Ten years in and Fletcher is dead. Neiman hopes it was a fucking coronary. Which is easy enough to picture, the great bandleader of the 21st century keeled over mid-obscenity with a stupid look on his face. Neiman is nothing but glad. He's glad Fletcher's dead and he hopes he suffered. He hopes they kept him hooked up full of tubes, pissing into a bag, listening to the irregular chirp of his own fucking shriveled-up heart, finally flatlining while some junkie nurse takes a smoke break. (Rushing or dragging? Why not ask yourself, you fucking cocksucker?) He hopes that some bitch ex-wife pulled the fucking plug on him. He hopes it was cancer. It'd explain a lot -- some overworked mortician would crack him open like a pre-sliced bagel and there'd be nothing inside him but fucking tumors. Nothing inside that wasn't blackened and tarry and malignant.

The newsprint might hold a clue somewhere to the facts of it, but his own version is better, like Fletcher's own idea of a good yarn: more vivid and more satisfying. Andrew doesn't want to know what Fletcher's been doing with his life for the past 10 years that him finally kicking the bucket is newsworthy. There's only one photograph, which his eyes mercifully gloss past, sped by his disgust -- Fletcher half-turned away from the camera, lit up like a skull, smooth black tee shirt and hairless-cat wrinkles. It could have been taken last summer, or forty years ago. Peak form. Terence Fletcher is dead, and Neiman is alive, and a whole lot of barely-competent young musicians can breathe easier.

Suddenly it's fucking freezing in here. His mouth aches and his cheeks prickle with disgust; Andrew fumbles with the week-old newspaper and turns it over. The hotel bed is flush against the wall, or he'd have the satisfaction of knocking it to the floor.

Andrew Neiman can't uncurl his right hand without the web of his thumb and index finger cracking and bleeding. Doesn't that bring him back -- he can't hold either hand fully flat at all without a splitting pain that runs all the way up his arm to the elbow and makes him gag with its intensity. His tendons are fucked, his wrists swell no matter how much he ices them, and the veins in his arms look like bad road. As an image it's as subtle as a brick through a window -- permanent damage, what a pair of words, permanent damage. But it's not an image, it's a life now, and he's learned to fumble left-handed at the miniature hotel-room coffee maker without burning his fingers. He's learned how to tent up his skin for the needle with reasonable dexterity, but it sometimes takes a couple tries.

He doesn't know what possessed him to pick up the newspaper anyway -- an appreciation of the courtesy, maybe, or he'd just been looking for some familiar name and just didn't expect it would be that one. Dad's writing for the web version of a magazine that hasn't been what you'd call relevant since Bush was in office, but he sounds happy, looks happy in photos. His portfolio is healthier than ever and there's only one piece that alludes to his son's predicament. They haven't seen each other in person in five years. It hurts sometimes.

Andrew doesn't know how long it's been since anyone's really wanted to hear him play. He doesn't really play any more -- that's what he says -- but it's in his blood, music is one of those diseases that sticks around like hepatitis or AIDS and it'll itch for the rest of his life, everything he's squandering. He's circling the fucking drain. At least Sean Casey had an apartment to string himself up in. Charlie Parker used to pawn his instruments to get cash to buy heroin with. That's the kind of motivation no amount of instruction can provide. Not about going up in the world, just keeping going.

Every time Andrew thinks he's hit bottom, he'll rally again for just long enough. That's the only thing that's kept him from jumping off a bridge or sucking cock behind a Dumpster somewhere or moving back in with dad, getting a job and listening to Starbucks jazz. There's never really such a thing as rock bottom, not for people like Neiman. He'll rally long enough that he doesn't actually have to clean up his act for more than a few weeks at a time.

Andrew wonders if he'll rally now. He'll be playing again in a week, getting exposure, getting paid, and he'll switch back to pills and slowly patch up again, a triumph. It's never as bad as it looks.

He'd dated a girl (like every other girl -- haloed brown hair, strong arms, didn't know shit about music but knew to keep her mouth shut) and when she'd seen him scream and shake and flinch back, he'd tried to tell her -- talk about it, you'll feel better, people will listen, it's important for people to hear. Told her about Shaffer, told her about it from the top -- told her about Fletcher, about being nineteen and dumb and cute, the rehearsal room and the jazz club, sweat and blood and spit. Just the hits, none of the esoteric stuff with swapped charts and broken sticks, empty of content and void.

Andrew had almost gotten around the good stuff -- backed up against the wall, Fletcher leaning in, his hand out -- when something skittered ahead too fast and this girl's face lit up like a check-engine light -- recognition, horror, pity. "Oh my God," she'd said, "he was fucking you guys. Andy, he fucked you?"

He wasn't. He didn't. He didn't have to. That was the best, worst part -- Neiman would have let him, even, gladly.

And when this girl told him she had a teacher like that too once, that she understood, Andrew didn't know how to tell her (wrapped in her soft strong arms, spotting her shirtfront with mute tears he couldn't account for) that he hoped to God she was wrong. Six days later he'd thrown a plate at her head and she'd broken up with him.

It's just as well; he can't even come any more. The kind of listless, aimless marathon fucking this leaves guys like him capable of requires an expenditure of energy he can't afford, that he finds distasteful, and girls don't seem to like it either. There's no rush any more, and without that, what's the point?

His hand falls back against his belly, the fly of his jeans already undone. He'd jerk off for old time's sake but he knows how well that goes when Fletcher's on his mind and the last thing he wants is the ghost of a seventy-year-old man calling him a faggot. (Jesus, seventy? Still working at seventy? He lifts his head like he'll be able to just glance over and check, and his neck throbs.) There's nothing left to do, nothing that isn't strictly rationed or too-loud or likely to bruise him where he's already bruised. Nothing left to do. He doesn't have anywhere to go or anything he needs to buy or anything left to sell. He can't even sit up without dizziness sweeping over him. Andrew sinks back down again against the hotel bed, more out of a sudden failure of motivation than fatigue, though he's feeling that too. Better to stay put.

He extends his trembling arm and flexes his fingers, feels the crackle of his calluses cut through the murkiness of a fading high. Feels his damaged tendons roll beneath his abscessed skin. The last person who understands all this is dead. There's no one else.

A tightness starts to uncoil between his lungs that might be a sob. He lies flat on his back and taps out time against the newspaper: unsteady, and fast.