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My life now consisted of sleeping until noon, checking my email, applying for jobs, watching reruns on Soapnet, fielding calls from my long-lost friends and relatives, and running the occasional food shopping or laundry errand. I’d lose count of how many days it had been since I last showered until someone actually invited me out into the real world.
I came to the realization it is not impossible to become extremely busy doing absolutely nothing.
I also came to the realization that I was in desperate need of a job.
***
Surely there are worse things in life than going from a music writer to a resume writer. When I find out what they are, I’ll let you know.
With my minimal experience, the only job that I could find was writing resumes for Staffing Pros, a recruiting firm that occupied the fourth floor of the Fiduciary Trust Building in South Station. In addition to the fact that I had now been demoted from an entertainment industry expert to a corporate suit, I was also forced to take public transportation, since ninety-nine percent of places downtown didn’t provide on-site parking.
When I arrived, Elaine Curtin, my new boss, barely said two words to me before leading me to a cubicle-infested room and pawning me off on my co-worker. The girl, a short brunette who didn’t look much older than me, pulled up a chair beside her and motioned for me to take a seat.
“I’m Angela,” she said, peering up at me through her purple Vogue eyeglasses. “I’ll be going over your job duties with you, but they’re pretty easy. You’ll speak to candidates over the phone, ask them about their job responsibilities and put together a nice, formatted resume that highlights their experience.” She handed me a stack of sample resumes. “You’ll also need to provide them with a cover letter, as well as a thank you letter that they’ll send to clients post-interview.”
She wheeled her chair towards the computer screen and opened a resume template. “Basically, you want to make sure to emphasize how the candidate’s role affected the business as a whole, instead of just listing their individual responsibilities. I always recommend searching for similar resumes and job postings online to get ideas.”
I nodded. “Sounds easy enough. Is this what you do, too?”
She shook her head. “I’m a recruiter. Basically, after you’re done with the resume, it’s my job to find the candidate a job with one of our clients.” She pointed to the row of cubicles to our right, where two middle-aged women were typing on their computers. “That’s Nancy and Linda. They’re the other recruiters. And over there,” she said, pointing to our left, “is where Kerry sits. She’s the other resume writer.”
“What about the girl in the front?” I asked, motioning to the six-foot-tall Asian woman who was seated at a desk in front of the entrance. She looked like she weighed about ninety pounds, and her hands were the size of my entire head.
“Oh, that’s Kim. She’s a temp who’s working as Elaine’s assistant.” She leaned in closer to me and whispered, “We’re all convinced she’s really a man.”
She grinned, then looked over her shoulder at the clock. “Do you want to go grab some coffee before we get started? There’s a great little café downstairs.”
I grinned back, stood up and followed her to the door. And for the first time since I’d moved back home, I got the feeling that things were starting to look up.
***
After my first day on the job, I arrived home from work a little after six, just in time to catch Dylan bidding farewell to his girlfriend in the parking lot. Her hair was a tornado of poorly bleached curls, her shirt looked like it was laminated to her breasts, and her jaw line was sporting a fresh trail of orange facial concealer that went along nicely with her giant layer of black eyeliner. A walking Halloween party.
I hustled through the parking lot, trying to pretend that I didn’t see them, but I could feel Dylan’s gaze on me. I always felt it. Even when I wasn’t looking at him, I sensed his stare burning a hole in the back of my head. I kept my eyes focused on the ground, hoping he would ignore me.
“Hey, California.”
Damn it.
“Hi, Dylan.”
“Who’s that?” God, even his girlfriend’s voice was annoying. She sounded like a whiny toddler.
“Some girl who just moved into the building.”
“Oh. How do you know her?” A certain suspiciousness crept into her voice.
Oh boy. Not only was his girlfriend tacky and whiny, but she was also insecure, which I assumed was probably because he cheated on her. No, he definitely cheated on her. Of course he did. What man didn’t cheat?
Note to self: all men are lying, cheating scum.
I spent the remainder of the evening unpacking what was left of my things, which was really just one box, the box I had been avoiding since I’d moved in. I sat cross-legged on the floor and sliced open the cardboard with a pair of scissors, removing the contents one by one.
Justine’s passion, ever since we were teens, had always been photography. I’d listen to her rant for hours on end about the evolution of technology and how no one bothered to develop photos in print anymore.
“They’re going to lose everything,” she’d say. “Everyone just saves their pictures to their computers or to websites instead of developing them. Sooner or later, their computer is going to crash, or another social networking site will take over, and somewhere down the line those pictures will be lost.” She’d hold up a giant photo album for emphasis. “But no one ever loses these.”
To prove her point, every Christmas I’d receive the same gift: an album of all the pictures we’d taken in the past year.
And now, here they were, laid out in front of me. Smacking me in the face with reality.
I knew better than to sift through the recent albums, the ones that would make my eyes bleed, reflecting back on my beautiful lie of a life in L.A. I stacked the albums on the top shelf in my closet, a safe place where they’d never block my path or catch my eye. But when I got to the bottom album, the archives from 1997, I opened it.
Maybe I was hoping to discover some clue, some inclination of where it had gone wrong. But all I found was a series of Polaroids of two fourteen-year-old girls, laying side by side behind the football field, whiling away another fall in Rockland. Justine had always been a boy-magnet, with her small frame, giant blue eyes and teeny nose that crinkled when she laughed. I had a blonde shoulder-length bob and short bangs that looked like they belonged on a first-grader. We were both fashion disasters back then, Justine constantly wearing dark lipstick that contradicted her pale complexion, while I was caught in the middle of a grunge versus goth identity crisis.
I stood up and relocated to the couch, my head propped against the armrest as I flipped through the pages. There was the freshman semi-formal, the dance that Justine and I dressed up and pretended to go to, but instead snuck out the back door to get drunk in the woods with the senior boys. There was my first boyfriend, Ethan Blackwood, the typical high school bad boy who was notorious for his crass humor and irresistible charm. There was the time Justine and I MacGuyver’ed a bong out of a Sprite bottle and tin foil and spent the night blowing hits out of her bedroom window and laughing hysterically.
Ah, high school. How I missed it…
I hadn’t realized I’d fallen asleep until I was awakened by a familiar melody coming from directly above my living room. It sounded like it was flowing from the vents, but it was hard to tell. I listened to the words as they drifted through the walls, like some sort of distorted lullaby.
It's never over,
She's a tear that hangs inside my soul forever
I couldn’t believe it. Someone, somewhere in my building, was playing “Lover You Should’ve Come Over,” the Jeff Buckley ballad that had altered my entire perception of music.
As I haphazardly transferred myself from the couch to my bed, I realized that something about the song was off. It sounded almost identical to the album version, only it was softer. An acoustic version, maybe. I couldn’t place it, but whatever it was, there was something brilliant about it.
***
Two nights later, it happened again. I was in the midst of a dream where I was working back at the Pace offices. I had been assigned my first profile story on a local band, but as soon as I finished piecing the article together, my computer crashed and the entire document was lost. I kept restarting the computer, but all I saw was a giant black screen in front of me.
When I awoke, the same familiar sound was seeping through my vents, and I realized that was what woke me. Only this time, it was a version of Buckley’s cover of “Hallelujah.” I listened until the song ended, and then heard the first notes of “Lover You Should’ve Come Over” strike up once again.
Without even thinking, I got up, threw on a pair of shoes, and proceeded up the stairs to find out where it was coming from.
When I reached the top of the stairwell, I heard the music coming from the first door on my right, the apartment directly above me. I paused and gnawed on my lower lip, contemplating how ridiculous I’d be to knock on some stranger’s door and confess that I was eavesdropping on their music collection.
I turned to head back down the stairs, but froze when something on the door caught my eye. The apartment number stared back at me, mocking me, laughing at my expense.
Apartment eighteen.
The image of Dylan’s registration appeared in my head:
Dylan Cavallari
10 Park Place Apt. 18.
Boston, MA 02111
There was no way in hell I was knocking on that asshole’s door.
I lingered in the hallway for a few minutes, imagining what would happen if I did knock. I pictured his trashy, loudmouth girlfriend answering the door in her underwear and demanding to know if I was sleeping with her boyfriend. I pressed my ear to the door and listened, but didn’t hear any voices so I assumed he was alone.
My second fantasy consisted of Dylan answering the door, telling me that I was a huge bitch and to go screw, then slamming the door in my face. That was what I was most afraid of.
My third fantasy consisted of Dylan answering the door and inviting me in. While Jeff Buckley played in the background, he threw me down on his bed and ripped off each article of my clothing one by one, while condescendingly telling me what a bitch I was. I liked that one that most. It was kind of a turn-on.
Screw it, I told myself. It’s now or never.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and knocked on the door.
Chapter Six (#ue6596bfd-b712-54f1-b59e-ad3fe3ba99d3)
The incredulous look on Dylan’s face when he answered the door was priceless. He stared at me for so long that I burst out laughing.
“California?” he asked. “What the hell are you doing here? Everything okay?”
I nodded. “I know this is really strange, but I have to ask you a question. Am I interrupting anything?”
He shook his head. “No, I’m alone. Come on in.”
I followed Dylan into his living room, which was an absolute pigsty. It had that specific bachelor pad aesthetic to it – piles of books and newspapers strewn everywhere, dirty dishes covering the coffee table, the lingering scent of stale beer and dirty laundry. I could barely tell what color his armchair was because of the massive pile of clothing draped over it. I made a poor attempt to hide the disgusted look on my face, but it must have been pretty obvious because Dylan shot me a judgmental look.
“Listen,” he said. “I know it’s a mess, but I don’t want to hear one complaint out of your mouth or I’m kicking your ass out. Understood?”
I nodded in agreement.
“Good. So what’s up?”
I glanced down, looking for a place to sit, but I didn’t have many options. Realizing this, Dylan picked up the pile of clothes on the chair, threw them onto the floor, and motioned for me to sit down.
“Well,” I began. “I woke up the other night because I heard music coming through my vents and … ”
“Hey,” he interrupted. “If you’re coming here to bitch about the noise, I don’t want to hear it. It’s one of the prerequisites of living in a complex.”
I felt my face harden. I hadn’t even been in the door for two minutes and the guy was already getting under my skin. “Will you let me finish? That’s not why I’m here.”
Dylan threw his hands up, his expression softening. “Sorry. Continue.”
“Okay, so I woke up and heard one of my favorite Jeff Buckley songs, but I…”
My voice trailed off as I noticed a pleased expression slowly cross Dylan’s face, replacing his usual perma-scowl. “Wait a second, you listen to Buckley?”
“Of course. The guy’s amazing.”
Dylan leaned forward in his chair, looking at me with raised eyebrows. The shocking part was, in place of his normal brooding self, he was actually smiling. This was a first.
“Wow,” he said. “California, I may have completely misjudged you. You kind of struck me as some high-maintenance club rat that rocked out to overproduced pop music. But I’ll have you know that I’m a huge Buckley fan myself, which you’ve already probably guessed.”
“That’s what I was getting at. I came here because I’ve never heard that acoustic version of ‘Lover You Should’ve Come Over’ before. I have a few live albums of his but the one you were playing was just…” I searched for the word. “Brilliant.”
Dylan raised his eyebrows. “Well, I’m flattered.”
“Huh?”
“I’m flattered,” he repeated.
“What do you mean you’re flattered?”
Dylan smirked at me like he knew something I didn’t. “It’s Renee, right?”
I nodded.
“Well, Renee, you can search long and hard, but you’re never going to find that version of the song.”
I was getting annoyed with his off-topic insinuations. “Okay. Why not?”
“Because that wasn’t Jeff Buckley’s version. It was mine.”
“Bullshit.”
“I’m serious.” He pointed to his acoustic guitar in the corner of the living room. “That’s my favorite song to play.”
No way, I thought to myself. There was no way. Buckley was The Almighty. I had yet to meet someone walking this Earth who could be mistaken for him.
“So, you mean to tell me that you were the one singing that song tonight?” My eyes narrowed.
“That’s what I said.”
“Okay.” I walked over to the other side of the room and handed Dylan his guitar. “Prove it.”
He sat in silence for a minute, his smooth wave of confidence crashing down. He suddenly became very interested in studying the ceiling patterns.
I placed his guitar back on the floor. “I knew you were full of it.”
He finally lowered his head and met my gaze. “I’m not lying, I just… can’t,” he mumbled. “I can’t play in front of people. I’ve never been able to. I hate it because a lot of my friends are in bands and I envy them every time I see them up on stage, but I just can’t do it. I get too nervous.”
It was funny because the intensity that usually seared from his eyes had now dimmed, changing his entire demeanor. In a matter of seconds, Dylan had transformed from a cocky, arrogant prick to some sort of self-doubting loner. It was like he oozed both confidence and insecurity at the same time.
“It’s just me,” I reminded him. “It’s not like you’re playing in front of an audience.”
He turned and stared at his guitar for a long time, as if debating whether or not to pick it up. I knew he wanted to, but he probably felt strange emptying his soul in front of someone he barely knew.
“I…I can try,” he surrendered, reluctantly picking up the guitar. “But I’m telling you, it’s not going to be as good as the version you heard a few nights ago. I play the best when I’m alone because I’m not nervous.” He let out a quick laugh. “Actually, on second thoughts, I always play alone so I guess it’s hard to compare.”
“Have you ever played in front of anyone?”
