The Bad Decisions Playlist

by Michael Rubens

She’s here. She’s next to me. It wasn’t/isn’t a dream.

  “Who is it?” she says again.

  Not my mom, I think. Each time I’ve stomped out of the house and stayed at Devon’s​—​three occasions now?​—​she’s given me the silent treatment. No call, not even contacting Devon’s mom to make sure I’m alive until at least two days have passed.

  “What time is it?” Josephine slurs now.

  I lean over the edge of the futon bed and grab the phone, squinting at it. 7:48 a.m. And it’s not my mom calling.

  “Hey,” I say. “Hey, Shane.”

  “Hey! I wake you?”

  Full of energy, keyed up.

  “No, all good.”

  “Good. Excellent. I wanted to get you before you went to work. Listen​—​I wanted to thank you for yesterday. I haven’t had that much fun in the studio since​—​I mean, look, I know the first part was rocky​—​but the end? Creating that song together with y’all? Pure joy. Honestly. I’d forgotten that you can try to create something and that the process can be fun. Did you have fun?”

  “What? Yeah, yeah, definitely.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Did Barry like it?” I ask.

  “Barry? Yeah, Barry, it’s all good with Barry.”

  “He liked the song?”

  “Yeah! Where are you now? You heading in to work? You still home?”

  “Uh . . . yeah. Still at . . . the house. At the house. Yes.”

  Which is not a lie. I am still at the house. Or a house. Shane’s house. Or on the property thereof. The granny apartment over the garage, to be exact. If Shane opened his bedroom window, and I did the same, we could dispense with the phones altogether and have this conversation across the backyard, barely raising our voices.

  “I’ve been stuck for so long, Austin, and there was something about yesterday, the freedom of it . . . I’d forgotten all about that. That’s what it’s supposed to feel like.”

  “I’m glad.”

  Josephine has rolled more onto her side, resting her head up on her hand to watch me. She’s got an oversize T-shirt on, one of the items that she had stowed in a small backpack, along with a toiletry kit. She had the bag slung over her shoulder when I pulled up to her house last night, Josephine emerging unexpectedly from the shadows and marching across the front lawn to me. Organized and prepared even when fleeing into the night with an unsavory kid on a motorcycle. She walked up to me and grabbed me and kissed me on the lips.

  Then she said, “You asked me if I’d ever cross against the light. This counts, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’d say it does.” Then, “Wait. That’s not why you’re doing this, right?”

  She kissed me again.

  “You know it’s not.”

  She clung tightly to me as we drove through the darkened streets, clung to me as we headed toward east Edina, the houses old and older, kissed my neck as we left Edina behind and sped toward and then around the lakes again to Uptown and Shane’s house. I parked the bike a block from Shane’s and we walked the rest of the way holding hands. We went down the back alley and I used the blade of the small knife on my key ring to lift the latch of the back gate and we were in the backyard. I found the key hidden under the mat outside the door of the granny apartment, and we eased the door shut behind us and ascended the stairs, Josephine giggling as I picked her up at the top and staggered across the threshold.

  Then a sudden shyness, both of us. We had been lying naked together on the swim platform an hour or so earlier, comfortable with each other, but we got quiet, the two of us alone there in that room with its miniature kitchenette and round table the size of a pizza tray and tiny bathroom. A play house for us to play house in.

  “You want to shower first?” I said.

  “I showered​—​you go,” she said, and I breathed a sigh of relief, glad I didn’t have to figure out yet if I was supposed to pee in front of her.

  When we got into bed, we lay on our sides, facing each other, and she traced the contours of my face with her fingers, and we leaned close and we kissed, not the passion of before but tenderly, sleepy and slow, and I heard the music again, so present that I wondered if she could hear it. Our foreheads were touching, our hands resting on each other’s cheeks, and I murmured, half asleep, “I don’t know how this song ends.”

  “I guess we’ll find out,” she whispered. And while I was thinking about that, the music swirled gently about me, and I fell asleep.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  “You know I have to move on soon,” Shane is saying now.

  “Yeah.”

  “So I had a thought. I was just wondering if, I don’t know, you’d like to spend some time together before I do, maybe come into the studio and play around some more.”

  “Seriously?”

  I sit up in the bed. Josephine responds by moving to a sitting position too, facing me, now propping herself up with her arm.

  “Yes, seriously,” says Shane. “I’ve got the studio until the end of the week. Might as well use it.”

  “What about the album? What’s happening with that?”

  “Yeah, don’t worry about the album. I’ll get back in a studio in a few months and finish it.”

  “Barry’s okay with that?”

  “Yeah, it’s all good with Barry. Don’t worry about Barry. What I want to do is use this time to have fun. To make stuff. No pressure, no demands, just make music. I haven’t been able to do that for so long, and I don’t want to lose the feeling while it’s here. You down with that?”

  “Yeah, of course, of course.”

  “You’ve got work, though, right?”

  “Uh, no. No, I’m off this week. All week. I can do it.” Looking at Josephine as I talk. She looks back, questioning.

  “Great!” says Shane.

  “Hey, can I bring Josephine?”

  “I was gonna suggest that!” he says. “And you know what? Bring that other kid.”

  “Todd?”

  “Yeah, Todd. He’s an asshole, but he’s a pretty good drummer.”

  “You just want to mess around with stuff?”

  “Right. Also, if things go well, I had an idea.”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  When he finishes telling me about his idea, I hang up the phone, thoughtful. Josephine says, “What was that about?”

  “Can I tell you in a minute? Because first I just want to look at you for a while.”

  “Okay.”

  And that’s what we do: just lie there on our sides and look at each other, smiling, laughing sometimes, Josephine saying, “Okay, kissing break.”

  Around kissing break seven or eight, her phone rings. She looks at it, grimaces.

  “I’d better do this.” She takes a deep breath and sighs it out. “Hi, Mom.”

  I step into the bathroom, listening to her end of the conversation:

  “Yes, Mom, I’m with a biker gang, and I’m smoking crack and having unprotected sex with all of them. They’re Muslims. What? ‘Running away’? Mom, this is not one of those TV movies you watch. I’m staying over at a friend’s house. I promise, it’s not going to affect my GPA. Okay, can I remind you of something? You let Jackie stay over at Kyle’s house all the time. No, she was not much older, she was a year older than me, and let’s be honest, she behaved like​—​actually, still behaves like she’s twelve.”

  I take the opportunity to message Todd.

  Want to come to the studio to play more music today?

  A minute passes, then, K. Just like that. Not that I was expecting an emoji or anything. So I text, I’ll pick you up at 10 and suggest a rendezvous point.

  K.

  Josephine’s still on the phone when I come out of the bathroom and sit at the small table.

  “Mom, here, let me help you with your parenting. This is one of those situations where you look the other direction and everything turns out okay. No, I told you, I’ll be back tonight. What? No. No, I’m not going there today. That’
s correct. Let’s say that I’m respectfully tendering my resignation to the Lindahl campaign so I can spend less time with my family. G’bye.”

  When she hangs up, we do more of the looking and smiling at each other, her sitting on the bed. Finally she says, “Is this crazy?”

  “Yes.”

  “A really crazy song.”

  “The best song ever.”

  “The best. What did Shane say?”

  “He wants us to come by the studio today.”

  She nods. “Okay.”

  I say, “Also, there’s something else. He has an idea.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll let Shane tell you.”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  “Shane Tyler and . . . ?” I say.

  “Shane Tyler and the Children’s Crusade,” says Shane. “Good name, right? One night, one show. This Friday.”

  “Us?” says Josephine.

  “Yes, you. And you and you,” says Shane, pointing in turn to Josephine, to me, to Todd. “And me,” he adds. “I have a show anyways. I’ll play my set, and y’all will join me on our songs.”

  We’re eating at the bowling alley diner, tired and exultant after a day in the studio that went by like a half-remembered dream.

  There are hazy clips in my mind, all starting with Shane saying, “Okay, gimme a line,” and me singing one of the fragments in my head, something that had come to me the night before while I was lying with Josephine. “Great!” Shane said, and scribbled it down, then did the thing where he looks up at the ceiling and sways back and forth, muttering. Then sang a line, wrote that down, and the day zoomed by, a journey full of obstacles large and small, each surmounted in turn, each demanding full focus and attention so there was no time for doubt or distraction. Shane being musical director: Josephine, you sing this, let’s change key, Todd come in here, Austin, you take the high harmony . . .

  Before I knew it, it was late afternoon and we had two songs​—​two full songs, with verses, chorus, bridge, all of it!​—​and we were emerging, blinking in the light, and Shane took us out to dinner and we sat and ate and talked and laughed and recounted the day. Except for Todd, who focused pretty much entirely on eating at the expense of talking/laughing/recounting. As we were finishing our food, Shane said, “So, I have a crazy idea for y’all,” and told them what he had suggested to me on the phone this morning.

  “What did we do today, two songs?” says Shane now. “With the song we did yesterday, that’s three songs total. We’ve got three days left to prepare, and we could have, say, six songs to play together. So what do you say?”

  Josephine looks at me, smiles.

  “Yes,” she says.

  “Austin?”

  “Yeah, of course, you know it.”

  We all turn to silent Todd, who is more present to the remains of his french fries than he is to us. It takes him a bit to realize that we’re all waiting for his response. Which is: (shrug) “Sure, why not.”

  Hey, kids, my dad’s got a studio, and we’re makin’ a band and puttin’ on a show.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  As the newly established Shane Tyler and the Children’s Crusade finish their collective band meal and file out of the restaurant, the bandmates sharing exuberant handshakes and hand slaps and hugs (save the drummer, who partakes not), the young female vocalist leans close to the young male backup vocalist/instrumentalist and murmurs, “Are you going back home tonight?”

  The young male vocalist ponders that ludicrous idea.

  “No way.”

  “Okay,” she says. “Then I’m not either.”

  Spirits whisper this is everything and all /

  there is no more / there is no end / amen amen amen

  Think of the best part of the best song you know.

  That part that makes the world disappear, the part that makes your heart ache as you listen to it over and over again and ache more when it ends.

  This time is that music.

  Three days of the world’s least responsible summer camp: Studio. Writing music. Group dinner. Josephine and me together every minute of the day, then together each night in our secret hiding place, our private world.

  Lying there in my arms, she whispers, “I want it to always be like this. I want this song to go on forever.”

  We buy eggs and bacon and cereal, and in the morning I make breakfast for us, a skill you learn early on when your mom tends to spend the first part of her days sleeping off the night before. We eat at the tiny table, talking and laughing, our chairs scooched side by side, and wait until the garage door opens beneath us and Shane drives off to the studio. Then the complicated choreography: Josephine takes the bus downtown, and I ride my bike back into the wilds of Edina to pick Todd up, then to the studio to make stuff with Shane.

  Who is glowing, tireless, joyful, as merry as I have seen him. Our endlessly encouraging and positive ringleader. The other Shane, the angry, impatient one, the defeated one, it feels as if he never existed.

  He never says anything directly to me about Josephine, but sometimes I catch him looking at us, that mysterious smile on his face. Amused and maybe proud and maybe something else, the closest that he gets now to melancholy, the way he looked during his show when he was peering skyward at those high notes that are gone forever. When he sees me observing him, his eyes crinkle more and his smile grows, and once he gives me a nod.

  I want this song to go on forever.

  And so do I.

  And I know that it can’t. Know in the back of my mind that gravity still exists. That it will eventually assert itself over whatever shoe or shoes are out there waiting to drop. The little red flag again. I look the other direction.

  I still haven’t spoken with my mom. But I started getting texts from a number I didn’t recognize. I opened the first one and it said, Hi, it’s Rick. That’s as far as I got. I’ve ignored the rest.

  The morning of the second day Josephine and I did a ninja visit to her house so she could grab more clothes. That night she had a phone conversation with her family, a sharp argument with her mother:

  “Oh, you’re going to call the police? How’s that going to look in the paper? Mom​—​would you​—​Mom, listen to me​—​fine. Put him on. Put Dad on.”

  Pause.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  She listened.

  “Dad​—​hold on. Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad, Patricia Laughton.”

  She waited, a look of grim satisfaction on her face. I didn’t hear anything coming from the other end of the phone. The pause seemed interminable, and she stood stock still, jaw clenched, and I watched her eyes get brighter as they started to fill with tears. Finally she said, “I’ll be home in a few days, Dad.” And she hung up and put her head in her hands and cried, and I held her, confused. Finally she said, “I knew it. I knew it.”

  “Knew what?”

  “She’s his campaign manager.”

  “Oh. So . . . ?”

  She looked at me.

  “Oh,” I said. “Oh. Oh, jeez.”

  Thus does Josephine blackmail her way to a brief period of freedom.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Do Austin Methune and Josephine Lindahl, teenagers in love lying together unsupervised each night in a bed in a romantic hideaway, do they, well, do they?

  I will not lie. There are repeated incidents of both hanky and panky.

  But for me, none of those activities compares with just being together, holding each other, whispering, sharing our secrets, falling asleep intertwined. If someone made a pronouncement that time would now stop and I would get this and nothing else forevermore, I would be content.

  To answer your question more completely: While there has been hanky panky, there hasn’t been Hanky Panky. I’m still technically in the V column.

  But the night that Josephine blackmails her dad, when we’re wrapped around each other in the bed, she says, “You never asked me if I was a virgin.”

  “I didn’t think it was my business.”

/>   “Do you want to know?”

  “It’s okay if you’re not.”

  “I know it’s okay if I’m not.”

  “Well?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you wait?”

  “I wanted someone special too.”

  We lie there in the dark, and she starts to smile and I start to smile until we’re both giggling.

  “Okay, yes,” I say.

  “Yes,” she says.

  “But not yet,” I say. “Not yet.”

  “When?”

  “The night of the show.”

  “Okay. The night of the show.”

  We kiss and go at it and nearly break our own promise but manage not to. Because here’s the thing: When you know that you’re together forever, why rush it?

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  And Todd.

  The first day I picked him up, he was waiting on the corner, drumsticks in hand.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey,” he didn’t say, just nodded. Then climbed on the back and we rode wordlessly to the studio.

  And that’s how he’s been. If someone were to transcribe every word Todd has said since the day I spirited him away from the lawn crew, it wouldn’t fill half a page.

  In the studio you get about five phrases from him: Okay; Yeah; Sure; You mean like this?; and Got it. I think he said more to me back when we were mowing lawns and he was threatening my life. Maybe this is just how jocks do the whole interpersonal-relations thing: grunts and nods, the occasional menacing outburst, maybe the mutual removal of lice.

  There was one odd exception. It was just the two of us in the studio, Shane out to smoke, Josephine in the bathroom. I was strumming one of my own songs that I’d been working on, singing a few of the lyrics softly.

  “That yours?” Todd said, and I nearly jumped.

  “Yes.”

  He paused, like he wasn’t sure he was the one who had spoken. Then, “It’s a good song.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Needs balls, though.”

  Other than that, silence. It’s the same at dinner each night. Todd sits with us without really being with us, and I’d wager that if you pulled that sneaky teacher trick on him​—​“Mr. Malloy? Can you tell me what we’ve been discussing for the past ten minutes?”​—​he’d fail every time.