(Six Years Later: July 23, 1999, in Los Angeles)
My coffee cooled down rapidly on the table in front of me as I waited for Liam to arrive at my condo. The bitterness of the dark coffee felt icy on my tongue, but I was too lazy to go make a new batch.
I shifted around on my couch and looked up at the ceiling. Whenever I was bored or was caught up in a thought, I would stare at my chandelier, wondering how that tiny piece of string was holding the entire thing up. Every time, I waited for it to collapse onto the ground into a million crystal pieces, but it never did.
I suddenly heard my front door open with keys jangling in the background.
“Demi! Sorry, there was so much traffic.” Liam’s voice rang through the hallway. I’d always wondered if I should take his spare keys back. I thought one time he came over secretly and borrowed a few salad bowls or something.
His heavy footsteps echoed through the place like they always did, with him walking like the next Bigfoot, until he reached the living room where the white carpet cushioned his feet.
“It’s Los Angeles, Liam. There’s always traffic.” I pointed out. Liam had been my agent for about two years now. He was a pain sometimes, but I wouldn’t be doing what I do now without him.
When Jacob and I left town with almost everything we owned, the first place we hit was New York. The “Big Apple.” The place for new beginnings, and the place for building a new life.
We hitchhiked for days until we actually reached New York. Sometimes we would wait for hours until a driver was willing to carry us any farther. Half the time we were scared to death that we were going to be murdered or something, but it wasn’t like we had anything to lose. By then, we were in dirty rags and our money was low. We came across this sketchy place with a cheap restaurant called Miranda’s. We saw a sign on their window looking for people to work there so we applied. We asked if I could be the restaurant’s entertainer and if we could live there for free in exchange for a very low minimum wage. After two years of getting our life together, an agent walked in, watched me perform, and asked me some questions about my music. At first he didn’t like my style, but within a year, the agent introduced me to his friend, Liam, who agreed to work with me. That was when life actually started to fall into place.
Liam sat down on the couch in front of me. “So, how’s the new song coming up?” he said and drank his cup of coffee. “It’s so cold.” He made a disgusted face and set it down.
“I’ve got the lyrics pretty much done, but I still need to get the melody going,” I said. This time, I was writing a song for a country singer.
“She wants it done by the middle of next week,” Liam said.
“Well, you can tell her that if she wants a hit song, she should be patient,” I said. I’d literally been working on it for only two days.
“Let’s not forget you work for her,” he said.
“I work with her,” I reminded him.
“So, um, how’s your health?” He looked uncomfortable asking me that question, as if he wanted to show that he cared but at the same time wasn’t ready to go full in on details of some rotten cancer.
“Same thing,” I said. When I got the news I had cancer, I wanted to keep it quiet. The media had been swarming around me these days, trying to get the latest scoop of the next song I was going to write for the famous country singer.
“Look, you don’t have to be on the waiting list for this long. I can ask around for donors,” he suggested.
“You actually believe a random guy is just going to give me his kidney?”
“Hey, it raises the chances of you actually getting one,” he said.
“My time will come,” I said calmly.
“If you keep waiting for your time to come, you’re not going to have any time left.”
I sighed. “I’m good. Look, can we just talk about the song?”
“Fine. Let me see what you have so far,” he said and took another sip of his cold coffee. I think he’d gotten used to the disgusting taste.
Liam and I got up and walked toward the piano where my notebook lay out on the stand.
“Here,” I said after I flipped to the page.
I’m all alone with no direction to go
Cars race past but time is passing slow
Midnight comes but the city is still awake
There’s people on the streets even though it’s late
My eyes straight ahead with music in my ears
Seems like I just lived through twenty years
So here we come into the streets of New York
I look up into the sky
Can't tell the difference between the stars and the city lights
I see the beggars with their empty plates
Sitting on the pavements waiting for fate
“You do realize that this song is for a country singer, right?” Liam raised one eyebrow and placed the notebook back on the piano stand.
“Yeah, I know.”
“This sounds like a pop song or something,” he said in disappointment.
“These lyrics just came to me,” I said.
“Play it.” He gave me one more chance to prove that this song could be the next big hit.
I sat down on the chair and laid my fingers on the keys. It was funny—each time I played, I wondered if I looked like Alaric, with my hands (instead of a violin) flying across the piano. It had been years since I’d last seen him. He was probably not even alive, but through these years, he’d always been my inspiration.
I loved him then and I still did.
Even though all we had were those short memories, I kept on replaying them, using them. I transferred each emotion in me to my hands, and out the sound came. My own sound.