14. Phoenix St. Pierre
PHOENIX ST. PIERRE
“Hey, Mom,” I answer, my temples throbbing from lack of sleep. I don’t want her to think I’m avoiding her, even if I have been skirting around this—another five-minute monologue about focusing my time on the orchestra and not The Carraways.
This career pivot is all her and my dad can talk about, and the last conversation with Philippe St. Pierre took two hours and a Tylenol.
Now my mom is in my ear, cautioning me and saying I should be risk averse. She asks about my debt.
I tell her, “I’m paying it off here and there.” Barely.
“How, Phoenix?” I hear the coffee pot brewing on her end.
“You didn’t sign the record deal with The Carraways.
You joined after the fact, so you don’t get a cut of their advance.
” Accurate. Tom’s old drummer and bassist were paid.
Not me. I won’t see a dime unless The Carraways sell through the advance and make royalties.
She knows this.
She knows it’s unlikely I’ll pocket any money. Tom said his advance was half a mil. How many bands actually earn out the six figures they were given?
“You need to be paying off your loans, the interest…”
I let her impart her parental wisdom and worry, but I can’t listen. I’ve heard it a hundred times. I’m the one who sees the number increasing, not decreasing.
My credit is shit. I’m doing my best not to charge everything and incur more debt on my Mastercard.
“I hear you,” I tell my mom when she finishes.
“What’s to say Tom won’t drop you in a couple months?”
My stomach knots. “Why would he?”
She tells me she went on a deep-dive internet investigation into Tom Cobalt—something I’ve refused to do—and she didn’t like what she found.
“He’s been through ten drummers in the past three years. Ten.” My mom’s worry has never been delivered in a pretty package tied with a bow. It’s thrust in my face like a hand grenade.
She says the number ten like it’s the amount of murders Tom has committed, and not—you know—just a sign that nepo baby is a pain in the ass to work with.
“I hear you,” I say my favorite reply to her and my dad. I hear you means I’ve received their advice loud and clear, but it’s not a promise to take it. They love being heard, which means it’ll buy me some time before they realize I’m not following their guidance.
At my own peril.
I’m their child who takes the ill-advised path and makes too many mistakes because I don’t listen. I can’t even say she’s wrong. My parents have always been right, and still, I can’t do the easy, safe thing.
Even if it’s better for me.
Very deeply, she says, “I love you. I just don’t want to see you do something you’ll regret.”
“I’ll be okay either way, Mom,” I assure her.
“I know you will. I’m just afraid…” She exhales a soft breath. “I know how hard it was for you after Sophomore Summer disbanded. Do you really want to go through this again?”
“Yes,” I tell her what I told my dad. “I made my decision, okay?” My chest is tight just waiting for her response and hearing her tiny, fragile sighs. It makes me feel like shit every time. “Mom, please.”
“I just don’t want to see you living on microwaved ramen and the false hope that you can become the next big thing.”
It’d be a lie to say reality didn’t hurt.
It hurts every time.
I wonder if I just like the pain. Because she’s showing me the path where it doesn’t exist. The orchestra. The reason I even have student debt was for a degree I’m not using to its full potential.
What a waste.
Me.
My eyes sear. “I’ve got to go,” I say, trying not to sound choked. Or she’ll just worry more.
“Okay, don’t forget the auditions on Friday…”
I tune her out. Guilt twists my gut. “Yeah, yeah,” I tell her. “Mom, I need to go.”
“Okay, okay,” she says fast. “I love you. Have a great day. Tell Birdie I said hi.”
“K, love you too.” I hang up and try not to replay her advice, which just pulses my temple and bears weight on my chest.
I take a couple steps toward the door and water pools around my toes.
Oh fuck.
More water seeps underneath the doorframe, and when I push into the hall, my feet splash against half an inch of liquid.
Yeah…we have a leak.
Our apartment is one long hallway that has seven interior doors. The first three lead to shared spaces (bathroom, kitchen, and living room) while the last four go to bedrooms.
A vintage movie poster of the 1979 film Alien hangs on my brother’s door. I rap my fist against the wood. “Birdie!”
No answer. I twist the knob, but it’s locked.
Fuck.
I move to the next door and knock. “Neil! Steffi!” Nothing. I don’t try to open this one because Neil sleeps in the nude, and I have already met my limit on seeing Neil and Steffi tangled together in bed. Thanks go to the tight quarters on the tour bus for that statistic.
My feet splash as I continue down the hall, skipping my room, and I end up at the last door.
I pound a fist on the wood. “Scally!” No answer. I’m not at all jealous that my roommates sleep like fucking logs. “Scal!” I yell into a frustrated breath.
Just as I’m about to try the knob, the door swings open abruptly.
Vale Scalamonti. He emerges from his bedroom with a mop of disheveled brown hair and a wrinkled Alice Cooper tee. Bracelets run up the olive skin of his wrists along with two sleeves of tattoos.
There are only two things Scally gives a shit about. One, Nothing Personal. The band he created with Steffani Mendoza in their dorm at NYU. Two, having a good fucking time.
Considering it looks like he passed out in his clothes, I’m guessing he went hard on number two last night.
I’ve partied with him enough to know it consists of a 3 a.m. binge of cigarettes, alt-rock so loud it shakes the walls, and cheap booze.
He bites on the chain at his neck—a tell that he’s still drunk.
He grabs the doorway to steady himself. “What the fuck, Phoenix?” he groans and squints through the harsh light in the hall. His eyes fall to the ground. “Is that—?”
“Water. We’ve got a fucking leak,” I say. “I need you to call Vincent.” Our landlord blocked my number a year ago when I cussed him out for not taking care of termites.
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean, you can’t?”
“Vincent is spending the month in Bali. Remember? It’s one of those bougie holistic retreats where they confiscate your phone.”
“Great,” I growl.
I don’t ask Scally to call the building manager instead.
No one calls Freddie for help since my brother banged and ditched him in the middle of the night.
That was two years ago, but Freddie acts like it was yesterday.
My brother fucking the building manager is just one item on the very long list of messy shit he’s done with hookups.
Then again, I’m not one to talk. I just jacked off while imagining my new bandmate. So maybe I’m the one who likes living in a dumpster fire of mess.
Scally’s examining me with a heavy-lidded gaze.
My muscles tense. He can’t read your fucking mind.
But he is my childhood best friend. I’ve known him since I was five years old.
Yellow school bus friendships are hard to kick, especially the kind involving busted knuckles after defending each other from seventh-grade bullies.
So I’m sure he’s zeroing in on the sleepless circles beneath my eyes and my twitchy fucking hands. “You sleep at all?” he asks me.
I don’t want to lie to him. “I’m going to pass out in a couple hours.” Hopefully.
“Mmm,” he says in drunken disapproval. “Mmmm-hmmm-mmmm.” I roll my eyes. Somehow that chain finds his mouth again. It’s nasty how much he nibbles on it, and it’s mind-boggling how many girls fawn over him for it. “Do I need to wake Birdie?” he asks.
“To what? Read me a bedtime story? Count sheep with me?” I stomp my foot, water splashing, reminding him there’s an actual issue here and it’s not me. “What I need is a toolbox.”
“Your brother lent that out to Daphne in 4C.” Scally smiles. “You want to wake her up?”
“No, I’m going to let the one who’s been in her pussy do that.” I reroute back down the hall and continue banging on Birdie’s door for a solid minute.
It still doesn’t open.
Now I’m worried. I ram my shoulder against the wood, breaking it off its hinges only to find his tiny room completely empty. Bed made. No clothes on the floor. It’s like he never made it home.
And he’s not here.
He’s not here.
I grab my phone off my bed, and while I jump into a pair of pants and a long-sleeved shirt, I try calling him. He’s not answering. When I check his location on the app, I barely expel a breath.
“Scally!” I yell out.
“Yeah?” Scally sticks his head in my door. His socks are soaked but he might still be too drunk to care.
“Call an emergency plumber,” I tell him. “I have to go get my brother.”
Birdie and I grew up in a three-bedroom house in Quincy, Massachusetts—just south of Boston.
We had to share a room, but we never cared. By the time we were teenagers, we spent most of our time in the garage anyway. One night we’d been there until 4 a.m., and Birdie asked me, “We should keep going, yes?” His breath was labored and sweat dripped down his temples.
My raw hands gripped wooden sticks, blood splattered on the drum kit. He held the guitar against his body like it was an appendage he couldn’t drop.
“Yeah. Let’s go again.” I counted us down, and I used the pain in my hands and ache in my biceps as fuel to power forward. We played like it was life or death.
Like we were on the brink of survival, and it wasn’t because we were starving artists.
It was because rock music was our unrelenting passion.
We knew we’d never leave our parents’ garage unless we gave every ounce of ourselves, all the blood and heart and breath we could offer without flat-out dying.
It was the price our parents said had to be paid—because guys like us don’t just make it big on desire and a whim.
We have to work and work and work.
And even then, it may never be enough. Just because you want something more than someone else doesn’t mean you’ll get it.