Sinner

Over.

A lot of my brain was on the Mustang parked outside.

Before I’d come over here, I had packed everything I’d brought from Minnesota back into my backpack, and put it in the tiny backseat. Tonight I was staying at Jeremy’s, and in the morning I was doing some wrap-up stuff with Baby and a couple of interviews with some magazines. And then — I didn’t even know.

I didn’t want to go back to Minnesota. But I couldn’t stay here. I saw her everywhere, in everything. Maybe one day I could come back, but not now, not like this. I couldn’t spend every day looking at L.A. but not feeling it inside me.

I dropped my head into my hands, listening. There was no reason to have Leyla redo her drums. She was fine. It was my vocal track that needed work. I sounded like I’d been anesthetized.

Standing, I made a chopping motion across my neck to the sound engineer in the mixing room. I had tried and failed to remember his name, and now, at this late point in the game, it seemed pointless to try again. “She’s fine. It’s good. I need to get back in there, though.”

Everyone in the room heaved a collected sigh, except for Jeremy. He just said, “Eventually, it’ll have to be over, Cole.”

“It’s over when I say it’s over.” I headed into the tiny, glasswalled isolation booth.

In the booth, I slid the headphones on again, and as the engineer adjusted the levels and got ready to record another vocal track, I tried to think of how I’d improve on my previous attempt. Maybe I should just add another layer of harmonies this time around.

Or maybe I should stop sounding like I was heartbroken.

I fidgeted. I was well aware that the cameras could see me through the walls of the booth. It was a goldfish bowl.

“Okay,” the engineer said. “You’re good. Go for it.”

I heard the now endlessly familiar synthesizer loop that began “Lovers (Killers)” and then Leyla’s tapped-in drum, and then Jeremy’s tripping, gentle bass line. My voice sang in my ears, a Cole who was weary and heartbroken and homesick for a home he hadn’t left yet but was about to. I kept waiting for a place that begged for me to put down another layer, but nothing stood out.

I closed my eyes and just listened to my sung miserable confession.

I didn’t want to go.

Because of the headphones, I felt more than heard the door open. A rush of cooler air entered the booth.

I opened my eyes.

Isabel stood in the door, cool and elegant as a handgun.

Behind her, through the glass, I saw the cameras pointed at us, and Baby standing in the double doors that had been opened to the night. In the parking lot beyond, several hundred people were gathered, craning their necks to see inside.

I didn’t understand.

Isabel stepped into the booth. Reaching up, she pulled off the headphones, setting them carefully down onto the stool beside me. I couldn’t tell from her face what she was thinking.

Baby’s smile was so giant and the camera angles so favorably pointed at Isabel that I knew that, impossibly, Isabel must have agreed to be filmed. Agreed to be on the Cole St. Clair show.

Dozens of faces crowded closer through the door, trying to get a better look at whatever was happening. They looked . . .

anticipatory.

“Isabel —” I started. But I didn’t know what was happening, so I couldn’t finish it.

“Ta-da,” Isabel said. The big microphone in front of me picked up her voice and played it through the headphones sitting on the stool. A smile was threatening on her face. A real one.

“Culpeper, maybe I don’t like ta-das,” I said, even though there was nothing in the world I liked better.

She knew it, so she just put her arms tightly around me. It was the first time I’d felt her hold me before I held her first. The first time I felt her hold me like she wanted to hold me more than anything.

She said, loud enough for the microphone to pick it up again, “Stay.”

But I had been staying. She had always been the one going.

“How do I know you’ll stay, too?”

In my ear, she whispered, “I love you.”

She rested her face on my shoulder, and I pressed mine into hers, and we just held each other. Like something solid, for once. I thought of all those times standing on a ledge, real or not, looking for something real or not, never finding what I needed.

I felt it now. This was what I needed.

The heart was pumping sunlight.

I didn’t want to think about the cameras, but now that I could breathe again, it was hard not to. And it was hard not to realize that Isabel had framed an absolutely perfect ending episode to this show, because she was a diabolical genius and she knew me. How that crowd must be dying inside right now.

I felt Isabel shaking, and it took me a moment to realize she was laughing soundlessly and witheringly.

“Fine,” she whispered into my collarbone. “Just do it. I know you’re thinking it, so just do it.”

She lifted her head. I looked at her. She asked, just loud enough for the microphone to pick up, “Why did you even come here, Cole?”

I touched her chin. This place, this beautiful place, this girl, this beautiful girl, this music, this life. “I came here for you.”

And her mouth quirked, because she knew it was no less real for saying it in front of a crowd.

Then we kissed the perfect kiss. The people in the studio went absolutely insane.

I’d known how to pull off the way just fine when I was just Cole St. Clair.

But we did it better together.

Epilogue

· cole ·

f live: Today on the wire we have young Cole St. Clair, lead singer of NARKOTIKA, giving his first interview since Heart (Attack) released. Cole, most bands tour after their release. Instead, you’ve opened a recording studio.

Let’s discuss. Actually, let me go deeper. Since you moved to L.A., you’ve survived a stint on reality TV, recorded two pretty damn hot albums, opened a recording studio, produced Skidfield’s hugely successful debut album, and digitally released a new song every month this year, culminating in Heart (Attack). All the while, you’ve refused the advances of every major label. Please tell me you’ve also finally gotten a dog.

cole st. clair: No dog. But we’ve decided to keep Leyla on as our drummer, and she’s pretty hairy.

f live: Do you think of yourself as a label? Is that happening?

cole st. clair: Whoa, whoa, Martin. Keep your shorts on. “Label” sounds a lot like commitment. It’s more like, sometimes friends come over to the studio and we throw some stuff together.

f live: Friends like Skidfield?

cole st. clair: Yeah.

f live: That thing you “threw together” with them sold over a million copies.

cole st. clair: Yeah, well, they’re good friends.

f live: I’ ll bet the — What’s that noise?

cole st. clair: Los Angeles. Leon, can’t you make these people move? Martin, possibly you remember my fearless driver. Say hello.

leon: Hello.

f live: Leon! Where are you taking our fearless hero today? To record another indie hit? To take over Broadway?

leon: Can I tell him?

f live: Tell me what? Is that Cole shouting? What did he say?

leon: He said, “Now I don’t have to work anymore!” His girlfriend is graduating from medical school today.

f live: Wait — this is Isabel, right? The girl from the show. Put Cole back on.

cole st. clair: Of course it’s the girl from the show. Who else is there? Congratulate me. I always wanted to date a doctor.

f live: Congratulations. After th — cole st. clair: You know what — yes. Yeah, I’m just going to get out of the car here.

f live: Wait! Where are you? Are you on the freeway?

cole st. clair: Yep. You know what, Martin, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m hopping out here. You should go ahead and play that track I sent you, and I’ ll call you back to see how the world liked it.

f live: Look both ways, Cole! Look both ways!

cole st. clair: Always. All right, I’m out. Leon, you coming with?

f live: Is he?

f live: Cole?

f live: Leon? Is anyone still in that car? Well.

f live: Ladies and gentlemen, that was Cole St. Clair of NARKOTIKA.