Chasing Death Metal Dreams (30 page)

“Sure, baby. I can do that, for a while. But I want to know what’s going on with you. All right?”

“Maybe. Later.”

“I love you, hon. Remember that. Well, Sal and María, you remember that dog they have, the Great Dane? Well the other day…”

He listened to the news, pushing her to tell him about everyone from his great uncle to his family in Mexico. Apparently his brother Juan and his wife were expecting another baby. That was nice. Mamá and Papá were no doubt thrilled. With luck big brother Fernando would tag him with the news on Facebook. Mamá and Papá might have closed the door on him for good, especially after he used his college fund to transition, but Fernando and Leticia had friended him once they were all grown up. He wasn’t really alone in the world, at all.

Tía Lisa paused now and then for a gentle question, but he just nudged her back to the good family stuff. New jobs were excellent, broken legs not so much, babies were wonderful, yeah. He kept his eyes closed and managed not to shed one tear, hearing about everyone’s lives going along, with the highs and the lows. When her voice ran down he dodged her concerns and said good-bye.

It was only midafternoon. He couldn’t settle, so he got up and cleaned the apartment thoroughly, until he thought the heat might make him pass out. Then he changed into shorts and a sleeveless shirt and went outside and ran until he puked. That was definitely one of his finer moments, bent over the gutter, heaving. He made himself jog home anyway, and once he got there, he was too tired and achy to do more than just collapse into bed. He pulled his phone out of the pocket of his shorts and checked it one more time. No texts. No calls.

He turned the phone all the way off, set it on the stand by his bed and closed his eyes. Night was coming, and then eventually it would be morning.
Not going down.

He tossed and turned. After a while, he gave in to temptation, went online and read the fucking blog, start to finish. It was long, stupid, boring, but it didn’t sound a bad kind of crazy. Some of the other poetry sucked, the stuff that wasn’t his, but most of it wasn’t awful. It didn’t sound like anyone he knew— not Foster, not Nate, not anyone he might have insulted somehow, or any of the Sparkfest bands who might have wanted the fucking contract instead of Serpentine. It was all this mellow imagery shit. Most of it would have made better folk lyrics than metal. It made
no sense!

At some point in the long, hot, stifling, miserable darkness he must have fallen asleep, because he woke sticky and headachy, to a loud knocking on his door. For a moment his heart leaped, and his phone crashed off his pillow to the floor as he rolled out of bed. But when he hurried to open the door, instead of Nate, the person standing on his doorstep was Tía Lisa.

“Whaaat?” He stared at her.

“Gonna let me in, hon?”

“Huh? Sure.” He pulled the door open. “What are you doing here?”

“Bringing you hugs and
dulces de nuez
. Although I think you need to shower before the hugs.”

“Oh. Um, yeah.” He rubbed his face hard. “Sorry, I stink.”

“Aw, Carlos, I’m joking.” He was abruptly swept into Tía Lisa’s arms. She held him tight, rocking them from side to side. “You look like crap. You’re sure you’re not sick?”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay.” She set him aside and bent to pick up a backpack by her feet. “You’ll feel better with a shower, and I’m going to make you some breakfast.”

“How did you even get here?”

“I drove. Ten hours straight. So you’d better be nice to me.”

“Wow. Um, you shouldn’t have done that. It’s um, Monday, isn’t it? Shit, I have to get to work.”

“Call in sick,” she told him firmly.

“I’m not.”

“You’re going to scare away the clients, the way you look. And tell me you’re not going to make a hundred mistakes. What time are you supposed to go in?”

“I. Um.” He couldn’t remember. “The same as usual, I guess. Um, eight-thirty.”

“It’s almost eight. Call them.”

“They’ll be shorthanded.”

“How many sick days have you taken this year?”

He tried to remember. “One, I think. When I had the flu.” It was a small office. They tried to cover for each other, but asking a hygienist to come in and man the reception desk for him was something he saved for emergencies.

“So you’re taking another. I drove all the way here to figure out what the hell is going on, and I don’t want to sit around your apartment for eight hours and twiddle my thumbs.”

He had a sudden thought. “Hey, you’re good with computers. Maybe you could spend the day checking something out for me instead. While I work and don’t leave my boss in the lurch.”

She tilted her head, looking at him. “Something important?”

“Yeah. Let me show you.” He hurried over to his laptop, turned it on. He didn’t have the link on this computer, and searching for “Better With Grass” got thousands of hits, but adding a few more keywords let him find the blog. He scrolled down the sidebar to 2011, and located the post. It was still a sucker-punch of pain to see his words there. He’d almost wondered if he’d imagined it. It was so impossible, but no, there was his song beneath a picture of a plate of nachos. “This.”

Tía Lisa sat down and pulled the laptop a little closer. “What about it?”

“These are lyrics to one of my songs. Except this guy claims they were his first, in this post from 2011. But I swear, Tía Lisa, I
swear
I wrote this from scratch at a party, two years after this post went up.”

“Mm.” She scrolled around a bit. “Is this guy asking for money?”

“No. He’s just mad at Eli or the band or me. Or crazy. I don’t get it.”

“Well, if you wrote a song, and then it shows up in his blog post, it’s because he stole it and put it there.” She looked over at him, her eyes stormy. “So either he’s trying to hurt you, or he’s planning to ask for money.”

Her casual certainty brought an odd mix of pleasure and pain.
That’s what unconditional love and trust looks like.
It burned like acid to realize he’d expected that from Nate, that he’d trusted Nate so much he’d just assumed they were good, when Nate still had him on probation. And then flunked him on someone else’s word. “It looks like it was written in 2011. There’s nothing there about edits.”

“Sure. But you can go back and alter old blog posts anytime and most hosts won’t show evidence of the changes up front. It’s not like Facebook or something, where edits show. People go back and clean up old blogs a lot. If you can find a cached version, you might be able to see the changes.”

Carlos dropped limply in the other chair. “You mean, he could fake it with nothing showing? Just like that? And you might prove it?”

She looked at him calmly. “Yeah. In fact, I doubt he could make any legal case at all with just a blog post. It wouldn’t hold up in court, because they’re so easy to edit.”

“So what…?” He shook his head to clear it. “What do I do? How can I prove it?”

“Do you need to? Can’t you just tell him it’s a known scam and to eff-off?”

“Eli believed him. The band leader.”
Nate did too.
He had no words for that feeling.

“There are several ways you
might
get definite proof. Some host sites will keep a record of edits, at least for a while. If you go to court, a judge could order the host site to release that information.”

Carlos sighed. “I don’t know. That would take a while, wouldn’t it? He’s threatening to go to the label and the manager and wreck the band’s contract with this.”

“I bet your lawyer could tell them it was no problem. Their lawyer would probably say the same. Even if it went to court, which I can’t imagine, a judge would throw the case out.”

“Yeah, but we have—” he realized there was no “we” anymore “—
they
have to produce an album pretty fast. If they’re tied up in court over the rights to the songs, the album might just get dropped. It’s such a competitive business, I can’t imagine the label would cut a new band much slack. Even just a fake story coming out, whispers on YouTube…” He could think of a dozen rumors that had become so big they were believed, long after the evidence proved they were wrong. “They’d drop Serpentine for a different act, I’m sure.”

“So you want me to help you do something faster?”

“God, yeah. You think you could?”

“I can try.” Tía Lisa patted his hand. “Go, shower, get ready for work. I’ll get us some breakfast and then see what I can do. At least I might be able to figure out who it is and check them out. Maybe they’ve done this to other bands.”

“Okay.” He wanted to beg her to start now, but a ten-hour drive deserved breakfast. He stood and scribbled on a scrap of paper. “That’s my password, in case.”

“I’ll keep it safe. Go, get clean.”

He went and showered, with a little flicker of hope in his darkness. Tía Lisa had been his salvation in the past— the person who eventually told his parents she was going to help him transition, not stop him; the one who marched into school and told them either Vinnie Brock got suspended or she would press charges; the one who helped him buy an electric guitar; the one who argued with Tío Ramón that if Carlos chose to use his college money for top surgery, well, he was nineteen, an adult, and it was his right to choose. Tía Lisa wanted him to be the best that he could be, but in his own way, not hers, and she was the smartest person he knew. If she said they could fix this, she was the one person he might believe.

When he came out, damp and dressed and shaky from not eating last night, she set a plate of eggs and salsa in front of him. She put a slice of dry toast on the side. “You had jam, but it wasn’t open so I wasn’t sure if you were eating sugar again, or not.”

“Not so much. It was for—” He’d bought it a few days ago, in case Nate ever had breakfast here again. “Maybe you can take it back with you.”

She patted his arm. “Eat up. Go to work and don’t worry.”

Hah.
But he shoveled the food in, almost feeling his body sigh at the rise in his blood sugar. He felt a little better with each mouthful. “I hate to eat and run,” he mumbled around the toast, “but I’m gonna be late.”

“Go. No worries. Call me at your lunch break.”

“Okay. If, um, anyone comes by here—” He couldn’t imagine they would, not Nate, surely not Eli, and if it got to the label’s attention they were all fucked. But there was a little part of him that liked to picture Nate standing on the doorstep.
Yeah, right before I slam it shut in his face.

Tía Lisa said, “I’ll tell them to come back tonight. But you might text that Eli guy not to do anything rash, right? Tell him it’s under control.”

“Maybe.” He’d think about it. Later.

Work started out busy enough to keep him distracted, which was a very good thing. Two patients had insurance changes that involved multiple phone calls. He spent some time convincing a paper-pusher that yes, sometimes a capped tooth could be a medical necessity, not just a Hollywood thing. Honestly, he wondered what kind of bozos they were hiring. He elected to work through his break and then let Shannon convince him to walk down to the Dairy Queen for lunch. She claimed that the exercise would counterbalance the calories from fried food, then gave him a hard time for buying a grilled chicken salad. It was good to have friends.

He called Tía Lisa, who made sure he was eating and not moping and told him she was “
working on it.
” He tried to take that as hopeful. He didn’t contact Eli. Or… anyone.

The afternoon dragged. He found himself checking his phone obsessively, pretending he was checking the time even when his eyes went to that text-message icon over and over. Finally he made himself turn it all the way off. If he wanted to know the time he could look at the damned analog clock on the wall, the way he’d learned when he was four years old.
See? Hands. Big hand on the three, little hand on the eight. More than an hour left to go. Fuck.

When he finally clocked out, he was as tired as if he’d spent the day at the gym, which made no sense. Every muscle ached like he’d been working out. He felt cold, despite the heat of the late afternoon sun. Maybe he was coming down with something. He scratched his thigh where the pellet was. Wouldn’t it be the icing on the shit cake if his T was getting low ahead of schedule? It’d happened a couple of times, back when his hormone doc had been getting him leveled out— PMS with all its fucking joyride. He forced his hand away. He’d been stable a long time now. He was fine. He needed to think about more helpful things, like Tía Lisa.

God, it was good to know that when he got to his place, she’d be there. It was so good. Sure, he could call Mia, or Gabe down at the music store, or one of his other friends. Mia would back him up, without a doubt, but her support still wouldn’t be proof, and not even Mia would be as completely on his side as Tía Lisa. He didn’t want Mia sucked into this mess. He drove home with careful concentration and bounded up his stairs two at a time.

When he reached the apartment, Tía Lisa was sitting in front of his laptop at the table. Her blond hair was mussed, the way it used to be when she ran her hands through it working on a problem, back home. The sight warmed Carlos’s chilled bones. She looked up and smiled at him. “Hey. Knock out anyone’s teeth today?”

“I’m a
receptionist
, Tía. They don’t let me do that.”

“Pity. It might be therapeutic.” She stood, came over and hugged him. “I’m going to duck into the bathroom for a minute, then I’ll show you what I have so far.”

“Okay.” He pulled off his scrubs and put on a pair of jeans, while she ran water in the john. He’d just grabbed a beer out of the fridge when there was a knock on the door.

****

Chapter 15

Carlos froze, the sound of the knock on his front door echoing in his head. It could be anyone. He had friends, he had neighbors, even the UPS guy. But somehow it was a hurt, but not a surprise, to open the door and find Nate in the hallway.

Carlos managed to say, “What do you want?” in a steady voice.

“To say I’m sorry?” Nate’s tone was shakier than his. “I really am sorry.”