Coda

by CD Reiss

  “Everyone?”

  “Everyone. Omar. Brad Frasier. The Glocks. Benita. The list will knock you over. They have a space for a girl act like you, but here’s the thing.”

  My heart pounded. That did sound like something groundbreaking for my career. Being associated with big names like that could get my name out to people who had never heard of me. It could give me credibility and standing. And if it was a little after the EP came out, even better.

  “Okay,” I said. “Tell me the thing.”

  “They have to herd all these cats, and that means it could record on a dime any time between the fifteenth and the thirtieth, and the big names? Well, they call the shots. They get there when they get there. The less-established artists have to be ready to go.”

  “I’m ready.”

  “Can you fly to New York tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow? New York?”

  “Quentin Marshall? Hello?”

  My throat went dry. I wanted to go. I wanted to get on a plane immediately and sit in the studio waiting for The Glocks to show up. I wanted to hear Omar sing in a studio. I could learn so much from that guy. He had a sound no one could emulate. If I could watch him, I was sure I’d pick up some tips.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “You don’t know?”

  “I have to ask Jonathan.”

  He put up his hands. “Fine. You have until tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow is Sunday.”

  “Music doesn’t take the weekend off.”

  “Okay. I’ll call you by tomorrow night.”

  “Noon. That’s the best you get. I have a line of people who would scratch your eyes out for this opportunity.”

  “Monica,” Margie said, poking her head in. “We need you at the piano.”

  I glanced at the counter before following Margie. The catering staff hovered over a cake, lighting thirty-three candles. It seemed like enough fire to burn the house down, but that was the point. A man who almost died at thirty-two deserved every single flame.

  Stop.

  I needed to stop obsessing over the transplant. I’d given my worry a wide berth, as if it was insurance against something bad happening, but I’d let a healthy concern metastasize into a cancer. I had been perfectly happy letting it take over my life until I dreaded singing “Happy Birthday” because it sounded like a dirge.

  I knew where the piano was from my last visit, when Sheila had insisted I play. I’d thought she was trotting me out like a trained monkey, which I resented for a few seconds, but once my fingers hit the keys, I realized what she’d done. I’d played “Wade in the Water” for his family, and music did what music does: it brought us together and gave us something to talk about. It was a way into our shared humanity. I’d loved music before I loved my husband, and it would outlast the two of us.

  As I stroked out a scale in the parlor with thirty people in attendance, I let myself love it again. I caught Jonathan’s eye across the room. He was fingering an apple with his nephew David. I knew the positioning. Split-fingered fastball. David, at ten, was too young for that. I shook my head at Jonathan and took my hand from the keys long enough to wave my finger “no no” at him. He smiled, winked, and showed David the whipping motion that would get the ball to split, along with his nephew’s young tendons.

  He’s not teaching our kids that.

  “Up tempo, people!” I cried just as the cake appeared.

  “Happy Birthday”—well, there’s not much you can do with it when everyone’s singing and not listening to the piano. I smiled. Fuck it. I gleefully let everyone else set the tempo, and I sang along in the dragged out rhythm. No one knew why I was smiling, not even Jonathan, who came up and leaned on the piano.

  Sheila brought out the blazing white confection and placed it on the piano as we sang, “yoooooooouuuu!”

  His face lit golden and his smile a true thing, from his beautiful candlelit green eyes to his borrowed heart, he blew out his candles. Or tried. No one could blow out thirty-three candles (and one for good luck) in one breath.

  “Nice effort,” I said, standing.

  He put his arm around me, and we blew together. I clapped and faced him. I wanted a kiss, but he glanced at the cake, then at me, then back at the cake, then at me, as if he was trying to tell me something. I looked down at it, thinking we’d missed a candle.

  And we had. One little bugger was still bopping along, but I didn’t blow it, because inside the ring of candles sat an open, frosting-caked velvet box, and inside the box was a ring.

  “Jonathan?”

  He plucked the candle out of the cake. “That was the candle I hold for you.” He blew it, and the flame popped up again.

  Thirty people and ten kids said, “Awwww.”

  He pursed his lips in a smile. “I didn’t know there would be so many people here.”

  Margie took the candle from his fingers. It still burned. It must have been one of those parlor trick candles, and it was sweet.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, still confused. He guided me back onto the piano stool, and I sat. “We’re already married.”

  “Not properly,” he said, picking the ring out of the box. “Not on my own power and not for the right reasons.”

  Were there dozens of people in the room? I couldn’t hear them. I couldn’t see them. Only this man, this king, getting on his knee in front of me.

  “Jonathan, you don’t have to. I…”

  “You going to give me your hand or not?”

  “I can’t.” I put them in the corners of my eyes as if to press the tears away. “I’m using them. Hang on.”

  “Get on with it!” a male voice called from the crowd.

  “Shut the fuck up, Pat!” someone else said.

  Jonathan touched my left wrist, and I brought my hand down. I didn’t wear the borrowed diamond anymore. Just the key ring wedding band.

  “Will you marry me, Monica?” I sniffed back a bunch of tears, and before I could answer, he continued, looking at me. “Will you have a normal engagement with me? Will you get to know me on any given Tuesday?” He shook his head quickly, as if making it all up on the spot and discarding an idea. “Can we plan a real wedding and argue over seating arrangements? Can we find the things we agree on naturally? Flowers. Invitations. Whatever is important to us. I want us to be right with the world. I want us to take our time, because you’re worth it. We are worth it. Nothing skimped or rushed. You deserve all of it. Everything.”

  Doing it all over. A second chance at a mask of normalcy. He wasn’t rethinking or going backward. He was giving me a gift.

  “I love you,” I whispered through my tears. “I want you. Everything.”

  He slipped the ring on my finger. The diamond was huge and the color of sunshine.

  “A canary diamond,” he said. “For my songbird.”

  “Gross, Uncle Jon!”

  Jonathan turned around toward David, who had a face like kneaded dough at the thought of icky grown-up love.

  “Yeah, gross,” a laughing, adult voice called out.

  Jonathan glanced at me for half a second, and I saw mischief in those eyes. I didn’t have a moment to tell him not to do whatever it was he was about to do, before he scooped up a swipe of white frosting from his cake and flung it at his tormentor.

  “Quiet, Patrick!” Jonathan said.

  Impulse moved my arm. I scooped up another bunch of frosting and flung it at my husband and fiancé, coating the bottom half of his face in a buttercream goatee. “Be nice to the guests!”

  He blew, spraying me in vanilla, and everyone laughed and clapped. David, seeing the world as only a ten-year-old could, recognized an opportunity when he saw one. He mashed his hand in the cake then flung it at both of us. Jonathan, not to be out-immatured by a ten-year-old, whipped around and threw a mess of it at his nephew, with half of it getting on Eddie.

  “Hey, asshole!” Eddie shouted.

  “Language!” Sheila called, too late.

  H
er son threw another handful of cake at her. The young pitcher had great aim, getting his mother in the face with white confection.

  “You!” Sheila said with a pointed finger.

  I shut the cover over the piano keys just in time, because all hell broke loose. Cake flew everywhere. Laughter. Squeals. My god, the cake must have been huge. I was covered. Jonathan was covered. Everyone I could hit with a lump of cake was covered, and we were all laughing through beards of white frosting and fruit filling. The kids were licking the floor. Eileen slipped on a wad of cake and laughed, and her granddaughter put a handful down Eileen’s shirt. Leanne fell when she tried to help Eileen up, and Jonathan, my beautiful king, put his arms around me and kissed cake off my lips.

  “Goddess,” he whispered, even though in the chaos, he didn’t have to. No one was paying attention to us.

  “Yes, Jonathan. Yes. I’ll marry you.”

  “Let’s take our time.” He kissed my cheek, sucking frosting off.

  Our time.

  He was giving me permission to stop counting the months and years. Permission to let it happen as it would, to stop using worry as a paper-thin bulwark against the tides of fate. This was our time. However long it was, it belonged to us.

  ***

  The staff had made short work of the mess. Clothing had been stripped off, some laundered, some left in bags, some rinsed and worn wet. Sheila had loaned me a pair of pale blue velour sweatpants and a white shirt with a neck so wide it fell off my shoulder. It was probably the best party I’d been to in my life.

  “I love this on you,” Jonathan said, pressing his lips to my bare shoulder. We sat at the piano in the empty parlor as I played a soft jazzy thing.

  “It doesn’t go with the ring.”

  “I can’t wait to see how that looks on you naked.”

  “It’s beautiful. I love it.” I did. I had a hard time keeping my eyes off it.

  “I’m not trying to take away our marriage, goddess. You need to know that.”

  “I know.”

  “But it was hasty.”

  I sighed. Yes, it had been hasty, and for all the wrong reasons, but I hadn’t thought about it that deeply. I hadn’t thought about anything deeply in the past six months, because it hurt. I had the feeling I wouldn’t be able to avoid it anymore.

  “I got you a birthday present,” I said.

  “What do you get the guy who has everything?” He brushed his lips on my shoulder and drew his fingertips along the back of my neck.

  I smiled, and a ball of hitched breaths gathered in my throat. He thought he had everything. I had no idea I’d married such an optimist. “I was supposed to play this for you in front of everyone, but you stole my limelight with this big stinking rock.”

  “They had a bigger one, but it was imperfect.”

  “It’s not the size of the boat.”

  “Yes, it is. It’s a buoyancy thing, see.” He motioned with the flat of his hand, swaying it. “Too small and it sinks.”

  I laughed, and he laughed with me.

  “Do you want to hear your song or not?”

  “More than anything.”

  I took a deep breath. “I want you to know, I wrote one before, and it was all about what we’ve been through in the past six months. And I hate it. It was… I don’t know. It was ugly, and it dwelled on things that weren’t important.”

  “Can I hear it?”

  “No.” I hit the first notes definitively and found my opening tempo. “It’s short.”

  “Sing it twice.”

  “You ready, Drazen?”

  “I’m ready, Drazen.”

  I sang it quietly for an audience of one. I wasn’t confident enough that it would survive me belting it out. Not until I did a few hundred rewrites.

  How fragile it is

  And how real it all feels

  I can touch it, taste it

  Hold it like a baby forever

  But that’s not the deal

  I am your ever

  You are my after

  I am your altar

  You are my prayer

  Where do I end

  And you begin

  Because I’m untied sometimes

  And we’re a dandelion seed in the wind

  I’m a seed or a flower.

  Or I’m a breath or a wish

  I am your heart

  You are my beat

  And I am your voice

  And you are my song

  “Happy birthday,” I said, letting my hands slip off the keys. “Many more. Many, many more.”

  He kissed me, then I kissed him. His skin smelled like cake, and his tongue tasted of salt water. We wrapped our arms around each other, connected at the mouth, as if we were passing a common soul between us.

  chapter 15.

  JONATHAN

  She was most perfect in nudity. I left her standing there, hands at her sides, in front of my chair so I wouldn’t have to move to watch her change. I put my elbows on my knees and folded my hands together, leaning forward. She was an arm’s length away, but I didn’t reach for her.

  “Look straight ahead, Monica.”

  I knew what it did to her when I kept her in stasis. I’d known the first night when I’d sent her upstairs naked, and I knew now, after my birthday party, with the canary diamond heavy on her finger, that her body was changing before my eyes. In trying to stand still, she was acutely aware of my gaze on her. If she stood still and I kept my concentration, she’d be soaking wet and very close before I even touched her.

  Her nipples hardened in the cool night air. The triangle between her legs was a promise of compliance and unyielding pleasure. The ocean outside the open balcony door would be the background noise to the melody of her cries.

  Slowly, I reached my hand forward and touched her belly. It quivered like the undulating ocean behind me. I drew the finger down between her legs and stroked inside her thigh. Her body reacted involuntarily, and I took my hand back.

  “I’m not going to fuck you,” I said. “You’re already bruised everywhere I want to put my dick.” I kissed her navel then pulled away.

  “My mouth is in great shape,” she said.

  “So is mine.” I stroked her gently, awakening her nipples. “What if I laid you on that bed and pulled your legs apart. Just the tip of my tongue on your cunt. If I was gentle, would you come, do you think?”

  “Yes. I would.”

  “Do you like your ring?”

  “I love it.”

  I stood and wedged my foot between hers, pushing her legs apart. She was used to it and spread them without a stumble. I went behind her. She was framed by the ocean, the curves of her ass blue and black in the evening light. I got on my knees, close to her so she could feel my breath. I waited until the tension was so taut it felt as if it would break like rock candy.

  I brushed my finger inside her thigh. She was painted in angry bruises there too. I’d stopped feeling guilty about inflicting damage; I knew the difference between hurt and harm.

  “I’m sorry about the party. About worrying you. I was joking, not thinking.”

  “I’ll die if you do that again.”

  I brushed my fingers over her soft wet lips, slightly touching the dampness.

  “I just…”

  “Go ahead,” I said.

  “That hospital. The smells. The colors. You. It claws at me. In my sleep, I hear the doctors whispering. I dream you’re dying in a room I can’t find. When I think of it, I just think of you in pain. It hurt me. And I’m sorry I’m being self-involved.”

  “You’re not being self-involved.” I kissed the small of her back.

  “I dread it. I know I’m going to have to go back there with you, and the dread hangs on me.”

  I rested my cheek against the curve of her spine and put my arms around her waist. She didn’t move her hands, ever obedient when in scene. I could hear her lungs through her rib cage as they let out short, sharp breaths.

  “I didn’t
give you permission to cry,” I said gently.

  “I’m sorry.”

  I pulled away from her and stood. “On the bed, goddess. Facedown. Hands under your thighs. And face the window.”

  She did it, and when she automatically put her ass up in ready position, my dick went completely rigid. I pressed her ass down until she was totally flat against the bed. She watched me peel off my clothes. I put pajama bottoms on so I wouldn’t distract her.

  “Wait here.”

  I went into the bathroom for lotion. The last time I’d done that, I’d seen her negative pregnancy test. I thought about that thing every time I went in there. The burden of it was so heavy that I often went down the hall to piss.

  “Are we still in scene?” she asked when I sat at the edge of the bed.

  “No.” I put a blob of lotion in my hand and closed it into a fist to warm the lotion.

  “I want you to fuck me.”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s my birthday, and I can do whatever I want.” I put the lotion on her back and slowly dragged my hands down from her shoulder blades to her waist.

  Her eyes fluttered closed. I put more weight on the heels of my hands and moved them back up to her shoulders. She groaned.

  “What were you and Eddie talking about?” I asked. She stiffened. “Relax. It’s just a question. Did he upset you?” I worked my hands over her shoulders and down her biceps.

  “No. But there’s a thing in New York. I don’t think I can make it.”

  “No?”

  She made a noise in her throat that was a cross between “no” and “that feels nice.”

  “The last two weeks have been good, goddess. Really good.” I focused on her shoulders for a second then moved back down her body. I stopped at her ass, which, in all its beauty, was welted and tender. I pressed my thumbs into the sides of her spine and moved back up.

  “Mmm.”

  “You are everything. My everything. There’s nothing I’d change about you. And that includes your talent and ambition.”

  “I don’t want to be away from you,” she grumbled.

  “I’m bound to you wherever you are. You know that, right?”

  She opened her eyes and looked at me through the web of hair. “Come with me.”

  “No. I have things to do here.”