CHAPTER SIX
Scott found himself quiet and distracted all throughout dinner.
He was not in his element; this was a very wine-soaked Westchester affair.
He and Sana had been commiserating earlier about their feeling of alienation, but Sana’s mom Maryam and her three bridesmaids had joined them for dinner, and he really was the odd man out now.
He appreciated being included and having a seat at this giant, crammed table, but he was constantly fighting the urge to excuse himself and start walking aimlessly in a cardinal direction.
He always felt like that in these situations.
He was an only child, his mom was too, and his father ran away from home at fifteen and barely spoke to his family of origin.
If Scott was at a big family holiday or other special occasion like this, almost by default he had been shoehorned in by someone who actually belonged.
He knew he was personable and charismatic, but these situations only called for little drips of charisma.
“Hi, I’m Scott, nice to meet you.” “Thanks so much for having me.” No one was there to see him — they were there to see each other.
And he was not an each other. Least of all in Bitterfeld, despite it having produced him.
But Letty wanted him there. Letty had kept him tied to Westchester even after his parents had moved.
She insisted he attend their ten and fifteen-year high school reunions with her, and kept him up to date on the people he would have otherwise forgotten about as well as the people he should forget about, namely Carver.
Carver was two seats down from him, quiet and seemingly also distracted.
Between them sat Lillian, who Scott was mystified by, but she was easy on the eyes and had good enough manners to periodically try to engage Scott about himself as they made their way through three courses of catering from a place called Barley Quarter or something similar.
“What kind of music does your band play, again?” Lillian said to him while they were all waiting for Nora and Doug to finish plating entrees in the kitchen.
Scott took a sip of his wine. “I’m in two bands right now,” he said, “but one of them’s on hiatus.
I’d say they’re both indie rock. Silk Tourniquet is more indie pop, more radio-friendly.
” It was also far more successful, and the one he was less emotionally and creatively attached to, go figure.
“The one that’s on hiatus, Say Again, is more straight rock…
which these days is more like alt-rock, but we do release through an indie label, so in that sense we’re indie, but I don’t think our sound is what people think of as indie. But we get called an indie rock band.”
Lillian looked at him with zero comprehension, then nodded. Down the table, Chip was laughing hard at something his wife had said.
“Hiatus?” Letty said, glancing over during a break in her conversation. “I thought Say Again broke up.”
“No, I’m negotiating our way back,” Scott insisted.
“Mmm,” Lillian said, squinting at him.
“I have a solo project also,” he said lamely, “and that’s more, uh, fusion. Jazz-rock fusion.”
“Jazz-rock fusion,” Lillian repeated. “Interesting. None of this is ringing any bells for me.” She paused, then confessed, “I don’t really like music,” as if she were saying something naughty like ‘I’m not wearing panties.’
Scott drank more wine. “Don’t like music. No music? Not any?”
“No, not really.”
“Just, I’ve had people say that to me before, but they just meant they only like pop music and Christmas music and stuff. I get that, I’m not a snob. I love Nickelback.”
“Christmas music,” Lillian repeated, her gaze drifting toward the ceiling. “I can’t say I’ve ever given that any thought. What’s a Christmas song?”
Scott felt adrift, like he was talking to a sphinx. “Uh… Silent Night?”
Lillian thought about it more, then shrugged.
“Okay,” he said.
“Does it hurt your feelings that I don’t like music?”
“No, no, everybody’s different. I just don’t meet too many people who say that.”
Lillian nodded. “It must be exhausting to be an artist,” she said, “and be asking everyone to love you all the time.”
Scott grew a little flustered, fiddling with the rolled-up sleeves of his flannel shirt. “I’m just meeting a need, like anybody else,” he said. “A lot of people feel like they need music in their life, same way they need a plumber or a roofer.”
“Okay, a man of the people,” Lillian said. “But you don’t find it difficult when you work really hard on something, and put it out, and people don’t care like you wanted them to?”
“Uh… no, that’s tough. I don’t love that.”
Lillian sipped her white wine. “But I guess it’s like when a deal falls apart for me after I spent months on it. Like, so fucking frustrating, because why do other people have free will if they’re just going to use it to subvert yours. Is that it?”
“I do want people to have free will,” he said carefully, “because, you know, I want them to genuinely like my music, and decide to buy it.”
“Right, but you can’t control your label. And I bet they fuck you all the time.”
“Sometimes, sure.”
Lillian’s eyes flashed with interest. “And doesn’t that just drive you crazy?”
“I think of it as one of the tradeoffs of capitalism, I guess.”
“But your industry is anticompetitive sometimes, right? Like, isn’t it an oligopoly? And what about the payola issue?”
Great, even this raging capitalist wouldn’t accept capitalism as a brush-off answer. “You’re gonna have to define oligopoly for me,” he said.
Lillian turned to Carver. “Carver, do I like any music?”
Carver cleared his throat and roused from his torpor, leaning forward.
Scott was still surprised, every time he looked at Carver’s face, by the ways in which this was the same face he’d left behind in Westchester eighteen years ago and the ways in which it was a new face.
He’d always been lean, but there was baby fat in his cheeks then, and now they were hollow.
Carver was fit and handsome — Scott didn’t bother denying how attractive he found him — yet something like anemia gnawed at him.
He was impeccably groomed and had a suspiciously Botoxian lack of lines around his mouth, eyes and forehead, plus a $500 haircut, but none of this disguised the dark circles under his eyes or the weary look in them.
“Music,” he repeated. “Uh… I wouldn’t say so, no. You like going to the opera.”
“But the opera is funny,” Lillian said. “All the melodrama.”
Carver rubbed his eye with a forefinger. “Then, no?”
“That’s what I thought, but I wanted to check.”
To Scott, Carver said, “An oligopoly is a monopoly with a few dominant firms instead of one, and they collude, like, anticompetitively.”
“Got it,” Scott said. “A hydra.”
“Yeah.”
Scott had known dozens of cokeheads in his life and done his fair share of coke, and he suspected that both Carver and Lillian were abusing stimulants.
Probably not coke, probably Adderall or something like it.
With Lillian, the main tell was how bubbly and chatty she was despite the checked-out look in her eyes and the frequent lack of affect in her voice.
With Carver, the main tells were his grinding teeth and hollow cheeks.
He now reminded Scott of a cokehead agent he’d worked with for five months out in California, a guy who made increasingly grandiose promises to him with nothing to back them up.
He’d also been slim with dark hair and a handsome face.
“Scott,” he kept saying, “I am going to make… you… a rock star. You will be bigger… than… Kurt Cobain.” Then one day he vanished overnight: his office cleared out, his phone disconnected, his other clients also mystified.
Scott was smoking a lot of pesticide-laced ditch weed at the time and could not remember this guy’s name for love nor money.
The difference between that guy and Carver was that Scott actually cared about Carver, or at least didn’t want to see him unhappy.
He couldn’t even imagine Carver’s current day-to-day.
The boy he once knew was so eager to get out of Westchester and live free — they both were.
Scott had his own problems, he was always the first to admit it, but he knew he was living the life he was best suited to live.
It looked like Carver had traded one prison for another.
Scott kept considering that maybe he truly was just jealous of the hot rich wife and the $250,000 car and the impeccably tailored clothes, but it didn’t add up.
He’d never lusted after flash. Being married to someone like Lillian would drive him crazy, he thought Maybachs were ugly and overpriced, and Carver’s tight little button-ups weren’t his style.
And Scott had spent his whole life on the periphery of serious wealth.
His mother was family friends with the Cargills and the Paleys, and he’d once partied at Jon Bon Jovi’s house.
He definitely hadn’t looked at everything Bon Jovi had and dismissed it as a prison.
Jealousy was actually a more comfortable and intelligible feeling than whatever was turning his gut right now.
Nora and Doug came out of the house, then, with armfuls of plated steak and salmon.
“Can you let me help you with that?” Letty said, turning around.
“Are you kidding?” Nora said. “You’re the bride.”
“Let us help, then, Aunt Nora, let the bridesmaids help,” Priscilla said.
Nora hesitated as she set plates in front of Letty and Sana, then said, “Okay, the bridesmaids can help.”
Six women got up from their chairs. Doug, setting a plate in front of Sana’s mom, said, “I think we should have let our children help instead?”
“Um, I’ve done a lot today,” Conway said from the far right end of the table, sipping her wine.
Nora smiled at Conway as she walked by her, and stroked her hair. “You have, honey.”
“I’m on the injured list,” Chip said from the other end of the table.