Downtown Los Angeles, CA

"I don’t know about this," Max Silva says. He rides shotgun in Freddy Fallow’s rental car and has been sober for roughly eighteen hours. This was the longest he had gone without ingesting mind-altering chemicals of any kind (except maybe the Twinkie and Diet Rock Star he had pounded at a gas station a half-hour before) in the last six years.

And by Fred’s count, this was the maybe the seventeenth time Max had said that in the last half-hour.

"I don’t know about this either," Fred replies, braking hard at the corner of Commercial Street and Center to avoid killing a fat bag-lady trudging across the filthy asphalt lane against the light and carrying what appeared to be a brown paper grocery bag. The bag looked very full and as Freddy peered through the windshield, squinting against the hard, bright blue light of some asshole’s oncoming Hummer, he could see that the bag appeared to be squirming. "And you need to stop saying that and focus."

On the outskirts of Downtown is the edge of East L.A. – the mostly-abandoned waterfront and its mess of warehouse space, each unit in its own unique state of decay. Wedged into this shadowy half-world is a gourmet Japanese restaurant called R23. The place seats maybe forty at a time, with a line circling the artfully-designed ramshackle warehouse storefront. It was trendy, it was delicious, it was insanely expensive. And the rage-inducing snarl of traffic in orbit of some über-chic fucking sushi joint was the very last place Fred Fallow wanted to be. He was about to loudly announce this to his backseat passenger when the light in front of him suddenly blinked from green to yellow to red, all in a flash. Freddy stomped on the brakes and the rental car – a mid-Aughts no-color Toyota Corolla – slammed to a halt.

He had momentarily forgotten about both Max, who he had to say was doing a lot better than Freddy had expected, and his spooky, silent backseat passenger. Max and Fred had played in the same rock band Blue Tile, one of those string-of-seven-hits-wonders who cashed in early, listened to their outwardly calm but almost-terrifyingly happy parents (in most cases) and set money aside... only to blow it all on, say, investing $2.7 million to develop a square of ripe commercial property back in White Hills, his hometown. Eighteen weeks and roughly $7,450-worth of surprisingly-convincing phony construction later, Fred Fallow would find himself flat broke and the proud owner of a flimsy plywood-and-duct-tape shell of a construction zone. He lived on his mother’s couch for six months, as royalty checks and percentage bonuses were filtered to him with agonizing slowness.

Fred would hear about how, months later, those same con men – Punjabi brothers who had owned and lost a mid-level Abu Dhabi casino - did their best to stage a major Bollywood film production in San Francisco. Rather than play it out, the boys cashed in the $40,000 retainer from their financiers – meant for the location-scouting and insurance-application fee - and left town. Which meant they had blown nearly three million dollars in less than six months. Fred would remind himself of this whenever he felt absurdly stupid and ineffectual about anything.

Now he thought about Max. Haunted, lonely, withdrawn, soon-to-be growling-through-DTs Max Silva. Fuck this.

Fred Fallow had seen Max Silva at the most debased levels of suddenly-rich lunacy. Their second-to-last tour ended three weeks and ten gigs early, when Max went missing for three days in the middle of Terre Haute, Indiana. He was found in the local NBC affiliate TV station’s rec room, peacefully sleeping off an Adderall binge. The band had played their final hit single, a power-chord-heavy cover of Pearl Jam’s "Daughter" which took the song to a bizarre, Nine Inch Nails-level of rage that surprised almost everyone, including Pearl Jam’s rhythm guitarist, Stone Gossard, who told Rolling Stone magazine that "Blue Tile played our song the way we could have played it, but we don’t have quite their level of the bizarre. That cover of theirs goes down a dark little rabbit hole, for better or worse." Fred had never quite understood that last part, but fuck it.

"We have nearly arrived," their backseat passenger intoned. Freddy burst out laughing. When the oh-so-goddam calm-sounding tangle of dreadlock’d shadows in the back of the shitbox Corolla glared at Fred, it made him laugh harder.

"Fred, if you’re high, it will have adverse effects on the outcome of the next twenty minutes or so," said the backset passenger.

Max looked at him.

"Please tell me you’re sober," he said.

Fred Fallow wanted badly to turn and look his friend straight in the eye and tell him holy shit was he ever sober, had been sober long enough to finally understand the true nature of the expression "sober as a judge;" judges wait until off-duty to pound the bourbon because if they could do their job hammered they’d just execute every last idiot. But this shit was happening while he was driving, so the best he could do was shut up, grip the wheel, and follow the passenger’s directions around the back of this weirdly popular sushi joint in the middle of nowhere and through a maze of odd, half-hidden cul-de-sacs. A strip of vacant land butted up against the edge residential area. No one around could remember who owned it. The rest of the block consisted of the long-abandoned and vandal-violated shells of what used to be a bunch of small, perpetually-competing mechanic’s shops. 

Freddy slammed on the brakes. Max’s seatbelt held him as his chin knocked against the window and suddenly he came back to life.

"What the fuck?" Max tried to snarl, but it came out more like a dehydrated mutter.

"Had I not been sober, we’d all be dead right now."

"I think I have whiplash," Max whined, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Good," Freddy said. Their backseat passenger ignored all of this and sat back, hiding his face in the shadows.

"I don’t know – " Max says, and Freddy simply reaches around with one hand – keeping the other on the steering wheel while weaving around a stalled Honda and four pedestrian gawkers – and smacks him upside the head. Max yells and bats at his hand. Freddy yanks his arm away and turns his attention back to the road just in time to swerve sharply to the left to avoid a rather irritatingly hard-to-see dumpster.

"We’re here," says their passenger. This still-hooded figure quietly opens the backseat door and slips out.

Max and Fred exchange a look. They sit there for a moment, not speaking.

"What the fuck is going on?" Max asks.

"Is that a rhetorical question?" Is Fred’s only answer.

"No. It’s a – a real one, I guess. Don’t fuck with me right now!"

"I’m not fucking with you. This was your idea, remember?"

"I think it might work."

"I think you don’t know your ass from your proverbial elbow."

Max looks at Fred, and Fred doesn’t look back. If Max is about to say something, it remains unsaid.

Then, Max says in a small voice completely unlike the booming light baritone he was once famous for: "I don’t know what I’m doing."

Fred actually smiles.

"I know," Fred says. He turns to Max and flashes a smile. Then he exits the car. Max follows.

They leave the rental where it is – "parked" at a crazy diagonal near a run-down, empty warehouse. Fred turns and follows their hooded passenger, who waits patiently at the edge of the warehouse, half in and half out of the sick yellow light of the halogen streetlamp across the street. Max catches up with him. They walk side-by-side toward their passenger.

Our boys will wander out of the warehouse just as dawn spreads its first strands of ghostly light across the sooty Los Angeles skyline. Max will barely register the early hour. His mind has been blown, and not in a sexy way. Fred follows him – both seem dazed.

Max and Fred will get into the car and drive off. The freshly minted L.A. morning will surround them.

Here’s how we begin:

Next Chapter: FRIDAY, The Bell Game. 2:21 pm