Earworm

by Colin Varney

  “I’m sorry, Mr Nicholson.”

  The barrier of his surname came between them. He was relieved. His fists clenched as he got a grip on himself.

  “Perhaps we should listen to Empty Playground,” he said.

  Hopefully he was better with names during his days as a journalist.

  She thumbed the remote control and I blared from the speakers. The sound from the cheap player had too much bottom end: it made me ploddy.

  “Tell me what you see,” said Marla.

  Spencer tried to feel afternoon delightful, but sullenness descended upon him. He couldn’t shake what he had blurted about Vivienne. He fixed on the painting at Marla’s feet and attempted to see it as the booming undersea swirl beneath rolling surf. Rosemary tumbling down through the seethe, all flailing limbs before streamlining into a torpedo and knifing for the surface. The image did nothing to shake, rattle and roll him. Psychedelia refused to wriggle through the room.

  “Well?” There was a hint of impatience in Marla’s voice.

  “Red blobs,” Spencer lied. “Appearing about here.” He wiggled his fingers vaguely in front of his chin. “Creeping upwards … A bit like … I don’t know … tentacles?”

  “Do they move in time to the music?”

  “Of course.”

  Marla splashed red at the base of the canvas and drove some brush strokes upwards. “What now?”

  “It’s becoming sort of … rough.” Spencer’s voice wavered. “Scratchy.”

  Marla dabbed at the paint with the edge of the bristles, producing stucco. “Like that?”

  “That’s it.” Impure tone. Not enough breath behind it. Timbre timber.

  She looked at him sceptically. “You sure?”

  Vertigo made him hunch forwards. Underarms swampy. Sweat tickling his trunk. “Marla, it’s not as easy as you think. This thing’s not on tap. You can’t force it.”

  “You don’t have to make stuff up,” she said. “Don’t you see music? Isn’t that synaesthesia? Just describe what you see.”

  He hadn’t thought of Nanny Nicholson for years, but now he recalled how the family would giggle when she’d claim she could taste people. The mere mention of a friend or relative could make her smack her lips or pull a face. Spencer, Nan insisted, had the tart crispness of an apple. “The apple of my eye,” she’d croon. It hadn’t been called synaesthesia then. They’d called it “being dotty”.

  Spencer’s father never giggled over Nan. He’d fall silent, turned slightly away. Spencer wondered now what his dad could taste, or smell, or see, or feel. He’d never spoken about it.

  “I think my dad thought he was a freak,” he said aloud.

  And now he felt under siege. Marla was out to exploit an essential part of him: his special ingredient. The Colours were precious to Spencer. And to me too. I wanted to become a crimson cruiser again. Puce on the loose. Fugitive fuchsia. Nosing through the hot air. Pretending I could bask in the heat.

  “I didn’t even know it was different until my thirties,” said Spencer. “I thought everyone experienced music that way when they were …”

  He clamped his lips. The room shrank.

  “When they were what?” she asked.

  “Anxious,” said Spencer. “Agitated.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “Vivienne. She saw it in me. Told me something about myself I didn’t know.”

  Vivienne suffused the air like the smothering heat.

  Marla laid her brush down. “You should go,” she suggested gently.

  He hesitated, rocking slightly. Confused and defeated. I fattened myself in his head. I linked to as many memories of Rosemary as I could. Yeah, ah yeah. C’mon, Spence. Get down.

  His head tilted up and his gaze settled on the box beyond her bedroom door. “I’ve got an idea,” he said.

  He levered himself up and made for the box. He felt like an intruder in her room and tried not to see the strewn nightgown, the bottles of scent, the packet of sanitary pads. He sorted through the hairpieces, letting some flop to the floor. He held up a curly auburn wig.

  “Put this on.” Timid tremolo; not what he’d expected. Like a pianist surprised by a prepared piano.

  Marla took the wig and turned it thoughtfully in her fingers.

  “So to experience synaesthesia,” she said carefully, “you need to feel … agitated?”

  Spencer nodded. “Agitated,” he confirmed.

  As he splashed cool water on his face, Spencer avoided his reflection in the mirror. Marla’s bathroom, with its creams and potions, body washes and cleansing pads, made him as queasy as the bedroom. Her toothbrush was too close. Her razor on the sink made him think of the rungs up her inner arm. He ached for the torment she must have endured as a teenager and the punishment she inflicted on herself. He imagined her curled up, reading Love Is Black and Blue and sympathising with the kick boxer who couldn’t trust her own body. A pitch perfect, profane E rang in his head, elbowing me out of the way, and Spencer saw a shadowy piano tuner.

  Was that it? Was that why Vivienne kept the piano primed? Was it her way of self-harming? He pictured the forsaken record player and the opera albums she loved, forever sheathed on the shelf. The kick boxer convinced her body would sabotage her. He thought of Vivienne canted towards the bathroom mirror in the depths of the night, frenziedly checking herself for signs of attack and unsprung traps for the unwary unborn.

  He heard the clatter of Marla coming through the front door, returning from her errand. She’d been gone ten minutes or so. He hurried from the bathroom.

  Marla was wearing the curly wig and had changed into a clinging scarlet T-shirt that unaccountably thrilled him. Had she been inspired by his description of the red song? She held a bottle of wine in each hand.

  “This might help,” she said.

  Spencer once saw Ornette Coleman play. He’d gawped in awe as musicians confident in their ability to produce effortless magic laid down a backing for Coleman’s banking, bawling saxophone. The soaring notes inhabited him, transformed his blood to ichor. He recalled that when he first walked into the concert space it had looked drab: a theatre that had seen better days. It had ornate touches such as converted gas lamps reaching like supplicating hands from the walls, but they were tarnished and spotty. Yet after the show, as the audience log-jammed the exits and Spencer stood, stunned and sated, the hall was transfigured. The music had permeated the walls, instilling an inner essence. The paintwork was richer. The corrosion of the gas lamps looked antique rather than antiquated. The place had been renovated by rhythm.

  Spencer had similar feelings now about Marla’s flat. The lounge was no longer oppressive, despite the harboured heat. Daylight no longer oozed begrudgingly through dusty panes, but rationed itself to induce an atmospheric dusk. The frozen faces in the frames were friendlier: even Griff seemed sympathetic. Spencer slurped at the wine, spilling droplets down his shirt and laughing. When Marla had handed him his first glass, he’d sputtered at its sharpness and metallic aftertaste. She had apologised for its cheapness—she was on a budget—but now it seemed appropriate. They were cheerfully slumming and it felt like adventure, like the embraced privations of camping. It made him think of the plonk he’d gratefully slugged back as a youth, before his predilections became rarefied. He felt loose, unleashed.

  Marla had ramped the volume on both versions of me— me classic plus the impudence of the Probe. Spencer had listened with the alcohol tanging his tongue. He’d pictured Rosemary slicing through the surf or dancing in his arms. He’d eased his lids to peek through damp lashes at Marla at the easel. The wig blurred and the scarlet shirt bled from its borders. The idea of Rosemary carried in the heat. I rode the Colours then, flowing upwards like gravity-defying salsa during classic me, or jagging like violet lightning bolts exploding into indigo splotches during metal me. When the red came, Spencer could make the wig borrow its tincture and for brief flashes he convinced himself Rosemary was really there. Flesh, not fantasy. Eventual
ly he could study Marla wide-eyed, drinking her in unashamedly. She became a hybrid creature: part myth, part Marla. The walls had sponged up the vividness of his visions so they now appeared chocolate brown rather than diarrhoeal dun.

  Anal Probe crashed to a halt and the room quietened. The molecules in the walls, excited by the bludgeoning beats, settled. Neighbours sighed with relief. Neighbours: a song’s archenemy. The tock-tock of next door’s clock reasserted itself. Marla worked at the canvas, lacquering on thick blobs for the indigo ignitions and swift brush-jerks for the bolts. She worked speedily, trying to impart spontaneity. I have a lot of respect for artists—they are the closest to songsmiths in evoking emotion—but in this instance I have to be that most vile of things, the carping critic. Marla had failed to capture the exhilaration, the charged thrill of those coursing Colours. The headiness, the flexing freedom. Nothing mattered but the moment. Like a ride in a … yes, in a fairground. To give Marla her due, the paintings appeared impoverished to her too, but she believed they had a sense of possibility. She planned to work on them later and try variations. Spencer found the pictures inconsequential and dull. He was more interested in the whoosh of booze and the way the curly hair transformed Marla. She was unstable, shimmering and morphing.

  “Hey, I forgot,” said Marla. “I’ve got something to show you.”

  Still swiping at the canvas with one arm, she reached into the pocket of her shorts. She pulled out a folded paper and tossed it at him. He straightened it on his knee. It was a flyer for JayJay. The reunion show.

  “Wow,” said Spencer. “They’re still alive and kicking.”

  “The song’s not that old,” said Marla. “I interviewed them for a street mag. The two main guys—Jones and Jones.”

  “They’re twins.” Spencer remembered Rosemary telling him. “And you need to do more than flirt pieces, Marla.”

  “Yes, Mr Nicholson,” she intoned, like a bored schoolgirl. “And you’re wrong. They’re not twins.”

  “We should go to this,” babbled Spencer. “You and I.”

  “You should take your wife. Is she a fan? You could tangle your fingers in her locks during Fempty Airground.” Marla reached up to the wig. “I’m guessing Vivienne has curly hair.”

  Spencer was mute for a moment. “She’s more of an opera buff,” he said eventually.

  “So what’s it like, being married to someone who writes racy books? Do you ever worry that, like, something you do in the bedroom will wind up on the page?”

  “It worries me when she stops to take notes.”

  Marla swerved back from the canvas, laughing. Her arm dropped and the brush blotched her knee.

  “Strange thing is,” Spencer continued, “we don’t do much bedroom stuff while she’s writing. Sometimes I feel like we’re in a David Attenborough documentary: we have a writing season and a rutting season.”

  He’d wanted to make her laugh again and watch her careworn features enliven. Instead, stillness descended. Spencer became aware again of the tock-tock from beyond the walls. For some reason, he thought of the toyshop. He should have bought a doll.

  “I’ve got cobwebs down south myself,” Marla mused.

  Spencer reached into his pocket. He encountered the cold solidity of the ball bearing. The one he’d purloined from the science lab all those decades back. He’d wanted it secreted on his person today and he rolled it between his fingertips. His favourite part of the classroom demonstration was the silver sphere poised at the peak of the slide. He wished the teacher had never let it go. The ball bearing bursting with blue. The finger about to press play. The stylus poised above the vinyl.

  “But seasons always come round again,” said Marla. “That’s what they do. You’re like me. You know second goes are always possible. See, check this out.” She grabbed the remote and triggered the Anal Probe version of me. She shouted above the noise. “A superannuated old song everybody had forgotten about given the kiss of life by a kick-arse band. Second goes.”

  Superannuated? Now I don’t feel so bad about being a carping critic.

  She danced to the chugging guitars, arms punching around her body. Her head swooped and jerked, the wig shunting. As Spencer watched, I splashed into the air between them as indigo daisies and violet violence.

  Does everybody feel all right?

  I said, does everybody FEEL ALL RIGHT?

  Spencer scooped the ball bearing into his palm. He shot to his feet and swayed before her. He looked dazed, shell-shocked. He couldn’t believe what he was about to do.

  His fingers fumbled and the ball bearing dropped. He imagined the streamer of blue as it fell.

  He leant in for a kiss.

  Track 4:

  DUET SPENCER, NICOLE

  ( PLUS BCK VCLS )

  Rosemary felt a breeze tease her shoulder and turned, expecting to see Terry. Transparent Terry: an imprint on the air that faded before her eyes.

  Rosemary knows about air. As a climatologist she has a good grounding in meteorology. Where most people see the weather as something magical, capricious—merry or malign—she understands it as a set of processes that can be reduced to graphs and vectors. When others feel the temperature dropping, Rosemary can peer up and almost see the isobars etched on the firmament. It doesn’t dim her delight or allay her annoyance, but changes the nature of her appreciation, as a musician with perfect pitch might enjoy a sonata while seeing its notation pegged to staves. Many cock an ear to me as my sheet music reels through their minds. I’ve seen it. But Rosemary had to contend with the frosty fact that Terry was no longer a presence in the world, and the absence was immense. How could this sudden missing chunk not create a drop in air pressure that made the breeze rush to fill it? Perhaps that’s what wind was—the void created by the absence of people in the world and the hiss of atmosphere that compensated for it? She felt Terry all around her, pressing close. He couldn’t just cease to be. Her rationality scoffed and tried to shrug these notions off.

  As she floundered with the funeral arrangements, shadowed by Terry’s sister who would swoon or moon at any object associated with her sibling, a rhythm section set up a swampy blues beneath her scalp. It developed the debilitating pulse of a migraine, similar to the ones she’d endured after the birth of Nicole. Wracked and Richtered, she stumbled to her room and collapsed onto the bed, the crook of her arm a poultice over her eyes, pressing, pressing. The throb took on my beat, albeit slower. Rosemary pictured eight-year-old Nicole singing me at a birthday party with a naive enthusiasm that had no truck with pitch matching. The colours of the scene were bleached by pain. She dully registered Nicole’s obsession with me, and her daughter’s belief that I was there during her conception.

  Her lips moved and she mouthed the words: “It was, lovey-dove. The song was playing. That part was true.”

  Something else shimmered at the back of her mind. Something she’d heard about the band that produced me. What was their name? Jaybird?

  Jay-what? Why is talent so easily forgotten?

  It’s unpleasant being in an aching head. You abrade against it and, although it doesn’t hurt, it’s oppressive. But before the pain welled and repelled, Rosemary grasped the name. JayJay. And they were reforming. In Adelaide.

  I returned the next day as Rosemary climbed into the attic, remnants of her migraine nagging like a hangover. She dug me out of a box that contained a clutch of vinyl singles, then carried the various components of a hi-fi system down the ladder to her bedroom. She connected the turntable to the graphic equaliser and wired up the speakers. She set the stylus onto the black plastic.

  The delicious anticipation of the needle on the outer rim, sizzling away before it reaches the first note. I love it when I sound like this. The sputs and phuts give me a nostalgic quality but also inject a nervy kind of energy: fits and tourettic tics. Rosemary started to drift away almost immediately, small details of larger memories flittering past. She saw Terry reaching over his shoulder to draw the Cloak of Hanzov over his cro
wn as Nicole watched with slack-jawed awe, soon to give in to giggles. Or Nicole breathless with laughter as Terry tortured her with tickles. Nicole accusing Terry of lingering too long on wine rather than searching for her during hide-and-seek. Nicole and Terry …

  Ouch! A chink was slit from my chorus. I jagged from the beginning of the word “memory” to the end of “empty”. Rosemary blanched as if somebody had bumped her. It took her some time to relax back into my rock-a-bye. The memory morsels returned.

  She played me again. Ouch! Lulled by melody and mulling, she jounced with surprise at the same spot. She imagined how amused Terry would be at her reaction: her analytical mind outfoxed once more by triviality. She felt him there, lips lithe with a cheeky smile. So she played me again, this time girding herself against my injury, just to teach him a lesson.

  “Mem … ty fairground …”

  Too tense, she flinched again. But this time something about my wound hooked her. She lifted the needle and replayed the jump several times, insensitive to my discomfort. Picking at the scab. She lifted the single from the turntable and located the hairline fault. It was barely detectable. If the needle hadn’t been so blunt it might have manifested as a snit, a tiny chock, rather than a skip.

  The record trembled in her grasp. She had goosebumps. She stared around the room—drawn to the cornices—as if expecting to see something. Someone. It was the “…ty” that spooked her: the way it exploded with abrupt force now that it was amputated from its first syllable. The letter T jumping from the music.

  T for Terry.

  His presence suffocated her. She hunched on the bed, making herself smaller, trying to hide. Then she unfurled and let him wash over her. Caress her. Soak into her.