The Color of Home: A Novel by Rich Marcello

before it was out of his hands. He tried to push it back down, but had no weight. “Are you sure?”
    “Yes. But in a year or two, unless I figure my stuff out, there may be. I’ll get restless. Or you will. This way, it’s more honest.”
    He spun around. “I’m sorry, this is all bullshit! Can’t we commit to doing this together? Or is this some elaborate way to break up with me? What did I do wrong?” Pacing back and forth in front of the windows, he couldn’t hold back tears any longer.
    “This isn’t an elaborate scheme. I meant everything I said. I love you, and it’s deeper than any love I’ve experienced before. It’s just that I need to search, experiment. I want a life that has fifty more years of what we had most of this past year, a life of bliss, but I’m not ready to be anyone’s longterm partner. I need to get a lot more exposure and experience. We need to be brave and honest enough to let each other unfold. Then we’ll know the right thing to do. I’ve gone as far as I can right now.”
    “I’m out of here.” He raced to the front door, grabbed his keys, and stormed out of the apartment toward his studio.
• • •
    One day, early in Nick’s senior year at Columbia, he had flipped through an article in Beautiful Noise for Youngsters about the future of the recording studio. The piece projected two major emerging trends. The first, not surprisingly, espoused the virtues of the home recording studio. With price drops on high-quality recording equipment, setting up a good-enough home recording studio to serve singer-songwriters was easy. On the other hand, with bandwidth on the rise and cheaper, larger storage devices doubling in capacity each year, the article predicted the emergence of online recording studios that would allow for collaboration over the Internet.
    The possibilities were endless. A singer-songwriter in Montreal, Seattle, Stockholm, or anyplace in the world with an Internet connection could hire a back-up band in New York City to play on his or her album and the result would be completely seamless to the audience. Beautiful Noise for Youngsters concluded that no clear leaders existed in the space at that time, and the author believed online recording, with its high-growth potential, was disrupting traditional recording studios.
    Nick threw Beautiful Noise for Youngsters on the top of a pile of music magazines. Was it possible to combine his business training with music? Should he start an online recording company? How would he incorporate? What should he name the company? Where would he get physical space for the large amount of gear required? How much up-front money would he need? Where would he find the studio musicians? How would he advertise? How much should he charge per song? What kind of services should he provide? Who could help him with the website?
    He opened up his laptop and researched his questions. He scanned websites for a business plan template. Working for twelve hours straight, by the next morning he had a first-pass business plan for studiomusicians-dot-com. Temporarily, he lost sight of his sadness.
    In the spring of his senior year, he launched studiomusicians-dot-com with $75,000 dollars. He had risked asking one of his uncles, his father’s brother, for the money. After a reasonable amount of coaxing and reminiscing, his uncle agreed to loan it to him. Twenty-five thousand on the website. Twenty-five thousand to buy equipment. The rest for rent of the top floor in an old Brooklyn warehouse.
    He’d found love.
    After storming out on Sassa, Nick spent the day in his music studio trying to map his heart, trying to map a way forward, trying to hold on to her love. When he’d built the studio, he’d added a large utility room to store his gear when not in use. He made his way to that room right after entering the studio and locked the door behind him. Curling up in a ball on the floor, he surveyed the equipment he’d accumulated over the years: old