The Old Crooner Makes the Pop Star an Offer
The pop star goes clothes shopping in London. Her usual shopping buddy, another singer, is not here. She has a bad feeling about the other singer, who has not been seen or heard from anyone in several weeks after declaring she was going to Ibiza for a rave. But coming and going from friends’ lives is the price she paid to be successful, and she hopes the other singer has not relapsed into her bad habits that landed her in the papers last year. Together, shopping is a fun diversion. Alone, the pop star’s bags weigh her down like shackles.
Exiting a store, the pop star bumps into an elderly gentleman in a suit and top hat. She recognizes him from her uncle’s CDs of greatest hits of the ‘50s. The old crooner apologizes for bumping into her, and when she says she is a childhood fan, he tilts his hat and says, I’ve heard about you. Would you like to chat?
He does not say, I’ve heard salacious rumors about you or I don’t like your music at all because it represents everything that is wrong about your generation, so the pop star agrees to chat. He hands her a note, with an address and a time scribbled, initials signed. How quaint to be offered anything handwritten, the pop star thinks, how unusual it is that she is on the receiving end of waiting for a signature.
The pop star arrives at the bar five minutes early. The average age of the bartenders and the patrons is fifty. A single saxophonist plays cool jazz in the back corner, the music loud enough that any conversation is hard to hear. The crooner arrives five minutes late, his suit impeccable.
Have I got a deal for you, the old crooner says. A great deal for you. I can make it so for a day, you’ll be a nobody again. Nobody will remember who you are, and your family and friends will think you work at a place like this, that you sing here instead of—he gestures at the window—out there.
What’s the price? the pop star asks.
I’ll take one song, the old crooner says. Pick your least favorite song, and I’ll take it away. You’ll never have to hear it again.
The pop star thinks it over, and this is a fair price to pay. She has been traveling for half a year on tour, and a day off is a dream.
She considers all her songs. On her second album, a slow number co-written by a man two decades older than her who would leer at her when he thought she wasn’t looking. Her first hit single, which she now finds cringeworthy in the sheer repetitiveness of the hook, I wanted you and now I don’t, I wanted you and now I don’t. The song about being the kind of friend that people don’t want to be friends with, someone who ditches old friendships whenever a new relationship starts, a song that was technically okay but sent her fandom in a tizzy as they speculated who she was singing about.
Let me think about it, the pop star says.
Miss, there’s no time to spare. The old man fiddles with his top hat in his hands.
I need to use the restroom, the pop star says, and slides down from the high barstool in search of the restroom. She makes a list of what she would do during her one day free of fame while washing her hands. She would walk down the street and sing. She would visit her shopping buddy, and she would have the energy to talk to her instead of just shopping, pop over to San Diego to see her best friend from home, go on mediocre first dates with strangers without having to worry about whether the strangers were only interested in her because she was famous, visit her parents and reassure them that she was doing okay even though she was just a singer in a bar. Once her day was done, she would wake the next morning and could resume her life.
When she returns from the restroom, the old crooner is gone. His glass is empty, his hat, nowhere to be seen.
She asks the bartender, Did you see the gentleman in the suit leave? The one sitting next to me?
What man in the suit? There was nobody here, the bartender replies. Didn’t you come alone?
In a Meadow of Pop Stars
The pop star moves to Los Angeles at sixteen to discover she is only one pop star in a meadow of pop stars. Pop stars grabbing drinks. Pop stars on the beach. Pop stars in sports cars crashing on the freeway. Ghosts of pop stars in the park, waiting for anyone who will listen to their plotless stories. Pop stars in grocery stores. Pop stars on the roofs of grocery stores, because nothing can weigh down a pop star as they float towards the sky. When the clock strikes midnight on December 1st of each year, the pop stars sing together so loudly that the entire world can hear, a final gasp of freedom before the holiday season arrives and the pop stars are doomed to performing “Jingle Bells” and “Deck the Halls” until January. The first year, the newest of the pop stars covers her ears to block out the noise. The second year, she joins them from her hotel room in Minneapolis in the middle of her tour. When the clock strikes midnight, she opens her mouth, adding to the chorus with noise of her own.
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Tina S. Zhu is a Lambda Literary Fellow who writes fairytales and co-edits WYRMHOLE, the terminally online speculative fiction newsletter, from New York. Her work has appeared in monkeybicycle, Lightspeed, and The Journal, among other places. You can find her at tinaszhu.com.