FAREWELL GHOST

constrictor, the repenting Satan stumbling along with his giant wooden cross, the artists and skaters and beach bums and Anthony Kiedis lookalikes and Post Malone lookalikes. Fiasco had a friend who lived on one of the old canals and that friend threw parties every Saturday night. Savy, Clay noticed, steered wide of the bong circles and upstairs hookups, preferring to hang out on the roof-deck with Mr. Eddy, the resident Bullmastiff, or sit out front in the rowboat tied to the dock, strumming her acoustic with her bare feet up. And though he made a serious effort not to follow her around, Clay often encroached on her solitude. He was here to be with her, after all, not his drunken, bro-hugging drummer or his angry, philosophizing bass player—and certainly not for the temptation of the increasingly harder drugs that were showing up at the canal house. He remembered Savy’s warning and that, if nothing else, kept him on the straight-edge path. His addiction to her company was a safer alternative, whatever the side effects. He loved her patience as she schooled him in the Circle of Fifths and the pentatonic scale. He loved the ten-dollar vocabulary she sometimes used—ambisinister, vainglorious—in everyday conversation, and how she frequently inserted profanity into the middle of words: Every-fucking-where I look, there’s some vainglorious dumbass with a tribal tattoo. And he loved the way Savy had listened to him when he finally told her about his mother, finding her crumpled and dead at the bottom of the stairs, and how the memory seemed to hurt her as much as it hurt him. Empathy was a gift that could heal the world, Boyle once sang, and Savy had it stockpiled.

One night, halfway through a particularly rowdy get-together, they bailed and walked from the canals down to the beach with Mr. Eddy. Savy found the rooftop where the Chili Peppers had filmed their “Rain Dance Maggie” video and the rooftop (she had a real thing for rooftops, this one) where Jim Morrison had spent the summer of ’65, sleeping under the stars. She’d brought her guitar along and they did an unrehearsed Doors tribute, Clay crooning “The End” and “Indian Summer” down at the passing crowd, who didn’t miss a beat, shouting “Jim?” at the silhouette above. Others simply scowled and invited Clay to take a running leap, splatter himself across the sidewalk.

Sometimes they stayed out late enough to watch the dawn-patrol surfers hit the water. Then it was back to BadVan and, after relieving Randy’s of many crullers and cream-filleds, a led-footed sprint through the Sepulveda Pass before L.A. could wake up and throw a traffic jam in front of them.

Looking back, Clay would know these weeks as the best in his life; in the company of new friends, creating music, growing his hair out, and discovering a sprawling urban wilderness that was fast becoming home.

Then came the day when Fiasco Joe announced he’d landed them a gig, and even as Clay’s excitement rose and his self-doubt flooded in, he was already lamenting the fact that the first chapter of his life in a band was coming to an end.

Things would only get more complicated from here.

“Am I ready? Really?”

Clay was bringing three hours of practice to a close the way he usually did—with a state-of-the-union with his ghostly mentor. The Generator had changed in recent weeks, from a storage room to the recording and rehearsal space it originally had been. Peter, seeing his son (eventually) repair the master suite and the cracked window, and perhaps feeling a bit guilty about his relationship with Essie, after all, had given Clay full run of the place, and Clay spent his caretaker salary on a decent amplifier and a gently-used Regan-puke-green couch. Savy found a leopard-print rug at a yard sale and Spider resurrected a few dusty, fat-cushioned chairs from the Knickerbocker’s basement. Having moved his plans for a home gym into the main house, Peter nevertheless equipped the Generator with recess lighting and added a dart board and Crossroads, a vintage rally car-themed pinball machine in which he, Peter, accrued the highest score on and which Clay’s bandmates had been trying to best ever since.

“Ignoring my question doesn’t fill me with confidence,” Clay told Boyle.

We played our first show in the parking lot of The Forum, came the reply. After weeks of communicating, Clay sometimes forgot there wasn’t another body in the room. I’m sure you read about that somewhere.

“They say you guys snuck into the parking lot of an Aerosmith show and started a riot.”

We had a generator for the amps and did it guerrilla-style. Jumped from our SUV like the A-Team and played about two and a half songs before the cops surrounded us. If anyone caused a riot, it was them. Everyone else was dancin’ and havin’ a grand time.

“We’re not doing anything that awesome,” Clay said. “I mean, all it is is some girl’s 16^th birthday. A bunch of high-school sophomores who’ll probably spend our set texting each other. But a gig’s a gig, right? I want to play well.”

Never worry about the crowd. If you play good, if you play fierce, they’ll go from skeptics to believers in seconds. 

Clay understood the simple wisdom in that. Their songs were catchy punk, folk, metal, hardcore, post-hardcore rock tunes and Clay needed to have confidence in them. Still, even if he and Boyle had written most of the songs together, and even if Savy and the gang had helped perfect them, Clay couldn’t shake the suspicion that all he would ever be was a disillusioned loser from Philadelphia. Could he really bring a song to proper life in front of an audience?

The springs of the adjacent chair groaned as Boyle shifted his weight. He was doing things like that recently, human things, playing the pinball machine or longingly spooning up Clay’s baked ziti, even pounding out Keith Moon beats when Spider left his drums behind. Almost as if, Clay thought, he forgets he’s dead sometimes.

“There’s