The Leavers(5)
Two
A decade later, Daniel Wilkinson stood in a corner, hoping no one would notice his shoes. They were insulated hiking boots, clunkers with forest green accents, necessary armor for upstate winters but aesthetic insult in the city. With his Gore-Tex coat, wool hat, and puffy gloves stashed in a back room with his guitar—a butterscotch Strat he’d bought off of Craigslist—his jeans and black T-shirt didn’t seem too blatantly suburban, yet the other guys’ feet were clad in stark white sneakers or dark leather boots, and the old fear bucked up that he’d be exposed, called out, exiled. You’re a fake. What’s your real name? Where are you really from?
He dug his hands in his pockets and rubbed the fabric between his thumbs and index fingers. How did you sew the inside of a pocket, anyway? He saw a roomful of sewing machines, women guiding denim beneath darting needles, and thought of his mother.
The show was in a loft apartment on the last remaining industrial block in Lower Manhattan. Windows lined one wall, edged with late February frost, and the concrete floor was tacky with spilled drinks. Closer to where the bands played, it was as hot as July. The current act, math rockers whose set sounded like one thirty-minute-long song, dull grays and feeble angles, the singer’s head shaved bald around the sides while the hair on top sprouted up like a fistful of licorice, reminded Daniel of being stoned for days in his dorm room at SUNY Potsdam, hitting repeat on the same song until the notes separated and unraveled.
Thank God he was no longer at Potsdam. He drank vodka in his plastic cup, let the warmth spread into his belly, sandpapering his nerves until the music soaked down to his toes. When he and Roland played, the audience would be incredulous, admiring. Not like earlier, when this dude Nate had been talking about Vic Sirro and Daniel had blurted, “Oh, you mean the blue backpack guy?” and Nate had made a face like he’d noticed a stain on his pants.
Oh, you mean the blue backpack guy. Daniel mentally punched himself. Nate was so tall and skinny he had a premature hunchback, and his long, thin face was giraffe-adjacent, but even he thought Daniel was a loser. After tonight, no one would turn away from him in the middle of a conversation or look over him as if he was invisible. The band would play sold-out shows, be profiled on music blogs, his picture front and center. Roland had been telling people that this new project was his best yet, reunited with his original collaborator, with Daniel’s insane guitar. Hearing this made Daniel nervous, like they were tempting fate. All week he’d been waiting for someone to tell Roland to shut up and stop bragging. But half the room was here because they wanted to cheer Roland on, and Daniel was trying hard to absorb the excitement.
He poured himself another vodka, downed it, poured another. He wandered out to the rooftop, the city spread wide like an offering, though he knew better than to admit he was impressed by the view. Upstate, snow was everywhere, the season in deep coma. Yet in the city there was minimal snow, heat lamps on the roof and bridges in the distance lit up like X-rays, and there was music, wordless and thumping, bulbs of gold and green, and dancing, arms and legs moving in slow motion, like animals stalking their prey. There were girls with geometric tattoos up the insides of their forearms, hair bundled up like snakes, eyeliner packed on so thick it looked like it had been applied with a Sharpie. One of them had played a set earlier, creeping yowls and crashing keyboards, violin, theremin, melodica, each instrument creepier than the next. Daniel glanced at his hiking boots and moved toward the eye of the dancing, the music an underwater dream.
Years before these transplants dared to venture out of their suburban hometowns, Daniel had been a city kid who memorized the subway system by fourth grade. Yet he still felt like he didn’t belong. Post-Ridgeborough, it had never been easy for Daniel to trust himself. Not like Roland, who could give a party direction simply by showing up. When Roland asked if anyone wanted to eat at Taco Bell, which would elicit silence or even derision if anyone else suggested it, people said sure, cool. If Roland proclaimed a show boring, people agreed to bounce. Daniel was malleable, everyone and no one, a collector of moods, a careful observer of the right thing to say. He watched other people’s reactions before deciding on his own; he could be fun or serious or whatever was most strategic, whoever you wanted him to be. Sometimes it backfired, like when he’d overheard these guys talking about a band named Crudites and said, “Yeah, I’ve heard of them, nineties pop punk, right?” and one of them had said, “It’s not a real band. It’s a joke.” How quickly he’d stammered that he must have misheard. Or the other night, when he and Roland were hanging out with friends who were talking about how much they loved Bottle Rocket, Daniel had nodded along. “But you hate Wes Anderson,” Roland said later. “I’m allowed to change my mind,” Daniel said. He wondered if his annoyance at the preciousness of Wes Anderson movies was misinformed, if he had overlooked a hidden brilliance obvious to people more schooled than he was.
If only he had the right clothes, knew the right references, he would finally become the person he was meant to be. Like Roland—self-assured, with impeccable taste—but less vain. Deserving of love, blameless. But no matter how many albums he acquired or playlists he artfully compiled, the real him remained stubbornly out there like a fat cruise ship on the horizon, visible but out of reach, and whenever he got closer it drifted farther away. He was forever waiting to get past the secret entrance, and when the ropes did part he could never fully believe he was in. Another door materialized, another rope to get past, always the promise of something better.