A Song for Julia

you when you needed us. And you went wild. I bet you got laid a lot.”
    Crank laughed, and I did too, and suddenly we were all laughing, even Sean.
    After a few moments, Sean turned to Crank. His eyes were wide, and he did something I’d never seen him do before. He met Crank’s eyes, dead on. “Crank … can we ask Mom to come home?”
    Crank’s eyes watered suddenly, and he whispered, “Yeah. Let’s do it, little brother.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

    I love the song (Crank)
    It was late by the time Julia and I headed out from my Dad’s. We huddled together on the train ride, then kissed goodbye at Park Street where I switched to the Green Line train to head back to Roxbury.
    I slept like the dead that night. The next morning—well, that’s a relative term, it was almost noon—we loaded up the van and headed over to the studio.
    I was taking a short smoke break when she called.
    “You’re not going to believe this,” Julia said. “I got a call from my sister Carrie last night.”
    I shifted my phone to my right ear and waved a hand to Serena, signaling 5 minutes. “How’s she doing?”
    “She’s all right. Ready to leave home, I think. She’s been accepted early decision at Columbia. She graduates in June. But anyway … here’s the thing. After I refused to go to San Francisco for Thanksgiving … my father bought tickets for the whole family. They’re coming here.”
    My eyes widened. “You for real?” I said, as I shook a cigarette out of the pack and lit it.
    “Yes.”
    “So will I be meeting your parents?”
    “Are we ready for that?”
    “Why not? Your dad was an ambassador? Doesn’t intimidate me. My dad’s a Boston cop.”
    She laughed, a beautiful, rich sound that I’d love to hear a thousand times a day. But I was out of time.
    “Crank!” Serena called. “Time!”
    “Yeah, yeah, I’ll be right there,” I called back. “I gotta go. Talk later?”
    “Bye!” she said.
    I slapped the phone closed and walked back into the studio. We were recording at Division in Somerville. We did our original EP at some crappy studio over in Jamaica Plain. This was more like it. World class, really. Expensive as shit, too. We had 4 hours to record, re-record, edit and perfect the new song. And I was determined to do it. This was our chance to make a serious frickin’ impression.
    Jon, the engineer, had called his buddy at Division records after he heard our first run through this morning. That had apparently generated another call, and shortly after, Jon gave us the news. Ron Murray, the head of Division Records, wanted to stop in and hear our final take.
    I was sweating bullets. But we had it together today. We were as good as we’d ever been, and if there was ever a day for him to show up, it was today.
    Inside, I switched my phone off and gulped back some water. Mark fingered his bass and then said, “Dude, something’s different about you.”
    Serena looked over the top of her horn-rimmed glasses at Mark. “He’s in love,” she said. She’s been wearing the glasses for a couple days. Not prescription. She just liked them.
    Mark rolled his eyes. “Whatever, man. Drugs are more reliable than that shit.”
    “Do me a favor,” I said. “Everybody shut the hell up, and let’s play. Jon, you ready?”
    The sound engineer, sitting at the panel on the other side of the glass, gave a thumbs up.
    “All right … let’s do this.”
    I pointed to Pathin to signal him, and he tapped the snare drum to count us in, and then we played. Serena had pushed this after the second time we played “Julia, Where Did You Go?” in front of a live audience. She’d argued that we needed to record a single right away. It’s not that our audiences hadn’t liked our music before. But they’d never reacted like this, and at least a hundred people had posted on our website, asking when we were going to release a single. No one had ever asked that before. It was good: a hard driving song, with an angry, tense edge, but highly sexually charged. I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit that it’s the best song I’ve ever written.
    The question now was—would Ron Murray agree? We hadn’t expected an executive from the record company to come down. He had the ability to get us released as a single, if he thought the music would go. So, I focused on the music and nothing else. But as I played, I thought of her. I thought of her, in the dark; shadow snowflakes running across the ceiling as she told her story,