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Paul didn’t feel like he had a life anymore. For Peter and Ace, it was great. They had all the money in the world to fund their binges; all they had to do to earn it was manage to stumble onstage for two hours three days a week. Gene was having a fantastic time, grabbing whoever he saw first at the Coop without any regard for looks, build, or VD. Paul’s relative selectiveness made him less satisfied. The girls were just there, as inevitable as the minifridge full of alcohol in his hotel room. Fucking them was stress relief, something to quiet the buzz in his ear, but at the end of the day, he knew better. The girls weren’t his trophies. He was theirs.
And at the end of the day, he knew something else, too. Maybe he wasn’t the only one—maybe Gene, wry and too-bright, the only one of them who had a B.A. to back all his bullshit—maybe Gene knew it. Like that movie Patton, with old George C. Scott standing behind the brilliantly huge flag. Right at the end, the slave standing behind the victor, holding some golden crown and whispering that all glory is fleeting. Something like that.
All glory is fleeting.
Twenty-six was too damn young to be thinking of crap like that. But he couldn’t quite help himself. Thinking about Elvis—goddamn legend, Elvis—turning into a joke in those white bellbottoms and that massive potbelly before he’d died on his own toilet last year. Thinking about the Beatles and how even that magic was gone, John fucking off with Yoko, George getting sued and Paul writing sap and Ringo—well. Gene hadn’t managed to get a single one of them to help on his solo album. That afraid of being upstaged by someone else.
It wouldn’t last for KISS either, not forever. But hell if he’d let the band become a joke. Fuck if he’d still be screaming out the chorus to “Rock and Roll All Nite” at forty years old. There were things they could still do. Prolong the wave. Rejuvenate their image, reinvent if things became stale. New costumes, new gimmicks, new singles. The stageshow could always get more spectacular, the songs more stellar. “Beth” had cracked the top ten. If they played their cards right—really played their cards right—then the singles off someone’s solo album, preferably his, might do even better. Casablanca had already guaranteed them platinum status; it was just a question of promotion now.
He’d come to the dressing room early. The others weren’t there yet, and so he tossed off his shirt before settling down into the makeup chair, his case already on the counter. They used to all get there at around the same time, shoot the shit like a bunch of girls getting manicures while they put on their faces. That was dissolving, too. Paul shook his head and started smearing the clown white on his face, dolloping it on heavily to hide the five o’clock shadow he didn’t have the patience to shave. The single star didn’t take half as long when he had nobody else to talk to, and after another few minutes of applying eyeliner to his other eye and overdrawing his lips, it was done.
Paul closed his eyes. Exhaled. And then he heard the sound of something crashing behind him.
It was Ace. Predictably. He was in full costume, by some miracle, and flat on his stomach. He did extend his hand in a thumbs-up when Paul walked over to him, which would have been a relief if Paul hadn’t found him in that position at least four times in the past six months.
“Hey, man. Still getting used to Earth’s gravity.”
‘“That shit is getting really old.” Paul reached a hand out, yanking Ace back to his feet. He’d forgotten when or if he’d ever seen Ace sober. At least Ace could still play guitar while drunk. God knew how long that was going to last—but for now, that made him more valuable to the band than Peter was becoming. When he caught sight of Ace’s face, though, he couldn’t stifle a groan. Apparently, Ace had taken it upon himself to not only put on his costume before getting to the dressing room, but his makeup, too. The clown white was smeared unevenly on his face, the stars looking more like blotchy silver splatters that ran past his cheeks and into his hair.
“Ace, what the hell did you do?”
“I got ready, Paulie.” Ace grinned. “We got a show, right? Did you think I wouldn’t make it?”
“Your face.”
“What? It’s not straight lines? I swear I did some lines… on the hotel dresser…”
“Ace, you’re going to kill yourself.”
“Nah, man, I’m gonna live forever.”
No time to weigh options. No one but the band was allowed in the dressing room. Paul crossed over to the sink and soaked a towel in water.
“I’ll fix it. Just stay still.” Paul leaned in and immediately started to scrub Ace’s face with the towel.
“Jesus, Paul, I can get it off myself!” Ace snatched the towel back and finished rubbing the makeup off with a surprising amount of adroitness. “’M drunk, not paralyzed.”
“Could’ve fooled me. I’ll still do the makeup.” Giving Ace the option to redo it himself was just asking for another disaster. Paul could only remember vague snatches of the Hotter than Hell photoshoot, but he did remember Ace with only half his facepaint on, and a bloody scab on the other side. He remembered finding that hilarious, too, and passing out on the bed in between a naked blonde covered in silver paint and some chick wearing a crow’s head mask.
When he’d gotten sobered up, finally, he’d been in a panic. Gone through the photos, all the photos, to make sure his hair covered up his ear. Asked Gene afterwards if anyone had seen. He’d told him they hadn’t.
That was the first and last time he’d gotten drunk, really drunk. And that was why he couldn’t understand it, Ace getting drunk every minute of the day. No excuse. He was giving up control over his life. Willingly. All that talent, all that off-the-wall humor and fun—just getting pissed away.
Paul spread the clown white on his bandmate’s face with his fingers. Ace winked.
“You really know how to make a girl feel pretty.”
“I try.”
“What d’you usually say to them? Do you still ask for names?”
Paul got another glop of the clown white, rubbing it in, tracing cheekbones and jaw. Ace’s skin was sweaty, and, this close, the inevitable smell of champagne on his breath was almost overpowering. He started to ask Ace if he usually covered his whole face in white first or left space for his eyes the way he did, but opted against it.
“No. Do you?”
“Sometimes.” Ace brightened. “There was this girl back in Atlanta. Southerners, man. Nice girls. Her name was Ellie Mae. Like the show, remember? Remember Green Acres?”
Eyes on the dresser, Paul nodded. He found a tube of black paint, squeezing out some and dipping a brush into it. Only then did his bandmate begin to protest.
“That’s not how you do it, Paulie. You gotta do the silver first, then if you fuck it up you can just hide it with the outline—”
“Okay, fine.”
“How many times have you watched me put it on? Jesus. I guess you really do only look at yourself.”
“Ace, we’ve got a little over an hour before we go on. Now either you get out there looking like shit—” Paul gestured toward the mirror—“or you stop talking so much and let me fix it.”
“Where’re Gene and Peter?”
“Threeway.”
“Bullshit. Gene doesn’t do threeways.”
“Then I don’t know.”
“Are we gonna do this with half a band? Two fucking guitars out there?” Ace cackled.
“Stay still.”
The clown white wasn’t hiding the lines on Ace’s forehead anymore, or the rough texture of his skin. Could’ve done with a skincare regimen, or maybe just a detox. He wasn’t nearly as skinny as he used to be, either. Paul chewed on his lip as he started to apply the silver paint, switching sides with every line he made in an effort to keep them even. Given a little more time, he probably would have done the initial outline with a comb, the way he did his own star, but time wasn’t a luxury he had.
“You’ve got lipstick on your teeth.”
“I know—”
“Hang on.” Ace rested his palm on Paul’s shoulder as if to steady him while Paul filled in the stars. The pointer of his other hand was extended toward Paul’s face.
“What are you doing?”
“Open your mouth.”
“Ace, what the fuck—”
“Come on.”
Forty minutes until showtime. Paul’s lips reluctantly parted, only for Ace to jam his finger between them. Paul jerked his head back so fast that his hair fluffed behind him, and he hurriedly pushed it back in front of his shoulder on reflex.
“There, it’s gone now.” Nonchalant as always, Ace raised his finger, which now had a circle of red right below his nail.
Paul grabbed the black paint and hurriedly outlined the silver stars.
“Okay, you’re done. Can I trust you to do your own lipstick?”
“Maybe. Hey, could you do the blue on the eyelids?”
“No.”
“Pauuuuul. You said you didn’t want me out there looking like shit.”
Thirty-five minutes.
“Close your eyes.”
Ace did so. Paul dredged up a brush and started spreading the blue powder against his eyes, trying inexpertly to fluff and blend it out the closer it got to his eyebrows. Ace was humming merrily to himself, something that sounded like an unholy mash between “Shock Me” and “California Dreamin,” only stopping when Paul closed the eyeshadow palette.
“I dig you, you know? I mean, maybe it’s ’cause you’ve got my name but I really do dig you.”
“Thanks, Ace.”
“No, I mean it. Yeah, you’re kinda a tightass and you’re really fucking jumpy but—”
“I’m not jumpy!”
“Yeah, you are. S’okay. We’ve all gotta hide something.” Ace opened his eyes and tilted his head to look in the mirror, scrutinizing Paul’s handiwork. “Christ, not bad. I forgot you went to art school.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I forgot you went to art school?”
“The other part.”
“Oh.” Ace reached over to rustle through Paul’s makeup kit, digging out the lipstick. “It’s true, ain’t it?”
“I’m not hiding anything.” The protest hadn’t felt so false in years. Paul swallowed. His throat felt sticky, thick with that old fear, thinking: all glory is fleeting. All glory is fleeting, but a deformity—a deformity is eternal. A worse blemish on KISS’ name than any bad album or bad concert could ever make. If anyone knew—if anyone but Gene knew their band had a half-deaf frontman—it would all crash down. All of it. They wouldn’t just be scorned by the critics; they’d be pitied. Panned. But looking at Ace as he looked at himself in the mirror, Paul couldn’t detect anything but that drunken congeniality that had turned into Ace’s trademark. Not a hint that he knew any different as he unscrewed the top of Paul’s lipstick. “That’s red, idiot. I don’t have black.”
“I know what I picked.”
Ace lined his lips suspiciously well to be loaded. Didn’t overdraw them, either, before filling them in with red—which was weird. If Ace really wanted to swap colors for whatever inane reason, no point in not going all the way. If his lips weren’t full enough, they’d get lost in the rest of his makeup. Paul opened his mouth to tell him that, but Ace just put a finger to his mouth again.
“Ace, if you try that one more time I’m biting.”
“See, that’s what I mean. You worry way too much.” Ace’s hand dropped to Paul’s bare shoulder, rubbing at it in an odd sort of rhythm. “About the band and about you and—you don’t have to, y’know? I’m okay, you’re okay. Like the fucking book.”
“I—”
“Shh.” His hand had shifted to cup Paul’s chin, callused thumb against stubble. Paul stiffened up on automatic, eyes going wide as Ace’s fingers got caught, inevitably, in his mass of black curls. Tugged just slightly. Paul leaned his head in, not knowing why in the hell he was when he knew damn well what Ace was about to do now. His heart was thumping. I dig you, Ace had said, but Ace had said he came from another planet with just as much sincerity.I’m okay, you’re okay, but Ace had no idea, right, no idea—
Ace’s lips crushed against Paul’s in a greedy instant. The taste of alcohol wasn’t half so bad secondhand, somehow, Ace’s tongue urgent against Paul’s teeth, suddenly demanding. Paul parted his lips, and, hesitant, put a hand against Ace’s shoulder. It was awkward, Ace’s costume bulky against Paul’s bare chest, but it didn’t seem to matter. Ace was sure of himself and Paul was more certain with each passing, dumbfounding second, the knot of tension untangling, disappearing. Four years on the road had taught him plenty. For a crazy second it didn’t matter that his bandmate’s tongue was in his mouth, or that Ace’s hand had found its way from his hair to the zipper of his jeans. For a crazy second all his fears seemed allayed, like a high, a real high, better and brighter than the tokes he’d had in high school and the cocaine that fueled Ace’s nights.
It felt raw. Real.
Paul’s thumb was hooked in his jeans, starting to shove them down, when Gene’s voice bellowed from the other side of the door, along with some heavy pounding that might have come from him or Peter or, likely, both.
“We’re on in twenty minutes! Let us in the fucking dressing room!”
Paul yanked his jeans back up so quickly he nearly broke the zipper. His lipstick, his and Ace’s, was smeared like vibrant murder across his face, hair disheveled almost beyond his normal standards. He looked like he’d gotten into it with a groupie; he looked like—
“Ace, what—“
“Oh, yeah. I might’ve locked the door before I fell.” Ace grinned widely, smudging his own red lipstick with the back of his hand as he stumbled toward the door. “Now fix your makeup, Paulie.”