Lo Fi

Chapter 2

2.

Some nights, when Julien cuts me from the door, I stay until well after close. Until the stage lights go up and the traffic lights down Eighth flash yellow. Because the interns are always there to close down Colt’s bar. Shots of whatever is around—Four Roses or Jack. Jim Beam if they’re unpaid. Eddie blends in with them, milking his free drinks and easy connections long after he’s been cut. The actual talent agents are having kids now, passing off some of these late weekday shows to the new guys—Hot Topic teens turned new college grads, out here looking for a band that can make them feel as wild as the music they listened to when they were seventeen did.

Other nights, I immediately text Sloane. Tonight is Saturday, ten p.m.—a solo show for a folksy female songwriter and it’s all too quiet, The Venue is too empty, not the way it should be on a show night. People are hanging in the back bar shooting pool. Eddie’s trying to hit on a girl far out of his league on the balcony, talking so loud I can hear him describing his improvisation process from inside the office. Julien’s still downstairs.

Up in the office, I grab my jacket and bag. There’s a stack of vinyls on the coffee table, and I flip through them while I wait for Sloane. The last one stares mockingly back at me: an early pressing of Flirtation Device’s new album. Cloud Cover. My thumbs along the spine—it’s gorgeous. It looks hand-drawn: waves of tangled, hay-colored hair, almost like a field of wheat. It’s a drawing of his hair, I know immediately.

God—sometimes it feels like the night of the flood broke some levee between me and Nick and now he’s fucking everywhere. I set the record down.

—You heading out? Julien asks from the doorway. He looks exhausted, a slight slump in his shoulders, a sheet of paper in his right hand, an amp cable wrapped around his upper arm.

—You cut me, I say.

—You don’t have to defend yourself. I know. You’re allowed to leave.

—Sloane and I are going to a house party. Well, dinner and then a house party.

—At Alex Molly’s?

—You’re going?

—Depends on what time everybody finishes loading out.

I nod. A song ends in the main space. Polite applause, a little mild cheering.

—So maybe I’ll see you later, I say. Julien Black, out in the wild.

—You’ve seen me out in the wild, he says. You’ve been to my apartment.

—Once, I say, holding my index finger up. My phone rings: Sloane out in the parking lot.

—Oh, you can have that if you want, Julien says, nodding at Nick’s record on the coffee table. It’s just a promo from the label. I figured you might want it. Though I guess you can probably get an advance copy. Since you know them. Him, I mean.

I want to say no, to not reach for it, but I can’t resist. I reach out to grab it—the cardboard square, the slick plastic—and try to slide it into my bag, but the corners stick out awkwardly, like an extra syllable that doesn’t fit the rhythm of a song.

—You sure?

—Let me know how it is, Julien says.

To my knowledge, there is only one problem with music. Well, two, if you count the power of earworms, the fact that even bad songs can get stuck in your head. Okay then, three: the simple fact that once you’ve heard a song you love for the first time, you can never hear it for the very first time again. But the real problem—and this can fundamentally Fuck You, in my opinion—is the way a song or an album or a voice on the radio can fling you so authoritatively into the past. Songs are almost always slivers of souvenirs, recollections, and Nick’s are no different. Maybe this is why his voice, to me, always sounds so much like a memory.

In the parking lot, Sloane dangles a cigarette out the window of her Wrangler. She’s listening to an album from a new California band, Laurel Canyon harmonies slipping out into the night. Smoke out of her mouth like a frail ghost. She’s wearing a plain black shirt and a short skirt, small gold hoops in her ears.

She’s in one of those moods when she’s being rich, which happens about once a month or so. Usually it appears in the form of designer jeans or some extravagant flea market purchase, but sometimes it’s a meal we have no business eating. A night of eighteen-dollar gin and tonics and prime rib sliders at the Palm before a Ryman show, a bottle of champagne and filet mignon at the steakhouse that just opened on Demonbreun.

She passes me her phone—Mix #19—and says:

—Only additions for this one. No deleting. And no songs by people you’ve fucked.

For a moment, I think about telling her about the late period, the pregnancy test. But I can’t, because it’ll change the whole tenor of our evening. She’ll probably make me take it right now, in the car, something crazy like that. Instead I scroll through her music, adding a pop-punk song I loved as a teenager, then slinking back into the seat. Sloane turns it up, sound pressing against the polypropylene, spilling into the night. Downtown skims by. Sloane’s hand out the window, the energy of the night humming under my skin, like this is a warm-up for the rest of the evening, the rest of the week, the rest of the year. You know the feeling, like being on the precipice of something—the edge of a tall building but you know you can fly—where it seems like almost anything could happen, and we were still dumb and young enough to let it.

Sloane’s parallel parking is divine. She finds a spot on Nineteenth, and when we empty out of the Jeep the breeze is mellow. An anemic leaf floats down facade of the condos on Division, the threat of a chill just palpable in the air as we walk into Giovanni’s. Dark night into a darker entryway. Sloane hugs the hostess and I follow her to the bar. The bartender arrives, tall and freshly shaven, suspenders tight, his hands reaching across the bar quickly to Sloane’s. Sloane says something I can’t catch and then introduces me.

—Benny, this is my roommate, Al. She works at The Venue. Al, this is Benny. He works here.

Benny sticks out a large hand. I want to ask how they know each other. They look like old friends, their hands clasped, their frenzied side chatter. But this is just Sloane.

—Al also writes songs, Sloane says.

Benny gives me a smile, performative but vacant, but I can’t return it. Sloane’s never introduced me that way. I’ve certainly never introduced myself that way. But then, before I can say anything, she’s leaning across the bar, showing Benny something on her phone. I get the sense that there are two Sloanes: the one I see, who lives in a normal house with cheap rent and a low-paying job, and the other, who splurges on three-hundred-dollar dinners and hangs backstage at Ryman shows and doesn’t pay her own car lease. A Justin Wilson song comes on overhead. I briefly imagine him and Esther in a room together, a guitar in hand, parsing out the lyrics—

—No I don’t, I say. I mean, I’m not, like, a songwriter. I’ve written songs. But I’m not—

Sloane doesn’t even hear my response. Her hands are still clutched in Benny’s, a platonic set of palms across the marble bar.

—What can I get y’all? he asks.

—Vodka martini. Dirty. Ketel One. Two olives.

—I didn’t know you were such a regular here, I say to Sloane. Then, to the bartender: I’ll do the same, but with gin I guess. You can make it with gin, right?

—You should make it with gin, Benny says, flicking his eyes dismissively at Sloane. Gin preference? he asks.

Nobody has ever asked me this question before. The gin I drank in college cost three dollars. I’m not sure I’ve ever ordered a martini proper before. Overhead, the song is still on, loud and haunting, an acoustic version of Wilson’s album.

—Hendrick’s, Sloane says for me. And you hate olives, right? At least on pizza? Don’t get it dirty then. Dry. With a twist. Is this really your first martini? Trust me, she says.

The song ends, and before another one starts, quiet fills the bar in an awkwardly loud hush, like a server has dropped a stack of plates. A cocktail shaker rattling, a chair scraping against the floor. The phone rings at the hostess stand, but nobody picks it up. A credit card hits the bar.

—Why’d you tell him that? That I write songs? And how do you know everybody here?

—I told him you write songs because you write songs, Al!

—It’s…misleading, I say.

—I know you don’t want to play anything after the—ugh, the Incident—but it’s been months now. Plus, I know you write. I know you’ve been writing, Sloane says.

—Privately, I say.

—Privacy is a privilege, she says.

—Oh my god. What does that even mean?

But Sloane was right: she did overhear me playing something I’d written, but it was something from college. And I didn’t even realize she was home.

Our drinks arrive then, clear and crystalline on the marble bar. Sloane reaches for hers and holds it up delicately.

—I got a promotion, she says.

My hand is on the glass and I spill some of my drink, the liquor sloshing softly over the rim. Before we can cheers, Sloane has already taken a sip of her martini. I do the same. The gin is sharp and fragrant. My throat opens up and the evening becomes almost instantly a shade more pleasant.

—I didn’t even know you were up for one. When did this happen?

I know I should be happy for her, but I liked the way our jobs felt similar—straightforward and easy, barely real. The bare minimum responsibility of The Venue is all I really want out of a job. I have no desire to climb any kind of career ladder; I didn’t even know there were ladders I could climb. I thought Sloane was the same, that she didn’t want to do something real either, but maybe I’m just being naive. Maybe eventually I’ll be the only one left working at a place like The Venue.

—I wasn’t really, she says. But Billy needed a new promotions director and I told him I was interested. We’re starting to sponsor the free live shows downtown, and he needs somebody to take on that new work. So. You know. Blah blah blah. Boring work stuff, and voilà! I’m the new promotions director. Maybe now I can get us our own radio show, you know? Get some women behind the ones and twos.

—Well, shit. That’s amazing. Is this why we’re at such a nice restaurant?

—We’re at such a nice restaurant because we’re adults, Al, she said. And because it’s a Saturday night and I just got paid and we deserve martinis and Benny promised to treat us well. Okay, she says, now what do we want?

She doesn’t have any management. Do we want another round? It’s the mixing and postproduction that’s taking so long. Their drummer is a dick. I see him everywhere. He owns all the masters, everything. There’s the weirdest party up on Love Circle. He said Caleb Followill was coming. He relapsed. I heard them on NPR. Wouldn’t we know if he was dead? Nobody’s cared about them for the last two albums. That voice will kill you. They’re kind of a band’s band. When is load-in? I think bus call is midnight.

We abandon Sloane’s Jeep at the restaurant and she calls us a black town car.

We are daydream drunk and happy and warm. On the ride over we make grand plans for Sloane’s promotion. She already had access, but now she’ll have something better: influence. We talk about it like she’s about to be running a record label or station of her own: the concerts where we’ll be backstage, the musicians we’ll meet, the radio show we’ll eventually host together. It’s all fantasy, all overblown, but fun all the same.

By the time we arrive at the dilapidated blue bungalow off Belmont, the party has spilled onto the lawn. A band has just finished playing a set in the living room, and guys in flannels and jeans are shutting the clasps on guitar and bass cases, stacking amps in the damp grass. Above: a bright moon, a nickel of light above the neighborhood. Cigarettes spotting the grass, the smell of weed drifting across the lawn.

—I have to pee, Sloane says, and takes off quickly through the crowd. Get me a beer?

The sound of drunken flirting, a distorted guitar from a window upstairs. I want a drink. That’s the problem with martinis, I think, as if my first real martini half an hour ago has made me a connoisseur: they go down like water, and then all you want is more. I make my way inside.

The house is stuffy. Faces flushed, clusters of guys and girls huddled around holding Solo cups and cans of Pbr and bottles of Yazoo. There’s a nice, even ratio of men to women. Jessika is there, in the kitchen, surrounded by a group of guys. She stands tall and comfortable, singing along to a song carrying in from outside. They all look like they’ve known each other for ages. Probably all Belmont kids. She’s braiding one guy’s long, curly hair, a joint floating in and out of fingertips, its movement practically choreographed. When she laughs, it cracks through the room like thunder announcing a storm. She doesn’t notice me.

In the kitchen, there’s so much beer in the fridge it’s comical. Like I’m doing these people a favor by taking some. When I take three, the refrigerator light splits into fluorescent white shards, the remaining stacked beers blocking the rest of the light. Behind me a shuffle of cards, the pop of a bottle top. I snake back through the party, passing Sloane on my way outside. I don’t save her from the conversation she’s already stuck in, though—it’s too entertaining to watch her grin and bear it, talking to a guy with bright eyes who looks like he’s holding a ferret. Fuck you, she mouths to me as I slip her a beer.

Outside I fall into conversation with a barefoot upright bass player named Tommy and an intern for Big Machine named Drew, a guy with gray eyes and a slight lisp. Tommy and Drew are debating the best Stones album. Tommy says it’s Some Girls, everybody knows that, and Drew says it’s Exile on Main Street, and I tell them it’s Sticky Fingers, if only for the actual working zipper on the vinyl cover. I start rambling to them about an interview I read where Mick Jagger said it was called Some Girls because they “couldn’t remember any of their fucking names.” Beers are finished and crushed underfoot in the grass, only to be replaced by new ones handed off by acquaintances. The party is still pulsing, people arriving and leaving in minivan cabs, live music coming from the kitchen, a couple of guys messing around on guitar, bass. I think I see Julien across the lawn, but when I look again it’s just shadows, a couple holding each other and swaying beneath an oak tree.

From across the lawn I see a girl with a gray streak in her hair leaving the house, walking toward a car parked up the street, staring at her phone as she walks. It looks like Esther Wainwright. I step away for a closer look, but she’s already in the car.

Lukewarm beers, a dry joint passed, the twang of an acoustic guitar in drop D. Damp warmth between my legs—I think it’s my period but it’s not. Just sweat. A guy doing backflips in the grass, a playful shriek from the street. A firecracker pops on the sidewalk; a bottle crashes onto the concrete. Snippets of starlight, a neighbor threatening to call the police. A drummer, a guitarist, another drummer—

Sloane takes off right around the time my group disperses. She’s going with her drummer, Jamie, to a late-night diner over on Eighth, like we didn’t just drop $250 on dinner.

—I can send the car back for you, she says. Or Jamie can come back and get you? I mean, he’ll have to drop me off first, because, you know, a motorcycle. But he can come back.

She’s drunk but her words are sharp. She lights a cigarette, takes a drag, then passes it to me, tells me to keep it.

—I’m fine, I say. I’ll get a ride.

—I can take her, says a voice behind us. It’s Julien, appearing from a cluster of people as if we’ve summoned him. Seeing Julien outside The Venue—it’s like seeing a teacher at the grocery store. Sloane pinches his cheeks like they’re the oldest of friends, then traipses off and climbs on the back of Jamie’s bike. I slide into Julien’s front seat, wondering where his girlfriend is.

Songs meant for nighttime driving only:

“We Looked Like Giants” (Death Cab for Cutie)

“Just Like Honey” (the Jesus and Mary Chain)

“Runaway” (the National)

“Who Says” (John Mayer)

“I Will Be There When You Die” (My Morning Jacket)

“Everything in Its Right Place” (Radiohead)

“No One’s Gonna Love You” (Band of Horses)

“Hammers and Strings” (Jack’s Mannequin)

—I wish you could see the stars, I say, looking up at the sky as we roll up to a stop sign. Julien glances over at me, his eyes on me like a physical weight. Then back on the road.

He turns on the music, a burned CD he’s slid into the console—an old pop-punk song I loved when I was seventeen, the kind of deep cut that makes me pause, look at him, ask:

—You know this song?

Memories of Michigan highways and cool, dry summers. A hand under a T-shirt, windows down, a fizzing somewhere in my chest.

—You know this song? Julien says.

—I haven’t heard this in forever, I say. I didn’t know anybody else still listened to these guys.

—I didn’t know anybody else listened to them back then, either.

—We would have been friends in high school then, I say.

He takes us through the Gulch, though I don’t know where we’re going. Away from where we live, down toward the area where warehouses start to give way to new construction, sleek restaurants fading into empty parking lots, an Urban Outfitters sitting aglow across from the Station Inn. He flicks his blinker on; he’s driving in circles just to let the song finish.

Waxing ivory moon—oily sky.

The volume is perfect. It’s too tempting. Too much nostalgia—too much to drink—to not sing along. Is that what you call a getaway? I belt.

I’m louder than I need to be, the drinks drowning out my self-consciousness. Julien drums along on the steering wheel. He’s usually a little stoic at shows, even for the bands he loves, but this—

I look out at the skyline: Technicolor lights in the distance down Broadway, all the honky-tonks bursting at the seams. Here on Division, though, we’re the only car at the light, and Julien’s full-on singing now. Outside, the shape of the city obscures the stars.

A low breeze out the window. The nylon of the seat belt pressing into my neck. Julien, looking over at me again, mouthing the words, fists still balled up on the steering wheel, right at ten and two.

And then the chorus breaks back through and he shrieks it, his voice carrying over the song, me right there with him screaming at the top of my lungs, the kind of volume where there isn’t even pitch anymore, just noise and sound. Violent guitars and throaty howls, all our emotions emptied from our bodies.

When the chorus ends, Julien takes a breath. A bead of sweat appears on his temple.

—The light’s green, I shout, and he turns left and swings onto Cannery, pulling into The Venue.

Car off, a hushed calm.

—Nightcap? Julien asks.

The parking lot has a lovely, ethereal glow, as if it’s just rained, though it hasn’t. The Gulch is deserted. It’s after three. We walk up the back stairs to the balcony.

—Watch that step, he says, pointing out a spot where the wood is rotting.

I stand still, briefly grabbing onto the back of his shirt as he walks forward, like I’m following him through a forest. He unlocks the back door from a mess of keys clipped around his belt loop.

Pitch-black, eerie silence. I will follow you into the dark.

And even though he’s warned me, even though I’m being careful—isn’t that the true irony of all this, how reckless I am even when I think I’m being careful?—I trip. Knees onto warped wood, my purse poured out in front of me as Julien moves his hand along the wall, searching for a light switch that he can’t quite find. And then light rushes over us, and he leans down quickly to grab my bag, the one I’d been carrying the other night, the one with—

—Are you okay? he asks, grabbing my wallet, keys, a couple of matchbooks.

I scramble for the cardboard box from the pharmacy. Why didn’t I just take the test the night I bought it? I inhale sharply as Julien gets to it first, glancing down and then sliding it back into my bag like it’s just a pack of gum. He passes me my purse and I stand up shakily. The quiet of The Venue is obnoxious, and I clear my throat to try to break through it.

—It’s for Sloane, I say, ensuring the test is fully stuffed back into my purse.

He holds up both of his hands, as if to absolve himself of the conversation. Pale palms above his head, eyes wide and soft. I look at him for several excruciating moments, trying to read what he’s thinking, but now his hands are down and his lips are closed and his face is back to its usual inscrutable.

—What happened to Jess tonight? I ask.

—Oh. Uh, she had to go home, he says. Early flight.

—Oh yeah?

—Don’t act so excited.

—She’s a lot, I say.

—Do you even know her? he asks, though it comes out as more of a curiosity than a reprimand.

—That laugh, I say.

—M-hm.

—Where’s she going? I ask.

—Austin City Limits. Then on tour for a couple weeks.

—Denim? I ask.

—Yeah, or something, he says.

—You don’t know? Isn’t she your girlfriend?

—Do you want something? he asks. A drink? Or just water?

—You still have that secret stash of Yuengling? I ask.

In the office he grabs two beers from the mini fridge and hands one to me. It’s too nice a night to sit inside, though, so we go back out on the balcony. We lean against the bricks; I prop my right heel up against the building.

—Have we ever used that second space upstairs at all? I ask. For photo shoots or, I don’t know, anything, really? I know we rent the other space out for weddings sometimes.

—Not that I know of, he says. Though Colt just found out about it and now he wants to scope it out for a video.

—Of course he does.

The moon is high above the city. The air tastes like cold ash and yeast. A low chill, light shivers. Julien’s shoulder next to mine, a few inches away, a low undercurrent of heat from his torso. There should be music playing but of course it’s silent.

—What’s up with, uh—What’s up with you two, anyway? Julien asks. Is that—

My breastbone clenches.

—Nothing, I say. No. Why?

He takes a sip of beer and swallows quietly. The smell of brass and rotting wood, a scurry of an insect, a rodent, some other creature.

—Just wondering, he says.

—Nothing, I say again. Really.

—All right, he says.

—Nothing really. Not anymore.

It’s obviously bullshit, like saying the test is Sloane’s, but he nods, turning his ankle, digging the toe of his right foot into the warped wood of the balcony. My skin prickles at the base of my neck. I sing a line of what we were listening to in the car out loud without thinking. Molecules of air bouncing off bricks—sound.

I look over at Julien. He’s looking at me and—

Eyes brackish like floodwater, almost wet. He takes another sip of his beer, glass against teeth, our mouths full of bones.

—You told me a couple months ago that you had someone like…I trail off, not wanting to say Nick’s name. From before you met Jess? You know, like, a person, an ex, a someone, who…

He blinks, his eyes closed for a moment. He glances away and clears his throat.

—Someone from back home, he says.

I nod, trying to ignore the sourness that’s settled across my chest.

—Do you still talk? I ask.

—Here and there.

He looks away then, and I can’t tell if the acerbic taste in my throat is from all the beers or the conversation, the thought of some girl Julien has in the back of his mind, like he doesn’t also already have a girlfriend, like—

I exhale, then hum another line from the song we were listening to in the car to break the silence.

—I can’t get that song out of my head now, I say.

He opens his eyes and looks at me again:

—When do I get to hear one of your songs?