He walked in after a few minutes and sank into a beanbag, playing his guitar very softly.

“Is this too loud?” he whispered, glancing at E.

“I don’t think so. She’s really asleep,” I said. As he played, he looked over at Joy, who was hopping around the room listening to a huge pair of headphones, a can of Coke in her hand.

Dougie stuck his head in the room.

“Five minutes,” he said.

When the time came, Joy, Troy, and Harvest walked onto the stage. The floor was packed with people there to see Milk. Harvest had strapped on a bass guitar. Troy was at the drums. Joy, gleaming in her chain mail, had an orange electric guitar hanging off her shoulders as she strode up to the mic.

“Hey, we’re Junkyard Palace,” she said in a low voice as she bent her shorn blond head over her guitar. And so it began. Even though there were only three of them, with Dougie in the wings working the amps and sound effects, somehow it sounded like there were ten musicians onstage, building up a relentless, despairing drone. Joy’s voice, when she sang, was a howl, a yelp, a lament. I could see the audience from where I stood in the wings. People were crying, keening, going into trances. I watched Harvest, who stood immobile, a part of the unit that was the band, which had become one person. His fingers seemed to be playing a simple phrase, yet the sound coming out of his bass was immense.

When the song ended, I ran back to the greenroom to check on E. She hadn’t moved.

The second song was a dance number. The audience was whirling and hopping. Then came a song filled with violence. Joy screamed. She showed her teeth. She was frightening. Then Harvest sang a song so tender it was painful. It was a song about two kids skating on a river in Nebraska. About loss. I knew this was their song—Joy and Harvest’s. His voice had a high, sad, nasal twang.

I went back to the greenroom. E hadn’t moved. The truth was, once I put her to bed, E always slept exactly eight hours. She never moved or woke up in the night. Then, eight hours from when she had shut her eyes, she would open them, like a good machine.

The band all walked in and took beers from the fridge. Harvest held one out to me. I took a sip. The lead singer from Milk put her head in the door, her sharp cheekbones casting shadows, her glossy dark hair throwing off light.

“Guys, that was fucking amazing,” she said with a cheerleader’s smile. I suspected that she was not in fact a heroin addict.

“I want to watch you from the pit,” said Joy.

“Sure,” she said. “We have a bunch of wristbands.”

Joy and Troy and Dougie made for the door. “You coming?” Joy asked Harvest.

Harvest shook his head. They all left.