Page 2 of All That Remains
I keyed up Damien Rice's "Cheers Darlin'" on the intercom so that it played throughout the house with a morbid ubiquity. As I showered and later toweled off, I let it run on a loop until the words lost all meaning. My nightly ritual took longer than usual, as I was unable to stop staring at my tattoos in the mirror. Meaningless hieroglyphs I’d overlooked for years.
Clearing the steam from the glass, I flexed my torso and arms to get a better view. Some ungainly, fleshy-cheeked dweeb stared back. Much unlike the poised, six-foot rocker who’d leftthe house earlier today. Too many of the markings were awful, hardly distinct from the Sharpie figures I’d splotched on as a kid. The lines smudged, the form so distorted I could hardly recall what they’d ever been. Others were sheer art, like the warrior angel whose wings spanned the breadth of my ribcage. Some had slipped my mind and were only recalled because the ink seemed to scintillate. The longer I stared, the lines only emitted more light. Satirizing me. The cringy kid I once was. My ideas, my ambitions.
I examined the anatomical heart on my right biceps, threaded thickly with veins and chambers, and remembered thinking it was edgy. It was impaled with three crucifix-like nails that dripped with blood. Already it brought back the compulsions of my teens. Dr. Ehrmann would urge me to put it out of my mind, to try the rubber band—but she had no idea the sorcery it held over me. I pressed a tremulous kiss to the ink. It began to thaw, seeping down my arm and splattering onto the tiles like a broken pen. Next thing I knew, I was doubled over the toilet and spewing my insides onto the inner seat.
***
"Rafe?Hellooo…" Jen waved a hand in front of my face after I’d climbed back into the truck. "Who was it?"
I opened my mouth but shut it again. Then carefully, as though topping off a quaking house of cards: "Him."
"Shit..." she gaped, forever more fussed than John, despite him being the one on my payroll. She listened better, noticed more. The last altruist in all LA. Probably the last non-blonde. She elevated him somehow. I admired her clean-cut, ivy league sophistication.
"Again?” she laughed. “Twice in one night? That's insane, right? Did he follow you here?"
"'Course not. They just...happened to stop for coffee as well."
"Well? What'd he say? He act any different? Sound any different?"
"Uh…no, not really,” I tossed my hands up. “Not as far as I could tell, anyway. The accent's a bit heavier, y'know? A lot denser than I remember."
"So…what'd you talk about?"
"Fuck's sake, I already can't remember. Music?"
"That all?"
I’d been too self-conscious to venture further. Music was safe. It was our common ground.
"He looked good," I uttered, staring at my knees.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Really good."
Smoke in his cologne. Mingled with luxury soaps and the oaty underpinnings of his shampoo. That's what I’d stumbled on tonight but had been unable to tell her. An old friend. A composite smell. Heady, sweet, dark—bright. That's all I ever remembered after spending time with him. Hardly the face, always the smell. I could shut my eyes and pick him out of a room of a thousand silent strangers. Or an arena. Like the ones in East Asia where the fans were too polite to shout, so it was like we were whistling past the graveyard.
I dreamt in arenas now. Murky spaces deep with constellations of faces. A careen of bodies. The hum following me for hours after each show. Still, that smell was remarkable. It opiated the craze of those days and I could find it anywhere, sleeping or awake.
As I stood in the closet, pulling on clean briefs and trying to ward off daydreams, I stubbed my toe. That jarred me back to the here and now. Ripped me back from the gala. Back from the car ride home. Back from my conversation with Jen. The compulsions welling within me as I tampered with his memorygrinded to a halt. Now I nursed the wound, pulling broken bits of nail away until it stung.
Limping across the master suite, I flicked a switch, retracting the screen that covered the floor-to-ceiling windows. A quivering cityscape lay beyond.The view is optimal—the broker had insisted. It had been the subject of his email. The tagline whenever we spoke before the closing.Like a seat on Mount Olympus, he’d assured me.
Despite only winning the bidding months ago, I’d already received a dozen unthinkable offers from enthusiasts dying to get their hands on the place. More so now that I’d owned it. A few billionaires itching to secure it for their zealous daughters—proposals I couldn’t consider without second-hand embarrassment.
The closing had endowed me with a sense of potency the mounting numbers in my bank account failed to provide. Something I’d lacked even as the lead vocalist of what Rolling Stone deemed one of the greatest rock bands of the past decade. It was a 1940s, midcentury modern palace, steeped in true crime and golden age allure. Far removed from the unrest of the city, though overlooking it like a seat in the gods. It featured a sweeping vantage of Hollywood Hills and sprawling canyon views. Every night the city shimmered out of the darkness like some fabled land of good and plenty. I watched its innerworkings spring to life with a pang, like a quarantined leper from my gilded cage.
Frankly, I wasn’t the only new expat in LA. It’d hit the news two years ago that Roman Jacobs, former lead guitarist of Invicta, had purchased a secluded, multi-million-dollar estate in Beverly Hills Post Office. A one-story compound sequestered by verdant lawns and towering hedges, or so the articles had read. Like everything post-band, his new place remained a mystery to me. I’d stared at the photos in the real estate listing red-faced and limp. Didn’t know I could ache for a place I’d never been. Somehow, I’d walked its halls in my dreams, the rooms furnished by facets of fading memory. Ideas of him. Remote theories of who I thought I’d known. And as the years stretched on, the depth of our separation became more grievous and bizarre.
I wondered how many parties he’d thrown. How many walls had been graffitied indoors and out, like his London place. If he’d fucked in every room. If he also had a fort of sun-bleached packages accumulating on his terrace. If he had a view as spectacular as mine.
The P.I. told me he tended to move a lot. I knew instantly it wasn’t by choice. He’d likely been evicted due to noise complaints. The modus operandi hadn’t changed much. I didn’t take it further. It was the only time I allowed myself to check up on him, apart from what I could find online. I only needed to pin him down after he’d left the UK, and now that I knew where he was, I’d let him be. This was officially stalking.
From my perch in the hills, thousands of lights winked before me, mapping the lives in the region like an image of deep space. He was but one of those atomic lights now, a needle in a pile of needles. Despite my best efforts to mend bridges, his world recoiled. He’d shed the headstrong Yorkshire boy I'd once worshipped and become a man with ways unknown to me. Now I walked behind and he ahead. Light-years removed.
2
Earlier that night, we arrived late to the Clive Davis pre-Grammy gala, which was set to honor John’s father with an award for lifetime achievement. For years I’d heard stories of the lavish, star-studded event, though failed to secure an invite until I was signed to a preeminent American label. It would be my first major event in the two years since the band split, and already I was queasy.
