by Mercy Brown
“Get what?”
“Everything,” he says.
***
I go inside and curl up in a ball on my bed. I’m tired, I don’t want to do any schoolwork, I don’t even want to play my guitar because that makes me think about him and every time I think about him I just picture the moment he leaves, all pissed off at me again. I spend the day scribbling in my lyrics notebook, different crappy lines of songs I’ll never finish writing. I watch Raising Arizona and eat a bag of microwave popcorn. I look at the clock. It’s seven p.m. and I anxiously await the sound of van tires on my gravel driveway and get up to look out the window several times. Twenty-five minutes pass before Travis calls to say he’s still working on his paper so he’ll meet me at the studio at eight. Here we go, I think. Here it comes. He’s finally done.
I drive my CRX over the bridge into New Brunswick and park behind the Student Center. At a quarter to eight, Travis is there and he’s taken a shower and he’s in a black button-down over a Girls Against Boys T-shirt and jeans and Converse and his hair is wet and he’s got his acoustic guitar. He’s so cold to me that I feel frozen enough to crack. Billy has left the outside door propped open with a brick, so we go in up the stairs and Billy hands us each a beer (which is illegal, by the way) while Ween’s new single is playing. We drink them, and after the single, Billy interviews us on the air.
“Emmy and Travis Soft from New Brunswick’s very own Stars on the Floor are here tonight, and they’ll be opening up the Ag Field Day show,” Billy says into the microphone. “For those who are either dead or unconscious, Ween is coming home to headline, so it’s going to be mobbed. Congrats to you guys for nailing a sweet slot.”
“That sounds so wrong,” Travis says.
“It’s a gift. That’s why I’m the guy with the radio show,” Billy says. “So how’d you end up getting it? You deserve it, of course, but there were about twenty bands jockeying for it.”
“Well, after our last show at the Melody I barfed on Travis,” I say. “But the catch is, I was lucky enough to do it in front of Dean Ween.”
“Who could pass up a class act like that?” Travis says.
“Remember this is showbiz,” I say. “It’s not how good you are, it’s who you humiliate yourself in front of.”
“Everyone loves a spectacle,” Billy says.
He asks us to play our song, and I tell him the Overnight Sensations audience is getting to hear the debut of our latest tune, even before the rest of the band has heard it, which makes Billy super happy. He introduces us again and we start to play.
Even though we’ve played through “Loud” about four hundred times since last night, it’s not quite in my hands yet and Travis is mad at me so I’m distracted and nervous. The song is new enough that I still have to think about what I’m doing and what comes next. I worry if Travis has it down, but I shouldn’t because he obviously does. He glances up at me when we get to the chords and I start to sing. I close my eyes and try to lose that nervous wiggle in my voice, but I’m nervous, I can hear it. I hate that. We get to the chorus in one piece, though, and I sing it and it sounds even better than it did when I recorded it on the four-track. But the second verse comes, and as I’m about to sing the first line, I choke—I forget what the hell the words are, and for some stupid reason, I don’t have the lyrics out. I’m playing, so I can’t grab them from my guitar case at my feet. I just choke. And then I panic. I’m in the control room of WRSU and I’m dying up here.
I look at Travis with an apologetic look, and he just nods: It’s okay. When the riff comes back and I don’t sing, he starts singing the words for me and his voice is so good that even though I can remember the words now, I just play along and listen to him. He looks up at me, raises his eyebrows, and then I jump back in for the chorus, but he doesn’t drop out, he sings it along with me and breaks into this really cool-sounding harmony that he just makes up, right now, and it makes the song even better. It ends and Billy is on his feet, clapping and saying, “Bravo, bravo, magnifico!” in the control room, and I’m staring at Travis thinking he just saved my ass again. He’s my fucking hero. And he’s looking back at me with a reassuring smile that I really don’t deserve.
Outside in the parking lot after we’ve loaded our guitars, Travis is leaning against the driver-side door of the van, his arms folded across his chest, and I’m facing him, leaning against my car feeling sheepish.
“I’m so sorry, Travis,” I say, and I can’t look at him so I look down at the blacktop under our feet.
“For what?”
“A lot of things. Screwing up on air tonight, for one.”
“You don’t need to be sorry for that,” he says. “That was no big deal.”
“Well then, I’m sorry that I’m like this,” I say.
“Like what?” he asks, raising his eyebrows.
“I don’t know, bossy?”
“For starters?”
“Flaky?”
“As a county fair pie crust?”
I know he’s teasing me but it still hurts.
“I’m sorry I was a jerk today. I’m just so afraid of losing what we have together.” My voice cracks and I don’t realize until now how close I am to crying. I think I’m talking about Stars on the Floor and his MBA, but now we both know that I’m not. His face softens and he drops his arms and wraps them around my shoulders, pulling me into him, and I let him because I have grown very fond of the feeling of him holding me.
“Emmy, we could have a lot more than this, you know?” he says. “If you’d just relax and let it happen.”
I look up into his face, lit all soft and dreamy by the streetlamp. I do and don’t want him to kiss me. Like, I’m longing for him to put his lips to mine, to put his hands in my hair, and I’m terrified of it. It doesn’t matter because he’s not kissing me, he’s waiting for me to say something back. Unfortunately, I do.
“Yeah,” I say. “But we’d have so much more to lose.”
He lets me go and leans back against the van again, shaking his head at me.
“Bean, you’re my best friend and you know how rare it is to find someone you get along this well with and can write music like this with.”
“Of course I know that,” he says, his tone with me rightfully exasperated.
“You’re my unicorn,” I say, and I don’t even care how dumb it sounds. “You’re like this magical, mythical beast and I never had a horse so maybe I don’t know how to take care of unicorns very well, but I do know I’ll never find another one.”
“I’m your unicorn?” he says, giving me a funny look. “Really, Emmy? Your magic beast?”
“Well? Unicorns are awesome, aren’t they?”
“Of course they’re awesome—they aren’t real. Unicorns don’t have school loans to pay off or parents to deal with or an alcoholic boss or concerns about supporting themselves on eight dollars an hour, and they don’t have any expectations of you, either.”
“It’s a metaphor.”
“Yeah, well I’m not a metaphor. I’m real and I’m right here in front of you, waiting for you to figure your shit out.”
And I don’t know what to say, because it’s not like I’m not trying.
Chapter Fifteen
A week later, on a sunny, warm, clear spring day in Jersey, Ag Field Day arrives. And as well-prepared as we are (we are always well-prepared, remember, we have our shit together), we are all nervous. This is the biggest show we’ve ever played, and Ween are the biggest headliners we’ve ever played with. Plus, we know a lot of people out there in the crowd.
Rutgers Ag Field Day is a huge outdoor festival that spans the Cook and Douglass campuses. There are all different kinds of agricultural displays here. The cow with the glass stomach, the miniature horses petting zoo, lots of plants and flats of flowers grown by crunchy Cook students, soil testing demonstrations. Don’t even ask me why
somebody might drive half an hour from Freehold to come here to look at soil testing demos, but they do.
Today we’ll be playing right on Passion Puddle, a decent-sized pond on Douglass normally home to stoned Frisbee players and feminists with acoustic guitars, now dotted with picnicking families, stoned Frisbee players, and feminists with acoustic guitars, as well as everybody within fifty miles who has nothing better to do today.
I can’t think of a more bizarre setting for a Stars on the Floor show than this, but if Ween can play it, we sure as hell can. Right now the field is mostly empty, save the handful of parents chasing wayward toddlers across the lawn. Most folks are just wandering around the booths and displays, eating funnel cake and grilled corn and hot dogs on a stick.
Not only are all our friends from the music scene and Rutgers here, but when we’re trucking our gear across the lawn I run into Professor Cocksucker with his wife and kids. He says hello and tells me to break a leg and I don’t even roll my eyes at him, so I guess we’ve come to an understanding. That’s likely because I am getting an A in his class, despite the B I earned on that paper (that would have also been an A if he was less of a dick). I think he likes me because I have a lot to say in that class (one place where talking a lot serves me well). I think I like him, too, even if he is a dick.
We’re all hanging out under the awning behind the trailer, which is our stage today. We’re in the specially roped-off “band only” area with Ween, Billy Broadband, and Carl, drinking beer. The entire women’s rugby team drops by with George to wish us a good show. My mom and Granny and my cousin Nick, with his long, permed hair and his Whitesnake T-shirt (which he unironically wears, all the time), and his girlfriend Jasmine (what stripper pole did he pull her off of?) are here, and that’s a huge deal. When my mother saw this show advertised in the Hunterdon County Democrat, she clipped it out and put it in my baby book (don’t even ask), and then she told me she’d be here, and she is. Granny said she wouldn’t miss it, and she, sadly, went and told my cousin Nick he had to be here to show support. And I can’t say no because in theory, I want this. I want them to take me seriously and to support my music. But it’s making me so fucking nervous and I’m suddenly aware of how many times I say “fuck” in my lyrics. Oh well. Which reminds me, the show is going to be broadcast live, which should really help us with that CMJ quest. I think. But Billy doesn’t, and wouldn’t, ask me to bleep the “fuck” or anything else out of my lyrics. Because he knows better.
My family is hanging out and now Nick and his girlfriend are talking to Aaron and Mickey from Ween like they’re old pals. When Nick starts air guitaring and singing “Slip of the Tongue” (fucking Whitesnake!), I swear to Christmas I’m about to clock him with my Big Muff. I’d chuck it right at his fat, perfectly coiffed head but I need it in working condition in a couple of hours. Granny is calling my bandmates “honey” and “cutie pie,” and when she sees Travis, she gives him the biggest cheek-pinch and calls him “Blondie” and offers to buy him funnel cake because he looks hungry. And Travis, my heart, laughs. And he’s not just being polite, either.
“I was telling Emmy she should get her hooks into you,” Granny says, and I go red in the face. “If she lets you get away, well, let me give you my number.”
Travis looks my way and raises his eyebrows and says, “I’ll take it.”
And I die.
I don’t know why, but Travis has been nicer to me this week than he has been since I sort of suggested that we be fuck buddies in the band and then flaked all the way out and said we had to keep it on our pants for the sake of the band, like that’s what any of this has been about. For either of us. Ever since that night we wrote “Loud Is How I Love You,” Travis has been different. He hasn’t been on his man period at all, even though I put my combat boot in my mouth after the radio show last Sunday. Honestly, he didn’t even seem that mad after that, possibly just resigned to how stupid I am.
“I’ll pick you up for rehearsal on Tuesday,” he said as he was getting back into the van. That gave me a glimmer of hope that I hadn’t fucked it all the way up.
“Do you want to hang out for a little while?” I asked, leaning in so he couldn’t close the door. “It’s only nine.”
“I can’t—I’ve got to finish my paper,” he said. “I’m still doing the citations.”
“Want me to read it?”
“I have to hand it in tomorrow,” he said.
“Travis?”
“Yeah?”
God, there was so much I had to say to him. But I was so certain I’d say it all wrong that for once I just didn’t say a word. Instead I grabbed him and hugged him as tight as I could, buried my face into his chest and didn’t let go. I couldn’t even breathe until I felt him put his arms around me, his lips to the top of my head.
“What am I going to do with you?” he muttered into my hair. “I seriously have no idea.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I have no idea, either.”
At least we were in agreement on that point.
Bean picked me up for rehearsal both nights this past week, and he drove me home, too. He called me when he went to Sam Ash for strings, and while he didn’t ask me to go, he did ask if I needed picks or strings. He let me have my way when we were debating the order of songs for the set list. He even took me out for bagels this morning, and I was smart enough not to mention a word about graduate school or the tour or anything that might even remotely cause strife today. All we talked about was today, Ag Field Day, and how psyched we are to play with Ween.
Now Mom is catching on that Travis is a guy that I happen to think well of, so she invites him to the house for dinner. Casually, as in, at the end of the semester she’ll throw a barbecue to celebrate and he should come. He says thanks but he doesn’t say yes. Mom adds that the whole band should come, and he smiles and says, “Sounds great.” But he still doesn’t say he’ll be there. Not that I read into it or anything.
After the gear is squared away on stage, Travis, Cole, Joey, and I go get some lunch at the grease trucks, those heavenly vessels of all the most engorging fried and unnatural combinations of artery-clogging foods on the planet. For example, where else in the country—nay, the world—can you order a Fat Fellatio, where the chicken fingers, mozzarella sticks, french fries, bacon, and honey mustard are already on top of the cheesesteak, I mean, all of this on one fucking bun, and there is no need for awkward side orders? This is where we run into Montana, gazing awestruck at the menu, looking like he just died and went to trucker heaven. He’s immobilized by the unreal diversity of bad sandwich choices, most of them salmonella-free. I do a running slo-mo thing over to him, calling out, “Oh, Montana!” (he actually answers to Montana for me and Travis—we still don’t know if he’s ever even lived in Montana), and he turns and catches me as I careen into his arms.
“You really made it!” I say. “I can’t believe you’re here!”
“Ten state troopers couldn’t keep me away,” he says. Talk about a rock-and-roll champ. “Besides, who can pass up free soil demonstrations?”
We all get our food and we’re on our way back to introduce Montana to my family (but I forbid him to tell my mother the circumstances of where, when, and how he met me because she’ll kill me—anyway, we’re working on a plausible cover story), when we spot the Rutgers soccer team kicking a ball around in front of the pond.
“Oh shit,” I say.
“What’s wrong?” Joey asks.
“Oh shit,” Travis answers.
“Do we have a problem here?” Montana asks.
I look at Travis and he tries to act cool and laughs, but he isn’t looking super confident.
“Come on, what’s going to happen right here out in the open?” Travis says.
“You’re right,” I say. “They probably forgot all about us.”
Montana, Cole, and Joey have no idea what we’re talking ab
out. Why would we care about some soccer players kicking around a soccer ball at Ag Field Day? But then I see Eli looking our way and waving and pointing, right before he and ten soccer players come jogging over.
“Oh shit,” Travis says again. “Shit, shit, shit.”
“I’m armed,” Montana growls. “Just so you’re all aware, in case there’s trouble.”
“They’re soccer players,” I say. “And stoners. The most trouble we’ll be in for is some very slow fist fighting. Besides, Travis is a Taekwondo expert.”
“Expert?” Travis says, the color of his already pale face draining as they approach. “Not really an expert, per se.”
“Emmy,” Eli says, an enormous smile on his face as he reaches us. His eyes are swollen and squinty, and I don’t think it’s allergies, so I’m guessing we’ll be okay. If any trouble starts, Travis can just flip these assholes on their backs and they’ll lay there like suffocating fish, right? Eli wipes his brow with his jersey and I try not to notice the ripped, tan six-pack he just flashed me. “You never called me, sexy.”
“Yeah, right . . . well, um, I didn’t have your number,” I say.
“I thought maybe you and your skinny punk-ass vampire boyfriend here ran off to Vegas.”
“I told you he’s not my boyfriend,” I say. Like maybe he is a skinny punk-ass vampire, though.
“Thanks,” Travis says to me. “A whole lot.”
“Well, there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you,” Eli says.
“What?” I ask.
“Time to settle up, motherfucker!” Eli laughs and cracks his knuckles as the soccer team surrounds us. Joey and Cole flank Travis and ask us what the hell is going on here, when Eli announces that Travis cock-blocked him and Taekwondo’d his ass at his own party.
“We don’t want any trouble here, kids,” Montana says, and he gives his leather vest a suggestive pat to let the soccer team know he’s packing, but nobody here even knows what the hell that means.