Perfect Tunes - Emily Gould Page 0,18
to look into his eyes so that he could tell she really meant it, wasn’t just saying it by default because it was the thing to say. For a second, his face lost its vague look and he really seemed to appreciate the compliment. He even seemed hungry for it, like he wasn’t already sure of himself. He led Laura to a low velvet couch with a coffee table in front of it and introduced her to the band’s manager, who was already sitting there, wearing a green army jacket with deep pockets. As she watched, he pulled handfuls of drugs out of them: cubes of perfectly intact marijuana buds with shimmering crystals on each folded leaf catching the light, bottles of pills, a small pile of plastic bags full of powder.
“It’s the world tour of drugs,” said Davey, diving toward the table and scooping up a handful of bags. Laura laughed; it was ridiculous, a caricature of rock-star behavior. Dylan didn’t laugh. He started dissecting a cigar, removing the tobacco to refill it with weed. He licked the paper, and she felt a shiver of desire at the sight of his tongue. He reached for pills from the pile and ate a couple of them like Tic Tacs.
“It’s just Adderall; we’re exhausted,” he explained, but he also shook some of the powder out of one of the bags on top of the weed before rolling up the blunt.
“So are you back here for a while?” she asked.
“No, they’re sending us back out again soon. We just have a couple of weeks, but we can hang out the whole time I’m here.”
Laura fought back the urge, again, to tell him that she loved him, to claim him officially somehow. The thought of him with random girls in different cities made her want to peel off her skin. She wished that they were married. She wanted everyone he met to know they were together. There was no possible way to express any of this to him.
He lit the blunt and took a deep, desperate drag on it, then passed it to her and lit a cigarette. She wanted to ask what the powder was but was worried about seeming naive. She tried to take a small hit, but the flavor of the smoke was delicious, and she could feel it relaxing her into the couch, making the situation seem normal much faster than the beer could. She smiled at him through half-lidded eyes.
“Are you good?” he asked. “I’m sorry we’re not alone. I have to stay here, but you should go home and get some rest. Tomorrow we’ll hang out, just us.”
He was swaying and slightly slurring as he said this. Laura understood, without wanting to, that Dylan was much more interested in getting fucked up than he was in having sex with her. She still couldn’t make herself give up and leave. After he finished smoking the blunt, he started walking around the room playing air guitar, dancing unsteadily. Laura got up and followed behind him, unsure what she should do next. Callie extracted herself from underneath Davey’s armpit and reached over and pulled Laura toward her.
“We’re getting out of here,” she hissed in Laura’s ear.
“I’m just going to stay another twenty minutes, I’ll see you at home,” Laura whispered back.
“No, you’re coming home with me. It isn’t happening tonight, and you look stupid. Let’s just go; you’ll see him again when he’s more sober.”
She waved at Dylan as Callie forcefully grabbed her arm and moved in the direction of the door. He waved, smiling in her direction, then turned his attention back to the world tour of drugs.
* * *
When Laura came over to his apartment the next afternoon, as he’d asked her to, Dylan still wasn’t alone. The whole band was there, and there were some girls who looked vaguely familiar from the night before, and everyone seemed to be wearing the same clothes and not to have slept. It was the hottest, sunniest part of the afternoon, and the apartment had one window air-conditioning unit that wasn’t doing anything to cut the fug of smoke and bodies and sickly sweet spilled booze. Cigarette butts marinated in the dregs at the bottom of beer bottles. Laura almost turned around and walked back down the stairs and out onto the relatively less gross street. She didn’t even see Dylan at first. But he was there, on the couch, slumped over and holding his head. She rushed over to him.
“Are