2. Zak
Reverend Timothy addressed the crowd, pious sadness etched into his age-spotted skin. His gaze made a pointed pause on Zak and her friends, standing atop a hill on the outskirts of the procession. Wearing band T-shirts and ripped jeans instead of black formal wear.
“We are here today to pay our respects to a man of God, our beloved Lincoln Nicholas Meyer.”
It took every ounce of Zak’s concentration to suppress her laugh.
Link’s legal name hadn’t come up until two years into their friendship, when Dale Winkler Jr. headed to the county clerk to change his own name to Dallas Beckley. And their late friend was no man of God. He had worshiped centerfolds, cocaine, and Robert Plant. He got high and watched MTV on Sundays when these people were at church.
What Zak needed was a smoke. Anything to smother the stuffy eulogy and the dirty looks from Link’s actual family—related by blood, unlike the four who used to share everything with him and knew everything about him.
Link had been too claustrophobic to sit through rush-hour traffic in a car, let alone spend his eternal rest inside a shiny walnut coffin. Flowers made him break out in hives, but white lily and gardenia garlands dangled behind the twenty ruler-straight rows of wooden lawn chairs where the invited guests sat. All people who had talked shit behind Link’s back, forgot to call on his birthdays, and never once heard him sing.
Reverend Timothy’s lips pulled taut as he rattled off some impersonal praises. The paper in front of him was full of carefully selected adjectives like “charismatic,” “unique,” and “vibrant.” None of them wrong, per se. Link was the most remarkable person she had ever met. He was wild and hilarious and in love with life, but he had also been in love with the needle.
It was a miracle he hadn’t overdosed earlier.
An out-of-tune violin whined to life. Saint of Spades had offered to play for no charge, but Link’s parents had refused. “You all shouldn’t be allowed to perform at any serious event,” they’d said, which had earned them the kind of disrespectful retorts from Zak and Dallas that kept this vicious cycle in motion.
Mr. and Mrs. Meyer had disapproved of the band from the start. Particularly, their son’s involvement with a homeless sixteen-year-old, a Mexican immigrant, a gay man, and the trailer trash friend who had encouraged Link to ditch high school during their senior year. They weren’t alone in hating the idea either. The only relatives who had ever made it to a gig, begrudgingly, were Edge’s parents.
Her own mother used to refer to the guitar as the Devil’s instrument, which meant Zak needed to find clever ways to hide her most cherished keepsake when she still lived at home. Dallas’s parents were too busy breaking up and getting back together to notice he played the guitar. And their drummer, Alex, had been disowned after his third failed round of conversion therapy.
A spattering of microscopic raindrops collected along Zak’s hairline.
Rain had been on the forecast, but this timing was a cosmic joke.
Link’s relatives clutched their funeral party favors, monogrammed handkerchiefs, as his corpse descended to its final resting place. A narrow patch of dirt overlooking the highway that cost more than they would pay in rent over the next two years. His mother and father gave a few artificial words about the boy who had been nothing more than a stubborn stain on their family tree of otherwise impeccable breeding.
This was the contrived portrait that would follow everyone else home tonight. Link’s death would remind them life is fleeting, and if a twenty-six-year-old from a wealthy household could pass from “sudden health complications,” it could happen to anyone.
They would feel empathetic and uneasy for a few hours. Maybe a few days, if they were deeply moved by this performative mourning. Afterward, the canvas-wrapped picture of Link propped up next to his casket—a high school yearbook photo because it was the last one of him without tattoos—would be filed away. A passing thought every couple of years on a special occasion.
Unable to watch the burial, Zak looked at the ground instead. She kicked a few pebbles into a puddle of muddy rainwater that had formed at the base of the hill.
“You okay?” Edge whispered in her ear.
“I’m going to be late for work again.” She swallowed to quell the stinging in her eyes, unsure if tears were forming because strangers were shoveling dirt over her friend’s corpse, or because his parents had hired the West Coast’s worst violinist. “That’s the third time this week. Janet is going to kill me.”
Dallas watched with weighted eyes as the funeral party tossed bushels of those stupid fucking flowers over Link’s coffin. His naturally slim frame was now gaunt. His dark hair was matted, his pale skin red and blotchy, and he smelled like the dumpster at the back of a dive bar. People often told Zak that she and Dallas looked like siblings, but right now he looked like her charity case.
He stumbled backward as he took a swig from his flask, and she wasn’t sure if it was because he was a few sips away from blacking out, or because his muscles had atrophied from skipping meals and lying in bed all week.
“Remember that night we all sat outside talking about what we wanted the others to do with us when we died?” he said.
“And he told everyone he wanted to be processed into powdered coffee creamer and shipped anonymously to his enemies?” Edge remembered.
She rolled her eyes. “He didn’t have any enemies.”
Everyone who met Link ended up obsessed with him. He was more than an addict; he was an addiction. People got one taste, one show, and they saw he was going places. They got hooked; they wanted to be along for the ride, and Link made everyone feel like he wanted them there, too. Like they were all special.
Alex’s empty stare hadn’t left the coffin since they arrived, his hazel eyes long cried dry. “I’m sick of funerals.”
Zak hugged him with one arm around his waist as she lit a cigarette with her other hand.
Alex had been the one who found their friend’s body, cold, limp, and coated in bile on the living room couch last Tuesday night. She and Edge had arrived a few minutes later, and while the sight would forever haunt her, she was glad Alex didn’t have to talk to the first responders alone. During the height of the AIDS epidemic, he had watched too many familiar faces disappear from the places that had first embraced him in the unfamiliar city he now called home.
“I always thought it would be me,” he had told her as they sat together on the living room carpet, waiting for the EMTs and sheriff’s department to arrive. “It should have been me.”
And the look on his face now said he was still telling himself the same thing.
“He’s going to miss it,” Dallas slurred. “Our big break.”
She took a much-needed pull and aimed the smoke toward the misty gray sky. “We’re all going to miss it. You seriously think they’re going to want us on Amped when they find out we’ve lost our singer?”
He snatched the cigarette from between her lips and took a hit of his own. “We’ve made it this far. You’re not seriously going to give up on the band now, are you?”
Seven years since the formation of their band, two years since they had picked up any regional traction, and finally—finally—they had an in. Amped was a debut battle-of-the-bands television competition series, backed by America’s largest music label and some of the most popular names in rock. Three months from now, they were supposed to enter the race for the record deal of a lifetime, but Zak had a feeling it would take them much longer than that to clean up the shrapnel Link had left in his wake.
“I’m not giving up,” Zak said. “I’m being realistic. None of us sing and there’s no way we’ll find someone new in this short of a timeframe. They would have to be able to learn all the songs, to handle the pressure of performing in front of large crowds and on camera. They would have to be willing to drop everything and jet off to New York for three months, and that alone is a huge ask.”
The sole of her shoe rolled a few more pieces of gravel down the hill, creating a rhythmic rattle, and sending her brain on a side-quest to figure out how it would sound as a lick on the bass in F-minor. “And that’s assuming we can find a good vocal fit. Replacing a singer hardly ever works. No matter how good the new guy is, there’s always something missing. The chemistry, the sound. It’s all off.”
“Not everyone hates Sammy Hagar as much as you do, Zak,” Edge pointed out. The most half-hearted joke he’d ever made. “A lot of people think he was an improvement.”
“A lot of people are wrong about a lot of things,” she said, knowing full well Edge was one of those people. It had been their first argument, and the only one still unresolved to this day.
“We have to try.” Dallas drained the rest of his flask before dropping it into the back pocket of his jeans. “It’s what Link would have wanted. This was a big deal to him.”
“Yeah, well. Not a big enough deal to keep him from shooting up.”
“Not everyone handles shit like you do.” Dallas’s tone sounded more defensive than wounded. “For some of us, it’s not enough to suffer through it. Sometimes the suffering doesn’t end.”
“All of us made plenty of excuses for Link over the years, Zak included.” Alex’s expression darkened. “And he made his choices. Don’t make this about suffering. We’ve all been through enough.”
She stepped back in before everyone”s hurt devolved into them hurting each other. “I just hate that he’s gone. And I hate that he gave us this hope before he left. Because now that’s gone too.”
Music was her life. It was all she knew, and until now, it had never occurred to her a future existed in which her dream died. But there it was, in the casket with Link.
“I agree, it’s a long shot. But don’t we owe it to ourselves, not just Link, to see this thing through?” Edge said.
Her eyes flitted across the cemetery. “It feels so wrong to think of anyone else up on that stage with us. Pretending like they’re one of us. And everyone knows the lead singer is the only part of a band anyone cares about. They’d be the face of Saint of Spades, the sound of every song we’ve written. It would all be a lie.”
A firm hand came down on Zak”s shoulder, making her jump, before Reverend Timothy stepped in front of her. He leveled her with a chilling disciplinary glower that only seminary school could teach.
Dallas, Edge, and Alex made a run for it.
“The family of the deceased kindly requests you to leave.” The only-God-may-judge-you (but I’m definitely judging you) tone of voice combined with the fold of jowls over a clerical collar triggered some deep-seated gag reflex for her. “This is a serious event, and side conversations are strictly prohibited.”
Zak suspected it was really a matter of the four of them being prohibited, and Link’s parents had been patiently waiting for the right time to kick them out. She made sure Mr. and Mrs. Meyer were looking before holding up both middle fingers around the side of Reverend Timothy’s head—one last token of her appreciation for their hospitality—before she headed downhill to the parking lot.
If an afterlife existed, watching them get kicked out of his funeral service was going to be the highlight of Link’s millennium.
She spotted her friends, the traitors, leaning against the side of her ‘84 Chevy Caprice wagon, and upon making eye contact, all four of them sputtered into an out-of-practice fit of laughter.
“Jerks,” Zak muttered as she took her place in the torn cloth driver’s seat. But for the first time since Link died, she smiled.
Even if they never made it to Amped or booked another gig in their lives, they still had each other.
They would be okay. Someday.
“Save it. You’re fired.”
Janet Hoffman glared at Zak, who, at a perfectly average five-foot-five, not only looked like a child standing before the absolute behemoth of a woman who owned Salt Surf, but also felt like one with the way she was constantly in trouble.
She knew she was a terrible employee. There was no denying it. She was unreliable, unapproachable, and extremely heavy-handed with her pours, which made her the worst bartender a beachside sports bar could ask for. It wasn’t a secret that they’d solely hired her because of her tits. Cup size had been an implied interview question, which on its own should have entitled her to half-ass her way through every pay period.
“Wait, Janet, please.”
Zak choked on the sour taste of groveling. She hatedbegging people for anything, help especially, but if there was anything she hated more, it was cold showers. Which she would soon be forced to take if their electricity got turned off again.
“Please. I’ll work extra shifts, I’ll clean bathrooms, I’ll mop vomit, I’ll do dishes. Whatever you want me to do because I really need this job.”
“That’s not my problem.” A mondo wad of spearmint gum rested against the corner of Janet’s mouth, gathering saliva and smudging her oily mauve lipstick. Squelching noises punctuated each sentence. “Here’s a piece of advice, sweetie. Next time you need a job? Show up for your shift.”
Zak wished she had been wearing her usual footwear of choice—anything with a minimum of a four-inch heel—because she could handle rejection, judgment, and fiscal stress like a champ. She’d been doing it practically her entire life. But if Janet was going to make her feel inept, she’d rather not feel small at the same time.
She laced her fingers together in front of her chest and swallowed her last ember of pride. “My friend died last week. I was at his funeral.”
Who could turn down the bereavement card?
“Condolences. I don’t even know the kid and I know he was a better worker than you. Get out of my bar.”
Janet could. That was who.
“If you just give me one more chance…”
“Oh, like the one more chance I gave you when you had the flu? Or when your alarm didn’t go off? When your car wouldn’t start—twice in one week? When you had to drive your sister home from the hospital? You’ve called in with so many excuses, the shift leads and I have a betting board drawn up in the breakroom with wagers on which ones are fake.”
“Who bet on one and four?”
Janet was done talking, which wasn’t a hopeful sign because Janet always had something to say. She had the look on her face of someone who was about to squash a bug. Zak would know. The roaches at her place were entitled to squatter’s rights at this point.
“I know I suck, Janet.” Zak also knew she was about to burn a bridge, but didn’t have the filter to stop herself from pouring the lighter fluid. “But at least I don’t act like I run a clean business while promoting girls who blow dick behind the counter on the clock. And you know what? I don’t blame them. Sounds like the pay is better. Fuck you.”
She untied the apron from around her waist and flung it to the ground on her way out, holding in tears of frustration until she was back in the privacy of her car.
“Fuck.” She slammed her forehead into the steering wheel between two white-knuckled fists. “Fuck!”
If only she could think of something more eloquent to say to herself, to prove she wasn’t the complete failure everyone thought she was, but she was fresh out of dignity and spending money. So, she decided to do what she always did.
She screamed a few more expletives to the illuminated Service Engine light, wiped away her tears, and threw the car into reverse.
Plan B was five minutes down the road, twenty-five in traffic, at La Cantina de Cortez. She’d quickly resolved to never beg Janet for anything again, but it wasn’t beneath her to beg Marisol for five bucks under the table to pour drinks and scrape melted cheese off cast iron skillets.
Zak pulled on a sweatshirt when she arrived at Edge’s parents’ restaurant, her elbows knocking against the steering wheel. It was seventy-five degrees and damp from the earlier rain, but Marisol didn’t appreciate her looking like a hookerany more than Zak appreciated having to trust four snap fasteners to hold her top together.
She and Edge had met at a youth group the summer before seventh grade. Back then, Zak’s mother was on husband number four, who decided they all should attend his church as a family. That idea would last all of three months before the newlywed high wore off, and Jaclyn”s serial infidelity broke yet another set of vows.
Though the youth group didn’t stick—and neither did Catholicism—to Edge”s detriment, their friendship had held together like cement. Her best friend would have had a solid shot at a better life without her holding him back. He had the support, the drive, and the grades to play Eeny-Meeny-Miny-Moe with college acceptance letters, but like the others, he believed in the band enough to forsake the rest.
Deep down, she knew he was better than her. He deserved better than her. But her heart still plummeted when she walked in and heard Marisol say in Spanish what Zak understood to be, “I told you, those friends of yours are no good. Criminals, drug addicts. That girl especially. My baby, I can’t watch you do this. I can’t bury my son.”
She still wasn’t native-fluent, but she heard Edge say something about trust and about how he was taking care of himself, which was true. After trial and error with triggers and prescriptions, he had finally gone a full year seizure-free, but Marisol still phoned daily to make sure he got enough sleep and took his medication.
“Can’t you see it’s time to give up on this dream? Or has that whore made you blind by filling your head with all these crazy thoughts? Why do you need to do this? Money, fame, power? If it’s money you want, there are better ways to get it. Safer ways.”
He started to tell his mother it wasn’t fair to blame things on Zak when he caught her out of the corner of his eye, trying to sneak back to her car to panic until she thought of a Plan C.
It was stupid of her to come here in the first place, when Marisol had never made a secret of disliking her. Following Zak”s court proceeding, she’d slept on the loveseat in their living room for one awkward week before Marisol approached her in the morning with a paper plate of huevos rancheros and spoke to her for the very first time in full English to say, “Do you think today is a good time for you to find a new place to live?”
“Hey! Wait, wait, wait.” Edge followed her outside. “What are you doing here?” His eyes asked, instead, How much of that did you hear?
“Confirming that I’m a loser. You know how everyone always tells you to get a second opinion.” She jiggled the car door handle. “Turns out I’m the worst. Pass along my thanks to your mother. She keeps me humble.”
“I’m sorry, she’s just freaked out by what happened, you know? It’s not really about you. She’s worried about my future.”
“She’s right to be. I’m worried about our future, too. I don’t know if we even have one.”
Zak turned around. She didn’t have a choice. The handle was jammed again, and she would have to crawl in through the passenger side if she wanted to hide from her problems in her car. Which, with its assortment of cosmetic and mechanical defects, was another one of her problems—just a lot further down on her priority list.
“Look, I have nothing against your mom. She’s worked her ass off so you and your brothers could be whoever you wanted to be, and you’re choosing to live in a 700-square-foot apartment that definitely used to be a meth lab with a girl who can’t hold down a job at the shittiest sports bar in LA.”
He waited for her to inhale. Then, the bastard smiled. “Is that what this is all about? You finally got fired?”
Her face pinched into a frown. “Comforting.”
“I didn’t realize I was supposed to empathize with someone who knowingly leaves late for work every day.”
“It wouldn’t matter if I was punctual or not. Janet is a major bitch. I know it, she knows it, you know it, and you sound exactly like her.” She hopped up on the hood of her car and kicked his knee. “Besides, I don’t need empathy. I need a paycheck.”
“Ah, so you came here for work.” He raised his voice to talk over the blare of an oncoming train horn. The vibrations from the tracks disturbed Marisol’s wind chime collection, hanging from the eves of the mustard yellow building. “As much as I would love being stuck in the middle between my two favorite highly opinionated women, I feel obligated to point out that even if you could convince her to give you a job, you would make better money standing off the side of the freeway with a cardboard sign.”
He wasn’t kidding. Marisol had never cut him a check for the hours he put in at the family restaurant because she didn’t want him to “get too comfortable.”
“You’re being way too casual about this. We’re all on the hook for Link’s share of the rent now, too.”
“You still have us. We’ll get through this together.” Edge ran his fingers through his thick curls. “Remember why you got fired?”
She groaned. “Is this the part where you remind me what an unmotivated slacker I am?”
“The opposite, actually. An unmotivated slacker wouldn’t have gotten us this far. You constantly miss work because you’re constantly working on music.”
“Big whoop.” She twirled a finger in the air. “All our gigs got dropped. Not that they paid jack anyway.”
Edge pushed himself up on the hood to sit next to her. “Here’s the thing. I know this is going to piss you off, but I agree with Dallas. We need to find Link’s replacement.”
It didn’t piss her off. There just happened to be a gaping disconnect between their soaring optimism and her severe doubt.
“We have no time.”
“Sounds to me like you have thirty hours a week freed up now. Why don’t you help us hunt for a singer while you hunt for a new job you won’t care about?”
“Help us,” she repeated, the pieces clicking together. After the funeral, she had dropped everyone else off at the apartment before speeding off to get fired, leaving them with plenty of time to come to a majority rule. “So, this is a sure thing then? You’ve all decided?”
“We were talking about having an audition here at the restaurant next week after hours,” he admitted.
“And I assume I’m the last to find out.”
“My mom doesn’t know either.” He held up his key to the building. “She’d kill me.”
As if that should make Zak feel like she was in good company when Marisol also thought her son was still a virgin and raindrops were angel tears.
“I’m going to kill all of you for planning this without me. What’s up with that?”
Edge’s angular brows drew together. He had the most sympathetic wince, perfected over years of disappointing his mother, which articulated, Sorry for upsetting you, but not sorry for what I did. “We thought you might come around?”
Zak laid across the hot steel, the pale skin of her exposed legs frying under the sun, while her friend’s warm brown complexion glowed.
She must have pictured their albums a million times. It was a by-product of having piles of notebooks full of songs, waiting on a record to call home. She had envisioned every possible sequence, which songs could be extended cuts, and which would make successful singles, but never had she pictured some stranger’s face alongside theirs on the covers. Or the blank spaces in the writer’s credits of every song composed from here on out, where Link’s name would have been.
“I’ll be there,” she said. “But there better be chips.”