by Katia Rose
I’m officially going to play The Cube Room next month.
“Thanks for coming in,” the agent says as she leads the way to her office door. “Normally we could do all this by email, but Nabil said you have some unique setup he’d like to accommodate and that you might want to get a look at the booth, so you’re welcome to go out on the stage before you leave.”
“Cool. Yeah, that’d be great.”
“Oh, and by the way,” she says after I’ve stepped into the hallway, “if you’re in the market for a manager, I’ve got a lot of contacts who I know would be interested. Nabil is crazy excited about booking you, and I looked you up too. You’re fantastic. A manager could really take you to the next level.”
I know she means well, and she is right, but I have to fight not to sound defensive when I thank her and tell her I’m fine before heading down the hallway.
I know I’ll have to cave and get one eventually, but the last time I had a manager I was just a kid, and she didn’t exactly turn me onto the idea of giving another person that sort of power over my career. She pulled me and my sister out of school so many days I almost had to repeat a grade and dragged us to audition after audition for roles as ‘two cute Asian girls who know how to sing and play piano.’
She didn’t even care much about the way ‘two cute Asian girls’ get treated by men in the entertainment industry—which is not ideal for a manager who is also your mom.
I ball my fists around the cuffs of the loose grey sweatshirt I’m wearing and turn the corner that will take me past the stage and out the staff entrance. When I pass by the wings, I pause and take another look at the DJ booth. This will be the biggest venue I’ve ever played. It’s not a giant club by any means, but they pull in some big names.
And mine is going to be one of them.
I step closer so I can peer around the edge of the stage and out into the empty dance floor, imagining it filled with screaming fans waiting for a show.
There are a lot of moments in my life when I wonder what I’m doing—twenty-three years-old, a graphic design school dropout who bounces from one freelance job to the next while fitting in gigs wherever I can just to barely cover rent for a shitty apartment I share with some guy I found on Craigslist—but that moment when the lights come on and the crowd goes crazy always makes it all make sense.
This is what I should be doing. I know it. I trust it. I fight for it with all I have.
I glance over my shoulder before stepping onto the stage. There are a few people at the very back of the room stocking up the bars, but other than that, I seem to be alone. I take my place behind the booth and run a finger along one of the state of the art CDJs. I’ve only played on gear this nice a couple times before. The contents of this booth alone are worth more than pretty much everything in my apartment.
I was shocked when the booking agent told me I could set up my own stuff for my set too. That’s why I love Taverne Toulouse so much; most other clubs don’t want the hassle.
Even the microphone here is wildly expensive. I stare at the crisscrossing metalwork of the head and imagine singing into it. I haven’t sung on a stage in a long, long time.
I haven’t sung in front of anyone in a long time.
I’m looking out into the dance floor again, hands poised over the control panels like I’m about to play, when a crash from the other side of the stage makes me jump.
I squint through the glare from the stage lights and make out the shape of a guy trying to gather up all the cables that just spilled out of the storage container he knocked over. Then he straightens up and looks my way.
I freeze.
“Uh, hi Paige.” Youssef takes a step forward. “Um, fancy meeting you here?”
He looks like a complete dork. I almost laugh before I catch myself.
I should be angry. Or confused. I should have questions about what the hell he’s doing here, but all I can do is stand there and stare as something hot swells in my chest and blocks my throat.
He just feels so fucking familiar. Everything about him hits with the same sense of recognition: his voice, his hands, his faded black t-shirt with a drawing of New York City on the front. Even the way he stands calls up a hundred memories I told myself I forgot.
He steps closer, and again, I can make out the differences that mark him as changed, but they don’t matter. I know him.
You don’t. You don’t know this guy at all.
“Is this the part where I demand to know if you’re stalking me?”
He scratches the back of his neck. “Um, maybe? It seems like a reasonable question.”
I raise an eyebrow, doing my best to play it cool even though my heart is pounding in my ears. “So? Are you?”
“I can see how you would come to that conclusion, but no. Nabil called me in to help with some electrical issue they’re having.”
“So you finished, huh? Engineering school?”
The question leaves my mouth before I can stop it. I watch as a mix of surprise, curiosity, and something close to pain works its way into his features.
“Yeah.” His voice is lower now, softer. “Yeah, I did. Never worked as an actual electrical engineer, though.”
He takes a few steps closer and leans against the edge of the booth. I do the same on the other end, mirroring his position before I even realize I’m doing it. We’re only a few feet apart from each other now.
“I started working here as a rigger during college, believe it or not. Then I dropped out of my first post-graduation placement with an engineering firm and did it full time while I tried to get my foot in the door at a recording studio. Now I master for them.”
I bite back all my questions, struggling to hold them in.
Did you keep making music all through college? How did you feel the first time you played for a crowd? How’s your family? When’s the last time you went back to Brampton? Did you ever see me there?
Did you ever stand outside my house and think about how different it all could have been before leaving without saying a word?
“Never really saw that coming,” he finishes, “but it’s funny how it all works out.”
“Except it didn’t,” I blurt.
He squints at me, and I feel a rush of heat rise in my cheeks.
“I mean, you’re describing this life where you’re all set up with a steady job,” I explain. “What about the part where your single is blasting in every club in the country every Friday night?”
“Ah, right. That.”
Now it’s me squinting at him. He just gave me an impromptu rundown of his life since he was a teenager and left out what most people would consider the biggest thing to ever happen to him.
“So what about you?” he asks.
“What about me?”
I jump a little when he throws his head back and laughs long and loud at that.
“What?” I ask after a few seconds, trying to sound defensive even though I’m about to start laughing too.
It’s impossible not to join Youssef when he laughs like that. I used to try to stonewall him or get pissed about one thing or another back in high school, and he’d just laugh like I was the most entertaining thing in the world.
It would piss me off even more, but I’d always end up laughing with him in the end.
“I see you’re still as personable and forthcoming as ever,” he finally manages to get out. “Chatty, even.”
My restrained laugh comes out as a snort, and he starts laughing all over again at me snorting.
“But seriously, what have you been up to?”
I stay quiet for a moment, and the ease between us fades as reality sets in. We’re not old friends catching up on old times. This isn’t a casual chat. There’s too much we can’t say for anything we do say to be more than a front for all the hurt we’re hiding.
Although why he thinks he gets to be hurt when he’s the one who left is still beyond me.
I turn my attention to the closest CDJ and let my fingers
wander over the jog wheel, spinning it around and around as I imagine fast forwarding through this conversation like I could with a track.
“You’re really good, by the way.”
I look back up and find him watching my hand.
“Your set on Saturday was crazy. You were using a Push, two MIDI keyboards, and the CDJs?”
I raise an eyebrow. “You saw all that from the crowd?”
He shifts his weight. “Uh, I might have Googled you and found a Reddit thread theorizing about how you set your stuff up.”
I should be mad, but the first thing I feel is flattered.
“Well, that’s pretty close to what I use, yeah,” I admit.
“Your looping is crazy. I mean, I can improvise, but you...Where’d you even learn all that anyway? I still wish I could just bring my little controller to clubs and forget about everything else, and you’re out here being a fucking multi-keyboard savant.”
“Multi-keyboard savant? I’ll put that on my resume.”
He laughs again, and I move so I’m standing in front of the controls. It puts me closer to him, but it gives me something to focus on other than how much the way he laughs makes me want to thread my hands into his hair and pull his face down to mine.
I wonder if he’d taste the same. I didn’t get many chances to learn his taste, to commit the way his lips moved over mine to memory, but I can still close my eyes and feel myself kissing him like we’re back in his parents’ basement again.
So I keep them open and distract myself by miming out the beginning of my set while he keeps talking.
“I don’t throw the word savant around every day. I mean it.” I can feel his eyes on my fingers. “Hey, want to try something?”
“Huh?” I look up and see him dashing over to the side of the stage. He disappears into the shadows of the wings for a second, and I hear some switches flicking before the equipment in front of me boots up and comes to life.
“Play something!” Youssef calls out before making his way back over to the booth. “Let’s see those savant skills. You can’t get behind the DJ booth and expect to not have to play.”
“What? Is there even anything loaded in this?”
He points to a port in front of me. “Somebody’s USB is in there.”
“You want me to make a performance off a random USB whose contents I have not even looked at?”
He gets a familiar gleam in his eyes. “Do you accept this challenge or not, Paige?”
It’s what we used to say to each other before inevitably doing stupid shit that usually didn’t go well. We had a habit of daring each other to do things just for the hell of it.
We were teenagers. We were bored, and every second of our lives felt like it held a thousand opportunities. I forgot what it was like to be that alive, to let it all go and just say yes to the world instead of fighting my way through it. Sometimes it feels like that’s all I know how to do.
“Challenge accepted.”
I cue up the first track on the USB, and Youssef nearly loses it when Ginuwine’s ‘Pony’ starts blasting out of the club’s speakers. I just hunch over the controls and begin twisting dials as he laughs beside me. I actually use this song in a lot of my bar sets; people go crazy for it, and I’ve remixed it so often I decided to put a version on SoundCloud that ended up going kind of viral.
It doesn’t take Youssef long to stop laughing and focus on what I’m doing. I’m already in the zone, slipping into the dreamy, fluid state of concentration that takes me over like the rush of a river every time I’m behind the decks.
I grab the pair of headphones plugged into the system and slip them on so I can get the next track ready, still using my other hand to fuck around with ‘Pony’ and recreate my remix.
There’s some old school Daft Punk on the USB, so I start working it in and build up to a drop. Time has slowed down in that way it always does when I’m performing, like I can feel everything just before it happens, like I’m the one who makes it happen. My hands fly over the controls, creating a new universe with every beat, and I’m both a slave to that world and the god who rules over it.
I crank up the tempo, letting it climb and climb until the speakers are filling the empty room with a high-pitched whine that bounces off the walls and steals the breath from my lungs before I finally let the beat drop.
I throw my head back and pull the headphones down to take it all in, turning to glance at Youssef with my face stretched in an ecstatic smile I couldn’t hold back if I tried.
His mouth is hanging open, eyes nearly bulging out of his head.
“What?” I shout, laughing a little as he keeps gaping at me while I use one hand to keep mixing. “You having a heart attack or something?”
“You’re not even looking at it!” he shouts back. “How are you doing that? How are you doing that and talking?”
I just laugh again and turn back to the controls for a second before stepping to the side and offering him the headphones.
“Your turn!” I call out over the chorus of the Daft Punk song.
“What?”
“Come on!” I step a little closer so he can hear me better. “Do you accept this challenge or not?”
He keeps staring, but he’s not watching me like I’m crazy anymore. He’s watching me like he used to just before he’d grab my face and kiss me.
Nobody else has ever been able to take me over quite like that, to pull me down with them into some secret place where every colour was brighter and every sound skated across my senses like the most delicate of explosions.
He says the words so softly I can’t hear him, but I read his lips. “Challenge accepted.”
He takes the headphones and comes to stand next to me behind the booth. I can feel the heat of his arm right next to mine, and for a second, I forget where we are and what we’re doing. I want him to reach for me. I want to give in.
The song’s bridge bellowing out of the speakers yanks me back into the moment, and I start playing around with the controls on my side again while Youssef searches through the USB contents. I notice him setting up a few of the hot cue buttons out of the corner of my eye—which he’ll be able to push to skip to specific parts of the track he picks—and I almost want to laugh again.
Not much about this has changed. Even when we were kids trying to produce our own tracks on some free laptop software, Youssef was always the one who’d read all the instructions and sit there memorizing every button and switch. He’d listen to a piece of music over and over again until it was like it had seeped into his bones and become part of him, and that’s how he’d manipulate it into anything he wanted.
It doesn’t surprise me that he got into mastering. He has the patience for it, the depth, the ability to step back and observe.
Whereas I always wanted to go, to move, to fling myself into the ring and land on my feet. Music is the one place where I feel like I don’t have to be calculating.
I nod in approval as Youssef starts fading a second track into the Daft Punk song. I drop my hands to my sides and look over at what he’s doing, shaking my head when Earth, Wind & Fire’s ‘September’ becomes recognizable.
It’s like somebody deliberately filled up a USB with the randomest collection of songs they could find.
Youssef doesn’t look up from the CDJ, but he grins like he knows what I’m thinking. His mix is good—really good. I may have thought that EP he put out was complete pandering and a waste of his talents, but there’s no denying he’s come a fucking long way in six years. Even experienced DJs would pay good money to learn what he’s doing right now.
His focus deepens as he adds more and more intricacies to the song, his body swaying and his tongue pushing against the inside of his cheek as his fingers work the controls. He finishes with an expert and totally unexpected transition into some Tiesto track that shouldn’t work out, but it does. I’m already reaching for the headphones before he’s taken them off, high on the adrenaline I know we’re both feeding o
ff and desperate to keep it flowing.
We play back and forth like that a couple times, weaving our music in and out of one another’s like a dance we’re choreographing on the fly. We don’t miss a step the whole time.
It’s only when we’re both panting and I can feel my neck starting to drip with sweat that Youssef motions for me to set the headphones down instead of taking them out of my hand. I fade the music to silence and turn to look at him as I pull shallow breaths into my lungs.
Then I hear the applause.
I peer past the glare of the stage lights and find a group of about ten club employees gathered on the dance floor, all clapping and shouting their approval.
“Bravo!” one voice calls out above the others. Nabil steps up to the edge of the stage. “Bravo! Now that is what I call chemistry.”
Youssef is laughing and taking a few ironic bows beside me, but I go still as dread starts to climb up my throat. I forgot where we are. I forgot who we are, but now I remember, and the fact that we were laughing and smiling just seconds ago makes it hurt even more. I force my feet to move, leaving the stage without looking back.
“Paige!” It only takes him a second to come after me. “Paige, wait.”
I’ve already reached the door out onto the street. I pause with my hand on the push bar.
“What is it?”
“I mean, are you just...gonna go?”
My shoulders tighten.
That’s what you did. You just left.
“Yeah, I’m just gonna go.”
“Don’t.”
The word rips through me, a bullet aimed right at my resolve. My hand drops from the door, and I curl both arms around my stomach. I still haven’t turned to face him.
“Why?” I hate how close my voice is to cracking. “What’s there to say?”
“I don’t know.” I hear him take a couple steps closer. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe there’s nothing to say, but can’t we find out?”
The part of me that wants to run out the door wars against the part of me that’s craving the warmth of his arms wrapping around me from behind.
It’s been a long time since anyone’s held me. It’s been a long time since I’ve wanted anyone to.
