Opening Act Read online

  Grief Bacon, by Overlords of Loneliness.

  There were five faces on the cover, in a kind of modernist design—tilted at odd angles, with unnatural lighting. The one at the forefront must be the lead singer Zee was always going on about. Loni cocked her head appreciatively. Not bad…if you liked the square-jawed, alpha-male type. She herself preferred the bespectacled, intensely intellectual sort.

  But he had brooding eyes, this Shay Dayton. Nothing wrong with brooding eyes.

  Of course, that was probably just Photoshop.

  She turned the CD case over.

  The back cover was the same as the front, only with all five members’ faces now bloated out of proportion. Definitely Photoshop.

  And in the place where the title had been on the front cover, was the word “Kummerspeck.”

  She took out her smartphone and Googled it.

  Kummerspeck—A German word meaning “excess weight gained from emotional overeating.”

  English translation: “Grief bacon.”

  She let out an involuntary bark of laughter. She had to admit, that was pretty witty. Maybe she was being hasty in dismissing Overlords of Loneliness so quickly. She put the disc into Zee’s stereo and began playing it—turning up the music loud enough so that it cloaked the worst of the jackhammer. She sat on Zee’s bed, listening and holding the CD case in her hands. She stared into Shay Dayton’s eyes, almost daring him to win her over.

  And…he didn’t.

  She’d expected a whole cycle of songs about loss and longing and appetite, as promised by the title. But there was only one tune, “Feed Me,” that even came close, and it seemed to be mainly about sex in a way Loni didn’t really want to think too hard about.

  The other tunes all seemed to be standard-issue rock songs, some a little more driven, others more like ballads, but the lyrics were completely unremarkable. There was a song titled “Never Till Next Time,” but the title was the cleverest thing about it. The bridge was utterly pedestrian:

  No use making promises I can’t keep

  No use going to bed when I can’t sleep

  No use pretending I’m not in too deep

  I say never, but if ever

  You crooked your finger I wouldn’t linger

  I’d be back in your thrall

  Back at your beck and call.

  It wasn’t horrible, but there was nothing behind it. The song felt as though it was written merely because the singer had to sing something. She felt no actual longing behind the words, no real desperation, nothing approaching the fever of romantic obsession. It was typical pop-music posturing.

  She felt a series of vibrations from the pocket of her terrycloth robe and realized her phone was buzzing. She jumped up and turned down the stereo, then pulled her phone out and answered it.

  It was Byron. “Didn’t wake you, did I?”

  “No. It’s after ten. Please.”

  “Sorry. I never know. I never see you anymore.”

  “Well, not because I’m sleeping.” She walked to the kitchen. “Plus, there’s this jackhammer thing going on here that would wake the dead.”

  “Is that what that is? I just thought we had a bad connection.”

  She fetched a cup from the cabinet, then a bag of green tea. “It’s driving me crazy. I can’t think straight.”

  “Well, good. ’Cause I’m giving you a reason to get away from it. Come to lunch with me.”

  “Today?” She dropped the tea bag in the cup.

  “Today,” he confirmed. “We’ve got something to discuss.”

  “Can’t we do it over the phone?”

  “I’d prefer not to. Especially with that racket going on. What’s the matter, you’re suddenly too busy for your sad old professor?”

  “No, no,” she said, going to the sink to fill the teapot before remembering there was no water. “It’s just, I haven’t taken a shower.”

  “So take a shower.”

  “Can’t,” she said, putting the pot back on the stove. “The jackhammer is for the plumbing. Everything’s off for God knows how long.”

  “Well, how dirty can you be? Seriously.”

  She sniffed the sleeve of her T-shirt. She was a little sour, but not really offensive. “My hair,” she said, running her hand through it.

  “You’re welcome to come over and use my shower,” Byron said, then quickly added, “or wear a scarf. Or a hat. Aren’t girls supposed to have these tricks?”

  Loni decided to ignore his offer. “It’s just…I feel gross. Whether I am or not.”

  “Look,” he said, and she could tell he was getting a little irritable, having to cajole her while all this noise was getting in their way, “you’re the one who, when we were reading Shakespeare and Spenser and Sidney, told me it was your dream to live in Elizabethan London.”

  “Well…it was. It is. Everything about it.” She grimaced. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “No one ever bathed in the sixteenth century. They slept in their clothes and only changed once every two months or so.”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “That’s Elizabethan. So use that vibrant imagination of yours. Just throw something on, and come to lunch. Pretend I’m Philip Sidney and you’re the queen.”

  “I’m pretty sure Elizabeth I changed her clothes more than every two months.”

  “When Elizabeth I died there was half an inch of permanent makeup on her face. So don’t even.”

  She gasped. “You’re lying!”

  “I’m not. She never washed it off. Just kept applying new layers.”

  She laughed, aghast. “Liar!”

  “Google it. And meet me at noon at the Glass Onion on Ferris.”

  She Googled it. He wasn’t lying. Also, after her death the queen’s coronation ring had to be sawed off her finger because skin had grown over it. Loni was delightedly horrified. She wondered if Byron knew that. Probably. He was such a wonderful repository of bizarre facts and anecdotes.

  She pulled on a cotton dress and sandals—not exactly Elizabethan—and spritzed herself with plenty of the sea-mist perfume her mother had given her for Christmas. Finally, something from her mom was actually coming in handy! (Usually Loni wore no scent at all, which she’d told her mother at least five hundred times.) Then she pulled back her hair into a ponytail and put on a purple beret she’d bought at a carnival on an impulse and which she’d looked at the next morning and thought, I will never wear that. Never say never, she reminded herself.

  That made her think of Overlords of Loneliness—“Never Till Next Time”—and sent her back to Zee’s room to take the CD from the player and put it back in its case. As she dropped it back on Zee’s stack, Shay Dayton’s brooding blue eyes caught her attention once more.

  She wrinkled her nose at him. “Sorry, buddy,” she said. “Not gonna work on this girl.”

  It was a beautiful day. There’d been a swift and sudden rain shower while she drove to the restaurant, but it had cleansed the air, swept away the humidity that had hung over the morning, and left behind a slight sharpness, as showers sometimes do. Loni and Byron sat at an outdoor table, and Byron was wearing his robin’s-egg-blue shirt, which Loni had once complimented him on—after which he seemed to wear it more often than not.

  She felt a little stir of something in her chest…a suspicion. It wasn’t the first time she’d had it. And she felt herself suddenly glad she wasn’t at her freshest and most attractive. They engaged in the usual small talk—faculty gossip and the like. One of the TAs, a guy Byron despised and Loni occasionally defended, had been caught in a sexting scandal and had been fired, but he was fighting the dismissal. “I guess he doesn’t mind the department board reviewing the ‘evidence,’ ” Byron had sneered.

  Loni had said, “Maybe he’s got nothing to be ashamed of,” which had made Byron blush. But the waiter arrived, and after they ordered Byron’s manner turned suddenly serious.

  “Do you remember Tammi Monckton?” he asked.
/>
  “Sure. She was your TA when I first started studying with you.” She knit her brow. “What about her?”

  “She took a sabbatical to write. I just heard from her. She’s finished her project and now she’s looking for a publisher.”

  Loni felt a flash of envy. Someone who had been bold enough to live her dream. “Good for her,” she said, and tried to drown her jealousy with a few gulps of iced tea.

  “And she wants to come back,” Byron said.

  Loni licked her lips and put the glass back down. “Pardon?”

  “She wants her job back. I told her I’m moving to St. Nazarius, and she doesn’t care. She’s been at a writers’ colony in Maine. She doesn’t have any roots. She’ll go to the West Coast, drop of a hat.”

  “She wants to be your TA again?”

  He nodded.

  They sat quietly for a moment as Byron allowed Loni to process this. Then he reached across the table and placed his hand over hers. “I told her I’d offered the position to someone else. Someone who hadn’t yet accepted or declined it.”

  Loni nodded.

  “And I’m not retracting the offer. You’re my first choice.” He paused, then withdrew his hand. “But.”

  “But…?”

  Their waiter appeared and set their salads before them. Byron waited till he’d gone, then smiled a bit crookedly and said, “You’re very young. And I’m very fond of you. So I’ve allowed you to go all this time without giving me an answer. Even though it isn’t really fair to me.”

  Loni gulped. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think…”

  “I know. As I said, you’re young. But I leave in two-and-a-half weeks, Loni. Fine, fine, I know you, you’re brilliant, you’re gifted. I want you on your terms. I want you to be comfortable—happy, even. So I haven’t pressed you.” He sighed and shrugged his shoulders. “But now it’s not just unfair to me; it’s unfair to Tammi.”

  Loni looked at her salad. “I see.”

  “Now I’ve upset you. Please don’t get all gloomy. This is the reason I didn’t want to talk about it over the phone. Let’s have a nice lunch and enjoy ourselves. My treat, by the way.”

  “Thank you,” she said, barely audible.

  “But I need your answer very soon. That’s all.”

  “How soon?”

  His face momentarily reddened, and Loni realized she’d insulted him. He was trying so hard to be accommodating, and she was treating him like he was some horrible surgery she kept putting off. “Four days,” he said. “I told Tammi I’d give her my answer this weekend. Which means you have to give me yours before then.”

  She nodded. “I will. Promise.”

  “Growing up is hard. I understand that. When you’re young, everything is wide open. You have a seemingly infinite number of possibilities before you. And then,” he said, smiling sadly, “you start making choices, and with each choice, a door closes. But that’s how it is, Loni. That’s what it means to be an adult. You make choices, and you say good-bye to the possibilities those choices preclude.”

  “I know,” she said, using her fork to toy with her salad. “You’re right.”

  He sat back. “Anyway, that’s all I’m going to say about it. Now, tell me what your crazy roommate’s been up to.”

  Interviewing for a job, came immediately to mind. Closing doors. Growing up. But instead, she told him about Zee’s misadventures at a recent strip-Twister party, and by the time the second course came he was almost choking with laughter.

  CHAPTER 2

  Zee was a fairly normal-looking girl. She was an average size and had naturally curly hair that she was always straightening in imitation of the girls with naturally straight hair (who were always curling theirs). She looked great in casual clothes and was always running around in shorts and a hoodie. She got a lot of attention from guys, who liked her sporty, easygoing style.

  But her obsession with music seemed to derange her. Loni had seen it happen before. Zee would go into her room to get ready for a concert, and she’d come out wearing a black leather bustier, her hair all teased, and wearing enough mascara around her eyes to give the Exxon Valdez spill a run for its money. She had a tattoo on her lower back of a burning kitten—the residue of her infatuation with another band she didn’t like anymore (called, perhaps obviously, Flaming Kitteh)—and she usually tried to cover it up, but on concert nights she didn’t bother. The only good thing about that tattoo, as far as Zee was concerned, was that it had taught her not to make lifelong commitments to rock-and-roll bands. If she hadn’t learned that lesson, probably the only un-inked skin she’d have left would be on her scalp, under her hair. Some of her friends, alas, had never learned that lesson. Looking at them, Loni wondered, Where exactly are you going to get a job? Not to mention the piercings. Zee, who had been in the workforce for a couple of years, knew to shy away from too many of those, something her wilder friends had not twigged to. Loni imagined what it would be like, twenty years from now, when the bagger at her supermarket was a middle-aged woman with a cobra tattoo around her neck and a Diet Coke can through one earlobe.

  So in that respect, Zee was more conservative than her concert-going friends. But tonight when she came out of her room, slinging her bag over her shoulder, Loni had to gasp.

  “How do I look?” Zee asked.

  Loni groped for some euphemisms, but they failed her. “Like you were ridden hard and put away wet,” she said.

  Zee grinned and said, “You’re so sweet,” then gave Loni a peck on the cheek. “But we gotta get going here. Seriously, Loni. Get dressed.”

  Loni took up her own purse and said, “I am dressed.”

  Zee looked at her, appalled. Loni, seeing this, gave herself a quick reappraisal and couldn’t figure out what was wrong. She was wearing designer jeans, a filmy tank top, and a burlap-colored hoodie. She thought she looked awesome. Badass, even.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  Zee gave her a wary, sidelong look. “Nothing. I mean.” She grimaced. “If you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “It’s just…this is a rock concert, Loni. Not a meeting of the Daughters of the American Revolution.”

  Loni swung her purse at her and hit her in the arm. “Just because I don’t look like a sex worker!”

  Zee laughed. “No worries there. Not a man alive who’d pay for that.”

  “Only because I’d charge more than the seven-dollar special you’re obviously offering,” Loni shot back as she followed her out the door.

  They laughed together as Zee locked the door behind them.

  In the cab to the concert, Zee was obviously feeling celebratory. It was turning out to be a great week for her. The interview had gone well, and she’d been asked back for a follow-up the next morning. Now she was on her way to see her favorite band, with an invitation to party with them afterward.

  She fiddled with her right earring, a big black quartz alpha symbol (her left was an omega), which annoyed her by continually pulling itself out of its clasp. “Now, remember, you have to stay with me,” she said. “We can’t risk getting separated.”

  Loni furrowed her brow. “What do you mean? How can we get separated? Aren’t we seated together?”

  She snorted. “There’s no seating, duh! It’s all standing room. For dancing. Or moshing, or whatever. Seriously, you’ve never been to Club Uncumber?”

  Of course she’d been to Club Uncumber. It was one of the city’s only hipster hangouts. It was impossible to have a dating life in town without getting dragged there at least once. But the few times she’d been there she’d avoided the main floor. The noise from the bands had always been so loud she could feel it resonate in her pelvis. Instead she opted for hanging out by the bar, where she tried to have a conversation with whichever guy had brought her there. It had been like trying to make small talk in a jet engine. So her experiences at Club Uncumber hadn’t exactly been memorable.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on you,” she said,
imagining Zee up in front of the stage, jumping up and down and flailing her arms like she was trying to signal a ship from a deserted island. It would all be to attract the attention of Shay Dayton, and no doubt there’d be dozens of other frenzied, convulsive girls doing exactly the same thing, limbs flying in all directions. If Loni stayed by Zee’s side, she’d risk getting her eye poked out or her kneecap busted.

  “You won’t be able to ‘keep an eye’ on me,” Zee insisted, turning to her. As her head swiveled, the alpha earring came loose again. As she fumbled with it, she said, “This is Overlord’s last regular gig there, for, like, ever. And everyone who’s ever been a regular will be jammed in there to say good-bye.”

  “I’m sure they’ll be back,” Loni said with a slight roll of her eyes.

  “Yes, but then they’ll be visitors,” Zee wailed. “They won’t be ours anymore. It’s like, we’ve nurtured this band all by ourselves, from their very first gigs back in the old days when Kelly Ramos was on rhythm guitar, before he, y’know, got married and moved out of state. Idiot.” She sneered. “And we’ve stuck with them and supported them and loved them and watched them grow, and now we’re releasing them into the world.” A little tear brimmed on the lid of one eye. An actual, human tear. Loni couldn’t believe it. It seemed to be having some trouble falling—it probably wasn’t up to surmounting that mother lode of mascara.

  But Loni didn’t mock her; she had a feeling that Zee wasn’t so much celebrating the success of the band she loved as she was mourning the death of the community that had built up around them. Possibly, she didn’t even realize she was doing that. But it was clear: once these local boys went national, there wouldn’t be any reason for their fans here in town to come together anymore. No need for them to stay in touch, even. They’d inevitably drift apart. Zee would almost certainly invest all of her enthusiasm and emotion in some new band, but she was getting a tad old for that kind of thing now. And the new band almost certainly wouldn’t be as successful as Overlords of Loneliness. Zee had just lived through a golden age, a period of her life that she would always look back on as being filled with joy and excitement and the thrill of one good thing following another.