Chapter 4
4.
I just think that if you gave Nebraska an actual listen—like, all the way through—you might like it. But until then you’re not allowed to talk shit about Springsteen.
—I’m not talking shit about Springsteen, I say.
—You’re saying you don’t like Springsteen and you’ve never listened to Nebraska. Tell me an album of his that you’ve listened to all the way through, Julien says.
—Do you have the other mop?
—That’s what I figured.
—I don’t know, I say. He just never really did it for me. I get that he’s important, canonically speaking.
—Canonically, Julien repeats.
—Yes, canonically. But I don’t know, I think I’d just rather listen to—
—The Format? Taylor Swift?
—Shut up.
—Here, Julien says, handing me the mop.
Andy’s agreed to let us host a couple of small, private events in the second space, but it’s on us to make the place look decent. Halfway up to code, he said. So Julien and I have been up here all week, mopping the floors, dragging trash cans and barstools and cocktail tables up from downstairs, screwing light bulbs into the fixtures that still work. Outside, the sun is starting to crest over the horizon, flooding the sky in a sickening fuchsia.
I stow the mop away in a corner and press my hands into my thighs.
—Fine, loan me your vinyl while you’re gone and I’ll listen, I say.
—Jess didn’t put any Springsteen on your mix?
—Do you want me to listen to it or not?
I glance at Julien and he immediately looks away.
He laughs.
—Fine, he says, looking at me very intently for a moment. The room is warm, the light from the windows hitting the back of my neck, shoulders. Julien is still looking at me.
—What? I ask.
A mop handle falls to the floor, breaking the silence.
—Nothing, Julien says, looking down, digging the toe of his right foot into the floor.
—Can we get out of here? I’m starving. And it’s not like we have an event tomorrow or something.
—Careful what you say, or Eddie’ll be up here throwing his birthday party.
—Oh god, no, I say. Why is he always dressed like he’s on his way to the saloon?
Julien laughs quietly. The Venue echoes with the sound of our sneakers against hardwood, a delivery truck idling out in the alley, the incessant dripping of an old pipe. We lock up the second space. In the parking lot, the sun is blinding, and I hold my hand over my eyes as I look at him.
—Want to get dinner? he asks.
He’s tying up a trash bag, twisting the plastic around his fingers, not looking at me.
—Do you want to get dinner? I ask back. I was thinking about checking out the bluegrass jam tonight. At Station Inn?
He shrugs, like he didn’t ask me first. His shadow stretches out behind him, infinite.
—Want to get dinner and then go to the bluegrass jam? he asks.
His face is in shadow, so I can’t read his expression. But it sounds like he’s asking me on a date.
A white delivery van pulls into the lot, practically dragging its muffler, beeping as it shifts into reverse. A whiff of garbage and then malt.
—You don’t have to, Julien says now, and the sun shifts behind him in shards of yellow.
—No, no, I do. I mean, I know I don’t have to, but I do want to. Yeah. Let’s do it.
—Okay, he says. Okay.
—Okay.
My face is warm. Julien takes the trash bag to the dumpster and then unlocks his car. When we get into the front seats, I pull down the visor to block the sun. He leans over to pop the glove compartment open and hands me a pair of sunglasses.
—If you need them, he says.
When I put them on, the city turns to amber.
Songs for spring drives:
“My Girl to Me” (Dawes)
“The Way We Get By” (Spoon)
“As Tall as Cliffs” (Margot a few folks lead, and anyone can join in. Right now there’s a fiddle player, a handful of guitarists, a stand-up bass, harmonica, banjos, a pedal steel player. A preteen girl with long frizzy hair and a cardigan stands by, a fiddle on her shoulder, waiting for her opening.
The crowd is thick and space is tight. Julien orders a pitcher of beer and I find two open chairs against the back wall vacated by an older couple. We squeeze in, our legs touching. An older man in overalls plays a familiar lick in the key of G, answered by the clap of callused palms. Julien’s foot is tapping next to mine, the sole of his sneaker rubbing ever so slightly against mine. He unclips his keys and sets them on the floor. Sweat builds at the base of my neck as I say quietly into his ear:
—This is my favorite thing to do in the city.
I can smell the hops from the beer on his breath as he turns to look at me, his face close, residual heat like dust in the air. He’s got the pitcher on the floor in front of us, our plastic cups balanced on our knees. He’s still looking at me like he did at The Venue earlier, a question somewhere in his face, but I don’t know what it is. Could a look just be a look?
A round of applause, the lilt of strangers’ conversations. The preteen girl pulls up a chair into the round. She’s in. She looks terrified, her face tight as the bow of her instrument. But she’s doing it: sitting with all these strangers, playing somebody else’s song. A woman in flannel with long gray hair counts the girl in, the opening bars of “I’ll Fly Away.” The air beside me has cooled, and when I turn to Julien to point at the girl, he’s gone. Did he say he was going to the bathroom? I look around, but all I can see are the tangled hair and bald heads of strangers. The players in the round are singing now, tapping their feet, some of them soloing, closing their eyes, losing themselves a little.
We could do this, I think, in the second space. A round of some kind, no stage or amps. Something small, just for fun. I crane my neck to look for Julien again and place my palm on the vinyl seat he’s left. My hand is damp, the seat is warm. There’s some instrument I can’t place, that I can’t see, that I’m hearing in the round now. A brassy, subtle sound, rounding out the melody and giving it some unexpected dimension. It’s not until I stand up that I finally spot him, tucked behind the stand-up bass, just out of my line of sight, lips pursed against the mouthpiece of his trumpet.
It would be easy, here—in Nashville—to mock his choice of instrument. I mean, this isn’t jazz night. It’s not a swing session. It’s a bluegrass jam. There are no other brass instruments in the round, and even the preteen girl with the fiddle is looking at Julien quizzically as she stretches her bow. I try to catch his eye, but my view is obstructed by a beam and the upright bass next to him, like I’ve bought a bad ticket at the Ryman.
But it’s working, and now the girl with the fiddle is smiling and they do a short little back-and-forth, a call-and-response bit—playful and restrained and somehow, against all odds, sounding perfectly natural, like he’s done this before, stepped into the bluegrass jam with a fucking trumpet.
Julien plays a few rounds, then steps away and comes back to me. My skin prickles. I’ve finished my beer and started another. He sits down like nothing has happened. I look at him and smile and shake my head. His cheeks are red, a close-mouthed grin across his face. I lean in closer, just a few inches of space between us. He tucks his trumpet back into his bag, smiling, holding my gaze, and shrugs—What?
Outside on the curb, the twang of banjos in the background. Our feet sticking out into the street, Julien’s ankles twisting his feet back and forth like windshield wipers.
—Used to be a venue over there, he says, pointing at the dim lights of the Urban Outfitters just across the street.
Sometimes I forget he knows that kind of thing. That he’s been in Nashville longer than I have, that he’s seen more of the city shift and change, knows backstreets and bars and shortcuts I don’t, places that opened and closed before I set foot in the city.
—Thank god we have a whole store of fake vintage tees now, though. What was that place called?
—City Hall, he says. Cool space, but the sound was always a little rocky.
—Anybody good come through?
—I only went a couple of times. A pretty good Decemberists show right after I got here.
I nod and lean back on my elbows. We soak up the quiet of the Gulch, our legs still kicked out from the curb. There isn’t much pedestrian traffic, but cars pass every few minutes or so, and we pull our feet in, hugging our knees to our chests like little kids.
—When do you leave? I ask.
—Next week.
I want to say Don’t, but instead I nod, press my lips together.
—You’re really going to leave me alone with Eddie?
He laughs.
—You’ll have Colt too.
The door behind us swings open, the sound of a key change spilling out onto the sidewalk. And then, quiet.
—It’s not like that, I say, rolling my eyes. With Colt.
He’s tracing his finger against the concrete, and he nods.
—Despite what it looked like. Or what it seemed like. I don’t know—I just wanted to say that. It’s not.
—I know it’s not, he says.
My palms are pressed into the concrete now. A couple steps out of the Station Inn, looking around in confusion, then waving down a cab on Pine. Tourists, trying our city on for the night, discarding it in the morning with their hot chicken receipts and ticket stubs.
—If anybody can handle Eddie, Julien says, it’s definitely you.
—Last week he told me he thought Eddie Vedder was derivative, I say. And then he read me the lyrics to a song he’d written, out loud, in their entirety. He read the chorus out loud three times. Three times.
Julien laughs, his body bending forward. A loud truck runs the traffic light on the corner.
—I heard him explaining the concept of a concept album to Andy earlier in the week. I thought Andy was going to light him on fire.
—And you’re leaving me with him.
—I’ll be back, he says. It’s not like it’s forever.
—Did you decide? I ask, turning my body toward him. About Europe?
—I think it’s up to the band. This first leg will be a trial run to see how it goes, see how the fit is.
I nod. The traffic light changes from red to green; no cars come through. Yellow, then back to red again.
—I can’t believe you joined the round with a trumpet.
—I can’t believe you didn’t join the round at all.
The moon is misty orange above the city.
—Sloane’s trying to get us a radio show, I say. You going to listen to us while you’re driving the van?
—Depends on what you play.
—It’s me and Sloane. We will only play good shit.
—You mean sad shit?
—Well sad shit is the only shit, I say.
Julien laughs. The street darkens, and he leans forward next to me, his hip grazing mine. The streetlight above us flickers on and off, on and off, on and then off completely. Applause coming from inside, then the murmur of voices. The smell of gasoline, burnt popcorn, steel.
—We’ll miss you, I say.
—Oh yeah?
I turn to him until our faces are so close I can feel his breath on my upper lip. He shakes his head just a bit, a smile creeping up his cheeks.
—I will, I say.
In the streetlight, with his sleeves pulled up, you can see the scars on the underside of his forearms. I almost reach out to touch them, but instead I put my hand next to his, our pinkies touching.
—It’s not that I don’t know what I want, I say quietly.
Julien’s face is inscrutable, but his pinkie reaches for mine. My chest is pounding. Inside they’re playing Lucinda Williams now.
—Nobody knows what they want, Julien says.
Our faces are still so close that I can see pinpricks of sweat around his mouth. For a moment he says nothing, just closes his eyes. Mine run over the outline of his lips, the eyelash on his cheek, the shadow from the streetlight across his jawline. Maybe I’m sick of not seeing what’s right in front of me.
—I do, I say. I want—
—I’m gonna miss you too, he says, opening his eyes, suddenly all serious.
A buzz beneath my skin. Somewhere in the distance: the pop of a car backfiring.
When it happens, I can’t tell who actually initiates it, who leans in more, who wants it most. But the heat rushes—from our hips to my chest, my neck, my jaw, open to his. His tongue inside my mouth, along the insides of my teeth, like he’s trying to get me to come just by kissing me. Beyond us the city is muffled; the only sound I can hear is the movement of our hands against each other—fingernails to denim, cotton, wrapped around his neck. Sweat and guitar strings, a song in C fading out behind us. Julien.
My bed is unmade, which simplifies things. Julien’s palms are sweaty; my chest is cool and damp. Our tongues move slowly, then frantically, his palms flat against my cheeks, my chin, the base of my skull, his tongue soft and deliberate, my hands in his hair.
It takes us a long time to remove our clothes—or no time at all. We are in that hookupblackhole of time: two minutes is twenty, an hour is thirty seconds, we don’t really know. It doesn’t matter. There’s no music playing; our breath is heavy and melodic.
His hands inch up my shirt, my rib cage, fingertips finding the wire of my bra, like he’s reached a fence and is waiting to be told he can open it. I tug off his shirt; the gate is open, all bets are off. Downstairs, Sloane has turned on music—the Postal Service or Death Cab or some Ben Gibbard solo shit, who can tell. Julien pushes my shirt up, fumbles with my bra like he’s never fucking done this before.
He’s hard—I can feel him, just barely, pressing against me. I run my hand along him over his jeans as he finally unhooks my bra, and we both laugh in relief, in disbelief, that something so small could cause such a fuss, that our fingers can’t always do what we need them to, and then just like that they do, they can, they are—a single, long index finger slipped inside me. I’m already soaking as we fall onto my bed, my head knocking slightly against the headboard, Julien losing his footing but somehow keeping his finger inside me, curled into a comma; he is not fucking around.
Naked and tangled now, our clothes flung to the floor, Julien pressing against me, soft tease after soft tease, me biting against his lips, running my hand through his hair, softer, finer than I imagined.
I reach for a condom from my nightstand, my hand flailing as Julien keeps his cock pressed against me; if I tilt my hips he will slip right in. He giggles as my hand continues to fumble, my fingers frantic until I find what I’m looking for and pass it to him. He unwraps the plastic, keeping his mouth pressed to mine, his hands fumbling at our waists, my legs open for him as he slides it on. I bend my knees, spread my legs wider, and he watches me and laughs quietly, shaking his head a little bit, giving me a look like: Are you sure? And I pull him into me, hard and fast—it’s too easy—and then slower, surer, the two of us moving together in a comfortable, sweaty pulse.
I never come during sex. I don’t even think of it as a possibility, as an option. But already now I’m close, I’m biting my cheeks, I’m too wet, I’m going to implode, the night is going to dissolve, and I tell him so and he just pumps harder, his palms tight around my shoulders, pulling me close as I clench around him, surprised at my own climax, surprised at how long I pulse around him, how quickly he comes as well, how long he stays inside me, still hard, the two of us sweaty and ecstatic and relieved.
We laugh and the breeze rustles through my room. A car passes on the street below us, trailing the sound of a song I can’t recognize.