New Waves

by Kevin Nguyen

“That friend is bad at checking her voicemail. All people are, I guess. What kind of person is good at checking their voicemail? Psychopaths, probably. Anyway, after the wake and the funeral, she enters a deep state of mourning. When she’s not crying, she’s barely living. After a few weeks, she is looking through her recent voicemail messages. And that’s when she finds it: a voicemail message that she hasn’t heard yet. It’s from her mother. From the day she died.

  “This is how my friend and I are different. I would’ve listened to it right away. But she doesn’t. It’s too hard. Can you imagine that—your mother’s last words for you are saved on your phone? How could she bring herself to listen? My friend feels like as soon as she listens to the message, her mother is really gone forever.

  “That’s sort of the thing with grief, right? You realize the saddest part isn’t that you’ll never see this person again. It’s that you’ll never hear them say anything new.

  “Anyway, days go by, then weeks. I’m begging my friend to listen to this voicemail because I can tell it’s killing her not to. So finally she does. She lights some candles, has a few drinks, and gets ready to say goodbye to her mother forever. My friend opens her phone and checks her voicemail.

  “The message is strange: she can hear her mother vaguely in it. But it’s mostly rustling, nothing coherent. The message, it turns out, is two minutes of this. There’s nothing for her in it. And that’s when she realized that the last voicemail from her mother—the one that she’s been avoiding listening to for weeks, that she feels guilty for not picking up—is just a butt dial.”

  When the punch line comes, we both start laughing. I don’t know why. It’s not funny, but I let out a sickly cackle that I can’t keep down. I laugh so hard that my throat gets dry and I start coughing.

  “How many times have you told that story?”

  The music was off now, so I just heard the clinking of pint glasses as the bartender carried a plastic tray of them to the back. Out of sight, he answered, “Definitely more than once.”

  He came back with an empty glass and poured himself some water.

  “A lot of people who come in. Late, when the bar is quiet, folks who are in the shape you’re in like to get plastered and lay a bunch of heavy shit on me like we’re old friends. Which I’m more than happy to oblige.”

  He drank almost the entire glass of water in a single gulp. He wiped his mouth.

  “Most people have problems with work, so I’ve got a story about that. A lot of people have issues with their spouses or significant others, so I have three or four stories like that.” He paused. “I don’t get quite as many people in here with dead friends or loved ones. So I don’t tell that story as often.”

  He motioned over at the clock, which I had a hard time reading, but I got the hint that I should finish up.

  “Is that story true? The one about the friend and the dead mom’s voicemail?”

  The bartender put on his jacket. He flipped off the remaining lights.

  “You strike me as the kind of person who asks a lot of questions he doesn’t really want the answer to.”

  * * *

  —

  JILL TOLD ME I smelled like a bar.

  “Like, the whole bar. Like someone took all the liquor and boiled it into a cauldron, cast a spell, and a young man came out of it.”

  She was in surprisingly good spirits considering I had shown up at her apartment in the middle of the night and we hadn’t spoken in a week. She said she was awake anyway, and even though I was in fairly rough shape, she appeared happy to see me. Maybe she’d missed me.

  Jill poured me a glass of water and set me on her couch.

  “How drunk are you right now? On a scale of one to ten?”

  “I’ve just been…thinking, you know?”

  “Oh good, you’re a fifty.”

  “I feel like we’re not making enough…progress…on Margo’s book.”

  “Lucas, it’s three a.m.”

  “I just feel like we could be working harder at it.”

  “What if we have this conversation when you’re not wasted?”

  “I want to talk about it now.”

  “Clearly.”

  Jill disappeared into the bedroom, then reemerged with a blanket and an extra pillow. She set them beside me on the couch.

  “Just get some rest and we’ll talk tomorrow.”

  She turned off the lights and went back to her room.

  I closed my eyes. It was hot, humid. I was restless. I was out of my mind. Unhappy and angry and sweaty. I drank some water from the tap, hoping it would cool me down. But it just made me more agitated, a pool of cool liquid sitting in my belly. I went into the bathroom and splashed water on my face. Was my face always this red and puffy? My eyes this bloodshot? I splashed again but the face remained.

  I opened the door to Jill’s bedroom. She was reading in bed, her desk lamp pulled over so that it perched over the edge of her bed, giving just enough light to illuminate the page.

  “Everything okay?” she asked.

  “You don’t want Margo’s stories to be published.”

  “What are you accusing me of?”

  “I can tell. I can sense it. You don’t want to do this.”

  “Lucas, of course I want to do this. Why do you think I have spent hours of my life with them? Hours that I should be dedicating to the thing I am supposed to be writing?”

  She closed her book and set it on the desk. She looked at me for a moment, seeing if that answer was enough for me to drop the subject. It wasn’t.

  “Lucas, this shit is really hard. You have to get an agent on board, then sell it to a publisher, a place that’s made up of editors and marketing people. If you want to make something that lasts, it takes a lot of work. I spend all day trying to do this. No one cares about Margo’s stories except us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Here’s the truth: Margo’s stories are never going to be published.”

  “Then why are we doing this?”

  “I don’t know. We’re both grieving and it felt good to be writing again, even if the stories weren’t mine. And it feels like the right way to memorialize Margo—”

  “No,” I clarified. “Why are we doing this.”

  Jill scooted back in her bed so she was upright.

  “Oh, we’re having that conversation. Right now. At three in the morning. Like this.”

  “Let’s have it! We’ve never said anything about it.”

  I don’t know why I did it. I had nothing but gratitude for her. She was the only other person who knew the pain of missing Margo like I did. She was kind and warm and thoughtful. And all I wanted to do in this moment was make her feel bad. If she could share the grief of Margo, maybe she could share the sting of disappointment. She could take part in every shitty thing that I felt.

  “Fine, I’ll start,” Jill said. “I was sad and you were sad and we could do that together, and you turned out to be a surprisingly good lay.”

  “Why surprising? Because you assume…?”

  She cut me off. “Because you are strangely considerate for a twentysomething who drinks too much and doesn’t know anything about the world,” Jill said. “And I really, really hate that I know you well enough that you were going to imply I was being racist.”

  “You assumed correct.”

  “Lucas, you need to stop blaming everything on how shitty other people are.”

  “That’s easy for a white person to say.”

  “Exactly! God, I knew you were going to say that. I’m sorry I am white, Lucas. There’s nothing I can do about that. Usually relationships work better when one person isn’t constantly throwing that in the other person’s face.”

  Jill was right. But I was furious, and drunk, and that doesn’t excuse it but I wasn’t going to let
her have the last word.

  “I’m glad Margo never had to meet you,” I said.

  It wasn’t true. But I knew it would hurt her. And it did, and as she began to cry, I left. I walked out of Jill’s apartment, knowing it would be the last time I’d probably ever see her.

  * * *

  —

  THERE WEREN’T ANY CABS out at that hour in the morning, so I started walking north. I figured a taxi would eventually pass me and I could hail it. Somehow, none ever appeared. Maybe this is what I deserved. I did the entire trip on foot. It took me three hours, and I listened to the iPod the whole way. When I finally arrived home, I collapsed into my bed, clothes and shoes still on.

  But I still couldn’t sleep. I opened my phone. I had texted Brandon that I quit as I was walking home, and he had responded that I couldn’t quit because I was fired. I was going to blow everything up. What was left?

  That’s when I eyed Margo’s laptop. I’d vowed never to log in to it again. But I had kept it around, so some part of me must have known that was a lie. But Margo was dead. And Jill and I weren’t together anymore, so she couldn’t tell me what I was allowed to do. What did it matter?

  I had torn up the sticky note with Margo’s password, but I had the password memorized. It only took a few tries, and I was in Margo’s email.

  I don’t know what I expected to discover, but all I found was myself:

  Subject line: Long time no see

  Subject line: It’s been a while

  Subject line: See what you’ve been missing

  Subject line: Did you forget about us?

  Subject line: We miss you

  Subject line: Come back

  Subject line: ajdklfja

  Subject line: askdjklfajsdl

  Subject line: aklsdjjskldjfalksjfjio

  VII

  Six Weeks at the Crystal Palm

  Week 1

  ACCORDING TO MEN, MEN need to be heard. This is why they approach women at bars. They think they’re making conversation, but really, they want to do most of the talking. It’s not so much about getting in your pants—well, they want to sleep with you too, but their needs don’t stop there. They need to be listened to, validated. This is why they will tell you stories at a bar. Men want not just your affection, but your approval. They will buy you drinks in hopes of getting one of those things, or both. It’s transactional. And on some nights, it’s even a fair trade. I’ll take that free drink and I’ll listen to your sad story because I am broke as hell. People say they “need” a drink. Nobody needs a drink. Lucas always said he needed a drink, but he just wanted an excuse to feel sad.

  But I was sad now, and I had convinced myself I “needed” a drink. And I needed one at the same time every day in the same place. Getting back on track meant scheduling my sadness so I could organize my life around it. If I was gonna get through this, I needed to write and I needed to feel sad. I spent all week writing—and being extremely disciplined about it—and then I brought my sadness to the Crystal Palm every night.

  This was not some upscale cocktail bar with dark wood and perfectly calculated ambient lighting, or a throwback tiki joint with teak furniture, the faint glow of neon. Brooklyn is filthy with these places. Nor was this an ironically named dive bar with cheap beer, an arcade machine that lets you slaughter deer, and an unusably dirty bathroom—a kind of performative grittiness that New Yorkers love. No, the Crystal Palm was a bar with exactly zero distinctive characteristics and an aesthetic that could be described as “no comment.” They served drinks, but there were no beers on tap, and you couldn’t ask for a cocktail that involved more than two ingredients.

  In some ways, the Crystal Palm more resembled an airport or a bus station in its utility. A liminal space, where you might find yourself on your way to someplace better. Well, I loved it.

  * * *

  —

  IF YOU WRITE BOOKS, you get an agent so you never have to be the bad guy. A good agent negotiates on your behalf. She’s incentivized to get you the best deal, because she takes a 15 percent cut. I’m told that that’s the reason the best agents aren’t your friend. The good ones are focused on that 15 percent. They don’t get paid if they spend all day trying to be your pal.

  A draft of Mining Colony had gone out to publishers, and unlike with my first book, no one had shown the slightest interest. My agent had urged me to start a new project, but I was convinced Mining Colony could be reworked. At her suggestion, I started new drafts of things—only to abandon them. My agent hated this, telling me to just commit to something. I sometimes wondered if she cared about the books themselves. But if I didn’t sell another book, she’d never collect another 15 percent.

  The Rut, I called it, and I always wrote it out with a capital R. It felt serious and specific enough to be a proper noun. Treating it like a person made me feel less insane every time I’d email my agent things like “fuck the Rut,” like I was referencing some asshole person instead of an ambiguous inability to write anything worthwhile. Without Margo, I was taking my sweet time and it was slowly killing me.

  I still spent most of my days with the intention of writing. I stared at my computer, waiting around for something to happen. It was easy to get distracted by the internet and its unending fountain of articles. You’d read one thing, then click through to another, and suddenly your afternoon had been consumed by a black hole of hyperlinks. Sometimes I’d hit the BACK button on my browser as many times as I could to retrace my steps. It was like traveling back in time, if time travel made you feel bad about how you’d wasted a perfectly good day.

  Every few weeks, my agent would email me to ask how things were going. I would answer these messages immediately with reassurances that the book was going great. Writing never came easier to me than when I was lying to my agent.

  * * *

  —

  WHEN LUCAS AND I were working on Margo’s stories, we’d had a firm schedule. I would meet him at the bar near my apartment at 6 p.m. each day for one drink. It marked an exact end to my workday, which was something I’d never put limits on before. Before Lucas, I had let my writing bleed out into the evening, until the point where I got hungry and tired. I realized after a few days of licking my wounds, letting the day stretch on and on, that structure was much better.

  The first day I went to the Crystal Palm, I was the only one there. Well, there was the bartender too—a goth chick rocking a sleeve of tattoos and a septum piercing—who made polite conversation. But mostly I sipped my rum and coke and read my book in silence. It was a perfect experience. And after I finished my drink, I went home and made dinner. Okay, “made dinner” might be giving myself too much credit. I was teaching myself to cook. It was all part of the plan.

  The second day, there was a man at the bar. He was handsome, looked early thirties, and he asked if he could buy me a drink. I said I was just staying for the one I had already ordered. Then he introduced himself as Alex, and I told him I just wanted to read my book. And then Alex asked me why I was being such a bitch when he was just trying to be friendly, and the bartender—the one from the day before—told the guy to get the fuck out of there. “We have a policy at the Crystal Palms: No assholes.”

  He stormed out.

  “Is that why no one is here?” I asked.

  She introduced herself: Megan, but her friends called her Charlotte.

  “Why Charlotte?”

  “Because Megan is a stupid fucking name.”

  You could always call yourself something different, she explained. No reason to let the name your parents chose—which they picked before they met you, before you were a real person—define you your whole life. I liked that idea.

  “So what’s your name?”

  “Jill,” I said, and I hardly thought about it as I continued, “but why don’t you call me Margo.”

  “It’s a plea
sure to meet you, Margo.”

  “The pleasure is all mine.”

  AFRONAUT3000: Hi, we’ve never messaged before, but we have interacted a bit on some Fantastic Planet threads. Anyway, I just wanted to say that I loved your first book, and that I’m even more excited about the science fiction novel you’re working on. It’s very cool that you came to our message board looking to solicit help from a well-read community (even if it is a little dorky that your username shares the name of your book). But if there’s anything I can do to help, please, just ask.

  MINING_COLONY: Hello! This is a very flattering message to receive, especially from someone who is so prolific on this forum. I feel a little intimidated, a little out of sorts here. But the community has been very welcoming, in no small part because of people like you, but also very specifically you.

  Week 2

  IT WAS FUCKED UP, I know. But if I’m being totally honest, it felt good to be Margo, satisfying in a way nothing had satisfied me in months, maybe years. Margo was who I was at the Crystal Palm.

  For the first time in a long time, the novel was going well. I was writing just enough each day, enough that I might turn in a manuscript to my agent before she dumped me. I’d begun incorporating some elements of Margo’s stories into my work—nothing that she’d said in her recordings, but ideas. The real difference in my writing was that I began to think of how she would write. The Margo I’d communicated with was open and optimistic. But in these stories, I discovered a perspective that was skeptical of everything, that thought of the world as an adversary, that believed interesting characters should be at odds with their surroundings. At the very least, it gave compelling (if not cynical) stakes to all her stories, and it might help mine too.

  The bartender, Charlotte, at least she was in on it. Not that she knew who the real Margo was, or what she meant to me. We never got that deep, but we were friendly enough that I received the occasional free drink, even if it was always some awful shot of a dark purple liquor that we drank together. (“It’s an amaro,” Charlotte explained. “All bartenders like it.”) By the second week, we had a rapport. I came to have a drink and read by myself at the bar; Charlotte would chase away men and I’d leave her a nice tip.