The Almost Rock Star (A Ghost Story) (DRAFT)

The Almost Rock Star (A Ghost Story) 26, Jealousy of the Salmon

Chapter Twenty-Six

Jealousy of the Salmon

I watched my Leader of the Pack help Bimbo-ette stumble out the door. I felt terrible. This was the worst day of my life.

I wasn’t just thinking differently than I used to. I was carrying those mixed up and sometimes weird thoughts around and then putting them into actions. For example, I never, I mean never, would have hurt my Leader of the Pack when I finally found him. Maybe with words, if we had a fight. But physically? No. I wasn’t a man-beater. 

I’d always looked at those men-beaters as some sort of oddity. The craziness of my times. They were like Black Widow “Almost Theres.” Black Widow women are something of a mystery to everyone. I was always upset by the idea of a woman striking a man. Except for slapping. That’s OK. Or spanking your little boys. That’s even better. I got interested in this idea of Black Widows once, after it made the news, and researched the whole murder for some inspiration. In one of my songs, “White Widow,” I sang about a Black Widow as some sort of white trailer trash. In general, Black Widows weren’t educated, or at least not very much, the news said. They were smart and conniving, but not intellectuals or thinkers. I came up with a song that sounded remotely like Ke$ha’s “Tik ToK.” I had been thinking: How smart are Black Widows, really? Like what the news said, or did these women sit around all day and plot murders and how not to get caught. Then, inevitably, my thoughts turned to music, and smart women, and then to Ke$ha, who had a genius IQ, and then the song came pouring out:

I was a young rock star, yes I was

Never knew much about how far, how far

how far would I go, this young rock star, rock star

and then I turned a little tune, in-to a murder tomb...

It went on from there. 

And now here I was, acting like white trash myself. I might as well have decked Daith. Maybe I was the White Widow trash I wrote the song about. 

My mind was swirling. That’s when I realized it was just more weird thoughts. So I tried to get control of my own mind. I tried to reason my way out of my mind mess. When I wrote that song, I had a really bad woman in mind. Someone I would never be. She was poor, she was uneducated, but she was savvy in a mean way. She seduced and married and then killed them. Men. She hated men. 

I always had loved men. Starting with my Grandpa King. My brother Kennie. My Dad and I didn’t always get along, but we got along better than I did with my Mom. In general, I got along better with men. I had girlfriends, but there some girls I couldn’t stand. Bimbo-ette’s type was one of them. But when I think about men, I can’t really name a type I hate. Oh, wait. There is one. I absolutely hate fleshy 1930s Nazi scientist types. You know, not really fat but sort of fleshy, sweating, pale, thin colorless lips and thin greasy hair. The gas chamber makers.

I figured one reason I got along better with men was partly because I was beautiful. I know, call me Justine Bieberoo again, like all my girl friends do. I’m really beautiful and I know it. How hard is that? 

I felt better just thinking about how men looked at me all the time. It completely shoved out the rotted corpse look that kept pushing its way into my mind. Maybe all this was just too much trauma for me. I mean, I had a right to the drama, right? Didn’t I? I walked over to the coffee table and placed the white cubes on the old French screenplay. There, I thought. You two deserve each other. I felt like washing my hands. 

Thinking about the water rushing over my hands made me realize I had had only one bout of suffering since I got here.  I looked around the empty penthouse. I didn’t really understand some of the things that had been happening. The strange suspicions and feelings about Aja. Thinking wild thoughts. It was like I had no control over my mind. Or, I was losing control.  

Maybe it was being dead. It was very quiet in the penthouse with Daith and Rebecca gone. I realized Shadow must be around somewhere, but there were no sounds from him.  I walked into the kitchen, wondering when Daith would get back. I stared dully at the mess in the kitchen. Yes, I thought slowly to myself, I thought so. I looked at what Daith had been working on before I began hurting everyone. 

There were the three salmon filets, after Shadow had dragged away one of them. I wondered if the maid found salmon carcasses in the closets or under the beds. There was a half-chopped up fennel bulb, a zested orange with the juice squeezed into a crystal glass. Some white wine was in another crystal glass, a tumbler. It looked like Galway crystal but I wasn’t sure. There was flour on a teak cutting board, salt and pepper in onyx bowls and an expensive imported EVOO sitting in the middle of the organized mess. 

In a pot on the black stovetop, bubbling chunks of what looked like leek, carrot, celery, onion, orange heirloom tomato, fresh bay leaves, a salmon skin, and whole black peppercorns tumbled over each other. I might have missed an ingredient. It smelled wonderful. Yes, it figured. This was the “structure” of one of my favorite dishes, as Aja used to call it.  La Jalousie du Saumon. I used to eat it every summer when we went to the lake. There was a little French restaurant there, and I always ordered what my Grandpa King said was their best dish: La Jalousie du Saumon. It was salmon in an orange sauce over a braised fennel. The chef there, Pierre, served it with a white chive butter. That was the only thing I saw missing on the counter. The white garlic chive flowers. And butter. 

My soulmate was cooking my favorite dish. The coincidence, that someone I had never met before, might have the same favorite dish as me, struck me hard. Tears welled up in my eyes. I stood there and watched the leeks bubbling away with the fish skin and wondered why I had to be dead. Daith couldn’t even see me. 

Maybe it’s time you grew up, little almost rock star. You and that guy would never have gotten along. You’re too smart for him, anyway. He hates smart women. Just take a look at his current squeeze.

It was the one who called himself Satan. I could hear the sarcasm and hatred in his voice. I felt defensive. Not just for myself, but for Daith also. I had forgotten Satan was here. I looked in the direction of the voice. There he was. Leaning against the wall, in the hallway, just like I had seen him in my mind’s eye a short while ago.

“How old is he?” I asked. 

Oh c’mon, Allie. This guy would sell drugs to little kids at a playground. I’m telling you, you don’t know that guy like I do. You hate him, trust me.

I had an overwhelming sense that Daith was a drug lord or some kind of killer.  It didn’t hit my head like a voice. The thought seemed to come from outside my head, from there in the kitchen. Like it was my own thought, but foreign to me.  It didn’t seem to be coming from this guy, this James Dean-like devil. I resisted the thoughts. Daith was my Leader of the Pack, the James Dean of my dreams. This devil who had all the right moves, the right posture, the right look on his face; he was like a taller, older Edward Cullen without the heart. Without the love. 

“No, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t sell drugs to 1st graders. He is a nice guy,” I said.

You completely miss the point. You are here to do a little work for me. Then you get to move into my palace. All you have to do is shake the cubes at him, kid. And what do you do instead? You hit the babe in the blue dress. On purpose, no less.

“I’m not doing what you want,” I said, deciding right then that no one would blackmail me. “You can’t make me.”

I saw the Prince of Darkness roll his head back, as if he were rolling his eyes at someone.     Then he looked at me. The intense pain started, worse than when the goddess was hurting me, and I hugged myself. Something swirled and rolled inside of me, like a huge dark force, making me sick and making me suffer. I broke out in a cold sweat as thousands of tiny needles seemed to cut my skin. The burning pain involved all of the sensations of being alive, and now, dead, I thought I had found hell on earth. 

I think you don’t understand who I am. You need to do what I say. You think about it. I’ll leaving now. I’ll be back.