by Jeff Gomez
Craig opens his laptop. Josh sent him half a dozen emails last night about various things he wants Craig to tackle by the end of the week. Rewriting their welcome emails, starting a newsletter, getting an RFP on a CRM system so they can start a Seatr loyalty program. The emails were sent starting at one in the morning and continued until almost four, one every half hour or so.
Despite everything he has to do, Craig decides to do some research for his lunch this weekend.
He hadn’t meant to try and get together with Ashley—at least not yet. He figured they’d trade emails for a while and, a few weeks later—after reestablishing a rapport, becoming a presence in her life—he’d suggest a phone call. From there they’d move on to texting, and only then would he suggest some sort of meeting. He thought it’d be drinks or, if he was brash, dinner. But lunch on a Saturday? He doesn’t know what came over him except he was excited to think of her out there thinking about him, so he came up with a way to see her sooner rather than later.
He opens a Word doc and types the names of all the restaurants he knows in and around Kitty. He then goes through the list—visiting their websites, looking them up on Yelp—trying to see if one’s suitable for Saturday. One by one he decides against them.
Too fancy. Too casual. Too public.
He decides this is all crazy since he doesn’t really know what this lunch is. He’s searched for more information about Ashley online, to see if she’s married or divorced or has kids or what, but all he can find is her LinkedIn profile. Without any more information he doesn’t know if this is a date or just a casual get-together, doesn’t know if this is closure or some sort of new beginning.
After going through the list a second time, he decides on Nolan’s. It’s nice and takes reservations, comfortable without being overtly romantic. He grabs his phone and goes into the hallway to make a reservation. As he passes the coders in the kitchen, he can hear them talking about Bitcoin.
“Hello, Nolan’s.” The woman’s voice is perky. “How can I help you?”
Craig makes a reservation for noon on Saturday. He sends a quick email to Ashley telling her the location and the time. After he presses SEND his heart starts to race.
Heading back into Seatr, he sees Josh standing near his desk. Josh is wearing brown cargo shorts, blue Toms, and a bright green T-shirt that says WHO’S YOUR DATA? As Craig passes the group of coders, he can hear they’re now talking about Space X.
“Craig, my man. Pretty nice, eh?”
“Nice?”
“I understand you took the shuttle this morning.”
“Oh, yeah.” Craig sits down, wobbling for a second on the ball. “It was nice all right. I was the only one on it.”
“Well, it’s early days.”
“But most of these guys don’t even drive.” Craig nods toward the area near the windows, where he used to sit. It’s now filled with bikes. Now the bikes have the view. “The coders all live in the new condos down the street. Some of them even walk to work. The shuttle probably drives right past them.”
“We’re growing, Craig. Growing. I’m the CEO, remember? I’m trying to think two moves ahead.”
“But the money it must have cost to—”
Josh interrupts him.
“Craig, you need to trust me. I’ve done this before, okay?”
“Okay, Josh. It’s just—the site’s still not making any money and I’m worried that we’re going to—”
Josh puts his hands on Craig’s shoulders. His grip is firm, his strength impressive. Craig looks at Josh’s face. He’s lean and tan and there’s not a wrinkle on him. Josh says, again, “Trust me.”
Craig replies, dreamily, “I trust you.”
Josh removes his grip, his arms falling back to his side. Craig shakes off the trance he’d momentarily fallen into.
“By the way,” Josh says. “I don’t want to make a big deal about it, but I noticed you didn’t use your laptop.”
“What?”
The Ping-Pong game ends with clapping and cheers. James exits the conference triumphantly, arms raised. A few seconds later a board member shuffles out, his eyes glued to the carpet.
“On the shuttle ride,” Josh says. “Just now. You didn’t use your laptop.”
“Oh, I was just relaxing and—wait, how did you know?”
“Server logs from the Wi-Fi.”
“That can tell whether or not I was working?”
Josh shrugs.
“Not exactly. It can only tell whether or not you were accessing the network.”
“So what if I was just using Excel or something?”
“We can tell that, too—but not until later. There’s a program on all the company laptops that records your keystrokes, but that only syncs once a day.”
Craig just sits there, balanced precariously on the yoga ball. In the conference room someone’s started another game of Ping-Pong. Different bits of music seep out of various headphones and a guy in the corner—Josh described him last week to Craig as a “brand evangelist”—is wearing nothing but swim trunks as he watches Breaking Bad on an iPad.
“Look, about the shuttle,” Josh says. “It’s no big deal. Really. Next time, just—you know—try a little harder. We all have a lot to do around here.”
“I will, Josh. I will. Speaking of which, I got your emails last night. When do you ever sleep?”
“What? Oh, that.” He leans in again. “That wasn’t me.”
“How do you mean?”
“I really wasn’t up. Well, at least not working. I was with Alex, a girl I met at the tech meetup. We went back to her place. She works for Pillw and, well, let’s just say a few pillows were indeed involved, if you know what I mean.”
“But—the emails.”
“That’s just an app called Schedulr. You preload in a bunch of emails and tell it when to send them. It plugs right into your email. To the person getting the email, it looks like it was sent at two in the morning or whatever.”
“But why? What’s point?”
“Motivation,” Josh says. “Team building. If everyone thinks I’m working nonstop, it’ll inspire them to do the same and, in just a few months, we’ll have a world-class product on our hands.”
“But why are you telling me this? Now I know it’s not really you.”
“I don’t know, Craig. You’re different.” He waves his hands around the room. “For a lot of these guys it’s their first job. But you—you’re seasoned.”
The word sinks in.
“Just get to that stuff when you can, okay? If we get our act together we can grab some of the summer travel action. I have a friend at the Daily Beast.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, Tina Brown. I built the New Yorker’s database. Anyway, she’ll run a feature on us if we can make it worth their while.”
“But the site’s still not working.”
“Craig. Craig. What did I just say? Trust me.”
Josh’s hands are placed again on Craig’s shoulders.
Craig says, slowly, “I trust you.”
Mark pulls up to the Dark Star Lounge. He parks alongside the building, forgetting at first to lock the rental car. He backtracks a few steps and hits the button on the keychain. The horn squeaks, the headlights blink.
As he walks around to the club’s entrance, he can’t believe how big the building is. It’s long and low and takes up pretty much the entire block. A sign above the entrance says NO REENTRY WITHOUT HANDSTAMP. As he approaches the large double doors Mark starts to get nervous. He’s not sure there are enough Bottlecap fans in town, let alone the world, to fill a building this large.
Dark Star doesn’t open until seven, but he’s meeting the writer for a drink at five. Mark checks his phone. 4:56. He knocks on the door. While he waits for someone to answer, he notices a framed calendar of events next to the box office, which is also closed. For the month of May, besides Bottlecap and the other groups playing next Saturday, Mark doesn’t see any bands. There are just th
ings like: IT’S A SIN, ’80s DJ NIGHT, and GOTH ANTHEMS WITH MC BROOD. Also, Wednesday is ladies’ night.
A guy finally opens one of the doors. He’s wearing a black T-shirt that says STAFF tucked into his jeans.
“You Mark?”
Mark nods.
“My manager told me you’d be by. Come on in.”
Mark steps into the club.
Closing the door, the bartender says, “Feel free to look around. If you need anything, my name’s Rick.”
Mark nods again as Rick wanders off, disappearing behind a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. The inside of the club is mostly dark. Mark sees a few lights on here and there, along with shadowy bodies sweeping the floor and stocking a bar at the back of a long room at the front of which is a stage. Mark walks up to the edge of the stage. It’s bigger than any of the clubs he used to play with Bottlecap. Back then they never played to more than 350 people at a time, but the Dark Star Lounge looks to fit maybe twice that. The stage has big monitors and huge speakers suspended from the ceiling on both sides of the stage, strung together to form a big C. Dozens of lights stick out from black scaffolding above and behind the stage, the differently colored gels seem bright even in the darkness. And in the middle of the room, hoisted above the floor, is a disco ball.
Mark gulps and walks back to the bar. He catches the attention of a Hispanic-looking guy bringing in cases of Rolling Rock.
“Can I just get a club soda or something?”
The guy fills up a glass from a pistol-shaped dispenser, puts it on the bar, and walks away. Mark sits down, his back to the stage. He can’t bear to look at it, to imagine himself up there playing guitar and singing. It’s been so long.
After he left the band, Mark hung around LA for a while, writing new songs, recording demos, trying to get another band together. When the Bottlecap record finally came out—after Gary and Steve had gotten another guy to play guitar and sing—there were magazine and newspaper stories about Mark here and there. Writers wanted to talk to the ex–lead singer of the hot new band and get his side of the story. Why did he do it? Why did he walk out on fame and fortune? Mark hated the questions because he didn’t have good answers. He usually tried to pass it off as artistic purity. He didn’t want his music watered down, didn’t want to play the major label game. The word “vision” was used so often you would have thought he was an ophthalmologist. It usually worked. Rock and roll has a long line of misunderstood geniuses who walked away from their careers in one form or another: Syd Barrett, Lee Mavers, and now Mark Pellion.
Even though the band had a bit of success without him—Lollapalooza, a Buzz Bin video on 120 Minutes, the cover of Alternative Press—it didn’t take long for their star to fall. Bottlecap was eventually dropped by the label and the singer who’d replaced Mark left for a solo career. Steve and Gary, not wanting to draft yet another guy to sing and play guitar, broke up Bottlecap, retired the name, and moved back to Kitty. Just a few years after the adventure began, it ended.
“You Mark?”
He turns to see a young guy wearing a T-shirt and skinny jeans walking towards him from the entrance.
“Yeah, you Seth?”
Seth nods and they shake hands. Seth hops onto a barstool and pulls an iPhone out of his pocket, placing it on the bar.
“Okay to record this? I’ll transcribe it later.”
Mark shrugs.
The same guy from before appears with more cases of beer. Seth asks for a Diet Coke.
“I don’t know how much your label guy Dave told you,” Seth begins, “but I’d love to do a story about the show next week about all the bands coming back to town and where you guys are now. Is that cool?”
Mark shrugs again. Seth takes a sip of the Diet Coke, punches some buttons on his iPhone. Mark waits for him to take out a notebook or a piece of paper. Instead, Seth just starts asking questions.
“So, tell me about the show next week.”
“Yeah,” Mark says, “the show …”
For a few seconds, he draws a blank. What’s he supposed to say? He kicks himself for not syncing with Dave. Should he talk about the label? Is he supposed to hype the concert, or the other bands? After taking a sip of his club soda in order to stall, he finally mumbles something about it being an honor to get the group back together again and how he’s looking forward to playing for a hometown crowd. When he stops talking, Seth gives him an approving look and Mark relaxes.
“You know,” Seth says, “you’re the first band we’ve had here in a while. Normally it’s just DJs. There’s now a trivia night, and on Tuesdays there are comedians.” Seth looks around the cavernous space, and then points at the floor in front of the stage. “Things got so slow for a while, they did yoga right there twice a week.”
“Why don’t any bands play here? I know Kitty’s small, but there’s got to be some kind of scene.”
Mark thinks back to when he lived here. In addition to Bottlecap, there were half a dozen bands in town. They played shows together, shared gear, had feuds, and swapped members as well as girlfriends. Dave had most of these bands on his label for a seven-inch or on a compilation, if not putting out a full-length album. Out of all of them, Bottlecap was the only one to get some type of recognition outside of Kitty, or even outside of Virginia. No one else from town ever got signed.
“Scene?” Seth laughs. “Those are gone.”
“Yeah, but—”
Seth cuts him off.
“What, you’re thinking of something like New York City in the seventies? Athens in the eighties? That kind of thing doesn’t exist anymore. It doesn’t need to. Scenes are just a room in Reddit, or a tag in Bandcamp. And those are places I can go to on my computer.” Seth points to the bar. “Hell, I can go there on my phone.”
Mark’s own phone buzzes. He looks down. It’s a text from Gary with the address of the practice space where they’re all meeting on Saturday.
Seth points. “Do you need to answer that?”
Mark turns the phone over.
“No, it’s nothing. Keep going.”
“It’s just—there’s nothing I can’t get online.”
“Yeah, but what about going to concerts? Having firsthand experiences? Being in a crowd?”
“I did a road trip out to Coachella and it was ridiculous. I’d never seen more rich kids staring at their phones.” Seth laughs. “If I’d wanted to sit in a field and constantly check Facebook and Instagram, I could have just stayed home.”
“I don’t know.” Mark slouches on the barstool. He takes a sip of the club soda, now turned room temperature. “Maybe you’re right.”
After a few more questions, Seth declares that he has all he needs. They both get up, leaving their empty glasses on the bar. The door’s locked again, and they have to shout to get someone to let them out. While they’re waiting, Seth fiddles with his phone while Mark just stares down at his sneakers. Finally, a different guy also wearing a STAFF T-shirt opens the door.
As they exit the club both of them blink as their eyes adjust to the light. There’s still only Mark’s rental car parked beside the building. Seth stands there, looking around.
Mark asks, “Do you need a ride?”
“Nah,” Seth waves him off. “I’m waiting for an Uber.”
Mark gasps.
“What, you guys have Uber down here, too?”
“Yeah,” Seth grins. “Running water, too.”
Charles wears sunglasses to the office, hoping to hide the bags under his eyes. He didn’t sleep at all last night. All Charles could think about was the roof, and where he’s going to get the money to pay for it. It didn’t help that he was lying there, staring at the ceiling. In the half-dark of the room—the hallway’s nightlight casting shadows across their floor and one of the walls—Charles looked for wet spots and stains in the plaster above his head. All he found were streaks of paint and shadows. He sniffed again for mold in the air, but all he could smell was the lotion Grace puts on her face, hands, and elbows every
night before she goes to sleep.
Now, after fighting to stay awake during his morning commute, Charles sleepwalks into the small kitchen on the twelfth floor. He’s headed for the coffee he desperately needs to stay awake. Brooks enters, notices the sunglasses, and asks, “Late night last night?”
Charles winks and says, “You know it.” He immediately realizes the wink is lost on Brooks because of the sunglasses. But since it’s just Brooks, Charles doesn’t worry about it.
He grabs a mug from the cupboard and fills it up, topping it off with cream and sugar. He walks away, leaving splashes of milk and a sprinkling of sugar on the counter.
Charles goes to his office, closes the door, sips his coffee, and tries to get ready for his meeting with Tom. He tries to think of some small talk, as well as office gossip, to get the conversation started. Since he’s really not sure what the chat will be about, he doesn’t know what else to prepare. For a second he thinks it might be about what Brooks said at the meeting the other day, his report on sales projections. But Charles doesn’t think so. That could be handled with a quick email written by his assistant. Tom wouldn’t schedule a meeting just for that.
When it’s finally time to go upstairs, Charles slowly rises from his desk and walks down the hallway. Before heading to the elevator, he stops by the bathroom. He relieves himself of the coffee and then rinses out his mouth so he doesn’t have coffee breath. As he’s leaving, Dylan enters and gives him a smirk.
Fucking idiot.
Upstairs, Heather asks him to have a seat. Charles obliges, sitting and crossing his legs in what he hopes is a masculine way. As the seconds turn into minutes, and the minutes begin to stack up, he tries not to let his mind wander. Charles tries to stay focused, but fatigue begins to catch up with him. Any lift he’d been given by the caffeine fades. His stomach, at first just grumbling, begins to do flips. He tries to take his mind off the waiting by pulling out his iPhone and checking his email. He figures if Tom walks up and sees him on his phone, it’ll make him look dedicated, a workaholic.