You Don't Love Me Yet

by Jonathan Lethem

  “I don’t have my checkbook.”

  “I’ll take a hostage.”

  The complainer reached his hand into her hair, cradling her skull. She kissed him, on tiptoe, felt the grit of his unshaved cheek. She found herself folded into his encyclopedia of clothes and hair and limbs. His free paw bridged her buttocks and drew her higher into the embrace. In the kiss Lucinda tasted traces of their night and afternoon, hints of herself or the Ambit’s mustard and ketchup unrinsed from his face.

  Someone tapped her shoulder. She turned and found the two appropriated interns standing unexpectedly close. They didn’t speak, but like spectral sentinels nodded to indicate Denise, who waited a few yards from the stage, her rack toms tucked beneath one arm. Lucinda nodded and Denise lowered her head and moved through the dancers, for the elevator.

  “I have to go be with the others.”

  “The others in the band.”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I come?”

  She stared, not understanding.

  “I’ve never been in a band before,” he said.

  She capped his mouth with her hand to silence him and to keep herself from kissing him again before the lingering interns. Then, helplessly, mouthed the back of her own hand instead, as though seeking him through prison bars. “Call me tomorrow,” she whispered through her fingers. “Or tonight.” Then escaped.

  denise hadn’t lied, Tang’s Donut was a place bands went to celebrate and debrief after shows. The others recognized this at once. Though by the standard of most gigs they’d played the Aparty ludicrously early, at Tang’s it might as easily have been four in the morning. Traffic buzzed past on Sunset and Fountain, isolating Tang’s like a reef in time. Elderly chess opponents in vintage suits nudged pawns across squares at their booths, under clicking, humming fluorescent fixtures, as though installed there by some miraculous hand that had plucked them from a 1930s Vienna kaffeehaus. Trays of cold congealed muffins lay untouched and unloved within the fingerprint-layered lead-glass cases, while the customers invariably queued for the same buttermilk doughnuts, dough flash-fried in irregular clumps with a browned horny crust, which gave way to the peachy-yellow fluff inside, too hot to eat if you badgered the drowsy, indifferent counterman to serve you from the cooling racks in the kitchen behind him.

  Crowded at their booth, they juggled steaming buttermilk-dough fragments between fingers and lips, gobbling them when they could stand to. Here, it turned out, was why you wanted to play a triumphant gig: in order to eat Tang’s doughnuts afterward. True, you could come here after merely seeing some other band play. They’d all done that. So, you sought glory then in order not only to sit at Tang’s but to feel you deserved to. Denise slurped peppermint tea, made from Tang’s hot water and a tea bag she’d stashed in her jacket, while Matthew, in vegetarian solidarity with his secret captive, sipped orange juice. Lucinda, heedlessly, drank coffee. Bedwin, hot chocolate.

  “I feel like we left some opportunities back there,” said Matthew.

  “Those people only dug us because there are women in the band,” said Denise. “They see it as some kind of marketing hook.”

  “We don’t know that for a fact,” said Matthew. “Anyway, it’s not like that with Fancher Autumnbreast. He’s got nothing to gain.”

  “Anyone who likes us already likes us for the wrong reasons,” said Denise. “We’ve only ever played one set.”

  “A lot can happen in one set,” said Lucinda. They fell silent in contemplation of it. The performance fizzed inside them like carbonation, the bubbles destined to unbind, bob to the surface, expire. Perhaps that was even what they’d come here for. Tang’s was a sort of detox ward, a safe zone in which the band could decant, settle back into the safety of their familiar, unfamous lives.

  “We sort of got a manager tonight,” said Bedwin. He dunked a chunk of doughnut deep into his hot chocolate, displacing the liquid to the rim and nearly over.

  “Maybe a name, too,” said Matthew. He’d crumbled his own doughnut to fragments and spread the fragments around his place mat, wrecking his cake like his bathroom stowaway had wrecked her salad.

  “That can’t be our name,” said Lucinda, a little panicked at all she knew and couldn’t say. “It’s a song. It can’t be both a song and a band.”

  “Why not?” said Bedwin.

  “It’s stupid. Who does that?”

  “Hey hey we’re the Monkees,” said Bedwin.

  “That only proves my point.”

  “Black Sabbath has a song called ‘Black Sabbath.’”

  “I don’t want that to be the name.” Lucinda resisted speaking the famous phrase itself, as if to do so were to invoke the band’s occult debt. She wanted the phrase to be smothered in silence, made a footnote. Never mind that it was the title of their hit. They’d write more that were better, leave “Monster Eyes” in the dust. Only Bedwin had any reason to suspect her, but he showed no sign he recalled that the lyrics originated outside himself. Her deception was as safe with him as it would be with a cat or a dog.

  Lucinda was the band’s invisible betrayer and its invisible angel at once. Ward of their innocence, she’d inserted the complainer’s language into their art like LSD slipped into a punch bowl. Now she must persuade them that the effects were natural, that though the world had transmuted around them, the hallowed unit of the band remained untouched. Lucinda would take the crime on herself. The others would never know. She only needed to control the whims of the complainer, the least controllable person she’d ever encountered.

  “Are We Not Men, We Are Devo,” continued Bedwin. “‘Clash City Rockers.’ ‘Give It to the Soft Boys.’ And the Verlaines have a song whose whole chorus is just the word ‘Verlaine’ over and over again.”

  “That’s enough, Bedwin,” said Denise. She placed a quarter of her doughnut onto a napkin and pushed it, like a raft with humanitarian cargo, across to Bedwin, who’d been eyeing hers after gobbling his own.

  “Our manager is an armpit sniffer,” said Lucinda despondently. The four again fell silent, unsure how to encompass this remark.

  “I do that,” said Bedwin eventually.

  “I mean other people’s armpits,” said Lucinda.

  the phone rang and Lucinda slugged to the pillow’s edge. She stretched the receiver from its cradle to her head, which was too ponderous to raise from its nest. The receiver, too, was too heavy to hold, so she rested it on her face.

  “Hello?”

  “You awake?” asked Matthew.

  “What time is it?” She’d been fathoms deep, possibly dreaming of the complainer, but the phone’s chime had shattered any dreams, her first eyeful of daylight sweeping the remains off like motes on its beams. But it should have been the complainer calling, she felt.

  “Ten,” said Matthew. “Can we talk?”

  “Marsupial predicament?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come in half an hour.”

  She allowed her eyes to sag again for what seemed an instant. When she reopened them and padded into her kitchen she found Matthew there, having used his key. Or perhaps she’d left it unlocked. He scrounged in her refrigerator, hip-deep into the appliance. She stretched her T-shirt around her knees and peered over his shoulder. He rattled at back layers of condiments, prying at shrunken fists of tinfoil, artifacts she hadn’t examined in months.

  “You won’t find anything in there,” she said. “I fed it all to a fugitive yak who lives in my hamper.”

  “I’m broke,” said Matthew. “Will you buy me breakfast?”

  “Sure, but I have to go to the gallery. Falmouth owes me a paycheck. I’ll put pants on.”

  Matthew didn’t turn to see. “If you feel like it,” he said, sucking a glob of something, peanut butter or chèvre, from his finger. “Uck.”

  They took Matthew’s Mazda, with its moonroof open. A tape Lucinda had heard a hundred times before squeaked in the deck, a mix of bands from New Zealand and Australia that Matthew collected on vinyl like
holy relics from another realm. Sunset Boulevard blazed, empty, rinsed in sunshine, the stray cars like bugs streaming in the footprint of a vast lifted rock.

  “Where is everyone?” said Lucinda, shielding her eyes from the glare. “Is it some kind of holiday?”

  “Saturday.”

  “Where are all the people?”

  “In bed, like you usually are.”

  “Don’t you have any other music?”

  “The tape’s stuck in the player.”

  Falmouth was at his desk the morning after the debacle, seeking consolation in routine. The gallery office was shuttered against the day’s light, Falmouth’s face lit by the blue-toned screen as he attacked his e-mail. Falmouth was the first person Lucinda knew to use it. It might have been his invention, an artwork he’d tricked the world into adopting, the true Aparty. Lucinda stood beside him and cleared her throat. Matthew hung back, never happy to visit the gallery.

  “Boss, I need some money.”

  Falmouth looked up, scowling. “Didn’t you people get some sort of signing bonus last night? Isn’t a number-one record worth anything anymore?”

  “We’ll reimburse you out of our first royalties.”

  “No, you’ll waste it all on cocaine and prostitutes, because that’s what rock stars do.”

  “Just enough for breakfast.”

  “This is severance pay. You’re all fired. I had an epiphany last night. The world of complaints can carry on without my help. It has a certain inexorable momentum. Frankly, I’m not sure it needed me in the first place.” Falmouth’s gallery had a crestfallen air, Lucinda saw now. An enterprise that teetered on despondency, it had been restrained from that brink by Falmouth’s will, a gambler’s bluff. Today the place felt vacated, rustling with ghosts of spectators moved elsewhere, to the next curiosity.

  “You already fired me the other day,” she said gently.

  “That was different, that was affectionate.”

  “In retrospect this will be affectionate too.”

  “You’re losing me.” Falmouth waved his hand. “You know what I would like? For someone to take me to breakfast every once in a while.”

  “You want to come to breakfast?” said Lucinda, surprised, glancing at Matthew. Yet perhaps Falmouth was innocent of the grudge.

  “I’ll still pay,” Falmouth said, almost begging now.

  “Matthew and I have things to discuss,” she began.

  “Your future recording career under the hand of Jules Harvey,” suggested Falmouth, his voice withering.

  “I don’t even want to hear that name today,” said Lucinda.

  “Come along,” said Matthew. “I don’t have any secrets.”

  Falmouth climbed past the passenger seat, into the back of Matthew’s Mazda, another astonishment on this first morning after the Aparty. Falmouth ordinarily piloted his own car to any rendezvous, refusing passenger status even in a front seat. Now he sat dreamily trapped in Matthew’s two-door, seated on a cushion leaking yellow foam, his shoes topping a heap of rubbish. The backseat had likely been the kangaroo’s transport, though Falmouth had no way of knowing that. Oddly childlike, he rubbed at the five o’clock shadow on the back of his head and blinked at the street as though seeing it for the first time.

  “What about that place that makes that great oatmeal frittata?” he said. “With the strawberries and cottage cheese on top.”

  “Hugo’s, you mean?” said Matthew.

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  “Fine with me. Lucinda?”

  “How about oatmeal frittatas, Lucinda?” said Falmouth. “Since I’m paying, and Matthew’s driving.”

  It only took an accumulation of two ex-boyfriends acting un-characteristically cheery to make a swarm, a blooming conspiracy. Lucinda wondered irritably whether she was missing a phone call at home. She wanted to tell Matthew and Falmouth how she was changed entirely, not who they took her to be, not a mere bassist or ex-girlfriend, foil for banter, kangaroo confidante. Her liaison and bender with the complainer had thrown her world off its rails, but not hers alone. If Matthew and Falmouth felt in some way changed this morning it was due to how the complainer had crept into their lives too, through the gallery telephones, through the lyrics and his secret collaboration with Bedwin. She wanted to tell them but the complainer’s injunction of secrecy felt as profound as his touch, the trails he’d left across her.

  Calls might be stacking up on her machine. If they spoke she’d want to see him. Anything seemed possible: Carl might even be waiting for her in her house, or outside it. The carousel only seemed stopped because she instead bumped along in Matthew’s shockless Mazda, hell-bent for brunch. Matthew and Falmouth were at the moment discovering common ground, an animated cartoon they both liked, something to do with a Chihuahua and a cat. She should cherish this interlude, perhaps. Besides, she was ravenous for frittata. Sunlight strobed through the moonroof. She tilted her head back and shut her eyes to feel it batter her lids.

  matthew explained to Falmouth about Fancher Autumnbreast’s radio show, The Dreaming Jaw. Playing one of Autumnbreast’s live in-studio sets had launched careers, everyone from the Rain Injuries to Souled American to Memorial Garage. Matthew also explained how Autumnbreast had been Janis Joplin’s boyfriend, the only one, according to her, who’d never taken advantage of her. He’d also spent a famous weekend consoling Marianne Faithfull in Morocco after her breakup with Mick Jagger. The three of them sat outside, on Hugo’s long deck, spectating as new brunchers grouped at tables around them. Their own chairs had been pushed back from the table, their meals demolished, oatmeal and egg white and curds scattered to plates’ edges and beyond, juice glasses emptied, coffees filled a third and fourth time. Matthew’s fingers stole across the settings to harvest appetizing chunks that had been abandoned on Falmouth’s and Lucinda’s plates. He looked healthier than in weeks, his sallowness fleshed again with glamour, with rock-star prospects. The kangaroo seemed forgotten for the moment.

  Falmouth smoked and listened intently as Matthew talked, pursing his lips and shaking his head, stripped of irony. He interrogated Matthew precisely. It was as though his solipsism had been dissolved by the revelation of a rock-and-roll demimonde hiding in plain sight before him, now uncovered by the events of the Aparty.

  “This person, this Autumnbreast, never wanted to play music himself?”

  “He’s more like the most virtuoso listener who ever lived,” said Matthew. “When he listens, other people hear things. He’s like a site, an occasion for things to happen. His radio show’s like a clearing in the woods where the history of contemporary sound just happens to stroll through.”

  “See, I like that very much,” said Falmouth. “It’s not a passive role. His sensibility declares itself, and others pay attention. He’s presiding.”

  “Right.”

  “Who cares?” said Lucinda.

  They both stared.

  “What a lot of malarkey. Presiding. You only like the way that sounds because it reminds you of yourself. It’s like the gallery. You don’t want to be an artist, it’s too vulnerable. You want to be a collector instead, a curator of happenings. But that’s what pushed you into the arms of Sniffles Harvey.”

  Falmouth blinked, smoked, refused to lash out.

  “And you,” she said, turning to Matthew. “You only like Autumnbreast because he calls you sweetheart, Matty-o, honey bunch.”

  “I don’t think he actually called me honey bunch, Luce.”

  “I thought we were supposed to be an art band, something alternative.” She felt herself growing vicious, couldn’t quit. “I didn’t realize you’d fall over your own feet getting caught up in some sleazy sixties rock dude’s clutches.”

  “He’s responsible for getting attention for a lot of alternative bands,” said Matthew, with defensive precision.

  “I’ve never heard of any of those bands you mentioned. Except the Rain Injuries. And you hate those guys.”

  “Well, that’s probably b
ecause you don’t listen to much of anything, Luce.”

  “Now, friends,” said Falmouth, making an appeal for peace.

  “And anyway, all those legendary women this clearing in the woods ever-so-sweetly presided over but never took advantage of,” Lucinda continued, “I can’t help noticing they were all conveniently smashed on alcohol or suffering a famously devastating breakup at the time.”

  “Huh?” said Matthew.

  Lucinda’s eyes stung. Her throat began to tighten and she understood, reluctantly, that she was crying. “I’m just saying Mr. Funbreast sounds like a rebound operator to me.”

  “What’s the matter, Luce?” said Matthew.

  “Nothing.” She pressed her knuckles against her trembling chin, swallowed hard.

  Falmouth stubbed his cigarette and peered at her. Lucinda fell silent, cast her gaze to the far avenue, shook the slime of tears from her cheeks.

  “Did I say something?” said Matthew.

  “We were only joking, Lucinda, whatever we said,” said Falmouth.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine, you’re crying,” said Falmouth.

  “I’m fake-crying.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “For sympathy.” She tucked what had welled, the joyous trauma of the past days, back into its hidden compartment. Something in Matthew might have been triggered by her sniping, however, or perhaps by the sight of her tears. He’d lapsed into his old recessive state, his joy in the gig unsustainable. Perhaps he’d also recalled Shelf the Flyer, maundering in her dismal basin.

  “I wish I could fake cry as well as that,” said Falmouth.

  “I’ll teach you.”

  “Sniffles Harvey—that was a good one.”

  “You don’t even know how he earned that name.”

  “Of course I do. He was sniffling all around your band like a truffle pig. Trying to take credit for it himself, as if you were some strange lucky outgrowth of his loft.”

  “Let’s give last night a break,” said Lucinda. “Forget about Harvey and Summerbreast or any of these other spooky characters circling around.”