Pickup Notes Page 18

  This shouldn’t have bothered me. Everything was exactly the same as before. If anything, he’d cleared the air.

  I was sixteen when I’d gotten so self-conscious. It wasn’t that I thought him stupid or psycho. It was that I was nervous. I never wanted people staring, and until he stuttered, they never noticed me. But then they did, and it hurt—it physically hurt—that awful moment when they turned from him to me and saw exactly who I am: a bad friend, a financial failure, an inadequate musician, and an all-around disappointment to anyone I ever loved.

  And once they saw that, well, it was over. I could get people to tolerate me, but it was a testimony to their charity that they kept me around at all.

  I tensed as a yellow cab emerged, but it went to another lane. Not Josh.

  Harrison had made it clear I was replaceable. Shreya accepted me as a pre-existing condition. My family treated me like family. But I’d always thought Josh liked me. Losing that left me on a precipice without handrails.

  And who could I ask for advice about something like this when the one I trusted most for advice was Josh?

  I looked at Bach. “You got anything?”

  No, no help there.

  What sucked worst was how Josh must think I still felt that way. Back then, if Josh had asked me to marry him instead of going to that stupid dance, I’d have done it in a heartbeat. Back then he was my protector and confidant and best friend all together, and whenever he’d called me Mrs. Galen, I’d warmed with the thought that someday it would be real.

  Slide open the window. Take a ten. Hand back change. Put up the arm. Put the cash in the register.

  But this time after I took the toll, I left the window open. The chill swirled around me, and it stung.

  I didn’t have a choice, did I? Josh had never forgotten what I’d done. I needed to let him know I regretted it.

  The CD ran out, and I hit stop before it played a third time.

  A career in music was wonderful in so many ways, but it also highlighted the unfairness of a world that blessed some of its daughters and ignored the others. Barring a lightning strike, Shreya and Harrison and Josh would never become household names. Shreya and her improvisations, Harrison and his technical skills, Josh and his ability to hear the different voices of a piece. Shreya’s defunct band with its powerful vocalists, its amazing bassist, and skillful compositions with juvenile lyrics.

  I’d met people who played music so sad you’d cry, but they never got a contract, never went on the radio, never became known to more than a dozen other musicians. They taught kindergarteners who didn’t practice and frazzled housewives who always meant to take up something. For twenty-five bucks a half-hour, they imparted wisdom gleaned over two decades filled with two or three hours a day of practice. Then the student went home and forgot it, and driving home they’d hear someone on the radio who lucked into the right connections at the right time and now played for millions, for millions.

  Meanwhile, Shreyas and Joshes and Harrisons filled the country like so many troubadours, talent suffusing their universes without ever overflowing to flood everyone else’s.

  At a quarter to one, I was getting paid for reading The Name of the Rose while listening to Dvorak.

  Josh interrupted the excitement with a text. “You want a ride home?”

  I texted, “Sure. Why?”

  His reply: “I’ll be there when you get out.”

  By the time I’d hung up my stylish neon vest, a cab idled in the parking lot. I got in, and Josh punched the button to start the meter.

  I laughed.

  “Fine, you get a frr-reebie.” He turned it off. “So listen—” He threw the cab into reverse, swung around so fast my vision darkened, and then launched onto the street. “Harrison called. Guess what?”

  “We’re going to court?”

  “Yeah, because I’d pick you up to tell you that in p-p-p-person.” He slammed on the brakes at a red light, cinching the seatbelt around my waist and shoulder. “We got ...invited to a music festival.”

  “Really?” My heart hammered, and not just because he pulled two-point-five Gs to start on the green. “Which one?”

  “The one in May, in West...chester.” He nodded. “We’ll need to finish the CD right away.”

  I sunk back into the seat. Wow. Oh wow. We needed a playlist. Needed to know how long we had on stage. Needed to find accommodations. Needed to invite my parents.

  Josh talked even faster than he drove. The crowds, the experience, how Harrison was beside himself planning our next step (What? Carnegie Hall? Or could we aim lower and start with Lincoln Center?)

  Josh said, “I wanted to tell you myself, though. He’ll have to c-c-content himself with sending ten emails.”

  When Josh pulled up by my house, I clenched my fists. No more dodging. Just do it. “I was thinking about what you said, back at the studio. About being shallow.”

  Abruptly I wished I hadn’t started.

  He frowned. “What about it?”

  I ran my finger over the window button. “About avoiding you because of your stutter.”

  “Oh.” He looked at the steering wheel. “Why are you still thinking about that?”

  “Well… Yeah, I mean…” There was no air. I couldn’t say it, not with his eyes devouring me. Instead I focused on the sidewalk. How do you apologize for something that happened a decade ago? “It was wrong.”

  The edge in his voice made my heart sink. “But what I did wasn’t wrong.”

  I sounded plaintive. “It was a stupid mistake.”

  “That wasn’t a mistake.” His voice sharpened. “I recognize del...liberate avoidance.”

  I looked for my stray cat, but I couldn’t see him in the streetlight. “How can you not hate that?”

  “I...” I knew just how he’d blink and shake his head to clear the block. “...used to. But not anymore.”

  I was so cold. I couldn’t speak.

  Josh began, “I…” This didn’t sound like he’d blocked. More like he didn’t want to be having this conversation. Well, I didn’t either. “I’ve accepted it. You of all people know how it is. Stu-stuttering filters out the people I wouldn’t want to be close to anyhow.”

  Oh my God. I must have hurt him so badly. I must have gutted him.

  He didn’t look outraged. More like he was really shocked. I wound my fingers around one another.

  He’d kept contact with me even though he’d never want to be close to me. Why?

  I said, “So…can people change?”

  “Not really.” He took a long breath. “People rrr-reveal who they are because I stu-stutter. You made me realize that.”

  Before this moment, I never would have thought I’d prefer one of Josh’s detonations over him remaining calm. I pressed my thumb into the scar on my left hand, pressed hard enough to hurt.

  He continued, “You don’t need to worry. I’m not saying someone who does that is a bad person, but when it happens, I know what I can expect from them.” A pause, then an uptick in his voice. “You’re rrr-really rattled about this?”

  Then his breath caught and his head raised. He stared right at me with what seemed like surprise.

  “Jenny was just f-flirting!” He sounded urgent, and he reached for my hand. “I wasn’t interested in her.”

  “It’s not about her!” I yanked back. How could he stand to touch me? “But you said—”

  I hurt him.

  He leaned toward me. If I didn’t know better, I’d almost say he looked happy.

  I hurt him.

  I looked away. No cat. No people. I’d ruined everything. Everything.

  “Really?” His voice was raw with disbelief, but I couldn’t face him. “So you wish things were different?”

  “Of course I do! Don’t you think I’ve spent the last eight years hating how I screwed things up?” I had to get out of the car before I suffocated. I shoved open the door. “I should have just left it alone. I’m sorry. Thanks for the lift. Don’t wait for me to
get inside.”

  He snorted a laugh. “Yeah, the extra fifteen seconds is a killer. See you t-tomorrow.”

  I raced up the steps and let myself inside without stopping to feed the cat. When I shut the door, I saw he had waited.

  I held it together long enough to get into my apartment, but I didn’t get all the way into my bedroom before I was sobbing.

  SEVENTEEN

  The next morning I marched into Harrison’s apartment with my thermal mug of coffee, a list, and a calendar. By the time Shreya and Josh had arrived (Josh with both my viola and his cello) I’d commandeered the table and begun scrawling on March, April, and May.

  “We need to be organized if we’re going to pull this off.” They stood in a row, agape, as if they’d never seen a schedule before. “Here’s what needs to happen.”

  Using one color marker for each of us and a final color for the entire group (a quintet of their own with a heady smell) I filled in our performance dates and the dates for the studio. For the studio dates, I listed the pieces we’d record. Each of those pieces went into a slot for practice the two weeks prior. I arranged the ones with the rights secured first, the others for the end. “Hotel California” I omitted entirely. Finally I noted which pieces to review for performances.

  Harrison folded his arms. “This is nice and all, but I didn’t become a musician just to stare at a spreadsheet.”

  “And if you don’t sometimes stare at a spreadsheet,” I replied, “you don’t get to be a paid musician.”

  Shreya pulled up a chair to point out flaws in the schedule, which I corrected. Harrison put in our drop-dead date for printing CDs to sell at the festival. We inserted final dates for Josh’s arrangements. I added dates to send press releases. I included time to keep the IRS happy by filing our taxes.

  I asked about the lawsuit, and the others fell quiet. Right. You can’t schedule a bomb drop, not when someone else is doing the fly-over. I wrote it into the side bar.

  “You’re giving me a headache,” Harrison muttered.

  Poor baby. “Better a little headache now than a larger one later.”

  Shreya said, “She’s got the right idea. Let’s be professionals.”

  Harrison sent a helpless look to Josh, who raised his hands palm-outward. Great. I’d upgraded myself from viola joke to unstoppable force.

  “All these things would work themselves out,” Harrison said, and I snapped, “But it’s better if we work them out.”

  Harrison stalked to the kitchen, muttering, “Fine,” and with that ringing endorsement, I finished planning our next eleven weeks.

  When I snapped the last cap on the last marker, Harrison asked with a theatric sigh if we could finally, you know, play music?

  As if he didn’t normally waste that much time anyhow. “But don’t forget, this afternoon you need to follow up on the rights to three songs.”

  Harrison herded me toward the stands with “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

  He got his revenge because nothing was good enough. Either the dynamics were off or our timing was off or the phrasing was off or our interpretation was off.

  “This is ridiculous,” I exclaimed at one point. “You’re saying Josh is interpreting his own arrangement incorrectly?”

  “But it works better my way,” Harrison replied, and once you reached that level, you could have had Hayden, Handel, and Don Henley in the living room, but Harrison would have kept repeating, “You have to trust me.”

  After ninety-five minutes, we still hadn’t run through one entire piece, and I interrupted Harrison’s argument with Shreya about her entrance. “Look, we’re recording the damn thing next Thursday. Let’s run through it once, straight through, without you picking it to death.”

  “Sure, if you don’t have a problem with sounding like crap.”

  “But we don’t sound like crap, and the more you hammer on the stupidest details—”

  Harrison rolled his eyes. “Didn’t you waste the first hour of practice scheduling all the stupidest details?”

  Half an hour. “Showing up on time isn’t a stupid detail.”

  “But greatness is in playing the right note after you show up.”

  “I’m not looking for great.” My eyes narrowed. “I’m looking for ‘not about to rip out my fearless leader’s throat.’”

  Shreya stood. “We’re done.”

  I kept glaring at Harrison like a junkyard dog straining at its leash.

  “I said,” and she dropped her voice, “we’re done. Put away the instruments. I’m not having us break up over starting on an up-bow or a down-bow.”

  Harrison said, “We need to be professional—”

  “I said enough!” She closed the snaps on her violin case like the lock of a cell door. “I’ve seen where this garbage ends. It’s not worth it.” She turned to me, eyes livid. “We need to cool it before people say things none of us will ever forget.”

  Easy for her to say. She wasn’t the target of Harrison’s sniping.

  Harrison folded his arms and said to her, “Do you want the recording to sound awful?”

  “If it keeps the band together, hell to the yes.” She grabbed her jacket and strode out of the apartment.

  Josh beside me whispered, “Oh my God.”

  The door slammed.

  When Harrison looked at me, I stared back at him.

  Josh stood. “She’s right. We need a break.”

  The tension on Harrison’s face left me unable to blink, as if the first one to break contact would lose something. Finally he walked out of the room.

  Josh touched my arm. I pulled away.

  “Let it go,” he whispered.

  “This is how he drove out Peter!”

  “Then don’t let him do it to you.”

  Harrison reappeared in the living room. “Are you coming back tomorrow?”

  Not this again. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

  “Don’t be like that.” He came closer. “I know it felt good at the studio. But we want to sound our absolute best.”

  We? As if he had the right to say what we wanted.

  I chose a silent departure over saying something that would have gotten me ejected.

  After a long elevator ride, we reached the street. Josh said, “What’s wr-r-r-ong?”

  “What do you think is wrong?” My voice came sharper than intended. Good job, Joey, pissing off the only quartet member who isn’t actively angry at you.

  My cell phone buzzed. Shreya had texted, “Can you talk now?”

  I texted back, “Yes.”

  She texted, “Lay off Harrison.”

  What the hell?

  I showed Josh, who said, “I agree. You’re wound tighter than an A string.”

  “Why does Harrison have to go all picky on us when we have so much to do? It’s only slowing us down!”

  Speaking of slowing us down, I forced myself out of a speed-walk. What I wanted was to run.

  “He wasn’t that much wor-rse than usual.”

  “He’s impossible! Quibbling over every note, everything, even when we did what he wanted—”

  “Whoa!” He put a hand on my arm. I jerked away. After what he admitted last night, how could he bear to touch me? “C-c-c—” He blinked. “Calm down.”

  “How can I calm down when he’s destroying everything?” I picked up speed again. “Look, I didn’t get much sleep last night after— So much isn’t done, and we may be sued, and now we’ve got this festival, but he’s stuck on whether your phrasing is perfect on some passage no one will ever hear!”

  With my hands shoved deep into my pockets, I blinked hard.

  Josh said nothing more.

  At the subway entrance, I turned to him. “See you tomorrow.”

  “If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll see you at the toll-booth.” He reached for my hands. I recoiled, but he took them anyhow. “G-get some sleep tonight. It’s going to be okay.”

  As he touched me, the wind came up and I blinked at the tears. “It’s
not going to be okay. How can it?”

  He leaned forward, squeezing my fingers. “It is. Tr-rust me.”

  He tried to draw me closer, but no, not after yesterday. “Don’t.” I yanked my hands from his. “Please.”

  Wide-eyed, he stared with a strangled expression.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about everything.” And with nothing else I could say, I descended the concrete steps alone.

  By next practice, it had blown over. Mostly.

  Harrison and I exchanged non-apologies. That meant he said he was sorry if he had been too demanding (but thought he hadn’t been) and I said I was sorry for losing my temper (but not for being frustrated with his frustrating behavior). We pretended that was fine. Kind of the way Josh pretended things were fine even though he thought I was shallow. Kind of the way Harrison pretended he wanted me around.

  Of course, Harrison still jotted things like “blow nose” onto his calendar and then criticized everyone’s playing, but it never again came to a fight. Shreya assumed the within-practice scheduling and switched us to a different piece if we got locked down, a relief after Harrison’s policy of “hammer on it until it’s good and dead.”

  On Tuesday night, I inhabited the toll-booth once again, my impersonation of the troll under the bridge, other than how I lacked a bridge and I wasn’t a troll. Trip-trap-trip-trap...who’s that paying eight bucks to the MBTA?

  The unseasonably chilly night had surprised me without my space heater or gloves. Even Bach had gone dormant, too cold for his batteries to stay charged. I longed to do the same, but my paycheck required sticking my hands out the window.

  Just after midnight, an SUV pulled up and the driver barked, “How do you get to the Port Authority Bus Terminal?”

  Hello to you too. “It’s on 42nd Street and 8th.”

  “But how do you get there?”

  He still hadn’t handed over his money. I’d seen that trick before, where they ask ten questions and then tell you they already paid. Fortunately, I was smarter than a violist. Oh, wait, I wasn’t. But I was smarter than a viola.

  I pushed the button for security. “Okay, so when you get out of the tunnel—”