The Third Wedding #4
“So,” he says, “about all the brand names...are these favorites of hers? Are there any stories that tie them to their courtship?”
“Their courtship! I love everything about you! It’s easy to see why Celestia is so excited about your song. Can I trust you?”
J answers yes, and tries to keep a question mark of the end.
“And you’ve returned your NDA?”
J can answer a firmer yes to that.
Mikhail’s voice lowers to a whisper. “Well, this is so exciting...but really you can’t tell anyone.
” (J has a feeling Mikhail has said this to many people before.) “Celestia’s event was already going to be the wedding of the year.
But what her public doesn’t know is that for the past three months, she’s been recording the new season of—” (here, Mikhail mentions a reality TV franchise that revolves around the girlfriends of rich men) “—and the wedding is really going to be the season’s centerpiece.
A lot of extraordinary, visionary brands are on board, and those are the brands reflected on Celestia’s list.”
J has encountered people who’ve wanted their favorite things in their wedding songs before, but this is starting to sound uncomfortably like product placement.
“So I can’t sub in another brand if it rhymes better?” he asks.
“Ha! Just be sure to get us the song by next Tuesday; Celestia’s approval process usually takes a week, but with the wedding, we’ll want ten days. She needs to approve all lyrics, as I’m sure you understand. And then we’ll see you for the run-through on the twelfth.”
J doesn’t remember a run-through being mentioned in the contract, but perhaps it was buried in there between the translation rights and the streaming royalties. Considering his fee, a run-through certainly makes sense.
“I’ll be there,” J says, in a tone that is perhaps not quite a match for the wedding of the year.
“Oh! And please be sure to send me your measurements, as precisely as possible. Celestia is a very visual person, you know! Let me know if you need anything else,” Mikhail says. “I’ll get back to you about the toaster!”
J gets back to Mikhail about the measurements, but Mikhail does not get back to him about the toaster. And J has five days to write the most expensive song of his career.
He tries to convince himself that these are brands Celestia likes, that he is not selling out by taking on the burden of her wedding’s corporate sponsorship. The principle doesn’t entirely sit right, but neither does the principle of being paid only $0.003 when someone listens to your song.
Since he’s been given a list, the best way to go seems to be a list song. The greatest of all list songs being Cole Porter’s “You’re the Top” (which also featured a brand name or two). J figures if he’s going to crib, he might as well crib from the best.
He also thinks it will help to be really, really stoned.
So he takes the necessary measures and starts drafting a song from the list. At first, it’s mostly gibberish, with long breaks for him to contemplate his phone and why V isn’t calling. But slowly a song starts to take shape...
Oodles of poodles
Look up from their noodles
When they see you passing by
Whether Pepper or Salty
Their perception’s not faulty
To see love tinting the sky
It’s New York fashion
To speak of your passion
There can be no wondering why...
You’re a Balenciaga ball gown
You’re a Hermès tie
You’re a Prada feather
Gucci leather
Nike sneakers
Bose’s speakers
You’re the best...
money can buy.
“You’re kidding, right?” V chimes in, in his head.
J looks up. She’s not here. But she also...is.
“This is just a draft,” J protests. “I haven’t even made it to the second verse.”
“You’re insulting them.”
“I am not!”
“The best money can buy? You don’t think that’s an insult?”
“Not to them!”
V snort-laughs and sits on the bed. Well, his hallucination of her sits on the bed. It’s not like the bed sags under her weight.
“New York isn’t on her list,” V points out. Then, sarcastically, she adds, “I wonder how it got there?”
“You don’t have to be this way.”
“What way is that?”
J doesn’t want to be having this conversation. Not with an imaginary V. Then again, if she’s imaginary, maybe he can get some imaginary answers.
“Why don’t you love me anymore?” he asks. “Or at least not enough to want to be here right now.”
V looks like he just asked her where she bought her dress. “You don’t want the answer to that question.”
“I do!”
“No, you just want reassurance that I love you.”
“Yes, of course. But I’d still like the answer.”
“I’ve told you multiple times that I’m coming back. I’ve taken great pains to make it clear to you that we aren’t breaking up. Why are you so afraid?”
“You’ve been gone so long.”
V tilts her head to the side. Levels him with a glance.
“You go on tour for months at a time. We’ve never broken up over that. We’ve always managed to reunite. Don’t you think you’re being a little hypocritical?”
“I just don’t understand...”
“What? Tell me.”
“Yes, I’m afraid. I don’t even know why. It’s just...there. And the thing that makes me most afraid is that you don’t seem afraid at all.”
V makes a gesture like she’s putting out a cigarette on the blanket. Then she stands.
“You want me to be afraid,” she says. “That’s fucked up. Now, go back to your stupid sellout song. Although, really, I like it better when you improvise.”
“I like that better, too. But that’s not what they’re paying me for.”
“In that case, I have only one thing left to say to you. Do you even know what that is?”
J stands up and reaches for her. “What?” he asks. “Tell me.”
She leans over and whispers into his ear.
“ Toaster .”
And with that, she disappears.
The next morning, he wakes up groggy, but still texts V, You up yet ?
It isn’t until the afternoon that she replies, Things are intensifying here. Will try to find a moment later .
J finishes a draft of Celestia’s song. He can feel other songs starting to form underneath.
None of them are happy songs.
He sends in the draft of his lyrics and receives Celestia’s “notes” two days later. She isn’t at all put off by the “best money can buy” refrain. She just wants to add a few more brand names.
“There are still a few sponsorship opportunities,” Mikhail confides. “So there may be other additions or substitutions. Stay flexible.”
“I’ll try,” J grumbles.
What’s absurd to J—what’s truly absurd—is that his acceptance of the product placement in the song isn’t just about the money he’s being paid and his need to make a living off his art.
No, there’s something even more desperate underneath.
He’s reminded of another wedding he did—for not one but two influencers. They weren’t rich like Celestia and Roger, and they certainly had time to sit down and talk to J about their song, which they wanted to be about how they met (skiing) and not at all about their individual platforms.
The influencers were in their twenties, as influencers often are, and most of their guests fit that demographic as well.
There was only one child at the wedding, a girl who was about five or six years old and dressed like a princess.
After J played, the girl came up to him and asked, “Are you famous?” It was a question J would usually sidestep or laugh off, but coming from a young kid, he made an effort to give himself a little glory, so she could reflect in it.
“I’ve been a little famous,” he said.
With a deep assurance, she replied, “I am going to be famous, very soon . Princess is my brand.” She showed J the Instagram account that her mother had set up for her.
In each image, the girl was dramatically clothed as a different princess—some fictional, some historical.
When J was a child, this would have been called “dress-up” and would have occurred in a haphazard way after school.
But nothing about this was haphazard. To J, it was all hazard.
Princess Girl’s mother appeared and said, “Darling, have you shown the man how many likes you got on your latest video? Everyone loves you when you’re Diana!
” The girl showed J the video, pointing out how many followers she had, how many likes she got, and how many famous people were following her.
Later that night she had a fit when she didn’t get enough attention, sitting on the floor, crying, “Am I not pretty enough to be a princess?” It was very unsettling.
But just as unsettling—now as then—was how J secretly wondered whether the girl had the right strategy.
In this day and age, was it foolish to still be touring and releasing albums?
It used to be that a big break would come when a famous DJ put your song into heavy rotation on an influential station, or maybe a song of yours would appear in a movie or a TV show.
But now your best chance is for your song to be playing in a fifteen-second burst as a very passionate teenage girl you’ve never met complains about her heartbreak to her seven million followers.
(Your song will get even more attention if she’s sobbing.)
So that’s the desperate hope under J’s acquiescence to Celestia’s whims: What if this ridiculous wedding is the thing that makes people take notice of him and his work? What if some of her almost arbitrary fame rubs off on him for a night?
J and V facetime. He is in bed, and she is pouring herself a glass of wine at her small kitchen table.
“I’m not even sure if there is such a thing as selling out these days,” V says after he explains how he’s feeling. “When everyone’s become a brand, isn’t that essentially the triumph of capitalism? It almost feels inevitable at this point.”
“What’s my brand?” J asks.
She laughs. “Are you serious? Swedish troubadour. Shepherd of the lonesome and the clever.”
“Fair.”
“And do you know what my brand is?”
There’s no challenge in her question, not really. But J finds himself utterly stumped.