The Last Hit

Some fans sang his songs, others prayed. Most cried as Adi’s casket passed through the villa gates. Police held reporters back while the family crossed the courtyard. They wore the terrible dignity of people whose grief could be photographed.

The Danciu women entered the house, supporting their father, ahead of the clan’s patriarchs, who knew better than to mistake ceremony for power. The young men stayed in the courtyard, smoking, hands in their pockets, thumbs rubbing over their knives. Inside the gates, the clan ruled. Before morning, they would learn how little that meant.

One of the patriarchs stayed behind with them, drawing on a cigarette. He glanced around. He murmured instructions. Then he flicked the butt away and entered the house. Inside, the sisters stood beside the coffin: Danila holding Adi’s hand, Nica one step behind.

There wasn’t much for Danila and Nica to decide. The house was still dressed for mourning from the week before. To Nica, it seemed as if their mother’s funeral had never ended. As if their brother’s death was only another rite within it. But it wasn’t, not to her. He was her big brother, the one who always cared about how she felt, the one who always stood by her side.

Danila moved through the house, arranging the flowers, telling the men where to sit. They listened to her, the living image of her mother, but Danila had learned long ago that nobody could stand up to what that meant. Adi couldn’t. And he was the best of them. The most talented. The most fragile too, though nobody in that house had ever called it fragility.

No one had to be told where to stand. The patriarchs gathered around Raggy — no one had used his real name since his wife died — close enough to advise and far enough to deny it. Nica stayed beside Adi’s body, guarding what was left of him, trying to forget for a while that she should have stayed close to him. Danila moved from flowers to chairs to glasses, pretending to tend to the wake while taking possession of the room.

“Nica, the wine. Bring the wine for the men.”

Nica didn’t lift her head until their father, Raggy, rested a hand on her shoulder. Raggy had never ruled the women in their family, but he had kept their respect. Nica nodded once and left them there.

Raggy followed Danila into the kitchen. The patriarchs watched him go and did not move. One look from him was warning enough. This was family business.

The wine cellar was in the basement. Nica had to pass Adi’s door to reach the stairs. She kept her gaze on the door. She had shut it tight before the wake — she didn’t want anyone around her brother’s stuff — but it was slightly open. Something shifted inside. She paused by the door, resting a hand on the surface, as if she could feel a presence before she saw it.

Behind her, her father raised his voice in the living room. Her sister did too. The exact words didn’t reach her, but the tone did. She pulled the door closed. The door resisted at first, then gave a sharp thud against the frame, and she went down for the wine.

“It will only be him,” Danila said.

Raggy shook his head insistently. “Not in my house. Not now.”

“Now that Mother and Adi are not with us, we’ll need a friend in the press more than ever,” Danila said, taking the glasses from the cupboard.

“God take me now,” Raggy said. He added nothing more.

The house was already too full of people. Their life had always been attached to music and the stage. It had always belonged partly to strangers. He returned with the patriarchs and laid the guitar across his lap. Whatever he had to say came better through the trembling strings.

“Bring me wine,” he said between notes. His broken voice made it sound like a verse. Raggy lifted his chin as a young man passed along the corridor. The young man met his gaze briefly and kept walking. Not one of theirs. Danila’s reporter, maybe.

Raggy thought about calling him back, but his fingers drew a few notes from the guitar and his heart tightened. Danila had let him in.

Nica climbed the stairs with a crate of wine. If they wanted more, they would have to ask one of the young men in the courtyard, she thought, seeing them through the corridor window, smoking and joking with one another. Only the youngest, Florin, stood apart, his jacket buttoned, his face turned toward the house.

Despite the weight in her hands, Nica stopped at Adi’s door. It was open. Again.

“Papa,” she said, pouring wine into her father’s glass. “Did you send someone to Adi’s room?”

He looked up — not at her, but toward the door — and shook his head. He gulped down the wine and returned to the guitar. He set the glass on the table harder than necessary and held it there until Nica filled it up again.

“Talk to your sister,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

Nica left the bottle there and set the rest on the table. Those men had come from all over the country. Some even from abroad. They had come for Mother’s funeral, to offer support, and they would stay as long as the family allowed. Raggy brought the music. The wine brought the clapping, hands rapping on the table, until a cracked voice rose among the men and filled the house. Danila entered the room and joined in.

A young man in a black suit stood motionless by the door. Not a Danciu, Nica thought. His face was flushed, but neither the casket nor the music seemed to move him. Not even Danila, carrying the same spell her mother had cast fifty years before, seemed to affect him the way she affected everyone else. Instead, he stole a glance at Nica, looking away as soon as her eyes found him. Whatever the young man was doing there, he had already been noticed. Raggy caught Nica’s eye and lifted his chin toward Adi’s room. She nodded and walked past the stranger.

Nica put her hand on the handle of her brother’s door, and then it came to her. Her brother’s songs. If there was one thing anyone would want now, it was that. The handle turned under her hand, but the door did not open. For a moment, she thought she had imagined it: only an echo of Adi behind the door, still writing one of those songs that had carried him into a world their mother’s voice could no longer enter. She bumped the door with her hip, and it opened. Behind her, the music did the mourning. Even those outside the clan would have felt the grief threaded through the voices and the clapping hands.

The open drawer didn’t catch her attention at first. Instead, her gaze went to the walls. The crucifix hung above the bed — something her mother had insisted on, and her words were law in that house — and below it, covering the rest of the walls, were posters, T-shirts, all kinds of fan memorabilia from the rock bands he loved.

“Nica —”

Danila stood beside her, the word dying when she saw the drawer. Behind her, the stranger had stopped in the corridor. No one would stop him from turning the wake into a cover story.

That drawer was always locked. Whenever their mother asked about it, Adi said he had lost the key and was afraid he would never find it again.

“His comics?” Nica said, expecting no reply.

Every time someone tried to open that drawer, he complained that his favorite comics were buried there, out of reach.

Danila looked at her as if there were no time left for that kind of innocence. His songs, that was all that mattered. They were what had given Danila her only real success, the same songs that had pushed Nica higher up the charts than Adi had ever climbed himself.

“The songs!” she cried.

“The songs!”

Danila burst into motion, and it seemed as if the whole house moved at her command. Soon, every paper, record, and piece of cloth in Adi’s room was flying, snatched up and thrown aside by her shaking hands.

Nica stared at her, shocked by the sudden fury of it, by her sister’s wailing voice. The racket filled the space the music had left behind. She turned to the door and saw her father there. Raggy had the stranger firmly by the collar. The stranger didn’t fight him. He lifted his chin instead. Someone behind him had a blade pressed to his throat.

“Check his pockets,” Raggy hissed. Florin’s eyes appeared over the reporter’s shoulder. Nica saw his hand then. A hand she knew so well.

“Florin—” she began. Then stopped. Raggy would know about them. She knew.

She noticed his grip on the knife, the slight shake in it, his tightened brow. The other hand moved nervously over the young man’s chest, his trousers. A strange and violent hug, Nica thought.

“Let go of him,” Danila said, staring right into her father’s eyes. Raggy didn’t say anything.

The man breathed heavily. He kept his hands up.

“I said, let him go,” Danila spat.

The knife passed from one hand to the other. Florin kept patting him down. Only when Florin finished did Raggy release his grip. The knife disappeared, but the reporter would not forget it. He let his arms drop slowly, then touched his throat and raised his fingers to his eyes. Clean. His trousers were not.

The patriarchs were all behind Florin and Raggy by then.

“What did you think you’d find in here?” Raggy asked the reporter.

The reporter kept his gaze low.

Behind him, the other men took up the question, each voice adding weight to it.

“You’d better start listening to me right now,” Danila said. “He’s here for the same shit that’s always filled our pockets when it wasn’t Adi’s songs: carnage. An article, a cover, an exclusive, an interview.”

The eyes were her mother’s. The voice was her mother’s. The reasons, too. The silence stayed.

“What about Adi’s comics?” Nica asked after a moment.

Danila gave her only half a look.

Raggy took the reporter by the elbow and passed him to Florin. A jerk of his chin sent Florin out with the reporter. Florin nodded and led the stranger away. The reporter would never set foot in that house again. Raggy would have dragged them all back to carts and horses before surrendering another child to the fame that had taken his son.

“The songs. Where are Adi’s songs?” Danila asked again when Florin returned. He had been the one Adi trusted in the house.

Nobody answered. Nica stared only at the drawer. The rest exchanged glances. Then every gaze settled on her.

“Nica?”

She raised her chin. Florin didn’t blink. His lips tightened.

“I’ll tell you where the songs are when somebody tells me about the comics.”

Danila snapped. “But what comics, Nica? What are you talking about? This is nonsense.”

A tear ran down Nica’s cheek. She sat on the bed, holding her knees to her chest. Her face sank against them.

“I want Adi back. I want his comics. He used to read them to me after school. He made me laugh.”

“That drawer, Nica? Are you talking about that drawer? Do you seriously think it was comics he kept in there?”

Danila looked briefly at Florin.

Raggy turned around. He made his way through the patriarchs and went back to the living room. “Wine!” he shouted as he slammed his hand on the table. Someone served him. Soon enough the guitar wailed, and the house felt like his again.

“You know something, Florin,” Danila said. “I can tell.”

Nica stared at him, her jaw slack. A tear still ran down her cheek.

Florin put a hand in his pocket. When he drew it out, his fist was closed. When he opened it, a pocketknife rolled from his palm to his fingers. It was inlaid with mother-of-pearl and amber. Too expensive for him. Almost too expensive for anyone. Nica recognized it. Her mother had bought it for Adi when his first single went gold.

“That’s Adi’s,” she murmured. “He hated that thing. He despised violence.”

Florin pressed the catch and the blade sprang open. Then he held the knife between two fingers and showed it to Nica. The blade was not a blade at all. It ended in the teeth of a key.

“Adi gave it to me,” he said.

“Why?” Nica asked.

He looked at the drawer. Nica followed his gaze.

“To empty it.”

“Empty it of what? His comics? That makes no sense.” Nica held his gaze. He stayed silent.

Then she turned away.

Florin swallowed.

“Heroin,” he said.

The word landed between them. The silence held.

“And the comics?” Nica asked.

“I took them too,” Florin said. “He said empty it. Burnt all of it.”

Nica nodded slowly.

“I’m sorry,” Florin said.

She nodded again. “Leave me alone.”

Florin left the room as if he had something important to do, though he had done enough for the night.

Danila sat beside Nica in silence. Nica held her knees tighter. Her breathing shortened, then loosened again. She felt the weight of the loss that her mother first and then her brother had left her. She rested her head on Danila’s shoulder.

“Nica.” Danila let the name stay before she continued. “Where are the songs, Nica?”

“Right where they should be,” Nica said.

Danila stood before her, gripping Nica’s shoulders with both hands.

“Nica?”

“Adi. The songs are with Adi.”

Danila held her shoulders a moment longer. Then her eyes narrowed.

“You mean, in the coffin?”

Nica nodded once.

The Danciu family never had another hit. The name remained in the country’s cultural memory for a long time.