Like “Versions of Me,” his great early song about playing poseur and then wondering why no one knew the real you. He already let the ironic twist come in, the self-admonishment that made him such an appealing songwriter. When he first played this song for Denise, they were sitting in the kitchen of Casa Real. It was late, they had been out at a party. Denise followed Nik in, drunkenly shushing each other even though their mother was still out on a late shift and they were the only ones home. Denise walked straight to the pantry and took out a box of Wheat Thins. She stood with the pantry door open and gnashed a steady stream of salty squares between her teeth. This was her strategy to avoid room spins and subsequent hangovers. She always crammed as manystarches in her stomach as she could before she made any attempts to go horizontal. And she always woke up sixteen and fresh-faced.
Nik held his guitar by the neck as he hoisted himself up on the old aquamarine tiled counter. He rested the guitar against his lap and attempted to reach in his jacket pocket for his cigarettes—he shifted his pick to teeth and tried again. He then replaced the pick with a cigarette and started to play. Denise didn’t stop eating her crackers as she walked over to the narrow transom window above the sink and pushed it open.
“I’m not gonna smoke it,” he said without looking up. She put her hand in the Wheat Thins box again and watched him strum. “You want to hear a new song?” he said, looking up. She nodded, leaning against the sink. He began to play “Versions of Me,” and all at once Denise’s very familiar but distant brother became someone else. This was truly the moment when she saw how different he was from everyone else she knew, including herself. He, just by singing his song, could change how she saw the world. He became a vivid human to her, someone who understood her as yet unnamed alienation. She had, all at once, a deep faith in his perception, as he pinpointed the way she often felt, angry at the world for misunderstanding her while playing at deliberately misrepresenting herself. He stopped and shrugged. He lit his cigarette and took a long, proud drag.
Brother is a rock star.
“I love it. It’s great!” she said, still chewing.
He smiled.
“Your first hit!”
“A chart-topper,” Nik said, with a sarcasm about his chancesat success that would soon be replaced with something more, well, unusual.
The moment stood out to Denise for other reasons as well. She realized then that he was good at this, songwriting, in a way he never was at guitar playing. He had figured this out, while she was still nowhere.
Denise really should call someone.
She sat down at Nik’s worktable, a huge unfinished piece of wood set on two sawhorses and pushed against the wall. His razor-point black pens of various widths and sharpened General’s Cedar Pointe pencils were neatly lined up. Scissors, X-Acto blades, erasers, homemade wheat paste, double-sided photo tape, rubber cement, and Tombow Mono Adhesive were all within reach. A ream of acid-free pure white paper, and off to the side the white Royal manual typewriter with the lazy
a
that he used to type his formal entries in the Chronicles. Evidence of the Chronicles was everywhere around her. The earlier volumes were shelved in chronological order starting in the garage downstairs (1970s–2003). But he kept the volumes of the current year in a neat row on a shelf above his desk. On the walls near the desk she could see the framed album covers, posters, master images for label art, photos, and pasted-up fake news clippings. And under her hands and all in front of her was Nik’s clear, inviting wood desk. All set up for work.
His archive oppressed her. She needed a chronicle of her own, with her own opposite silly penchant for reality and memory and ordinary facts. Because that was all she could think to do with what had transpired. She must conclude it liberated her in