Chapter 1
1.
My period is four days late.
I sit in the bathroom, tensing my lower abs, as if I could force my stomach to cramp, willing the blood to come. This has happened before—well, not this many days—but only when I was nineteen, before I’d even had sex, when I briefly convinced myself that I was experiencing an immaculate conception.
I have been careful, relatively speaking, with the exception of…I do the math, trying to count down to one specific, slightly sloppy night with Colt. Three weeks ago. After the blue room show. My stomach quickly sinks below the floorboards. I press the toilet paper to my crotch and my clit pulses through it. I analyze the pure white toilet paper for spots of blood, like it’s a color you could miss. A text from Izzy buzzes on my phone, asking me if I’m still joining her for lunch today. Sloane’s voice carries from the other room. She’s getting ready, singing Taylor Swift loudly above her hair dryer.
She calls my name from the other room.
—Just a minute, I say, a cold edge to my voice.
I flush the toilet again.
—You good? Sloane asks when I come out of the bathroom.
—Hungover, I say.
—Oh no. Happy Monday. Are you pukey? she asks.
—No. I’m fine. You look good, I say.
—I always look good.
Her hair is pulled back into a tight bun and she’s got on light coral lipstick. She’s pouring coffee into a sleek-looking to-go tumbler.
—Dinner Saturday? she asks.
—I have to work, I say.
—Can’t you get that annoying guy to cover? Or talk to Jujubean? Flirt with him, get him to give you the night off! Oh shit, I gotta run. Make me a new mix, will you?
—Julien and I don’t flirt.
—Oh please. Make me a mix, make me a mix, make me a mix!
—What if I’m busy?
Sloane laughs loudly and just says:
—Yeah, okay.
Sometimes, in the middle of a show, when the lights are low and the energy is high, you can forget where you are. You can forget the club—yes, that comes and goes quickly—but you can also forget the city, the day, the night, your friends, your family. The guys you’ve loved, fucked, cried over, forgotten; the friends you’ve lost; the songs you’ve learned. All of it. You can be orphaned, right there in the middle of the room, and it doesn’t even matter, because you live in the audience now.
—I swear to god that guy is fucking tone-deaf, says Eddie, his hands drumming on the metal railing.
Monday night, high moon, cigarette smoke wafting off the balcony as we stand outside. A handful of local bands are on, the closest thing The Venue has to an open mic. The crowd is thin and distracted. Swimming between the bar and the balcony: interns from Red Light and Paradigm, agents from William Morris, sipping whiskey sodas, their palms resting on the bar.
—His monitor wasn’t in, Julien says. More a Simon issue than a band issue. And just because someone doesn’t have perfect pitch doesn’t mean they’re tone-deaf.
—Well, maybe if we all grew up learning a tonal language instead of just English, we’d all have a better sense of pitch.
—Says the guy from Knoxville, I say. Don’t you have exams or something?
Eddie shakes his head, blows smoke over his shoulder.
I pull out my phone and text Julien, even though he’s standing right there: Do you want to push him or should I?
A muffled vibration and Julien tugs his phone out of his pocket, looks at the screen and then over at me, a small, focused smile.
Beyond us the city looks too small, the buildings squat against the obsidian sky. Part of me aches for something a bit more grand. Chicago or New York—a hulking skyline, glittery and boundless. I’m desperate for a drink, but—
I exhale smoke out into a snake of gray. The door into the main space swings open to a blast of Sleater-Kinneyesque howls from the stage, a song crescendoing up toward its tonic. Colt emerges, smirking as he meets my eyes. I look down and tense my stomach again, begging for cramps.
—Shut up, Eddie, he says, as though he’s been listening to us the whole time.
For those three seconds, I love Colt.
—Has anyone heard any news on Justin Wilson? I ask.
—Who? Eddie asks.
—Probably OD’d, Colt says.
—We don’t know that, I say.
He reaches out for a cigarette and I slide him my pack. His hand lingers for a moment. The breeze—sharp and then completely still. I pull my hand back. My phone buzzes: What if we push them both?
—Are you two fucking? Eddie says now, looking from me to Colt and then back at me.
—Jesus, I say.
—Fuck off, Eddie, Colt says.
Glancing down at my phone I catch Julien’s ankle, twisting in a tight axle against the wood beams.
—His manager was at a show last week, but he didn’t stay long, Julien says.
I try to catch his eye but he’s looking out at the city, like he’s trying to sketch the skyline in his mind.
—I feel like Esther’s probably the only person who actually knows what’s going on, and I think she’s off the grid too. The rest of the band has been totally silent.
—Are they together? Julien asks.
—Justin and Esther? I say. I think so. Or they were. Or they weren’t and now they are. Seems messy. I don’t know, but I feel like she’s sort of the woman behind the man. You know what I mean? Doesn’t she do a lot of the writing?
Julien’s the only person paying attention now, his eyes intently focused on me.
—I thought they wrote together, he says.
—Some songs, I say.
His eyes flick away from me, then quickly down to his hands. Another breeze, picking up a parking ticket in the lot below.
Andy pops his head through the door—a Wicked Weed Brewing T-shirt that looks like it’s been washed a thousand times, a pair of jeans faded white around the knees. I don’t know how old he actually is, but the reading glasses propped on his head make him look ten years older than that. I always assume everybody is my age—young—unless they look obviously the opposite. Or unless they tell me so.
—Can I steal you? Andy nods to Julien. Oh, and Hunter—don’t forget your paycheck in the office. It’s on my desk.
Julien stubs out his cigarette on the railing and flicks it into the parking lot. I imagine the cigarette as Eddie or Colt, their bodies tumbling to the asphalt, Julien and me laughing. The air is catching its first bit of fall, a heady relief from the never-ending stretch of steamy days, which had started to make me feel like I was sleepwalking. Julien slips back inside. A bit of quiet, then the sound of Kanye blasting from a car driving down Eighth, the repetitive echo of a nail gun from the construction in the Gulch. Andy hollers out to Colt something about the ice machine, and he goes inside. Eddie follows.
The beeping of a car in reverse down the alley. A helicopter slicing through the air, headed toward the Vanderbilt hospital. Tobacco ash—cheap vodka. A trio of girls, stumbling out from the show, staring at an image on a cell phone. Silky moonlight. Uncomfortable, truncated banter from the stage: a joke about Mondays. Lukewarm laughter.
—Got a light?
A tall wisp of a guy comes out on the balcony. Another break between bands, people swinging the door open, mouths wide with laughter and bullshit. Name-dropping, flirting. I recognize him immediately as the lead guitarist for a band around town, though I didn’t think he was playing The Venue tonight. He has wild curly hair, Robert Plant’s texture with Jimmy Page’s color and Jack White’s length. Flannel shirt over a Metallica T-shirt littered with holes. The fingernails on his right hand are long, delicate like a girl’s. A guitarist’s hands, like Nick’s. Nails kept long for fingerpicking. It’s hard not to immediately imagine them inside me.
—You’re Dan Daniels, I say.
His head cocks left in curiosity. A cloud shifts in front of the moon. There are moments when I want to play it cool in this city—an actual celebrity, a musician I deeply admire—and there are moments when I can’t be bothered to care, when being covert just isn’t worth the bullshit.
—Have we met? he asks.
I pass him the pack of cigarettes and he plucks one out. His index fingernails are each painted a dismal shade of gray. My lighter flicks flicks flicks and he leans over to catch it.
—No, I just…I mean, I work here. You guys played back in February, right? The show with Steel City?
A guy in a camel suede jacket and a wide-brimmed hat swings open the door. He looks around, ducks back inside.
—Yeah, that was us.
Sloane had told me about Dan, an interview he’d done at Lightning earlier in the year. Something about a bizarre diet, marathon training, days in the studio fueled by only sparkling water and—
—Is it true you only eat sweet potatoes? I ask.
—You’re sure we haven’t met? he says, inhaling a long drag from his cigarette. He’s leaned toward me.
From inside, a three-piece girl group is going on, their voices blending in a sultry harmony behind us. A line about crying in an airport bathroom, a twelve-string guitar ringing out.
—Well first of all, Dan says, that was a phase. I was testing out being a vegetarian. And turns out, I don’t like most vegetables.
—Tough gig, I say.
—I was also testing out being single, though not necessarily by choice. Anyway. You are?
—Al.
—You can call me Al, he says. Where you from, Al?
—Michigan, mostly.
—Michigan seems like a dream to me now, he sings, in a voice that’s higher than I’d anticipated, milky soft.
—It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw, I say.
I don’t sing the lyric, even though it probably would have landed better in conversation with a melody. But Dan still laughs, his piqued interest as faint as perfume left on a pillow—slight but sexual, unignorable.
—Your shirt is the color of C sharp, he says.
I pull at his, a faint blue a shade lighter than my own. I am full of shit, but he smiles and watches my fingers pinch the fabric. I let the shirt fall back to his chest.
—So yours is what, B flat?
In the lot below us a girl howls in laughter, hanging on a guy in flannel and leather.
—What do you do when you’re not here, Al? Dan says.
His eyes: intense and dark dark brown. He keeps them pinned to my face. I find myself shifting my glance from his face to his shoulders, then back up to his forehead, his eyelashes, his fingernails again.
—I write poetry, I say.
Not actually writing the poetry I tell people I’m writing. Not having perfect pitch. Not even being able to match pitch all the time. Not listening to enough Allison Krauss, Carole King, Dave Rawlings. Saying my favorite band is Mazzy Star when I’ve only listened to the album once, but I play Something Corporate on repeat. Not being able to keep rhythm without a metronome. Not being able to play when almost anyone else is listening. Not being able to get onstage, to even think about getting onstage. Caring so much about Nick’s band that I stop writing my own melodies. Sleeping with the bartender knowing that you should never sleep with the bartender. Knowing the name of all the local lead singers instead of the founding members of Pink Floyd or the Who. Maybe someday I’ll actually be one of them, but for now—
Down at the door, Julien gives me shit about Colt, about Dan, about some random guy who comes through and mercilessly hits on me.
—You’re in love with everyone, he says.
A group of girls between us suddenly. Pulling wallets from Gucci purses, wiping the edges of their smeared lipstick.
—I’m not in love with you, I say.
The last album didn’t really do it for me. Have they got Yuengling up there? Two months sober. Nobody hates that song. At Grimey’s, Saturday. Is he actually missing? They’re doing an after-party. Late night over off Charlotte. That guy is too tall to be standing in the front row like that. Why do people come to this shit if they’re just going to talk the whole time? I need a new weed guy. You know if you haven’t heard anything it’s not good news. Yeah it’s all free, whatever you want, baby.
A break: twenty minutes. I end up at the pharmacy closest to The Venue. It’s late, quiet, traffic sparse after ten on a Monday. I take laps through the brightly lit store, weaving in and out of the aisles. Taking inventory, killing time. I’ve never actually bought a pregnancy test before. It seems like the kind of thing I should have asked Sloane to do with me. Or for me.
“Pour Some Sugar on Me” is playing—a song that should be illegal. The automatic doors at the entrance sound like they’re on a loop: open, close, open, close, open, close. A surprising number of people shuffling in thirty minutes before close to buy half gallons of milk and toothpaste, pints of ice cream and room-temperature beer. The lights are too bright. I’m pretending I desperately need an ankle wrap as I glance at the tests; I didn’t expect so many options. I need to be back at The Venue in ten minutes.
My phone buzzes with a text from Julien as I reach for the cheapest test.
Want to grab us a snack?
I start and stop typing several times, then finally respond:
Like what?
When I glance up from my phone, I look across the aisle and there, studying the tampons, is Jessika. It seems like a cruel joke.
—Oh hey, she says, not unkindly.
I don’t know what to do with the box in my hand, which suddenly feels like a third limb. My whole body is hot, my temples pulsing. I should have driven to the East Side.
—How are you? she asks. Are you off tonight?
—I’m—yeah. Well, no. Break. I’m on a break.
—Who’s playing? she asks.
She’s wearing a light neon windbreaker, leggings. Her hair is pulled up in a messy bun. She’s holding a giant sparkling water and contact solution. She’s different, I notice, when she’s alone. Not in front of Julien or one of her bands. Voice just a bit quieter, flirtatious energy reined in. Like she’s offstage or something.
—Honestly, I can’t even remember.
She laughs, that big honking laugh. There it is. The guy at the photo counter looks up, startled.
—You guys are there every night. I’m sure it’s easy to lose track.
—I’ve been sent out for snacks, I say, and then immediately regret it, because now she’s looked at my hands, which are of course not holding snacks. I might as well be handing her the box, asking her to carry it for me, to buy it for me, to pee on the stick for me.
Her eyebrows lift and then settle back down on her face.
—And obviously I’ve failed, I say. With the snacks.
She laughs again.
We both stand there for a moment. I tap the box casually against my hip. She takes her thumb and index finger then and runs them across her lips, zipping them closed. I shrug, let the unspoken weight hang there for a minute.
—How many days? she asks.
The doors at the front: open, close, open, close.
—Four, I say.
—Eek.
—And a half.
She nods, and I can’t believe Def Leppard is still the soundtrack to this moment.
—You’ll be fine, she says. I’ve taken probably a hundred of those in my life. Even if I’m, like, thirty seconds late.
I nod. Her response is so reassuring, like she actually knows what will happen. Like she has control over it.
—I gotta get back to The Venue, I say.
She pulls out her phone then and hands it to me.
—Put your number in, she says.
A couple walks by us and stops in front of the condoms, all of us quiet. I slide the test under my arm and punch my number into her phone and save my name.
—Cool Ranch Doritos, she says as we part ways.
—Hm?
—If Jules asked for a snack, she says.
A game Sloane and I like to play, or rather she likes to play: Pull up someone in your phone, she’ll say, waiting patiently while I do. Then scroll back to the very first text exchange. What does it say?
Mine and Sloane’s: The address of the house we now share together; then, before I could respond, another text: Thursday at The Basement—Free. I wrote back: Yes to all of the above.
Mine and Nick’s: A text from me that said just Al Hunter, in case he couldn’t remember my name.
Mine and Colt’s: 7—my place?
Mine and Julien’s: Evidence against us, if we ever murdered Eddie together; then a request for snacks.
Mine and Jessika’s: You can text me if you ever need to buy one of those again.