Stay Until We Break (20 page)

“But . . .”

Then Cole turns and walks away before I can say another word.

Sonia

Friday, August 25, 1995

Caledonia Lounge, Athens, GA

With Crown the Robin and Fire Setters Anonymous

Soft Tour—Day 16

The guttural, retching sound of a dying animal echoed off the cold, white tiles. It was fifteen minutes before my Juilliard audition, and I was on my knees in the ladies’ room, heaving my lunch into the toilet. My mother stood outside the stall, fumbling in her purse for my Valium, but there was no way I could manage the audition if I took that.

“Maybe just a half,” she said.

“I’m not taking it,” I said.

I got up, walked out, washed my face in the sink. I took a hard look at my red eyes in the mirror. It was the most important day of my life. I did know it, and would have known it even if my mother hadn’t reminded me of it twenty times an hour, hadn’t recounted her own audition for, and acceptance to, and graduation from Juilliard.

“Look, Sonia,” my mother said, trying to take a more supportive approach. “It’s okay that you’re not as good as I was at your age. I was a special case. You got an audition, right? It’s difficult enough to get in—don’t sabotage yourself.”

“You really think I can’t get in?” My lip twitched.

“I didn’t say that,” she said.

Maybe she knew if she pissed me off enough, I would go out there and kick ass. And I did. I blew that audition out of the water. My
Pezzo Capriccioso
even brought my mother to tears. But it took so much out of me I had to sleep in the car on the way home. It did get me into Juilliard, though. Because I wasn’t as good as my mother was at eighteen.

I was better.

That’s what I’m telling myself now as I hork my grilled cheese into the toilet at the Caledonia Lounge, minutes before I have to get on stage to play bass for Soft. My head is spinning and I feel like I can’t breathe. I’m hoping it’s going to pass, and I’m just trying to think about my happy place, and not think about my fucking mother or Cole or anything else that’s got my stomach in knots.

“Sunny?” Emmylou says, coming in. I retch again at the sound of her voice, completely humiliated. “Oh my God, Cole was serious? You really do throw up when you have to perform?”

“I’m fine,” I say. I wipe my mouth again with a piece of toilet paper and get up off the floor. When I walk out of the stall, Emmy is leaning against the sinks, looking worried.

“I can play the set, no problem,” I say.

“I know. I’ve been hearing you play it all day long. But do you actually
want
to play it?”

No, I think. I really, really don’t. If I wanted to play bass in a band, I would play bass in a band. I want to manage a band, not play in one. But I guess I’m learning that there are times when being part of a band means you just do what has to be done, even if it’s not exactly what you want.

“Sunny, you don’t have to do this,” Emmy says. “Really.”

“I can do it,” I insist. “Come on, it’s my big chance to play rock star.”

She gives me a hug.

“Okay, look. This is indie rock, so for your first set, you can get away with putting your back to the crowd and keeping your eyes on Joey, all right? Just like we practiced at Misty’s. If you get lost, look at Joey and he’ll get you back on track. If you get nervous, look at the floor. The crowd isn’t even there.”

***

She wasn’t kidding. The crowd literally isn’t even here. I’ve been to funerals more upbeat than this empty room at the Caledonia. I mean, Crown the Robin are playing cards at the damn bar while we play, not even pretending to pay attention. I can’t remember if Stars on the Floor have ever played such a shitty Friday night anywhere.

Why is this club so empty on a Friday night? The fucking Pumps, that’s why. The Pumps are playing the 40 Watt, literally right around the block. That place had a line that went clear back to Atlanta tonight. Sold out. Everybody from last night’s party is there. Meanwhile, we’re in this great room playing to Crown the Robin and two bartenders. I guess since it’s our first set without Cole, it’s better that it’s empty. And every time I think of Cole, which is the entire time I’m up here in his place, my stomach knots with anger.

When I manage to look over at Travis and Emmylou, they’re playing like there are five hundred people out there—doesn’t even matter to them. They don’t feel anxious or demoralized like I do. That’s why they’re the musicians and I’m the manager. They’re happy when they make music come out of their amplifiers, no matter what the hell else is going on around them. The club could be flooding and they wouldn’t care.

I do manage to play all the notes of the songs okay, but fucking hell, keeping up with the pedal changes adds a whole new layer of confusion. I miss many of them and the songs don’t sound the same as when Cole plays them. These guys don’t play with any charts, so there are none for me to follow. Hell, how do they even do that? How do they keep all that information in their heads?

When we finish the set, I’m so rattled by how much I really don’t know about playing electric bass. Cole makes it look so damn easy, that bastard. I hate that I have a whole new level of respect for what he does up here night after night. Yes, I can figure out where my hands go on the bass, and yeah, it’s got some very serious mojo going on with it. In rock they call it “butter” when a guitar plays like this. The strings melt right in your hands. But my hands aren’t Cole’s hands. They are smaller, softer. I’ll get my calluses but I’ll pay dearly for them. The painful blister forming on my index finger at the end of the night is the first installment, and I’m not sure I packed enough Band-Aids to get me through the week.

“Don’t use Band-Aids,” Travis warns. “You need the calluses. I know it hurts but you just have to keep playing.”

“You did all right,” Joey says. “Seriously, Sonia, for no actual practicing, that was phenomenal.”

I was practicing all day,
I think, but I don’t say it.

“You definitely know the set,” Emmy encourages. “You’ll get those pedal changes in a day or two.”

They’re working so hard to make me feel better, but all I can think about is Maxwell’s, and how much better I’ll need to be to pull that show off if I have to play for Matador. Maybe I should cancel.

But no, fuck that. If I can get into Juilliard, I can get Soft signed to Matador, damn it.

I have to.

***

“Oh my God, what the fuck is that smell?” Emmy says when we open the van door the next afternoon to make the drive up to Charlotte.

“It smells like someone took a shit that came to life and then died, and then while dead took another shit, and then died again,” Joey says. “Shit and death, that’s pretty much what I’m smelling.”

“I think it’s coming from the door,” Travis says.

Trap, being the god of dipsticks and wrenches, decides to whip his toolbox out before we get on the road, and he’s got the driver’s door panel off in two minutes. There, behind the inside panel, we discover something that smells even more like shit and death, only now with the distinct essence of rotting fish, too.

In fact, it is rotting fish.

“I think this was a sandwich,” Travis says, holding it with a plastic shopping bag.

“Yeah, tuna on rye, to be exact,” Anton, who has just appeared out here in the driveway all of a sudden, says, nodding. “I lost that about two weeks ago. Thanks for finding it for me.”

“But how . . . ?” I ask.

“You dick!” Travis snaps and lunges at him. Emmy shrieks because I think he’s going to shove the sandwich right down Anton’s throat, but Anton manages to outrun him and he locks himself in the Ram van. Travis leans against it, sweating in the ninety-degree heat.

“He’ll have to crack a window at some point,” he says. “And I’m not moving or getting rid of this sandwich until he does.”

“Let him go, Trap,” Joey says.

“They desecrated Steady Beth,” Travis says. “Now they have to pay.”

“Oh, they’ll pay,” Joey says. “I promise. Later, though. When they’re least expecting it.”

***

Saturday, August 26, 1995

The Milestone, Charlotte, NC

With Crown the Robin and 4-Squares

Soft Tour—Day 17

We open the set tonight, but now we have an actual crowd, so I’m even more of a wreck. I don’t eat all day but still manage to throw up and then get the dry heaves before we go on.

I manage to play okay—not fantastic, but a little better than last night. I’m able to pick my head up and look at Joey a couple of times, and that helps. I still can’t face the crowd, who are nowhere near as into it as they are when Cole is up here. That’s one way I know that playing in a band is a hell of a lot more than knowing the notes and the pedal changes. But I’m determined to get there.

Thinking about Cole still makes my stomach hurt, and I try to push the thought away as I make an attempt to get into the music. But how the hell can I not think about him while I’m holding his bass, playing his parts, stomping on his pedals? It’s constant war in my head, the entire time I play.

The next day in the van, Joey sits up front with Travis so Emmy and I can work on the set in the back. I’m trying to be careful with Cole’s bass (it will always be Cole’s bass to me—I will never be able to bring myself to consider it mine) as we careen north. We work through the set some more, with Travis playing a cassette of rehearsals, Joey tapping along on the dash.

“Cut it out,” Travis says. “No drumming the dash.”

“Fine,” Joey says, and starts drumming the door, his legs, anything he can.

“Stop the tapping,” says Travis. “It’s fucking annoying. Why do drummers always have to tap?”

“Because we’re drummers? Asshole. It’s good practice.”

“Yeah, but you don’t see guitar players air guitaring all over shit.”

I look at Emmy next to me, totally air guitaring her parts.

“Hey, you can’t hear air guitaring,” she explains. “Far less annoying.”

“You’re still a dork, though,” I point out.

On Monday, Joey tries to get a hold of Cole to see how he’s doing but nobody answers, so he just leaves a message. Then he makes a call to his mother in Lodi, just to check in. She tells him she’s seen Cole, Katelyn, and Claire in the neighborhood. Katelyn seems to be up and about okay since her hospital ordeal. Did he know Cole started working for Patrick on the plumber’s truck? He’s coming over later to check on that leak by the washing machine.

“Patrick’s been hounding him to come work for him for years,” Joey explains to us. “He was going to buckle sooner or later. Plus he can get in the union.”

“That’s one hell of a commute from New Brunswick,” Travis says.

“Yeah, he’ll probably end up moving back,” Joey says, glancing my way, but my eyes are fixed out the window. I should have guessed Joey would have picked up on Cole’s plans, even if Cole didn’t come out and tell him.

“What will you do for a roommate?” Emmy says. “What about our band cave, dude?”

“We’ll figure something out,” Joey says. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

***

Tuesday, August 29, 1995

Richie’s Pacific Grill, Richmond, VA

With Crown the Robin, Chimp Cringle, Crypt Whores

Soft Tour—Day 20

By Tuesday we’ve crossed the bridge back into Virginia to play in Richmond with Chimp Cringle and Crypt Whores again. Being reunited with them is like seeing long, lost family after all the different places we’ve been and people we’ve met. They bring a bunch of their friends out, too—including Little Lauren Hutton. Joey is so relieved when she explains that she had to get to work that morning and that she’d left her number on the bureau before she left. She even writes it across his palm in Sharpie so he won’t lose it this time.

I still feel shaky as hell getting up on the stage, but I’m getting better at it. No dry heaves tonight, just a little queasiness before we play. With a couple more shows under my belt, my hands are beginning to feel better, too. I have the pedal changes down. But I hate to admit I don’t love playing bass for Soft. I can’t get into their music the same way from up here. My playing is improving, and we sound better than we did at the Caledonia, but not better enough, and I just can’t figure out why. The songs aren’t so difficult for me now. They’re not perfect yet, but that’s not the real issue. The real issue is I’m not feeling it. I have to get over this if I’m going to play Maxwell’s in front of Matador, because if Matador pans Soft, word will spread and it will be a lot harder for them to get picked up by another label at that level. Jason said as much.

We’re in the middle of playing “Loud Is How I Love You” when it occurs to me that every time I’m on stage playing Cole’s bass, I feel exactly the way I felt when we broke up in Atlanta. That’s why I can’t get into the music—I don’t want to feel close to him, and this bass, these songs? They’re like a direct channel to that boy’s soul. My anger is this thick, glass wall, protecting me from going there.

When I realize that, I force myself to think of something good about Cole instead. So as painful as it is, I think about that night with him in Tinglewood, and how excited he was looking at the tree carvings. I think about how he kissed me and teased me about my lip gloss. I’m banging out the chorus of “Loud” and thinking about him bare and frantic inside of me, and how when it was over he teased me about babies and a house in north Jersey and how close I felt to him then. It’s a knife to the gut to think of all that, but when I do, the glass wall shatters and now I fucking bring it. My head is moving, my legs are moving with Joey’s kick drum. I look up and see Travis and Emmy grinning at me. Obviously, they feel the difference in my playing. “Fuck yeah, Sunshine!” Emmy yells across the stage, and now I’ve arrived. Fucking finally. Our eyes lock while we’re syncing up on this sweet riff and she puts her forehead right to mine as we rock the chorus. I feel it all the way through my body. It’s good now.

Maybe even good enough for Matador.

***

We stay at Chimp Cringle’s barn again, and when we arrive at two a.m. I just want to lock myself in the bathroom because being here reminds me of Cole. I haven’t been able to reconstruct that wall around my heart and now I miss him more than ever. It hurts and I hate him for making me feel like a fucking goddess, but never taking me seriously as a girlfriend.