The Lonely Hearts Club Read online

  As soon as the tears start to flow, I immediately wash my hands and splash water on my face. I hate girls who cry. I’m sure that Deborah Harry never cried when she was living with her whole band in a studio apartment that only had one bed before they got their record deal. (She did have Chris Stein to keep her warm, though.)

  I call Jesse’s cell phone and it goes directly to voice mail. I hang up and walk over to the couch, careful to baby my left foot as I walk. Distracted by the pain, I almost walk into Jesse’s drum set, and my right hip grazes his cymbal, causing it to ring out. Beck’s immortal words immediately spring to mind, and I take my guitar from its stand and begin to play.

  “‘Soy,’” I sing, “‘un perdedor. I’m a loser, baby, so why don’t you kill me?’”

  The phone rings and I set down my guitar and pick up the phone. I take a quick peek at the caller ID and it reads supergood advertising. It’s safe to pick up the phone, since it’s Chloe calling from her uber-hip ad agency, and not my mother calling again.

  “How’s unemployed life?” she asks.

  “It sucks,” I say, leaning back onto the couch. “My dad just had my Beetle carted away.”

  “No freaking way!” she says. “Well, think of it this way, now you definitely don’t have to drive all the way out to Long Island anymore for a job that you hate!”

  “True,” I say, “but why do I feel like such a loser?”

  “Because you don’t have a car or a job and your daddy pays for your apartment?” she suggests, laughing. I know she’s teasing me, just like she always does, but this time I take it to heart. She’s right: I’m just a spoiled brat whose daddy pays for her apartment. How did I get here? I was supposed to be a rock star by now, with my own downtown loft, complete with parking space and car to park in it.

  “Wow, that sounds even worse when you say it out loud.”

  “Well, at least you still have a hot boyfriend. And anyway, you’ll never believe this.” As Chloe segues into a story about how her expense account has been cut down, I allow myself to do something that I know isn’t good for me, to indulge in an activity that I know I shouldn’t: I turn on my computer and go to my old band’s Web site. Now, I know there’s no point in doing this and that no good will come out of revisiting my thirty seconds of glory, but at times like these, I can’t help myself.

  Just a few clicks of my keyboard, and I’m there. The Lonely Hearts Club Band Web site. It looks so primitive compared to what they’re doing with the newer Web sites nowadays, but I like that it hasn’t changed at all, a snapshot frozen in time. I click on the link for the blog and read my last entry. It’s all about that last gig we were supposed to play, written the night before Billy OD’d and died. There are links to our Facebook page and Twitter account. I linger on Billy’s picture a little longer than I should. A wave of sadness overcomes me, and I take a deep breath just to steady myself.

  I wish I could still be that person who wrote this blog entry. Hopeful and confident, so full of possibility. Everything I wanted in life was almost within my reach, so close I could taste it. My band still intact. Like a family. Safe and sound. But they’re not now. Billy is gone, and I’m not that person anymore. I don’t think that I ever will be again.

  I should write a blog entry now, I think. Show the world what life is really like. Full of disappointment. Full of anger.

  “Are you even listening to me?” Chloe asks. I quickly turn off my computer, as if she’ll somehow know that I’m doing something that she wouldn’t approve of.

  “Yes,” I say. “Only thirty-five bucks for dinner when you’re working late.”

  “Exactly,” she says. “It’s totally inhumane. Speaking of food, do you want to go for dinner tonight?”

  “Sure,” I say. “I’m tutoring Lola at six. How about eight?”

  “Call me when you get back,” she says, and we hang up.

  Talking with Chloe cheers me up and gives me the energy I need to stay off my band’s old Web site. If Chloe knew that I was on it, she’d tell me that it’s unhealthy to dwell on the good old days like that.

  Talking with Chloe also reminds me that I need to figure out what song I want to work on this evening with my Little Sister from the Harlem Community Center. Chloe and I first went there for a volunteer project our human services class did with them about two years ago—one of these programs where they hook you up with a child from the area who you mentor and spend quality time with. The rest of the class did the requisite one school year with their Little Siblings, but Chloe and I stuck with it, she teaching her Little Sister art, me teaching Lola about music. I hate to say it, but I think that I get more out of my relationship with Lola than she does. Getting to know her has truly been one of the brightest spots in the last few years for me. And it always puts things into perspective for me: No matter how bad I think I have it, seeing how hard Lola’s mom works for her to have a better life than she had reminds me that all things considered, I really am a very, very lucky person.

  What would Lola like to play today? I wonder as I flip on MTV. It’s an Amber Fairchild video. Yes, that Amber Fairchild. Singing her latest slutty bubble-gum pop number. This one’s called “Stick It (In Me).” As the video comes to a close, I see her telling an MTV VJ that the song is really about self worth and self love, and that when she’s singing the song, what she’s really doing is asking the Lord to stick confidence and self love and a whole host of other very Christian things in her.

  As if we all can’t see right through that. Everyone knows that she was sleeping with her manager before she was even legal. And with the leopard skirt she’s sporting today, I’m quite certain that what he will be sticking into her after the show will not be self love.

  I decide on “I’m Special,” by the Pretenders, and download the sheet music off the Internet. I put my guitar in its case (I gave Lola her own acoustic guitar last year for Christmas) and fill my messenger bag with everything I’ll need for the evening. I used to drive to Lola’s place on my way home from working on Long Island, and I silently curse my father as I realize that I’ll need to take the subway all the way uptown. Then I silently curse myself when I realize that I’ve let my MetroCard expire.

  Setting down everything I’ll need for later, I look around the loft and decide that today is the first day of the rest of my life. Of my new unemployed life, that is. I make a mental checklist of all the things I plan to do, all of the projects I want to tackle, in my new unemployed state. Starting in the living room, I begin to clean. As I organize and dust and arrange, I realize how therapeutic fixing up the loft is. It may be owned by my father, but as I put Jesse’s and my things back in their proper spots, it still feels like it’s very much mine.

  It’s unbelievable how even when you spend the day doing nothing, the time flies by. Maybe it’s just the freedom from helping my father do pore extractions all day, but in any case, once I finish organizing the apartment, shower, and change, it’s 5 P.M., time to head up to Harlem to tutor my Little Sister.

  “I can’t believe you took the subway,” Lola says to me with a laugh as she picks me up at the 6 station on Lexington and 116th Street.

  “I told you not to pick me up,” I say. “Why are you not at your place waiting for me, like I told you?”

  “I didn’t think you could survive the mean streets of Harlem all by yourself,” she teases. She’s eleven and already has that pseudojaded attitude that I know she thinks is cool. I know it because that’s how I was when I was eleven.

  “Well, I can,” I say. “And I would’ve made my way to you just fine.”

  “I can’t believe you even knew where the station was.” As we walk from the subway to her apartment building, Lola struts and preens, checking herself out as we pass windows that she can see herself in. She’s even got her guitar strapped to her back, trying to look hip, which is entirely unnecessary, since we’re heading straight to her apartment anyway.

  “So what do you want to play today?” I ask her as we g
et into her apartment, a one bedroom on 118th Street and First Avenue. Her mother, who is studying to become a nurse at night and works as a nanny to an Upper East Side family during the day, gives Lola the bedroom and sleeps on a pullout couch in the living room.

  “Amber Fairchild,” she says, flipping on MTV and dancing along to the “Stick It (In Me)” video, which is, for some reason, playing yet again. How can this video play twice in one day when MTV barely ever plays videos anymore?

  “What did you just say?” I ask, putting down my guitar on the couch.

  “‘I want you,’” she sings, “‘to stick it.’”

  “Turn that off,” I say, but she ignores me, still facing the television, gyrating along to the music.

  “‘Stick it in me,’” she sings. “‘Stick it in me.’” I grab her hips and steady them.

  “Stop it,” I say. “You are not listening to this crap.”

  “Why not?” she asks, turning to face me. My hands fall from her hips and Lola throws her hands above her head and starts gyrating to the music again.

  “She is totally antifeminist,” I say, pulling her down on the couch to sit next to me. “You should like talented women, like Joan Jett and Chrissie Hynde.”

  “Who?” she says, now dancing in her seat, eyes back on Amber Fairchild. I click the television off.

  “Or Pat Benatar,” I say, grabbing Lola’s guitar and tuning it for her. “I’d even accept Pat Benatar.”

  “Who?” she says as I line up her fingers for her to strum a few bars of “We Belong” on her guitar.

  “Alicia Keys,” I say as I begin to strum my own guitar. “You should like Alicia Keys.”

  “Why, because she’s black?” Lola asks me, a tiny smirk betraying her false tough-girl front.

  “No,” I say, “because she is a brilliant and talented singer-songwriter who doesn’t use sex to sell her records.” Lola stares blankly back at me. All I can think is, Please don’t ask me any questions about sex. “Now, let’s play.”

  5 - Suspicious Minds

  “Lola wants to play Amber Fairchild music,” I tell Chloe later that evening, once we are firmly ensconced at the sushi bar at Suki. Owing to my newly unemployed state, Chloe’s treating me to a nice dinner, since, as she explained to me, I’ll probably have to subsist on cat food and crackers from now on. I should have one nice meal before the poverty sets in.

  “Is that a sign of the apocalypse?” Chloe asks with a laugh as she hands our order to the waitress. At Suki, you don’t tell your waitress your order. They just hand you a piece of paper with all of the sushi choices listed and you simply mark off the ones you want and hand the sheet back to your waitress. Chloe says I’m only a pseudo-sushi eater, since I refuse to try anything but rolls. She orders a platter of sashimi while I opt for a spicy tuna roll and an eel avocado roll.

  “Maybe,” I say, watching the sushi chef in front of me slice through a massive piece of salmon.

  “You know what else would be a sign?” Chloe asks as she breaks open her chopsticks.

  “What?”

  “You getting a real job,” she says, tapping her chopsticks together for emphasis.

  “I had a real job,” I say. “I got fired.”

  “By your own dad,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I know.”

  “Really sensitive, Chlo,” I say, turning to face her.

  “How would you like to work at supergood advertising?” she asks, turning to me. “Well, for supergood. You wouldn’t actually be working there.”

  “Your agency?” I ask. “What do you mean?”

  “Well,” Chloe says, her smile brightening, “there’s this freelance gig coming open.”

  “I’m listening,” I say. A freelance job sounds perfect—making your own hours, working on your own time. It would give me the cash flow I now desperately need, while giving me the time to work on my music.

  “Writing jingles.”

  “What?” I say as the waitress brings us a bowl of edamame and our bottle of sake.

  “Writing jingles,” Chloe says, pouring me a glass of sake twice as big as hers. “For one of our corporate clients.” The fact that she’s trying to get me drunk tells me that she already knows what I think of that.

  “Me writing jingles for corporate America?” I say. “That really would be a sign of the apocalypse.”

  “Down that glass of sake and then tell me what you think,” Chloe says, taking a piece of edamame. I do as I’m told. “It’s freelance for now, so it’s basically part-time. You’ll start with one of our oldest clients—Healthy Foods. They’re looking for a new image after that huge false-advertising lawsuit over their coffee, and they want us to bring in some new blood to shake things up. That’s where you come in. You’d be the new blood. The designated shaker-upper.”

  “Still a sign of the apocalypse,” I say and Chloe pours me another glass of sake. I down it, and Chloe downs hers. I take a deep breath and Chloe looks at me with hopeful eyes, waiting for me to say yes. “Actually, it’s not. I’m being a brat—I need the money, and you know that I need the money—I can’t believe you. You’re an amazing friend. Thank you so much.”

  “Don’t make me blush,” she says, giving me a hug.

  “How many people did you have to piss off for this?”

  “None, actually,” Chloe says as she finishes off her second glass of sake. “They thought I was a hero for suggesting it. It’s a win-win.” We clink our tiny sake glasses for a toast. “Cheers. To being a sellout for corporate America.”

  “Ah,” I say, “to being a sellout for corporate America with a place to live.”

  “When do you have to get that first payment on the loft to your dad?” Chloe says, putting her sake glass back down on the table.

  “Not for a while, I’m sure. Dinner’s on me,” I say. “You rule.”

  “It doesn’t pay that well,” Chloe says. “I’m still paying for dinner. You can just pledge your undying love and devotion to me.”

  “Done.” We clink our glasses together again.

  “Good,” she says, “because you start tomorrow. We’ve got a client meeting with Healthy Foods at noon.”

  “I guess I won’t sleep in,” I say. “I’ll set my alarm for ten.”

  High on sake and my newly acquired freelance gig, I get back to the loft and kick my shoes off as I walk in the door. Right next to Jesse’s black Converse sneakers, there are a pair of gold stilettos that are not mine.

  I make my way into the living room, where Jesse is sitting on my couch with a very familiar-looking redhead. They’ve already polished off a bottle of my father’s 1990 Lafite-Rothschild and are laughing hysterically. Jesse knows that I was holding onto that wine for the next time my father comes over, and I can’t believe he’s opened it. I’m not sure what I’m more pissed off about—the fact that he’s opened a bottle of wine that I was saving for my father or that he’s done it with some redhead who wears gold stilettos.

  “Hey, babe,” Jesse says as he stands up and throws his arm around my waist. “You remember Cassie, don’t you?” For the record, I don’t. “From The Rage?”

  “Yes, of course,” I say, practically tripping over my own feet as I go to shake her hand. For some reason, I’m trying very hard to pretend that I’m not drunk. “How are you?”

  “Great,” she says. “Just great, man.”

  “Congratulations on your record deal,” I say, and immediately recall that Jesse told me that no one was supposed to know about it. I eye the bottle of Lafite and see that it is almost completely empty.

  “Thanks so much,” Cassie says. “We are psyched.”

  “You earned it,” Jesse says.

  “Thanks, man,” she says as she gets up from the couch. “Anyway, we’re recording tomorrow, so I should probably go.”

  “No!”

  “Yeah...” Jesse and I say at the same time. I tell Cassie to stay, but Jesse maintains that she probably should go. I scramble awkwardly out of her way as she tries to gather
her things to leave.

  Jesse walks Cassie to the door and I fall down onto the couch. I can hear them whispering before he closes the door behind her. I position myself just so on the couch so that I look sexy when Jesse comes back to the living room to apologize for inviting some strange woman to our apartment and drinking my father’s expensive wine.

  “So,” Jesse says as he walks over to the couch.

  “So,” I say, trying to maintain my sexy pose. I’m lying on my right side with my left leg thrown lazily over my right and have my head in my right hand. I’m hoping he mistakes my drunk eyes for sexy bedroom eyes. I like to look good for arguments with Jesse, so that he can tell me that I’m right that much quicker and we can get to making up that much sooner.

  “Cassie lent me money for the demo,” he says, standing over me. Usually, he would plop himself right down on the ottoman, but he stands in front of the couch tonight, looking down at me.

  “Why did Cassie lend you money?” I ask. It occurs to me to sit up, but I’m simply too exhausted.

  “Cassie lent me money and she has none,” he says, still standing over me. “You wouldn’t lend me money, and you have tons.”

  “I don’t have tons,” I say, and hoist myself up to sit upright.

  “Yeah, right,” Jesse says, opening his arms out wide to show me the loft, as if he’s one of the Deal or No Deal girls.

  “Why did she lend you money?” I ask, as the room starts to spin. I’m not sure if it’s the sake or the confusion over what is going on.

  “I needed the money, Jo. You knew that,” Jesse says. “I had to take the money from wherever I could.”

  “What are you,” I say, summoning all of my energy to get up from the couch and walk toward the bedroom, “a drug addict? Getting money anywhere you can?” Jesse doesn’t follow me—he stays firmly planted in the living room.

  “Yes. I’m addicted,” Jesse says. “I’m addicted to music.”