This Is Where We Live - By Janelle Brown Page 0,46
bet we could finish it in, like, a month. Maybe two.”
Ben looked like he’d been handed a lemon and told it was a cupcake. “Dude, you’re married. You have no social life. How am I supposed to get laid if I’m holed up in the studio with you tools every night?”
“We all know you aren’t getting any and you won’t get any until you’re a rock star—at which point you can have all the cheap, regrettable sex you ever dreamed of. But we need to finish the album before that’ll happen. So, how about it? Every night, starting tomorrow?”
“Not tomorrow,” said Emerson. “I’ve got a client dinner. I’d cancel if I could, but things are a little dicey at work right now.”
“OK,” Jeremy said. “Wednesday, then, and every night thereafter.”
Ben shrugged. “I can’t do Wednesdays or Saturday afternoon, because that’s when my other band practices. But I’ll do my best on the other nights.”
“Deal. And we should map out a plan of attack, set some deadlines.” He turned to Daniel expectantly. But Daniel’s gaze remained firmly on the floor, just above a cigarette burn in the industrial carpet, with a persistent little smile flickering across his pink chafed lips. There was something strange about Daniel’s behavior tonight—not just his newly discovered onstage confidence, or the way he’d cradled his guitar close to his groin, fingering the frets with an absentminded caress. It was the way he just stood there in the corner now, bruised-looking eyelids swagged across his cheekbones, smiling shyly at the toes of his sneakers. Jeremy had known Daniel since fifth grade, and the only time he’d ever seen his friend look like this was when Riva Richards let him deflower her in their junior year of high school. Was Daniel in love?
Daniel swayed with apparent exhaustion. “Sure, that all sounds fine, Jeremy, but … can we talk about all this at our next practice? I’ve gotta be somewhere.”
“Now?” Jeremy glanced at the clock; it was eleven-thirty. “I thought we could all go out for drinks. Celebrate.” But Daniel’s words were like a recess bell, springing everyone into action. Ben tumbled off his chair and raced for the door, already dialing his cellphone. Emerson kicked at the nest of extension cords that had coiled around his feet, releasing himself. “Maybe next week,” he said, apologetically. “Things are kind of imploding at work, and I’ve got to be in the office early tomorrow.”
Jeremy watched them collect their bags with dismay. “Fine,” he said. “We’ll make a schedule on Thursday. Just remember, guys: priorities. OK?” He smiled encouragingly, and then pitched his guitar pick across the room toward his open guitar case. He meant it to be a gentle lob, a gesture of casual confidence, but he threw it a little too hard and it skittered across the top of a box of concert posters, bounced across the industrial carpet, and landed in a forlorn cluster of dust bunnies in the corner.
Daniel followed Jeremy out to his car, watching Jeremy heave his guitar into the backseat of the convertible. A police helicopter flew by overhead, stirring up a vortex of refuse along the wall of the nightclub. The storefronts were dark, only the red blinking eyes of their alarms keeping watch in the windows. It was mid-September and the nights had already grown heavy with dew; soon, he’d have to put the car’s top up at night.
Daniel and Jeremy shuffled around the car, keeping its steel bulk between them. They shared that twinned quality that comes from too many years of shared taste: They cut their flyaway hair the same way, curling a bit too long around the ears; and were nearly the same height and weight, with loose spaghetti arms and sinewy legs and stomachs a little too soft from beer; and they both owned wardrobes of faded T-shirts and tenderized jeans and unshowy Converse sneakers. It was unspoken that Jeremy had always been the handsome one—he had a delicate symmetry to his face, and women had responded to his high cheekbones and blue eyes and long lashes as early as junior high, whereas Daniel’s jaw was square-boned and his ears vaguely simian. From a distance, though, they could be mistaken for each other. Seeing himself in Daniel was reassuring, proof that Jeremy hadn’t veered too far from an acceptable mean. But tonight, as he looked at Daniel, he saw that his friend was different: He had cut his hair shorter, used gel, changed into a button-front shirt, shaved.