Garbage PA

In the morning you can't look at her.

Which is ridiculous, because nothing happened. Some texts at three a.m. across a two-foot aisle. You wrote back. She wrote back. At some point you fell asleep with the phone on your chest, and when you woke up at nine, her curtain was open, her bunk was empty, and the screen still said her last message.

You read it again in the bathroom mirror while brushing your teeth. Then you put the phone face down on the sink like it might bite.

When you come out, Ivy is in the front lounge in sunglasses with a coffee, feet up on the bench, scrolling. She doesn't look up.

"Morning, Sparky. Or should I say Ava, now that we're pen pals."

"Morning."

"Sleep well?"

"Fine. You?"

"Like a baby." She sips. "Babies wake up every two hours and scream, right?"

Kit, who is eating cereal out of a mug, looks between you with enormous interest. Odalys, at the whiteboard, says, "Load-in at noon. The house engineer at the warehouse is named Duane. Duane says the PA is 'basically fine.'"

Ivy and you say "Oh no" at the same time.

She looks at you over her sunglasses. The corner of her mouth moves. Then she goes back to her phone, and you realize, with your whole body, that last night did happen. You both know it. And neither of you is going to say it out loud yet.

The PA is not basically fine.

The warehouse is a gutted brick hall the size of an aircraft hangar, with fourteen-meter ceilings and broken skylights and pigeons. The speakers are mismatched, half of them hung at the wrong angle, two of them blown. The amp rack is held together with zip ties and faith. Duane, who is twenty-five and wearing a Hawaiian shirt, shows you the mixing desk with real pride.

"She's a beauty, right?"

"Duane," you say gently. "Where's the delay tower?"

"The what?"

You have five hours until doors.

You take off your jacket. You start pulling cable. You make Duane climb a ladder and re-hang two speakers while you stand in the middle of the floor and clap, listening to the echo come back off the brick, adjusting by ear. You find a dead amp channel and swap it. You find another bad ground and fix it with a real ground instead of gum, because you have standards. You run pink noise through the system and walk every corner of the room with your eyes closed, and you tune the room the way you'd tune a guitar, slowly, one frequency at a time.

At some point you realize Ivy has come in and is sitting on the edge of the stage, in the shadows, with her chin on her knees.

You don't know how long she's been there. You don't stop.

"Duane," you call. "Play something. Anything with a low end."

Duane plays a track off his phone. The kick comes through the system, round and tight, and hits the far wall and doesn't bounce back muddy. The brick sings. A pigeon flies off a rafter.

Duane says, "Holy crap."

From the stage, Ivy says nothing at all. When you turn around, she's gone.

You find her in the green room an hour before doors, which is a converted foreman's office with a mirror and a bowl of fruit nobody's touched. She's doing her makeup. Dark plum mouth, a sharp wing of eyeliner, something shimmering on her cheekbones that catches the bare bulb like light on water. She's in a black slip dress and heavy boots, a chain at her throat, the nightshade tattoo bare above the neckline.

Kit is in the doorway pretending not to stare. You're in the doorway openly staring and trying to pretend you're not.

"The room sounds like church," she says to the mirror.

"Thanks."

"Who taught you that?"

"Nobody. I just listen."

She turns on the stool. Without the teasing, her face is very serious and very beautiful, and it's hard to know where to put your eyes.

"Trevor used to soundcheck by putting on a Daft Punk song and saying 'yep,'" she says. "You walked every corner of that room with your eyes closed."

"It's a big room."

"Ava." It's the first time she's said your name since the contract. It lands differently. "Stay in the booth with me tonight. Not at the desk. With me. If something goes wrong, I want you right there."

"What would go wrong?"

"Nothing." She turns back to the mirror. "I just want you right there."

At one a.m., three thousand people are packed into the warehouse, and Detroit is losing its mind.

You stand at Ivy's shoulder in the booth, a borrowed rotary mixer on the table in front of her because the Bellweather's still dead in its case at your feet. She keeps glancing at it, like a person glancing at an empty chair. Then she glances at you instead. The third time, she smiles.

She's even better than at the Orchid Room. Bigger. The room gives her the space and she fills it, slow and dark and then suddenly euphoric, three thousand bodies moving like one. Kit's visuals pulse across the brick, purple and green, and the broken skylights show a few stars. At the drop, she grabs your wrist without looking at you and squeezes once, hard, like did you hear that, and you did.

You're grinning like an idiot. So is she.

Then, mid-mix, her hand goes still on the knob.

The next record is cued. The current one is running out. She doesn't move. You glance at her face and she's gone white under the shimmer, staring into the crowd.

"Ivy." Eight bars left. "Ivy, you're running out."

You follow her eyes.

In the middle of the floor, under a column of purple light, a woman stands perfectly still while everyone around her dances. Platinum hair in a sleek knot. A white suit in a room full of black mesh. She's stunning in a way that looks expensive, cheekbones and calm, the kind of face that sells perfume. She lifts a hand toward the booth, a small, intimate wave.

Four bars.

You reach past Ivy and bring the next record in yourself, clumsy but on time. The crowd doesn't notice. Ivy does. Her hand finds the knob again, shaking slightly.

"Who is that?" you ask over the music.

Ivy doesn't look away from the woman in white.

"Thessaly," she says. "My ex."