Sinner

I put my paws on the edge — sand gritted under the pads of them — and looked down below. Too far to jump. But the world stretched out invitingly nonetheless. I whistled in soft frustration.

Everything in this place called to me, but I was trapped up above.

I fell back into my human body beside the lemon tree’s decorative pot. Lying on my back, I looked up through the leaves of the captive fruit tree. My thoughts and memories slowly reassembled themselves.

Even as a wolf, I wanted more.

Chapter Sixteen

· cole ·

Here are things that never get old: the first word said into a recording studio mic, the rough cut of a song, the first play on the radio.

Here are things that do get old: me.

Whatever part of me that had been able to pull off allnighters or something close before had evidently been left behind in my ill-spent youth, or maybe just in Minnesota. I slept until the sun was high and then discovered I had nothing but an empty donut bag of bored ants for breakfast. I clearly couldn’t work under those conditions, so I went out on foot to hunt/

gather (lyric possibility? Jot in notebook)(gather/hunt more interesting as it is unexpected).

(I gather/you hunt/we both miss the trap) By the time I got back to the apartment, the sun was even higher and Baby was waiting for me.

She sat in one of the two white vinyl chairs in the vestigial sitting area, working away on her iPad. When I slid open my door, she looked up.

“You’re supposed to be working.”

I slid the door shut behind me with my elbow. “I was working.”

“What do you have there?”

I looked at my hands. I couldn’t remember everything I’d gotten. “Stuff. For things. For. Work.”

She watched me unload my arms onto the table in front of her chair: a small wicker basket that crackled very intriguingly and would probably crackle even better into a microphone, a fake ivory candelabra, a not-gently-used Hawaiian shirt in extra large, and a small purple Buddha statue as a welcome-back present for Jeremy.

“This isn’t The Bachelor,” she told me. “I don’t have the budget to stalk you. So you’re going to have to do interesting things when my cameras are there. Or call me when you’re about to do something. Meanwhile, my feelings are hurt that you fired the musicians I picked out just for you.”

I headed to the keyboard. It was a Dave Smith. Maybe my Dave Smith. I didn’t know if it had been liquidated or something when I was reported dead/missing/werewolf (lyric

possibility?)(too on the nose)(another word for werewolf ?)(beast) (unicorn)(suicide)(jot in notebook?)(nothing to see here).

I pulled out my notebook and wrote nothing to see here in it.

“Cole.”

“What? Oh. I didn’t want a guitarist, and the bass player was totally wrong.”

Baby tapped at something on her iPad. “For the record, he was chosen by users on the show’s forum before you even got here. They knew him by name. It was their way of being involved.”

This was the way I preferred my listeners to be involved: buy the album, come to my shows, know all the words.

I turned on the keyboard. Lights flared across the board.

For a moment, I rested my finger on one of the knobs. Just to feel what it was like again. It had been so long. Even though, chronologically, I had spent much more time playing my keyboard on tour than I had playing it at home, it was those early days I remembered now. My first keyboard, my bedroom, morning sun across keys, cell phone photos snapped of the settings, songs hummed with my eyes closed. It was like NARKOTIKA had never happened.

“Get out your phone,” Baby said, “and call him back. Tell him you’ve made a mistake.”

I didn’t even bother to turn around. “No.”

“This is not optional.”

I bristled inside, but I kept my face blank and my voice careless. “Is making a good album optional?”

No answer.

“They didn’t like the first episode?” I knew they had. “They didn’t like Jeremy?”

“I didn’t mean for this to be a NARKOTIKA reunion show.

Is Victor going to appear out of the woodwork?”

I could feel the song drain out of me. “I can pretty much guarantee that is not going to happen.”

There was a very long pause from behind me. I heard Baby tapping away at her electronic life while I flicked on the speaker and concentrated on making the biggest, fattest, meanest synthswell this apartment had ever heard.

The chord grew and grew until I was imagining the album cover and the number of tracks on the back and the feeling of releasing it out into the world to sink or swim — only they always swam; it was only ever me that sank — and wondering what in the world I would call myself if I wasn’t called NARKOTIKA.

Finally, Baby said (loudly, to be heard over the biggest, fattest, meanest synthswell this apartment had ever heard), “Here is the deal. You aren’t going to take Chip back?”

I released the chord I’d been hitting. The sound slowly trailed off. “Who the hell is Chip? Oh. No. I’m sticking with Jeremy.”

“Then here’s the deal,” she said again. “This is yours now.”

I turned. In her outstretched hand was a phone. “What’s this?”

She didn’t answer until I’d taken it, reluctantly. “Your new work phone. I just signed you up for every social media avenue on the Internet. And I told the world you’re going to be handling all those personally. You want to be able to call the shots on the band? You’re going to have to work twice as hard for it.”

I stared at the phone in my hand. “You have murdered me.”

“You would know if I’d murdered you.”

I groaned.

“Don’t even,” Baby said, standing. “Don’t act like I’m your jailer. Because we both want the same thing. This show does well, I get to do another one. This show does well, you don’t have to tour for the rest of your life. So get to work and don’t forget you have studio time booked for this afternoon.”

I got to work.

Because she was right.

Chapter Seventeen

· isabel ·

“What’s the next meal?” Cole asked me.

“Lunch,” I replied. I glanced at the classroom door to make sure it stayed closed as I walked in the direction of the girls’

restroom. Bathroom breaks were the only allowed excuse to escape my CNA class, a fact that seemed to trouble only me.

The other students in the class seemed genuinely engaged, a concept I could only understand if I told myself they hadn’t read the textbook closely enough to note the redundancies in their learning experiences.