Suddenly, Amos and Asher shifted out of their seats, effusively greeting a man who approached our table. I couldn’t see his face, his back was to me, but he used his hands aggressively as he spoke, with a loud Jersey accent. My chest thumped, faster and faster, and I bit down hard, tasting blood and metal in my mouth. Asher gestured in my direction, and the man turned toward me with a wide smile. He looked the same, like he’d rolled around inside a vintage shop, but an expensive one. My mouth parted in the air—my throat strangled with heat. A loud ringing blared in my ears, and my heart pounded inside my skull.
The paparazzi were camped outside Thompson Street, and I was the other half of their target. Tonight was a super-problematic time for PTSD to pop on by for a visit, but I didn’t blame her. I could feel every inch of my body wrapping itself up in distress, like a siren sound warning me to hide, to hold myself under the table, to exhale horrifying screams so that others could save me. Instead, I gripped one hand over the other with white-knuckled fists, letting my nails etch onto the backs of my hands—an attempt to feel physical pain, an attempt to keep my body upright and glued to my seat instead of folding into a panic attack.
“Maggie, this is Cole Wyan,” Asher said.
Cole smiled in my direction, and his eyes widened the moment he met my face. His expression shifted back to neutral just as quickly, and with a sickening smile, he extended his hand down to mine.
43
TWENTY-NINE
I STOOD UP ON THE stage at the Bowery Electric—making it to the stage of my dreams at twenty-nine. I was uncharacteristically nervous at first—but there was pressure on my shoulders—my chest thumping against having the largest crowd that had ever gathered simply for me. Just hours prior, Garrett had texted me that he couldn’t make it—there was a burgeoning medical supplies company in San Francisco that his dad wanted to acquire, and Garrett needed to stay there. I texted him back that it was fine, in lowercase, without an exclamation mark, which, if you’re listening (men), means the opposite of fine.
Over nine months ago, we had parted with a long kiss before he left at five in the morning, neither of us knowing what our bodies wrapped around each other meant. We texted often, but neither mentioned that night. He had been in San Francisco longer than he was supposed to, working eighty-hour weeks, and he was due back in time for my show. I had put too much pressure on the idea of seeing him again, so even as my career was about to take flight, on this big booming stage there was a large ache in my heart.
The song I had written for Garrett, “Let’s Lie,” left my lips, fueled by a newfound bitterness in my veins. As I finished the song, the air got sucked out of my angry lungs. My wide eyes blinked back a famous face, a genius whose indie-folk lyrics had inspired many of my first songs. Cole Wyan. I owned all of his CDs. In high school, I downloaded his demos on LimeWire. This was the extent to which I worshipped Cole’s music and his melancholic indie-folk vibe: I risked being caught by the FBI to hear his rarities and B-sides. He was a vulnerable and prolific singer-songwriter, who also produced a handful of artists under his Power Groove label—many of them female artists who I admired.
He carried himself with a Venice Beach vibe: I might look like I don’t embrace personal hygiene and I shop at Goodwill, but if you look closer, you’ll see I’m wearing a $500 beanie. He had a cherubic face with a wild mop of sandy-blond hair, with gold and leather bracelets hugging his tattooed wrists.
Cole grinned up at my glittery, wide eyes like he was Moses and I was the Promised Land. Finally, right place, right time—chest pounding, perfect out-of-this-galaxy vocals, yearning lyrics, someone important watching. It had only taken me twenty-nine years.
Cole waited for me after my show, nervously chewing off his chipped black nail polish with his face hiding behind the glow of his phone. He knew that I would approach him. And the second I did, he looked up from his phone with a dry smile.
“You know what you are?” he asked, fully prepared to tell me. “You’re like a manic pixie dream-girl version of Fiona Apple. And I’m going to change your life.”
He said it, and I believed him, wholly.
Over the next few months, Cole’s enthusiasm for me only grew stronger, which made me feel like the most talented woman alive. What followed were writing sessions, incessant text messages, and FaceTiming at all hours of the night—his nervous gusto, 5-Hour Energy drinks, microdosing on shrooms, and Adderall consumption keeping him and me up while the rest of the world slept. Cole inspired me to leave a little bit of my softer folksy side behind and lean into heavier sounds that I had previously shied away from. He inspired me to experiment with my sound. I would spend nights in front of my computer, layering my demos with a grungy edge, bringing angry instruments into the once-quieter spaces of my favorite tracks. He came to watch me play at my usual dive bar, sitting in a corner while eyes floated toward him. He would react with his hands in the air—a “you CAN’T be real” sort of exclamation—as I played every song I’d ever been proud of. There was a safeness that I felt with him. Cole was married to his gorgeous high school sweetheart, so the knowledge that a man simply appreciated a woman for her talent allowed me to drop my guard. I had roamed through the music world without a mentor, and finding one this late in the game was like being rescued after nearly thirty years on a desert island.
After a few months of being emboldened by Cole’s guidance, he let me know that I would record his favorite song, “Let’s Lie,” in his studio, and then another two tracks in the weeks to come—so we could get my EP out into the world as soon as possible. There was even a cherry on top of this life-changing news: I would open for Cole Wyan on his North American tour. Gone were the days of playing half-empty dive bars. This was the birth of Maggie Vine, the professional singer-songwriter.
We recorded “Let’s Lie” in a real studio a few weeks before my thirtieth birthday. A stupid smile stayed on my face as my guitar was mic’ed separately from my mouth in the vocal isolation booth. There wasn’t pantyhose tugged onto the mic’s windscreen. My body wasn’t hunched inside my apartment’s tiny closet in an attempt to get a semiprofessional sound. This was the real deal. This was Making It. Cole was making the real thing happen the way it was meant to. When other producers would pop their heads in to say hi, Cole would tell them that he had just discovered the Next Big Thing, pointing to me.
But he said it in a way that put no attention on me, and all the attention on himself. I started to see another side of him, and I started to see him as human. His imposter syndrome was the amalgamation of an insecure kid who became the most powerful person in a room.
After his sound engineer stepped out of the studio to go on break for lunch, I sat with my bony knees pointed inward as he played back “Let’s Lie.” Cole sat across from me on a black stool in front of the mixing board, his eyes shining at me as the pre-chorus to “Let’s Lie” swelled. I tugged at a loose thread on the tufted couch below me, a mixture of self-consciousness swirling with thrilling pride—I had never heard myself professionally produced. This was the one song that I didn’t layer with a heavier sound—it was delicate in all the right places, with the quiet swelling of acoustic guitar and tambourine, using reverb to give the song a dreamy, thickening air of romance. It was perfect.
Cole leaned back, pinching his eyebrows together. He energetically toggled with the sound effects on the board in front of him.
“What if we try this?”
Inside the chorus, there was now a gunshot in a space where a sparkling tambourine had once sounded.
I shook my head no, emphatically.
“Really? I think it gives the sound some mystery. Brings Mazzy Star into a gunfight.”