This Is Where We Live - By Janelle Brown Page 0,41

quite experienced that same epiphany, the same giddy high of self-knowledge that he’d experienced in the seventh grade. Sometimes he was just up there, hot and self-conscious, wasting his beloved songs on an indifferent crowd. There were even periods of time—during the year that his mother died, for example—when he didn’t play music at all. Still, he always eventually came back to the same place: the front of the stage, the guitar slung around his neck, microphone poised inches away, in search of a long-lost feeling.

And this, this moment right now was very close indeed. The darkly cavernous club was packed to capacity, standing room only—which was really incredible for a new band showcase on a Monday night in September—and Audiophone had never played better. Two songs into their set, and already Jeremy knew that something extraordinary was taking place. Daniel, as lead guitarist, still tended to grow shy when performing, turning sideways to face Jeremy as if by doing so he might somehow deflect attention from himself. But tonight he was playing to the crowd, with a foot casually up on a speaker, his shoulders rising and falling in a dramatic flourish that underscored each new utterance from his guitar. Behind him, Ben was whaling away at the snare drum with an intense fury that was, Jeremy suspected, fueled by a line of cocaine, probably ingested when Ben vanished to the bathroom two minutes before they went onstage. But if cocaine always made Ben’s drums sound this sharp, this brutal—well, hell, Jeremy would pay for his next eight-ball himself.

But the real epiphany tonight was Emerson. Emerson had always been the most unlikely member of Audiophone. He worked at one of those three-name financial firms downtown, doing mergers and acquisitions; he drove a BMW 5 series sedan and wore suits to work and had a special rate at the Four Seasons because he stayed there so often on business trips. Even in jeans and a T-shirt he somehow looked less like an aspiring musician than a slumming yuppie. He was the weak link, the least experienced among them, and the band member most likely to forget a critical bridge or boff the tempo when they played live. Still, he played the bass with moderate skill and extreme enthusiasm, and he’d adopted the mantle of band sugar daddy with such cheerful generosity that Jeremy didn’t have the heart to tell him that his haircut was objectionably short or that basketball shoes weren’t really appropriate footwear on stage. (They’d work on that before the band went on tour, he thought.)

Tonight, Emerson had shown up a half hour late to sound check smelling suspiciously like whiskey and tacos. He’d barely spoken a word as they’d raced through setup, his face set with a panic that made Jeremy’s heart sink: Emerson was going to seize up again. But his fears were unfounded, because here Emerson was, improvising a new turn on the opening to “Super Special”—something he’d never done before—and doing it remarkably well. He played with his eyes closed and a blissful smile on his face, seemingly lost in a beautiful world of his own making where quarterly earnings didn’t matter and the only merging taking place was of bass with guitar.

Emerson opened his eyes and caught Jeremy looking at him. He offered an abashed smile, almost as if he felt guilty for enjoying himself so much, as Jeremy stepped forward and grabbed the microphone:

“I don’t know why you think you’re super special,

Yes, you’re special-looking

But you’re not especially deep.”

The first few words were rough, as he fought with a burr in his throat, but then his voice opened up and the rest of the lyrics poured out in a happy growl. Singing had never been Jeremy’s true forte—his real skill lay in his one-on-one communion with his guitar—but he had a decent baritone and could sing consistently on key and had been told his voice was “arresting” by more than one critic. And he secretly enjoyed being the fulcrum around which the rest of the band rotated; enjoyed serving as a kind of medium through which everyone else onstage spoke directly to the audience; enjoyed, of course, the extra attention granted to the lead singer.

“You know what would be

Really super special to see?

The day when you wake up and realize

You’re as ordinary as me.”

He wasn’t sure who this song was about, specifically—a bitter diatribe about one of Daniel’s unrequited crushes, probably. Audiophone’s lyrics had always had a cynical bent, a result of Daniel’s