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  To Kim, at the CC Club

  Cassie

  Today, August 2, at 5:34 p.m. on the South Congress Bridge, also known as the South Congress parking lot, I accepted my true form. The windows of the Subaru were down, Queen’s Greatest Hits was at full blast, and this was it, I was no longer a woman shackled to a cubicle, I was a bandleader, scream-singing with Freddie Mercury. The cars ahead were braking. I followed suit, holding out my hand to make sure the box on my front seat didn’t slide. Inside was a picture of my mom and me at Disneyland when I was five, a coffee mug with David Bowie’s face emblazoned on it, and three stale granola bars I found buried under some old depositions. My personal effects.

  A half hour ago, my boss, Beth, had called me into her office. She’d reached over and taken my hand, the slime of her lime-scented lotion rubbing my palm, and fired me. I’d looked down at my thighs sticking out of my boxy navy dress, my cheap ballet flats, and felt this odd buoyancy. It was the feeling I got every single day at five, walking through the parking lot, but magnified ten times. Like at some point, I’d hear the clap of a director’s slate and everything in Beth’s office would get brighter under studio lights and someone would yell, “Okay, that’s a wrap on paralegal! Nice work, Cassie.”

  And that was today. I had walked off the set to start my real life, hopefully one that involved not just car singing. Despite the fact that Beth’s drawn-out, fake-sympathetic “I wish I didn’t have to do this” speech had made me late for my second—now only—job, I had already realized being laid off from Jimenez, Gustafson, and Moriarty wills and probate attorneys was meant to happen. Not a blessing in disguise, not a wake-up call, but an actual pure-as-sugar good thing, a thing I had wanted and wished for: to be rid of the endless hours of licking stamps and finding typos, and, more often than not, quickly tabbing out of Hiatus Kaiyote performances on YouTube when I sensed Beth behind my desk.

  I switched lanes to get ahead of the Pathfinder. This was it. I would announce it. I turned down Queen, put my phone on speaker, plopped it in the cup holder, and dialed.

  “Yello.” Traffic hummed in the background. Mom must have been on her way home from the Florien residence, where she cleaned on Fridays.

  “Hi,” I said. “I was fired.”

  Silence. The traffic inched forward. “You got fired?”

  I blew out a breath and smiled. “Yes.”

  “You got fired?” she repeated.

  “Yes, Mom,” I confirmed.

  “For what?”

  “They said that business was down, and they were combining my job with Stephanie’s, and Stephanie had been there longer, so, wah-wah.” I made a sad-horn sound. “Good-bye, Cassie.”

  “I’m sorry, mija.” I could picture her face, her lips smashed together, her brows knit. “I’m very sorry this happened. What are you going to do?”

  I thought of Nora’s smoky basement, of Toby swiveling on the stool behind his drum set, of pressing my ear to the wood of the old upright piano I got off Craigslist, of never having to end band practice at ten p.m. so I would be awake enough for a daily purgatory of Excel spreadsheets. I could find out what it feels like to be an actual musician. I could wake up tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, knowing the whole day was mine for The Loyal.

  My voice was light. “I’m on my way to The Handle Bar, so, go to the next grind, I guess.”

  “You’re taking this well.”

  “Yeah,” I said, softening my voice so I sounded sadder, since it was what she expected. “I’m trying.”

  “What about your health insurance?”

  A truck blared its horn nearby. I yelled over the noise, “There are government programs.”

  “What about your rent?” my mom interrupted. “I’m worried,” she said, and, as if the word “worried” were some sort of password, a coiled spring released and she began to rant. I hoped she was still driving slowly. She tended to wave her arms a lot. She spoke of a severance package. The enrollment deadline for state-assisted health care had passed, she said, but they better make an exception.

  I waited to tell her about my full transformation as she spoke, breathing deep, trying to calm the hard, twisted kernel of worry in my stomach.

  I had learned to pay close attention to my stomach, more so than most people, I was pretty sure. We had to be on the same team, my gut and I, because for the past few months it’d been off, cranky. I pictured it as a wise, old, talking anthropomorphized object, like a character in an animated movie. What my gut communicated was usually limited to things like I do not care for these Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, or Good effort with the bean soup, I’m going to expand and sit with this for a while.

  Now it seemed to be saying everything my mom was saying, but in a nicer, less shrill way. Cassie, it rumbled, sending waves of nausea. You’re not facing reality. She was still going.

  “Stop panicking!” I interrupted, loud enough for the woman next to me in a VW to look over. “This is a great opportunity.”

  “You’re right, Cass,” she said.

  And for a wonderful moment, we were all together, the three of us—me, my mom, and my gut. The traffic moved a whole twelve inches forward, and a breeze sailed through my open window.

  Then she said, “You can use your free time to study for the LSAT.”

  My gut flared again, and I avoided hitting the bumper of the Honda in front of me by an inch. I wanted to slam my head against the steering wheel.

  With her accent, anyone who wasn’t me would have thought she said “El Sot.” The dreaded El Sot. It wasn’t as if Mom were going to smash my Yamaha and force me to enroll in UT Austin by gunpoint, but ever since I graduated prelaw four years ago, the law school seed had grown roots. Now she could bring it back into the sun, water it, talk it into growing until it strangled me. I wanted to play music. Not just any music, but my music with my bandmates, Nora and Toby, somewhere between Elton John and Nina Simone and James Blake. It was the only thing that made me happy. But you can’t eat happiness.

  My mother reminded me of that every chance she got, and now that I’d lost the paralegal job, I had nothing to point to in order to distract her.

  “The LSAT, yeah,” I said. I took a deep breath.

  “You know what, I know you’re going to be short on money,” she continued. “I’ll pay for the prep course.”

  The mass in my stomach was taking over my whole torso.

  “I have to go,” I said.

  “Okay, I’ll start looking for courses nearby.”

  I swallowed. “You don’t have to do that.”

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Okay, love you, Mom! Bye!”

  The mass had spread through my whole body, throbbing, dizzying me. This happened a lot. Like, twice a day, thereabouts. Hence the gut intimacy. I usually chalked it up to student loan–related anxiety, and tried to nail the source of this particular spell: Deeply hungry? Too full? Did I have to pee? Let’s go with hungry, I told my gut. I grabbed a granola bar and bit into the stale oats, trying to keep my head from spinning.

  My phone buzzed. I expected a harried text from Mom, but it was Toby.

  Plans tonight?

  I smiled. A text on a day we didn’t have band practice? And before midnight? This was new. When the traffic stopp
ed, I started replying, Maybe I’ll come over after work, but stopped. I’d let him wait. Toby was a tall, long-haired Cat Stevens lookalike who played a musical instrument. In Austin. He’d be fine. I was probably one of three women who received that text anyway.

  My phone buzzed again. It was Nora, who was working bar-back. Where are you?

  Traffic, I texted back. Be there ASAP. Also, whatever, Nora.

  I got her this job, so she can’t pretend like she’s all responsible. If it wasn’t for me, she’d be on her couch three bong rips in, trying to figure out the bass part to “Psycho Killer.”

  I needed to show Mom I was serious. An album by The Loyal, perhaps. As yet unnamed. Maybe a color. Toby had suggested naming it Lorraine, after his cat. We’d have to record it first. The rest—the health care, the money—would fall in line after that. My gut rumbled again, disagreeing.

  “What do you know?” I asked it aloud, turning up the music to full blast. “Just eat your granola and be happy.”

  Luke

  Fort Hood was its own little clockwork town. Equipment boomed and creaked. Gridded roads led to dried-out lawns, to shooting ranges, to seventies-era dormitories, to huge red gateways where vehicles of varying sizes and killing capability filtered in and out. They’d watered the grass, I noticed. Behind our line, family and friends sat in folding chairs, fanning themselves with ARMY STRONG flyers.

  Earlier today, when we’d packed up, the blankness of our bunk hit me. Every trace of us was gone. Clean for the next set of recruits. Not that there had been much in the first place—my yellow army-issued towel tossed over the chair, the picture of Frankie’s girlfriend, Elena, in a frame on his desk, the little legal pad where I recorded my running times. But this wasn’t camp. This wasn’t even basic. It was infantry training. The point of being at Fort Hood was to leave Fort Hood. And now we were.

  “So relax and enjoy this time,” Captain Grayson was finishing. “Use it wisely. Remember you represent the Sixth Battalion, Thirty-fourth Red Horse Infantry Division, and the United States Army. When you return to duty, you’ll be in a combat zone.”

  “No shit,” Frankie said under his breath beside me.

  In fourteen days, our company would fly to an unknown base in southwestern Afghanistan. Antiterror unit. Eight months minimum, indefinite maximum, most likely a year. Going to the combat zone was kind of the point of the whole “congratulations and good-bye” ceremony. We clapped.

  Across the field, happy people found one another. I watched Clark pick up his kid and spin her around like he was in an insurance commercial, setting her down so he could take his wife’s face by the cheeks, pressing his lips to hers. Gomez jumped on her husband, wrapping her legs around his waist. Frankie had disappeared.

  Davies came up beside me, holding his hat. Armando, too. The orphans, drifting together.

  “Y’all got people at home?” Davies asked. He was a pimply kid, just out of high school, one of the youngest of us, as dumb as a bag of hammers. He could barely identify the letters on the vision test. Good heart, though.

  “My main girl. My sister. They couldn’t get off work,” Armando said, crossing his arms across his wide chest.

  “I ain’t got no one,” Davies said. “I hate this part.”

  Over their heads I found Frankie, watched him wrap his arms around a curvy woman in a yellow sundress. Elena. She’d brought flowers. Atta boy, Frankie. His parents watched, their arms around each other’s waists.

  Armando ran a hand through his clipped black hair, bringing up a spray of sweat. “I just want a cold Bud, dude.”

  I licked my dry lips, watching Gomez and her husband laugh and press their foreheads together. “I feel that.”

  “You taking the bus, Morrow?” Armando asked.

  “I guess,” I answered.

  Davies put his gangly arms around both of us. “What y’all doin’ tonight? Wanna get turnt?”

  “Hell yes,” Armando responded. “Now get off me, Davies, it’s too hot.”

  Davies nodded at me. “Morrow, come on. What else are you gonna do?”

  I checked my phone. At least Johnno hadn’t called yet today. “I don’t know.”

  Armando shook his head, looking at me. “You’re one of the weird, quiet types, huh?”

  “No,” I said, proving their point.

  Maybe I was weird. So what. I wasn’t here, willfully getting my ass kicked, preparing to roam through the Middle East with a hunk of hot, deadly metal in my hands, because I got bored with my fantasy football league.

  “Cucciolo!” Davies called.

  Frankie and Elena approached, followed by his parents. His mother was a beautiful woman with Frankie’s big brown eyes, wearing white linen pants, and his father was pure Italian, with curly black hair and thick eyebrows and skin that glowed. Elena kissed Frankie’s cheek. He clapped his hands, approaching. “Anyone else going to Austin tonight? I want to get sloppy.”

  “Chyeah,” Davies said. “I’m in.”

  “Where should we go?” Armando asked.

  Frankie turned to me. “Dealer’s choice.”

  “I’m out for this one.”

  “Aw, fuck that.”

  I gave him a look. “I gotta go to Buda.”

  “Tonight?” When I didn’t answer right away, Frankie’s smile faded. He lowered his voice. “Something wrong?”

  “Nothing specific,” I said, feeling my chest tighten. “You know, just family stuff. I’ll find a motel on the way.”

  “A motel?” Frankie stared at me. “What about your brother?”

  I paused, and stepped aside. Frankie followed.

  “I have some other stuff to take care of. I don’t want to—yeah.” I should have just said good point and let it drop. “My dad and I don’t get along. And Jake’s got a wife and a kid. I don’t want to burden them.”

  Last time I had seen Jake, I had brought him a list of apologies I had written on St. Joseph’s stationery, where I had just spent ten days detoxing. He’d shut the door in my face. I still had the piece of paper folded up in my bag a year later, as if I’d never be able to write it again.

  “Come on, you’re about to go overseas. Someone will let you sleep on their couch,” Frankie said. “Crash with me for a while.”

  “It’s all good. I’m gonna get a hotel. Thank you, though.”

  He shrugged. “My parents have a big house. You’d have your own room.”

  My heartbeat sped. In the fight between spending the next two weeks in a bed in a home in Austin versus a room off Highway 49, staring at shitty TV, trying not to relapse, the air-conditioned bed would win. But I liked Frankie. He’d become my friend. I didn’t want to bring my shit into his house.

  His large, comfortable, air-conditioned house.

  “For the whole two weeks?” Don’t look desperate.

  “As long as you need,” Frankie said, glancing up at me, giving me a nod.

  Luke Morrow was not the kind of person you bring home to people like this. Even before all this shit went down, I wasn’t a shake-your-hand-and-ask-about-the-weather kind of guy. I never had a mom to teach me how to be a gentleman, how to offer to do the dishes after dinner. More like smoke on the back porch until everyone went to bed.

  But no one here knew that. I could do the dishes and whatnot. I could call everyone ma’am and sir, I was good at that now. The air felt cooler for a second. I took a deep breath.

  I lifted my hand. Frankie took it.

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  “Morrow’s in!” Frankie yelled.

  My phone vibrated in my pocket. I checked the screen. There was Johnno. I silenced it.

  And it wasn’t like I was going out to snort powder off a dirty counter. This would be a bar with music and light and friends, ice in a glass. Frankie’s smile was wide and open, carefree. We started walking back to his parents’ car with the rest of the families, with everyone else.

  Cassie

  When midnight rolled around, The Handle Bar had cleared.
Bittersweet air from the smoking patio was drifting through the high windows and over the pool tables. A few sweaty Lana Del Rey lookalikes were posing for selfies under the twinkle lights and Lone Star posters, a man with a man bun balanced a full-to-the-brim pitcher over the heads of hipsters playing Scrabble, but other than that, no money coming in. Everyone was drinking, but no one was refilling. I wet my dry mouth with the rest of a Gatorade, retwisted the kinky, black mass that used to be my hair before the humidity got to it, and reviewed the list I’d made on a cocktail napkin:

  get a spot at Petey’s open mic

  get another amp

  get more hours at bar / make more $$$

  Nora breezed past in jeans as tight as a second skin and a cropped Stones T, glancing at my list. “Big plans?”

  I tapped the list. “No more block parties where we get paid in gift certificates. We need actual gigs, at actual venues, opening up for touring bands. That’s how we get real money.”

  She looked around toward where a group of office workers stared at us, huddled at a high top. “No opposition from me! But—”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I waved my hand. I knew what she was going to say. “I’ve been too obsessed with getting the EP perfect. I see that now. We just need to go for it. A whole album of new songs is better than four, like, perfected songs, right?”

  “I agree!” Nora glanced behind her at the table again. “And now that you’ve—”

  I finished her sentence, feeling my giddiness rise. “Now that I don’t have the office job, we can practice more, and I can work during the day on getting us more gigs! Right?”

  “Right, but—” She pointed behind her.

  “No more ‘buts.’ ” I threw up my hands. “But what?”

  “I need three gin and tonics and a Lone Star for the high top.”

  “Oh.” I started to scoop ice into three glasses.

  “You’re on a tear, huh?” Nora said. “I like it. Jobless Cassie waits for no man.”

  Yes. My true form. “I just think a couple years of fucking around is long enough.”