Smile A Little Smile for Me (Rosemarie!)

Rosemarie passed away yesterday.
A life of being a tough performer.
Bring HER into the fold of this book, please!

==
A dream of escape.

Here in the Northeast in America, we are under a cold snap.

Since Christmas, we have been suffering with below zero temperatures and into the predictable future (according to the iPhone).

And then, with or without a cold (which I have), we are essentially trapped indoors.

I've been lucky to have a writing project to take me out of myself.

The BEST vacation I can ever have. 

Your Subtle Glance (Purple Ukulele)

You For Me: Blossom Dearie

Sometimes you have a sense that all the songs you ever sing are gifts that you are merely waiting to open throughout your life.  As if the songs come to you from your future self.

You don't understand it yet, except only in the most general terms. But one day, it will break your heart with its accuracy.

I Walk A Little Faster

I Will Follow You Into the Dark

The Miller's Son (!!!!)

You for me.
Only you can do the things you do for me
I'm the fish at sea and you're the lure for me
--a friendless heart
an endless start at romance
then watch it dance
YOUR SUBTLE GLANCE
Gave me the chance to DISCOVER it's
you for me...
Take a look and see you've hooked the she
Who'll agree
Quite cheerfully
To be for you if its you for me

Midnight Confessions

When they played a song that sounded just like their other song
(Temptation Eyes)

And Aubrey Was Her Name

She always thought of him like a music box, waiting to be opened.  Full of treasure and music, if only she could figure out how to crack him open in just the right places.

Returning to his house, suddenly the house of an old and sick and dying man, it seemed literally full of boxes.  Mostly cardboard, mostly things half packed, as if he had been trying to organize or empty out his life but had been felled by his illness.

She found the tiny velvet box for the ring just behind their record.  She had been tempted to pick up their record, Handsnaps and Fingerclaps.  All the joy that was contained in its tiny vinyl grooves.  And there it was, blue and tiny and hidden from everyone.

Would it have made a difference to them? To their lives now? In many ways, she was glad he never asked her, and almost wished he had bought it for someone else.  Or that maybe he had a few on hand, over the years.  Expensive gifts to cash in on, or not.

She found it and was surprised to hear him specifically ask her to go get it.  There's something behind our record, he'd said.

She brought it to his hospital bed in the dining room without opening it.  Light enough for it to be a thin band of gold, even without a stone.  He started on a long, rambling speech.  She stopped him when she realized.

"it's empty," she said, simply.  That surprised him, but not her.  It was symbolic of everything he had promised her and had left out. 

She suddenly felt tired and told him she was going to make up a bed for herself upstairs.

She kissed him on the forehead before heading up.  No regrets.  Everything was as it should be.

When we are deep in love, not a lot to say

The first few shots of the movie take place in what seems like the modern day.

The light is harsh and all too realistic-like.  The woman shuffles around his house.  You can't tell who they are to each other yet.  Is that his daughter?  His maid?  His nurse?  She might have been cuter when younger, but a lot of her sparkle has been worn away until her inner color has been smoothed over like a piece of seaglass.

She prepares his medications. Trying to grind and administer according to notes she can't quite make out.  She is disgusted by the mouse dropping and bugs and general flith of it all.  She can't find the silverware and none of the plates are clean.

This is not her house.

When he first saw her, his eyes sparkled with recognition.  She was trying to hide the shock she felt, seeing his bed in the living room.  He was mobile and could move around, but it appeared he didn't do it often.

She does not have to be there.  She's waiting for the man she used to know.

==
She saw his favorite light blue guitar in the music room. Exiled.

She picked it up and held it like a distant relative.  Strummed the strings.  Out of tune. Neglected.  Reminded her of that scene in Breakfast at Tiffany's where Audrey Hepburn reveals that George Peppard is lying.  He hasn't been writing/typing at all lately.  There's no ribbon in his typewriter.  There's no harmony in his (PT's) music.

No hiding the fact she was too nosy for his taste. Propped it up close enough to his bed, just close enough for him to reach it.

He glared at her.  His memory of music was divorced from this present moment of ill health.  Music was about joy, about the exactitude of notes, the clarity of sound.  He had always been jealous of her vocal tone, untrained and free, it was nevertheless lovely and easy for her. Her voice was beautiful, like a river, sometimes wild and reckless, uncontained. Joy personified, flowing cleanly like wine, sweet like (apple?) juice in the sunlight. Her berry notes.

He had notes clearly on the page.  But couldn't rely on his body, ever really, to do what he wanted it to do for him.  The notes from his throat were unreliable, he liked the accuracy of manipulating something with his hands.  He used to be so baffled that she couldn't read music, didn't know the notes by just reading them off a page, like words.  So automatic for him, like breathing.

His body was weak for sex, for alcohol, evil intentions against all his purest thoughts.

Instruments, he could control. Basketballs, driving cars, piano, flute drums, anything he picked up he could pick up.

Now in this unsettling old age, everything had betrayed him.  He was choosing to be alone, and to put everything down. He wanted everything to be quiet, to stop whirling.  He had images of clarity of the notes, of how amazing music was.  But parts of his brain had left gaps, like blown up bridges on the tracks he had lain down (!!!)

His mind was clouding over.

He startled/started when he heard her strum his guitar.  Something stirred. He had forgotten the moments of music he used to live inside.  All those solos which had taken him to another level of orgasm; his mind remembered he had liked it, that these were amazing moments.  But even the memories of the memories were gone.

When had he put down the guitar?  Why?  Was that why he was dying?  Was it due to a lack of music, or was the silence a result of the sickness.  He had just lost the instinct for music.  And it was further from him every moment.

==
He wanted to ask her to find her treasure.  He remembered hiding it behind their album.  Handsnaps and Fingerclaps. "Go get it," he'd say, sometime after dinner.  And she'd say there was a jewel box behind it.  Something that looked like it would contain a ring.

When had he planted it there?  Wasn't she supposed to come back into his life?  After that last tour with the Boys.  She was too busy with her own life to come visit his.

But she had entered it, uninvited.  Found the boxes of old, unsold CDs, sheets of music.  Broken glass.  Something from a fury or a drunken rage.  Or neglect.

If she could find his guitar, she could find their album.

(Hymn #482: "I will lift the cloud of night"-HA eclipse!! "and the high place I will bring down")

Even the Nights Are Better

Driving in the car, they witnessed an accident on the highway.

Horrible.

And when things get horrible, his instinct was to distract her.  Hers was the same for him.  Somehow they could take the pain individually, but couldn't bear it in the other person.

A random song came on from the 1980's.
She sang along, knowing every word.  He joined in.
From the vantage point of the other cars in traffic, it could pass for a surprisingly tender moment.

"i didn't know you'd know that song"
"Same here, funny thing"

A few months later.

They were wandering in an old amusement park.  The song came on again.

"Aren't the nights supposed to be better by default?  Isn't it the traffic that is better "since I've found you?"
"Even the traffic's better"
Both:
"As long as we're here together..."

It was a code for them.  Everytime something terrible happened, they'd sing the song to forget.
Seeing a roach the size of a mouse on the floor of a coffeeshop.
Complimenting someone's necklace, when it was a scar.
All the awkwardnesses of life.
Saved by a song

****SEPARATE SHORT STORY IDEA
a) She remembered a night in college, wandering around with a boy.  A perfect date.  They were in an amusement park.  They talked about the stars.

Everything was downhill after that.

b) Even overseas, where the carnival had a slightly different flavor to it.  Something un-American.  Not as shiny.  The illusion wasn't complete. She could distance herself from the bright lights (like a child whose parent had died-seeing the difference between childhood and knowledge)

c) Mks pilot

d) Air Supply, Even the Nights Are Better
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRx58DgOxeg

One Girl Shy/She Don’t Look Back

Wpom-One Girl Shy/She Don’t Look Back, 4pp

5/20/17, 11:48am, Saturday, 1700 words

He had graciously offered her the use of his barn.  One of those brilliant moments of inspiration he had where he could fit two needs into one. He needed her to be near him, for inspiration, for sex, for her, but he couldn’t think of a good enough excuse.  He knew that she liked her art thing, whatever it was and although she wanted to move to the city, art, especially HER art required a lot of space.  One day, he had brought her out to the barn, and they were both amazed at the amount of space revealed by the dusty barn door.

She already had a lot of her junk stored at his house.  He had allowed her a certain amount of space from their last journeys, and since she was a packrat after his own heart, he let her grow into his domain.  She had dragged it into one of the kid’s old bedrooms on the first floor, a few boxes.  But somehow those boxes grew into complaints the last time the kid visited.

He never even visited the barn.  He used it daily, looking out from the kitchen window, it sat very pretty on the horizon and he always smiled to himself, thinking of the picture it would make.  She heard that line one too many times and sketched it out for him, and hung it just above the sink.  A bit redundant actually, but he liked it as a joke. That way, even at night, he still had a view of the barn.  It didn’t get old, no matter how many times he told it over the next few decades.

When he inherited his parents’ house, he had dreams of turning it into a music studio, of having concerts there and parties. But the cost was insane, to redo the floors, to run the electricity, to make it “nice” for visiting musicians.  But all the musicians he knew preferred comfortable furniture and a close bathroom.  

She wasn’t picky.

Her investment in the renovation included about $40 of extension chords and cheap pipes (to insulate them from the rain) that ran from the garage to the barn.  It was enough for a light and a radio, and a sense that she didn’t have to run back to the house when it got dark or lonely.

She’d run back anyway.  Only liked creating during daylight hours anyway, so she said.  He left her out there to paint and rig up all sorts of sculptures with “found objects” from their trips, or things she scavenged from his house or a nearby junk shop.  The barn had beautiful giant crossbeams, and although they were 20 feet off the ground, she never asked for help from him to hang her sculptures.  One was a brilliantly shiny set of corkscrew curls that she had cut from tin cans.  Their sharpness sparkled in the dusty barn light and somehow made the room appear brighter, like a disco ball. (It was the first piece to sell)

He admired her shadowy paintings she hung on the walls, the ones that contained abstract images of her dead fiance.  They were just vague enough that she could call them something else, or someone else.   She had other canvases full of colors, her playing with paint.  Sometimes she’d give him a canvas, like a child, and show him how she painted.  Once, he complained too much of being a klutz with a brush and she let him fingerpaint a whole canvas.  They had made love that afternoon, after making too much of a game of getting the paint on each other.  Afterwards, in bed, he was still making jokes, but she was especially quiet.

“I drew on him once,” she said, into the afternoon light.

“I had just grabbed a pen.  I had started with his hands and then he rolled up his sleeves.  And then he took off his shirt.  And then his pants. I even did his face. It was like a giant tattoo. He didn’t even mind that it lasted for days, he was like that.  Sweet in that way. Encouraging.  I think I still have some pictures of that, somewhere.  I can’t bear to look for them in my stuff, but I know I will never throw them away.”

==

He felt a deep pang of jealousy at that.  Hat she could still love a dead man in a way that he could never offer her. He didn’t want to have to ever explain away a body tattoo like that.  All it takes is one photo and…. Plus, he didn’t like the idea of it somehow. It was hearing her say out loud how much she loved another man, that P arranged for her to meet an Art Dealer friend of his.  Someone from High School, local enough to know the barn, and accomplished enough to be spending his real life in the City.

His name was Simon, and ironically enough, he ran a little free digest in Soho called ‘Simon Sez”.  His wife was tall and beautiful and had rasta-braids instead of the beautiful long blonde hair he remembered sleeping with.  Simon also had a bevy of “interns”, young women who got paid little to no money for helping him run errands or edit copy or take photos.  He joked that he paid them mostly in Kiehl’s shampoo and gestured to a closet that was filled with gift boxes from the store.  Certainly given as some kind of trade.  The barter system at work.  He gave the girls fancy soap and a place to have their names published in an art magazine.  They gave him god knows what.  Maybe he also made some introductions.

He came over for a “showing”, something very casual.  It was a lunch, actually, and even she treated the invitation to the barn as an afterthought.  But when they arrived, the barn was clean and shiny.  Everything was arranged carefully, and it actually looked like its own museum to her, with a workspace that was carefully tidied, yet “in use”.  “This is where the amazing painter worked.  This is where she created her masterpiece.  Oh, and she could sing, too,”

The Art Dealer liked the stuff.  Or was kind enough to compliment it, at least.  

P took his encouraging words as evidence that her work was ready for prime time.  Over the next few weeks, a series of machinations allowed for the rental of some musical electricity for the band to perform, for him to throw a party, and for an unknown number of potential art buyers to be invited.

===

The night of the party, she seemed excited.  She had already announced ahead of time that she didn’t WANT to put on her singing hat, that she wanted to take in the full experience of being a visual artist, for just one night.  He agreed, thinking that she’d at least do an encore or two when she saw how much fun he’d be having.

But as the first few people arrived, she was nowhere to be seen.

He did a quick tour of the property and finally found her on his kid’s old bed.  Her chosen outfit was a gorgeous purple silk dress and pigtails.  She reminded him of a child on her birthday.

He asked what was wrong. She blinked at him.  Almost crying.

He knew she was shy, those crippling moments when she was younger, but he thought it was one of those issues that had disappeared after a certain amount of maturity.  And 10,000 miles of shows.

She shook her head.  “I can’t do it.  I CAN’T talk about my art. One of the reporters asked me a question and I froze…”

“Reporters?”

“Yeah, Simon said/SIMON SEZ, that he had invited a shit-ton of reporters and…”

He held her for a few minutes and then said that she didn’t have to talk to the reporters.  She looked at him disbelievingly.  He told her that she’d be more mysterious if she appeared and pretended she didn’t understand their language. ‘Works all the time,” he said.

She fiddled with the roll of blue painters’ tape that she had worn like a bracelet for the past few months.

==

She sold everything. Not all that night, but most of it then.  The rest was gobbled up by the people in the City who had seen the press.  She had made the front page of the Arts Section, her purple dress, her pigtails and a giant strip of blue tape over her mouth.  

It was a gimmick. And it worked.

“The artist gave a sly look everytime a question was thrown at her.  Occaisionally, her “partner in crime”, a musician, would offer an answer and thus started a pantomime of interpretation.  One could never tell if he was just inventing a story to make us all laugh or if it was true.  The artist wasn’t telling.”

When he saw himself credited as “a musician”, he just laughed.  He was especially sensitive to billing and at any other time might have blown up.  But here, they didn’t even get his name.  The Barn was given a title he hadn’t heard of, it was almost as if Simon were trying to keep his name out of the papers.

He didn’t mind.  He loved giving her this moment.  He loved seeing her happier than he had ever seen her onstage.  She WAS happy onstage, but there was something else that stopped it from being her highest level of happiness.  THAT was reserved for their car trips, for the getting there, for their journeys.  He was thinking about that as she came out to him on the porch.

“I got the final check!” she said, like a schoolgirl with a fabulous report card.  And he was proud of her.  Enough money, plenty of money for her to DO something.  Down payment on a something, a trip around the world, school.  It was plenty of money for her to escape from the pitiful future that he could offer her in touring.  He was thinking over a goodbye speech when she interrupted his thoughts.

“Is that enough for an album?”

Healing/Mercy Now

Story:

He brought her back to his barn.
He let her do art there.

She had stopped talking.  And every morning he brought coffee out to her.
And eggs.
It reminded him of the mornings she'd nurse his hangovers.
All the times he had sworn off drinking.
And all the nights he drank anyway.

There was not a lot of singing.
She used a lot of black paint at first.
When she could get herself to move at all.

But he brought her to church.
A weird church.
2 Lesbian pastors, open to a whole range of freaks and geeks and misfits.
They fit right in.

He played piano.
There was upright bass
Violin
Autoharp

The pastor was gentle and funny.
They met up.

Eventually, he caught them together.
making out.
(The pastor was married)
No resolution is monitored, that storyline get resolved privately.

He is just stuck in the doorway, stymied and shocked.
And maybe he laughs a little.
If HE couldn't seduce her after all these months, he was glad she found healing somewhere else.

Roller Coaster/ BARN FIRE

EVERYDAY-Buddy Holly

And the power went out. 

And he was a Blues guy, who allowed himself to have fun with this girl. And played their common ground. Showtunes and Great American Songbook.  And even learned parts do he could do duets!!

--

Sinatra

There were times she was terrified. Him too, she'd sing: just what makes that little old ant/think he can move a rubber tree plant?

It worked on Laverne & Shirley!!

---

Silence 

The night they broke down in the wilderness, no rescue for miles. Deciding to curl up in the car until a passing motorist took pity.

Tell me what NYC was like. In the early 60's...

Greenwich Village?

It was her happy place, a fantasy, and it was the same for him too. Better than he remembered and worse.

He didn't tell her about how beautiful it was to be married in the spring. Barefoot in the Park. How idyllic it was, until it wasn't. 

No, he stopped telling her stories about how happy he was, the few times he was married.

After seeing her cry, all night, between the nightstand and the wall, he couldn't ever tell her how to be happy again.

---

FIRE///Several years later

And the beautiful barn, more full of trash than art. Sitting there, seething at him.

He opened the door and there was a giant leak in the roof. All over her canvases. If he had cared, he would have come here to visit with her ghost on break from the last tour. As it was, this was more than a year since he'd been back inside. It was more than 2 years since he'd last seen her. He wanted to save something of hers. Looked around through the junk, couldn't find anything worth keeping that wasn't ruined. 

He got angry, then frustrated. An old temper rose in him, one that he had forgotten he'd possessed. It was good to FEEL something again.

It wasn't until he found himself staring at the barn ablaze that he'd remembered why he worked so hard to keep that temper down. He had an empty whisky bottle in his hand and the taste of it on his tongue. And a big blank space where his memory was.

Then he remembered the box.

How he had hidden it inside the barn. Because someday she'd be back.

By then, he'd had so much to drink//he'd been so disoriented that he couldn't tell whether he loved her or hated her. 

The flames had caught onto some of the materials, but the box was just inside, inside a coffee can by the "kitchen" by the door.

He remembered seeing it all burn, wondering how it would feel if he walked into the fire. And he remembered the feel of the hot coffee can against his hand. Lid nearly melted off.

When he woke up the next morning, with his familiar hangover, the barn had burned itself out. And he was laying on the grass, next to the coffee can. His left hand and arm burned something awful. 

The ring was still inside.

All Tomorrow's Parties/Reunion

THE PARTY/All Tomorrow’s Parties

It was held at his friend’s house.  A perfect place, just cozy enough.

She walked in and looked around.  The place was lovely, a farmhouse, sitting proudly on lots of land.  Surrounded by trees that guarded it well, including a weeping willow in the front yard by a natural small pond.

Inside, the rooms looked well worn.  Furniture from different eras gathered like old friends.  Bookcases, overflowing.  None of her friends’ IKEA bullshit about minimal design.  The living room was layered with books, then knicknacks, art upon art. Paintings of a small blonde boy, probably Him or his brothers.

The fireplace mantel held a child’s sports award, not his Grammy.  Probably another sign of his prevailing domesticity these days.  He had a girlfriend (fiancee?) and was again head over heels.  The kid was hers, or so it was assumed.  There was again that question in her mind; who did he love more, the mother or the idea of being a father?

There was a chair setup for a film interview, well lit and surrounded in a surreal way by lights and flag diffusers, as if it were meant for a space alien.  Someone had replaced one of the photography flags with one of his stained glass experiments, so that instead of a gentle colored gel illuminating the subject’s face, it would add a psychedelic effect on the interviewee.  She wasn’t sure if the display was permanent, but it was his 50th birthday year and all bets were off.

He was suddenly famous again.

She wondered if he’d remember her name.  She kept wandering around the house, free in the way when you are a stranger at a party, in the way that you’d never dare when you are invited as a friend.  She was not the only one, and ran into another (NEW) groupie who was buzzing with excitement.  That was her several years ago, when being in the same room with him set her body off with excitement.  She felt a little sad for not being the girl she used to be.  She missed the buzz, but couldn’t remember what it felt like.  Some piece of her had died along the way.  Her life was drained of color and she had the sense of suddenly seeing it that way, in all its dull reality.

She felt out of place all of a sudden.  Not part of his current life, a piece of his history.  Maybe her invitation came in the tradition of “This is Your Life”.  And here is that sweet young thing from the Radio Station!!

Peeking into the kitchen, she saw him talking excitedly in the corner.  Like a magnet, his eyes were drawn to hers and he stopped talking midsentence. He smiled grandly, put down his (non alcoholic) drink and rushed to her.

She thought it was going to be a Hollywood embrace, she’s cry, he’d kiss her and everyone else would disappear.  The thought of it made her cringe a little, she both wanted it and didn’t.  But in the moment before they talked and caught up, he held her with his eyes, and then gave her a full body hug.

Shit!  It’s still there,  she thought.

It wasn’t the star quality she missed, it was the part of the “hidden” him she remembered.  The innermost peanut in the Russian Doll of his personalities.  The piece that only she knew.

He held her so long that she felt embarrassed.  Yet she recognized that place inside his embrace, not realizing how much she missed it.  And him.

They held each other for far too long as the party swirled around them. Everyone tried to keep talking as if it were all normal, but eventually people ran out of ways to pretend.

They broke apart slowly, still smiling deeply into each others’ faces. Tears rolled down her cheeks without her actually crying.

“How ya doing, kid?” He asked,wanting to soak up all the years she had been away from him. He wanted it all back.

“Great, kid.  How are you?” It was something to be able to give it all right back to him.  The nickname she deserved and he didn’t.  Nobody else gets to call him kid, not since he’s become the eldest person in the room on a regular basis.

The next voice she heard was the girlfriend.  Who didn’t even sound jealous.  That was exactly the type of woman he needed.  Someone who would accept everything from his past and understand that his present would also contain multitudes.

To everyone’s surprise, including hers, she looked over her shoulder at the man of similar disposition and introduced him.

“This is my fiance.  We’re getting married next year,”

Without a blink, PT transferred his gaze and shook his hand. Then grabbed his arm, then slapped him into an embrace of his own.  

“Take care of this one, she’s a treasure,”

He remembered.

==

Several hours later, the conversations turned to music, then instruments, then songs, as his parties always did.

Everyone drifted into a circle, children and dogs in the center, where the campfire would be. He led the group in some songs, and sang some by himself.  When he started one of THEIR songs, she joined in without realizing it.  Her voice was thin and breathy, but had the pleasant undercurrent he loved.  

“I forgot how much i missed your voice,” he said in front of the crowd when it was over.

“Me too,” she thought.  It had been a few years since the last time she sang properly.  She couldn’t even remember.  Even her fiance was surprised.  She had tried to sing to him a few times as they fell asleep, but he never seemed to notice, one way or another.

“I used to call her my little frog.  Like the one in the Warner Brothers cartoons.  The one who could sing so beautifully, but everytime Bugs put it in front of an audience, the frog wouldn’t sing. Everytime she got in front of a microphone, she’d freeze,”

And he made a face, crossing his eyes and turning his head.  Poking at her gently.

She wasn’t sure why he was telling this story, but smiled to remember those days.  It was all true, but she seemed to remember him getting more angry about it at the time.  

He offered her the floor, “You must have a few new songs in you?” but she didn’t.  He bugged her and so did the audience, until he got her to sit next to him as they went through a few more of their old songs.  It seemed like they had forgotten more than they remembered. It was all a great laugh.

As it got later and later, he refused to let her go.  He invited them both to stay over in one of his many extra bedrooms upstairs.  She relented and felt the jealousy turn palpable among the other attendees, especially the new groupie.  It was impossible to describe the connection they had, deeper than the time together, than the songs, than the comfort of being next to each other, but everybody wanted it.  Even the Girlfriend knew she wasn’t in that Pocket, and it made her keep one bag packed and kept her paying rent in her studio in the city.  Even if she managed to get him to marry her, she’d never have all of him.

==

Sat aft, 6:40pm, Fornatele’s Mixed Bag

Chaim Tannenbaum//McGarrigal Sisters, Young Love

Someday Soon-Judy Collins

The horse Rider-lessly passes

John Prine

==

They ended up being the last few people still awake a few hours later. Her boyfriend had gone up to bed before midnight and here the sun was just about to come up.  He alluded to his new tour a few times throughout the night. When she pressed him further, it turned out that it was only a couple dates, up and down the East Coast.  But he had gotten together a new band, 3 guys who were excited to play with him, enough to agree to the dates at least.  What he really needed was someone to help organize.  Her old job.

She was slightly disappointed and relieved that she wasn’t asking her to sing with him.  He could PAY her this time, so at least there was that kind of respect.  And she knew he’d want her to introduce him, he liked that. He hated introducing himself, just like back in the coffeehouse days. She wanted to agree just for that part. To be a part of him, of his machine.  To be stuck with him in the car, like in the good old days.

Her own life was fine, if boring.  She was doing a bunch of temp gigs, alongside some recently soured graduate classes.  She had jumped in with both feet into a degree program in something that now seemed to be closer to torture and mental masturbation than a career. She needed a break.  Her fiance still had another year or two of work, until his PhD would be granted.  They had met in the hallways and elevators, different departments and different worlds.  He was showing signs of stress and other personality changes that made her reconsider a lot of her life choices.  It meant being away, which could be deadly or exactly what they needed, she was too sleepy to understand which.

“What else can you offer?”

“You can drive,” he said with a wink, both of them knowing it meant she would sing him through multiple states.  

She looked at him and in her sleepy haze, it seemed like it would all work.  They would drive forever, stop at greasy spoons, he’d complain, she’d kiss him, they’d sing, they’d argue, they’d love it.  And it would break their hearts all over again.

“Let me think about it,” she said as she dragged herself up to bed.  

==

https://www.bestworstthingmovie.com/

Merrily we Roll Along

==

They talked about it a little in bed in the morning.  Her personal giant wanted to be back on the road before noon and the deadline kept getting closer.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine.  He’s completely safe,” she told him.  Although she wasn’t sure if either statement would be true. There was a sense of jealousy she had about her fiance’s relationship with his degree.  He was headed to a clear end, and she was certain that if she stopped showing up, her program wouldn’t miss her in the least.  In the past few weeks, she had started to skip classes and had felt free for the first time in ages.  And couldn’t tell her beloved giant.

He looked at her like a puppy, his long blonde bangs falling over his eyes, reminding her of the posters she had put up in her bedroom as a teenager.  He looked just like HIM 30 years earlier, but she hoped that nobody would notice the resemblance. Especially since HER MAN was 6’4” and closer to a Greek statue of Adonis with glasses.  As with every gorgeous man that gave her attention, he had a crucial flaw.  He was Bipolar.  He needed his sleep and routine and a focus.  She had seen him fall out of line, and wanted to take care of him.  But being together for 2 years, she was starting to test the waters of escape, to see what was healthy for her within the bounds of his requirements. Skipping classes led her to think maybe she should go back into theater or art.  Maybe a tourguide, maybe admin work for a museum. She didn’t want to tell him she was ready to leave school, that she didn’t want a PhD, not in this discipline, not at this school.  She was lost and hated being his port in the storm.  This was an opportunity to shake things up, which she liked.  Which he didn’t.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildfire_(Michael_Martin_Murphey_song)

“We’ll leave Sodbusting Behind”

When they wandered back down to the kitchen, coffee made just for them by the Girlfriend, she knew she was still being courted.  He had been on a strange macrobiotic diet for most of his life which generally made him cranky about all kinds of foods.  Caffeine was something he refused.  Alcohol, before he had gone straight, didn’t seem to enter into the health equation.  He had been a full fledged alcoholic, but apparently had met this Girlfriend at an AA meeting.  Another reason to love her, for him and for all who wished him well.  Maybe this woman could take care of him in a way that she never could.  Maybe this tour could be everything she had wanted from the last time.  They could do it right this time.

“He’s out in the barn,” The Girlfriend said over her coffee.  When he was out of sight, she enjoyed caffeine, sugar, cream and what was worse, she did the NY Times Crossword in ink.  This woman had spunk, SHE was afraid that she might start falling in love with her too.

The three of them walked out to the barn in back. Out of the corner of her eye, the weeping willow by the pond made a perfect countrytime postcard.

The Girlfriend pulled the door open in a dramatic fashion, the dust clouding in the sunlight.

She revealed him standing in the middle of a giant pile of junk, which ran to the edges of the barn.  Just like his car in the old days.  He was a sentimentalist, and from the date of the rust from the junk, he came from a family of packrats.

“I can give you the barn!” He said, as if he were giving her the keys to his vintage 1964 MBGHT car.

“For what?”

“For your art!  You can use it as a studio! Whenever you want. I’ll clear it out-no really.  All this junk belonged to my father and I don’t even want it!”

She looked at him dubiously.

He saw her reaction and got down on one knee.

“No really, I want you on this tour with me.  I need your organizational skills.  You can be the Tour Manager!! The Company Manager!  Whatever suits your resume!!”

“What’s the difference?” her Giant asked.

She looked up and shrugged.

“Either way, I’ll be the one to blame for getting lost and the one who still has to run out and get coffee,”

They all laughed except her.

“I didn’t know you did art,”

“I showed you, the paintings that I have in my apartment,” she said without accusing, holding her disappointment gently, like broken glass.

PT POV:

PT caught the reference that this Beloved Giant, this fiance, didn’t know her as well as she claimed.  He wondered why her voice sounded so out of shape. She has grown into a lovely young woman, but her life practice was different from the road he thought he had set her on a decade before.  She was fundamentally scared, he knew it.  She made the safe choices, even though it was clear to everyone that she wasn’t happy.

“Well, just the dates in the summer, in between semesters. The dates seem to work out,”

The Giant cleared his throat.

“No, really, I think it can work.  If something better comes along, I’ll still have my weeks.  This is mostly a weekend thing, anyway.”

She heard herself negotiating with his ideals, and all the expectations she had of herself from before.  The more words tumbled out, the clearer her future became, this was a step backwards, to her other life. A chance to start again, go back to jail, collect $200 and to even pass go. //Start again at square one.

End: Thank god you agreed. My Girlfriend refuses to take care of the band!!

You’re enough trouble!!

They all laughed, as if this were just another joke from the party.

As if it wasn’t the joining of these two forces, back in league with each other.

The hinge of their lives.

If she had just said no, they could have parted and would have had happy enough lives.

But she had a feeling he wouldn’t have stopped.

The Song Is Love

The Song is Love

She heard the tail end of it on the radio in the car as they drove to meet M at his house.

He was driving.  He HATED going to M’s house.  Hated how proud he was of all the awards.  How everything was framed and staged for maximum impression.  They were both 2nd rate, or even third rate stars, and sometimes M thought he was Sinatra.  Maybe he could’ve passed for the bad years.

There was going to be a crew and an interview.  Cameras and recording equipment, much more expensive for a 2 hour shoot than everything he had rented for his last album.

She felt she still hadn’t broken the ice with M.  He hoped she never would.  M was a notorious charmer and womanizer.  Even married, M had more women than P had in his entire active time in the 60’s.  Maybe.  Well, close, anyways.

She looked it up on her phone and made him listen to it again in full.  It was a syrupy-sweet generic love song by another famous 60’s group.  One which had led marches, stayed together, and kept their branding solid for the next few decades.  He was deeply jealous everytime he heard one of their songs.  He was only slightly reassured to know that their songs followed the Pete Seeger model of being more popular in classrooms than on the radio.  (Although he winced slightly when he heard the first few bars of any of The Boys songs.  Syrupy-sweet music that put another nickel into Green Hat’s bank account. Not his.)

“Do you know this song?”

“Of course.  I even see them on tour sometimes,”

“No, I mean, could you play this song . . .  if I asked you very nicely?”

Simple chord structure, he could do it in his sleep.  She began singing along very softly.  He hadn’t heard her sing in over 2 years, and even her voice, out of shape, had an endearing quality.  He liked hearing it again.  In fact, he loved it.  Her voice was this miraculously beautiful thing in his life and for reason he could not explain or identify, he wanted more but couldn’t open his mouth to ask. But as with many things which he loved enough to break his heart over, he couldn’t ask her to sing louder or encourage her.  The thought of her voice and the days when they sang together nearly brought tears to his eyes/broke his heart.  He stretched his jaw and widened his eyes to avoid crying.

“If you ask very nicely.”

She was humming it in the car, playing it on repeat, trying not to fry his nerves.  

===

They arrived, and as usual, M wanted to show them around.  The latest thing he was working on.  As if he had been trained from an early age to mention the last award and the next project.  All his conversations were like that.  

The crew was still loading in, there were giant black cables all over the living room floor, indistinguishable from the expensive oriental rug design.  Good thing he hadn’t had a drink today.

She was hanging back in a corner of the kitchen, holding the speaker to her ear at a funny angle, trying to find the best acoustics while trying not to sing out fully.

Never one to be upstaged or miss out on anything, M dropped the conversation and was drawn to the tinny noise.  M came up behind her and P could tell that she jumped when she felt his hand on her back.  That’s a good sign, P thought.  

“What’re you singin’, kid?”

She looked scared, but quickly brought the cut back to the beginning with a swipe of her finger.  The guitar was so low that you could barely hear it. The first verse was so tentative that she whisper-sang it wide eyed. You couldn’t tell if she was talking to him or performing, but she had a giant smile on her face and used the 2nd person lyric to full effect.  Suddenly, it was HE that she was singing to. And his hand was on her arm. P stepped immediately into her line of sight.

M knew the chorus (and so did P) and both joined in right on cue as if this had been one of their very own songs. Her voice rose up in harmony and sounded perfect in the glass atrium of his kitchen, clear as a bell and hitting her berry notes as if she was a reincarnation of the original blonde singer.

She turned to P for the 2nd verse, her outstretched hand finding his and suddenly all was right with the world again.  Everything clicked into place, or maybe everything else had fallen away.  They were immediately in the pocket, modest though it was.  The men found their old harmony and everyone stayed in key.  It’s always easier singing along to a well known recording.  Everything about her was sparkling and she had created something infectious between them.  She brought them back to the music.  When the song was over, they all immediately wanted to do it again.  They did. And again.  Better than sex, better than applause, they were each amazed at the way they sounded and how good it all sounded together.  Probably just a trick of the acoustics, or maybe the song itself opened up more sentimentality than they wanted to express. Unbeknownst to them, the enterprising cameraman captured the moment, sparkle and all.  It could have gone sour very quickly, the chemistry among them turned to scandal, but the clip that was shown on national tv a few nights later only prompted positive feedback. And WHO WAS THAT GIRL?  ARE THEY GOING ON TOUR?  WHAT ARE THEY WORKING ON?

After a few more run throughs, they were all smiles.  In fact, they had to stop when she began tearing up.  As if she had begun listening to her own magic and had gotten carried away with the show.  M knew there was some kind of magic passing among them all, and that he was probably just getting the extra sexual energy coming off the couple.  He had always tried to ask if she was a girlfriend or lover, but P had growled at him too many times. There was something in the song that brought up something beautiful, something from her childhood, a thankfulness and a sense of responsibility.  It was not unlike what M/he had heard being expressed by the fans.  It could easily be that.  This would make a great recording for the next album; she could be the proxy.  

M suggested taking it to the living room, but his piano was encumbered by gear.  And the crew suddenly decided there was a schedule to stick to, so all new spontaneous moments were off.  She was relieved, knowing that the next steps would suddenly expose her weaknesses.   She could sing with P in the car, and sometimes on stage, but when she had to adjust herself to trained expectations, her voice faltered like the singing frog from Bugs Bunny.  She couldn’t keep count, she couldn’t stay on key.  The voice that was strong alongside a recording, somehow lost its footing//her gears came off the tracks, a dancer without grace.