A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall

by Will Chancellor

  They kissed.

  —Why not just admit that we can’t listen to these records forever, but let’s listen to them while we can because they make life more bearable?

  —Bearable? You don’t really care for music, do ya?

  —Clearly not enough.

  —You’re missing the point.

  —No. I see the point. I just don’t know how you cope with loss if you’re thinking about it constantly.

  —I tell myself we’re all in the same boat. And I let some things drown. You can’t experience anything without peeling off the illusion of permanence. Everything ends in nothing.

  —Everything ends in nothing? Are you high?

  —That’s in a critical letter from Heidegger to Sartre. But it’s also Ricky Martin’s latest single: “Y Todo Queda En Nada.” That’s the trouble with theory. One second you’re in league with philosopher kings, the next you’re in nightclubs with pop stars.

  He woke at three in the afternoon. The ship didn’t appear to be moving. He checked in the bathroom for Stevie. Gone. No note.

  He opened the leather-bound information packet and read that they would be docking in Mannheim from 11:00 to 17:00 for an afternoon of exploration.

  He read about the city he couldn’t explore—the city he couldn’t even see from their starboard Window to the Rhine. The speakers had been unplugged from the Discman and now sat idle on the desk, already in a knot. He found the Iron and Wine jewel case on the desk. He might find a way to play the CD before she got back. It wouldn’t be breaking the rules if she wasn’t here. The days didn’t start until he saw her.

  He opened the case and found a note:

  Cheating bastard!!

  He put the note in his back pocket even though he could imagine her finding it and thinking he was weird to have kept it. He opened the liner notes. A thought that wouldn’t have occurred to him before Basel: one of them should keep each empty CD case. The actual CD probably needed to be destroyed. Or donated. Stevie was apparently seeing to that. But the empty case was something they should always have.

  He was still reading the liner notes when she returned. She set her beach bag on the desk.

  —You missed a beautiful day. And you slept through about five listens of the best album you’ve never heard.

  She took the Discman from her purse, undid the headphones, connected the speakers, and swapped out the double As.

  —I brought you food. And here’s how I’m thinking this works. It’s amazing outside. Sorry, but it is. I’m headed to the sundeck so you can listen to Transformer over lunch.

  Owen stretched, laced fingers over his head touching the ceiling.

  —I got a suit in town. Can you turn around?

  The braver, fuller version of Owen would have grabbed her. But today’s Owen looked at the wall and heard Stevie step from her sandals, unfasten and then slide her shorts down her smooth legs, and snap the elastic.

  She was smoothing the white ribbons over her hip when he turned around. She backed into him and put white nylon straps in his thick fingers.

  —Can you tie the top?

  He pulled her toward his lap. She took two steps forward and tied her own suit.

  —You have to listen to the record first.

  She pushed play on the Discman. The first word was vicious, which Owen thought she might have planned.

  —Okay. I’m gone.

  Owen spun down the volume wheel until the song was no louder than the ship’s motor. He brought the Discman and speakers into the bathroom and showered.

  He toweled off and dressed to the first verse of what turned out to be the last song, and took Stevie’s hand as she entered at the last line, “It’s a lonely Saturday night.” It was Thursday. They were in Mannheim. He had almost given up the idea that he was being hunted. Or if he was, they were giving him a dramatic head start.

  —Well, what do you think?

  She was wearing a robe, but he saw nothing but how she wore the bikini. The Discman’s default setting was repeat; “Vicious” started again.

  —The first half is better than the second half.

  —But the whole thing is Lou Reed. You can’t just take the good parts.

  —The one song was in Trainspotting.

  —You’ve seen Trainspotting but haven’t heard Transformer? That’s unbelievably sad! “Perfect Day” is probably the genesis of this whole game. The only thing that’s not perfect about the song is that you can listen to it over and over again. More than any other song, this one is conscious of the impermanence of perfection and the perfection in impermanence. The song is perfect, it’s our listening to it whenever we want that makes it imperfect. This is our chance to fix that.

  —So this is how perfect things end.

  Owen hit track repeat. “Perfect Day” started again. Stevie pulled a bottle of wine from her bag and walked toward Owen. Her stomach was warm. The sunblush on her cheeks made her eyes seem impossibly blue, a milky opalescent blue with the same promise a drowning man sees when his foot is pinned in the reef and he looks up to the bright sky.

  They woke to the twining piano and violin of the song’s last minute. Stevie stretched.

  —My perfect day has about four more hours of sleep.

  She only ever slept in a T-shirt. Starched white sheets breezed over her legs. She spooned back into Owen, settling into him, caught between eros and sleep.

  Owen whispered:

  —I think we’ll be in Koblenz soon. And then Cologne tomorrow.

  Stevie freed Transformer from its one-track repeat. They had to have listened to the song a hundred times by now and should have been ready for something else. The jangling guitar and faster tempo of the next song was like when credits roll to music that both rips you from the dream world of a film and contradicts everything that you’ve just watched. Even though they had the rest of the night to listen to the album, “Perfect Day” was gone. Stevie realized it.

  —I shouldn’t have chosen this.

  They listened to the album again. She turned over to find Owen dead asleep. She put a fresh set of batteries in the Discman and mourned until she drifted away.

  She woke and rolled to her feet. Transformer had expired in the night. She ejected the disc before getting dressed. Her hair was in damp knots from sleeping with a towel around her head after a late-night shower. After getting dressed, she walked up to the observation deck.

  She had envisioned flinging the disc into the muddy Rhine, but couldn’t overcome her aversion to littering and put it in the trash slot instead. The rest were going to be easier than that. Today was Owen’s choice. If he had any sense, he would pull the Band-Aid, as she had done, and play his favorite album first. Jazz? Who was he trying to impress?

  Her. He was trying to impress her. More than Hendryk of the Sacred Calves, more than Tom the American footballer who said he was in Berlin for the semester but was gone by Tuesday, more than Johan the drunk and hilarious, more than Erik of conglomerate money, Owen was trying to impress her with the things he didn’t have rather than the things he did have. He acted as if he had nothing to offer her but his awkward striving, his falling over himself to get her a glass of water.

  She did the right thing to play Transformer first. And he should play Tom Waits today. Otherwise, they would grieve the whole time over what would eventually be lost. Is there a difference between grief and mourning? Grief is more sobbing. More destructive. Mourning is welling tears. And that will come after.

  Stevie watched the castles tick past. The ship left Mannheim sometime before they awoke. They were now traveling through a scooped-out valley with ruins or vineyards on every hillside. Stevie imagined herself against the walls of one of the castles looking at the white ship, Owen buried somewhere in the galley, sliding past.

  The woman at the concession table asked if she was okay.

  Stevie found Owen sprawled diagonally across the bed, facedown on top of the sheets with the thin synthetic pillow in his arms. He unaccountably s
till had a tan, and with the towel around his waist, he looked like an Egyptian hieroglyph. She scooped his legs over and gently set them down so she had room. His ankles and feet hung in the air. He grumbled.

  The comforter was in a heap on the floor, still tucked into the mattress. She gently pulled it over his feet, only to find that it now came to her hip. She combed his hair behind his right ear and kissed his big cheekbone. Even before Basel, she had a sense that more than anything else he wanted to be small and forgotten, miniaturized and tucked away in her pocket.

  He pressed his forehead into the bed and coughed.

  —Today you get to choose the record. You’re going to go with Tom Waits, right?

  —Hrrffrrgrr.

  —Okay. Say something if you don’t want me to choose Tom Waits.

  He sniffed.

  —Okay. I’m going to play it now.

  She took Closing Time from the bundle of tissue paper, ticked her fingernail over a corner until it caught, and then peeled off the clingy cellophane and put the disc on the spool of her Discman. The album was new to Stevie. She checked the track names and didn’t recognize any of them as Tom Waits singles. The 1973 copyright took her by surprise. He must have been about their age when he wrote this.

  The CD spun to life on its own and waited for her to push play. But Owen had to be the one to push the button. When she said his name he only coughed in reply. She unplugged the Discman from the speakers and brought it to the bed.

  —Okay, I can’t be the one to push the actual button. You need to do it.

  She took his right hand in hers. It was dead heavy, huge and lifeless. She turned it over to look at his palm.

  He grumbled at the slight strain and pawed the mattress until he found the black plastic box.

  She guided his index finger to the button and rolled it as if she were taking his fingerprint. Leaning from the foot of the bed, she set the player on the desk and connected the speakers.

  The first song was vaguely familiar. It sounded like a coffee commercial. She hit pause and went upstairs for a cup, came back and found Owen still sleeping. She hit play again on the record and sipped her coffee from the corner chair, near their Window to the Rhine. She finished a long poem in Auden and slunk into bed.

  He was hiding his injury in the pillow. She swam a hand under his neck and pulled him in as tightly as she could. This was their third run through the album, these were quiet minutes before the nap that always followed sandwiches in the now familiar triangular cardboard boxes. The afternoon light reflected off the river in violet brown. Owen sat by her side with his arm around her waist. She ran her thumb over the knot in his wrist.

  —This is a nighttime record.

  —Well. It’s called Closing Time. There’s even a song called “Midnight Lullaby” that ends with . . . a lullaby.

  —Maybe we should wait until the sun goes down.

  —You can’t see the moon out our Window to the Rhine? Look. It’s a giant full moon. A grapefruit moon. That’s so strange. It was just the middle of the afternoon and now it’s pitch-black—except for that big full moon—I’m thinking we just go with it and don’t ask any questions.

  This was the type of game she would usually play. But she just looked at him. He asked if everything was all right.

  —You can’t even go on the observation deck.

  —Probably not. But I wouldn’t want to anyway, would I? You make it sound like it’s all white wine spritzers and old people in tanning oil.

  —I didn’t want to tempt you. It’s actually models playing shuffleboard.

  He laughed.

  —You think I want that?

  —Substitute “reading Greek” for shuffleboards.

  —We dock in Cologne at sunset. I’ll go into town with you. It’ll do us some good.

  —Cologne’s huge. That’s just stupid.

  —You seem to bring that out in me.

  They spent the next hour in bed tracing subtly different routes along each other’s bodies. She was still radiating yesterday’s sun. The observation deck had been mostly women tanning their arms. She had donned her shorts and chambray shirt as soon as she was out of the cabin and in the hallway, but even in that outfit she attracted more attention than she wanted. Rather than cover up, she’d undone her top and fallen asleep on her stomach reading. This was a childishly defiant sunburn, so she couldn’t wince now if Owen rubbed her shoulders too hard, but she did let him know the soft touches were more welcome.

  The past day did have a violet tint. Amethyst. He would say Demeter or something, and she didn’t want to talk about mythology. She worried that Owen’s strange way of seeing the world was becoming her own.

  —You stay here with your record. I’m going to go explore Cologne.

  —I can understand if you need some time by yourself. But let me be the one to go. I’ll go.

  —Take a nap. I’ll be back in an hour.

  She kissed him good-bye and went straight for the Hyatt Regency. In the lobby bar she ordered a half bottle of Veuve. The bartender hit on her twice, which annoyed her enough to keep her in the present.

  She boarded the Saga with the other tourists to find Owen reading volume two of the Odyssey.

  —I thought you were gone.

  —Not yet.

  —Wait. After a good twelve years of trying, I finally finished volume one. I want you to have it.

  She looked at the book, sure that it would stay with her forever, but unsure how she could ever replicate the desperation with which Owen cradled it.

  —No books. Just records. Besides, I’m only up through like twenty-year-old Auden.

  —No, I want you to have it. It’s from me and my dad. He’d understand. In fact, he’d insist. It’s his book. Half of his life is in there . . . well, a quarter, the other quarter is in volume two—you know what I mean.

  —Are you sure? Shouldn’t the two books stay together?

  —Actually not at all. His whole thing is called liminality, the space between.

  —Like laminalism.

  —I don’t think either one of us wants to get into that.

  —Well. Thank you. And thank your father for me when you eventually get back to California. Now let’s listen to this record. I’m curious to hear anyone’s all-time favorite album, let alone yours.

  Stevie sat on the edge of the bed, facing the speakers. Owen sat by her side with his arm around her waist. Her skin was orchid in the late afternoon light, light blue veins visible under the glowing. She ran her thumb over the mounts of his palm. Thick clouds rolled in. They smelled the storm through the glass, or they imagined they did.

  Owen had listened to the album five times through already. He knew what was coming: right now they were purring to “I Hope I Don’t Fall in Love with You,” but two songs from now “Old Shoes” was going to play, and there was no hope of that going over well. He tried to distract her by running his fingers through her hair, cupping the tops of her ears with his palm, and feathering the base of her neck.

  The first verse rolled by without Stevie seeming to hear. He tried praising her beauty in German to distract her from the song’s words.

  She pushed him back hard, clawing his chest.

  —“I can see by your eyes, it’s time now to go? So I’ll leave you to cry in the rain?”

  —I think he’s—

  —“Though I held in my hand the key to all joy, honey my heart was not born to be tamed?”

  —That’s not what I’m saying at all. Bad Tom. That’s so sophomoric, ‘I’m a free spirit. I’m a wild horse that can’t be tamed.’ Uh-uh. Nope. That’s not what I’m saying at all.

  —You’re ruining the record. Not to mention totally killing the mood.

  —I’ll be quiet now.

  They listened to the next songs. When “Rosie” finished, Stevie spoke:

  —I understand the distinction between a speaker and an author. I’ve spent plenty of time in the performativity literature. But I can’t help but wan
t more . . . loyalty. He follows a heart-wrencher about one girl, Martha, with a song about a completely different girl, Rosie. And if this came out in 1973 he must have been about our age, so it’s not like he’s looking back on a lifetime of heartbreak.

  —There you’re wrong. Losing someone at any age can easily mean a lifetime of heartbreak.

  —You still didn’t tell me why you chose it—and I’m hoping here for a specific answer, not something vague about the stars and the moon.

  —There are about five thousand CDs in my house. All jazz. All my dad’s except the dozen or so I listen to when the team has to take a bus to SoCal or Arizona. I listen to Bad Religion, Social Distortion . . .

  —Love Social Distortion.

  —Well, I didn’t think you would. Anyway. I have a few dozen CDs, another dozen mix CDs, but the albums I listen to the most are the nineteen vinyl records that my mom left me.

  Stevie had guessed.

  —Her favorite album was Astral Weeks. I was going to give that to you, but felt like it wasn’t mine to give. She had Closing Time. I’m not sure that she listened to it much. It stuck out because the rest of her music is fairly . . . astral. For a long time I thought it was left there for me. Maybe that this was a window to the men on her side, her father, her grandfather, people I would never know. Now it’s clear that she bought this record for us.

  —I’m going to get us some wine. This is a red wine record. I’ll be back.

  —I’m not going anywhere. By the way, you’re Martha. And I’m trying hard to avoid a life where I have to make that phone call.

  Owen listened to the album another time through. It seemed right to give it to her, and to give her his favorite song. He was going to have to destroy two records: the one playing in the Discman and his mom’s vinyl copy at home—assuming he ever made it home. He listened to “Martha” on repeat until Stevie came back, at least ten listens later.