The Color of Home: A Novel (22 page)

When they slid into the taxi, Nick knew they would spend the night together. Sleeping together seemed like the right way to end their relationship. They’d come to know each other well enough that they wouldn’t confuse sex for anything more than a good-bye.

In Debbie’s apartment, they stopped talking and gently, slowly, made their way to her bed. It was the first time Nick had been with a woman since Rachel died. He wasn’t nervous or inhibited; instead, he brought everything that he had learned about sex from Rachel, from Sassa, on his own, into the bed that night. Debbie, more and more receptive, shed layers of inhibition as the night progressed. They stayed up until 5:00 a.m., finally dozing off, exhausted and satisfied.

They awoke, starving, after six hours of sound sleep. Later, at a local breakfast place, they devoured three-egg omelets, pancakes, toast, bacon, and two full pots of coffee.

“Thank you,” she said.

“For what?”

“I don’t think anyone has ever said good-bye to me like that before.”

“You’re blushing.”

“I’ll remember last night, you, for the rest of my life. I was so hungry.”

“Life is all about sex and food, my friend.”

“Sassa is a lucky girl.”

The next week, Nick and Fellini departed Great Falls and headed for New York City. On their way out of town, Nick texted Sassa to let her know he was heading east. He asked if he could visit her in Portland once he was back for a few days. Sassa replied immediately, stating that she no longer lived in Portland, had relocated back to New York, could see him as soon as he arrived, and, without going into details, had a lot to tell him.

Early May, After Sassa Year four, New York City: Fellini gravitated to the living room sofa of Nick’s apartment. He vaulted on the left cushion; then he circled down into a familiar ball. Nick slouched down next to him, and while scratching Fellini’s back, surveyed the living room. All his belongings, coated with a thick layer of dust, remained exactly where he’d left them two years ago. The television, the books, the furniture, even items minute as Rachel’s guitar picks, had formed a still-life. For a moment, he swore he smelled peppermint and lemon.

A dozen or so unevenly stacked boxes precipitously towered in the corner. Before Nick took off for Great Falls, he’d emptied Rachel’s apartment. He’d given away all of the big items—the bed, tables, chairs, lamps, rugs—but he couldn’t bring himself to part with her clothes, her make-up, her brushes, her perfume, her jewelry, all of the things that made up her personas. He’d packed the personas into boxes and hauled them over to his apartment.

Next to him on the sofa stood Rachel’s guitar. He picked it up and doodled up and down the fretboard, pressing each metal string until they tattooed his fingertips. His mind crowded. Raced. The Fleet Foxes concert, Difara’s, Ocean House, the tantric sessions, “Gordian Knot,” “Love,” all fired in rapid succession. He played the guitar solo from “All Along the Watchtower.” Jim Hendrix was a god. Was she playing?

He jumped up and gently laid the guitar down on the sofa. Stepping over clutter, he walked to the corner of the room and spread out the boxes in a circle around him. A medicine wheel of sorts. Fellini jumped off the sofa and joined him inside the circle. Combing each box for memories—leather girl, hippie girl, preppie girl, tantric girl—he placed silver earrings, a Buddhist prayer bracelet, a tie-dyed bandana, and a black leather vest off to the side. For an hour, he black-bagged the remaining articles from each box and carted the bags out to the trash bin. After dumping the last bag, he slipped his phone out of his pocket and called the studio to schedule a late afternoon meeting.

The room bustled as Nick’s employees crammed into the makeshift conference room. He stepped onto a wooden box in the corner and quieted the room. Fellini wandered out into the audience like a politician working a fundraiser and collected admirers.

“As you all know, I needed to leave New York for a while after Rachel died. I rented a cabin in Great Falls, Montana. Over time, part of how I figured things out was through music. I ended up working on an album last year, called
Songs of Love and Loss
. I wanted you all to be the first to hear it. Oh, and I brought food.”

Caterers paraded into the studio with a bountiful supply of Italian takeout: veal parmesan, sausage and peppers, vegetarian lasagna, bruschetta, wine, beer. The smell of red sauce filled the room. All take-out sauce in New York was the same, as if there were a single Italian grandmother supervising each and every batch. The musicians heaped their plates and filled their glasses. Someone made a large plate of veal and sausage for Fellini. Nick cued up the album.

Songs of Love and Loss
poured through the studio monitors. A hush came over the room as the first notes from “Love” sounded. When the song finished, silence. What to make of it? He sipped his wine and watched for micro-expressions. Shaken. Impressed. Moved. Hmm. He scratched his knee, downed a piece of bruschetta.

The album played on, strengthened its hold, laced together Nick’s story. Each song, melodic in a familiar and original way, reminiscent of the Beatles or the Beach Boys, built on the last. “Showers of Grace” to “Growing Down” to “Stillness.” Almost a full hour after “Love,” the last song, “Good-bye,” faded into the big calm. Then the bass player started snapping his fingers. Others joined in. People with lighters lit them above their head. People with smartphones fired up their flashlight app and did the same.

Scattered tears. A vocalist hugged herself and swayed to and fro. The drummer nodded. All lined up.

A hug. “Amazing. So emotional.”

“Thank you.”

Another hug. Fellini jumped up to get in on the action. Laughter. “Best thing I’ve heard in years.”

“Thanks.”

A kiss on the cheek. “The cabin saved you.”

“That it did.”

The next day, Nick texted Sassa:
Let’s meet at Joe’s for coffee
. An hour later, he stepped into the café.

Sassa, wearing a black business suit, black pumps, and rectangular black glasses, the kind you might see in an Italian movie from the sixties, was already sitting at a table sipping her tea. She pushed a cappuccino with a leaf sketched into the froth his way. “How are you?”

“Okay.” He sat down. Under the table, he tightened his fist, loosened it a few times. Reaching across the table with his free hand, he brushed Sassa’s suit. New perfume. Power tangerine. “Nice.”

“Meeting. A lot has happened since I last saw you.”

When he’d last seen her in Portland, before the accident, she seemed happy. She belonged there. A hippie vegetarian. A flock of kids down the road. A farm in the country. Her version of home. And his. “How come you’re back in the city?”

“After you left, I threw myself into work.”

“Work helped?”

“Yes. About six months later, the restaurant was doing so well that a few businesswomen approached me out of the blue and proposed opening a chain of Green Angel’s.”

“Wow. So you own multiple restaurants?”

“I turned them down at first, but they pushed hard. They presented a surprisingly compelling business plan, so I signed on.”

“Weren’t you the one asking me to write a business plan just a short time ago?”

She smiled. “They recommended smaller cities with colleges and a younger demographic, so we settled on Portsmouth, Cambridge, and New Haven. Six months later, we launched those three restaurants to positive reviews across the board.”

“Wow.” He’d always thought Sassa would run her own business, but listening to her talk business pulled him in a way he hadn’t experienced before. Work would always be part of home for her. Work had centered her, helped her find calm.

She took off her glasses, folded them, placed them on the table. “The plot thickened after the restaurants opened.”

“How so? Why the glasses? They look good on you.”

“My partners approached FoodNation to secure additional financing for expansion. They explained, apparently well, our growth plans for the restaurant. FoodNation liked our stuff so much that they bought us out a month after our initial request for help. Their CEO likes the glasses.”

“You sound like a businesswoman.”

“So I’m told.”

“I like it.”

She smiled into her teacup. “They asked me to be the face of the restaurant. They even funded
The Green Angel Vegetarian Cookbook
.”

“I still don’t understand how you ended up back in New York.”

“I accepted their offer with the condition that they open the flagship Green Angel in New York. I’m the chef/owner of that restaurant.”

“You demanded something from a multi-national and got your way?”

“The glasses.”

He picked up his cappuccino. Every grain of the ceramic handle danced off his fingers, as if she’d transferred some mysterious energy to all of the inanimate objects around her. How did she do that? It took his breath away. “How many restaurants are there?”

“We’re in the process of opening twenty across the country. I’m traveling all the time. I’ve never worked so hard in my life.”

“You sound like you’re in love.”

“I’m surprisingly good at all of the corporate stuff. I hope I don’t sell out.”

“You sound solid, not like someone who’s going to sell out.” He’d never seen her so solid, so confident, so full of grace and power. Maybe in order to find her way back to him, she had to find work first.

“So tell me about you. What happened over the past two years?”

“Let’s go back to my apartment. Probably the best way to start is for you to meet someone and listen to some music.”

“Don’t you think you should keep me away from your girlfriends?”

“Not a girlfriend.”

When Nick and Sassa stepped inside Nick’s apartment, Fellini scooted over to Sassa with his tail wagging. She bent down. A big hug. He licked her face. Blonde and black hair intermingled.

“Nick, he’s so big. What’s his name?”

“Fellini.”

“Fellini, you’re so handsome,” she said. She sat on the floor. Fellini lifted his paw and she shook it. She scratched the top of his snout until he sneezed. Scratching behind his ear, she pushed her nose right up to his snout, where the two of them conversed for a bit without another English word. “Where did you find him?”

“I adopted him from a shelter in Montana.”

“Montana?”

“Yeah. I rented a cabin on the outskirts of Great Falls.”

“I had no idea you landed out there.”

“Secluded.”

“I can see country living has been good for your physique.”

Perched on the windowsill, he glanced at his arms, his chest, his legs. His body had changed. He’d built muscle everywhere, more than enough to store the sadness, more than enough to weather any storm, more than enough to make his way home. “Russian kettlebells. Iron weights with an attached handle that you swing around.”

“You may have to teach me a thing or two about them. Finding time to exercise these days has been impossible.”

“Really?”

“What did you do out there?”

“Lots of things.” He told her about his exercise routine, about the ins and outs of juicing, about his daily walks in Riverside Park, how furniture building was the perfect way to practice staying present. As he spoke he studied her eyes, her mouth, her hair, her hands. She was just as lovely as the first time he saw her. Even more so. When she turned eighty, he would think the same. “By the way, you look great.”

“I can’t picture you making furniture.”

“It’s an old skill I learned from my uncle.”

“Did you make that chair?”

“Yep.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“Thank you. Back to the story. At first, I tried to live simply. Sowing seeds, I guess. Then, I had a conversation with Evangeline.”

“Like the woman from
Lost
?”

“Much younger.” When Nick and Sassa were together, they spent an entire month watching
Lost
episodes back to back. Evangeline Lily was her favorite
Lost
actor. “One night, Fellini and I were hanging out in the cabin and we heard a noise outside. When we went out to investigate, we spotted a little girl, maybe seven or eight, playing in the front yard.”

“Evangeline.”

“She didn’t say much, but what she did say, coupled with a conversation I had with Debbie, changed everything.”

“Debbie?”

“A waitress and a friend.”

“Oh.”

“I slept with her last week as a good-bye and a thank you. She helped me out.”

“How noble of you.” She walked over to the window and joined Nick. Watching a man and a woman stroll down the street arm in arm, she doodled in the dust on the windowsill her version of the
Lost
smoke monster. “So what did Evangeline say?”

“She said that I was in between and that I needed to get out of the middle so I could touch the sky.”

“What?”

“I had the same reaction. It seemed like gibberish until I replayed it with Debbie.”

She walked back to the sofa, slipped off her shoes, patted the cushion for Nick to join her. Facing Nick, she pulled her knees up to her chest. “Tell me more about Debbie.”

“She’s a waitress at an Italian restaurant. We talked a lot when I ate there. She became my only real friend in Great Falls. At first, she thought that Evangeline meant I was torn between Rachel and you, but that didn’t seem right to me.”

“You were with Rachel when she died.”

“True.” Nick fingered a speck out of the corner of his eye. He really had been with Rachel. How had that happened? Why was so much of life about timing? And luck? He had a sense that, after Great Falls, things were about to change for the better. “Then Debbie thought that Evangeline was trying to tell me that I’ve been between life and death all these years.”

“In the middle.”

“When Rachel died, she could no longer drag me toward life and, instead, tugged me back to the middle, back between life and death.”

“I feel shaky.”

Nick put his arm around Sassa and she rested her head on his shoulder. Touch always calmed her. And him. How did he go so long without touching her? She’d known long before he did that words and ideas were not enough. One of the first of many things he’d learned from her. “That’s how I felt. It was so bad that night that I rushed out of the restaurant.”

“I may follow your lead in a minute.”

“No, no, you definitely want to hear the rest of the story. Okay?”

“It smells like peppermint and lemon in here.”

Nick took a sip of water. The peppermint and lemon: a reminder, a witness. Like Rachel couldn’t miss his graduation. Or rebirth. Like she knew all of her hard work had paid off. “That night, after I left Debbie, I couldn’t sleep. I kept replaying what Evangeline and Debbie had said over and over again. Finally, something clicked. I’d been stuck in between life and death all these years, firmly in the middle. Music, girls, words, movies, even you kept me there. That night I had a choice. Choose life or accept a kind of living death until the real one comes along.”

“You chose life, right?”

“Yes, which for year two of my time in Great Falls meant this.” He handed her a copy of
Songs of Love and Loss
.

Sassa pointed to the picture on the cover of the album. “Is this your cabin?”

“Yes. Do you want to hear the CD now?”

She opened the jewel case and pulled the booklet out. Thumbing through the booklet, she occasionally paused to read a lyric or a liner note. Staring at a picture of Rachel playing guitar, she asked, “Do you have alcohol?”

He cued up the CD and poured her a glass of wine.

She reached over and pulled his hand across her lap, which she sheltered with her hands through the entire album, pressing harder and softer depending on the song, like she had invented her own form of Morse code. She handed Nick her glass after the first listen. “More wine, please. Play it again.”