by Nick Hornby
“Oh, come on, man. It sounds great. Really.”
“I’m sure. But first of all, right? ‘The best part is at the end?’ That’s what you’re telling me?”
“Yeah.”
“And that’s what you’re going to tell people on the dance floor who are walking off to get a drink? Don’t go! Come back! Here comes the good bit! Nobody’s ever going to get to the good bit. How long does a radio D.J. give something before he bins it? How long have you got before kids skip on to something else? I know the answer to that, by the way. Thirty-five percent skip in the first thirty seconds on Spotify. There’s a twenty-four percent chance of them skipping in the first five.”
“Yeah, but you think they would walk off the dance floor?”
“Not if the best part is at the beginning.”
“OK. So what do I put at the end?”
“That’s the other thing. It’s not like proper EDM. It’s got a tune. Nice changes. You’ve written a song.”
“Is that bad?”
“It is if nobody’s singing it.”
“I haven’t got any words.”
“Write some.”
“I don’t know any singers.”
“You sound like a kid trying to get out of homework. But I don’t give a fuck if you do it or not. Don’t write words. Don’t find a singer. You have my full permission. OK?”
“You might not be right.”
“That’s true. But why did you come here? Because I’m always right.”
“Thanks anyway.”
He unplugged his laptop and put it back in his bag.
* * *
—
“Play it to me,” said Lucy.
“Nah, you’re all right.”
“What does that mean?”
“No, I suppose.”
“I’m not useless. I listen to a lot of music.”
“No. I know. But you don’t listen to the stuff I want to make.”
“Does that matter? Music is music.”
“What’s your favorite song?”
“I’m not answering that.”
“Why not?”
“First, because I haven’t got one favorite song. Nobody has. And if I tell you, you’ll go off and listen to it and come back and say, mine’s nothing like that.”
“What’s your favorite dance song?”
“Michael Jackson. ‘Workin’ Day and Night.’ Anyone plays that at a party, I’m there.”
Joseph laughed.
“Yeah. Mine’s different.”
“In a good or bad way?”
“Bad. I did mine on a computer, I don’t have a brass section, I haven’t got Quincy Jones producing me. Anyway. We watching an episode?”
Lucy had somehow missed The Sopranos. She remembered everyone else watching it, but when it came out she had been in her midtwenties, living with Jane in the horrible apartment in Stroud Green, both working hard, both going out a lot. She could no longer remember whether they’d even had a T.V. They certainly wouldn’t have had any kind of cable. Joseph, meanwhile, had never heard of it. When they googled, they found that he was four when it was first broadcast. He thought that was funny, but Lucy’s laugh was a little forced. She was sleeping with someone who had been wearing nappies in the 1990s. In the end she consoled herself with the thought that they’d both been too young, in their own different ways. But now they were both addicted, and if they were at any other stage of their relationship, they would have been binge-watching. They only ever had time for one episode, though.
They were nearly done with the first season. Episode 10 was about the music business: Chris and Adriana end up doing business with a rapper called Massive Genius, although it all goes wrong when Adriana tries to produce a track by a band whose singer she used to date. Chris eventually beats him up with his own guitar. Lucy got a bit confused by who owed who money, but as the financial stuff was about sampling, Joseph was drinking it in like a vile-tasting medicine he had to down in one. The Sopranos made sampling look scary and violent, and Joseph was a man who’d just lifted a chunk of an Earth, Wind & Fire record.
“Have you got a name?” said Lucy when it was over.
“How do you mean?”
“Like Massive Genius.”
“Ha. No. More trouble than it’s worth.”
He told her about the troubles £Man was having at college, and she laughed.
“But can’t you just have a music name? I call you Joseph, but the world knows you as something else.”
“The world. Yeah, right.”
“All right then, a tiny bit of London, misery guts.”
“I suppose.”
“Like Massive Genius.”
“Massive Genius is a great name.”
“You can have it.”
Joseph thought about it.
“It would be funny. And cool.”
“I think so.”
“Thank you.” And then, before he’d had a chance to think about it, “Do you want to hear the track?”
“If you’re sure.”
“I’ve got others. But this is the one I’ve worked on hardest.”
Lucy didn’t have a sound system like £Man’s, but she had her little Bluetooth, and it was better than his laptop. He linked to it and started the song. Lucy began nodding her head vigorously to the beat, and Joseph thought he might die of an embarrassment-induced seizure. He wanted to tell her to stop, but that would mean talking over his music, which he didn’t want to do. Because then she’d ask why on earth she wasn’t allowed to nod her head in her own living room to dance music, and Joseph wouldn’t have a good answer that didn’t refer to her age and her . . . Well, her teacheriness, he supposed. Was that a word?
After a minute or two, she started dancing. It wasn’t full on, but she was moving both her hips and her feet. And it wasn’t that she had no rhythm. She was clearly a good dancer. It was just that it was the wrong kind of dancing.
“I can’t be in the same room,” he said. “Too nervous.”
And before she could say anything, he went to the downstairs toilet and locked himself in.
* * *
—
It was the first time he had ever felt younger than her. Or rather, it was the first time she’d ever felt older than him. And it wasn’t because of the dancing, he realized. It was her enthusiasm. Yes, he could have had a girlfriend of exactly the same age as him, who did exactly the same things. But when there was an age gap, her attempts to show that she liked it, with the hip-swaying and the head-nodding, felt like the kind of approval a mother might give. She hadn’t even given it three seconds before she started trying to show him she liked it. This is going to be good, she seemed to be saying, whether it was or it wasn’t.
He wanted Lucy to be on his side, of course he did, but he wanted her to show her encouragement in a different way. He didn’t know what that way was, though. She talked to him about her work, and he was almost sure he listened and bolstered and did all the things a friend or a lover might do. But he hoped he didn’t do it in a way that reminded her of his youth.
He could hear the trumpet solo through the toilet door. There was about a minute left. He was just a kid. He could see that now. It was because everything was new that he was embarrassed and raw. He wasn’t established in any field, really. He’d be bringing her stuff, like a puppy, for a long time to come, and she could only rub his belly and call him a good boy until he was an old dog with no new tricks.
* * *
—
“I LOVED it,” said Lucy. “It sounded so . . . professional.”
“Thank you.”
“Better than a lot of the stuff they play in clubs.”
“What clubs do you go to?”
“All right, smart-arse.”
“So, nothing to say?”
She hesitated for a tiny beat.
“No. Perfect as it is.”
“But there’s something.”
“No, nothing.”
There was something.
“I mean, I wouldn’t play it at home.”
“Why not?”
“That’s not what it’s for, is it?”
“No. But . . . You play dance-y things. Like Michael Jackson.”
“I suppose . . . Am I allowed to say that I prefer music with a voice and words?”
“You listen to jazz sometimes.”
“But that’s for mood.”
“So you want a singer on it.”
“Maybe.” She screwed up her face, as if she were telling him she didn’t want to see him any more.
“That’s what PoundMan said.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Wow.”
“Wow what?”
“You took the track to PoundMan because he’s a genius. And he said the same thing as me.”
“I think I’m going to have to find a singer. And write some words. And a tune. I’m nowhere near finished.”
“Well, you must know someone who can sing.”
Later, he could see that he snapped because he was disappointed, and he went for the place where she would always be vulnerable.
“What does that mean?”
“Just . . . you probably have loads of friends with good voices.”
“Yeah, we can all dance too.”
“You must know I wasn’t saying that.”
“How many singers do you know, then?”
“I’m a teacher. I know tons.”
“All the black girls?”
“I think I should stop talking.”
“If the only things that come out of your mouth are racist stereotypes, maybe you should.”
“You know that’s not fair. And if you really think I’m a racist, maybe you shouldn’t be here.”
It was a clever challenge. He wanted to walk out, because he was pissed off with everyone and everything, but by walking out, according to Lucy, he’d be telling her she was a racist. He didn’t think she was a racist, not really. The two racist things she’d said were, “You must know someone who can sing,” and, “You probably have loads of friends with good voices.” And maybe a third: “I know tons.” He’d heard a lot worse.
“I don’t think you’re a racist.”
“OK.”
“But I want to go anyway.”
“I understand.”
He gave her a peck on the lips, packed away his laptop again, and went home.
He was still steaming on the bus. After a little while he let himself notice the subject his thoughts were looping around, uselessly and unhelpfully, and it wasn’t anything to do with Lucy, or at least the argument he’d picked with her. He was pissed off about the track. He had wanted £Man to love it, and he had wanted Lucy to love it. And he felt embarrassed that he’d played it to them without a vocal on it, because when he shut himself in the toilet and listened through the door, it seemed blindingly obvious that it needed one. So he felt stupid, and defensive, and hurt. He wondered how he was ever going to make anything, if it meant feeling like this every time. He couldn’t not make music, but he couldn’t expose it to the world either.
Joseph had loads of friends with good voices. Lucy had turned out to be right in her assumption, even though she might or might not have been wrong to make it. He knew people in the church choir, for a start. The church choir might have been one of the sources Lucy was referring to. Nobody in the choir was white. But he knew the person he should get to sing on the track, and she wasn’t in the choir. He’d never forgotten Jaz singing the Beyoncé song in his kitchen. Now he came to think of it, he’d remembered it while he was putting the finishing touches to the track, and when he played it to £Man, and when Lucy said it needed vocals. She’d been in his head the whole time, but tucked away in a corner, behind all the other crap that was in there, Lucy and money and work. Her voice was so good that he was even prepared to text her and ask her to sing, even though she would be angry, and he was afraid of her. Nobody could say he wasn’t committed to his craft.
* * *
—
“Oh,” said his mother the following evening. “To what do we owe this pleasure?”
“I live here.”
“Not often you don’t.”
“I sleep here every night. That’s the definition of living here.”
It was true. He had only stayed the whole night at Lucy’s house the once, when the boys were with friends. He would like to wake up with her in the morning, but that would mean coming out, as it were, and neither of them wanted to do that.
“Well, you’re never here at this time.”
She was watching T.V., a documentary about Alzheimer’s that was the most depressing thing Joseph had ever seen. He was on his phone most of the time, but his mother kept telling him he’d learn something if he paid attention.
“I don’t want to learn about this.”
“It’ll be me, one day.”
“I won’t let it get to that. I’ll bump you off.”
“Lovely. The last thing I ever see, my own son strangling me.”
“I’d use a pillow. You wouldn’t see anything.”
“Did I tell you I’ve changed my mind about the referendum? I’m voting to leave.”
“Why?”
“Because of the money the N.H.S. is going to get.”
“That stupid bus? Three hundred and fifty million a week? They’re lying. Even I know that.”
“Yes. They’re lying. We were arguing about it on the ward, and we checked it on the BBC’s fact-checker. But . . .”
“You know they’re lying and you’re going to vote for them anyway?”
“The BBC says it’s a hundred and sixty-one million.”
“Oh, so they’re only lying about two hundred million a week, then. That’s fine.”
“A hundred and sixty-one million a week, Joseph! Think what we could do with that!”
“You’re not going to get it all.”
“You’re not taking it seriously.”
“And what happened to all the European staff you’re worried about?”
“There’ll still be immigration. But it’ll be like in Australia. Points-based. The more skills you have, and the better your English and so on, the better your chances.”
“Who’s telling you all this stuff?”
“Janine. She’s voting out. Half the nurses are.”
“So why aren’t the other half?”
“Ask them. Or ask your fancy lady. She’s in, isn’t she?”
“She’s not my fancy lady.”
“I don’t know what she is, then.”
“Isn’t a fancy lady like a mistress?”
“Yes, and she’s married.”
“Separated. Anyway, I’m not, am I?”
“You might as well be, all the time you spend round there.”
His mother could sustain an argument forever, simply by switching sides right in the middle of it.
“When am I going to meet her, anyway?”
“It’s not like that,” he said. It was an ill-considered answer, unlikely to prevent any follow-up questions.
“What is it like, then?”
“It’s not, you know, oh, I’d like to introduce you to my mum.”
“Why not?”
“It wouldn’t be appropriate.”
“She must have clothes on some of the time.”
“Oh, Mum. Jesus.”
“I won’t have Him brought into your seedy arrangements.”
She’d done it again. She was the one who had introduced the off-key note, he was the one in trouble.
“I don’t see what the big deal is. I’d like to meet these boys. They sound lovely. And I’d like to meet her, if she’s worth all this time.”
“It’s not a serious thing.”
“So she means nothing to you. Just sex.”
“Yes, she means something. But it’ll all fizzle out in a minute.”
Every time he thought or said something like that, he felt his stomach drop, as if he were in a lift. But it was true: it would all fizzle out in a minute.
“Well, how long is a minute?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tomorrow?”
“No.”
He felt that in his guts too. And if he didn’t want it to fizzle out tomorrow, then he needed to see Lucy and apologize for calling her a racist. She might be thinking that they’d fizzled out already.
“One month? Six months?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“So what you’re saying is you’ll only let me meet people you’re sure you’re going to marry.”
“You’ve met my girlfriends before.”
“Only because you had nowhere else to take them. This woman has her own house. Say it goes on for two more years. You’re just going to disappear every evening and I never clap eyes on her?”
“I’ll introduce you in two years’ time. I promise. What’s the date?”
“May the twelfth.”
“So on May the twelfth 2018 we’ll all go out to dinner. I’ll pay.”
“So you’ll be breaking up with her on May the eleventh, I would imagine.”
“Can we put something else on?”
“No. This is doing you good.”
While the old man with Alzheimer’s was dying, with his family round his bedside, Joseph texted Lucy and asked whether he could come over.
I thought you’d never ask, she said, with the apostrophe in the right place.
* * *
—
He rang, and then he knocked, but he didn’t want to knock loudly. He could see the bathroom light upstairs, and guessed that she was taking a shower, maybe especially for him. He texted her, and leaned against the door, waiting, but nothing happened, and a next-door neighbor, nobody Joseph had ever come across before, walked past and then put his keys in the lock. But he could see Joseph over the little hedge that separated the two properties.
