by Liz Moore
The bus moves on and the guards shut the gates behind them, keeping the fans out. The three girls stop and collapse in laughter. One of them is dressed in a shirt she has made that says I LOVE YOU TOMMY! and she is freezing. It’s January, and the sun is going to set soon. Her friends are dressed more sensibly.
Leila is the name of the girl in the homemade shirt. She is in love with Tom, really in love with him, she thinks. She cannot imagine being in love like this ever again. Her friends all claim to love him too, but she’s not sure they understand him. She’s not sure they’ve listened to his words like she has.
She and her friends are singing now: “If you’re alive, why aren’t you living?” She loves that song. Leila looks around and has an uneasy feeling of hatred for all of his other fans, which she works to suppress.
She and her friends are all seventeen. They drove to this concert at four and have been drinking beer ever since. They’re a little tipsy.
IV.
The opening act walks offstage. Siobhan and the other members of the Burn are sweaty and elated. This is the biggest crowd they’ve ever played for, by far. They are unsure of themselves and their legs feel light and bothered. This has happened quickly: Theo Brigham somehow managed to place them on tour with Tommy Mays when the original opening act dropped out. The signing, the contract, and now this: all in just over a month. Is this how it happens? thinks Siobhan. Is this how fame happens to everyone? The crowd is still cheering and Siobhan wonders if the Burn will ever have this kind of draw on their own. It’s a bit scary. She’s not sure she wants it. But the other members of her band are jumping up and down, screaming. They’ve had their taste of the big time and they want more. Siobhan is worried.
They pass Tom, who is slumped in the concrete hallway, meditating on the opposite wall. He looks as though he’s had a couple of drinks. Siobhan’s heart flutters a little—she remembers going to see his band when she was seventeen.
Tom looks up. “That was great,” he says. “Have fun?”
Siobhan nods and says, “Good luck!” too chirpily. Immediately she feels like a little kid again. Mike G. snickers and runs down the hall like an airplane.
When Tom is onstage, his mind wanders. He’ll be in the middle of a song and suddenly thinking about dinner. Or about the girl in the front row with the shirt that says I LOVE YOU TOMMY! Or about his father.
Tonight, he is also thinking about his wife and his daughters, wondering if they’re asleep yet—it must be about ten o’clock because the band has played ten songs already. He hopes Clara and Alice are sleeping well.
They’re in the middle of an old song. This is one off their first album for Titan. It was their first single. The crowd loves it because they all know it and it’s upbeat and fun and it has lines like “If you’re alive, why aren’t you living?”
Tom hates this goddamn song. Titan made him write it and Titan makes him play it.
They’re in the middle of an instrumental break and Tom is pacing the stage with his guitar, acting hot and bothered because the song requires it. He bends his knees—he shakes his ass. He stomps up to his lead guitarist, Jeff, who grins and then goes back to looking intense. Tom has to fight back his urge to roll his eyes. Jeff is young and cute and girls like him and he tries very hard to keep it that way.
Tom walks over to the mic in time to deliver the last chorus. He’s sung it so many times that he dreams it sometimes. Is Camilla having a hard time with the girls?
Leila watches Tom and cries. Her small hands are clutching her necklace at her heart and she is standing perfectly still while, all around her, people are dancing and singing. She has never been so close to the stage even though she’s seen the band eight times before. She is in the front row—the front row—and she can see each bead of sweat work its way down Tom’s face. Her two friends scream and shout and cry out, “Marry me, Tommy!” in unison sometimes.
Leila wonders if they can see the wedding ring on his finger. She closes her eyes and wipes tears from them. She is overwhelmed by the music, absolutely drugged by it. She is sobbing. She looks up at Tom and suddenly he is looking at her too—looking right at her and singing. She freezes.
Tom is blinded by the lights onstage. The crew turns them up full force during the loudest parts of his songs. He squints down into them and blinks. He can’t believe he’s thirty. When did that happen? He remembers turning twenty-one. That was a fun birthday.
The song ends, finally, and Kai, the drummer, bangs out the final beats. He tings the triangle ironically a few times, deadpan bastard that he is. Tom walks back to the elevated drum set, where his beer is sitting. He takes a quick swig and feels better. He likes getting a little drunk onstage. It’s powerful.
Back at the mic, he says, “Thank you for comin’ out! Thank you, New Jersey. Jerseeeee.” He retreats and the crowd is screaming for more. He could say anything. It wouldn’t matter.
She is absolutely silent. She is wanting more. Leila has not told her friends this yet, but she has discovered what hotel the band will stay at tonight.
V.
After shows, the band usually goes back to their hotel and sits in the hotel bar and gets drunk. They’ve done this since they started. It’s tradition. Tonight, Kai and Jeff have found a piano and they are pounding out a drunken version of “Heart and Soul.” Kai has borrowed sunglasses from a waitress and is pretending to be Stevie Wonder. Tom laughs. Kai is so funny sometimes. Jordan, the bassist, is in the bathroom. Jordan has developed a bit of a bad habit since the band took off.
Jeff is making eyes at the waitress. Tom feels like telling him he doesn’t have to try so fucking hard. She’ll sleep with him either way.
Tom is at the bar, working away at his sixth beer. He feels good. He wants to call Camilla and tell her how much he loves her—a lot, he thinks, so much. He takes out his cell phone and dials.
On the third ring, Camilla answers frantically: “Hello?”
“I love you,” says Tom. “I love you, Camilla.”
“You love me?” says Camilla.
“Yeah.”
“Tom, it’s one in the morning. You woke up the babies.”
“Are they crying?”
“Yes, they’re crying now. I have to go,” says Camilla. “Are you drunk, Tom?”
“I miss you.”
Camilla has hung up.
Across the bar, Jeff and Kai and Jordan have lost interest in the waitress and have moved on to three girls who look too young to be in a bar. One of them looks familiar, Tom thinks. Maybe they were at the show tonight.
The room has become blurry all around him. He walks toward the band and the girls, winding left and right. He sits in their booth and puts his head down on the table.
“Dudemeister,” says Kai.
“Good show!” says one of the girls. One of her friends giggles. The other is silent, staring at him, her mouth open.
“Thanks,” says Tom. “Thanks very much.” He sips his beer and waits for them to ask him for an autograph, or to leave.
They don’t. The two girls nearest to him are staring at him hungrily. One of them says, “So are you staying here tonight?”
Tom looks at her. “How old are you?”
The girl is caught off guard. “Twenty-one,” she says. She’s lying. “How old are you?” Her friend laughs. The quiet one looks like she might cry. All three of them are wearing shirts that barely cover their belly buttons, and tight jeans.
“I’m thirty,” says Tom.
“You’re an old man,” says Jeff.
Tom nods sadly. He is an old man. Kai and Jeff and Jordan are ordering drinks for the girls now.
Under the table, Jeff puts his hand on Leila’s leg. She feels sick from too much beer and from being what she is: just another fan. Easy. They think she’s a slut. She’s dressed like one. She is looking at Tom, pleading with him in her head, thinking maybe if he can see her, really see her, he’ll rescue her. But his head is down on the table again, and she’s never seen a
nyone look sadder. Jeff’s hand moves to her side and he touches her face.
No one can save her.
“You wanna go someplace quieter?” he asks in her ear.
Kai and Jordan are teasing Leila’s friends and they are shrieking with laughter.
“Yeah,” says Leila. She wipes a tear off her cheek. Her eyes are down. She has kissed two boys before.
Tom picks his head up in time to see Jeff walking out of the bar, holding the hand of the quiet girl. But she’s too young, thinks Tom. She’s just a baby.
“Jeff,” he says. “Jeff.”
The music in the bar is too loud, and Jeff disappears with the girl out the door. Tom’s drinks are swimming around in his head. He wants to see Camilla. He wants to see his daughters.
Leila, in the elevator, is dreaming of the first concert she ever saw. She was in the second-to-last row. She was fifteen. Tom, in the lights onstage, had looked like an angel.
4.
CYNTHIA, GODDESS OF CHASTITY AND OF THE MOON
You carried all my hopes
Until something broke inside
—PJ HARVEY, “We Float”
I.
While walking through Times Square on her way to Titan, Inc., Cynthia sees what she has been dreading for four months: a big fat billboard with Lenore on it. Lenore with her hands in her back pockets, looking limp-haired, looking strung out. Lenore with a ’61 reissue Gibson SG hanging too low on her tall sharp frame. Below the picture is this caption: “Lenore Lamont—her Titan Records debut! Available everywhere this fall.” Her first thought: They’re advertising early; it’s only April. Her second thought: This means that they think Lenore’s going to be huge. Her third thought: I am going to cry or vomit.
But she didn’t. She held it in and kept walking.
Certainly, she’d had warning. In December she had answered the phone and Bernie had said, “Have you heard about Lenore?”
“Bernie, you asshole,” Cynthia said, “I don’t give a fuck about Lenore.”
She had hung up the phone and pulled her hair and racked her brain for what could possibly have happened; feared momentarily that Lenore had died; grieved prematurely and against her will; looked on Lenore’s Web site and breathed a deep sigh of relief that there was no death announcement; and, finally, saw that Lenore had been signed. To Titan. It said it in bold letters in the News section. Of all the record companies in New York, Lenore had been signed to Titan.
It irked Cynthia still that she hadn’t known before Bernie. She was the one who worked for Titan, damn it, and she didn’t even know.
Each day for the last four months, all day long, Cynthia has watched for Lenore, has expected to see her walk out of the elevator bank and onto the top floor of Titan, where Cynthia works as the secretary, or receptionist, depending on which way you look at it. She used to be one of two personal assistants given to Jax Powers-Kline, the president of A&R at Titan, but Corporate turned her into a secretary for the whole A&R department recently, citing cost issues. Jax still treats her like her personal secretary, though, and Cynthia can do nothing but accept it: one cannot negotiate with Jax.
Cynthia’s desk faces the elevator doors almost exactly. If the doors opened on Lenore one day, it would be a face-off. It is simultaneously Cynthia’s biggest fear and her great hope that one day the elevator doors will open and Lenore will walk out. So far this has not happened. No one at Titan knows she has ever even spoken to Lenore Lamont, of course; no one at Titan knows anything about her. Theo Brigham might know something of their relationship, because he is friends with Siobhan, the lead singer of the Burn, and Siobhan is friends with Lenore, but he has never mentioned it, out of respect—or perhaps because he was uninterested.
The closest Cynthia has come to Lenore since they broke up is hearing her murmured name in the halls of Titan, Inc. More and more frequently she hears it—“Lenore Lamont”—on the lips of some exec or other on his way in or out. Lenore is, according to most, the next big thing.
So Cynthia has known this was coming anyway. She’s had fair warning. But face-to-face like this, blindsided by a billboard on Broadway. Cynthia wants to kick out like a child; her eyes go blurry; her head starts pulsing the way it does before a migraine.
And now—Cynthia checks her watch—she will be late for work.
But it doesn’t matter. She’s always late anyway.
II.
The morning after Cynthia’s first night with Lenore, she had woken slowly and had experienced an overpowering sense of disorientation, which was unusual for her. Admittedly, she was used to sleeping in strange beds. She was alone in this one. The sheets were red. The room was small and filled with sunlight. PJ Harvey was on the stereo. It had taken her a full ten seconds to place herself. When she did, happiness overwhelmed her smoothly, and she regarded the room with new eyes. It was Lenore’s room, and it was as perfect and lovely as Lenore herself.
There was a mirror across from her, mounted on the wall, and she sat up to look at herself. The back of her hair was mussed. She tried to smooth it. She wiped her mouth and the corners of her eyes. Cynthia wondered if Lenore had left; if she was embarrassed or regretful, if she would return.
And then Lenore walked in, fully clothed, smoking a cigarette. It was possible that she had been up for hours. She did not smile, but she didn’t look upset either; she looked at Cynthia curiously, impassively.
“You’re up,” she said at last.
“Come here,” said Cynthia, and patted the bed. Lenore crossed the room obediently and sat down, keeping her back straight and her hands on her knees. She faced the window and looked outside intently.
“How do you feel?” asked Cynthia, because she couldn’t think of what to say. She wanted to touch Lenore’s back but found she couldn’t muster the courage. She felt embarrassed, suddenly, to be naked under the covers. In the dark she had been brave, unthinking. But now it was morning and Lenore was sitting there, fully clothed already. She felt a bit guilty, a bit dirty, a bit corrupt.
The angle between them gave Cynthia a view of Lenore’s profile that Cynthia had considered many times before. It was a very nice profile. Lenore had very long hair then, and it was in a ponytail, and her eyes were wide and thickly lashed, and she looked five years younger than she was, and she looked even younger when she turned away from the window and slid childishly, conspiratorially down on the bed to face Cynthia, as if they were at a sleepover.
Then Lenore said, “Are you my girlfriend?” Cynthia had been asked the question before. Usually the answer was no. “Am I your girlfriend?” Lenore asked again, and gazed at Cynthia earnestly. She held her cigarette in her hand, resting it on her rib cage. It was only the cigarette that leant her the air of an adult. Everything else about her was innocent, sweetly unaware and childish, brimming with youthful vigor.
“Do you want to be?” asked Cynthia, surprising herself, all at once nearly trembling with greed.
“I think this is a good idea,” said Lenore. And looked at her again: “You’re my first girlfriend.”
It was a lie. Later Cynthia would find out that it was a lie. But the memory remains dear to her because of her happiness at that moment, her feeling that she was luckier than anyone in the world to be naked beside Lenore Lamont in Lenore’s bed, with PJ Harvey on the stereo. She knew instinctively that it was a lovely day outside, warm and breezy, and she thought that she was going to teach Lenore about life.
III.
When she gets to work her telephone indicates that she has already missed ten calls. Unfortunate, as at least five of them will have been Jax. She settles down behind the desk and takes a breath, feels the personality melting off her. She is completely different here. She takes orders. She is meek. She complies.
She surveys her surroundings.
The top floor of the Titan building, just east of Grand Central Station, is always warm. The heat has no clear source; there is no radiator and there are no ducts in the ceiling of the great foyer, which is b
ordered on one side by windows, on two sides by impressive offices, on the fourth side by a bank of elevators.
Against the large wall of windows facing west, there is a ficus tree that Cynthia mists each morning and each evening before she leaves. When the sun sets, the tree casts its shadow across the marble floor and she is comforted by its familiar slow progression toward her desk.
Cynthia sits out in the center of the high-ceilinged room, so she always feels a bit marooned. The hall is full of echoes and the music of Titan’s latest find. Cynthia checks behind herself occasionally to make sure no one has crept up. It would be easy to startle her out there in the middle of everything.
Her job is to smile when the doors open and greet the people she knows or knows of. To those she does not recognize, she says, “Welcome to Titan. How may I direct you?”
But those who are allowed access to the top floor of Titan are an important breed. Cynthia thinks she’s maybe asked that question twice.
IV.
Jax Powers-Kline comes in for the day two hours after Cynthia. She never says hello. Today is Monday and she is wearing tight jeans tucked into cowboy boots and an orange velvet blazer. The elevator doors open. Without lowering her copy of the Times, Jax knows that the secretary is smiling at her. She pauses before exiting and waits to hear it:
“Hello, Jax. How are you today?”
Jax was out until four A.M. last night and she’s not in the mood. She inhales, lowers the newspaper just enough to see the secretary. Raising it again, she reads as she walks to the right and dodges the central desk, hoping the secretary won’t talk again. She fumbles beneath the paper, still reading, for the handle of her door. Then she has it open and just for a moment the life-size cardboard figure of Elvis that Jax has set up in her office peers out into the foyer. Jax shuts the door behind her.