by Emily Gould
“Seven hundred and eighty dollars,” said Alexis, pushing the stacks of bills she’d made into one pile and shoving it toward the bartender, who took his tequila shot like a sip of water and then started recounting the money.
“Not bad! You reclaim your position as number one. Here’s your bonus.” Stefan nodded at the bartender, who dealt out a handful of twenties back onto the bar in front of Alexis. Stefan turned to Laura. “Interested in playing? Every night the servers compete for a sales bonus.” His eyes were unfocused, and when he touched her arm it seemed less a move than an attempt to keep from swaying. He smelled sickly sweet and powdery. She forced herself not to flinch at his touch.
“I’m not a server,” she reminded him.
“Oh, right. What’s your name again?”
“Laura.” She hadn’t told him her name before.
“Well, I should get going,” Alexis interrupted, and motioned behind Stefan’s head to Laura, who also slid down off her barstool.
“But the night’s just getting started! Come on, celebrate your first day,” Stefan said, but lightly. “Drink your drink.”
Laura watched Alexis’s face closely for clues as to what she should do, and when she detected a hint of a headshake she grabbed the rum and Coke and downed the remainder of it in a single gulp, then managed a smile. “Okay! See you tomorrow,” she said, aiming for the same light tone that Stefan had used. The trick with men like this, Laura thought, was to behave with complete neutrality so that they could project whatever thoughts or feelings they wanted to imagine you having onto you. She felt good about this realization, like it gave her some power.
“Let me walk you out at least,” he said.
Alexis shrugged, and her eyes conveyed “You’re on your own” to Laura.
When they reached the door of the bar, he insisted on hugging her goodbye, then delivered a lingering double-cheek kiss. She stood there mutely, disgusted by the sticky redolence of her boss’s dead-flowers aura so close to her own skin. He went back into the bar, and she wiped her cheeks.
When she turned toward the street, she saw Callie, Dylan, and Davey were there on the sidewalk, waiting for her.
“We thought we’d pick you up from work, ’cause the party got boring,” Callie said. “Want to go back to Dylan and Davey’s and smoke a bowl and watch dating shows?”
She wanted nothing more. But when she tried to catch Dylan’s eye she found that whatever had passed between them last night was gone, or at least submerged under some resentment or confusion.
“Who was that?” he asked, in a slightly accusatory tone of voice, like he thought she shouldn’t have let Stefan cheek-kiss her. That was annoying.
“Ugh, that’s my new boss. He’s like that with everyone.” She stopped just short of actually apologizing.
But then his hand brushed hers, and she forgot to be annoyed immediately. For an awkward, heartbeat-skipping moment she thought he might hold hands with her. Even though he didn’t grab her hand it seemed possible that he could, or that he wanted to.
When they got back to Dylan and Davey’s apartment everyone smoked weed laced with opium in front of the TV and slumped onto one another in a puppy pile, Callie’s legs on Laura’s and Laura leaning into Dylan’s shoulder. Eventually everyone but Laura fell asleep. Even anesthetized by drugs and exhaustion she was alert to each of Dylan’s breaths as he slept and how close she was to him, close enough to hear his heartbeat. She imagined kissing him and felt almost queasy with desire. But after maybe twenty minutes it became clear that he wasn’t about to wake up again and she finally passed out, letting her body relax tentatively into the side of his. She had fitful, flashing dreams.
She woke up as it began to get light out, and as she realized where she was and whose flannel shirt she was smelling because it was right up against her nose, her whole body went into a kind of flu-like feverish shock. She had to exert an enormous effort to stay where she was, not wake everyone by suddenly bolting off the couch.
Her breath, though, and her fast heartbeat were outside her control, and Dylan rustled awake. He kept one eye scrunched closed and looked up at her, then reached out an arm and pulled her up off the couch. Callie grunted something disapproving as her legs got rearranged but then rolled over in the empty space and went right back to sleep. Dylan pulled Laura along the hall to his bedroom.
He had a loft bed made out of raw, splintery two-by-fours, with piles of clothes and cables and synths littering the floor underneath. The mattress was so near the ceiling that Laura couldn’t help but think about how the only kind of sex they would be able to have would be close together, with nobody sitting up. She was desperate to have sex with Dylan, but she was also nervous. There were so many variables when you hooked up with someone for the first time; would he, after everything she’d imagined, be rushed or lazy or inconsiderate or just not really there? She had already experienced more than her share of dull, grabby hands and slimy lolling-open mouths and mistaken ideas from porn.
He saw her staring at the makeshift bed and caught her eye and smiled. “I know, it sucks,” he said. “I’ll get a real bed one of these days, I promise.” She felt a rush of joy at the suggestion that she was going to be around to witness his future bed.
The difference in their heights was thrilling but inconvenient; she had to crane her neck up a lot to reach his mouth. They clambered awkwardly up into the tiny bed and stretched out against each other. He ran his fingertips lightly around the edges of her still-clothed body. She was wearing her unfashionable jeans. There was no graceful way for him to remove them because neither of them could sit up all the way, so he said, “Let’s just take off our own clothes,” and they each hurriedly did, then lay down next to each other again. He was thin and pale, with only a few wisps of chest hair right in the center and a constellation of freckles in a semicircle near his navel. He’d kept his boxers on—a nice touch, to have taken them off would have been practical but still somehow presumptuous—and his dick strained against the fabric impressively. Without any of the delicacy and finesse he’d displayed in the way he touched her, she reached out and grabbed it. It felt almost improbably thick, and it pulsed in her hand. He made a little involuntary grunting sound as he pushed his waistband down to give her better access, and even though they were still kissing she managed to glance down to assess what she was holding.
Dylan had the most beautiful dick in the world. It was perfectly symmetrical, long, thick, and uncircumcised, and it was even a nice color—not purple or red at all, but the same pale white as the rest of his skin.
She wondered, in the tiny part of her mind that could still think, whether Dylan knew, whether his perfect dick had informed the direction of his life. Probably? If you came to New York with some musical talent and a perfect dick, why wouldn’t you take for granted that your band would soon be recording and touring, that you would be able to get by without a day job, that you would be able to get girls to come home with you by, essentially, existing in their presence? But the tiny pang of jealousy that Laura felt in that moment was soon eclipsed by what was happening in front of her. Dylan crouched awkwardly and somewhat perfunctorily between her legs for a moment, then put on a condom and gently, slowly, shoved about a third of his perfect dick in.
He made eye contact with Laura and said, “Is it okay?”
Clearly, this was a thing that he knew he had to do, which should have mildly grossed Laura out, but she was no longer processing this experience from a critical remove. She said, “Unf,” in a way that she hoped expressed okayness, so he continued.
It wasn’t ultimately satisfying, exactly; Laura was too excited and nervous to let go all the way, and she kept hearing the sounds she was making and getting thrown out of the moment by worrying about the people sleeping in the other room. But she thought that even so, something about this particular morning would end up staying with her, returning to her occasionally over the years in dreams or fantasies or even during sex with other people. There w
as just something pure about it, something fun and happy that made her feel like anything might be possible. The unavoidable metaphor was that it was her first hit of a drug, and she imagined that she might spend the rest of her life chasing this high and never quite replicating it.
* * *
A few hours later Laura slipped out of Dylan’s apartment into the quiet of what passed for early morning in her neighborhood. The people who had daytime jobs in other parts of the city had left hours earlier, but the people who had nighttime jobs and other kinds of work were still in their apartments, taking long showers, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, lighting incense, and reading their tarot card of the day. She splurged on croissants and non-bodega coffee from a bakery on First Avenue, taking a circuitous route toward the shop where Callie worked on Seventh Street. The sign on the door still read Closed, but the door was unlocked and Callie was inside, zipping up a dress that Laura recognized from the window display. It looked even better on Callie than it did on the headless, white-limbed mannequin.
“Oooh,” she said when she saw Laura. “So?”
Laura was grinning. “I don’t want to diminish the experience by analyzing it or giving you a play-by-play.”
“How selfish! Come on, just one detail. Please? I haven’t even opened the shop yet and I’m already bored.”
“Does anyone even come in here?”
“Oh yeah, it gets busy! I sell lots of dresses. I pick things out for people and make them feel like I’m making them look good.” She flipped the sign on the door to Open and then walked toward the mirror-covered pillar in the center of the store, staring herself down, smoothing the sides of the dress. Her mirror face was grim and determined, but satisfied. As usual, her makeup was immaculate, though her hair, never very clean, looked wild and slept-on. Somehow this juxtaposition was, on Callie, glamorous. Looking at her made you want to stop washing your own hair. It was easy to see why she sold lots of dresses; being around her made you want to try to look as good as she did, and also somehow made it seem like it might be possible.
“Do it for me, pick me out something.”
“You can’t afford any of this, even with my discount.”
“I have a job! I could get some new clothes.” Having sex had also made her feel pretty. There was no better time to go shopping.
“I get that you’re trying to distract me, but I’ll weasel some intel out of you before we’re done here,” said Callie, circling Laura and looking at her from all angles. “This is what I do: I stare at people like I’m computer-analyzing their unique proportions and going through a mental database of our whole inventory. Then I pick the most expensive thing I think I can get away with, or whatever is going on sale next week.”
“Well, don’t do that with me. Just show me the cutest thing,” said Laura.
“For you? It’s this.” The dress had a halter top that exposed the top of Laura’s back. She liked that it was a light color, so she couldn’t wear it at work; it was a dress for her actual life, not the dim black-clad half-life of the bar. It was perfect for summer and could even be worn under a cardigan in fall. It showed off Laura’s arms and shoulders, where her muscles were well defined from years of both playing and carrying around her guitar. She imagined standing near Dylan and having him reach behind her neck to untie the straps. As soon as she put it on she knew that she would have to buy it, no matter how expensive it turned out to be.
She waited until the flush that rose across her chest subsided and came out of the dressing room to get Callie’s reaction, but Callie was paying attention to an actual customer, so instead she walked around the store, pawing the racks. There was a shelf of “vintage” shoes near the back of the store, which the shop’s owner had found at thrift stores just outside the city, polished slightly, and marked up several hundred percent. They were good finds, though, pretty eighties pumps and barely worn leather sandals. Laura found a pair of heels in her size and slipped them on. They were lipstick pink, which looked good with the off-white dress and her dark hair. Callie’s customer left the store, and she walked back over toward Laura.
“Okay, very nice, but where are you going in that?” she asked. “I mean, how are you going to justify it to yourself?”
“I’m going to wear it onstage,” Laura said, without thinking. Callie nodded approvingly. She rang her up with her staff discount and threw the shoes in for free. “They probably cost the owner a dollar, let’s not sweat it,” she said. “Now, let’s figure out where your band is going to play.”
“I don’t have a band,” Laura said. She went back into the dressing room and started putting her dirty clothes from the night before back on. Callie kept talking to her through the door.
“You should get one. You know, I’ve been thinking about this. No one’s going to book a singer-songwriter, that’s some open-mic-night shit. I can pretend to be in your band till you find someone better. Then we just need a drummer, and maybe someone who can actually play bass, but that can happen later.”
“Pretend to be in my band?” She was still zipping her jeans, but she stuck her head out of the dressing room so that she could see the expression on Callie’s face and try to gauge how serious she was.
“Yeah, like a backup-singer type of situation. We’ve sung together before, remember? In high school.”
Laura came out of the dressing room, avoiding the letdown of the mirror. Without the dress on she was returned to her former self, dirty and puffy around the eyes. “If I’m onstage with you, no one will look at me,” she said.
“Of course they will, you idiot. You’re the one who can actually sing and play. I’m just going to help you get your foot in the door.”
The thought of wedging her foot into that door alone was terrifying, which was why Laura hadn’t made any attempts to do it yet. “Okay, I’ll think about it,” she told Callie. “I got you a croissant, by the way.” The owner didn’t like food in the store, so they ate sitting on the stoop just outside, watching as the sidewalk got more crowded as noon approached and the day properly began.
* * *
The Clips were leaving to go on tour in two weeks. Laura had sex with Dylan whenever she could. At 4:00 a.m., after her shift ended, she’d call to see if he was still up or even take the chance that he wasn’t and just walk to his apartment and buzz. Most of the time, he answered. Then they would stay in his tiny, uncomfortable bed till the middle of the next day, when he would leave to go rehearse and Laura would be back in the non-Dylan part of her life. She was dreading the tour, already imagining how empty she’d feel on the first day, when this part of her life would be all that was left and she would have to figure out something else to care about. A few times, Callie asked her if she was still thinking about the idea of a band, but she didn’t press it. Laura was, of course, but somehow it didn’t seem as important as thinking about Dylan.
The day before Dylan left, he invited Laura to meet him at a recording studio in Bushwick where he was supposed to be finishing up some alternate takes of songs the band was going to put on their next album. He told her to bring her guitar so that he could hear her songs for the first time.
The first part of the trip, the walk from her apartment to the J at Delancey, was blissful. Laura loved crossing Houston and looking west at the giant sky over the low buildings, feeling small but fast and purposeful as she marched in a mass of people across the intersection. Her guitar case bumped against her back rhythmically as she walked, reminding her over and over of the purpose of her trip. And the elevated subway journey into Brooklyn was beautiful, too, the same giant sky over the receding city. When she disembarked and walked down the dirty staircase to Broadway, Laura started to feel nervous. She craved contact with Dylan but also felt shy about singing and playing music in front of him. For a moment as she loped down Broadway, attracting stares with her guitar, she found herself unable to quite remember his face, or what his speaking voice sounded like. But, she knew, sex would immediately put everything back in ord
er. If they couldn’t have sex at the studio they could at least make out. It had been days, and it would be the last time for a while.
She was passing a Dunkin’ Donuts that seemed reassuring in this alien neighborhood, so she went in. Her whole body was buzzing with adrenaline, but it still seemed like a good idea to get a cup of coffee. She got a limp, weird bagel with toothpaste-texture cream cheese, too, because even though she was too nervous to be hungry, she wasn’t sure when she was going to get to eat again and she didn’t want her stomach to make weird noises in front of Dylan.
The studio was in an old warehouse building with big windows right at the level of the elevated train tracks. A heavyset man buzzed her up and curtly informed her that Dylan hadn’t arrived yet, so after looking around at all the expensive gear in the cavelike loft, she just sat and ate her bagel, looking out the window at the trains, waiting. Every train that passed could potentially have him on it, and though waiting and watching like this made it seem like he would never come, Laura felt strangely peaceful sitting there at the window. The sun was beautiful, not scorching, somehow casting more light than usual on the elevated tracks and torn awnings and old dirty-windowed buildings. Summer hadn’t really gotten started yet; it was still cool in the early mornings and late at night, and you could still sleep under a blanket.
Laura thought about sharing Dylan’s tiny bed, being forced to have some part of her body touching his at all times even as they slept. The first few times she’d thought she would never be able to fall asleep like that, but the long nights had caught up to her, and she’d even dreamed a little and woken up staring into his face, watching his eyelids twitch, free to stare at him for as long as she liked until he woke up.