Perfect Tunes - Emily Gould Page 0,15
Dylan got back.
She went through the rest of her in-box unhurriedly, lingering over the details of spam emails she’d gotten instead of immediately deleting them. Really, she was waiting to see whether he would respond. This was crazy; the odds of his even being near a keyboard were so slim. She didn’t even know what city or what time zone he was in. Still, when her half hour was up, she went up to the counter for a refill and another passcode to unlock another half hour of internet access.
“Why do you need to stay here longer?” asked Callie, who had finished her coffee and her free issue of VICE and was tapping her long nails on the counter.
“I just thought maybe a person I wrote to might write back,” Laura admitted.
“A person. Jesus.” Callie rolled her eyes and went to wait for Laura in the park across the street.
But then when she got back to the desk, there it was: a response! She felt like the gross shared computer was a slot machine dispensing a flood of coins. He would be home in a week, he wrote, and would be playing a show first thing. He invited her and Callie to meet up after the show at Brownies. He said he missed her.
Laura floated into Tompkins Square Park and found Callie sitting on the patchy grass on the hill. The park was full of people their age with nighttime jobs or no jobs who could treat the park like a beach, lying on blankets with snacks and drinks and joints and cigarettes, getting sun, watching the dogs in the dog run and one another. Callie had bought a large bottle of orange juice, from which she poured out some of the juice and replaced it with the contents of a small bottle of vodka. Laura didn’t have to be at the bar until seven; there was still time to get drunk, then nap and shower before work.
This was how they’d been killing all the lengthening summer afternoons lately, but the surge of energy Laura had gotten from her communication with Dylan had made her too hyped up to enjoy lolling around. She told Callie about her email and the response, and the minor lie she’d told.
Callie ashed her cigarette thoughtfully on the patchy grass near the blanket they sat on. “Oh, that’s no problem. Let’s just go by there right now and see if Alex is working. Well, not right now right now. Like in half an hour? Let’s finish our drinks at least.”
“I have to go grab my guitar and stuff first! And I don’t want to get drunk.”
“You’ll just be relaxed. You need to.” Callie took a swig, then offered the bottle. Laura semi-reluctantly accepted. She was suddenly feeling too wound up, almost to the point of panic. Her initial joy at being in touch with Dylan was activating her brain and body in ways that were agitating if she couldn’t be around him physically.
An hour later she and Callie were in the dark daytime interior of Sidewalk, in the side of it that was a bar and not a twenty-four-hour diner. Alex, a short, skinny guy with bluish-pale skin who could have been twenty-five or forty, hugged Callie too long and then looked Laura over as frankly as her bar employer had on the day she’d gotten hired.
“So you guys are in a band together?”
“Well, it’s mainly Laura, but yeah, it’s kind of a band,” said Callie, smiling at Alex and doing her “you are the only person who exists in the world” thing.
“Great! Hop up there and do one of your songs real quick.”
They conferred quickly and decided to do the song that Laura had started writing at Dylan’s studio. For never having technically rehearsed, they weren’t as terrible as Laura had assumed they’d be. Callie had heard Laura sing the song so many times that she had memorized it, and she sang almost harmony and shimmied around a little as Laura tried to keep up with Callie’s innovations in rhythm. It was uncomfortable to make eye contact with Alex, so instead Laura watched Callie as she sang. She thought again about how anyone watching them onstage together would spend more time looking at Callie shimmying than at Laura playing guitar. But maybe it didn’t matter; it was Laura’s music, Laura’s song.
When she looked out at Alex next, he was grinning. “Come back tonight, I’ll put you on at eleven thirty,” he told them. “What