Perfect Tunes - Emily Gould Page 0,50

forehead. She was grateful, in a way, that she looked so shabby; she didn’t look like someone who had anything worth stealing, plus, she didn’t. Her guitar had traveled in the van straight to the practice space, she had $20 in cash, and her credit card was within a hundred dollars of its limit. Cataloging this stuff made her feel less vulnerable, but also depressed.

When she asked for directions she found that the studio was much closer than she’d assumed. Soon she was entering the echoey stairwell of a converted industrial building where she could already hear the dull thump of drums. At the end of the hallway Callie drew back a beaded curtain and enveloped her in a hug that smelled like cigarettes and the same perfume she’d worn since high school, Tommy Girl, the smell of candy and tea. She was holding a beer, which she handed to Laura. It was icy-cold, a shock to Laura’s sweaty hand. She drank it and started on another.

They ran through the new songs Laura had written, and it felt effortless, even though a few minutes earlier she hadn’t been able to remember any of the words. She and Callie grinned at each other and danced around the way they had in her bedroom as teenagers. After another beer Laura realized that she wasn’t going to have energy left for the show if she didn’t take a nap, so she curled up in a corner of the loft on a pile of foam sound insulation and fell into a deep sleep. When she woke up it was eight. She frantically dialed Matt as soon as she’d opened her eyes.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry. Was she okay going to sleep? Did she ask about me?”

“I thought of calling you, but I know you’re in the middle of stuff. Like, being a rock star.” His tone was kind, gentle, appeasing. He was clearly willing her not to freak out. “She’s still really high on the big-girl factor of being with Kayla. I mean, she asked where you were, and I told her, and I said you were coming home tomorrow, and she wasn’t thrilled about it but she didn’t cry or anything. I’ll keep you posted, of course.”

Laura was silent, willing herself not to cry twice in one day in front of this guy she barely knew except from a year’s worth of generic wry playground/pickup interactions. He seemed to notice the tension in her silence, though, and stayed on the phone with her a little longer. After a minute of just letting her breathe through her stifled tears, he seemed to figure out what to say.

“I remember when Demetria and I first split and we were just figuring out divvying up time with Kayla—she was too little to understand what was going on, but she still knew, you know? And it’s so hard, not just missing them, but thinking of them feeling bad even for a second. I always tell myself that it helps them figure out how to be independent, and maybe that’s bullshit—or maybe it’s not. Who knows? Who knows whether anything we do with them, good or bad, even matters. All we can do is try our best. But you also have to do what’s best for you. I’m sorry to lecture you, I mean it as a pep talk. It’s the one I give myself, like I said.”

“It’s the one I give myself, too, but it’s nice to hear it from someone else for a change,” Laura said. She felt outsize gratitude toward Matt. If they’d been in the same room, she would have hugged him.

She hung up feeling shitty, but not totally gutted. It was almost time to head back to the house, where she would let Callie doll her up, and then to the venue, where she would walk onstage and sing a love song that no one in the room would understand was actually about a child. And back in Brooklyn, in a toddler bed in Matt’s small apartment, Marie would sleep peacefully till morning, or so she hoped.

* * *

Onstage, the bright lights blinded Laura at first, but then she began to make out the shape of the crowd. There were men in the front row and women behind them, as there were at every show. She heard a tremble in her voice when she began to sing. Callie heard it, too, and shot her a warning look. To kill her nerves, she started