Curt trudged back to his new apartment, his hands jammed into the pockets of his jeans. The snow was gone but the nights were still cold. The wind tugged at the loose bits of hair around his face and he stuck his chin deeper into his chest.

The people passing him on the street seemed to be similarly afflicted, and they hurried past him with bags and thick coats and the frozen look of concentration on their faces that broke only when they scowled angrily at whatever was in their way.

He spotted a guy begging at the corner and fumbled for a few coins with his stiff fingers. The beggar was more upset that he wasn't getting more.

Ah, New York! Curt loved the old place.

He looked around with a grin on his face, winked at a lady passing him and chuckled when she muttered something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like 'creep'. He liked the fact that New York had a foul mouth. That it spat and cursed and raved at everyone else who didn't understand that it was a whole world in itself and everyone who didn't live in it was an alien.

New York, to Curt Wild, was where he felt sane.

He bounded lightly up the stairs and then stopped short when he saw someone leaning against his door. "Hey! What d'you want?"

The man started and turned around.

"Stewart, right? Fuck! I thought you were some smackhead." Curt didn't seem to find it at all ridiculous that Arthur Stewart had tracked him down and invited himself over. He unlocked the front door and waved his guest in as a matter of course. Dumped his jacket over a chair.

"Mr. Wild, about…"

"Mr. Wild?" Curt laughed. Very deep and rough. "Talk about old! Just Curt, right?"

Arthur nodded and hefted his backpack higher on his shoulder. "Curt. Right. Sorry."

"S'okay."

"Yeah. Look, I wanted to apologize about the las' time we met. You caught me at a really bad time and I were dead tired, man. It was a crap day. I was just…" Arthur couldn't think of how to say it. "I was, er, not feeling too good."

Curt watched him, hips cocked and one hand on his waist. "Huh," he said, breaking his pose to wander into the kitchenette. "Want a beer?"

"I don't want to disturb you," Arthur demurred.

"You won't." Curt was very decisive. He took out two beers, opened both. One he kept for himself. The other he handed to Arthur with a pragmatic thrust that threatened to drop the bottle if Arthur didn't catch it. "You can sit down, man. I don't bite."

"I shouldn't stay too long."

"If you want. Sit down."

Arthur sat down. He took a cautious sip and looked around wonderingly. His own apartment was nothing to write home about but Curt's apartment was worse. Dirty walls and dinghy carpets that smelt of stains and dust. A couch that sagged in the middle and a scratched up old armchair. A poster of the Ratz adorned one wall and a print of a nude Chinese girl adorned the other. She looked out with her sad, tip-tilted eyes and her small mouth. Even the erotic position of breast and ass couldn't seem to lift the sadness he saw in her face.

"You like it?" Curt asked abruptly, jerking his head to her, "Pretty, isn't she?"

Arthur smiled politely and nodded, taking another sip of his beer so he didn't have to reply. He didn't know how to. He thought the girl looked too young to be posing in the nude but it wasn't for him to say.

"The guy died last year," Curt continued, "The guy who took the picture. He died of pneumonia. Can you believe it? Fucking pneumonia. He went to this den in Ohio and he found her. He said he wanted to remember her for the rest of his life."

"Did he?" Arthur asked.

"Remember her? Nah." Curt laughed. "He gave me the print years ago. Can't even remember her name, now. Sad, isn't it? People live and die and sometimes nobody even remembers them."

"I should go," Arthur said.

Curt bonded lightly to his feet and paced up and down, his tense energy snapping and crackling around him as he bit his nails. "I want to give you some advice." It was a peculiar announcement, and he said it with a defiant sort of sullenness. "You're mixed up in the wrong thing and you should know that."

"Wrong thing?"

Curt sat down again. "Brian." He looked up for a second and looked down for a second and then made eye contact as if helpless to think of any other way to express himself. "Look, Brian's a goddamned miracle but you got to understand that he's different. He's not…"

He stopped.

Arthur waited, watching him closely because the topic of conversation was so strange that it made him curious. He didn't know how much Curt knew. He didn't even know if Curt knew anything at all. After all, it wasn't anything great. He'd been with Brian only twice; Curt Wild had had an affair with the man. The two didn't even compare. It was the same way twisted around- he'd had one night with Curt Wild and Brian had had love. Whatever it was Curt was trying to do, it didn't seem to be necessary.

"I want to give you some advice," Curt ended, "But I don't have anything."

"I don't get it," Arthur said frankly.

Curt laughed a little to himself and scratched his chin, sorting things out with a rueful twist of his lips. "See, I can't tell you what Brian'll do. Thing is, he doesn't have to do anything. But if he wants something he'll storm heaven for it. He doesn't care; he just wants. He's like a big kid but smart. And when he doesn't want, he throws you out."

Arthur nodded encouragingly. He remembered this intimate voice.

"It's- it's like stepping stones. He doesn't go back. So he won't leave. He'll push you. He's good like that, Brian, very good." Curt licked his lips and flopped back in his seat, throwing his arms up to cushion the back of his head. "That's my advice."

It hadn't been much. What there was in it was confusing. Arthur couldn't tell if Curt really wanted to warn him or really envied his position. "Thanks," he said politely.

Curt smiled at him and closed his blue eyes.

"Can I ask yer something?"

"Sure."

Arthur fiddled with the neck of his bottle. "You don't remember me, right?"

Curt opened one eye and squinted, the lines at the corner deepening with the strain. Suddenly, the languor was gone though he didn't seem to have moved a muscle. "In the bar. Why?"

"We met once," Arthur confessed, "Years ago. After one of those, er, Death of Glitter concerts. You were really good. And I met you on the roof after."

Arthur had been expecting awkwardness. He was counting on it. He knew how to respond to Curt denying it or hedging around it. It was only to get things out in the open, so to speak. To settle things in his own head and give someone else the worry of remembering. Like Curt had the worry of remembering the girl on his wall, holding the memory for someone else; why not something similar for Arthur?

Curt didn't respond like Arthur was expecting- "We did it, didn't we," he sighed, opening the other eye and grinning, "Was that it?"

Arthur couldn't help giving in to the other man's obvious relief. "Yeah." He had nothing else to say.

"I was worried there. I thought I'd done something worse," Curt told him.

Arthur made polite conversation for a few more minutes. He felt the words dragging painfully out of his mouth and he wanted to have a sparkling conversation with Curt Wild because hell, it was Curt Wild and a little piece of Arthur wanted something that promised to be easy and honest and thoroughly about impulse. He counted down the time as best he could with his own heartbeats and when he finally ran out of things to say, he stood up and said he had to leave.

Curt shrugged and didn't get up. "Good luck, man," was all he had to offer.

It was a strange thing to say. But then Curt Wild wasn't the average person.

Arthur quite liked average people. Even if he was a groupie.

The chill air hit him with the force of a bomb in his lungs when he got to the streets. He'd been expecting to find Brian with Curt, or to find Curt as distant and hard to approach as when he'd worked on that piece for the weekender. But Brian wasn't there.

Which begged the question of where he was.

Shannon didn't know. Arthur was still shocked by that phone call.

"We parted company, Mr. Stewart," Shannon had said crisply, "Brian Slade is his own man now."

She hadn't even bothered to use the old name of Tommy Stone.

Just on a hunch, Arthur packed up his old backpack and trotted to the nearest record store. There were the usual teenagers in groups of twos and threes, the usual earnest looking types flipping through choices and deciding which piece appealed to them the most. A few browsers, too. Nothing special.

"Hey," he called, walking up to the counter, "I'm a journalist. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions."

"I'm busy," the girl told him.

He looked at her magazine, he looked at the store and he looked at the empty space around him. "It's for a piece I'm writing," he said sweetly, "For the New York Herald."

That was different, of course! The New York Herald wasn't a great paper but it was pretty good. The girl sat up straighter and though she still looked sulky, at least he had her attention.

"That whole thing with Tommy Stone," he began. He didn't get any further.

"That phony?" she interjected, "The only thing I can say about him is the guy's a creep. He should be locked up for selling all those lies to innocent little kids. I mean, God, some of them really dug him, you know?"

"I know," Arthur said, "I was wondering about his records. Do you have any?"

The girl snorted and popped gum in her mouth. "Plenty," she mocked, waving a hand to the stacks behind him, "No one's buying any more. Why should we? It was all lies."

It hadn't actually been lies, Arthur was forced to cede. He kept that opinion to himself.

"So no one's buying since they found out?"

"Sure. The guy ripped us off and everyone's pretty mad about it."

Arthur put his little notebook away and thanked her. He said she had been very helpful and he wasn't sure when the piece was coming out but she could keep an eye out for it. He left the store with the feeling that this was all somehow exactly what Brian- or Tommy- had wanted all along.

The next place he went to, he didn't bother talking to the store clerk. A tall gangly teenager with an earring was rifling through all the available Tommy Stone merchandize. From the look on his face, he was about to spend more than he really could afford to and was happy to do it.

"Hi, I'm a reporter with the Herald," he said immediately, smiling to prove he wasn't some pervert, "Mind if I ask you a few questions?"

The guy looked surprised but he nodded and turned to face Arthur. "What about?" was the only stipulation he asked.

"Tommy Stone," Arthur said, indicating the abandoned music, "Your opinion on the lies and cover-ups."

The young face split into a big smile and the brown eyes sparkled with animation. "It was the hottest thing I ever heard! My old man had this Brian Slade record and when I heard I got him to play it for me and then I put this stuff on and it was so awesome!"

Arthur did a double take and almost dropped his pen. "Really? I heard everyone was angry. Fans trashing their records and not buying any more. You don't have a problem with Brian Slade's lies?"

"Well, he lied," the guy shrugged, "So what. They all do it. I mean, they all sound so cool on TV and then they're complete idiots in private. Slade has class, man. Think about it. He didn't just play something new. He did something totally crazy! That's the stuff you dream about, right? Getting another life? He did it. Just like that. And everyone fell for it."

"Yeah," Arthur said, shutting his notebook again, "Yeah, it was pretty funny. So not everyone's mad about it."

"Nah! I'd say the little girls, maybe 'cause Brian's supposed to be gay but there's a lot of people who think it's funny. Anyway, it's just music, isn't it? Not like he killed someone."

"This time," Arthur said thoughtlessly.

"What?"

"Sorry, nothing. Thanks. That was a lot of help."