The Words of Every Song

by Liz Moore

  But he likes his sentence a great deal, the rhythm of it: Last night’s show at Southpaw revealed not much more to this reporter than a dedicated fan base and a distinct lack of stage presence. He angles his head at the stage and thinks, Yes, their stage presence might be described as lacking. Yes, they are inexperienced. They have no sense of choreography or timing but move as spastically as puppies.

  He likes that thought. He writes it down. Onstage, the Burn come off as puppies: eager to please, overly energetic, a bit skittish. Perfect.

  But he knows that there is a moroseness too, and Thoreau feels suddenly uneasy at his inability to describe it in words. He looks again at the lead singer and imagines that she has suffered in her life.

  He would like to touch her.

  He imagines that many people would like to touch her. To be touched by her.

  Look at me, he finds himself saying to her. See me. Without thinking, he stands up from the stool and tucks the pad and paper into his pocket. He is compelled to move toward the stage, and he does so as if in a trance. He pushes his way into the mass of audience members, suddenly desperate to reach the stage, to hang his fingers over the edge of it, put his chin to the place near where the girl’s feet are planted.

  “Hey,” says a young man in a collared shirt who suddenly finds Thoreau’s elbow in his side. But nothing can stop Thoreau, who is tall and quite good at making space for himself. He keeps moving until he gets quite close. Still, he is not where he wants to be, not yet directly in front of the stage.

  He is just behind a girl who barely reaches his chest. She’s there with her friend or her sister. They are both small and fragile-looking, but Thoreau knows that he must be closer. Recklessly, he pushes between them to the stage and does as he has imagined: places his fingers over the edge of it, looks timidly up into the face of the lead singer.

  A shock washes over him. But she is so lovely: her eyebrows furrowed together, gorgeous beads of sweat forming on her upper lip and brow. He is consumed by lust. Thoreau has always prided himself on his ability to suppress his own desires—he is very rational. He does not lust. He does not whine for what he cannot have.

  Until now. Look at me, he says again to her. See me.

  And then he feels a tap on his shoulder. He turns, annoyed at the interruption.

  One of the two small girls is staring angrily at him. Her large gray eyes flash with indignation. She says something to him, but he cannot hear above the band.

  “What?” he asks.

  “You’re very rude,” the girl shouts, and her friend nods emphatically. “You hurt my friend’s shoulder.”

  She takes her friend’s hand, motions to her: Come on. The two of them turn from Thoreau and walk back toward the bar, and the crowd closes in quickly behind them.

  IV.

  Mike sees the girl with big eyes leaving and his heart sinks a bit. Despite his resolution not to speak with her after the show, he had been enjoying her attention and he thought she was making him play better. He had been showing off for her.

  And maybe he would have talked to her after all. He might have changed his mind.

  Now he’ll never know her name.

  V.

  Thoreau, in a fit of shame, looks rapturously at the lead singer and feels certain both that he cannot now write a piece about her, having fallen in love with her, and that he is not worthy of her love, having pushed small helpless girls out of his way to be close to her.

  He will have to tell his editor, Marie, that he cannot complete his first assignment. Perhaps he is not cut out to be an arts writer. Perhaps he should write for the real estate section. He feels foolish in his carefully conceived outfit, and he misses his Italian leather loafers. The sneakers he wears make him feel childish, powerless.

  He leaves before the show is over. On the street outside it is quiet but for the muted sounds of the band inside. He scuffs his feet as he walks toward the subway, wondering if tonight was a triumph or a defeat, wondering about the lead singer and what her name means, where it comes from.

  On the subway, he reaches into his back pocket and notices that his new pen is no longer there.

  11.

  TIA, A TERRIBLE DANCER

  My world, it moves so fast today

  The past, it seems so far away

  And life squeezes so tight that I can’t

  breathe

  —LAURYN HILL, “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill”

  I.

  Being the fattest member of a girl band is not fair. Tia thinks this as she looks at herself in the mirror of the rehearsal space they’ve been renting by the week for the past three months.

  She’s not fat, really: the other four girls are just smaller. There always has to be a fat one. She’s it. She’s the tallest and the widest. When her father ordered pants for them from Dance Depot, sparkly pants that stretched tight across their bottoms, hung loose to their calves, and zipped up the side, three of the other girls had to get theirs tailored because the smallest size was too big. Linette fit into the smallest size. And Tia wore a size eight. They have not yet worn the costumes in public, and Tia dreads the day that she must.

  It would be okay with her to be the big one if she had the best voice, but she doesn’t. Ravenne does. Ravenne sounds like Christina Aguilera, and that’s why Tia’s dad said she could be in the band, even though she has the wrong kind of nose. Tia has a pretty nose. It’s her one vanity. It slopes; it upturns slightly. A nice nose.

  “Again,” says her father, whose name is Paul. He hits the CD player and the song starts up—the same song they have been singing for the last week. Tia is so sick of it she almost groans out loud. But she knows what her father would say.

  “Isn’t it, isn’t it, isn’t it over now?” This is what they are supposed to be singing in five-part harmony. But they aren’t singing at all, because this is a dancing rehearsal only: the kind that Tia hates. Her father hired a choreographer to create a dance for them, and a dance coach who would rehearse them through it. Tia is definitely the worst dancer. Mainly because she does everything she can do to avoid jiggling, and this puts her at a disadvantage. It gives her a robotic look, a stiffness that the other girls don’t have.

  If she looked at her father, she would see him glaring at her, perhaps mouthing, “Pick up your feet!” So she rarely does. Instead, she looks at herself in the mirror, and then at the other girls, and thinks for the thousandth time that they must talk about her fatness when she is not there, because it is so obvious. She sticks out. Her breasts are bigger than theirs. Her hips are bigger than theirs.

  Tia plays a game with herself. It’s called “What’s Wrong with That Girl?” She plays it now and thinks about her bandmates. She already knows that Ravenne has an ugly nose. But also, her lower half is wider than her upper half. She would look better if her shoulders were wider. They’re too small for her frame. And Janelle’s blond hair is the wrong kind of blond. It’s too yellow, not white enough. It looks really fake. She should get a better dye job, thinks Tia. Linette is pretty, but she’s old. Tia’s father has decided to say that Linette is fifteen, but she’s really twenty. She looks older too: a little more ashamed of her outfit, maybe. A little more subdued when she’s dancing.

  Then Tia looks at Kira and despairs. Kira is perfect. Really perfect. Her thighs don’t touch in the middle between her legs. Her stomach is cut, almost concave. Her neck is slender and graceful and her eyes are the most striking part about her: they’re bright blue. Also, she’s the best dancer. But she can’t sing, thinks Tia, and is comforted briefly before her gaze falls once more upon herself, distant and huge, in the mirror before them.

  II.

  Their story, the story that Tia’s father Paul has decided to put together when pitching them to labels, is that they sang together in a church choir from the time they could talk. Even though only Tia and Janelle have known each other since they were little. The others Tia’s father found by putting an ad in the paper. “Female singers and
dancers wanted for girl band,” the ad said. “Ages 12–18. Industry attention.” Which was also a lie. Paul had met one record executive in his life, and it was an accident, and they did not talk about Tia or about bands or anything at all. The exec was a friend of his wife’s friend. But meeting him, and seeing an episode of Oprah about obsessive stage dads, had given Paul the idea. He hated his job as a car salesman. Tia was not a good student. She liked to sing.

  And Paul was always impulsive.

  Now the band is together, and they have been for a year. They have been rehearsing at Sound-Off with full sound once a month—Sound-Off is expensive—and at a dance studio in the Bronx three nights a week. The girls are all from Queens, except for Linette, who is a student at Brooklyn College. But they got a fantastic rate at this dance studio, and so Paul picks four of them up in a van before every rehearsal, and Linette takes the subway and meets them, and then afterward she goes home on her own and Paul drops the other four girls off. It works nicely. He likes picking them up—likes their parents to have limited involvement in the enterprise. It’s his idea, his creation. He made it clear to all the parents, before offering their daughters a place in the group, that he was in charge, that he had final say over everything. It was, he said, the only way he could make the band work. The only way to get them a chance.

  Now, looking at the five of them preparing for what will be their most important audition to date, he feels that he was right all along. It’s ten in the morning. At four this afternoon, the girls have been invited to the office of Theo Brigham, an A&R man at Titan Records. They will perform for him personally. Paul imagines telling this story in the past tense on VH1’s Driven. Imagines Theo Brigham himself being interviewed. “I was blown out of the water,” he will say. “I knew these girls had it.”

  III.

  “You look scared!” says Paul to his daughter, who does, in fact, look scared—for she has noticed that her father’s gaze is on her. “If you look scared now, what will you be like this afternoon?”

  The girls keep dancing, and Tia does her best to smile and look relaxed.

  “Tia!” says Paul. “I’m talking to you.”

  “She doesn’t look scared to me,” Janelle volunteers.

  “I’m not scared,” says Tia. And imagines meeting Theo Brigham, imagines an infinitely blond man with very white sharp teeth and very piercing blue eyes, a supremely tall man who smells like cologne and sits on a stack of record contracts as high as a chair. Her knees nearly give out beneath her. She thinks her father may be right. She does get scared quite easily. She lacks the showmanship of the other girls. Her movements betray a distinct lack of sass, of pizzazz, of—Tia cringes at the thought—sex. She’s only fourteen. But Janelle is her age, and the other girls aren’t much older, and already they know how to move so that people think of sex, of what they must be like in bed. It’s all a game.

  “Look at Kira,” says Paul.

  Tia looks at Kira in the mirror, watches her face change with the words of the song, watches her flip her hair and slap her hips at appropriate moments.

  She tries to imitate Kira. Tries very hard to imitate Kira.

  “Smile,” says Paul. “Look like you’re having fun, Tia!”

  Having fun. Having fun. I’m having fun, thinks Tia. Then the song ends, with a thunderous “Isn’t it over now?” Yes, thinks Tia. Thank God.

  Paul pauses before speaking, as he always does, as if considering the most effective way to convey the very important thought in his head to the rest of the world. The girls relax gradually out of the poses they strike at the song’s conclusion. They are breathing hard. Tia worries, not for the first time, about singing while she is dancing—she can do each separately fairly well, but together is more difficult.

  “Terrible,” her father says at last.

  IV.

  Paul has read all the right books on the music business. He knows that it is very difficult for a band to make it. He knows that in order to attain success, a group must have an image, one that is easy to remember. The group must be different from other groups so that people will take notice of the group, not confuse the group with other groups. Most of all, the band must be attractive and visually appealing, easily marketable.

  In this case, Paul thinks he has found the right way to promote the girls. He has named them Hype Girlz. He has commissioned a song for them from a fairly prominent songwriter who has had other hits. The song is catchy and sassy—it’s about dumping a boy. This is the vision he has for Hype Girlz: girls with attitude. The comeback of grrl power. It hasn’t been done since the Spice Girls. Paul thinks the public is ready for more of the same, but with an edgy, current twist. Hype Girlz are tougher than Spice Girls. They’ll dump you and then they’ll kick your ass.

  This was how he described the girls to Theo Brigham when he finally got a phone meeting with him. Theo had heard of Hype Girlz—Paul’s aggressive, guerrilla-style campaigning has been hard to ignore—but had been dubious about the public’s need for another girl band.

  “We’ve filled that niche,” he had said. “Girl groups are notorious for being one-hit wonders. Look at Dream, look at 3LW.”

  Paul, desperate to keep Theo on the phone, had promised he would change his mind if he saw them in person.

  “Just one chance,” he had said over and over again. “That’s all I’m asking for.”

  So Theo transferred him to the new secretary, who penciled Hype Girlz in for today at four. Then he hung up the phone, preparing to disappoint this group, as he does most groups; hoping, as he always does, that these girls would be different. He has been desperate to sign someone. Once again, Jax has been on his back.

  Once Paul got off the phone, he ordered costumes for the girls. He remembered being younger, in his twenties (he is almost forty now) and wondering what he was meant to do with his life. He feels fairly certain that this is it. He feels proud of himself for the first time in a good while. He knows he is accomplishing something.

  V.

  The Hype Girlz run the dance a few more times, and then it is time for a break before their vocal warm-up. Tia sits in a corner with a water bottle. It gets hot in the studio. Janelle comes over and sits facing Tia.

  “Hi,” she says.

  Tia offers her a drink from her bottle.

  “I’m okay,” says Janelle. She tucks her yellow-blond hair behind her ears and thinks a minute.

  “Are you nervous?” she asks Tia.

  “No,” says Tia. “Are you?”

  “No,” says Janelle.

  The girls sit in silence until their vocal coach arrives.

  “Here we go, Hype Girlz,” says Paul. “Vocal warm-ups. Then we hit the road.”

  Paul has decided that for the big audition the Hype Girlz should sing their song a cappella. He read once that Jessica Simpson did that and it worked. So each time they sing, they do it unaccompanied. Their vocal coach, Ilsa, gives them a note and then they break into song. They are decent. Some are better than others. Ravenne’s voice shines through the other girls’ voices: Ilsa has given her the melody. The others sing with her at times and in harmony at times. Ravenne also has the only solo of the song—the bridge, which goes like this: “If I can’t make you want me then we’re better off apart / I was wrong to give you my love when I knew you’d break my heart.” Ravenne really sells this part: she ends on a high note that seems to last forever while the other girls come back in on the verse. It works. It’s a good song for them.

  An hour passes, and once again the girls are sitting in a corner of the studio. Paul is outside on his cell phone, speaking with the stylist, who is late to do hair and makeup for the girls before they drive to the Titan building.

  “Just get here as soon as you can,” Paul is saying. “I’m not sure you understand how important this is.”

  Inside, the girls can see his expression and they know how tense he is. They are silent, the five of them, each thinking something separate about what the afternoon holds. Ravenne
passes her bottle of water to Linette, who takes it without saying anything.

  “Do you think we’ll be on MTV?” says Janelle.

  No one answers.

  When Georgia, the stylist, finally arrives, they have thirty minutes before they’re scheduled to leave in the van.

  “Let’s see what we’re working with,” says Georgia, inspecting them in turn.

  “Pretty eyes,” she says to Kira. She starts with her. When she is finished, Kira looks like she was born to be on television: her eyes are outlined in smoky black eyeliner and her black hair is pulled back from her face into five spikes that look like a crown on her head.

  Georgia does each of the girls in turn, and leaves Tia for last. It is two minutes before three P.M.

  “We’ve gotta go,” says Paul, walking into the room from outside with an armful of outfits on hangers. He has been on his cell phone again.

  “She hasn’t done me yet, Dad,” says Tia, who wants desperately now to get her hair and makeup done. She looks at the other girls, who are looking at themselves in the large mirrors in the dance studio. Each has a different hair-style. Tia’s hair is straight and she is wearing a headband. She looks like a little girl. A little chubby girl. The others look like stars.

  “You look great, Tia,” says Paul. “Traffic is bad. We have to go now. Get your clothes on.” He hands each outfit to its owner and shoos them into the bathroom to change.

  The injustice of this event will haunt Tia for most of her life—even when she is old enough to realize its triviality, even when she has children of her own and knows how children exaggerate slights, how they can be unabashedly indignant on their own behalf. It is something about her father’s tone. Something about the look of pity and understanding on Georgia’s face.