TROY
Our New York trip is like a regular day on tour—if it were jacked up on cocaine, steroids, and crack. We get five hours of sleep and slump into the makeup chairs of our first morning show at four a.m.
Interview. Sordid questions Bo evades and Emil takes by the horns and answers too candidly for this PG show. We play a tune on one show. Two on another. “Deep in You” is the main song everyone wants, so it’s the one everyone gets.
Nadia and Zoe show their faces in two of them, with the promise of not having to answer any questions, while we keep Waris and Aishe out of the limelight. Until the FNL meeting.
Yes, it happens after all. Janet is as high as the day itself, cheeks blooming with excitement and smarminess while she introduces us. This can happen, we’re told. Oh yes, because we won’t be filming until next month. Does that work for us? They’ll pin us in on the twentieth.
Ignoring Janet, I say, “One of the girls in the video won’t be available, though. Just making sure that’s not a deal breaker.” Our pretty foursome is currently enjoying a private tour of the FNL souvenir shop. It’s the least they could do, the intern told us while not ripping her eyes off Bo.
“Right, right. Janet informed us of this last night.” I’ve forgotten the suit’s name. Dr. Pepper, maybe. Or Kravitz. He tips a jovial chin up, broadcasting a fresh razor mark under the top fold. “We have ways around that, of course. No worries. It’s not the first time we can’t gather everyone on a team at the same time. We’ll be fine.”
“What were you thinking, though?” Wide open, Emil is grinning with the possibilities ahead. “Like, a weirdo reenactment of the video or something? This could be so fucking hilarious.”
“Yes, yes, that could be!” Dr. Pepper tips his head erratically, in a diplomatic display of meh. “The writers are already having a ball with this. How it works is, they first toss out ideas, then they start homing in on what will make the audience laugh the hardest. You know what I’m saying?” He folds thick fingers in his lap and leans forward, starting on that odd head-dance again. It makes me wonder if this is his affirmative after all.
“He should get that checked out,” I mutter to Elias.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
By the time we’re on our way to the airport, it’s dark again. Selena does her baby snores in Bo’s lap, belly up and diaper slightly askew above the lining of her faux jeans. I turn to study Aishe between Waris and Zoe. The girls are comparing FNL souvenirs. They’ve got bags and bags of that shit—travel mugs with the FNL logo on it, t-shirts, wiggly pens with some sort of feathers on them. Aishe’s eyes are sunnier than I’ve seen them in a long time when she holds up a rubber duck the size of a fist.
“Look! It’s the one from, ‘Gimme my ducky ba-a-ack!’ Did you see that one?” The quote is said in a cute pout, her tone hitched up to Smurf levels.
I lower one eyebrow and pair it with an arching of the other. “No idea.”
“What? But it’s a classic! You know, it’s like, ‘Gimme my ducky ba-a-ack!’” she repeats in the exact same way. Then, she looks at Nadia, who repeats it with her. Next, Zoe chimes in too, laughing.
“Jesus.” I shoot a they’ve-lost-it-stare at Emil next to me.
“That last time, though,” Emil says, grinning. “I almost remember it now.”
“God, we need to find that skit for them,” Aishe chuckles out. “So-o-o funny.”
“Total classic, I hear,” Bo mutters.
“Ha, never mind. They’re Swedes,” Zoe says. “What do they know?”
Emil’s hand shoots out and hooks around her neck. Then he launches half of his body over the row for a make-out/raspberry-blowing session. It ends with Waris being helped out of the way by Elias, Selena startling awake, and Bo telling everyone to shut the hell up. Good thing Janet is in the passenger seat up front. Even so, she’s all knotted up, arms flexing hard over her boobs and her legs more twisted than crossed.
At the airport, I get out first and stand with the car door open. It’s a sliding door. There’s no need for anyone to hold it. I still feel like watching my friends hop out one after the other. Bo flips open Selena’s stroller.
I’m rewarded when Aishe finally jumps out. She heaves three plastic bags onto her shoulder and meets my stare in passing. Still playful, still with that glint of carefree in her eyes, she holds up the rubber duck again and whispers, “Gimme-it-ba-a-ack.”
Gimme-it-back.
Tired as a motherfucker, I thud my head into the pillow of my Boston hotel room. She was playful. I’m sure of it. She held up the duck. She didn’t mention the actual duck that time, though, so she could have referred to something else.
I’m probably overthinking shit.
Fuck, but I took something from her I can’t give back. It’s done. I seduced her. Emil was right; Aishe Xodyar is an incredible woman. She’s all beautiful flames and passion. Her body reacted so quickly to me, and even when her mouth said, “No,” her arms took me in. Her legs scissored around my ass and pulled me toward her, accepting me so deep I saw stars. And when she came that first time, every damn fiber in my body was saturated with how I’d made her feel. I didn’t care about Emil, how he sat in a chair behind us with a smirk on his face and a towel in his hand. “What did I tell you?”
Love. Guilt. Regret. And the sensation of having reached the heavens with someone. It’s like it happened yesterday.
I let out a quiet laugh and turn on the light. Sit up in bed. A pair of drumsticks wait where I left them on the night table. I grab them and run through some single-stroke rolls against my thigh.
She remembers like it was yesterday too. And she remembers it differently. Her anger is gone now. It was easier when she was furious; it felt right, because no apology in the world suffices for what I did.
I speed up my rolls, rocking my body to the rhythm. Varying with flam-taps and triplets, I rush from single paradiddles to doubles.
Aishe, this amazing carnal woman who deserves it all, she doesn’t have sex anymore. It’s my fault. I did this to her, lunged her into guilt and regret and withdrawal from closeness. She was the girl with the Gypsy curse, the one with the love fire. She’d do anything for love back then, so blatant about it, we all saw and knew. But I was her friend.
I slow to a standard 4/4 beat with my right hand, calming my heart down. But my left hand still does its thing, starting in on a polyrhythm.
It’s been a whole year. The only person she’s been with in that time is me. Emil and I marked her for life.
I jolt to the edge of the bed, let my stick slap the polyrhythm louder, bash it out of a bottle, a Coke can, the alarm clock, speeding up my right drumstick until the 4/4 beat is fast enough to feel good. But if she doesn’t feel good, should I?
I leap to the desk and run my sticks along it, over the TV, testing the solidity of the screen. I layer in syncopations against the hollow wood of the drawers beneath, make them thick with the beat until they stutter, but still—still it’s not enough. My suitcase is small and hard-shelled. It’s served me before. Come to papa, baby.
My drumsticks rev the engine of a Lamborghini Diablo SV. I stomp the beat with my foot. Impatient, I will the rhythm to stagger, tilt on wheels as it comes alive. I throw my body into it, speeding up, going faster with each second. I keep no pace. I fucking destroy it like I destroyed her.
My tongue clicks out the sound of my snare drums, and moans and sighs become the beat of my whisks. Until the stark offbeat of someone knocking on my door makes a drumstick crack against the desk.
“What?” I shout.
“Dude! Open.”
It’s Emil. Heaving for air, I unhinge the chain and swing the door open. “S’up?”
“Dude, what was that? Fucking A, are you going Meshuggah, now?”
I flash a quick smile. “Don’t think so. Hard enough to be the only American in a throng of Swedish rockers. No need to mix in another ice-country band.”
“Man, that was mind-ripping! Explosive, fucking genius. It was like a fucking horde of horses or something, running down a mountain full of rocks.”
We grin, and Emil starts to nod. He’s wearing a bright red pair of Guitar Hero pajama pants. Fleece, for good measure. “Lame,” I tell him, jutting my chin toward them. He breaks from his prolonged nod for a fleeting look down his white-ass chest and his clown pants. Then he resumes the nod.
“Run with the Horses,” he says, all eureka-like.
“Yeah, I do.” Impossibly, his grin widens. “Can you keep the pace up through it?”
I roll my eyes lazily. “Naw. I can keep it up, no prob. But Bo’s not gonna let that fly. He’s not gonna rename ‘Unbreak my Soul’ to “Run with the Horses’ just because of my beat.”
“Man, it’s worth trying, though. We’ve been smooching this new tune for how long, now? Stroking it like a frigid honey, and she’s not getting off. Lyrics are fine. Melody’s good. But this is exactly what it’s lacking. We all agreed it needed more, and this is even more than more. You’d be breaking that fucking song into pieces and reassembling it in a completely different way. Like Picasso.”
“Okay.” I cross my arms, waiting for the kicker, because when Emil begins?
“Can’t wait to hear you on drums with this. You know what?” He shoots his hand out so quickly I instinctively blink. Last thing I need is my eye poked out.
“Picasso started by painting naturalistic stuff. Like totally legit exactly like people looked. And he was good at it. Get it?”
“Not entirely,” I say. But Emil’s enthusiasm could rev a bass drum into snare speed, so he already has me chuckling under my breath.
“Like you!”
“Because I paint?” I know where he’s going with this, but you gotta give the guy a hard time.
“Yes! You paint beats. Bash out beats, more like it. And technically, you’re a superstar. You keep the pace like a god, at the same time as you pull off legendary shit. So, like, you started out painting naturalistically, all perfect, and now you’re experimenting like Picasso did.”
I laugh quietly and pick up my broken stick. Toss it at the trash bin by the TV and miss. I pick it up and try again, from farther away. Score. “Sounds to me like this is Revved-Up Emil talking. Wait, Revved-Up Emil is always the one talking.”
His excited stare doesn’t waver. Instead, he raises a hand between us, clenches it, and holds it up like he means victory. “What do you say?”
“Depends on the question. I’m not Picasso. He’s dead. Also, I just drummed a Lamborghini Diablo SV, not a flock of horses, and—”
“‘Horde’ of horses, it’s called.”
“Don’t know, don’t care,” I say when someone knocks on the door again. Emil opens, and Zoe tiptoes in on bare feet, robe tightened around her and hair tousled.
“What’s going on in here?” She blinks against the light.
“Troy just whacked out a new beat to ‘Run with the Horses.’”
“Hmm, I don’t know that one. New?” she asks, voice sleep-crusty.
I shake my head slowly, emphatically, and flatten my palm toward Emil. “What your husband, here, means is he came barging in while I was messing around, told me I’m Picasso, and now we need to rename ‘Unbreak my Soul’ to ‘Run with the Horses.’”
Zoe looks like I just summarized the weather forecast. “Cool. Shouldn’t you guys tell Bo, though?”
“Yes!” Emil points at her in another eureka-moment. “Let’s go. Zoe, you coming too, right?” He grabs her hand and starts walking toward the door. Being the other half of his crazy ass, she sees no problem with this.
“Hold your horses,” I say. God knows where that came from. “It’s three in the morning, and the whole Lindgren family’s crashed out. If you want to go through with this, at least wait until the morning, unless you want to get on Bo’s bad side for waking up Selena again.”
For a second, Emil looks indecisive. Weighing his options, his shoulders eventually deflate. “Fuck. But this shit’s important. He’ll want to know.”
“Yes, but Cookie, he’s right,” Zoe murmurs, stroking hair away from my buddy’s easily excitable face. “Come on. I’ll keep you entertained until the morning. The Lindgrens get up early anyway. Come, come.”
I groan and look away as he grinds his Guitar-Hero pajamas crotch against Zoe’s hip, scooting her in front of him out the door.
“Dude, gotta go,” he murmurs in his sexy-voice. “See you tomorrow, yeah?”
I smirk. “I’ll think about it.”