I’d been painting apartments in between music gigs, but I knew after six years in the business that most people don’t paint anything at Christmas. It had been my usual goal to save enough during the summer and fall to carry me through the holidays and well into January, when things would pick up again. But the intestinal parasite I’d caught that October had cost me fifteen-hundred uninsured bucks to kill, so there went the savings. The flyers I papered my neighborhood with weren’t producing any results, and all of my painter friends were out of work, too, so I couldn’t sign on with another crew until my business picked up. It was December 19. Prospects seemed bleak.
The luck turned at 4:30 p.m. Eric, a friend of mine who worked for an ad agency, called and said he had a client who needed a remix of a jingle I’d done for Publisher’s Clearinghouse earlier in the year. Jingles are a musician’s dream. The song I’d done for Eric’s client in April took me all of 30 seconds to compose in my head and had netted me a check for $11,000. It was like winning the lottery. It was like crack. I wanted to do it again and again.
“Are you interested?” Eric asked.
“Yes.”
“Good. They want it five seconds shorter, and they want it with a bigger sound than what you did in April.”
“Can do.”
“Here’s the deal, though—it’s a spec thing. If they like it, it’s $5,000. If they don’t, you get nothing.”
“They’ll like it.”
“Good. I need it by tomorrow.”
“OK.”
The sun came on in my heart. I quickly booted up all my studio stuff and got to work with the guitars and keyboards. By 8 p.m. I had a great version of the jingle minus the five seconds. My home studio didn’t have sufficient outboard gear to get a big sound, though, so I booked time in one of those 50-buck-an-hour midtown studios and mixed my song there, spending most of what little cash I had left in the house. At 3 a.m. I had a big fat sound ready to go. I dropped it off at Eric’s that morning.
And waited. Two days went by. Not a good sign. Finally, on the third day, Eric called.
“Bad news,” he said. “They didn’t go for it. I’m really sorry.”
I was stunned. It was as if he’d told me someone had died. After I got off the phone, I sat there in shock for a few minutes. I couldn’t accept it. They’d bought the first jingle; what had stopped them from buying the second? I’d already had that money spent in my head. Gifts, rent, food, a little savings, a movie or two, money in the bank. I really needed gloves, too. Now, nothing.
I lurched out of the house and out onto Broadway in the freezing December air, walking up and down the streets with no destination. It was snowing, and as it got dark, it snowed harder. People dashed by all wrapped up in scarves and hats, people with money to pay their way in the world. Thoughts skittered around in my head like beads of water on a hot skillet. It was always going to be “no,” it would always be endless scraping for money, and I would end up an old toothless buzzard in the South Bronx in an unheated apartment with cracked walls and a bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, eating a can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup out of the can in my boxers and t-shirt.
Finally I leaned up sideways against a building and just stood there paralyzed, tears rolling down the face. I didn’t give a damn who saw me. I was a bum anyway—what difference did it make?
Fuck it.
I decided to jump off the George Washington Bridge into the icy Hudson and kill myself, get it over with. I actually started making a mental list of who would get my stuff after I died.
I don’t know how long I remained leaning against the building, but the cement was making me cold and my hair was full of snow. I ducked into the Food Emporium. The harsh fluorescent lights stabbed my eyes but I decided to spend my last couple of bucks on a bagel, which I’d wash down with a hot cup of coffee down at Twin Donut a couple of blocks away. No sense killing yourself on an empty stomach, last meal and so on. While I was perusing the bagels, the Beatles’ “I’ll Follow The Sun” came on the store’s sound system. It soothed me like a lullaby. Oh, beautiful Beatles, there-for-me-Beatles, fuck you rich-and-successful Beatles. But I love you and I love “I’ll Follow The Sun.”
“And now the time has come/And so, my love I must go,” John and Paul sang. Yes, I must go, the time has come, I thought to myself. As the song went on, though, it occurred to me if I were dead, I’d never get to hear the Beatles again. So I decided to live, and hustle some money together somehow, some way, and try, try again. The bagel and coffee helped.
I shuffled home in the dark afterward. My roommates weren’t there and the Christmas tree wasn’t lit. The little red light on my answering machine was blinking, though, so I pressed play and heard this message:
“Hey, Josh, it’s Eric. Listen, I had a little time today so I fed your remix through this compressor we have and beefed up the sound a little. I played it for the client and told him you’d re-recorded it. He totally loved it. Come by tomorrow and you can pick up your check for $5,000.”
There is no smile like a $5,000 smile, and no Christmas like a $5,000 Christmas.
