by Alexi Venice
She compartmentalized Jen into a different section of her byzantine brain, easing her personal burden. Her busy mind slowed, and her complex, heartbroken world swiftly simplified. Then her emotions recalibrated to relish the sound of the surf, the crackle of the fire, the warmth of Margot, the smell of the wood burning, the relaxed vibe of the group, the happy expressions on their faces, and the glow of the setting sun. Her attention successfully shifted to living in the moment.
Even Chance was more relaxed than Amanda remembered him from working side-by-side during her re-election campaign.
Her eyes traveled to Margot, who had a small grin plastered to her face, as she listened politely to a middle-aged man on her right talking about the power of playing the timpani, striking the head that reverberated in the copper bowl, flowing up his arms and into his body, consuming him. He insisted that he literally became one with the drum during their performances on stage. Blah, blah, blah.
Professional musicians are so self-absorbed , Amanda thought.
She ignored him and turned her attention to surrendering herself to being high, a feeling of contentment spreading through her. Nothing was that bad. Everything would be okay. She felt happier than she had in days, if not weeks.
She realized Chance was talking to her, but she hadn’t caught the beginning of his remarks, so she swiveled her gaze to his face, struggling to catch up. To comprehend. The familiar hindering of cognition spread like a wave through her brain. She adored the handicap after suffering from a racing brain her entire life.
Chance was saying, “No sooner had I signed onto Kara Montiago’s campaign than you and your detective friends started visiting her house, confiscating her phone and computers, and generally fucking with her. It was a nightmare.”
“Oh God, why did you have to bring her up?” Amanda asked. “I tried to warn you…” As her voice trailed off, her hand finished the sentence with a rolling motion.
He groaned, and a few long seconds passed, although Amanda couldn’t be sure if seconds or minutes passed, her perception of time now hampered by the ganja.
“How did you try to warn me?” he asked.
Her brain struggled against a veil of muddled memory and a desire to suspend intellectual activity. Chance had just asked her a question, so she had to respond. She searched the labyrinth of memories in her mind to retrieve what she wanted to say, moving in slow motion—time an elastic reality-bender—actually picturing herself moving through her brain as she would through the offices at the Hall of Justice. She searched and searched, reaching for their phone call several weeks ago, finally discovering the memory. Proud of herself for accessing it, she said before she could forget, “When we spoke on the phone…I explicitly warned you not to join her campaign.”
“That’s what I’m asking,” he said. “How?”
“That’s the point,” she said. “I’m the DA. I couldn’t say anything. My deliberate silence should have signaled you.”
He laughed then imitated her authoritative tone. “How was I supposed to distinguish between your usual reticence and ‘deliberate silence’ during a phone call?”
“Now that you put it thaaaat way.” She grinned.
“I mean, seriously, girl, over the phone? You were probably rolling your eyes and making faces too, but I couldn’t see them, could I?!”
Amanda wheezed out a laugh, then covered her mouth as she pictured herself talking to Chance about Kara Montiago. He had pretty much nailed it. “Was I too subtle for you?”
“You’re so subtle that you need to come with subtitles,” he said. “Next time, just come out and say, ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you.’”
Peals of laughter snuck up on her, racking her body. She absentmindedly rested her hand on Margot’s thigh, unaware of her own body’s movements.
When she came up for air, she rubbed her eyes and said, “If there’s ever a ‘next time,’ I will simply advise you not to pull a ‘Kara Montiago,’ and you’ll immediately know what I’m talking about.”
“Brilliant,” Chance said. “The beauty of history.”
Switching topics, Amanda voiced the inexplicable. “You know how your mouth tastes minty fresh after you brush your teeth?”
“Yes,” Chance said, then muttered, “especially after tongue-punching the fart box.”
Amanda stopped mid-thought and looked at him, her eyes wide with surprise. “Oh my God. I’ve never heard that before!”
Chance puckered his lips and smoothed back his hair before drinking his glass of red wine.
Amanda leaned in close to his ear and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “I mean, I’ve heard of anal tongue darts, but not tongue-punching the fart box.” She covered her mouth as another round of laughter bubbled up. Through it, she said in staccato bursts, “That’s. So. Gross!”
Chance glanced nervously at Kip, then returned his attention to Amanda. “Try it sometime with Jen. What were you going to say about your mouth feeling minty fresh?”
She stared at him for a second, her mind searching…searching…concentrating like she never had before, then retrieving. “Oh yeah. Right. I remember now. My eyes feel minty fresh right now, especially when I blink.” She blinked in rapid succession for him. “God, this is amazing. Do your eyes feel minty fresh?”
Both Chance and Margot blinked.
“Ah no, but my skin feels tingly all over,” Margot said. “What is this stuff anyway?”
“Yeah, Kip, what did we just smoke?” Chance hollered even though Kip was sitting next to him.
“You don’t have to yell, Chance. I’m right here.” Kip gave him an embarrassed eye roll. “It’s called Blue Dream. The bud master at the dispensary said it was a nice blend of some substrains from Sativa and Indica. I didn’t catch the percentage mix or names of the substrains. To tell the truth, I wasn’t really listening, but she said it was good for a wake and bake, so I thought it would be good around the fire.”
“What does that even mean?” Amanda asked, her hand still on Margot’s thigh.
“You know,” Chance said, “you wake up in the morning and get high, so you’re barely awake and your baked, but you can function all day.”
“Like I’m ever going to do that!” Amanda blurted.
Chance laughed. “Nope. Can’t picture you getting high first thing in the morning, that’s for sure.”
Amanda sensed Margot’s hand covering her own, which had dropped into Margot’s inner thigh without consulting her brain. She was swimming in Blue Dream, mindless to stress, mindless to pain, mindless to rejection. Only love, and the love of touch, registered in her brain, abiding her base instinct and impulse.
Amanda stared at Margot’s hand—broad, freckled and tanned, the hand of someone who spent time outdoors. She allowed her fingertips to roam freely over Margot’s palm, sensing tiny calluses at the base of her fingers.
Margot’s nails were short but not professionally manicured and definitely not the thin, translucent appearance of someone who existed entirely indoors. Amanda slid her finger over the tips of Margot’s nails, going from one nail to the next. She wasn’t sure why she was hyper-inspecting Margot’s fingers, but her curious fingers had a mind of their own. Neither finely filed nor jagged, Margot’s nails were groomed comfortably short, only a fraction of the white tip visible.
There was a weight, a meatiness, to Margot’s hands that told Amanda that Margot used them often.
Sliding off Margot’s hand, Amanda’s long fingers caressed the inner curve of Margot’s thigh—Margot’s hand now riding on top of Amanda’s—going in a lazy, circular motion. Sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, their heads only inches apart, they watched their hands move in concert. Amanda knew the hand was hers, but she felt like she was watching someone else’s hand in a movie, so detached was her brain in its blissful state.
“That feels nice.” Margot slid her hand up Amanda’s forearm then back down again.
“Uh-huh.” Amanda had no idea if she caressed Margot’s thigh for three minutes or thirty. Tim
e dilated as the sun kissed the ocean then sizzled into it, the horizon of sun and sea becoming less defined as the pink sky gave way to muted tones of grey-black.
“What do these hands do?” Amanda finally asked, turning Margot’s hands over in her own.
“That’s a loaded question.” Margot laughed softly for a long minute. “They usually garden and play the flute.”
Amanda smothered a grimace. She abhorred the sound of the flute. Sure, she acknowledged its necessity in an orchestra, but considered it too whimsical, tinny, and breezy for her taste. Flute music was usually frivolous, and Amanda considered its players to be as well. Of the wind instruments, the clarinet was her favorite.
She decided to explore the more desirable avocation. “Do you grow flowers or vegetables?”
“Both,” Margot said.
“I wish I had time to garden.”
Margot smiled patiently. “I’d be happy to help you.”
“I barely have time for yoga.”
“And, see, yoga and gardening go hand-in-hand.”
Amanda pondered that pearl of wisdom for some time, envisioning herself on a yoga mat in a garden.
“I know you’re the DA, but what do you like to do in your free time?” Margot asked.
A bittersweet expression claimed Amanda’s face. “Walk the beach. Play cello. Practice yoga.”
“You play?” Margot’s voice rose in excitement. She grabbed Amanda’s left hand and turned it over in hers, inspecting the pads of her fingers. “These look pretty raw. Did you just take up playing after a hiatus?”
“Impressive detective work,” Amanda said, not revealing more but redirecting the conversation back to Margot. “Do you play flute a lot?”
“Full-time in the symphony, in chamber groups, teaching master classes, you name it.”
“ The symphony?” Amanda asked, referring to the San Francisco Symphony.
“Is there any other?”
Amanda laughed.
“A few of us around the fire are sentenced to long black dresses and tuxes while toiling away on stage for others’ entertainment,” Margot said.
“You make it sound so romantic.”
“I’m just joking,” Margot said. “But it can be a grind.”
“Like any job, I suppose,” Amanda said.
“As opposed to what you get to do with your cello. Playing music for fun keeps the romance alive. Instead of being married to it as a profession, you can have an affair when you long for escape.”
Amanda tilted her head and shifted her shoulders, contemplating the flames. “I have to admit that I do have a certain way with my fingers on the neck while I move the bow across the strings.”
“Taking the metaphor in that direction, huh?” Margot asked.
Keeping her eyes on the fire, the edges of Amanda’s lips turned up.
“Fine. I’ll give you that,” Margot said, “but flutists can move their lips and tongue in concert while covering the open holes with their fingers.”
Amanda broke into a high-beam smile, her eyes reflecting the fire at Margot, who casually sipped her G&T.
“Killer line,” Amanda said. “If you only had a nickel for every time you’ve used it, right?”
“I don’t need a nickel. I had a woman for every time I used it.”
The timpanist to Margot’s right supplied the bah-dum-bump for Margot, revealing that he was eavesdropping. Why not? What else did he have to do?
“Well, as you said,” Amanda half-whispered, “the amateur can bring fun, spontaneity, and creativity to the instrument because it isn’t a daily grind.”
“I’m a fan of the hobby player,” Margot said. “No need to make it into a nine-to-five job.”
She’s matching my double-entendres, Amanda thought, I like her . Amanda’s world became smaller, as she basked in the simplicity of fire and friendship. She sensed that the minutes were passing, but she was floating in a reality of the here and now. Touch. Warmth. Laughter. Companionship.
“I’ve often thought that humans are at their best when they’re making music and creating art,” Amanda had dined on this notion several times in her life, but it had resonated with her in a profound way over the last few days.
“Hear, hear,” Timpani Tom said. “The rest is just bullshit. Composing and making music is what distinguishes humans from every other species.”
“Birds sing,” Margot observed.
“But they don’t compose unique melodies, much less play instruments,” he said. “They have a call, which is very different from a musical piece.”
Amanda gave voice to a spontaneous thought. “If I were diagnosed with a terminal illness, I’d spend several days listening to a variety of music by decade, starting with the 1950s. Enjoy every single Nat King Cole song, then Frank Sinatra, even Dean Martin singing, ‘That’s Amore—’”
“The 1950s?” Margot interrupted. “Why not begin with the classical music of the 1700s?”
“If you want the earliest piece of music,” Timpani Tom interjected, “you would start with the Hurrian Hymn No. 6, composed on a clay tablet in the 14 th Century B.C.”
“It’s sick that you know that,” Amanda said in response to his non-information, “but why would I listen to a piece of music that I didn’t enjoy during my lifetime? I’m talking about spending days listening to all my favorites because who knows what kind of music awaits me in the afterlife? Will there be Journey, Pearl Jam or Billie Eilish in heaven?”
“—or Jimi Hendrix?” Tom asked.
“Tom’s wrong, you know,” Margot said, oblivious to Amanda’s comment.
Amanda hmphed. “About what?”
“The oldest piece of music is actually Greek.”
“Bah,” Tom huffed. “They take credit for everything.”
Margot turned on him. “It’s true, and you know it. The oldest musical composition to have survived in its entirety—unlike the fragments of the Hurrian pieces—is a first Century A.D. Greek tune known as ‘Seikilos Epitaph.’ It was engraved on a marble column on a gravesite in Turkey, and includes both musical notation as well as lyrics. I think a woman wrote it.”
“Of course she did.” Amanda cast an imperious glance toward Tom.
“We’ve had this conversation before,” Margot said, tsking at Tom.
“I’m sure you have a lot of downtime to debate these things between rehearsals,” Amanda said, “but that isn’t my point. I’m not even sure I’d listen to my favorite songs by decade. I might do it by genre—like American jazz, blues R&B, then pop…” Her voice trailed off as various songs and artists floated through her mind, reconfirming her love of music.
Thirteen
A star-spangled canopy blanketed the Pacific as time passed in soft conversation, the crackle of the fire and the rhythmic pounding of the surf filling the air.
Amanda formed a question in her addled mind long before she was able to articulate it. She turned to Margot. “Do you have a favorite composer?”
“For flute or symphony?”
“Flute.”
“It’s a toss-up. I like Cécile Chaminade because she was a female in an era of male composers. Her flute concertino is romantic and moves in a flowing way that baroque music doesn’t. On the other hand, I like Francis Poulenc for the opposite reason—modern phrasing full of dissonance and unresolved melodies.”
Amanda nodded thoughtfully. “I’m not sure I’ve heard any flute pieces by either.”
“I’ll play them for you sometime.”
Shit. Fell into that one. Amanda chose not to respond, hoping she seemed contemplative in the firelight or too stoned to focus. Death by flute recital!
“Do you have a favorite piece you like to play?” Margot asked.
Amanda sighed, reluctant to admit her recent meanderings through the darkest of dark nights. “Lately, I’ve been playing a lot of Saint-Saëns because I’ve got the blues, and the low, elongated notes help draw out my sadness, so I…” Her voice came up short, preventing her from co
mpleting her sentence.
“Which piece?” Margot asked.
With great effort and in a shaky voice, Amanda said, “ The Swan… You know, from—”
“ Carnival of the Animals.” Margot rested a knowing hand on Amanda’s forearm. “It’s a beautiful, bittersweet tune. I can see why it makes you cry.”
Amanda nodded, embarrassed that she was verklempt again. She didn’t think of herself as emotionally labile, but the notes, how they sang to her, resonating with her broken heart after Jen cut off their relationship like it was the head of a fish. After playing for hours, Amanda had felt as though she had cried for an eternity, so cathartic was the ritual of making music.
Unbidden, the notes exploded in her inner ear like big, fat bubbles, bursting with their full timbre and soul, spilling the melody into her brain, phrase after phrase. She swayed dreamily to The Swan’s languorous melody, as if she were drawing the bow across the strings there, in front of the fire. The sound had never been clearer to her. The phrasing never more touching. The notes never so tender, torturing her.
She stared blankly into the fire, the hypnotic effect of the flames dancing to the melancholy tune, her body vibrating internally to the pure beauty of music. What she couldn’t express in words she communicated through her cello, the large instrument humming between her legs, drawing, pulling, and even ripping out her heartache until she could weep no more.
She felt as though she were in the center of a swirling blue mist, serene in her thoughts, modest in her intentions, content to allow herself to be carried away, giving up control, acquiescing to the inevitable. Fate. But she wasn’t afraid. She was calm and assured. If this is what Blue Dream did to her right brain, she needed to smoke it more often.
She had played The Swan and another, quieter piece— Thaїs: Méditation by Massenet—several times day and night, drowning herself in their unrelenting, plundering of emotion, pushing her deeper into depression, dredging mysterious cells of sadness in the deepest reaches of her body. She swam in a black abyss over the last week, alone in her house, a turbid sea of unrequited love for Jen.
One night, she had pulled out the sheet music for a Shostakovich piece in a minor key. Stress minor. Considered one of the bleakest of compositions, its notes drove Amanda deep into the mortal reaches of night from which she could see no daylight. It had a wild movement that was atavistic and tuneless, emoting death. The composition had resonated with her, but she had abandoned it for fear of taking her own life. She needed hope, and Shostakovich’s work provided none. In the interest of self-preservation, she had returned to the French composers.