Lonesome Lies Before Us

by Don Lee

  As quickly as he could, Yadin got out of there. He climbed into his van, and noticed the cargo door on the passenger side was ajar. He walked around the van. Someone had punched in the lock cylinder and taken almost everything that had been in the back. The glove compartment was open and empty as well. Thankfully the person had not touched his spiral-bound notebooks or the cassettes for Lonesome Lies Before Us. The tapes were copies, not the originals, which he had left in Rosarita Bay for safekeeping, but they wouldn’t have been able to listen to the album or the B-sides at the meeting. He supposed no one—thieves, in particular—had cassette players anymore. He had almost brought his TASCAM along with him for the meeting, but Mallory had checked with her manager, and he had told her that the head of A&R at Mirrorwood was an audiophile and had a collection of vintage stereo equipment, including an old cassette deck, in his office.

  There hadn’t been much that was valuable inside the van: driving directions, sunglasses, his hard hat, safety vest, and clipboard, a flashlight, a tire-pressure gauge, his acoustic earmuffs and ventilator mask. Other than the sunglasses, why would anyone have stolen those items? What most disturbed him was the theft of his soft-sided cooler bag, which had contained his bento box with his lunch and his bottles of mineral water. He had to eat something. He headed back west on Sunset, passing fast-food franchises, which would not do. He saw a food truck, but after parking on a side street, he went up to the truck and discovered they were serving spicy fusion tacos. The sun was blinding. The light was so harsh and flat in this city. He was beginning to get a headache, agitated by the brightness, all the cars and people, the asphalt and concrete and stoplights and buildings and noise.

  He bought a garden salad from a convenience store, making sure there was no dressing on it, and ate it in his van. As he was backing up in the little parking lot, he heard a loud thump against the rear door. A kid ran up to his window, holding a skateboard. “What the fuck you doing? What the fuck you doing, man?” he screamed. “You trying to kill me?” Then he raised his arm and pointed a flashlight at Yadin—his just-stolen flashlight?—and flicked the beam on and off repeatedly into his eyes. “Asshole!” the kid said, and skated off.

  He needed somewhere quiet to sit for a minute. He needed to get off this street. He saw a church on the corner, flat-roofed, windowless, with stucco wall slabs painted beige and green. A cross was on one side, a mural on another of a choir in a circle, hands joined. He walked inside the empty sanctuary, which had pews made with Scandinavian blond wood, carpeted in a taupe-colored loop-pile Berber, maybe from Shaw or Beaulieu. Inside the foyer stood a security guard, a gun in a holster on his belt. The guard nodded to Yadin, bobbing his chin toward a steel donation box on a stand, which was secured with a lock and bolted to the floor. There wasn’t a suggested amount. Yadin put two one-dollar bills through the slot, and the guard frowned, so Yadin shoved one more into the box, which seemed to satisfy him. From a brochure on a table, Yadin saw that this was a United Church of Christ. He wasn’t familiar with the denomination. Oddly there was no cross behind the pulpit, just another large painting similar to the mural outside—same artist—that depicted caricatures of choir members holding candles in a lurid, goony palette.

  He sat down in a pew and took out his rosary and made the Sign of the Cross. He skipped the Apostles’ Creed because it was long and complicated and he had yet to memorize it all, moving ahead to Our Father, then whispered three Hail Marys:

  Hail Mary,

  Full of Grace,

  The Lord is with thee.

  Blessed art thou among women,

  and blessed is the fruit

  of thy womb, Jesus.

  Holy Mary,

  Mother of God,

  pray for us sinners,

  now, and at the hour of our death.

  Amen.

  That was as far as he had gotten into the rosary sequence, so he simply continued to push the beads between his thumb and index finger, trying to calm himself, to let himself be subsumed and borne away. He prayed that he would be able to make things right with Jeanette and Joe, that the three of them could carry on as before, as if nothing had happened. He prayed that no one at Mirrorwood would laugh at him, that the A&R people would be enticed by the idea of Mallory doing an album of his songs. He prayed that Caroline and Franklin would not get divorced, that the library and church would persevere. He prayed that he would be able to keep his house and self-release his album. He prayed that he would never have to leave the peace and quiet and sanctity of Rosarita Bay again.

  But as he prayed, it occurred to him that it wouldn’t be as easy as attending this one meeting, giving Mallory his B-sides for her own album, and then being done with it. First he’d have to hire a lawyer, maybe a manager, too, to negotiate his contract and make sure he wasn’t getting screwed. Then surely he’d have to return to L.A., perhaps multiple times, to work with Charlie Peacock or whoever they chose as the producer, because he couldn’t trust that his songs would not be dumbed down for pop radio and prettified with an orchestra or harp or some such nonsense, that they wouldn’t be layered and gridded and click-tracked, that Mallory’s vocals wouldn’t be comped and Auto-Tuned and buried under some Wall of Sound bullshit. He’d want to be in the studio for all the recording sessions, then he’d want to stick around for the mixing and mastering. That was, if Mirrorwood and the producer would allow him that much participation and control, which was unlikely. Hell, he might have to insist on producing Mallory’s album himself, withholding his songs unless they agreed. He might have to be in L.A. for months.

  Something different occurred to him then—something he had not considered at all up to now, thinking it impossible. What if Mirrorwood surprised everyone and was willing to take on Yadin and Lonesome Lies Before Us, either as it was, from his cassettes, or re-recorded analog at Sound City Studios, tracked live, stripped down, exactly the way he wanted? What if they actually acceded to his demands that he and Mallory would not have to tour or do any promo?

  They might make those promises, they might even put it in his contract, but then they’d ask him to do just one little thing. One little show, one little interview, one little photo shoot. Soon they’d want meet-and-greets, music videos, festival appearances, record-store signings. Mallory would wheedle and pester him until he consented, and from there it would never stop. He’d get sucked right back into everything. How would he be able to do any of that with his Ménière’s and stage fright? Booze and drugs had never worked well for him, and he knew that he could not depend on them at all now. He would be defenseless. The fact was, he had never been cut out for this business. It had been ludicrous for him to enter it. He just didn’t have the constitution for it.

  He walked out of the church. In his van, he started driving west toward Mirrorwood’s office, squinting into the glare of the sun. He was feeling dizzy and a bit nauseous, and then all of a sudden it began to swamp him, the familiar whoosh and roar in his right ear, his head squeezing, his vision narrowing, the horizon listing. What was triggering it? The stress of the meeting, the anxiety of being in the city? Had there been something in the salad? Salt or MSG or chemical preservatives? Or maybe it had been that skater kid, flicking the flashlight in his eyes. He veered the van to the side of the road, cutting off another car, the driver honking and screaming and flipping him the finger. Sweating and hyperventilating, Yadin put the van’s transmission into park, closed his eyes, and waited for the vertigo to overwhelm him.

  Someone rapped on his window. It was a cop, LAPD. There was another cop, a woman, on the other side of the van. Yadin rolled down his window, was asked for his license, registration, and proof of insurance. In his side mirror, he saw their police car behind the van, lights on the roof flashing red, white, and blue. He flipped down the visor and tugged out his registration and insurance from the plastic pouch there. When the male cop took the documents and began walking back to his car, Yadin opened his door. “Steinie!” the female cop yelled. The male cop whirled arou
nd and pulled out his gun and pointed it at Yadin. “On the ground! On the ground!” he yelled. Yadin tumbled out of his van onto all fours and vomited.

  He passed out—for how long, he did not know. Time wrinkled, his awareness of events buckled. He vaguely recalled being thrown against the hood of the police car, frisked, and cuffed. There might have been questions about drinking, being under the influence of drugs. “Nothing, nothing,” he remembered mumbling. He might have been administered a Breathalyzer test. He heard the cops discussing a possible stroke, a heart attack. He lost consciousness again. When he came out of it, two EMTs were examining him. A group of passersby huddled around him on the sidewalk.

  “Ménière’s. I have Ménière’s,” Yadin said.

  “What’s he saying?” the male cop asked.

  “I’m having a Ménière’s attack,” Yadin said. “Just let me sit.”

  They allowed him to ride through the episode, and gradually—was it ten minutes, or an hour?—he surfaced. “We’ll take you to the hospital,” one of the EMTs said.

  “No,” Yadin said. “I have a meeting. I have to go to a meeting.”

  “You’re in no condition to drive,” the female cop said.

  “I’m okay,” he said.

  “Doubtful.”

  He stood up and, not knowing how else to demonstrate his lucidity, tightroped a straight line on the sidewalk, then retraced his steps. The male cop handed back his license, registration, and insurance, the female cop warned him to fix his exhaust system, and, unexpectedly, they let him go.

  He was still shaky and weak. It was a miracle he had been able to put on that little show and walk with one foot in front of the other. He checked his watch: 1:22. He was late. There were several missed calls and voicemails indicated on his cellphone, all from Mallory. He pulled his van onto Sunset Boulevard, his head thudding, his shirt seeped in sweat. His right ear was blocked up, and he swallowed again and again to try to pop it.

  He got caught at every stoplight, and then couldn’t find a parking space in front of the Doheny Sunset building. Mallory had told him there was an indoor lot, but he missed the entrance. He made a U-turn, drove past the building on the other side of the street, made another U-turn, and then swung into a loading zone a block before the building. He looked up at it. The entire east side of the building was a mammoth billboard. Or not a billboard, but as if the ad had been painted directly on the façade and windows. Then he figured it out. Some sort of material, maybe vinyl, had been stretched and adhered into place. He hadn’t noticed it the first time, coming from the west.

  A woman had her hands pressed against a glass wall in front of her, as if trapped in an invisible box. She was young and blond, with a comely body, dressed only in a black bikini or underwear, but she had been distressed with kohl eyes and stringy hair, as if ragged out on heroin. The ad was for Calvin Klein, abbreviated CK. As Yadin stared longer at the image, he noticed a subliminal message, intended or not. The leg and frame of a table behind the model and the dipping contour of her bikini bottom, together with the logo, spelled out FUCK.

  His phone rang. Mallory. “Where are you?” she asked. “I’ve been trying to reach you. Are you stuck somewhere?”

  “I’m down the street,” Yadin told her.

  “How far away?”

  “I’m parked on the next block.”

  “Then come up!”

  “I’m in a loading zone,” he said.

  “So what? Just leave it there.”

  “Can you come outside?” he asked. “I need to talk to you.”

  “We can talk later,” she said. “Everyone’s waiting.”

  “I really need to talk to you first, Mallory.”

  He watched the front of the Doheny Sunset for her. Everyone going in and out of the building, everyone on the sidewalk, was so slickly dressed and good-looking. None of these people, Yadin thought, had ever had a pimple in their lives. BMWs, Porsches, Range Rovers, and Mercedes-Benzes drove past, as well as a Hummer, a Bentley, and a Tesla. His ear popped and released.

  She came out of the building and glanced right, then left. She was dressed entirely in black: strappy sandals, skinny jeans that snugged her butt, and a tight, sleeveless turtleneck top that varnished her breasts. She had styled her hair differently, parted on the side, a decidedly younger look. Her skin was lucent, her lips gleamed. Yadin honked his horn, and she walked up to his van.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Can you hop in?”

  “We need to be upstairs!”

  “One minute. That’s all I’m asking.”

  She opened the door and sat down in the passenger seat. “You look awful. Are you sick?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “But that’s not the problem. I have something to tell you.”

  “What?”

  There was a sudden ruckus. A white Cadillac Escalade screeched to the front of the Doheny Sunset, and a young woman ran across the sidewalk toward the car, flanked by two bodyguards in suits. Immediately they were swarmed by a dozen paparazzi, snapping their cameras and shouting. Where had they come from? Had they been hiding near the entrance the entire time? The girl and her bodyguards jumped into the Cadillac and raced off, chased by a convoy of cars and motorcycles.

  After a few moments, Mallory asked Yadin, “What do you have to tell me?”

  “You won’t like it.”

  She breathed out heavily. “You’re not coming up, are you?” she said.

  “No.”

  She turned away from him. “I knew this would happen. I knew you’d sabotage it somehow.”

  “I can’t do it,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Nothing’s changed. You haven’t changed at all.”

  “I have, though. That’s the thing,” he told her.

  “This is Raleigh all over again,” she said. “Why did you run away? I was so angry with you. I wanted to hurt you, the way you’d hurt me. That’s why I ripped off your song. I thought you’d at least call me—even if it was just to tell me I was a conniving bitch—and I could finally talk to you again, but you never did. Nothing. Just silence. Why did you leave me, Yadin? Everything would have been different.”

  “We were just kids,” Yadin said. “It wasn’t real. What we had wasn’t real.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “You would’ve left me eventually,” he said.

  “That’s not true. I wouldn’t have. I was in love with you. Why couldn’t you believe that I could love you?” Mallory asked. “I’m still in love with you.”

  He didn’t—couldn’t—believe her. She was simply saying so to get him to attend the meeting.

  “It’s pitiful,” she told him. “You broke my heart, and I’m still in love with you.”

  It was wrecking Yadin, listening to her. Couldn’t she see what she was doing to him? So much of him ached to believe her, but he knew that what she was saying was a lie. She was acting. She was an actress. She was reciting lines from some old soap opera script.

  “I always wondered how I’d feel if I ever saw you again,” she said. “Now I know. I still love you.”

  For a moment, he allowed himself to become engulfed by everything he had yearned for, all these years. For so long, he had anguished that he had done it all wrong, that he should never have deserted Mallory. Everything would have been different. He had never stopped thinking about her. He had never stopped loving her. Yet he’d never let himself fully inhabit those feelings, those longings, because he had thought it impossible he would ever have the chance to be with her again.

  Now, sitting with her in his van, he knew it was still impossible. The woman across from him was a stranger. She belonged to a world that was not only foreign to Yadin, but repellent. She was not in love with him. She was in love with the boy and the girl they had been in Raleigh. He had been in love with them, too. But those people were gone. They didn’t exist anymore. What they had once had together could not be revived.

  “We could be happy,
” she told him. “You don’t have to keep hating yourself, Yadin. It’s okay to allow yourself to be happy. Stay with me. Will you stay with me?”

  He stared up at the ad on the side of the building again. The fatigue from the Ménière’s attack began to pool into him. “I can’t,” he said.

  “Why? Tell me why.”

  “I just can’t do it,” he told her. “I would die here.”

  “Because of those weasels up there?” she asked. “Fuck ’em. Fuck Mirrorwood. We don’t need them. I won’t ever make you go to another meeting again, all right?”

  He lifted the notebooks and cassettes of his B-sides from the floor of the van. “Take these,” he said. “It’s everything that didn’t make it onto the record. I want you to have them.”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t want them.”

  “They’re not scraps. They’re good songs. They’d be perfect for you on a solo album. It could be your comeback.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “It’s what would make me happy, Mallory,” he said. “Nothing would make me happier than having you record these songs.”

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “I’m not interested in doing anything without you. That was the whole point—the only point. You assumed I had other motives, didn’t you? You’ve never had any faith in me.”

  She got out of the van, shut the door, and began to walk away, then after several steps turned around and returned to the van, bending down to peer through the window.

  “Will you mail Lonesome to me when it’s done?” she asked. “Cassette, CD, I’ll take whatever. Or are you going to make me wait to order it?”

  “I’ll send you the first copy,” he said.