in a righteous better-than-thou stance. “You know how I found out what you’d done?”

Aishe shakes her head and pulls in a shivering breath. She doesn’t shake my hand off her arm this time.

“Troy, get some toilet paper for your nose for God’s sake,” Mariana snaps and jerks her head toward the bathroom.

I hesitate. I don’t want to leave Aishe alone. Mariana rolls her eyes and disappears into the ladies’ room. Comes back with a wad of toilet paper for me. I almost thank her.

“I found out from the paparazzi. For a second, I thought we’d finally made it, that they were stalking me when I pulled up, but no. They wanted my wardrobe assistant. ‘Where’s Aishe Xodyar? Do you work here? Is she inside?’ Man, did they have a ball when they got to tell me what my employee had done.”

“We’re holding a press conference,” I say in my most reconciliatory voice. “All of this should blow over very soon, okay? The video is being taken down as we speak.”

Mariana rewards me with a cold laugh. Its utter musicality makes it almost ugly. “Right, because you can ‘take down’ stuff from the internet.” She makes sarcastic quotation marks in the air. “It’s not like you will live on until the end of time on all the porn sites out there or anything. ‘Oh look, the wardrobe assistant of The Thalias with the drummer of Clown Irruption.’ You have got to be kidding me.”

“Whoa,” I say, voice low. “You need to stop talking about Aishe in that tone.”

“Right, because you treat her so much better?”

“Enough! I get it,” Aishe shouts. Her eyes fill with tears as she absorbs the magnitude of what’s happening, and suddenly, she starts toward the stairs.

“We don’t need your services in the dressing rooms anymore,” Mariana says.

“I know,” Aishe sobs. “I’m just going to pick up my stuff.”

I never noticed how short her steps are before. She stomps ahead of me toward the back exit, agreeing with me on this one thing: staying away from the ever-thickening throng of jerks up front.

Small feet in dark red shoes. They’re shiny and remind me of ballerina slippers. She takes three steps for each of my strides, always ahead of me, as she greets her way past roadies and guitar cases of backup bands and secondary acts.

“Left,” I say when she’s about to veer right last minute. She’d be heading face first into storage territory and have to sidle her way out past kegs of beer.

“I knew that,” she mutters.

The back alley looks free of assholes. Good thing too, because Mariana fucking ripped her a new one in there.

“Oh no,” she says, shaking her little foot a few inches above the ground. “What is this? Oh my God.” Then she loses her shit, and she’s crying like a baby.

I pull her toward me. She tenses at first, but then she slumps against me, and the wail she emits is so small I wouldn’t have heard it without her mouth buried into my elbow. I dry the oil off her foot.

“Shh,” I whisper. “It’ll be over soon. They love to throw everyone’s misfortunes up in the air and shoot them down like clay pigeons. It’s a game to them.”

“A game they earn money from,” she says.

“Because they’re jerks. Come.” I lift her face toward me and stare into those beautiful eyes I’d never in a million years forget. Running my thumb over her cheek, I wipe away a tear. “Come with me.”

She shakes her head. “No. The last thing I need is to go with you right now. You get that, right? It’d be even more fodder for them. I need to stay the hell away from you guys.” As she says it, she pushes her hands against my chest again.

“Where do you want to go then? I’ll take you there.”

“I have to go alone, Troy. Alone. We never met today, and we won’t tomorrow either.” Her breathing needs to even out before I can trust her on her own. She scrapes her shoe against the ground without looking, trying to get rid of the rest of the oil.

Her mane is long and wild, a natural black mixed with dark red stripes and feathers scattered throughout. I push it out of her eyes. My Bohemian. My Gypsy girl. Except that’s the one thing she’s never been: mine.

“I’ll call you a cab, then,” I say, already dialing. I rattle off the address to the club.

By the time we round the corner from the trash containers, it’s too late. We’ve already been found out.

AISHE

“Aishe Xodyar! Oh wow, Troy Armstrong, huh? You guys a couple? Stand still so I can get some shots of ya. Kiss! Come on, kiss for the camera!”

I stalk forward, ignoring the photographer and his leering stare.

“Wait a second, Aishe. Don’t leave me hangin’ like that. You didn’t leave Troy hangin’ did you? Judging by the video, you didn’t!” He hollers a laugh, clearly meant to attract attention. He gets it too. As I reach the end of the alley, hoping for that taxi to appear, at least a dozen of his buddies block my exit.

“Get out of our way,” Troy growls. He raises an arm, shielding me with it.

“Du-u-de, Troy. We’re only doing our job, here. Give us a couple of good shots, and we’re good!”

Troy shoves through them, pulling me under an arm while they multiply. A dozen paparazzi becomes two dozen. They’re breeding again, going on thirty. Soon, they’re pressing around us.

“I have a family, man! I live off this. A smile? Just a smile is all I’m asking of you,” someone whines, and that’s when I lose it. I start hitting around me, wildly and without focus, and I don’t stop until I’m airborne.

I scream. Papparazzi whoa and laugh, their flashes going off in rapid succession while Troy takes off with me.

“What the hell are you doing?” I roar, hitting his back with a fist. My purse drags along his thigh. “You’re no better than they are. Set. Me. The fuck. Down!”

“Sorry,” he says, voice staccato from his long strides. “Gotta get to the taxi.”

I want to say I can walk on my own, but I can’t even breathe up here. In a rush, he sets me down but keeps a hand on my shoulder, eyes scouring the car lights—and the new group of people approaching.

“There. There’s the taxi.” He waves his phone light at it, and God have mercy, it stops.

“You Joe Decker?” The driver sticks his head out the window, warily looking around at the paparazzi shouting behind us, at the awning of the theater, where others wait.

“I am. Now, get us out of here and fast.”

A quick glance in the rearview mirror confirms he has no idea who’s in his cab.

“That I can do,” he says, Middle-Eastern accent sieving through a yellow smile. “Where to?”

Our cab driver shoots off with us. Someone slaps the side of the car. Others hop out of the way. That last part is strangely satisfying.

“The Gargoyle,” Troy mutters.

“You got it, man,” the driver says. “Those ‘razzi, there? Crazy.” He shakes his head. “They don’t let people alone.”

“Yeah.” Troy’s voice is hoarse. It’s how I realize he’s not completely immune either. Hell, he has family. A lot of family. Seven sisters, I remember. Parents, and all of them live right here in L.A.

“What were you thinking doing that anyway?” I ask him.

He turns to me, eyes gleaming in the low light of the car. “What do you mean? I had to.”

“No, why did you sign the contract to star in the video? Didn’t you think of your family?”

He lets out a puff of amusement, and my gaze strays to his chest. Slowly, it rises. I remember him, warm and hard under my hands.

Kind, beautiful eyes. How can eyes be so kind and still have it all wrong? What a lapse in judgment. So many of them.

“I didn’t, I guess. I was gullible, thinking we could keep it classy.”

Wunderbaum mingles with the scent of old tobacco. The car is clean enough, just old. Very old.

I shiver.

“You’re cold,” Troy murmurs.

“Not really. It’s probably just some kind of shock.”

He lets his stare roll over my face, deciding for himself if I’m right. A small swallow interrupts the flow of his throat. Despite the immediate impression of his long, wild dreadlocks and casual-artsy choice of clothing, he’s always immaculate with his hygiene. But tonight, Troy has stubbles. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him with stubbles before.

It reaches me for the first time today, the scent I’ll forever see as his, as my friend’s, the one person I trusted with every secret on tour. I’ve tried to place his mixture of spices since I left the band. It’s tarragon and Artesimia. Cinnamon and thyme; warm and rich, he exudes it so subtly I can’t tell if it’s the scent of his skin, or some cautiously applied cologne.

For a moment, I shut my eyes against the pull it has on me. Moments flow through my memory. Troy consoling me when Emil was shattering over another woman. The two of us on the tour bus, playing board games, and his low, melodious laughter as I cheated and won.

The two of us in Emil’s hotel bed.

The three of us.

The deception, the disrespect, the coercion.

How I reacted to it.

“Aishe?” Troy’s arms are open, resting over the backrest of the car and leaning on his thigh. There’s no push for me to accept this could-be embrace.

I look up at him.

“I lost you, there, for a second.”

The words make my mouth curve in a sardonic smirk. “You never had me.”

Troy doesn’t let the sting sink in. It doesn’t surprise me. After all, I’ve never let him live it down.

I’m mad at myself too for what I allowed to happen. If what occurred in that hotel room had been only the guys’ fault, I might have forgiven us. It was intense attraction, being encouraged to find what I couldn’t get from Emil in Troy, and it was wrong. But it wasn’t rape.

“You have goosebumps. Look: take my sweater.”

“No. Seriously, I’m good.”

He still pulls it over his head, revealing hard edges under a white T-shirt. I can’t accept any more thyme and warm spices tonight. Can’t get wrapped in fake comfort and be reminded of the time I was the one seducing, making him stare into my eyes the way I had stared at him the first time around.

I swallow my memory. It tastes like candy-flavored PTSD.

He wraps his sweater around my shoulders anyway. I think about Wunderbaum and old tobacco. Stale taxi overpowers seduction any day, and so I push discreetly at the fabric until it rests against the upholstery of the cab. I feel it with my fingertips, soft, subtly aromatic cotton. Even the color is cinnamon, and it’s giving me no respite.

“I’m at the Bohemian two blocks south of The Gargoyle,” I tell the driver.

“So not to The Gargoyle, then?” He finds Troy, not me, in the mirror.

“Isn’t that what I just said?” I snap.

“You got it, man. Let’s do the Bohemian first,” Troy murmurs.