garrett night, amended

   I'm circling the parking lot at a Trader Joe's when Damien calls me. I fumble with my bluetooth for a moment too long and a bitch in a white Toyota Corolla swoops in and snags a space out from under me. I unroll my window and give her a thumbs down. She opens her door and advises me to "Fuck off", which I do, and I'm not happy about it. "What?" I finally say to Damien. "Yooo?" "Can you hear me?" I raise my voice. I'm about to go park on a side street. I yank my steering wheel around and zip out of the lot. "Okay, so. We got some of the boys from the studio coming out to Wyatt's show tonight. It's the perfect time to do some networking." Wyatt Easton is the son of a couple of people who got very big into denim back in the nineties. He's got enough money to pay people to think he's talented. He usually just opens warehouse shows for bigger names, but lately he's been fancying himself a headliner. This will be his first big show, and he's charging beaucoup dollars for people to watch whatever he ripped of Deadmau5's Master Class. Damien and I find this both irritating and amusing. "Aw, his first recital," I say. Damien laughs. "You gotta come out dude, we'll have a couple, do a little blow, mention the show a littleee.." It isn't ideal, though. Not for what I want to do. I have some pretty fair suspicions that the "boys from the studio" are going to be the lower rung writers, the kids that don't have any real pull or influence. When it comes to pitching my show, I want to talk to the people who are the least supportive of the Writer's strikes. I want the top dogs. "I still think we should wait until we go to the Lux Event at Lacma. Beside's, the pilots not even finished. You haven't even looked at what I've written, have you?" Damien ignores this. "Come on, bro. I put you on the list. You're going." I fucking want to stay home and write, Damien, since we both know you're not going to. But I agree and hang up. I let out a loud groan as I walk into Trader Joe's. 

   You'd think that with his insistence that I go to Wyatt's event tonight, Damien would at least have the decency to pick up his phone. He doesn't, and I walk around the block three times before I find the entrance to the venue. I left my car in a weird little alley offshoot and paid a homeless guy ten bucks to keep an eye on it. I doubt he will, but it's better than making myself a target. I'd bet money the same guy I bought my protection from is the one doin' the break ins, but never mind. The entrance is an elevator shaft on the outside of the building. It's obvious the warehouse has been renovated but the exterior still holds a lot of the grimy, LA charm. We go up five or six floors to the top of the warehouse. I walk into a sleek club with floor to ceiling panorama windows where I'm welcome to look down on the working class plebeians below. VIP sections are roped off and and security is dressed in black on black suits. They look classier than they do formidable, which I took to mean if you're here, you're here for a reason. They're not expecting trouble from this crowd. I scan the crowd and I'm right, it's all the LA yuppies, or children of yuppies, in carefully devised looks that make them all look super individual and artistic. Damien is wearing a trench coat and a bucket hat. He's talking to a girl with a black mullet who keeps playing with the ends of her hair. I nod to acknowledge him and then do a lap. I get a tequila from the bar, rocks, no lime, and stroll around the room. "Are you drinking water?" A girl asks me, trying to flirt. "Yep," I say. It might as well be, for all the good it's doing anyway. Wyatt has a bottle table roped off for us, but I'd like to be at least a little lubricated before I have to put on a show of sociability. I drain my drink and step back into the line for the bar. 

  Damien walks up to me. He seems to have ditched mullet girl, or she him. He leans in to say in my ear "My coke guy fell through." I'm heartbroken. My own guy lives way out in San Fernando and there's no way he'd be here in time for me to enjoy this night. "I'm gonna need it to drive," Damien says. Me too, brother. I've drained my second tequila already. I swill around the ice and still say nothing. Then, "Wyatt will, right?" Damien shakes his head. "That whole crew is California sober or whatever, except, you know, still doing a shit ton of Ketamine." "Fuck Ketamine," I say. I hate feeling groggy and it makes my head spin, especially when I'm drinking. I'm an uppers person. Always will be. "No choice, then," I say. "Let's do a lap, but make it conversational, no need to seem like crackheads." Coke has become a sticky issue in these kinds of circles in the wake of all the Fentanyl bullshit floating around. At least, from what I've seen. All I knew was that once I found my dealer, I kept him close and took care of him. I missed the accessability back in Florida. Damien nods. "Always, brother, always. Let me know what you find." The “studio boys” could wait, this was a much more pressing issue, and besides, I was much more glib after powdering my nose a little. I take a deep breath and then walk over to Wyatt's to shake hands and touch base with his crew. 

  Wyatt is surrounded by a a group of cheesy looking wannabes. He is putting an extreme amount of energy into looking nonchalant. I imagine him practicing in the mirror at home. He notices me and bounces forward ever-so-slightly, then, catching himself, resumes his glazed expression and gives me a slight wave with his index and middle finger. The girl next to him snuggles close under his arm. She is telling him a story about some club she went into in Europe but Wyatt isn't listening. His eyes are darting around the table and assessing his fan club. I jerk my head to the right, scoot, and he does. The girl he's next to gets pushed uncomfortably against the wall but she gives us a big, toothy smile to tell us she doesn't care. She's chill. "Everybody having fun?" I ask because it's obvious he's worried about it. It's shitty to pick on him but it goes over his head, either way. He gives me a look of concern. "I thought we'd sell out. I had this shit all over socials." I roll my eyes at his admittance of weakness. Why'd you tell me that, bud? We fake it 'til we make it. "Seems pretty packed," I shrug. He tells me about the bottles he got (Casa Bueno, mid-range, boring.) "I'm having them send out Mags of Dom when I go on," he says. He checks his phone. "Shit. I gotta go to the green room. Save me some champagne." I scowl. "I don't drink champagne." But he's gone. The girl that was clinging onto his arm sidles up to me, instead. "Hi, I'm Bethany. How do you know Wayne?" she asks me. Her fake eyelashes are drooping at the corners. "I don't." I get up and brush past her with a glare. 

  I find Damien in the back of the club talking to some DJ I made out with at a mansion party in the hills last winter. She doesn't recognize me, or pretends she doesn't. I shake his hand and put on a show of making sure I get the pronunciation of her name correct. "Nay- leeeeese? Is that right?" Naelyse turns up the corners of her mouth for my benefit and resumes her conversation with Damien. "I swear to god, I'm not paying my manager fifty fucking grand a year to not make it to at least main stage EDC this year. I'm on at four on the fucking kinetic stage? I'm honestly so close to firing him but he works with Sigma and like, what is all his energy going into sucking his dick? What about me? I got ninety thousand likes on my last Instagram post." Damien is nodding along but he reaches over and taps my wrist. I open my hand and he drops a little bag of coke in my palm. I lean forward. "Tested?" I ask. He shakes his head no. It's sketchy as hell doing random coke amidst the fentanyl epidemic. Even though the crowd around us is the young, rich, making it demographic, they're still, above all else, dumb. I take the little baggy back to Wyatt's bottle table. He must be about to go on because some thirty-something bottle girl in leather pants and a bralette shoves past me waving a sparkler. She "accidentally" pops the cork and champagne spills all over. I bet she's hoping they'll run out of champagne quick and buy another bottle. I eye the wad of bills she has wrapped around her bra strap and hope she takes them for all they're worth. 

  Bethany welcomes me back into the fold as if it's her table. I forget I'm not on Wyatt's side for a moment and I'm annoyed on his behalf. She grabs me by my bicep and her nails dig into my arm. "Have a drink with us," she commands. She tries to hand a glass of champagne but I grab the bottle of Casa Bueno and pour it neat into a plastic cup. Her smile falters.  I revert back to friendly. "Anyone ever tell you you look like an actress?" I don't even bother naming a name: I literally say "an actress" and it's enough for her to giggle and bat her eyelashes at me again. I meant Margo Martindale and you still wanna fuck me. I hate her so much and I'm so edgy from wanting the coke that I offer her a bump. "You can go first," I tell her. I text Damien and tell him I found a test kit, results pending. She doesn't die, but I see how much she did and wish she did. I go to the bathroom and lay out a few lines with my phone balanced on my knee. It's the first time I've used my Costco card since I moved to California. I haven't done any yet, but my hands are shaking slightly. I roll up a twenty because it's all I have. Some people are particular about what bills they use but I don't care. The same people who won't use a single because it was "up a stripper's asshole" are the same people eat after touching their phone or pumping gas. My immune system is getting bolstered either way. I'd take my chances with making my drug use more convenient. A few of the boys from the table are outside the stall. I give them a few bumps just to get them chatty. I'm glad I do, because it turns out one of them is from the studio. Just as I suspected, he's nothing more than a writers assistant. A glorified fucking temp. The night is shot either way. I knew coming out here it was going to be bullshit. 

  I leave the restroom and eye the bottle table. I can tell Damien is coked out because he's got his arm around Wyatt and is making exuberant hand motions while he talks. I'm sure he's telling him what a great night it was and how innovative Wyatt's sound is. Though to me, the entire set sounded like something you'd here at one of those weird after-hour lounges that serve sushi for whatever reason. As if anyone wanted crab rangoons in a nightclub at four in the fucking morning. I walk over to the boys.  I bet if I tell Wyatt I think he played the same song twice he'd shit his pants. He probably couldn't tell the difference between any of his tracks himself. "You should tell your parents you want a ghost producer for Christmas this year," I say. "What?" He doesn't hear me and I'm glad. I don't know why I'm being such a dick. They make room for me at the table and I slump down in my seat in a way that'll bother my lower back if I do it for too long. I pour myself a neat tequila in a champagne flute because there's no other glasses. I cross my arms and stare at the people around me who are so content to talk about absolute nothing/garbage all night. I will myself to be happy. Bethany plops down besides me and asks "So what do you do?" It doesn't matter what I tell her, so I break my own rule and say "I'm a writer." She lets out a little gasp, ohmygodthatssocool. It appears Bethany has, indeed, heard of books. "What do you write about?" She asks. I gesture vaguely. "You should write about this." She says it with certainty. She looks around the venue with a warm smile, like the people around us are a part of a tribe she's been wandering the Earth - hunting and gathering and warring with - for years. "Bethany," I say, "It's all futile." She gasps again and clutches my arm. "I fucking love that. It's vital. It really is."