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“Got a light?”
The lighter Daisy produces, pulled from a mysterious place somewhere between her bra and bellybutton, is professionally engraved. When Eddie takes it he swears the name on the tin’s Margaret, not Daisy - but he gives her the benefit of the doubt and blames that missight on the poor lighting of the studio parking lot.
Looking at her now, really looking at her, Eddie’s a little surprised to find bags under her eyes. Everybody on this side of the Hollywood sign knows about Daisy’s daily (or nightly) exploits, the pills that jangle in her loose pockets everytime she so much as shimmies her shoulders, but her constant energy could’ve fooled him. He suspects it’s fooled a lot of people. She’s much smaller now out here with him. Her shoulders are beginning to hunch, her hair frizzy rather than free, and her eyes are tired, dimming. Eddie thinks the expression is distinctly Billy.
The first implication of that is cynical; lovers share so much they start to share weariness, life’s burdens, and Eddie has no experience to show for that. Except he does, even if it’s proof nobody will ever see. The way Daisy’s hair hangs by her ear reminds him a bit of another woman with darker hair but the same loveworn face, and something tightens in Eddie’s stomach at the idea that these two people, the most beautiful women he’s had the pleasure of meeting, are both so marked by the man he grudges the most.
“Hasn’t anybody ever told you it’s not polite to stare?” Daisy asks around the bud of her cigarette, and her disarming grin does nothing to dampen the challenging burn in her voice. Eddie, abashed, refocuses on the pale skyline to his right. If he were an angrier man (and he is, but tonight he mostly feels resignation) he’d ask why, if it ruffled her so much, Billy was allowed to drink her in as much as he pleased.
“I liked your line for ‘The River’,” Daisy says after a moment, a complete tonal shift. “Eddie, right?” Three weeks of recording together and she still didn’t know his name. He smiles a tight-lipped smile anyway, nodding his shaggy head in agreement.
“Thanks,” Eddie says, belatedly adding: “And thanks, you know, for giving Bill a little pushback. You said all the shit I’ve been saying for years.” Daisy shrugs, takes another slow drag from her cigarette.
“I wanted to play music I actually felt something for,” Daisy says, as if it’s the simplest thing in the world. “I think he needed a knocking down, anyway.”
Is that all you’ve given him? Once again, Eddie bites back the vitriol and keeps smoking. It’s early in the morning and, if he squints his eyes enough, the sun looks like it’s about to begin peeking over the skyline. Somewhere in the hills Camila sleeps, one leg stuck out the sheets, restless in an empty bed. Just the imprint of the image, an outline on the backs of his eyelids, crashes a harsh wave of jealousy across him. He grips the cigarette a little tighter, jams his hand into his pocket. He can feel Daisy watching him from a few feet away. She’s looking at him the same way you look at a monkey in a zoo enclosure.
“But I bet you were bluffing a bit,” Daisy says. Eddie looks over at her, confused. She has that smug little smile on her face, the one she wears when Billy gives in and gives over control of the studio to her - because of course he does, it’s inevitable.
“Sorry?”
“When you said you didn’t want to play any more songs about sex with Camila,” Daisy elaborates, and her words dance in the air. Even if his heart is lodged in his chest he’s beginning to understand why the world is so entranced by her, the energy pulsing off her as she presses her thumb against his pressure point and demands all his secrets with that flighty voice of hers.
“What d’you mean by that?” Eddie asks, careful and slow. Daisy levels him with a look, narrowed eyes and pursed mouth.
“You guys’ve known each other a long time, right?” Daisy asks, tone casual and expression anything but, “you and Camila. She was telling me about it at that housewarming party they had a few weeks ago.”
“Yeah,” Eddie allows, “since we were kids. You and Camila talk?”
“A bit,” Daisy says, shrugging. That spins Eddie’s head a bit.
“About me?”
“You sound nervous,” Daisy says, laughing. “What d’you think she said about you?”
“I’m not nervous,” Eddie protests, but it falls on deaf ears. “I just, uh. I didn’t think you guys were friends.”
“So, is it true?” Eddie’s blood goes cold. He whips his head around and must look suspicious as hell, but he can’t stop himself from swallowing and replying with a weak:
“Is what true?” Daisy’s grinning and biting her bottom lip. She’s got no right looking at him like that when she and Billy treat every recording session like foreplay for whatever fucked up affair they’ve got going on.
“You are nervous,” Daisy teases.
“Like you got any room to talk,” Eddie pushes back, feeling the familiar anger flare up in his stomach like gasoline in a bonfire. Something flashes in Daisy’s eyes before she’s grinning again. It’s more closed this time, though, as if she wears the smile as a mask for something more painful, tear-filled.
“Don’t make accusations you can’t back up,” She warns, suddenly the careful one of the two of them.
“Everybody knows,” Eddie says, a heated whisper despite it only being the two of them in the parking lot. He gestures back to the recording studio door when she gives no impression of understanding, arm flailing. “You and Billy. I mean, it’s obvious.”
“What does Billy say about that?” Eddie huffs through his nose, rolls his eyes.
“Daisy, does it look like I’d know?” He says, running a hand through his hair and shaking it out back down in front of his eyes. “Oh, yeah, me and Bill shoot the shit all the time. We’re best buds.”
“Nothing’s happening,” Daisy says, but something in her voice gives her away.
“Yet.” Eddie tacks on the unspoken, invisible word for her. She doesn’t look very thankful for his implication.
“Don’t act like you know anything,” Daisy says, fiery. He glares just as fiercely back at her.
“Same goes for you.”
They both take a break to smoke, stare-down paused.
“Sometimes it feels,” Daisy starts and then stops, shuffles on her feet. Suddenly she looks much younger than she acts like she is. “Sometimes he’ll look at me and it feels like everything’s gonna change, like he’s gonna walk over and pick me. But he’s not - he’s not going to and I know it’s terrible for me to even want that.”
Eddie’s first instinct is to lecture her - she’s a homewrecker, a fucking mess. He’s a hypocrite, though, because on the other side of the coin he lies in wait, a much quieter pipe bomb in the Dunne household but just as lethal, sneaking through Camila’s window to keep her company.
“I know what you mean,” Eddie finally decides on, and when he gathers the courage to look at Daisy again, he can see her overwhelming gratitude for just saying something out loud spilling over into her calculated face.
“I can’t take much more of it,” She says. The voice crack betrays her true feelings.
“I know.” Neither can I.
“But they’re sticking it out, huh? They’re staying together,” Daisy says, bittersweet as she takes a final drag from her cigarette and drops it to the pavement. He watches the light flicker out when she smushes it underneath the bare heel of her foot.
“Maybe,” Eddie says. She’s right, though. And hearing her say it only digs the knife in deeper. He’s starting to feel it physically, this soul-crushing pain of watching Camila fight so hard, go back again and again, as he fades to black on the sideline.
“They are - you know they are.”
“I dunno,” Eddie says, rocking back on his heels contemplatively. The full moon hangs low in the sky and he goes back to a memory he thinks about near constantly, of watching the moonlight reflect off Camila’s sculpted cheek and her eyelashes against her tan skin. She sleeps on her back, small breaths from a body overworked and overrun. He feels stupid with the waves of love that crash over him when he looks at her like that, when he thinks of her now. He’s so, so stupid. And he keeps running back to the shoreline anyway, even when every time all he gets is a mouthful of salt water.
“For what it’s worth,” He says, turning to Daisy, “I think you’re a damn good writer.”
“Thanks,” Daisy says, eyes shining with unshed tears. He wonders if she ever cries or if the pills stop her just in time for ever having to.
He wants to say something else but he’s not sure what. Reassure her? Console her? Why comfort her when they’re in the same sinking ship, the same punctured lifeboat, clinging to the same piece of driftwood? She turns and sets her hand on the door to go inside. Eddie stomps out his cigarette and takes in the view for a few seconds longer. The slumbering hills look a bit like the masterwork curves of Camila’s hips, thighs, shoulders and nose.
“I, um,” Daisy seems to struggle to know what to say. It feels good to hear he’s not the only one. “I’ll see you inside.” Eddie nods curtly. The door swings open and shut behind him and he’s left alone in the sea of pavement.
Later, through a particularly grueling session, the rest of the band watches from the booth as Billy and Daisy scream at each other. With the microphones off it looks a little absurd - their silent mouths moving, hands in the air, circling each other like prey with predator. But who is who? He can see the burning in both their eyes.
Eddie watches and glances down at his watch. It’s six in the morning now. Camila will get up in an hour or so to get Julie to daycare. Los Angeles will kick itself awake. And he and Daisy will go to bed alone.