The Leavers(10)

“Well—” Kay said.

“I am. You have nothing to worry about.”

“We’ll get the forms from you next weekend. A copy of your statement of purpose. And after that, you will send us a confirmation of your submitted application.”

“Next weekend?”

“We’ll be in the city again,” Kay said. “Jim Hennings is turning sixty and having a party on Saturday night. Angel will be there. You’ll join us, of course.”

Daniel’s muscles contracted. So Angel hadn’t gone to Nepal. If they were still friends, if she was still talking to him, he would tell her about Michael’s e-mail, about Peter’s accusation of ingratitude, how torn he felt between anger and indebtedness. If only Peter and Kay knew how much he wanted their approval, how he feared disappointing them like he’d disappointed his mother. Angel had once told him that she felt like she owed her parents. “But we can’t make ourselves miserable because we think it’ll make them happy,” she had said. “That’s a screwed up way to live.” Daniel had known her since they were kids, but their long, insomniac phone calls had only started last spring, and for most of last year she had been his greatest consolation. Her sincerity was contagious, and he liked hearing about her friends and crushes, her plans for the summer, the classes she liked and the ones she didn’t, how living in the Midwest was calmer and quieter than Manhattan—sometimes the silence still spooked her—but God, she would kill for a decent slice of pizza, a lamb shawarma in a pita.

Kay motioned to the waitress for the check. “We love you. We want the best for you. I know it doesn’t seem like that right now, but we do.”

“He’ll see it someday.” Peter pushed his chair away from the table. “Where’s the bathroom?”

Daniel watched Peter walk across the restaurant, a new stiffness in his shoulders and legs. Guilt sank through him; they wanted him to succeed in the ways that were important to them because it would mean that they had succeeded, too. Roland had been too busy to talk to him for a year, but Kay and Peter called each week. How could he hurt them more than he already had? He could never return Michael’s e-mail.

He turned back to Kay. “I’ll fill out the application, Mom.”

AFTER A SEVEN-HOUR SHIFT at Tres Locos, Daniel’s wrists were sore from bean scooping, pepper chopping, and burrito wrapping. On Roland’s kitchen table was an empty box for a Neumann microphone, and Daniel picked up the receipt and let out a low whistle. The mic had cost two thousand bucks. He removed the Carlough College forms, now crumpled after being in his pocket, and left them on the counter.

The couch pulled out into a bed where he slept, his backpack and guitars stashed at its feet. Roland’s roommate Adrian was either working or at school or at his girlfriend’s place, and Roland was mostly out as well, taking classes, transporting art, working on a construction crew for gallery installations, modeling for a designer friend, helping friends in other bands. Daniel sank onto the couch and took his guitar out. Despite his sore wrists, he wanted to work on a song.

He heard keys in the door, and before he could put his guitar away, Roland came in. “What are you playing?”

“Just fooling around,” Daniel said.

They looked at each other. “Listen.” Roland shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I want you to know I’m not mad or anything.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“We’d barely practiced.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Come listen to something I did today.”

Daniel sat on Roland’s bed as Roland opened Pro Tools on his computer. A line trickled out, Roland’s voice, a Psychic Hearts song. Roland pressed a button. It was the same line, but altered with plug-in effects to sound scratched up, scuzzified. Daniel didn’t get it. It was using cheesy CGI effects in a historical film, a bad vintage photo filter.

“Hutch, the Jupiter booker, is into this shit,” Roland said. “After you left last night, I ended up talking to him about the bands he’s worked with. You know he helped Jane Rust blow up, right? And Terraria. Brutal percussion, guitars in overdrive. Now they’re huge. I’m thinking Psychic Hearts should go in this direction.”

“You want to change the band for Hutch?”

“I want to play Jupiter. I want to get signed.”

“What about your own music? You don’t even care?”

Roland shrugged. “Art evolves.”

“Oh, give me a fucking break.”

“We don’t have to.” Roland hit pause. “But we should.”

“It’s not like Hutch is going to book us after last night anyway.”

“Nah, I talked to him. And Javier’s playing a show in a few weeks, nothing big, but we can have one of the opening slots.”

“With the new sound. That Hutch likes.”

“Yeah, of course.”

Still, Daniel was closer to it than ever before. The oldest burrito wrapper at Tres Locos, a red-haired white guy named Evan who dropped frequent mentions about how New York had been so much cooler and more dangerous in the nineties, was thirty-six and still trying to get his band off the ground. Daniel had gone to see Evan open for four other acts on a Tuesday night, and the guy could barely sing. At work today, when Daniel mentioned he’d played the loft party, omitting the part where he had run away, Evan had said, “Get the hell out of here” and plopped down a spoonful of pintos with such force, bean juice had splattered his chest. If Psychic Hearts played Jupiter, he would be sure to invite Evan. In high school, Roland used to tell the other kids, “You have to see Daniel play,” and if they did a show and no one said anything Daniel would fall into a funk, consider tossing his guitar in the trash. But when people called him amazing he basked in it, couldn’t sleep, reviewing the compliments over and over in his mind.