Pretty Lethal. Joe Schreiber

      ‘Are you kidding? Armitage is, like, the hottest promoter in the world right now. Ever since the Enigma festival in the U.K. last summer, plus he owns his own airline . . . You actually work for that guy?’

      Paula smiled. ‘Well, I’m sort of the liaison between him and the labels. Technically I’m on Armitage’s payroll, but I spend about half my time in L.A., working with new bands in the studio. It’s kind of a position that I created for myself.’

      ‘That sounds amazing.’

      ‘I grew up in Laurel Canyon.’ Paula reached up, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘My father was an A&R guy back in the day, worked with all the legends – Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan, the Eagles. Madonna and Sean Penn practically got a divorce in our pool. It’s in my blood.’

      And that was how it started. People talk about fate and luck and blind chance, and even now I’m not sure where I stand on those issues, but I will say this: In the weeks and months that Paula and I got more serious, I found her to be exactly as confident, ambitious, imaginative, and funny as she was that first night, and as I got to know her better, I sort of ran out of adjectives. She was that mixed mouthful of flavors, the kind of person that would walk through a farmer’s market and in the middle of a conversation about Soviet cinema in the 1940s, pick up two bananas and pretend they were her eyebrows.

      And she was unfathomably beautiful, totally out of my league. The kind of girl you write songs about. She was twenty-two years old, and I was eighteen.

      Then again, historically, I tend to prefer older women.

      

      ‘Is There Something I Should Know?’ – Duran Duran

       But hows the sex????

      I looked at my iPhone, knowing the message was from Norrie before I even got a look at the screen. He was the only one that texted me on a regular basis, even though we saw each other practically every day at practice. Everybody else – including Sasha, our lead singer, and Caleb, our guitarist – just called.

      It’s awesome, I typed.

       how awesme?

       Tantric.

      A long pause, and then:

       yr still not getting any, r u?

      ‘Who are you texting?’ Paula asked from the driver’s seat.

      I switched off the phone and stuffed it in my pocket. ‘Norrie.’

      ‘Did you tell him yet?’

      ‘I told him there’s a band meeting at my house in an hour. I want it to be a surprise. Unless Linus already talked to them.’ Linus Feldman was our manager, a five-foot-two, hundred-and-eight-pound Jewish tsunami who’d blown in sometime last summer from the wilds of Staten Island. He was old-school management, a scarred veteran of a dozen legendary management teams from back in the go-go eighties, when rock-and-roll was minting millionaires on what seemed like a weekly basis. From the moment he’d come out of semi-retirement to represent Inchworm, he’d been waiting for someone to try to take advantage of us so he could rip their head off. So far, to his great disappointment, we’d been treated with an unprecedented level of fairness and respect.

      ‘I’m not sure how crazy Linus is about the idea.’

      ‘A European tour? How could he not be thrilled?’

      ‘He’s got his own ideas about the band,’ Paula said. ‘We’ll see how it goes.’

      She signaled left and turned from the beach road onto the two-lane highway and I watched the ocean receding in my side-view mirror, each of us lost in our own thoughts.

      I checked my phone to see if I might have missed any more texts, but the last one was from Norrie, accusing me of not yet having sex with Paula. Unfortunately, he was right. Paula and I had spent hours on the couch, kissing until our lips were numb and tingling, and we’d done plenty of other stuff, basically everything you can do – but the Deed itself remained undone.

      It definitely wasn’t Paula’s fault. She’d made it pretty clear that she was ready whenever I was, which I guess made me one of the worst deal-closers of all time. Throughout junior high and high school, all I’d thought about was the day I’d finally get rid of the virginity problem. Now here was Paula with her knockout face and smoking body – an experienced woman, no less – patiently waiting to teach me so that I wouldn’t knee-and-elbow my way through the chicken dance of sexual initiation the way my parents’ generation had, decoding the lyrics of bad eighties hair-metal power ballads as our Kama Sutra. Exactly what did you say to a girl after she shook you all night long? And was pouring some sugar on someone as sticky as it sounded?

      We were an enlightened generation. Chow had lost his cherry to his girlfriend back in his sophomore year of high school, Sasha and Caleb had never had any problems scoring (‘Dude,’ Sasha once said, with absolute sincerity, ‘why do you think we even play in a band?’), and even Norrie sounded like he was at it pretty routinely with his current girlfriend. Here I was, paralyzed at the starting line, waiting. For what? True love? A sign from God? A long weekend in Paris?

      Therapy was what I needed, and a lot of it. Meanwhile, I wondered if there was a Virgins Anonymous program in some church basement somewhere, or at least a cult in southern Connecticut in need of one to sacrifice.

      Throughout it all, Paula remained super cool about the whole thing. She always said she’d wait until I was ready. But how long before her anticipation turned to exasperation?

      Meanwhile, I tried not to think about it.

      It was a great plan, and sometimes it almost worked.

      

      ‘The Loved Ones’ – Elvis Costello and the Attractions

      When we got back to the house, Mom was in the kitchen with her laptop and a glass of wine. We’d just moved in at the end of the summer – the workmen were still finishing the addition over the garage, and there were color tiles spread out on every surface, two thousand shades of white. It looked like a Michael Bolton concert on our kitchen table.

      ‘Hi, Perry. Oh, hello, Paula. How was the beach?’

      ‘It was great.’

      ‘I’ve always loved that stretch of shoreline, especially in the Fall.’ She cast her gaze across at the sea of nearly identical rectangles fanned out across the table. ‘Which color do you like best for the upstairs bathroom, honey? Isabelline or Cosmic Latte?’

      ‘Mom,’ I said, ‘Paula and I have got some really great news.’

      Mom looked up, her face suddenly slack with surprise. ‘You’re not getting married, are you?’

      ‘What? No.’

      ‘Thank God.’ Mom reached for her wine glass. ‘I mean, not that you’re not a wonderful, terrific person, Paula, but – ’

      ‘It’s all right, Mrs. Stormaire,’ Paula said, and flicked her eyes in my direction. She still hadn’t gotten to the point where she could comfortably call my mom ‘Julie’ yet. ‘For a second there, the way Perry said that, I think I almost