CHAPTER TWO
I walk to the kitchen. To the bedroom. Down the hallway to the living room. My guitar is there, so I flop on the couch and pick it up. My fingers, on the upside-down strings in their left-handed configuration, want to pick out “Dream,” but playing old, buried songs isn’t what I’m supposed to be doing. So I set the guitar aside and walk to the kitchen.
To the bedroom.
Down the hallway, to the living room.
My apartment isn’t big enough to properly pace. I had a firm budget for housing, and it didn’t go as far in Old Town as it would have gone in one of the less savory sections of Inferno Falls, like near Edison Park or maybe the Regency, where Brandon used to live.
It was important to stay near the club so I wouldn’t need to waste money on a car. Hell, at least I have a bedroom. Some of the cracker boxes I’ve seen around here, like Dimebag’s place, have the bed in the living room.
I walk to the kitchen. To the bedroom. Down the hallway.
I feel like a caged animal. Supposedly, when you see tigers pacing, they’re basically going insane. Used to prowling land that sprawls for miles, they get neurotic in small spaces. They walk back and forth, slowly losing their shit. Like Jack Torrance in The Shining. A metaphor Danny would get, seeing as it’s his favorite book, seeing as he named his little corner concert hall and bar after that book’s grand hotel. The Overlook in Inferno Falls doesn’t actually overlook anything other than Main, but at least one of the lead characters is going nuts right now, walking hallways and feeling uninspired.
I could write a song called, “All Work and No Play Makes Gavin a Dull Boy.” I’m seriously considering it, noodling chords and how the hook might sound, when it begins to feel extremely important to brew a pot of coffee.
The pot is dirty. Usually, I just brew into it anyway, figuring that coffee residue gives flavor, but right now it seems pressing to wash it. That’s when I realize that my kitchen sponge is kind of gross. There’s an extra two-pack of sponges here somewhere, but I can’t remember where. I search under the sink and in the utility drawer, then retrace my steps, futilely trying to solve the Mystery of the Cleaning Products.
I’d committed to an hour of seriously working on a new song. I have forty-five minutes left. Going great. Soon, I’ll be through the entire hour and can give up with a clear conscience.
There’s this moment of epiphany, and it’s as if I’ve stared at myself in the mirror. As if a doppelgänger — a Gavin Adams who has his shit together enough to move on — has just walked up and slapped me. Suddenly, the bullshit is gone.
There’s no point to any of this.
There’s no point to setting a stopwatch because this is the kind of crap I do when I’m trying to create on a deadline. I procrastinate. I pace, I strum, I wait for the clock to run out. It’s stupid. Nobody can be creative under pressure. It’s not the kind of thing you can put on a calendar. You can’t book creation time. No way. Inspiration comes from everywhere — or nowhere, if you’re like I’ve been for the past three years. I suppose I have a muse, but she’s a bitch. Or a cocktease. She used to whisper in my ear all the time, like she whispered to Grace and Charlie, but now she says nothing.
I’ve taken hikes meant to inspire me. I’ve listened to other music, wondering if there’s something I can steal because Picasso more or less said stealing, for artists, is cool. I’ve pored over the old photos. That took some hacking. I have my own pictures, of course, but I wanted Grace’s. They never found her phone, but luckily her cloud password was the same one she uses for everything. I bought a new phone, entered her email and password, and set it up as a replacement. A clone. It has all of her settings, her email, her bookmarks, even the browser tabs she had open when the backup was made. And it has all of her photos. Pictures of me. The three of us together, held at the end of her stupid selfie stick.
None of it works. Supposedly, pain makes great art, but all I get is the horrible ache. It isn’t fair. It’s all rubbing, no orgasm. I can’t even cry. I don’t want to ask around, but I’m pretty goddamn sure I should be able to cry, if I’m healthy — if I’m not Jack Torrance in this version of the Overlook.
I’m blocked. You can’t fight block.
I decide to give myself a break. You can’t rush the creative process. I conveniently shove aside the fact that my rush has spanned three years, but it’s not entirely accurate to say I haven’t created in that time. I did all those acoustic adaptations. I did that banal stuff that I find embarrassing, though it keeps me on Danny’s stage. And there’s all that came out in those fugues, when I couldn’t sleep. Not that any of that survived, because it was sleep-drunk, pretentious bullshit. I pitched it. Nobody needs to hear that crap.
I stand up. Change my shirt, dragging a plain white tee over my worn jeans. I grab my keys then fish off the door key to carry by itself so I don’t need to carry the whole ring. I pull out my credit card and license, then thirty seconds later I’m walking out the front door into the warm air.
I’ve no destination in mind. I just walk. I’m a tiger finally out of his cage. But instead of running off to eat babies, I want to meander, seek the muse, or let her find me. Maybe she doesn’t like my apartment. Maybe the air is too stale, the mood too maddeningly neutral.
My feet stop in front of a place I’ve seen before and heard a lot about. It bills itself as a diner, but serves malts like a ’50s shop. Like the other kitschy eateries around here — bricks in this city’s increasingly trendy foundation. Somewhere around here serves homemade Twinkies. It should sound horrible, but I’ve always been curious.
Just like I’ve been about this place.
I don’t buy lunch for myself. Ever. I don’t like to spend money other than on rent and groceries, and I glom off Danny’s generosity as much as humanly possible, eating at the Overlook for free like a mooch. It’s not that I’m cheap. It’s that studio time costs a ton, and some day I’m going to have something worth recording again. I don’t know how long that will be, but I intend to be ready. We almost had our shot with Firecracker Confession, but it’s not like failure killed that shot. I could probably even get myself a band right now and try again — same songs, different players, different singer. Chloe might even do it. She can’t write, I don’t think, but Grace gave us enough Firecracker songs for a couple of albums.
I’d just need to summon the nerve.
The diner’s transfixed me. Probably because the minute I decide to break my no-spending-money rule and step inside, I can stop thinking about the past and start thinking about my lunch choices instead. Part of me knows exactly what I’m doing, but I’m going to do it anyway. Like a guy on a diet deciding to eat the damned donut even though he knows he shouldn’t. This is my donut.
I walk inside.
The Nosh Pit is as trendy inside as it is outside, but in a totally different way. On the deck, under a partial canopy, there’s a lot of wooden furniture — benches and bamboo chairs — some backed with wicker and padded with pillows. There are hanging lights in the shadows and natural light beyond. From out there, it looks like a cafe. But inside, where I am now, it’s easy to see why the place calls itself a diner. I feel like I’ve stepped back decades, to a time before I was born. There are round, alternating red and white barstools along a black-and-white-tile countertop. The floor is made of tiny little squares, and there are padded velour booths opposite the counter, along the windows facing the terrace.
It’s a look that shouldn’t work, but totally does. Two cooks are visible in the open kitchen, and they actually ring a little bell when they set food into the pass. Waiters and waitresses are all smartly dressed — men in slacks and women in modest skirts — but the uniforms don’t match. They’re as eclectic as the diner itself.
There’s a hostess stand, so I wait. And soon, a stunning brunette approaches, smiling with full pink lips. She has delicate, catlike features and light-blue eyes. Her name is Roxanne, stitched into her uniform. It manages to look cute, not tacky like a mechanic’s.
“Hi, Sweetie,” she says, “table for one?”
It’s just five words, but it’s like she’s read me some sort of seduction act. Her voice is breathy, her eyes knowing, her lashes practically batting. I’m sure she’s going to bite her fingernail, or finger, or find a pen and bite that. Then wrap her lips around it. Even “table for one” carries undertones, as if she’s asking to join me.
“Yeah, thanks.”
She leads me to one of the booths in the middle, but I very much don’t feel like being in the middle of anything right now. I’d be right there, smack in the center, more or less with a spotlight above me. I’m a bit self-conscious about sitting alone in a restaurant, but mostly I’m still ruminating on the morning’s emotions. I came out to get inspired. I need mood for that, not scrutiny.
I point to the corner. “Can I have something back there?”
She wets her lips, as if planning to kiss me. She looks at the booth she just offered then ignores a mousy woman in the booth beside it trying to get her attention for a coffee refill. Her eyes move back to where I’ve pointed and responds with a voice that’s somewhere between put-out and disappointed. She shouldn’t mind if this means I won’t be in her section. Even if I had money for a big tip, I’m too diligent about saving right now to spend it.
I sort of pity the server who has to wait on me. I barely want to eat; I’m feeling picky; I’m cheap as hell.
I sit. I pick up a menu. Roxanne leaves, but ten seconds later I feel her return.
But it’s not Roxanne. This must be my waitress. The poor girl who has to wait on the moody, self-destructive cheapskate.
Her name seems to be Abigail.
And I like her smile.