“Do you want me to take JD’s bed so you can have a room to yourself?” April asked, reaching into the painted fridge.
“No,” I said. “But I’d love a few minutes alone.”
“You got it, boss.”
On the way out, I snagged the can of glo-paint. Back in our room, I propped my guitar in the corner and grabbed a needle from the emergency sewing kit I kept in my bag. Pushed aside the dresser, dipped the needle in the remaining paint.
Where nobody was likely to ever see it, I wrote the lyrics to a song I wasn’t yet prepared to put to music: a song that had come to me on the silent drive back to the hotel from the show, jumbled and half-formed. Some songs stayed that way forever, ragged and ruptured and far from reach; those ones I’d rehearse and put aside, start again and put aside, saying it’s not ready yet, but someday. I locked this one into order, painstakingly, letter by letter.
The dresser was back in place by the time April slipped into the room. I had the lights off, my guitar in hand, and I was listening to the tiny words that glowed behind the dresser, waiting for them to tell me what form they wanted to take. There were, to my knowledge, one hundred and seventy-three ways to wreck a hotel room. The one hundred and seventy-fourth was a slow, small form of destruction: tiny words, tiny fears, tiny hopes, etched in a place they might never be found.
6
ROSEMARY
Career Opportunities
She’d never had any plan to leave Superwally, so Rosemary couldn’t say why she started poking around StageHoloLive’s job listings, only that she was curious. The position that initially caught her eye was “upload supervisor,” which involved being online at home to make sure there were no glitches in getting performances to the people who had paid for them. She was qualified; she had six years’ experience at Superwally, including working out that bug before one of SHL’s own concerts.
She debated expanding her one concert experience into talk of a lifetime’s love for SHL, but they probably had ways to check. Cross-reference her address and they’d know she didn’t have a home box, much less an SHL-enabled Hoodie. Cross-reference her credit account and they’d see the one drink at the one concert. She settled on mentioning how wonderful that Patent Medicine show had been, leaving out that it was her only one.
As she went over the job description one last time, she noticed a listing for an “artist recruiter.” It paid the same, but included travel and expenses. What kind of job required travel? Plumbers and construction workers and blacksmiths drove around the area, but they made it home every night. This position didn’t require experience; just enthusiasm, love of music, people skills, and a willingness to travel. She had enthusiasm, she loved music, and she could point to her vendor services record as proof of her people skills. She was willing to travel, even if she’d never done it before. She checked the boxes to apply for both positions.
The skills assessment and psychological section were easy enough. Then there was a fun little field test, where they posted a series of live videos with all information stripped from them, and she had to decide whether to pass on each act or make an offer. Five in total.
She didn’t know anything about the music business, so she approached the problem in the same way she approached code, envisioning a perfect combination of catchy music and visual style first, using Patent Medicine’s show as a guide, and then looking at the examples to see where they deviated. There wasn’t such a thing as perfect in this case; music wasn’t code, and musicians didn’t snap to her rulers. Still, she disqualified one video because the act lacked energy, and another because they came across unfocused. She “signed” one band of the five. Nobody had messaged her to ask for the SHL Hoodie back, so she used that for the remote interview, rather than risk using her work rig or the glitchy old Basic model.
She was surprised when the offer came through for the recruiter job instead of the upload supervisor position. She closed and reopened the message, making sure she hadn’t misread it. “Uniquely qualified,” they said. She went back and reread her application to make sure she hadn’t promised anything she’d be unable to deliver, but she’d made no rash declarations. She hadn’t even exaggerated much. Her enthusiasm must have shown through, or maybe her dedication to her current position. Or maybe they saw her as a blank slate. Moldable.
Leaving Superwally was trickier. For starters, she had no idea how to do it. For all their “You are valued but replaceable” posters, they didn’t leave any instructions for severing ties with the company. Maybe that was deliberate. In the end, she waited for Jeremy’s morning call.
“You’re doing what?” he asked. He was a young Igbo man today, wearing a mix of traditional and modern clothes. The Superwally avatars weren’t fancy enough to show much emotion, but his made a good stab at surprise.
“Quitting. How do I quit?”
“Why would you quit? You have six years’ seniority. You’re good at your job.”
“I found a better job. I hope. A different one, anyway.”
“Nobody quits, Rosemary. There are no better jobs.”
“You mean no better jobs for people like me?” That was what she’d been told since high school. She hadn’t been able to afford the online certification courses she needed for higher-end jobs, and her parents’ credit hadn’t been good enough for loans. She spent all of high school preparing for Superwally customer service. Leaving was unthinkable.
“For people like us.”
“I am. I’m leaving. I’m leaving Superwally.” She psyched herself up in the saying. It was as much for her benefit as Jeremy’s.
He sighed. “I’m sorry to lose you. You’ve been reliable.”
He gave her instructions for contacting a mysterious Talent Management hotline. She repeated the whole conversation, almost verbatim, with a generic gray-blonde white woman avatar exuding generic concern. It wasn’t that anyone was worried they couldn’t replace her. It was touching; they genuinely didn’t believe there were other jobs out there. She appreciated the concern. It embroidered her own terror nicely.
What was she doing? She had a real job, a good one, one she performed well. She was leaving it because she had been struck by lightning, had gone crazy, had some idea she could do something else.
“Superwally is reliable work. What if this new company goes out of business? Where will you be then?” her father asked when she told him. He asked all the questions that swirled in her head, as if they were leaking out.
She held a panel for him at the windmill’s base while he fiddled inside it. They wore thick winter work gloves, which made the adjustments cumbersome and slow. “They’re not new. They’ve been around for a bunch of years and they’re in eighty percent of American homes.” Answering felt good. It built her own confidence in her decision.
“What if Superwally decides to go into the concert business? They’re in even more homes.”
“If we—they—wanted that they’d have done it already. It’s some kind of partnership, with Superwally as the conduit.”
“And tell me again why you have to go there in person?”
She hadn’t yet mentioned that her job would involve more travel after this trip. Baby steps. “It’s a training program. They want us to see how they make the magic happen, so we can fix it when it goes wrong.”
“Wrong magic?”
“Wrong metaphor, I guess, but you know what I mean. And how cool is it that I get to go someplace?” Her father looked hurt, and she scrambled to appease him. “Not that I ever felt like I needed to go anyplace before, but I’ve been doing the same job for six years. I think I’m allowed to want to change it up a little, aren’t I?”