Tom Andes

Remy’s band, Night Chode, was opening for his ex, Alissa’s band at a club called Gasa Gasa on Freret. Time was, Scent of Jasmine would’ve had the opening slot, Remy at the top of the bill, but oh how the worm had turned.

“Kind of a girly name,” Remy said, “isn’t it?” He was talking to Alissa’s bass player, Donald, who used to be Remy’s bass player. “Like all flowery? Why don’t you just call the band Steel Magnolia or Mint Julep or something?”

Donald was sipping his mocktail, pinky aloft. But it was all a put on. He was a metalhead from Bakersfield, California, straight as a Baptist in his denim jacket and skull rings. “I think Jasmine’s supposed to be a woman, not a flower.”

And okay, Remy had to concede the point, that was cooler. But he still didn’t like it.

“Why don’t I just name my next band Crotch Smell?” he said. “Or Aroma of Angela?”

Angela was another ex he wasn’t on speaking terms with, left over from a phase when he’d dated women at the beginning of the alphabet, a phase that had culminated in his six-month marriage to Alissa.

“Why don’t you?” Donald said, with that edge he’d had in his voice when he questioned Remy’s creative decisions in the band. “Or maybe you could call your band Evening Penis.”

And before Remy could say anything else, the guy walked away.

Sheesh, Remy thought. Passive-aggressive much? Yeah, Remy was well shut of Donald and Alissa both. He didn’t need any more toxic people in his life. He was just trying to get his shit together and make his art.

But though it killed him to admit it, Alissa looked good, resplendent, queenly, even, in a shimmering floor-length gown, pink and green, that must’ve set her back a car payment or two at the Buffalo Exchange on Magazine, and she floated among her subjects, waving a wand she’d brought for the occasion, though it was months before Halloween, like this was her coming out party. Gossamer. That was the word. And she beamed that 1000-watt smile around the room until it came to rest on him.

“You’re doing 35 minutes,” she said, “right?”

At close quarters, the wattage of that smile didn’t so much intensify as it blinded. She’d had her teeth whitened, but the whole façade might crumble if you poked it in the right place.

“I thought you told me 45.” His blood pressure was rising, that familiar bump in his pulse.

She kept the smile in place, but nothing was behind it, nothing except Alissa’s naked ambition, thirst for power, and need for control.

Still beaming those whitened teeth around the room like she wanted everyone to know things were all right, Alissa glanced over her shoulder.

“The guys from the touring band are sick. Don’t worry, they all tested negative, but they’ve got colds, so they were hoping to finish their set early.”

The touring band was from Nashville, a bunch of dudes like literally half Remy’s age.

“Are you cutting your set short?” he said. And now maybe the wattage of that smile did dim a little bit.

“No,” Alissa said, “because we’re going on after, so it doesn’t really matter how long we play, does it?” She shook her head. “I should’ve known you were going to be like this.”

“No,” Remy said, “it’s fine. I guess I just thought everything was going to be equal, and I wish someone had told me sooner because I already wrote out my setlist.”

“It’s clearly not fine.” Alissa sighed. “You shouldn’t say things are fine when they’re not.”

“Really,” Remy said, “it’s okay.”

Though it wasn’t okay, and it wasn’t fine, either. It was typical Alissa, making a last-minute power play. Their whole marriage had devolved into each of them pretending things were fine when they weren’t, trying to outdo each other, outmaneuvering one another with how self-sacrificing they were being.

But it all masked a fight for control, a toxic death spiral and a passive-aggressive race to the bottom, and they were still doing it. It never ended.

“I can just tell them you’re doing 45,” she said, cranking that smile up again, but with a pained little intake of breath, wincing, so that according to the script, he was supposed to refuse this kindness. “I mean, it’s only 10 minutes, and I’m sure they won’t mind. It’s just that usually, on a bill with three bands, you know, the first band does do a shorter set.”

Lord knew you could never tell a woman whose dad was a federal judge anything, and maybe he shouldn’t have joined this bill. But he liked the guys from the touring band. And anyway, Remy and Alissa were grown folks, adults who were capable of being friends, even if they’d shared a bed and bodily fluids for a few years, though maybe that long engagement had been a red flag.

“I’ll do 35,” he said.

“I’ll tell them,” she said, her hand on his arm, “that you’re doing 45.”

“No,” Remy said. “I don’t want to do 45 anymore. Tell them I’ll do whatever they want. Hell, I don’t have to go on at all.”

“Now you really are being childish,” Alissa said.

“I’ll do 30,” Remy said, “tops. And you don’t have to resort to name-calling.”

“Great,” Alissa said. He’d expected more of an argument, but she was beaming again. “I’ll tell them you’re doing 30. Tops.”

And she floated across the room in that shimmering gown, leaving him with the sinking feeling that was what she’d wanted from him—a 30-minute set—all along.

Cursing under his breath, he wasn’t even surprised when Donald’s hand wandered into the small of her back, the guy looking at Remy over his shoulder, then looking away.

Well, they deserved each other, and he was better off being shut of both of them.

###

Still, when he took the stage 15 minutes after the scheduled start time—for a New Orleans club, they ran a tight ship at Gasa Gasa—he was dismayed, and it added insult to injury to realize he didn’t know most of the faces in the crowd, which meant ninety percent of those people weren’t there for him but for the touring band or more likely, Alissa and whatever she was calling her project.

“Hi,” Remy said into the microphone. “We’re Scent of a Woman, or the Artist Formerly Known as Night Chode.”

 Someone whistled. Remy’s sister had said she was bringing a couple friends, and he’d hoped to delay the start time until she could get there. How did Alissa know this many people? Hell, Donald was right about the name of Remy’s band, it was probably sexist.

“Ascent of a Woman,” he said into the microphone. Standing by the merch table, Alissa narrowed her eyes. Donald’s arms were folded.

Remy was playing through a vintage Ampeg, a tube amplifier that had once been an accordion amp and that had a delicious clean tone, sweet, clear, and drenched in reverb. The sound guys at that club were aces, and if the mix down front sounded half as good as what was in the monitor, this was going to kill.

He’d crossed off four songs to make the shorter set time, including one of his best, a faux-gospel number that let him stretch out on guitar, and they’d come to that point in the set, the 25-minute mark, when Sally and a couple of her friends from the title company where she worked walked in the door by the bar at the back of the room.

What was the harm in adding a couple songs back? Sally and her friends had paid their ten bucks to get in like everyone else, and since they’d come for him, it wasn’t fair if they only got to hear five minutes of his music.

And hell, if he added one of those songs back, he might as well add them all back, since that was the least Sally and her friends deserved.

“Thanks for coming out tonight,” he said, when they finished. Behind him, the sound guy and those kids from the touring band were starting to break down Remy’s equipment. When he looked at his phone, they were at the 48-minute mark. “Stick around for these guys from Nashville and then Odor of Ophelia.”

When he climbed off the stage, Donald bumped his shoulder.

“Hey,” Remy said.

“Sorry,” Donald said.

“Whatever,” Remy said.

“You guys were great.” Sally’s face was flushed, a strand of brown hair stuck to the film of sweat on her forehead.

“I’m glad you all managed to get here,” Remy said.

“Oh my God, we wouldn’t miss it for anything,” Sally said. “I got held up at work, otherwise we would have been here sooner. We had a big closing. My friends are really into the headliner.”

“You mean the guys from Nashville?” Remy said. They were just taking the stage now, their singer’s face red and inflamed under the stage lights.

“No.” Sally’s tone changed, like she’d just realized she was about to deliver a blow, and she wanted to soften it. “I mean Alissa’s band, the other band. What are they called? I just assumed since you guys were on this bill together, everything was okay.”

“A Good Scent from a Strange Woman,” Remy said, and one of Sally’s friends gave him a look.

“Is everything okay between you two?” Sally said. “I just assumed you were getting along again.”

            “It’s fine,” Remy said. Onstage, one of the dudes in the touring band sneezed, then they hit the first chord of their opening song, which Remy remembered from the last time they’d played together. They had a good thing going, sort of like Wilco before their whole experimental phase. No doubt within a couple years they’d be headlining festivals, touring with national acts, Remy still slogging away in the New Orleans bar scene, where he’d spent his life. God knew where Alissa would be.

            Don’t say you’re fine when you’re not: that had been one of the lessons from the few months they’d gone to couples counselling, but the counsellor had been a friend of a friend of Alissa’s, which even in a small town like New Orleans wasn’t ethical, and what were you supposed to do, anyway? Sometimes you had to lie and say everything was okay. Otherwise, we’d just be crying all the time, and no one would accomplish anything.

            “These guys are pretty good.” Sally was leaning close to him, raising her voice to speak over the music, sweat beading on her upper lip, and Remy nodded. Was it too late for him to do what she’d done, get a square job, date like a normal person? Hell, people went back to school, changed careers, started families or entirely new lives at his age, didn’t they?

“Yeah,” he said. “They’re great.”

“Do you want a drink?” She was making a sipping motion with her hand, that universal piece of sign language offering someone a beverage, and Remy said sure.

While she was at the bar, he checked out her friends, the one a pillowy blond with the kind of obliging look Remy should’ve been dating instead of getting involved with coldhearted, domineering bitches like Alissa. She was into the music, really feeling these guys from Nashville, but when Remy moved closer, she took a long step away from him, dancing with her back to him on the dancefloor.

Between songs, the drummer blew his nose into a hanky.

Sally handed Remy a Gnarly Barley.

“Thanks,” he said, and they touched cans.

“Listen,” she said.

“I think—” Remy said, almost at the same time she’d spoken. “What’s up?”

“No,” she said, “you.”

“You first,” Remy said.

“Really, it’s nothing,” Sally said. “Tell me what you were going to say.”

Remy’s mood darkened. Saying it was tantamount to admitting it was a problem, and it wasn’t a problem, not really, was it? Anyway, he’d always been able to tell Sally everything.

“I think Donald’s sleeping with Alissa,” he said.

There, that wasn’t so bad, now, was it? He’d almost said fucking. It was like removing a splinter, tough when you were doing it, but now that it was out, he felt relieved.

Sally was wincing, nodding, making a face where she did this sharp intake of breath through the corners of her mouth, like Alissa had done an hour ago, trying to squeeze his set time.

“Right,” she said.

“I mean, I don’t mind,” Remy said. The band had started up again, and he was raising his voice to speak over the guitar, the drums crashing. “It’s fine, right? I mean, whatever they do, we’re all adults, and it’s their business, right? I guess I’m just—I don’t know—I guess I’m worried about Donald. I mean, I know what Alissa’s like, and I know what she does to men. She eats guys like Donald for breakfast. She’s going to eat him alive.”

Vagina dentata. My old bass player is fucking my ex-wife. This town really was too small.

Sally was nodding, and he had the strange sensation he often had at shows of not knowing whether she’d heard half of what he said. What did it matter, anyway? He moved his mouth, and words came out. Why did anyone listen?

“It’s probably normal to be jealous,” she said, her hand on his arm.

“I’m not jealous,” Remy said. “I’m really not. I’m just worried about Donald, is all.”

Was he insisting too much? He felt like he had to say everything twice, shouting over the music.

“Whatever you feel,” Sally said, “it’s okay.”

“What were you going to tell me?” he said.

Sally was watching the band, the kids from Nashville, an awareness creeping through Remy, beginning in his gut and hitting his brain last.

“I’ll tell you later,” she said, pointing to the stage, raising her voice. “I want to watch these guys.”

“You knew,” Remy said, “about Donald and Alissa, didn’t you? You knew.”

But Sally shook her head, pantomiming deafness.

“Talk after,” she said, enunciating, like Remy couldn’t hear, like he had to read her lips.

###

But when the guys from Nashville finished, cutting their set short at 25 minutes, Alissa glided over to him in her satin robe, which looked more and more to Remy like a Halloween or a Mardi Gras decoration, like something you’d pick up in the Seasonal aisle at CVS or Walgreens or the K&B Drugstore and staple to your front door, like she’d dressed up as a fairy princess.

“Listen,” she said, “that really wasn’t cool, going over your set time like that, and I’m going to have to tell the booker here what you did.”

Was she wearing platforms? Remy wasn’t one to be threatened, and he’d always liked the fact she was a tall drink of water, as his Cajun uncle with the propeller boat in Thibodaux would’ve said, but she seemed to have gained a few inches, so that she was looking down at him. She was still holding that wand, and he imagined her tapping him on the head with it, casting a spell, blinking like Samantha on Bewitched and turning him into a mongoose.

“Sally and her friends came to see me,” he said, “and they couldn’t get here till 7:45. They paid their ten bucks like everyone else, so why couldn’t they see me play a few more songs?”

Alissa leaned closer, modulating her voice like she’d learned to do in therapy, only the brightness in her eyes betraying her anger.

“And what’s with all that Scent of a Woman stuff?” she said.

“I don’t know.” Remy shrugged. “I guess I got to thinking about the name of the band, and I decided Donald was right, it’s probably sexist.” He leaned in, trying to strike a perfect mimicry of her reasonable, measured tone. “And it’s not Scent of a Woman, it’s Ascent of a Woman. Get it?”

“You’re blaming Donald for this?” she said, and though he knew the path he’d chosen could lead nowhere good, Remy felt a little thrill, the rapid-fire blinking of her eyes a dead giveaway that he’d managed to worm his way under her skin, like that proverbial splinter. Striking his mark.

“I’m not blaming him,” Remy said. “I’m just saying he pointed it out, and I thought he made a good case.”

“Since when do you care about being sexist?”

Alissa recoiled, like she was surprised by this base creature in front of her, lowly Remy Fontenot, who’d defiled her bed and her body for two and a half years. How had he ever loved her? And having loved her, how could he wish for her destruction?

“Are you screwing Donald?” he said, and she made a face that could only be described as aghast, turning her head, like she’d swallowed something that wouldn’t go down. She started doing this thing with her chin, like she was trying to pop her ears on an airplane.

“Am I what?” she said.

“I mean, it’s cool if you are,” Remy said. “We’re all adults here, right?”

And he made a gesture that took them all in, Alissa, Sally, and Sally’s friends, hell, everyone in that club, as if they all might know Alissa was screwing her bass player, who had once been Remy’s bass player, and might all be fine with it.

But Sally pulled away from him, a smile fixed on her face but with nothing behind it, like when they demolished one of those Midcity shotgun houses, stripping it to the decking and leaving the façade.

And maybe he was pushing it. He felt like Wile E. Coyote in one of the Roadrunner cartoons, just in that moment of self-awareness after he runs off the cliff, but before he falls.

“I don’t see where that’s any of your business,” Alissa said, “quite frankly.”

Onstage, Donald was setting up his electric double bass, the band waiting for Alissa to make her entrance. Remy felt a little jolt, a smidge of satisfaction. You knew you were getting to her when she started using pretentious phrases like quite frankly.

“It’s cool,” he said. “Like I said, we’re all adults, all friends here.”

“Some of us,” Alissa said, “are adults.”

And she was just about to hit a boil.

“You can screw who you want to screw,” Remy said, and he wasn’t raising his voice, but from the way heads were turning around them, he must be projecting. “Even if he used to be my best friend and the bass player in my band, even if he’s now the bass player in your band, it’s totally okay if you’re screwing him.”

“And you’re just asking me about this because you’re curious,” Alissa said.

“I was just curious,” Remy said.

“And you’re what,” Alissa said, “giving me your blessing?”

“I guess you could call it that,” Remy said. “But you don’t need my blessing. It’s the Twenty-first Century, you’re a grown-ass woman, and you can screw who you want to screw, even if he used to be the bass player in my band and my friend.”

And he closed his eyes because he was waiting for it, anticipating whatever concoction she had in that keg cup splashing his face, and he didn’t want to get booze in his eyes.

But Alissa was looking at him with the disinterested expression of a lepidopterist fixing a butterfly—perhaps a live specimen—to a display board.

“Like I said,” she said, “I’ll be talking to the booker. Now if you’ll excuse me, my band is ready, and we need to get started because it’s a school night, and we want to wrap up by eleven.”

And she might’ve tapped him on the head with her wand, shrinking him to the size of a pea, for how diminished he felt as she glided across the room toward the stage.

On the dancefloor, Sally’s friends turned their backs, the one giving him a dirty look over her shoulder. Sally came over and rubbed his back, her palm between his shoulder blades, but with a sad expression, like Remy had disappointed her, too.

###

And the truth was, he’d never seen anything like it. Never seen a band command a small room quite the way Alissa’s band did.

They were, first of all, chicks, having reversed the rock cliché by having Donald—the one dude in the band—on bass.

And though Remy strained to hear the songs in those whispery, finger-picked little ditties Alissa had worked out sitting on the edge of their bed—sometimes on his acoustic guitar—with that band behind her, it didn’t matter. In those full arrangements, the songs came to life, and more importantly, they came across, connecting with the crowd that had by now packed that club.

Who were these people?

They were dancing up front by the stage in duos and trios, men with men, women with women, as if in a prelude to a massive pansexual orgy. Remy hadn’t seen so many dudes in cutoffs since the last time he’d wandered across the Lavender Line and into Oz, the infamous gay bar on Bourbon Street, during Southern Decadence, and if he was openminded and comfortable with his sexuality, he felt lost without the familiar signs and signifiers. Were they gay men who’d just finished their shifts as delivery drivers and line cooks—these lithe creatures in Converse and combat boots, with semi-ironic concert tees and eyeshadow—or were they straight men on the make?

He felt like they were all in on a joke, and he’d missed the punchline, or maybe he was the punchline. And it filled him with the helpless rage of the old and impotent, like he’d become a meme, old man shaking fist at sky, while at the same time, grudgingly, as a fellow artist, he couldn’t help but admire Alissa for bringing it off.

“They’re pretty good, aren’t they?” Sally said, and as a woman with a mullet in stonewashed cutoffs and fishnets danced past him, Remy had to admit that they were. The weird part was that he wasn’t that much older than any of these people—hell, some of them might’ve been his age—but he felt dated, unhip, like a fossil, uncapable of recognizing whether their Def Leppard tees were ironic, nor of understanding what it would mean if they were.

“Yeah,” he said, “they’re all right. I mean, it’s cool. I know we had some rough patches, but I always knew she had it in her.”

And Sally squeezed his arm—Sally, dear Sally, who’d always believed in the best in Remy—like she was proud of him for extending his ex-wife that small bit of grace.

And maybe she was extending him grace, too. Letting him tell himself he’d recognized and supported Alissa’s talent all along—nurtured it, even—as opposed to feeling as crushed as he did.

By the time they finished, it was 11:30, and when the house lights came up, Alissa took off her guitar, her Ovation acoustic, basking in their applause. “Encore,” someone shouted, and the band broke into one last song, one she’d been saving, a song that was about Remy. But he didn’t begrudge her that, not even the line about how she’d broken a bottle of Turbodog in frustration with him in the street one night, and now she hoped all the riders in the bike lane didn’t slash open their tires.

In fairness, she could’ve written a lot worse. And she had. Next time she posted something to Bandcamp, he’d have to give the lyrics a listen. But for now, this was as bad as it got.

###

And so, at the end of the night, Remy Fontenot, with his Fender Jaguar strapped to his back in a gig bag that didn’t fit, so the headstock was sticking out, with his pedalboard, his merch, and his cables in a velour suitcase in one hand and his Ampeg accordion amplifier in the other, was hauling his gear out to the Toyota Tacoma pickup his uncle had given him when Donald followed him out of the club.

“Hey,” Donald said, inclining his chin at Remy the way dudes did.

“What’s up?” Remy said. He was loading the amplifier into the back of the van, strapping it down with the bungee cords he used to keep it from bouncing when he hit the sinkholes that dotted New Orleans streets like an obstacle course, like the city was a bombed-out ruin in the Middle East. Hell, they probably had better streets in Lebanon, in goddamn Beirut.

He spread the tarp over his gear. He wanted to go to Buffa’s for a burger, and he didn’t want anyone peeking in the tinted windows of the camper shell, seeing his gear, and getting any ideas.

Maybe—even though she had work in the morning—Sally would come with. Maybe she’d bring her friends.

“What’s the big idea,” Donald said, “telling half the club I’ve been seeing Alissa?”

The dude was leaning forward a little bit, sticking his chest out, with his fists balled, with a KISS tee-shirt underneath his denim jacket, and he’d styled his hair with something that made it look like it was still wet, or maybe he’d just worked up a sweat onstage.

“I wasn’t trying to say anything,” Remy said, and he started to walk back inside, but Donald was following him, staying between Remy and the door of the club, like they were playing basketball, and he was guarding Remy. “I was just trying to tell her I really am okay with it.”

“You’re okay with it?” Donald said.

“Yeah,” Remy said, “I really am.”

And maybe for the first time, he was. Inevitable that Alissa should move on, just like Remy would one day move on, too. Just like Donald had moved on from Remy’s band. And you couldn’t change anyone else’s behavior, just had to lean into the fact that change was the one constant in life.

“You don’t get a vote,” Donald said, “when it comes to who your ex-wife dates. Just like you don’t get a vote when it comes to who I play music with. Do you understand that?”

“Yeah,” Remy said, “I understand that.”

“Because I’m not sure you do,” Donald said, “not since you were just slut-shaming Alissa in front of an entire club before she got up onstage and blew the doors off the place.”

“Slut-shaming?” Remy said.

“Yeah,” Donald said, “slut-shaming. That’s what you call it when you stand in the middle of a crowded room and make a PSA about how your ex-wife is screwing me now.”

He made air quotes around the word screwing.

“PSA?” Remy said. Like he’d gotten up and announced through the PA that Alissa was sleeping with Donald.

“It stands for public service announcement,” Donald said. He was doing that thing with his eyes, like he’d done at the beginning of the night when he’d made that crack about the name of Remy’s band, like he was trying to stare Remy down or maybe make his head explode or mentally shrink him, crushing him with his fingers, like on that episode of Kids in the Hall.

“I know what it stands for,” Remy said.

“You should know I dated Angela a few times, too,” Donald said.

“Angela?” Remy said. They’d gone out for a few months, and she’d been a nice girl, more into it than he was, and why couldn’t he fall for the ones who liked him as much as he did them?

“Yeah,” Donald said. “Your other ex.”

“What are you doing,” Remy said, “working your way through the alphabet after me?”

“I bet you’d like to think that,” Donald said.

“I’m going back inside,” Remy said. He’d had enough of the whole situation, enough of Donald’s passive-aggressive behavior, which was beginning to feel actually aggressive, and enough of the whole scene, which was saturated with transplants and felt like it had moved on without him. Maybe he could go back to school, get a degree in one of the helping professions, so he wouldn’t have to work in restaurants anymore, and he could do music on the side.

“Come on,” Donald said. “I’m just messing with you.”

“You dated Angela, too?” Remy said.

“Just a few times,” Donald said, shrugging. “But, like, enough.”

What did that even mean?

“Enough?” Remy said.

“Yeah,” Donald said, “like, enough. Enough for us to go to bed together. You don’t have a problem with that, do you?”

“No,” Remy said, “I don’t.”

“You don’t have a problem with me screwing one of your other exes?” Donald said.

Again, with the air quotes.

“No,” Remy said, “I don’t. And now I’m going back inside to see my sister.”

Donald brushed Remy’s shoulder as Remy walked past, and he turned the corner to find Sally and her friends talking to Alissa by the back door of the club, the friend Remy had eyes on all night trying on one of Alissa’s tees. The design was a version of Munch’s Madonna with a jasmine shrub growing from between her legs, all silkscreened in grayscale on a white tee, nice enough, though she’d lifted the whole aesthetic from the cover of Remy’s first EP. The friend was scanning the QR code on Alissa’s card, Sally trying on one of the tees, too, when Donald grabbed Remy’s shoulder.

“Hey,” Donald said, “you should know I went on a couple dates with Sally, too.”

“What are you talking about?” Remy said.

Was Donald trying to tell Remy that he’d screwed Remy’s sister, too?
            “I’m just telling you,” Donald said, “we went out for dinner a couple times. We went to Rosalita’s and got tacos, then we got cocktails at N7. I just thought you should know.”

“Are you trying to say you’re screwing my sister?” Remy said, too shocked to be angry at the guy, whose beady eyes made Remy think of the guru in a sex cult. Man, these California people were crazy, Donald and Alissa both. “You want my mom’s phone number, too?”

Donald recoiled, like Remy was being unreasonable, or like Remy had hurt him.

“I’m saying we went out to dinner a couple times,” he said. “I thought you should know.”

“You thought I should know?” Remy said.

“Yeah,” Donald said. “I mean, we’re all friends here, so I thought you might like to know I went on a couple dates with your sister. You don’t need to be all weird about it.”

“Weird?” Remy said, flashing for a horrible moment to a vision of his sister in Donald’s king size bed in his Lower Garden District studio, which was tricked out in dark wood and wrought iron, with definite BSDM, dungeon overtones. Was that what Sally had been trying to tell him on the dancefloor? Bad enough she’d known about Donald and Alissa, but if she’d been holding this back, it felt like a next level betrayal. “What would be weird,” he said, “would be you telling me you’d hooked up with my ex-wife, my ex-girlfriend, and my sister after leaving my band. What would be weird would be if you told me you’d done all that for any reason except to mess with me, like as a weird, stalkerish thing that’s maybe also kind of gay, like in a subliminal way.”

“You don’t need to make this all about you,” Donald said.

“And Alissa’s okay with this,” Remy said, “with you seeing my sister?”

He wasn’t disturbed, just curious.

Donald shrugged.

“I mean, we’re not exclusive or anything,” he said. “Me and Alissa, I mean. Or we weren’t.”

It was all too much for Remy, who hadn’t moved any merch, who hadn’t even added any names to his email list.

“I’ve gotta go,” he said. “Got to call it a night.”

“The tacos at Rosalita’s,” Donald said, leaning closer, with an expression that made Remy think he wasn’t talking about tacos at all, “were amazing.”

Were tacos supposed to be a euphemism for something, God forbid, demented slang for vagina, like in that old George Carlin routine about bearded clams and tuna tacos? Remy shuddered. Maybe it was harder than he’d imagined, just making your art and trying to build your community. Especially when your community was a one of dysfunction and sickness, filled with people who’d moved here two years ago trying to one up each other. Especially when your community consisted of people like Donald, who was an overgrown man-child and a fake feminist freak living off family money.

“Have a good night,” Remy said, and he turned his back on Donald, intending to walk down the sidewalk and hug Sally goodbye. Maybe later he’d confront her about this whole Donald situation, though she’d probably tell him it wasn’t any of his business. And hell, maybe she’d be right.

She was pulling on one of Alissa’s tees when Remy felt the hand on his shoulder.

“Noogie,” Donald said, “noogie.”

Then he had Remy in a headlock, and he was digging his knuckles into Remy’s skull.

Remy twisted left, then right.

“Hey,” he said, “cut it out. I’m not kidding, man, let me go.”

“Noogie alert,” Donald said, his arm tightening around Remy’s neck, those knuckles digging in harder.