Chapter 29

Chapter 29

Spring had turned to summer when Corey received the call from Lou.

“It’s on,” said her manager.

“What’s on?”

“A-Game. They shopped around, but they said you had, and I quote, ‘dope energy.’”

She was stunned. She had succeeded in banishing their meeting and the prospect of working with them from her thoughts, or at least restricted it to a dark, forgotten corner of her mind.

“Dope energy like cool or dope energy like heroin?”

“It’s on, so I’m guessing cool. Congratulations, you are now a silent member of A-Game.”

“Do not ever say that again.”

Lou cracked up. “Come on, they liked you, so they can’t be all bad.”

“They’re idiots, but harmless idiots,” conceded Corey.

“This is a good thing, Core. This could even be a great thing. Now, you’re heading back down to the Power Plant in a week, so remember: be indispensible and be undeniable. And Drop is the prize.”

“In other words, if I’m going to sell my soul, get a good price for it.”

“Good line. Save it for one of the ‘dope’ songs you’re going to write for them.”

Corey honestly didn’t know how to feel. She was deflated. She was scared. She was numb. She paced around her condo, bristling with energy, but the thought of going somewhere and doing something overwhelmed her. She wanted to call Kyle, but she didn’t want to call Kyle. She had never brought up the specter of A-Game before and now that she was actually doing it, actually selling out, it seemed even worse. But she needed to talk to someone besides Lou about this. Then it hit her: Josh! As a chef, he was a creative—an artist—but he didn’t own the restaurant, and his industry was rife with stories of chefs and owners butting heads. Plus, his condo was nearly identical to hers and just down the hall, the perfect solution for wanting to get out of her condo without actually going out.  

Corey banged on Josh’s door, but an irritable Kincaid answered instead.  

“I need Josh,” said Corey.

“Not home.”

“Shit!” 

“And a lovely day to you as well,” said Kincaid. He closed the door, then opened it again, and she was still standing there, as if she hadn’t realized he closed it in the first place.

“Shit!” she said again.

“This goes against all of my instincts and my better judgment,” he said. “but come in.”

He led her to the table and she took a seat without a word. He put the kettle on then sat down next to her.

He sighed, then with exaggerated cheer, said, “And how are you today?”

“I don’t fucking know.”

“Okay. We’ll I suppose you can sit there until Josh comes home.”

Corey barely heard, then blurted, “Hey! You’re, like, a finance guy or something, right?”

“We literally discussed my job when Kyle—”

“Great. Maybe that’s what I need. A cold, impersonal opinion, utterly devoid of human emotion.”

“Or you can wait in the hall…” he said, standing up.

“Wait,” she said, leaning over and grabbing his sleeve. “Let’s say I had the opportunity to make some money, real money, but it was just…wrong.”

“Are you getting into the mule business?” he said and laughed, and when Corey didn’t say anything, he said, “You know, I’m legally obligated to report any crimes.”

“Even crimes against humanity?”

Corey.

“It’s not that, it’s my finances.”

“Let me guess, they’re a mess.”

“Why would you say that?”

“You don’t strike me as being a details person.”

She raised her finger to protest, but said, “Fair point. Anyway, a mess implies such a surfeit of finances as to be untidy, which is actually the opposite of my current situation.”

“That’s a tortured way of saying you’re out of money.”

“Well, when you put it like that, it stings because it’s true. Do you know Lou, my manager gave—”

“I know Louise. We’ve met.”

“She gave me a couple of options. Both shitty. First, she wanted me to license Limelight for a cash grab.”

“Do it.”

“Of course you’d say that.”

“Why not?”

“Why not? How about integrity? How about authenticity? Artistic freedom? I didn’t write it to hawk tortilla chips.”

“No, you wrote it about being successful and ubiquitous someday. Successful and ubiquitous enough to have options. That song can give you options. It can keep you afloat until help arrives, or until you can figure out a way to rescue yourself.”

Corey’s mouth fell open. No one had put it to her like that before, not even Lou, using her own song’s intentions as incisively as a spear to her heart, and here it was coming from the unlikeliest of sources. Hell, he’d never given any indication he’d ever heard her music before.

“What was the second option?” he asked.

Corey looked around as if an escape hatch might suddenly appear. “A-Game.”

“You’re a little old to be in a boy band. And also a girl.”

Corey shook her head, impatient. “To write songs for them.”

“You?” said Kincaid, then began to laugh uncontrollably. “They’d never let you write songs for them.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because they’re all…” he said, shimmying in his chair and waving his arms in a poor approximation of one of their choreographed dances, “and you’re you.” With that, he slumped in his chair and made a sour face.

“Oh yeah, well I met them and they said I was dope. Dope cool.

“Wait, you met them?” He straightened in his chair. “You actually met them and they like you? How on earth did you pull that off?”

“I got them shitfaced.”

He nodded, as if that was the most obvious solution. “So let me guess, the same reason you don’t want to work with them is the same reason you don’t want to license Limelight. Not to mention the fact that you probably spent a sizeable chunk of the beginning of the century slagging them and you don’t want to feel like a hypocrite.”

“I didn’t slag them that much…”

“Hell, I did.”

“You? I thought you would have loved them?”

“Because I’m gay?”

“Half their fan base was teen girls, the other…” she said and gestured toward Kincaid.

“Thank you for reducing me to a stereotype. And yes, I may have wanted to sleep with half of them…alright, three quarters of them…but their music was garbage. Vapid, manufactured swill.”

“I’m totally retabulating your cool points.”

“I assume you’re here for some kind of advice?”

“I guess.”

“Well, I can’t tell you what to do. But it’s good you have options, because it means you’re still in the game. And yes, some of those options might require some compromise, but that’s called being an adult.”

“I’ve managed to avoid that fate for a long time.”

“Nothing lasts forever. Look, do you think when I was lying in bed as a child and looking up at the ceiling I dreamed about being an insurance underwriter?”

“What did you dream about being?”

“An actuary.”

He paused for a moment, then smiled to let her know he was joking. She cracked up and he joined in. When their laughter finally petered out into giggles and Corey wiped the tears from her eyes, she saw Kincaid doing the same. They looked at one another and then Kincaid looked away.

“Why don’t we get along?” she asked.

“You really want to do this?”

“I do,” said Corey. She put her dukes up and scrunched up her face in mock aggression. “Bring it.”

“Because you’re a bully.”

Her brows knitted and her mouth fell open. It was the second time in as many minutes that he pulled the rug out from under her. She struggled for a witty rejoinder, but all she could say was, “That’s ridiculous.”

“Mmm, no. No, it’s the truth actually.”

“Bullshit.” She laughed, but it sounded uneasy in her own ears. “How am I a bully?”

“Just because you don’t physically throw a punch doesn’t mean you don’t punch down.”

“Give me one example.”

“The night we first met for starters. At that party in your loft with all of your music friends. You and Josh just started hanging out and he’s a chef, so even though he wasn’t a musician, he had some cachet, but I was his plus one. At one point, we were all standing in a little knot, and everyone was saying what they did for a living and when it came to me, I brushed it off and gave a one-word answer or something, knowing it wasn’t sexy, but you pried. You asked again and when I started to explain, you let out a big yawn and it got a huge laugh. What could I do? I laughed along, trying to be a good sport, and then slipped out as soon as I could.”

“I…I don’t remember that.”

“Of course you don’t.”

“I must have been drunk. Or high. Or both…”

“That doesn’t change your character, it reveals it.”

“I’m sorry about that night.”

“It’s not just laughing at me, which by the way, sucks. It’s that you’re so damn exclusionary. You’re a music snob. Everything is so tiered and categorized. You’re either in or you’re out. If I listen to music, it’s not the right music. But if I listen to the right music, it’s not the right artist. When I listen to the right artist, it’s not the right record. Even when I’m in, I’m still out. Jesus, even now. We both don’t like A-Game, but to you, I probably don’t hate them enough. Or I hate them for the wrong reason. Your manager Lou—I’ve met her a half-dozen times! You don’t even bother to remember.”

He was getting worked up, but looked around and took a deep breath. “You know, feeling invisible I can handle,” he said, “but you make me feel uncool.”  

She sat there stunned, as if he’d slapped her in the face. Her? A bully? It was so counter to her own self-image as to be absurd. After all, she was the one waging the uphill battle for the past twenty-five years. She was the one who had to fight for a measly track or two on every Toddlers’ record. She was the one who everyone thought would fade into obscurity when the band broke up. She was the one who poured her heart out and transmuted all of her pain and insecurity into art. She was the one who had to kiss every ass in college radio, and she was the one who had to practically beg program directors at Top 40 stations to play Limelight, and then she had to kiss college radio’s ass all over again because she had dared to “sell out” to Top 40. She was still singing for her supper, getting shit on by critics and club owners and internet trolls every day since. Corey Lyondell was the perpetual underdog.

Wasn’t she?

Her parents split up when she was young. Looking back, they never had a healthy relationship. Turns out though, they would be far more unhealthy apart: within a year, her father died alone in his Spartan apartment in the next town over and she lost her mother to breast cancer a few years after that. Through it all, music was her salvation. It’s what she had chosen as her identity as a teenager, and had clung to it ever since. And she’d clung to it like a weapon. Sometimes it was a sword to cut through life’s falsehoods, sometimes it was a shield to protect her from the daily barrage of bullshit. And now Kincaid was telling her she had wielded it like a club, and she realized with horror that she was no better than the popular twats in high school who did the same to her with their trendy cloths and indecipherable argot and their cruel whims that blew like squalls, all designed to keep her at arm’s length, at bay, out. No better than the pretty ones, those teenage judges, juries, and arbiters of cool.

And definitely no better than A-Game, whose only sin was trying to make music for as many people to enjoy as possible.

“Oh, no,” she said, and put her head in her hands. “I’m such a fucking asshole.”

“Look, I get it. I’m not a rock star. I’m not a chef. I’m not a sexy kind of guy. But I’m creative with numbers. And that’s not nothing. And I’m sturdy. Sexy needs sturdy. Without a little bit of sturdy, sexy would be completely—”

“Homeless?”

“Unmoored. I’m happy to be the underwater part of Josh’s iceberg. But a little respect would be nice, is all.”

Corey blew out a deep breath and met Kincaid’s eye.

“I was cunty. I am cunty. But I’m sorry. Truly. Can we be cool? Fresh start? Please?”

Kincaid sighed. “Fresh start.”  

“Cool.”

“You know, I hated hating you. I really like your music.”

She laughed, stunned again. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

He smiled a devilish smile. “Withholding praise was the only weapon I had.”

“You bitch!”

They both laughed, then her laughter trailed off and Kincaid asked, “So what are you going to do?”

She returned to her condo and paced, still in disbelief at everything Kincaid had said, but grateful he had said them. She thought about her career, then about A-Game’s career. She thought about peaks and valleys, and though the heights of their respective summits were far different, their trajectories had been largely the same. How it had hurt her and how she wished she could reverse it. Then she found her journal and began to write.