Aliyah, Madeline, Four Candles

The crowd hadn't even gotten there yet. It was merely the act of
setting up to play Radio City Music Hall that made me realize we
were not just a successful band--already a miracle--but that we
were a big-dick famous band.

At first I had wondered whether the stage crew may have already
had a long day prior to our arrival, or whether they really were
just weirdly inexperienced for such a large venue, because as we
worked, they seemed almost perplexed by our fairly normal desire
to be a part of arranging the instruments on stage, and doubly
perplexed by our fairly normal selection of instruments, and had
very mixed reactions on Aliyah's great dane, Lion, who was
bounding around the stage and sniffing things. Some crew would
offer out a hand to him as he neared, and give him a rub if they
got the chance. More than one of them would run away--Lion would
chase briefly, then bound off somewhere else. But I realized, as
far as the setting up goes, that it was because they were
starstruck by us. I had known for a while now that fans can be
weirdos, obsessives, awkward types, but seeing someone trip over
themselves professionally on our account was, I guess, an
interesting first, and it made me appreciate that we weren't at
such a big venue by mistake. We were here because we really had
made it.

We had never played a room half this large--most of our lives we
could play shows without microphones. But that wouldn't swing
here. A technician was helping me figure out the mics that would
best facilitate my piano, accordion, saxophone, and acoustic
guitar. Aliyah, up front of course, was having an easier time with
her two guitars (electric and acoustic) and her microphones. The
bass guitar (Steve) was to be on a stand halfway between us, so
that either of us could have him depending on the song.

Jess, after getting help putting up the platform for the drums,
had told the stage hands to go away. She would set up her drum
world, thank you very much, yes if I need anything I'll ask.

"Any backing band?" the stage hand helping me asks, as he is
managing a cable.

I'm sure Jess, Aliyah, and myself are each keeping our own count
of how many times we've been asked this, so that we can compare
later. In fairness, this particular stage hand has not asked me
the question yet.

"Just the three of us, start to finish," I inform him. "Why, do
you play anything?"

He smiles a little. "Most of what you've got on stage. Just rusty
on the drums, but otherwise..." He shrugs, and pretends that his
full attention is needed on the cable that seems to already be
sorted out.

I skip over to the stool with my accordion on it, grab the
accordion (it makes a silly noise), and turn to face the stage
hand. "Catch!"

His head snaps up and there is amazing panic in his eyes as I am
tossing him my accordion. Everything drops from his hands and he
catches it.

"Play something!"

Jess adds from the drums, "Play Piano Man!"

He is trying to remain bashful, but his smiling betrays his
eagerness. He had fantasized about this outcome, but had not
expected it. He straps on the accordion.

After dancing up and down a scale, he is playing Piano Man just as
well as I could. Jess whistles and cheers. He sings the words,
complete with the La-Dadada-Dadadada's, and lets the final note
fade out a long time.

I point at him and shout to Aliyah. "Aliyah!"

"What, dear?"

"Let him do the show!"

"Does he know our songs?"

I look at him.

He is already taking off the accordion. "Sorry," he says, still
much happier than he was when he was fiddling with the cable. He
hands off the accordion.

"That was really good though," I tell him.

He tells me his name is Chuck. I tell him my name is Willow, and
he seems amused, and says that he had heard what my name was
before. I have lied to him anyways, as my birth certificate and
driver's license say Madeline. Setting up the cables with Chuck is
a lot of fun, and my mind is taken off of how big this big-dick
theater is, and how many people will be fit into it in a few
hours. I find out that he has also lied to me, and he can play one
of our songs. He plays it in my place, complete with Jess on the
drums and Aliyah on electric and vocals, as I run from the front
of the hall to the back, stopping for a while at various seats to
make sure that I can hear everything well. (There is also someone
whose job it is to do this, but they are waiting for me to stop
playing and go on stage so that he can hear it with the correct
band and each of the instruments as I would play them, since the
band is here anyways)

With everything set up, Aliyah, Jess, and myself play a rehearsal.
(We are a punk rock band but literally everyone besides the three
of us disagrees with this. We are called Ring Fingernail)

During the actual show (like in front of people) my eyes are
closed from start to finish (They open to a narrow squint only
when I need to change instruments, particularly when going for
Steve)

After the show, we all run outside. Aliyah gets into the driver's
seat of her car after letting Lion into the passenger side. Jess
and I climb into the back (Jess shows me that she has a bottle of
rum) and Aliyah drives us all to our hotel and parks (Jess and I
are intoxicated)

Security stops us for being drunk and having an accordion and an
enormous dog with us, but after a moment they are informed that we
are big-dick famous and we are escorted to the elevator, where
Aliyah then informs the security that we are fine thank you, and
hits the button for the top floor, and the elevator closes with
Aliyah, Jess, myself, and Lion inside, and also a man with a beard
who seems to be unrelated to any of this.

Jess looks to him, and asks, "Screw?"

He appears uncomfortable. He holds up his hand, and with his other
hand points to his wedding ring.

"Cheat?"

He pulls a cross necklace out from his shirt collar.

"Ugh."

He gets off at his floor.

Jess passes Aliyah the bottle of rum. Aliyah drinks. Jess drinks
again. I drink again. Jess drinks again. The elevator doors open,
and we maneuver our way through the short hall and into the
penthouse suite.

As soon as I have heard the door close behind us, I look over and
Jess is naked (Drunk Jess has Opinions about clothes) and Aliyah
has taken her own bottle of rum for herself from the minibar (she
salutes me with it before tilting it back and drinking)

I go and close the curtains that overlook New York City and also
grab my own bottle of rum from the minibar and then I sit on the
couch. I fiddle on the accordion as I replay the night's events in
my head (although my eyes were not open for the show, I can
vividly recall the presence of the crowd. Their sound was a
physical force. Reprocessing it now while drunk, the crowd has
only gone up in physicality. I rethink of moments of songs again
and again, and how all of those people screamed at us or were
silent and held their breath for us)

When I am finished, I set the accordion aside. I am drunk and
sleepy. I look around. Jess is in a bubbling hot tub in the corner
of the room. She raises an arm and waves at me. I wave back.

I stand, and become immediately aware that walking is going to be
an ordeal and I will probably fall over a lot. I begin walking
towards Jess, and amazingly I continue walking towards Jess until
I am at the edge of the hot tub. "I'm going to bed," I inform her.

She tells me that she's scoped out the bedrooms and this penthouse
has one guest bed and one master bed and that she is willing to
take the guest bed if me and Aliyah want to share the master bed.
I have not processed any of what she has said when I nod and walk
off towards the master bedroom, where the door is open.

I walk through the open door, and there I see Aliyah lying on her
back with her legs hanging off the edge of the bed. Lion is
standing at her spread legs, and is doing a thorough job of
licking her vagina.

"AH!" I say.

Aliyah flinches, and then she and Lion look to me. When she sees
that it is me, she raises a finger to her lips, and says, "Shhhh."

I stand frozen in the doorway.

Aliyah beckons me over.

I mechanically walk forward and stand at the corner of the bed.
Lion has sat down, and is looking at me, though he keeps glancing
back to Aliyah's vagina, which she still has spread out in front
of his face.

She slinks down the bed and onto the floor, crouching beside Lion,
rubbing the length of her body against his sitting body. "Lion and
I are more than friends," she tells me. She is at least as drunk
as I am. As she rubs him, I can hear the scratching of the hairs
of his fur all rubbing together.

I nod.

"Do you mind if he and I get back to where we left off?" Aliyah
asks.

I can't think of a reason to be bothered. Correction: I can't
think of a reason to be bothered that I actually believe. Jess
having sex while we're in the room is a normality. Aliyah I have
never seen in the act before, and it is now plain to see why. I
tell her that she and Lion can get back to it.

Aliyah kisses Lion on the front of his dog lips, and his mouth
opens and begins licking at her, and soon they are making out,
Lion lapping into her mouth and all over her face. I crawl up and
sit at the head of the bed, huddled up in comfy blankets, watching
my best friend fuck a dog. I fall asleep at some point. When I
wake up, I am lying on one side of the bed, and next to me is
Lion, and big-spooning Lion is Aliyah.

Over breakfast, while Jess is in the other room, Aliyah and I are
talking at regular volume about the concert, and at a quieter
volume about the fact that she fucks her dog.

"I trust you to keep it a secret," she tells me.

"Of course," I tell her. "Does anyone else know?"

"Just the dogs."

"Dogs?"

She takes a breath in to talk again, and then her breath catches
before she can say anything. She pauses a while, and then tries
again. "Missie growing up, and Victor after that. Definitely Daisy
too, even if..." Tears have not fallen yet, but she has started to
cry. "Even if that one didn't last long."

I get up and go and get on my knees next to her chair and hug her.
She lets it out, hugging back. Lion comes and sits at her side
opposite me, and rests his nose against her, looking sad. She pets
him. She thanks us both. We eventually get on with breakfast and
the rest of the day. We are doing a much smaller acoustic show
tonight, and I am looking forward to it.

Months go by. We take a break from touring to work on new material
for our next album and to have a vacation. Aliyah, Jess, and
myself all live in Portland and see each other often. Jess moves
away from Portland to Los Angeles. Aliyah moves away from Portland
to a farm in rural Colorado, near a town called Kohath. It is
rarer that any of us see each other. About three years after that
night we played Radio City Music Hall, Aliyah, Jess, and myself
meet up in Kohath for a month to rehearse the new material, iron
it out, and record the new album. I love being with them again. I
know that this band is no longer the thing it was before when we
were touring, but nonetheless, I am grateful for it to still be
here, still be the three of us playing music, with Lion lumbering
around the recording studio. He walks with a limp now. I pet him.
Aliyah pets him. When we are finished recording the album, Jess
returns to Los Angeles, and I return to Portland, although I am
wondering whether I might like Kohath better. I do not pursue this
idea, as I do not want to impose on Aliyah's seclusion. The band
is not what it was before. The river is shallower, still enough to
turn a turbine, but less. I will not overexpect of it. I still
talk on the phone with Aliyah and Jess every now and then.
Sometimes I play small shows as a solo artist, and Jess tells me
that sometimes she does the same in Los Angeles. One day, after I
have not been able to get in touch with Aliyah for months (I
thought we had been missing each other's calls, but in fact, she
was avoiding me) I learn that Lion has died. Aliyah wants to go on
tour. Jess is agreeable to this. We meet up in Los Angeles for a
few shows as a test-run, and when it goes well, we begin arranging
the cross-country route. It is similar to last time--it is good--
even if we are all damaged goods even more so than we were the
last time. The tour is a lot of fun and I love Aliyah and Jess and
I also love that there are still a lot of people in the world who
are fans of us, apparently, which is affirming that we must be
doing something right, probably. When we have gone from one side
of the country to the other and back again and the tour is over,
we all return to our homes. Aliyah and I talk on the phone every
day for a few days, and then, I can no longer get ahold of her.
When I have not been able to reach her for a week I ask around,
and learn that nobody has been able to get ahold of her. I travel
to Kohath and break and enter into her farmhouse, and go through
every room, and she is not there. I call around. Nobody knows if
she went somewhere. She is declared a missing person. I am helping
with the searches. The searches yield nothing--we do not find her,
alive or otherwise. Two months pass. Jess comes to Kohath and we
cry and she tells me there's nothing more I can do here, and I
should get back to my own life. I return to Portland. I play music
in my living room, but nowhere else. Often I sit back on the couch
fiddling with my accordion, mentally playing back shows we'd
played, conversations we'd had, moments we'd lived. I miss my
friend.

A year goes by. Sitting on the couch and playing the accordion so
often, I have ended up with a lot of new workable material. I
fiddle with the other instruments, and figure out the
arrangements. I have never been much of a lyricist, but I come up
with some stuff. I begin recording in my living room, recording
the different tracks of the different instruments all myself.
Eventually, I have a demo for a new album. I send it to Jess. Jess
calls me in tears and thanks me for showing it to her, and she
says I should get it produced, it sounds really nice, that it
shows so much of how much of the band's sound had been Willow
sound. I thank her and I mean it, but I also mean it when I tell
her that the band's sound was all because of Aliyah. She
disagrees. She says the band's face was all Aliyah, but it would
be lost in genericism without the Willow parts. I appreciate that
we are talking about this but I also feel uncomfortable whenever I
have to speak about Aliyah as though she is dead. She almost
certainly is dead. Whether she is alive or dead, she almost
certainly would enjoy that we are talking about her. I thank Jess
again, and get off the phone with her.

After finding the phone number and gathering the courage, I call
up the recording studio in Kohath. I explain who I am (they
remember me) and I tell them that I have an album to record if
they might be interested, and I can send them the demo. They
insist that sending the demo will be unnecessary and I can come
down to record at my soonest convenience. I pack up my instruments
and go (I leave Steve behind in my living room and buy a new bass
guitar on the drive)

I arrive at the studio a couple days later, early in the morning.
I am greeted warmly by the owner. We sit down and listen to my
demo. By eleven AM we have begun recording. By nine PM I can't
stop. The studio owner asks if I will lock the front door when I
leave if he gives me the keys. I agree to this. He hands me the
keys and goes.

At the stroke of midnight, I am recording an acoustic guitar solo.
I finish it, open my eyes, and standing behind the glass in the
tech room is Aliyah. I scream for joy and drop my guitar and rush
to the door to meet her, but I halt as I actually near the door.
She looks different. I am certain of it. I had thought it was just
the reflection of the glass playing tricks, but I can now see that
her black skin is no longer skin, her black hair is no longer
hair, and her dress (she rarely wore dresses) is no longer
anything earthly either. From head to toe, I can see through her.
She is made of something smoke-like, but also glass-like, but it
is certainly in the shape of Aliyah, or at least close enough that
I could recognize it.

She does not wait around for me to open the door. She walks
forward, and she moves through the studio window as though it
wasn't there. I step forward to hug her, but she shakes her head,
and I step back.

"That song is coming together beautifully," she tells me. She is
smiling at me, but she is not happy.

"What happened to you?" I ask.

She frowns. "I got super murdered."

Tears hit me. Aliyah and I sit down next to each other on the
couch in the tech room. I ask, "Who killed you?"

"Not gonna say. Don't need you getting involved too."

"I'll kill the bastard."

"Yeah, so, like I said."

I snarl.

We sit quiet for a little while.

"I want you to do something else for me besides killing," she
says.

Anything. "Go on."

"Well, first off I should tell you I'm not in a major rush about
it. I want you to finish recording your album before you go and do
my thing. Okay?"

I am listening.

"Okay," she says. "Okay. First, finish your thing here. Then...
then I'll tell you where my body is buried, and I'd like you to
dig me up, and bring me to Crater Lake National Park, and rebury
me there, near the water."

I look at her.

Now it is her turn to be in tears, although it appears she cannot
actually cry. "Missie and Victor--Crater Lake is where my family
scattered their ashes when they died. It's where I scattered the
ashes of Daisy and Lion too. And I don't want to spend the rest of
eternity away from them."

I nod. "I can do it now. We can leave right now."

She smiles. Again, she is not happy, but nonetheless I don't think
that the smile is meaningless. "I want to hear your album finished
before I go. C'mon. Let's get back to it, if you're still staying
up tonight."

I agree to this, and step back into the recording booth. I retune
the guitar and put down another take of the solo.

In three days I have finished all of the recordings, and in four
days I have finished editing everything together exactly as I want
it and recording some touch-ups, with guidance from the studio
owner and from Aliyah. I have bullied Aliyah into writing the
lyrics of a song for me. A song about love and empathy and fucking
dogs. It is by far the best song on the album. I hope that
everyone who thinks it's a joke becomes more tolerant without
realizing it. I hope that everyone who gets mad about it gets it
stuck in their head forever.

I pay the studio owner generously for letting me take complete
control over his studio for the week. After packing up my things
from the bed and breakfast I've been staying at, I sit on the edge
of the bed with Aliyah, and the two of us listen to the album,
start to finish. She thanks me, and I thank her. She tells me that
she is buried in the dirt cellar of an abandoned farmhouse five
miles out of town.

I pack up my van, buy a tarp and a shovel and a big flashlight
from the farm supply store in town, and drive out to the house. I
break into the cellar. During the initial searches after Aliyah
went missing, the police searched this building and a few other
abandoned ones, and I should not be surprised that they did a shit
job of it. Sweeping the flashlight across the floor, I don't even
have to ask Aliyah where exactly she is buried. There is a raised
mound of discolored dirt the size and shape of a grave. It is so
conspicuous that I am stricken with certainty that a cop killed
Aliyah and covered it up during the search, but I do not bring it
up, because I know she still won't tell me who did it (I already
asked a lot more times as we were doing the recordings)

I dig her up. I am careful not to damage her body, although she
insists that this actually does not matter in the slightest. When
she is unearthed, I lift her body out of the grave, and place her
onto the tarp. I wrap her up and carry her out of the cellar and
into my van. I go back into the cellar and fill the grave back in.
I drive north out of Kohath, bound for Crater Lake National Park.

On the way, as Aliyah and I are talking, I make a comment about
how unfair it is that she died so young.

"I did not die young," she tells me.

I shrug. "Okay, maybe not young, but you weren't exactly elderly."

"I was ancient and sick of life anyways," Aliyah tells me, and I
am shocked. "You're not thinking about life the way that I lived
it, dear. You're thinking in human years. Human lifetimes. I lived
four lifetimes with people whose candles burned short but brighter
than anyone else in the world. With each and every one of them, I
was right there burning with them."

I apologize. We keep driving.

When we arrive at the lake, I make my way down a gravel road and
eventually I park the van. I grab my shovel. I dig Aliyah a new
grave. In the time it takes me to do this, nobody has come by. I
take Aliyah's body out of the van, lay her to rest in the woods
near the lake, and bury her properly.

She stands atop her grave, facing me. I am covered in dirt and
sweat and death germs. I am smiling at her. She is smiling at me.
She is still not happy. Not yet. But she is smiling, and she is
optimistic.

"Thank you," she says.

"Thank you," I say. "For everything. Have a good afterlife."

"You too, when you do."

I snicker, and I wish I could hug her, but she is gone. I go to
the lake and get into the freezing water to wash off, and then I
return to my van, dry off, and return home. I call up a local
venue and they book me to play an acoustic show. I play our old
songs that were Aliyah's favorites, even though I know that she is
not listening, that she is somewhere else where she, by now, is
probably burning with the happiness of four lifetimes rediscovered
at once.