American Love Songs (5 page)

¹⁵
Well, guys. Chris had a healthy double standard where women were concerned.

 

Parker accepted that with the lifting of one shoulder. “What about Jimmy?”

 

“Jimmy ever see your fingers move when you play?”

“Uh, I dont think so.” Parkers face was the picture of perfect confusion. “Except maybe during my audition.” Jimmy was usually pretty focused on the drums, and they practiced facing inward, Parkers body at a ninety-degree angle to Jimmys line of sight. “Why? Does it matter?”

“Only way Jimmy knows a good guitarist is by watching your fingers. I guess listening to the beat, too, but yeah.”

 

“Tone deaf?”

 

Jake confirmed it. “Like you wouldnt believe.” There was a reason Jimmy didnt have a microphone.

 

“Who ever heard of a tone-deaf musician?”

 

Snorting, Jake picked up his shot glass. “Son, you never hear of a guy called Bob Dylan?”

 

“Careful,” Parker said, laughing. “In some parts of the country, thems fightin words.”
¹⁶

Jake winced, almost sloshing rum over his fingers. “Oh, God, please tell me youre not a Dylan fan. I might have to kick you out. Seriously, dude. I cannot have that shit in my apartment.”

“Relax,” Parker soothed him. “Its only on Mondays!”

Monday being tomorrow, when Jake would likely be hung over as hell and in the mood for peace and quiet, not toneless, indecipherable caterwauling. “I need a bigger bottle,” he decided morosely, knocking back the shot.

“Kidding. Not a fan.” Parker nudged him with his foot. “Its my turn.”

“So it is.” Parker still hadnt exactly been forthcoming. Jake was starting to believe that he would have to get to know his roommate the old-fashioned way: over time and through walking in on him in the shower. “Fire away.”

¹⁶
Parker had picked up Chriss habit of imitating accents. Unfortunately, he was terrible at it.

In fairness to Parker, he stopped asking such complicated questions, and they ended up talking about books, movies, music, and television for the next half an hour, MTV playing on low volume in the background. Jake bravely confessed his clandestine
America’s Next Top Model
addiction, and Parker explained his love of Vonnegut with a slightly slurred vocabulary that would have made Jakes mama proud.

The introduction of a feature about Paul McCartneys latest musical efforts prompted a long, serious, drunken conversation about whether he and John Lennon were doing it. Parker was adamant that they were, while Jake was more skeptical—”Dude, come on. You know he was totally in love with Linda.” That conversation further devolved—or re-evolved, depending how you looked at it—into a debate over which Beatle was the better songwriter.

“„While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” Parker said.
Jake had to give him that, but—“„Come Together.”
Parker made a noise of assent. Stalemate.

Somehow they ended up streaming backwards clips from the White Album until John Lennons voice proclaiming Paul was dead gave them both goose bumps.

“If Paul is dead,” Jake said, “then who the hell is that guy?” Both sets of eyes darted back to the television screen while maybe-Paul performed a soulful version of “Let It Be.”

 

Parker reached for the remote and turned off the television. “Youre a bad influence,” he said, yawning.

Smirking lazily, Jake leaned back into the couch. “Yep.” He burped and wrinkled his nose at the taste. “Maybe we should have mixed that with something.”

No response.
“Parker?”

Jake turned his head. Parker was slumped against the arm of the couch, mouth slightly open, eyes closed. “Lightweight,” he muttered, stretching out his legs on top of the coffee table. Hed just rest his eyes, and then hed go to bed.

In the middle of the night he woke up with Parkers feet in his lap, disoriented from a bizarre dream in which he and Parker were dressed up in the uniforms from the cover of
Sergeant Pepper
, being chased through the streets of Independence by a giant walrus.
I have got to stop watching television before bed
, he thought with a yawn. Then he reached up and turned off the light.

W
HEN Jake got home from his shift at the store, Parker was sitting at the table in the living room, the weeks classified ads spread in front of him on the table. He had a pen in one hand and another he must have forgotten stuck behind his ear, and his glasses were sliding down his nose.

“Hey,” Jake said, kicking the door closed behind him and setting a bag of groceries on the counter. “Whats going on?”

“Got a letter from the landlord,” Parker answered without looking up from his papers. “Our lease is up in two months, just a reminder notice. So I was checking if there was anything better listed for the price.”

“Good idea,” Jake nodded; he had a cousin who worked in real estate, and hed heard her say many a time that it was a buyers market. Maybe that meant it was a renters market too. “Any likely candidates?”

Parker shrugged. “Some. It depends what were looking for. I thought it might be nice to rent a semi or a townhouse, have a bit of a yard. We could make some use of the barbecue your dad gave us.”

Jakes dad had purchased a new barbecue a few weeks previously in a sale and had offered them his old one. Jake wasnt one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but they didnt exactly have anywhere to put it at the moment; their apartment didnt have a balcony. “That sounds good, actually. Anything around here?”

“A few. Some shitty basement apartments with yard access, one or two townhouses that arent too bad—most of them are already furnished, so theyre a bit pricier.” Parker stopped to scratch his nose, looking perturbed, and then picked up the paper and showed Jake the one he had circled in red. “And this one.”

Jake squinted at the picture on the newsprint, taking in the miniscule details curiously. “This looks like Chris and Jimmys place.”

“Thats because it is Chris and Jimmys place,” Parker sighed, flopping back onto the sofa and pulling off his glasses. He rubbed an obviously tired hand across the bridge of his nose before continuing. “I double-checked. Its the other half of their semi.”

Blinking, Jake set the paper down and sat back with him, turning his full attention to Parkers reaction. “Okay,” he said agreeably, folding his hands in his lap. “Thoughts?”

Parker shrugged. “On the one hand, its not too far from our places of work, it has two baths, we can afford it, we know the landlord, and Chris and Jimmy live next door.”

Jake nodded along, waiting for the other shoe to drop. “And on the other hand?”

Voice drier than the Gobi desert, Parker replied, “On the other hand, its a one-year lease, some asshole painted the kitchen orange, and Chris and Jimmy live next door.”

“You make a compelling case,” Jake admitted with the ghost of a smile, picking up the paper again. There were a few other prospective places circled, and of course they could just stay where they were, but it seemed silly not to explore other options.

“Dont mock my pain,” Parker whined. “Seriously. I mean, dont get me wrong, the guys are great, but we already see them every day but Sunday.”

“I hear you,” Jake assured him, chewing his lip while he thought. “Okay, what if we make a list of the places we like best and go see them all? If any of them can compete with what we have now, or what we could have there, then we know its probably not the right thing to move next to the guys. If we dont, we reevaluate how much youd hate living next door to Chris”—Parker gave a guilty flinch—“and start again. Hows next Sunday for you?”

“I guess Ill make some calls.” Parker smiled ruefully. “Were going to end up their neighbors, though, you know.”

“Yeah, I know,” Jake said easily, reaching around behind Parker for the TV remote. “But itll make you feel better if you feel like weve thoroughly explored our options.”

Parker was quiet for a minute while ESPN flashed on the TV. “Thanks.”

 

Jake nudged him not too gently with his elbow. “Dont mention it.”
Interlude
Ten Things Jake Learned About Parker Their First Month Living Together

 

1. Parker was a musical genius.

Logans enthusiastic endorsements aside—Parker could apparently play nearly every instrument in the store—the evidence spoke for itself. He was always careful not to upstage Chris at practices, though as the days passed he was getting less paranoid. Out of deference to Chris, Parker refrained from embellishing the songs that had already been written and merely played them perfectly. Chris was even warming up to him, and as a show of appreciation had instituted a sort of guitarist-bonding-night ritual that seemed to revolve around a shared love of Twizzlers and Monty Python.
¹⁷

But at home, there were no such compunctions. Whenever Jake caught Parker playing, and it wasnt often, the songs were beautiful, precise, and full of harmonies—and rarely anything he recognized. Occasionally Jake noticed a beat-up notebook sticking out from under the couch or hidden under Parkers guitar case; he took that as an indication that the songs were indeed of Parkers own design, but he figured Parker would come forward with them when he was ready and not before. Jake just had to wait and let him build his confidence. It was going to be awesome.

¹⁷
Particularly the Silly Walking skit.
2. Parker didnt like to wear shoes, even though his feet were always cold.

The morning Jake woke up with Parkers feet still in his lap, he had a bad moment where he thought hed given Parker alcohol poisoning and hed choked on his vomit and died, his feet were that cold. Of course, part of that panic was residual dumb-dumbs from alcohol consumption. After that, he started paying attention. Parker wore nice shoes to his job at the music store, but he took them off as soon as he got home and put his socks in the laundry. After the last frost, he wore sandals everywhere, including on stage, even though someone inevitably spilled beer on his foot. Jake didnt get it, but that wasnt really new where Parker was concerned.

3. Parker owned exactly three CDs. Four if you counted the Wayward Sons demo.

Jake didnt find them the day Parker moved his stuff in—hed been out while the actual physical moving had happened, and when he got back in, there was an empty hiking backpack on the floor. It took some serious work to find the little changes—a couple of framed photographs in what had been Kylies bedroom, a few battered paperbacks, and, a little surprisingly, a Bible that looked like it was older than Jake. He didnt find the CDs on the tower until two weeks later, when he was looking for something to rock out to while he cooked. There were three of them, though he only recognized Bach. The other two looked homemade.

Now that Jake was thinking about it, he was pretty sure that piece Parker had played during his audition was Bach. Curious, he popped it in the CD player instead, humming along to the motifs he knew while he boiled the water for pasta.

4. Parker still had an operational Discman. 5. He also had no fashion sense to speak of.

Jake wasnt really one to nitpick—seriously, his best friends were straight guys, so he put up with a lot of things, fashion-wise, that were frankly unacceptable. It was worse because they were
single
straight guys, so instead of just having uncoordinated wardrobes, they had uncoordinated wardrobes that were generally stained with bleach, food, or grease, or had simply never seen an iron. In a few cases he had to wonder if theyd even seen a washing machine.

Parkers clothes were fastidiously neat by comparison. Hell, he even did Jakes laundry, too, on occasion (usually the occasion where Jake left dirty clothes around the apartment). However.

Jake knew Parker must have some clothes nice enough to go to work in, otherwise Logan wouldnt have hired him. And he did all right when he was just lounging around the apartment in ratty jeans and a Tshirt. All signs pointed to the fact that it was going to be okay, but no— the first time Parker dressed for the stage, it was a disaster. He put on his nice work pants and a long-sleeved button-down shirt that would have been too big on Jake. He didnt do his hair, either, but by the time Jake noticed, they had to leave or they were going to be late.

The next night, he made sure to get to Parker early. “Dont change,” he ordered, and Parker put down the pants hed been holding and blushed scarlet.

Jake grinned at him and leaned over to ruffle his hair. “And do something about this, seriously. I know the bed-head look is in, but this is ridiculous.”

Against all the odds, Parkers flush deepened. “I, uh—” “Used to playing classical?” Jake guessed. There had been something uniform-like about the black-on-white of the night before. Parker bit his lip. “Something like that.”

 

Jake nodded and clapped him on the shoulder, confident that Parker would tell him someday.

Probably.
6. In a bizarre juxtaposition with his usual geek chic image—pale skin, fluffy hair, plastic-framed glasses, button-down—Parker had a tattoo.

Jake was so thrown the first time he saw it that his mouth stayed open in the middle of a word because it wasnt getting any input from his brain.

Parker adjusted the towel around his waist. “You were saying?”

Jake waved his hand. “Forget what I was saying,” he managed. He couldnt tear his eyes away from the clean black lines. “You have a tattoo!” he accused. “You have rocker cred after all!”

“Doesnt everyone have one nowadays?” Parker looked like he really wanted Jake to drop the subject so he could go put some clothes on. “Youve got one, right?” he asked a little desperately.

“Scared of needles,” Jake said shortly, still too entranced to be embarrassed. He walked around behind Parker to get a better look. Two sets of five lines wound in a spiral across the upper part of Parkers arm, then around again and across the back of his shoulder. The lines and spaces were interrupted every so often by a group of precise notes; the deep curlicue of the treble clef would only be just covered when Parker wore a T-shirt.

“Dude, Im dripping on the carpet,” Parker finally pointed out, and Jake snapped out of it at last and stepped back.