The tequila was poured. Jeremy looked around for his bandmates but they’d all found friends in various corners of the bar. What a night, he thought.

“To the best night of my life,” he said.

Jeremy didn’t know if Claudia heard him. She drank the shot, shook her head, and then hopped off the barstool.

“Save my seat,” she said, touching Jeremy’s chest.

And because it was exactly that kind of night, Jeremy wrapped his arm around her waist, put his face in her neck, and whispered, “You got it, baby.”

When she was out of earshot, Chad said: “I’m fucking her tonight.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“She’s been a bitch to me for years, and tonight she’s all brokenhearted and here I am, listening to her bullshit. That shit ain’t free.”

“I hear you.”

“You could probably fuck her, too. Seriously, I don’t mind sharing. And she’s not gonna remember a thing. Trust me. I’ll even let you go first.”

“That’s kinda fucked up, man.” But as he said it he started to imagine and he started to get hard. He was going fuck Claudia Castro on this perfect night after all. It was fate.

Ten days later, Jeremy was sick of thinking about Claudia Castro. He was sick of thinking about Chad and his father in the big black car. He was sick of seeing that video in his head, and he was sick of thinking about the thirty-thousand dollars he couldn’t make happen. He wanted to think about music, he was trying to think about music. He was trying to get inspired. When he turned into the Mews that last night of the first part of his life, he was headed to see a professor and then to the dorm to drop off his guitar before catching the late train back to Long Island. He was walking slowly, trying to lose himself in the surround sound of his $300 headphones, twiddling his fingers with Slash to the opening bars of “Sweet Child of Mine,” when what the cops told him later was probably a baseball bat came down against his skull.

TREVOR

It had seemed like something he could do when they talked about it in the hotel room. She told Trevor she paid cash for the bat and the gloves and the duffle at the Astor Place Kmart, and got the NYU cap from the store on Broadway.

“You went down to campus?” he asked, trying the cap on. It was a little small.

“I got there right when they opened. Nobody saw me. I was thinking it would be a good way to make sure you blend in, but cover your face a bit, too.”

“That makes sense.”