by Jessie Tu
‘Coriander?’ I repeat.
‘Cilantro,’ Tuba says.
Even in the cosmopolitan centre of the universe, I am an outsider.
We sit at our table outside, eating. A stout, bearded man approaches us and taps Tuba on the shoulder. Tuba stands and hugs him then introduces me: Alejandro, an old friend from high school. They talk, trying to avoid the subject of the newly elected president. They fail. Tuba offers Alejandro a ticket to this afternoon’s Brass concert.
‘You’re a musician too?’ he asks me.
‘I’m just here for the season.’
Alejandro says in a voice that is half irritated, half astonished, ‘I’ve been in this city for six years and have never once ventured inside that place. It’s full of rich white folks, isn’t it?’
Tuba looks injured. ‘You don’t have to come.’
‘No, I’ll come.’
‘I don’t want to force you.’
‘No, I’d love to see the inside of Carnegie Hall.’
‘It’s Geffen Hall, at the Lincoln Center.’
‘Oh okay.’
‘And there’s no classical stuff, if that’s what you’re expecting.’
Tuba plays in the Brass concert at three in the afternoon, and Alejandro and I sit in the audience.
After the concert, we wait in the foyer for Tuba and decide to get drinks.
Tuba suggests a communist bar where local poets and writers with ‘liberal values’ give readings.
We walk, following Tuba, Alejandro smoking a cigarette with an ungloved hand. I glance over to admire his shoulder-length curls, his thick lashes. His mouth is so expressive. He’d have made a wonderful trumpet player. I tell him this. He smiles, a little hesitant, sucking on his cigarette, shaking his head and combing his hair back with his other hand.
‘You think I have a good mouth?’
After a few blocks, we stop in front of a building that resembles a rundown industrial warehouse.
‘This is the place?’
We walk up a set of metal stairs. At the top, we enter a crimson-lit space. Old propaganda posters of Mao’s army, a row of faces looking out into the distance holding red books in the air. They are forceful and determined, unwilling to let anyone penetrate their line of fire. They look fierce. They look like me.
The boys push through the crush of people to the bar. I stand in front of a tall man in a grey parka and black beanie, peeking behind me every few seconds to make sure the position of my body doesn’t suggest anything untoward. He ignores me, staring over my head at the poet onstage.
The boys return with beers as the MC introduces the second set. ‘Eastern Europe is not Western Europe, but its impoverished, uncool cousin,’ she begins. ‘Eastern Europe lost the Cold War and everybody else won it, without even trying. Statistics show that Eastern Europeans are among the most pessimistic people on earth. But in light of recent events, let’s claim that for ourselves.’
The crowd murmurs, some people click their fingers.
A woman walks onto the stage and reads a poem about the death of Paul Walker and how he’d reminded her of her ex-husband, an abusive Bulgarian. She’s holding her phone out at waist height, glancing at the audience every few lines. ‘Who will do Fast and Furious now?’ she cries. ‘Who will drive the cars and fuck the girls?’
The crowd chuckle, a choir of soft laughs. Alejandro leans over and whispers, ‘I haven’t seen a single film in that series. Can’t stand cars.’
The next poet is an older woman. She reads a poem about the shifting politics of the country, and mentions the person about to take office. Instead of a collective chorus of boos, the crowd is quiet, solemn. Then the poet breaks into a Guns N’ Roses song, launching into a melodic query about existential direction.
Everyone joins in. The bartenders stop moving and sing along. It’s like being in a church and we are all hoping to be saved.
Afterwards, the three of us stand together at the top of the stairs at Bleecker St/Lafayette St station, trying to work out what to do next. We decide to take the subway to Alejandro’s bakery in South Williamsburg. It’s a few hours before dawn, we’re already hungry. There are leftover cheese scones, he tells us. The bakery is a few minutes’ walk down a short, unlit street from the Marcy Avenue stop. Alejandro leads us down to the basement, a low-ceilinged space cluttered with bags of organic unbleached wholemeal flour and large machinery. He takes a bag of scones from an industrial-sized freezer and fires up a small oven. We sit on top of the silver benchtops and chat about Alejandro’s extended family back in Chile. They’ll never make it in America in the new reality of the world. I’m not sure how to comfort him. His sadness dampens my appetite.
Alejandro uses a pair of tongs to take the scones out of the oven and peels off paper towels from a roll as plates. We eat in silence. Then he disappears, reappearing moments later with three glasses and a bottle of vodka. He pours us shots and we down them.
Tuba launches into a bitter attack on the clarinet. It is the most spineless instrument, he claims. It has absolutely nothing to say. ‘At least the oboe is a bit abrasive—you know, cutting. But the clarinet? It’s like that pretty, polite girl who is always in sensible shoes and smiles and laughs at everything but has absolutely no personality and no opinion about anything. I mean, Jesus, who the fuck even invented the clarinet?’
I’m laughing, the strain of muscles tightening around my abdomen, but I’m thinking about Noah.
‘I dated a clarinet player once,’ Tuba says. ‘He broke my heart.’
The heat from the oven warms up the small space. I roll up the sleeves of my blouse, flap the hems of my skirt to fan myself.
The newness of the city has been replaced by something thick and heavy.
‘I’m going outside,’ I announce.
Tuba frowns. ‘It’s fucking zero degrees out there.’
They persuade me to stay. Tuba loosens his belt and takes off his shoes. I notice the whiteness of his socks, clean, unstained. One of them begins to help the other undress. Shirts are unbuttoned, fall to the concrete floor. I lean against the wall and watch silently, taking small sips of vodka, feeling its heat sear through my body. There is more hair on Tuba’s chest than I expected.
‘I hope you don’t mind us doing this,’ Alejandro says.
I watch Tuba. His eyes shut; mouth clamped. He doesn’t want to be kissed. The two men sprawl across an open bench, unmoving at first, then they slide their hands across each other’s bare torsos, pressing a cheek to a white stomach. I’ve never seen skin so white.
They stop and we chuckle. Alejandro puts on some tunes on his phone. Ella. Classic Ella.
He gets up and moves towards me. ‘Is this okay?’ he asks, touching my shoulders. I flinch, ruining the moment. But then he laughs. It’s a high-pitched cackle. I don’t mind. Tuba narrows his eyes, watching Alejandro, watching me.
One of them slides off his underwear. My head mixes them up. They look like the same person.
‘Are you sure?’ one of them asks.
I catch a glow of my reflection on a machine. My eyes are sad. My cheeks pale. I am invisible, even to myself.
‘Come on. Loosen up, girl.’
I reach for my bag. Race past them towards the door.
‘Jena!’
I don’t know who calls out. Their voices, so distinctly different earlier, now sound the same.
I’m running through the night, dark pavement, feet crunching on dry snow. I can’t seem to get my balance.
I see a taxi and wave wildly. It pulls over and I jump into it.
My phone pings. A text from Tuba. I throw my phone back into my bag without reading it.
When I reach the apartment, a single beam of gold traces the side of the building. It’s 7 am when I open the door. Rehearsal is in one hour.
I undress and shower quickly. If I fall into bed now, I might never wake up.
Rehearsals are long and tiring. We work on a program of Copland, Strauss and Marsalis. I find them e
xhausting because there is so much to learn in such a short space of time. Maestro makes us repeat a two-bar passage twelve times. Each time, the sound is slightly altered, but then the twelfth time sounds exactly like the first. His black turtleneck collects the sweat from his head.
I focus on the back of Frank’s head to stop myself from screaming. At one point I will myself to look over at Tuba, who does not look back at me.
I turn my eyes back to the front.
Frank is always in a T-shirt. The back of today’s T-shirt lists the concert dates of a bluegrass band, Gerry’s Gone Outta Town. Toronto. Atlantic City. San Antonio. El Paso. During sectionals, he points his bow at each desk before asking us to play individually. Everyone gets used to it. I snap upright when he calls on me to play a few bars of an especially difficult passage in the Copland. I play it and he rewards me with a nod of the head, no eye contact.
The sectionals are combined. I look across the orchestra and find a place to rest my eyes as Frank targets other musicians. I meet Tuba’s grey eyes. They’re staring back, penetrating my skull. Then he smiles. A short, quick twitch of the lips. I stare at him because I want to test his boundaries. He does not look away.
Frank calls on Tuba. Tells him to play the opening of the second movement.
Tuba sits forward, straightens his back, aligns his shoulders to the music stand in front of him. I watch his face change as he blows into his mouthpiece, eyes flashing. I don’t recognise him as the man who undressed in front of me and another man only hours earlier. I do not recognise him at all. He holds the last note longer than needed. Maestro smiles. ‘Good.’
We catch each other’s eyes again. And then we look away, as if we’ve seen something we weren’t meant to.
For a week, App-man is tied to family events. His mother is very religious; he goes to church with her each day leading up to Christmas. Tuba has gone back to Austin for the week. It feels like the worst time to be left alone in this big city. I wedge my body at the foot of the couch in the lounge and stare out the window at the spires of the First Presbyterian Church, phone pressed to my chest; the long days stretched out—in my mind, an infinite void of nothingness. I reach for Monkey as I’ve always done, but even his sad, kind face cannot console the needy child in me. I want attention and I want it all the time. The urge feels like a hunger I can’t contain, an illness without remedy; for the first time in a long time, I close my eyes and think about Mark, his violent hands, his reckless mouth, and the ways I’d reach for him like a limitless reservoir of love. In this city, as families are reuniting, I rock myself to sleep on the floor, Monkey pressed to my shins; wondering how I can get myself out of this unlivable, dullish hell. Seven days, alone. I reach for my open case. Get up, Jena. Get up and play.
44
In the final days of the year, we work on perfecting Copland’s ‘The Quiet City’. It’s so lonely, so maniacal. The trumpet, like the military bugle. On Friday evening, we play a concert for a visiting guest from Monaco. A member of the royal family, with a name that’s hard to commit to memory. He sits in the sixth row beside his wife and two children, twin girls. They’re dressed in Disney-princess gowns with silver lace draped across their skulls. During rests and in between movements, I see one of the girls sneak a hand into a pocket to play with her phone.
We’re introduced to each of them at the cocktail party. They have gloved hands. I bend down and try to squeeze softly. Gloved hands remind me of Banks. He used to put them on before touching the bare parts of my shoulder. Leather gloves. Cold.
We stay for an hour, and then I retreat backstage for my violin and jacket and bag. As I’m strapping on my case, my phone buzzes in my bag.
My mother. She asks about the program. What the other musicians are like. All her questions sound scripted, as if she is reading from a book for parents who no longer know how to hold a conversation with their children. Hmm. Hmmmm? Hmm.
‘And how’s the hall?’ she asks.
‘The hall is the hall. It doesn’t change.’
I massage my jaw with my hand, hoping she won’t launch into an old grief involving Banks.
‘The hall sounds good,’ I add.
‘Well, take a few videos, won’t you?’
When I return to the apartment, I text App-man. The anticipation of his arrival is schoolgirl excitement. When he finally shows up, I am impatient. I push him against the wall and pin my mouth to his, gorging on his tongue like I’m trying to choke him. Everything feels balanced in the universe. He pushes me back gently. ‘Give me a moment.’
I watch him move to the sink in the bathroom to splash his face with water. I follow him, bend over him, bury my face against the back of his neck. He flips me round, pushes me against the bathroom vanity and steps behind me. In the mirror, I see the colour of my own naked body, the dull yolk of my stomach, my small breasts. He unbuckles his belt and we have sex standing up. I stare at his hands. The smooth clamp of them. The way they cover my breasts, squeezing them. In the mirror, I watch the way my body shifts with each thrust from behind, the way my agile flesh adjusts, moves to the strokes of his fingers, his limbs entangled with mine. He is skilled in a way that feels entirely new and frightening. Being with him is like discovering a new planet. I feel his tempo increase; his breath quickens, coarse and wild. As he is about to come, I can barely see my flesh in the mirror. He is consuming me. I panic, suddenly realising I might not have brought the morning-after pills with me from home. I pull away.
‘Go get a condom.’
He rushes to his backpack and takes one out, tearing the sleeve open and rolling the condom on calmly. He steps behind me again and clasps my body with his hands, pressing his mouth hard against my upper back, neck, face, mouth. I swallow him and he swallows me. He thrusts with a mechanic virility, a pushing that is rhythmic and vigorous, moving in time to my own quickened heartbeat. He pushes himself inside me and pushes and pushes like he wants to break open a shell with his whole body. He stops after a while.
‘What happened?’ I turn my head to face him.
‘I came,’ he says, looking at me with tired eyes.
We move to the bed.
He tells me about the man in the subway who harasses him constantly.
‘He tries to give me the Bible, says I need saving.’
‘Just take it and he’ll stop bothering you.’
‘I don’t want to give him that satisfaction.’
‘You don’t believe in God?’
‘I do.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. The god that’s between your clit and asshole.’
‘Oh, right.’
‘When I’m pounding you from behind, I see God reach out and touch me as I’m about to come. And then I see the face of God as I’m coming. God kisses me on the lips. Sometimes he sticks his tongue inside my mouth.’
‘I think I might know God too.’
45
On the last day of the year, the streets are still lined with red and green banners, tinsel flickering against the bright white of the falling snow. In a few days, the decorations will be taken down. Christmas comes, goes.
After rehearsals one morning, Maestro makes an announcement to those of us on exchange. We are in the players’ lounge; Tuba, Anne, Katie and I stand with our cases on our backs, waiting. He tells us the sectional leaders will be paying close attention to each of us during performances over the next few weeks.
‘Just to get a sense of how you bond with the music, the crowds, and so on.’ For the first time I realise he has a striking and uncomfortable resemblance to my father.
‘That’s pretty vague, if you don’t mind me saying,’ Tuba remarks.
Maestro shrugs. ‘I’m afraid I don’t make the rules around here. It just means we’ll be looking at things like your fit for the culture. We’ll be talking to other people in the orchestra. You know, all that jazz. And Jena, Frank will obviously be watching you closely.’
We thank him. He waves as he walks away.
That night, during the concert, I feel myself making persistent eye contact with Tuba and the other members of the exchange. We look stiffer than usual. Our postures erect.
After the concert, we disperse. Everyone to their own New Year’s Eve plans. Nobody invites me to their celebrations. Tuba follows me out and walks beside me as I head back to the apartment.
‘You don’t know how to celebrate, do you?’
I blink away his glare. ‘Big celebrations are a toll on my mental health.’
‘How about a film then?’ he suggests. ‘They’re showing indie films at the Spectacle. It’s Frances Ha tonight, I think.’
‘Frances Ha?’
‘I’ve never seen it.’
We decide to meet at 10 pm at my apartment.
By the time Tuba arrives, I am two shots of vodka in, have brushed my teeth and wiped the sheets clean of sex and male scent.
We sit on the couch. I pour us vodka. We lean back and listen to the sounds of the city.
The blare of engines and horns on Fifth Avenue. The motor hum of the building’s heating pipes.
We arrive at the cinema just before the film begins. There are half-a-dozen couples. A few solos scattered on the aisles. I lean over to Tuba during an ad. ‘You’re going to be a changed person in two hours’ time.’
He rolls his eyes. ‘God, I hate it when people say that. It just completely lowers my expectations.’
‘I’m not people. I’m an expert.’
The film is so much a part of who I am, I want him to like it. I need him to like it. During the long monologue where Frances pours her heart out to strangers at a dinner party, I feel my heart racing, wild. I think Tuba must be able to see the fabric of my sweater pulsing up and down with its beating.
At 2 am, we buy bagels from a food truck on the way back to my place. I put them on plates and pour us glasses of red wine and we carry everything to the couch.
‘Well? Are you a changed man now?’
He smiles. ‘Sure, why not.’
‘A toast to you then—a changed man.’