Coda

by CD Reiss

  She could be away. She could travel. Her career was necessary to her happiness, and more than anything, I wanted her to be happy.

  So why did that picture bother me? We’d reestablished ourselves. I trusted her. She needed to do her job and make her art. What was the problem?

  The problem was that we had a disconnect, and that disconnect was me. She’d come back to me fully, but I hadn’t broached my side of the distance. I hadn’t gone to her with an open heart the way she’d come to me.

  That was going to change.

  chapter 20.

  MONICA

  The balcony had room for two, maybe three if everyone liked each other. It overlooked a tiny cobblestone street in Chinatown and onto the tops of the beat-down signs in Cantonese. Manhattan had many of the same structures as Los Angeles. They were straight up from the ground at ninety degrees, had corners, straight walls, windows, and roofs. Some buildings were made well and some were sad. But the whole proportion of the place was different. It couldn’t be absorbed by car; it could only be experienced on foot or bike. Then the flower boxes, cornerstones, and cobbled streets took on their natural life.

  I had no business being on the balcony off the studio, since Omar and Trudy were smoking and I wasn’t about to even try it.

  “It gives me my edge,” Omar said. “Biggest secret in music is how many of us smoke.”

  “The other type of smoke, not such a secret,” Trudy said.

  She was a guitarist and could smoke her brains out for all I cared. From Omar, well, I admitted to being a little disappointed. I took so much care with my vocal chords. I could tell when there was a forest fire in Flintridge based on how my throat felt.

  “Does he do this all the time?” I jerked my head toward the inside, where Hartley had abandoned his drums to throw up last night’s party.

  Trudy smashed her cigarette underfoot and blew a cloud carelessly. It landed in my face, and I resisted the urge to wave my hand in front of me.

  “Constantly,” she said. “But he never pukes. I think it’s a flu or something.”

  “Oh.” I tried to not look more worried than any normal person would. Normal people got the flu and just suffered through it. But I had a husband on immunosuppressants, and a flu could kill him.

  “Quentin’s looking for another drummer.” Omar shrugged. “Or Franco can do it.”

  “Nope,” Trudy said. “He’s down with it too.”

  “What is it? A percussionist’s strain?” I joked.

  “All those guys hang out together. It’s like incest without the sex.”

  I didn’t know what came over me, but the words shot out of my mouth before I’d even thought about the logistics. “I know one. He can be here tomorrow. He has something today. He’s really good.”

  “Do I know him?”

  “He’s from LA originally. So probably not. He’s super-hot in indie circles.”

  “Not that husband of yours, is it?” Omar smiled a half moon of perfect white piano keys. It was the third time he’d mentioned Jonathan that day, as if he was trying to gauge my reactions.

  “The only instrument Jonathan plays is me.”

  “That can be good or bad.”

  “He’s a maestro, trust me.”

  I went inside. I’d wanted to learn from Omar, and he’d taught me a few things, but I was starting to feel as if it all came with a price. Maybe that price was simple flirtation and attention or maybe he expected more, but I was getting irritated with his off-color comments and sultry eyeballing.

  Everyone was filing back into the studio. There were fifteen actual musicians. Some kept klatches of preeners and hangers-on. Others traveled alone. Add to that the engineers, press, security, and agents, and the room was as hot as a sweatbox and smelled only ten percent better.

  I couldn’t believe there wasn’t a drummer among us, but it was worth a try. I found Quentin in the middle of eating a slab of crunchy fried fish, surrounded by people I didn’t know.

  “Hey,” I said, trying to slink into the tiny room unobtrusively and failing.

  “Faulkner! Everyone out!” He made shoo-shoo motions with his fingers, and everyone shooed. He closed the door behind them.

  I hoped I wasn’t stepping out of the frying pan with Omar and into the fire with Quentin.

  “Sorry,” he said, rooting around his leather messenger bag. “Not a big deal, but I didn’t know what this was, so I didn’t want to give it to you in front of everyone.” He handed me a long, blue velvet box. “This was at reception with your name on it.”

  “Thank you,” I said, taking it.

  He slung the bag over his shoulder. “I have to find a drummer.”

  “No one in this building can do percussion? It’s a house full of musicians.”

  “You have no idea how hard it is to find a good one.”

  “I kind of do.”

  “Evan Arden’s in the bathroom puking his guts out, and he’s on bass. If I can’t find someone within the hour, we’re all going home for the day.” He made motions to leave but was so slow about it. He glanced at the velvet box then back at me. “Sorry, not trying to be nosy.”

  “Not trying?”

  “Even straight guys like a little sparkle. Come on. Don’t hold out.”

  I smiled. What could it be? Jonathan never disappointed me, but I was afraid it was a diamond-studded leather collar or a bracelet with the word SLAVE in emeralds. That might require a little more explaining than I was willing to do.

  I held the box at my eye level and cracked it open so only I could see. Whatever it was, it didn’t sparkle. I didn’t know if that excited me or scared me. But it looked harmless enough. I opened it all the way.

  “What is it?” he said, hand on the doorknob.

  “It’s a Sharpie.” I turned it toward him. Indeed, right inside the bracelet box lay a black Sharpie. I could see from his expression that he was disappointed, as if he’d expected an actual bracelet in the bracelet box.

  “What’s it for?”

  “I have no idea.” I opened the little card that had been folded inside the lid. It was typed.

  Keep this with you, goddess.

  I closed it slowly.

  “He’s more of a romantic than I thought,” Quentin said.

  “You know him?”

  “We have a long history of feeding children together.”

  “Is that why you hired me?” I said before I could catch it. That was a completely unprofessional thing to ask, and it made me look like an insecure ingrate.

  “I hired you because Dionne Harber couldn’t make it. I don’t regret it.” He winked at me and got away with it.

  “Thanks. And I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply my spot was bought.”

  “It wasn’t. Trust me.”

  He left with a smile. I opened the velvet box again. Shook it. Looked under it. Turned the card over. Nothing special. I got my stuff ready to go.

  Typically when I traveled, Jonathan and I spoke once a day, and our conversations were short and mostly about his medicines and appointments. But that was the old us. The miserable us. The couple treading water in a sea of doubt and unsaid truths. I didn’t know or understand the couple we’d become, and I didn’t think there was much precedent for it.

  So I didn’t know what he intended with the permanent marker, and I didn’t know enough to be excited or anxious. I was only curious as we laid down some tracks, and I played my theremin for everyone in the studio while we waited for two other people to decide if they were too sick to continue.

  “We’re doing a small thing at a club after,” Omar whispered in the hall outside the bathrooms. “You’re invited.”

  “Thank you. I think I’m just going to bed.”

  “Alone? I bet we have the day off tomorrow.” He put his hand on my wrist.

  “You know I’m married, right, Omar?”

  “Where is he?” He spread his arms, indicating the whole of the studio, New York, the world about us, where Jonathan w
asn’t.

  Was he drunk? Who would make such an implication? What person in their right mind would assume my husband’s presence was required for my fidelity?

  The answer came to me in the tightness of Omar’s jaw and the tension in his fingers. He was on something. Some white substance whispered in his ear that he was a god and entitled to whatever he felt like having.

  I sighed. I’d really admired him. He sang like an angel, but he’d just been in the studio thirty minutes ago. I recalled the moments of inappropriate laughter and long space-outs when I’d thought he was preparing, but he’d been stoned the whole time. I knew how many artists worked stoned. I’d always told myself it was their thing and not my business, but suddenly I felt as if it was most certainly my business.

  “My husband’s home,” I said, “waiting for me to call.”

  He looked at me as if he didn’t believe me.

  “Look,” I continued, “I know what you’ve probably heard about me, and it may be all true. But this scene, the drugs, and the other shit? The partying until all hours? The fucking around? It’s not my thing. And if that means I’ll always be small time, well, it’s okay.”

  He didn’t move, as if stuck in that moment. “You think I got where I am because I party?”

  “No, I—”

  “No?”

  I didn’t think he’d coasted. Not at all. But he wasn’t interested in hearing it. I’d insulted his talent and his manhood, and he was walking away with at least one intact.

  “Break it down,” he said firmly, his jaw still grinding. “You just said you’d be small time if you didn’t party. You know what, girl? I’ve done everything I could to support you. I lifted you up the minute you got here. And this is the attitude you throw me? You think your pussy is dipped in gold? Well, fuck you.”

  He turned on his heel and went down the hall just as Rob Devon cut the turn and ran into the men’s room as if his belly were on fire. In seconds, the hallway was silent again.

  I dragged myself out the door, and Dean waited for me in the Rolls. I’d walked into the studio wrapped in confidence and love, and I was walking out feeling as if my expensive ride was an ugly appendage, a street sign pointing at my gold-plated cunt. God, I must make such a scene with this stupid car.

  “Mrs. Drazen,” Dean said by way of greeting.

  “Hi, Dean.”

  “Back to the hotel?” He opened the back door.

  “Yes, thanks.”

  I slid into the pristine comfort of the Rolls. It envelops you, that luxury. The money. The sense of well-being. That was the point, wasn’t it? When the car started, there was no jolt, no rumble, just movement.

  I called Jonathan as the streetlights streaked across the night sky, then stopped seamlessly at a stop sign, then started again.

  “Hello, Monica,” he said, and I wanted to cry.

  “Hi.”

  “I see you’re on your way back to the hotel?”

  “Is this Dean telling you everything, or do you have a tracking device on me?”

  “Yes to both. How are you?”

  “Do you know the Rolls doesn’t even obey the law of inertia? Like when Dean stops at the light, my body doesn’t go forward a little. and when he starts again, I can feel it moving, but it’s not like I feel my back against the seat. Did you know that?”

  “I never noticed.”

  We went through a busy part of town, and I curled into the seat, watching the Saturday night crowds walk the streets. People crossing stared at the car, big packs and smaller groups, dressed for big things and made up for the lights and sounds, a single wave in an ocean of revelry.

  “Did you get my present?” he said.

  “Yes. I love it. How did you know I needed to write my name on all my tags?”

  “Are you all right?”

  “What time is it there?” I asked.

  “Sun’s just thinking about setting.”

  “Is it hot? Is it gloomy? Tell me things.”

  “It’s nice. It’s mid-June. Same as always. The marine layer burned off, and I can see… let me look… one two three four five clouds out the kitchen window. One is shaped like a rabbit. One is shaped like a guitar. It makes me think of you.”

  “What about the other three? What are they shaped like?”

  “Big white turds.”

  I laughed. “Did you take your medicine?”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “And drink your shit shake?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did you go for a run?”

  “Yes. You never answered my question. Are you all right?”

  I sighed. I knew he could hear it. I wanted him to. “I feel, I guess, not lonely. Not alone. Just separate. Separate from you, and separate from everyone here. It’s… I can’t pin it down. I guess it’s not a bad feeling as much as it’s a weird, disconnected feeling. Uncomfortable. I don’t know.”

  I could hear him breathing, and the lawn mower outside our house, and the birds in Los Angeles.

  “Would you believe me if I said I know how you feel?”

  “Yeah.”

  Dean pulled up to the hotel. A doorman in a snazzy uniform was ready to open the door before the car stopped without a jolt. The inside of the hotel looked gilded and soft through the glass windows, as if the lights were colored gold.

  “Do you have your marker?” Jonathan asked.

  “Of course. I’ll treasure it always.”

  “Hang up with me then and call back on the tablet. I want to see you.”

  Dean opened the door for me, and I hung up.

  chapter 21.

  MONICA

  I’d kicked my shoes off and dropped my bag before calling Jonathan from the iPad. He picked up on the first ring.

  “How is the hotel?” he asked.

  “It’s a parody of itself.” In the screen of the tablet, I saw he’d moved out to the side patio that overlooked the twinkling grid of the city. “Or a farce. I can’t decide which.” I pouted at him from the edge of the bed.

  “I’ll tell Sam you said so.”

  “I wanted to stay in D.” I snapped the drapes open. Manhattan was dark and vibrant and closed tight in a granite-and-clay-brick embrace.

  “It’s in Alphabet City. There’s piss in the doorways from the seventies. I already don’t like you spending days in a studio in Chinatown.”

  “A little grit’s kind of nice.”

  “Nice?” He leaned forward in his seat.

  “Yeah, nice.” I opened the patio door, holding my tablet out so he could see me.

  “Turn the camera around,” he said. “Show me the view.”

  I did, then I showed him the street below and the building across Lexington. “Not much to speak of,” I said. “Except, yeah, New York’s kind of fabulous.”

  “Go back inside.”

  I turned the tablet and looked at him in his dying-daylight rectangle. He was looking directly into the lens, which was right above the screen, and though the mic was tiny and tinny, I knew I was hearing his dominant voice.

  “Put the tablet on the desk so I can see you.”

  I leaned it against the lamp. Seeing him inside that rectangle with our backyard behind him was somehow ridiculous. In the top right corner of the screen, a small box showed what he saw as I stood there. My face was off screen. I was only visible from neck to knees.

  “Take your clothes off,” he said casually yet firmly, as if asking me to pass the salt. As if it was no more than a courtesy to ask for what should be available to him without question.

  I pulled my T-shirt over my head and watched myself take off my bra. My breasts bounced out, and I saw my hard nipples in the screen. Jonathan was impassive, tapping his thumbs together as if keeping a rhythm. I peeled off my pants, down to the lace thong I wore for him in his absence. I let him see it for a second, but he twisted his hand at the wrist in a “get on with it” motion. I got my thong off and stood before the tablet, naked neck to knees.

  “Are yo
u wet?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Check for me.”

  I put my hand between my legs. I saw it slipping down my belly in the screen, saw the way my knees bent a little when I spread my legs to accept my fingers.

  “I’m wet,” I said.

  “Put your fingers in your mouth. And let me see.”

  I bent to look at him, lips puckered around my fingers, tongue curled around them. The pungent, sordid, sexy taste of my cunt filled my mouth. His eyes warmed with arousal.

  “Go get the pen,” he said.

  I plucked it off the desk and showed him.

  “Put the pen in your mouth. Get the desk chair. Sit in it, and put your feet on the desk. I want to see your beautiful cunt.”

  I wheeled the chair over, placing it in front of the desk. He waited, fingers laced together on the iPad screen. He was casual and intense at the same time, as if he didn’t have to worry about me doing what he asked. He was just going to wait.

  I put my feet up on the desk, exposing myself to him. I could see myself on the little corner of the screen, the soft part of me, the place where I was split in two, the fold of sensation between the smooth mass of skin, and I was shocked by the sight of it.

  “That’s mine,” he said. “You understand, my wife, that everything I see there is mine?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re wet, and that’s mine too. No matter where you are, I own your cunt.”

  “It’s yours. It’s only for you. It’s so wet for you.”

  “Mark it,” he said.

  It took me a second to understand, even with the Sharpie in my teeth. Then, seeing my thighs against the wet flesh between them, I knew what he meant. I popped the base free of the cap and leaned over, pressing the pen tip to my left inner thigh. I glanced up at him.

  He gave a slight shake of his head. “You start on your right, at the knee.”

  I switched and pulled the skin to make it taut for the marker. Like his fingers, the Sharpie was firm and purposeful; like his tongue, it was damp and warm.

  “Wherever you are,” he said low and steady as I wrote his name, knee to crotch, “I own you. I own your filthy mouth. I own your dirty mind. When you get wet thinking about fucking, it’s mine. Every drop from you. I own your every thought. You are my property.”