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and signed autographs, but nooo, you were hell bent to get out of there so we could—oh, sit in some car park and get pissed,” Simon muttered from the driver’s side. He was wrapped in his army surplus jacket, his hair pulled back in the standard post-show ponytail. He had tilted the seat back and was nursing the remains of a beer. “So, are you going to share with the class as to where the hell you were, oh, for the first three bleeding songs?”
    “You don’t want to know, mate, trust me.”
    “Oh, trust me, I do. I can’t play guitar for shit, and you left me up there defenseless with bras being thrown at me head. You’ve never been late for a show in your pathetic excuse of a life, so I reckon this better be good. I had you dead and bleeding, or kidnapped by one of those psychotic fans of yours and stuffed in some boot with that stupid red scarf strangling your neck. All I’m saying is it’s a damn good thing Neil wasn’t there tonight, or he’d have your balls for bacon.”
    “But he wasn’t there.”
    They had been in San Francisco for one month and nothing had happened at all on that front. Yes, Simon and Christian were content to bask in the adulation of their newfound popularity, but they were equally content to believe the pipe dream that Neil St. John would swoop down and take them under his wing. In actuality, all he had done was arrange a handful of gigs and provide the nightmare of a house where they now lived. But Andrew didn’t want to think about Neil; he’d deal with that headache later. Now he had to figure out how to explain his whereabouts to Simon, whose sly eyes saw through the most suave serving of bullshit. He opted for the truth.
    “I fell asleep in the park. On a bench…listening to a concert.”
    “Are you high?”
    “What do you want me to say?”
    “That you were banging some girl, or that you got stuck in traffic—something normal. You sounded shitfaced on the phone. At least tell me you were drinking.”
    “I wasn’t drinking. Too early.”
    “Then what?”
    Honestly? You honestly want to know what I did today? I wandered San Francisco, that’s what I did today, like I’ve done nearly every day since we got here. I wandered San Francisco searching for a woman I’ve never seen and I’m not sure exists anymore. And you know what else? She wasn’t there. She’s never there—in all the godforsaken cities we’ve toured, she’s never, ever there. And I thought this town would be different, this bloody damp city with fucking palm trees and no sun, because it felt different. Everywhere I turned, something felt different. The shops, the streets, even that disgusting piss-soaked corner of the park up there where I’ve been playing, hoping that one of the faces that passes by might be hers. My muse. The woman you despise. Remember her?
    This was what Andrew wanted to say, he wanted to scream it actually, but instead he dragged himself up from the seat and threw his bottle in the trash.
    He had eventually fallen asleep on a bench—that part of the story was true. And he had spent the afternoon walking the park, anxious and on edge for no reason, repeatedly opening and closing the same pack of cigarettes that he never smoked, then tired and sick of himself, he collapsed in front of the bandshell to hear some lame student orchestra or some such shit. And when the first strains of Brahms squealed from those wretched violins, he could do nothing but sit uselessly, knees to chin, on that stone bench. Only when he awoke several hours later, frozen to the bone like some pissed sot, was he shocked to realize he was late for the show. For the first time in his life, he was late for a goddamn show—all because he couldn’t find her.
    “Please tell me you’re pulling my chain and it was actually some girl’s fault,” Simon begged as he started up the truck.
    “It’s always a girl’s fault with me, isn’t it?” Andrew muttered in reply.
    “That’s what I’m afraid of,