Theo Brigham, while walking up Tenth Avenue on his way to meet a band, decides impulsively to visit an art gallery. It is the sort of decision he rarely makes and usually regrets. The gallery itself does not matter, he thinks; it is the idea of it, the surprise, the defiance of his own expectations of himself. He sends furtive glances north and south and then darts left into the first gallery he sees, maintaining his pace as he does so, fairly careening into an open doorway with a rusted-over frame—no, a frame that has been painted to look like rust. He pauses for a moment on the threshold of the place, peering inside, savoring a bit the odd sensation of shyness. He so rarely puts himself in situations like this one. Rarely makes entrances he has not planned on making.
From the doorway, he can see various installation pieces, two of which resemble giant greeting cards. One says, “Love! Love!” One says, “Trust? Ho ho!” Then Theo catches the eye of an official-looking woman, who smiles coldly and says, “Welcome to ArtSpace.”
Theo walks out. He breathes deeply, congratulating himself on his brief adventure, feeling that he has once again fulfilled some unspoken promise. But now he must turn his mind to other things: he is going to his fourth industry showcase this week, and he has a terrible hangover. In his messenger bag is a planner. Today’s date has written on it, in Theo’s neat handwriting: Edgedwellers. 3 pm Sound-Off. 19 yr olds—good for next drive? Call Cynthia re: manager. Theo is not thinking of the Edgedwellers when he walks into the lobby of Sound-Off Studios at three P.M., or of their incompetent manager, or of the secretary, Cynthia (though today is her thirty-second birthday, and he will buy her a bottle of champagne later). No, today Theo is thinking of being a very young man—sixteen—and hearing Springsteen’s album The Ghost of Tom Joad for the first time. He was sitting in a car with a girl.
Here is Theo in Sound-Off’s lobby, which is lined with signed and framed posters of the Stones, Fleetwood Mac, Phish. Others too. All famous faces. Theo knows what he will find at the end of the hallway and through the heavy padded door: four terrified kids trying to look cool. He hopes these ones don’t have acne. One of the three acts he’s seen this week did. Acne throws him off.
Through the door Theo goes, enjoying as always the immediate hush that falls over the room when he enters it. He quickly takes in the Edgedwellers, who don’t have acne, but do have annoyingly short hair. Tony the sound man is lurking in a corner, fiddling with the sound board.
“Hey, guys,” says Theo. He walks up to the stage and shakes their limp nineteen-year-old hands in turn and prays none of them has masturbated recently. Each straightens a little when Theo greets him, and Theo is amused by their too obviously planned outfits: retro rock T-shirts and Converses all.
Theo can tell they are surprised by his appearance, and he likes this feeling; he is slim and tall and quite young-looking, even for his twenty-six years. The Edgedwellers might think that he is their age, and this gives him an advantage. He’s the one with the contracts sticking out of his messenger bag. He’s the one with the messenger bag, come to think of it: an ideal thrift store find. Exactly the right amount of wear. Theo sits on a couch twenty feet from the stage and waits for the band to play.
The lead singer is not a good-looking kid. He decides to be brave and he walks over to Theo, who is now reading a text message from his girlfriend—“bond st 2nite 10pm”—on the smallest cell phone the kid has ever seen. The kid notices this halfway through his walk and he isn’t sure whether it is a good idea to interrupt Theo, but he has already started walking and he can’t turn around now. It wouldn’t look smooth.
Theo knows the kid, whose name is Kyle, is standing in front of him, but he takes a few beats before he looks up.
Kyle says, “I just wanted to thank you because we’re, you know, we’re really grateful that Titan brought us out here to New York, and we want to say that we’re hard workers.” Immediately Kyle knows this wasn’t a good idea and he should have just played the fucking song. God, thinks Kyle, why am I so uncool?
The other Edgedwellers are still pretending to tune, but they are looking at Kyle, who has taken the hit for them, they know. Each of them is silently thankful that he is not Kyle right now: They wait for Theo’s response.
“Yeah,” Theo says.
Kyle makes a hasty retreat.
Theo knows already that he won’t sign the Edgedwellers, that he will send them back to California with broken hearts but a good story to tell their friends, who will ask them about it incessantly for the next year and then forget about it. The Edgedwellers will forget about it too, later in life, much later, when they are Officedwellers, when they are so far from the Edge that the Edge could buy them a Rolling Rock in a bar and they wouldn’t know. One will start a family but have a string of affairs. One will come out of the closet. One will kill himself.
But how could Theo know all this? He puts on an expression that flutters between bored and bemused, lights a cigarette, leans his head against the wall, and waits for them to play their shitty emo pop meets indie rock.
Theo is unhappy.
There is an old rummager on Bond Street and he is sifting through garbage cans. He is whistling “Star Dust,” a song that strikes Theo as lovely and comforting as he jogs by, messenger bag jostling against his left side uncomfortably—for he is late again to meet his girlfriend, Luz. Lovely, comforting, yes, thinks Theo, checking himself; but unhip. Whistling has always struck him as terribly unhip. Farmers whistle. Old men whistle. Theo cannot imagine himself whistling, ever, even by himself, even though he likes the sound of it and it reminds him of his father.
The rummager eyes Theo’s back and remembers suddenly and painfully that “Star Dust” was always the last song they played at his high school dances. Once he had a girl named Esther who wore her hair in braids.
Now Theo stops, huffing, in front of the restaurant. Through the window he can see that Luz is there already, sitting with her friend Amelia. Luz is the kind of thin that makes people follow her around rooms with their eyes. She is tall and tan—“and young and lovely,” thinks Theo, imagining that if he were a different kind of person, more casual, less afraid, he might tell her she looked like the girl from Ipanema and then do something silly like give her a noogie or tickle her. He smiles, imagining it—Luz would like that. She dresses purposefully. She is in her last year at FIT, and her wardrobe is a small work of art. She has six rings, all plain bands made of different colored stones, that she wears no matter what. She takes them off each night and puts them in a little mother-of-pearl box by the side of the bed, dons them each morning and holds up her smooth dark hands to inspect them. She says she got them from her mother, but Theo suspects they are from a former lover, the way she caresses and cares for them, the way she fingers them absentmindedly when she speaks of the past. She has kept her hair long all her life, and she brushes it so it gleams.
Luz will eat out only at sushi restaurants, so she and Theo have tried nearly all of them in the city: Neo, with its wooden floors and bamboo poles; the various Harus, with their overpriced meals and overly sticky rice; the original Nobu, with its endless waits and posh crowds. Bond Street is their favorite.
Luz should be happy, thinks Theo. She’s twenty-two, she’s lovely, and she’s sipping water that she has turned into a sick kind of diet lemonade with a lemon wedge and Sweet’n Lo. But he can see that she’s upset and he knows it’s probably something he’s done. He shifts his focus to his own reflection and considers himself. He is decent-looking. He might pass for a good person. He thinks briefly about leaving.