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 —”
“I didn’t ask for a guitarist,” I said. “Why would I need a guitarist? This isn’t the Beatles.” I pointed. “Bassist. Drummer.
Me. Done.”
T clearly wanted to keep the peace. “Why don’t you just keep him to see how it goes? Then you’re happy, Baby’s happy, Chip’s happy.”
I presumed Chip was the guitarist I was going to have to forcibly eject from my life. The most annoying thing about all of this was that I was certain Baby hadn’t forgotten that I didn’t want a guitarist. Someone who remembered a notepad didn’t misremember an extra band member.
“If he wants to sit around, whatever,” I replied. “But that thing’s not coming out of the case. I don’t write for guitar. He can keep the plants company.”
T held my gaze, waiting for it to waver. But it wasn’t going to. If nothing else in the world went right, I was going to at least keep this: I was recording the album my way.
Finally, T said, “Chip, why don’t you wait in the car?”
Leyla blew a puff of smoke into the lion-documentary lights.
Chip pushed his way out of the yard.
“Well,” said T.
I turned to the bassist. He was a tall, lanky kid with long hair. He had fingers like insect legs. I said, “Are you any good?
Let’s hear you.”
The bassist’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.
T was no fool. He saw the writing on the wall from a million miles away. “Right now? I thought we’d jus —”
I interrupted, “No time like the present, T. We’re not getting any younger, and youth, they tell me, is where it’s at. Pop that sucker out, dude. Let’s hear what you’re made of.”
The bassist, realizing immediately that I, and not T, was in charge, scrambled to retrieve his bass. “It’s, uh, better, amplified.”
“I’ll use my imagination.”
“What should I play?” he asked.
“You tell me.”
Jeremy, NARKOTIKA’s bassist, hadn’t been the greatest player in the world, but he’d had a sort of relentless energy about him. He’d have to study each song for days before he worked out even the most basic riff, but when that riff appeared — oh, man, hold on to something or sit down. It hadn’t ever mattered that it took him so much time to get there. All that mattered was that he got there in the end.
Now the long-haired bassist played a riff from one of our songs. I couldn’t remember the name of it. Damn, I felt old all of a sudden. Pimpled kid adoringly playing an old riff of Jeremy’s from a song I couldn’t recall.
“Not that one,” I said. “Something I haven’t heard.”
He played something else. It was funky and very acceptably skilled and like nothing I ever wanted to hear in one of my songs, ever. I didn’t even really want it in the room with me. It might get some of its funk on me.
“Thanks, Charlie, but no,” I told him. I couldn’t believe how this night had gone. I should’ve been out with Isabel right now.
“My name’s not —”
“He can go sit in the car, too,” I said. “Have a good night, all. I’m out.” I left them there. As I climbed up the deck stairs, I wondered if I should call Isabel. Maybe I should send her something. Not flowers. That was boring. She’d never be convinced by flowers. A midget jumping out of a card or something.
“What a dick,” said the bassist, loud enough for me to hear.
He didn’t know my reputation at all if he thought that was anywhere near enough to offend me.
“Cole, come on,” T called up. “What am I going to tell Baby?”
“It bothers me that you call your sister baby,” I told him.
“Tell her that auditions start tomorrow. I’ll do it myself. Bring your camera and a clean pair of shorts.”
The other cameraperson — Jane? Joan? — spoke for the first time. She asked peevishly, “Are you going to fire Leyla, too?”
I glanced back at where she sat, still smoking contentedly. I wanted my band. I didn’t want all of these jokers.
“Not yet.”
In the bathroom, I double-checked for cameras, turned on the shower for white noise, and then I took out the things I needed to become a wolf for five or seven or nine minutes.
It was a small sin in the relative scheme of things. At the height of NARKOTIKA’s fame, I had been known for my chemical fearlessness — there was no drug I wouldn’t try at least once. Some of them had incredibly gross and complicated side effects, but I hadn’t been very interested in my body at that point. Really what I had wanted was to get out of life entirely, but I was too much of a coward.
I set my stuff on the edge of the sink and stripped. My mad-scientist father, an ardent fan of the scientific process, would have been proud of the steps that had brought me to this moment. Several months of self-experimentation had brought me to my proprietary blend for stress-free werewolfing: epinephrine to start the process, a vasodilator to make the process more streamlined, a beta-blocker to keep my head from actually exploding, and an aspirin to keep my head from feeling like it was actually exploding.
It was so much tidier than any substance I’d ever done. It was no messier than getting a beer from the fridge. No, cleaner than even that. Because there was no hangover.
So there was nothing to feel guilty about.
But I did, a little. Probably because of association. I’d only become a werewolf because every other drug’s purported kicks had ceased to kick and I needed something that wouldn’t let me down. Because I’d hit the absolute bottom. Because I just wanted out and was a coward, always a coward.
But that wasn’t the point tonight.