by Lisa Ko
“He seems nice.”
“He’s planning on law school.” Elaine leaned closer. “You know, I’m sure they wouldn’t want me to say this, but I’m going to say it anyway, because you know me and my big mouth. Your parents are heartbroken that you’re not going back to school. I know it seems like we’re a bunch of old fuddy-duddies, wanting to control your life, but believe it or not, I was young once, too. I know how it goes. But in this case, I must say, your parents know what they’re talking about. But. Have you thought of suggesting to them a school in the city if you don’t want to be upstate? I mean, I love your parents, but I get why a kid your age would prefer to be here rather than Ridgeborough. You could always stay with Jim and me. Think about it, will you?”
He heard Angel’s voice across the room; heard her laugh. He’d have to text her again, keep trying until she gave their friendship another chance. She said he needed to figure his shit out, but wasn’t that a sign of caring? “I’m going to Carlough,” he told Elaine. “For summer semester.” Saying it made his shoulders slump, but too late; he’d given Peter the essay.
Elaine clapped. “Terrific!”
He told Kay and Peter he was sorry he couldn’t join them at the Hennings’, but he had to work early tomorrow, even though his next shift actually wasn’t until Monday.
“We’ll see you soon,” Peter said. “Summer session is in two months, so plan on being home a few weeks before that, to get settled in and squared away. The first week of May would be best.”
Kay said, “I’m glad you’ve decided to do the right thing.”
He had to do as much as he could in the city for the next two months, before he left, starting with tonight. He’d meet up with Roland and his friends. He deserved a night out.
He was almost at the corner when he saw Charles smoking a cigarette in front of a fire hydrant. Angel had always hated smoking, called it gross. She must have changed her mind.
“Hey,” Charles said.
“Hey, man.”
“I want to talk to you for a second.”
Daniel stopped. “All right.”
Charles tossed his cigarette to the sidewalk, ground it out with his shoe, and took a pack of gum out of his pocket, popping a piece into his mouth.
“Can I have a piece?”
Charles tossed him the pack. “Keep it. Seriously.”
“Thanks.” The gum was a green square, slightly bitter with artificial sweetener. Daniel immediately wanted to spit it out, but swallowed it instead.
“I know what you did,” Charles said.
“I’ve done lots of things. You see my show the other night?”
“I respect Angel’s decision not to take this to the courts to try to get her money back, although I don’t agree with her. But you better not try to talk to her again.”
“Wait. Hold on.”
“Are you seriously going to deny this? I know you stole ten thousand dollars from her. She’s the kindest person I know and you took advantage of her.”
“I didn’t steal.”
“So tell that to Angel’s parents. They go on and on about what a good friend you are, how you guys grew up together like brother and sister. It’s disgusting. You should tell them, or I will.”
Daniel took off, half-walking and half-running, toward the subway. He couldn’t please anyone. But he wanted, more than anything, to not feel this terrible about himself.
When he emerged from the station at Canal Street, his phone rang. He scrambled for it, hoping it would be her.
It was Peter. “Your mother and I looked at the forms. What is wrong with you? You know we can’t submit that essay. I don’t even want to go to Carlough so I don’t know why I’m writing this. What is this garbage? We gave you another chance, which you clearly do not deserve, and this is how you repay us?”
Daniel reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. Under a streetlamp he unrolled it. The small classes and liberal arts education that Carlough College offers, in particular its top-rate economics and political science programs, would allow me to pursue my professional career goals. He felt disappointment, edged with relief. “Sorry, Dad. It was a joke. Let me run over and I’ll give the real essay to you now.”
“Not to mention, you were rude to Angel tonight at the party. Now, I know you feel like she betrayed your friendship because she told us about your gambling, but you could at least try to be civil to her. She was worried for you, Daniel. That’s why she told us. To help you.”
“Where are you now? At the restaurant? At Jim and Elaine’s? I’ll come give you the essay. I have it, it’s good.”
“Don’t bother. You have made your decision loud and clear.”
“Dad!”
“This is the last straw. You have done enough.”
“Can I talk to Mom?” he said, but Peter had already hung up.
He ducked into a bar on Grand Street and ordered a whiskey. The bar was small and dark, nondescript, a jukebox playing AC/DC’s “Hells Bells” and a video slot machine glowing insistently at him from a corner. He turned his back to it and looked through his phone, went through a few messages and deleted them, saw a note he’d saved months ago, when he was still at Potsdam, with the name and address of an underground poker club in the city. Two hundred to buy in, Kyle had said. The address was on Lafayette, a few blocks away.
He deleted the note and finished his drink. He would go to Jim and Elaine’s to give his parents the right essay, though he didn’t know their address. He walked east, kept taking the green lights, staying on Grand, then saw a bank and went inside to get cash. His finger hovered over the button that said $50, but he hit $500, the bulk of his account, and watched the bills shoot out.
On the corner of Grand and Lafayette, the address for the poker club reverberated in his mind. He headed south to where Howard Street crossed over to Hester. It wasn’t too late, he could turn and go right to Roland’s, go right past the building, which was narrow, no doorman, only an intercom. He checked his phone; no messages. He was frightened by how much he was about to fuck up, by his lack of desire to stop himself, the rising anticipation at the prospect of falling down, failing harder, and going straight to tilt; he’d known from the moment he left the bar exactly where he would end up. He pressed the intercom button. “What?” a guy’s voice said. He provided the password, and for a moment, a feeble hope hung in the air that it would be the wrong one. But the door buzzed open.
The club was a one-bedroom apartment with two tables piled with poker chips. There was a large TV with a basketball game playing on mute, a counter with buckets of beer. Daniel gave his five hundred to a woman in a black suit and waited for a seat. The other players were all men, of different races and ages, and he was one of the best dressed. He approached a table, ready to play.
IT WAS THE DEADEST time of morning, before sunrise, when the street sweepers and garbage trucks had yet to emerge, and Daniel sat on a bench along the East River, wind blowing in an unsynced delay, hitting his face seconds after it rippled over his coat. At the beginning of the night, so many hours ago, when he left the restaurant, he’d had a hat, but lost it along the way. He’d lost the Carlough College essay as well, the one he had meant to deliver to Kay and Peter, though it was saved on his computer. He could e-mail it to them if he wanted.
He wanted breakfast, coffee, but was out of money. The men had been tougher than they looked. He’d known early on that he was in over his head, but kept playing despite their suppressed excitement. They thought he would lose so much he would break down, and they were waiting for the big show, his inevitable unraveling, but each loss felt like shucking off another weight and removing an uncomfortable article of clothing, so that by the end of the night he wasn’t crying but grinning. When he left, he heard one guy say to the other, “Wacko.”
He felt a savage euphoria. The night had confirmed his failures, and he’d freed himself from having to fight his inability to live up to Peter and Kay’s hopes. He didn’t want
to go to Carlough, wasn’t ever going to be the kind of guy Angel respected, some law-school-applying moral citizen. God, it was great to be himself again.
From his bench he could see winking lights on the water and make out flashes of ships as they moved toward the ocean. He heard the distant bellows of boats, purple, low and soothing, nautical mating calls. This was where he used to come with his mother, walking from the Rutgers Street apartment, and once she had told him that when she was a little girl, she had loved going to the river in Minjiang. “We would watch how the waves went off into nothing and that was the place I wanted to go,” she said. “Far, far away.” He never asked her who we was.
The sky pinkened at its edges, white clouds marbleizing into pastels, and the night broke into patches. Daniel’s toes curled inside his boots. Well, she’d done it. She’d gone far away from him.
The sun tore the night into orange and yellow streaks. The river became blue and glassy. A wave of anger broke over him, and he wanted to talk to her, tell her how angry he was.
He dialed the number. The phone rang, but by the fifth ring he knew she wasn’t going to answer and he relaxed. The woman on the recorded voice mail message didn’t identify herself by name, but he recognized his mother immediately. Her voice was reedy and trumpety, yet her tones were clipped and plucked, a flawless-sounding Mandarin he didn’t remember her having before.
He left a message with his name and number. If she didn’t call him, it would be all the evidence he needed.
Nine
Daniel knew before they finished the first song that they would kill it, that he had arrived at the sweet spot when he was no longer conscious of being onstage. They had practiced plenty and he hadn’t drunk tonight, but the secret was more than that, it was believing in it, even if the songs were crappy and overwrought. At the end of the set he awoke to find himself onstage with Roland, covered in sweat, the room vibrating around him in sheets of violet and lavender, a roar of cheering and clapping.
When they returned to the floor, Daniel felt hands thump his back and shoulders. He heard voices he didn’t recognize. “Damn, you can play.” He followed Roland’s head through the crowd, stopping every few feet to be complimented by someone else. Roland caught his eye and grinned. Daniel was a prizefighter, surrounded by his entourage after a landing a KO. He’d scored a comeback. He’d fucking showed them.
At the bar, waiting for Javier and his band to go on, Daniel recognized Hutch, the Jupiter booker, in a beige canvas coat and faded dad jeans. Someone else intercepted Roland, and Hutch said to Daniel, “Didn’t think you had it in you after the last time.”
“I’m full of surprises.”
“I like what you guys did with the sound. Maybe the vocals and drums can be amped up even more. Push that distortion, up the reverb, you know.”
“We’ll see. Thanks.”
Roland’s friend Yasmin, of the theremin and melodica and strange, yowly songs, who always called him Darren or David, or one time, puzzlingly, Thomas, punched him in the arm and said, “Daniel, great job.”
“First time you got it right,” he said, smiling.
People wanted to know what other bands he’d played in, how long he’d known Roland. One guy, whose pupils were so black and enlarged his eyes resembled marbles, told Daniel that Psychic Hearts sounded like pork chops. “Hold on, my friend’s here and I want to say hi,” Daniel said. “I’ll be back.” It felt good, being the one making the excuse to get away.
WITHIN A WEEK, EVERYTHING changed. He and Roland lined up several more shows, and Hutch said he’d come to the one on May 15, at a space out in Gowanus, and that if things went well, he would keep them in mind for any openings later this year.
Summer was coming, the city delirious with warmth, the air damp and metallic, and Daniel’s phone chirped incessantly with messages, what was going on that night, what had gone on last night, and even if the music he was playing was not the music he wanted to play, even if it meant he no longer had time to work on his own songs, at least he was playing something, going to shows and parties, charging drinks and car services to his credit card, wincing each time he swiped but telling himself he’d worry about it later, that right now, it was worth it to live a little. Because he had done it. He’d reached Peak Coolness. At a secret show in a Bushwick basement, watching a band who sang lyrics about animals written in this complicated sonnet-like poetry style, or drinking on a Sunday afternoon with Roland and Javi and Nate while listening to a Lithuanian metal act, he would look around and think that this was no second-tier upstate wannabe party, this was the real deal, and it was only a matter of time before the life he had been waiting for would finally happen.
In the future, this would strike him as delusional. But lately, he was so rarely by himself he had no time to dwell on how he’d been ghosted by his own mother, or Peter and Kay, who also hadn’t called—though he hadn’t contacted them either—or Angel.
A writer from a music blog interviewed Psychic Hearts, e-mailing Roland a Q&A that he filled out and forwarded to Daniel.
Q: Roland, you’re a veteran in the scene, having played in a number of different bands. What’s it like working with Daniel? Do you both collaborate on songwriting and production?
ROLAND FUENTES (RF): Well, Daniel and I have been friends since sixth grade, so we’ve done some embarrassing projects together (I’ll leave it to him to decide if he wants to talk more about our power punk days—LOL, straightedge 4-eva!) but the advantage of working with someone you’ve got such deep history with is that our communication onstage is practically second nature. It’s like working with family. While I’m doing the songwriting and producing for Psychic Hearts, the songs also have DW written all over them—he does these insane key changes and melodies that are out of this world, and he doesn’t even have to think about them, he sees them.
DANIEL WILKINSON (DW): Roland’s a true visionary and a born front man. Anyone who’s seen him onstage can vouch for that.
Q: The band’s latest songs are more amped, more energetic than the earlier material. Has this shift in style been a deliberate one?
RF: It’s been an organic decision to move in this newer direction. It’s what feels right for the project and it really plays to both our strengths.
Javier, who had an apartment full of cameras and video equipment, took a picture of them on his rooftop at dusk, and when the photo appeared alongside the interview, Daniel was taken aback to see that Roland was in clear focus, while he was in the shadows. Or was he being paranoid? At Tres Locos, he passed his phone to Evan to show him the interview, who agreed he did look out of focus. “They’re fucking you over,” Evan said, “and you should watch out.” That night, Daniel pulled the link up on his laptop and looked at the picture more closely. A dull, queasy feeling spread through him. He had often felt like this that first year in Ridgeborough, and with Carla Moody, whom he’d been with for a few months his freshman year at Carlough, when he would wake up in the middle of the night with her sleeping next to him and think, You’re only with her because you don’t want to be alone. Most recently, he had felt it last September, in the dorm room of a girl he’d been crushing on for weeks—this was when he was still going to classes—mouths moving together, skin buzzing from the weed they’d just smoked. He saw her eyes move a little to the left, a quick glance at the wall, and detected what he thought was her waning interest. He got up and left.
When Roland came home, he said, “You see the interview?”
Daniel looked at his friend’s hopeful smile and closed his laptop. He didn’t want to be like Evan, yelling about being fucked over. Psychic Hearts was blowing up. He and Roland were on their way to something big. “It’s great. Great picture, too.”
DANIEL SAT WITH THAD and Roland on a rectangle of stained orange carpet, listening to the tracks they had recorded to tape. Thad ran a recording studio in the basement of a three-story house in Ridgewood, where he lived with ten other roommates. Daniel read the liner notes Roland had w
ritten for the cassette and saw the sentence: All songs written by Roland Fuentes.
“Listen.” Thad rewound. “I like that.”
Roland nodded. “That glitchy sound.”
The wall, a patchwork of plywood sheets, was lined with posters for performances by sound artists and video jockeys, bicycle repair workshops, an anti-gentrification rally in a nearby park. Tall shelves were crammed with mikes and amps, drums of all sizes, cratefuls of scavenged instruments—a dented trumpet, a silver harmonica, a plastic flute. A piano sat next to a TASCAM four-track and an Apple monitor with a screensaver of salamanders morphing into monkeys. While they recorded, a drummer visiting from Berlin napped on a couch by the piano, waking up periodically to smoke. “It’s good,” he said, when Daniel suggested that a recording studio might not be the best place to sleep. “I’ve got the jet lag.”
Daniel put the liner notes down. A tangle of cables lay next to cardboard boxes full of cassettes by other Meloncholia Records bands. Later, when the only evidence of him having been in here was the Psychic Hearts demo, the cassettes would be filed away into one of these boxes, all songs written by Roland Fuentes.
“I’d like to bring in a fuller, more layered sound,” Roland was saying. “Maybe even a drummer, another guitarist.”
Thad said, “I can totally see that. Heavier, more guitar harmonies.”
Roland turned to Daniel. “What do you think?”
Daniel picked at a callus on his index finger. He stared at the posters and imagined his mother watching an experimental noise artist manipulating sounds on a laptop, a what-the-fuck expression on her face. Why was he even thinking about her?
“Cool.” He was having trouble mustering up enthusiasm to match Roland and Thad’s. Their friends read books about gentrification and food justice and spoke about the importance of community outreach and safe spaces, yet they were all college students or unpaid interns funded with credit cards paid for by their parents, and none of them had even grown up in the city. Thad’s roommate Sophie, who had turquoise dreadlocks and cooked meals from ingredients scavenged from Dumpsters, asked Daniel if he was familiar with socialist food models since he’d been born in China, and he told her was born in Manhattan. Thad had said, “It’s dope that you left school and rejected your parents’ boners for academia. It’s such a scam, college, being a professor, all of that.” Uncomfortable at hearing someone else talk smack about his parents, Daniel asked, “How’d you know they’re professors?” Thad said, “Roland told me.” Roland had told Daniel that Thad funded Meloncholia with the monthly allowance his parents gave him. “I hear your dad’s a hedge fund manager,” Daniel said. “Yeah,” Thad said, “he fucking sucks.” Daniel envied people who could take their origins for granted, who could decide to hate their parents.