Lo Fi

Chapter 4

4.

The next morning, my period finally comes. Heavy and forceful, my stomach aching all morning. I relish it, lying in bed with the heating pad until midafternoon. I throw out the pregnancy test, take the trash out before Sloane gets home. I don’t want her to freak out, don’t want her to wonder why I didn’t tell her earlier. She’d scoff at Colt, I know, but then again: Who wouldn’t? When I go to change my tampon, I consider saving it. Framing it. Handing it over to Colt as he stands there clueless. Instead I text Jessika and say: safe.

Back at The Venue, up in the second space, a few days later. Bare feet on paper napkins, I slide across the wooden floor, dancing to an old Death Cab song in my head. Downtown glimmers through the window. Wet cardboard, old beer. I take a hit from the tail end of one of the joints from Andy’s drawer and sit in the windowsill with his guitar.

don’t waste your time on me

you know I’m only looking for novelty

The melody is too loose, though; I’m not even sure what key I’m in. I keep getting stuck in the spaces between notes—the melody meandering until it’s nothing at all. When I open my eyes, Julien’s across the room, a blank look on his face. Black jeans and a navy blue Modest Mouse shirt, the two shades clashing slightly in the sunlight. Emo front-man cute, I think.

—What the hell? How long have you been standing there? I ask.

His face is hard to read from across the room, the sun slanting in from the window behind me and briefly turning him into a silhouette. I set the guitar down and stand up, but in my haste the instrument slips and hits the hardwood with a horrible smack.

—Me what the hell? You what the hell? What are you doing up here? Aren’t you off today?

—Aren’t you off today?

—Just bringing back some chairs I snagged for the party, he says. What song was that?

—Nothing, I say.

Julien and me on his porch—a warmth in the tops of my cheeks—and then he asks:

—Did you smoke up here?

He starts stacking chairs, the clink of metal on metal filling the space.

—Probably Eddie, I say.

He knows I’m lying, though, and we laugh. I slide Andy’s guitar back into its soft case.

—He keeps trying to show me his tight five on his phone, I say. It’s him rehearsing the bits in front of a mirror.

—Tight five?

—Yeah. He’s working on a stand-up routine. He hasn’t tried to make you watch it?

—Oh god, Julien says, laughing. No.

—Lucky, I say.

—Probably because he doesn’t have a crush on me.

—Gross. He’s barely legal, I say. Plus, he knows you’re taken.

Julien smiles and runs a hand through his hair, though the strands fall back across his eyes immediately. He does look like he’s getting ready to go sell merch at Warped Tour—swooping hair and dark jeans and all. Oh I would kill for the Atlantic / but I am paid to make girls panic while I sing. Something in my chest tightens, and he bends down to adjust the tongue of his sneakers.

The zipper on the guitar case is stuck, but I sling the guitar over my shoulder anyway, half open. Julien clears his throat and it echoes throughout the space. We collect a dozen or so chairs, stacking them the way we used to after church when I was a kid.

—You found it there at the end, Julien says.

—What?

—The melody. That last bit.

My face is hot, and I have to look away for a moment. The sun is starting to dip slightly off to the west, a firestorm orange beyond the skyline.

—I don’t think so, I say.

He shrugs.

—I’m just saying. It sounded like the start of a song to me.

Waking up and feeling like I’m underwater. Preferring drinking over eating. Relishing the dark headlines, wishing for rain, for the sun to go down. Not getting out of bed until noon. I’ve been here before—stuck in the kind of looping sadness that blurs the days with a milky film of ennui—but I’m still not sure what to do except listen to sad music and crawl back into bed. I can turn it on at parties, when I’m drinking, when the alcohol mutes the melancholy a bit. But at home I sink into the sadness, let it course through my body like blood.

At home, I get a text from Julien that says: For someone so private about her songs, you sure play out a lot.

An abandoned storage space is hardly playing out, I respond.

We haven’t even texted enough for our texts to be scrollable yet: just this exchange and our back-and-forth about the snacks and pushing Eddie over the balcony. He sends back a dumb, old-school emoticon smiley face. My phone buzzes again, but this time it’s a notification from a Google Alert I set up. Esther Wainwright Asks for Privacy During this Difficult Time. There haven’t been many updates lately about Justin—maybe his inner circle is small enough that whatever is happening can be truly kept under wraps. Or maybe he just wasn’t well known enough for people to care in a public forum. Maybe I’m one of the only people who are this invested.

There’s a chance Colt’s right. Wilson may just have overdosed. He could be sitting in some hospital, strung out in a hazy in-between of life and death. The family has all but said something of the sort; it’s been months now. Wilson and Wainwright had apparently just started recording something new too, and the thought of the unfinished songs sends a pang up through my shins, my pelvis, settling into a hollow corner of my stomach. If I died today, I wouldn’t leave even a single finished song worth hearing. My old notebooks, pages I used to fill with pedestrian poems and half-scribbled verses of songs I never finished in college—all of them just bulky place mats to catch crumbs from break-and-bake cookies.

I pull up Wilson’s appearance at the Americana Awards from a year and a half ago. It’s a shaky video that I haven’t watched in a while. A full band performance, but it might as well be solo—the spotlight’s on him alone. He’s a little staggery, clearly intoxicated, and when you get a glimpse of the band, their faces are clouded in concern. You can tell people are wondering if he should be up there at all. He looks possessed—though that’s probably the drugs—like he could fall over any moment, but it would all be worth it, just to get these last breaths of song out into the air. It’s mostly a cappella; his fingers are too clumsy with the guitar. When Esther’s voice comes in—her high harmony just barely hovering in the background—it’s otherworldly. You’d think they were singing to save their lives. When I look up the songwriting credit for the song, “Off the Ground,” I see it’s Esther’s. She wrote it alone and Justin recorded it for his debut.

I replay the video a few times, letting the song wash over me. I scribble down the lines I love as I listen—sparse lines about the heavy weight of depression, but Justin and Esther have somehow made the pain poetic. The performance itself is a little hard to watch, not just because Wilson is so fucked up but also because he’s still so good despite being so fucked up. His hypnotic stage presence, that bellowing baritone voice on the cusp of cracking or crying or both, the hand Esther places on his shoulder when he seems to stumble backward, his neck craned and eyes closed, sweat beading on his temples as he sings the last words of the bridge and Esther’s harmony swirls in, their voices together subtle and soft, like cream into coffee. I pause the video and take a deep breath, still wondering where he is right now. If he’s okay, if he’s alive, if—

For weeks I’ve slept poorly. Late nights after shows, drinks well after nobody needed another drink, coming home just before dawn—the sun slinking menacingly over the horizon. On the nights when I’m not out, I wake up in the middle of the night, unable to get back to sleep for hours. In the mirror, my eyes are somehow gaunt and puffy at the same time, something I didn’t even know was possible. Online I look for a fix. Google sad eyes, delete it, google tired eyes, bags eyes, fall down a rabbit hole of dumb shit I could do, though nothing that will actually help except sleep and becoming seventeen again.

Just as I’m about to click on that link about Wilson, a text from Nick:

Well, what do u think?

I toss my phone onto the bath mat.

The songs I listen to when nothing else will do, when no one is around or everyone is around and nobody cares, in no particular order:

“Callback” (Flirtation Device)

“Bruised” (Jack’s Mannequin)

“The Best Deceptions” (Dashboard Confessional)

“Love Story” (Taylor Swift)

“Konstantine” (Something Corporate)

“I Thought She Knew” (NSYNC)

“Hey There Delilah” (Plain White T’s—let’s keep this to ourselves)

“Swing, Swing” (the All-American Rejects)

Later that week, I crack open a Yuengling and sit on the edge of Sloane’s sink while she’s getting ready for a date with the drummer. Her laptop on my knee, I’m flicking through a playlist.

—How was Jujubean’s party the other night? she asks.

—It was fine, I say. Though I did think I was pregnant the whole time.

—At the party? What the fuck, Al?

—For the last three weeks, I say.

—Jesus. Why didn’t you tell me?

I take several large gulps of beer.

—Nick? she asks.

—I wish, I say.

—I know you do, Sloane says.

—Colt.

—Yikes.

—See, that’s why I didn’t tell you.

This is why it was easier to tell Jessika—she didn’t know me well enough to comment, to judge. She was a blank slate.

—I’m kidding! Sloane says. Wait, is that a thing? Is Colt, like, an ongoing thing?

—No. Not really. Not anymore, I say.

—I don’t believe you, she says.

—Jujubean found the test, I say.

—Wait, not, like, the one with piss on it?

—God, no. The box. I never even took it.

—Oh my god we are going to the pharmacy right—

—Don’t worry. My period finally came. Earlier this week.

She lets out a lengthy exhale and starts to unscrew her mascara.

—Thank god, she says. We cannot be raising that drug-dealing barback’s baby.

—He’s not a barback. And I’d hardly call him a drug dealer.

—He’s a music video extra, Sloane says. And that’s just because he doesn’t make you pay for the drugs.

I laugh and roll my eyes, glancing back at the playlist.

—Avett Brothers or no?

—Don’t change the subject. Did you make out with anyone at the party to celebrate your empty womb? Sloane asks.

—No chance. I’m celibate now, I say.

—Oh I’m sure, she says, laughing.

Lou Reed is looking up at us, hungry as always.

—Did you feed him? I ask.

—Don’t let him fool you, she says.

Lately she’s been cooking him ground turkey in the morning and sprinkling it with Maldon salt because—as she says—dogs need salt too. But he looks starving, eyes wide and desperate. Unclear how my beer disappeared so quickly; Sloane hasn’t touched hers. I change the song on my phone.

—Who is this? Sloane asks, looking at me in the mirror.

—It’s appropriate to the fall theme, I say.

Nick’s voice—peaking into its upper register, cresting over a note in the bridge, a line about morning frost and something lost.

Sloane parts her lips in the mirror; suddenly she looks both five years younger and older at the same time.

—Goddammit, Al. We’re not giving your ex any more airtime, she says. And I told you. No more adding guys you’ve slept with. What, did Colt slip you a demo too?

She sighs. Lou Reed shakes himself off, then comes in and curls up at Sloane’s feet. I lean my head on her shoulder for a moment while the song plays out. Her phone buzzes on the counter but she doesn’t reach for it.

—Ugh. Fuck. It’s good, she says.

We let the song play for another thirty seconds. Sloane swipes on a little bit more lipstick and then presses her lips onto a piece of toilet paper. Blood red on the tissue—the color I’d been waiting on for weeks.

—So, what did Juju say when he saw the test? she asks.

—I told him it was yours, I say. Sloane cackles, and I add Nick’s song—the one he texted me—to the playlist.

Never knowing—really knowing—how to change my own strings. Never having sat in the balcony at the Ryman. Accidentally buying the obstructed view tickets at the Ryman. Not spending enough time on the East Side, at the 5 Spot, the French Quarter Cafe. Not being able to harmonize on the fly. Not being able to harmonize even after someone feeds me the notes, even after practicing, even when I’m alone. Confusing a blues scale with a standard minor scale. Forgetting what makes a pentatonic scale pentatonic. Having no real vocal range. Breathing from the chest, not the diaphragm. Not really doing coke. Not liking tequila enough. Forgetting the words to “On the Road Again.” Not thinking Tom Petty is a god. Not recognizing a Tom Petty song when it comes on the radio. I don’t know what makes someone legitimate enough to live here, to call themselves a musician or a songwriter or a writer at all, but I don’t think I’ve crossed the threshold. I’m not sure I even know where the threshold is.

It’s close to midnight and Sloane and I are leaving the twenty-four-hour spot off Elliston. I pass her a bite of a weed brownie from Aunt Izzy. Start with half, she whispered as she handed them over.

We slide into Sloane’s Jeep, freezing. Her Rhode Island bones are built for a different kind of cold, a resilience to temperature that I never picked up in Michigan. She lights a cigarette while I shiver and blast the heat.

—Did I tell you I saw little Jujubean at the William Morris thing the other night? Sloane asks, turning onto Twenty-First. He’s everywhere. I should have told him that was absolutely not my pregnancy test.

—I’m pretty sure he knew I was full of shit anyway. What was he doing there?

—I don’t know, I didn’t really talk to him. It was a networking thing. Jess was there too, but not really with him, I don’t think. Are they still together?

—As far as I know.

—She’s cool, Sloane says. I’d never talked to her before, but I ended up in a corner with her for half the night, ducking all the douchebags. She may have been flirting with me? Anyway. You didn’t tell me she worked at Red Light. She’s very legit. I thought she was just, like, a hot girl who was Denim’s friend-ager.

—I don’t really tell anyone anything about her.

—And yet you can tell me the exact coordinates of Nick’s location at any time, Sloane says.

—Anyone else there that we know? I say, ignoring her.

—Not really. I spent the rest of the night telling Billy he should give me my own radio show. He made it sound like someone would have to die before he did.

—Is this the National? I ask, pointing at the dash.

—Seriously? This guy has the most recognizable voice in the world.

—He was screaming.

—Shit, aren’t you from the Midwest? They’re, like, the coolest thing to come out of Ohio, maybe ever?

—Michigan and Ohio are not the same place, I say. Who do we have to kill to get a show on Lightning?

—Oh, you’re cohosting now?

—Yeah, I say. I’ll explain to the listeners who the National is.

Sloane laughs—accidentally snorting, her whole body leaning forward as she pulls up to the light. Matt Berninger’s baritone bleeds into the night. Frost on taillights, a few rogue guys in Carhartt jackets smoking cigarettes outside the brewery, shoulders ducked into the cold. The song fades out and Sloane throws the car into park.

Midtown, well after last call. Curing my hangover with pineapple vodka, then some kind of alcoholic milkshake. Colt’s at the bar looking dangerously good, but wearing a hat that makes him look bald. I consider telling him about my period, about the test—why was I the only one who had to think about it, to worry about it?—and then a stranger tugs at my elbow and…I’m?working?on?my?faults?and?cracks?the?sky?blue?sky. Julien’s still at work—I doubt he’d ever come here anyway. Someone famous—snakeskin loafers, an eleven-thousand-dollar watch—is playing tabletop shuffleboard in the back. Low amber light, everything a bit fuzzy. Sloane is talking to a woman in the corner; she looks familiar, but the shapes of their faces are a blur. Spinning. A CD skipping ad nauseam. Sleater-Kinney comes on, and I wander out to the front deck—a rush of crisp, black fall air. Practically a rebirth after all the cigarette smoke.

I text Julien, but when I look down at my phone, the letters are gibberish.

Eddie’s in the corner of the deck, laughing like a lunatic, but when I look again, it’s not him.

Sorry, Izzy, we did not start with half.