Sound Bites: A Rock & Roll Love Story (15 page)

“I am now,” I replied, still smiling. I extended my hand out. “I’m Renee.”

“Nice to meet you Renee,” he said, grabbing my hand and shaking it firmly. “I’m Walter.”

Good god, I thought. I knew there had to be a catch. I tried to picture what his pare
nts were like. Any imbecile who
would name their child Walter ought to be locked up in parental prison, even if it was a name that had passed down for ten generations.

“Hey, Walter,” I choked, withholding the strong urge to have a little fun with his name. “What brings you here?”

“My brother’s the guitarist in Eclipsys,” he replied, nodding his head towards the stage. “I came to give him some support. What about you?”

“My friend is the singer of Electric Wreck. They’re up next.”

Walter gave me a curious look. “They any good?”

“Oh, you’ll see,” I replied matter-of-factly.

He seemed impressed by my confidence. “So, what do you think of these guys?” he asked, nodding towards the stage again.

I crinkled my nose, debating on whether or not to give him my honest opinion or not, but apparently my facial expression gave it away because he burst out laughing.

“That bad huh?” he asked.

“Tell your brother he needs a new singer. The songs aren’t bad, but I think people expect singers, especially female singers, to be able to… well… sing. Her voice would be okay if it was 1994 and that whole angry rocker chick thing was still in.”

He nodded in agreement. “So I assume your friend has a pretty good voice?”

I rolled my eyes back in my head and Walter cracked up again. I had only spent two minutes with the guy but clearly he was already enjoying my sense of humor. I leaned in closer to him and whispered, “You have no idea.”

He raised his eyebrow, intrigued. “Oh yeah?”

I nodded. “One of the best I’ve ever heard.”

I suddenly realized that I was being completely rude and hadn’t introduced Walter to Bianca, although it really wasn’t that rude since she was such a nonentity that it was easy to forget her presence. I waved my hand in her direction and said, “Walter, this is Bianca. She’s Christian’s girlfriend, the drummer in Electric Wreck.”

As Walter introduced himself to Bianca, I couldn’t stop staring at his beautiful dark eyes. Up close that they were a lighter brown than I had initially thought, like creamed chestnuts. He had a perfectly chiseled, heart-shaped face and a tiny scar above his eyebrow. “Universally hot,” Justine would’ve called him. That was her renowned expression for all the beautiful model/actor look-a-likes in L.A. The ones too perfect for words.  Like Walter.

I realized at that moment that I had spent the last few months pining over Dylan, someone who apparently would rather make fun of me than sleep with me, when there were plenty of guys in the world, and gorgeous ones to boot, who would be more than willing to take me on a date and tear my clothes off at the end of the night. I was newly twenty-five and I knew that I couldn’t wait around forever to find out if Dylan wanted to cross over the friendship line.

Walter focused his attention back on me, realizing that Bianca wasn’t much of a talker. “So, where are you from Renee?”

I smirked, glancing at the Yankees cap on his head. “You sure you want to know?”

“Am I shoo-wah I want to know?” Walter had a quiet laugh that almost sounded like a whisper. It was sexy. “Well, judging from your accent, I’m going to assume you’re a Red Sox fan, am I right?”

I nodded. “You got the location right, however, I’m not a baseball fan whatsoever, so don’t hold it against me.”

He stepped backwards like I just sucker punched him. “You don’t watch baseball
at all?
”

I shook my head. “Not into the sports scene. It’s like a foreign language to me.”

We spent the next ten minutes discussing music and sports until Eclipsys finished playing and Electric Wreck took the stage, at which point I silenced Walter and made him devote his utmost attention to the three-song set they were about to perform. Dylan and I had decided that he should open with a powerful rock ballad he had written titled, “Fallen,” followed by a slower track, “Mystic Avenue,” which I thought showed off his vocals and falsetto power the most, and end the set with “Wicked,” which was like a melodic thunderstorm. It started off slow, exploded in the middle, then calmed back down towards the end. “Wicked” was undeniably their best song to date, so we wanted to save the best for last in hopes of leaving an impressionable impact on the audience.

I spotted a group of teenage boys to my left and excused myself from Walter momentarily to promote Dylan’s band before they began playing.

“Have you heard these guys?” I asked them, elbowing a tall kid who had curly blonde hair and a friendly face.

“What’s their name?” he asked, while his friends eye-balled me
not-so-discreetly
. I loved teenage boys because they always listened when I preached about music.

“Electric Wreck,” I replied, my eyes widening like they had invented the theory of music itself. “They’re
awesome
.”

“Really? Who do they sound like?” the curly-haired boy’s friend asked.

“Do you guys like loud rock?” I asked. “Like Muse?”

“Yeah,” curly-haired boy exclaimed. “Muse is awesome.”

“Then you’ll like these guys,” I replied. “They’re giving away demo CD’s at a table in the hallway. Make sure you grab some after the set.”

The boys nodded in agreement and I sauntered back over to Walter, who was chuckling to himself. He knew what I was up to.

“Teenage boys,” I explained. “They listen to me.”

“I wonder why.”

Walter, Bianca and I stood in silence for the next fifteen minutes as Electric Wreck lit up the stage, with Dylan wailing out every note like his lungs were on fire. The only words we spoke were halfway through the set, when Walter elbowed me, his eyes wide with disbelief.

“You weren’t kidding, huh?” he asked, turning to face me.

I nodded, my eyes still glued to the stage. I glanced around at the audience, who had a mix of reactions. Some obnoxious teenagers up front were being rowdy and throwing things, but the rest of the audience stared intently at the stage, nodding their heads to the music and occasionally whispering to the person next to them, pointing at the stage in amazement.

They understood. They knew.

They were one of us.

***

Walter and I were sitting on a bench in the hallway engrossed in a deep conversation about New York nightlife, when Dylan came barreling towards us with fire darts shooting out of his eyes.

“Where’ve you been?” he asked me, paying no ack
nowledgment to Walter
.

“I came out here after your set. I…”

“So you just left Bianca by herself?” he scowled. “That’s nice.”

“I told her I’d be right back. She’s a big girl. She can take care of herself.” I waived my hand and pointed towards Walter. “Dylan, this is Walter.”

“Hey,
Wally
,” Dylan replied sarcastically, clearly mocking his name. He focused his gaze back on me. “Did you see that kid in the front throw shit at me?” He shook his head in disgust. “Unbelievable.”

“He’s just an immature kid,” I said. “The kids next to us loved you. They all grabbed demos from the table after you guys were done.”

“Yeah,” Walter agreed. “Don’t let it get you down. Everyone’s going to react differently to a band they’ve never heard before.”

“Oh, is that so?” Dylan challenged.

“Yeah, dude, don’t worry about it,” Walter continued. “Kids can be mean sometimes.”

Dylan’s eyes glazed over, as if he was about to roll them but held himself back. “Thanks,
dude
,
” he scoffed. “Next time I want your advice, I’ll ask.”

“Walter, please excuse us for one second.” I grabbed Dylan’s arm and dragged him to the nearest abandoned corner.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I yelled, once we were out of earshot from Walter. “Seriously, Dylan, what was that all about?”

He rolled his head in a circle and looked at me like it was perfectly normal for him to behave like an ass in front of a complete stranger. “Oh come on, Renee, are you
serious
about that guy? What the
hell
are you doing with that clown?”

“It doesn’t matter! I happen to think he’s a perfectly nice guy and you were just a rude, arrogant son of a bitch to him for absolutely no reason. He was nothing but nice to you and did
not
deserve to be treated like that.”

“You know what, if you want to take off with some tool in a Yankees hat whose name is Wally, then go ahead, be my guest.”

“You don’t even know him.”

“Yeah, and neither do you.”

I took a deep breath and finally managed to spit out the question that I really wanted to ask. “Dylan, why do you care?”

His face remained grave as threw his arms up in the air, surrendering. “You know what? I don’t. I hope you and Wally have a great night together. I’ll see you back at the hotel.”

I watched his back as he stormed off, but I was pretty sure that this time, he didn’t care whether or not I was watching. And honestly, I wasn’t even sure if I cared anymore either.

Chapter
16

Normally, when a guy as ridiculous looking as Wa
l
ter is within a five-foot radius of me, I somehow forget how to form a sentence properly. However, by some miracle of God, Walter was actually such an easy conversationalist that I was not only able to push coherent words out of my mouth, but also able to shove the fight with Dylan to the back of my mind and enjoy myself for the rest of the night.

After leaving the theater, Walter brought me to a Thai food restaurant on the Lower East Side called Triple Seven. It was a cute little place loaded with colored Christmas lights, bamboos and round paper lamps. The tables were stacked a little too close together for my comfort, but I kept that to myself. I didn’t want to start voicing complaints five minutes into the date.

Although Walter didn’t align with my typical staving artist/cheating jerk-off dating genre, I was able to overlook it based not only on the fact that he was a portrait of impeccable male beauty, but also because his personality wasn’t ranking that far behind his looks. Ordinarily, guys that looked like Walter had a tendency to be either completely self-indulgent or possess the personality of a doormat, but, thankfully, Walter was a pretty bright guy. And genuine.

And gorgeous, did I mention?

While we waited for our entrées to arrive, I learned that Walter had grown up in Jupiter, Florida, a town outside of West Palm Beach. He’d moved to New York his freshman year of college and loved it so much that he never left. He had two older sisters and was, in fact, named Walter after his father since he was the only boy in his family. He worked in the real estate market since his dad had been in the industry for over a decade, and often flew back and forth from New York to Florida for business.