A Perfect Blindness

by W. Lance Hunt

  I won’t, because things are not okay. I won’t let him put makeup on the scene at Crazy Mama’s. Or let him pretend, in that way only Jonathan can believe, that “it’s just like new, even better than before.”

  Hell, that sounds like a line from a song. One you’ll write back in Chicago about this.

  Maybe I should dictate it and get liner credits for writing a song. Not just a dedication, like on the Joie de Vivre EP: “For Jennifer, who helped make this happen.” I snort a laugh.

  “What?” Jonathan asks.

  “Inside joke. You wouldn’t get it.”

  “Try me.”

  I curl up.

  Eventually he rolls away, finally leaving me alone. Not that I’ll be able to sleep. Scenes from tonight keep playing in my head like highlights of Crazy Mama’s worst moments. After the better part of an hour, I sit up in bed, trying to stop this loop from playing.

  “What?” he asks.

  “Nothing.”

  I’m too pissed at myself to say anything. Things got out of control.

  When I’m on the job, managing shoots or a show, I handle spats and fights backstage, onstage, wherever, all the time. I’m the calming influence, the voice of reason. But here, in my own life, I’ve been tricked into playing the dupe for the jealous lunatic—the idiot who can’t control herself because of a boy. I’ve been turned into the problem that pushes along the plot of this rock ’n’ roll miniseries we’re living in.

  Tonight was only the next twist in the plot after Exit. It broke things further. The next step in the plot is obvious; we’re done. But I want the happy ending, not the logical one.

  It’s as though Scott’s hijacked the script. He’s turned me into a walking menace who falls into the keyboard and almost trashes the show, nearly wrecking Jonathan’s equipment. I could’ve ruined the Newport Music Hall show and ruined the tour. Made us lose money. But that wasn’t my fault. It was hers. Yet Scott’s got me standing in Jonathan’s way, and not Amy. I’m the one Scott’s been able to push in the way of their making it, turning me into an obstacle to overcome.

  But why does Scott get to write the script? What happened to the story Jonathan and I were living? Or was there ever our story? Was there only his or Scott’s, with me as a subplot—a red herring?

  Jonathan sits up. In the darkness, I can barely see the outline of his face.

  Need to be back in Chicago.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “For what?”

  For not being a part of your goals. Or part of what you need.

  “For Amy tripping you?”

  “No.”

  “Try to see the bright side here.” He turns on the lamp. “We’ll get in the papers. Extra publicity.” His expression says I shouldn’t take him too seriously.

  Those gonna be lines in a new song about “how everything happens for a reason/and the reason is success”? Even love and jealousy?

  “I don’t want my picture in the paper,” I say. “Don’t let Ron give them a photo of me.”

  “Okay,” he says. “I’ll make sure.”

  “I don’t want to be in that story.” But you’ll twist me up in your next song anyway. I’ll be whoever you make me for the audience, including the devil Scott’s turned me into. What would one photo matter? Or a hundred?

  “You know,” I say, tossing off the sheet, “it’s fine. Let him publish one. It’ll be the same as another line in the song.” I walk to the window.

  “A line? In what song?”

  I pull back the curtain. “Oh, come on, Jonathan.”

  “Come on what?”

  “Will it be like ‘Just Walk Away’? But ‘it’s better with a fall’?”

  “Better with a fall?”

  It turns out I’m looking onto a yard in front of the building, across from a row of buildings facing this one.

  “You know. Trip. Fall. Crash.”

  “Okay. You fell.”

  “The song about tonight. Perhaps to go with the photo of the catfight for the cover of the single. Chris will make it look great.”

  “Um … Kinda lost me there.”

  “The song you’ll write. Like you always do. About your women.”

  “My women?”

  The lamps mounted on the buildings throw a pale yellow light over the yard, which is crisscrossed with sidewalks connecting all of the buildings to each other.

  “Your music: a highlight reel of your bed.”

  “Oh, come on now,” he says.

  I hear him pulling back his sheets.

  “We’ve already been through this, remember?”

  “You write songs about what happens in your bed. Or doesn’t.”

  “I write what I know.”

  “You know nothing about Scott?” I watch a cat dart from its hiding place under a bush.

  “He’s not—”

  “Your lover? Why don’t you sleep with him? Get it over with. Then you can write about him.” I can’t tell, but the cat might have caught something. The lights cast odd shadows, so it’s hard to see clearly.

  “Look,” he says. “I know tonight was messed up.”

  I feel him step up next to me.

  “But how’s this suddenly about me? I didn’t trip you. Amy did.”

  “You’d’ve loved to take her into that bathroom again and gotten yourself another fat lip.”

  “Where the hell did that come—”

  I face him. “You accused her of abandoning you. Like I’m just filling in until you get her to Chicago.”

  Jonathan’s expression drains of concern and hardens into a frown. He’ll get all quiet now.

  Because I’m right and you can’t stand it. You truly love only her. Even she couldn’t defeat music.

  In the silence of his old bedroom, I’d wondered what my old bedroom looked like back home. Mom did say she’d straightened it up.

  Now that I’m driving back to Chicago, I’ve decided not to care about that.

  I try to distract myself by taking in the countryside, but Lake Erie has flown away behind me, and it’s monotonous here: corn and soybeans in neat rows, an occasional barn, some cows here and there. So I’m stuck watching the road unfurl in front of me, and then, taking advantage of the monotony, what happened at the Newport Music Hall bubbles up in my mind again.

  Jonathan had left early with Kenny to meet up with the rest of the band.

  I’d simply wanted to sit in the audience and watch the show. Then, on the drive down with Jonathan’s sister, she’d begged me into going backstage before the show begins.

  When we got there, the opening act, Willie Phoenix and the Shadow Lords, was setting up under the Mercurial Visions banner hanging at the back of the stage, the eight-foot-tall version of the wall hanging with a torso, arms raised, reaching beyond its edge, looking like an overexposed black-and-white print.

  I didn’t want to go backstage and have to deal with Scott, but Lisa had already talked to whoever she knew and scored two backstage passes. We flashed them to the bouncer, and he let us go backstage. I had such a bad feeling about this. After a couple of false turns, we found them. Jonathan was sitting back on a stool, combing out his hair. AnnMarie was looking at herself in a mirror. Behind them, Scott swished ice around in a glass. Sitting quietly in a corner, Nancy had Lolita propped open on her knees, and Ron was taking photographs of everything. Looks about the same as in the loft. Only more cramped.

  Then, from behind me, a man barked out, “Who’s Jennifer?”

  I turned. A bouncer filled half the passageway.

  Nervous, I raised my hand. What the hell happened now?

  “The guy at the stand wants to talk to you,” the bouncer said, throwing his thumb toward the front; then he left.

  Feeling Scott glaring at me, I looked to Jonathan and shrugged in uncertainty
.

  “No clue,” he said, shaking his head.

  As I turned to leave, a short, wiry man appeared in the doorway right next to me, looking like a Jamaican leprechaun with long dreadlocks and a pointy smile, his white teeth nearly glowing against ebony skin.

  Jonathan introduced him as Willie Phoenix and talked about watching him down at the Distillery, listening to “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” “My Apartment,” and “Misunderstanding.”

  I left him reminiscing and got out. On the way, I was wondering what could be wrong: The keyboard doesn’t work now? Is the stand broken? Or did Amy get the police to show up?

  In the lobby, Kenny was standing next to the card table.

  No police lights. That’s good.

  Then he explained to me he’s never gotten to see Mercurial Visions, and since I was there, it might be his only chance, so he was wondering if I would mind covering the sales table.

  Of course: Scott’s little friend gives up his car, takes off work, and has missed six shows, so he deserves to see them tonight. More than the “menace.” If I tell his little half-queer friend no—

  “Sure,” I said, pulling out the chair behind the table. At least I get to listen.

  This time I made sure I got the change.

  Around South Bend, the view gets more varied and includes signs for Notre Dame. Not that I can really see it. Then it’s back to farmland.

  Staring along the lanes of the freeway, I try to remember what it was like at the loft before the tour, before they put out that first CD, back when I could believe I mattered more to him than his music; when I came home as his lover, not as another song he hasn’t written yet.

  The sun still shines brightly in spite of dark clouds gathering to the West, near Chicago. The next sign tells me “Chicago 91 miles.” That means I’ll get there before four. So for the next hour and a half to two hours, it’s me, the road, and my music. I wish I had “Born to be Wild,” “Frankenstein,” or some Zeppelin. Then I’d be in a ’70s road movie, near the end, when she makes it home after all her crazy adventures. Of course, something could be going on that the driver doesn’t know but that the audience knows, ’cause we’re watching, like in The Hitcher.

  We’re all thinking: Look out! Look out!

  See, though, I am watching out. Don’t worry. I can handle anything after Martin—even Kenny and Scott in bed together, with Ron documenting away.

  The only thing that could surprise me would be if Scott moved out.

  I laugh. That’s about stupid, Jennifer. Shit like that doesn’t happen even in movies. Not even Pretty Woman, and that was more than I could believe. It’s fine for fairy tales, but we live in Chicagoland, not Never Never Land.

  Of course, when it looks the worst, there’s always something that saves the couple—a little detail mentioned earlier, like a trinket caught in a shot, or a comment by one of the characters that’s forgotten until the last minute and which turns out to be a secret desire, or some thoughtful gesture that stops the split, and saves what they both want, even if they don’t know it yet.

  Like climbing up a fire escape with a rose in your mouth to surprise the woman you can’t really lose.

  Or a poster of “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” Concert-sized. The white-stone angel covering her eyes on a flat black background. Like you imagined it in the loft one day.

  That day will be today.

  There’s no time to dry mount it, but I can stop by Reckless Records on the way back to the loft and then hang it up like a regular poster.

  Close enough.

  In the distance, a thunderhead blackens the skies over Chicago.

  Storm’ll have blown over by the time I get to Reckless Records. Or should have.

  Chapter 46

  The Angel

  —Jennifer—

  The storm was blowing full force when I made it to Reckless Records yesterday. So I had the poster wrapped up tightly, and with a run to and then from the car, I got it home safely and put it up last night. It looked good on the wall: three feet by five feet, black background, with a black-and-white photo of a lying angel, one arm akimbo across a wing, her other arm laying its hand across her eyes in grief. “LOVE WILL TEAR US APART” was printed in white across the top, and “JOY DIVISION” across the bottom.

  All day today at Les Femmes, the pretty young girls complaining that they aren’t getting glamorous jobs and aren’t millionaire supermodels like Linda E. annoyed me more than usual, and it’s later than I expected when I climb our four flights of stairs, beat. Since I don’t know when Jonathan’s getting back home today, I’m relieved I have the poster up already. That also gave me time to get to my old salon, Viva!, for one last nudge—another moment I remember: that he loved the first massage I gave him. Should be good for a line or two in a song about weathering a storm between lovers.

  Pulling open the heavy gray door, I see the equipment piled in the center of the loft. It’s so quiet I can’t be sure if they’re asleep or have gone out.

  Closing the door carefully behind me, I walk lightly to the table and quietly set down the bag from Viva! I sneak a squeeze bottle, a flask of oil, and a small bottle of scent out of the bag with hardly a sound. I pour some of the oil into the squeeze bottle and drizzle in a touch of the opium scent he mentioned he likes so much, and then I swish the squeeze bottle around. For a massage. After being on the road that long, you’ll love it.

  I slip off my shoes and tiptoe over to the mattress, where I find him sleeping with a T-shirt over his eyes.

  To stack the cards more in my favor, I make this scene R-rated: I strip off my shirt and my bra, and dab some of the sweet-smelling oil near each nipple. Then I kneel down next to the mattress. Carefully drawing back the sheet, I look at his body—at his chest rising and falling steadily. I peel the T-shirt off his face. He stirs, moving a hand over his eyes; his other arm falls off to the side as if reaching for me. He looks like the angel from “Love Will Tear Us Apart.”

  Bending over, I sweep my hair back and kiss him lightly on his lips, on his chin, on his chest, on one nipple, and then on the other; I feel him wake up. I gaze at his fluttering eyes. He nods, gives me a weak smile, and then looks around the edge of the mattress.

  “Hi,” I say, holding the squeeze bottle behind my back.

  “Hey,” he says, reaching for his cigarettes.

  “How are you?”

  “Beat. To death. Need some more sleep.”

  “I’ve got a surprise for you,” I say.

  He grunts, lighting up.

  “Did you like the poster?”

  “Yeah,” he says, shrugging. “Thanks.”

  It’s not exactly the reaction I was expecting. That poster’s something he’s been dreaming about. I put it exactly where he told me he wanted it. It’s the wish, granted, that reveals the deep love for each other, the hidden strength of the two, that keeps them together.

  You did just wake up, though. It’s the scare before the kiss. The audience needs the suspense.

  “That’s the one that you’ve been talking about, right?”

  “Yeah. It is.” He looks down at his hands. “Looks good. Really.”

  I’m half-naked here. I smell like opium. I’ve granted the wish.

  “What’s the matter?” I ask, sitting back on my heels.

  Shouldn’t we be kissing now as the shot pulls back, showing us together, revealing that, yes, we will be together?

  “I’m … just tired. Very tired.”

  “Maybe I should let you sleep.”

  “Probably,” he says, taking another drag of his cigarette. He falls back onto the pillow, throwing his arm across his eyes.

  The wind rattles the panes, first stronger and then softer, but never stopping. I glance out the window at the ugly gray weather; dark clouds are pushing the sky down, making everything feel as if it’s
trapped in a small box.

  This is plenty of suspense.

  As he turns away to snuff out his cigarette, I kneel to the mattress.

  “I’ve got a surprise,” I say.

  “Yeah. So you said.”

  “You have to turn all the way over.”

  He sits still.

  I motion for him to turn over, and he only stares at me blankly.

  “Here,” I say, leaning toward him. I hold my perfumed breasts out to him. “Smell.”

  In the twilight, I watch his eyes shifting from my face to my breasts, and back again. He lifts himself, quickly sniffs, then falls back to the pillow. He nods.

  The panes rattle loudly as a cool gust runs over the floor, blowing across us.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  “This isn’t working.”

  “What?” I shake my head.

  “This,” he says, motioning his hand between us a couple of times and then around the darkened loft. “All of it.”

  “I don’t understand, Jonathan.”

  “It’s not working. With you. Living here. Us.”

  “What are you saying?” I stare intensely at him, watch his lips move.

  “You have to … move out.” He looks away. “I’m sorry. I’m really so sorry. But we have to take some time off. Rethink things.”

  “What? Jonathan, we … this is supposed to be us smoothing everything out … I got the poster—”

  “Thank you,” he says. “But I can’t do this any longer. I can’t. I’ve tried. But—”

  Unwilling to watch, the angel from “Love Will Tear Us Apart” keeps her eyes covered.

  Chapter 47

  Falls Like Dirty Snow

  —Jonathan—

  The tape has rewound and stopped with a click. I balance the remote in my hand, my thumb over the play button. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched it already.

  I push play.

  As the camera reveals a room in a slow pan down from paint peeling from the ceiling, and the delicate opening notes I’ve played so many times rise in volume, white letters float in the lower left-hand corner.