Paint It Black by Janet Fitch Page B

worked at a print shop in Hollywood. His accent was so thick she could barely understand him. It was just as well, she didn’t really want to understand anybody. It was easier to nod and drink her beer. How well did anybody know anybody anyway?
His hyperintellectual Harvardettes.
    “Bet you’re an actress,” the boy from Leeds said.
    “Waitress.” She turned to the bar, signaled for a third tequila. She didn’t like people who tried to impress you by fluffing up who they were. When she said actress or model, they got the wrong idea entirely, that she had ambitions, that she thought she was going to end up on a TV show. She didn’t care about any of that crap. That was her edge, her secret weapon. She didn’t give a shit. If you didn’t have anything truly great to offer, something truly amazing, then you should just shut the fuck up. Unless you were Michael Faraday, for instance. She raised the pale liquid in a mock toast, slugged it down.
    “You could be a model,” the boy said. “You know, I know some people, they’re making videos, like of bands. You might could do that.”
    She might could, but it only paid twenty a day tops, and she made more in two hours at Otis just standing still. But she didn’t give him a hard time, he was just trying to be nice. “So what’s Leeds like?”
    “Like LA without palm trees,” he said.
    She laughed. It was a surprise, that she still could. She wouldn’t have thought she could even rouse the shadow of a chuckle. She liked the way he talked, he said
f
instead of
th. Wifout.
Like a little kid. They watched the roadies set up for Lola Lola, props and instruments, a giant rubber sex doll. “See the bloke wif the green stripe in ’is hair?” Leeds said in her ear, pointing at a skinny boy in black eyeliner, a ruffled shirt. “He follows her everywhere, says she put a spell over ’im. All over the world. They’ll be in Japan and that little wanker’ll be there.”
    A desperate fan.
Just like John Lennon. Josie wondered if Meredith had fans like that. Followers. If she fucked any of them. Did Meredith Loewy even have a sex life? That cold beauty, a woman like that, she must still get offers, even at her age. She wondered what kind of man Meredith would pick for herself. She pictured a dark man, in a dark suit with a very white shirt, putting a fur coat around her shoulders for her, saying something quiet and witty. But she’d picked Cal, who wasn’t anything like that.
    The lights went down and the band took the stage, began the opening number, slow and spooky. They were joined by an enigmatic figure in eye makeup like a mask, Raggedy Ann tights and a red yarn wig, dildos strapped to her skirt like tools from a carpenter’s belt. Lola Lola had been thrown out of East Germany for obscenity and incorrigibility. Josie shot a grateful look to Pen, who gave her a shove.
Told you so.
    The singer snarled and crooned over the heads of the crowd, weaving her spells, her black-magic curses, pumping the dildo that hung in front of her short puffy skirt, that fabulous growling voice, a whisper, then a huge burst of operatic sound. They were all a body now, the crowd, and Josie was part of it. She had forgotten about this, the narcotic of the crowd. This is why you came to hear music. To stop being yourself, to let that thing that you supposedly were go, and just be part of a mob, synchronized by the heavy beat, mesmerized by a singer with big smeary red lips, her spooky chant. Michael hated this, it was the worst thing he could imagine, disappearing into the mass—he didn’t know how to submerge himself, he was the puzzle piece that fit nowhere. Pen was right, this was the right place for her. To be no one. Nothing. The wanker with the green hair lurched and jerked as if he were being electrocuted.
    Lola Lola sang the song “Heard You Laughing,” which Josie knew was for Ferdi Obst. They said Lola had been the one to find him, in her dressing room after the show, with the