American Girls(63)

The inside was packed, and I had to squeeze my way through about ten feet of people before I found Jeremy. He was talking to some friends, other actors or musicians, and he introduced me as “a friend who was working on his show.” It wasn’t as good as “girlfriend,” but it was definitely a step up from runaway thief. And before I could even worry about what to say next, the crowd began to roar and whistle, pumping their arms as the Freekmonkee scream sounded from the monkeys on top of the garbage heaps.

Karl Marx walked out onto the stage, half whispering the song I had heard in Jeremy’s car. It felt like he had darkened the room and started a séance with three hundred of his closest friends, the sounds were that eerie and mesmerizing. The crowd settled down and then erupted when the opening chords of “Heart Not Beating” began. If I hadn’t been worried about embarrassing myself in front of Jeremy, I would have held my phone up and recorded the whole thing, because even though I was definitely there and it was really happening, I was still having trouble believing it. I closed my eyes and gave myself over to the music, to a place that felt so pure that it seemed impossible that anyone could exist outside that crazy space, let alone be mad, or worried, or sick, or sad. There was just this perfect sound, and hundreds of people becoming a part of it, and I was part of those hundreds. When I opened my eyes, there were lights flashing across the warehouse, and people were ripping parts of the trash piles off, throwing them at each other and onto the stage. Most of it was paper and all of it glittered and it was like nothing I’d ever seen.

Jeremy shouted something, but I could barely hear him. I leaned closer.

“C’mon,” Jeremy said. “This is the last number. I’ve got to check on Olivia.”

The moon-booted space DJ. Olivia Taylor. Of course. I’d heard the twins talk about their sister’s new career, making appearances at clubs on the Vegas strip. My stomach dropped for a second, but I decided to play it cool. Fear of Olivia Taylor was not going to make me miss the chance to meet Freekmonkee. I was Jeremy’s friend. I worked on a show. I had as much of a right to be there as she did. Kind of.

Jeremy grabbed my hand and we snaked our way through the crowd. The side of a CD case hit me on the shoulder, and a laughing man in a rainbow Afro showered glitter over Jeremy.

“Thanks, man,” he said, shaking his head from side to side. “Can you help me get this out, Anna?”

We found a space where there was enough room for me to comb through his hair and try to shake the glitter free, a losing battle if ever there was one. I imagined we looked like a pair of blinged-out zoo animals, huddled in some corner, one grooming the other. Freekmonkee left the stage, and for a second I was sure that I had destroyed my hearing; the echo in my skull throbbed almost as loudly as the music itself.

“This is not going to end well,” Jeremy said as more of the garbage made its way onto the stage. I could see what he meant, but I just didn’t care. It might have been destructive but it was magic.

Backstage, Olivia Taylor had removed her moon boots and was curled catlike against Karl Marx. He rubbed his hand up her leg, almost into her crotch, and she opened a mirror and lined her lips silver-blue while he talked.

“It’s all waste,” he said, his accent as perfectly beautiful as it sounded in the interviews I’d watched. “Waste and filth. Even these women, these perfect creatures.” Now his hand was in her crotch, but if I’d had my glasses on, I would have sworn he was looking at me. “They look like something off of God’s top shelf, and you know they have their fingers in their underwear, smelling their own filth like the rest of us.”

Olivia grunted with what was either disgust or interest, I couldn’t tell. She shifted her position and put a hand on Karl’s knee. He brushed it aside.

“What happens when we’ve filled the oceans?” Karl continued, leaning forward. “Should we decorate our shit and send it to another galaxy? Is that our legacy? Is it so different from the trash we already send into the universe, the television programs that mean nothing, the endless, banal chatter?”

He wasn’t looking at Jeremy, but I wondered if Jeremy took that kind of thing personally, even if Karl was right, which he probably was.

“Can we lose ourselves in space,” he asked, “if space is nothing but what we leave behind for the uglies to care for? Our garbage? The shows we’ve already seen? The pop star whose music has come and gone? Isn’t that all now just part of the void?”

I was listening to him but watching the rest of the room as well. Leo Spark was in the corner, smoking a cigarette and tightening and loosening his guitar strings. He was taller than Karl Marx, and had on skintight jeans and a red silk shirt, his perfect, wavy brown hair falling over his perfect brown eyes. When Karl said something he agreed with, he would stop touching his guitar and point at him, then return to what he was doing. He had silver rings on three of his fingers, a band with diamonds, a skull, and the openmouthed screaming freekmonkee that each of the band members wore. If I squinted I could almost make them out, and I so wished that I could just put on my glasses, walk across the room, and gape.

The music coming through the walls changed, and the band members all stood up. Karl kissed Olivia full on the mouth, and then much to my horror, on his way back to the stage, Leo did the same. She kissed each of them back for at least as long as Delia had kissed Roger, and though I was trying not to stare, I couldn’t help myself. As she was tonguing Leo Sparks, Olivia Taylor opened her eyes and looked straight at me. Even without my glasses, I couldn’t miss it.