Wonderland (28 page)

I like Billy Q. He peers intently into every window; he drags us into shops where he engages the shopkeepers in long conversations in Italian about items that look like nothing much to me—a cut-glass pitcher, an oddly shaped clay bowl—but that clearly have great resonance for the two of them. When Billy Q asks questions, the shopkeepers back up warily, narrow their eyes, answer
sotto voce,
spy to spy. He buys nothing. I feel that I am witnessing some sort of devastation, like Sherman’s March, and I try to look at the shopkeepers sympathetically when we leave each store.

We stop for an espresso and are standing at the bar. “Hey,” I say, “what do you think of Little Wars?”

“They blew up kind of fast on that first record. They’re on a big label—I know there are certain expectations there, could be good or bad for them. Everything is so rough now, it’s hard to say. It’s like . . . climate change. No one knows where it’s all going. Nowhere good, I guess.”

The espresso is bracingly bitter. A group of Italian workmen in green jumpsuits tumble in, ranging in age from lithe youth to craggy elder, faces brown from the sun. They jostle and push for midafternoon coffees, laughing and talking. “They asked if we want to open for them in Japan and Australia this fall.”

I study Billy Q’s face for a sign, but he is studying mine. “Do you want to do that?”

“I would lose my job.”

“You have a job? What kind of job?”

“It’s—it doesn’t matter—it’s a job. It pays the rent. They’re not that nice there, they would feel betrayed, and they wouldn’t have me back.”

“Could you get another job?” I wonder if Billy Q has ever said the word “job,” it sounds so strange when he says it, as if he’s saying, “Could you get another yellow-bellied platypus?”

“I don’t know. I guess. I never really, you know, looked for a job. This is the only one I’ve ever had.”

“Do you like it?” Billy Q, bless him, looks deeply interested, as if this is a fascinating conversation. Maybe for him it is. The Italian workmen all leave as quickly as they came in, and the bar goes quiet again.

I frown. “Sometimes. We build things. I like that, I guess.”

“Uh-huh.” Billy nods, and I can tell he is confused, although he is trying to be helpful.

“The point is, well, the point is that—I mean, look, it’s been a while. For me. Let’s be honest. It’s been a while. This tour has done okay, but it hasn’t shattered any records, and I don’t know if the Little Wars audience is our audience, if we even have one. When I’ve looked out at the crowd these past few weeks, I don’t recognize those people. I don’t know who the hell they are. And then with everything else—I’m kind of a mess.”

Billy Q squeezes the lemon rind between his fingers. “Terry knows that band is getting old. They only had hits that one time—that was two records ago. He has to suss out a different crowd, pop is too brutal. That’s why he wants you. He wants the people who remember you, that whole
Whale
moment. He wants your . . . your trace, your vibe. I’m sorry, am I being too blunt? My Queens side is showing. I am
so
my mother.” He smiles. “Anyway, listen, we all think you’re genius, the admiration is real, but I’m just talking demographics. Do you know who they were going to go out with before it fell through? Whether.” He sips his espresso. “I thought that was a bit VH1, but anyway, they split up or something. I’m not sure I love Little Wars as a band, but Terry is a smart dude. He’s thinking of his future.” Billy Q looks at me with the sharp gaze I just saw him turn on the shopkeepers. “I don’t know if that helps. I guess it doesn’t answer the job question.” He leaves the lemon rind in the empty espresso cup. “Tokyo is lovely in the fall.”

Back at the venue, the problems with the channels must have been resolved, because I find everyone at a table in the garden out back, eating a leisurely Italian lunch. I sit down next to Zach, who pours me a glass of red wine. Alicia, barefoot now, says, “Anna, this risotto with the peas is
gorgeous.
You have to try it.”

Some performers say that at every show they pick out a person in the audience, one face, and do the show for that person, who will never know that the entire show was for him or her. Others say that they try to blur the faces behind the stage lights as much as possible and concentrate on who’s on the stage with them, playing for family. Others stay high. Who are you out there in the dark? Where do we meet? To whom is our love addressed? I run from door to door, some tiny, some huge, looking for you. I was playing, that night in Rome, at the venue in the middle of a labyrinth of gardens, for you and you and you. The house was packed. We wrecked it. We went too far, really, we were almost bullying, but the audience loved it. They wanted to be wrecked, maybe it was the full moon. After five encores, shaky-legged and gasping for breath, we stood in silence in the green room, which was an aluminum hut at the back of the garden. Tom took off his hat and poured a bottle of water over his balding head. Boone wept. Alicia grinned. Zach sat down on a bench. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

Flicker, flicker. Out, later, champagne and gelato, it flashes in the long mirror over the bar. Then gone.

S
IMON AND I
walk through the Roman Forum on a hot July day with Maya, who is thirteen, and often dour in a way that mystifies both of us. She is a tall girl with his dusky skin, his hawkish features, and my mother’s flowing way of moving, a grace of which she seems to be entirely unaware and which she doesn’t value. At school in Zurich, where we live, she’s at the top of her class in nearly everything. She’s especially brilliant at mathematics. She says she wants to be an engineer.

Simon pauses, face turned up. He says, “Maya, look at this. This was a temple.” The three broken columns remain, with nothing to hold up but the sky. She takes his hand unselfconsciously, squinting up at the ruin through her glasses.

“It’s still so symmetrical,” she observes. “Were there . . . eight columns?”

Simon, beaming, gesturing, still holding her hand, explains what was there once, what crumbled, what was rebuilt. Sweating in the heat and the rubble—why didn’t I put on sunscreen?—I check the calendar on my phone; Analiese has managed some clever way of color-coding that lets me know at a glance that this is a school event, that an evening event of mine and Simon’s, this an appointment of mine at the dentist, that my swimming class (deep aqua). The surface of my phone looks like Tibetan prayer flags, a brightly colored string of pleasantly productive days and nights. It occurs to me that I have nothing whatsoever to worry about, all the wars are over. This is the prosperous peace. I doubt I’ll ever love Zurich—who could?—but Maya is worth it, I knew that all those years back, lying on the bed that stretched from wall to wall on ratty 19th Street with nothing to my name, but still,
I cannot give you up.
Darling, stay.
Sacrifices had to be made, but those sacrifices were long ago. I suppose I have become European. I know all about Janáček now, and Smetana, too.

I walk over to them and take Simon’s other hand, rub my thumb on his in the gesture that means
I love you.
He kisses my surely reddening forehead. The three of us walk through the ruins, hand in hand in hand, talking about finding a cool spot for lunch.

I
CAME IN
from the rain, annoyed and wet, my thumb pinched from trying to chain my bike up with the heavy, wet lock, because it hadn’t been raining when I’d left home that morning. It was 7
A.M.
; grade school starts early. Stu, at the Arts and Crafts front desk, nodded me in, along with four incandescent sixth-graders in multicolored wellies riding a giggle all the way up the carpeted stairs, past the oil paintings of the school’s founders. I wondered which one might look like me.

“Wet one,” said Stu, our elderly stone lion, in his suit and tie, his milky gaze fixed briefly, sharply on each small person coming in, as if he could actually distinguish one from another.

“Yup.”

“You need an umbrella.”

“I know. I forgot.”

“Weather always changes, Miss Brundage.”

“It does that.”

I pushed open the heavy oak door to the teachers’ lounge with my hip, trying simultaneously to zip up my wet backpack, unclip my jeans leg, and text Jim to meet me at the gate after school if it was still raining in the afternoon. I realized that I’d also forgotten the lunch he’d packed me. “Motherfuck,” I mumbled, tossing the entire wet mess of clip, open lunchless backpack, and phone onto a sofa.

Jamal, the art teacher, drinking coffee by the stained-glass window, said, “Mercy, Anna. Already that bad?” Jamal had several skin tags on his face, a visible paunch, and nearly always wore the same jeans and button-down striped shirt to school, but there was nevertheless something sexy about him, something knowing. I’d been thinking about Jamal a fair amount recently. But what was a thought? Just a thought.

“It wasn’t raining when I left.”

“Sounds like a song.” He smiled at me over his half-glasses.

“Stop.” I poured myself some coffee in the clean, generous, bone-white mug that was waiting for me in the cabinet, added warm milk from the thermos, indulged in a pecan muffin from the ribboned basket on the table. Thursday was pecan muffin day, a treat made by the headmaster’s wife, and they were truly spectacular, dense yet lofty spheres of butter, sugar, and nuts. Since the headmaster’s wife was the heiress to a tire fortune, one didn’t have to feel guilty about gender politics, etc.; the pecan muffins were clearly a ceremonial curlicue, a gift from the Queen to her loyal subjects. I sat down by the fire, took my wet shoes off, and bit in. “These. Are. So. Brilliant.”

“Are you going to the brown bag today?”

“Well, I forgot my brown bag. But who is it again?”

“That violinist, what’s his name, the big Russian guy—Sasha’s father. Just tell Holly in the kitchen—”

“Right.” I wiggled my toes toward the warmth of the fire, took a sip of coffee. “Oh, this helps. This is good. Hey, what happened with your back?”

“Reply hazy, try again later,” Jamal said. “They maybe want to fuse the disk, but I don’t know. I need to read more about it. Apparently a lot of people have problems even after the surgery.”

“Surgery, Jesus. That’s no fun.”

“I’ve been a back person all my life. You know.” Jamal waved a hand. He had beautiful, tapered brown fingers, one with a single, slender gold band. “What?”

“Nothing.” My own fingers—one banded in Oaxacan silver—were sticky from the muffin. I wiped them with a napkin, considered eating another muffin, but, just barely, didn’t. Today was jigsaw day, and I didn’t want to have a sugar crash at the machine. Jamal did have beautiful hands; he often slept in his studio on Canal Street, worked in metal, paper, and string. How long had it been since I’d written a song? I quietly counted on my clean fingertips. Five years, three months. “Did you finish that thing?”

“Which thing?”

“The one with the spinning part.”

“Not yet.” He reached for a muffin, ate it slowly. “I’m still working it out. Damn, these are good.”

The rain pattered against the stained-glass window, leaving the light blue glass sky, the white glass knights, and the dark blue glass river untouched. Onward the glass knights went in their quest, on a perpetually bright day, forever about to pass the same light green and dark green glass tree. A log in the fireplace opened, sparking. My socks were almost dry.

“How old do you think those windows are?” I asked Jamal.

“These?” He touched the one near him appreciatively. “A century or so. Imagine living with this kind of thing, having it in your house.”

“They were rich.”

“Yeah,” said Jamal, “and then they were all dead.” He shrugged. “Do you want to get a drink later?”

I looked at Jamal. He looked at me over his half-glasses. His eyes were brown. The rain rained, but the knights didn’t know it. I put my feet back in my wet shoes. “No,” I said. “I have something I want to work on.” Which is how it is, really—throw the rope out into nothing, hope it holds, starfish down.

W
E TAKE UP
an entire Green Car compartment. Zelda alternately walks and crawls up the aisle, teeter-tottering in her corduroy overalls. Her curly hair is exclamatory. She tips from Terry’s outstretched hand to Kiki’s to Luther’s to Badge’s meaty fingers; when she tumbles, Grant, Terry’s bodyguard, leans from his seat to right her; the guitar techs, Red and Fred, call to her, and she almost runs before, butt high, returning to crawling. Terry’s trainer, José, has taken up two seats to sort out everyone’s respective protein snack; he smiles as Zelda tugboats past. Alicia, coming down the aisle with a violet cardboard bento box, scoops Zelda up and the child burrows into Alicia’s neck.

“She’s in love,” comments Kiki.

Alicia settles with Zelda in a seat, and they share a rice ball that has something purple inside. Zelda turns her small head toward the window, her hands full of rice and purple. The sea appears, disappears behind trees, appears again. “Fish!” says Zelda.

“In the sea,” Alicia agrees.

“Maybe,” murmurs Zach, next to me. “Might glow a little.”

“Shhhh.” I close the composition book, open the footrest, lean back. “This first-class thing is working for me.”

“But we really have to talk to Terry—”

“I know, I know. When we get to Kyoto. I know Tom fucked up. I hate having to fire people.”

“But, you know,” Zach continues, tilting his seat back, “Tokyo kind of blew my mind. It felt like Tomorrowland.”

“And it was so quiet, did you notice that? I’ve never been in such a hushed city.”

“All that light,” Zach says. “It’s like the sound was in the light.”

“I want to go back. I’m not finished.”

“No,” says Zach. “Me, neither.” He taps his feet together restlessly.

I don’t know what we are yet. I suppose that’s always the case, the unknowing, but I feel between us a continual shifting, sliding motion, like a ball rolling first one way then another, the weight tipping unpredictably. In the years between us are worlds of echoes that are different to me than they are to him, different to him than they are to me.
Whale
is one of his, huddled with his bad stoner high school friends in the wrecked house that smelled like gas back in the woods. He spray-painted the lyrics on the walls: “When the wolf found her / she was already waiting . . .” He wanted to get to that planet as fast as possible, and he did. He dropped out of Juilliard to go on the road, which is the kind of choice we have in common. He’s been in those vans, slept on those sofas, gotten clawed by those untamed egos.