by Emily Gould
She got out her notebook and started to write down some of her lovelorn thoughts that could be turned into lyrics later on. Eventually she got bored of that and just started doodling. After half an hour she started to feel slightly angry, then even more angry, then resigned. Then angry again. In the end, he made her wait an hour and a half.
He looked hungover as usual, wincing in the sunlight that streamed through the big windows. He put down his backpack and glanced around the room, taking in Laura, her bagel, and her notebook. “Oh, good, you brought something to do. This might take a minute,” he said, and then he went back into the booth to confer with the stern large guy who’d let Laura in. When he came back out he hardly even looked at her again. He sat down with his guitar and tuned it, then nodded to the guy in the booth. The room flooded with the track that Davey and the band had already recorded, another fuzzy banger that wasn’t too hard to imagine playing over the PA in a bar or even at a baseball game. Dylan put his head down and played over it with the same detached intensity that he always did. Laura didn’t know what she was supposed to do. Stare at him worshipfully? Part of her wanted to, but she was also annoyed that their date seemed to consist of her in a corner with a bagel watching him play. Then again, this was what he’d invited her to do, and she’d said yes. She picked at the bagel.
About half an hour later the guy in the booth gave Dylan a thumbs-up and then, within minutes, had packed his stuff and left. Dylan stood up and shook out all his long limbs, then turned to Laura. “Did you bring any more bagels? I’m starving.”
She tamped down a rising surge of annoyance and shook her head. “I brought my guitar, though, I thought you said …”
“Oh, right! I still need to hear you play.” He made this sound like it was something he’d forgotten to buy at the grocery store, eggs or dish soap.
As she unpacked her small guitar from its dorky soft-sided case and sat tuning it, Dylan kept himself busy by rolling a small joint. By the time she was ready to play he was smoking it as casually as if it were a cigarette. He pushed the window open a crack and ashed on the sill.
She paused before starting to play. It felt like an audition. Or she assumed this is what an audition would feel like; she’d never auditioned for anything before. “Well, what do you want to hear?”
“I don’t know, whatever you want to play. Your favorite song? Your best one?”
“People seem to like this one,” she said, then played him “I Want My Tapes Back.” She didn’t know exactly what to do with her face and eyes while she sang, so she mostly looked at the neck of her guitar and out the window. Dylan stayed halfway across the room, smiling inscrutably. He laughed a small knowing laugh—thank God—at the line where the audience was supposed to laugh, the part about “I miss my mix of all Liz Phair / Heavens to Betsy and Huggy Bear.”
“That’s really cute,” he said when she was finished. “I feel like you could make bank if you busked on the subway.”
She stayed silent, hoping that he would say something else that would redeem what he’d just said.
“I mean that in a good way. You’re a great guitar player.”
“Oh! Thanks. No, I’m not.” She deflected compliments habitually, as though to accept one might be rude, though it was probably ruder to tell someone they were wrong. She didn’t play like someone like Dylan, who could probably do things like improvise a solo. She had mostly taught herself, but she liked how she played.
“So … ,” he said, stepping toward her. She became more aware of how they were alone in the studio and felt her whole body flush as she imagined fucking Dylan right where they were standing, or possibly, more comfortably, in the booth, in one of the large, cushiony chairs there. He reached past her, toward what was left of the bagel, and stuffed it in his mouth. “Sorry! I’m totally starved. Let’s get out of here and find a diner or something.” He brushed the crumbs off his mouth and, in the same movement, grabbed her by the hand and pulled her toward him.
“ ‘I want my tapes back,’ ” he sang in his dramatic, growling deep voice, nothing like Laura’s clear, no-nonsense alto. He spun her around the room in a little waltz. “ ‘I hope you know where they are.’ ” She was intoxicated by sheer physical proximity to him, and so flattered that he’d remembered the words to her song.
* * *
Dylan had been gone on tour for two weeks, and Callie and Laura were on their way to alt.coffee to check their email when they passed the magazine store on A and Fifth Street and saw the cover of NME with Dylan on it. The other band members were on it, too, but the photo was mostly Dylan, standing in front, looking into the camera like he was sad and annoyed about having his photo taken. They both saw it at the same time and came to such a screeching halt that the man walking behind them bumped into them.
“Fucking morons!” he shouted as he pushed on past. They ignored him and kept staring at the magazine.
“Oh my God, you’re dating a rock star,” said Callie.
“Dating?” said Laura.
“Oh my God, we’re groupies!” said Callie.
“Gross, no. Do you think he’s famous now?”
“Yes! If you actually want to be his girlfriend now, good luck. Girls are going to be throwing themselves at him after this.”
Callie was always so pragmatic, but she was probably right. The way Laura had felt about Dylan the first time she’d seen him play hadn’t just been lust, it had been admiration for his talent; his magic was real. It was inevitable that other people would acknowledge it, too.
She felt both vindicated and frustrated—it was good to have been proven right about Dylan, but she also wanted something like credit for having known him before he became more generally known. Mostly, though, she wanted to actually talk to him.
They hadn’t said anything about how they would stay in touch while he was away—it hadn’t seemed like a long enough amount of time to justify a plan for keeping in touch—but now Laura wished she’d said something. He didn’t have a cell phone, but that was probably for the best. If she’d been able to call him at that moment, she would have asked whether he loved her. Asking someone you’ve had sex with a handful of times whether they love you, especially if they’re turning out to be a famous rock star, is not the right move, she knew. But she also knew that if he called her at this exact moment she wouldn’t be able to stop herself. She decided instead to email him. She didn’t know whether he would be checking email, but she had his address that he’d scribbled somewhere and she would be able to control herself better if she could revise what she wanted to say to him as much as she liked before sending it.
They went into the café, which was dark and smelled like old couches and cigarettes, and ordered their drinks and their allotments of internet time from the guy at the counter. Laura stalled by going into the bathroom, where a bunch of computer parts sat in a bathtub, some kind of dumb art installation, and while she peed she thought through the decision she had just made to email Dylan. It was such a low-stakes way of reaching out to him. But what would she say?
She sat down at one of the shared monitors, trying to ignore the greasy feel of the keyboard, and began to type. She asked how the tour was going, what the different cities were like. She fished delicately for a response that would indicate that he was looking forward to seeing her when he came back, but she didn’t make any dramatic declarations. She tried not to mention her feelings at all. She needed to include at least a sentence about what she’d been up to, but this was tricky because there really wasn’t much going on in her life besides working at the bar, hanging out with Callie, and obsessing about him. So she lied a wishful lie about working on her songs and playing a small show that a friend of Callie’s had hooked her up with. Callie had mentioned something about introducing her to someone who booked bands at the Sidewalk Café, so it wasn’t exactly a lie. Plus, she could even use the lie as motivation to make it true before Dylan got back.
She went through the rest of her in-box unhurrie
dly, lingering over the details of spam emails she’d gotten instead of immediately deleting them. Really, she was waiting to see whether he would respond. This was crazy; the odds of his even being near a keyboard were so slim. She didn’t even know what city or what time zone he was in. Still, when her half hour was up, she went up to the counter for a refill and another passcode to unlock another half hour of internet access.
“Why do you need to stay here longer?” asked Callie, who had finished her coffee and her free issue of VICE and was tapping her long nails on the counter.
“I just thought maybe a person I wrote to might write back,” Laura admitted.
“A person. Jesus.” Callie rolled her eyes and went to wait for Laura in the park across the street.
But then when she got back to the desk, there it was: a response! She felt like the gross shared computer was a slot machine dispensing a flood of coins. He would be home in a week, he wrote, and would be playing a show first thing. He invited her and Callie to meet up after the show at Brownies. He said he missed her.
Laura floated into Tompkins Square Park and found Callie sitting on the patchy grass on the hill. The park was full of people their age with nighttime jobs or no jobs who could treat the park like a beach, lying on blankets with snacks and drinks and joints and cigarettes, getting sun, watching the dogs in the dog run and one another. Callie had bought a large bottle of orange juice, from which she poured out some of the juice and replaced it with the contents of a small bottle of vodka. Laura didn’t have to be at the bar until seven; there was still time to get drunk, then nap and shower before work.
This was how they’d been killing all the lengthening summer afternoons lately, but the surge of energy Laura had gotten from her communication with Dylan had made her too hyped up to enjoy lolling around. She told Callie about her email and the response, and the minor lie she’d told.
Callie ashed her cigarette thoughtfully on the patchy grass near the blanket they sat on. “Oh, that’s no problem. Let’s just go by there right now and see if Alex is working. Well, not right now right now. Like in half an hour? Let’s finish our drinks at least.”
“I have to go grab my guitar and stuff first! And I don’t want to get drunk.”
“You’ll just be relaxed. You need to.” Callie took a swig, then offered the bottle. Laura semi-reluctantly accepted. She was suddenly feeling too wound up, almost to the point of panic. Her initial joy at being in touch with Dylan was activating her brain and body in ways that were agitating if she couldn’t be around him physically.
An hour later she and Callie were in the dark daytime interior of Sidewalk, in the side of it that was a bar and not a twenty-four-hour diner. Alex, a short, skinny guy with bluish-pale skin who could have been twenty-five or forty, hugged Callie too long and then looked Laura over as frankly as her bar employer had on the day she’d gotten hired.
“So you guys are in a band together?”
“Well, it’s mainly Laura, but yeah, it’s kind of a band,” said Callie, smiling at Alex and doing her “you are the only person who exists in the world” thing.
“Great! Hop up there and do one of your songs real quick.”
They conferred quickly and decided to do the song that Laura had started writing at Dylan’s studio. For never having technically rehearsed, they weren’t as terrible as Laura had assumed they’d be. Callie had heard Laura sing the song so many times that she had memorized it, and she sang almost harmony and shimmied around a little as Laura tried to keep up with Callie’s innovations in rhythm. It was uncomfortable to make eye contact with Alex, so instead Laura watched Callie as she sang. She thought again about how anyone watching them onstage together would spend more time looking at Callie shimmying than at Laura playing guitar. But maybe it didn’t matter; it was Laura’s music, Laura’s song.
When she looked out at Alex next, he was grinning. “Come back tonight, I’ll put you on at eleven thirty,” he told them. “What should I say you’re called?”
“I can’t tonight, I have to work,” Laura said.
“Weird name for a band,” said Alex, then laughed at his own joke.
“You can call in sick once. You’ve been there long enough to get away with it,” Callie said.
“Five weeks?”
“I’m sure you’re a lifer by the standards of that place.” Callie turned back to Alex. “You can call us the Groupies.” She wrinkled her nose and laughed like she’d made a hilarious joke. The vodka-OJ was cold and acidic in Laura’s stomach.
“You’re on the bill,” Alex told them. “You get two drink tickets and a cut of the door that you share with all the other bands, so tell your friends to come.”
Laura was silent as they walked home, scuffing her Chinatown mesh slippers against the dusty sidewalk, walking like her guitar was heavier than it actually was.
“What?” Callie finally said.
“Well, we’re going to make pocket change, for starters. I can’t afford to miss my shift or to lose this job.”
“But this is what you came to New York to do!”
“Not like this,” Laura said.
Callie stopped and turned with her hands on her hips, so close that Laura could smell her breath, orangey and rotten in Laura’s face. “Like what?”
“Like … the only reason he booked us is because of you.”
Callie smiled and turned around, her anger immediately defused. She let Laura walk next to her on the sidewalk again. “That’s not true, I’m just training wheels. You’re doing it on your own. It’s okay to let people help you sometimes!”
“Callie, I’m not blind. When both of us walk into a room, all anyone sees is you.”
“Dylan saw you,” Callie said almost too quickly, like she’d been planning to say it. And Laura couldn’t argue with it, because it was true. Maybe whatever he saw in her would translate now. Maybe things would be different, and Callie was right, and Laura was going to be the one people looked at this time.
* * *
It was Callie’s idea to both wear the dress Laura had bought from the boutique where she worked, Laura’s in white, Callie’s in red. Laura wore her dark hair down around her face, so that when she bent her head toward the neck of her guitar it was hard to see her. Callie wore her straight blond hair pushed back. They wore winged eyeliner, applied by Callie’s unerring hand. On Callie, it made her light eyes more visible from the audience, but on Laura, it was just another dark thing receding into shadow.
A friend of Davey’s was recruited to play drums at the last minute, and to loan them a bass guitar, which Callie pretended to play. The drummer, a sleepy-eyed but highly professional guy named Zach, was actually great to have. They were allowed a little sound check before the show started and he gamely fleshed out Laura’s songs, making them sound less folky and more upbeat, like a low-fi version of a sixties girl group. Despite still being slightly disturbed that Callie had hijacked and reshaped her dream, Laura had to admit that the Groupies weren’t that bad, especially for being put together in one afternoon. They would have to figure out a different name, though.
They sat in the small audience comprised of the other bands’ friends and drank their free vodka tonics till it was their turn, then awkwardly shuffled up onto the stage as the previous band was leaving it.
Laura said, “Hi, we’re the Groupies,” in a flat quiet monotone into the mic, then pushed into the opening lines of the song she’d written about Dylan. She’d named it “Can I Call You?” It was about not wanting to scare someone off by coming on too strong, but the joke was that of course the narrator of the song, because she was thinking about whether it was okay to call the guy (on the phone) or to call him (her boyfriend), was sort of obsessed. It was supposed to be humorous and pathetic. Callie was so charismatic, though, and so sexy as she tossed her ponytail from side to side, that by chiming in on the choruses she transformed the song into something different. A guy would have to be an idiot not to want to be her boyfriend, she seemed to be
saying. She swayed from side to side as Laura played a plinky, cute tune during the song’s bridge, her version of a guitar solo. Even though Laura was singing lead and playing guitar, it was somehow Callie who made it work. It was because of Callie that everyone in the bar was clapping with more than the perfunctory politeness they had showed the other bands.
After their set was over and they were back at the bar, Alex came over to congratulate them. “You guys are invited back whenever,” he said, looking at Callie, and he gave them their cut of the door: thirty dollars. They ended up giving it to Zach so that he could take the bass home to Williamsburg in a cab.
* * *
Brownies was unassuming on the outside, just another storefront-size bar on Avenue A, but inside it was a dim, noisy deep cavern, a whole alternate world. The stage lights were sharp and perfect, so bright that they illuminated motes of dust buzzing around them, flecks of sweat bursting from the band as they strutted and thrashed. The floor was packed and writhing, moving in waves pressing closer to the stage. Usually Laura wasn’t into close contact with strangers, but this wasn’t like being on the subway. It was like being a cell in some larger organism, everyone joining together with the same aim in mind. It was just loud enough so that their bodies were enveloped in sound, just on the edge of discomfort, a vibration rattling up through everyone’s shoes, re-regulating their heartbeats and breathing so that everyone exhaled in time. Some people even knew the lyrics of the Clips’ songs. A few weeks ago the band had been unknown, playing shows that people came to for the promise of free wine. Now they were galvanizing hundreds of people, maybe thousands before long. Laura was close enough to the stage to see the look on Dylan’s face as he played. She thought he seemed happy, but at the same time uncomfortable. There was a twitchiness in his expression she’d never seen before. Maybe he was anxious to see her; she was so anxious to see him that when the show ended, she prayed for no encores. But of course there was an encore; the crowd demanded it. The band waited a desultory minute before strutting back out onstage. Thankfully they played only that one song, though, and then it was finally over.