by Jesse Jordan
“Thank you.” Quiet: embarrassed and proud at the same time.
“Now, I have to tell our audience—”
James could picture her there, sitting in a cushy office chair, pushed up to the desk. Phones and computers abound, her feet barely touch the ground, and the headphones they put on her cover most of her head. Ankles crossed, right over left, uncrossed, then crossed again, left over right.
“—and that was when you were how old, now?”
“Fourteen, last year.”
“Fourteen. My word. And you’re scheduled to perform at the Civic Opera House, is that right?”
“Well, it’s not just me. A bunch of—”
Her parents must be there. James knew they were a small family, and when Dorian spoke of them it seemed to him to mirror some of the distance in his own family. Dorian was an only child, and her parents were separated. Still, they had to be there for this, didn’t they? Standing off to the side or behind a glass partition, beaming with pride like cliché happy families allegedly do?
“And you’re going to sing for us today. Do you want to get yourself situated?”
“Yes, thank you.” Rustling. James could see her as if he was in the room, bowing her back and then that shrug, one shoulder then the next, like a cat. One head roll, inhale through the nose, smile.
“And what will you be singing?”
“‘Habanera.’”
“Now is this Bizet or Carmen Jones?” The man with the soft voice chuckled, and Dorian followed suit. What the witticism had been, James had no idea. He made a mental note to look up Habanera, Beezay, and Carmen Jones.
“Bizet.”
“Ah,” he said, “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle. A beautiful aria. Please . . .”
And that was it. The man said, “Please . . .” and then waited, and for a moment or two the radio was nothing but that silence which isn’t. Then she began. He didn’t understand the words, and her voice seemed to reach and dip and trill so much that he thought for a moment it might be English, but no . . . French? He knew it, though, knew the song, or the aria, as they’d called it. He’d heard it before. Commercials, movies, just out in the active ether of the world.
Da da dada
Da dum doo day
Dootoo da dada . . .49
James felt that, in a way, he’d never heard music like this before, not alive and breathing. It was like the difference between seeing a gun on TV and holding one in your hand for the first time. Certain things have a power which is undeniable. It was playful and challenging and seductive. Every line seemed to have a shot in it. Dum-dum-dum da-DUM-dum-dum. Every time her voice peaked, he pictured her neck straining upward, the work, as if she was mining the notes. It was such a flirty, dismissive thing. But lonely too. James thought of the time he’d seen Gail Asbury at one of the school dances. She’d been dancing with Colin, each pressing against the other, getting as close to kissing as possible without their lips ever meeting, and his hand brushed her breast and she smiled, but when that hand grabbed her ass she twirled away for a moment before spinning back into the embrace. But then there was later, when he tried to get her to go behind the bleachers with him and she said no and he called her a tease and left with LaMarcus and the power she’d had only ten minutes ago vanished and she stood under one of the basketball hoops and looked like she wanted to cry but couldn’t because everyone was watching. That was what “Habanera” felt like to James when Dorian sang it, like both of those moments were happening at the same time, only a thousand times more so.
She snapped off the last note and again the nonsilent silence filled James’s room, making him aware of the space around him. He wasn’t in the studio with her. He was here. But she’s not there either.
“Wow,” the now-almost-whispering NPR host said as James searched for a clean shirt. “‘Habanera.’ Beautifully done.”
James deodorized and grabbed his toothbrush.
“That was Dorian Delaney, and again, she’ll be performing at the Civic Opera House in July with a coterie of young performers.”
He checked his hair—As good as it’s gonna get—and stuffed his sockless feet in shoes.
“Thank you again for being here, Dorian. It was a treat.”
“Thank you for having me.”
“Stay tuned for . . .”
James pedaled his bike north on Main Street, and as he crossed the tracks, he hit the rising pavement at just the right angle. He left the ground, and for a second, he held his breath and felt that good exhilarating fear and wind before bouncing back to the Earth. “Habanera” played in his head in perfect surround. It was his whole world as he rode, a sound track that his feet kept time to.
James slowed as he reached Dorian’s block; the cold constriction of anxiety grabbed him from his solar plexus to his knees. Why was he going to say he was there? He’d ridden over without thinking it through at all. What do I say?
It doesn’t matter. James began to pedal toward the house. He had to. He simply had to tell her what he’d felt when he heard her sing, how beautiful it was, the effect it’d had on him, everything.50
There were no cars in the driveway, and as he turned into it, he quietly stepped off his bike and laid it down in the grass. Before he made it to the front door, though, he heard a sound around back. Soft music, heavy bass. James held his knock and walked around the side of the house, down the driveway, until the small backyard opened up before him. A grill from the Cold War sat on a blanket-sized patch of concrete, and on the other side of the yard, by the chain-link fence, was a small, blue kiddie pool filled with clean, clear water. Between the two was a chipped, white-and-yellow lawn chair, on which Dorian Delaney reclined in a red bikini and oversized sunglasses.
She hadn’t heard his approach over the music, some dance-club techno thing that James was unfamiliar with. Her right hand dangled down by a glass of melting ice, and her left foot was turned in slightly.
Say something. If she catches you staring at her—
“Hot out.”
Dorian jerked forward, knocking the glass of ice into the grass and pulling up the towel under her legs to cover herself.
“Sorry,” James said, taking a step back. “Sorry, sorry.”
“James?” The word was reproach and question all at once.
James felt his face fill with shame.
“Sorry, I’m . . . I just heard you on the radio and I had to come over and tell you that I love—that I loved it. It was, it was amazing. I didn’t mean to—it’s just that I went to the door and I heard the music—I said something, I wasn’t just like staring at you and being creepy, I mean, I saw you and I said—”
“Okay.”
“—and I said, ’cause it’s hot.”
Dorian stood up and folded the blanket over the back of the lawn chair. “Thanks,” she said, picking up the glass. James noticed she purposefully stepped on the melting ice before walking away. “Do you wanna come in? It was getting too hot anyway.” She switched off the radio as she went by.
James fell in behind her. The tiny lines at the back of her knees were white with suntan lotion, and the air she passed through was polluted with coconut. As she opened the door, James heard a snap-rustle and, looking off to the right, saw something large disappear around the house. He went over to the fence and looked, in the bushes, along the house into the front yard, but saw nothing.
Dorian held the door open. “What is it?”
James tried to replay what he’d seen, but it was too little, too fast. What he felt, though, was that it’d been a person; someone standing in the bushes who’d dashed off. He looked out into the neighborhood, but there was nothing. Still, he couldn’t help thinking of the men from the Escalades, and he ran his hand along his thigh, feeling the outline of Dink in his pocket.
“Nothing,” he said. “An animal, I guess.”
Dorian told him there was lemonade in the fridge and went off to change. When she came back, he’d poured them each a glass. She wore jean s
hort-shorts and an old, worn T-shirt at least two sizes too large. He could see the bikini strap, still there, poking out of the massive neckhole. The shirt read, John’s Pass Seafood Festival.
“Oh, god, what happened to your face?” She reached out, and two fingers brushed that dark purple knot on his chin.
“I just, uh . . .” He’d been prepared to tell her the same story he’d told his parents, but as it started to come out he realized that a lie would be a barrier between them, a thing he had to remember and keep track of, and just then he didn’t want anything between them. “Nick’s brothers jumped me.”
“What? Are you kidding?”
“Listen—”
“You should call the cops. You should. Like right now. I mean, what the hell’s the matter with those guys? They’re like in college—or y’know, should be. Oh my god, just—you should totally call the cops on them.”
“Hey, uh, do you mind if we just don’t talk about it?”
Dorian was frozen for a moment, mouth still open. She obviously had more to say.
“I came over because I heard you on the radio.”
That did it.
“You listened.” It wasn’t a question.
James nodded. He sipped his lemonade and tried to keep the oversweet acid cringe from his face. “Where is everyone?” When she didn’t answer, James said, “I figured you’d be here with your family listening . . .” She shook her head and her eyes went everywhere in the room except to him. She smiled and shrugged, and he got it. His mind scrambled for a new subject—This silence is killing you. “I set my alarm and wrote a reminder.” That was a smile. “I listened to it in my room. It was . . . I feel like it was special. Do you know what I mean?”
“It wasn’t . . .” James couldn’t help but smile; even her false modesty was weak. She knew.
“I’ve heard you sing before, and, y’know, you’re always really good. You are. I mean, you know that. But today—I feel like I’m gonna sound stupid explaining it but, uh . . .” James looked down into his lemonade, knowing there was no chance he could put any of this into words while looking at her. “It was like being there while something was being made. It was like, like there was nothing, and then there was something, and you did that. I don’t know. It made me feel really happy. Does that make sense?”
James peered up. Oh, god, that face. Dorian held all the symptoms of a smile on her face as she bit her bottom lip with a canine. James had never felt the urge to explode with such acute longing. He wanted to purge himself, to be free of this awful burden of bridled lust and impotent emotion. He wanted to howl, “Oh my god, Dorian! I love you! I love you, I love you, I love you!”
“My singing coach,” Dorian said, “is this old Russian guy. He says he’s in his early fifties, so only a little older than my dad, but he looks like he’s a hundred. He has liver spots. Anyway, he says that all art is creation. He says that God is creation. That’s the only thing that we know for a fact that God does is create. He says that’s the way humans really pray is creating stuff.” Then, in a nasally Russian accent, she added, “When we emulate the Creator, we commune with him.”
James laughed. Her Russian accent sounded oddly like Speedy Gonzales without the lilt, but he knew enough to shut up.
“When we create,” he said. “That kinda makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah. And whenever I have to practice or perform, he says, ‘Time to pray.’”
“Time to pray. That’s cool.”
And that damned silence again. James pressed his molars together as frustration swept through him. Why is it always like this with her? I say something stupid and then I say something unfunny and then there are these silences. Is it me? Maybe it’s her? No, dickhead, it’s you. And this one is getting—
“Do you wanna hang out and watch a movie or something?”
James could say, in all honesty, that he had never wanted to do anything so much in his entire life.
Dorian set out a bag of fat, soft chocolate chip cookies and fresh-from-the-freezer taquitos. James made a point to sit down first. There was a couch and two chairs, one of them a big, man-of-the-house recliner. Had she sat first, James would have found himself paralyzed. Next to her? Across the room? What if she sits on the couch? Do I sit on the couch? How close?
James sat at one far edge of the couch and, to his surprise, Dorian came and sat on the couch as well. Not next to him but not pressed against the other arm either. Definitely on the other half but closer to the middle, he noted.
When she asked what he was in the mood for, he simply said whatever she wanted. That got an eye roll, so he went with, “Something I’ve never seen.” That was easy. As soon as she learned that he’d never seen The NeverEnding Story, the decision was made. As the credits began, Dorian explained this was her absolute favorite movie, even though it was for kids, and that when she was little she used to watch it almost every day.
For the next 102 minutes, the only words spoken between them were Dorian asking if he wanted the last taquito. James just shook his head. He watched, captivated. In the movie there was this giant force erasing their entire world, and it was called the Nothing. His mind grabbed hold of the Nothing and turned it over and over. This ever-growing void, this erasure that swallows everything, it sat in his gut like rot. There was nothing specific, no connection he could pinpoint, and so no logical reason to be afraid. And yet there was an undeniable feeling: the physiological symptoms of fear, a dark spot in his mind as if he’d forgotten something, and it dragged his consciousness from the room and into his dreams, into Taloon and the Pit.
When the movie was over, Dorian turned to him. Her knees were pulled up to her chest as she twisted her body on the couch so that she was facing him. “Whatta you wanna do now?”
And like that they were spending the day together. It was something James became aware of as it happened, though he already felt as if he’d missed so much. They played HORSE in her driveway on an old-fashioned garage hoop. James missed one shot so badly that it grazed the roof and rolled into a neighboring yard, where he had to go and retrieve it. Then they shared a cigarette, though James was pretty sure Dorian didn’t inhale, and she kept saying how if Lem, the old Russian voice coach, saw her smoking he would flay her. They talked about going up to the public pool or watching another movie but didn’t do either. At one point she showed him her room, and his heart beat with such madness that the excitement bordered on terror, but nothing happened, and they walked out as easily as they’d walked in.
The afternoon crawled on, but the sun didn’t seem to move in the sky. Mack Truck AC inside; short shadows and wavy heat lines outside. Then, around three that afternoon, they decided to walk up to the Funky Bean for iced coffees. There, in the back corner that isn’t by the sky-blue bathroom, over by the mock stage and the percussion instruments, Dorian said, “Did I ever say thank you?”
James immediately reminded himself what he’d decided—Never mention it again—and for a second he actually started to pretend he wasn’t sure what she was talking about, but when he saw her eyes—furtive and dancing, now on him, then the coffee, the door, the barista, back on him and down—he stopped. “No,” he said. “But you didn’t have to. I knew.”
She didn’t look up. “What did you know?”
“Y’know, that you were . . . there was like an unspoken thank-you. You started being nice to me.” God, that sentence hurt to say. His cheeks flushed, but then he noticed the tail of a tear on her cheek. “What?”
Sniffle, throat clear. “I was mad at you.”
“What?”
“I was . . . different with you because it was, I mean, it was the right thing to do. It was polite.”
“Polite?”
“I know how that sounds.”
“Sounds?”
“You saved my life, and the doctors and my parents and everyone kept telling me how lucky I was that you came along, and you were so worried. I remember when they were picking me up, when they carrie
d me out. They were shouting and trying to keep me awake, but I felt like I was only half there, like when you wake up overnight but you’re still kind of in your dreams—and then I saw you there. I was lying down and they were lifting me and I saw you, covered in blood, and you . . . you looked so scared. I remember, I didn’t recognize you. I just kept thinking, somebody help him. He’s hurt and he’s so scared.” She still had not looked up at him.
James’s right leg bounced, his hands held the table, fighting the urge to jump up and run right out of the Funky Bean.
“Then, afterwards, when I understood everything, I felt like I—please don’t hate me for saying this; I just want to get it out—but I felt like I had to be nice to you. I felt like I owed it to you, or at least everyone felt I owed it to you. But secretly I . . . hated you.” Her chest went in, and her shoulders shook.
James could see that now she was really crying, and he wanted to reach out a hand and place it on hers but he couldn’t make himself do it.
“I’m, I’m only saying this because it’s not like that anymore. I mean, not just with you. With me.” Two great big inhales and a long drink of vanilla Frappuccino-thingy. She looked up, but apparently whatever she saw in James’s eyes was not what she’d been hoping for, because she looked back down. “Please don’t be mad. I’m—I practiced saying this, but it just sounds awful. What I’m trying to say is that it wasn’t about you. I was mad because I really wanted . . .” Dorian leaned down as if she was speaking to the table and whispered, “I wanted to die.”
James could only watch as she cried. Her shoulders slumped, as if those words had been holding her up.
“I’m . . . sorry?” he said.
And then she laughed. One sharp laugh caught like fire and morphed into a rolling, tumbling laugh that seemed as impossible to control as the earlier tears.
He was aware of his naïveté, but whatever it was that James didn’t know, he couldn’t say.
Dorian reached out and took his hand. “You don’t have to be sorry. I told you this because I wanted to say thank you finally.”