by Gayle Forman
When it’s time for me to get in, she holds up a blanket. “I’ll leave this off until the border so you don’t get claustrophobic. And I’ll stay back here with you until then to make sure you don’t get crushed to death in an avalanche of musical equipment. The irony of it would be too much.”
“Ha, ha,” I say meekly.
It’s quiet as we wind through the streets. Every time we take a turn, Hannah leans against the cases to keep them from shifting. When we get on the highway she asks Claudia how long till the border.
“About forty-five minutes,” Claudia replies.
“Perfect timing.”
“For what?” I ask.
“My surprise.” She slips a pair of earbuds through the crack in the gear. “Put these in.”
“Is this a playlist of your perfect songs?”
“No, it’s my attempt at a playlist of your perfect songs.”
“I don’t have any perfect songs.”
“Yet. Hence the list. My attempt to find your perfect song.”
“How’d you do that?”
“I guess I thought about you, tried to channel you, and here’s what I came up with.”
The thought of Hannah spending all this time to find me a song gives me a lump in my throat. “Thank you,” I croak.
“Don’t thank me yet. You ready?”
I nod.
“Okay, the first song is ‘Papa Was a Rodeo’ by the Magnetic Fields. I chose it because it tells a story, and you being a books guy, I thought you’d appreciate it.” She presses play.
The song is as slow as rising bread. Against a melancholy guitar riff, a guy with an earth-deep voice begins to sing. It’s a love song. But the saddest kind. About loving someone, and not being able to love them at the same time.
“Well?” she asks when it’s over.
A dozen butterflies flutter around my stomach, though I can’t tell if it’s the song or the fact that Hannah chose it for me. Maybe there’s no daylight between the two. “What’s next?”
“I went out on a limb on this one. ‘Clair de Lune.’”
“Classical?”
“Yeah. But that’s not why I chose it. The song comes from a poem by Paul Verlaine; in it, he describes the soul as somewhere full of music, in a minor key.” She puts her hand over her heart. “So that seemed, I don’t know, right somehow. The poetry. The minor key.”
“Why minor key?”
“Minor keys are beautiful. And melancholy.” She takes a breath. “Made me think of you.”
“Because I’m beautiful or melancholy?”
“Stop fishing.” She plays the song. The melody must seep out of the earbuds because as the music fills my head, Hannah dances her fingers through the air, as if she’s tracing the invisible arc of the notes.
When the track ends, she says, “That might be one of my perfect songs too.”
“How do you know when a song is perfect?”
“When it Beethoven’s Anvils you.”
“What’s Beethoven’s Anvil? Aside from your band’s name.”
“It’s the title of a book.”
“You named your band after a book?”
“Not the book so much as the phenomenon the book describes.”
“Which is?”
“Well, the book is written by a jazz musician. And it’s his attempt to understand why the brain reacts to music so powerfully, so primally. And it all boils down to how when we play or listen to music, we enter a communal experience. We vacate our ego and become, I dunno, part of the music. It sounds hokey, but to me, when I hear a perfect song, that’s exactly what happens. Everything else just disappears, all there is in the world is just me and the music.”
In the moment that follows, everything I hear—the slap of the tire treads against the pavement, the squeak of the speaker casters against the metal truck floor, the beat of my swelling heart—has a beat to it. I can’t find to a way to explain how I feel but words can’t contain it. Maybe only music can.
“Hannah,” Claudia calls. “We’re nearing the border. Better come up front.”
“Okay. I’ll leave you with this,” Hannah says, handing me her phone. “The songs will get you home.”
There must be a queue to cross the border because the van slows to a near stop. I listen to the next song, and the one after that. I can’t tell if they’re perfect or not. But they do help me quiet my doomsday worrywart.
The van lurches forward just as I hear a familiar fluty riff, the opening notes to a song I know so well. “This Must Be the Place,” by Talking Heads. The song Mom started every morning listening to. The song that was playing on Ira’s radio when Mom almost ran away from him. The song that made her stop and turn around.
It wasn’t just that Talking Heads were, still are, Mom’s favorite band. It wasn’t just that she was in fact hitching home from a musical festival they’d played at. It was the song itself. As David Byrne sang, Home is where I want to be, but I guess I’m already there, Mom felt like he was talking to her. Telling her this man would bring her home.
Hannah put this song on my perfect-song list. This is the song that’s playing as we cross the border. This is the song that brings me home.
* * *
After we are safely back in the United States, Hannah rushes back to me, pushing away the bass amp. Her face is flushed and hopeful and beautiful, and when I see her, it’s like my insides are turned out, like if she touches me, I will hemorrhage feelings.
I pull her toward me. The moment our lips touch, everything goes quiet, everything recedes. All there is in the world is just me and Hannah.
It is the Beethoven’s Anvil of kisses.
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Starting and Running a Coffee Bar
I’m dreaming of Sandy. I’m in his room, amid his peeling band posters, his cork wall of ticket stubs from every show he went to, his corner workshop of turntables. His bed is unmade, as it was that morning. His boxer shorts are half in, half out of the hamper, as they were that morning. His face is blue, like it was that morning. Only unlike that morning, Sandy is alive. He’s playing records for me, in a way that he never did in real life. One track after the other. He’s bouncing to the beat, talking to me. But I can’t hear the music. No matter how hard I listen. And I can’t hear what Sandy is saying to me. No matter how I hard I listen.
* * *
I wake, utterly disoriented. In a short time I’ve become used to the whine of the table saw, the rifle pow of the nail gun, the Lumberjacks’ low-fi bickering. But today there’s none of that. It’s like the quiet of the dream has trailed me to the waking world.
Downstairs in the shop, Ira sips his tea while Chad quietly works on his laptop. They aren’t talking but there’s something about them, a warmth, as if they’ve known each other for years, not weeks.
“Good morning, sunshine!” Chad says when he sees me.
“Good morning,” I say.
“Afternoon is more accurate,” Ira notes. “It’s past noon.”
“It is?” I ask, rubbing my eyes. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
“Chad said you had a big night.” Ira closes the book in his lap. It’s not one of his West Indian novels but one of those Idiot’s Guides we used to sell so many copies of. This one is called The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Starting and Running a Coffee Bar. “Did you have fun?”
“I did,” I say, warming at the memory. I look around. “Where are the guys?”
“Off scavenging for parts for Lady Gaga,” Ira says.
“What are you two up to?” I ask.
“Chad’s working on the inventory,” Ira says. “And I’m getting ready to meet Bev for support group.”
“Tai chi,” Chad reminds him. “Support group is tomorrow.”
“Right. Tai chi.” Ira reaches for his coat.
“Did you t
ake your Lexapro?” Chad asks.
Ira knuckles himself on the forehead. “I did not. Thanks for reminding me. Now, where did I leave the bottle?”
“In your pocket,” Chad says.
“Right,” Ira says. “Thank you, Chad.”
“Anytime, Mr. Stein.”
“Please call me Ira.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Stein.”
After Ira leaves, Chad turns to me. “Are your dad and Bev boning? Or whatever the old person version of boning is?”
“Thanks for the image, Chad.” I watch Ira skip down the stairs. He has seemed happier of late, though I’m not sure whether it’s the store renovation or the meds he began taking or Bev cheering him up. Maybe all three.
“Speaking of boning, how’d it go with Hannah last night?”
“Good,” I say. “We kissed. For real.”
I expect this news to have an impact, but Chad’s attention has been diverted to his phone, which is vibrating with incoming texts. “How was it?” he asks absently as he taps a message back.
How to describe that kiss? Or the one that followed when she dropped me off? Those two kisses kept me awake most of the night.
“I mean, I’ve kissed people before, obviously, but it’s never felt like that.”
“Uh-huh,” Chad says, cracking up at his phone.
“It was like, I don’t know, we were inhabiting each other.”
“Cool, cool,” he replies, still texting.
“If you’d like to be alone with your phone, I can leave.”
“Sorry, dawg.” Chad puts down his phone. “I’m happy for you. Bring it in for a hug.”
“Uh, okay.” As I awkwardly hug Chad, I feel his phone vibrate with more incoming texts.
“Who keeps texting you?”
“Jax.”
“Oh, right. You drove back together. Was it weird?”
“Why would it be weird?”
“Because you don’t know each other very well.”
“It wasn’t weird. It was the opposite of weird. Like we just started talking and didn’t stop.”
“What’d you talk about?”
“Everything. Music. Love. Bathrooms. Sex.” Chad’s cheeks now go pink as his phone buzzes with yet another text. He reads it and literally laughs out loud. “Anyhow, we kinda went there right away. Like, I talk a lot with other paras about, you know, the sex thing, when the big head’s outa sync with the little head. Jax has had different experiences, and they had an interesting take about not trying too hard to connect one to the other. You know, letting yourself be turned on up here, or down there, and maybe it’s okay if it doesn’t happen at the same time.”
“You packed a lot into a two-hour drive.”
“So did you from the sounds of it.” Chad grins. “You and Hannah. It’s for real?”
“Yeah. Crazy as it seems, I think we’re inevitable. Like the good kind of inevitable.”
“There’s a bad kind?” Chad asks.
“Most inevitable things are bad. Death. Extinction.”
“Taxes,” Chad adds.
“Exactly.”
“Jax said Hannah hasn’t really been involved with anyone since she got sober. So she must be really into you.”
I’m so chuffed by the “involved with” and “really into you” parts that it takes a second for me to process the rest of what he said.
“Sober?”
“Oh, shit. Jax told me not to tell. They already goofed by telling me. Because it’s meant to be anonymous. It just came up because they were in rehab together.”
My ears start to ring. No. Chad must’ve got it wrong. I must have heard it wrong.
“Rehab?”
“Yeah. That’s how they met.”
The club sodas. Hannah and her Saturday meeting. The twelve-step lingo. Suddenly it all clicks into place.
Hannah is an addict.
I’ve fallen in love with an addict.
“Excuse me,” I say to Chad. I run upstairs, without thinking, straight into Sandy’s room. As if he’s going to be there. As if he’s going to tell me what to do. I take a deep breath but all I get is more silence.
Tuesdays with Morrie
“Fudge a duck on a hot sidewalk!” Ike yells as he wipes a spray of espresso grounds off his face. “Pardon my French.”
“Not sure that’s French,” Garry says.
“Gaga three, Ike nil,” Richie says.
“Gaga four,” Chad says, peering into a box of books. “Aaron, Eat, Pray, Love . . . Don’t tell me. Fiction.”
“Memoir,” I reply absently, checking out the window for Lou, who is supposed to be bringing by a couple of big spenders today.
“But it was a movie,” Chad complains.
“And before that it was a memoir,” I snap. “They’re not mutually exclusive.”
“Yeesh,” Richie says. “What’s eating you?”
“He’s obsessing about his girlfriend,” Chad replies.
“I’m not obsessing, and she’s not my girlfriend,” I say. “I mean, I don’t know what we are yet.”
“Yesterday you said you were inevitable,” Chad says.
That was before I found out she was an addict. Now I need more information. For instance, what kind of addict is she? Is she the Sandy kind, which is to say cruel, manipulative, destructive? No. She can’t be. I never would have fallen in love with a Lucy.
“Dagnabbit!” Ike yells as a blast of steam hisses from the wand. He lifts his wrist, covered in angry welts, to his mouth. “This darn thing makes no sense.”
“You sure it’s not the plumbing?” Garry asks.
“The plumbing’s perfect,” Ike replies with a snarl. “It’s the darn-tootin’ machine. It’s like everything’s the reverse of where you think it should be, like how they drive on the wrong side of the road in other places.”
“Pretty sure in Italy they drive on the right side, same as us,” Garry says.
“Now how do you know that?” Ike demands.
“From The Italian Job.”
“I don’t know why you won’t watch a YouTube tutorial,” Richie says.
Ike’s look is withering. “I don’t need a computer to teach me how to work a machine.”
Chad pulls more books out of the box. “Hey, Aaron, what’s the deal with these?”
And how am I supposed to get this information? Just casually ask, Hey, Hannah, did you ruin your family’s life? Did you pull the football out from under your little brother time and time again?
“Aaron,” Chad asks. “What’s the deal with all these copies?”
And why didn’t she tell me? We made a deal not to lie to each other. Isn’t this a whopper?
“Aaron,” Chad repeats. “Why do you have so many copies of the same book?”
“Huh?”
Chad holds up a stack of Tuesdays with Morrie.
“Oh, that must be left over from when Mitch Albom did an author visit.”
“Mitch Albom was here?” Garry asks. “When?”
“Ages ago. I was a kid but apparently it was my mom’s greatest triumph. He was huge by then, and she met him at a trade show, and she just asked him if he’d come to our store. And he did.”
“Whole town showed up,” Ike says, grinding more beans. “Line went down the block. Beana waited hours to get her book signed.”
“Man,” Garry says, shaking his head. “Wish I’d been there. I love Tuesdays with Morrie. Ain’t too proud to say I cried my eyes out when I read it.”
“Me too.” Chad says. “I mean when I saw the movie. But it must have the same ending. When they say goodbye and you know Morrie’s about to die . . .”
“Hey!” Richie objects. “No spoilers.”
“You’re not gonna read the book, so what do you care?” Garry asks.
“Maybe I will read it,” Richie shoots back.
“If you do, I’ll read it too,” Chad says.
“If you two read it, I’ll reread it,” Garry says. “And we can talk about it.”
“Like the Knit and Lit?” Richie asks.
“Yeah. But we can drink beer instead of knitting. Lit and . . .” Chad taps his temple. “Getting lit?”
“Books and Brews?” Richie suggests.
“I like that,” Garry says. “Can we borrow some copies, Aaron?”
I stare at my phone. Should I just call her? Say, Hey, why didn’t you tell me you were an addict? I mean, it’s cool and all but you should know that my brother . . .
“Aaron?” Garry asks again. “Can we borrow some of the Morries?”
“Yeah, sure. Take as many as you want.”
“For real. Maybe I can send a few to Caleb,” Garry adds. “He says the prison library is shit.”
This gets my attention. “I didn’t know Caleb was locked up.”
“Serving three years for breaking and entering. Idiot broke into a cop’s house.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. If he hadn’t gotten locked up, he probably would’ve wound up like your brother.”
“Why?” I say, but then I realize what Garry means. Caleb’s an addict. Hannah’s an addict. Is everyone but me an addict?
The bell rings over the door. “We’re closed,” Richie shouts without looking up. “For renovations.”
“Uhhh . . . I’m here for my jacket?” Lou says. Behind him is a guy in a porkpie hat and a woman with a buzz cut and sleeve tats.
“Right, your jacket,” I say, jumping up. “It’s in the basement.”
I lead them down the stairs. “These are your big spenders?” I whisper to Lou.
“Don’t be deceived. These guys are total vinyl junkies.”
Maybe everyone is addicted to something. Maybe it’s not a big deal.
I grab my phone and text Hannah: Hey, can we talk?
“And they brought beaucoup bucks,” Lou adds.
“Good. I have till the end of the month to sell a shit ton of these records.”