Selma—tattooed and pierced and wearing a tattered pink satin dress over her jeans—was doing a sound check when Izzy approached. Ink diamonds dripped down her face and across her chest arced the words, “Fool’s Errand.” Had she gotten that tattoo before or after Joe? Brutal.

Selma didn’t see Izzy at first, but a man, tall and brick-shouldered as Frankenstein’s monster and preternaturally pale, even under that desert sun, crouched in the dirt by the stage and watched both women. Izzy felt an explosion of beetles along her spine.

When she finally noticed Izzy, Selma tapped the microphone and glared out across the torn-up couches to where the other woman stood. “Izzy Ames,” she said, her vocal cords scratchy from cigarettes. “I heard you lost your man.”

“I heard you lost yours, too,” Izzy said, in spite of herself. “I just saw him at CAL.”

Selma knelt, put one hand on the stage and leveraged herself to the ground. Izzy spotted a pair of small feathered wings attached to her back, but they did nothing to lighten Selma’s heavy gait.

“How’s old Joe doing?” she asked.

“Not too good.”

Selma scratched at her bicep with the pinup tattoo and the words “Daddy’s Girl” scrawled underneath. Izzy had heard that Selma wandered into Slab City one day and started hanging out with a crowd of bikers. No one knew where she came from—where did any of the lost kids come from?—but she said she’d seen a documentary about the Salton Sea once and knew it was home. Better than whatever home she’d left, apparently.

“And you’re here looking for Cyrus,” she said.

“Have you seen him?” Izzy asked staring through the hole of the Totonac ear plug stretching Selma’s lobe.

“I’d have liked to see a lot more of Cyrus. Who wouldn’t? But I guess you’re the one who got him, huh?”

Izzy wanted to punch those sharp little teeth. “You hung out with him when you were kids?”

“He was a pretty boy, that Cyrus. I always wanted to put barrettes in that hair. Maybe a little eye shadow—”

“He’s missing, Selma. He could have hurt himself. Or someone could have—”

Selma shimmied her shoulders so the wings fluttered. “I’m sorry, man. I really am.”

“What do you know?” Izzy almost shouted.

Frankenstein shook his head as if he had a bug in his ear and made a moaning sound. Izzy wondered if Selma would sic him on her.

“I know shit,” Selma said in her cigarette-scratched voice, her eyes frozen on Izzy, un-melting even in the flammable heat. “Except this: your ego drives you. I suggest you go home and lock yourself in the darkest closet. See if you can find yourself first.” And though she was the one in the wings and the too-small satin dress and the tattoos that spoke of a harsher past than Izzy wanted to contemplate, her eyes looked, Izzy had to admit, clear as desert sky.

◆◆◆

When Izzy got home, she stripped off her dirty T-shirt, her pants, her underpants, leaving on only her socks. She went into the closet and took out Cyrus’s black suit. She buried her face in the fabric. It smelled slightly of mothballs—the chemicals naphthalene or paradichlorobenzene—under his sage and smoke scent.