Blueberry Pancakes: The Novel

by Anton Lee Richards

  He glanced at his phone. “Getting late,” he said, “wish I could stay with you forever.”

  I packed up my guitar, and we headed out the door and toward the train together. We stayed quiet for most of the trip until we were near my stop. We exchanged numbers and made plans for the next Saturday. I exited the train a minute later and turned around to see Patrick through the open door. We stared each other down one last time, I on the platform and he in his seat. I received his text on my walk home.

  So good to meet you tonight.

  I didn’t want to gush too much too soon. I paused for a moment and texted him.

  You too. See you Saturday.

  We’d resisted the urge to text each other before our first official date. He agreed to come up to Andersonville. We met at a sushi place on Clark Street. I waited in front of the restaurant and spotted him at the corner. I turned my head to avoid another staring contest like we’d had at the open mike. When we met, he grabbed my cold hands and stood on his toes to kiss me on the cheek. We sat down at a table near the window.

  “How’s your weekend, so far?” I asked.

  “Not much of a weekend. I’ve been working overtime the past two days to get this month’s publication out.”

  “That sucks. At least you’ll have something to be proud of in the end.”

  “Yeah, it’ll all be worth it. This month’s material is better than anything we’ve ever put out.” He pulled out a beta copy of the magazine with his piece in it.

  “My work projects don’t give me any sense of achievement. I’m just relieved when they’re over. They’re never really over; they kind of die out, needing less and less support.”

  “When your band takes off things will be different.” He gave a quizzical look when I didn’t reply. “The group you write songs with. Aren’t they your band?”

  “No, we create a finished product and then try to get it placed in a movie or advertisement. Or a demo to convince other singers to record it with their producer. Or my friend Marlene, who has a beautiful voice, uses it for her career and performs it on stage. It’s been a struggle, and we have had no success. So far, every road’s a dead end. We sent a song we thought was just the right thing to a song plugger last week, but he rejected it yesterday. We keep trying though.”

  He cocked his head. “But most serious artists write their own material, right?”

  “Yeah, but there are always non-serious artists.” We laughed together. “My best friend’s trying to jumpstart her career with some of my songs.”

  “You should record the ones you performed at the open mike.”

  “We’ve recorded ‘Touch My Soul,’ and it sounds much different from the acoustic version you heard. I still want to make a few more changes to ‘Your Poetry’ before recording it. Besides, I don’t think ‘Your Poetry’ would be very marketable.”

  “Marketable? Art isn’t supposed to be marketable. Soap is marketable.” He fell silent and picked up the menu, his eyes hovering above it. “I’ve heard the food’s good here. I kind of wish I lived in Andersonville. Lakeview has more happening, but Andersonville has the cutesy factor. And it is not as hectic.”

  “This gayborhood feels more comfortable even more so than Boystown. If only I were into antique stores, I’d be set.” I nodded toward the antique store across the street.

  “So that’s why I haven’t seen you around. And I would have recognized you even if I hadn’t met you. You would’ve blown me off my feet if I ran into you on the L or at an open mike.” He looked up from the menu, and I stared into his eyes, falling for every word.

  “You’re different. I mean, from most people I’ve met,” I said, gulping.

  “So are you, and that’s why we’ll work out.” Maybe I was a little too serious, too soon, but I loved it. We sat in silence and exchanged awkward glances until our food arrived. His long black bangs flipped to one side every time he lifted his head up, and they fell back down over his eyes when he looked down to eat.

  “You’re deliciously flawed,” Patrick said out of nowhere. I hadn’t touched my food yet. I was still coming down from his last comment when he hit me with that.

  “Oh,” I said with a shaky voice. Was he reading me? Could he tell I still wished I had Jesse?

  “Don’t worry. It’s okay. We’re all damaged in some way, but you are more than most. That’s why you need your art. Your songs.” He placed his hands over his heart, a touching move that was a little too cheesy, even for me.

  “Um, sure,” I muttered, uncertain of where he was going.

  “That’s not based on the songs I heard, but rather I can see it in your eyes.” I diverted my gaze to the kitchen staff, then the hostess counter near the front door, anywhere to not make eye contact. It was too intense. “When you smile, the scared little boy comes out. He’s freeing himself from the chains he uses to shackle himself.” I wasn’t sure if he was head-tripping me on purpose or not. I wore my heart on my sleeve, but nobody ever told me so to my face. He was trying to reach out to me, and it felt right. “Look me in the eyes,” he said. “Can you see what I feel?”

  “Um… happy?”

  “Close. I’m feeling hope. Hope for us,” he said. This was officially the most intense first date I’d ever had.

  “And what are my eyes saying?” I asked. He leaned in and examined my pupils.

  “Excitement.”

  “Impressive.” He was right, for the most part. Perhaps it was one of a plethora of emotions I was feeling. Maybe Jesse and Christopher weren’t the ones for me, and Patrick was.

  “We know each other,” he said, brushing his bangs to the side with the back of his hand.

  After dinner, we walked down Clark Street past Chicago’s independent, feminist bookstore. The frigid January evening didn’t bother me because I was with him. He grabbed my hand as we walked. We weren’t the only gay couple holding hands on Clark Street that Saturday night. It was also Chicago’s Swedish neighborhood. Bright blue flags with yellow crosses adorned signs all over the place; in storefront windows, hanging from lampposts, and on Andersonville’s iconic water tower. We walked in front of the Swedish-American Museum and past the life-sized, concrete Swedish Dala horse that Jesse took pictures of me on. I said nothing as we walked past the quirky burger joint where Jesse and I had had our first date or the delivery truck with the man yelling in Farsi. Reflections about Jesse slipped in here and there despite my best efforts to focus on Patrick. I also kept my mouth shut when we walked past Pancake Heaven like I did when I met Christopher.

  We turned around when we reached the northern end of Andersonville, toward my street.

  “How close do you live from here?” he asked. Was he reading my mind? I tilted my head, and he bounced on his toes. “Humph, good to know.”

  “It’s also good to know my roommate isn’t home tonight,” I said. Screw it. I grabbed his hand and picked up the pace. He said nothing and followed me. We walked up the stairs, and I opened the door. I hoped my place was clean, but then I remembered I had cleaned it, anticipating the date might go well.

  We strode through the doorway, and he spun around, taking the place in. He sat down on the sofa with a smirk and tossed his bangs to the side.

  “Want something to drink?” I asked.

  “Sure, surprise me.”

  I couldn’t use Marlene’s wine, so that left vodka and Red Bull. He opted for OJ, and I poured. I returned to the couch and sat down next to him. I put my feet on the coffee table and grabbed his left hand. He turned toward me and put his other hand on my shoulder, running it down my forearm. A tingling sensation lingered over my body.

  “I can hear what you’re thinking,” Patrick said. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing. He ran his hands over me and leaned in. I turned to lie length-wise on the couch. He crawled on top of me, laid his head on my chest and fell asleep.

  Chapter Twelve

  RADIATE MY WORLD

  Anytime I had new material, I liked to get to Silas’s befo
re 7 pm so he could import the new songs into Pro Tools and set them up before Robin and Marlene arrived.

  “Do you think we’ll get to work on my new song tonight?” I asked. “It’s called ‘Radiate My World.’” He sat at his laptop, his face glowing from the monitor.

  “Let’s see what Robin says about the guitar tracks for the ones we worked on last week. I’m satisfied, but knowing him he’ll want to redo them even if they’re perfect. He’s like Rachel—never satisfied.” He checked on the file import.

  There was no way to reply to that. He’d been ranting about his wife more and more in the last few weeks. I shrugged for lack of a better answer. He loaded the new files. I used to spend hours trying to create perfect drum and bass parts. Now Silas took care of that and could focus on melody and lyrics.

  “You’ve improved your guitar playing,” Silas said.

  “It seems pointless to practice with Robin around, but I use my acoustic to write songs more than the keyboard these days. Sometimes a change in rhythm stimulates a new word or note for me. I need all the tools I can get because I’m afraid my melodies are all sounding alike.”

  “Why don’t you spend time alone with Robin during your writing process?” Silas asked.

  Write a song with somebody else in the room? It’s such a personal process. Most of everything I write is garbage on the first, second, or thirtieth try, and I didn’t want to share my embarrassingly lame lyrics with anyone until I figured out something halfway decent. By then, they’d only be somewhat lame.

  “Play the chorus,” I said. “I want your opinion on the chord progression.”

  Here you come to radiate my world.

  “Let me work that two-four-five,” he said. “Your progressions are confusing.” Chords never mattered much to me. I just picked ones that seemed to fit with the melody. “Let’s change the melody a few notes to match a more pleasing progression. Slightly.” Silas clutched his mouse as he waited for my reply.

  I took a deep breath in. “How slightly?” This song was one of my babies, and the idea of changing it didn’t thrill me.

  “Very slightly.” He dragged out the pronunciation the word very to appease me. “Let me see what I can do first. Lemme turn off the guitar track and work with the synths, then change this two-four-five into flat seven-six-five.” That amount of chord detail was way over my head.

  He fiddled on the computer and then replayed the track without the vocals. I realized right away he was right. He sang the melody of the chorus against the new progression. A few notes had to be moved around, but they slipped right into place with the new chords. It would take me a while to get used to the new melody, but Marlene hadn’t heard it yet, so the old version wouldn’t bias her.

  The doorbell rang and a minute later in walked Robin and Marlene, doing the walk of shame. Marlene and I arched our eyebrows to each other. We knew we had some gossiping to do.

  “Did you get the MP3s for last week’s songs?” Silas asked, facing Robin as he set his guitars down.

  “Yup. I’m happy with the acoustic part except for the solo in the interlude. I didn’t have a chance to work out a new part. Everything I came up with sucked. Let’s move on to new material.”

  “It’s called ‘Radiate My World,’” I said.

  “Uh-oh, Duncan met a new boy,” Marlene said, clapping once.

  Robin let out a booming laugh. “It’s a damn good thing you fall in and out of love so much. That’s what pop songs are made of.”

  “This boy—I mean, this guy—is different. It’s more than physical this time. He gets me.” Marlene snorted.

  Silas never took his eye off the computer monitor. “First thing, four-on-the-floor. A big fat electronic bass drum,” he said, searching through drum patches. “This is the best, but we’ve used it on the last three songs. Our song pluggers will start calling it our sound.” He added a few drum fills and played the song for the group. We all laughed when Silas’s voice replaced mine in the chorus. “We need a new key.” He hit the F-sharp three times and gave it to Marlene. She hummed the note.

  Marlene sang the chorus in several keys and picked one comfortable for her range. Silas transposed my keyboard parts to the new key. He used a pitch-translator to change the audio files—as he did with my voice—into the new key. It sounded like a chipmunk, but it helped Marlene learn the song. I handed her a lyric sheet while she grabbed her water and headed for the vocal booth. Silas and Marlene worked section by section, starting with the first verse.

  When I saw your smile, my whole world changed.

  She stopped and laughed, clutching the lyric sheet at her waist. “Pretty lame-ass.”

  “Okay, so that isn’t my best material,” I said, though I loved the song. “Just get the scratch vocal down, smart-ass.”

  I neglected to tell them I had started this song after I first met Jesse. I let them think it was about Patrick since he inspired me to finish it. The chorus still sounded funny when Marlene finished recording the vocals, but Silas knew best.

  Robin picked up his electric and began a scratch rhythm. “Is this what it sounds like when you do Patrick?” he asked.

  “We haven’t… never mind. Besides, you can’t mimic that on a guitar,” I said.

  “How about this sweet arpeggio of strings?” Robin asked, strumming his guitar. “Two young gay boys falling in love?”

  Silas frowned at us, signaling for us to stop goofing around. “As long as we’re done with vocals, lets overdub more guitar tracks,” he said.

  Robin and Silas worked things out while Marlene and I walked up the stairs for water. We were careful not to disturb Rachel or the baby. Once again, Silas’s kitchen left me in awe. If Patrick and I got married, we could use all this counter space to make vegan brownies for the homeless refugees. Or some shit like that.

  “Hel-lo?” Marlene waved her hands in front of my face. “And?” She prodded me. “Patrick. Details.”

  A quick, high-pitched squeal came out of my mouth before I caught it. “He’s perfect. We haven’t had sex yet, I mean, not physically, but it’s like we had sex mentally.” She almost spat her water out on me when she laughed. “He head-trips me and I like it. He’s not bitchy like Christopher. You should read his writing. He’s an editor at a magazine, and they print his poetry sometimes.”

  “You‘re way too emotionally invested after one date,” she said, gulping her water. “But if it keeps you from talking about Jesse, I’ll take it.”

  “You have to meet him. After the second date.”

  “By then you’ll have broken up.” She gestured with melodramatic animation. “So, you really haven’t had sex yet?”

  “Nope. We almost did, but we fell asleep.”

  “Fell asleep! How sexy.” She scoffed, and I glared at her, leaning over the kitchen island and pointing a finger.

  “Look who’s talking. Who did you show up with here tonight? What’s going on?”

  She smirked. “I prepare myself psychologically for every time I see him. I tell myself we’re just friends, songwriting colleagues, professional musicians. Then he looks at me with butter eyes and I lose my power to resist.”

  “Did you?”

  Marlene laughed. “Yeah. Hell, yeah. And I don’t regret it at all. Damn. Hell to the damn. His car is our favorite place, at least lately. We would park by the curb knowing somebody on the sidewalk could catch us, but that’s the thrill.”

  “Don’t get arrested.”

  “Oh, yes officer. I couldn’t help myself with this gorgeous man,” she said. She mangled her breasts and leaned back against the counter.

  “Lord. I want Patrick on a bed of rose petals, and you want Robin in the back seat of a Honda Civic.”

  “Pfft. Your fantasy is lame. Mine is dangerous.” She opened an app on her phone. “I tried to write a song on my own, called ‘Another Round,’ about two people rekindling their relationship after breaking up.”

  “I wonder if I’ll be writing a song like that about Jesse and
me one day.”

  She pressed her finger into my chest. “Patrick. Your focus is Patrick, okay? I need your help with my new song, but we can’t let Robin know. Would Silas work on something behind Robin’s back?”

  “If it’s a good song, Silas wouldn’t let it get away. Then, long after you and Robin are happily married with children in the suburbs, we can introduce it to Robin for the guitar parts.”

  “Children? Hell no. I just want to fuck him.” She dry-humped the kitchen island, and I laughed until I couldn’t catch my breath.

  “I want his guitar parts,” I said, laughing. “I wouldn’t mind having his Strat either.”

  She laughed and turned to walk back downstairs. I stood next to the island until she looked back, motioning for me to follow.

  “Will you be the surrogate when Patrick and I have children?” I asked.

  “My womb is not for sale,” she said, grabbing her perfect abs. “But how much are you willing to offer?”

  “I have to see how much Patrick has in his wallet.”

  “Does Patrick even want children?”

  Good question. “I didn’t bring that up on the first date.”

  “I thought you would have discussed moving in together already like that stupid stereotype they say about lesbians.”

  We took a sip of water and stared out the kitchen window. I wanted to stay there forever, contemplating a future with Patrick, and maybe some kids. Nah, make that dogs. Marlene was right, of course—I was moving too fast. I hoped Marlene and Robin would work out too. He was good for her. She better have room for her best friend after Robin was in her life full-time.