Page 88 of High Notes & Hail Marys

“He’s just tired,” you say hurriedly.

Cal is not convinced. His brow stays cocked, his brown eyes boring lasers into you.The man is likefucking Santa Claus: he knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good, for goodness’s sake!Okay, so you are more than a little high. That brownie hit like a Mack truck. Whoever baked it was diabolical.

“To be completely honest, umm, he’s had a little bit. Probably too much,” you utter guiltily in Cal’s direction.

“A little bit too muchwhat?” In contrast to yours, Cal’s voice is very, very clear.

“Nothing bad!” you are quick to reassure him. “Just some wine and an edible.”

“One ‘n a half edibles,” Sterling elides. “Alis gave me another piece while you were in the bathroom.”

“What?” You and Cal say it at the same time, which would be funny if you didn’t have thathe’s-gonna-kill-mepit in your gut again.

To Cal’s credit, he doesn’t condemn you for letting this happen. Not verbally. The tight knots of his clasped fingers tell a story, though, along with his stony silence.

He insists on personally driving you two back to Kensington.

“Maybe I should walk you up, Mister Grayson,” he suggests. Sterling shakes his head.

“I’ve got Kai,” he says. And then, after a moment, “Kai will be my bodyguard for the night. Morning. Whatever.”

There’s a lot to unpack there: you clearly have done an insufficient job guarding Sterling from bad influences tonight; Cal is a goddamn professional, and you could never do this job; your boyfriend is a high dumbass and probably offended the most loyal member of his staff…

But, again, Cal restrains himself.

“I’m technically off the clock,” he says tightly. “Levitt is down the block.He’soff in three hours, then Eric’s taking over. I won’t be here tomorrow, Mister Grayson. Are you going to be all right?”

It’s on the tip of your tongue to comment that nobody ever died from getting too stoned, even if they maybe wanted to, but self-preservation kicks in. You think that kind of talk could be what finally gets Cal to beat you down. The man worked overtime on his overtime and stayed around to see Sterling off the plane. He deserves a bonus, not a smart-assed remark.

Sterling doesn’t answer, so you incline your head at Cal.

“I’ve got him,” you say, trying to imbue every syllable with trustworthiness. “I promise that I’ll call if there’s a problem. Try to enjoy your day off,man.”

Cal looks dubious, but he squares his impossibly-massive shoulders and nods his goodnight.

You have your doubts that Sterling is going to make it from the mews street to the door of the house, which requires climbing to the porch, but he does… only to stagger through the foyer and lie down on the hardwood like a rug when he gets to the living room.

“What are you doing?” you ask.

It’s dark. There are no streetlights on the mews, which the room faces, and the moon is nowhere to be found in the middle of the night. It’s awkward, but you step over Sterling to click on one of the little vintage lamps. Artemis comes padding into the room, her ears perked up.

“Go to sleep, girl,” you croon at her. “Your daddy’s a mess. He’ll love you up when he’s feeling better.”

You’re not sure if dogs can understand language like that, but Artemis gazes down at Sterling with an expression that you could swear is sympathetic. She deigns to allow you to scratch her between the ears, then leaves the room. You can hear her nails on the stairs.

“I don’t like the way I feel, Kai.” On the floor, Sterling scrubs his face. “That ride home from the airport lasted hours. I was scared it was nevergoing to end.”

You sink down onto one of the overstuffed couches. “The ride home from the airport was less than thirty minutes,” you say. “You’re just too high, Ster. That, plus the wine. Got you messed up.”

For a moment, he’s still. You look around the living room. The grandfather clock is ticking quietly; the portraits of white ladies in hats gaze benignly down from the walls. How much shit has this room seen over the years? Did the people who built it, back when they were still burning candles for light, think that there would ever be a cross-faded superstar on his back in front of the fireplace?

(Your stoned brain isn’t helping things.)

“What can I do to make it stop?” he asks pathetically.

The question seems a little beyond your processing at the moment, and you need to ruminate really hard. You think back to college, to the lightweights that you have known in your time. What did they do for Santiago, that kid in the dorms who was 135 soaking wet and started puking and crying after his first joint? Lemons! They made him suck a lemon. You aren’t sure if there are lemons in the kitchen, honestly—you didn’t ask Muriel for any, and you sure haven’t bought them—and, besides, it just seems meanto make Sterling suck a lemon when he’s feeling anxious. On top of that, you don’t recall the lemons helping Santiago; he had to sleep it off.

That’s it!

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