She woke up to something clattering on the floor, and she instinctively cursed, feeling around for her phone that probably fell off her bed.
Christine's heart leapt, and for a moment she panicked, assessing where exactly she had fallen asleep. It wasn't the most comfortable thing, definitely not a bed, but at least there was a pillow and blanket to keep her warm. She was on some kind of couch that unfolded, maybe a daybed or a futon.
Her eyes focused on the rectangular acoustic panels dotting the wall to reduce any reverb- around the same time, her ears registered a computer tower across the room humming away. A portable cardioid microphone clipped to the edge of the desk. A Minimoog synthesizer on its own table perpendicular to the desk, forming a large 'L' shape that took up most of the room, and a couple of portable keyboards on the table. Some patch cables were plugged into the synthesizer, and some were strewn around the floor, slightly camouflaged by an expensive-looking, but stained, Persian rug. A dull glow of the morning light eked through the drawn curtains, the singular window in the far corner of the room.
Erik's studio. Her heart swelled a little. She remembered walking in for the first time, watching Erik set up the comfy sectional to be a makeshift bed for her. Christine had snuggled under the covers, eyes peeking out while Erik tapped away on the keyboards, typing out words, programming, hammering out chords. She had insisted he unplug his headphones-the random loops of synthesizers and drum tracks were the best lullaby. Every once in a while she thought she could even hear Erik humming out a chord progression or melody underneath the instruments.
If she had panicked just a moment ago, then in the next instant she narrowly missed a heart attack. The strangest, loudest noise caused the whole room to rumble, something that droned on continuously. What in the hell-?
She realized it was coming from something awfully close by-maybe even from UNDER her. Christine yanked off her blanket, furiously eyeing for the source. She stuck her arm down in between the cushions. Maybe it was her phone? No, it had to be Erik's phone, hers never made that sound….
Sure enough, her phone case with the light purple case was vibrating and emitting that belch of a sound as some sort of notification.
Erik had texted her, as she unlocked her phone to read his message, it hit her. What sound that her phone had suddenly decided to belch out. Christine screwed up her face and started shaking with suppressed laughter. She failed spectacularly and fell into a fit of high pitched giggles. She had completely forgotten.
God, how late did they stay up? How the hell did they start from taking turns queuing up their favorite music videos to watching the most random videos, in the bowels of YouTube?
Christine's giggles faded, but her smile lingered as she nestled back into the futon and replayed the sequence of last night. Erik had left to scout for the greasiest, cheapest food that France had to offer, and Christine fiddled with her phone. After connecting it to his smart TV she tried to test Erik on more obscure, nostalgic videos of different artists that she loved, and it turned into a sort of back-and-forth game of them queueing up their favorite music videos and live performances. Then, between bites of burgers and fries, spiraling into the manic hour of 3am, they had decided to out-weird each other with the most random videos they could possibly think of.
Christine had hit the ground running with her favorites- TV news blooper compilations. Erik started playing cringey lip-sync fails and on-stage flubs. Christine had never seen him laugh that hard when she showed him a grainy video of a news anchor getting scared by a lizard that jumped onto him when he was in the studio with an animal expert ("News Reporter gets Owned by Lizard").
Then the piece de resistance: the Lowest Note Ever Sung video. For a good five minutes they just had that video on repeat, laughing so hard nothing was coming out. For another five minutes, they each took turns trying to see if they can copy the lowest note and it just ended up devolving into breathless laughter.
Erik must have somehow changed her text tone to the note sung from that video, she marveled incredulously. She couldn't even be mad because she couldn't stop smiling; imagining Erik getting into her phone settings and setting it up to surprise her in the morning.
The rumbling bass note sounded again, and grinning furiously, Christine scrambled to unlock it again-of course, the damned iPhone never wanted to recognize her face whenever she tried to open it up- a time-stamped text from two minutes ago: "Gone to get coffee and breakfast. Put in your request now or otherwise you'll get a surprise pastry."
Christine responded back, settling into the folds of Erik's fleece blanket as she typed on the screen.
Christine: Literally anything just no dumb fruits in my pastries
Erik: Well of course. Warm baguette it is.
Christine: You do realize that ringtone kinda sounds like a fart out of context?
Erik: Look that wasn't a thought at 4am
Christine: It's okay lol
Christine: I guess I'll just have to have my phone on vibrate for the rest of eternity
Erik: De rien :-)
Now that she had properly been scared awake, Christine sat upright and started to properly wake herself up. She stretched out her arms and turned her gaze towards the window, watching some gentle streaks of sunlight trying to eke into the studio. Her bare feet met with ice-cold wood paneling, so she took it upon her self to wrap the blanket around herself a couple of times before the stood up to push back one of the curtains. The window was an absolute cold sink, even being a foot away from the windowsill she could feel the bite of the winter morning around her ankles. Even so, she happily withstood the cold as she glanced around the familiar street corner. Familiar, and yet brand-new from this vantage point.
It was a place she knew like the back of her hand-crossing from the northeast corner from the subway station and passing by two other storefronts along the way before she arrived at the studio-but now it was from an entirely new perspective. Last night, she was one story below, tears welling up behind her eyes as she walked into the studio and saw Erik. It was only a few hours ago, but it felt like an eternity had passed.
Christine almost caught herself smiling when she thought back to last night.
It was one person, one night, one conversation, one song. And she felt like she could do anything.
Xxx
Christine lay down on the couch and stared up at the ceiling. Erik was seated at his usual desk chair, but he was on the edge of his seat, leaning over towards Christine with his hands clasped, elbows on his knees. Over his face mask, his eyes bored into his. (From a third party perspective, Christine later mused, it looked like a shrink talking to a patient.)
She sighed gustily. "You and look at Meg, Sorelli, even Paul. Meg and Sorelli are in a world-famous ballet corps, okay? And, fuck, Paul is-he's literally about to become the number one French-language rapper on the charts. Shit, maybe even the best rapper in all of Europe. Like, they have their shit together. More than that: They're doing what they love, they're killing it, and it's so infuriating. Like, trying to be happy for them but at the same time the jealousy is eating away at you. You want to have purpose like they do."
Erik suddenly sat up very straight in his chair. His intense stare almost made Christine avert her eyes. "Listen to me, Christine. You're destined for something great, I promise. Just because it's not happening now, doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong. You're exactly where you are meant to be." He spoke with the conviction Christine yearned for, with the sureness she craved to have about the trajectory of her life.
"I just feel… you know what I feel like? I feel like I want to do twenty thousand things, and they all look really awesome, but I don't know which I should pick. And I'm afraid whatever I do end up picking might be the wrong choice, a dead end."
"You can't think like that," Erik said. Then, his confidence dropped, much to Christine's surprise. Her eyebrows raised the tiniest amount, as his eyes wandered to the floor. He took a long, slow breath before speaking. "Look, I had always felt like I had to do everything by myself. And looking back, that was really stupid. I figured out only recently that-you can't do it all on your own. You need to ask for help, look for the good people in life you want to stick by."
Christine just stared at him, taking in the most vulnerable he'd been in the whole evening.
"You also need to book a ticket to Perros," he chided her.
Christine squeezed her eyes shut, putting her fists over her eyes. "Ugh. Fine."
"Christine. Buy one before you fall asleep, okay?"
"I don't want to," she whined. Erik cringed a little, but still managed to have a bit of a grin on his face that still peeked out from under the mask and crinkled his eyes. Through her whining, she made a show of pulling out her phone and booking a train ticket on the following Monday.
Erik, looking satisfied, got out of his chair to leave. "You're doing the right thing to go see Meg and her mom, I promise"
"You're right, and I appreciate your advice-but I can't stand you sometimes." Christine wrinkled her nose, twisting her head to follow Erik as he walked to the door.
"Goodnight, Christine."
"Erik," said Christine. He paused at the doorway, looking expectantly. She opened her mouth to speak, but hesitated.
"Do you need something? Should I get another blanket?"
"Um. Can you stay?"
"Well, I won't leave the apartment." Erik didn't want to sound rude, but he figured that would be obvious.
"No, I mean-I don't want you to…" Christine eyes were pleading him, begging him not to leave the studio. Her face grew hot with embarrassment, causing her to trail off.
"Oh." Erik understood. "Okay. Just-give me a second."
She nodded and snuggled under the covers. A few seconds after disappearing into the hallway, Christine heard him close his bedroom door, which made her panic for a second. She wondered if he was going to ignore her request, but less than ten seconds passed until she heard a closet door open and bang shut, then a chest of drawers opening and shutting. He was changing.
Xxxx
The rest was blurry-she was struggling to remember up until she fell asleep. Christine walked back to lay down on the couch, hoping that it would jog her memory. They stayed up so late, she remembered fighting so hard to stay awake….
Erik changed, he came back to the home studio, but then… Then what?
He sat down on his desk chair, then-maybe he asked her if she minded he work on some of his tracks. Yes, that was right, because when Christine saw him put on his headphones, she stopped him. She asked Erik if it was alright to just keep the volume a bit low on the speakers.
Of course, Erik said he didn't mind. She remembered saying-oh no, Christine thought. Her stomach twisted in a knot. Just as she was about to fall asleep, she remembered telling Erik something. Christine blearily muttered to Erik that he was-well, is-a good friend. Was that embarrassing? Did she make him feel uncomfortable? She had hoped not, because she meant it. She had already made a fool of herself sobbing and crying all night, so if Erik could stand her then, she convinced herself that he didn't mind her words of true appreciation.
Until last night, Erik had been pretty closed off. Obviously, with the whole mask thing, of course there was always something he'd be hiding, but there was something else he purposely didn't want Christine to see-metaphorically speaking, anyway. But she felt like that changed after this evening. She picked up her phone and re-read his text messages. He was being funny, making jokes unprovoked, even with the surprise ringtone- he'd never done anything like that until now.
It was a bit of a relief-imagine if Erik pushed her away even more after she chose to be so vulnerable in front of him. Instead, he went above and beyond to make her feel heard, make her feel safe.
Christine rolled off of the couch, and stretched her legs a bit by pacing around the room. Erik was probably headed back now. She sat on his computer, and instinctively jiggled the mouse, expecting to see a screensaver or lock screen come up, prompting a password as she had set up for all of her electronic devices.
Instead, it brought up the audio mixing program he had been working on. She greedily began to drink in the information in front of her. For a split second, she thought to look away-she had just earned Erik's trust, how dare she snoop around through his personal things?
But the timing was horrible. Because the instant the thought crossed her mind, she saw the song title of a demo she had sent out to several clubs in the area.
Her heart leapt into her mouth. How did Erik find this? Did he know it was her, even though she had a tons of voice filtering and used a pseudonym for this demo? Morgon, she recalled. It was a genderless name, something she deliberately picked so that producers wouldn't be too heavily influenced by the fact it was produced by a young woman.
Her mouse twitched, hovering over the file. She realized two things, one immediately after the other. Under her original track (same title, same timestamp), there was a file titled in all caps, called REQIUEM FOR THE DANCEFLOOR. It was one of the few in the library that did not have a generic file name, like "New File 143" or "Track 339." The name didn't really seem like something she would have expected Erik to come up with-his singles were usually very on-the-nose titles, typically copying a word or two straight from the chorus. This didn't seem like most songs. In fact, the playtime was around 15 minutes long. Much longer than any standard release, she noted to herself. It dawned on her-with the strange title and the long track time-this is probably a full, mastered mix.
For almost a full minute, Christine didn't move an inch, barely breathing. Was she… afraid? Perhaps. She had never heard any of Erik's own music before.
Suddenly, and despite Christin's heart hammering against her ribcage, with the press of the index finger on her cordless mouse, the file was open. Before her were two full-length tracks, side-by-side, each - one titled first MIDNIGHT, then the other MORNING. Christine could see the waveforms of each track stretch out onto the screen before her. The teal-blue spikes of the soundwaves was the last temptation she could bear-finally, with her headphones on, she slammed the space bar on her keyboard.
Then, she heard midnight.
Ominous, droning notes opened the track, a synthetic wind blew around her ears, and the synthesizer played the first few notes of the melody. There were no vocals, just different variations and modulations of a synthesizer that carried the melody. When the drop hit, Christine actually felt herself gasp, it was almost to the point of frightening. The backbeat was jagged, harsh, almost to the point of violent. But the infectious, driving beat and the percussion made it unmistakably Erik's. It was like watching-listening, rather-to someone else's nightmare. Darkness and fear continued to hold her captive throughout the whole song. She couldn't bring herself to tear her headphones off, even though the music seemed to wail and scream throughout the track. It was glorious and it was terrible. She could feel every single emotion, the anguish, the pain, the desperation… By the time it was over, her eyes snapped open-when did I close my eyes?, Christine realized suddenly-and found she was panting and in a cold sweat. She was dumbfounded. She didn't even know how to react, but she had no time, for the track faded into-
Morning.
Echoes of MIDNIGHT opened the track, but this time in a different key. There were vocals, words Christine couldn't make out or understand. It was a chanting, either in Chinese or Japanese, perhaps, performed by either one or two female voices. Haunting, repetitive, and beautiful. It slowly transitioned to something more hopeful, the vocals slowly elevating into something more passionate, like a plea for help, Christine guessed. Nevertheless, she could still make out the echoed, syncopating, jarring chords from MIDNIGHT carrying on behind the evocative reverie of MORNING. Oh, it was just as wonderful as the last track, but in a completely different way, she marveled. It seemed to hypnotize her, the soft sounds of traditional far east instruments drew her in, and she was utterly entranced. She didn't want it to end. It was almost meditative in the way it left her mind feel at peace in the midpoint of the song, but the electronic backbeat in the background still kept her full attention. But then, it started to ramp up, and sharp, staccato male hip-hop vocals entered into the mix. After a few beats, the MIDNIGHT tracks started to make their way to the forefront again, and Christine had thought the first song was preparing to repeat itself all over again. But then, slowly but surely, it backed off, letting the female vocals win out. They soared effortlessly, bringing the song to a wonderful, blissful climax, and finally the chanting faded out to complete the track.
Christine was softly crying by the end of the MORNING track. She didn't know when she had begun to do so, only that tears were already dripping down from her cheeks and jawline by the time it had fully faded out.