“Look, Will,” Evan said, “are you going to make me guess what’s going on? Or are you going to tell me …” We had rounded the corner into the main recording room. Evan stopped walking and looked around.
There was a drum set and guitar amplifiers and cables and microphone stands, but what he saw, I’m sure, were the pizza boxes and full trash bags, and a television, and when Nolan and Jeffrey came around the corner from the control room he saw one friend with a bandaged head and another with a busted lip. And of course he saw the girl—looking tired and miserable, but curious, too—on the floor of Room A, sitting on the sofa and looking at him quite calmly, almost as if he were the one imprisoned and on display, like at a zoo. She sat with her head in her hands, with only her gaze trained on us. She looked incapable of becoming excited anymore, of getting her hopes up, though she must have been wondering if this new man who’d entered the room was indeed the savior I’d promised or merely the beginning of some new indignity.
“What the hell have I just walked into?” he asked.
We had planned to tell him everything. Nolan, Jeffrey, and I would sit in the control room with Evan and begin back at the Milk-n-Bread, telling him what we’d done, and, as best we could, why we’d done it. We would try to convey how basic concepts like time, like morality, had become distorted and unpredictable when mixed with the impurity of panic.
Nobody would raise his voice. Nobody would interrupt. We wouldn’t even rush. Evan had flown halfway across the country. Marie had been our hostage for three days. What did it matter if we explained ourselves in thirty minutes or an hour? We would confess everything and calmly ask for his counsel. We would follow his advice wherever it led us.
That was our plan, but it didn’t happen. Because the moment Evan saw Marie, the rest of us were forgotten. He rushed over to Room A, opened the door, and went inside.
Their conversation looked strangely animated. Almost heated. It went on a long time, nearly an hour, and when they emerged, Evan looked distinctly perturbed. Not sad, exactly. Annoyed, and frustrated. Like a student who’d failed an exam because of trick questions. Marie was with him. Not running for the door. Just standing beside him.
We caught up with them in the main studio. “So,” I said, “what’s the verdict?”
Evan said nothing, just continued on with his annoyed look, lips pursed, head shaking slightly. Marie stared me down. Didn’t nod, didn’t say a word. Her gaze moved to Nolan, with his bandage and his bloodstained hair. And to Jeffrey, his lip swollen, his eyes ghoulish from lack of sleep.
“This young lady narrated quite a story.” Evan frowned. “I keep telling her that maybe she wants to rethink what she told me. That maybe her recollection isn’t exactly right. But she insists that it is.”
“I know it must sound crazy,” I said, “but I swear, we never meant—”
Evan held up his hand like a stop sign. “She says that you, Will, first met her several weeks ago at the convenience store where she works. That you heard her singing along to the radio one day and complimented her voice. Said it was the best voice you’d heard in ages. Then, last week you invited her to record some demos at your studio while your friends were in town. You began to fill her head with talk of how you all would make her a star.”
Marie stood beside him, nodding right along.
“On Friday,” he continued, “you all came here to begin recording, but little by little it became clear you didn’t like what she was doing. You didn’t like her voice as much as you’d first thought. You told her to try harder. You all worked late into the night.” He spoke dispassionately, as if he’d memorized a set of lines but was bored by them. “She thought she could prove to you all that she had what it takes. But now you’re telling her you were wrong. Now you’re telling her she has no talent. You’ve crushed her dreams and wasted her time, and for that she wants compensation.” He turned to Marie. “Do I have it right?”
She nodded. “They made a promise, and now they’re backing out.”
I started to ask what the hell the two of them were talking about, but Evan cut me off again.
“I’ve suggested to her,” he said, “that maybe her story isn’t entirely accurate. But she insists that it is. So I’m asking all of you, is that the way it happened?”
So this, I thought, was how Evan would be able to wake up in the morning. How he’d decided to square his felon friends with his professional obligations. Evidently, he was willing to get his hands dirty, but only if his sensitive ears remained ignorant.
I looked at Nolan, at Jeffrey. Nobody said a word.
“Very well,” Evan said. “Then shall we move on from here?”
Move on from where? I was thinking, when Evan said to Marie, “Go on. Tell them what you want.”
Marie looked at me and shrugged. “Two million.”
Sleepy, confused, I asked her what she meant.
“That’s how much I want.” She looked at each of us. “Two million dollars, for my time. And for keeping quiet about … everything.”