A Song for Julia

list of people to talk with today?
    “Mitch? Hey, it’s Julia. Okay … we’re on American Airlines. Flight gets in at 10:05 A.M. Should we cab to the office? Oh! Great. Well, I guess we’ll see you tomorrow then! And Mitch? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You have no idea how much I owe you.”
    She listened for a second then laughed. “All right. Happy Thanksgiving to you, too.”
    She hung up the phone, then sat back and smiled.
    I was gritting my teeth by this time. I lit another cigarette. I don’t normally smoke this much, but she was pissing me off.
    “Spill,” I said.
    She smiled. “Allen Roark is taking us to meet the president of White Dog Records tomorrow.”
    I caught my breath, trying to process what she’d just said. “Allen Roark … the Allen Roark?”
    She nodded.
    “Mitch played the song for him this morning. And so Roark called the President of White Dog, told him we had to meet right away … and … so you and I are flying to LA in the morning.”
    I drove. And took a drag off my cigarette. And drove some more. She looked at me, waiting for me to respond. I took another drag off my cigarette and then spoke.
    “Is this the part where I say I’m sorry? I should never have doubted you?”
    She looked thoughtful then said, “Why don’t we save that for when you really piss me off.”
    I burst into a laugh and shook my head. “I can’t believe we’re meeting Allen Roark tomorrow.”
    “And the president of White Dog Records,” she said. Rubbing it in.
    “He really liked the song?”
    “Would he set up a meeting on this short notice if he didn’t? On Thanksgiving day, of all days?”
    “I guess not. Can I tell Serena?”
    She looked over at me, raising her eyebrows. “Serena doesn’t doubt me.”
    “Oh shit,” I said. “I’m sorry. I really am.”
    “I’ll forgive you eventually.”
    “Do we have to go eat with your parents? Let’s shack up in a hotel and have wild mad makeup sex instead.”
    She grinned at me. “We have to be up early tomorrow.”
    “You’re killing me.”
    And so, she navigated from her MapQuest directions, and I drove us into the wilds of the suburbs of Boston, where I’d spent exactly no time at all during my life. I was a pit rat, and spent too many years hanging with the punks and homeless kids around Cambridge and Somerville to ever be comfortable out in the pristine, upper middle class suburbs. I kept expecting to get run over by a horde of soccer moms driving SUVs. But here we were, driving up to a five-star restaurant with an award winning chef and her parents. I hoped we could keep it short. She could use the excuse of the early flight. Of course, her father would then wonder how she paid for first class tickets to LA. Better not mention the flight, I thought, if he was the one getting the bill.
    Even that was hard to get my mind around. Who gives their kids credit cards? Especially one with a limit high enough you could just buy four thousand-dollar airplane tickets at the drop of a hat? That was crazy. And how had she arranged the meeting with Allen Roark, or even gotten him to listen to our song? He must have a thousand bands a week sending him demos. Julia had been the band’s manager for exactly two days. And she’d already arranged that. In some ways, it didn’t even seem fair. Was it really all about who you knew?
    No. Maybe getting us to Roark this quickly was about who she knew. But him to like the song? That was all about the music. And I could own that.
    We finally got there. And I spied a family going in. The men were in suits and ties. The ladies were in dresses.
    I looked down at myself. “I’m really not dressed right for this, am I?”
    “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Unless you showed up with a million dollars in the back of your own limo, my parents will never approve of you. Not much we can do about that.”
    I looked over at her and grinned. “Who knows, Julia? You got us a meeting with Allen Roark and the head of White Dog Records? Maybe one of these days we’ll roll up together in the back of a limo.”
    She laughed. “Don’t get your hopes up too high.”
    And then I said something I shouldn’t have, something I’d never said before to a woman. It just came out, and the moment it did, my heart started racing in panic. “I think I’m falling in love with you.”
    She froze. Literally … just … froze in place. Her eyes went off to the side, and it reminded me so much of Sean I wanted to