Chapter 73: Vices and Anonymity
Monday, January 11, 2016
The gray Toyota Corolla pulled into the "24 Hour Fitness" parking lot. The engine turned off, but Michael didn't get out immediately. He sat there, hands gripping the steering wheel, breathing slowly.
He felt wrecked.
The weekend had been a whirlwind. Friday's show at The Echo had been intense and sweaty, full of skaters and indie fans. Saturday's show at Create had been a madness of strobe lights and rumbling bass.
But the problem hadn't been the concerts. It had been the "after". The after-party with Jake, the team, and a group of promoters at a house in Hollywood Hills had lasted until dawn on Sunday. He had drunk too much. He had smoked too much. And he had slept too little.
Now, on Monday afternoon, his body was sending him the bill. His head hurt, and he felt a mild, persistent nausea.
He rolled down the car window. The fresh January air came in, but it wasn't enough.
His right hand moved automatically to his hoodie pocket. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
Clack. Fssss.
He lit the cigarette. The first drag burned his throat, but the nicotine gave him a small hit of clarity he desperately needed.
As he exhaled the smoke onto the parking lot asphalt, he took out his phone with his other hand.
It was his ritual. His nervous tic. Before entering the "real world", he had to check his secret world.
He opened his secure wallet app.
His eyes narrowed behind his sunglasses. His heart skipped a beat, the hangover forgotten for a second.
ETH: $2.02
He stared at the number.
'Two dollars', he thought. 'It broke the two-dollar barrier.'
He did the mental math quickly, a habit that had become obsessive.
437,500 coins multiplied by $2.02.
$883,750.
Almost nine hundred thousand dollars. His initial investment of $350,000 had more than doubled in four months. He was touching a million dollars liquid. And he knew this was just the beginning, the tip of the iceberg before the madness of 2017.
Euphoria mixed with terror. He had a fortune in his pocket, and no one in this parking lot, no one in that gym, had the slightest idea.
He took another deep drag on the cigarette, trying to calm the trembling in his hands. It was insane pressure.
He finished the cigarette and threw it on the ground, stepping on it with his sneaker.
He looked in the rearview mirror. He looked pale. His eyes were red. He smelled of tobacco and hangover.
He opened the glove compartment and took out a bottle of cheap body spray. He sprayed himself generously, trying to mask the smell of vice with the scent of "Sea Breeze".
'Time to act', he told himself.
He pulled up his hood, adjusted his sunglasses, and opened the car door.
He left the secret millionaire and the rap star in the Corolla. The boy who walked toward the gym door was just Mike, the skinny rookie trying to get in shape.
Michael crossed the gym turnstiles. The indoor air, a mix of recycled air conditioning and human sweat, hit him in the face. Normally, that smell told him it was time to work. Today, it just churned his stomach.
The gym music was particularly loud. A generic EDM remix boomed from the ceiling speakers. To his ears, which still had the residual ringing of the Create Nightclub subwoofers, the sound was like a drill.
He adjusted his sunglasses, thankful they hid his bloodshot eyes, and headed to the free weights area.
He looked for his anchor.
There she was. Amy.
She was on a flat bench, doing dumbbell presses. She wore large headphones, her high ponytail swaying with every controlled movement. She looked like a machine. Fresh, focused, strong. There was no trace of tiredness in her. She was the picture of health, a brutal contrast to the wreck Michael felt he was.
He approached, trying to walk normally, although the floor seemed to move a little under his feet.
Amy finished her set. She dropped the dumbbells to the floor with a sharp thud and sat up. She took off her headphones and saw Michael.
"You're late, Mike," she said, looking at the wall clock. "Five minutes late. That's two missed sets."
Michael tried to smile, but felt the skin on his face was too tight.
"Traffic," he lied. His voice came out as a croak.
Amy looked closer at him, narrowing her eyes.
"Are you okay? You look... pale. More than usual."
"Just a long weekend," said Michael, dropping his backpack on the floor. "I'm fine. Let's hit it."
Amy didn't look convinced, but she shrugged. "Today is back and biceps. Grab those 25 dumbbells. We're going to warm up with curls."
Michael nodded. He approached the rack. The 25-pound dumbbells, which last week he lifted with relative ease, today seemed to be made of enriched lead.
He grabbed them. His hands, which were normally steady —guitarist's hands, audio surgeon's hands— had a fine, uncontrollable tremor.
He stood in front of the mirror. He tried to do the first lift.
His arm went up, but it wasn't fluid. It was a jerky movement. His elbow flared out. His back arched to compensate.
"Elbows tucked," corrected Amy automatically, watching him from the bench.
Michael tried to correct it. He gritted his teeth. The effort made the blood hammer in his temples. The headache, which had been background noise, turned into an alarm siren.
He did three reps. On the fourth, his grip failed. The right dumbbell slipped from his sweaty hand and fell to the padded floor with a dull THUD.
Michael staggered a little.
"Woah!" said Amy, jumping up and grabbing him by the arm to steady him.
Michael leaned on her for a second, closing his eyes while the gym spun.
"Sorry," he muttered. "It slipped."
Amy didn't let go. She was close. Very close.
And then, she wrinkled her nose.
She leaned toward him, sniffing the air with an expression of growing disgust.
"Mike..." she said, letting him go and taking a step back. "What is that smell?"
Michael adjusted his hoodie, nervous. "What smell? I put on deodorant."
"You smell like 'Sea Breeze'..." said Amy, analytically. "And underneath that, you smell like the floor of a bar at three in the morning. You smell like stale tequila and an ashtray."
Michael looked away. His disguise had failed. The cheap body spray hadn't been able to hide the toxins his body was trying to expel through his pores.
"I told you it was a long weekend," he admitted, his defense dropping.
Amy looked at him, crossing her arms over her chest. Her expression went from concern to big sister disappointment.
"Are you drunk?" she asked directly.
"No," said Michael. "I have a hangover. A biblical hangover."
He coughed, a dry smoker's cough that scraped his irritated throat. He brought his hand to his mouth. His fingers smelled of tobacco.
Amy shook her head. "Look at you. You're shaking. You're sweating pure alcohol. And you're trying to lift weights."
She pointed to the door.
"You're not going to train like this. It's dangerous. You're going to drop a weight on your foot or you're going to pass out and crack your head open on a bench."
"I can do it," insisted Michael, even though he knew it was a lie. "I just need to sweat it out."
"You don't sweat out poison, Mike. You sleep it off," said Amy. "You're useless here today."
Michael sighed. He felt defeated. He had hundreds of thousands of dollars in his virtual pocket. He had fans screaming his name. But here, in front of this 20-year-old girl in spandex, he was just a pathetic kid who didn't know how to take care of himself.
"You're right," said Michael. "I'm sorry, Amy. I wasted your time."
He picked up his backpack. He felt humiliated.
"Wait," said Amy. Her tone softened a bit. "Don't go yet. If you get in the car like this, you're going to crash. Come outside. You need fresh air, not this recycled air."
She grabbed her own towel and water bottle.
"Come on. I'll walk with you. My workout is ruined anyway."
Michael followed her toward the exit, walking with his head down, passing the January "tourists" who, ironically, were in better shape than him.
Monday, January 11, 2016 (Sunset)
They stepped out of the gym into the open air. The sun was setting behind the low buildings of the strip mall, dyeing the sky a dirty orange.
For Michael, leaving that building was like leaving a prison. He felt free from the judgment of the mirrors and Amy's disappointed gaze.
They walked in silence toward the cars. Amy was a few steps ahead, moving with that athletic energy that seemed inexhaustible. Michael followed her, dragging his feet, feeling his muscles cooling down and stiffening.
As soon as they crossed the automatic door, Michael's hand moved. It was a reflex act, conditioned by months of secret stress.
He took the crumpled pack out of his pocket. He took out a cigarette.
Click. Fsshh.
The lighter's flame shone in the twilight. Michael inhaled sharply, closing his eyes, letting the smoke fill the void that exercise hadn't been able to touch.
He stopped dead.
Amy had turned around. She was standing two meters from him, hands on her hips, looking at him with disbelief that quickly turned into anger.
"Seriously, Mike?" she said. Her voice was hard.
Michael exhaled the smoke to the side, avoiding her gaze. "I needed one."
"We just spent forty minutes trying to get your lungs to work," said Amy, taking a step toward him, invading his personal space. "We just did cardio and you're putting tar in your lungs?"
She shook her head, making her ponytail swing.
"You're sixteen years old, for God's sake. You should be drinking protein shakes, not smoking like a fifty-year-old trucker."
"It's a bad habit," admitted Michael, taking another defiant drag.
"It's not a bad habit. It's stupidity," retorted Amy. "All the exercise you do is useless if you don't stop smoking and drinking until you pass out on Sundays. You're canceling your own progress. You're building muscle with one hand and poisoning it with the other."
She looked at him, and for a moment, Michael saw genuine concern in her blue eyes. It wasn't the concern of a trainer for a client. It was the concern of a friend.
"You have talent for this, Mike. You have the frame. But you're killing yourself. And you look terrible today."
Michael looked at her. He knew she was right. He knew it was stupid. But Amy didn't know about the pressure of being a secret viral star. She didn't know about the loneliness of an empty house.
The cigarette and beer were the only things that turned down the volume of the noise in his head.
Michael smiled. It was a cynical, crooked smile, the smile of someone who knows he's wrong but doesn't care.
"It's my balance, Amy," he said, blowing a perfect smoke ring. "Yin and Yang. I build in the morning, I destroy at night. That way I stay in the center."
She ignored him and they both laughed, though Amy's laugh was short and frustrated.
"You're a lost cause, new kid," she said, but the tension broke. "A lost cause with good delts, but a lost cause."
"I do what I can," said Michael.
They walked toward where their cars were parked, Michael's cigarette smoke leaving a gray trail in the clean evening air.
The sun had almost disappeared, leaving only a violet trace on the horizon. The strip mall parking lot was starting to empty out. Michael and Amy were leaning against the hood of her small sedan, in a silence that was no longer tense, but resigned.
Michael was finishing his cigarette. Amy was drinking the last of her water.
Suddenly, the silence broke.
A modified Honda Civic, windows down and neon lights under the chassis, passed slowly through the row of cars in front of them. The car's sound system was maxed out, vibrating the asphalt.
The melody was unmistakable.
Ding... ding-ding...
The "Dream Bells" of 'Betrayed' resonated in the cold night air, followed by the smooth, round bass.
'Xans don't make you...'
'Xans gon' take you...'
Michael tensed instinctively. It was his voice. His song. Playing in the real world, three meters away.
He looked at Amy, expecting to see if she made the connection. If she looked at the boy standing next to her and realized he was the same person singing on the radio.
But Amy didn't look at him. She looked at the passing car, and a smile of recognition appeared on her face.
She started bobbing her head to the beat.
"I love this song," said Amy, humming the melody. "It's super catchy. They play it all the time on the gym radio when the trainers aren't playing their EDM trash."
Michael exhaled smoke, hiding a half-smile behind his hand.
"Oh, yeah?" he asked, with studied indifference. "Do you know who it is?"
"No idea," said Amy, shrugging. "Some new internet kid, I guess. Michael something. Demi-something."
The irony was delicious. Amy didn't know Michael was the singer. To her, the artist was an abstract entity, a voice on her Spotify playlist. And "Mike", the skinny kid standing next to her smoking and shaking after lifting 40 pounds, was... well, just Mike.
The car drove away, but the music could still be heard in the distance.
Amy turned to him, with that trainer look again.
"You should listen to the lyrics, by the way," she said, pointing in the direction the music had gone.
"Why?" asked Michael, amused.
"Because it talks about quitting crap," said Amy, with total seriousness. "It says drugs betray you. That they make you fake. You should apply the lesson to tobacco and drinking."
Michael almost choked on the smoke. It was perfect. She was using his own song to teach him a moral lesson.
"Yeah..." said Michael, throwing the butt on the ground and stepping on it. "I've heard of him. He's not bad."
"He's good," insisted Amy. "He has a sad voice, but... real. I don't know. You should check him out. Maybe he'll inspire you to take care of your body."
Michael adjusted his sunglasses, even though it was already dark.
"I'll keep it in mind, coach."
Amy laughed, taking out her keys. "Get out of here, Mike. Go home. Eat protein. Sleep eight hours. And if I see you hungover tomorrow, I'll make you do burpees until you puke."
"Understood. Tomorrow, sober," promised Michael.
"You better. Bye, new kid."
Amy got into her car and started it. Michael watched her drive away.
He stayed alone in the parking lot for a moment longer. The duality of his life had never been so clear. He could be a viral superstar to millions of people, and at the same time, be a charity project for a girl at a gym.
And he loved it.
He got into his gray Corolla. The interior smelled of pine and safety.
He plugged his phone into the aux cord. Searched his library.
He put on 'Betrayed'.
He turned up the volume.
He drove toward his house, singing with his own voice, enjoying the only place in the world where Michael Demiurge and Mike from the gym could be the same person.
The night was young. And tomorrow was leg day.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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