Kris played ironic self-deprecation at him: plucked notes like heroin, like whiskey, like cigarettes and daydreams. “Forgotten all those stories, have you? No, just get cozy under there, shut your eyes and rest.”
“Sing to me,” Justin said, half a joke, half a small plea. “If you want.”
A flicker of “Snapshot” landed in the night; Justin breathed out in amusement, curled up amid pillows, closed eyes. “If you want to do it once for an audience…”
“I’d touch you, baby, if you were real,” Kris sang at him, “but a snapshot’s all I can feel…”
Justin was real. Justin trusting him was real. Justin falling asleep while Kris sang a not-truly-that-awful song by a rival rock group, a lullaby of longing intangible fantasy, that was real too.
Triumph, a weary raised-arms salute after a long black ni
