The Lonely Hearts Club (25 page)

Love,

Jo

Blog comment from Stantheman:

I’m looking for someone, too. Someone I lost. John, if you’re out there reading this, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. Give me another chance?

Blog comment from Bluebird97:

Met a girl on the Lower East Side last night. You said you loved the Sex Pistols. I said I did, too. You were wearing a gray motorcycle jacket and jeans. I was wearing a camo jacket. If you’re reading this, meet me tonight at The Bitter End at 10.

Tweet from
@alecsax
:

Looking for a lost love? Trying to reconcile with someone you wish were still in your life? Check out the #LonelyHeartsClub

42 - Personal Jesus

When I wake up at 8
A.M
., Chloe’s already left the apartment again in a mad rush. As much as I apologize, Chloe’s still angry, still avoiding me as much as she can.

It’s time for me to get off her couch. I open my laptop and start searching for apartments before I even make a cup of coffee. Things move fast in New York—I could be out of Chloe’s hair by next week. And then we can work on getting our friendship back to where it was before. I know she’s angry, but there’s something about the friends who have known you since you were five years old. You don’t let friends like that go.

Everything’s out of my price range. To put it more accurately, I don’t really have a price range, since I have no money coming in. The money from the ads stopped the week after the Lonely Hearts Club Ball.

What’s a musician in need of money to do? I know what Max would say to that—sell a song. I then run the whole dialogue in my head:

But I don’t want to sell out
.

It’s not selling out
.

It is the definition of selling out
—
selling one of my songs to an artist who’s going to tear it apart. Who’s going to ruin it
.

She might not ruin it
.

She will
.

You’ll be a homeless musician who doesn’t sell out. Sell the song
.

I don’t want to be homeless, but I also don’t want my relationship with Chloe to disintegrate any further than it has because I can’t leave her couch. I pick up my cell phone and make the call, prepared to be shot down the way Love, Inc.’s parent company did to me about the Web site sale, but to my surprise, Amber Fairchild wants to meet.

“I didn’t think you would want to meet with me,” I say to Amber. We’re at her midtown duplex apartment, on the roof. A person I can only assume to be her assistant is serving us iced green tea with slices of lemon.

“Of course I wanted to meet with you,” Amber says. I can never get over the way she speaks. As if she’s auditioning for a current adaptation of
Little House on the Prairie
. All wide eyes and big teeth. “I’m a devout Christian.”

“Oh,” I say. “I’m not Christian.”

“I know that, silly,” she says, smiling her big-toothed smile. “I meant that I forgive. I’m very forgiving. I forgive you.” She says that last bit with prayer hands, like she’s about to bow down to me or something.

Green tea almost comes out of my nose. I don’t know why I find her earnestness so completely funny. Probably because I know it’s all an act. Ten bucks says she’ll be cursing and gossiping inside of an hour. Not knowing what else to do, I give the prayer hands back to her, and nod my head down.

“I know that you’re not a liar, Jo,” she says. “And I forgive you for letting everyone think you hated love when you don’t really hate love. You love love, don’t you?”

“Do you have any vodka?” I ask. “It might make this green tea a little more palatable.”

“Heavens, no,” she says. “I don’t drink.”

“Of course you don’t,” I mutter under my breath.

“You never asked me my username.”

“What?” I ask. I take a sip of my iced green tea and a lemon pit gets wedged in the straw.

“My username,” she says again. “On your site. Or do you know all of them already? Do you track those?”

“I definitely do not track them.”

“I’m Allsnotfairinloveandmusic,” she says. And then she dramatically pauses. Now, I know this is the part where I’m supposed to gasp or faint, or otherwise express extreme shock, but the truth is, at its peak the site had over a million users. I really can’t remember any one in particular.

I nod my head in a way that I hope seems knowing.

“I used to write about my husband,” she says,
sotto voce
. I still don’t know what she’s talking about. I wish I had Chloe here with me—she knew so many of the site’s users. She’d be able to tell me who Amber was and I could save myself this awkwardness.

“Writing about your husband isn’t off limits,” I say. “Actually, I started the whole site after a brutal breakup with my ex, Jesse.”

“You were married?” she asks.

“No, we just lived together,” I say, and then instantly regret saying it. Amber puts her head down and makes those stupid prayer hands again. I guess I shouldn’t have mentioned the whole living-in-sin thing?

“Well, I was married,” she says when she finally comes up for air.

“That’s okay,” I say. “That’s my point. A lot of people wrote about their spouses. You’re not alone in that.”

“Well, the problem is,” Amber explains, “I don’t believe in divorce.”

“Does your husband believe in it?” I joke. Amber stays straight-faced. I’m not sure if she doesn’t get the joke or if I’ve inadvertently offended her. Probably not a good way to start a working relationship. “Sorry,” I say. “Should we get to the songs?”

“My husband usually chooses my music for me,” Amber says quietly. She looks down into her green tea.

“No problem,” I say. “Are we waiting for him to get started?”

“He’s not home,” Amber says. She can’t bring her eyes up to meet mine. I don’t know much about business negotiations, but I’m thinking that this is not a good sign.

“Oh. Do you want me to come back later? I’m really looking forward to working with you. I can work on whatever time frame is good for you,” I say, but in truth, I was hoping to sell at least one song today. I really need the money that Alan had offered me when we first met. I’ve got my first appointment to look at apartments tomorrow. To sign a lease, I’ll need to have first and last month’s rent, along with enough for a security deposit. “I know you’re going to love what I’ve picked out. I’ve got that first song, “When Will Tomorrow Be,” that I know you guys really responded to.”

I reach down to pick up my guitar—I remember from my supergood days how much better hearing a song played on guitar in the meeting can sell a concept—and when I look up, Amber’s crying.

“When I say he’s not home, I mean he hasn’t been home for two weeks,” she says, crying. “No one’s seen him, no one’s heard from him.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he’s nowhere to be found,” Amber cries. “He’s gone.”

“Does he do that a lot?” I ask.

“Yes,” Amber confesses. It’s like a tiny whisper that escapes from her lips. From the way she says it, I get the sense that it’s the first time she’s admitted this out loud. That I’m the first person outside of her camp she’s told. “Unfortunately, he does. This time is a little different, though.”

“How so?”

“I’m having a slight problem with some of my accounts,” Amber says, and then starts crying hysterically again.

“He took your money?” I ask, incredulous. I know I thought it was funny when Amber got stuck with a lip-synching scandal, but this is something entirely different. This is a federal crime.

“All of it,” Amber says. “Gone.”

“All of it?” I parrot back and Amber nods her head yes.

I don’t quite know what to do—part of me thinks I should reach over and give her a hug, but I barely know her. Would a hug from someone you barely know be comforting? I end up putting my hand on top of hers, and she looks up at me and smiles.

“What are you going to do?” I ask. “How are you going to pay for all this?” I look around the rooftop and can’t even calculate how much an apartment like this must cost. I can barely afford the rent on a ground-level studio apartment. This gorgeous house in the sky must cost a complete fortune. Not to mention the staff she employs. Payroll alone must run in the five figures.

“My accountant just sold off one of my properties,” she says. “So that can hold me over for a while.”

“That was smart,” I say.

“Alan was the one who encouraged me to invest in real estate,” Amber says, and the waterworks start over again.

“That piece of shit,” I say, taking a swig of green tea for good measure. Not exactly the same as downing a shot, but I think it has the intended effect.

“Oh, I wish you wouldn’t use a cuss word,” she says. “He
is
still my husband. We are still bound by God and the law.”

“The law?” I say, thinking aloud. “You should have him pronounced dead!”

“Dead?”

“After all, no one’s heard from him, right?” I say. “And maybe he really
is
dead! Then maybe you could get your money back.”

“I don’t want him dead,” Amber says. “I don’t want anyone dead. Just like I’m sure that you don’t want Jesse dead, Jo. You’re just cross with him.”

“No, I want him dead,” I say.

“The Bible tells us...” Amber begins.

As Amber gives me my Bible lesson for the day, I think about what she’s said. How could she
not
want him dead? I want the dry cleaners dead when they deliver my clothing a day later than promised. Maybe I could learn a thing or two from Amber. Maybe I could learn to live without the anger. Without the rage.

“Can I confess something to you?” I say.

“Sure.”

“I thought it was really funny when you got caught lip-synching,” I say. “I really did. But now I feel bad about that. And I’m sorry. I’m really excited to help you get back into the swing of things.”

“I thought it was funny, too,” she says. “And frankly, I never could understand why they always made me lip-synch at those things. I can sing and dance at the same time, thank you very much.”

I can’t help but laugh. “I’m sure you can.”

“But I’m sure you remember that from
American Star
,” she says, smiling at me. I can’t help but smile back. So
the
Amber Fairchild remembered little old me all along. And look at us now.

She sings a few bars of her breakout hit—“I Want You to Keep Me Up All Night (All Right)”—but she does it with just a few chords on the guitar, and plays it slowly, not with the frenetic beat it was recorded with as a pop single.

It’s another song entirely.

When I can focus on Amber’s voice, and not all of the Auto-Tune electronic sounds, the song takes on another meaning. I can focus on the words, and how beautifully Amber can actually sing, and I love it. I really love it. It’s a song about longing, about wanting to be with someone every moment of the day. About how you can never get enough of that person. I connect to it completely—it’s how I feel about Max.

“I wrote it about Alan,” she says. “When we first met. You know that feeling when you first meet someone wonderful?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I do.”

I wonder why I don’t write songs like that. My songs are usually borne out of anger or rage. About the end of things. Why didn’t I ever think to write from a place like that? To write about the beginning? To write about love?

“Do you think maybe we could write a song together?” Amber asks.

“I think that would be great,” I say. And I actually mean it.

43 - Modern Romance

Blog comment from Rockboy1983:

To BrokenHeartontheLES:

I’m so sorry. I know you were waiting for me. I know I was supposed to show. Things have changed, and I couldn’t be there. I promise, I’ll explain it to you one day. All I can say is sorry. Give me another shot when the timing is right?

Blog comment from Vermontisforlovers:

You, rushing for the L Train. Me, trying to hold the door open for you, but getting crushed by the doors. I saw you smile at me. We had a moment there, didn’t we?