Pretty Scars

by CD Reiss

  My hand shook as I signed. What was I walking into? The next hours were an unexpected Christmas present found behind the tree. At worst, they’d be pleasant. At best… I couldn’t even guess the best case. I’d witness practicing musicians who didn’t know me from Eve, enjoy as much as I found comfortable, and slip out.

  The guard gave me directions. Left. Right. Right. Down the stairs and left. I nodded, knowing I’d forget it all and get where I was going anyway.

  I was right.

  Once I was in the public-facing space, all I had to do was follow the music.

  A cello tuning. Playing a few atonal measures. Stopping and playing again to get it right.

  The theater was empty, broken into sections of minimal house lights. The stage was arced with chairs and music stands, flatly-lit, with a white folding screen stretching across the left half, casting the man behind it into a silhouette. He was playing that cello, and the sound was unmistakable.

  Adam Brate. Had to be. Was the note in the book intentional? Should I sit and listen like an eavesdropper?

  I walked down the center aisle as quietly as I could.

  When I got to the front of the stage, he stopped.

  “Hello?” I said. “I found a note. I’m not sure it was for me?”

  The shadowy arm extended to a metal folding chair on my side of the screen. I climbed up to the stage, heels clopping on the floor like dogs barking in an otherwise quiet yard.

  He said nothing as I sat. The chair was so close to the screen, I could touch it.

  “Are you…” I stopped myself. Saying the name seemed sacrilegious. Louder than the intrusive, cloppy heels. “Are you who I think you are?”

  The answer should have been, “Who do you think I am?” which would have softened the sound of the famous name. But he didn’t answer. He drew his bow across the strings.

  On the first note, I knew what it was.

  He was playing Ballad of Blades, just for me. I sat back, ready to receive his gift for whatever reason he’d decided to give it. I knew the piece. After playing it a hundred times, I’d memorized it, making it the soundtrack of my best memories.

  But the movie wouldn’t play in my head, because this was different. He played it with a sharpness I’d never heard. Maybe the CD recording or the speaker’s amplification had dulled the experience. Maybe it was me.

  No, it wasn’t me.

  The notes had an inner life. They were greater than memory, larger than longing. The cello called to me with a voice that spoke a wordless language filled with sadness and grace. My mind emptied. I lost any preconceived notion of what the piece was and let myself hear the humility and ache in the melody. It pierced me. Opened me. Filled me with a melancholy that grew inside my chest until I thought I’d be lifted from my seat.

  It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard.

  When it was over, my cheeks were wet with tears and I could hear him gasping for breath.

  I leaned toward the paper screen. “Thank you.”

  He didn’t move. I put my hand on the screen, and high on the truth of the music, I opened my mouth and spoke the truth.

  “Gabriel.”

  My hand flat on the paper, I waited for him to acknowledge what I knew to be true. The shadow shifted, and he laid his hand on his side of the screen, palm pushing against mine until I felt the pressure of it.

  “Little bird,” he croaked. “I miss you.”

  “Why?” I asked before swallowing tears. “Why?”

  He paused before he spoke. “Because I loved you.”

  My hand got warm against his. The man on the other side was real and alive.

  Gabriel was dead. Gabriel didn’t have warm hands. Without the music to tell me the truth, doubts crept in.

  “Take the screen away,” I said.

  “I can’t.”

  “Please. I want to see you.”

  “No.”

  Reacting to the cut of his answer, I took my hand away and regretted it. “Why did you call me here then?”

  He plucked a few pensive notes from the neck of his cello, as if he needed music to think. “Because I have everything I ever wanted, and I’m empty. I saw you at Dorothy Chandler and realized I didn’t want you. I want lots of things, but not you. No. I need you. Without you, I have the world. The whole, empty, meaningless world I’d give up for one more night with you.”

  “Take it. Take tonight. Move this screen and tell me what happened in Venice.”

  “I can’t.” He laid his cello down like a fact.

  “I thought you were dead.” The last word came out so loud, it echoed in the hall.

  “What? No. I didn’t know that.”

  He was surprised that I thought that. God. Had I been tricked? Mistaken?

  “I did,” I said. “But you’re not. You’re… I can’t believe it.”

  “I am dead without you.”

  “What happened? Gabriel. What could it be? Why can’t I even see you?”

  He took a deep sigh, and his silhouette bent at the waist, elbows to knees, one hand in his hair. “Can you just trust me? This one thing. For now. I didn’t think you’d come. I didn’t think you’d remember me or a stupid joke. But,” he said with a resigned laugh, “you were always smarter than anyone gave you credit for. Especially yourself.”

  “It’s not that I’m smart. It’s that you always knew me.”

  “No.” He put his hand to the screen again, and mine shot up to meet it. “Things are at work here. Things I can’t control. Promises I made.”

  I shrank inside. Who was to say he wasn’t married? And who was to say she wasn’t powerful enough to control who saw his face? I’d spent so much energy thinking of my own husband, I hadn’t given a thought to who he’d given himself to. “Promises to who?”

  “I can’t say. Not yet.”

  “Can you tell me what happened after Venice?”

  “No.”

  “But you lived.”

  “Apparently. And you?”

  “I died.” My hand slid away. “Peter Thorne took me on a whirlwind tour of Europe and I figured…” I stopped to manage the shame of what I was about to say, but I resolved to say it anyway. “I figured why not? I had to get married anyway. Might as well get it over with.”

  “Did you go to Duke?”

  Did the woman he was promised to have a life? A career? A degree she’d finished because she was smart and capable and had enough grit to make it past anything life threw at her?

  “No,” I grumbled.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m just a pretty rich girl and that’s all I’ll ever be. I mean, think about it. Who wouldn’t want what I have? What’s the point of trying for more?”

  “Fulfillment?”

  “That wasn’t an option after Venice. I know I’m a disappointment. I gave up. That’s all there is. I gave up. Married Peter. Being his wife is my job. End.”

  He rubbed his hands together. I heard the callouses scrape. “Do you love him? Is he good to you?”

  “No. He’s shit. He treats me like…” I trailed off. He hadn’t earned the details. “I’m leaving him.”

  The scraping stopped. “Are you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because I’m here?”

  The truth was that the decision to leave Peter had been in the oven since I heard him play “I Will Always Love You” and had only been pulled out the night before I stepped into Carnegie Hall. It was still warm, but it was finished. I had no intention of undoing it whether Gabriel belonged to someone else or not.

  “No,” I said. “It’s been a long time coming. I just have to figure out how to do it. And I will. Even if I never see you again. Even if you’re happily married to someone you love.”

  My voice cracked so hard on “married,” I barely got to “love.” As much as it hurt to say, I had to give him a chance to confirm it.

  “I didn’t know you thought I was dead,” he said.

  “But you stayed away? Why?”
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  “I’ll tell you.”

  He sat up straight with his hands on his knees. I waited. And waited.

  “Gabriel.”

  “I can’t. Not now. Not yet.”

  “If you’re with someone—”

  “I’m not ready,” he cut in. “I just want you to know… to believe that I never forgot you. You’re in my mind every day. You take up space in my heart. I tried closing it up so I never had to miss you again, but this piece? Ballad of Blades? It’s for you. It sounds like you. Every time I play it, you’re speaking to me. So I stopped playing it for a while and it only got worse. It called to me. I couldn’t shut it out. You were there with that voice of yours. I thought I was playing your song, but it was playing me.”

  Why? Then why did you stay away? The questions came to my lips but couldn’t leave them.

  “Do you want to see me?” he asked.

  “Yes. And not through a screen.”

  “Okay.” His shadow placed the cello between his legs and picked up the bow. “I need to do some things, and you need to think about it.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You do.” He drew the bow across the strings. “I’m at the Waldorf. Room 2220. Call me there tonight if you want to see me. No.” He stopped himself as if changing his mind midstream. “We’ll meet at the library lions at three, and you’ll have one more chance to walk away.”

  He played the first few measures of “I Will Always Love You.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Then you’ll be mine again.” He abruptly stopped playing. “But you’ll walk when you see me. Anyone would.”

  He played the song, and I knew that no matter what I said, he wouldn’t be interrupted.

  I stood, and with one look at the screen and the outline of the man behind it, I turned and—

  “Wait!”

  The silhouette of the man stood. “You have to know.” Head down, hands fidgeting at his sides.

  “Know what?”

  He came from behind the screen and stood with his back to me, hands balled into fists at his sides, and I gasped.

  Chapter 26

  VENICE, ITALY - 1993

  I hadn’t realized how many turns we’d made through the city, but every time Gabriel guided me around a corner, we passed something I recognized. A particular box of flowers. A configuration of the stones. A little storefront that had been open when we passed the first time but was now shut for the night. I fell into a relaxed state of submission to his sense of direction.

  “Hey,” a man called from a doorway twenty feet in front of us. He stepped into the center of the street, silhouetted against a bare bulb behind him. “Turisti! Vi sieti persi?”

  I couldn’t understand what he said, but there was no language barrier for his tone of menace.

  “No.” Gabriel stopped short, pushing me behind him.

  “Questa è la mia strada,” the man called, speaking slowly enough for me to understand that it was his street. The man stepped forward into a shaft of moonlight. He was in his late teens, maybe early twenties. Young enough to do a stupid thing.

  “Bene, prego,” Gabriel said, then turned, his body close, facing mine as he looked over my head. “Ce ne andiamo.”

  I followed his gaze. Two men had appeared on the other side of the alley.

  “What’s happening?” I asked.

  “Stay close, little bird.”

  Even as the men came toward us, I assumed we’d walk away. Our wallets might be lighter, but we’d be together the next day and the days after. Some things were inviolate. We’d established our future as one of them.

  “Dove stai andando?” a fourth man asked from the shadows of a doorway just a few feet away.

  I jumped.

  Gabriel pulled me away from him, but he was running out of ways to protect me.

  I threw my purse on the ground between us and the two approaching figures.

  “Take it!” I said, not knowing if they spoke English.

  It didn’t matter. The men didn’t even look at it. The first man was a few feet away now.

  “Grazie,” he said, “Ma avrò il tuo sangue come pagamento.”

  The moon glinted on the blade.

  It happened so fast my perception sped up, making the attack play in slow motion as my muscles froze into helplessness, as if they’d submitted to spectator status. All I could do was cling to Gabriel as they pulled him away, and despair when he let me go to save me.

  Four of them. Two of us. One on me, pulling me away by the arms, the hair, my legs pulled from under me as I flailed. I thought I was screaming, but I couldn’t hear myself. Couldn’t see anything for a moment. Then in the next moment, I saw Gabriel with utter clarity—on his back, straddled by one of the men, and the blade coming down on his face.

  Finding strength I didn’t know I had, I broke free and lurched for him.

  The blade came down again on his throat.

  Blood everywhere. His face covered with it like a mask. The thick, viscous jet from an artery.

  Stars crackled in the frame of my vision. I tilted sideways until the stone street met my cheek.

  Gabriel and I were face to face, locked in a split-second eternal stare. My head hit the ground again, and it dipped under me, our eyes the hub of a spinning wheel that turned into blackness.

  Chapter 27

  NEW YORK - 1995

  My gasp echoed in the acoustics of Carnegie Hall, as I recognized the man I’d heard behind the screen

  It was Gabriel, even from the back. The shape of his body under his shirt. The way his jeans sat on his waist.

  It was him. Risen from the dead.

  “I’m going to turn around,” he said.

  When I didn’t answer, he rotated slowly with his neck bent downward, his hair dropping over his face. I approached and pulled up his chin so I could see him.

  I swallowed a sharp inhale so hard my body jolted. “Gabriel?”

  The left side of his face was divided by multiple scars a short beard did little to hide. One closed the side of his mouth in a quarter inch of web. Another ended in a boneless divot in his cheek. His left eye was covered with a light brown patch made of cloth.

  But the right eye was framed with black lashes, and it was brown and warm. He didn’t see how I was made, but who I was. He didn’t look at my face. He looked at me.

  “You’re still beautiful,” he said.

  I ran my fingertips over the scar on his cheek and he shook with discomfort, but he didn’t stop me as I found the lump of a scar on his throat.

  “Is this why you gave up violin?” I asked.

  “Yes.” He pulled back and stilled my hand. “It’s… a sensitive spot. It almost killed me.”

  When I pressed my hand to his cheek again, he grimaced, as if keeping still for the touch took reserves of willpower.

  “Your eye,” I said.

  “Gone.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “Show me.”

  His smile was nervous, and cut short on one side, but it was his. “I should have known you’d be curious.”

  I touched the patch. He went taut, holding his breath, swallowing hard. I could practically hear his heart pounding.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  His mouth tightened shut as, with a shaking hand, he moved the patch aside.

  The eyelid was sewn shut and sunken into a misshapen socket.

  “I know…” His voice shook. “I know I’m horrible.”

  “What happened to you was going to leave a mark. I just…” I shifted the patch back down, more for his comfort than my own. “You’re alive. Gabriel. I’ve never seen anything as beautiful as you being alive.”

  I raised my other hand to the undamaged side of his face, still in a state of disbelief. He was here. Damaged but here, and all the feelings I’d stuffed away blew the lid off the box.

  The last two years folded into moments as if he’d never left. As if I hadn’t married
Peter in desperation and endured his abuse as a way of punishing myself for surviving. As if Gabriel and I were kids in college with nothing to do but fall in love.

  “You needed to see me before you decided,” he said.

  “I feel like you were never gone.”

  “But I was.”

  “What happened? Why didn’t you come back to me?”

  “I didn’t think… I mean, look at me.”

  My hands slid off his face. “You could have let me choose.”

  “Please be mad,” he said. “Please be so angry you hate me. Tell me it’s my face, or what I did when I didn’t come back. Don’t give me a reason if you don’t want. Just tell me you never want to see me again.”

  He thought it was going to be that easy, did he?

  He wasn’t playing the pathos card with me. I wasn’t as impressed with the state of his face as he was.

  “I have some things to take care of first.” I backed away. “Don’t go anywhere, Gabriel Marlowe. Adam Brate. Whatever you want me to call you. I know where you are now, and I know why. You can’t hide. I will find you, and I will love you the same as the last day I saw you. Do you understand?”

  “You scare the fuck out of me,” he said through a smile that, even cut short on the left, could melt the ice caps.

  “Good. Then I’ll see you at the lions tonight. Don’t be late.” I turned on my heel and left.

  Margie handed me the hot tea I didn’t ask for. The warmth of the mug was welcome against fingers running with Los Angeles-thin blood.

  “And you’re one hundred percent sure it was him?” she asked, pouring boiling water in her own cup.

  “One hundred percent.”

  She leaned against the counter, tapping her ring against the porcelain. “Who told you he was dead?”

  “Daddy.”

  “Just him?”

  “He had some lawyers, and a doctor was there, I think.”

  She sighed. “Yeah.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You got sold, Carrie.”

  Our conversation in the bathroom came back to me. I’d refused to believe it was possible for my family to change the course of my life without my approval.