CHAPTER TEN : almost famous

( i saw the light, part i )

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MARILYN: I STILL DISTINCTLY remember the first day I heard Look At Us Now in real life, outside of the studio. We were out at this burger joint, Eddie, Graham, Warren, and I, and we were just leaving.

     GRAHAM: [laughs] Mari was screaming at Eddie because he'd stolen her burger.

MARILYN: God, I was so pissed. First, he had the nerve to take my food. Then, he started telling me to shut up while I was asking for it back.

WARREN: She was threatening him for that burger. She mentioned knives.

EDDIE: Through Marilyn's yelling, I could just hear this familiar melody. Playing from a car driving past.

     WARREN: We charged at that car, full speed, to find out what station we were on. Scared the crap out of those poor girls.

MARILYN: I think that was the moment for me. None of our songs off [The Six] became a hit like Look At Us Now did. And, then, we got paid for it.

"Smells good in here," Graham remarks, barging through the door of the back house. With Marilyn hot on his heels, he takes a piece of freshly toasted bread off a plate in Camila's hand and scoots out of the way quickly so his sister doesn't come careening right into him as she turns the corner.

Just a second later, the youngest Dunne sibling appears. "What's for breakfast, Mama?" she asks, fighting back a shit-eating grin.

Camila rolls her big brown eyes. "Sit down and wait," she says, turning her attention back to Graham, "and save some for the rest of us."

Warren comes barrelling in next, stealing a strip of bacon out of Camila's other plate, though she tries her hardest to move it out of his reach. "Hey! They live in the back house so that Camila doesn't have to feed you vultures!" Graham calls out from the dining table, despite taking some food himself. Warren jumps up to sit on the kitchen counter as the stragglers of the band stroll in.

On entering, Eddie takes his place at the dining table, while Karen stays standing, sorting through a pile of envelopes. "When's the last time anyone went through the mail?" she asks as Marilyn leans against the counter, right by Warren's legs.

"I thought that was your job," Warren says, taking an aggressive bite of his bacon.

She raises her eyebrows, appalled. "My job?"

"Also, that pile of stuff in the sink is getting pretty big."

Marilyn elbows him in the shin as hard as she has the heart to. "Die," she says, staring him in the eyes. Warren mock pouts, only for it to turn real when Karen throws a handful of dirty cutlery at him, hitting him right in the arm.

"Hey!" the boy complains, jumping off the bench without hesitation.

"Do it again! Make him pay!" Marilyn calls out.

Karen screws up her face at the younger girl. "Are you twelve?"

Marilyn flips her off. With a shake of her head, Karen takes a seat at the table, sorting through the letters in her hand. "Uh, guys..." She holds the envelopes up. "Does anyone know what these are?"

Everyone turns to take a look. Still standing up, Marilyn sticks her head over Karen's shoulder to see properly. She gasps once she realises what she's looking at. "Money! Money, money, money!" At her outburst, everyone starts scrambling for the letter with their name on it. It's a messy ordeal, with Karen having to avoid multiple paper cuts as envelopes are torn from her hands left and right. "I got two! I've got two!" Marilyn celebrates, holding a letter out in each of her hands.

Warren jumps up and down on the spot, hoisting his cheque up in the air, proclaiming, "I'm rich! I'm rich!"

     WARREN: Six hundred dollars went a real long way in those days.

     MARILYN: We really never checked our mail, like ever. Missed a ton of bills. There were two envelopes with two cheques for me, one for SevenEightNine, and one for American Teenager. A thousand whole dollars, baby!

     BILLY: Even though I wrote most of the songs, we split the publishing evenly. I thought, "Why not?" You know? I mean... we were family.

     ME: What was the first thing you bought with the money?

     GRAHAM: First thing I bought? A surfboard.

     EDDIE: Couple of amps. Fuzz pedal.

     KAREN: Stock market, obviously.

     WARREN: Oh, there was this beautiful fur vest in a shop down in Venice.

     MARILYN: Tickets to see Red Day in concert. They were awesome, by the way.

     BILLY: A house for Camila and I, and [Julia]. Well, I rented it but—

     MARILYN: We had the house to ourselves after we got those paycheques. It was awesome.

With Billy, Camila, and baby Julia out of the house, the remaining members of The Six relish in their newfound freedom. They've dragged chairs up to the tip-top of the house — a balcony space coming off Marilyn and Karen's shared room — and, no longer having a kid around, obviously they take drugs.

"How soon does it kick in?" Graham asks almost nervously, his fingers laced tightly together in his lap.

Karen purses her lips, her arms folded behind her head. "Depends on the person," she replies, staring unblinkingly at the night sky.

Warren rocks back in his seat, then uses the momentum to jump to his feet. He laughs. "Come on. Now I feel like, on a molecular level, you know, me and the canyon, we are... we're..." He claps his hands together once, startling Marilyn out of her daze. "Ha! No, we're the same, man." Both hands on the railing, Warren peers out over the edge into the darkness.

"Warren's feeling it," Karen remarks.

Turning his head from side to side, Graham comments, "Yeah, I got nothing. I mean—" He blinks hard all of a sudden, his constant looking around clearly catching up to him. "Oh..."

With a hum, Marilyn sits up straighter. "I don't feel anything," she says. She goes to stand, but once she's completely vertical, her head starts to spin. Warren catches her as she stumbles forward.

"Now you do," he says, stabilising her.

She nods, beginning to get giggly. "Now I do!" She turns to lean against the railing, her arms coming up to grab the wooden beams, and leans as far back as she can, just to look at the world upside down. Karen snorts at her.

     WARREN: [laughs] I really miss drugs.

Marilyn pulls herself back up into a standing position. "I need water," she mutters, pushing her way past Warren, and Graham's outstretched legs, to get back into the house. She has to keep a white-knuckled grip on the bannister of their staircase to keep from tripping, but ultimately makes it to the kitchen safe and sound.

There are already a few empty glasses by the sink, all upside down to signify that they're clean, so she grabs the one closest to her and fills it up at the tap.

"Make me one, yeah?"

She checks over her shoulder despite recognising the voice. Warren's a few paces behind her, smiling and glassy-eyed, his hands tucked into the back pockets of his jeans. Marilyn offers the full glass she's already holding out to him, then goes to fill another for herself.

The curly-haired boy doesn't bring the glass to his lips just yet. Instead, he takes a step closer, silently watching as Marilyn takes a drink of hers. She lowers her cup, resting it on the edge of the counter. Warren follows suit.

Then he kisses her.

One hand rests on her jaw, the other on her hip. Neither of Marilyn's move, her arms hanging limply at her sides from the surprise.

It's not for another few seconds that Marilyn ducks her head to cut the kiss short, her heart beating out of her chest. She picks her glass back up.

WARREN: [smiles sheepishly, shrugs]

     BILLY: I wanted to get back into the studio right away. Cut a new album. Turn the page. You know? But that song wouldn't quit.

     GRAHAM: We got asked to join the bill at the Diamond Head Festival in Hawaii. It was our first show since...

     EDDIE: We were on at 1:00 in the afternoon. But, hey, at least we were invited.

Whoever decided to bring bottles of tequila and whiskey to the show was a genius. All of the nerves bottled up inside Marilyn melt away with each shot she takes, and it looks to be the same with each of her peers — except Billy, thankfully abstaining from the stuff. He's a few steps away, smoking a cigarette, talking quietly with Teddy.

Warren's twiddling a cigarette — one that he'd bummed off Billy not moments earlier — between his index and middle fingers. It isn't until Marilyn takes a step away from the rest of the band to stretch out her arms that he quits fiddling and approaches her.

"Are we cool?" he asks.

Marilyn's truthfully a little thrown by the sudden question. She tilts her head to the side. "Yeah? Yeah, we're cool," she replies.

Warren mirrors her head movement. "Because we haven't really talked about the whole—"

Right.

Mari nods slowly, just once. "—the kiss thing." Although she waits for a response, Warren doesn't give one. His fingers are still jittery with apprehension. "I mean, we were both high, so..."

"Yeah. So, we're good?" he asks again.

She doesn't answer at first, she just looks at him, at the genuine concern flickering in his eyes. Instead, she turns, reaching across the table behind her to grab the bottle of whiskey and a shot glass. She pours one and hands it to him. "We're good."

     MARILYN: It was awkward, but only for a bit, after that first kiss. And, it wasn't that, "Oh my God, I just kissed my best friend," thing. It's, just, he was the first guy I'd kissed since I... It was just... a weird time, y'know?

"All right, huddle up, everybody!" Billy calls out.

Everyone falls into line, grouping up together for Billy's pre-show pep talk. Over her shoulder, though, Marilyn notices a certain redhead and breaks away from the huddle. "Hold on!" she shouts, rushing toward Daisy to sling her arms around her. Daisy barks out a laugh and plants a kiss on her friend's temple, then lovingly pats her on the top of the head as Marilyn leaves to rejoin the cluster.

"All right, who are we playing for?" Billy asks.

Warren's the first to chime in with his motivation for the show. "Roberto Clemente, baby."

"This one's for Mom," says Graham, earning an agreeing nod from both of his siblings.

"Free beer," Eddie suggests.

Marilyn fights back a laugh. "That really weird-looking cat I saw down the street." Karen flicks her on the back of the head. "What? It was really fucked-up looking."

"It was taxidermy."

Billy ignores the girls. "Pittsburgh on three. Ready? One, two, three!"

"Pittsburgh!"

     KAREN: So, we all got on stage. Daisy was meant to come on after we'd done four songs, then we'd do Look At Us Now, then she'd go back off so we could do two more.

     EDDIE: She came on after we'd only performed one.

     BILLY: She obviously did it on purpose.

     DAISY: I'm not exactly a patient person.

     MARILYN: All I could think in that moment was, "That's my Daisy."

     GRAHAM: We didn't really have a choice, so we skipped right to Look At Us Now.

     WARREN: It was awesome, man.

     MARILYN: We finished the song and the crowd just kept chanting her name.

"You guys want me to stay for one more?" Daisy asks into the mic.

The crowd could not be any louder if they tried.

MARILYN: Billy was smiling but, God, he was so pissed off, I could physically feel it.

     DAISY: It's not my fault. [The audience] wouldn't let me leave.

Suddenly, the youngest Dunne has an idea. She grabs Daisy by the arm to get closer to her. "Do you remember the words for American Teenager?"

     MARILYN: Hey, when was I gonna get the chance to play any of those songs live, right? I would've gone with Castles Crumbling, y'know, the actual song that Daisy's on but... it's not really the right kind of song for a music festival right? Anyway, there comes the upside to using your own band for your solo side project, everyone already knows what to play. Billy, uh, didn't have a part on the song, so he jumped on some backing harmonies. It actually sounded really nice. I didn't think he minded.

     BILLY: I did mind.

     WARREN: The audience was loving it.

     MARILYN: They were loving us.

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a/n:
not me literally having to reread half the chapters i've already posted bc i forgot almost everything i've written for this.

published : november 26, 2023
word count : 2.1k