We All Looked Up (13 page)

A
ndy

SAY WHAT YOU WOULD ABOUT
Bobo, but the dude knew how to draw a crowd. The Crocodile was jam-packed by the time Perineum took the stage. It had been a few months since their last show, and as Andy climbed onto the throne behind the beat-up house kit, he felt the prickle of butterflies drowning in the four beers (delivered by a sympathetic bartender) he'd already put in his stomach. The lights were too bright, and he couldn't seem to find a good distance from the snare.

“Hello, Crocodile!” Bobo said. “We're Perineum, and this is our first song!” Andy counted it off. Somehow, without consciously ordering his body to start drumming, he was there right on time, and then the flow of it, the crazy speed trip that was punk rock, swept him out from the chorus to the verse and back again. One song became another. He was immediately soaked in sweat—a well-oiled machine keeping the beat coming and going like a set of windshield wipers—and through the rainbow glare he could see that the moshing was intense, a ­jumble of limbs and leather. Was Eliza out there? She had to be. Anything else would be a failure on the part of the universe. They made it through about ten of their two-minute songs before Andy noticed that the room had gone silent. Bobo was offering up his guitar.

“Hey,” Andy said into the mic. “I'm gonna do something a little different here. Hope you don't mind.”

“I mind!” someone shouted. Andy shielded his eyes and saw Golden standing right at the lip of the stage. The light glinted off the links of his necklace.

“This is a song of mine, about not wanting to deal with other people's shit. Maybe you can relate to that. Or not. Whatever. It's called ‘Save It.'”

He started playing. It wasn't a song you could mosh to. It wasn't punk. It wasn't even rock. He'd written it a little more than a year ago, about this freshman girl he'd started dating only to find out she was batshit crazy (she claimed to brush her teeth for an hour and a half every night because she “liked the sensation”). Nobody booed him offstage, so they couldn't have hated it too much, even if the applause was sparse and the cheer loud when Bobo returned to the mic. He gestured to Andy to start the beat for their last song.

“Thanks for coming out on this fine Valentine's Day evening,” Bobo said. “As you may know, tonight's concert is about more than music. This is the beginning of a movement. Unless we're all ready to stand up when the time comes, we'll get trampled into the dirt.” The crowd cheered. “If any of you give a shit about your civil liberties, pass your e-mail to my girl over there.” He pointed to Misery, momentarily spotlighted at the edge of the stage. She'd dressed up for the occasion like a true punk-rock slut—short pink-and-black tartan skirt and spiderweb tights, tight pink tank top, and a black bow in her hair. Maybe it was just because they wanted to talk to a pretty girl, or maybe it was because there was a giant ICBM of a rock bearing down on them, but Andy saw people start to crowd around her.

They finished their set. Andy felt the molten lava of performance anxiety draining from his bloodstream, and he quickly replaced it with a couple of the tequila shots Golden was buying by the dozen. He was shoving his way through the crowd, searching for Eliza, when he ran face-first into Anita Graves.

“Heeeeeeeeeeey!” he shouted. “It's Anita Bonita!” He hugged her, coating her in a layer of 60-proof sweat.

“Hey, Andy. I liked your set.”

“Really? Awesome!”

“Well, not your whole set. Just the one you sang. The rest of it kinda sucked.”

“Oh. Cool.” He felt flattered and offended at once. “Uh, have you seen anyone else here?”

“Anyone else?”

“From Hamilton, I mean.”

Anita looked around the room. “Half of this crowd's from Hamilton.”

“Yeah, but I mean, have you seen anyone specific? Like, a specific girl?” Andy wasn't sure how to ask about Eliza without actually asking about Eliza.

“You're drunk, Andy. I think it's time to call it a night.”

“No way! The guys are all going to the Cage. Golden said he can get us in.”

“Is that an invitation?”

“You wanna come? That is so great! Anita Bonita at the Cage!” He hugged her again.

“I'm definitely driving,” she said.

The outside air sobered Andy up a bit, enough for him to realize how weird it was that Anita had come to the concert. He would have asked her about it, but she didn't give him the opportunity.

“So do you have any other songs like the one you sang?” she asked.

“A couple. But I'd—”

“Have you ever considered having someone else sing your songs?”

“I guess, as long as—”

“And how do you feel about collaborating on new songs?”

“Well, Bobo and I tri—”

“Who are your musical idols?”

It was like being interviewed for
Rolling Stone
by a journalist with ADHD. Eons seemed to pass before Anita found a parking space and Andy could escape the interrogation.

“We're not done talking about this,” Anita warned.

“I'm sure we're not.”

The Cage was Seattle's most famous biker bar. A huge black guy in an orange trucker's cap sat outside a door built into a spiked wooden palisade. As Andy and Anita approached, he looked up from the book he was reading—
Man's Search for Meaning
—and emitted a ­single dry chuckle.

“What are you? Sixteen?”

“We're with Golden,” Andy said.

“And you're already wasted, aren't you?”

Andy looked guiltily to Anita. “I'll keep him on a short leash,” she said.

The bouncer sighed and picked up his book again. “Whatever, man. I'm quitting tomorrow anyway.”

There was a wide-open patio space on the other side of the palisade. Golden and his crew were seated at the centermost table, already festooned with a half-dozen foamy pitchers of beer. Bobo had positioned himself at Golden's right hand and seemed to have captured the drug lord's attention. Andy had always been impressed by his best friend's familiarity with the street scene; even back in middle school, Bobo had been able to chat up the crackheads and the gangbangers and even the homeless, as if he were one of them.

“Which one's Golden?” Anita asked.

“Head of the table. Dude's one of the biggest dealers in the city. Sweet, right?”

“Dealer? You mean a
drug
dealer? And you think that's cool?”

“I don't know. Dealers make bank. Even Bobo can pull down a couple hundred bucks in a good week.”

“Musicians are way cooler than drug dealers, Andy. They don't end up in prison. Usually.”

But Andy wasn't paying attention. He wanted to find out what Golden and Bobo were talking about. “Wait here a second, okay?”

“I'm thinking we do the same kind of thing, only on a bigger scale,” Bobo was saying. “That way, you've got people when the time comes. But we've got to move on it. Like, next weekend or something.”

Golden nodded sagely, a general in consultation with his lieutenant. His necklace was the exact same color as the glass of beer in front of him. He noticed Andy lingering nearby.

“Andy, nice set tonight.”

“Uh, thanks.”

“So Bobo here wants to put together a little fiesta next week. You think that's a good idea?”

“Bobo's full of good ideas,” Andy said, but he was so drunk he'd already half forgotten the question. “I mean, whatever he says, I'm in. I just want to enjoy myself before the end, you know?”

“I do, Andy. I really do.” Golden gestured for Andy to come closer. “You wanna hear a secret?”

“Fuck yeah.”

“You ever heard someone talk about having greatness thrust upon them?” Andy shook his head. “Fucking Shakespeare wrote that.”

“Whoa.”

“Exactly. As soon as I heard about that asteroid, Andy, I made a decision. This was my chance to be great. Ardor is thrusting greatness upon me. Maybe upon you, too.”

“Okay.”

Golden lifted his glass. “To greatness.”

A shot materialized in Andy's hand. He downed it—vodka, maybe?—and then, for all intents and purposes, he ceased to exist. He didn't remember sitting down at the other end of the table and talking with Anita. He didn't remember leaving a few minutes later, or vomiting out the passenger-side window of her Escalade. He didn't remember telling her where he lived. He definitely didn't remember using his phone to visit Eliza's Facebook page (and had she always had 4,254 friends?) in order to get her phone number so that he could leave a five-minute message on her voice mail. In fact, pretty much
everything
that occurred after he'd climbed down off the stage at the Crocodile was gone the next morning, as if someone had taken the mad pencil sketch of those few hours and rubbed at it with a big pink eraser.

He woke up with a hangover so pure and perfect that it awed him. He groaned one long wordless groan—the sound of absolute suffering.

“Good,” a voice said, “you're finally awake.”

“Eliza?” Andy sat up in bed like a shot. Sitting on his futon, a book open on her lap, was Anita Graves.

“No,” she said, stating the very obvious, “I am not Eliza.”

P
eter

HE STOOD TRANSFIXED FOR A
good thirty seconds after she walked away, his arm up like some cardboard cutout of a guy waving. It was the Sunday after the announcement, and the first time Eliza had acknowledged Peter's existence since they'd made out in the photography studio a year earlier. She was wearing a chunky pair of headphones and carry­ing some kind of antique camera, its big black eye replacing her brown ones as she raised it to take his photo. A little kaleidoscopic spin as the iris opened, a brief wave, and then she was gone.

Felipe saw the whole thing happen.

“That a friend of yours?”

Peter finally dropped his hand. “Sorta. Do you mind if I say hi?”

“Go get her, champ.”

But by the time he untied the tight knot of his apron and went outside, Eliza was gone. He felt a stab of anxiety on her behalf, then felt stupid for worrying. What was she to him, or he to her? Nothing at all.

Peter volunteered at Friendly Forks every night that week. It wasn't just that he hoped Eliza would come back and find him; he liked the camaraderie in the kitchen, the satisfaction that came from accomplishing something practical. Many of Seattle's restaurants had already closed their doors, so Friendly Forks had more customers than ever. Peter's presence had only been tolerated at first, but now the guys in the kitchen were getting used to having him around, and they'd come to treat him like an annoying but ultimately lovable little brother. They'd even taught him a few words of Spanish, just enough so that he could understand the full extent of their vulgarity when they made fun of him for being, as Felipe put it, “
El lavaplatos mas gringo en todo el continente americano
,” which translated roughly to “The whitest dishwasher in all of the Americas.”

Peter wasn't just doing it out of the goodness of his heart; he was desperate for distraction. The whole “two-thirds chance of everything he knew and loved disappearing just a few weeks from now” was really getting to him. He couldn't sleep more than a few hours a night. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the asteroid looming just above the house, his sister framed in her bedroom window, eyes wide, as the light grew brighter and brighter and then everything went white. He would wake from these half dreams and run to his own window, finding nothing but the usual stars, distant and disinterested as ever (Ardor had lost its telltale blue tint, and now it was well hidden in some innocuous constellation, like a sleeper agent). Peter would then return to his regularly scheduled tossing and turning. The only effective sedative was sunrise; somehow, seeing the world spinning its way back into day temporarily interrupted the dark thoughts. As the sky colorized, Peter would finally pass out, only to wake up a couple of hours later to the shrill cry of his alarm. There was no way he was going to skip out on school, no matter how much his mom hinted that she wished he'd stay at home. What would he do all day? Sit around comforting her? Wait for his dad to get back from work, later and later every night, as fewer and fewer people came into the office to share the load?

No, the key was to make sure there was a never a free moment in which to think. That first weekend after the announcement, Peter spent Friday and Saturday with his family, and on Sunday he took Stacy out for a nice brunch. He apologized for forcing Friendly Forks on her, and she forgave him. With everything else that was going on in the world, the last thing he needed was a lot of arguing or a messy breakup (however happy it might make his sister). He'd even managed to get Stacy's endorsement of his own volunteer work (“I don't get it, like, at all, but I think it's pretty amazing that
you're
willing to do it”), which had become his favorite part of the day. At the restaurant, there wasn't time to ponder the ephemeral nature of life or imagine your loved ones melting into puddles. From the moment the first guest sat down until the moment Felipe judged the kitchen “fucking spotless,” there was only the work.

On Valentine's Day they closed up shop a little after midnight, gracefully escorting the last tipsy couple out the door. So many people were out on the streets that it looked like some kind of citywide block party. Peter was standing on his own outside the restaurant, taking it all in, when someone punched him on the shoulder.

“What's up, Whitey?”

It was Felipe, and behind him, Gabriel, his sous chef. Peter had yet to actually speak with Gabriel, who was one of those “all business, all the time” kind of dudes. Word was he'd been offered a job as a chef at Starfish, an upscale seafood restaurant on the Sound, just before Ardor showed up and shut the place down. It was an impressive accomplishment, considering that he was a black ex-con with a long, Bond-villain scar stretching across his face from cheekbone to chin.

“You heading home?” Felipe asked.

“I'm supposed to see my girlfriend. Valentine's Day, you know? I promised we'd do a late-night dessert thing.”

“Come get a drink with us first.”

The truth was, he
did
have a better time with Stacy when he was a little buzzed. “You sure it's cool?” He looked to Gabriel, for some reason, who nodded. “All right. One drink.”

Unlike Gabriel, Felipe was the kind of guy who could just talk, on and on, and didn't even seem to care whether anyone was listening—the perfect thing for keeping your mind occupied. He told some crazy story about a rich girl he'd dated in high school, and it lasted them all the way to their destination. Down a narrow alley, a red light was set into a wooden palisade illuminating a small wrought-iron sign:
THE CAGE
.

The patio was clouded over with more smoke than the stage at a heavy metal concert, produced by a crowd of grizzled bikers in studded leather and beefy, tattooed Hispanic dudes fresh off the late shift somewhere. There were maybe a dozen women there, and most of them could've passed for men in a pinch.

“Find a seat,” Felipe said. “I got the first round.”

Peter was left alone with Gabriel. “So, you guys come here often?”

“Sure.”

“Seems like a cool place.”

“It's okay.”

A raucous explosion of laughter from a group of punkers nearby. Peter recognized a couple of them: Golden, the thug he'd met at Beth's Cafe, and Bobo, his sister's slacker boyfriend. Thankfully, Misery wasn't with them.

“You know those guys?” Gabriel asked.

“A little bit.”

“Those guys aren't good guys.” He pulled a joint from his back pocket and lit up. “You want a hit?”

“No, thanks.”

“Six bucks for three Buds,” Felipe said, back from the bar. “Best deal in town.”

The bubbly coolness trickled down Peter's throat and into his stomach, loosening up everything along the way. It was probably the best beer he'd had since his very first, enjoyed at the end of a dock on Lake Washington. He and Cartier had tossed back a whole lukewarm six-pack (secured by Cartier's older brother) and talked shit until dawn.

The possibility of actual relaxation was just coming into focus when a hand landed heavy on the table, rattling their glasses.

“Big man slumming it in the city,” Bobo said. His voice was an alcoholic slurry. Golden stood a few feet behind him.

“Just having a few with my friends,” Peter said.

“Why didn't you come to my fucking show tonight, yo?”

Peter vaguely recalled seeing some flyers around school, but he didn't really go in for punk rock. “Didn't know you had one.”

“Well, I did. And I kicked ass. Misery was there. Your sister. My girlfriend. But she already went home. Said you were all up her ass about not staying out late. And now here you are. What's that about?”

“She's younger than we are. Anyway, I'm glad to hear she actually listened.”

“Eh, maybe you're right.” Bobo squinted up at Ardor. “You can feel it up there, can't you? It's coming for us. It wants blood.”

“You trying to kill our buzz,
ese
?” Felipe asked, just friendly enough to break the tension. “We're trying to forget about that shit.”

Bobo smiled. “Sorry. It's my fucked-up head, I guess. Good to see you, big man.”

Golden stepped closer as the others were walking away. He put a hand on Gabriel's shoulder. “We miss you round the Independent, G. You ever wanna get back in the game, you let me know.”

Gabriel's answer was a long, cool plume of smoke.

“Drug dealers,” Felipe said, after they were gone. “They're always assholes. It's because they got no friends. Everybody wants something from them. Turns 'em mean.”

“You and Golden known each other a long time?” Peter asked Gabriel.

Gabriel shook his head. “He doesn't know me. He knew a guy who looked like me. I got the next round.”

He stood up and went to the bar.

“Man's got stories,” Felipe said. “Took him a long time to straighten out.”

Peter would have liked to hear some of those stories, only just then there was an eruption of shouting on the other side of the palisade. A few of the guys on the patio looked up from their drinks, but nobody actually moved. Even Felipe only paused for a moment, bottle of beer halfway to his lips, before knocking it back.

A girl screamed.

Peter stood up, but Felipe grabbed him by the wrist. “Nah, man,” he said. “It's not our business.”

Peter shook him off. In the alley just outside the Cage, Golden's crew was clustered around something. Peter pushed through them to find Golden with his hand around the neck of some street girl, her hair a tangled mess and her eyes sunk deep as land mines in her head.

“What the hell are you doing?” Peter said.

Golden was momentarily distracted, and the girl took advantage, scratching at his arm with a wicked claw of sparkly painted nails. He dropped her, and straightaway she was up and running, throwing bony elbows in every direction. Bobo got knocked back on his ass and came up with a gushing nosebleed.
I should be running too
, Peter thought, but too late. The circle had re-formed, and he was at the center this time.

Golden stepped deeply into his personal space. “Are you stupid?” His irises were huge and black, with only a thin rim of gray around the edges, like two eclipsing suns. “Don't answer that,” he said. “Just from looking at you, I can tell you haven't worked a day in your life, so maybe you don't understand the concept of making a living. That girl owed me money.”

“That's not a reason to get violent with her.”

Golden smiled. “You think that was violent?” He reached up and unclasped his necklace. It unspooled, sinuous and shiny, long as a magician's handkerchief. “I bet you've never seen violence outside of movies—that's why you can't recognize it. What you just saw wasn't violence. It was intimidation.” Golden began to wrap the chain around the fingers of his right hand, covering up the
LIVE
tattooed on his knuckles. “Intimidation is a
threat
of violence. Good intimidation is like torture; it can go on for years. But violence is different. Violence is like lightning. It's over as soon as it starts.”

Peter wasn't used to being afraid—a six-foot-tall athlete seldom is. But then Golden squeezed his fist, now fully encased in the chain, and the muscles in his wiry forearms shifted and rippled, veins rising like some secret maze that had been hidden beneath the surface of his skin. Peter understood that a blow from that fist would be grievous. It would be meant to crush his nose and break his jaw and shatter his teeth. It would be meant to annihilate him.

And the one crazy thought in his head was that Eliza would never kiss him again if he lost all his teeth.

“Where would you like me to hit you?” Golden asked.

Before Peter could answer, there was a single, simple click from somewhere close by. Everyone turned to see Gabriel and Felipe standing by the door of the Cage. Felipe was red-faced with anger, but it was the tranquil-looking Gabriel who held the gun. Such a strange thing, Peter thought, a
gun
. It was a toy he'd been playing with for most of his life. And when it wasn't a toy, it was a prop, popping up in TV shows and movies about cops and robbers and heroes saving the day. It was easy to forget that guns existed in real life, too.

Golden looked straight down the barrel. “Only a pussy brings a piece to a fistfight,” he said. Still staring directly at the weapon, he lashed out and caught Peter in the cheek with the back of his hand. The chain bit hard, but Peter knew it was only a gesture. Golden wanted to give up the field without giving up his dignity. Peter's greatest fear at that moment was that Gabriel would shoot anyway, and then all hell would break loose.

But there was no gunshot. Golden uncoiled the necklace from his fist and wrapped it around his neck again, taking his time. Without another word, he walked off, holding tight to the wall of the alley.

“There's more coming for you than an asteroid now,” Bobo said. The blood was already drying to a crust around his nose, and it crackled when he smiled, fell away like flakes of crimson snow.

What was it Mr. McArthur had called it?

A Pyrrhic victory.