Chapter Text
Fairfax District, Los Angeles: Greyhound Bus Station, 1987
It only took a few days filled with incessant pleading and the clichéd younger sister’s brattiness to convince Duff to let her spend her first summer vacation as a graduate with him in California. In typical Duff fashion, he hesitantly hemmed and hawed about the idea. He wasn’t very keen about exposing his seventeen-year-old, eager, and bright-eyed sister to the dark underbelly that LA had to offer. He had already been out there for a few years and had seen and experienced his fair share of living rough. Regardless, she dug her heels in and pulled out the big guns, using that whiny little tone that made him cave every time, not to mention their mother, Alice, forever trying to keep the peace between the kids, thought it’d be a great idea for him to gradually show her the ropes around the city, rather than her going out there blind. So, out of options and patience, Duff begrudgingly agreed.
As soon as the plans were set in stone, she hung the landline back on the receiver, grabbed an old suitcase shoved to the back of the closet adorned with peeling leather and dents, and threw in every band tee and pairs of threadbare jeans that fit.
She thought she was having delusions of grandeur when accepted into SPIN Magazine’s internship position. She mailed out the application to the cutting-edge music magazine situated in Downtown LA from her suburban oasis in Washington State on a whim, the posted advertisement in the newspaper emboldened with big letters HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES ENCOURAGED TO APPLY! So, tucking the paper under her arm, she frantically conjured up every menial writing accomplishment and extracurricular activity under her belt on the school’s library typewriter, which she may or may not have had to haggle with Ms. Lewis about using.
She mentally bargained with herself about the prospect.
A few forfeited Saturdays' worth of helping the old, crotchety librarian organize books for a chance to start a career as a music journalist seems like a fair trade, so why not?
But on another surrendered weekend, as she sorted through what felt like the hundredth pile of science textbooks with an inch-thick layer of dust and no sign of a hearing back from the mag, her fleeting sense of bravado finally started to waver. She began to resign to a future fate of community college and part-time jobs at the mall.
That is, until she strolled into the house one afternoon after school, and Alice nonchalantly threw some words over her shoulder, attention more focused on a Virginia Slim and a Cosmopolitan article.
“Honey, do you mind running to Safeway for me?” Mom said, skinny cigarette teetering between clenched teeth.
She bit her tongue and suppressed the obligatory eyeroll, already having made plans of hiding in her room and finishing the last chapter of Wuthering Heights. But right as she turned the corner to the staircase, Mom motioned to her with the glossy paper.
“Oh, by the way, someone called for you earlier…something about an internship? Give them a call back when you get the chance.”
Rocketing upwards, tripping over a few steps on the stairs, haphazardly throwing her backpack into the corner, and knocking over a few tchotchkes sitting on a bookshelf in the process, she flopped onto the bed and dialed SPIN's number.
After a few moments of prolonged hesitation and repeatedly putting the phone to her ear and then back on the receiver again, she decided to buck up and just go through with the damned thing. This is what she wanted, no? An opportunity to begin the career that she'd dreamt of since she read her first band interview in Rolling Stone?
She huffed under her breath, chin pointed towards the ceiling, forcing her shoulders to lower. "Fuck it..."
Might as well rip the band-aid off. The worst they can say is no...right?
She finally spun the rotary one last time and listened to the dial tone ring like a church bell tolling. After practically chewing her nailbeds down to the cuticle, the call connected, and a perky-sounding receptionist answered.
“SPIN Magazine, how can I help you?”
Her stomach bottomed out. “U-Uh…This is Ms.McKagan,” she hated the quiver of uncertainty in her voice, but to her credit, she really didn’t think anything would come out of sending an application all the way from Seattle.“I was told to give you a call back about the internship position?”
“Oh, Ms.McKagan, yes, I have very exciting news for you!”
—
Which is what led her to this: sitting on a Greyhound bus that’s Los Angeles-bound. The transition happened incredibly fast, almost too fast for her to wrap her still-developing brain around everything. She called on a Friday, and by Wednesday night, Alice was dropping her off at the bus terminal with eyes threatening to spring a leak, willingly shipping her youngest pup off into a town curdled with excess. The internship organizers told her the program began as soon as her school credits were finalized and was supposed to be a crash course for aspiring future writers and editors to help transition from high school into the real world. Unpaid, of course, what's being a young adult in the workforce all about other than exploited labor?
Duff was proud of her for chasing her dreams, much like he did at her age, but less than thrilled about her wading through the waters of a city that has a penchant for chewing young girls up and spitting them out on the blackened pavement. It’s really the only reason he agreed to let her stay at his shabby little one-bedroom apartment for the duration of the program. He’d rather keep a watchful eye on her than throw her to the wolves, but that also meant she'd finally be privy to the kind of lifestyle he’d become accustomed to since leaving home.
She was only fourteen when her big, gawky older brother decided he was going to jump ship in Seattle and make his Odyssey to the big city to pave a name for himself. Growing tired of his dead-end, hometown punk bands that never seemed to fulfill his expectations, and too many of his friends falling into the abyss of opioids, Duff sought out LA as a new beginning with fertile soil, ripe and fruitful for planting.
She missed his presence around the house, of course. Being the youngest sibling at the bottom of the pecking order in their large, Irish-Catholic household had its perks, but it also meant she was left with an eerily quiet abode when Duff took off. No more late-night drives to get Dairy Queen, no more arguing over who lost or cracked a vinyl, and her favorite sibling pastime that she never realized she'd miss so much; no more talking about music until the sun came up.
There would be times when Duff would call home in the wee hours of the morning, a familiar vodka-like slur and heaviness to his voice.“Im-miss ya, kiddo…it’s real cool out here,”
She'd placate him and live vicariously through his tales of debauchery—the ones he was comfortable sharing with his teenage sister, that is—with a new group of guys that he had fallen in line next to and formed a kismet, musical connection with.
His tongue-in-cheek named band, Guns N' Roses, comprised a group of Los Angeles drifters in their mid-twenties who all seemed to co-mingle throughout the scene and double dip into each other’s musical groups and friend circles. It only seemed natural that when they all finally convened and started writing together, things just felt correct.
She loved hearing about it all. She yearned for comradely experiences like Duff was having. But back in her little secluded bubble, she always struggled to find her place. High school was a cage match, and she usually came out bruised.
She had a small tribe of friends; she wasn’t a complete outcast, but being an AP kid meant that most of her classmates already had full-ride scholarships by junior year. Everyone either packed up and hauled ass or got knocked up and locked down into a future confined to housewife material. She had an interest in neither.
She learned to be content with being labeled as the avant- garde, shy kid who had her nose buried in some classic book or music periodical, more so out of survival than being comfortable in her introversion. Forever the person who was coincidentally not invited to the homecoming parties, or standing alone and awkwardly at the school dances, looming in the corner like a pubescent Nosferatu.
That’s when she knew the second she saw the internship ad placed in the music section of the local paper, that this was her shot to leave her hometown in the rearview mirror, fully embracing and taking on the identity of a complete unknown,àla Bob Dylan. Finally able to go to a place where no one knew her, no one had misconceptions or prejudice, not to mention, California had sunshine. No longer were the days of living under a perpetual cloud of gloominess and Pacific Northwestern overcast; now she'd get to spend her free time lounging on a beach somewhere and hopefully getting some vitamin D.
—
It rained the day her bus finally rolled into LA.
A cruel twist of irony that only her presence could manifest. Duff always boasted that summers in LA are sunny and 70°—but of course, the day she decided to plant her feet in a new state for a fresh reset of life, it was a monsoon like back home. When she steps off the bus into the terminal, she's hit with the smell of smog and wet pavement.
“You brought the shitty weather with you!” Duff playfully jabs with a smile, pulling her in for one of those half-hug, half-punch sibling embraces.
She lands a knuckle in the spot that always makes him squirm, right between rivulets of his ribs. He releases her, and she gives a tight-lipped, deadpan smile through cold strands of hair sticking to her temples. “Very funny. Nice to see you again, too.”
She chucks her duffels into the trunk of his beat-up sedan, the front bumper hanging on by duct tape and prayers, and plops down up front. It's been a couple of months since Duff's last visit to Washington, his weekend trips back to the ‘burbs becoming fewer and far between due to whatever business he has with the band starting to get more solidified and steadier.
Standing tall and bony at around 6’3 when he’s not slouching, he looks the same for the most part; his bleached, wiry hair is getting longer and bouncing off the shoulder pads of his leather jacket, but he still sports his usual fresh-faced, green-eyed charm. Duff drives like a typical city-goer, weaving through traffic, fat droplets making rapid pitter-pattering noises against the windshield.
“How was the ride? Told you I could've driven you down here.” He says, eyes squinted as he tries to see through the storm.
She shrugs, watching skyscrapers disappear into gray clouds. “Nah, didn’t want you to waste the gas…was fine, just a little cramped.”
The small talk commences as it normally does, futile questions like are you hungry? Or do you wanna do anything? Only answered with small meh’s or subtle shakes of her head.
Duff's car, a dreadful, dented little thing running purely on fumes and overdue oil, smells like a sickeningly sweet slap of nostalgia, Marlboro's and patchouli, the heel of her right foot repeatedly crinkling an old McDonald’s bag carelessly discarded in the footwell.
“I’m just kinda tired. Think I wanna sleep for a little bit.” She says through a half-yawn, eyes drooping since Fresno. Tourist traps can wait; the only thing she's really interested in seeing right now is the back of her eyelids.
Duff nods wordlessly, continuing to drive through the backed-up traffic, the storm lessening the closer he gets to home. He makes a right on West Sunset, dead clubs and empty bars blurring past in a wash of muted colors. A little down the road, deeper into residential areas and mom-and-pop shops, the car rolls to a stop.
He puts the clunky shifter into park, but she stays rooted in her seat, blinking at the building before her, half-dumbfounded.
When he would call her at 3 am and go on his usual intoxicated ramblings about how he’s in a ‘legitimate’ band now, and they’re all going to be rock stars, a small, naive part of her wanted to put stock in that notion. He would send her small magazine clippings and bootleg cassette tapes of shows, and to the untrained eye and ear, they looked and sounded like fucking rockstars. The idea that they’d get snatched up by a record label and immediately funneled with cash didn’t seem so far-fetched.
That fantasy went out the window when she found herself standing in front of a dilapidated apartment building that’s been leaning deeper into a sinkhole since Eisenhower was in office, with chipping paint and iron bars over the windows. She decided maybe her brother’s tangents were spoken through heavier beer goggles than she previously realized.
But growing up in a household that wasn’t exactly well-off, she learned early to bite her tongue and be grateful no matter the circumstances. Duff's letting her stay at his place rent-free for the entire summer, so she should be appreciative—but she's only been lingering outside for five seconds and has seen at least three engorged rats and a couple of discarded needles in the alleyway bordering the Section eight housing.
A large hand claps the shoulder of her denim jacket.“Home sweet home!”
She gives Duff a meek smile and pushes down whatever uppity misconceptions she had about his living conditions.
They trudge up the iron staircase, and after wiggling his key in the lock and forcing the dirt-stained door open with his right shoulder, she's greeted with a slightly less apocalyptic sight.
Duff's place is small, but tidy in the way that a twenty- three-year-old boy is able to uphold. Aside from piles of laundry kicked into corners and festering dirty dishes in the sink, there’s an old polyester pull-out couch with abstract cigarette burns, which was her soon-to-be bed, a small TV propped on a wooden table that looks like Duff snatched it from the side of the road, and a kitchenette set that she'd recognized their Mom gifting him when he first came to LA as a housewarming token.
Definitely not a flashy, boisterous, millionaire mansion—but it’s a roof over her head and that’s enough for now.
She discards her bags by the sofa and kicks her old, worn-out Converse by the door. She zeros in on the couch and plops down, the springs creaking under her weight as she sinks into the thin cushions. She looks over at Duff, who’s already cracking open the tab of a beer with a small smile.
“Your place is nice,” She says with as much sincerity as she can muster in her exhausted state.“I know I already said it, but I appreciate you letting me stay.” Greyhounds aren’t renowned for their comfort or amazing sleeping arrangements, so she's been awake for the better part of 18 hours, running on adrenaline and gas station coffee. For the majority of the ride, she had a switchblade that Duff gifted her for her sixteenth birthday clutched tightly in her jacket pocket.
He throws words over his shoulder, disappearing into his room at the back of the unit. “‘Course…take a nap, we can order pizza or something later.”
She sighs, deflating her lungs and scrubbing her face. She leans over on the couch and curls into a ball, too tired to pull the bed out; she resorts to just stuffing her face into the beer-sodden fabric and letting the heaviness of her eyelids give way.
—
She could tell it was dark out the next time she came to, hearing her brother’s disembodied voice chatting back and forth with another person through the fog of drowsiness.
“Why can’t we do this shit tomorrow?” Duff groans.
The replies that follow aren’t as loud, a soft-spoken tone, a slight rasp that curls around the words. “Everybody’s there already. We gotta go over the new stuff for the show on Tuesday before everyone gets too fucked to play.”
The faint smell of cigarette smoke wafts into her nostrils. She grumbles groggily, stirring awake.
Duff sighs. “Yeah, alright. Just gimme a sec. Lemme tell her, then we’ll go.” He murmurs in a hushed voice, the heel of his black cowboy boots clicking down the hallway.
She flutters her eyes open in curiosity, pupils struggling to adjust to the dim light. A blurry figure stands by the kitchen counter, the orange glow of a cigarette ember flaring with each drag. After a few harsh blinks and a good rub of her eyelids, she makes out a tall, lean frame shrouded in the hazy, yellow-toned light, his gaunt face almost pale enough to blend with the walls. Black stringy hair clings to sharp cheekbones and tumbles over broad shoulders. A silver nose ring hugs his left nostril, catching a glare, and small, hooped earrings dangle from either earlobe and jangle with each movement. His leather jacket creaks softly as he shifts his weight, the only sound in the otherwise still room.
She sits up slightly, propping herself on both elbows, and squints at the man she assumes is one of Duff's friends—or bandmates. He gives her a slight nod of acknowledgment, a motion so minimal she almost misses it. No greeting. No smile.
Duff emerges from the bathroom, shrugging on a denim jacket and running a hand through his hair. “Oh, hey,” he says, jerking his chin toward the man by the counter.“That’s Izzy.”