Tonight, I dealt in surfaces, no workings, no coaxing out mystical energy, only the natural emotional storm of the crowd and the band, ebbing and flowing like tides. Even this was a magic of a sort, and I loved it, and so did they. I gave some back tonight, but I didn’t give them everything. I didn’t do that shit anymore for anyone. They were screaming for me to do “War Engine,” one of Leaving Season’s songs that did pretty well on the charts, but it wouldn’t have been the same without the band, so we did a twenty-minute jam of Tool’s “Forty Six & 2” and called it a night.
It was after three, and I ended up signing cocktail napkins and the guitarist from Nympho Punch’s shirt. I also got lots of phone numbers on scraps of paper, a few demo tapes, and some questionable drugs. At a quarter to four, the band and most of the bar’s patrons and staff were out the door, on to the next party. I got invites for more places to go, and I was politely vague about my arrival. Magdalena remained at her table as the crowd thinned and dispersed. I sat down across from her with a cold Budweiser, given to me by my new best friend, the bartender.
“You should have kept making music,” she said. “You love it. It makes you happy. I saw it in your eyes. It was nice to see. You make music like you build a working or make love. Passion, but there is technique behind it, barely hanging on.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked. “In L.A.?”
“Working,” she said. She slipped a cigarette between her lips and I lit it. She hadn’t smoked when we met; she used to make fun of me and my “hipster smokes.” The Surgeon General has determined that knowing me is hazardous to your health.
“You have a shoot? Didgeri with you?”
“No,” she said, sounding irritated as she blew the smoke out her nostrils, “not that kind of work, your kind of work. Messy, ugly, probably violent. And I don’t need Didgeri Doo running after me to make sure I don’t fall down and bust my ass. I can handle this myself, Laytham. She’s not my mother, and you sure as hell are not.”
“Okay,” I said, “just making conversation.” I sipped my beer. “You want to tell me what this caper is about?”
“No,” she said. “I can deal with it.” She paused for a second. “That’s exactly how that feels, by the way, for all the times you ran off on your own. Enjoy it. What are you doing out here, other than rekindling your rock and roll career?”
“Skip trace,” I said. “A Fae noble lost his daughter, so I’m out here looking for her.”
“Fae,” Magdalena said, “so, Torri’s involved in this. You’re doing it for her?”
“No,” I lied. Magdalena shook her head.
“You know how I can always tell when you’re lying, Laytham?” I made a low groaning sound and rubbed my face. “Your lips are moving. Of course it has to do with her; most things that get you motivated in your life have to do with your ego or your kinda dead girlfriend.”
“Hey,” I said, “I was with you. I tried, I really fucking tried. I stopped drinking, I cut back on the smoking. I even kept you as far away from the fucking Satan thing as I could. I tried, okay?”
“I know you did,” she said. “I did too. It was just … bad, we were just bad. I tried to give you what I thought you wanted and needed but were too stubborn to let yourself have. I tried to love you, and you kept pushing me away. Banging your head against that wall, Laytham, it wears you out.”
I heard an echo of Anna’s words earlier. “I know,” I said. “I’m a selfish son of a bitch. It wasn’t you. You gave me every scrap of you, freely, with love, with really good fucking love. I just … fucked it up.”
Magdalena watched her cigarette burn toward entropy. “I finally figured out why you’re still mooning over Torri,” she said.
“Don’t,” I said.
“No, Laytham, you need to hear it,” she said. “Because she’s the perfect woman for you, she’s unobtainable, unreachable; you can stay faithful to her because any trespass is forgiven. You have memory and grief instead of messy living, clumsy, uncertain love. A dead woman is the perfect partner for a man who doesn’t want life to touch him.” I stayed silent. There was nothing I could say to any of that. Magdalena reached out and touched my hand. “I was angry and hurt when we parted. I thought you had presented a lie to me about who you are. But you did tell me the truth, you did warn me. I just lied to myself.”
“What are you working on?” I asked. “It sounds dangerous.”
“And now we run as fast as we can away from the real danger,” she said, smiling, “the ugly truth.” She crushed out the cigarette in the glass tray on the table and then stole a sip of my beer. She made a face,
