Rock On (21 page)

“Yeah, but—”

Daniels gives me a shove. “You, whoever you are, talked her into doing this gig. So she’ll expect you to be here for it. But you won’t be. So saith the Son.”

No. We can’t leave now. Not with Lydia about to go on stage for the first time since India. She’d hate me. Us.

Yeah. But that might be what she wants. She thrives on being treated like dirt. That’s why she goes for guys like us. But we’ve been too nice lately, and it’s screwed her up.

That’s sick.

That’s Lydia.

“All right,” I tell Daniels. “I’m going. But I don’t like it.”

Daniels grins again. “Shit, neither do I. But it’s for her own good, and yours too. If you weren’t fucked in the head right now, you’d know that.”

Come on. Let’s get out of here.

I turn away from Daniels and walk off down the dark alley, abandoning Lydia to herself. My boots crunch on the broken asphalt. A bat flies past my—our—face, coming so close that we feel a puff of air from its wings.

Is Daniels right? Am I fucked in the head?

In the soul, Christopher. In the soul.

The stained-glass eye has become an open mouth surrounded by jagged teeth. Blue shards cover the front step, and they make snapping sounds as I come up to the door. I smell something burning. The stereo in the front room is blaring an old thrash-metal number about a murder-suicide. My back teeth begin to ache again.

As I cross the foyer into the front room, I see what Lydia has done. The picture windows have been broken, and the walls are pockmarked with holes. Some of the holes seem to be the results of shotgun blasts, and some have been punched with free-weight bars from the gym. The bars are still sticking out of some of these.

All of the furniture has been torn to pieces. The only things left intact are the AV components, which are stacked on the floor in front of the fireplace. But the cabinet that housed them is with everything else from the room—with everything else from the entire house, I think. Everything has been broken, shredded, crumpled, melted, or twisted, and then piled in the center of the room. A misshapen pyramid reaches three-quarters of the way up to the ceiling.

Lydia, wearing the jeans and T-shirt from last night’s gig, is sitting atop the pyramid and using a fireplace-lighter to burn holes into white cloth that used to be drapes. She doesn’t notice me until I cross the room and turn off the stereo.

“Christopher,” she says, glancing at me with a distracted expression. “You’re back.” Her voice is thick. I wonder if she’s taken pills.

No. Her eyes are clear. She knows what she’s doing. If the shotgun’s handy, she might kill us now.

“I’m sorry I left last night,” I say, trying to think of a lie to explain myself. “Daniels told me it was my fault that you were playing a joint instead of an arena, and I was afraid that if I stuck around I was gonna pop him. So I went for a walk, but when I got back, you and the truck were gone. I tried to call, but my card wouldn’t work. And I couldn’t find a cab that would bring me out here at night. So I stayed in a motel.”

Too much. She won’t buy it.

“I thought your card didn’t work,” Lydia says.

We’re meat.

Not if you back off and let me deal with this.

“It didn’t work in the phone,” I say. “But the motel took it.”

“So why didn’t you call from the motel?”

Told you.

Piss on it, then. I’m going to tell her the truth, including who I am.

Who’s that?

“Don’t answer,” Lydia says. “Just turn on the VCR and watch the monitor.”

So I do as she says. The monitor flashes on as the tape starts, and there I am, doing it with a brown-haired girl I’ve never seen before.

Yee-oww. Where was I when this was going on?

This never went on. I know that’s the motel room we stayed in last night, because I recognize the bent corner on the picture frame over the bed. But I don’t know that girl. So that can’t be me.

Looks like us.

So it must be you. It’s Christopher before the crash.

You are Christopher.

Yeah, but I’m Christopher after the crash.

Check out the hat on the floor. We were wearing it last night. We’re wearing it right now. And it didn’t belong to Christopher before the crash. It’s brand new.

But I don’t have a chance to figure out what that means, because Lydia has succeeded in setting the white drapery on fire. She waves it like a flag, bringing its flames close to her hair, so I move to yank it away from her. But she tosses it away before I can reach for it, and it snags on a chair leg sticking out of the pyramid. To my relief, the flames start to die down.

Lydia is staring at me now. “Tell me what happened last night,” she says. “Tell me where you found that girl while I was sweating in front of all those people. Tell me whether you started with her while I was singing, or whether you waited until you knew I’d be on my way home. Tell me whether she can suck the chrome off a trailer hitch.” She points the fireplace-lighter at me. “Tell me the truth, Christopher.”

I look at the video monitor. The brown-haired girl and I are still going at it. The clothes on the floor are the ones I’m wearing now. The stamp on my left hand is the one that was put on at the club last night, the one that’s still here on my skin. But that man is not me. I didn’t do those things. We’re watching an imaginary past with false faces and artificial voices.

Whoa. Sounds familiar.

Danny Daniels. CCA.

“Where’d the tape come from?” I ask, turning back toward Lydia. But if there’s an answer I don’t hear it, because the fire, instead of dying, has jumped to some paper and plastic in the pyramid. I can still smother it with the drapery if I hurry.

But Lydia jumps down partway and jabs her lighter at my face, stopping me. The yellow flame at the end of the barrel is two inches from my nose. The brim of my hat scorches.

“Tell me the truth,” Lydia says.

A wisp of black smoke rises to the ceiling.

All right, then. The truth. Or as close as I can get.

“I’ve never seen that girl before,” I say. “Daniels faked that tape to split us up.”

Just doing his job.

Right. This is the way things are supposed to be, and I’m supposed to help them along.

But I don’t want to anymore, and I don’t care if it costs me my album or my face or my name. Looking at her now, I realize that I only care about one thing: I love Lydia Love.

I know. So do I. But loving her isn’t enough.

Lydia’s upper lip pulls back from her teeth. “Why should Danny care who I’m with? He doesn’t have a thing for me.” The flame waves before my eyes.

“No,” I say, “but CCA does.”

“What—” Lydia begins, and then a deafening buzz buries her words.

It’s the smoke alarm. The pyramid shudders with the sound, and Lydia loses her balance and pitches forward. My hat gets knocked off, and Lydia’s flame burns across my cheek as I catch her and fall backward. We hit the floor as pieces of the pyramid crash down around us.

The video monitor is right before our eyes. The brown-haired girl’s lips are forming a name over and over again.

Christopher, she says. Christopher, Christopher.

But that’s not my name.

No. You are Willie.

But we are Christopher.

Sprinkler nozzles pop out of the ceiling hissing and begin drenching us. The fireplace-lighter sputters out, and Lydia drops it. Then she pushes away from us, snatches up a pump shotgun from behind the AV components, and runs from the room. The fire in the pyramid dies, but the alarm keeps buzzing and the sprinklers keep spraying.

We struggle up and go after her. The door to the studio slams shut as we come down the stairs. A glimpse before it closes shows us that the sprinklers aren’t on in there. We try the door but it won’t open, so we pound on it and try to shout through the noise of the alarm. The door isn’t padded on this side, and the steel is cold and hard. We tell Lydia our names and the truth of why we put on this face and came back to her. We tell her about CCA wanting to get its money’s worth, about the surgery and the chip, about everything we can think of. The burn on our cheek stings as the water hits it.

She wouldn’t believe anything we said now. Even if she could hear us.

But we have to try. She has the shotgun. And last week she said she was going to kill herself—

The alarm stops, and we shout Lydia’s name as loud as we can.

There are two quick explosions, and circular patterns of bumps appear in the door’s metal skin. From the other side, Lydia’s muffled voice tells us to go back to the dead where we belong.

Then comes the sound of an electric guitar, and of a scream fueled by betrayal and anger.

Lydia Love is writing songs again.

And we know what that means. It means that our name, or whether we even have a name, doesn’t matter anymore.

We are—

Shut up. It doesn’t matter.

No. We guess not.

We sit down to soak in the artificial rain.

On the day after our return to Austin, Danny Daniels called us at the motel and asked when we wanted to have the surgery to remove the chip and to return Willie’s face and voice to their pre-Christopher states. We’d had a night to calm down, so we didn’t accuse him of using the sex video to give our relationship with Lydia a shove over a cliff. Of course he had done it. But his job, and ours, was to get Lydia Love to start producing again. We had a contract, and all he did was help it along.

And he lived up to his end of the bargain. We got Willie’s face and voice back, more or less, and the chip was removed from our jaw. The doctors made a point of showing it to us after the operation.

As if a conscience could be removed so easily.

Quiet. Willie can’t shake hands, think, and listen to Christopher all at the same time.

So let Christopher take over the social duties. Crush a few knuckle-bones.

Deal.

Today our album,
Willie Todd,
has been released on datacard, DAT, and compact disc. Just in time for Christmas. And thanks to Daniels, three of its tracks are already in heavy rotation on the audio and video networks. He even arranged for this release party at the Austin Hyatt Regency with a whole shitload of CCA bigshots and performers in attendance.

We asked Daniels if one performer in particular would be here, and he winked. But we don’t see her anywhere.

The son of a bitch can lie without opening his mouth.

Daniels has done a lot for us, but we still don’t like him.

Wait. There she is, by the waterfall, talking to a couple of CCA execs.

She might not want to see us.

Sure she will. We don’t look like Christopher anymore.

There’s a touch on our arm. It’s Daniels. Our well-wishers melt away until we’re alone with him beside the fake creek burbling through the atrium.

“Your hat’s crooked, Willie,” he says, giving us that alligator grin of his. “You want to make a good impression on her, don’t you?”

“It’s all right if I meet her?” we ask.

Daniels raises his eyebrows. “None of my business.”

What a load. It’s exactly his business.

“You’ve finished her sessions?” we ask.

He straightens his necktie. “Yup. Got the last four tracks in the can yesterday. She wants to call the album
Go Back to the Dead,
but we’re trying to talk her into something more upbeat. My co-producers like
Once More With Love,
but I’m partial to
What Goes Around Comes Around.
We’ve gotta decide soon, because it has to be out by Valentine’s Day.”

“Valentine’s Day?”

Cute.

“Yeah, her tour kicks off in New York on February 14,” Daniels says. He nudges our shoulder. “How’d you like to be the opening act?”

Opening act. Right. You know what kind of act he wants us to be.

Should we refuse?

Like we could.

We turn away from Daniels and start toward her.

“Attaboy,” Daniels says behind us.

The CCA honchos move away from her as we approach. Her hair is even longer now, and her skin is smooth and healthy. Her eyes are a bright green, like sunlight shining through emeralds.

“You’re Willie Todd,” she says, extending her right hand. “I’m Lydia Love. Congratulations on the album. It’s good work.”

Our fingers touch hers with a snap of electricity. We jump, then laugh.

“Danny Daniels played me some songs from your own new album,” we say. “They sound okay too.”

She smiles at the understatement. “Gee, thanks.” She tilts her head, and her hair falls over one eye. “Did he mention that I’d like you to open for me on the tour? Your music makes you sound like a guy I could get along with.”

For a while, maybe.

But a while is better than never. A while is all anyone ever has.

“Maybe we could talk about it after the party,” we say.

“Maybe we could,” Lydia says.

And so the cycle comes back to its beginning. But now Lydia isn’t the only one who can play the phoenix game.

Across the atrium, Daniels raises his glass to us.

Like the man said: What goes around comes around.

Or “Once more with Love.”

So we might as well plan ahead. What name shall we go under next time?

One we can use for both of us. It’ll avoid confusion.

If you want to avoid confusion, you’re in love with the wrong woman, Christopher.

My name is Willie.

Whatever. She’s looking at our eyes. Her lips are moist. Kiss her.

We let our conscience be our guide.

Bradley Denton
’s first professional sf story, “The Music of the Spheres,” appeared in
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
in 1984. Some of his subsequent stories have been collected in the World Fantasy Award-winning collections 
A Conflagration Artist
and
The Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead Comedians.
 His 2004 novella “Sergeant Chip” won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and his novels include
Wrack & Roll,
Blackburn,
Laughin’ Boy,
Lunatics,
and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award-winning
Buddy Holly Is Alive and Well On Ganymede
(soon to be a motion picture starring Jon “Napoleon Dynamite” Heder). Brad played drums in the Austin-based blues band Ax Nelson for over ten years, and now he plays guitar and harmonica in his own act, Bland Lemon Denton.