Mike
Maybe that’s why Tim invites Mike to his concert off the coast of Spain.
Mike and Tim smoke together sometimes. Mike makes electro pop and Tim does remixes. Tim has always had more fans, more tour dates, more stories of trashed hotel rooms and parties in limousines. Mike knows what people say, that Tim is a wonder but Mike might be a one hit, that Tim’s got a stage name but Mike is just Mike. People don’t know Mike’s dad is sick, but Tim knows. Maybe that’s why Tim invites Mike to his concert off the coast of Spain.
Tim is spinning disks before a crater of screaming people. Backstage someone holds out a bag of pills and Mike reaches in. Mike watches Tim work the turntables with arms hovering in a way that reminds Mike of a wax sculpture. Tim looks sideways in Mike’s direction but not quite and the song picks up speed. Tim is cool. Mike is cool. Overhead the can lights swivel in great circles, their black petals closing and opening. In art camp Mike filled a metal tray with water and added ink in many colors two droplets at a time and drew a dowel through the water to make feathers, ribbons, flowers, insects. The camp counselor said keep going, so Mike added more ink and sliced the water with the dowel again and again, skimming paper after paper over the surface until the colors gummed into gray. Mike asked the counselor what to do and the counselor pointed Mike to the sinks, where there was a rag and a jug of rubbing alcohol. The alcohol stung Mike’s nostrils, poison and clean, a smell not unlike the later smell of Mike’s father’s sick body. The concert ends and Mike’s irises are still buzzing. He looks for Tim backstage, then at the afterparty. He has one of the hotel staff unlock Tim’s door and finds Tim sleeping in his concert clothes. Mike returns to his room and writes a song, or what might be a song, before going to sleep.
The pill wore off years ago. Mike is back in the U.S. He has grown a beard and dropped his electro pop setup for an acoustic guitar, which he plays for a modest group of sober-faced people. In his mind, he draws dowels through water: Tim’s stories of smoke-filled hotel rooms and poolside drinks, the stories that never ended with Tim alone though that’s how they must have ended, the way Tim breathed almost erratically when he smoked, that time Tim cried in the studio, the pill in Ibiza, the empty feeling when Mike woke the next afternoon, the time he could have spent with Tim if he were not trying so hard to be Tim. Tim came to the funeral for Mike’s dad and hugged Mike but then left without saying goodbye. Then Mike got the news that Tim had torn himself open with a piece of glass and all the rainbow leaked from his friend to somewhere else.
Samantha Steiner is a writer and visual artist. She has received fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, the Saltonstall Foundation, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Find her on social media @Steiner_Reads.
