with effort did not pick up the receiver. “And my mum always said you must tell people when you’re thinking of them, in case they’re run over by a bus, and you later regret missing the opportunity.” He laughed despite himself. “And so, today, having said that, this would now be your day to step in front of a bus, if you must. Not saying you
should
. Up to you, of course, only that I would have a clearer heart. Failing that, I rather feel like a brainstorm. Do you have any nice new music for me, genius? Can I come over?”
She began at ruthlessness; ruthlessness was the starting point of her every action; her every word could be traced back to her ruthlessness, like a river system rushing across a whole country, powering mills and irrigating farms and drowning little children in blue overalls. He couldn’t hope to be as ruthless as she, but he could play along. So he mustered relish and a dash of smug frat-boy hilarity, but it didn’t really suit him. He could only fight feebly and from the shadows, like a sickly ninja. He didn’t expect to scare off her suitors in person. So, when Drums reported that Cait had been asked to dinner by a famous English actor who’d seen them play at the Rat, Ian, overwhelmed with cardiac evidence of his desperate courage, printed out Web pages detailing the man’s sexual antics, the divorce-court testimony of his drunken racism and adulterous excesses, and the item that in the end did offend Cait’s otherwise tolerant sensibilities: his TV commercial in Japan for a fishery that Greenpeace said slaughtered dolphin. Ian left this indictment anonymously for Cait at the Rat.
She of course smelled Ian’s complicit air. If he thought he was being sly, she was willing to let him have his moment, as toddlers require a certain sense of growing self-sufficiency or their development will stunt. And she was shriven of any sin for Chase.
And she rejoiced. The end had come at last—thank sweet Saint Cecilia, who protects pious girls and their bands—of backstage sweethearts who thought it acceptable to call Ian’s cell two minutes before stage time and demand that he whisper anxiously into his cupped hand for fifteen minutes until he would close his phone with a mumbled curse and an apology to Cait and shuffle onstage to play guitar as if he was sight-reading from a book of show tunes for a geriatric orgy.
No, huzzah, Ian was conducting himself appropriately again, providing a scratching post for the nails of roaming club felines before leaving them on the roadside, tied in a sack. In Raleigh-Durham the evidence suggested he had serviced a pair of them at once, though he was chivalrously silent the next day when he arrived in Greensboro, a cheeky six minutes before soundcheck.
“You still stink of them, baby,” she whispered in his ear as he played his solo on “Blithering” that night, and she saw the hair on his neck hunch and stagger, and all was well. She could put a name, only now, to the feeling that was pouring out and away from her like ebbing tidewater contaminated with sewage: it was
departing fear
, and hanging over the fear, like fumes over that sewage, was
shame
that she of all people had been afraid without even knowing it, and now she felt light fearlessness returning. If she were not onstage, in the middle of a song she had discovered in that space that manifested itself—like some state of quantum physics—only when she and Ian stood a certain distance from each other and concentrated on their own questions, she would have wanted to punish someone for her fear and shame. But she
was
onstage, and he
was
playing her music, and it
was
sounding like she’d dreamt, in literal dreams of music she’d had for nearly twenty years, since that morning when she was almost four and woke sobbing, beyond any parental consolation for nearly an hour, because the music she’d heard when she was sleeping wasn’t playing when she woke, and she couldn’t make it come back.
should
. Up to you, of course, only that I would have a clearer heart. Failing that, I rather feel like a brainstorm. Do you have any nice new music for me, genius? Can I come over?”
She began at ruthlessness; ruthlessness was the starting point of her every action; her every word could be traced back to her ruthlessness, like a river system rushing across a whole country, powering mills and irrigating farms and drowning little children in blue overalls. He couldn’t hope to be as ruthless as she, but he could play along. So he mustered relish and a dash of smug frat-boy hilarity, but it didn’t really suit him. He could only fight feebly and from the shadows, like a sickly ninja. He didn’t expect to scare off her suitors in person. So, when Drums reported that Cait had been asked to dinner by a famous English actor who’d seen them play at the Rat, Ian, overwhelmed with cardiac evidence of his desperate courage, printed out Web pages detailing the man’s sexual antics, the divorce-court testimony of his drunken racism and adulterous excesses, and the item that in the end did offend Cait’s otherwise tolerant sensibilities: his TV commercial in Japan for a fishery that Greenpeace said slaughtered dolphin. Ian left this indictment anonymously for Cait at the Rat.
She of course smelled Ian’s complicit air. If he thought he was being sly, she was willing to let him have his moment, as toddlers require a certain sense of growing self-sufficiency or their development will stunt. And she was shriven of any sin for Chase.
And she rejoiced. The end had come at last—thank sweet Saint Cecilia, who protects pious girls and their bands—of backstage sweethearts who thought it acceptable to call Ian’s cell two minutes before stage time and demand that he whisper anxiously into his cupped hand for fifteen minutes until he would close his phone with a mumbled curse and an apology to Cait and shuffle onstage to play guitar as if he was sight-reading from a book of show tunes for a geriatric orgy.
No, huzzah, Ian was conducting himself appropriately again, providing a scratching post for the nails of roaming club felines before leaving them on the roadside, tied in a sack. In Raleigh-Durham the evidence suggested he had serviced a pair of them at once, though he was chivalrously silent the next day when he arrived in Greensboro, a cheeky six minutes before soundcheck.
“You still stink of them, baby,” she whispered in his ear as he played his solo on “Blithering” that night, and she saw the hair on his neck hunch and stagger, and all was well. She could put a name, only now, to the feeling that was pouring out and away from her like ebbing tidewater contaminated with sewage: it was
departing fear
, and hanging over the fear, like fumes over that sewage, was
shame
that she of all people had been afraid without even knowing it, and now she felt light fearlessness returning. If she were not onstage, in the middle of a song she had discovered in that space that manifested itself—like some state of quantum physics—only when she and Ian stood a certain distance from each other and concentrated on their own questions, she would have wanted to punish someone for her fear and shame. But she
was
onstage, and he
was
playing her music, and it
was
sounding like she’d dreamt, in literal dreams of music she’d had for nearly twenty years, since that morning when she was almost four and woke sobbing, beyond any parental consolation for nearly an hour, because the music she’d heard when she was sleeping wasn’t playing when she woke, and she couldn’t make it come back.
Similar Books
