Mike sometimes let Ed hang out with him at the recording studio while he finished mixing tracks. Ed had to concede that Mike did have a cool job. Sure, he wasn't a big shot in the music industry- the indie label that gave him the songwriting contract wasn't in NYC or LA- but Mike liked to tell Ed that he (and the bands with which he worked) was creating the Linden Valley sound- just as Prince had done for Minneapolis in the seventies, or what McFadden & Whitehead did for Philadelphia a decade before that. Linden Valley might be a stop-gap before the nationwide big-time for a few of Mike's acts, but Mike would always prefer the creative freedom that came with younger labels, at least that's what he said. And Linden Valley's music scene was certainly young.  

Linden Valley's corner of Pennsylvania's rusted former steel region survived the post-industrial nineties as a bedroom community for New Yorkers or Philadelphians willing to make a one-and-a-half-hour commute in exchange for cheaper rent and greenery. As the population hit one million around the beginning of the new millennium, internet start-ups and regional corporate headquarters popped up beside abandoned textiles factories and the vegetated remains of steel mills. The oddest development in Linden Valley's Lazarus-trick, however, came at the hands of Hollywood directors and producers. The old steel town soon found a strange second life as an easy facsimile of middle America for any movie set: close to major cities, yet not far from checkerboard fields or pastoral farmland, and chock-full of sprawling, lemonade-stand suburbia. Mike was not the only creative to claim the city, even if he assumed responsibility for its sound. Most of the days when Ed was allowed in the studio, he would wonder how one person -or even one group of musicians- could create an entire city's sound. Today, though, all Ed could think about was Audra.  

"You don't get it. She's beautiful," Ed spun in his swivel chair.

"So?" Mike set down the pair of headphones he had been holding to his right ear. "Do you wanna bag beautiful bitches or average ones?"

"Bag?" Ed lifted his eyebrows. "That sounds kind of creepy."

"It does not," Mike snapped, "it's common parlance."

"Common parlance for serial killers." Ed said. "I'm going to bag that bitch. What exactly is the etymology of that? Does it come from body-bags?"

"No," Mike looked disgusted. "Don't be stupid-"

"Like trash-bags?" Ed chuckled. "Like I'm going to cut up her corpse and bag each part before I dump her in the lake."

"Okay, that's really creepy you little weirdo," Mike balled his rather large fist, "Do you want my advice or nah?"

"I'm sorry Sensei." Ed stretched his feet on top of the edge of the soundboard. "Teach me your ways."

With one arm, Mike cradled the master output controls and with the other he swatted away Ed's skate shoes. "I can't even trust you in here, can I?" he glared. "This equipment is precious."

"Ooh," Ed teased. "I'm a music producer, I sit around in Yeezy sweatpants all day, so important, I save lives-"

"Okay, out." Mike grabbed Ed by his dark hair and yanked him to his feet, "we're leaving."

"Ouch, bro," Ed winced, "that hurts."

"Well," Mike dragged Ed out of the sound room and into the hallway, "you hurt my feelings."

"Your feelings?" Ed smoothed down his hair.

"I already got enough shit from dad about my job," Mike crossed his brawny arms, "don't need it from you too."

Oh right. Ed remembered the many shouting-matches he had witnessed between his dad and his half-brother after Mike decided to major in music at Temple. Although things had quieted since Mike signed his songwriting contract, the legitimacy of his work was apparently still a sore spot for him.

"I didn't mean it like that." Ed watched Mike bobble his eyes and stick out his tongue.

"Whatever." Mike swaggered toward the fourth floor's foyer. "It's fine. Don't take my advice. Don't get laid."

"See, I'm not looking to get laid, per say," Ed followed close behind.

"Sure." Mike's stormy mood seemed to subside as he eyed the vending machine standing beside the elevator. He pulled his wallet out of his sweatpants' left pocket.

"That's part of it, I guess, but what I'm really interested in is a-" Ed stammered, "-a relationship."

"You like Jujyfruits?" Mike tapped his wallet against his lower lip.

"No thanks," Ed said.

"I wasn't offering you anything, bitch," Mike took some quarters from his wallet and dropped them into the vending machine's coin slot. "I just don't know anybody who actually likes Jujyfruits. Why do they still make them?"

"She plays the violin! And she speaks three languages. Three!" Ed thought about the red marks all over his last English paper. "According to Miss Larsen, I can barely speak one."

"I mean, my grandma liked Jujyfruits." Mike closed his eyes. "That bitchwas a straight up G. Gone too soon, Grandma P," Mike tapped his left fist over his breast twice then extended his arm outward, unfurling his hand into a peace sign salute, "gone too soon."

"This is serious, Mike," Ed blinked. "I think love her!"

"Who again?" Mike punched a number into the vending machine's keyboard, "the French bitch?"

"Please don't call her a bitch."

"GODDAMN IT." Mike kicked the vending machine. "SON OF A BITCH."

"It's disrespectful," Ed held up both his hands as if to calm a roaring beast. "I see you're upset, but-"

"This is utter bullshit," Mike knelt to the ground and opened the exit chute. "I'm a moron," he rose with a yellow box in his hands, "I pressed the number for the stupid Jujyfruits."

"Oh," Ed felt a little dumb and then a little annoyed, "Were you even listening to me?"

"Sure. Don't say bitch." Mike said in his most school-marmish tone. He placed the Jujyfruits box between his knees and pinched his thighs together.

"It's just that most of my friends are girls, and my mom's always talking about Naomi Wolf-" Ed said, somewhat apologetically. While both of these things were true -Ed's mom did often talk about Naomi Wolf, and his closest friends were girls- Ed didn't mention the short current of inexplicable anger he felt when Mike reduced (wonderful, artistic) Audra to the French bitch. He didn't want to prove he was as humorless as Mike's intonation had suggested.

"Shit," Mike frowned at his wallet's coin pocket, "I'm out of quarters."

"I might have a couple," Ed fished fruitlessly in his back pocket, "but what I meant-"

"Listen here kid," Mike put away his wallet, unclenched his thighs,and retrieved his box of Jujyfruits. "You outta hold off on this love stuff." He pressed the nearby elevator button.

"But I feel like there's something different and special-" Ed watched the elevator indicator light up, "-see, the gang went bowling last week. She and I got put on the same team and we beat Phil and Emily. The way she looked at me-"

"You got all that from bowling?" Mike opened the Jujyfruits box and popped one into his mouth. "Pff. Kids."

"Yeah, well, you started dating Yessica at fifteen," Ed argued. "People probably went 'pff kids' at you, too."

The elevator arrived on the fourth floor. Mike led Ed inside.

"Not a chance." Mike swallowed the Jujyfruit he had been chewing on. "We're like Marc Anthony and Cleopatra, you feel me?"

"No," Ed narrowed his eyes. Miss Larsen's Shakespeare unit only really covered Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth, but he recalled seeing Antony and Cleopatra listed under the "tragedy" heading on the Shakespeare bibliography handout she had printed. "Don't they both die horribly?"

"No! Of course not." Mike looked alarmed. "Look, what I meant is that most people don't belong with their high school sweetheart. It's a statistical fact."

Ed flinched at the words statistical fact. "It's still possible."

"Anything's possible." Mike rummaged through the Jujyfruits for a red-flavored one and popped it in his mouth. "But it's a numbers game. Don't put all your eggs in one French basket."

The elevator doors opened onto the first floor and Mike and Ed crossed the studio's lobby.

"Okay, I won't." Ed said, even though 'putting his eggs in one French basket' was precisely his plan. "Would you just tell me how to impress her?"

"What's she like?" Mike pulled open the studio's front doors.

"She's beautiful and smart and talented," Ed stepped outside, "and she says all these real interesting things- just the way she puts her sentences together is fascinating," his eyes fell onto his shoes, "and whenever I try to talk to her, I sound like a loser."

"She probably feels like a loser too, ya know." Mike squinted at the afternoon sunlight reflecting off the white sidewalk pavement.

"How?" Ed highly doubted that someone as fascinating as Audra could ever feel like a loser.

"It's because guys are chicken-shits," Mike said. "They see a girl like that and think: why should I bother, she's got thousands of better options. Thing is, her thousands of better options all think this, all at the same time. You gotta man up and ask her out. That alone will impress her."

"What, I just ask her, and she'll say yes?" Ed nearly tripped over a tree root protruding up into the cracked sidewalk. "Why would she say yes?"

"You need better self-talk." Mike knocked Ed on the back of the head. "Somebody might think you're beautiful yourself."

"Me?" Ed choked. The idea was ridiculous.

Well, maybe not that ridiculous, but Ed didn't know that. The fact was Ed didn't know he was beautiful. And with a name like Ed. Who were the more famous Eds? Ed Sheeran, Ed Miliband, the first Ed of Ed, Edd, and Eddie. All fine people, but there wasn't a shining example of conventional beauty among them. Ed just wasn't an attractive name. If he had been named something like Liam or Jesse or Sam, he might have learned to be "suave." But he was Ed, and he carried along all the baggage which comes with his name. Before people would meet him, they would expect Ed to be a certain way: a little awkward with small talk, but overall a genuinely good guy, the sort of guy who'd let you have the last slice of pizza if you wanted it. And if there were one thing that Ed was excellent at, it was meeting people's expectations.

It's not as if Ed ever comfortably went by Edward, which might be a slightly more attractive name, at least since it had irrevocably become associated with sparkly vampires. Edward was the name Emily called him when he annoyed her. It was also the name his dad called him when his grades slipped below a B, or when he accidentally said something stupid around his dad's partners at the law firm. Ted was too old-mannish, Teddy was either effeminate or nerdy, and Eddy was the sort of name you'd expect on a five year old or a sex offender. At least, that's how Ed saw it. He was pretty much stuck with Ed. And as an Ed, it didn't matter that his hair fell in thick, dark brown waves that somehow managed to take even the rainiest weather without frizzing, or that his skin was olive-colored and even, or that his eyes emoted an unusual, perpetual sweetness. Ed could never think of himself as beautiful.

"What you gotta do, my friend, is smack yourself around." Mike offered Ed the Jujyfruits box. "You gotta play an open mic somewhere."

"But I don't have any talent," Ed took an orange Jujyfruit.

"That's not the point." Mike sliced the air with his left hand. "The point is to get real drunk beforehand to deal with the stage fright, and then piss yourself while you're performing. You gotta experience true, professional humiliation. Once that happens, asking girls out won't be a problem-" 

"Is that something you did?" Ed scrunched up his face. "Did you piss yourself on stage?" 

"Nah brah," Mike snatched back the Jujyfruit box, "but my friend Randy, he did that once. The man's got absolutely no shame now. He's a real master of the numbers game." Mike popped a Jujyfruit into his mouth and grimaced. "Aww hell, it's licorice flavored-" 

"You want me to have no shame?"

"What I'm saying is there's worse things than getting rejected by a girl." Mike spat into a trashcan on a nearby street corner.

"I know that," Ed said. "Like, I would take rejection to cancer, obviously. Or Hitler."

"Then get out there."  Mike ruffled Ed's hair. "Like the Frizz said: Take chances! Make mistakes! Get messy, bitch!"

"Maybe you ought to do something about the gendered language-" 

"GET MESSY BITCH!" Mike started down a flight of cement stairs to the underground parking garage below. Ed glanced around the sidewalk on which he stood, suddenly realizing where he was, but not quite remembering how he got there.

"Wait!" Ed shouted. "Do I ask her to hang out? Or do I just go straight for prom? What do you think about balloons?"

Mike threw his arm into the air behind him and waved dismissively, then disappeared beyond a row of sleeping cars.

***