deadly nightshade | fever in, fever out

chapter 44: new kid

Sam, Aurora, and Zelda stayed in San Francisco until early Sunday morning, and even though the latter had had a room with Zetro, she stayed the night with the two of them especially since they were all headed back to the Northeast together; and meanwhile, Lars vowed to take care of them for the rest of the weekend. His fridge was full of food and his tiny house was warm and dry from the dense, cold San Francisco fog bank. Some time in between then, on that Saturday afternoon, Lars took out a faded photograph from his bottom clothing drawer and he showed it off to Sam. A young couple with a young child in between them: the man had a thick lush beard that extended down to his chest while the woman wore a light lacy shawl about her shoulders.
"It's me and my parents," Lars told her in a low voice.
"Aw, so adorable," Sam remarked as she cradled it in her hands. She eyed Lars nestled in between them: his apple cheeks were large and round and his bright eyes gazed back at her. "How old were you here?"
"I was—seven, I think? Seven or eight?"
"Your hair looks so soft and smooth," Aurora added as she peered over Sam's shoulder.
"It still kind of is, too," Lars pointed out with a stroke across the crown of his head with his palm. "Speaking of which, I feel like a shower right about now, my ladies."
"You wanna look good for us before we leave, right?" Zelda joked from the hallway. She appeared in the doorway and rested her hands on either side of the door frame.
"That's for me to know and for you to figure out," he retorted with a wag of his finger. Sam peered down at the photograph and she wished for her journal right then, or at least a singular sheet of paper and her black ink pens with her at that moment. She could do it right there for him.
"When I see you again after we leave here, I'll try to remember to bring it back for you," she vowed to him.
"Oh, no, it's alright," he told her as he put his hands on the bottom hem of his shirt. "My dad actually has the original one back at his place down in Los Angeles. That one's just a copy I got and asked the photo people to make it black and white just 'cause it looks nicer to me."
"Right, right..." Without another word, Lars stripped off his shirt and Zelda whistled at his slightly round little body.
"Avert your eyes, girls," he commanded with a wave of his left hand. He ran his fingers through his smooth light brown hair and he let it drift down over his shoulders and the upper part of his chest. Sam skirted past him towards Zelda and the doorway, and Aurora followed suit. The three girls filed out to the hallway and, once Lars shut the door behind them, they headed into the den to wait for him.
Once Zelda sank down on the left side of the couch, and Aurora took her seat in the spindly chair next to the table right outside of the kitchen, Sam couldn't help but laugh as she looked on at the photograph in her hands.
"What?" Aurora asked her, but she never answered with anything other than another soft snicker.
"What is it?" Zelda joined in as she drummed her fingers on the arm of the couch.
"These people and their desire for me to draw their families," she chuckled.
"Or just them as kids," Zelda chimed in.
"It's because art makes one youthful and timeless," Aurora explained.
"It's also indicative of a kid's behavior, too," Sam added, "you know how when you're in elementary school, it seems so easy to make art and make a lot of it, too?"
"Absolutely," Aurora said with a nod of her head. She then turned to Zelda with a stern look upon her face. "By the way, I'm taking what you told me about the label into account and I'll be chatting with Jon about it once we get back to New York tomorrow. Well, not tomorrow—Monday. But, you get the idea."
"Okay, thank you so much," Zelda said to her as she clasped her hands together.
"You're quite the manager, Aurora," Sam told her. "I did work side by side with you over the summer."
"Imagine if she's manager for the Cherry Suicides," Zelda suggested.
"It'd be quite the promotion," Aurora pointed out. "I could be manager for you girls and Sam could one for Stormtroopers."
"Although I don't know how hard it's gonna be to listen to any harder music, though," Sam confessed with a shrug of her shoulders. Both Zelda and Aurora showed her soft looks of comfort. It was in fact the truth: Cliff's absence made everything feel different, especially with the thought of that music scene firmly in mind and all around them.
"Speaking of Stormtroopers," Sam started again, "what's the story on them? They kinda just stopped, didn't they?"
"I was talking to Scott yesterday about that," she said, "and I guess that's—not too far from the truth. It's like an outlet for him and Charlie."
The sound of water running in the wall filled in the brief silence and Zelda snickered at the sound of it.
"What's so funny?" Aurora asked her.
"Just thinkin' about Lars in that shower," she confessed.
"You and drummers, I swear, Zelda," Sam joked as she set her free hand on her hip. Anything to help her with the
"'Cause I be a drummer, too, y'know," Zelda retorted with a little gyration of her head and a pattering of her feet on the hard wooden floor beneath them.
"You can be a drummer and like other musicians after all—like you and Zetro!"
"He's got a girl, though. Besides, I can't do that to my dear Lewis, either."
"Louie Louie," Aurora followed up.
"Louie Louie, yeah!" Zelda then lay her head on the top of the cushion and she tilted her head up so she could look at Sam upside down. "But what comes after Cliff now?"
"Just taking care of myself, I guess?" she said with another shrug of her shoulders. "Keep making art and being friends to these boys because they need us now."
"They do need us." Aurora drummed her fingers on the table top before her. Silence settled over them again. Silence save for the water that ran through the pipes in the wall.
But then the doorbell rang.
"I'll get it," Zelda quipped and she ducked passed Sam there at the side of the couch. She turned to Aurora there at the table.
"Are you hungry? Especially since we haven't really eaten anything all day."
"Nah, I'm good. I am kinda dying of thirst, though."
"Okay—"
Sam sauntered into the kitchen for a glass of water and, when she poured it out of the pitcher rested upon the counter, Zelda's voice floated in from the front foyer.
"Aurora?"
"Yes?"
"Alex is here to see you," she said.
"Me?" Sam stopped right in her tracks, and she faced the doorway. Alex was there again, and yet she had no idea if she wanted to see him again given he was so cold to her the day before. She had no idea if he would still be nonchalant towards her and thus she stood there before the counter with the glass of water in her hand.
"—he's in the shower, though," Aurora was saying. "So what brings you here?"
"I want you to do something for me," Alex started in a near whisper; careful not to bring attention to herself, Sam shuffled in closer to the doorway. They were about five feet away from her and yet he spoke in a voice so soft that she stopped at the counter's corner and leaned in closer to the doorway so she could better hear him.
"Go on," Aurora encouraged him.
"Well, it's actually for the whole band—I'm just the one telling you, though." He hesitated for a second and Sam wondered how he was feeling.
"Go ahead, Alex. It's okay."
A soft rustling followed.
"Want me to leave?" Zelda asked them.
"No, no, it's okay—you're a musician, too," he assured her.
"What is it?" Aurora gently encouraged him.
"Do you have any idea if we have a deal with the label yet?" he asked her in a small voice.
"First off, why are you asking me this?"
"I was asked to do it while you're still here in the Bay Area. Yeah, I was literally asked to do it. Apparently the guys think because I'm smart enough that I can do it."
"Eric couldn't do it?" Aurora was flabbergasted by that.
"He had to go somewhere. So because I can drive now, I'm here."
"I haven't heard anything, no." She paused. "Why? 'Cause you're eighteen now?"
"Yeah. Like—I'm kinda ready to go on tour now. I'm out of school and everything."
"Right, right. Well—I'm not really the right person to turn to with that, but I'd be more than happy to ask around, though. There is one thing I want to ask you, though, Alex, and that's the band's name. I distinctly recall hearing about a year ago that there's another band elsewhere called Legacy."
"It's The Legacy, though, if I remember correctly," Alex told her, "that's as far as I know. I'm kind of the last guy in the pipeline to know these things."
Sam knitted her eyebrows together at that. If he was so smart and so cool for his young age, then why was that the case? He was in fact that young, she remembered. She was only three years older than him.
"I think Billy said something about that," Zelda recalled. "I have a vague memory of that—of all of us sitting in that little room together and he said something about that. I forget what he said, though."
There was another pause.
"Is there someone else here?" Alex asked them.
"Sam's here," Aurora replied, to which Sam herself closed her eyes. "She's in the kitchen getting me a drink of water. Which, by the way—hey, where's my water?"
Sam sighed through her nose and she headed out of the kitchen with the glass in her hand. Alex, who had taken his seat across from Aurora, had his back to her. He turned his head when she stood in between the two of them and she caught a glimpse over at Zelda, who had returned to the couch. She shook her head at her.
He knew she was there. How did he know she was there?
He gazed up at her with those deep eyes. At least he wasn't wearing the yarmulke that time around.
"How're you doing?" he asked her, still with that cold tone of voice.
"I'm doing alright," she replied, and she shifted her weight in that spot in between them. He just sat there with pieces of his thick black curls strewn down his shoulders and onto his chest and his hands rested upon his slender thighs in repose, and yet she was unnerved by that grave expression on his face. Young and old at the same time, and that tiny gray pearl over his brow didn't help matters, either.
The water switched off in the wall across from them, and that was her cue.
"Oh, good, Lars is out of the shower!" Sam declared as she felt her face growing warm. "I have to ask him something—"
She handed Aurora the water and she bowed away from there. She scurried past Zelda and down the hall to Lars' bedroom. She pushed open the door and ducked inside.
She let out a long low whistle but she almost jumped out of her skin when Lars emerged from the bathroom behind her.
"Sam, what the fuck you doing in here?" he demanded, and she covered her eyes with one hand once she turned around. "It's okay—I'm just wearing a towel but still! What're you doing in here?"
She lowered her hand; Lars stood in the doorway with the towel wrapped around his thick waist. His hair dripped wet and his chest heaved from the surprise.
"I just needed to get out of there," she sputtered.
"Why?" he stammered as he padded out of the bathroom to his dresser.
"Alex is here."
He stopped.
"Alex is here? Really?" His face lit up.
"Yeah, he's—talking to Aurora right now about something."
And then he froze.
"Wait. Why exactly are you in here?"
She ran her tongue over her bottom lip and then fetched up a sigh.
"He's—unnerving," she confessed in a low voice.
"What do you mean, he's unnerving?" He knitted his eyebrows together.
"He's like—chilly. Like there's something off about him."
"Oh, that's just how he is," Lars assured her. "The kid's a work horse having to balance school and being in a serious band for a while now, so it's matured him a lot in such a short amount of time. And as a result, he does seem a little bit arrogant to a lot of people. That's just how it is with Alex. It's nothing to take personally. In fact, if it's any comfort to you at all, he intimidates all of us. He's a young Jewish kid with this ferocious fire in his belly that's totally not what his parents expected and yet he still went with it. And he was taught by Joe Satriani, too. Kirk was a student of him, too, but even he's afraid of Alex."
"Well, he hasn't been very comforting towards me, whereas most everybody else has been, especially you and Kirk. Actually no—I take that back. You and I were pretty much alone yesterday."
"Well," he began again as he turned towards his dresser for a fresh change of clothes, "a lot of it has to do with the fact that you were kind of hidden away when you and Cliff were together. It was a secret he kept away from even the three of us. But now that Cliff is—out of the picture—you can mingle and integrate yourself more with these people. It's alright, though. I had the same problem when I first came to America. Exact same problem. It just helps to—be a little more assertive. I can help with that."
"What did you do?"
"What did I do?" He took out a clean pair of underwear.
"Yeah. And—you want me to avert my eyes again?"
"Please." And then she turned away from him. "But I talked. Just talked to people. Just introduced myself to people, shook their hand and bonded right there. That was how I did it, I don't know about you, though."
"Hmm..."
"I mean—I hate to do this to you, but your name is Sam. You can turn around now".
"Right," she stated as she did. "And what about it?"
"It's a man's name. You have a man's name. You have an androgynous name."
"And?" She shook her head at that.
"When you have a man's name, you ought to go forth like a man. Be a lady but also be a man. That's the best advice I can give—is to act. Act like how men act, but I do not mean that in a literal sense. Take Alex's cool collected demeanor. You don't have to be as cool as a cucumber like him, but it does in fact help, though."
He slipped on a clean pair of blue jeans, left leg first followed by his right.
"I mean, the fact you were able to move to a different coast and set up a homestead there tells me that there is a bit inside of there. You just need to—" He zipped up. "—tap into it more and tap into it more often to boot."
"Be like Zelda," she said.
"Zelda is a good one to draw from," he noted as he slipped on a black Deep Purple shirt over his head. "I think her being a trommer helps, too. Very visceral and just—something about sweating brings something out primeval in a person." He lifted his dripping hair out from under his shirt and then he reached for his towel again to better dry it off. He doubled back to the bathroom to hang it up on the rung, and then he returned to her with a twinkle in his eye.
"Come," he beckoned her, and then he stopped. "Actually, no. You should be the one telling me to come."
"Okay, come then," she said with a straight face and a gesture of two fingers, which brought a giggle out of him: she noticed the little indentation over his left eye, about the size and shape of a pea, something she never noticed before then.
"What's this right here?" She fingered the spot over her own left eye.
"Oh, my scar? James gave me that about three years ago. You really honest to god don't want to know how he gave it to me."
She then gestured for him to follow her back out to the hallway. If she was to be more forth going, then it began with comfortably standing next to Alex. Lars followed her into the front room, where Alex himself and Aurora stayed at the table, but he had picked up the photograph Lars had given Sam as a reference. He showed it to him once they came back into the room.
"Is this your parents, Lars?" he asked; his voice seemed a lot bigger and louder to Sam now that they were in close quarters rather than out in the open.
"Yeah."
Alex turned it back around for a second look. "Kinda thought it was my parents at first. And I was thinking, 'my brother probably took this.'" That brought a laugh out of Aurora, but Sam and Zelda stayed silent: the former stood next to the couch with her hand on the top, right behind Zelda's head.
"We are both Jewish after all," Lars pointed out.
"More so me, though. I dunno if you ever had your own parents refer to you as 'meshuggah' for wanting to go into music before and for the music you play, but that's the case with me."
"A couple o' Jew boys," Zelda joked.
"A couple o' Jew boys, exactly!" Lars laughed, but Alex continued to look on at the photograph, still with a collected look on his face. There was in fact something intimidating about him as Sam watched those deep eyes scan over the photograph as if he was reading over something important rather than a family portrait. There was a young boy in there still, but he had been locked away behind those deep penetrating eyes and that sliver of gray.
The three girls and Lars spent the night together, and then he drove them back to the airport bright and early that next morning. He threw his arms around all three of them before he let them climb aboard.
"I already told Zetro I was leaving early," Zelda assured him as she picked up her suitcase. "And he gave me the biggest frickin' kiss before I said goodbye."
"Aw!" Lars laughed at that. "Alright, safe travels, ladies! And Sam?"
She whirled around for one last look at him, and his expression switched to one of seriousness.
"If you need anything at all, just call me," he told her, to which she nodded.
"Yet another person to tell me that."
He shrugged his shoulders.
"Neither of us have much but we do have each other, though." He then blew her a kiss and the three of them padded down the gate to their seats.
"Charlie and Marla already go home?" Zelda asked them in a low voice given it was still pitch dark outside of the window.
"Don't know," Sam confessed. "Lars didn't say anything about them all weekend..." Her voice trailed off for a moment and then she remembered what she had said to Lars before they stepped into the plane. "By the way, Zetro kissed you?"
"I was thinking the same thing!" Aurora chimed in.
"Yeah. Just a little peck on the cheek, but yeah—he kissed me." She halted right in her tracks. "Louie and I are just roommates," she assured them. "I'm just paying his rent."
"You sure about that?" Sam asked her as the image of them together at that market popped into her mind. Zelda let out an exasperated sigh.
"Okay, fine. Louie and I are in fact a couple, and we've been a couple for a long time, but—I don't think it's gonna last."
"Why?" Sam was taken aback by that.
"Because of Legacy. They're a West Coast band and I'm a Rhode Island girl. It's been hard on him to be in the Northeast but he does it anyway because—" She pursed her lips together.
"He loves you," Aurora stated in a soft voice, to which Zelda nodded.
"Yeah. He does. It's hard on both of us but we manage and we've managed for this long, too—we were together when Alex joined. We met at a Plasmatics show, believe it or not, and then he told me he had just joined a band and he was a drummer. And—" She then fetched up a sigh. "—I feel us slipping apart. We live together and we've lived together for almost two years now, and I feel us slipping. So I started talking to Zetro more because he treats me better."
"That explains why you guys weren't really communicative with each other the other day at the ceremony," Sam recalled.
"Yeah, and that's why I'm also flying home with you, too."
Aurora gasped at that.
"Aw, I'm so sorry."
"He'll be back at some point, though," Zelda assured her. "He needs to fly back to Providence to fetch his things, so he needs to be back just to sign a thing saying that he doesn't live with me anymore. Or maybe I can send 'em back for him, I dunno yet..." Her voice trailed off and the three of them fastened their seat belts.
"I am gonna say this, though," she piped again, that time with a serious look on her face and one pointed at Aurora. "The new Cherry Suicides album is going to be one worth looking at."
"Will do," Aurora vowed, and they took off from the blackness of the Bay Area and made the flight back to New York. Zelda picked up her car and Sam and Aurora drove back to the latter's apartment; meanwhile, Sam herself took the subway home.
"Are you gonna be alright?" Aurora asked her as she gave her one last embrace.
"Oh, yeah," she assured her. "I have people to talk to now."
Sam returned home and then she walked into school the next day and the next couple of weeks with a fresh feeling over her head. She continued to wear that hat but that time, she kept it on her head as she headed back home. Cliff was always with her even when he wasn't. She kept the hat next to her on the table as she ran her paint brush over the heavy grained water color paper and worked on the current painting of a cluster of red and yellow tulips.
Yellow to honor him, red to keep his spirit going even in his wake. The green of the leaves and the background meant he was part of the earth yet again.
It took her a week given the washes on the petals kept on washing out upon drying out, but she managed to make the darkest shade of red on the biggest tulip at the front with a pure bit of paint rather than from her palette. She handed it in that Friday before she walked up the block to visit Aurora on her break.
The autumnal rains were upon New York City once again as she held onto the hat by the crown. At a quick clip, she strode up the sidewalk to that vast white building on the left side of the street. The front door hung a little ajar, and she saw that the front room was completely vacant.
"Hello?" she called out, and Aurora surfaced from the far end of the hallway in front of her, complete with the deep purple sweater wrapped around her body.
"Hey! You came just in time!"
"For what?" Sam shut the door behind her and made her way down the hall.
"Two things," said Aurora with a twinkle in her eye, "the first is we're moving."
"You're moving?!" She was stunned by that, but Aurora burst out laughing at that.
"No, not me! Anthrax found a better place to jam and record at—a few blocks from here. The second is—meet Metallica's new bassist."
She moved to the side and the tall, long haired boy stepped forward. He had a smooth, slightly square face, a prominent nose and brow, and yet his face lit up when he saw her. His long smooth mousy hair drifted behind him, much like Joey's hair, and he wore a short black coat that looked to be from a nearby thrift shop.
"Already?" Sam muttered aloud.
"Already," he said in a soft voice, and he showed her a little grin as a result. "My name is Jason. Jason Newsted."
"Hi, Jason Newsted," she replied as she took off her hat for him and he nodded his head at her. "Awful quick."
"I know, right? It was all kind of a whirlwind but I got into it." He gave his hair a slight toss back and she noticed a bare spot on the right side of his head, right underneath the longest part of his hair, as if he had a cowlick there.
"He followed Metallica around for weeks on end this past tour," Aurora told her.
"Yeah, I did! I was with another band called Flotsam and Jetsam, and when we didn't play, I studied Cliff's parts down to a T, like I took copious notes and tried it out myself. So when I tried out for the audition, Lars and James looked each other like, 'uhh, yeah? We need this guy with us!'"
"Well—I wish you best of luck," Sam said to him in a soft voice and she held the hat close to her chest.
"Aurora told me about you and Cliff and—I just wanted to meet you first before we leave for Europe soon. He was an inspiration to me. You were a lucky girl."
"And you're a lucky man," she said, still in a soft voice.
"I have to make a couple of phone calls," Aurora told them both.
"I do, too," Jason added.
"And I have class in a few minutes," Sam said as she put the hat back onto her head.
"Stay in school," he advised her, "and I love that hat on you!"
"Cliff did, too," she told him as she adjusted the brim. The three of them headed out of there and back to the burgeoning rain. Sam peered over her shoulder at Aurora and Jason as they headed up the sidewalk, the other way. No one could replace Cliff, but she had a good feeling about him. She had a good feeling that Metallica were in good hands with the new kid.