Know Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book One) (13 page)

Judging from the golden light
fading
in through the
windows, I guess it must be around four-thirty P.M. when I wake up
again. Declan’s on his back, looking up at the ceiling, his inked
arm—the right one—behind his head. He looks rested. “Good morning,”
he says. “Wanna grab some supper?”

I sit up, clear my throat. “Sure, why not.
I’m just gonna jump in the shower.”

“
Only if I can as well. I mean,
after
you of course.”

I laugh, because I wasn’t averse to him
joining me
in
the shower
either—which I end up thinking of endlessly while the hot water
sprays over my head and shoulders.

Declan
grabs a bag from his car and jumps in after me.

While he showers,
I turn my phone back on. It’s been off
since I started the set. It starts going crazy with blinking lights
and beeps and notifications:

Congratulatory messages for a great set,
forwarded to me by Xavier. Randy’s been getting them all morning,
he tells me. Then there’s a message with a link. Xavier tells me to
visit it.

I do.

It’s a forum.
And the title on the page is:

HEAVENLY:
HOTTEST NEW DJ? YOUR
OPINIONS:

One user (
“Skitz-O”) disagrees. Says:

I disagree, Heavenly’s
stile[sic] is stale. Her excessive dependence on
automatic effects
is overused. Beatmatching doesn’t make someone a DJ. Neither does
mixing one song into another. Let’s face it, Paris Hilton taught us
that.

Heavenly’s
[sic] taste is also
questionabel [sic]. She’s trying too hard. The 90s r over. And as
for my trip? She ruined it. I’m really bummed that the two other
DJs didn’t make it. I beleive [sic] it was Uncle Trouble? I
hope
House Market
can recover from
this. It was a mistake I don’t think randy [sic] will recover
easily from.

The phone feels heavy in my hand.
But, like someone staring at a
gory body in a car crash, I keep reading.

Username
“Trippa” says:

@Skitz-O

Quit trolling. You come in here
week after w
eek bitching about Randy’s parties. Last month you bitched
about the very DJs you’re praising this week! I’m gonna ask an
Admin to ban you. You’ve overstepped yoru [sic] boundaries. Your
comments are not constructive and don’t help anyone.

So, in the interests of
slightly more constructive
points on her set, here are a few pros and cons
for Heaven-Leigh’s gig last night (note the spelling of her name,
folks):

- A seven hour set.
Impressive.

- She mixed local talent into
freaking HOUSE MUSIC. I mean, local Indie bands. That’s slow rock.
This is unheard of. I assume that’s all her own pre-made mixes,
done on her own time, because you just can’t beatmatch Bushwick
indie (70, 90 BPM?) with House (120 - 128 BPM) on the
fly.

And she did that
all night.
So how much music
is she mixing in her spare time? How many bands is she seeing a
week? How many songs is she downloading, then cutting, to be able
to play a 7 hour set and not go stale and fall into all that
Kaskade and Guetta crap we’re so tired of hearing at our
underground parties?

H
er Magic Set showed a dedication I haven’t
seen since back in the nineties. (And, yes, I’ve been raving since
then, FYI. Before, during, and after Giuliani.)

IMHO, this girl (how old is
she? 19? 20?) is gonna make it big. I mean, Kaskade big (yes, I
have nothing against Kaskade—just not at my underground parties.)
And she’s home-grown, folks. Right here from Brooklyn from what I
heard!

Ten bucks Randy signs her up
for his new
label. Fuck it: A hundred bucks.

So, now the cons:

• She was nervous. It was apparent. She played
  to the crowd but didn’t embrace it. No biggie, the music came out
  cool, but our scene is all about the unity, and I think she needs
  to improve on that.
  

• Perhaps a little
  too
  old school. Then again, this is more
  a question of taste. The original stuff was cool though. At least
  thirty percent of her gig was stuff I’ve never heard of before, so
  she’s probably making her own original tunes in her spare
  time.
  

No
w, I know this has nothing to do with
the set, but, hey, I’m just gonna put it out there: Thank FUCKING
god we finally got some female talent at these damned parties! And,
er, can I get a
hoot
from any other dudes who think she was freaking
smoking
hot!

Heaven-Leigh, send me your
number if you’re reading this.
Let’s hook up. ;)

“
I’m twenty-one,” I say at my phone, as if
“Trippa” were listening.

“
Skitz-O” says a bunch of other negative
things, including “
Hot? Yeah, if you like that skank white-trash look three
degrees removed from screwing your half-brother.
”

I decide to skip
the rest of his (or her) comments.

Then,
Username “Lucy-Sky”:

HOT. I mean, this is as big as A-Trak
winning DMC World Champs at the age of 15 in ’97!!!

Username
“Darth”:

Oh, pahleese! A-Trak was a
turntablist, a prodigy. Vinyl and
“pretend DJs” who hit a button on a deck
these days and have everything run on auto-mix will never be “the
next big thing” because the skill level needed to mix in the 21st
century is, well, as Skitz-O said, Paris Hilton bullshit. And Disco
Mix Club Championships are only for vinyl DJs.

I will admit though, mixing
that local indie rock with deep house
—and calling back to all that old school
Detroit and Chicago stuff—I haven’t seen that done before. I, too,
was impressed. (And I’m also an
old-skool
nineties raver FYI, Trippa.)

So I’ll give Heaven-Leigh
my
thumbs
up. (And, yes, she definitely is a beauty, too. But I put her more
at 22 years old or so.)

“
I can also do vinyl, you prick. And
Auto-Mix my ass, you mother—”

“
Say what?” Declan’s voice gives me a
start. I turn and see him rubbing his wet hair with a towel. He’s
put on a gray sweater that does nothing to hide his macho
chest.

I’m still so zonked
and stunned by the comments on my phone’s
browser that I just blurt out the following: “I need to know how
you got so
huge
!”

He looks at himself, almost a bit
surprised. “Trev’s huge. Not me.”

“
So what’s the answer?”

“
Football. Weights. Work?” He
shrugs.

I park that one for later. I don’t
care
how
, I just
care
that
.

“
You said something when I came
in.”

“
No, uhm”—I laugh—“it seems I’m an internet
sensation...”

“
Really?” He takes the phone from my hand.
After reading for a bit: “Who is this fucking asshole?”

“
Oh, that
Skitz-O
prick? Forget him. Read the others.”

After a few seconds, he smiles.

“
What?” I reach for my phone, he snaps it
away. “What!?” He holds the phone in the air and looks up at it,
and I can’t reach it! “Hey! What are you smiling at?” I jump up but
the phone is still too high up. He’s so tall!

With a grin, he reads out loud:
“
‘Hot? More
than hot. I’d do her. Oh yeah baby.’’
” He cracks up laughing, then fixes me with his
glorious gaze. “I’d
have
to agree.”
He eases down to my lips and manages one peck before I slide away
and
snatch
my phone
back!

“
Hey!” he says.

I run! He chases me to the back of the
loft and lifts me off my feet. I start kicking! We’re choking
crazily with laughter. My phone’s slipping from my hand. “Let me
go!” I say as a joke.

“One kiss, then you can go.”

I instantly flush hot with heat. I don’t
even bother putting up the façade of a fight. “Fine, put me down
and kiss me then.”

He does put me down, and when his lips
touch mine, my fingers and hand relax. And my phone falls to the
ground. My nipples harden.

He eases away gently, licks his lips. He
looks as dazed as I feel. “Deck?”

“M-hm?”

“
You look like you’re
in a dream.”

In a deep rumble of a voice, he says:
“
Feels like
it.”

I pick up my phone (grateful as hell that
it’s got a sturdy cover on it) and
I scroll through the rest of the forwarded
messages from Xavier. For a short, confused moment, my mind takes
me back, and seeing the name
XAVIER
next to all these unread messages throws up images of the
past which I don’t care to look at. And for an almost indiscernible
second, I even expect to see Savva’s or Patryk’s name in amongst
the messages. Something like,
Hook up at ten tonight?
Or
Awesome set, love, S.

The mind is a funny thing. If it could
just let go of things, maybe we wouldn’t
all suffer so much.

But the messages I’m reading now, although
from his phone, are not from him, they’re other people’s messages.
Each one lifts my mood up more and makes me forget
Skitz-O
’s crappy
comments (although, not completely.)

The last one he writes is:

Xavier:
Need 2 talk money. Call
me.

I call him.

“
Ola, baby. Get a good night’s
rest?”

“
Uh-huh.”

“
Get all my messages?”

“
Uh-huh.” I’m waiting anxiously for the
money subject.

“
So, Randy said he gonna give you
da full payment for
both
the other DJs. Now these are
small parties, so even the top DJs don’t get paid a lot, but how’s
two Gs sound to you?”

“
Two...
grand
?” If I’m getting two, I wonder what the other DJs
were
really
getting,
seeing as Xavier wouldn’t be Xavier if he wasn’t lining his own
pockets at least a little.

“
Dass right, baby.”

Pause.

“
Blaze, you there?”

“
Uh-huh.”

“
Good news, right?”

I’ve hardly ever
even made two Gs in an entire month before... Cut
or no cut, it’s a mountain of money to me. And I’m not ungrateful
for it. “
Amazing
news,
Xavier. Thank you.”

“
Yeah. Well. Now, our brains are too fried
today, but stay by your phone. Randy’s keen on getting you into a
few clubs. If you generate enough interest, maybe he’ll get you on
the label. He wanted to know if some of the stuff you mixed was all
your own. I told him yes because I remembered you creating all that
EDM stuff on your computer back when we used to hang. So, was
it?”
EDM
is
Electronic Dance Music, the equivalent of our crowd’s
Rock n
Roll
.

“Was it what?”

“
The stuff you played, was some of it your
own?”

“Plenty of it was.”

“
Dass
what I told him. Yeah, so that means he’ll
definitely wanna talk about releasing a single. You
interested?”

“
If it pays, sure.” Getting a record deal
has never been my goal. Making music has always been. That and
paying the rent.

I remember the two Gs again. The earth
shifts. I lean against my kitchen counter.

Xavier
says, “You still doin’ those
kiddie parties for dough?”

“
It pays the bills.”

“
I guess. Well, each to his own. We all do
what we have to to survive, eh?”

I don’t comment. Xavier’s been talking to
me again for less than two days and he’s already getting on my
nerves.

“
Anyway, chiquita, there’s big things
coming, so you might wanna take on less work for now.”

“
I’ll take on less work when I get the
gigs.”

“
You always played it safe, didn’t you? I
guess that’s a good thing. Would’ve helped if Savva had done the
same. Anyway, what’s done is done. Send me your account info. Randy
wants to pay you
tonight
. He said
you’re the hottest news of the underground scene right now. And he
wants dibs on you.”