Spin: A Novel

Chapter 1

Must Love Music

This is how I lose my dream job.

It’s the day before my thirtieth birthday when I get the call from The Line, only the most prestigious music magazine in the world, maybe the universe. OK, maybe Rolling Stone is number one, but The Line is definitely second.

I’ve wanted to write for The Line for as long as I can remember. It still blows me away that people get paid to work there since I’d pay good money just to be allowed to sit in on a story meeting. Hell, I’d sit in on a recycling committee meeting if it’d get me in the front door.

So, it’s no surprise that I almost fall off my chair when I see their ad in the Help Wanted section one lazy Sunday morning. I sprint to my computer and wait impatiently for my dial-up to connect. (Yes, I still have dial-up. It’s all this struggling writer can afford.) When the scratchy whine silences, I call up their webpage and click on the Work for Us! tab, as I have too many unsuccessful times before, and there it is. A job, a real job!

The Line seeks self-motivated writer for staff position. Must love music more than money because this job pays jack, brother! Send your CV and music lover credentials to [email protected].

I spend the next twenty-four hours agonizing over the music lover credentials portion of my application. How am I supposed to narrow down my musical influences to the three lines provided? Then again, how am I going to get a job writing about music if I can’t even list my favorite bands?

In the end I let iTunes pick for me. If I’ve listened to a song 946 times (which, incidentally, is the number of times I’ve apparently played KT Tunstall’s Black Horse and the Cherry Tree), I must really like it, right? Not a perfect system, but better than the over-thought-out lists sitting balled up in my wastepaper basket.

And it works. A few days later I receive an email with a written interview attached. I have forty-eight hours to complete the questionnaire and submit it. If I pass, I’ll get a real, in-person interview on The Line’s premises! Just the thought of it has me doing a happy dance all over my living room.

Thankfully, the questionnaire is a breeze. Pick five Dylan songs and explain why they’re great. Pick five Oasis songs and explain why they suck. What do you think the defining sounds of this decade will be? Go see a band you’ve never seen before and write five hundred words about it. Buy a CD from the country section and listen to it five times. Write five hundred words on how it made you feel.

I stay up all night chain-smoking cigarettes and working my way through two of my roommate Joanne’s bottles of red wine. She’s always buying wine (as an investment, she says), but she never drinks any of it. What a waste!

When the sun comes up, I read through what I’ve written, and if I do say so myself, it’s a thing of beauty. There isn’t a question I stutter over, an opinion I don’t have. I’ve even written it in The Line’s signature style.

I’ve been waiting for this opportunity forever, and I’m not going to fuck it up.

At least, not yet.

The next two weeks are agony. My brain is spinning with negative thoughts. Maybe I don’t really know anything about music? Maybe they don’t want someone who can merely parrot their signature style? Maybe they’re looking for some new style, and I’m not it? Maybe they should call me before I lose my goddamn mind!

When the spinning becomes overwhelming, I try to distract myself. I clean our tiny apartment. I invent three new ramen noodle soup recipes. I see a few bands and write reviews for the local papers I freelance for. I clean out my closet, sort all my mail, and return phone calls I’ve been putting off for months. I even write a thank-you letter to my ninety-year-old grandmother for the birthday check she sent me on my sister’s birthday.

I spend the rest of the time alternating between obsessively reading The Line’s website (including six years of back issues I’ve read countless times before) and watching a young star’s life explode all over the tabloids.

Amber Sheppard, better known as The Girl Next Door (or TGND for short), after the character she played from ages fourteen to eighteen on the situation comedy called—wait for it—The Girl Next Door, is Hollywood’s latest It Girl. When her show was canceled, she starred in two successful teen horror flicks, followed by a serious, Oscar-nominated performance for her turn as Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey. She’s been working nonstop since, and has four movies scheduled to premier in the next five months.

When she wrapped the fourth film just after her twenty-third birthday, she announced she was taking a well-deserved, undisclosed period of time off to relax and regroup.

And that’s when the shit hit the fan.

Anyone really seeking relaxation would rent a cabin in the woods and drop out of sight. But not TGND. She partied all night, slept all day, and dropped twenty pounds from one photograph to the next. There were rumors appearing on such reliable sources as people.com, TMZ, and Perez Hilton that she’s into some serious drugs. There were other rumors, of the Enquiring kind, that her family had staged an intervention and packed her off to rehab. It seems like there’s a new story, a new outrageous photograph, a new website devoted to her every move every day, and I read them all.

Such is the fuel that keeps my idling brain from going crazy as I wait and wait.

The call from The Line finally comes the day before my birthday at 8:55 in the morning.

Mornings are never good for me, and this morning my fatigue is compounded by the combination of another bottle of Joanne’s investment wine, and the riveting all-night television generated by TGND’s escape from rehab (turns out The Enquirer was right). She lasted two days before peeling off in her white Ford hybrid SUV, and the paparazzi who follow her every move captured it from a hundred angles. It was O.J. all over again (sans, you know, the whole murdering your ex-wife thing), and the footage played in an endless loop on CNN, etc., for hours. I’d finally tired of it around three. The phone shatters my REM sleep what feels like seconds later.

Mmmph?

Is this Kate Sandford?

Mmm.

"This is Elizabeth from The Line calling? We wanted to set up an interview?" Her voice rises at the end of each sentence, turning it into a question.

I sit bolt upright, my heart in my throat. You do?

Are you available at nine tomorrow?

Tomorrow. My birthday. Damn straight I’m available.

Yes. Yes, I’m available.

Great. So, come to our offices at nine and ask for me? Elizabeth?

That’s great. Perfect. I’ll see you then.

I throw back the covers, spring from bed, and break into my happy dance.

This is the best birthday present ever! I’m going to nail this! After years and years of writing for whoever would have me, I’m going to finally get to write for a real magazine! For the magazine. Yes, yes, yes!

Katie, what the hell are you doing? Joanne is standing in the doorway looking pissed. Her curly orange hair forms a halo around her pale face. She looks like Little Orphan Annie, all grown up. Her robe is even that red-trimmed-with-white combination that Annie always wears.

Celebrating?

Do you know what time it is?

I check the clock by my bedside. Nine?

That’s right. And what time do I start work today?

I know this is a trick question.

You don’t?

That’s right, it’s my day off. So why, pray tell, are you dancing around and whooping like you’re at a jamboree?

Despite the inquisition, my heart gives a happy beat. Because I just got the most fabulous job interview in the world.

Joanne isn’t diverted by my obvious happiness. I think the answer you were looking for is, ‘Because I’m an inconsiderate roommate who doesn’t care about anyone but herself.’

Joanne . . .

Just keep it down. She turns on her heel and storms away.

As I watch her leave, I wonder for the hundredth time why I’m still living with her. (I answered her in-search-of-a-roommate ad on craigslist three years ago, and we’ve had a love-hate relationship ever since.) Of course, she’s clean, pays her share of the rent on time, and never wakes me up when I’m trying to sleep in because she’s yelping with joy.

Then again, I’ve never seen Joanne yelp with joy . . .

Ohmygod! I have an interview at The Line!

I resume my whooping dance with the sound off.

I spend the rest of the day vacillating between extreme nervousness and supreme confidence. In between emotional fluctuations, I agonize over what I should wear to the interview. I lay the options out on my bed:

1) Black standard business suit that my mother gave me for my university graduation. She thought I’d have all kinds of job interviews to wear it to. Sorry, Mom.

2) Skinny jeans, kick-ass boots, T-shirt from an edgy, obscure nineties band, black corduroy blazer.

3) Black clingy skirt and gray faux-cashmere sweater with funky jewelry.

I settle on option three, hoping it strikes the right balance between professional and what I think the atmosphere at The Line will be: hip, serious, but not too serious.

In the late afternoon, I receive a text from my second-best friend, Greer.

U free 2nite?

No. Very important blah, blah am.

Must celebrate bday.

Bday 2morrow.

Aware. Exam in 2 days. Party 2nite.

No.

Insisting.

Must sleep. Need beauty for blah, blah.

Never be pretty enough to rely on looks for blah, blah. Still insisting.

LOL. Need new friend. Still can’t.

Expecting u @ F. @ 8. Won’t take no for answer.

No.

LOL. 1 drink.

It never ends with 1.

Will 2nite, promise.

Can’t.

I’m $$.

Well . . . maybe just 1.

Excellent. CU @ 8.

I throw down the phone with a smile, and try to decide whether any of my outfits will do for a night out with my university-aged friends.

I’m a nearly thirty-year-old with university-aged friends because the only way I’ve been able to survive since I graduated (and the bank stopped loaning me money) is to keep living like I did when I was a student, right down to scamming as much free food and alcohol as possible on the university wine-and-cheese circuit. I met Greer this way two groups of friends ago. She’s the only one who stuck post-graduation. She thinks I’m a fellow graduate student who writes music articles on the side to pay for my education and that tomorrow’s my twenty-fifth birthday.

My own-age friends have all moved to nicer parts of the city. They work in law firms and investment banks, have dark circles under their eyes and pale skin. Their annual salaries are twice what it cost me to educate myself, and the only wine and cheeses they go to are the cocktail parties given by their firms to woo new clients.

They mostly don’t approve of the way I live—the part they know about anyway—but I mostly don’t care. Because I’m doing it. I’m living my childhood dream of being a music writer. It’s not a well-paying life, but it’s the life I’ve chosen. On most days, I’m happy.

If I get this job at The Line, I’ll be over the freaking moon.

Shortly after eight, I meet Greer at our favorite pub in my number two outfit: skinny jeans tucked into burgundy boots, obscure-band T-shirt, and black corduroy blazer to keep the spring night at bay.

The pub has an Irish-bar-out-of-a-box feel to it (hunter green wallpaper, dark oak bar, mirrored Guinness signs behind it, a whiff of stale lager), but we like its laid-back atmosphere, cheap pints, and occasional Irish rugby team.

Greer is sitting on her usual stool flirting with the bartender. The Black Eyed Peas song I Gotta Feeling is playing on the sound system. She orders me a beer and a whiskey shot as I sit down next to her.

Hey, you promised one drink.

A shot’s not a drink. It’s just a wee introduction to drinking.

Greer is from Scotland. She has long auburn hair, green eyes, porcelain skin, and an accent that drives men wild. Sometimes I hate her.

Tonight she’s wearing a soft sweater the color of new grass that exactly matches her eyes and a broken-in pair of jeans that fits her tall, slim frame perfectly. I’m glad I took the time to blow out my chestnut-colored hair and put on the one shade of mascara that makes my eyes look sky blue. Nobody wants to be outshone at their almost-thirtieth-birthday party.

She clinks her shot against mine. Happy birthday, lass. Drink up.

I really shouldn’t, but . . . what the hell? Tomorrow is my birthday.

I drink the shot, and take a few long gulps of my beer to chase it down.

Thanks, Greer.

Welcome. So, tell me about this very important interview. Is it for a post-doc position?

A post-doc position? Oh, right, that bad job you get after your Ph.D. Biggest downside to the fake-student personality? Keeping track of my two lives.

Nope . . . Actually, I’m thinking of going in another direction. It’s a job writing for a music magazine.

Well, well, the bairn’s growing up.

Greer is always tossing out colloquial Scottish expressions like bairn (meaning child), steamin’ (meaning drunk), and her ultimate insult, don’t be a scrounger (meaning buy me a drink, you miserly bastard). Depending on the number of drinks she’s consumed, it’s sometimes impossible to understand her without translation.

Had to happen sometime.

The bartender, Steve, brings us two more shots that Greer pays for with a smile. He only charges her for about a quarter of what she drinks, but since I’m often the beneficiary of his generosity, who’s complaining?

She pushes one of the shots toward me.

No, I can’t.

A wee dram won’t hurt you.

There’s no way anyone actually says ‘wee dram’ anymore. That’s just for the tourists, right?

I canna’ break the code of honor of my country. Now drink up, lass, before I drink it for you.

I upend the shot and nearly choke on it when Scott claps me hard on the back. He’s a history major I met about a year ago at, you guessed it, a wine and cheese. We bonded while arguing over who had deeper knowledge of U2 and the Counting Crows (me, and me). His athletic body, sandy hair, and frank face are easy on the eyes, and given our mutual single status, I’m not quite sure why we’ve never hooked up. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s twenty-two, which puts him on the outside edge of my half-plus-seven rule. (30 ÷ 2 + 7 = 22. A good rule to live by to avoid age-inappropriate romantic entanglements.)

Scott orders another round. When it comes, he slides shot number three my way. I protest, but he flashes his blue eyes and wide smile, and talks me into it. Into that, and the next one. When Rob and Toni arrive a little while later, they buy the next two. And when those are gone, the room gets fuzzy and I lose count of the drinks that come next.

The rest of the night passes in a flash of images: Rob and Scott singing lewd rugby songs. Toni telling me she had a pregnancy scare the week before. Me blabbing on about how I’m going to nail my interview tomorrow, just nail it! Greer Coyote Ugly-ing it on the bar as Steve plies her with more shots. Someone dropping me off at my door, ringing the doorbell, and running away giggling. Joanne looking disappointed and resigned, then putting a blanket over me.

I lie on our living room couch with the room spinning around me, happy I have so many good friends, and an awesome job waiting for me to take it.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. I bring my watch to my face so I can see the glow-in-the-dark numbers. 3:40 a.m. I guess it’s today. Hey, it’s my birthday. Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday, happy birthday, happy birthday to me.

Katie!

Someone is shaking me violently.

Katie! Get up!

The shaking gets more violent.

Get orf me!

Katie, you have to get up. Now!

Joanne rips the blanket off my face, and my eyes are flooded with light.

What the hell’s wrong with you?

Katie, pay attention. You have an interview in fifteen minutes!

The world sinks slowly into my still drunk brain.

I. Have. An. Interview. In. Fifteen. Minutes.

Oh my God. The Line. The perfect job. The interview I have to nail. The interview I have in fifteen minutes.

I bolt out of bed and lurch toward the bathroom. The face that greets me in the mirror is a mess. My hair’s sticking out at all angles, and my eyes are ringed with last night’s mascara and eye shadow. I’m not completely sure, but I might also be a little green.

I take several deep breaths and command myself to pull it together. Under Joanne’s reproachful eye, I fly into a fury of preparation, washing my face vigorously while simultaneously brushing the aftertaste of last night out of my mouth. After a few strokes of my hairbrush, I whip my hair back into a loose twist and pick up the clothes still laid out on my unslept-in bed.

What happened to you last night? Joanne asks.

I slip into my skirt and pull the sweater over my head. Nothing.

Yeah, that’s obvious.

Thanks for waking me up.

You know, someday, I’m not going to be around to take care of you.

Joanne . . .

You’d better get out of here.

I take a last look at myself in the mirror (not so bad, considering) and run down to the street, searching desperately for a cab. I’d meant to take the subway to save money, but that plan’s clearly out the window.

In a bit of good luck, a cab shudders to a stop the first time I fling my hand in the air. As it jerks and stops its way downtown, I fight a bout of nausea and nervously watch the minutes tick by on the clock.

8:56. 8:57. 8:58. 8:59.

Please, please, please.

9:00.

Shit, shit, shit.

9:01.

Breathe. Nope, can’t breathe.

9:02.

Oh, thank God.

I throw money at the cabdriver and sprint across the street through the rush-hour traffic. Cars screech and horns blare, but I somehow make it across alive. In the glass-and-marble lobby, I blank on the floor I’m supposed to go to. I wait through 9:03 and 9:04 at the information counter before I’m at the front of the line. Twenty-ninth floor, thanks! The elevator finally arrives at 9:05; 9:06 and 9:07 are spent stopping at what seems like every single floor between the lobby and the twenty-ninth floor.

I hurry out of the elevator, fling open The Line’s glass door, and try to walk calmly to the receptionist’s desk. She has spiky purple hair and a ring through her nose. She can’t be more than nineteen.

Are you Kate?

Yes.

Oh good, you’re finally here.

It’s then that I notice the clock on the wall behind her.

9:15.

I’m so screwed.

I was stuck in traffic, I say weakly. Even to me it sounds like I said, The dog ate my homework.

"Yes, traffic can be bad at this time of day."

Yes.

They’re waiting for you in the Nashville Skyline room. It’s down that hall.

Thanks.

I walk down a long hall decorated with framed blow-ups of The Line’s past covers, passing a row of conference rooms. Abbey Road. Pet Sounds. Nevermind. Nashville Skyline.

OK. Here we go.

I check my reflection in the glass that frames an iconic shot of Dylan holding his guitar to his chest while he smiles down at the camera. Not quite the impression I wanted to make, but surely I’m not that color.

I knock on the door.

Come in.

I take a deep breath and walk in. There are six men and women seated around one end of a long oak slab. Another photo of Dylan, singing close-to-the-mike harmony with Joan Baez, dominates the wall behind them.

I smile nervously. Hi, I’m Kate Sandford. I’m sorry I’m late.

A small woman in her early twenties with short mousy brown hair rises to greet me. She’s wearing a tight black sweater dress that emphasizes her ample curves.

Hi, Kate. I’m Elizabeth. We spoke on the phone? Why don’t you have a seat?

I sit at the end of the table and face the group. I’m having trouble focusing on their faces.

Thank you so much for seeing me. I’m sorry about being late. Traffic.

We understand? This is Kevin, Bob, Cora, Elliott, and Laetitia? Got it? Great? Let’s begin?

Sure.

Kate, we’ve been reading your pieces, and we really like them, says a man in his early thirties who I think is named Bob. Or maybe it’s Elliott.

Thank you, Bob.

It’s Kevin.

Sorry about that.

"No problem. Why do you want to work at The Line ?"

I clear my throat. "Well, obviously, it’s always been a dream of mine. Of course, it would be. Anyway, I love music, and I’ve read The Line forever, and, I don’t know, do you believe in soul mates? Well, I’ve always kind of thought of this magazine as being my journalistic soul mate."

My heart starts to pound. What the hell is wrong with me? Soul mates? I actually used the words soul mates in an interview?

I scan their faces nervously. Cora (or is it Laetitia?) looks like she’s trying to keep herself from laughing.

What do you think you could bring to the magazine? What do you have that’s different from everyone else out there? Elizabeth’s lilting voice brings back the nausea I suppressed in the cab.

Let’s try this again. With feeling.

Well . . . I have this real pure love of music, you know? Like on my application? I had a lot of trouble narrowing down my musical influences because I really love all kinds of music. Like, I might dig a Britney Spears song, and the next minute be listening to, you know, Korn.

Did I just say I liked Britney Spears’s music?

Cora/Laetitia isn’t even bothering to cover up her laughter now, and I can’t blame her. Elizabeth’s way of speaking seems to be catching, and I’m becoming less articulate by the minute. I feel like I’m about to throw up.

Talk to me about the bands you’ve been reviewing lately. Who stands out? asks an older man whose name I can’t even begin to guess at.

Well, I really like this little neighborhood band called . . . um . . . hold on . . . it’ll come to me in a minute . . . The color creeps up my face as I draw a complete blank. Um . . . I’m sure I’ll remember their name in a second . . . Anyway, they’re this great mix of . . . you know, that band that’s always on the radio now . . .

Total panic. I’ve known and remembered more about music than most teenage boys, and I can’t remember the name of one of the biggest bands of that very moment. One of their songs was even playing on the radio in the cab on the way here.

I’m completely done for.

Kate? Are you all right? Elizabeth asks.

I feel a little dizzy. Could I excuse myself for a minute to use the bathroom?

Bob or Kevin, or whoever he is, frowns, but Elizabeth tells me where it is, and says they’ll be waiting for me.

I walk quickly past Pet Sounds and Nevermind to the bathroom. The sharp odor of disinfectant catches in my nostrils. I splash water on my face, and grip the side of the sink as the room spins around me.

This cannot be happening! Please, please, please. Not today, not today, not today.

My stomach lurches, and I bolt into one of the stalls and throw up.

And up.

And up.

When I’m done, I slump to the floor and press my aching head against the cold tile wall, wishing I could disappear. The best day of my life has turned into the worst in an instant. I can’t believe the interview I’ve waited half a lifetime for is coming to this.

Kate? Are you in here?

Elizabeth. Fantastic. Please, please, let a hole in the ground open up and swallow me. Maybe it can take me right down to hell, where I belong.

I’ll be out in a minute.

I struggle to stand, and the room begins to spin again. I lurch over the bowl and empty the remainder of my stomach’s contents.

Elizabeth raps on the door. Kate. What’s going on in there? Kate?

I just feel a little sick . . .

I throw up again, and this time what comes out doesn’t resemble anything I’ve ever had to eat or drink and leaves a rancid, metallic taste in my mouth.

You’re drunk, right?

What? No! I just ate something bad. I think it was sushi.

I can smell it on you? The alcohol?

As her words sink in, I slide back to the floor in horror, my legs too weak to hold me.

Maybe this is none of my business? But I’ve seen this before? There are good places, you know? Like for people with problems with alcohol?

I’ll be out in a minute, OK?

I could give you a name? Like of a group? You know, AA?

I just need a minute, I whisper. Just a minute.

I don’t think there’s any point in continuing with the interview? When you’re ready you can show yourself out?

I listen to her leaving the bathroom, immobilized.

I know I have to get out of here, but I don’t have the strength.

This is the worst, worst day of my life.

My thirtieth birthday is the worst day of my life.

Chapter 2

Redemption Song

When I finally pick myself up off the floor, I slink out of the building and somehow make it back to my apartment and my bed.

And that’s where I stay for the next two days. I don’t answer my phone. I ignore all texts. The only email I open is the formal Thanks, but no thanks I receive from The Line.

When I can’t stand to be in bed anymore, I move to the living room couch and watch television twenty out of every twenty-four hours in a depressed wine haze.

There’s a lot to watch. After the escape-from-rehab-high-speed-chase fiasco, TGND disappeared. The speculation is that she’s holed up somewhere with her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Connor Parks, an actor eight years her senior.

Connor’s career exploded when he made the first Young James Bond movie four years ago, and he now makes ten million dollars a picture. He’s living like it too, having apparently rented (some sources say bought) an island in the South Pacific, and this is where the press speculates endlessly that TGND is hiding.

How can you watch that shit all day? Joanne asks in her twenty-seven-going-on-forty voice when she finds me in a nest of blankets on the couch for the fifth morning running.

I kick an empty wine bottle under the couch. What do you care?

I don’t. But it might be nice to be able to watch my own TV once in a while.

Ah, crap. Who knew Joanne had feelings?

I’m sorry, Joanne. I don’t mean to be such a bitch.

She gives me a thin smile. Apology accepted on one condition.

What?

You take a shower, get dressed, and go outside.

That sounds like a lot of conditions.

Do we have a deal?

Deal.

And because Joanne is right, I take a shower and go outside for the first time in a week. The air is clean and mild in the way it only is in spring. The first buds are on the trees, and everyone on the street is smiling, or at least it seems that way.

For the first time in a week, I’m smiling too. It’s hard to wallow in self-pity with warm sunlight on your face and the scent of cherry blossoms in the air.

I walk through my neighborhood, thinking about the state I’m in. Where my life is going. How I’ve been chasing a dream for eight long years without really getting anywhere. Something has to give, and I have a feeling I know what it is.

So, when I get