Loud is How I Love You (13 page)

“I told you George and Molly are fucking,” I say after he hangs up.

“Definitely saw that one coming,” Travis says. “But I think she’s really good for him.”

“She scares me.”

“Exactly.”

I’m so exhausted by now, I feel like I might finally fall asleep. Now I really do feel like a hobo, because I’m telling you this plastic bench in the rest area looks as comfortable as a Sealy Posturepedic. I curl up on it, trying to get comfortable. Our guitar cases are on the ground in front of us. Travis has his legs stretched out over them, and he puts his arm around me and pulls me close. I am tired and shaky and I’m not out of the woods yet, but I let out a big yawn and Travis makes a really good body pillow. He’s warm and strong and he’s here, which is my favorite part.

My favorite part of all.

***

“Vagabonds!” I hear George’s voice, wired on however many cups of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee the man can drink in a single hour. “Vagrants! Your limo is here.”

“Where the hell have you two been?” I hear Travis say, exhausted and relieved all at the same time.

I open my eyes and see George in a pair of mesh soccer shorts he’s obviously slept in, flip-flops (and it’s March, for God’s sake), and a Rutgers hoodie. Through the glass entrance I see Molly behind the wheel of George’s Jeep, waving at us. I glance up at the clock and it’s seven forty in the morning. Seven forty? Fuck! What the hell took them so long?

“We went to the wrong rest area, dude. I’m sorry. We were looking all over for you at Woodrow Wilson before Molly double-checked the Post-it note and saw you were at James Cooper.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, I’m going to be late,” I say, my heart racing. “I can’t be late, I’ll be fucked.”

“We’ll get you there, Emmy,” George says. “Never fear.”

We run out to the Jeep, jump into the backseat, shoving our guitars into the back, and Molly takes off like we just robbed a bank. At this point, I’m pretty ready to cut my losses and just be grateful if we make it back to Hub City alive.

“Are you sure your professor won’t let you take this exam late?” Travis asks as we speed north past Exit 7.

“Yes,” I say, hardly able to keep my eyes open.

“Are you sure you’ll be in any shape to take it? You’ve had an hour and a half of sleep.”

“I’m sure I have no choice,” I say.

“Try to sleep,” he says. “You can get another half hour in.”

I do sleep—I go out almost before he finishes his sentence. I’m curled up on the backseat, my head in his lap as he gently runs his hand through my hair and that’s like falling asleep to angels singing or some shit because it’s just the nicest, most comforting thing I’ve ever fallen asleep to. I’m asleep for a total of forty seconds when the Jeep stops at Bottom of the Hill, a ratty but awesome convenience store a block from where I’m taking my exam. George runs out, grabs a large coffee as Travis wakes me up.

“Drink this,” George says. “You’ve got five minutes.”

“How on earth did you make it back to New Brunswick so fast?” I say.

“Don’t ask,” George says. “Just be glad you slept through the worst of hyperdrive.”

“I got her here, didn’t I?” Molly says, eyes wide like she’s just done a gram of crystal meth.

I down the coffee like water, pinch my own cheeks. Now I’m thinking like Toni Morrison. I’m emoting like Chinua Achebe. I’m plotting like Marge Piercy. I’ve got this. Modern Novel. I eat Modern Novel for breakfast. I am a fucking connoisseur of modern literature now. Bring it, asshole English exam. Bring it.

We’re parked on Hamilton Street now, near Murray Hall where my exam is. I down the last gulps of my coffee. Travis takes my car keys and says he’ll be back to get me at ten.

“Be back at nine thirty,” I say. “I won’t be longer than an hour.”

“You won’t?”

“Nope.”

Now that I’m here, I know I’ve got this. I look like I’ve been in a car wreck, I know. I feel like it, too. But there’s no English exam they can give me that I can’t ace in an hour if I’ve read the books. And I have. Some of them multiple times.

Travis hands me my backpack and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear before he kisses me, completely unexpectedly and very sweetly on the lips.

“Go get ’em, champ,” he says.

And now I’m totally awake. I’m fucking euphoric. Or delirious. Either way, I’m ready.

I roll into class and I look like shit, I know. My hair is probably—well, I have no idea. I rake my fingers through it and comb it back behind my ears. I’m in yesterday’s clothes, including underwear, and I try not to think about that or how I might possibly smell right now. I haven’t brushed my teeth in . . . never mind. See, I expected to make it home, sleep a few hours, take a shower before coming here. But that’s not how it worked out, obviously. Sometimes shit just barely works out, and this is one of those times.

Professor Cocksucker looks dubiously at me and hands me my blue book. He probably assumes I was up all night snorting lines of coke and fucking six different guys from bad home environments, not up all night because I had to bring the rock to Baltimore and then possibly save a trucker from dying of food poisoning on the road. I had shit to do, is what I’m saying. What did he do last night? Sleep. And what good did that put in the world? Exactly.

These exam questions are not terribly difficult, but they’re not basic, either. I have to think about them, but my thinking brain is totally wired and online from the coffee and all the crazy shit that has happened in the last twenty-four hours. I am inspired right now about life, and thinking that what makes these stories so good, so vital, is not that they are or aren’t real or relevant, but that when you read them they make you feel like you lived them. They give you an experience that you just can’t otherwise have. That’s why books like these are so powerful, why they mean something. I can’t live in tribal Africa and experience what happens when the Christians come. I can’t be a black slave at the end of the Civil War. But I can read
Beloved
. Fuck, it’s the
least
I can do on that front. Good stories do something like what good rock and roll does, they make you feel something. Sometimes it’s something new. Sometimes it’s something familiar, but you feel it for a new reason. And
I do realize that listening to good rock and roll and reading good books don’t by themselves put food on the table. They don’t put a roof over your head. But they give you a reason to keep drawing air. Survival just for survival’s sake is fine if you’re a virus. A microbe. If you’re human, there should be a point to survival, and if love and art aren’t it, then I guess I don’t know what is.

And as I’m writing these short essays in long hand with my rollerball, it flows out of me so fast, I’m worried I’m going to run out of space. I end up needing two blue books to get it all down.

And I still finish in an hour.

I close the second blue book on my exam and look up to see Professor Cocksucker staring right at me. I look down at my crumpled T-shirt, my untied combat boots. I rub my hands on my face to try and smooth the bags away from under my eyes. I don’t know why he’s looking at me like that but it makes me uncomfortable. I feel judged and fuck him for being a judgy judgmental bastard. I hold my chin high, get up from my chair, and drop the blue books on the steel desk in front of him.

“Wait a minute, Emmy,” he says, pointing to a chair next to the desk. “Have a seat.”

“What is it?”

“Please,” he says. “Just for a minute.”

I sit there while he opens my exam book. He has his red pen drawn and I’m appalled. That motherfucker is going to grade this right in front of me? Right here? What kind of a dick is he?

I see him stick in a hyphen and circle something I accidentally misspelled (I’m good at spelling, so I’m a little mortified, here). He flips through and underlines a few things in the first essay. He’s biting his lip as he reads, nodding. Then he looks over at me and nods again.

“Very well done,” he says. “Now go home and get some sleep.”

Out on Hamilton Street, my little CRX is parked at a meter. When I get there, I see a mass of blond waves and Travis is fast asleep behind the wheel.

“You can do this,” I say to Julia Time.

It’s Friday night and we’re downstairs in the gear room of the Court Tavern, a dimly lit, unused corner of the bar with a low ceiling and band stickers and graffiti plastering one wall. It’s just before Circle Time’s set, and I’m with Millie and Dan, Circle Time’s drummer, giving Julia a pep talk while Matt is I don’t know where and I don’t care. Probably upstairs drinking with people from out of town since everybody around here is still pissed off at him. We’re all adults and we know shit happens and not all couples last forever, but cheating on your girlfriend of five years with Hanna Octane, or anyone, really, is just a shitty thing to do. Hanna hasn’t been seen or heard from in a week and there’s no small concern the girl ended up back on the psych ward after all this shit broke.

Julia was shaky when she got here tonight, but she was doing okay. Now that she’s about to go on she’s having a little bit of a crisis, and who can blame her? It’s a lot to get on stage with someone who’s so thoroughly and publicly fucked you over. But it’s not just that. This week, Circle Time got a call from spinART Records and some guy from the label is here tonight to scope them out.

“Fuck Matt,” I say. “You’re a pro, and he’s not going to get in the way of you doing what you want to do. You guys totally deserve to be on spinART.”

“Thanks, Emmy¸” Julia says, but she doesn’t look at all convinced.

“Drink this,” Millie says, handing her a shot of Stoli. “For courage.”

She downs it and grimaces as her eyes water. She’s ready.

We follow her to the stage and Dan takes his place behind the drums. Julia picks up her bass from the stand and straps it on and she looks good. She looks pissed, but she looks strong and like she’s not about to take any shit from anyone. Ever again. Matt appears and there’s an obvious murmur throughout the audience, but he ignores it. Matt and Julia don’t even look at each other and the tension up there is almost unbearable. But when they start to play, they both seem to get deep inside the sound, and while the band’s happy songs now have a poignant lilt to them, they still work. From here it looks like Circle Time will survive this betrayal, and those of us who love their music appreciate that. If they land a record deal, this is a band that will get somewhere, we’re sure of it. Their sound is really hot right now. Their mostly clean but slightly dirty guitar tone and hooky bass lines throughout their set are right in there with bands like the Breeders or Throwing Muses.

The spinART guy is sitting on the bleachers digging it, and I’m standing in the thick of the crowd watching the band with Joey when Travis arrives downstairs with Cole right behind him. Everything scene-related that I’m mulling over crashes into the brick wall of my stilted joy the moment I see Bean and all that blond boy hair come bouncing down those concrete stairs.

I haven’t seen him since last night. We drove back to Maryland to pay for Steady Beth’s alternator and get the beat brothers, and when we finally got home again I asked him if he wanted to stay over and he said no. Can you believe that shit? No? Well, here’s a taste of Travis for you, then.

“So, um, do you want to stay over?” I asked him. We were half asleep on my couch watching
Seinfeld
.

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” he said, even as I was curled up against him and he had his arm draped around my shoulders, playing with a strand of my hair.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t think I can sleep over and keep my dick out of you, that’s why.”

Romantic, I know. It sort of was, actually. I guess you had to be there.

“So?” I said.

“So?” he said. “Last time we did it, you flaked out in under six hours.”

“It was closer to eight hours.”

“Emmy.”

Frustrating, right?

Today he worked and I didn’t talk to him all day. Know what I did? I sat in my room listening to Soft rehearsal tapes and played my guitar. I sketched out plans for a summer tour proposal to bring up at our next rehearsal. I made a list of potential contacts in major music hubs from here to Seattle. I went through the
Musician’s Guide to Touring
and Travis’s copy of
Book Your Own Fuckin’ Life (
the premiere guide to the punk rock underground, from
Maximum Rocknroll).
I made a list of where to send demos and expanded the list of label reps we should send to. This is how I spend almost all of my free time, which is why I never have free time.

Then I went to the diner with Millie and I didn’t tell her what Sonia and Jeff and George and Molly and all of the Rutgers women’s rugby team already know—that even if I have no idea what I’m doing here, Travis and I are pretty much a
thing
now. And when Millie brought Travis up and asked me if I knew what his deal was, why he seems so disinterested in
her, I just shrugged and said, “I don’t know, he’s just like that.” And when she asked me to find out if she has any kind of hope of getting anywhere with him, I didn’t say, “No, back the fuck off, he’s mine,” either.

“He’s just goofy about girls,” I said.

“Is he possibly gay?” she asked.

“Only for Henry Rollins.”

I didn’t show her my ass, either, and besides, most of that Sharpie tattoo is gone as much as I attempted to preserve it. Eventually you just have to wash your ass.

When Travis sees me in the crowd tonight he smiles, but his smile shifts to a slight grimace when he’s intercepted by Millie, who drags him over to the bar. She puts her hand on his arm, leans in closer to talk in his ear and I want to drag him away from her, drag him home like a cavewoman, strip him bare and ride him until the Renaissance comes. Millie whispers something in his ear. He’s watching me as I’m watching him and who the hell knows what she’s talking about now. He laughs though, so I guess it’s something funny, though I’m not real amused here.

Millie leaves him and comes sauntering her way through the crowd over to me with a fresh drink and I have no idea, none, what’s on her mind. She hands me the cocktail and drapes her arm around my neck and plants a big, sloppy strawberry kiss on my jaw.

“I really do think he’s gay,” she says. “And not just for Henry Rollins.”

There’s nothing I can say to this with a straight face.

It’s really fucking loud down here, so even though Joey is standing right next to me, he can’t hear a word Millie says. Instead, he just ogles us as she hangs all over me and he is dying, dead and dying as he tries not to laugh. I look over to the bar where Cole and Travis are also looking our way. Cole gives me the biggest, dumbest exaggerated eyebrow waggle I’ve ever seen, and Travis, with that knowing smile, better not be getting any ideas about getting us both in the van tonight after the show.

“Why are they staring at us?” Millie says.

“Because they’re pigs,” I say.

A big, drunk grin spreads across Millie’s face and she turns to look over her shoulder at Cole and Travis. Then she looks back at me with a smirk and I know what she’s thinking as she licks her lips like that but quite honestly, I’m just not that drunk. Unfortunately, Millie is and before I can manage to duck and avoid it, she plants a big, openmouthed kiss right
on my lips, right there in the middle of the club, and oh fuck, spinART’s in the house, too. Great.

I can’t bear to look around me. I don’t want to see just how much attention we’ve drawn. But when Billy Broadband cries, “Whoa, Millie! Let me run to the car and get the camera, girl,” and I hear cries for an encore and Circle Time is still in the middle of their set, I can imagine the size of the spectacle Millie has just made of us. I know I’m turning red, for sure, and I think Joey just dropped his drink and Cole fell off his barstool and I can’t see Travis right now, but if his boner isn’t a mile long, then I have to admit, I’m a little disappointed in him.

Thankfully, all the dudes who take pictures of bands are near the front of the stage and don’t get us on film. Because that’s all I need right now.

Millie pulls her face back and laughs and I am sure I’ve turned a deep crimson, because, Jesus effing Christ, this isn’t the shore, folks. We’re not working at Frank’s Chicken House here. We are performing artists in this town, and I, for one, like to be taken seriously for what I do—and that’s sing and play guitar. I’m not here to dance on a pole, with all due respect to the exotic dancing community—they do their thing, I do mine, and mine is not to earn a living giving drunk guys hard-ons. Come on, now.

Anyway, I can’t even stay mad at Millie. She’s also too damned adorable when she’s drunk.

Travis extricates himself from some conversation at the bar and weaves his way through the crowd over to where we are. The look on his face is tough to read because there’s no questioning that he’s completely amused. But he’s coming to rescue me, that becomes obvious when he plants himself right between Millie and me and bends down to my ear to say, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I say. Now Millie gives me a long, lingering kiss on the cheek before she heads back over to the bar and Travis’s eyes flash with the fantasy of something he’s definitely not getting tonight. Not for all the vodka in the bar.

“That was not my idea,” I say.

“I know,” he says. “I thought you were going to wring her neck.”

“Well, she’s not that bad of a kisser,” I say.

He tries not to react. He glances past me, over to where Millie is sitting at the bar, and then back down at me. He narrows his eyes.

“You’re going to be in trouble if you keep that up.”

“I think
you’re
going to be in trouble if I keep it up.”

“Jesus, Emmylou,” he says, shaking his head. He laughs and then turns his attention towards the stage. “How’s Julia holding up?”

“She’s managing,” I say, nodding in her direction. She’s playing fine, not her best set ever, but who can expect that under the circumstances? It’s still good enough that the spinART rep is bobbing his head to the music and not checking his watch.

It’s near the end of Circle Time’s set when we all notice Julia is not okay. They’re playing a crowd favorite, “You and Me,” one of the oldest songs in their set, and tears stream down her face and now nothing is funny. Nothing is cute.

“Oh shit,” Joey says. “Poor Julia.”

It’s just so fucking sad, and now we’re all standing here unable to take our eyes off of her, unable to breathe as they careen through the song, pretty terribly. Matt is oblivious, that fucking dick. Dan can’t see because her back is to him, and she turns to face the bass cabinet to try to hide it. Julia misses a major change, she doesn’t make it to the bridge but hops to the chorus, and the song sounds really fucked up. And oh shit, she’s losing it up there, really losing it. Dan tries to catch her attention and get her back on top of the riff, but she’s not even paying attention anymore. The song falls all the way apart when she just stops playing altogether, puts the bass in the stand, and Dan stops playing and jams his sticks into the stick bag.

But Matt, determined to get a record deal with spinART, keeps going all by himself, like anyone gives a shit now. Like anyone in the crowd even wants to hear his lying ass. He finishes the song with the rest of us looking at him incredulous, like what a dick, seriously. When he’s done, Julia steps up to her mic and announces she quits, that’s the end of Circle Time. She thanks the rest of us for all of our support, but she can’t do it.

Nobody claps. Nobody knows what the hell to do. Matt is appalled. He quick jumps on the mic and says that’s not true, Circle Time is not disbanding, they’re just having personnel issues. Really, Matt? Jesus. And now spinART guy is not entertained, nor amused.

“This is exactly why I will never be in a band with a couple,” Joey says. “It’s so not worth the drama.”

Travis keeps his eyes on Julia as she makes her way through the crowd in a mess of tears and broken dreams. He doesn’t respond to Joey’s comment at all. But my heart freezes and shatters inside of me.

“What’s wrong?” Joey asks.

“Just . . . poor Julia,” I say, shaking my head.

“Shit, I know,” he says, wrapping his arm around me. “Let’s go see if she wants to hit the diner with us. She looks like she really needs a plate of chili fries.”

***

In Jersey, diners are where you go for fries and coffee after the bars close when you’re not done hanging out at three a.m., and on a night like this, nobody is done hanging out. Tonight, we go to the Edison Diner. It’s me, Travis, Joey, Cole, Julia and Dan, and Millie and Bailey, and then in the lobby as we’re waiting for them to put a few tables together for us, we run into Billy, Ron, and Darah Jordan, who isn’t a musician but some marketing major who is fucking Ron. This week.

You might be surprised at how crowded the Edison Diner is at three a.m. on Friday night/Saturday morning. But probably not if you’ve ever been there at that time. Half of the folks from the Court are here, which makes Julia want to hide under the table, but aside from a few pathetic looks and sideways glances, she gets several pats on the back and a few hugs. We are finally sitting, and this feels pretty much like being in a Rutgers dining hall at school except everybody here is in a band or was just out watching a band, if not Circle Time and Buttcrack at the Court, then they were at the hardcore show at the Melody. We run into the Holy Hobbies, the male pop masters of New Brunswick. They’re stopping for pancakes on their way home from playing a gig in the city.

“Dude.” Joey is leaning forward in his chair. His arm is on the back of Julia’s chair as he talks to her. “Next time I see Matt? I’m going to Taekwondo his ass. You have my word.”

“Sure, if I don’t do it myself first,” Julia says. “Maybe you can show me some moves.”

“Trap can,” Joey says. “He did competitive martial arts all through high school.”

“You did?” I say. There’s something I don’t know about Travis? Travis shakes his head at Joey.

“Taekwondo is for self-defense,” he says. “Not vendettas. For that you just want a good old-fashioned fist to the mouth.”

“I can handle that,” Joey says.

“It’s all right,” Julia says. “I’ve already done that.”