10

She was almost back to her old self when she heard someone call out, “Gotta say, I’m surprised.”

Fiona turned, her back scraping lightly against the vibrating brick wall. Inside the club, the music thrummed for its third uninterrupted hour; out back, in the alley, she was doing her best to not feel nauseated by the stench rising from a nearby dumpster.

Filip Moss leaned against the wall next to her. He wore ripped jeans and an Aura Noir shirt, but had a security laminate dangling from his neck. He lit a cigarette, offered her one, didn’t seem to care when she refused.

“What,” she said, “that I’m not in there raging?”

“That you came to this thing at all,” he said. “Girl who listens to High Spirits and Damone hitting up an EDM show? Seems a little silly, even if you’re not a true metalhead.”

She laughed. “I’m sorry that all my favorite bands don’t come from Sweden and worship the devil.”

He shrugged and said, “Nobody’s perfect.” They shared a laugh; she needed it, and relished it. Sometimes she wished that Filip was her type in the slightest, but there was no way.

“Real talk, though, Fiona. Why are you here?”

“I came with Horace,” she said. “He’s big into the Pit Viper. You’re working, I take it?”

“Yeah, but pretend like we just met if anyone asks,” he said. “They find out I’m a minor, I get fired.” He sighed, shaking his head. “The Pit Viper. Everyone loves the Pit Viper these days.”

“Seems like he’s tapped into something people really enjoy,” she said.

“Seems like he’s tapped into a lot of things,” grumbled Filip.

“What’s that mean?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Never mind. Just kind of off-putting to see everyone going crazy for this guy. He has a history.”

The tone of his voice told her he was hiding something, and the thought that he knew, possibly about everything, pinched her with excitement. “A history in Hamm?”

“Yeah,” he said, suddenly peering at her, curious and testing the waters, just like Fiona. “Yeah, exactly. Do you know? You know, don’t you? Robert Jones’s daughter, of course you know.”

“About the mill,” she said.

“About the last party that was ever had there,” he said, going the extra mile.

“Yeah, I know.” Fiona had always hoped that finding out she wasn’t alone in knowing the Pit Viper’s sordid story would be a relief. Instead, she felt ashamed, as though admitting they’d both witnessed the same murder and never said anything. “And after?”

“After?” he said. “What happened after?”

Ah. So, he didn’t know everything. “I was asking. That’s what I’ve been trying to find out. He performed there, the mill closed, and then what?”

“Fuck if I know,” said Filip, taking a deep drag from his smoke. “Seems like everyone just forgot about the Pit Viper.”

“I know,” said Fiona. “Everyone else is clueless. They’re acting like he’s this totally new phenomenon—”

“Maybe that’s because you can’t find information about it anywhere,” said Filip. “Not in old newspaper archives online, and they go back to the Sixties. It’s nowhere on the internet. It’s like that night doesn’t exist.”

She digested the idea, knowing it was heavier than it seemed on the surface. “Wasn’t that the point of the place? It was super underground. You had to be in the know.”

Filip sneered. “Yeah, that works in theory,” he said, “but given the pressure it brought on the town? On your dad and my mom? The mill was a thing. Huge parties, freaky-looking chemheads all over the fucking place, kids OD’ing—” He gave her a sympathetic glance and a nod, silently telling her he remembered about Jake. “And there’s not a sentence about it online?”

He was right, there was something way off about that. But something else about Filip’s big reveal struck her as odd. “You must be pretty interested in the Pit Viper,” she said, “to be looking so deeply into him.”

Filip gave her a hard stare and opened his mouth to reply, but just then the pounding rhythm of the music stopped, and was replaced by a roar of applause. “A topic for another time,” he said. “You meeting people out front?”

“They don’t really know I left,” she confessed, feeling a twinge of guilt at blowing off the wild night her friends had so eagerly planned. “And I think they’re trying to get backstage after the set.”

Filip nodded, took one last puff, and flicked his smoke. “Okay, come on. I’ll take you in through the service entrance.”

He opened a nondescript metal door in the side of the building and waved her through, giving a curt “She’s cool” to the huge barbacks inside. He led Fiona through a narrow alley of shelves stocked with boxes of liquor, crates of limes and olives, and broken stage lights, until they came out into a hallway covered in zigzagging pipes. Scattered around them were hangers-on and off-hours bartenders, all skinny and model-hot, checking their phones or tipping back beers. One or two gave a nod to Filip as he passed.

“There are your people,” said Filip, pointing. “You know that one dude, right?”

At the end of the hall, Tess Baron and Vince, aka Swordfish, stood in front of a lit doorway. They were flanked by PM and another nameless guy, massive and dressed in a tracksuit, his face a galaxy of acne. Vince talked quietly but animatedly, gesturing with his hands a lot; Tess looked mortified, her one fist pressed to her mouth.

“Vince!” called Fiona as she neared him.

Vince glanced at her. “One second, Fiona, in the middle of something here—”

“It’s you.”

Fiona froze. That voice.

She turned to the door, to the light.

In a dressing room illuminated by mirror lamps, he sat on a folding chair, hunched forward. The white pants were still on, but the hoodie had been tossed to the floor, revealing a taut physique more knotted together than chiseled, slick and shiny with sweat. He was absolutely covered in tattoos of looping concentric circles and ancient runic characters. His hair hung damp and dripping in his face. But for all the new muscles, new outfit, new location, and the new way he made her feel when she looked at him, the Pit Viper’s eyes were the same shimmering orbs that had watched Fiona as she’d approached him with an apple in her hand that night.

“It is you,” he said, his voice dark and smooth, like a black diamond, “isn’t it?”

Fiona wanted to play it cool, to pretend like she barely remembered him, but that was impossible. Her heart raced. Her head spun.

“Yes,” she said, her eyes locked on his. “Of course it is.”

A smile crept across the Pit Viper’s face. “I knew it was you,” he said. “At the party. I recognized you.”

She nodded. “And I recognized you.”

His smile spread wider. “I was worried you might have forgotten me.”

She bit her lip. Whatever he was making her feel, awe or excitement or whatever, she knew he was feeling the same. “How could I possibly have forgotten you?”

For a brief moment, they were silent, entirely lost in the energy flowing between them—and then Fiona realized, in a blast of cheek-burning embarrassment, that all eyes were on her.

“Sorry, do you two know each other?” asked Tess, sounding both surprised and envious.

“I was just going to ask the same thing, boss,” said PM to the Pit Viper.

The DJ’s eyes never left Fiona, and he showed no sign of self-consciousness. “The apple, Perry,” he said. “It was her.”

PM’s eyes darted to Fiona, now wide with surprise. “Holy shit.”

“So, anyway,” said Vince, trying to shoehorn his way back into the conversation, “as I was saying—”

“Where’s Horace?” asked Fiona. She had to stay focused on the situation, anything but those tattooed muscles and those eyes burning into her, making her feel both light-headed and comforted.

Vince inhaled sharply, glaring straight ahead like it took all his willpower not to choke Fiona. “He’s out there somewhere,” he said. “I tried to get him to come back here with me, but he’s rolling pretty hard.”

Fiona glared at PM, who held up his palms. “Not my fault the dude can’t hold his drugs,” he said.

“What’d you give him?” asked the Viper.

“Orbitin,” said PM. “Sorry, boss, if I’d known who she was—”

“I need to go,” said Fiona. “I have to find Horace.”

“You do that,” said Vince.

She forced herself to meet the Pit Viper’s gaze again, trying to match his pressence with her own, and feeling, momentarily, like she did so.

What could she possibly say to him?

“It was nice to see you.”

Dear God, Fiona, really?

“You never answered my question,” said the Pit Viper.

She wanted to play coy. What question? But what other question was there? And anyway, he knew the answer. He’d put her on the list tonight. He’d paid her cover charge. Who else could have?

But he wanted to hear her say it, finally. And she wanted to tell him herself.

“Fiona,” she said.

His face softened, and he was the boy again, entirely. For a moment, she thought he might cry.

“Music to my ears,” he said. “Good night, Fiona. I’ll see you soon.”

“Good night,” she said and hurried away from the brightly lit room, intent on finding her boyfriend and stopping her trembling.

…

The club was close to empty when Fiona reentered, so she followed the last few stragglers outside. Her eyes scanned the block for her friends, and she was beginning to lose hope when she spotted Rita standing down the street.

She trotted over, but as she got closer to them, she saw the extent of the scene, and the excitement of rejoining her crew vanished.

Horace was bent at the waist, both hands up against a wall. His head dangled between his shoulders, dripping long strings of drool. Between his feet spread a splatter pattern of watery vomit that made Fiona’s nostrils burn. Rita rubbed his back and looked apologetically at Fiona. Keller and Caroline stood nearby, faces pale and pupils dilated.

“Did you see, when he raised his hands up,” moaned Keller, “like this?”

“Oh my God,” cried Caroline, raking her nails down her collarbone and chest. “It was so beautiful. I wept, Doug, I fucking wept.”

“Horace?” said Fiona, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Horace, are you all right?”

“He’ll be fine,” said Rita, swaying tipsily. “Just needs to get all the bad stuff out, and he’ll be good.”

“Fiona?” moaned Horace. He belched, and his body shook. “Fiona, I heard it. The voice? It spoke to me. It was beautiful, Fiona. They’re all beautiful.”

“And the drug thoughts,” laughed Rita. “The drug thoughts need to get out, too. He’ll be okay, though.”

Ben Willis trotted over with a bottle of water and some napkins from a deli, and together they made Horace swish and spit and wipe his mouth. When he tried to stand, he had to cling to Fiona for balance.

As they walked back to Central Station, Fiona did her best to coo and smile and listen to Horace’s incessant babbling about gorgeous voices and what the sky sounded like, but every so often she would glance at the boy holding on to her for dear life and feel pissed off. Horace had represented joy and vibrancy to her. He had been what could be cool about growing up in Hamm. This guy, his face grayish-pale and sheened with sweat, his voice shaky and insane and carrying the scent of bile—this was not the boy she’d thought she loved.

On the train home, after Horace, Keller, and Caroline had gibbered themselves to sleep, the anger Fiona had been holding back hit her like a slap in the face, and she snarled at her reflection in the window. Tomorrow, she and Horace would talk it out, and he’d apologize profusely and make vows of sobriety, but the simple truth was, he had failed her. He knew they were on unstable ground, he knew he was supposed to be making it up to her for trying to have a party at the mill, and instead he’d acted like the kind of guy she’d always told herself she’d never date, a wannabe rock star who preferred wasted oblivion to her.

Inevitably, her mind kept wandering back to her exchange with the Pit Viper.

He’d remembered her. He’d told others her story; he had waited for years and years to hear the answer to the question he’d asked her on a dark, bloody night long ago, even though he’d somehow found it out on his own (Tess? Probably). His eyes had touched something deep in her heart, a sensation that she felt both giddy and guilty for having.

Thinking about him now brought up familiar feelings. Not the dread of his return, but the excitement of his initial arrival.

And other feelings, too. Feelings Fiona didn’t want to admit to herself while sitting next to her boyfriend. She thought about the way he’d looked at her. Her toes curled in her boots.

As they stepped off the train back in Hamm, Horace hooked an arm around her shoulder, shuffling along with bleary slow-blinking eyes and a glistening slick of saliva down his chin.

Fiona shook her head, wondering how things could get much worse, and then looked up to see her father waiting by his car.