Playing Along (3 page)

“Lexi, get your butt out here!”

“It’s official,” she yells back, “I am morphing into a witch. Or a crone. Or possibly both?”

Andrew appears in the bathroom doorway, eyebrows dramatically raised.

“Morphing into?”

Lexi pulls her thick brown hair into a low ponytail and squints at her reflection.

“Very funny. It’s thirty-two. Thirty-two hates me.”

“Welcome to my world. Heston just told me the other day that he thinks I’m getting a muffin top,” he lifts his t-shirt to reveal a perfectly chiseled six-pack, which he lamely attempts to squeeze.

“Heston is weird, Andrew. Why don’t you find yourself a nice older man to settle down with? You’ve got it all backwards. You should be the toy boy.”

Andrew and Lexi are roommates. They share a duplex in West Hollywood just south of Melrose with lots of charm. In other words, the shower leaks incessantly and they have to plead with the oven to persuade it to work. They each have a small bedroom with a walk-in closet, of primary importance even in dumps. It was Andrew who walked out of the closet four years after they parted.

Weeks after graduation from high school, their relationship just seemed to fizzle. He was spending far too much time with his basketball friends (still now, she wonders about all the extra “practices” he needed to attend). Even at eighteen, their sex life had become predictable and sparse. It felt like they were brother and sister. Looking back, he spent more time advising her on what color lipstick to wear than he did kissing her.

The plan had been for Andrew and Lexi to attend Columbia University together, her parents’ alma mater. The polo shirts were packed. Lexi was a girl who stuck to a plan, so when Andrew decided to stay on the west coast and accepted a place at UCLA instead, she was crushed, but determined to appear unruffled. She was Jeanette Jacobs’s daughter after all, hardwired for optimism. Lexi bravely boarded that plane in September with a smile on her face and a firm belief that her four years at Columbia would set her on an even better track, revealing to her the life she was meant to lead, and perhaps the new man who was meant to lead it with her.

It took some time for her rose colored glasses to warp and crack, eventually becoming so loose at the screws that they fell apart completely. She tumbled in and out of bad relationships with boys who were too young, men who were too jaded, or tutors who were arrogant and balding. She failed her European History final. She broke her wrist kickboxing. And she was mugged on Amsterdam Avenue walking home one night from volunteering at the Braille Institute for the Blind. It was on that particular night that the thought occurred to her that she too had been blinded by the fuzzy glow of her adolescence. Could she really have peaked at seventeen?

Only this morning she had asked Andrew that question for the thousandth time as he scanned the job opportunity pages for her on the
LA Times
website.

“Lexi, you were hot at seventeen and you are even hotter now. You’re just in a bit of a slump…”

“Yeah, so hot that I turned you gay.”

“Don’t start taking responsibility for that again. I’ve told you—it’s genetic. I’ve traced back three generations of McClouds and I’m almost positive there was a flaming uncle on every branch of my family tree. You were put in my path as sweet temptation. And you were—so sweet—still are…”

“Andrew, this isn’t a slump. This is more like a bottomless pit.”

“Enough! Today, we are finding you a job!”

Andrew pulls the tweezers out of Lexi’s grasp and thrusts his iPhone under her chin instead. “Look at this!” he says triumphantly, pointing to an ad halfway down the screen. “I’ve found it—your ladder back into the land of the living. This looks perfect!”

Lexi remembers how that word
perfect
used to invite her in, offering her countless opportunities to prove it true. Now she wishes that it never existed. Surely such a word should be banned permanently from the dictionary?

GEORGE
4
^th
November, 2009
Maida Vale, London

“Are you? You are, aren’t you? OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! Emma is going to
die
. It’s you, George Bryce—can you… I mean, can I? I mean… oh my God, I can’t breathe…”

George is standing in line at Tesco holding a four-pack of toilet paper, a box of PG Tips and three Crunchies. The teenage girl in front of him is beginning to hyperventilate. He’s not certain how this has happened. After their second album, he was still able to go out relatively undisturbed, usually wearing a baseball cap or a beanie pulled down over his eyebrows. He could have been anyone. But since the release of their third album,
Corners and Tables,
his image seems to have seeped into the consciousness of far too many members of the general public.

He quickly puts down the toilet paper (thinking why now? Why this?) and rests a calming hand on the girl’s shoulder, “It’s okay, take a deep breath.”

What he really wants to say is, “George who?” Unfortunately, his gesture appears to have the opposite of the desired effect and her breathing gets heavier and beads of sweat are starting to drip down her forehead.

“Oh sweet Jesus, are you touching me? Are your hands on my shoulder right now? I’m never, ever going to wash this sweater again for AS LONG AS I LIVE!” George is beginning to worry how long that might be if she continues to stay in close proximity to him. He wonders how Chris Martin deals with interactions like these. He most likely comes up with some amusing comment and defuses the situation with ease while making a quick escape. George, on the other hand, feels rooted to the spot.

The girl has managed to fumble in her oversized bag and pull out her mobile phone.

“My hands are shaking… look,” she holds out a trembling limb as proof. “Can you just take my phone and call Emma, and tell her that it’s you, and we’re standing together in Tesco and that we… you and I… are talking? She’s under F.”

“F for Emma?” he can’t help but wonder.

“Yeah, because she’s Fucking Gorgeous Emma… she’s my best fucking mate.”

“Oh, right,” George compliantly accepts the phone, hating himself for noticing that the histrionic teenager in front of him is really quite pretty. When he was fifteen he would have run a mile and wished the whole time that she was running after him. But now he wants to get back to his flat and have some tea and eat a Crunchie. He wants to watch two episodes of
Flight of the Conchords
and think about the lighting for the upcoming US tour. He has an idea.

“Look, Emma’s not going to believe it’s me if I call her. Why don’t I just take a picture of the two of us and you can text it to her?”

The girl smiles and it dawns on him that she will live on this moment for months to come, possibly longer. He leans in next to her face and holds up the packet of toilet paper between them. With a big cheesy grin he presses capture, checks the shot, and hands her back the phone, pointing her towards the front of the line.

“It’s your turn to pay.”

“You are
amazing
!” she says, staring at him adoringly.

“I can but try…” the words sound right enough, but underneath them he feels a familiar tug. The longing to be accepted when he was growing up. The fruitless attempts to fit into his family when it was clear that he was never going to. The realization that the young stranger in front of him with the scraggly blond hair and the blue nail varnish probably thinks more of him than his parents ever did.

Even now they struggle to approve of his chosen profession, having hoped that their sullen little Georgie might have outgrown his youthful sensitivity and pursued computer programming or a management position like his father.

“How can you stand all that smoke?” his dad asked recently, as if he was still gigging in small pubs with flaky ceilings.

“Ah, Dad—they banned smoking in all public venues a while ago. You should get out sometime—come to one of our shows. I’ll get you good seats—I’ve got connections.”

At fifty-nine George’s father is in a permanent sense of humour failure. “Too much noise, son. I don’t know how you haven’t lost your hearing yet.”

“What?”

George has condensed his visits to Oxfordshire down to two a year, Christmas and his mum’s birthday. They’ve refused his offer to buy them a new house, insisting instead on remaining in the cottage where he grew up and driving an old Ford Granada.

“We don’t need much, Georgie,” his mum has explained on numerous occasions. “We wouldn’t want our friends to think we were showing off. It’s hard enough having to hear all the envious comments about the triplets!”

The triplets. Archie, Padstow and Trevor—Polly’s precocious four-year-olds. The rotten apples of his parents’ eyes. George detests the matching outfits she forces them to wear like uniforms and the way they yell when they see him, “Uncle Georgie…
you’re
FAMOUS!” stressing the word famous like it was a contagious disease. Which of course it sometimes felt like—but for God’s sake, at least the little brats might look up to him, instead of following the rest of the family unwittingly into the lair of disdain.

He distractedly pays for his items, feeling a twinge of guilt as he accepts a plastic bag. Just thinking about his family darkens his mood. Christmas isn’t that far away. He has the trip to LA and the latest video to make before that, but even so, he can feel the dampness looming.

LEXI
November 4
^th
, 2009
Venice, Los Angeles

Lexi has parked her car and is scanning the street for number fifty-five. Based on the ad Andrew had shown her, she was anticipating one of those funky, architect designed office buildings off Abbot Kinney.

Up and coming environmental awareness company, looking for enthusiastic, earth loving public relations specialist. Must have prior experience and plenty of ideas. Fantastic opportunity to be part of a grass roots business and work in a creative space. E-mail resume and references to Russell Hazleton. Only apply if you are willing to Let the Green Times Roll!

Promising, right? So the last line might have been slightly suspect, but Andrew thought it was cute and Lexi was willing to overlook excessive perkiness if it meant a paycheck and a new beginning. But walking down Victoria Avenue, she is finding herself feeling slightly more dubious. There are no funky office buildings, just a row of run-down houses looking rather sorry for themselves. Lexi can empathize.

When she’d returned to California from Columbia in her early twenties, she had a degree in marketing and public relations and an addiction to cappuccinos. Though severely battered, her commitment to positive thinking was still limping along and she’d hoped that coming home would instigate a full recovery. She showed up just in time to be a bridesmaid at Meg’s wedding, to discover that Andrew was gay, and to land a PR job for a small internet start-up company selling maternity wear called “Bumps Ahead.” Really the name should have been a give-away.

Ten years on, she is godmother to both of Meg’s children and unemployed after a string of PR jobs that always appeared to be ‘perfect’ but soon revealed themselves to be as shaky as the economy. Lexi’s optimistic hardwiring is beginning to dangerously short circuit, after recently being let go from an interiors magazine because yet again, the company had lost their funding. She had dreamt once of opening her own PR company, but has convinced herself that clients would be impossible to hold onto. In fact these days, Lexi feels as if she can’t hang onto much of anything.

She finally spots number fifty-five and attempts to summon her inner Maria, an old trick her mother had taught her as a girl when her self belief needed bolstering. She imagines Julie Andrews, suitcase in hand, striding away from the convent, arms swinging forcefully.
I have confidence in me! What
is
so fearsome about a captain and seven children?
But it seems that her once loyal Maria has long since gone into retirement, because the only thing Lexi can summon is a sinking feeling that this job, like all the others, is not going to be the one.

GEORGE
4
^th
November, 2009
Maida Vale, London

George is crashed out on his sofa balancing his notebook on his knees and eating his third Crunchie. Just as he did at fifteen, he relies on good old-fashioned paper and pen, and has stacks of archived books piled in an empty kitchen cupboard. He promised Simon he’d work on the lyrics for “Over Time,” a song they’ve been playing with for the last few weeks, but instead he’s made some notes and sketches for a lighting idea he has for the North American tour. It’s crucial to George that the shows do not become a circus act. He likes to keep things simple and let the music speak for itself.

The truth is, George can’t come up with the line he needs to ground the song. He’ll recognize it when it arrives. The lyric that embeds itself under the skin and finds a way to resonate with a million people he’ll never meet. How to transform the intimate into the universal—a magical skill he knows he has, but can’t always rely upon. He fishes around between the sofa cushions, stretching his long, lanky legs, and pulls out a yellow rubber ball with a worried grimace drawn on one side in thick black pen. George contorts the ball in his hand, causing the anxious expression to look even more pronounced.

It’s his stress ball. A present from Simon three years ago when George’s creative flow might have been better described as a creative concrete mixer. The inevitable pressures of producing a sophomore album that would favourably compare to their collectively adored first try, had seriously stalled him. The right side of his brain had gone on hunger strike, literally. He was starved of inspiration. Simon had panicked. It was he and George who grew the seed of the band into the massive, many-limbed tree it had become. It was they who had barricaded themselves in their student digs at university, writing songs until their fingers blistered. George will never forget the intensity of that time. They knew they were creating something special, but it was hard to imagine that releasing their music into the world would see that inkling confirmed.

So when George came to a standstill after
Twelve Thousand Words
, Simon kicked into motion. He overloaded his friend on a daily basis with new chords and riffs and rousing choruses. They ran laps around Regent’s Park every afternoon. They ate Nando’s extra hot chicken sandwiches and they kicked a football endlessly around the studio. His friend’s tenacity drove George crazy, because really all he wanted to do was hide under his duvet and mope, but eventually George started writing again, and
Sounds As If
, their second album, was born.