Who knows what kinds of people that place will attract,she said.
In her mother’s stories, the hitchhikers had always been men. They certainly hadn’t been women with short bleached hair wearing dresses that looked like nightgowns under voluminous fur coats, guitars slung over their shoulders.Thiswoman—the one holding out her thumb on the road ahead—looks more like a ghost than a serial killer.
The driver can always spot summer people—even now, in the dead of winter, the people who own second homes on the island are “summer people.” It’s not only that they dress differently, drive different cars, carry different bags; their hair is different, their makeup, their skin. They move around the island as though its beaches, roads, shops, restaurants were put there expressly for their entertainment. Even the nice ones—and unlike her mother, the driver does believe there are nice ones—carry themselves differently than the locals, so that she could never confuse one for the other.
The woman in the distance doesn’t look like a summer person, but there’s no mistaking her for a local, either. As the driver inches closer, she’s able to make out the hitchhiker’s features: her smeared lipstick, the tattoos peeking out from beneath the hem of her dress, the messy bun. The driver doesn’t recognize her, but can tell, somehow, that this woman is famous. She eases off the gas pedal just like her mother taught her, slowing to a stop. She won’t take a picture or beg for an autograph. She only wants to be close to someone special, as if glamour might be contagious.
The driver tries to imagine what made this stranger seek help at the recovery center—the only reason a celebrity would be on the island this time of year—but it’s impossible. What problems could someone so dazzling actually have?
The hitchhiker grins as she asks for a ride into town, her teeth glowing white in the darkness. Her eyes are set far apart and focused on something in the distance, as though, despite the dark, she can see beyond the reach of the car’s headlights. She absently strums her guitar. The melody is sweet, like a lullaby. If this were a fairy story, the driver thinks, the stranger would be some kind of demon, her song meant to lull the driver to sleep before she pounces.
The driver wants to ask the hitchhiker about her life, but something in her gaze—a hunger the driver’s never seen before—stops her. She thinks about the story of the wolf in sheep’s clothing, pretending to be harmless to slip in among its victims. Or vampires, appearing in the road, waiting for some Good Samaritan to offer them aid.
Later, the police will ask what she saw, and the driver will only remember the sound of the guitar, as though she was under some sort of spell after all. They will ask, did the hitchhiking stranger seem sober, high, drunk, dangerous? They will blink at the driver’s answers like she’s utterly useless, driving all the way into town without asking her passenger a single question beyondWhere do you want to go?Her mother will scold her for picking up a stranger, take her keys, and ground her for a month. Briefly, the driver will become a bit of a celebrity herself: Her classmates will want to know every detail of the drive, and the boy who dumped her last month will start texting again.
But for now, the driver knows only that she is in the presence of someone special, so she tries to soak up this stranger’s magic by osmosis, breathing in deeply. She offers to turn on the radio, but the stranger says no.
“Don’t want anyone else’s song in my head right now,” she says with a smile. She looks, the driver thinks, happy. She looks peaceful.
52Georgia Blue
Georgia Blue.Andrew made the name—myname, the oneIchose, the person I created, the woman I made famous—sound like a curse.
He’s not the first person to say that what happened was my fault. The press started seeding nasty theories about Scott’s death almost as soon as he died.
Why,they said,would Scott Harris kill himself? He had everything.
He had everything, until he had me.
They said I killed him because I was jealous, because he was going to tell the worldhewas the one who’d written my songs, because he wanted a divorce and I wanted his money.
Or they said I drove him to suicide, made him so miserable that he chose ending it all over facing one more day tied to me. The industry was rife with stories about how difficult I was to work with; they could only imagine what it must be like tolivewith me. A basket case, they called me. A mess.
There was a time when I would’ve told them that I wasn’t difficult to work with, it was just that I was a perfectionist, determined to get every note exactly right. I singlehandedly wrote two albums, one of which went gold. That kind of thing doesn’t happen by accident, no matter the stories people tell about being hit by inspiration. Sure, I showed up to concerts high, but never recording studios. I hadpriorities; there were things I cared about more than drugs.
It’s cold out here and I lost my coat. My kid hates it, so good riddance. I don’t need it anyway. My skin is hot with rage, so hot that when it starts to snow, the flakes steam when they make contact with my skin. I sit on the curb of a sidewalk and pull my notebook from my guitar case.
For Andrew,I scrawl at the top of a blank page. After a couple weeks here, the notebook is almost full, only a few pages left. There are years’ worth of notebooks and journals I left behind in Laurel Canyon. My kidand my mom aren’t interested enough in me to snoop, so I never bothered hiding them away.
I can hear the intro to this new song in my head: soft and warm, like a caress. Like Andrew smiling at me behind Evelyn’s back. A piano’s tinkle-like laughter.
But after the first verse, my voice will scream the chorus:
I thought you cared and you did
Cared for yourself, the self you hid
Thought you helped and you did
Helped yourself, left me for dead
Got what you wanted, picked me dry
Like a vulture, but you can’t fly
Away, away, away from me…
You’ll never
