by Jessica Kale
“Oh my God, I liked our old studio better,” Gabriella said, squeezing her eyes shut. “I swear we must’ve had like a hundred empty beer bottles lying around everywhere. And no one gave a shit!”
“It’s because no one knew who the fuck we were!” Alicia said, pushing up on her tiptoes. “Now we have people like Nur Blankly coming to us. I’m pretty sure none of that would’ve happened had she caught a whiff of all that leftover pizza we used to forget lying around.”
Gabriella chuckled. “You got that right,” she said, spinning around in her chair. “So, I’m probably going to work on some mixes with the rest of the band during the next couple of weeks, you know, before the start of our tour. Then I’ll get a little bit of feedback, and then we can tweak it around, you send it again, and we just go back and forth until we’ve established an outline of what we’re going to do. Sounds good?”
“Sounds great,” Alicia said. “Now, should we drink to Sawdust’s new album or what?”
“I’m on it,” Jeremy said, popping open the wine bottle and pouring them some. “Sorry, we only have red solo cups here.”
“Are you kidding me? Had you switched to some fancy-ass glasses I probably would’ve lost my shit,” Gabriella said, taking a sip. “You know, I really miss spending time here,” she said again, looking around the studio.
“But you do come here,” Alicia giggled. “You come here almost every day.”
“Yeah, but it’s not like the good old days when you, me, Jeremy, Devon and Sydney would sleep over for nights on end, trying to finish our demo, you know?” Gabriella said.
“You have a point,” Alicia replied. But deep down, she didn’t miss those days, not one bit. She didn’t miss the fights she used to get into with her mom, nor did she miss those shallow nights of sleep at the studio. While Gabriella slept peacefully next to her on that carpeted floor Alicia remembered so well, she felt a tiredness in her chest that would only go away when the sun came up. She remembered how slowly she breathed on those nights, and how her thoughts dragged in slow motion, torturing her. On good days she’d get three hours, on bad days two. When she would doze off, she'd wake up as if a gunshot had sounded, with her heart beating fast and breathing as if she'd just surfaced from underwater.
“Well then, I think I’m gonna head out now,” Gabriella said. “Nur should be here soon.”
“Alright, you wanna get lunch after?” Alicia asked, smiling sweetly.
“Already planned a picnic,” Gabriella said.
Alicia giggled, loving how spontaneous Gabriella was. In fact, it was one of the best things about her.
CHAPTER 2
“So, how did the recording session go?” Gabriella asked, getting off the park bench and motioning for Alicia to walk with her.
The place was Alicia’s kind of hangout spot with its absolute stillness. The old swings were stationary and there was barely even a soft whisper from the remaining leaves of the late autumn trees. It was a beloved and familiar place. Suburban park, an expanse of grass, straight graveled paths lined with deciduous trees, round or rectangular flower beds thick with discordant petal colors, children running around in the distance, dogs exercising with balls and Frisbees, games of soccer, clumps of tall rhododendrons, wooden benches with brass dedication plates. Alicia remembered coming here as a kid, and watching as her dad played the guitar and smiled at passers-by whenever they tossed change into his case. She remembered the jingling sounds the coins made once they hit bottom. In fact, she remembered it like it was yesterday.
“It was alright,” she said, gulping in the fresh air. “It’s just a lot of work. I’m exhausted.”
“I’m exhausted for you,” Gabriella said, a look of concern on her face.
“Don’t worry about me,” Alicia said. “Just as long as we’re together, I can make it through anything.” The couple held hands and walked across the freshly cut grass, but it wasn’t long before Gabriella’s arm fell limp to her side.
“Are you done with work for the day?” she asked, finally settling down on a shady patch of grass.
“I still have to go back to the studio and meet up with another artist looking to release a demo by the end of this month,” Alicia said, clenching her eyes. “And get this, he hasn’t even started working on it yet.”
“Alicia, are you sure you can take on another client? I feel like you’ve already got too much on your plate,” Gabriella said, shaking her head from side to side.
“I think I can handle it,” Alicia said.
“Well, the bags under your eyes say otherwise.”
“It’ll be alright, just support me through it and I’ll be fine.”
“Fine, I’ll support you working with sexy musicians all day long,” Gabriella teased.
“You better,” Alicia said, nudging her playfully. She planted a kiss on Gabriella’s cheek and then slept on the grass, her eyes following the clouds as they rolled by. “Can you believe your album is number two on iTunes?” she asked.
“I don’t know. It’s so surreal, Alicia,” Gabriella said. “Every morning when I wake up, it takes a while for it to hit me. And then when it does, I feel like the happiest girl in the world.”
“I’m so happy to hear you say that,” Alicia said, closing her eyes and letting the breeze caress her face. “The weather is just gorgeous today.”
“You’re gorgeous today,” Gabriella said. Alicia was about to dive in for a kiss when Gabriella stopped her. “Too much PDA, man,” she said.
“What? Since when?” Alicia asked, narrowing her eyes at her.
“There are a lot of people around, and kids …”
“Kids? Since when did you care about kids?” Alicia asked.
Gabriella averted her gaze to a couple of little kids running around playing soccer. She didn’t answer at first, but when she realized Alicia was still staring at her, she broke into laughter.
“I don’t know, I’d just appreciate it if you and I had some privacy,” Gabriella said, taking Alicia’s hand. “But it’s fine.” She planted yet another kiss on her shoulder and laid down next to her.
“So,” Alicia said again. “Got any new songs for me?”
“I might,” Gabriella said, her lips curving into a wry smile. “I’m just not going to show you right now.”
“Why not?”
“Next time we go into the studio.”
“And when’s that going to be?” Alicia asked.
“You’re the busy one here, you get to decide,” Gabriella said.
“You’re definitely passive aggressive today,” Alicia said. “Come on, I’m happy we’re making this work. We’re both busy, but we’re making it work. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Gabriella said. “By the way, we haven’t talked about the tour yet.”
Alicia’s face drooped to a scowl. “Yeah,” she said. “What about it?”
“You know what,” Gabriella said. “Are you going to come with me?”
“No,” Alicia said, without hesitation. The look in Gabriella’s eyes killed her.
“Why?” she asked. Her shoulders were slumped and her eyes cast down in a mournful gaze. Her mouth was set in a semi-pout. Alicia couldn’t feel any worse.
“It’s just that I’m going to be really busy at the time of the tour. Gabriella, I would’ve loved to make it, you know I would have, but I have clients that I’m committed to.”
“Yeah, I understand,” Gabriella said, shifting her eyes from the gravel and raising them to Alicia. “It’s okay.”
“Are you sure you’re okay, or are you just saying that?” Alicia asked, taking Gabriella’s hand and squeezing it.
“No, no, I’m alright,” the blonde replied, nodding. “I promise.”
Alicia sat up and hugged her knees to her chest. The air was still, a bit too still. Suddenly everyone disappeared from view, even the little kids playing soccer. The park was almost completely empty. “Well, I brought this along,” she
said, unzipping her backpack and pulling out a Ziploc bag full of apple slices.
“If only we had some liquor to go with that,” Gabriella snickered. “Oh, look at that! We do!” She reached into her bag and pulled out what Alicia could only guess was a water bottle.
“What’s in this?” she asked.
“Oh, like you don’t know,” Gabriella said, unscrewing the bottle cap and bringing it up to Alicia’s mouth. Immediately, the smell of alcohol raced up her nostrils.
“That’s vodka, isn’t it?” she said, grabbing it. She took one large gulp from it and set it down in front of her. “Now, to chase it down with some good old sour apples.”
Gabriella looked left and right before she planted a kiss on Alicia’s lips.
The two of them sat in the park all day, basking in the sun and talking about this and that. Alicia felt like she hadn’t had proper alone time with Gabriella in ages.
“I miss you so much,” the blonde said suddenly. “I’m so happy we’re spending the whole day together.”
“I wish we could’ve really spent the whole of it together, though,” Alicia said.
“Hey, we’re doing a great job,” Gabriella whispered softly. She pushed Alicia’s hair behind her ear and stroked her cheek with the back of her hand. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll be okay, you and me.”
CHAPTER 3
Dorothy Gibbons drew the last cigarette from her pack, lit it, put her feet up and leaned back in her chair. She stared out the window for a moment before she drew the blinds and sat in the dark. Her office smelled musty, like an old library, and outside she could hear faint drumming sounds.
In her free time, Dorothy always fell asleep in her office. Even though it wasn’t the most comfortable space in the world, it was the only place where she felt at home. She never really liked to go back home. She lived alone with her dog, had very few friends and had given up on dating for a while now. Often she would spend her days drinking at her office, and whenever she would hear a knock at her door, she would jump in her chair and routinely put away all the liquor bottles in a secret drawer under her feet.
“What the hell is this, why can I hear drumming outside?” she said to herself. She spun around in her chair, rose to her feet and made her way for the door. “Whoa, hey,” she said, almost bumping into Straub, who was standing at her door with his hand balled up into a fist.
“Hey,” he said, his arm falling limply to his side. Dorothy could see his nostrils flare momentarily, as if they had detected something. “You’ve been drinking,” he said.
“I have, so sue me,” the black-haired woman said, raising an eyebrow at him challengingly. “So what do you want, Straub? And why can I hear drumming outside? Aren’t the walls supposed to be soundproof?”
“One of the band members decided to do something new with his drum set,” Straub said, motioning for Dorothy to step back into her office. “He wants to create some sort of background distortion in his track, for ambiance, or some shit like that.”
“Kids these days,” the woman said, folding both arms across her chest and shifting her weight to one leg. “What band is that?”
“This group called Sunset at Dawn, you remember them,” Straub said.
“Aren’t those are the ones we signed last week?”
“Yep.”
“I thought we had already settled that they transition to pop, so what the fuck are they doing right now?” Dorothy asked. Straub looked down at the floor. “Well, are you going to answer that?”
“We can’t tell every single musician that we sign with to move to pop music, D. It’s not reasonable,” he said after a long pause.
Dorothy rolled her eyes, those indigo darts, sharp yet full of emotion. They were bold and intense; Straub had always been a fan of them. The pair had been working together for over a decade now. They had built the studio from scratch; it was their legacy, their baby. But lately they had been disagreeing on a lot of things.
“Straub, there’s a reason why it’s called 'popular' music,” Dorothy said, taking a drag from her cigarette. She nodded towards his pack, which was sticking out of his pocket. “Got a cig or two to spare?”
“Sure,” he said, pulling out his own pack of Marlboro’s and handing it over to her. “You can have the whole thing, I’m trying to quit.”
Without a second though, Dorothy stuffed the pack into her handbag and turned to him. “Alright so, what was I saying? Yes! Pop music, what do you have against it?”
“That not all bands we’re going to sign are going to want to play that shit,” Straub said, shaking his head frantically. “Listen, it’s not like I have anything against pop music. It’s just that we need to bear in mind that these people have been playing music way before they signed with us. They’re not going to be good at anything else.”
“So you think a bunch of twenty-year-olds know what they’re good at? Straub, you fascinate me,” Dorothy said, flipping her hair to one side and opening the drapes. Her hair shone like the sea at night, the black strands utterly white where the bright rays fell. At times, Straub was absolutely mesmerized by her. But after ten years of working together, he knew the bite that waited underneath all those layers of fake charm.
“Dorothy, we’re not telling these kids to switch from rock to pop, and that’s final,” he said, stomping his foot against the hardwood floor.
“You do what you want, but when their first album flunks, it’ll be on the both of us,” she said, slumping down in her chair and putting her feet back up again. She gawked at him as he paced back and forth with his hands stuffed in his pockets.
“It won’t, trust me,” he said after a long pause. “This isn’t what I came to talk to you about anyway, I wanted to talk about Sawdust.”
“Ah, those kids know what they’re doing. Signing them was probably the best decision you and I ever made,” Dorothy said, her lips curling into a smile.
I’m pretty sure it was me who made that decision, Straub thought to himself. “Yeah, I think so, too,” he said, sitting down on the edge of her desk and staring at her through his thick glasses. “So, I sort of wanted to discuss with you their upcoming album,” he said again, sneaking a hand into her bag and pulling out his pack of cigarettes.
“I thought you wanted to quit?” she said with her head cocked to the side. She smiled at him like she could see right through him.
“You stressed me out with all that talk about pop music,” he said, trapping a cigarette between his teeth.
“I’m about to stress you out even more,” she said with a smirk on her face. “I think Sawdust should transition to pop, too.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Straub said, hopping off the edge of her desk and slumping down in the chair across from her. “Are you even listening to yourself?” he asked. “You’re like a broken record.”
“Oh, I hear myself just fine,” she said, staring him up and down with a smirk on her face. “And I’m pretty sure you’ll want to hear me out, too.”
Straub bent over in his chair and laced his fingers together. His eyes were fixated on the floorboards; for a while, he didn’t move. He thought back to the time when Dorothy had insisted that a boy band they had signed should transition to mainstream pop, and when everyone at the label refused, including Straub, the group’s first album flopped. At the time, Straub couldn’t forgive himself. In a way, he felt like he had shattered the dreams of four kids who were counting on him.
Around a year later, Straub saw them on TV. Their second album had just come out, and it was a hit. At first, he had a hard time believing it was them, but when he looked closer he realized that with a professional makeover, stage lights and high-pitched tunes, they were the same group of guys he had let down a year before. Straub was devastated.
“Straub, are you even listening to me?” Dorothy asked, leaning across her desk and looking him in the eye.
“Yeah, I hear you,” he said, his lips barely moving.
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“Do you trust me?” she asked, not taking her eyes off him. There was a pause. “After ten years of working with me, do you trust me?”
“I do,” Straub said, almost robotically.
“And do you trust that together we can catapult Sawdust to new levels of fame?” she asked with a spark in her eyes. Again, Straub nodded. “Then let’s fucking join our heads together for once and make these kids realize their true potential!”
At that point, Dorothy’s eyes were boring into his. In a way it felt like she was drilling her words into him with her eyes.
“You do realize that their first album was a hit, right? They don’t need to change their sound,” he said, staring at her through heavy-lidded eyes.
“But that was months ago, and by the time they release their second album, no one will want to listen to them because that shit’s already been done!” she said, her cigarette dangling from her mouth.
“I need some time to think about this,” Straub said, his eyes fixated somewhere over Dorothy’s shoulder.
“What’s there to think about?” she asked. Straub rolled his eyes. He knew how stubborn Dorothy could be. “These kids need direction, that’s what they need. That’s what we’re here for, that’s our job.”
“Yeah but these aren’t kids, D,” Straub said, putting out his cigarette and watching as the ribbon of smoke squirmed and twisted like a snake in torment trying to escape. “Their lead singer isn’t a sell-out, and you know that.”
“Oh, please. Give me thirty minutes with her and I’ll change her mind, just like that,” Dorothy said, leaning back in her chair.
“No, you won’t. Listen, I’ve sat with this girl more than once; she isn’t easy to convince,” Straub said, sneaking a hand under Dorothy’s desk.
“Hey, what are you doing?” she asked, jumping up from her chair.
Straub flashed her a smile before he came back up again with a bottle of whiskey in his hand.
