bloody knuckles, reaching down

*

There’s rules that go with being Adam’s errand boy – sort of workplace regulations. Be there whenever he needs you, don’t mess with his stuff, don’t ask annoying questions. It’s the middle of the day, Adam is out cold, and he’s about to violate one of the cardinal rules of their acquaintance by messing with Adam’s stuff. His bathroom has been out of order literally since they’ve known each other, and even the possibility of something seriously bachelor grisly in there can’t deter him from guerrilla repairs, from an act of kindness given that any proposed alternative solution probably violates a couple dozen civic health codes. He’s going to go in there with a wrench and a c-clamp and a rudimentary understanding of household plumbing — but he won’t let Adam live in a wreck, he won’t let him keep living like this and doing whatever he’s been doing out of sheer indifference. This is what Adam is paying him for – to keep things running smoothly – and Ian is pretty good at fixing things, so it seems like a pretty solid idea.

The door knob’s jammed from the other side with a wooden plank, but it’s not hard to jiggle it loose. The smell hits him first thing, solid and stale.

He’d expected dirty dishes in the bathtub, a dead cat propped up on the toilet cistern. He’d lived with musicians before, he knew about filth and ash and the kind of stratified crust that built up around bachelors who didn’t want to wreck their hands doing dishes. It smells like grout and bleach and rotten wood. Somewhere, a fly is buzzing. Rat shit on the tile, baseboards splitting; no sign whatsoever of human occupation, let alone use.

Against the wall there’s a refrigerator plugged in, old and squat, humming. The plug is wired directly into the wall – one of those things Adam does that Ian should probably keep quiet about, not that anyone’s going to complain if this place burns to the ground. Adam has a fridge downstairs, but it’s in way worse shape than this. It thrums, rattles like glass on glass as if any minute it might spray sparks. Ian bends down to look at it, wary of opening the sealed door. Three dark droplets spot the top corner of it like a constellation of freckles – Ian scrapes at one with his fingernail, acting on autopilot, and it crumbles into rust.

He doesn’t look inside.

He doesn’t stop to see. He turns around and walks out, before he understands what he sees – the sense is there, really strong and up to his eyes like a physical sensation, that if he stays here he’ll know something he shouldn’t

There’s no way to barricade the door from the inside the way he found it, so he balances the half-rotten board against the ancient bathtub (very carefully, so it doesn’t clatter to the floor) and backs out of the room. He guides the door shut as carefully as he can, and prays the weathered metal parts of the latch won’t click too loud as they slide in place.

There’s nothing there. There was nothing to see, and he didn’t see anything in the first place, just busted plumbing and old appliances made new again. There was nothing inherently strange in not wanting a dropout with no background check fucking around in his personal belongings, his medicine cabinet, his wine cellar, whatever.

Months later, he will be glad he didn’t look.

**

This is the kind of job that Ian can bashfully say he enjoys every minute of, that he’d do it for free, that it’s such an experience just to meet with Adam and to learn – but it’s hard to remember his own glowing endorsements when he’s driving like a maniac with a can of Red Bull in his lap because Adam wants him there when,, exactly – he’s been on the road all week, and would kill to just sit down, just rest, just sleep for more than four hours at a time max. Or when he’s dragged his ass all over the country (train ticket after train ticket, broken phone, busted-up shoes and no coat) to secure some purchase under the table and by the time he gets back, cradling the bashed-up case to his chest like a fucking baby, Adam doesn’t even want it any more, or he only wanted it for spare parts.

it’s times like that that he really hates him. He hates that this is how he has to make money, he hates that it’s really fucking lucrative and he has friends who would kill for it – to blunder into some effortlessly cool underground rock god and soak up his tunes, not to mention pocketing $50 for his trouble every now and then, $100, $500. Not often. But Adam wouldn’t have to keep him on the hook if he didn’t treat him rough. Ian wonders who had this job before him. Adam has a solid series of recordings going, a massive output of work for a guy in his thirties tops – he doesn’t need Ian to get his stuff made, and he doesn’t need him for supplies, instruments, vinyl, books, nothing. Ian’s presence just makes it easier for him to be lazy.

For his own part, Ian doesn’t need to work for him either. He doesn’t need the money that bad, he could play his own gigs and not even need to sleep on floors. This is a privilege, a bonus, something extra: getting to hear the best stuff before anybody else does and now and then let something tantalizing loose on the world. That part’s out of line, and he knows it. The guilty ache chases him for weeks but it can’t drown out the satisfaction that music’s supposed to be heard, and perhaps that he knows best, that Adam’s got a dinosaur streak in him that needs to be contravened for his own good. Only sometimes, only rarely. Nobody’s supposed to know where he is, who he is, what he is; Ian is just his emissary, his agent in the outside world.

***

There are more rules. Not to question Adam’s intuitions, not to ask how he knows who he knows, or what. Not to spend the night. Or, rather – he’s spent all night here before, when Adam’s needed the extra set of hands (that is to say, not often) but he’s not supposed to sleep there or to bring over any of his own shit or anything. They may be friends – even at the worst of times Ian can’t bring himself to doubt this, that Adam is his friend – but they’re not exactly pals. Nothing really lives there. Adam’s never had friends over before, so when he introduced him to Eve – and Ava – it was really something else.

Ava is Adam’s wife’s sister. She has grabby little hands and a soft dress and he doesn’t remember the club or the drive home, he only remembers her kissing him.

He wakes up, sunk deep into the sagging couch, and tastes tart Heineken vomit in the back of his throat. Adam’s lips are against his neck, the muscles of his arm and shoulder shift against his own chest – and Ian can feel this, feel all of it like he can feel each separate strand of muscle contracting beneath the broader mass, every thread of blood pulsing with a bad-trip stereoscopic certainty.

His throat is cracking, his eyes won’t focus, he can’t speak. Adam raises his head, but the feeling of his lips is still there in the form of a bruise.

Ian shuts his eyes again and tries to focus.

Adam is talking to someone in the room, but it’s not to him. Ian feels like he’s woken from the worst night’s sleep in his entire life – he’s slept on hotel floors and couches plenty, and is used to waking up stiff and miserable, but this is hell. The girl isn’t there any more. His hair sticks to his cheek.

“I’m sorry,” he croaks, trying to sit up; the soreness shoots through his whole body, nestling in his pelvis and leaving his spine like a fossil. The woman, Eve, bends over him murmuring nice nonsense and peels his jacket off of him. His lower lip is sticky. Ian takes a deep rattling breath, and tastes blood. He blinks to clear his eyes.

Ava is pressed against the far wall, still as a statue and all one shape, fur coat and blond mane like one mass, the red splash of a bloody nose. He can see her now, with an immediacy like a camera coming into focus, very clearly – the blood that coats her soft upper lip and her little pink tongue jumping out spasmodically to sweep it clean. Somebody hit her? he thinks, quite distinctly, twice.

Speech strobes back into focus; he can hear again, no longer muffled but keen and sharp.

“That’s right, darling, no harm done.” The woman says it, Eve says it, her voice a creaking subsonic purr. Eve’s hand rests on his forearm; Adam’s hand rests against her lower back, and he can feel the continuity flow through them like an unbroken chain.

Ian takes a few more breaths, like he’s taking his first steps. “Alright. Yeah, alright.”