Playing Along (12 page)

This morning the smog has vanished, and George feels as if he is running through a film set, the fastidiously manicured front lawns glistening around him. He starts slowly, but picks up speed, trying to forget Simon and Stacey, Mark and Anna, Duncan and his many conquests, and Fanny and her pussy. He propels himself forward, keeping up pace with a Calvin Harris song, his feet almost weightless. He used to run like this when he was a teenager in the woods near to his house. Anything to get away. He would write lyrics in his head as he ran, always knowing what he was running away from, but never sure of what he was running to. George decides to forget about his pact with Simon. Simon’s got it covered. He needs to keep his mind on the music. Nothing else. Just the music. Just the music.

A woman runs towards him halfway down a residential street. His heart is beating in time to the song. As they pass each other, they both look up, and even though her face is in his eye line for the briefest second, he could swear he sees tears in her eyes. His mind swerves away from thoughts of himself and for a flickering moment, he can’t help but wonder why she is crying.

LEXI
November 18
^th
, 2009
West Hollywood

Lexi manages to tolerate five minutes of Andrew waxing eloquent about his night’s escapades until she stands up and announces, “I’m so happy for you. Carl sounds great. I’m going to—” Her thoughts begin tripping over each other. She is determined not to cry again, but has no clue what she is going to do instead.

“Are you okay, Lex? You look a bit pale?” Andrew is so loved up, Lexi’s surprised that he can even focus his attention on another person’s well being. She is beginning to feel consumed by jealousy and has visions of it devouring her like a ravenous beast, permanently furrowing her eyebrows and etching deep hateful crevices in her skin.

“It’s nothing, I’m just a bit tired. I also went on a date last night.”

“Oh, typical, here I am talking about me, me, me. How was it?” She contemplates telling the truth, but decides against it. Lying suddenly seems very appealing.

“Incredible.”

“Really? Did you?”

“No, Andrew—never on a first date! Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten how long you had to campaign for.”

“Well, yes—but we were sixteen. Times might have changed—considering.”

“Considering what?”

“Nothing—just considering—you know—that it’s been a while.”

“Just say it, okay? In fact… why don’t you just join the club with the rest of them?”

“What Club?”

“The
Lexi is Desperate and Pathetic club
. I’ll give you a friends and family discount on your membership.”

“I only meant it had been a while since you were sixteen—so you might not have such rigid standards anymore.”

“A while since I was sixteen? So what are you saying, that I’m old and washed up?”

“No, Lex. Geez, are you PMS or what? I’m in a great mood and I’m not going to let you ruin it.”

“I don’t want to ruin it, Andrew. I just want everyone to leave me alone.” Lexi can sense the anger pulsing through her and she feels shockingly alert. She mainly tries to avoid it for fear of what she might become, but anger actually feels pretty damn good. Far preferable to sadness, and miles more empowering than jealousy.

“Fine!” says Andrew and storms out of the room.

“Fine!” Lexi shouts back.

She’s left standing in the kitchen bristling. She picks up the mug and tosses it into the sink where it lands with a resounding clatter. Lexi decides to go for a run around the neighborhood—on her own. She doesn’t need any of her friends right now. They’re smothering her—all of them. She needs to be independent and self reliant and free. Pulling on shorts and a tank she imagines getting Russell’s business off the ground and then leaving LA. Buying a ticket to Thailand or New Zealand or even Africa. She can picture it now—meditating by a Buddhist shrine in Phuket; building an orphanage in a run-down village in Uganda. Maybe she’ll forget about men entirely and become a lesbian. If Andrew could switch sides, why couldn’t she?

She’s full of plans as she searches in her purse for her iPod and headphones. Pressing them into her ears, she enters the world of Thesis—a world where a complete stranger seems to understand her more than her closest friends. Lexi slams the front door behind her and starts running down the sidewalk, no idea where she is heading, only certain that she needs to keep moving. When the tears arrive again, she lets them flow. This time they feel cleansing. The music wraps itself around her.

you ask, can I fly like an elegant bird? will I sew you new wings?

this life is absurd, when corners and tables keep calling our names,

with no reservations and no one to blame, blame, blame, no one to blame

find your own reasons, sculpt your own dreams,

I’m at a table for one, you’re not what you seem…

The piano mounts to a rousing crescendo and urges Lexi on. She’s annoyed by the appearance of another runner approaching her in the opposite direction. It’s as if he’s interrupted something intimate, a private space she doesn’t want trespassed. As he passes her by, their eyes meet for barely a second and she thinks two things:
God—he must be hot in that wool hat,
and
I wonder if he saw me crying?

GEORGE
20
^th
November, 2009
Hollywood, Los Angeles

As predicted, the last few days have disappeared in a flurry of arrangements, musical and otherwise. With the show on the horizon, the Thesis machine has kicked into seriously high gear and George has watched Gabe skippering a team of many, including instrument techs, roadies, publicists, and lighting engineers.

In rehearsals George has been feeling completely in sync with the rest of the boys. There are times when he sits down at the piano, fingers poised, when he wishes he could stop time and preserve the moment, so exquisitely full of anticipation. But then he starts playing, and he opens his mouth to sing, and it’s as if his ability to control anything evaporates, and he is overcome with the inevitable. Overcome with the music surging through him and out of him. Overcome with the invisible threads of sound linking him to each band member, each instrument, each note. George has heard it said before, but he’s felt it himself, in those moments he is merely a vessel, and the feeling is all at once humbling and exhilarating.

It’s the day before the show and they have just completed a final sound check. George sits on the edge of the stage dangling his legs over the side like a boy balanced on a bridge about to skim stones in a river. He looks out at the room full of empty seats and feels surprisingly peaceful. He remembers the first time they played Glastonbury, how his gut twisted before they went on stage at the prospect of being faced with a sea of writhing bodies and faces. He wondered in that moment how he could please a field of thousands if he couldn’t meet the expectations of two? But it was only after they made it on the stage and began their set, that he allowed himself to be elevated by the massive crowd who, unlike his parents, would love him because of his music. It was that simple. The crowd wanted him to succeed. He sang from his core that night and experimented with being completely uninhibited on stage, bounding around and letting his voice lead his body wherever it chose to go. Their debut at Glastonbury was legendary. Fans still reminisced about it today.

Gabe appears and sits down next to George. “Sounding superb.”

“You’re biased.”

“Well, what else do you pay me for?”

“Got me there.”

“We’ve just released the tickets on the website—your adoring fans will be going ape shit.”

“Excellent. I should take a look online.”

“So, my friend, we’re almost there. One more run through tomorrow.”

“Nope. I’ve talked about it with the lads. We don’t want to over rehearse. It might take something away from it.”

“Expect the unexpected and go with it then.”

“Something like that.” George fishes a pen out of his back pocket and writes
go with it
on the palm of his hand. “So what do you think, Gabe—you think we can keep this up until we’re old men?”

“Well, there are many who have paved the way.”

“Yeah, but what if I—”

“You won’t.”

George understands that neither of them knows exactly what he was going to say, but the specifics are irrelevant. What
does
matter to George is that Gabe is his anchor. The dependable voice of reassurance that went missing inside his own head a long time ago.

LEXI
November 20
^th
, 2009
The 10 Freeway East, Los Angeles

Lexi is driving home exhausted. Looking back she considers the night of the blind date and the morning after to have been a blessing, disguised in beige loafers and a loud shirt, but a blessing nonetheless. Running around the neighborhood the next morning, Thesis resonating around her head, she’d had somewhat of an epiphany. It was as if George Bryce was speaking directly to her, telling her to find her own reasons and sculpt her own dreams. It all made sense now—she had spent most of her life relying on other people to determine her happiness—her parents, Meg, Andrew. She had absorbed their perceptions of her like invisible fumes seeping into her pores, becoming the person they thought she should be—popular, positive, pretty. But even that hadn’t worked and she had lost Lexi along the way—lost the woman she wanted to become. She had also lost her edge, which she is determined to regain at this juncture in her life.

Lexi had called Russell after the run and said she wasn’t feeling well enough to work. She had spent most of the day crying, something she hadn’t allowed herself to do since she was a very little girl. Somewhere along the line she had taken her mother’s mantra, “Tears won’t help, my beauty, let’s look on the bright side” to be an indisputable truth, embedded into their family constitution. But tears
had
helped. They had flushed out something toxic swirling under the surface of her skin, and Lexi had woken up the next day with a renewed outlook. It was time to shed everyone else’s wishes for her and discover her own.

Quite how she was going to do this was still a bit fuzzy, but she knew Russell and the development of the business played a crucial role. She had to channel all of her energy into expanding Let The Green Times Roll. She wanted to make an impact in the world—to hear the bouncing echo of her shout rather than the hushed breath left behind by a whisper. Now was not the time for a relationship. No way. This was Lexi time. Even thinking about finding a man would derail her.
I’m at a table for one.
And she was going to choose whatever she wanted from life’s menu, instead of relying on someone else to do the ordering.

She’d spent the last two days in overdrive. Russell didn’t know what had hit him when she got back to work.

“I was convinced you’d be livid about the television interview,” he had said while brewing her an echinacea tea, “I told Boris to be on his best behavior.” But Lexi had returned with a flame at her heels and assured Russell they could make it happen by next Tuesday.
He
will be ready to go in front of the cameras, and behind the scenes,
she
will be ready for business.

“And I’m very much looking forward to meeting Mildred Cotton,” she had declared magnanimously, hoping to eclipse some of the bitterness she had initially felt.

“Yes, yes!” Russell had replied, blushing nervously, “Me too. I’m sure you’ll find her as engaging as I did.”

Now, two days later, stuck in Friday night traffic on the 10 freeway, Lexi is feeling entirely spent. She wasn’t actually sick before, but today she can feel a sharp scratch at the base of her throat and when her phone rings and she sees it’s Meg, she decides not to answer. They usually speak at least once a day, but she has avoided talking to her since Wednesday morning, purposefully trying to put some needed distance between them.

When Meg has texted, Lexi has replied only to say, “all’s well just super busy at work.” But two minutes later it rings again. Lexi feels a swift rush of guilt, what if something has happened to one of the children? She reaches for the phone.

GEORGE
20
^th
November, 2009
West Hollywood, Los Angeles

“How the fuck did this happen?” The band are all together in Gabe’s room and George is staring at the laptop screen completely dumfounded.

“I don’t know, George, you must have lost your notebook.” Gabe has had the unfortunate job of delivering the news that the lyrics for “Over Time” have been leaked on the Internet.

“I didn’t lose my notebook. I’ve got my notebook. It’s not even a song yet. The only person who’s seen the lyrics is Simon.”

“What are you implying?” says Simon indignantly. “You think I took our lyrics and sold them to a friggin blogger? Why would I do that?”

“Of course, you wouldn’t—I don’t know, but how the hell did they get
here
,” says George, pointing angrily at the computer screen. “Did you show them to Stacey?”

“No! I didn’t show them to Stacey. I didn’t even have them. They’re in your bloody book.”

“Lighten up, guys,” says Duncan, putting his feet up on the desk. “It’s not like some kind of mainland security has been breached. So what if the lyrics are out. You can still write the fucking song…”

“Dunc is actually talking sense for once, George,” says Mark. “Let it go—” George can’t understand why they don’t get it. He feels violated. Those are his words, his thoughts. Fresh. Barely born. The formation of songs for a new album is a painstaking process and it can take months, even years for the vision to articulate. He knew this song was integral but it’s been hijacked now—thrown into the glare of scrutiny way too early. He
will
have to let it go—all of it.

“Anyway,” says Mark, fiddling with his wedding ring, “I
do
mean to change the subject here, because I’d like to know why Duncan and I hadn’t even seen the song yet.”

“It was too early,” defends George, “you know we don’t show you things until they’re in better shape.”