by Susan Ward
My heart jumped into my throat.
Christ. I lay on the floor, pulling her body atop mine, and brushed the curls back from her face. “It was hard for me, too.”
“I know.” Her eyes clouded and she lowered her cheek to my chest and encircled me in her arms. “It’s why you turned to Jessica. I understand that now.”
Oh fuck.
I lifted her face so she could see everything I felt for her in my eyes. “I never turned to Jessica. I want only you, and I always will. I want to love only you. I want us to love again.”
Her eyes widened. “Again? I never stopped.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
I was making a mess of this.
She was naked.
I knew the signals of her body.
She was finally talking to me about things about us.
Not the things I wanted.
But perhaps what we needed to get us through this. I wasn’t sure what to say or which way this moment would go.
I stared at her. “I love you, Lena.”
Her mouth came back to mine and her hips started to rock, bringing her against my cock as she devoured me with her kisses. “I love you, Jack. Now show me.”
~
Things got better from there. We almost felt like us again. Lena wanted to try to have another baby. She and Sammy even started traveling with me when I was on the road.
It was hard. The venues were small and I could tell they were not places she enjoyed. The accommodations at times were anything but fancy. But the months that passed from spring into summer were very good for her and me.
We spent a lot of time with Reggie and Patty.
It was nice having couple friends and being a couple again. Even with Reggie and Patty, since political rants were standard fare after Johnson signed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and they’d widened their circle to become active members of the Catholic Worker Movement. Every time they joined a new movement it dominated our conversations.
By New Year’s, 1965 it felt like we were on a high we’d never come off and we’d just keep going as we were, happy.
Reggie and I were working on a second album for Columbia after the first had gradually gained steam.
I was ready to be a father and have my own child with Lena. It was our time since I was almost around the bend of financial worry.
All of us ushered out the old year in New York City. Lena was dazzling, even though she was sad the five months of serious trying hadn’t gotten her pregnant.
We spent the night talking about where we should move in the city, as it was clear to her I wasn’t going back any time soon to finish Harvard.
1965 was a new year.
A better year.
Or so I thought.
Reggie got a letter that started with “Greetings” and finished with “you are hereby notified that you have now been selected for training and service in the Army.”
Then, Yuri came to visit Lena.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Everything felt off. For ten hours, Reggie and I slugged away in the dingy recording space in midtown that Columbia booked for us. Nothing we rolled tape on was worth shit, and it was uncomfortable being with Reggie when before it had been easier.
Maybe it was because even at night it was stifling hot. We were both edgy, barking at each other, and the collaboration process that once thrived between us just wasn’t there.
Reggie stopped playing midsong and said into the mic, “Why don’t we just call it a day? I can’t take it in here anymore.”
I shrugged. “Fine with me.”
I’d been ready to quit hours ago. July in Manhattan was a like sauna, and the ventilation system hadn’t worked all day.
I set my guitar in the stand for tomorrow. “You want to grab some drinks somewhere before heading home?”
His jaw tightened as he shook his head. “No man, I’m good, and you should probably go home to Lena. I’ll walk with you, though. I could use a walk after this.”
As I waited for him to get ready to head out—fuck, he took forever to get ready to do anything—I stood at the piano, thumbing through the black and white journal he carried everywhere. Most of what he wrote down didn’t make sense to me. But he also set down his lyrics and music there. His music definitely made sense to me. Reggie was fucking brilliant.
Patty was right; he did see things other people didn’t. It made who he was so much harder to understand.
“What is this?” I asked, and he paused in taking off his sweat-dripping shirt to look at what I was studying.
“Ah, that. Just a melody. Nothing really yet. I can’t seem to finish it.”
My chin jutted out as I played the music in my head. “‘Take Back the Dawn’?”
He pulled on a fresh shirt. “It’s yours, man, if you want to finish it. It probably belongs to you more than me anyway.”
Yep, it was what I thought. The wistful, quiet arrangement of notes. The title. It was about Lena.
“Fuck, finish it yourself. Then maybe we’ll have something decent to record.”
He poked me in the chest, took his notebook, and held it as a roll in his hand before he shoved it into my pocket. “Nope, if it’s going to get finished, you’ve got to do it, Jack. I won’t be here.”
Fuck. “I don’t get you, Reggie.”
He smiled, unruffled. “I know, Jack. And I don’t want to have an argument about the draft. Let’s just walk home together, a couple of friends like we used to be.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
He stared at me, and we both knew what he’d meant.
I exhaled heavily. “Am I that obvious?”
“Not obvious. You’re just Jack, like a clear water pond. Never murky. I always know exactly where you stand on everything. But you don’t see where everyone else stands on things. I think that’s why all us murky people gravitate to you. We see our flaws shining back from Jack, always good.”
I closed my eyes, willing myself not to let loose my temper, but philosophical Reggie was at times as infuriating as ranting, political Reggie.
“Listen, I know all those hours you spend with her alone are not because you’re fucking Lena, if that’s what you’re thinking I’m thinking.”
He laughed. “Still seeing the small picture and missing the big one. Of course I’m not fucking Lena. Not that I wouldn’t. That’s something else you don’t see. I’m no saint. Lena’s one hell of a woman.”
“Asshole.”
He laughed and, fuck, he was just itching to piss me off for some reason. He’d never cross the line with her, and we both knew it—Reggie was a good guy that way. Not the kind that would make the moves on another guy’s girl—so his taunt just rolled off me.
We left the studio and headed to the street. “Then explain it to me. What the fuck do you two have to talk about?”
“Nothing, man. Everything. But mostly you.”
That shouldn’t have pissed me off—he was smiling when he said it. “Bullshit. Who’d want to talk about me?”
“Lena. She can see the writing on the wall, even if you can’t. Things are going to change around here real soon and not in a good way. She’s worried about you.”
I frowned. “Me?”
“Yep, you.” He sighed, annoyed. “All she ever does is worry about you.”
“She should worry about you. What the hell is going through that head of yours? Why the fuck aren’t you trying to fight getting drafted?”
“Now you’re sounding like Patty. I get enough of that at home.”
I stopped walking and stared after him. “Jesus Christ, Reggie. This isn’t a lark and it isn’t funny. You could get a deferment. Why aren’t you trying?”
He made a slight tilt of his head, moving it slowly, not really a shake at me, more of his Jack, Jack, Jack thing. “I bet you never thought marrying Lena in ’62 would have been such a smart move.”
“Marrying Lena was a smart move, but not because of the draft, you jerk.”
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He nodded. “Yep, God was definitely watching out for you then, Jackie boy. You’d be a fucking stuffed shirt doing nothing with your life, being everything we hate if he hadn’t sent you her.”
I grinned. “Probably married to Liz. Or someone like her.”
“Fate worse than death,” Reggie jeered, and we both laughed and started to walk again.
“You should have married Patty the day you dropped out of Harvard. Requested the marriage deferment.”
Reggie threw back his head, laughing more uproariously. “Nope, that wouldn’t have been a smart move. She’s not like Lena.”
I ignored his propensity to compliment my wife, and argued, “The two of you practically are married. Why not do the real thing if keeps you from going?”
“That girl is as fickle as they come. Off in every direction the second something catches her eye.”
I didn’t like him being even mildly disparaging of Patty. “What are you talking about? She’s a great girl.”
“She’s cozying up to Georgie again.”
I stared at him, surprised; that was news to me. “Jesus Christ, they’re friends. We all grew up together.”
He shrugged, dismissively. “Nothing is ever as simple as you see it. Last year you were positive there was never going to be a war. Now you’re antiwar and antidraft, but only because of me. Every girl is madly in love with you—in your head—except your wife, when she’s the only girl, as far as I can see, who’s ever cared about you. Oh, and she trapped you into marriage because you’re such a prize—”
I shoved him up against a building wall. “Don’t you ever talk about my wife that way. She did no such thing. I married her because I love her. You can be a miserable jerk at times, spouting off about things you don’t know shit about.” My angry face was just inches from his, my fingers a tight ball ready to hit him. Reggie lay back against the concrete and laughed.
“Hey, man, they’re your thoughts, not mine. I think you’re a fucking idiot for thinking it even once. If I had her, I wouldn’t doubt she loved me. I’d just enjoy it.”
I pushed back from him. “I’ve never thought that. Not once. And I think you are a fucking idiot for running away to the army because of Patty. So what if she goes back to Georgie? It just means that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
He studied me almost in wonder. “Oh, Jack, you never see a goddamn thing.”
He stepped away and continued toward home.
We didn’t talk the rest of the way to the apartment he shared with Patty.
He paused on the steps. “You wanna come up? Say hi to Patty? Have a drink while we smoke a little grass?”
I was still angry over his comments about Lena. “Nah. I need to get home.”
“See ya at the studio tomorrow, Jack,” he called out to my back.
“Sure, Reggie.”
“Don’t forget. Finish that song for me,” he added, and then I heard the door close behind him.
It was five blocks more to the basement flat I was living in with Lena, but I spent a couple of hours walking, trying to shake off the mood Reggie had left me with.
Reggie liked to fuck with people. The problem was it didn’t feel like he was fucking with me. Under the inflammatory statements, it was like he was trying to tell me something.
Shit, who knew? Reggie Dun was an enigma. Fuck, he was antiwar before it was a movement and he was just letting the army take him away.
As I trotted down the steps to my front door, I wondered what the hell I was going to do once he was gone. It would be the end of Parker and Dun—for a while—and I still had to make a living. Columbia hadn’t so much as winked that they’d keep me under contract without him. Reggie was the talent and I was the show. Fuck, what use were they going to have for me without him?
We weren’t living well, but we were getting by. Reggie being drafted ruined everything for Lena and me. It was a despicable thought, I hated thinking it, but it was the truth, even if it wasn’t how I wanted to feel.
Inside the apartment, I found Yuri and Walter with Lena in the living room.
“You’re home, Jack. Finally,” Lena said, rushing to the door to plant a kiss on my cheek.
“Sorry. Long day with Reggie. You should have told me we were having guests, Lena.”
“We stopped by with news,” Walter announced, uncharacteristically jovial even with me.
I smiled as I crossed the room to shake his hand. “Good news, I hope.”
“It is, if you can convince your wife to agree,” Yuri countered affably as I shook his hand.
I sank down on the arm of her chair and gestured for the men to sit again. I looked at Lena. “What’s going on, Lena?”
“Petkovic is retiring,” she said quietly.
“At last,” Yuri put in eagerly. “It means I have a chair to fill in the Sciarilo Quartet. Whoever I want. I want Lena. She’s the only violinist capable of filling Petkovic’s shoes.”
I scooped up my wife into my arms, surprised she wasn’t over the moon about this. “That’s great news. Why aren’t you happier?”
“She thinks she shouldn’t do it. That you won’t want her to go,” Walter explained. “I told her she was wrong, that it was what she’s work toward, but she won’t listen to me.”
I noticed Lena’s tight face and frowned. “Why wouldn’t I want that for you, doll?”
“The first nine months of the performance calendar are in Europe, Jack.”
Oh fuck. Walter was right. It definitely wasn’t something I wanted. Not to be separated from her, even briefly.
“I can’t go,” she added. “I can’t leave you.”
I could feel everyone waiting for my reaction. “Let’s not make any hasty decisions, Lena,” I found myself saying even though I wanted to say how the hell could you even consider that?
“We wouldn’t see each other for almost a year, Jack.”
I shrugged. “Hard, but not undoable. We should definitely talk about this. It’s not an offer we shouldn’t try to make work.”
Her brow crinkled. “How could we make it work?”
I smiled when I didn’t want to. “I don’t know. We just will.”
“See, Lena,” Walter said, standing up. “You were wrong about your husband and being difficult over nothing. Now will you tell Yuri you accept his invitation?”
And before I knew what the fuck had happened, the very thing I didn’t want happened. She’d accepted.
~
“I’ll stay if you want me to,” Lena whispered on a husky purr, and I shifted my gaze to find her watching me from the bedroom doorway. “I don’t need the Sciarilo Quartet. There will be other opportunities.”
I smiled over the top of Reggie’s journal. I’d been reading it since I climbed into bed.
“Nope, can’t do it, doll. No way to answer that. I don’t want you to go and I can’t tell you to stay.”
It seemed the right kind of comment to make when walking through a night of landmines. This would put her back on top in her career again, and I was going breakneck speed back to bottom. We were next to broke, and it wasn’t like I had any promising future prospects lined up for me. She deserved this, and it would have been a punk kind of move to take it from her.
No matter how I turned in my head the grim possibility of her leaving, I couldn’t find it in me to tell her no.
“I’m your wife. You’re the only one who has a right to tell me anything.”
I laughed, following her with my gaze as she went through her nightly routine—a brush through her hair, lotion on her arms, and slowly pulling off the nightgown she seldom wore into bed.
“Only a foolish man would even try to tell you what to do, Lena.”
She slipped beneath the blankets and curled in to me. “Then tell me to stay, since you’re still a foolish boy.”
We were being playful, but it was only on the surface. At least for me. From the moment she’d told Yuri yes, I’d felt like I couldn’t breathe.
I set aside Reggie’s journal and turned in to her. “We’ll make it work, doll. I’ll fly to you. You can fly to me. Nine months. Nothing.”
She spread out on the bed beneath me. “Or you could come with me.”
I moved between her thighs, kissing her neck. “Come with you, huh? Oh, definitely.”
~
“What’s that you’re reading, Jack?”
I set the journal on the breakfast table and looked at her. “Just a piece of melody I’m trying to figure out how to turn into a song.”
She kissed me. “Can you watch Samuel this morning? Yuri is having a meeting with all the members of the quartet. I’ll be back before your studio time, or I can take him to Patty instead.”
I smiled. “I can watch Sammy. I’m not doing anything more important than that this morning.”
She dropped a kiss on my mouth and then hurried toward the door. She opened it, turning to lean against it as she smiled back at me. “We were wonderful last night,” she murmured on her husky purr.
My heated gaze met hers. “We’re always wonderful together, doll.”
A lush smile raised her lips. “I half thought after that you were going to ask me this morning to turn down Yuri’s invitation to perform.”
I’d thought about it.
I won’t lie.
I probably would have at some point that day, given time.
“We’ll talk”—I grinned—“and other things when you get back.”
She blew me a kiss, something she never did, before she shut the door, and I was feeling pretty good as I cleaned up from our breakfast.
An hour later, Sammy was taking his morning nap and I was at the table, guitar in hand, trying to turn Reggie’s melody into something.
It just wasn’t happening.
I started thumbing through pages again, thinking maybe something in his messily penned, indecipherable thoughts might kick off some inspiration.
Antigovernment rants.
A few personal insights on Patty I didn’t want to know.
Thumb.
Thumb.
My hand stopped.
My gaze locked.
It was just a line.
Not even a full thought.
Hell, he hadn’t finished it.