I Knew You'd Be Lovely

by Alethea Black

  • • •

  “Hey, you,” Nash said, tapping her screen. It was Saturday night, and the setting sun had turned the sky into a Cheryl Wheeler lyric: drop jaw red, Maxfield Parrish blue. Three weeks had gone by since she’d last seen him.

  “Hi,” she said brightly. “Where’ve you been?”

  “No questions,” he said. “I want to take you somewhere. Come with me.”

  Whole Foods was locked up for the night, but he had a key. While Nash led, she followed behind with her hands on his shoulders. Even in the dark, she knew what they were passing: Straight ahead was the table with gingerbread loaves and tangerine cookies; to the left were the shelves with sun-dried tomato pesto and imported cornichons; to the right were the goat cheese and salad greens.

  When they reached the back of the store, he sat down on the mottled linoleum. “There’s something I’ve wanted to tell you,” he said. His hands moved restlessly in his lap. As soon as she sat down beside him, he stood up. “It’s hard to explain,” he said. In the light from the rows of refrigerated milk, his face looked almost pellucid.

  “I went to my father’s grave. I hadn’t been there for a long time,” he said. “I was lying on the ground, right above where he’s buried, when I noticed this stone angel on top of a monument, way up high. She was holding a horn in one hand, and her other hand was open at her side. And she’s staring at the sky, like she’s listening for something, or waiting for something.” He’d been pacing, but now he stopped. “Do you know what I mean? Like she’s listening for a music she has yet to hear.”

  “Maybe God—”

  “No!” he said. “This has nothing to do with God. What I’m trying to say here doesn’t have anything to do with God!”

  She didn’t know what to say. He’d never raised his voice to her before.

  “It has to do with me,” he said.

  Her eyes were fixed on the rows of milk. “I just thought—”

  “Forget it,” he said. “Forget I ever said anything.” In his face she saw a hint of something else, and she wondered what it was she was supposed to forget. He turned and headed for the exit. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Kelly’s disappointment emboldened her. “You always come close and then run away,” she said to his back, still sitting Indian-style on the floor. “Why is that?” Nash kept walking. “Why’d you even bring me here?” He was out of sight now, but she could hear the sound of metal on metal, and for a second it crossed her mind that he could lock her in for the night. But he wouldn’t do that. Would he?

  “Nash!” she said, addressing the idea of Nash, his wraith. “What is it you want from me?”

  When she got up, she would discover that the door was unlocked, but Nash was long gone. She figured she had her answer.

  So it was over. It was over before it began, which made it even harder to take. Kelly was surprised by how much it affected her. She couldn’t concentrate at work; she avoided Gwen; she kept checking her messages for the apology that never came. She didn’t like to second-guess God, but considering how things had turned out, she couldn’t help wondering what the point had been of meeting Nash in the first place.

  It had been raining for days. Pouring. Fortunately, Kelly had recently had the roof reshingled, or there would have been a swamp in her living room. She brewed a pot of chamomile tea and pretended to ignore the banging sound of the loose drainpipe. Until she couldn’t pretend any longer. She grabbed her coat and switched on the outside lights, not sure what her plan was but figuring she ought to do something. As soon as she stepped outside, she saw him. He was standing in the middle of her front lawn, in the rain.

  “Nash,” she said. She was quiet inside, almost frightened. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m thinking,” he said. “I guess you might call it praying.” His voice sounded different, and she noticed he wasn’t wearing any shoes.

  “Why don’t you come inside?” she said. “You can pray in here.”

  His eyes tightened. “I was just wondering—praying,” he said again, but he’d given the word a certain meanness, “how a benevolent God can allow so much suffering.” He made a sweeping gesture on the word suffering, and she wondered if he was maybe drunk. “It’s a simple question, don’t you think? And I’m going to stand right here till I get an answer.”

  Pixel whimpered at her feet, wanting to run to him. “We don’t always get answers our way, in our time,” she said. “It doesn’t work like that.”

  “It does tonight.” He gave her a look that suggested he was ready to stand on her lawn for the rest of his life, and for a moment she imagined him there, patches of snow resting on his shoulders like a statue’s, dandelions sprouting through his toes in the spring.

  “God suffers the most,” she said. “He only keeps himself hidden out of respect for our free will.”

  “Bull-shit!” Nash said, rainwater spraying from his lips. “You want a less-bullshit revolution? That’s ironic. You are the queen of bullshit. And you know what else? Not only is it bullshit, it’s the most milquetoasty, goody-goody, meaningless bullshit I’ve ever heard. Sometimes I’m amazed that you can say the things you do with a straight face.”

  Kelly was stunned. To her, they’d always felt like a team, even when they disagreed, like those celebrity couples who argue politics on TV. It had never occurred to her that he was secretly repulsed. A flurry of comebacks flashed through her mind: Why don’t you stay home then? Why keep coming here if I’m so disgusting? But the sting of his words left her speechless. She went back inside, slamming the door behind her as hard as she could. In her bedroom, she stood to one side of the window so he couldn’t see her watching him. She knew she wanted him to come in after her. She also knew he never would.

  By the time she went back outside, he was kneeling in the mud. He didn’t look up when she said his name, didn’t acknowledge her at all. She got down beside him.

  “Nash,” she said.

  When he lifted his face, it was laced with sorrow. “Why?” he said. His hands were fists in the grass. “Why why why why why why why?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t have all the answers. Sometimes I just like to act as if I do.”

  He pulled an amber-colored bottle from his pocket. “Know what these are?” he said, rattling it. “These are the antidepressants I’ve been taking for the last, oh, ten years. They’re supposed to dampen my desire to kill myself. And guess what? They also dampen everything else, if you know what I mean. Make it pretty much impossible.” He met her eyes. “Still feel like hanging around?” He stuck the bottle back in his pocket. “Allow me to answer for you.”

  “Come on, let’s go inside.”

  “No,” he said. “Your God has some explaining to do. I’ve waited long enough. I’m tired of waiting.”

  She didn’t want to argue with him. She felt rather tired herself. Tired of the waiting, and the misunderstanding; tired for what’s lost, and what’s never held in the first place. Tired for all the music that slips by unheard. She put her fingers beneath his chin.

  Across the street, the neighbors turned out their light, and a garage door slowly hummed to a close. In the end, there was no answer. There was no thunder, there was no lightning from the sky. There was just a woman, kneeling in her yard in the rain, and a man, lifting his face, waiting to be kissed.

  WE’VE GOT A GREAT FUTURE BEHIND US

  “Allow me to declare this a disaster in advance.” Zeb is standing in the entrance to the Oak Bar at the Hermitage Hotel, holding a guitar case and a carry-on. I rise from my chair, abandoning a laptop, a highball, and the plans I’ve been making to cover the following contingencies: Zeb misses his flight, Zeb shows up with a showgirl, Zeb shows up drunk, Zeb shows up with a drunk showgirl, Zeb sends a man dressed as a singing gorilla to take his place. His glance has a sideways cast, and I know he’s looking for Debra-Lynn.

  “She’s already up in the room,” I say. “I thought it might be best if you and I had ourse
lves a cocktail first.”

  “I’m telling you, Walt, this whole idea is a mistake,” he says. “She will sabotage any project she’s associated with. Her only joy is the misery of others. The woman has a tabloid heart.”

  I pull out a chair, and he sits. “That attitude isn’t going to make things any easier,” I say.

  “Easier? Nothing in heaven, hell, or anywhere in between is going to make this any easier,” he says, picking up the cocktail menu. He takes out his glasses, and I can’t help but wonder how much of my predicament shows on my face. I haven’t had a hit song since 1998, and I’m on the most-wanted list of seven different collection agents, not to mention my possibly mob-affiliated landlord. But that’s not the best part, the new part.

  “I wasn’t going to tell you this,” I say.

  “You always say that whenever you’re about to tell me something anyway.”

  “Catherine’s pregnant.”

  Zeb whumps the table. “Well, what do you know. How did that happen?”

  “So her tapped-out credit cards and my puny honorariums aren’t going to cut it anymore.”

  “Honorariums?” he says. “You get those?” While I’m trying to get him to pay attention, his only concern is flagging down the waitress. Before he and Deb got hitched, whenever we finished a set, his first words were always the same: “Where is the booze and where are the women?”

  I take his hand and look him in the eye. “We’re on a mission here,” I say. “A very important mission.”

  Back when I used to do the festival circuit with Zeb and Deb, as their opening act—back when everything they touched turned platinum—they promised they’d collaborate with me on a song. So now, even though they haven’t spoken to each other in over two years, even though it’s practically a violation of a restraining order for them to be in the same state, I’m calling in my chits, asking for the favor. Maybe it’s insanity, but maybe it’s my only hope.

  Zeb gives up on the waitress and finishes my highball for me. “Did I ever tell you about the time she convinced herself I was cheating on her, and cut the crotch out of every pair of pants I owned?”

  “Let’s try to stay focused,” I say. “We don’t have time to wallow in the past.”

  “I have more fun there,” he says. He slaps a pack of cigarettes on the table so they’ll be ready when he needs them. “Perhaps we should discuss my fee,” he says. We hadn’t discussed his fee because I hadn’t considered paying him a fee. Springing for a weekend at the toniest hotel in Nashville seemed fee enough.

  “I’ll be paying you in gin and tonics,” I say, and finally catch the eye of Sally, a bare-armed brunette with a honeysuckle voice.

  “Not even an honorarium?” he says. A slow smile spreads across his face. “My fee is that you name the kid after me.”

  I have no idea if he’s serious. Zebulon got his name not from the Bible, nor from Zebulon Pike—who never actually reached the summit of Pikes Peak—but from a poker game. His mother, eight months pregnant, was standing at his father’s elbow when his father lost a final hand to a pair of nines, held by a man named Zebulon Smith. This was the nadir of a long losing streak, during which the young couple had mortgaged nearly everything they owned. The victor, perhaps in a moment of pity, had agreed to let them off the hook on one condition: The unborn child would bear his name.

  “You’re joking,” I say.

  “I am serious as whiskers on a shark.”

  “Zeb, remember, the pregnancy’s a secret,” I say. “No one’s supposed to know. And I’m having a lot of trouble with the whole marriage idea.” When I first told Catherine I saw conventional life, the standard white-picket-fence thing—marriage—as a bit of a trap, she said: “Have you ever considered that the unmarried, unconventional life is also a trap?”

  “Just name the kid after me, and I’ll give this my best shot,” Zeb says. “No—I will deliver.”

  In the old days, back when they were the barn-burning, show-stopping success story of the lower forty-eight, the mighty duo could whip off an award-winning song in their sleep. Zebulon and Debra-Lynn were the top of the heap. They’d played everywhere, from the Louisiana Hayride to the Grand Ole Opry herself. Their love songs, and their love story, were legendary; there wasn’t a waitress in all of Nashville who hadn’t heard of Zeb & Deb. High school sweethearts, separated by fate, reunited in a guitar shop on Nashville’s Lower Broadway. For a while everything seemed perfect, like the sappy ending to a country love song. Marital bliss, material success, fame from bridge to bridge. Then came the kind of divorce you read about in gossip magazines, with a mean-spiritedness as outlandish as the love it had replaced. Recording-studio vendettas, pet custody battles, even an alleged poisoning attempt. It was payback for every corny love song they’d ever written. No: It was as if they were atoning for every hack lyricist since someone first rhymed moon and June. After breaking up their act, neither one had succeeded in bottling the lightning solo. Gradually they retreated from the public eye, and appeared to have quit writing altogether. Until now. I hoped.

  In the elevator, Zeb stares at his boots.

  “I realize you haven’t seen each other in a while,” I say.

  “Buddy, I’m way ahead of you. I brought my airsick bag from the plane.” He pulls a neat, square bag out of his back pocket, and I feel a bizarre surge of nausea.

  “I’m telling you,” he says. “If she pulls any of her funny business, I can’t be held—”

  “She won’t. She won’t, I promise. In fact, she told me she’s sorry—for everything that happened. At the end.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Okay, I’m lying,” I say. “But please—please. Let’s just try to get through the next forty-eight hours as painlessly as we can.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible,” he says. “I don’t mind telling you, I think the entire cosmos is against us here.”

  When we get to the door to the room, we both just stand there. It took a titanic amount of wheedling to make this reunion happen, but now that the hour has arrived, I want to run. I force myself to give a single rap with my middle knuckle.

  “Deb?” No answer. Zeb eyeballs the room-service tray she’s left on the floor, where there’s a linen napkin with a triangle of steak peeking out.

  “See? Carnivore,” he whispers, just as Deb opens the door. She’s wearing a silky green dress, and her lips have that magazine-ad sheen. Deb’s pushing fifty but could pass for thirty-five. Zeb’s pushing fifty but could pass for sixty.

  “Well, hello,” she says to me. She doesn’t look at Zeb.

  “Hello, beauty,” I say. We kiss each other on the cheek as I enter, and the door shuts behind us, leaving Zeb out in the hallway. I squeeze Deb’s hands. “Hold that thought,” I say.

  Zeb is frozen where I left him. “I can’t do it,” he says. “She’s too toxic. I don’t think I can be in the same room with her.”

  I am a grown man, thirty-nine years old, from a seventh-generation Southern family. But I am not proud. I drop to my knees and gaze up at him.

  “You promised me you would deliver,” I say.

  Zeb reaches into his coat pocket, pulls out one of those miniature booze bottles they give you on airplanes, and tilts it back. Then he lifts me by my armpits, and we go in.

  The three of us settle around a coffee table where Deb has set out a ceramic pot and two teacups. No one says anything; Zeb and Deb have yet to make eye contact. From my backpack I pull out some sheets of paper and hand each of them a pencil.

  “So,” I say. I hold my pencil purposefully, as if to set an example. I’ve never been much of a leader—“Born Follower” was my hit song from 1998—but I know I’m the captain of this doomed misadventure. Captain McGlue.

  “I thought we’d try to write something hysterically funny, but also heartbreaking, with some unexpected tenderness, maybe toward the end. But not at all maudlin. That rhymes.”

  “Jumping Jesus!” says Zeb. His face has an expression of
such profound disappointment that for a second, he reminds me of my father. I flip over the page on which I’ve written: Exact nature of hilarity yet to be determined.

  “What you need to do at the outset is try to write the worst horseshit you possibly can,” he says.

  Debra-Lynn lifts her bone white teacup and takes a sip. “And you just might succeed,” she says. Her lips form a perfect polite-society smile.

  Zeb glares at me. His face says mutiny. My face says mercy. It says: Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me. It says: All right, I’ll name the kid Zebulon.

  “Some people build entire careers,” Zeb says, “out of inventing new clichés. Scarce few are truly original.” He’s looking at me, but speaking to Deb.

  Deb sets down her teacup. “Originality is just a sign of not enough information,” she says. She’s also looking at me. They have yet to look at each other.

  “They can say what they want about me,” says Zeb, “but they’ll never say I pandered to the marketplace.”

  “Ha!” says Deb. “This from the man who wrote ‘An Oddness of Ducks’ and a song about a graveyard for roadkill?”

  “Are you suggesting that a children’s song about interesting plural nouns was pandering to the marketplace?” Now he’s looking at her.

  She looks at him, too. “I’m saying that in some cases, originality is hard to come by. Not much rhymes with flaccid.”

  “As usual, my cherub, you are fantastically misinformed. Acid, placid, Hasid. And that’s just off the top of my head—”

  “Okay!” I say, slapping my thighs. “Good that we’re thinking about rhymes. That’s an excellent place to start.” But the floodgates have been opened, and Deb cuts me off.

  “Walt, do you know the moment I realized the enormity of my misjudgment in marrying Zeb? It was on our honeymoon. We were in Mexico, out to dinner at a four-star restaurant, and in between the entrée and dessert, over candlelight, the man seated to your right told me how much better the world would be if women weren’t allowed to vote. You may think I’m kidding. I am not. That’s the sort of thing this man—if we can even call him that—thinks is appropriate to say to his new bride. I should have up and left right then.”