“Yo, Mara, what should we close with?”
Parth’s words shook her out of a trance Mara hadn’t realized she’d fallen in, staring at a flier for tonight’s opening band, an all-women group called White Men With Katanas. She was in the green room with Crystal Lake Counselors. WMWK was midway through a fuzzed-out yellfest of a set. Mara had taken two hits off of the blunt Gareth had brought and now was wrapped in her red jacket, appreciating the bass pumping through the floor. “Are there choices?”
“Well, Nick says ‘Donut-Eating Piggie,’ I say ‘Cry More White Boy.’ Gareth doesn’t care. So you gotta break the tie.”
“Goddamn those are two great songs. If I pick one, are you not playing the other?”
“Whichever you don’t pick goes second-to-last.”
Mara thought, with a viciousness that felt like self-defense, about all those lonely old men in that bar that weirdo Tommy had taken her to a few nights ago. Jimmy’s Pub. “‘Cry More White Boy,’ definitely,” she said. She noticed herself exhaling.
Something had been restless within her, restless to her bones, since that conversation with Tommy. There must be something wrong with her. She’d had fun, or at least a fine time. Until the very end, when Tommy had told that story about the regular with the gross burger.
Mimed what looked like a killing blow.
Something had happened, and it had to have been in Mara’s head. She couldn’t stop picturing Tommy killing someone. It wasn’t hard to picture him working a knife, it wasn’t hard to picture him sweaty. Then her brain would graft crime scene pictures under where a prep table or the grill would be. Tommy concentrating over a chopped-up Jane Doe from the San Francisco Chronicle in the 70s, Tommy nearly dripping over a dead guy in an alley from a 90s Sun-Times, Tommy plating pieces of The Black Dahlia in the pass-through.
Mara felt like she could smell light. Her nerves were fork twines wanting for an electrical outlet. Her eyes wandered around the way Parth’s black jeans hugged his legs while leaned over his pedalboard, tuning his bass. His left arm flexing while he ran through a couple warm-up scales. His shirt rising above his waistline when he took his bass off, revealing smooth brown skin underneath.
“You’re not staying back here while we play, right?” Parth asked.
“Yeah no, I’m meeting Melissa out there,” Mara said. “I just like being back here with you.”
“Is that right? Number one fan, kicking it in the green room.”
Mara gave him a lip smile. “Hey, hang out with me after the show tonight.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, like. Let’s get tacos. Or walk on the beach. I don’t know. Feels like a while since we’ve had, you know. Best friend time.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Mara saw Nick get up and walk towards them. Something in his hand—drumsticks. He tapped Parth on the shoulder with his sticks and gave a what’s up to Mara. It was time for them to set up.
“Totally,” Parth said. He slapped at Nick, who was still tapping sticks on his shoulder. “Let’s do it. Either one of those things.”
—
Outside, she found a breathless Melissa with a White Men With Katanas SO GOOD on her lips. The two of them zig-zagged through pockets of people yelling in each other’s ringing ears, found a spot slightly off center on the bass side, watched as Nick and Gareth and Parth plugged up pedal boards and tuned drums and checked levels, let the thundering first chord and cymbal crash splash all over their souls, grooved their shoulders and shook their hips, sang and yelled along, felt the distorted noise enter their bloodstreams, let their brains glaze over during the droning, trance-y part, picked the energy back up when the band came back in with a guitar scream that threatened to blow the walls off, setting up a blistering run on the last three songs, including plenty of audience participation gang vocals in “Donut-Eating Piggie.” After the last chord finished ringing on “Cry More White Boy”—another one that garnered some cathartic screamalongs from the crowd, especially the white boys—Mara and Melissa wandered back to the merch table to wait for the guys.
—
Melissa, Nick, and Gareth wanted to stay for the last band. After Nick volunteered to unload the van at the practice space himself, saying he wanted to work some stuff out through the night, Parth hit Mara with a you wanna go? We can go. She took the out without thinking twice.
“So what’s up, you hungry?” she asked him.
“Not yet,” he said. “Can’t eat too soon after performing. Butterflies, you know?”
They walked down the block, letting city noises—hydraulics of buses, chatter of outdoor diners, jazz music spilling out the door of this bar and dancepop flooding out of that one—meld into an ambient soundtrack. Mara bumped Parth with her shoulder. He smiled and nudged her back. A man walking past tried to hand them a flier for some show. They had to shift into single-file to get through some racks of clothes extended from storefront to sidewalk.
“Why aren’t you talking?” Mara asked.
Parth laughed. “Don’t do that, no no. You’re the one who wanted to take a walk, you’re the one who’s all head-on-a-swivel lately. Why am I not talking? I’m waiting on you, girl.”
She was laughing, he always had her laughing. “You’re right. I’m all kinds of fucked up lately.” Without meaning to, she reached for his hand, fingers entwining.
His hand eased into hers, he gently tugged her shoulder into his.
Mara’s whole body felt like the hum of a switched-on amp.
“Hey, what if we went to your apartment?” Mara said. “Like, ordered food? But in like an hour?”
“Yeah? What’re we gonna do for an hour?”
“I mean,” Mara said, and pulled Parth in for a kiss. He kissed her back, wrapping his other arm around her, as hungry for her as she was for him.
“Yeah, let’s get back to my apartment,” Parth said, pulling up but still holding her hand. The night had been hit with some new sensualism, like a buttery grilled cheese dropped sizzling onto a flat top. They couldn’t walk the six blocks fast enough.
Across the street, Mara could swear she saw him. Sweaty, lanky, eyes always a little too intense, carrying a knife bag out on the street. Was that Tommy? No way. It was in her head. No way he was standing there, across the street, stalk-still like a serial killer in an old movie.
No, whoever it was had a friend stumble out of the bar, clap them on the back, and offer them a cigarette. Turned out of profile, the guy looked nothing like Tommy.
Melissa would say that’s the universe. Warning you. Don’t let your guard down.
That’s what Melissa would say.
—
Sex with Parth was the first swim in Lake Michigan when the water finally stopped freezing, it was a sharing a joint with your best friends on a roof on a cloudless night, it was scoring free tickets to your favorite band, it was a grilled cheese and soup on a sick day, it was a weighted blanket on a winter evening. They did everything she wanted and nothing she didn’t. After, they lay in the sheets, taking in windows-open summer air.
As time passed, as Parth dozed off and Mara got up to pee, as she tried sleeping on her side and then her back, as she looked at her phone and saw it was only 11:30, Mara wrote off her lingering unease as hunger. She nudged Parth awake.
“Order pizza and watch a movie with me?” she asked.
“Most definitely,” he said. He pulled a pre-rolled blunt out his nightstand, massaged the leaves loose. Stood up and retrieved his laptop and a bluetooth speaker from his desk.
“Veggie lovers okay?” she asked.
“The best.”
He ordered a thin crust from Michael’s, fired up the blunt and the bluetooth speaker, and pulled up the HBO app. They settled on a new slasher they’d both missed in theaters. Mara figured it would either be cathartic— safe, external expression of her own paranoia—or it would ratchet her feelings of being watched back up to 11, and she wouldn’t sleep that night.
Either way, she had weed, she had Parth, and she had a pizza coming.