“I don’t know,” Dave answered. But then, all of a sudden, he did know and blood began to pound at the delicate centers of his ears and through the rigid veins at his wrists and temples. Even the smallest fibers of his being seemed to stand on end, screeching at him to speak plainly, for once, to scrape off this stupid mask of ironic indifference, because what good had it ever done him, anyway, and his mouth opened, the words already formed and spilling out of it, for they had been lying dormant now for weeks, lined up and ready to march out along his tongue, to crawl out into the world and pierce the heart of his no-longer enemy. “Yes, Curtis,” he would say, “I completely comprehend your meaning, despite your utter and complete inability to speak in normal English sentences, which everyone apparently finds charming and indicative of your superior intelligence and freakish musical talent, but which I happen to find annoying, but all that aside, I have that something else you think we need. If you would proceed with me to the piano, I will play you the three songs that will, I believe, win us fame and fortune and ass-licking reviews in the New York fucking Times and the love of that loser Reynold Marks, which is maybe a sellout, asshole thing to want, but I want it, and you know you want it, too, because he can help us, and I need some help right now, and so do you, since you’re living in a fucking pup tent and you clearly haven’t bathed in weeks. So come with me to the piano, my friend, come with me right now. Curtis, my friend, I am your man.”
But he didn’t say this or anything like it. He said, casually, “I think we sound good,” even as Sadie’s voice somehow, in his head, morphed with his mother’s voice into a chorus of “Dave, what is wrong with you?” And for them he had no answer, other than that there was some perversity of spirit, some untraceable, possibly archaic, pretty definitely misguided—he knew, he knew!—idea that true genius, or even just a good pop song, should be discovered by accident, by fate, rather than by canny maneuvering or self-promotion or mere suggestion. If he asked for it and received it, the resultant triumph would be cheapened, tainted, by his efforts. Or maybe it was that he was afraid to fail. Again. “Seriously, man, we sound good,” he said again, because an unfamiliar expression was distorting the calm sea of Curtis’s face, an expression Dave slowly recognized—with shock—as anger.
“Don’t lie to me, okay,” said this new, unfamiliar Curtis, his voice rising in volume. “I’m trying to talk to you.” And then, as if in a dream, he heard Sadie’s—and his mother’s!—words come out of Curtis’s mouth. “What’s wrong with you, man?” Dave looked at him, speechless. “I mean, what’s your problem with me. Or with us. You act like we’re a bunch of stupid kids. I just don’t get it. I am so sick of your attitude.” Bending low over the bar, Curtis at last lit his cigarette, his face growing increasingly red and taut, as if someone had turned a crank and tightened the flesh that covered it. “We’re a band, man. We’re supposed to be like a family.” He took a sharp breath. “You think we’re too”—again, the wave of his bony hand—“for your songs.”
Dave had gone from speechless to stunned. Accused, he almost found himself issuing denials: Songs? What songs? But even he was not this perverse. A strange calm settled over him in the face of Curtis’s fury. Instead, he said, “What do you mean?” Curtis sighed heavily, took off his thick-rimmed glasses, and placed them carefully on the bar. His eyes looked small and vulnerable without them.
“I’m really tired,” he told Dave.
“Me, too,” said Dave. “We should get some sleep.”
“Yeah,” said Curtis. “So, you’re starting your own project? That’s it, right?”
“What?” Dave asked. “Oh. No. I don’t have”—he smiled, for as he said it, he knew it was true—“the necessary leadership skills.”
“Then what’re the songs for. What’re you gonna do with them?”
Dave blinked. “I don’t know,” he said. “How—”
“Sadie Peregrine told me,” said Curtis. “She said they’re, like, the best thing ever.” The blood returned to Dave’s ears and resumed its infernal crashing, washing out the sounds of the bar, the clanking of glasses, the hiss of the soda nozzle, the clack of balls on the pool table behind him. Sadie? Curtis and Sadie had met once, maybe twice, in passing. When? At Lil’s party, a month or two ago? Yes. Why had they been discussing him—not just him, but his most private, crazy-making pursuits. Curtis was moving his mouth again, but Dave could hear nothing of his words for the cacophony in his ears and the hot flush that had crept into his cheeks, which seemed to emit a sound, a buzz or hum, of its own. He was furious. And he felt, without willing them to, his legs pulling his body down off the bar stool and readying for flight. “She’s really cool,” he heard Curtis say from a million miles away.
“No,” said Dave, slinging his bag over his shoulder, already loathing himself for this small betrayal. “She’s not.”
nine
Curtis Lang met Emily Kaplan at a party given by Dave Kohane the following summer. It was Labor Day, in the year 2000, and the entire group was in town for the holiday weekend. All except Tal, who was in Israel shooting some sort of thriller. “It’s 110 degrees here,” he’d emailed Dave the week before. “But it’s amazing.” They’d all agreed to come to Dave’s little thing, just twenty people or so, the first gathering he’d held at his apartment, though he’d been living in it for a year and a half now. The previous owners had left a small barbecue, which he’d never used, so he decided to serve up a big batch of ribs. On the Saturday before the party, he went to his parents’ place and obtained a recipe that called for brining and marinating the ribs, which were supposed to be the large beef kind, but (according to his father) could possibly be the small pig kind, then walked over to the butcher on Smith Street to pick up the meat, only to find that the store—operated by a portly Italian man who owned half the buildings in the area—was closed. Back at home, he called Emily, who was still at her dodgy place in Williamsburg (the rent still $500 per month), and explained the situation. “Do you think any of the Polish butchers on Bedford are open?” he asked. “Would you want to buy a few pounds of ribs and bring them over here?”
“Um, sure,” said Emily, warily.
“You’re sure? I’m not ruining your day?” he said.
“No,” she said, with a bit more enthusiasm. “We could go to a movie after, maybe.”
A couple of hours later, she rapped at his door, red hair frizzing in the late summer heat, a slightly pissy look on her face, which was flushed from exertion. He opened the wrought-iron gate and grabbed the white plastic bags from her. They were incredibly heavy. “Em, whoa, how did you carry these?” Emily was five foot two, almost a full foot shorter than Dave.
“Well,” she considered, “let’s just say it wasn’t fun. I got pork ribs. The guy said you need a pound per person, because there isn’t much meat on them. So I got twenty pounds. It ended up being, like, sixty bucks.”
“Okay,” said Dave, quelling a mild panic. Sixty bucks was way more than he’d expected to spend. It was just like Emily to agree to do him a favor, he thought, then mess it up (twenty pounds of ribs? What was he going to do with twenty pounds of ribs?) and make him feel guilty. But then, she was sweet to do it, and so at the last minute, and those bags were really heavy. And the money was fine, fine, he told himself. He had more cash than usual, from band stuff: they’d signed a small deal with Merge in the end. Over the summer, they’d flown to Lincoln, Nebraska, of all places, and recorded an album. In late September, they were supposed to go back to mix the thing. “I’ll stop at the cash machine when we go out.”