She was grilling toast and scrambling tofu with roasted peppers, and I was in love with how my teasing caused her to bend her head when she smiled, trying to keep me from seeing it and failing every time. She set plates out for us and poured coffee, and I set aside the Martin to join her, catching her hand to kiss her fingers.
“Here’s jam for your toast. It’s the last of the blackberries from summer. There won’t be anything but honey until the strawberries are ripe.”
“I already know your honey is sweet, Susi. I just want another spoonful. Did you make this jam back in 1955 when women still did that, and then brought it with you into the future?”
“It’s from that mass of vines in the alley. If you’re here in July, you can help pick berries for next year’s jam.”
“Why wouldn’t I be here in July?”
“You will be back at work and—”
“I’ll be working here. And I’ll be teaching in your institute, remember?”
“Jason, stop teasing for a minute.”
“I’m not teasing. I’m enjoying myself immensely. I intend to be here in July, eating breakfast and picking berries with you. However, if we’re going to have a serious relationship, you need a good Internet connection.”
“That borders on more commitment than I can consider.”
“You’ll have to chase me off with a stick if you don’t want me around, Susi. But you do want me, or you wouldn’t curl around my hand and purr like that when I touch you. I have to tell the office to forward my mail to heaven, since that’s where I am.”
She sobered, looking at me seriously.
“Jason, don’t tell your cousin about this yet. I know you tell her everything, but please wait until we understand what’s happening between us.”
Before I could answer, her phone rang and she disappeared into the bedroom to answer it.
The only other man she’s ever known was her ex. Yet she didn’t know me either.
I don’t have a cousin.
TWO: Adagio
30 ~ “I Gotta Know”
SUSI
“WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED at my house, Susi? I leave you with my cousin, and it’s destroyed. The neighbors called the police twice about the noise. I can’t believe this of you.”
“We’ve only been at my house, Angelia, not your apartment.”
“Your crotchless underwear is hanging in my bathroom.”
“We were here every night. Jason is playing my dad’s old Martin in the living room.”
“No, he’s here, passed out on my bed. Where he committed who knows what travesties in my absence.”
“Then who’s here with me?”
“Well, it isn’t my jerk of a cousin. I’m throwing cold water on him and tossing him the hell out of here. You failed to keep him from wrecking himself again.”
31 ~ “I Must Be Somebody Else You’ve Known”
JASON
SHE CAME BACK SHAKING, looking pale under her carefully constructed makeup.
“You aren’t Angelia’s cousin.”
“Who is Angelia?”
“Oh my god. You aren’t Jason Ferran.”
“Angelia sounds like someone in a song. Maybe by Dave Alvin or Marty Robbins? One Raul Malo sings?”
“Sweet lord, I went to bed with a stranger.”
“That is not what happened, Susi. We spent a year together over the last two days.”
“What else can you call it?”
“Two people found each other, discovered that they were two flames burning as one, and fell in love as Heaven intended.”
“I picked up a stranger in a bar and slept with him. Lord, if my father ever finds out—”
“That is not how we are going to explain it. We’ll tell him the part about singing together and two flames as one, and—”
“You knew I mistook you for someone else.”
“Not until just now. I was about to tell you that I don’t have a cousin.”
“Then you thought this whole time—oh god—you think I pick up strangers and go to bed with them.”
“Susi, sweetheart, I mistook you for my friend’s cousin. It was a long, long time between the bar and bed.”
“This is humiliating. What’s your name?”
“You’re hyperventilating, Susi. Take a deep breath and hold it.”
“What’s your name?”
“Jason.”
“I mean Jason what?”
“Jason Taylor.”
“But you went to Prescott? Paul Harris knew you.”
“Yes, I went to Prescott, though they threw me out when I went to Europe with my band.”
“Then that nonsense about playing in a bar band? I thought you were teasing. That’s real? You really are a musician?”
“Yes, and I really am in love with you.”
“I don’t know anything about you. You could be a psycho-killer or—”
“I’m a good guy, Susi. Guitarists are never psycho-killers. We could search it on Google, and I’m sure it will show that even bad guitarists are never dangerous. I’m fairly good.”
“And you don’t have a place to live? Or a car? You weren’t joking?”
“It’s true about no car. I’ve never owned one because I can’t drive. Not having a home is temporary. Anyway, what does Jason Ferran have that I don’t?”
“He’s a private banker in London.”
“So he tells rich old ladies how to make more money? I always thought that was a cover for high-priced gigolos. Susi, you aren’t marrying him. I won’t stand for it.”
“I have never met Jason Ferran. Oh god. How did this happen? You sat in that trustees meeting. I took you to Gwyneth’s house. Randolph’s family met you, believing that—”
“Come on, Susi. Let’s cuddle up and calm down. This isn’t a true catastrophe. It’s heaven. Or it was until your friend called. If the phone rings again, please don’t answer.”
“Don’t touch me. I’m not someone who does that with strangers.”
“If you could let Jason Ferran touch you, why can’t Jason Taylor? I know you far better than he does. Also, I’m in love with you. He’s probably a cad who will string you along and then hurt you.”
“Stop teasing.”
“Laughing is the only way through this. Years from now, our children will ask for the story over and over, so everyone can laugh. ‘Daddy, tell us about when Mama picked you up at a bar and’—oh Susi, don’t cry.”
“Please let go of me. I can’t remember what I said to you. I assumed Angelia told you all about me. She said—oh god, you don’t know anything about me.”
“Let’s just start over, Susi.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s take a walk and get to know each other. Or let’s just go back to bed. We were fine until we got out of bed.”
“I’m late for work. Most people have jobs, you know. You have to leave. Right now.”
“You didn’t make me leave on the other days. I’m still the same Jason. You can’t—”
“I can’t even think about it. And I can’t be late for school.”
“When is class out at lunchtime? I’ll meet you at school.”
“I have appointments until late tonight. You can’t come to the school.”
“I’ll be here when you get home tonight.”
“You can’t stay here. I don’t know who you are. You have to go.”
“OK, Susi, I’ll call you at work.”
“Don’t you dare. Get your pack so I can lock the door.”
“You’re just going to throw me out to the wolves here in the wilderness? I haven’t even showered. Dogs will follow me around all day, as funky as I am. Hell, I’ll follow myself around.”
“Get in the car. I’ll leave you at the bus stop on Thirty-fourth. You can take a bus or call a cab.”
32 ~ “The Cause of It All”
SUSI
AT THE BUS STOP, he touched me, which sent shards of fear through me, leaving my fingers tingling, li
ke an electrical shock. He rubbed the back of his hand against my cheek, letting that dark hair at his wrist tickle my face.
My heart was racing from an adrenalin surge, my insides so flooded with flight hormones that I could scarcely think.
He smiled, far too handsome for anyone’s good.
33 ~ “Fearless Heart”
JASON
“LOOK, SUSI, I THOUGHT Ian and Cynthia sent you, and you thought I was your friend’s cousin. So let’s invite them over tonight. Ian will vouch for me being a good guy, and your friend can protect you if Ian and I turn out to be psycho-killers. Qu’est-ce que c’est?”
“Please get out of the car so I can go to work. I can’t think right now.”
“OK. But it’ll be St. Patrick’s Day before we have our first child if you waste time fretting about a simple misunderstanding. I love you.”
My sole regret was that this momentary disturbance in the field left her flustered. I was so confident she’d be back—since no one in the world could run away from what had happened in the last two days—that on the bus ride I took out manuscript paper and wrote music, not lyrics. Just the sounds that had been haunting me, first since the gamelan shed and then after the twangy hymns in the Presbyters’ chapel.
~
IT WAS FIVE HOURS until our studio time started. I took the bus across town instead of a taxi, switching on Twenty-third Avenue to take the long ride on the number 48 bus to the U district, so I could switch buses to get to Ian’s house. I sat writing, blissed out. If I licked my lips, my skin still tasted salty. If I rubbed my nose while thinking, my fingers still smelled of her. When the bus went over the grated bridge at Montlake, where the tires kick up harmonic distortion on the metal grid so you can feel the vibration in your teeth, I realized she still didn’t know who I am.
Who’s Frank Zappa? Who’s Bruce? Who’s Eddie Vetter? Who is Jason effing Taylor?
OK, my name looks pretentious in that context. However, she didn’t know who I was the whole time we spent together. She still didn’t know when I told her my name. She thinks I’m a guitarist in a bar band.
Well, I am. Or I was for years. Life would be much simpler if I still were.
She went out with me, she walked on the beach with me, she trusted me to hear her sing, she went to bed the night before thinking it was just me. Not Jason Taylor the infamous indie songwriter who sold-out so he could run with the big dogs. But who just went to the dogs instead.
Two possibilities presented themselves.
First, she should sing with us. It was as important that she sing with me again as go to bed with me. Maybe more important, because if she would sing with me, she would trust me, which was all I wanted. Or needed.
Second, she was in love with me. Me. In the couple of days it would take her to get over the mix-up, I could enjoy that it was me she wanted, the real me. While she was getting used to the idea of musician instead of banker—how the hell could anyone think I was a banker?—she didn’t have to also be thinking he’s rich, he’s famous, his fruitcake ex-wife says he—
Shoot. I’d have to tell her that part.
I’d have to tell her things I assumed she already knew, but I didn’t have to start with the trash that accumulated as a consequence of the last couple of years’ bad decisions. Susi had already recognized the essentials about me: music is more important than food or sex. (Although she knew how to do things in both the kitchen and in bed that would never occur to me.) I can’t stop myself from spending all my time writing, playing, and thinking about music. (I pondered what I had written that might impress her, but I’d have to write a song especially for her.) She won’t be asking about things I don’t want to talk about, in the same way that I’d never ask her to discuss gruesome details of her accident or what caused her to spend Saturday night weeping. We understood the essence of each other. The details were tawdry and irrelevant.
The thrilling, fundamental truth was this: she hadn’t picked me up in order to sleep by a famous body, and she didn’t drag me through those meetings because she wanted my money.
“She likes me,” I said when I walked into Ian’s house.
He and his cousin Arlo sat watching a dieselpunk web video with the sound off while Ian dinked with a Stratocaster. He looked better with a shaved head than when he pissed Dominique off by cutting a Mohawk just before we filmed that concert video last year.
“Jason, my man! We gave you up for lost.”
“I am.”
I pitched myself down the stairs to the basement where Ian had piled my bags from British Airways, and then I showered and changed. Yodeling sounds good in the shower. Maybe the steam helps. Regrettably, my hands smelled only of soap afterward.
Ian was sitting on the bed when I came out.
“Let’s go over to the studio now, Ian. I am so stoked and ready. Wait till you see what I’ve been working on. And Toby’s going to groove on what we did this winter.”
“You missed curfew, buddy.”
“I was playing last night. I met these bluegrass dudes, and they let me sit in with them.”
“Then one of them took you home, made hot cocoa, and tucked you in?”
“Of course not. I was with Susi. She made polenta and goat cheese.”
Ian closed his eyes. “And the last thing said this morning was what?”
I thought closely. “‘Please get out of the car so I can go to work,’ and ‘I love you.’ I’m pretty sure that was it.”
“What the hey? Nobody says ‘I love you’ on a first date. She’s a lunatic and you should run.”
“What do you know about it, Ian? You’ve been married since you turned twenty-one. Anyway, she didn’t say it. I did.”
“Shit, man. You haven’t been back in the country forty-eight hours.”
“Sixty-six. I was with her for sixty-four of them.”
“So a little groupie picks you up right after you step out of the cab, like some hick come to the big city. She polishes your wanker, and you fall over the edge.”
“It is not like that. When you meet her, you’ll see. As soon as you hear her sing—”
“Oh crap. She sings. You found another diva.”
“She is so far from diva-ville. You’ll laugh out loud at the idea when you meet her, Ian.”
34 ~ “Right in Time”
SUSI
THE FANTASTIC THING ABOUT approaching obstacles as a professional is that there are trained skills to fall back on, such as deep breathing exercises.
I’m trying to be rational about this. I made it through the events of the past rough time by keeping a rational mind. When my great-aunt on my mother’s side prescribed faith healing and my father’s cousin claimed that Bag Balm and tobacco juice are the best remedies, and even my brother tried to talk me into Chinese herbs and acupuncture, I found that following my own advice—to stay rational—was the key to salvation. That, and music. To me, music is just another kind of rational thought. I just can’t explain to others how that is true.
To approach this situation rationally, I had to breathe in order to calm down enough to think. I took up my journal to write, trying to turn down the volume of my own voice saying oh god oh god over and over again. Since I don’t believe that sort of prayer is anything other than an invocation for despair.
And I don’t believe in despair.
Fine. First foundation truth that I have to accept and live with: I slept with a complete stranger.
As I write that statement and sit back and examine it, it is false. I knew him to a degree. The correct statement should be: I slept with someone who was someone else.
No, the truth is: I went to bed with a man because after singing with him, I thought I knew him. In retrospect, I didn’t have the correct name in my possession, but I was sure I knew who he was last night, and that I could trust him with my life.
Oh god. I did that.
I trusted him in ways I wouldn’t trust anyone else in the world. I never trusted Logan in all the years I kn
ew him to surrender myself completely (thank heaven).
Then, after I trusted this man completely, he—
I suppose the logical conclusion is that Jason didn’t cause the misunderstanding.
However, he did laugh about it.
And he touched my face.
I could still smell sex on his hands. He had used a condom—more than one—so I must have smelled myself. Oh god.
~
Half-way through music theory, I couldn’t stand it any longer and left the kids with an in-class rote assignment to transpose a piece of music from one scale to another, while I tore into the library. It took a minute, both to discard Nancy the librarian’s insistence on offering help and to determine which years that man might have been at Prescott, but I finally found the right yearbooks.
I sank to the depths of sneaking books out of the library and back to my desk, where I spent the next two periods, stealing time from my students to look through them. Over the two years he attended, his name appeared multiple times in the index of the first yearbook: orchestra, debate club, chorale, drama club, track, honor society, jazz ensemble. Though in most instances, the caption included the tag, “Not pictured: Jason Taylor.” Or, as in the case of the track pictures, distance, movement, and crowds occluded any real study of his face. In the few pictures where he appeared, it was the same person I had met. Thinner, with that gawky awkwardness of a too-tall, too-fast-growing adolescent, and even longer hair than now. The later year, his senior portrait was missing, and there were far fewer entries. No track, no debate or drama club. No picture in the orchestra later than Christmas. In neither book could I discern what instrument he played, though he seemed to be in the back with the larger woodwinds, fooling around instead of looking at the camera.
Two days’ intimate acquaintance with a man and I had become a liar, sneak, and library thief, in addition to having participated in certain activities that I couldn’t quit thinking about. With no sleep and an adrenalin-laden sense of fear crowding me, making me feel that I needed to flee danger, I performed my duties for the day no better than a simple-minded twit. When I did try to pay attention to business, my body kept interrupting my thoughts, as if the after-shocks of an earthquake continued to ripple through me. This did not bode well.
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