He scratched his winter beard. “I want you to be safe.”
“And happy?”
“And happy, but mostly safe.”
“I’m old enough to take care of myself. You lived in a city a thousand miles from your parents by the time you were my age.”
“That was a different time…”
She knew the speech by heart. “‘That was a different time, and this was a different country. The best thing we can do now is take care of each other and stay in the safest place we can, and make ourselves as self-sufficient as possible.’” She paused. “But Dad, you’ve been saying that my whole life. You’ve made this a great place to grow up, but if you don’t want me in a hood twenty-four/seven and you don’t want me to go anywhere, then I’m trapped with Superwally forever. I’m not going to do anything dangerous. I just want to know what else is out there.”
He held out his hands, and they fit the panel back into place. The more he argued, the more convinced she was she needed to try this.
7
LUCE
Something’s Gotta Change
A hotel in Pennsylvania found another bomb before it detonated. A gunman had shot up a bus station in Mississippi and barricaded himself in. That was the news we woke to the following morning: a study in random lone wolf horror, with nobody sure if it was actually random lone wolves or not, and the same ominous requests from the government to get home, and stay home. Whatever they knew, they weren’t telling.
“The tour is over,” Margo at the label repeated over the phone. “All the venues are dark. Go home.”
Home. I didn’t have one. I’d sublet my rented room in Queens a year before, to a guy who had taken over the lease when I didn’t come back. He had offered to give my bed back if I came knocking, but I didn’t have any particular ties to the furniture, and my few personal belongings traveled with me.
I sent messages to friends in a few cities I thought I could survive lying low in, and was rewarded with an offer of a situation similar to the one I’d left: a furnished sublet in a Baltimore artists’ collective. The occupant was also a touring musician, currently on an extended gig in Europe.
What about a European tour? I texted Margo.
Months to arrange. Visas, instruments, etc. We’ll see, she wrote back.
April and Hewitt tried to book flights home, to New York and L.A. respectively, but the planes were grounded. Hewitt ended up squeezing into a rental car with two businesswomen who were also trying to get west, and April bought a one a.m. bus ticket, the only one available.
The van felt empty, quiet, even with music playing. Loosed from the magnetic pull of the next show, the next stopover, the potential of any nextness at all, the road dulled and flattened. I was the losing team slinking home, except my destination wasn’t even home. I dumped my meager belongings at the new place, turned in the rental van with a wistful pat, and resigned myself to a stay of unknown duration in someone else’s bed in someone else’s room in someone else’s house in someone else’s city.
I had no idea what to do with myself. I woke around noon every day. Checked the news before leaving bed, to see if the curfew had been lifted; it hadn’t. People protested here and there, on principle, but the protests were halfhearted. The frequency of the attacks and the randomness of the ongoing threats had left people genuinely scared.
I’d pad downstairs in pajama bottoms and an old T-shirt, not even bothering to get dressed. There were four roommates: a sculptor, a nurse, a filmmaker, and a burlesque performer. The filmmaker, Jaspreet, was a teacher by day, but the rest of us kept odd hours. We mostly ran into each other in the kitchen: someone on coffee, someone else eating breakfast, another lunch.
“We should be getting back to normal,” one would say. “Before we forget what normal is.”
“We have to find a new normal,” said another. I knew all their names by then, but it didn’t really matter who said what. It was the same conversation, over and over.
Then somebody would point out some aspect that was improving—schools reopening, say—and we’d all pretend to be cheered. I’d fill a bowl with cereal and slink back upstairs. It wasn’t that I disliked their company; it just wasn’t what I was looking for.
I’d call Margo at some point in the afternoon. “Have you heard anything today?”
She’d assure me that she’d let me know if she had, and I didn’t need to call daily. She didn’t understand that I did. I needed her to tell me to head back out on tour. I thought of Alaia and the staff at the Peach, and at all the other places we’d played. They all got paid hourly. How many people were going to struggle to pay their bills next month if the clubs stayed closed? Clubs, theaters, cinemas, stadiums, malls. Even a day could be devastating for an hourly worker. I remembered what that was like.
I’d never done so much nothing before. High school had been a blur of new experiences once I relocated myself to my aunt’s couch uptown: jeans, guitars, music, girls, the entire glorious city I’d missed out on. When I graduated, booking and playing and promoting for myself were three full-time jobs, even while I held a fourth to pay my rent. Touring and promotion kept me busy once I got on the road; writing and recording and rehearsing kept me busy the rest of the time. Downtime was new territory.
Telling myself to write didn’t work, either. The song I’d written on the hotel wall had hidden itself from me. The lyrics still glowed in my head when I closed my eyes, but it didn’t feel right putting them to music. I lay on my bed and did nothing, a pointed nothing, an arpeggiated chord of a nothing, strung out over the afternoon.
April called once to ask me the same question I asked Margo; I gave Margo’s answer.
“You’re a mess.” April’s hands tapped a beat into her kitchen counter.
I turned off my camera, though she’d already seen me. “How are you not a mess? Where are you, anyway?”
“Home.” She looked unperturbed. “New York is always New York.”
My heart lifted. “Do you mean clubs there are open?”
“No. The clubs and museums are still closed, and there aren’t many tourists, but that makes it nicer. I’ve found enough session work to pay rent. Everybody’s recording since they can’t play out. What are you doing? You look like shit. When was the last time you washed your hair?”
I couldn’t remember. “I’m not doing much. Our stuff has been selling well online since people got stuck inside. SuperStream royalties are decent. It’s paying the bills.”
“Silver lining, I guess. You can come visit if you want.”
It took me another month to convince myself to take her up on that offer. Schools reopened, then a scattering of other places: local stores, a movie theater here or there. More threats rolled in behind. Major League Baseball discussed kicking off an abbreviated season, then called it off. A museum opened for a day, then closed again.
“If this were a war zone, people would go about their business.” My sculptor-roommate was Syrian, and knew war zones. “People here fool themselves into thinking they’re safe, and they can’t take it when that illusion gets shattered.”
I nodded, retreated to my room again, called Margo. “There’s got to be someplace to play.”
“Not enough to build a tour on, Luce,” Margo said. “Hang in there. We’re waiting to hear about summer festivals. If those are a no-go, we can start looking for small clubs again, maybe.”