The Lyricist

Every morning Max Valentine sat down behind a sheet of glass and fiddled with knobs while aspiring pop stars sang into microphones. He was a mixer for a small talent agency. The salary was small, the job was dull, but it gave him plenty of time to think. And more then anything, Max Valentine wanted time to think.

Rushed through high school by over bearing parents, his child hood was little more then a painful blur of stomach troubles and chronic nosebleeds. They shipped him off to college, hoping that the Ivy league would cure him. Instead, the stomach troubles gave way to unceasing headaches. He put his foot down, dropped out of Yale and went to a backwater SUNY school and majored in Music Theory.

The series of events had left him panting for breath and though he had always fully intended to become a doctor or some other useful thing, he found himself stuck in a low level job, trying to take a pause and let life catch back up to him. Several conclusions were in a rush to have themselves be made, but he was more then willing to be dense and stupid. Let them take their time. He was twenty-three and felt like forty. Lost and lonely, he sat on tall bar stools on weekend nights, trying to find meaning in colorful toxic fluids.

" Hey! Over here mixer-dude!" Max snapped out of his reverie, to see the newest client. Punks. It figured. There were four of them and Max unabashedly made snap judgments.

Three of them were going to be royal pains. They looked identical in their rage, piercing and slicked up hair, ready to break something not to their liking. The fourth might be all right. He wasn’t pierced, but there was more then that. There was a seriousness in the dark brown eyes that made it seem like someone was home. Long dark braids decorated with beads contrasted sharply with the rest of group. This one stepped forward.

" I’m Lance, lead singer ." Braid boy stretched out a hand which Max shook gratefully. Lance smiled briefly before introducing him to the rest of the band.

They started setting up equipment while he gave them the basic rundown of what they would be doing. His job was essentially to make a demo tape of them at their best. It could take up to two and half weeks of careful mixing and remixing to get the sound right. Max was good at what he did, he had a feel for music, but he didn’t fool himself into thinking it meant anything. It was easier to let life lead him on like a loose branch in the river.

He asked for a demo tape and they handed it over. He popped it into the machine, fully expecting to be unimpressed. Most of the bands that his boss turns up are heavy metal garage bands that were thrown together so some guys could hang out and pick up chicks. Sometimes even those guys were halfway decent. Halfway. But this was good. Genuine awesome. Loud and crude to be sure, yet there were undertones of the greatest beauty. The making of something decent to be sure.

It was a Friday and late at that. The band did little more then introduce themselves before they were out the door again and Max was headed to his apartment. It wasn’t much of a place, but at least it was his place. Three rooms, counting the bathroom. One served kitchen, dining room , the other as living room and bedroom. The walls were decorated in band posters from work and some pictures he had taken when he thought he might be a photographer. They were actually pretty good, he thought, but technical proficiency just wasn’t the same as art.

His sofa bed was tucked in, but the cushions were splayed out on the beaten blue of the carpet. Carefully, he rearranged them and spread himself out on the couch. With long practice, he timed his shower to that of the microwave dinner that he threw in and the ten o’clock news.

Clean, clothed, hunger sated, he settled in to watch the late shows until he finally couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer. T.V. Was a great invention, he decided. It didn’t deserve the bashing people were always giving it. True it made you slower and stupid, but so did life. At least television was entertaining while it killed brain cells.

The springs protested when he pulled out the bed for the night, the vague smell must clinging to the painfully white sheets. Laundry tomorrow judging by the intensity of the smell. Mentally, he counted off the quarters he had stowed away for the laundry mat. Should be enough for two or three loads.

Falling asleep to the thoughts of tumble dry clothes, Max wondered if this was the point everyone reached in their lives. When the biggest worry was what happens when there is nothing left to worry about, but the rest of your life?

The weekend passed fairly quickly in a drunken Saturday night and a vaguely hung over Sunday. Monday came all to quickly, bringing with it the gelled lead singer and his gang of punk friends.

"Sorry we’re late." Lance told him first thing. "Acker wouldn’t wake up."

Max believed it when he saw the punk in person. He was the one with the shaved head and nose ring. Looked like someone had put him through a blender the night before. Max was willing to bet all of his meager savings that Acker was the lyricist. He had that look of repressed poetry to him.

"You guys ready to go?"

The rest of the day was blur of work. Things that Max knew by rote and he was one of two working on this one. Riff was partnerd with him and together they started to make all the noise into a record. Riff was one of those manly men, who rarely talked and even more rarely made a whole sentence.

It made for a fairly dull day. And it was a good thing that Max hadn’t actually made that bet with someone. It turned out that the whole band wrote the words, separately for some songs, together for others. You could hear it too. Their sound was uneven in places, the lyrics inconsistent. Acker’s were the loud, over lyrical lines, heavy on curses. Joey, the drummer, wrote only about sex. It was Lance that puzzled Max. He hadn’t written anything. The lead singer had once been the bassist for the band. His voice and performance power were his credentials, not his songs.

"I don’t have great lines." He told Max over a lunch breaks of subs from the nearby deli. "I have the ideas, but not the words. Acker and Joey can do lyrics."

"You should at least try."

They were sitting together in the cramped studio. The rest of the band had gone out with Riff for a smoke. Lance had ruefully explained that he had recently promised a friend to quit. Indeed, Max saw him make as if to grab at a pack in his pocket at least three or four times.

"It’s not what I want." Lance told him with a shrug.

"What do you want?" Max’s favorite question. The one he could never answer.

"I’d like to be famous, for a little. Maybe have a hit. Then...I don’t know. Settle down." Lance shrugged. " Try not to give it to much thought."

"Huh."

It was just dusk when they broke for the day. Max walked home the long way, over the tiny bridge that saddled Brooke’s Creek. The little stream wasn’t much of anything in the summer, but now, in fall, it could easily know you off your feet and carry you a while. It roared to itself in satisfaction, stopping Max as it always did.

He really liked the river. It reminded him of an instrumental song. Played by some higher power. It weaved a spell on him always, but somehow today it’s call was stronger. He leaned further out across the rail, watching the rivulets flow over rocks and carry dead leaves out to sea. Gingerly, he reached into his pocket and pulled out pen. There was no convenient paper, so he used his arm.

For nearly ten minutes, he wrote with a fury he had never known, covering all the entirety of the limb. When he was done, he capped the pen and ran home, loving the burn in his lungs. As soon as he reached his rooms, he searched for an old school notebook and rushed to inscribe the poem from his flesh.

Setting down the words left him drained. His evening shower was a slow rhythmic thud on his back, cooling his overheated brain. It wasn’t long before he staggered out of the shower and into bed, skipping dinner completely for the first time in three years. The sagging mattress and creaky springs didn’t stop him from falling asleep instantly.

Without knowing why, he showed the poem to Lance. It was the first thing he’d written since dropping out of Yale and he had the dead weight feeling that it might be awful. He had no one else to talk to really. No one to ask an opinion. It wasn’t until he realized that he came to understand how isolated he really was now.

No friends outside of the bars and work, no realities nearby and not even a pet allowed in his building. The loneliness struck him all at once, hard in the pit of his stomach. He had carried the poem around all day, hoping to remember someone he could talk to. In the end, he let Lance see it, knowing that the sensitive lead singer was his best bet at an honest opinion.

"This is good." Lance said almost immediately scanning the lines. He rose in one fluid motion. "Hey, Acker! Check this out!"

"No!" Max said automatically, but it was to late. The guitarist had his hands on it and reading. He could feel his face flush in a way it hadn’t in years. High school was like this, he remember. That same pause before the punch was swung or that cutting line left the lips.

"This is some heavy shit man. Can we use it?"

"What?!"

"Yeah, it’s good. Take a look, Joey." The shaved kid passed it on .

"We can work with that."

As a unit they took of their instruments and started to jam. Max had never seen a band actually write a song, but that’s what was happening. They all of sudden just snapped together, riffing around each other until they found a sound that worked and went with it. After a few false starts they built a whole song and Lance kicked in with the vocals.

Riff came in for a minute, listened, then left. Came back with the boss. The boss watched, his eyes narrowing and a small smile curving on his lips. It wasn’t hard to recognize that statement. A money scheme was in the works. The band wound down, Lance winked at Max before turning to the boss through the proof glass.

"That’s our single boys!"

It still took days to turn out the perfect cut. The boss was very demanding. Everything had to sound great. Max didn’t mind. He liked having someone around to talk to and Lance was one of those open people you could say almost anything to and not feel like you were being judged. Didn’t hurt that a friend of his dropped in on the second day.

"Hey, I’m Anne Friedman. A friend of Lance’s." She appeared at the door. Long brown hair, blue-green eyes and a nose just a shade to big for her delicate face.

"Max Valentine. I’m working on the album. They’ve got a break in twenty, you can crash on the sofa, if you want to wait."

"Yeah, that’d be good. Thanks." Her voice isn’t so much soft as it is quiet.

Riff takes over the board for a minute so Max can get them both coffee, so he asks,

"I thought Lance came from the ‘burbs? This is a long way from home."

"I was in the area." Her smile is flawless and white. "My dad lives around here."

"Ah. So you came by just to see him?"

"And to get out the house, my stepmother was driving me crazy. Could I have a cup of that?"

He fetched another coffee and passed it to her, enjoying the smooth feel of her skin on his. She couldn’t be older then eighteen if she was Lance’s age which was young to his twenty six, but somehow, he gauged her to be almost in college.

"You’ve known Lance long?"

"Half-way to forever." Her laugh was deeper then her speaking voice. "We have a ton of mutual friends."

"Anne." Deadpan voice. Lance is stepping out of the recording booth. "What brings you here?"

"Looking for you. Wanted to see if all this actually happened."

"Well it did. Lunch?"

"You know it sugar."

A pit appears in Max’s stomach. By there easy way together, he can tell they’re dating or have at some point which makes Anne off limits. Not that she wasn’t anyway, he scolded himself. Don’t be a cradle robber. You don’t have anything to offer anyone, he continued. Let alone a pretty young thing like that.

Still, he’s glad that she’s back the next day and the day after that. She adds a warmth to the stuffy recording booth, makes it seem a little human. Her laughter is infectious, even Riff cracks a grin once and a while. The best news is Lance let’s it slip over lunch that they aren’t an item.

"How’s Monika?" He asks non-chalantely, mid way through chewing, but he’s not fooling anyone. It’s painfully obvious that the thought of this girl makes him break out in hives.

"She’s fine. Wonders when you’re going to call her. You know she thinks you guys are getting back together." Anne keeps her voice as even and cool, in that way that you know she hates Monika.

"Maybe." Lance says, which makes Anne very uncomfortable.

"She’s not the only one waiting for a call Lance."

There’s no answer, but pained look and rapid change of subject. Max realizes that he just missed a very important nuance, but the thought that Anne may be single keeps him from caring. To old, he tries to remind himself. She’s not even a high school graduate.

The last day of recording, Max doesn’t want to say goodbye. Not to Lance or Anne. In a short week, they’ve brought back the vibrancy Max hadn’t realized was missing. Now, they would leave him behind and his life would be colorless again.

"It was great working with you." He managed to mumble as the band files out for the last time, packing up everything to make way for the folk band that starts tomorrow.

"I’d like to stay in touch with you Max." Lance tells him suddenly on his way out. "I think we need your lyrics to balance out Acker’s stuff. The rest of the band agreed. We’d like you to be our lyricist."

"What?!"

"Well, a lot of bands who have people that write some of their stuff. We’d like you to do some of it. We’d keep a lot of our old stuff, but it would be a big help to have your songs in our repertoire." He flashes a crooked smile. " Besides, this way we can go out for bad coffee."

"I’d like that. Thanks." Max finally manages. A rush of blood to his cheeks and feels stupid for asking, but feels like he has to now that he has some ground. "Is Anne going to be around, too?"

Lance looked at him for a long hard minute, before breaking out in a big smile.

"Yeah. She’ll be back for December break. Did you know she’s actually twenty? They had to leave her back when she was real sick when she was little." The lead singer tipped Max a wink before waltzing out the door.

It took months for Max to realize the real impact Lance had made on his life. Anne did come back for winter break and she sought Max out by herself. He had moved into a slightly bigger apartment off the stipend from the few songs the band had taken from him. They had changed their name and were starting to make some tiny ripples in the community.

She found him in his new place, trying to cook a decent meal and failing miserably. The knock caught him by surprise and so did the visitor. Her clean high laugh, floated behind him into the kitchen. Carefully, she deftly showed him how to fix the disaster and even made the whole thing palatable.

They talked over the dinner and in the end it was Anne who came around to the crux of what the were really discussing.

"I like you a lot, Max, but I’d rather not be tied down when I went into college. Just in case." Her smile took the sting out of all her words.

"There are still a few things I have to work out too." he said, after getting over her bluntness.

"I’ll visit when I can. Maybe when we’re both a little more grown up, we can finish it together."

That dinner followed others, the most memorable was the greasy fast food that turned over their stomachs while they watched Fall from Glory premiere at the Living End, starting with Max’s song and wailing off from there into the bands incredible repertoire. It was a constant amazement to Max how well they jammed together, especially knowing as he did now, how many problems they had.

The change wasn’t just Anne though. It was his whole life view. Something in the way Lance had talked convinced him that there wasn’t room in his life for the obsessive worry that gnawed at him constantly. Instead of the baby steps back into life, he started to take running leaps. Soon the he would open up his own studio, maybe even take some clientele who were dissatisfied with his boss, but had potential. Riff had even indicated he would be willing to come work with Max should he ever decide to make the move.

Light had started to pervade Max’s life, sheltering him from the coldness that had once threatened to overtake him. And never in his life would he forget that he owed quite a lot of that to Lance. He was even one of the few people still calling him that. L.M. Lane had taken the stand.

By whatever name, he had a drawing quality that enhanced life and seemed to defy death. Max clung to that and through the rest of his time as lyricist for Fall from Glory, he respected Lance as the one who had changed him forever. It would one day grieve him to be the author of his closest friend’s eulogy.