Freedom. Jonathan Franzen
“I have no idea,” Patty said.
“She’s too supportive,” Eliza said. “I can feel her willing me to succeed.”
“That’s very bad of you,” Richard said to Patty. “You need to will her to fail.”
“OK,” Patty said. “I want you to fail. Can you do that? You seem to be pretty good at it.”
Eliza looked at her in surprise. Patty was surprised with herself, too. “Sorry, I’m going in my room now,” she said.
“First let’s see her fail,” Richard said.
But Eliza was unstrapping and unplugging.
“You need to practice with a metronome,” Richard told her. “Do you have a metronome?”
“This was a really bad idea,” Eliza said.
“Why don’t you play something?” Patty said to Richard.
“Some other time,” he said.
But Patty was recalling the embarrassment she’d felt when he produced the scrapbook. “One song,” she said. “One chord. Play one chord. Eliza says you’re amazing.”
He shook his head. “Come to a show sometime.”
“Patty doesn’t go to shows,” Eliza said. “She doesn’t like the smoke.”
“I’m an athlete,” Patty said.
“Right, so we’ve seen,” Richard said, giving her a significant look. “Basketball star. What are you—forward? Guard? I have no idea what constitutes tall in a chick.”
“I’m not considered tall.”
“And yet you are quite tall.”
“Yes.”
“We were just about to leave,” Eliza said, standing up.
“You look like you could have played basketball,” Patty told Richard.
“Good way to break a finger.”
“That’s actually not true,” she said. “It hardly ever happens.”
This was not an interesting or plot-advancing thing to have said, she sensed it immediately, how Richard didn’t actually give a shit about her playing basketball.
“Maybe I’ll go to one of your shows,” she said. “When’s the next one?”
“You can’t go, it’s too smoky for you,” Eliza said unpleasantly.
“It’s not going to be a problem,” Patty said.
“Really? That’s news.”
“Bring earplugs,” Richard said.
In her room, after she heard them go out, Patty began to cry for reasons she felt too desolate to fathom. The next time she saw Eliza, thirty-six hours later, she apologized for having been such a bitch, but Eliza was in excellent spirits by then and told her not to worry about it, she was thinking about selling her guitar and was happy to take Patty to hear Richard.
His next show was on a weeknight in September, at a poorly ventilated club called the Longhorn, where the Traumatics were opening for the Buzzcocks. Practically the first person Patty saw when she and Eliza arrived was Carter. He was standing with a headlock on a grotesquely pretty blond girl in a sequined minidress. “Oh shit,” Eliza said. Patty waved bravely to Carter, who flashed his bad teeth and ambled toward her, a picture of affability, with the sequins in tow. Eliza put her head down and pulled Patty away through a knot of cigarette-puffing male punks and up against the stage. Here they found a fair-haired boy who Patty guessed was Richard’s famous roommate even before Eliza said, in a loud monotone, “Hello Walter how are you.”
Not knowing Walter yet, Patty had no idea how unusual it was that he returned this greeting with a cold nod rather than a friendly midwestern smile.
“This is my best friend Patty,” Eliza said to him. “Can she stand here with you for a second while I go backstage?”
“I think they’re about to emerge,” Walter said.
“Just for one second,” Eliza said. “Just watch out for her. OK?”
“Why don’t we all go back there together,” Walter said.
“No, you need to hold my place here,” Eliza told Patty. “I’ll be right back.”
Walter watched unhappily as she burrowed off through bodies and disappeared. He didn’t look nearly as nerdy as Eliza had led Patty to expect—he was wearing a V-necked sweater and had an overgrown curly mop of reddish blond hair and looked like what he was, i.e., a first-year law student—but he did stand out among the punks with their mutilated hair and garments, and Patty, who was suddenly self-conscious about her own clothes, which she’d always liked until one minute ago, was grateful for his ordinariness.
“Thank you for standing here with me,” she said.
“I think we’ll be standing here for quite a while now,” Walter said.
“It’s nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you, too. You’re the basketball star.”
“That’s me.”
“Richard told me about you.” He turned to her. “Do you do a lot of drugs?”
“No! God. Why?”
“Because your friend does.”
Patty didn’t know what to do with her facial expression. “Not around me she doesn’t.”
“Well, that’s what she’s going backstage for.”
“OK.”
“I’m sorry. I know she’s your friend.”
“No, it’s interesting to know that.”
“She seems to be very well funded.”
“Yeah, she gets it from her parents.”
“Right, the parents.”
Walter seemed so preoccupied with Eliza’s disappearance that Patty fell silent. She was feeling morbidly competitive again. She was barely even aware yet of being interested in Richard, and still it struck her as unfair that Eliza might be using more than just herself, her native half-pretty self—that she might be using parental resources—to hold Richard’s attention and buy access to him. How dumb about life Patty was! How far behind other people! And how ugly everything on the stage looked! The naked cords, and the cold chrome of the drums, and the utilitarian mikes, and the kidnapper’s duct tape, and the cannonlike spotlights: it all looked so hard core.
“Do you go to a lot of shows?” Walter said.
“No, never. Once.”
“Did you bring some earplugs?”
“No. Do I need them?”
“Richard’s very loud. You can use mine. They’re almost new.”
From his shirt pocket he produced a baggie containing two whitish foam-rubber larvae. Patty looked down at them and did her best to smile nicely. “No, thank you,” she said.
“I’m a very clean person,” he said earnestly. “There’s no health risk.”
“But then you won’t have any for yourself.”
“I’ll tear them in half. You’ll want to have something for protection.”
Patty watched him carefully divide the earplugs. “Maybe I’ll just hold them in my hand and wait and see if I need them,” she said.
They stood there for fifteen minutes. Eliza finally came slithering and wiggling