Wildflowers

The day the photos surfaced I wore cat-eye sunglasses to hide my face.

Later, I would regret the outfit: the blush-pink satin camisole, the black suede hat, the vintage Levi’s. They had caught me with the dignified absence of a smile. To the world, I knew it would read as cool apathy.

My only solace remained in the fact that at this point I was still an enigma, somehow both anonymous and profoundly more famous than I had any right to be. And they didn’t even know my first name.

I took the train from Grand Central to Brattleboro, ten miles east of my family farmhouse in a village with the same name as a cigarette brand. As the lush bright green summer sped by, I attempted to sleep, but my skull rattled, my ears rang, and my veins were electric with tension.

*

At fourteen (and thus for always, I suppose), my best friend was Sadie, whose slightly more wholesome and decidedly less dysfunctional family lived down the road. Up a gritty gravel driveway, past a screen door, I always knew I could appear, unannounced, to be enveloped in the warmth of her companionship.

In those days she wore her freckled face bare, and I had a jet-black streak in my hair. Each morning I ironed my natural curls straight as straw. We stole liquor from her father’s cabinet and watched the stars from the roof.

Our gloriously mundane lives were interspersed only by the juvenile dramatics of adolescence. It was almost unbearably boring. And so we did, predictably, what every teenager does, as a rite of passage: we lived vicariously through our idols, forgetting ourselves in their hollow opiated eyes and emaciated bodies.

They were almost always men, but in the background of every story there was a host of women: feather-haired in their flowing bell sleeves and captured in chartreuse photographs. Even then, I knew they were play-acting, settling into the role of muse when they wanted to be visionaries. We weren’t allowed to be visionaries, they told us. We could only be pretty.

Whether they were horse-faced teenage girls cutting open someone’s entrails or doe-eyed dames playing at adult sexuality as they donned fur coats and trailed after dark-eyed rockstars, whether they achieved their faux power through sex or violence, they all assimilated to their circumstances in the same way.

Once they were in, it seemed to me, something sacrificial occurred. They became dull and tame. Their eyes went dark and dead, even as their laughter rang clear and girlish, as their clothing became brighter and their engine-red lips spoke about peace and love and happiness. They had shed their skin and sold whatever was left of their souls.

There was a formula to their stories, the stories that held these girls as simultaneous victims and demons, angels and whores; there was always a commonality. These girls, with their long, tangled hair and terrible smiles, always followed the lead of a man promising them the world.

*

The day after I became a muse myself, I argued with Sadie in my parents’ kitchen that we were always muses in a sense, whether we wanted to be or not.

She drank iced tea and listened with folded hands, nodding, not understanding. Sadie had gone to college. I had not, and now it felt too late. This gap existed between us whether we wanted to acknowledge it or not, and to Sadie my problems were likely silly. But she listened anyway.

There were others who listened, later, though they had their own agendas.

“We’re never allowed to be visionaries,” I told a journalist, a woman my own age, in my one and only interview that summer. It seemed as though I had repeated that singular phrase ad nauseum for weeks, and though a few were listening, no one was understanding.

I sat on the porch with my bearded dog crawling in the grass and drank cold-pressed strawberry lemonade. The journalist wore the clothes of a bohemian but her cupid’s bow was lined with a rouge red I could never afford.

I hated her, and so I spoke honestly.

“We’re never allowed to be visionaries. We’re never allowed to be geniuses. We’re always muses.”

I had never had anything against muses, in theory. It just always seemed that they were in a club too exclusive for me. And besides, I wished to create. To be known for what I created, and not for what I inspired.

*

A decade ago, having just arrived in New York, I was as naïve as one could possibly be, but I had a persistent love for aesthetics that carried me through. Eventually, my façade enabled me to blend in.

I carried fresh-cut flowers home with me on the F-train, wore long skirts and creamy blush, and bought books wherever I could find them. I thought everyone in the city was too beautiful to be real.

I tried to purge the dirt from my fingernails, to look polished and glamorous, to hide every bit of the country that still remained in me. In those times I slept on tattered couches, in bus stations, in a sublet with a paranoid schizophrenic. Most of the time I was exhausted. Yet at least I looked like I belonged.

It took me a while to find my new best friend, a city replacement for Sadie, who was settling into her dorm at a liberal arts college in the shadow of the Green Mountains and kissing a new boy every weekend.

I didn’t really want a new best friend, but I accepted her nonetheless when she arrived. With her sharp black liner and stick-and-poke tattoos Aria looked savage and feral enough to keep the worst of the worst off my back.

*

One evening it was grey and overcast outside, miserably appropriate, and I was feeling sorry for myself because Aria was on a date and I couldn’t recall the last time I had spent any time alone with a man who wasn’t a music industry professional.

I passed the time watching a documentary, one I’d been meaning to watch for months. It detailed, in grim and macabre honest, the rise and fall of 1960s cults.

I could have watched it with the sound off. The truth was in the imagery. Long-haired men smoking joints in the grass, girls lounging on the leather seats of a tour bus, laughing, kissing and caressing each other beneath a disco ball. Reedy young women with straight blonde hair standing in fields waist-high with wildflowers, blood on their white dresses.

Aria arrived home suddenly, having abruptly ended her date. The credits were rolling on my laptop.

I didn’t know, then, that this was the night that would change everything. I was accustomed to nights like this. But this time, unlike the other times, Aria did not drunkenly collapse on the bathroom floor, or on the couch. This time she slunk into the doorway of my room and knocked on the wooden frame, already grinning.

"Didn't work out?"

"He was boring."

She was still grinning, wolfishly. I knew that she was about to suggest something I would regret the next day.

"What is it?" I asked.

“I don’t want to force you,” Aria said apologetically. “But my friends are hosting an album release party tonight, and I thought you’d like to get out.”

*

The floor was smooth and a small low-level stage was built into the furthest wall. There was a glittering chandelier above the bar, where young and attractive bartenders hurriedly poured cocktails for immaculately dressed guests.

Booths arranged against both walls were sleek black leather; placards indicated reservations. A winding iron staircase led to a quiet, dimly lit upper level with a second bar, a modest table of merchandise, and the overwhelming feeling of exclusivity.

In this atmosphere Aria always came alive. Bright and fierce in the electric lighting, I saw her eyes turn wild. It seemed instantaneous. Soon she had spotted a group at one of the booths and disappeared.

I immediately sprung to action, determined to stick by her side even as I acknowledged that this side of Aria was a terribly unreliable host.

Just as I was about to follow her, feeling more than a little pathetic, I was interrupted, politely approached by a young man, no older than nineteen. I blinked at him and took in his spotty skin, his nervous smiling eyes, his black bowtie and pressed white dress shirt. He handed me a tall flute of bubbling champagne and a small notecard.

He vanished amongst the light crowd with a curt as I stared somewhat stupidly at the glass in my hand.

The notecard was on distressed paper, its edges ribbed with gold leaf. I read the names of custom, one-night-only cocktails, each of the eleven named for a track title on the album I was apparently here to celebrate.

A burst of glitter suddenly exploded in the corner, and a raucous burst of laughter erupted across the room. Altogether too many pairs of eyes turned to look in the direction of where I stood, and with a mortifying jolt I realized I was the only one left standing.

Aria had found a table. The group surrounding her seemed impossibly glamorous. A girl was draped in mink fur, wearing vintage cropped jeans and masculine black Chelsea boots. Her male companion, tall and chiseled, wore a designer watch and cuffed white sleeves and he smelled heavily of Tom Ford cologne.

“This is Layla,” Aria said once I’d sat down, and my name sounded as though it had just been on her lips a moment before.

The woman in the fur jacket turned to me. Her eyes were bluer than I thought possible. She was difficult to look at. When she spoke, it was with a mild accent, something Eastern European that I couldn’t place.

“I’m Stella. It’s nice to meet you, Layla. Aria says you are a musician.”

“I guess I’m trying to be.”

Stella smiled around her coral lipstick, not showing her teeth. “Are you a fan of this band?”

I shook my head. “Never heard of them. Aria invited me.”

“You and Aria,” Stella continued, curiously. “What is your relationship? How did you meet?”

“We’re roommates,” I said, realizing half a second too late that perhaps this was the wrong answer, that roommates were an uncool topic in such an environment. “We live together.”

“Ah!” Stella exclaimed, genuine. “How sweet. That is so nice. I loved my roommates in Amsterdam—when we first got signed to our agency, we stayed in this dumpy flat by the canal.” She broke off, laughing. “Clothes all over the floor. Lots of drinking, long into the night. I imagine American college to be similar.”

“So,” Aria interrupted, “you know anyone here tonight?”

Stella lifted her gaze from her phone and replied lightly, “Yes, some of them are my friends.” She craned her neck to look at the upstairs bar. “I don’t know if Rhett will show, but Austin…”

“Austin likes to party,” Lex agreed, appearing out of nowhere, sliding back into his seat with two tall glasses of white liquid in his hands. “I can’t even keep up with him anymore.”

“Austin,” Stella agreed, “is going to end up in a grave with all the others.”

“He’s only twenty-five,” Lex said with a smirk. “Two more years and he might leave behind a legacy.”

I was about to ask about Austin, doomed as he apparently was, but the way his name was spoken, it seemed as though I was supposed to know already. I kept quiet.

Another burst of glitter and smoke erupted, along with a powerful array of cheers and wolf whistles. A tiny girl in black combat boots and fishnets appeared suddenly, a roadie, stepping through the explosion with flecks of silver in her hair.

I realized, then, that a conspiratorial tone had overtaken the group, and that they were glancing at one another as though they were in on a joke I had yet to catch on to. It was only a moment later that I realized they were planning to use cocaine, something I had been around plenty but had yet to indulge in. Right now did not seem the best opportunity.

As they stood to go to the bathroom, I heard Stella ask, “Not interested?”

“She never is,” Aria said.

“Innocent lamb.”

As Stella gathered her handbag I was struck with a momentary, stupid flash of annoyance.

I got to my feet stubbornly. “I’m coming.”

Stella laughed brightly. “All right, honey."

They led me into the restroom, minimalist and awash in sterile light. The mirrors were surrounded by bizarre pink bulbs, giving everything a strange translucent rosy glow. I felt vaguely nauseous.

I stood at an awkward distance as Aria cut up lines on the smooth marble. When she was done, Stella motioned for me to join them at the sinks.

We did a bump each, and I was just beginning to acknowledge the thrilling buzz in my veins when the sudden muffled sound of shouting in the hallway interrupted.

In unison we turned to the door, and then to one another. Aria, leaning against the sinks, looked curious, almost excited—while Stella, to my surprise, appeared genuinely nervous.

“Shit!” she said under her breath. “I thought this might not happen tonight. That we’d be lucky—”

I blinked, baffled and a little annoyed at her fear. I felt tremendously confident. I felt on fire.

“It’s fine,” Aria agreed. “Whatever is it is, it will be fine.”

Stella moved swiftly toward the door and pushed it open, peering outside. I heard her gasp and move back sharply. In the hallway, two lanky, dark-haired men were brawling savagely.

“Austin!” Stella yelped.

The taller one was stumbling drunk, brutal in his leather jacket and a cut freely bleeding from his face. Eyes glassy, he pinned the other against the wall. Later I would remember Rhett this way: the first time I ever saw him outside of magazines, small yet powerful.

He wasn’t cowering. His assured dark eyes held a quiet confidence, and he was watching Austin with something like pity, even as his best friend held him in a chokehold, spitting fire with his words, yelling curses.

He spoke in a heavy southern accent.

“Austin, calm down, man. Jesus Christ, you’re making something out of nothing.” A slight pause, and then, almost tenderly: “I’m on your side.”

“Rhett,” Austin said, “you’re a damn good liar, I’ll give you that, but you can’t fool me. I know you want to punch me in the goddamn face right now and your sorry ass ain’t got enough nerve.”

Rhett shrugged. He didn’t bother to say anything. Austin released the lapels of Rhett’s worn suede jacket, beginning to mimic Rhett, making exaggerated, simpering gestures.

“You fucking pussy!” he shouted. “Why won’t you ever defend yourself?”

His fist balled and raised in a split second and Rhett turned swiftly away, and Stella finally cut in, brisk and bold. I stood in amazement: Austin stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of her.

“Stella, what the fuck are you doing here?”

“You invited her,” Rhett growled, shaking the hair out of his eyes. A bruise was blooming around his right one, yet he looked calm.

“Nah,” Austin disagreed. “I don’t think I would have done something like that.”

“You specifically put her on the guest list and asked me not to tell Gen.”

Austin blinked and stepped back, disoriented. I recognized this as a moment of lucidity, resurfacing from the abyss: perhaps this would be the only thing he remembered the next day.

“Maybe,” Austin agreed. “I guess that does sound like something I’d do. Can’t get my wires crossed. Am I right, Rhett?”

Rhett did not smile. A small crowd had begun to form in the cramped hallway, including a burly security guard, and I stood against the wall feeling the fear as something distant and exhilarating, the cocaine adding vibrancy and thrill to what should have been troubling.

Eventually I realized that Aria was laughing hysterically beside me. She caught my eye and grinned a malicious, glittering smile that felt inappropriate for the context. She leaned in, shameless and conspiratorial, making no effort to hide the video she had recorded on her phone.

The band had started playing. They were greeting the crowd to cheers of excitement, dominating the room with the whining strain of a blues guitar riff. I recalled their name was Gold War.

The mood had changed entirely in the hallway.

“Should we leave?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” Aria disagreed, beaming like a hyena. I was, once again, on the outside of an inside joke.

The huddle broke. Stella, one arm around Austin’s broad shoulders, was guiding him out through the back door. The private exit. He was calmer and more pliant now, though still mumbling obscenities, and Rhett was standing miserably in the hallway running a tired hand through his messy dark hair.

In the dim, flickering light, I was finally able to get a good look at him. Beneath his camel-colored jacket was a thick flannel layered over a V-neck black tee, beneath which I could see glimpses of ink.

He wore fitted black jeans and scuffed boots. A basic gold cross hung around his neck. His eyes in the half-light were the color of honey.

“Don’t think I caught your name.”

“I’m Layla.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Layla, though I wish it could have been under better circumstances.”

There was another loud, drunken shout from outside. Rhett rolled his eyes and raked an unsteady hand through his hair. I noticed his tense body was trembling slightly, betraying more anxiety than I had expected.

I jerked in alarm as he rushed to leave.

“Really sorry we ruined your night,” Rhett apologized.

“You really didn’t.”

My phone buzzed in my pocket. Come outside. Parking lot.

I ventured out, on impulse, the coke giving me the sense that something very real and very exciting was about to happen. Aria was standing in the parking lot, but so were several security guards, Austin, Rhett, and two other young men I vaguely recognized and assumed must be the background characters in the grand drama of Black Trap.

Aria’s eyebrows were raised knowingly. “You just had your fifteen minutes.” She patted me on the back. “Congratulations.”

“Somehow, I expected it to be different.”

“Well, beggars can’t be choosers. Have you seen Lex? I promised Stella I would meet her.”

I shook my head.

Biting back a curse, Aria said distractedly, “Well, I’ll see you later, all right?”

I nodded, recognizing the polite lack of invitation. I barely cared, then. I was frankly too wired to relax.

I paced around until the commotion died down and Aria vanished into the crowd.

There was a sound off to the side, and then suddenly there was Rhett, leaning against the gritty wall covered in anarchist graffiti, a millionaire in rags with a black eye. He was lighting a cigarette with a silver Zippo lighter. He did not seem remotely surprised to see me again.

I hesitated, but he nodded, and I followed dutifully, as though driven by magnetism. I allowed him to light me a cigarette.

“Your friends—where’d they go?” he asked.

“The Bowery.”

“Ah,” he said, in a tone that said he had heard a similar story a thousand times before and was very bored by it. I quickly redirected the conversation.

“Why are you still here?”

“Why not? We don’t have to leave for another…” He checked his watch. “… Five hours.”

“Sounds exhausting.”

Rhett nodded. “Did you come see us?”

“Sorry. No.”

“Next time,” he hinted.

I smiled. “Next time.”

“Where are you from?”

“Vermont.”

“I’ve always wanted to go to Vermont,” Rhett said sincerely, finishing his cigarette. “To see the fall foliage.”

“And I’ve always wanted to go to Nashville, but they told me the competition is too steep.”

Rhett ducked his head, laughing bashfully.

“It’s a ruthless town, but if you’ve got faith…”

I stared at his cross necklace. Suddenly it occurred to me that it might actually mean something to him, and I felt awed, embarrassed, and humbled all at once. I looked at him slowly. He swallowed, his gaze so steady. Our eyes fixed on each other.

The sudden flash of a camera bulb jolted us out of our reverie, and we both turned, startled. One final shot, probably red-eyed and unflattering, before the paparazzo dashed away.

This is an excerpt from a larger work. The full novella can be read on Medium. Thank you for reading and supporting my work!