The History of Us (8 page)

“What made you quit?”

Josh shrugged. “You know.”

Noah shook his head. “I really don’t. I really, really don’t.”

Josh trotted out his usual explanation, listening to himself inflect the words as though they’d just occurred to him, as though he hadn’t arranged them in just this way a million times before. “We got to a certain level,” he said, “and we weren’t going to go any higher. I mean, we came close. We had the meetings with the majors and we made a video that would air at, like, two in the morning. But at some point I realized that was going to be it. And there was nothing wrong with that. We had a good thing going. It was just, to maintain it, I had to spend most of my life in vans and bars. For the other guys it was worth it, but for me after a while it just wasn’t. You either want to be in a band more than anything else, or you don’t.”

“You think you would’ve stuck with it if you’d hit that next level?”

“I mean, maybe. Because we might’ve toured less. We might’ve gotten more songs in movies and commercials. We might’ve had more money, and not had to live with each other anymore. They’re all still working musicians, you know. The other guys.”

“Yeah, I read that,” Noah said.

“They were not super psyched when I quit,” Josh said. He looked at the black, empty stage in front of them and said to it, “An understatement.”

“I have an aesthetic theory to explain why you never got bigger. Do you want to hear it?”

“I don’t know. Do I?”

“Don’t worry, it’s not bad. When you’re trying to figure out why, say, lots of people like
Avatar,
and a much smaller number
of people like
Bottle Rocket,
you have to look at the emotional delivery system. Because it’s all about that.”

“The emotional delivery system.”

“Right. Because all art is about emotion, right? I mean, not that it doesn’t have an intellectual component, but in essence, at
base,
it’s about emotion. Some people just like their emotion delivered straight up. I’d say most people. So that’s why they like James Cameron films. But a smaller number of people, because of personality or training or both, need there to be something smart about the way the emotion is delivered, or they can’t feel it. Sometimes that’s irony or self-awareness or just quirkiness. Like Wes Anderson films. Those movies are actually really emotional, but there’s this quirkiness and this irony, and if you’re somebody who needs those things first, so you can let your guard down and allow yourself to feel, then you’re going to love those movies.” Noah looked around the theater, as if searching for the raised hand of someone who agreed with him.

Josh waited, still feeling wary. Was he about to be cheerfully offered unsolicited criticism? He’d never understood why people did that, or why they took for granted your polite response. What if he walked up to a stranger in a bar and said, “That shirt’s a nice color but it makes you look fat”? Would he expect the person to thank him?

“Your music is really emotional and earnest but also ironic and smart,” Noah said. “Some people don’t see the sincerity because of the irony, and some people don’t see the intelligence because of the sincerity. The people who loved you really, really loved you—because you gave them exactly the right emotional delivery system for their natures. But you were never going to get mainstream.”

“So we were doomed from the start.”

“No, man, no. You guys were
awesome
. You just were what you were, you know? I was one of the people who really, really loved you. I saw you guys play, like, ten or eleven times.”

Noah’s confidence and ease were impressive. In Josh’s experience most people couldn’t make a declaration like that without self-consciousness or excessive excitement, or this shyly hopeful quality, like they’d just proposed to him. But Noah didn’t seem to feel that his onetime fanboy status put them on different planes. It was Josh, instead, who felt self-conscious. He made a show of opening his program. “Let’s see what we’ve got here,” he said and hunted for Adelaide’s name. Her piece was in the second half of the program. The lights began to dim, the warning bell chimed, and he sighed and settled in, slouching lower in his seat so the people behind him could see.

Onstage five men threw five women in the air in perfect sync and Josh caught himself wondering if Adelaide was dating, or had dated, or wanted to date one of the male dancers. They were some very fit men. He hadn’t said to himself that he planned to look for Adelaide after the show, but now he realized that he had, nevertheless, been planning to, and felt nervous about the prospect. But he didn’t have to talk to her, he reminded himself. Not if he didn’t want to. Not if he was happy with his life as it was now—steady, consistent. It had been a relief, when he quit music, to stop living like a gambler, riding waves of giddiness and disappointment. But, man. He hadn’t felt something big in a long, long time. Despite himself, he hoped that when Adelaide came onstage she would mesmerize him. He hoped that she would stop his heart.

For the rest of the first half Josh managed to focus on the
dancing, though he wasn’t entirely sure what he was supposed to focus on. Was he meant to be piecing together the story? Or admiring the length and flexibility of the dancers’ legs? When you started using words like
length
and
flexibility,
it seemed like you were being pervy, but you weren’t supposed to be pervy at a dance performance, you were supposed to be aesthetically high-minded, verging on philosophical. Right? Or maybe he was overintellectualizing, and you were just supposed to feel something—the kind of emotional transport he was used to getting from music. He needed some training for watching dance. At Claire’s performances he’d always kept his eyes on her when she was onstage, tuned out when she wasn’t. At intermission, as he and Noah downed beers in the lobby, he noticed that some of the other people had bouquets with them. Damn. He should have brought a bouquet. Next time. If there was a next time. How much longer, anyway, until Adelaide’s turn? Why was he so anxious and scattered? What was wrong with him?

And then, at last, Adelaide. She was just as lovely as he remembered, maybe more, at this oblivious distance, with her limbs so beautifully displayed. She was alone onstage with one of the dastardly men. They were clearly meant to be a couple in some distress, as couples often are. They stalked each other, sprang together, sprang away. Her body expressed both yearning and confusion. The end of the piece was a rapid pow-pow-pow of ecstatic spins and lifts that made him think of the finale of a fireworks display. Then the male dancer set her down and she pulled herself up straight. They faced each other like fighters, and then turned their backs and did their stalking dancer walk off opposite ends of the stage.

Josh unfolded, slowly, in a daze, clapping vigorously as he got
to his feet, barely aware of Noah standing beside him. He could hear his own heartbeat as she took her bows. He’d found her attractive before, but now she was definitively beautiful—she was a necklace in a window, a sparkly ornament on the Christmas tree. She caught the light.

Before and after Sabrina, love and sex had been easy—too easy—to come by. That was how it was when you were in a relatively successful band. He’d been a singer, a guitar player—the guy pouring his heart out at the front of the stage. Most girls he met already thought they were in love. It was only a matter of whether he felt like loving them back. And then right after he quit music his history seemed to exponentially multiply whatever his natural attractions might be. The first woman he dated at all seriously loved tales of his glory days—How he had a hit in France! How he met the guys in Phoenix! But then she started to want those days to return. She didn’t say so, not at first. She introduced him to friends and family without a word about his current job. “Josh was in Blind Robots,” she’d say. “You know, the band. He toured with Spoon! He had his picture in
Rolling Stone
!” People’s eyes brightened at this news. He took a guilty pleasure in this. It was like having a ticket to a sold-out show, or better yet, a backstage pass. People let you in. They took for granted you were special, particular, worthy of their attention. But he really wasn’t, not anymore.

After a month or so she started to ask, “Do you ever think about going back to it?” It was exciting to date a former almost rock star, but in the end that was just a gateway drug, and the more she thought and talked about his past the more she wanted it to be her present. Then she could go on tour with him and meet the guys in Phoenix herself. Then she could take a special
pride in dating Josh without ever needing to explain why she had the right to do so. Then she’d never feel deflated by the people who failed to be impressed, who asked, “Why haven’t I heard of you?” and took obvious pleasure in the notion that under their strict standard of accomplishment he could still be dismissed.

Josh had stopped calling her six or seven months ago, and hadn’t been out with a woman since. He was done with music, with the currency it gave him. There was both novelty and excitement in being the one in the audience tonight, handing up his heart to the one onstage, hoping, hoping to be chosen. What he’d been drawn to, meeting Adelaide, was her passionate ambition, or ambitious passion. He liked her for that. It was the thing he’d lost, or surrendered, the thing he tried to stop himself from wanting back.

Outside in the lobby Noah said, “So, are we going to hang out and see if she emerges?”

“What?” Josh asked.

“The dancer. Your sister’s teacher. Adelaide? That’s why we’re here, right?”

“I guess it is,” Josh said.

“Good with me,” Noah said. “Let me just hit the head and see if I can get another drink. I’ll find you back here?”

Josh told himself he didn’t feel awkward, leaning against the wall, waiting, surveying the room. If there was anything he had gained from his time as one of the nearly famous, it was an ability to stand alone in a crowd and feel self-contained rather than exposed, an assumption that eventually someone would want to talk to him. Except—that wasn’t true here, was it? He’d believed for some time that he no longer traded on his sort-of fame, but almost everyone of his acquaintance knew about it. He hadn’t
realized that that was a kind of armor before having to stand here now, entirely without it. The dancers began to appear, approaching the lingerers with the hesitant air of deer in a garden. He understood—they were comfortable performing, but performing made people want something from them offstage, and they weren’t always sure what it was or how to give it, because offstage they were just themselves. And now people began to swarm them, offering the same compliments over and over—and the dancers wanted those compliments, they
needed
them—but still there was an endlessness to nodding and smiling and saying, “Thank you, thank you,” and beginning to feel the need for a transition to another topic, but not knowing how to bring one about.

Adelaide was one of the last dancers to emerge. It was startling to see her in street clothes again, the stage makeup suddenly garish, so that she looked at once normal and strange. She wore a red sundress and very high heels, her long hair released from its bun. He really didn’t like how nervous he felt. Maybe he could walk up, remind her who he was, and then immediately say something about missing the postshow high, and then she’d ask what kind of performer he’d been, and he could tell her, and everything would be as it always had been. Same as it ever was. Except if that was what it took to get her attention he didn’t want it. Except he did want it, and maybe he didn’t care how he got it. No, he should stick to his resolution. Besides, what if he tried that and it didn’t work? It wasn’t like with Sabrina, when he could then invite her to a show. His failure to impress Adelaide would be a crater in his psychic landscape. This was just so hard, walking up to a woman without any idea what she thought of him. He really wished he’d thought to bring a bouquet.

He saw Noah, then, coming his way with two beers in hand. He watched as Noah spotted Adelaide, then looked his way, eyebrows raised. Josh shook his head. Noah made an oh-come-on face, reached him, handed him the beer, and said, “Follow my lead.”

Feeling simultaneously trapped and grateful, Josh followed Noah up to Adelaide, who turned to look at them without apparent recognition. Still abuzz with adrenaline, she smiled at them anyway. “Adelaide, right?” Noah said. “I’m Noah. We met briefly at Eloise Hempel’s house.”

“Yes, right,” she said. “Hello.”

“And you probably remember Josh, her nephew,” Noah said. “Claire’s brother.”

“Of course.” She looked around. “Is Claire home?”

“No,” Josh said. “She’s in New York. She got us the tickets, though.”

“You two came by yourselves?” she asked, pointing at them, and when they nodded she looked impressed. “I’ve always found it hard to get men around here to come to performances. Even the ones I’ve dated.”

Dated,
she said, not
dating
. “You were great tonight,” Josh said. “You looked fantastic.”

“Thank you,” she said, smiling.

“You were terrific,” Noah said.

“Thank you,” she said again.

“I don’t know much about dance,” Noah went on. “But I thought your piece was the most expressive.”

“Thank you.” Now her smile was growing a little fixed, and Josh had a desperate need to say something to which she wouldn’t have to answer
thank you
.

“How did you feel?” he asked.

She looked at him. “How did I feel?” she repeated.

“Onstage,” he said. “You felt good?”

“I felt . . . ” She shook her head. “I felt amazing.”

He smiled. “You weren’t thinking about how much your feet hurt?”

“You remember that? No, no, not thinking about that at all. Though it’s good to get the shoes off.”

All three of them looked down at her feet. “Because those ten-inch stilettos must be a lot more comfortable,” Josh said.

She laughed. “They are. You’d be surprised.”

“So,” he said. “Did we compliment you right? What should you say to a dancer? What do you guys say to each other?”