June
ZANE
“Honestly? It’s all shit,” Steven said with a wide yawn.
It was three a.m. on a Tuesday (or was it Saturday?) and they’d been locked in the studio since noon.
The room was stuffy and dimly lit, and the only window faced the control room.
Sheet music, yellow legal pads with lyrics scrawled on them, and leftover takeout containers were strewn on nearly every surface, including the Steinway grand piano at which Zane sat.
Mike and Claudia were slouched on the red leather couch together.
She had one leg resting lazily on top of this thigh, a sight that irritated the shit out of Zane.
Rusty, whose back wasn’t thirty anymore, was lying on the black and red striped carpet, his feet resting on the seat of an armchair.
Steven sat behind the drum kit twirling a stick in his left hand, looking agitated.
The production team had left some time around one to get some sleep and give them time to fight it out in private.
After a straight month of recording, tempers always ran high, but with this album, the tension was at an explosive level. Nothing was gelling. There wasn’t one song yet that felt like a lead single, when usually they’d have at least two good contenders by now.
Zane glared at the drummer from the piano bench. “You’re pretty fucking picky for a guy who’s never written anything.”
“Just being honest. I know the difference between a hit and shit.” Steven got up and walked over to the table to grab a slice of the pizza that had been sitting out for hours.
Mike ran a hand over his short hair and groaned. “Steve’s right. We should scrap this one. It’s like we’re ripping off our own song.”
“I actually like it,” Claudia said, glancing at Zane. “It’s not quite there yet, but it’s got a lot of potential.”
Mike slapped Claudia’s knee with his left hand. “No offense, but you’re not exactly the expert in the room, so maybe stay out of it.”
She cleared her throat and stared down at the carpet, and Zane could see she was fighting tears. “Sorry. I just wanted to help.”
“Well, don’t. We know what we’re doing.”
Zane banged on the keyboard, letting out a clang of notes, all fighting each other to be heard. “Don’t be a dick, Mike.”
“I’m not.”
“Yeah, you are. Claudia’s the only one coming up with anything even remotely solid at the moment.”
Mike glowered at him. “Why? Because she rhymed candle and handle? Doesn’t exactly make her Bernie Taupin.” He glanced over at his girlfriend. “No offense.”
“Some taken,” she answered, standing up to get away from him.
Steven’s gaze followed Claudia as she crossed the room to the minibar fridge to get a Tab. “What we need to do is figure out why we’re struggling so much with this album. We’ve never run into this problem before.” The not-at-all-subtle message was that Claudia was the Yoko Ono in the room.
Rusty gave him a ‘seriously, dude?’ look from his position on the floor. “I think we all need to get some sleep. Maybe we take a day off and come back fresh on Thursday.”
“Today’s Thursday, isn’t it?” Mike asked.
Rusty shook his head. “It’s definitely Wednesday.”
“It’s Sunday,” Claudia answered.
Both men looked mildly shocked by this news.
“She’s right. It’s Sunday, which means we lose the studio in three days,” Zane told them. “Which means we push on until we have something. I refuse to go back to the label and say we came up empty.” He chewed his bottom lip, then said, “I say we go back to my original lyrics.”
Murmurs of dissent were heard from around the room.
Rusty carefully turned onto his side, then made his way to standing with an accompaniment of middle-aged man groans. “You stay and keep spinning your wheels if you want. I’m going home. I can’t even think straight anymore.”
“Fine, be a quitter,” Zane muttered.
“It’s not quitting. It’s sleeping so I can get my creative juices flowing again. Besides, I miss my wife.”
Zane felt a flash of jealousy as Rusty walked out the door.
Of course Rusty could leave. The pressure wasn’t on him.
It was on Zane, who wished to God he hadn’t told Larry he should be the sole songwriter.
The weight of it had been crushing him ounce by ounce ever since, while Rusty could stroll out and sleep like a man without a care in the world.
And the thing about him missing his wife?
That was on purpose. They all knew Sienna and Zane were at a low point, in part due to their toddler who never slept.
Little Poppy, who was going through the terrible twos, clung to Sienna day and night, as if she might die without her mom nearby.
She woke up at least three times a night crying for her mom, who was up by six with the older kids.
Sienna was a walking zombie with nothing left to give their marriage.
As much as Zane tried not to blame his wife, part of him couldn’t help but think she was spoiling their final baby, thus creating the problem herself.
They hadn’t had sex in over two months—on his birthday.
It was fast and quiet, and the entire time, he could tell Sienna was listening for Poppy instead of focusing on him.
It felt like a favor, which made him feel unwanted and old.
Since then, he feared both were true. He was forty-four after all, and suddenly terrified he was past his best-before date.
And now he’d been reduced to keeping track of how many days it had been since they’d had sex.
They were becoming one of those pathetic couples who only did it on anniversaries and birthdays.
What was next? Reading glasses on a chain? Chinos?
That morning, they fought about Poppy. He had tried to convince her to hire a nanny.
She told him it wouldn’t help because Poppy only wanted her.
He suggested the nanny could look after the other kids, which caused Sienna to burst into tears and say she didn’t want some other woman raising her babies.
Feeling helpless, he yelled that he ‘didn’t know what the hell she wanted him to do about it’ and that ‘he’d laid the entire world at her feet, but it would never be enough for her. ’
And now, as he sat in the studio, the walls feeling like a cage, he wished he hadn’t said any of it.
She probably just needed a hug and for him to say that someday soon Poppy would sleep through the night.
But he hadn’t. He’d taken out his insecurities and his frustration at how poorly the studio sessions were going on his wife.
But he couldn’t fix that now, could he? Not at three a.m. He might as well push on and get this done.
“Anyone else want to abandon ship?” Zane asked.
Steven held up a hand. “Me. According to you, I add nothing to the process anyway.” He set his drumsticks down on the snare and grabbed his coat. “I’ll be back around two tomorrow.”
“Terrific,” Zane muttered.
Mike grabbed a pack of cigarettes off the coffee table, only to discover it was empty. He swore under his breath, then said, “I’m going out for some smokes.”
Claudia turned to him. “Do you want me to come?”
He shook his head. “Nah. I’d be shit company right now.”
Zane watched her face fall as Mike stalked out the door. He hated what Mike did to her sometimes. Hated that she put up with it. But then he wouldn’t have picked her if she hadn’t been the type to let that stuff slide.
As soon as Mike left, Claudia said, “Maybe I should go home. Clearly, I’m the one throwing you guys off.”
Zane shook his head. “Nah, nope. You stay. It’s always this hard.”
She seemed to take him at his word and flopped onto the couch again. “I had no idea this was what this was like.”
“How did you think it went?”
Shrugging, she said, “I don’t know. Working on the greatest hits album was so easy. I assumed it was always like that—a smooth ride down a flowing river.”
“It’s more like a war. With us anyway. In the end, it all comes together somehow, but we can’t seem to skip the part where you forget why the hell you ever got into this business in the first place.”
She covered her mouth while she yawned. “Why did you?”
Zane’s lopsided grin appeared. “Honestly?”
“Yes.”
“Keep in mind I was fourteen when Mike and I started the band, so we weren’t exactly sophisticated.”
“I promise not to judge.”
“Also, we were the two scrawniest, nerdiest kids in the state of Washington.”
“Duly noted.”
Zane gave her a reluctant grin. “We wanted to get girls.”
She burst out laughing, and Zane narrowed his eyes in jest. “Hey, you said you wouldn’t judge.”
“I never said I wouldn’t laugh,” she answered. “Anyway, it worked. You snagged yourself Sienna.”
“And Mike finally found you.”
“That too,” Claudia said. She tilted her head at him. “What makes you keep going? I mean, you don’t need to work this hard. You could never sing again and you’d still never want for anything.”
Zane stared at the keys for a second before answering.
“It’s just… everything, isn’t it? The power of writing words that people you’ll never meet can feel in their bones, creating the soundtrack to their lives.
The background to their best memories. Writing a tune that’ll make them so happy, they’ll tap their fingers on the steering wheel even though they’re on the way to some crappy job.
” He glanced at her. “This is going to sound crazy or wrong, but… it makes me feel like a god.”
Claudia’s eyes widened, so he quickly went on. “Not like an important god. Not the God.” He gave her a sheepish smile. “More like a small demigod who can sweep into people’s lives and change their minds about things or let them know they’re not alone.”
She whispered, “Wow. So that’s why you’re who you are.”