Vanni: A Prequel (Groupie Book 4) (9 page)

I can still be me, and that’s important, isn’t it? It feels important. It feels like a goddamned lifeline. Maybe… just maybe… with that piano in the house, I won’t be so tempted to walk off the Brooklyn Bridge every week after monotonous, soul-sucking week.

After I get the piano, I blow off the clubs and Cynzia’s to practice while Lori works. It has to be while she works, or else she fumes so much I fear she’ll set off the smoke detector. And forget sex. Ever since she saw that piano, she has given me the cold shoulder.

Some nights, she doesn’t even come home. Her former roommates have rented out her room, but they always open their home for sleepovers.

I welcome the break as I try to recall every single thing Aunt Susan ever taught me about the piano. By the beginning of May, I have written two songs, “
Make it Happen
,” for my beloved aunt, and “
Dancer Girl
,” for Pam at the bar, who is the only other person on planet Earth that believes I could actually make my dreams come true.

Everything that drives me now is heavily influenced by the idea of following one’s dreams. I don’t realize until the end of May that the universe is about to test me to see if I really mean it.

The twenty-fourth of May starts out like any other day. I am in Manhattan by eight o’clock in the morning, my white shirt pressed and my dress pants wrinkle free. I spend most of the morning delivering the mail like I always do, in and out of all the offices of our large conglomerate. By now most people know me by name and greet me. The receptionists in particular wear big smiles when I enter the room. They flirt with me. I flirt back. It’s all harmless enough. In fact it breaks up what usually turns out to be a dreary, boring day.

The hours speed by until lunch, where I escape downstairs to one of the restaurants. I don’t eat much, but the notebook I carry at my side at all times is filled to overflowing with all kinds of ideas for songs and music. I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s on my mind during my commutes back and forth to Brooklyn. It’s on my mind when I get up, or when I go to sleep.

Sometimes it’s even on my mind while I’m making love to Lori. I don’t tell her, though. Thanks to her hissy fit over the piano, I realize that my love for music has become like an illicit affair. I can’t talk to her about it. I can’t share my love or passion of it with her without her feeling insecure, like it jeopardizes everything we have. I have to keep it on the down low, just to keep our relationship intact.

By May, she makes peace with music by viewing it as my hobby. She doesn’t like it, but she’s accepted it. As long as I show up for work every day at McKinley, Donnelly and Roth like a good boy, she plays the part of doting girlfriend. She still lobbies hard for a college degree. I finally appease her and we visit the local city college, where she pores over brochures to find the right career path for me. To throw me a bone, she adds some music courses in there, telling me that I can work in the industry if I just stay realistic. Maybe I can’t be a rock star, but I can find solid, steady work at studios and record labels.

“They have mail rooms too,” she says, but it doesn’t have the appeal she thinks it does.

Still, part of me wants to give it a try. I want to sing, but I need to eat. Those are just the facts. Maybe I
can
have both if I just play it smart, like Lori and Tony tell me. I look out the windows and see all the young people on campus at the dawn of their adulthood, taking chances, meeting challenges, and there is a part of me that feels like I should be a part of it. I was never the best student, mostly because school bored the shit out of me, but there was something about the idea of actually doing something concrete to shape my future that appeals to me, even if I didn’t know what the hell I wanted to be.

Nothing has a stronger appeal than performing, though. Being dream-adjacent isn’t quite the same as making my dream come true. Now that I’m writing my own songs, I feel even stronger that this is a legitimate path for me.

Unfortunately, so far only Pam concurs.

The rest of my day ambles by like most Tuesday afternoons. It’s still early in the week, with hump day yet to go. In fact the only good thing that can be said for Tuesday is that it was one day beyond Monday. It’s still too far away from the weekend for my tastes.

And I hate that. I hate that I have been marching along week after week, trying to get from the doldrums of Monday, to the hopeful hump of Wednesday so that I can race downhill towards Friday.

By now I start to dread Monday morning by Friday night. I only get forty-eight precious hours to myself before I have to head back into the city and rent my life for another week in exchange for a paltry paycheck.

I feel my life literally passing me by, and thirty looms closer on the horizon by the minute. All I have really figured out so far is where I’m going to live and who I will live with.

But even that is up in the air these days. Every time she becomes dour about my music, I feel less and less connected with her. Once upon a time that was a bond we shared. It was how we met. But now she has other priorities.

I find myself at Fritz’s nightly. Both Pam and Cheryl keep me smiling. They’re cute as hell, not to mention friendly and flirty. And I know that’s just part of their job, but it’s a hell of a lot more fun than hanging out with the house, being silently punished for wanting more.

Pam provides the strongest voice for following my dreams, which makes her even more appealing. Now my “other woman” (music) actually links me
to
another woman, and I find more and more excuses to see her. I enjoy it. I look forward to it. And Pam generally never lets me down.

When I finally presented her song to her the weekend before, I sang it to her in her car, while she stole away for a break. We do that sometimes, when the bar is loud and we can’t really talk otherwise. She listens mostly, while I prattle on about the bands I’ve seen in the city. Like me, she doesn’t see the harm in just seeing where it goes. So I was pleased to perform for her at last, just me, her, and her song. There were tears in her eyes as she listened. She looked so beautiful I had a momentary urge to kiss her. It seemed as natural as breathing. I think I may have even leaned in a bit, but she pulled away before it could go too far.

She’s not the kind of girl to break up a relationship. And I’m not the kind of guy to juggle two women.

It just feels so damn good to be around someone who believes in me for a change. It’s like a drug. It replaces alcohol, honestly, because I feel better about the “high” I’m getting. And there’s no hangover to speak of, unless you count the way I now have to suppress that part of my life to keep the peace at home.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m holding onto Lori because she reminds me of the Vanni I used to know, the one who doted on his aunt and worked a Cynzia’s, singing for tips.

Who I am now is still up for debate, with the mutant bizarro Vanni taking up way too much of my creative time as he battles the concrete jungle of New York.

Little do I know that this hazy day at the end of May will force my hand, to decide the kind of Vanni I want to be once and for all.

“Giovanni,” Stu barks from his doorway. “I need to speak to you in my office, please.”

I fight the urge to roll my eyes. He always makes it sound like such a big deal, but usually it’s a dickish power play. It always sounds to the rest of my coworkers like I’m about to be torn a new asshole, which puts me on display for everyone as I cross the crowded floor like I’m heading for the gallows. When I get into his office, however, he usually tells me he wants to trade this color for that in his color-coding system, or something equally as mundane.

But I shut the door behind me and stifle my sigh as I face him. “Yeah, Stu?”

“Take a seat,” he says from his seat behind the desk. Another power play. God, he’s such an asshole. Still, I do what he says and take my seat. “We’re going to be making some changes going forward,” he tells me as he pulls out a new employee manual. “We’re getting a lot of new clients, and they mean business. They want to work with the best of the best, so we have to prove we’re the best on every level.”

I nearly bite my tongue in two. He wants me to treat mail delivery like it’s some kind of Olympic event. What a joke. A monkey could do my job. Hell, a monkey
is
doing my job. “How does this affect me?”

He pushes the manual across his desk to me. “We’re focusing on every single aspect of the company, including the way we present ourselves to the clients. We’ve decided to change the dress code. Khaki pants. Royal blue shirt and a gold tie. Brown dress shoes. No ostentatious jewelry or visible tattoos. Hair must be kept tidy and trim, with neatly trimmed beards and hair no longer than the collar for all male employees.”

I stare at him for a long moment without saying anything. I’m trying to figure out if he’s joking, because surely I didn’t hear him right. “You want me to cut my hair?”

“By Monday,” he says with a nod. “That’s when all the changes are being implemented.”

“But I’m in the mail room. Nobody really sees me but other employees.”

“Clients see you when you’re on the upper floors,” he assures. “And your image represents all of us.”

It’s absurd. “And if I don’t want to cut my hair?” I ask, because it’s the last fucking thing I want to do for a job as shitty as this one.

“Non-compliance with these new employee standards is reason for dismissal.”

“So you’re saying you’ll fire me if I don’t cut my hair.”

“I don’t want to,” he asserts, but I know he’s full of shit. “This comes from the big bosses upstairs. Way over my head.”

I glance at his head, where his thinning hair races away from his pale, drawn face. I see how his eyes twinkle as he watches me, the corner of his mouth itching to curve up into a satisfied smile.

“I have no choice,” he says. “And neither do you.”

And he’s completely right. If I want to keep working at McKinley, Donnelly and Roth, I have to cut my hair. It sounds so simple. So why is it so hard?

“It’s just hair,” Lori tells me as we share dinner that night in the kitchen. “It’ll grow back. Besides, that hair is totally dated anyway. I always thought you’d look so hot with a shorter shag cut,” she says as she reaches across the narrow table and musses my hair. “Or maybe just buzz it off. Show ‘em that you mean business.” It always comes down to that with her. But when do I get to be
me
?

She slips out of her chair and wiggles her way onto my lap, looping her arm around my shoulders. “You have such pretty eyes anyway. Why would you want to keep them all covered up?”

“Because it’s part of who I am,” I tell her softly. Why doesn’t she get that?

“You’ll still be you,” she tells me with another kiss. “Just with more respectability. People will take you as seriously as you take yourself.”

I nudge her off my lap before heading towards the fridge for another beer. “What are you doing, exchanging notes with Tony?”

She leans against the table. “He’s right, you know.”

I don’t say anything. I just stare at her and wonder how we’d grown so far apart in such a short period of time. It dawns on me we’ve known each other a year, but it feels as if we are total strangers. I lift my beer for a sip before I leave the room.

I don’t even care if she hears me tinkering around on the piano. The sands are falling in the hourglass of my dreams. I have until Monday to scrape every last ounce of musical ambition out of my soul.

It’s easier said than done.

The rest of the week speeds by like stop-motion animation. I don’t get very far from minute to minute, but if I stand back and look at it, hours and days have gone by without my noticing. Before I know it, it’s Friday. “Giovanni. My office, please!”

I take a deep breath and count to five before I follow my balding boss into his office. He doesn’t even bother to close the door.

“I was kind of hoping you’d have fixed your hair issue by now,” he says as he takes his seat on his teeny, tiny throne.

“I haven’t decided what I want to do with it yet,” I hedge.

“Better make it quick. You’re running out of time. If you show up at eight o’clock on Monday with long hair, you’re going to get fired. I have no choice.”

He repeats that a lot, like it means anything. Regardless of whether it’s his choice or not, he’s enjoying the hell out of it. And
that’s
what makes him a raging asshole. “You know what? You’re right,” I tell him at last. “You don’t have a choice. But I do.”

I reach behind my head and pull the elastic band that is holding my thick, long hair in a ponytail. I feel it spill around my shoulders. It feels sensuous, like a lover’s hands against my skin. And I love the way it feels. I love the way it looks. I love the image it presents to the world about who I am, which sets me apart from anybody else. “I do a pretty good job around here,” I tell him. “I have hardly missed a day of work since I started and I earn every dime twice. And I don’t see how my having long hair will make me any better at my job, or any better as a walking, talking billboard to the company.”

“That’s irrelevant. You work for us, and we set the standard.”

“You also knew what I looked like when I got this job.”

“As a favor to Mr. Beillo,” he points out. “Who is in management now simply because he knows how to pick his battles.”

“Oh, I know how to pick my battles, too,” I promise. “For five months I’ve let you keep me under your foot, berate me, insult me, treat me like garbage just because you’re a miserable fuck. But if you think I’m going to change who I am to grovel for some $10-an-hour job, you’re nuts.”

“It’s just hair,” Stu points out with a sarcastic sneer.

“Exactly,” I shoot back. “It’s just hair.”

He leans back in his chair, his fingers linked together in his lap. “So that’s it, then? You’re really going to burn a whole bridge over a haircut?”

I only need a second to think about it. “Yes.”

“Fine,” he says as he sits up to grab his phone. “I’ll make sure payroll cuts you your last check by quitting time today.”

I’m both terrified and exhilarated. I stood up for what I wanted, but it had cost me dearly. If I’m honest, though, it only costs me the thing that never fit me in the first place, something I never, ever wanted. No kid lies in bed at night dreaming of the day they can work in a freaking mail room.