Then Again

by Rick Boling

  She looked back at me, obviously relieved to be talking about something else. “It was beautiful, Rich. Sad, but beautiful. Did you really write it for me?”

  “I did. At least the name part. The story, of course, was made up.”

  “I’m impressed,” she said. “It sounded so real. It’s hard to believe you could make up something that emotional, that personal sounding.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve had my share of heartbreaks, even before I lost Doris. If you listen closely, you can hear echoes of them in many of my songs.” A warm flutter in my chest warned me of the chemistry flowing between us, and I realized I was treading on thin ice. “Listen,” I said, “I don’t mean to run off on you, but I really am beat. I need to call a cab and get myself home before I pass out.”

  “If you can wait a few minutes, I’ll be happy to drive you,” she said.

  Things seemed to be falling into place according to some cosmic screenplay. Here I was again, a damaged single man in need of someone to help me recover. The only difference was that this time the recovery was from heartbreak and bereavement instead of drugs and alcohol. Like an idiot I’d let Aurélie talk me into playing Robin’s Song, and now that Robin knew the real story, I no longer had that ‘someone else in the picture’ to run interference for me.

  “Oh, no,” I said. “I couldn’t ask you to do that. I live way up north, at the end of a nasty dirt road full of potholes that are probably flooded by now.”

  “Well, you’re in luck,” she said, reaching for the door. “I’ve got a four-wheel-drive Jeep CJ-5, so you’ll be a lot better off with me than in a cab. Just let me take care of a few things here and I’ll get you home safe and dry.”

  I was trying to come up with a credible way to turn her down, when I heard that niggling voice in my head: Go ahead, Rix. Don’t be an idiot. Whatever happens, it won’t change how I feel about you, I swear! Nothing will ever change that. And I promise this is the last time I’ll be listening in, so you don’t have to worry about your privacy.

  My Place Or Yours

  We didn’t talk much on the ride home because navigating the storm required all of Robin’s concentration. It occurred to me that once we arrived I should invite her in, rather than making her drive back alone in what now appeared to be considerably more than a brief summer squall. Under any other circumstances, the situation would have been perfect for a romantic encounter, but I had no conscious intention of using it for that purpose. Then again, my conscious mind might not be in complete control here. These were the thoughts running through my mind as we crept slowly over the crest of a hill and saw the blinking lights of a cop car ahead.

  “Flash flood,” yelled the cop. The windows on the CJ-5 didn’t roll down, so Robin had opened her door about two inches. Still, the near vertical rain threw stinging drops far enough to smack my arm and face. Quickly closing the door, she wiped her face with a fistful of fast-food napkins snatched from a stack on the dashboard, then made a U-turn and headed back south. We crawled along, averaging maybe ten miles an hour, and when we came upon an abandoned gas station with a broad awning, she pulled off the road and under the rickety shelter. Fortunately, the wind was blowing from behind the building, so most of the rain was blocked. And after we rolled to a stop, she leaned her head on the steering wheel.

  “Boy,” she said, “this is one serious storm. What should we do?”

  I’d run into flash floods up here a couple of times during my first life, and I knew it would be a minimum of twenty-four hours before they opened the road again. “Don’t know,” I said. “But that road won’t be passable until tomorrow at the earliest.”

  “Is there a way around it?”

  “There is,” I said, “but it’s likely to be blocked by the same flood.”

  “Well then, I guess we should find the nearest motel. Or, we could drive back to my place. It’s not as far as Roswell, and you’re welcome to stay there for the night.”

  Another dilemma: neither option was safe. The motel idea implied the possibility of intimate contact, even if we got separate rooms; while the alternative brought to mind the sexually-suggestive “Your place or mine?” proposition. Problem was, I couldn’t think of any way to gracefully refuse. Thankfully, Aurie had promised to stay out of my head, so I didn’t have to put up with her harassment. But that didn’t do anything to offset the fact that nature had suddenly put me in checkmate.

  “You sure it’s not a problem?” I asked. “I mean, short notice and all.”

  “What, my place? No problem at all, as long as you can overlook the mess. I’ll even feed you. And I’ve got a bottle of wine—Bordeaux, I think. A Christmas gift—somewhere in the back of my pantry.”

  The storm’s fury suddenly increased, coming in slashing blasts of wind and rain that pounded the aluminum awning like stampeding elephants. At first, this was a welcome break in what was turning out to be an extremely stressful conversation. But as the interior of the Jeep steamed up, our exhaled breath fogged the windows, creating an atmosphere so ripe with possibilities, the anticipatory tension crackled between us like static electricity. I told myself it was all in my imagination, most likely a fantasy emanating from my long-neglected libido. And when the noise finally let up, I was relieved to see nothing more than grim determination in Robin’s eyes.

  “Ready?” she said, releasing the emergency brake. Without waiting for an answer, she jostled us out onto the deserted road. “I’m turning on the defrosters, so it’s going to get a little hot in here. How’s your distance vision?”

  I ducked down to look through the growing crescent of dried glass. “Not too bad now,” I said.

  “Good, then you can be my lookout. I’ll concentrate on the road just ahead, and you watch out for fallen trees or power lines in the distance.”

  Our concentration on potential road hazards paid off—more than once she swerved to avoid some bit of debris, while I spotted two downed trees long before we came close to them. One of the trees blocked the road, and I was obliged to brave the battering rain in order to drag it far enough to the side for us to drive around. We arrived at her apartment after two hours of slow, emotionally draining travel, with the storm still raging around us, though not quite as violently as it had been farther north.

  The apartment was above a three-car garage, and after parking in the attached carport, we made our way up the exposed stairway to the minimal shelter of her tiny porch. She fumbled in her purse for the keys, and once inside we stood dripping in the close confines of a narrow hallway.

  “Bathroom’s down the hall on the left,” she said, squeezing water from her hair. “You get out of those wet clothes and take a hot shower. I’ll bring you some towels and a robe.”

  “What about you?” I said.

  “I’m fine. Not nearly as drenched as you. I’ll light a fire and get dinner started. When you’re done, we can switch.”

  Oh, boy, I thought as I removed my shoes and started down the hall. Nothing like dinner by firelight to keep my sex drive in check.

  Inquiring Minds …

  I sat on the front steps and watched Robin’s Jeep bump and splash through the flooded potholes in my storm-ravaged driveway. She had not even made it out of sight when Aurie materialized beside me.

  “Well?” she said.

  “Well what?”

  “You know,” she whined. “It’s none of my business, but, well …”

  “You really didn’t eavesdrop?”

  “I said I wouldn’t, and you should know by now that I don’t say things unless I mean them.”

  “Good,” I said. “What you don’t know won’t hurt you. Not jealous, are you?”

  “Curious,” she said. “There’s a difference.”

  “Oh, just curious. I see.” It did my heart good to see that, even with all her verbal skills and superior intellect, she was unable to hide her jealousy behind a claim of innocent curiosity. I decided to let her stew for a while over my sarcastic reply, but after a few moments of sil
ent pouting, during which she tried—and failed—to keep her emotions from showing, I gave in. “Okay,” I said, “you win. But you have to promise not to be angry.”

  “Why would I be angry?” she said. “After all, I was the one who—”

  “Set me up? Gave me permission? Gee, thanks Mom.”

  That struck a nerve. And when the tears started to flow, it was all I could do to keep from reaching out for her. “Hey,” I said. “Buck up there, kiddo. You’re making me feel like a jerk.”

  “It’s … It’s just. I mean, it’s hard, you know?” she blubbered. “I want you to be happy. More than anything in the world, I want you to have a full and happy life. But I can’t help the way I feel. I only—”

  “Nothing happened,” I said.

  “What? Oh, Rix, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to …”

  “You didn’t do anything, Aurie. I tried to tell you it wasn’t what I wanted, but you wouldn’t listen. Not that I wasn’t tempted. I’d be lying if I said there was no desire. But that desire wasn’t for Robin. I can’t help it if sometimes when I look at her I see you. And it wasn’t a resurrection of my old feelings for her either. Those died the moment I met you. She and I are friends. That’s all we are and all we ever will be.”

  “But, what about, uh, the other thing”

  “Sex? Why do you have such a hard time talking about sex? If you weren’t so inhibited, I would have been talking about it all along. I’ve even thought about suggesting some kind of interdimensional holographic phone-type sex, but I was afraid that would freak you out.”

  Her eyes went wide and her cheeks started to color.

  “Okay, okay,” I said, “Don’t go losing it on me again.”

  “I am not losing it!” she said. “It’s just a little awkward for me. I need some time to process the idea is all. Meanwhile, why don’t you tell me what actually happened last night? And this time, I can assure you that all I am is curious.”

  The night before had started off pretty much as I’d expected. The shower relaxed me and I decided that since there was nothing I could do to alter the circumstances, I would play it by ear and take whatever came. Up until then, things had happened in such rapid succession I hadn’t been able to do much more than worry about the storm. But while Robin took her shower I had time to think, and that’s when I began to realize my longing for Aurélie had become totally confused with my sexual attraction to her virtual twin. Once I came to that realization, I knew I had to figure a way to nip things in the bud without hurting Robin’s feelings. What I didn’t know was that she was thinking the same thing.

  Her intention to keep things platonic was evident when she emerged from the bathroom dressed in a dingy, flannel muumuu that covered her shapelessly from neck to ankles. She wore no makeup, and her hair, wrapped carelessly in a towel, capped off an obvious attempt to present a totally unsexy image. This subtle show of passive resistance was reinforced by the straightforward, non-suggestive eye contact she made with me during our conversation over dinner.

  While I was in the shower, she’d thrown together a simple stir fry, which she served over wild rice, along with the wine and some crisp garlic bread. As we sat in front of the fire, eating off TV tables, we rehashed the harrowing trip back, finally able to find some humor in the ordeal now that we were safe and dry.

  After I helped her clean up, we returned to the fire with our wine glasses, and the conversation became more personal. Remembering how reluctant she once was to talk about her past, I was surprised when she told me she’d been engaged for over a year to a musician she’d met at the club, and how tough it had been for her when they separated. She didn’t go into much detail about the reason for the separation, though I heard enough to surmise that it had something to do with drugs. In fact, she told me it was Phillip’s Fender bass and amp she’d let Sam use, which I understood to mean he was currently in jail. She must have mellowed over the past five years, because she said she had not completely given up on him—something her counterpart would never have considered, seeing as how she had dropped me like a hot potato over a few tokes of grass. And that thought suggested another possibility: that maybe Phillip had something I didn’t have back then, like common sense and an honest heart.

  Since she had been willing to tell me her story, I felt I had to come up with something about my personal life, so I bent the truth a little and told her I’d been involved in a long-distance relationship with a mathematician I’d met shortly after Doris died. Aurélie, I said, had taken a position at a famous laboratory in Geneva Switzerland, the name of which I couldn’t even pronounce. Because of this we were only able to see each other on those rare occasions when our schedules allowed us both to travel at the same time and meet for a day or two at some mutually agreed upon location. Other than that, I said, our relationship was restricted to long, international phone conversations.

  We spent the remainder of the evening talking about the music business and our personal ambitions for the future. Mine, I said, was to make it as a recording artist without using my real name or former position as leverage, which was why I was calling myself Rix Vaughn instead of Rich Voniossi. She thought that was pretty silly (“Noble, but silly,” she said) so I decided to let her in on the plan to introduce me at the final stop on the hunger tour. After that, I said, it would be up to the public to decide whether or not I had deserved the opportunity.

  “Oh, you deserve it, alright,” she said. “Take my word for it, you will knock ‘em dead.”

  When I asked what her goals were, she first seemed reluctant to tell me. But after a little prodding, she shrugged and said, “They’re not nearly as grandiose as yours, but one day I’d like to buy the Black Orchid. I think I’ve become a pretty good judge of talent, and I like the idea of offering young artists a place where they can learn the ropes and maybe make some connections that could benefit them down the road.”

  I offered to help her out, but she apparently saw that as a threat to her independence and turned me down. So I made a mental note to keep an eye on things and see if there was some way I might be able to facilitate the purchase without her knowing, perhaps by making sure she was approved for a loan. I also decided to hook her up directly with Jimmy so she could continue to take advantage of the constant parade of new artists coming out of Blue Note Studios.

  The evening ended when exhaustion from the day’s activities finally got the better of us and we began to nod off. The closest we came to intimacy was a warm hug, after which she made up the couch for me, kissed me chastely on the cheek, and disappeared into her bedroom.

  Aurie listened to the story without betraying any emotion, though I could see the relief in her eyes when she realized there had been nothing more physical than a hug and an innocent peck on the cheek. As much as she wanted me to have an outlet for my physical needs, it was clear that she would have had a hard time coping if things had turned out differently. And that, as much as anything, told me how deeply she cared for me.

  “I know how frustrated you must be, Rix,” she said when I finished. “And I’m going to think about what you proposed. I can’t promise anything yet because the thought is still alien to me, but maybe if we talk about it some more I’ll become more comfortable with the idea.”

  Even though it was one of the many reasons I’d fallen in love with her, I had to laugh at the familiar, analytical way she approached even the most intimate of subjects.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked when she caught me smiling.

  “Oh, nothing,” I said. “Just that you are without a doubt the most fascinating person I’ve ever met, and sometimes the things you say are so incongruous—if that’s the right word—I find them amusing.”

  “I see,” she said with a frown. “Well, since I’m being incongruous, let me take things a step further and change the subject entirely. I could be mistaken, but I think you’ve just about perfected your stage act, so maybe it’s time we started talking about some concepts for new songs.”
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  “And just what might that entail?” I said. “More incomprehensible books and history lessons?”

  “No more reading, if that’s what’s worrying you. From here on out it’s mostly going to be just you and me discussing things. And I promise to use as much down-to-earth language as I can manage. Heyoka might join in from time to time, and maybe Ellie, if and when she gets the chance. What I want most of all is for you to understand and believe in what we’ve learned, because you are going to be one of our most important salesmen. And everyone knows the most effective salesmen are the ones who sincerely believe in the products they have to sell.”

  “Heavy,” I said. “A great burden to put on a small mind. I wonder if I might have a few days to prepare my feeble brain for this intellectual onslaught.”

  “You may,” she said. “In fact, first you need to finish the songs you’ve been working on and get into the studio so we can have your debut album ready in time for the concert. We can talk when you’re not working, as long as it doesn’t distract you. After the concert and the release of your album, you’ll have some personal TV appearances to deal with, but Geffen has agreed to wait until we have your second album ready before booking you on your own tour. Not only are we going to need time to get the new material together, but the minimal exposure will create an aura of mystery around your public persona and increase the public’s hunger for more from you. Meanwhile, you’ll be composing songs for the second album, which will be one of the most challenging tasks you’ve ever had to face.”

  “Really?” I said. “Why’s that?”

  “Because the songs will not only have to be commercial hits, they will have to incorporate concepts that may be totally new to you. Those concepts must be skillfully transformed into lyrics and music that will plant seeds of change in the hearts and minds of the public, where they can grow and influence the direction of generations to come.”