Over Queenie's shoulder, I watched a blond girl in black motorcycle boots loitering near Paul. Eventually the girl pulled up a chair beside him, leaned in close, and touched his knee, and I darted off to the bathroom because I couldn't bear to watch whatever was going to happen next.
Paul walked into the bathroom right behind me. “It's about goddamn time,” he said, standing so close I could feel the dampness of his sweat-soaked shirt. “I've been sending you telepathic messages for ten minutes.”
“I don't know if I can do this,” I said.
“Do what? We're just hanging around a urinal.”
“All the girls. I can't compete with that.”
“I told Avril, it's done. With all of them. I'm over it.”
I reached out and put my hand on his chest, but I didn't find the drumbeat I'd expected. Instead I found a flutter. Paul, I swore, had a butterfly trying to break free from his rib cage.
He put his hand on top of mine and leaned in, but the door swung open and I quickly pulled away, pretending to be washing up as a guy Paul called Judo invaded the moment.
“Great show,” Judo said, unzipping his pants and peeing into the urinal. “You guys were en feugo tonight.”
I moved toward the door and Paul said, “Hey.”
As I looked back, a pertinent soundtrack began playing, courtesy of John the Baptist, who had slapped Depeche Mode's Violator on the sound system downstairs.
Your own personal Jesus. Someone to hear your prayers. Someone who cares.
“Where are you going?” Paul said.
“Home.”
“Wait up for me.” His head was bobbing to the music. As I walked out I heard him chime, “Reach out and touch faith.”
I was sitting on my bed, feet flat on the covers, staring at Jesus on the wall, imagining that he and I were lovers, that we walked around New York holding hands, Jesus in a brown robe and sandals, and me with henna designs painted on my arms and feet like Barbara Hershey in The Last Temptation of Christ.
I made a gun with my fingers and pretended to shoot Jesus.
If Paul grew a goatee and got a tan, I thought, he'd look just like that guy.
Reach out and touch faith, all right.
Checking my watch for the umpteenth time, I wondered how long it took a bunch of guys to throw their equipment into the back of a van, haul it half a mile down to the rehearsal space, and unload it. After that I counted the myriad reasons why I would not be having sex with Paul when he got home: He was my roommate. He was my brother's friend. He probably had a sexually transmitted disease. I had no condoms. And last but not least, I hadn't had the time or money for a bikini wax.
I had just dozed off when I heard Paul's shoes colliding even quicker than usual with the stairs. Twenty-four steps until he hit the fourth-floor landing. There were twice as many stairs, but Paul usually took them two at a time.
He was humming when he came through the door. I listened as he went into his room, and then walked into mine carrying his acoustic guitar.
A voice inside my head whispered: No healthy, twenty-six-year-old woman should go six months without sex.
Paul folded his stringy bangs behind his ears, sat down and said, “I want you to hear something.”
For the record, if I were Superman, a pale, scrawny guy holding a guitar would be Kryptonite. Just watching Paul tune the thing was rendering me powerless.
And there was something mesmerizing about his face. That's what I was thinking as I sat there waning. Especially his nose. Aside from his translucent eyes, his nose was his most arresting feature. It was conspicuous, a size too big, but all of his other features were so delicate, it added a marked quality of strength to his character.
“What are you looking at?” he asked in his pretend-bashful voice, his eyes still focused on the neck of the guitar.
“Your nose.”
He ran his fingers down the bridge. “What about my nose?”
“It's sexy.”
That's all it took. The bashful act vanished and everything about Paul's smirk told me he knew he'd won me over.
“Fuck, it's hot in here.” He put the guitar down, stood up, whipped his shirt over his head and tossed it to the floor. Then he pulled off his belt like D'Artagnan drawing a sword and dropped it to the ground, causing his pants to slide down so low I could see the thin, glorious trail of dark hair that led to his groin.
Reach out and touch faith.
After kicking off his shoes, Paul repositioned himself on the bed with the guitar. I could smell rum and ginger ale and I wanted to lick his neck.
“The Michaels haven't even heard this yet,” he said. “I want to know what you think.”
After licking his neck, I wanted to dive into his throat and slide down his esophagus and swim around inside his hands while he strummed. Or maybe I just wanted to rest my head on his shoulder, close my eyes, and listen to him sing. I wondered if he was as nimble-fingered with a woman's body as he was with a guitar.
“Pay attention,” he said.
I scooted closer. To hear better.
The song didn't have lyrics yet, didn't even have a title, but it was so haunting it almost put a damper on my mood.
I said almost.
“It sounds like a requiem.”
Paul nodded. “It's about my mom dying.”
He set the guitar down and we looked at each other, neither one of us moving nor speaking. But the hush carried the weight of words. In his face I saw the pain of memory—a pain he did a good job of hiding most of the time—as well as the lust of the present moment. I wondered if he could see the same in me.
Finally he leaned in, almost like he was falling, and kissed me. His tongue was a fire in my mouth.
We kissed for a long time. When we started undressing, Paul's hand stroked my thigh and I could feel the little guitar-playing calluses on his fingertips.
He kissed my chin, my nose, my eyelids as he unbuttoned my shirt. “Red,” he said when he saw my bra. “Red is good.”
I ran my tongue along his collarbone. He tasted the way Rings of Saturn smelled—like smoke and sweat and stale beer, which under normal conditions I would never find arousing, but I suppose there are exceptions to all rules.
“In my pocket,” he whispered.
His pants were beside me. I reached into the right pocket and found a pack of condoms.
“I stopped at Duane Reade,” he said. “Just in case.”
I opened the box with all the right intentions. It never occurred to me that I wouldn't be able to do it. I wanted to do it. But somewhere between the kissing and having the condom in hand, my mind wandered off to the place where my past lived, where Adam lived, and I felt myself close down.
“I can't,” I said.
Paul covered us in the sheet and cuddled up behind me. “It's okay. No big deal.”
I wondered if he meant having sex, or not having sex.
He ran his fingers over my wrist. I could feel him breathing, and I could feel him hard against my leg.
“You know what I was thinking about on my way home?” he said quietly. “How different my life would be if you'd made that gash a little deeper. Or how different yours would be if I'd vaulted myself off a roof nine years ago. Do you ever think about things like that? Like, if either you or I wouldn't have made it, where would the other one be right now?”
It was something I thought about all the time: how death changes every remaining moment for those still living. “Are you glad you made it?”
“I'm glad you made it.”
That's when I let go. I rolled over on top of him, reached for the condom I'd discarded minutes before, and put it on him as if it were an erotic sex act in and of itself. Then I slipped him inside of me and moved as slowly as I could above him. I wanted it to last as long as possible. Eventually every muscle in my body felt like it was tensed to its breaking point and Paul's eyes looked like they were upside down.
When Paul finally came, his back arched like a bow ab
out to launch an arrow, and he exhaled a loud, melodious sound identical to one he'd made during the show, at the end of an intense, seven-minute-long song called “Never Prayed for Rain.”
For me, the release was a spot in time with no past and no future. Just the extraordinary simplicity of a moment— the kind of moment that has a funny way of making a person believe that life and love can last forever.
The light coming through the window and the sounds of the delivery trucks outside told me it was almost time to get up, but I'd barely slept. Paul, on the other hand, looked cataleptic. His hands were buried under his pillow, and his face was so colorless that if it hadn't been for his nearly concave ribcage moving up and down with his breath, I would've thought he was dead.
I pushed his hair off his face and tried to will his eyes to open. When that didn't work I kicked him in the foot and pretended it was an accident. “You look like a corpse when you sleep.”
“You're weird,” he said groggily.
“Tell me your real name.”
He checked the clock and then rolled his eyes.
“Come on. We had sex. You have to.”
He chuckled. “Eliza, if that were my only criteria, do you know how many girls would know my real name?”
“Bastard.”
That made him laugh even harder, which immediately set off an alarm in my head. Maybe I was no different than Avril or Beth or Alicia. Maybe Paul would turn his back to me the next time he saw me in Rings of Saturn.
“Oh, God,” I said in a panic. “Let's just lay this on the table right now. Because I don't want to think this is one thing and have it turn out to be the other. Is this real or is it crap?”
“Jesus,” he said. “The sun isn't even up yet.”
“I mean it. I need proof. Tell me your real name.”
“Proof?” He huffed. “You want proof? Give me your goddamn hand.”
Skeptically, I did as he asked, and he proceeded to sing the chorus to one of 66's meaningless songs, mimicking Amanda Strunk's whiskey-flavored voice, pointing to my arm. Nothing had changed. Then he sang the last verse of “The Day I Became a Ghost” and every one of my hairs stood on end.
“See that?” Paul said. “Ten goddamn seconds.”
“I don't get it.”
“You didn't even have to hear the whole song, just a few lines, and you still got chills and that swirly, happy-sad feeling in your gut, didn't you?”
“So?”
“So?” he huffed. “That's the difference between the real stuff and the crap. I know which one you are and you know which one I am.” He flipped over and buried his head in his pillow. “That's all the proof you need. Wake me up in an hour.”
Lucy sounded like a mad donkey when she laughed, which is what she was doing as she browsed the makeshift press kit Michael had put together for me to show Sonica during the magazine's weekly pitch meeting.
There was a fact sheet inside the folder, containing information on each band member—their musical histories, what instruments they played; there were excerpts from two small local papers hyping Bananafish's live shows as “electric” and “intense”; and what Lucy seemed to find so hilarious, the group photo, which had been taken on Spring Street in SoHo by a friend of Michael's, a photographer who sets up shop on the sidewalk outside of Balthazar making washed out, vintage-looking Polaroid image transfers for tourists.
In front of the whole staff of associate editors seated around the oblong table, Lucy said, “Eliza, which one of these guys are you screwing?”
I felt my fingers tighten around my pen. I wanted to stab Lucy's eye with it.
Lucy made the donkey noise again. “I'm assuming that's the reason you're pushing so hard to get them mentioned in the magazine, no?”
After stabbing Lucy blind, I decided I would put my hands around her neck and shake until there was no air left in her lungs. Then I would write Kick Me on her forehead and leave her on the sidewalk in Times Square.
“Actually, the guitarist is my brother,” I said, evading half the truth—half the truth being that I'd been sleeping with Paul for two weeks and hadn't told anyone yet, namely Michael and Vera. I wasn't ready for the lectures. The you-should-know-better lecture. The he's-going-to-break-your-heart lecture. The Mother-of-Pearl-are-you-out-of-your-mind lecture. Probably because on some level I thought Michael and Vera might be right, and I was in that highly romantic stage of denial.
Lucy scanned the fact sheet. Once she located Michael, she said, “I suppose it never occurred to you that having the same last name as the guitarist poses a major credibility problem.”
“I don't have to be the one who writes it. The point is to get their name out there. One mention, that's all I ask.” And then I expunged any headway I might have made in the respect department by begging. “If things don't start rolling for Bananafish, my brother is going to have to quit. Can we just do him this small favor? Please?”
Lucy stood up, poised herself behind her chair, and savored the moment. My weaknesses made her stronger. She took pleasure in zapping my energy and sucking on my life. “They're an unsigned band, Eliza. How many people outside of New York have ever heard of them? We aren't the Village Voice, we're a national magazine. Our job is to cover the artists people want to read about, not fill the pages with nobodies, even if you happen to be related to them.”
I wished a long, painful death for Lucy. In the meantime, I suggested that perhaps she might like to come to a show and judge for herself, my thinking being that if Lucy saw Bananafish live, it would become less about my brother and more about the music. Then again, even if I did convince her to come to Rings of Saturn—a venue she considered beneath her—there was a good chance she would abominate the band out of spite.
Listen up, little tape recorder buddy. Things are finally starting to happen. Good things. Potentially great things. Exhibit A: Guess who called me this morning? Jack Stone.
Who is Jack Stone, you ask? Only the president and founder of Underdog records—a small but highly successful independent label known for quality over quantity. No kidding, there isn't a band on their roster that doesn't sing the truth and garner the respect of their peers.
I almost dropped the phone when he said his name. Then I covered the mouthpiece with my hand, grabbed Eliza before she ran off to work, and told her Jack Stone was on the phone. It was a curious thing. She didn't look surprised. But I'll come back to that.
Unbeknownst to me, Jack was at Rings of Saturn last Thursday. He raved about the show and wanted to know why he'd never heard of us, and I told him—because Feldman thinks I belong on a major label. Jack said that explained why he'd put in two calls to Feldman and hadn't heard back yet.
Note to self: Have a talk with Feldman regarding call-return etiquette.
Jack asked me if there were any Bananafish demos in existence, and let me say this on record: I'm highly opposed to passing out demos. They don't do our live shows justice. But I really wanted a shot with Underdog so I told Jack I could probably scrounge something up.
Jack said, “Drop off a tape sometime today, I'll run it by a couple of trusted ears, and you and I will get together next week.” Then, before we say goodbye, he goes, “Oh, tell that roommate of yours I said hi.”
Eliza denied any involvement until I threatened to call her brother and say, “Eliza sucks good dick,” at which point she fessed up.
Turns out Jack is a good friend of Terry North's, and Eliza's been hounding Sonica about Bananafish—she wants to write an article, a little blurb, anything to help us out. But Lucy keeps shooting her down so Eliza had to go above Lucy's head. Unfortunately, Terry North agreed with Lucy that an unknown band wasn't going to sell magazines. But Terry also thinks Eliza looks like his dead sister so he let her tag along on a lunch meeting with Jack. A week later Jack showed up at Rings of Saturn.
Eliza and I called in sick for work and headed to Underdog, which is on Broadway, right between Washington and Waverly. Confession: I'd been to Underdog befo
re. I stopped by once with my guitar, asking if I could play a song for Jack. Back then the girl behind the desk told me they didn't accept solicitors. Otherwise, she said, could I imagine how much “crapola” they'd have to listen to. That's what she called me. Crapola.
Today the same receptionist, the one with the Bettie Page bangs and polka-dot thrift-store dress, acted like she was expecting me, and she put my demo in a metal basket that had Jack's name on it.
After we left Underdog, I suggested we go chill out under a tree somewhere. Eliza wanted to go to Central Park, but I was sure a subway ride uptown would've killed me, and neither of us had money to waste on a cab so we stopped at some cheap NYU hangout for coffee and then walked to Washington Square.
In the middle of the park, near the old fountain, this guy was sitting with a guitar, singing that old Dobie Gray song “Drift Away.” A crowd had congregated around him. His pants were too tight and his shirt was only buttoned halfway up his chest—he was from Jersey, I suspected—but he had a pretty decent voice, and Eliza said he reminded her of her dad, so we walked over.
Eliza closed her eyes, swayed to the music, and I could tell she meant it when she sang, “Give me the beat, boys, and free my soul, I wanna get lost in your rock ‘n’ roll and drift away…”
I can say this because she's my girlfriend, even if, at the moment, she's only my girlfriend in secret—Eliza has one of the worst voices known to man. Swear to God, for someone so obsessed with music, she's borderline tone deaf. But trying to describe how I felt watching her dance around and sing would be like trying to build a skyscraper with my bare hands. It made me want to marry her. Made me want to buy her a magic airplane and fly her away to a place where nothing bad could ever happen. Made me want to pour rubber cement all over my chest and then lay down on top of her so that we'd be stuck together, and so it would hurt like hell if we ever tried to tear ourselves apart.
We sat under a tree with leaves that were beginning to turn the color of fire. Eliza picked one off the ground, examined it like a botanist, and said, “Isn't it funny to think that this magnificent piece of matter is in a state of decay? Really, can you think of any other living thing that looks this glorious as it's dying?”