Sarah Dessen (21 page)

He was just standing there, grinning, and I made myself smile back. Of course this was good news. Wasn’t it me who wanted everything to be transitory, anyway? It was the best-case scenario, really, for him to get some great chance and ride off in the dirty white van into the sunset, tailpipe dragging. In time he’d just be some story I’d tell, about the crazy musician I’d spent the last days of my senior summer with, just the way Scarlett Thomas was only a footnote now to Chris.
They had these stupid songs about potatoes,
I could hear myself telling someone.
A whole opus.

Yes, definitely. It was best this way.

Dexter leaned down and kissed my forehead, then looked at me closely, cocking his head to the side. “You okay? You look weird.”

“Thanks,” I said. “God.”

“No, I mean, you just seem—”

“Band meeting!” Ted yelled from the kitchen. “We’re recon noitering right now!”

Dexter glanced toward the doorway, then back at me.

“Go,” I said, pressing my palms to his chest and pushing him backward, gently. “Band meeting.”

He smiled, and for a second I felt a tug, some alien feeling that made me, for an instant, want to pull him back within arm’s length. But by then he was already walking backward, toward the kitchen, where the voices of his band mates were now building as they made their plans.

“I’ll see you at Bendo around nine,” he said. “Right?”

I nodded, cool as ever, and he turned the corner, leaving me standing there. Watching him go. What a weird feeling that was. I decided I didn’t like it. Not at all.

Ted, sitting next to me and carving lines into the table, glared at him darkly. “I,” he said, “am the only reason she’s coming. So get off my fucking back.”

“Now, now.” Dexter tugged at his collar, something he’d been doing all night long: it was completely stretched out of shape, hanging lopsided. “We need to go up there and do the best job we can. A lot is riding on this.”

“No pressure, though,” Lucas grumbled.

“Where the hell is John Miller?” Ted said, pushing up from the table and craning his neck around the room. “Isn’t this a band meeting?”

“It’s impromptu,” Dexter told him, tugging at his collar again. “Plus he’s over there with what’s-her-name. The coffee boss.”

We all looked at once. Sure enough, at a booth by the stage, John Miller was sitting with Scarlett. He had his drumsticks on the table and was talking animatedly, using his hands. Scarlett was drinking a beer and listening, a polite smile on her face. Every once in a while she’d glance around the room, as if she’d expected this to be more of a group thing and was wondering where everyone else was.

“Pathetic,” Ted said. “Totally blowing us and the band’s future off for a chick. That’s Yoko Ono behavior, man.”

“Leave him alone,” Dexter said. “Okay, so I’m thinking we should start with ‘Potato Song Two,’ then do the kumquat version, and then. . . .”

I tuned them out, drawing my finger through the circle of water under my beer. Off to my left, I could see Chloe, Lissa, and Jess talking to a group of guys at the bar. At the Spot earlier, Chloe had decided they all needed to “get back out there” and make the most of the “summer single-girl thing,” appointing herself ringleader for the effort. So far there had been progress: she was sitting on a barstool next to a blond guy with surfer looks. Lissa was talking to two guys, one really cute, who was still scop ing the room as if in search of an upgrade (bad sign), and one not-so-cute-but-decent who seemed interested and not completely offended that he was most likely an also-ran. And then there was Jess, trapped by the beer taps by a short, wiry guy who was talking so excitedly that she kept having to lean back, which could only have meant he was spitting out more than words.

“. . . decided that we’d do no covers. That was the entire upshot of yesterday’s meeting,” Dexter said.

“I’m just saying that if the potato songs don’t go over well we need a backup plan,” Lucas argued. “What if she hates potatoes? What if she thinks the songs are, you know, infantile, frat-party crap?”

There was a moment of astonished silence as Dexter and Ted absorbed this. Then Ted said, “So that’s what you think?”

“No,” Lucas said quickly, glancing at Dexter, who was now tugging his collar hard enough that I had to reach up and unlatch his fingers, bringing down his hand. He hardly noticed. Lucas said, “I’m just saying we don’t want to come across as derivative.”

“And doing covers isn’t derivative?” Dexter said.

“Covers will get the crowd going and show our range,” Lucas told him. “Look, I’ve been in a lot of bands—”

“Oh, God,” Ted said, throwing up his hands dramatically. “Here we go. Educate us, oh wise one.”

“—and I know from experience that these reps like a tight set that gets the crowd going and showcases our potential as a band. Which means a mix of our own stuff and songs that we cover, yeah, but with our own take on them. It’s not like we do ‘I’ve Got You Babe’ just the way Sonny and Cher do. We give it a twist.”

“We are
not
doing a Sonny and Cher song here tonight!” Ted yelled. “No way, man. I am not going to be the G Flats for this chick. That’s wedding crap. Forget it.”

“It was just an example,” Lucas said flatly. “We can do another song. Calm down, would you?”

“Hey,” Robert, the owner of Bendo, yelled from behind the bar, “you guys planning on actually
working
tonight?”

“Let’s go,” Ted said, standing up and finishing his beer.

“Did we even decide anything?” Lucas asked, but Ted ignored him as they made their way to the stage.

Dexter sighed, running his fingers through his hair. I’d never seen him like this, so on edge. “God,” he said softly, shaking his head. “This is so freaking stressful.”

“Stop thinking about it,” I told him. “Just go up there and play the way you always do. Thinking about it is throwing you off.”

“We sounded like shit, didn’t we?”

“No,” I said, which wasn’t entirely a lie. But Ted had been off-key, John Miller was showboating outrageously—tossing drumsticks in the air, missing them—and Dexter had mangled the words to “Potato Song Three,” a song that I knew he could, literally, sing in his sleep. “But you sounded unsure of yourself. Wobbly. And you’re not. You’ve done this a million times.”

“A million times.” He still didn’t sound convinced, however.

“It’s like riding a bike,” I told him. “If you actually think about it too much, you realize how complicated a concept it actually is. You have to just hop on and go, and not worry about the mechanics. Let it run itself.”

“You,” he said, kissing my cheek, “are so right. How can you always be so right?”

“It’s a curse,” I said, shrugging. He squeezed my leg and slid out of the booth, still tugging at his collar, and I watched him weave through the crowd, stopping to flick John Miller, who was still chatting up Scarlett, on the head as he passed. Ted put on his guitar, played a few random chords, and then he, Lucas, and Dexter exchanged glances and head nods, setting the game plan.

The first song was a bit unsteady. But then, the next was better. I could see Dexter relaxing, easing into it, and by the third song, when I saw the A&R chick come in, they sounded tighter than they had all evening. I recognized her immediately. First, she was a little old for Bendo, which catered to a college and younger crowd, and second, she was dressed entirely too fashionably for this small town: black pants, silky shirt, small black glasses just nerdy enough to be cool. Her hair was long and pulled back loosely at the base of her neck, and when she walked up to the bar for a drink, every one of the guys chatting up my girlfriends stopped to stare at her. By the time the song wound down, the crowd on the floor was thickening, and I saw Ted glance at the bar, see her, and then say something, quietly, to Dexter.

After the applause and hooting died down, Dexter tugged at his shirt collar and said, “Okay, we’re going to do a little number for you now called ‘The Potato Song.’ ”

The crowd cheered: they’d been playing Bendo long enough now that “The Potato Song,” and its many incarnations, was known. Ted started the opening bridge, John Miller picked up his sticks, and they launched into it.

I kept my eyes on the girl at the bar. She was listening, beer in hand, taking a sip now and then. She smiled at the line about the vegan princess, and again when the crowd chimed in and yelled, “sweet potato!” And when it was over, she clapped enthusiastically, not just politely. A good sign.

Feeling confident, they continued with another “Potato Song.” But this one wasn’t quite so strong, and the crowd didn’t know it as well. They gave it a good shot, the best they could, but it sounded flat, and at one point John Miller, who’d only recently learned the new part, screwed up and lost the beat for a second. I saw Dexter flinch at this, then tug his collar. Ted was looking everywhere but at the bar. They launched right into another original song, one not even about potatoes, but it too sounded off, and they cut it short after two verses, ditching the third.

By now the A&R girl seemed distracted, almost bored, looking around the club and then—very bad sign—at her watch. Ted leaned over and said something to Dexter, who shook his head quickly. But then Lucas stepped forward, nodding, and Ted said something else, and Dexter finally shrugged and turned back to the microphone. John Miller tapped out a beat, Ted picked it up, and they launched full force into an old Thin Lizzy song. And suddenly the crowd was right with them again, pressing up closer. And after the first verse, the A&R chick ordered another beer.

When the song was over, Ted spoke to Dexter, who hesitated. Then Ted said something else, and Dexter made a face, shaking his head.

Just do it, I thought to myself. Another cover won’t kill you.

Dexter looked at Lucas, who nodded, and I relaxed. Then the first chords began. They sounded so familiar, somehow, as if I knew them in a different incarnation. I listened for a second, and the realization grew stronger, as if it was just at the tip of my mind, close enough to touch. And then, I got it.

“This lullaby,”
Dexter sang,
“is only a few words . . .”

Oh, my God, I thought.

“A simple run of chords . . .”

It sounded more retro and lounge-singer-esque, the maudlin aspect that had made it a wedding and lite FM favorite now twisted into something else, something self-mocking, as if it was winking at its own seriousness. I felt a drop in my stomach: he knew how I felt about this. He knew. And still, he kept singing.

“Quiet here in this spare room, but you can hear it, hear it . . .”

The crowd was loving it, cheering, some girls along the back row singing along, hands on their hearts, like washed-up divas on the Labor Day telethon.

I looked over at the bar, where Chloe was staring right at me, but she didn’t have a smug look, instead something even worse. It might have been pity, but I turned my head away before I could know for sure. And a few seats down from her, the A&R chick was swaying, smiling. She loved it.

I got up from the booth. All around me the crowd was singing along to the song, one they’d heard all their lives too, but never quite in the context that I had. To them it was just old and sappy enough now to be nostalgic, a song their parents might have listened to. It was probably played at their bar mitzvahs or sisters’ weddings, trotted out about the same time as “Daddy’s Little Girl” and “Butterfly Kisses.” But it was working. The appeal was obvious, the energy coming through the crowd so strongly, the kind of response that Ted, in a million potato dreams, wouldn’t even have hoped for.

“I will let you down,”
Dexter sang as I pushed my way toward the bar.
“But this lullaby plays on. . . .”

I went to the bathroom, where for once there was no line, and shut myself into a stall. Then I sat down, pulled my hands through my hair, and told myself to calm down. It meant nothing, this song. All my life I’d let other people put so much weight to it, until it was heavy enough to drown me, but it was just music. But even there, locked in the stall, I could still hear it going, those notes I’d known by heart for as long as I could remember, now twisted and different, with another man I hardly knew who had some claim to me, however small, singing the words.

What had my mother always said when we listened to it on the one scratchy album she owned of my dad, back when we still had a record player?
His gift to you,
she’d tell me, idly brushing my hair back from my forehead with a dreamy expression, as if someday I’d truly understand how important this was. By then, she had already forgotten the bad times with my father, the ones I heard secondhand: how they were dirt-poor, how he’d hardly spent any time with Chris when he was a baby, and only married her—not even legally, it turned out—in a last-ditch attempt to save a relationship already beyond repair. What a legacy. What a gift. It was like a parting prize in a game show where I’d lost big, a handful of Rice-A-Roni and some cheap luggage thrust upon me as I left, little consolation.

The final note sounded: the drum cymbals hummed. Then, huge applause, cheering. It was over.

Okay then. I walked out of the bathroom and headed straight to the bar, where Chloe was sitting on a stool with a bored expression. Truth Squad was still going, playing a medley of camp songs—played Led Zeppelin style, with crashing guitars and a lot of whooping—that I recognized as being a set-ender. The guy Chloe had been talking to was gone, Lissa was still talking to the not-cute-but-decent one, and Jess, I assumed, had used one of her regular excuses and was either “at the pay phone” or “getting something from the car.”

“What happened to the surfer boy?” I asked Chloe as she scooted over, making room for me on her stool.

“Girlfriend,” she said, nodding to a booth off on our left, where the guy was now nuzzling a redheaded girl with a pierced eyebrow.

I nodded as Ted did a few windmill guitar moves, John Miller going all out on a drum solo, his face almost as red as his hair. I wondered if Scarlett was impressed, but she’d left the booth where she’d been sitting, so I couldn’t know for sure.

“Interesting song choice earlier, didn’t you think?” Chloe asked me, pushing off the floor with her foot so that we twisted slightly in the stool, to one side and then back again. “Couldn’t help but feel that I had heard it somewhere before.”

I didn’t say anything, instead just watching as John Miller continued to battle his drum set while the crowd clapped along.

“Of all the things he should know,” she went on, “that you hate that song is a freaking given. I mean, God. It’s
basic.
”

“Chloe,” I said softly, “shut up, okay?”

I could feel her looking at me, slightly wide-eyed, before going back to stirring her drink with her finger. Now there was only one person between me and the A&R chick, who was jotting something down with a pencil she’d borrowed from the bartender, who was watching her write with great interest while ignoring a whole slew of people waving money for beers.