The shotgun is pressed tight against my shoulder, swiveling from window to window as I hunt for any sign of movement. To send Eddie flying, I need to hit him right as he’s crawling over the edge.
Whap!
Another plume of glass erupts into the car behind us, causing me to spin abruptly and nearly pull the shotgun trigger. Somehow, I manage to hold back, and with no sign of Eddie’s crawling body it appears I’ve chosen wisely.
I notice now that we’re coming up on the big, bombastic ending of “A Star Like Me.” It’s a long song, particularly because what starts as a tight pop arrangement gradually evolves into the track’s famously grand ending, and it takes a while to get there. The whole composition has broken down one last time, stripping everything away so that it’s just Eddie Michaels and his piano. From here, the track will swell, growing with even more spectacle than the intro and taking twice as long. Once this part reaches its absolute crescendo there will be a sudden pause, like the hesitation at the top of a roller coaster, and then the whole thing will erupt in a wildly dramatic return.
And if there’s one thing Eddie can’t help, it’s being dramatic.
In any other situation, I’d keep my eyes peeled for something impulsive, the random emergence of Eddie’s head over the roof. That would give me two variables to watch out for—time and space—but I’m confident I can lock down one of those.
I know exactly when Eddie’s gonna make his move.
The song’s ending builds and builds as we pass tower three, cold wind blowing through the gondola. The trees are thicker now, and the rocky crags are covered with a blanket of shimmering snow.
The piano and drums start blooming with a staccato pulse I’ve heard a million times before, every strike just a little bit louder than the last. Up until this point, I would’ve argued these ten or fifteen seconds are the greatest in rock ’n’ roll history, debated the transcendent power of this song until I was blue in the face, but as I stand here with Marlo wrapped around my legs and my gaze fixed tight along the barrel of a shotgun, I realize the track has somehow changed.
It’s not that I’mtryingto hate it; it just doesn’t feel right anymore. The tones are a lot more brittle than I remember, and Eddie’s moaning attempts to vamp up the energy are outrageously melodramatic.
Never meet your heroes, I guess.
My heart is slamming to the beat of the music, louder and louder as the drums reach their inevitable crescendo. Every instrument is pounding in unison, played with so much fervor that it feels as though every piano key will crack and every string will break and every drumhead will split down the middle if it goes on even a second longer.
And just when it all feels like the whole song is about to collapse in on itself, the pause arrives.
“But baby, I’m a—” Eddie belts. The second his recorded voice says the word “star,” his massive insect frame comes barreling over the roof’s edge to my right. His six pointy legs stab through the metal as he moves to skitter across the ceiling, tentacles lashing, but I’m ready for him.
I pull the trigger, blasting the giant earwig with a face full of buckshot that sends his body curling backinto the air, half his form holding tight while the rest of his oblong body whips out over the side. Eddie slips a bit, legs disconnecting as he struggles to regain control and, for a split second, I think he’s about to take the plunge. I swivel my weapon, ready to use my final shell and send him tumbling to the boulders below, but before I get the chance Eddie’s tentacles reach out and snag the gondola roof, pulling him back over the edge and out of my sight line.
“Fuck!” I erupt.
“Uh-oh!” says Eddie, his voice rattling down from above. “It looks like someone hit you pretty hard, sport. Knocked a screw loose.”
I have no idea where he’s going with this. My focus is still trained on the lip of the gondola.
“I think they gave you a bloody nose.” Eddie chuckles.
Again, his words are confusing, but I can’t help myself. I slowly reach up with one hand, wiping my upper lip to discover there is, in fact, fresh crimson blood running down my face. This injury probably happened during my fight with Kenny the security guard, likely when he struck me with the shotgun. That fucker hit hard. Hard enough to knock the wind out of me, or knock a tooth loose.
Or knock the wax from my–
Before I can finish this thought, Eddie rattles out a three-word command.
“Stop everything, Poppy.”
I freeze in place.
Influencer
The wax in my nose is gone.
This awareness erupts through my mind, screamed without any vocalization since my mouth is now trapped in a state of paralysis. The utter horror is overwhelming, enough to make me collapse into a sobbing, frustrated heap, but instead my body stays upright and stiff. Eddie’s command has overridden any expression of anguish.
I got so used to my nose being plugged up that I stopped checking in with myself, considering the problem solved as I hustled onward to other things. The shark kept swimming, kept looking ahead, and that endless forward momentum made it easy to overlook the fundamentals.
If my face were clean and moisturized on a calm, sunny day, then I probably would’ve clocked the sudden ability to breathe again, but right now my head is a globeof humming static that alternates at random between pain and numbness.
With nothing to do but hold this position and think these desperate thoughts, I can now sense what Eddie noticed. There’s a cool, sticky wetness atop my lip, specifically on the left side. The right nostril likely remains plugged with wax—in fact, despite all the radiating ache and discomfort across the rest of my face, I can still feel it in there—but one open side is all it takes for the pheromones to get in.
