Chapter 3
3.
I don’t like her gold hoops
her red lips, her attitude, I don’t like the way she’s looking at you
On the floor of my bathroom—the acoustics round and silky—the tile is cool against my thighs. Seven days late. I toss the notebook aside. I’ve lost my melody again, like I’m trying to draw a shape without lines. Lou Reed pokes his head through the doorframe, looking hungry. My phone buzzes and I swipe out of the Voice Memos app.
Nick.
Can I send you a song?
The timing is laughable, as if he knew even from afar that I was in the middle of trying (and failing) to write one of my own. I want to throw my phone across the bathroom. I want to scream. I want to say fuck you, crawl back into bed, tell him no.
Of mine, he says.
I toss back the dregs of my gin and tonic and turn up Steel Train and type back:
Maybe.
At my feet, Lou Reed has made himself a nest on the bath mat, nudging it with his nose and pawing at it repeatedly before collapsing into a perfect spiral. Is there a way to say no to Nick? Perhaps there is, but I don’t know it yet. A low-grade mania coursing through me—pricks of energy heating up the tops of my ears, my jaw, spreading down across my chest. The idea of getting unreleased Flirtation Device singles is still too exciting, too tempting—all that intimacy and access. Or maybe Nick is just drunk.
It’s rough, the next text says. Truly just a demo.
Send it, I reply, walking to the kitchen, filling a glass halfway with gin, topping it off with tonic like a fizzy afterthought. Sloane’s still at work. The house is too quiet, but she’s texting me updates from an interview she’s doing at the station.
My phone buzzing again. Nick: I wanted you to hear it first.
Thoughts I have but don’t send: Am I the only person you’re sending it to? Does Allison have it too? Has anyone else in the band heard it—or is it just for me?
Fifteen minutes pass and my email sits silent, like The Venue after hours. Under my skin, a louder hum of misplaced energy, like I’ve missed a step walking up the back stairs to The Venue, or swerved into the wrong lane driving. My body bristles again, this time my palms and fingertips, little desperate pads of anticipation. Colt’s given me a toothpick box full of benzos and other goodies, and I chew up a child’s dose of Xanax and let the bitterness coat my tongue before downing the next gin and tonic.
I scroll through social media, waiting on Nick’s email. Jessika has added me as a friend, and my curiosity is insatiable. I click on her profile—a photo of her standing in the alley outside the Ryman, a pass hanging from her neck—and flick through her photos while I get ready for the party. She is stupid fucking pretty, which of course I already knew but which now settles over me with a fresh clarity as I click through picture after picture after picture. The kind of pretty that requires no makeup, that looks good in dresses, in skirts, in men’s oversize shirts, in sweatpants, in baggy jeans and ponchos and ill-fitting swimsuits. Fake leather and family photos.
She has all her work experience and internships listed, and it seems impossible for someone who’s only twenty-five to have already done so much. Sony and CAA and Red Light, a couple of others I haven’t heard of. There’s a picture of her on a panel at last year’s Tin Pan South Songwriters Festival, and apparently she even sat on the board of some young music professional organization.
There are only a few pictures of her and Julien. Casual. In the cutest one, he’s standing behind her, his elbow hooked sweetly over her shoulder and around her neck, his fingers wrapped around the lip of a Yuengling, a Pbr tall boy in her hand. Her mouth is open in a wide toothy smile, his lips closed but warm. It’s from months ago and there haven’t been any posted since. I’m trying to figure out where it was taken—one of their houses? At a bar? A friend’s house? Julien’s living room. After sex, maybe. I look at the picture for a very long time, finish my drink, then head off for his party.
When I get to Julien’s, the night is nice, still a little warm, the trees starting to flicker fall. The maple on the corner of Lawrence is so red it matches the rust on the chain-link fence. It’s quiet for Halloween, just a few cabs and a band rehearsing on the corner of Twelfth and Edgehill, either covering Bon Iver or thinking they are. I walk even though nobody else does, putting in my headphones and flicking on a mix of Taylor Swift songs that Sloane made for me. She keeps insisting Taylor’s one of our generation’s greatest songwriters, but I’m still on the fence. By the time I get to the party, though, I’ve listened to one of her six-minute tracks five times. As usual, Sloane’s probably right.
At Julien’s, the party is not a party. At least not in any way that’s visible or audible from the porch, where the giant rocking chair sits empty. The lights are off in the upstairs window, so I let myself in a side door—which puts me directly into Julien’s room. Piles of beige boy clothes and Springsteen records and show paraphernalia. Springsteen seems a little vanilla for Julien—but then I’m still listening to Taylor Swift, so maybe I should shut the fuck up? The room is small and dark and the emptiness of it is a little sad. I wonder how long he’s lived here, if the decor is a product of not being settled or if this is just how he likes to live. There’s a certain coldness to the space, like a doctor’s waiting room, but with Springsteen posters. My throat is tight. I need a drink.
From upstairs, finally, evidence of a small party—low electric guitars, a few rumbles from boys’ voices.
—People know you can just drink? I say out loud to no one, arriving at the top of the stairs. You don’t even have to have a game.
—Ladies and gentlemen, Al Hunter! The Spirit of Halloween.
Julien’s cheeks are pink. He’s wearing a black suit, black-rimmed glasses.
—What are you supposed to be?
—Guess, he says.
—You look like a used-car salesman.
The table bursts into laughter. The music in the background is unrecognizable. Probably one of those bands everyone pretends to like but no one really does. Cool to like, boring to love. Arcade Fire, maybe.
—Elvis Costello, he says. Drink?
—Please.
He gets up from the table and passes me a Sierra Nevada from the fridge. The boys continue the next round of whatever game they’re playing, and silence slips around me and Julien for a second like a hand. This loopy, buzzed version of Julien is new to me—no books or trumpet or ratty messenger bag in sight. It’s like he’s unfolding.
—What are you? he asks.
—Like, what’s my sign?
—No, weirdo, your costume.
—Oh, I’m a musician.
He laughs quietly—kindly—and takes a sip of beer, wiping the back of his mouth with his hand. My face warms as I drink my beer half down. The vibration of my phone in my pocket is impossible to ignore: Nick. The song. I’m woozy, like I’ve been picked up and set back down into the conversation. Sometimes in moments like this, it’s like I’m plucking feelings for Nick off my skin like dog hairs off an old coat. Weeks, months, years after you thought you’d gotten them all, that the fabric was clean—
Julien has said something but I’ve missed it.
—What? I ask, putting my phone back.
—Nothing, he says. Take your call.
—I don’t have a call. I’m here.
—It’s not a costume.
—You know I hate Halloween.
—That’s not what I mean.
My phone is a hot coal in my hand.
—I’m here, I say, planting my feet. Julien takes another drink and then so do I.
—It’s not a costume if you’re dressed up as something you already are.
The heat from the phone spreads to my palms, then up my arms into my chest and down through my core. I tense my calves to keep from shivering.
—Stop fucking with me, I say, and Julien just smiles, lets his eyes get all squinty.
—Did you meet everyone? he asks, pointing over my shoulder to the table.
Elvis Costello. Buddy Guy. Springsteen. David Bowie. Prince. Sting. Stevie Wonder. Stevie Ray Vaughan. Paul Westerberg. Kris Kristofferson. Lucinda Williams. Loretta Lynn. Patti Smith. Morrissey. So many songwriters I don’t know shit about, so many legends I wouldn’t recognize if they walked into this party and sat down to play me a song.
Jess is still on tour, so it’s mostly a bunch of Julien’s friends from college. They’re a real mixed bag, and he’s the best-looking of them; the rest of them are fine, forgettable. Two of them are wearing fleece; they immediately become one in my mind. The third, dressed up as Yoshi, has a warm smile, and the childish costume makes me like him easily.
—Wanna play? he asks, holding up a deck of cards.
—I want to drink, I say.
Another friend arrives, though, and to my relief the game collapses before it begins.
—You don’t like Halloween or drinking games? Julien asks.
—I don’t need a game to help me finish my beer, I say. And then: Sorry.
—Feisty tonight, he says, but he’s smiling.
A half dozen people pour in from a side door, in varying degrees of costume.
—Do you know everyone here? I ask. A thought crosses my mind: if I had a party, the only person I’d know to invite, besides the guys at The Venue, would be Sloane.
Julien shrugs.
—Small town.
Shrieking from the back balcony. The sound of the fridge: open, shut, open, shut. A pint glass shatters in the sink, water rushing over the glass. Snare drum, a bass lick that’s familiar but unplaceable. A text from Sloane: she’s going to the East Side for a bar crawl, I should call her if Jujubean’s party is lame. A girl yodeling. A guy forgetting someone’s name and trying to cover it up.
After an hour, the party finally settles into a rhythm of its own. The music is all backbeat and radio rock now, the kind everybody knows, the kind that starts to feel like it’s bad for you the more you listen to it, like grocery store candy against your teeth. The ratio of guys to girls is in my favor, though no one in particular has caught my attention. I know literally no one here except for Julien, which doesn’t bother me as much as it should. For much of the evening, I slip in and out of conversations like a ghost.
Yoshi is telling stories about Julien, half-baked ones he looks guilty revealing, like how Julien was the lead singer of a hard-core band in high school that he still played with occasionally in college, or the fact that he lost his virginity listening to the Postal Service. Or maybe he just wanted to. Yoshi seems surprised that I don’t know these things already—haven’t I spent most of my evenings working side by side with Julien for the past nine months? He’s right—I’m surprised too. That pinch of envy again around my ribs.
I get up from the conversation—in theory to pee, but in reality to find another drink and in truth to find Julien, who’s in the kitchen talking to a girl dressed—how did I miss this?—in a cheap-looking Snow White costume.
It’s nearly eleven. Another text from Nick.
Let me know when you listen.
The refrigerator light is dim, blocked by a tray of Jell-O shots.
—Are these up for grabs? I ask, pulling the tray from the fridge and poking my finger into the neon jiggle, testing for doneness like it’s a birthday cake. I’m well past the point of needing another drink, but for one blissful moment I’m able to convince myself that a Jell-O shot is not a drink at all. I grab several, loosening one and letting the shot slide down my throat.
In the bathroom, the text from Nick is still hanging there, and now there’s another. I slurp down a second shot.
Why don’t we live in the same city?
I want to say, You’re never even there. I want to say, We could have. I want to say, We still could.
Instead I type back: I hate the winters there.
Still, the back of my neck shivers. Arousal at the hypothetical. The clarity and calm of a solid buzz slipping around me like a shield. I’m irritated but turned on, and there in front of the mirror I take off my clothes slowly, purposefully, like I’m being watched. My underwear is still spotless as it drops to the ground. I let out a protracted exhale. In the background, someone has put on bad country music.
My hip bones are visible in a way they haven’t been since high school, my hair is long and thick and can nearly cover my chest, my tan from the summer is still a faint glow on my skin. I don’t know what to do with my face, so I let the flash obscure it. Julien’s voice is audible over the din, somewhere nearby, though I can’t hear the girl. I don’t overthink it.
Will listen when I get home. For now…
In the picture I send to Nick, my nipples are hard, but my face is just a shadow. I delete the others and put my clothes back on. Opening my Notes app, I type in a few lines about the party, annoyed to hear them rhyme but unable to stop it: Snow white at your shoulder / felt the night growing colder / send nudes in the bathroom / swear this isn’t about you.
I’m either a genius or a total amateur. Back inside the party, the noise washes over me. Shouting about a show that just ended at the Basement, a drunk girl on a phone call, voices debating whether to go to the dive bar down the street. People have splintered off to corners of the kitchen, the living room, the back porch. I flick my phone off and scan the party for Julien.
The people in this town swirl together. Most nights, the sheer amount of creative energy—all in one place—is a deluge. The guy in the corner who plays in a folk band is maybe the same guy from the house party who also plays in a jazz trio, a pop band, a metal band, an alt-country band. A guy dressed as Townes Van Zandt is a friend of a friend of a friend of Sloane’s; he lives in an efficiency apartment on Belmont and writes horribly beautiful sad songs. A girl who chain-smokes on Monday nights at The Venue is in the corner, dressed up as Marie Antoinette or maybe Edith Wharton or maybe just an old lady; she sings backup and lead, but I can’t remember the name of her band. A guy who looks like Ezra Koenig, and who once told me he writes songs about the new American South, is now here at Julien’s, across the room, dressed like Moby. Everybody does something, nobody has a salary. Everybody writes songs, but only some of them are songwriters.
Julien is in a mood.
For much of the rest of the night, I am sure he’s flirting with me—real, bona fide flirting, like he doesn’t have a girlfriend, like I’m a stranger he’s just met or we’re actually exes. Intimacy like this comes only at the extremes on the spectrum, and I’m not sure which one I’m closest to. It’s hard not to slurp down drinks, but they just keep coming and the Snow White girl is gone and a guy dressed as Jim from The Office confesses to having built an ice luge out back and then another guy dressed as Don Draper passes around an enormous joint and then someone puts on Amy Winehouse and Julien is singing at me in the living room where a Christmas tree is already—still?—up and the air is stuffy but the ceilings are high and we are singing to only ourselves.
The song changes and my voice cracks at the high notes, aching over the volume of the music, but I don’t even care, I just sing. Julien is singing too. His voice is pretty in an unpracticed, maybe-he-doesn’t-even-realize-it kind of way. I didn’t totally register it in the car after the house party, when he was shrieking, but now his voice is bright and confident, his cheeks stop-sign red, his face buoyant and dotted with sweat. Woozy, breathless, the song carrying us along on the current of the melody. Sharp aftertaste of vodka. Julien’s throat open, teeth coffee-stained and crooked, the glint of a retainer beneath his tongue. My lungs trying to keep up with the music, with the water, until finally Brandon Flowers’s voice fades out and a song I hate comes on, and I ask Julien if he needs some air, and even though he looks disappointed and I can tell he wishes we were still singing along to the song together, he says: Sure.
On the porch you can hear the low murmur of the night. We sit in the giant rocking chair, and I cross my legs like a child and he does the same. It’s almost conspiratorial out here like this, all his friends inside debating different Bowie albums and reminiscing about drunken nights from undergrad. He offers me a cigarette, even though he rarely smokes, and I say no and then yes and then no again and then shrug and take one.
—Was that your friend from the door? The guitarist? He nods at my phone. Earlier.
—Oh, it was—no.
The lie slips out so easily, and I don’t have the heart to follow it up with a correction, that Nick is a lead singer.
The air is cool. My cigarette has gone out and I lean over to Julien with it between my lips, expecting him to light it with the neon green lighter he’s flicking around in his hand, but he leans forward instead, the ember on the end of his cigarette a hazy orange, and touches it to mine for several beats until mine lights in a slow glow. A shiver runs from my shoulder blades down my arms as he blinks his long eyelashes, fingertips close to mine. And then he pulls away and I realize I haven’t been breathing. A siren howls over by Horton Avenue and then the night is quiet again. I lean back.
—I heard you used to be in a hard-core band.
—Oh god, he says. Were you talking to Matt?
I laugh, nod. I crack my knuckles, run a hand through my hair. My phone is dead in my pocket.
—How’d you get from there to the trumpet?
—I contain fucking multitudes, he says.
My laugh is loud and sharp.
—Are you gonna stay here? I ask.
—Like, in the house?
—No, like, here here.
—In Nashville?
I nod, inhale.
—For now, he says.
—What does that mean?
—I don’t know. This year, anyway.
—There’s only two months left in the year, I say.
—You know what I mean. Probably for the foreseeable future.
—How long do you consider foreseeable? I ask.
—I don’t know, Al.
—I’m just curious.
—Why, are you planning to leave? Are you quitting? Don’t tell me you’re quitting, he says.
—I’m not qualified to do almost anything else, I say. Of course I’m not quitting. I love it there.
—Good.
—And it’s barely a job.
—I’m not moving, Julien says. Not anytime soon.
—That’s cool.
—Is it?
He puts his cigarette out.
—This is fun, I say.
—Good party, he says, and I just look up into the fractured light of the porch and say, That’s not what I meant.