by Mary McCoy
“I thought you and that guy broke up,” Max says, chewing on a mushroom-and-pepper slice.
Sage and my dad let their conversation slow to a trickle so they can hear how I answer.
I nod, to indicate to Max that we are being monitored, then whisper under my breath, “It’s complicated.”
“Isn’t he leaving town in a few days?”
“Geez, Dad, did you air my business to everyone?” I ask, in full voice, before turning back to Max and whispering, “We sort of got back together. I’ll tell you everything later.”
Max gets this world-weary look on his face, sympathetic but skeptical.
“Lee, maybe you could take Max to work with you tonight,” my dad suggests.
“What’s your work?” Max asks.
“I’m a sound guy.”
“Cool,” he says, to my surprise. This current iteration of Max seems possibly too cool to acknowledge that other things are cool. “I’ll go.”
I’m glad my dad mentioned it. I haven’t even thought about work until this moment, and now I’m wondering whether Ian will show up again and how angry Claire will be when she sees me. I’m glad Max wants to come along. It will be nice to have a buffer.
Harold arrives around the time Max and I are getting ready to leave, and he, my dad, and Sage set up on the front porch with a bottle of bourbon. I’m sure they’ll pull out their vape pens later on too. However, this evening doesn’t have the party atmosphere of their usual raucous college reunions. They all look miserable. If my mom was worried about Dad having more post-separation fun than her, her fears were misplaced. I wonder what she and Maggie are up to, whether they’re holed up in their hotel room, writing, or flirting with musicians, or sobbing in their daiquiris on Bourbon Street.
“How’s the podcasting thing going?” Max asks as we get into the car. “You still do that?”
Do I? I wasn’t sure. Would Vincent still want to make Artists in Love with me when he was working on real shows on NPR? Would he still have time when he started college? And what was I supposed to do while he was off doing those other things?
Running away with Vincent felt very romantic until I started thinking about the details.
“I listened to some of it,” Max continues. “It’s good, really professional. But I wanted to ask you, why artists in love? What makes them so special?”
The anxious questions in my brain evaporate as I remember the day Vincent and I came up with the idea. It was the first time he’d ever been to my house after school, and I remember how he froze in the middle of the living room. I thought he was nervous because we liked each other but hadn’t done anything about it yet, but then I realized he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the walls, covered with art by my parents’ friends. He was looking at the crates full of records, the hundreds of books, overflowing their shelves and stacked on every surface in the room. His face lit up as he spun around slowly, taking everything in, and then he kissed me right there in my living room.
We spent the rest of the afternoon pulling art books off the shelves, poring over them together, talking about the work we liked, trading artist love stories, and when my parents came home from work, they found us sitting on the floor, our fingers laced together over a book about Christo and Jeanne-Claude.
“Because artists have the best love stories,” I say to Max.
“Bullshit,” he says. “What about Barack and Michelle Obama? Prince Harry and Meghan Markle? Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas?”
It wasn’t just Max’s clothes that had changed, apparently. The Banana-Republic-shorts-and-deck-shoes Max would have nodded his head agreeably and left it at that.
I step up to his challenge. “Artists have a process that allows them to create. And some of that process gets into their love stories as well—that’s what makes those stories more interesting.”
“It sounds like you’re saying artists are better than other people.”
“I never said that. It’s just that, the kind of love you’re supposed to want, the romantic-comedy, Hallmark-card, royal-wedding mainstream idea, is so fucked up that I’ve always thought maybe artists have a better idea of how to do it.”
“Even now?”
“Especially now,” I say, but Max doesn’t look convinced.
* * *
Claire doesn’t make me any special drinks or give me treats from the day-old case when I come in, and she gives Max a suspicious look when I introduce him.
“I’m sorry about last night, Claire,” I say. “It won’t happen again.”
“Whatever, we’re good,” Claire says in a terse way.
It’s not the first time Claire has told me We’re good, and I know what she really means is we’ll be good in another day or so, but we aren’t good yet.
Max buys an iced latte and sits at a table in the corner while I set up. He puts earbuds in and starts messing around with his phone; meanwhile, I’m trying to look as professional as possible, like showing Claire how seriously I take my job will make her forgive me faster.
Then our manager, Trudy, shows up with that night’s musician, a one-man band who performs under the name Wire Mother, but whose name is actually Steve. Steve looks like an accountant, and I steel myself for a night of boring Beale Street knock-off blues or sad divorced-dad basement music.
But because I’m trying to show Trudy and Claire how much of a pro I am, I take notes while Steve describes his set and realize that, while he may be wearing pleated khakis, Steve is possessed of a deeply unusual mind.
“Can you mic a coffee can full of nails?” he asks.
“No one’s ever asked me to before. But I can try.”
The coffee can proves to be the least daunting thing Steve throws me, as his set also involves a glockenspiel, a kazoo, and a light-activated oscillating drum machine that sounds like a 1950s sci-fi movie. It’s fun having a challenge like this, figuring out how to mic the oddball mix of analog and digital instruments. And a decent distraction as well.
Trudy pulls me aside while Steve chills out in the storage closet, waiting for the set to begin. In addition to managing Java Cabana, Trudy books all the bands that play there. There’s so much music in Memphis, so many venues, it’s not like bands are exactly lining up to play at a Midtown coffee shop with no stage and no cover that seats fifty people if they’re packed in shoulder to shoulder. Trudy wants a club of her own someday, the kind of venue that bands are falling over themselves to book. The nights she isn’t working, she goes to shows, meets everyone, tells new local bands to send her demos. In that way, Java Cabana books bigger and better bands than we have any business attracting.
“Claire told me you disappeared last night,” she says.
“I’m really sorry, Trudy. It won’t happen again.”
Trudy gives me a hard look. “Is everything okay, Lee? Claire also mentioned that there was some personal drama.”
“It was a one-time lapse in judgment.”
“Then who’s that?” she asks, nodding her head toward Max.
“He’s my dad’s friends’ kid. I promise, he’s the opposite of trouble.”
“He looks like a postapocalyptic rogue you picked up at the club.”
“He’s from Chicago,” I say, like that explained things. Max is dressed like someone who’s spent a lot of time in Europe, which he has. His eyebrow is pierced and so are his ears, and right now, he’s wearing bright yellow pants and patent leather boots that come up to his knees.
“There are two rules, Lee. Don’t electrocute anyone, and don’t wander off. I mean, there are more than two rules, but those are the ones I really can’t let slide.”
I’m mortified. I should have saved up some of my breakup goodwill instead of squandering it all with thirty-six hours of questionable behavior that sent me running back to the safety of Vincent’s arms.
Although, now that I think about it, I’m not the one who’s been running. Vincent was the one who’d ended it, the one who was leaving. Vincent was the
one who wanted me back. And I’d gone along with all of it, like I was waiting around for him to decide whether we were going to stay together or not. The thought worries me. How had I ever accomplished anything up to now, without someone else prodding me along, telling me what to do, shoving me in front of opportunities I would have daydreamed past?
“Is your head in the game, Lee?” Trudy asks.
“Yes,” I say, determined to prove it to her.
Wire Mother, aka Steve, comes out of the storage room and gives me a set list and a list of cues to listen for.
“I’m worried it’s going to be muddy,” he says. “Do you have any ideas for that in a room like this?”
“I was going to ask you to scoop out the mids,” I say, and Wire Mother looks at me like I have asked him to saw off his thumb.
“I’ll lose my tone if I scoop out the mids.”
“You’ll lose everything else if you don’t. In this room, you’ve got to punch out a hole for the vocals and the sampler and the coffee can to come through.”
I speak with enough authority that Wire Mother nods and makes the adjustments on his guitar amp. The café is beginning to fill up, and both Trudy and Claire are behind the counter slinging drinks when Wire Mother slings his guitar strap over his shoulder and steps up to the mic.
He’s the wrong musician for this venue, too loud, too complicated. There’s no room for the sound to bounce around in a pleasing way, and if I’m not careful, he’ll drown everyone in a sea of sludge. But my head is in the game, and I’m holding it together, sorting out the different threads of sound, disentangling them so each one rings out clear, so the vocals cut through. He sounds as good here, in this makeshift space, as he would in a bigger club with a real stage and a real sound guy.
My head is in the game so much that I don’t lose my focus when Ian walks in during the set. I don’t panic when Vincent walks in a few minutes later and orders a coffee from Claire. I don’t do anything except whisper “thank you” when Vincent brings me the steaming mug between songs, kissing me on the cheek.
I refuse to let myself get distracted by the fact that the guy I’d been in bed with that afternoon and the guy I’d hooked up with last night are sitting within spitting distance of each other. Nobody knows, I tell myself, until I remember that Claire knows.
So what, I think. Claire can keep a secret. Nothing’s going to happen.
Wire Mother’s set takes up all my attention, and I don’t even look over my shoulder until it’s over. That’s when I finally take a moment to survey my handiwork—a long line of people waiting to talk to Wire Mother and buy his merch, a busy coffee counter, nobody complaining or holding their ears, a full house of happy people. Trudy catches my eye from behind the register and gives me a thumbs-up.
That’s when Ian leans over my shoulder and whispers in my ear, “You didn’t say you had a boyfriend.”
I doubt that explaining the complexities of the situation will make him any happier, so I ask, “What are you even doing here?”
“Maybe I was coming to apologize for last night,” he says, though he doesn’t sound sorry for anything.
“Were you?”
“Not anymore,” he says, his voice getting louder. “That’s a shitty way to treat someone.”
“Well, it’s shitty to assume a girl owes you a hand job just because you hook up.”
And of course, that’s when Vincent joins us.
“You okay, Lee?” he asks. “Who’s this?”
“No one.”
“That’s right,” Ian scoffs. “I’m no one.”
“What’s going on here?” Vincent asks.
“Ask your girlfriend.”
Vincent gives me a look, and I realize he’s waiting for an explanation. If my sweet, trusting boyfriend hasn’t taken Ian’s side outright, he’s at least decided it’s worth hearing him out.
And judging by Ian’s defiant stance, he’s not going to leave until he’s succeeded in making some kind of a scene.
“I don’t know what he’s talking about.”
“You were saying something when I walked up,” Vincent says, and his voice drops to a whisper when he says, “about hand jobs.”
“It wasn’t anything,” I say, and when he doesn’t look reassured, I add, “That’s not even what I said.”
Ian and Vincent both stare at me with disgust. Behind the register, I see Claire watching all of this unfold. I meet her eyes, looking for any kind of help, but she looks away.
Ian turns to Vincent and says, “Good luck with that,” before he walks out of Java Cabana.
I give Vincent a nervous smile, as if to say, Whew, thank goodness that’s over, can you believe that guy? He doesn’t smile back.
“I heard you, Lee,” he says. “I heard most of it, I think.”
“Oh.”
“Did you really hook up with that guy last night?”
“It wasn’t like that,” I say.
“What was it like?”
“I didn’t like it. That’s why I didn’t let it go any further.”
“What if you had liked it?”
“The point is, nothing happened.”
“Well, not nothing.”
“Vincent, we were broken up. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“Are we okay?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Vincent says, looking like he’s about to cry. “I mean, you just lied about it to my face until I called you out. And I know there were things you wanted, but, Lee, we’d been broken up for a day.”
“I didn’t think you were coming back, Vincent.”
“Did you even want me to?”
“Of course I did.”
Too late, I see Trudy approaching. She looks at Vincent and me and says, “Maybe finish this later?”
Vincent seems like he’s thinking about arguing with her, but I cut him off.
“Can we talk when I get home?” I ask.
He holds up his hands and starts to back away, then shakes his head and says, “You know, Lee, maybe not. Wait a day. See if some other guy comes along.”
Then he storms out of Java Cabana, and I sit down like I’ve been slapped. Trudy looks at the long line of people waiting for drinks, gives me an apologetic look, and joins Claire behind the counter.
Stunned, I start breaking down the gear, winding up cables and folding up the mic stands. I hadn’t started it, I hadn’t intended for any of it to turn out this way, and still, I’d done exactly what Trudy had warned me not to do.
“You were right about the mids.”
I turn around to see Wire Mother, aka Steve, standing behind me. He’s transformed from an avant-garde rock star back into an accountant in pleated khakis.
“You sounded good,” I say, like a zombie. “It was a good set.”
“Thanks to you. Do you have a card?” I shake my head, and he shrugs. “No worries. Maybe we’ll get to work together another time, though.”
I make some blandly agreeable sounds, then hide in the storage closet until the crowd thins out and it’s time to go home. I’d been hoping to slink out the door unnoticed, but Trudy catches me and pulls me aside in the middle of the coffee shop.
“Lee, I want you to take some time off,” she says.
My eyes widen as I realize what she’s saying, that I’m no longer wanted at the one place left that I have to go.
“Please give me another chance,” I beg. “What happened tonight, I swear it won’t be a problem again.”
“Lee, I’m not mad at you, but you’re going through a lot. Call me in a couple of weeks, and we’ll see where things are.”
“This isn’t fair!” I say, my voice growing hysterical. “If I was a guy and my ex showed up and made a scene, you wouldn’t be punishing me for it. Trudy, please. I need this.”
Trudy’s face goes cold, and I can tell that she’s reached the end of her patience with this conversation.
“Lee, come back when you understand w
hy I can’t let you come to work like this.”
I’d hoped that maybe Claire would come to my defense, but she stays behind the counter, washing dishes. The only customer left in the café is Max, at the same table where I’d left him two hours before, still fooling around with his phone.
He looks up when I come over to his table, takes the earbuds out.
“What’d I miss?” he asks.
CHAPTER 7 Your One Wild and Precious Life
Max doesn’t try to make small talk on our drive home. When we pull up to the house, my dad, Sage, and Harold are still on the porch, still somber, but talkative as we go inside. They’re putting on a performance to demonstrate to us, their children, how sober they are. We know exactly how sober they are. The bourbon bottle is half-empty, and though my dad hugs me and tells me that he loves me when we say good night, he looks like he’s about to break down or pass out.
As I follow Max to the kitchen, I take out my phone and see that I have texts from Vincent and my mom. I’m not sure which ones I want to read least.
I open the one from my mom, which says:
I saw this Mary Oliver poem today, and it made me think of you. Love you, baby. Miss you.
Her next text is a photograph of her holding a sheet of paper where she’s written a message in Sharpie. She likes to do this with me for some reason. I have a phone full of her selfies, holding messages that say things like Creativity takes courage and Please fold the laundry in the dryer.
This time, she’s written a line from the Mary Oliver poem, and it glares at me like an accusation: Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
Thus far, my plans for my one wild and precious life had amounted to getting fired and crying over boys.
I sit down at the kitchen counter and take a deep breath as I look at Vincent’s texts, which I know will be long and well punctuated and upsetting:
Lee, I’m so sorry that I lost my temper, but it doesn’t change the fact that I hate that it happened.
I wish I could find some way to explain it to you. Sometimes I feel like my parents and Jesus and the world get all mixed up together, and I can’t tell who I’m really listening to. All I know is, it’s too much noise in my head.