World Enough

by Clea Simon

  Did she reciprocate? Staring at the shadows on the ceiling, she wonders. Tries to remember if she was a good friend or simply an acolyte. For all the time they spent together, she can’t remember ever talking about anything but music. Still, how could she not have known that Scott was gay?

  Bewildered – amused, almost – by her own cluelessness, she rises to begin her day. There’s no sense fretting over the past. It had always been about writing with them, anyway. Writing and the music, of course. Both of them outsiders, looking in.

  Which doesn’t excuse everything. Far from it, although she’s thinking of more than mere amends as she calls Nick.

  ‘Hello?’ He sounds sleepy and she kicks herself. The man manages a bar. Has two teen boys. She should have waited.

  ‘Hey, Nick.’ She makes her voice soft. ‘I’m sorry to have called so early. Only, I wanted to talk to you.’

  He doesn’t reply, and she hesitates too. She knows she’s been – not unfair. Uneven, maybe. That she’s run hot and cold.

  ‘I want to apologize,’ she says. ‘For what I said. Implied, anyway. I was caught up in something. Not that that’s any excuse.’

  ‘Thank you.’ His voice is hoarse. ‘I appreciate that.’

  In the silence that follows, Tara finds herself waiting. Hoping, to be honest. She has reached out. She wants this man to do the same.

  ‘Do you think we could have a re-do?’ Her voice is smaller now. It is with some difficulty that she swallows. Tries again. ‘I mean, I’m not much of a cook, but if you wanted to come over, really anytime this week. I’m taking the week off, you see.’

  She’s talking too much. Filling in the space, and so she stops herself there. If he picks Thursday, the night of the tribute, she’ll figure something out. Just let him name a date. She’s on edge, she notices with some amazement. Nervous. It’s just excitement, she tells herself. It’s been a while.

  ‘Oh, Tara.’ He’s awake now; she can hear the deliberation in his words. Feels her heart sink, even as she hears the deep inhalation that presages his next words. ‘Part of me wants to. Really, I do.’

  She bites back the juvenile joke. Bites her lip as she waits.

  ‘I know we wouldn’t have met again, if it weren’t for your article.’ His words roll out with something like inevitability. That long-held breath finally released. ‘We’ve led different lives, you and I, but still …’

  Another sigh. She can’t resist.

  ‘Nick, I’ve been an ass.’ She has. She knows it now. ‘I get a little tunnel vision. A little caught up in the past. Min, Peter – my ex – they both tell me constantly, and I’m sorry. But you and I? That wasn’t nostalgia …’

  She catches herself: wasn’t?

  ‘It doesn’t have to be. Look, I fucked up, but I’m human. And I’m sorry. I don’t meet a lot of people I feel any connection with. What you said about loners? That’s me. That’s always been me, and you were always kind to me. And this now? Us? It’s been special, Nick. Hasn’t it?’

  She’s run out of words. Out of breath, too. Finds herself remembering. How could she have been so cavalier?

  ‘I feel a connection, too, Tara.’ He could be a million miles away. ‘But it’s not enough.’

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t trust you.’ Too little, too late. She knows that. Has to try anyway.

  ‘It’s not that – not just that.’ Another sigh. She can picture how his brow furrows. How he’s probably running a hand across his eyes. ‘I used to admire you. You know? You were fearless, in a clueless sort of way. You’d talk to anybody. It was like you wanted to understand it all.

  ‘But now I see the other side of that. When you’re writing. It’s like – I don’t know – blood in the water. You’re so single-minded, like the story is the only thing that matters.’

  She knows those words. She’s said them herself to Peter, to her ex. She has no answer now.

  ‘Let’s give it a break,’ he says, when the silence has gone on too long. ‘I mean, I don’t know. I’ll call you, Tara. And, hey, good luck with the article. I mean that.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She can barely whisper, and he hangs up.

  He’s wrong about one thing. She’s not completely consumed by the need to get the story out there. The need to get it right. Not completely like Peter, like Peter as she thought he was. In fact, she finds herself dodging her ex’s calls as the days go by. Weighing what she will tell him when, ultimately, she can no longer evade his questions.

  It’s not like she’s sitting around. Although she’s tempted to return to bed after the call with Nick, she makes herself get up and dressed. Makes herself read through the story – the version she’d shown Scott – and finds herself working on it. Tightening the prose. Filling in the blanks with what he’d confirmed, even tacitly.

  That’s enough for a day, and she leaves it at that, treating herself to a takeout feast and movie binge that keeps her up way too late.

  Tuesday and Wednesday follow the same path, although this time her reworking of the article leaves out the speculation about the Casbah. About Jonah and the heavy men who once ruled South Boston, ruled the waterfront. Fashions a version she might be able to defend. More important, to sell. ‘A rock and roll tragedy,’ she calls it, though a song title from those days kept on playing through her mind.

  By Thursday, her Zeron work habits might have never been. She sleeps till noon. Drinks coffee until two, and spends the next hour wondering what she’ll wear that night. Her guard must be down, though, because that’s when Peter grabs her. Shows up at her door, with an unlikely bouquet and confusion on his face.

  ‘Peter.’ She blinks at him, this remnant of another life. Placeholder. Token. Prototype. ‘Want some coffee?’

  ‘Sure.’ He follows her in, still holding the flowers. Watches as she fixes him a mug without asking: black, sugar. ‘I wanted to make sure you were OK,’ he says as he takes it. He puts the bouquet on the counter, and she looks at it as if it were an alien thing.

  ‘Yeah, just taking some time off.’ She turns to fetch the vase from the high shelf. Hears him come up behind to help her. Reaches it before he can.

  ‘Use it or lose it.’ He attempts a smile.

  ‘Something like that.’ She clips the stems. Fills the vase. How like Peter, she muses as she arranges the flowers, to see things in such a binary manner. White or black. Right or wrong.

  ‘I needed time to think.’ She places the vase on the table and turns toward him, this dear, simple man. ‘Time to figure out what I’m doing.’

  He looks like he might cry. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything.’

  ‘No.’ He winces, and she catches herself. He’s talking about Zeron – the job – not an investigation twenty years before. ‘I mean, no, don’t sweat it. I don’t know if I was ever a good fit with Zeron. I don’t care about it at all.’

  To his credit, he doesn’t speak. Doesn’t try to argue with her about adult responsibilities or the dwindling options out there. She hears the catch in his breath, right before he closes his mouth. But she’s heard all that before, from him. He knows this, too. He nods.

  ‘You finished the piece?’ He blinks. And in that moment, she sees how hard this is for him. He’s worried about her, sure. But he also envies her, at least a little.

  ‘Yeah, I think so.’ She weighs showing it to him – the expurgated version. Decides against it, at least for now. ‘But City killed it.’

  An explosive sigh. ‘So, why?’ he asks. What are your options? She knows that’s what he means. Why are you doing this?

  She shakes her head. In answer. To stop his further questions. ‘I’m working on it, Peter. I’m working on it.’

  Min calls at seven. ‘You’re picking me up, right?’ They have nothing arranged, but that always used to be the rule – back when Tara was writing and didn’t want to get too drunk.

  ‘Of course,’ she says now. Habit, mostly. Nostalgia. That sad, fond feeling for something that’s past.

  Better to f
ocus on the night ahead. But where once she would obsess about her hair, about the fit of her jeans – that beloved black leather jacket, long gone now – tonight she’s thinking of who will be there. And more important, who won’t. Frank and Brian. Chris is the obvious name – the biggest. Only in retrospect, Tara isn’t sure how much a part of their world the young star actually was. How quickly he burned out, and how much he took with him.

  That photo – the one she never showed Scott – comes to mind. She’d pulled it up again for inspiration as she rewrote the piece. How sad it was. The bad couch, the clothing in disarray. Jeans, some shirts. Two leather jackets, one dark, one light. She thinks of the others who survived but have moved on. Greg, with his grudges. Neela. And Nick? No, he’s not likely to show either. Not if he’s not working.

  Min is flying when Tara gets there. Bouncing off the walls. Also, not ready. Some things never change.

  ‘Help yourself,’ she calls from the bathroom, after a quick peck hello. ‘I got that tequila you like.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Tara hasn’t drunk tequila in years. Still, it’s going to be a night. She pours a shot and throws it back. Damn, that shit is strong.

  When she opens her eyes, Min is in front of her, dressed to the nines. Tara didn’t know her old friend could still glam up like this. Sees the tint of henna in her hair. ‘Wow,’ is all she says.

  ‘For Frank.’ Min shrugs, but Tara knows better. Tonight is about the two of them. The acknowledgment she never received, despite all the time, all the tears. Everything she did for that man.

  The music has started by the time they arrive. The Craters, rocking a blues-based tune that sounds familiar.

  ‘I’ll get us a round,’ says Min, as Tara stands there staring at the band.

  ‘Tara!’ Gina bounds up to her. ‘You made it.’

  ‘Wouldn’t miss it.’ Tara looks around. Thirty people, maybe forty. A good turnout, though half of them are musicians, she realizes. Tom and one of the other Exiles stand over by the wall. Onie’s come out as well. She sees him at a table with a woman she guesses to be his wife. Most of this crew is married by now, or married again. Phil and Joanie stand by the back. Katie and her new husband are at the bar.

  Min, meanwhile, is talking to the bartender, a young man with a shaved head who Tara doesn’t recognize. Those tattoos would be memorable, she’s sure. Still, this club is more his territory than it is hers, she thinks. Nearing fifty. Single. For the first time in a while, she starts to wonder what happened. Where it all went wrong.

  ‘Hey, I know this one.’ Gina snaps her out of it. ‘You do, too!’ Grabs her hand, to pull her to the dance floor. Tara lets herself be led, but she feels too self-conscious, all knees and elbows. After the chorus ends, she retreats to the bar.

  ‘I was watching you.’ Min hands her a bottle.

  ‘Thanks.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘Gina.’

  ‘Yeah, she was always a true believer, that one.’ They drink and watch as Gina gyrates and bounces around, not caring that she dances alone. Her enthusiasm, at least, is attractive. Katie drags her husband up front and they begin to move, somewhat more decorously, to the Craters’ beat. As they watch, Tara thinks about Katie. Katie telling her about the old days. About Frank taking care of Neela. Insisting she go to the clinic, all the way up in New Hampshire. Saved by a road trip, but how …

  She shakes it off.

  ‘How was antiquing?’ Tara yells, as the song winds up.

  ‘I didn’t go.’ Min shakes it off. Drinks more beer. ‘The weather.’

  Tara tries to remember what was wrong with the weather. Saturday, she stayed in all day writing. Stayed in her own apartment, with its own disarray. Sorting through the wreckage.

  ‘Did you get your piece done?’ Min might be a mind reader. Except, of course, Tara had told her.

  ‘Kind of.’ It’s the best she can do. ‘I think it’s dead, though.’ She doesn’t say that Scott is shopping it around. Offering it to his former editor in Portland. To someone he knows in New York. There will be time enough for that, if and when.

  ‘Good thing you didn’t quit your day job.’

  Tara turns. Min’s voice has gotten sharp, but she can’t see anything in her friend’s face. Min is staring at the stage – really just the front of the room. The Craters are finishing up. The drummer rushing a bit as he always did as their big number winds up to a close.

  ‘You do still have the day job, don’t you?’ Min’s face is unreadable.

  ‘For now.’ Tara turns toward the bar. All her friend does is work. Dedicated to her career after that one, brief suspension. ‘I’m thinking of quitting, though. Ready for another?’

  She returns from the bar with two bottles and two shots. The room is filling up, after a fashion. It’s darker now, the volume – even between bands – rising with excitement. Min’s in her element. Ralph and Tony D have passed by. Even Onie waves, from his table. His wife looks up. Two more shots appear beside them. ‘For Frank,’ says the tattooed bartender. ‘From the band.’

  ‘Everyone’s paired off, aren’t they?’ The room is loud enough, Tara feels like she’s talking to herself.

  ‘You seeing that bar guy? Nick?’ Min leans over slightly. Keeps her eyes on the bandstand.

  ‘No,’ Tara responds, the sadness settling heavy on her. ‘I think that’s over.’

  ‘Just as well.’ Tara starts. Maybe she didn’t hear right. The guitarist is tuning. There’s feedback. ‘Scene guys. They’re hard to love.’

  Tara turns toward her friend. There’s so much she wants to ask. About that night in the loft and a pink leather jacket, cradled as if it were a child. About a hot shot and how much Min was willing to do for the man she adored. Only just then, the room goes quiet. Everyone has turned. It’s Phil. He’s still got it – that star quality. He’s taken the stage, and he grabs the mike.

  ‘One, two, three, four!’ The guitar kicks in, with a familiar chord. The drums, the bass. The scene.

  ‘Hey, Min.’ Tara can’t help herself. She yells in her friend’s ear. ‘Whatever happened to that jacket of yours? The pink one?’

  ‘Seriously?’ Min is laughing. On her feet. ‘That was so long ago. Come on!’

  She grabs Tara’s hand and pulls her onto the floor, and Tara lets her. They’re part of the crowd. Dancing. Alive. It’s that song, the one she loves. The one that should have been a hit, all those years before.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Huge shout-outs to my first readers and former denizens of clubland: Brett Milano, Karen Schlosberg, and Lisa Susser. In addition to the usual plot and character issues, you all caught the references and corrected the anachronisms. Shout-outs as well to all at Severn House Publishers; to Erin Mitchell, publicist and cheerleader extraordinaire; to my agent, Colleen Mohyde of the Doe Coover Agency, who is not a night person and provided a reality check; to John McDonough, for all the answers; and to Kristophe Diaz, who lent his genetics expertise (and patience, during repeated explanations). Jon S. Garelick, as always, doubles as in-house editor and cheerleader, with this book maybe more than usual. I dedicate this book, as always, to you, but I’d also like to tip my hat to the late Rich Cromonic, of Sweet Potato, who got me started. Thank you, all. Rock on.