Chapter 10 – Music in Another Room
Time flies, time dies, Audrey had once heard. And fly it did. Days turned into weeks, which melted into months. There was no break – no stopping in the city that never slept...in the city of built up dreams and fabulous hopes. No breath or vacation. Nothing but school, the cafe, and painting. When she wasn't doing any of those three, she was only practicing the necessities like eating or sleeping. (But only at fortunate instances.) It wasn't pleasant to the normal person's perspective – of that she was certain. But Audrey, anti-ordinary as she was, somewhat enjoyed the constant stream of being busy. It was that sensation that came at end of each day – the one in which she felt like collapsing, but at the same time brought a wave of tired satisfaction that she could feel physically in her bones - that gave her the most sense of accomplishment. Before she finally let herself fall asleep at night, the knowledge that she hadn't sat idly all day in leisure and daydream about things she couldn't have eased her mind. For in a life of bohemian poverty and fighting to pull one's self up through the ranks by the bootstraps, there was no time for daydreaming. No, there was no time for that.
There was no time for anything, really. There was never any time at all.
It was when she was leaving school and reluctantly entering the Starbucks so conveniently placed around the corner that it was most apparent to her that she was falling behind. She'd stand in line, inching up a step or two with every departing satisfied customer. When it was finally her turn and a confused expression would come over the face of a new employee when she ordered tea instead of White Chocolate Mocha Frappuccino, she'd assure him or her, "You make that. You do. Trust me. I had it the other day." And it was then that she'd think once more about how she'd like to burn the whole place down. That Starbucks. The one further down the street. The two over by her apartment, and then every blessed other one in existence that could process lots of fancy Italian words thrown together to make up a sugary, caffeinated, complicated drink but couldn't understand plain English.
This thought of pure destruction of Starbucks entertained her and rolled around in her mind...at least until she hit the sidewalk. After that, other pressing thoughts filled her head as she ambled to work one hand in coat pocket, one hand clutching the controversial tea. She'd watch people as she walked, observing them, wondering what place they were hurrying to that had to be more pleasant than some crummy waitressing job. She'd see beautiful women and wonder if she should cut her hair like them...beautiful men and wonder if she were spending her time with the right boy. The beautiful things in the window made her wonder if she'd chosen the right future – painting would somehow never afford her the luxury of buying whatever she wanted. Perhaps she should have taken her father's advice and gone into medicine...or engineering. Everything around her made her doubt herself and how much happiness she possessed. All of these things she thought she wanted...this bohemian life she struggled so hard to maintain...was she working her life away for nothing?
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
Having just knocked and knocked loudly, Skittery stood at Jack's door and waited for him to answer. Actually, waiting couldn't be the technically correct word, since he didn't really expect him to be there. He'd dropped by on a whim, but figured it was worth a try. Skittery bit off a hangnail and scuffed his shoes against the old hardwood flooring, worn by the passage of time and many footsteps. Finally, the door opened to reveal a confused looking Jack Kelly, clad in only blue boxer shorts and a furrowed brow. "Hey man," Jack said in a surprised, somewhat befuddled manner.
Skitts glanced around Jack and into the apartment as quickly and as discreetly as he could manage, looking for a sign of whatever action he'd disrupted. Not seeing anything remarkable or suspicious, he arched his eyebrows and hesitantly said, "Uhhhh, am I interrupting something Jack? Because I can leave and let you get back to whatever it was you were...um...doing."
Jack stared back, hollow eyed and confused. Skittery motion downward with his eyes and Jack's gaze followed his lead. With one quick glance, he suddenly became very aware of what Skittery had meant by such a comment. "Oh!" he began, hastily trying to think of some sort of explanation for his slow start and lack of clothing. "No, um, I was just changing and well, never made it to getting dressed again." It had come out less convincing than he intended, his voice kind of downward spiraling from eager defense to flat monotone as the truth came out. But luckily, Skittery cut him a break by issuing a joke instead of any further inquiry.
"Uh huh, I'm sure that's it. Where's Audrey? You hiding her in the closet or something? Is she wearing her lacy black underwear?"
Jack scoffed. "Shut the fuck up, man. She's not here. There's no one here but me and the piano." He had told the truth - there really was no one there but Jack and the piano, but that was enough for him. It, alone, filled the apartment in ways that a dozen warm bodies could not.
With Audrey doing everything at once, the time she spent with Jack was few and far between. But altruistic and forgiving, he didn't hold it against her. He was busy himself, hoping and dreaming of earning his scholarship and working on assigned school work. In the moments that he would have been usually spending time with her, he made love to his piano instead, writing lyrics inspired by her presence that lingered in his apartment long after she had been gone. When he touched his piano, he could imagine that he was touching her, delicately at first, and then with tender force...his touch radiating through her body and causing her to sing. The words he sang were to her, even though her ears could not always hear. Jack was glad her ears could not hear. He was further behind than where he imagined he should be at this point, and he want any further embarrassment that would be caused when she certainly laughed at his unpracticed hand and tongue. Once, when the instrument was being particularly difficult, he'd even slipped and called it "Audrey" out loud. Laughing at himself after, he, with a sigh, swore that he'd get out and converse with real people more instead of locking himself away with the old upright and mediocre songs to play on it.
On his ride home on the train that day, Jack found a melody stuck in his ears and mind. One that he could not forget or hold onto long enough to conquer it. He hummed bars of it to himself, as he wandered his way through it and set it to the rhythm of the pulsating static sound of the train and its fuzzy inconstant lights. He had to entertain it the entire way home, had to keep playing it over and over again in his head with his fingers tapping against the window in accompaniment, so that he wouldn't lose it. The ride seemed longer than usual with the song stuck within him and by the time he was climbing the stairs back up to the surface and hitting the sidewalk with his sneakers, lyrics were forming. Words to his melody, he tongued them over and over, wrapping his lips around the mouthed traces of a perfect lead in to the music. He walked in rhythm to his mental melody, repeating the verses to himself over and over, arranging and rearranging them until they fit his intended pattern.
The door to his apartment was opened with haste, and he threw everything to the floor once inside and fled toward his piano. Pencil behind ear and then to paper, he molded the melody into a full fledged progression. Jack's fingers raced over the keys, sometimes tripping and erring in his excitement and race to capture a fleeting moment of inspired song and verse. Lyrics arose in staggered couplets..."I can't imagine all the places that you go, and the people that you know..." He struggled to write them down fast enough, so that they wouldn't filtered off into the atmosphere as quickly as they came.
"Is someone getting the best of you...best of you...constant blue...Is someone getting the best of you and your shade of constant blue?" From these lines of nothing, Jack was weaving a song of something. He didn't know if anyone would ever get it, if anyone would ever see the deeper meaning in it all. Yet, he could tell already that what he was crafting truly meant something to him, and if he could find the deeper meaning, he'd count it a success.
"I'm awake when I should be sleeping
Counting stars with double meanings
When the quiet only seeks to hide you
But when you come home
It's amazing, the look in your eyes
Like you could save me
But you never will try
You spill all alive and brand new...
If you've lost your faith in love and music
Look up, it's right before you"
He was really getting it. Working at it and finally transcribing his jumbled thoughts and feelings into something tangible. Into a song – which he had not accomplished for years it seemed. He'd had a bit of creative flow a few weeks ago – something that turned into the beginning of a song. Something he thought would pan out to a breakthrough. But it had only turned out to be a one night fluke. It had retreated as quickly as it had come, leaving him with that same half finished song that he'd been holding onto for years. The only difference had been the few extra lyrics he'd tacked onto the end. But now...yes now, the inspiration that had left him – the music that had abandoned him was finally truly coming back to him in droves. As he played and scribed his music down feverishly, Jack felt as though he were back in the place where he belonged. As if he had come home.
After nearly two hours of sorting out the notes in his head and arranging them into beautiful sense, finally it left him...he found it hard to think. He hit a wall in his brainstorming. The clothes confined him. He'd gotten up and stripped them off, with the intention of changing into a pair of shorts and an old t-shirt. But then the music gripped him again and he raced back to the instrument to bang out a few more notes.
Then there was the knock at the door. Jack cursed at it under his breath and wondered just who the fuck could it be.
"The piano counts as a person?" Skittery asked, with eyebrows raised accordingly.
Indeed it did to Jack. He referred to it as a 'she' whenever it came up in his mind or in conversation. The piano was a woman, and a much older woman whom Jack considered to be much wiser than in a good many ways. "These days it does. It acts just like a woman. Temperamental as fuck and everything."
"We'd better not tell your girl then. She might get jealous, hearing she's been replaced an' all."
"Yeah..." Jack mused, his voice trailing off in the end as his mind tried to wrap itself around Audrey. She just might.
Jack saw Audrey approximately twice a week. They'd go out to dinner, catch a movie, and then retreat back into Jack's apartment after. Inside, they'd disappear from the rest of the world...sink into their cave of refuge from the ugly outside world.. Kisses were quickened to make way for the sex – the beautiful sex that served as a cap to their days...a brief, sweet release. Afterward, Jack would hold her and tuck the sheets around her shoulders. He'd speak to her softly about his week and ask about hers. She only mumbled short answers in return. Soon, the wear and tear of too many things to do was too much to bear. She'd then let her heavy eyelids fall finally shut and in Jack's arms, she drift off into a heavy slumber. Sometimes, he'd stay awake and watch her – click back on his lamp and study or write papers. Watch how the neon of the light outside his window fell across her face. But most times, he simply shrugged her fatigue off as something that was beyond his doing or control and snuggled in beside her to sleep himself.
With the fatigue, came the strange behaviour. On more than one occasion, after Jack had given up and simply settled for sleeping beside her and nothing more, he'd awoken to find her awake and hard at work - flitting around the apartment or sitting in a corner with her sketchbook and an intent look on her face. The first instance of it, he particularly remembered – he'd awakened, but only half way. In his semi-slumber, he'd stretched an arm her way to drape it over her for comfort, but instead of a warm body, he found only the wrinkled sheets she'd left behind. Though sleep-heavy eyes, he jerked his head up and glanced around as best he could, trying to make sense of the sights around him. Blinking twice, and then once more, the fuzzy picture around him was coming into focus and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Audrey dart in and out of the room. He opened his mouth to speak, but what came out was more raspy breath then words. Clearing his throat, he called out to ask her 'just what the hell she was doing at that hour." "Cleaning up," was her response as she jetted past the doorway once more. Cleaning up? Jack was perplexed...why would anyone feel the need to do some desperate tidying up at two nineteen in the morning? If Jack weren't so tolerant and so aware of exactly how Audrey was Audrey he would have thought something more drastic was up. Yet, he shrugged it off and mumbled into her pillow to just turn on every light in the house and bang and crash some more things around until everything was neat and she was happy.
But more often than not, he'd stay awake and she'd sleep solidly. Often, an amusing thought or anecdote would manifest itself in Jack's mind late at night. He'd look up from a book or a paper and laugh out loud. Then he'd reach over to tap Audrey on the shoulder and share the bit of information, but he found he didn't have the heart to wake her. The green eyed monster of irrational jealousy would rear its ugly head and whisper in Jack's ear. He'd think of shaking her awake and gently, but firmly explaining to her how he felt he was undoubtedly getting the short end of the stick. But his unfailing logic, rationality, and ultimately adoration for Audrey slew the monster every time. And so, he'd use the hand he wished to wake her with to stroke her cheek or brush back her hair and he'd understand. There'd be plenty of time for talking later, he assured himself and buried his mind back into his studies, gulping down selfishness and jealousy with unnoted heroism. Jack would allow himself to admit that he did feel a little cheated, not by her but by the circumstances surrounding her. The jobs and projects and obligations that held her captive. But more than that, he pitied her and empathized. It was one shitty situation and how could he help but feel sorry for her? She was so tired whenever she was with him, yet she'd fight as long as she could, without complaint. She worked, she got things done, and still, she came home to him to give him that last little piece of herself that she reserved only for him. How could Jack not love and appreciate her for it?
Snapping out of his Audrey induced daydream, Jack cleared his throat and looked at his friend pointedly. "Come off it, Skitts. What do you want? What brings you all the way down here to my hellhole?"
Skittery leaned against the doorframe with ease. He took a glance over Jack's shoulder and into the apartment. "Don't you even want to ask me in or anything? I mean, I did come all the way down here in hopes of catching a glimpse of Jack Kelly in his blue plaid boxers. Makes my heart go all pitter patter when I think of it." He covered his heart with his left hand and feigned a dreamy expression. "Looks like I lucked up because now that I have...whew! I think I need to come inside and sit down. Maybe have an iced tea to cool off."
Jack cocked his head to the side and licked his lips. "You know Skitts," he said in a thick, thoughtful voice. "I've always questioned your orientation. I mean the eyeliner really had me goin' for a while there, but I, uh, figured it was just some stage thing that I wouldn't understand. But this...yeah, man...this clears it all up for me. If you want though, I'm sure I could stay in 'em all day. Or you could just give me a minute to finish gettin' dressed."
"Or you could just let me in for fuck's sake?" Skittery added lightly in the same tone, glancing upward at Jack and shrugging. Jack, in turn, stepped aside and used his outstretched hand to point the way into the room. "Ya know, Jack," Skitts continued, pausing at the door to give his friend a very obvious once over. "I think you should wear them all day. Blue's your colour. I see that now. Mmm hmmm. I think I packed my eyeliner in my man purse. I could go in your bathroom, put that on, and then we would be all set." He pushed past the taller boy and stepped into the room, breathing out a low whistle as he did. "Gee Jack, I love what you've done to the place since I've been here last. Those piles of books and papers everywhere really match your coke-can decor. And, the dust is a lovely accent. You've really been putting your inner female interior designer to work, haven't you?"
"You know something Skitts," Jack paused - for dramatic purposes only - "You've got it exactly right. It is the feminine instincts coming out in me. I've always wanted to be a flagrantly gay slut." He grinned as he slammed the door behind Skittery with one forcefully well executed push. "Ah yes, my tres chic decor...isn't it tragically bohemian and so very cutting edge?"
"It is," was Skittery's answer. He whirled melodramatically to face Jack, a seductive, faux vixen look dripping with pomp and sarcasm painted over his face. "But then," he breathed in a low, throaty, halting voice. "...aren't we all in this town?" He stared for a moment with longing, searching eyes...then threw his head back and howled at his own antics. Voice returning to its masculine, even tone, and taking on his normal 'live and let die' demeanour, he said, "So, you feel like going to the pub around the corner and grabbing a beer or somethin'?"
Jack looked around at his apartment: the sheets of music scattered on the floor, the pencil lying across the bench, the clothes on the floor, and the piano. His true answer was no. Inwardly, he sighed in remorse at the thought of just leaving his first creative streak in ages to rot. But he heard himself saying aloud, "Yeah, sure. Let me just get dressed and I'll be ready to go." Jack set off into his bedroom to throw on a pair of jeans and a tee shirt. As he stuck his feet into his worn Chuck Taylors and grabbed his jacket, he said. "Is it just you and me or are some of the other guys coming?" By guys, he meant his friends...none of which he'd really seen much lately. Skittery was the only one he came in frequent contact with, and then Jack knew that the only reason why was due to the fact that his band played at the Spanish Moon.
"Well," Skittery said with a heavy shrug, "I've been over to Spot's to invite him along and all, but the bastard's doing what he usually does and was occupied."
"You mean one of the only two things that he does?"
"Yeah. Today it was the girl. And I have a feeling from the looks of things, that he does the girl more than he does the paintings." Skittery smirked.
"Well, to hell with him. Let's leave him in his Bat cave to rot with Vicki Vale and his grapple belt and stun gun." Jack waved his hand, dismissing the whole thought of Spot as he slipped on his jacket. "He'll sink in his misery after they make a few billion kids or he dies from paint poisoning. Either way, I don't care. He'll come to his senses sooner or later. Probably later knowin' Spot an' all." He turned to Skittery with expectantly raised eyebrows. "You ready? Cause I'm ready."
"I came here ready, Jacky-boy," Skitts replied. "You were the one caught off guard and making out with your piano in blue boxers."
"You're full o'talk, you know that, fucker?" Jack said as he slammed the door behind him, not bothering to lock it.
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
After classes and before work, Audrey more often than not found herself walking the familiar blocks to Jack's apartment. She'd start on her route knowing fully that he would not be there, for she had a few awkwardly timed breaks in which Jack did not. Yet, she found that in just being there and lingering in his absence, she felt somewhat closer to him. If life and work did not allow her physical presence, she would seek the intimacy that came from inhabiting the same space with things left behind. As she turned her key in the old lock and walked in, she ran her hand along the wooden structure of his old piano. She sat on the bench, still clad in coats and bags, scarf still wound around her neck, and played three high register notes with gloved fingers. Sighing, she imagined him up late at night, pounding away on the piano and making the music that she could not. A fanciful daydream entered her head – one of she and Jack in a life they had not yet lived. In her mind's eye, she saw him walking through the door, home from work. She would be in the guestroom they'd converted to a studio and would be painting in such a trance-like state that she would not have heard him come in. And he wouldn't bother her. No, he'd head straight for his piano, and she'd listen fondly, her ears pricking with his presence told by music in another room.
His phone rang, chirping long and loudly and jogging her from her sweet little fantasy. She sighed and closed the cover to the piano, putting dreams so long and far away out of her mind for a time in which they could not be achieved. As the phone persisted, she undressed, unsnaking the scarf from around her neck and prying off gloves. All of these, including her coat, she draped over a chair and placed her bag down on its corresponding table. Upon the table, two lone fortune cookies remained, still wrapped in plastic from Chinese take out two nights previous.
Audrey turned the cookie over in her hand. Its cellophane wrapper crackled beneath the brush of her forearm. She purposefully slid her thumb along and into the crevice and using her right hand as leverage snapped its shell into two halves with a definitive crack. Discarding one side onto the table, she plucked the strip of paper from its center.
Jack leaned back against the arm of his couch, shoveling another bite-full of Lo Mein into his mouth. Clad in a white undershirt and blue sweatpants, he was barefoot. Scratching the back of his leg with his right toenail, he lifted himself up a bit – craning his neck slightly, and trying to peer over her hands and read the paper they held. "What does it say?" he asked, impatiently, still chewing.
She scrunched her nose as she read its message, brushing her too-long bangs out of her eyes and then running her thumb over its inked words. "It says," she told him, "Love truth, but pardon error." Audrey rolled her eyes as she popped one side of the cookie into her mouth and thoughtfully crunched upon it as she raised her eyebrows and shrugged in Jack's direction.
"How appropriate."
"Rubbish," Audrey said though a mouth full of cookie crumbles. She waved her hand as if shoving any meaning the message could have had out of her way. "What does yours tell you?"
"I don't know," he said, grinning through his own mouthful. "I haven't opened it yet. I'm not as impatient as some people."
"Shut up," Audrey returned. "I can't help it if I have things to do besides sit here and shovel takeout into my mouth."
"Oh yeah?" Jack asked, in a seemingly knowing voice as he stabbed a piece of sauced chicken from another box with the end of a chopstick. "What have you got to do? Name something."
"Well, like paint. Study. And I really have to go back to my apartment sometime so I can clean the dump of a place. It's really getting bad. I mean, Ray's never there and when she is, she's a mess. So..." Audrey sighed. "I get nothing done when I spend weekends over here. I like it, Jack...I do. But I've got a lot to do."
Jack nodded. He understood. Mostly. "That's all your usual stuff. You do it all the time. Don't you ever get finished?"
"No."
"You got a shitty life then, Audrey, if those are the only things you get to do all the time."
Audrey shrugged. So be it, she thought. She was only doing what she thought she had to. She looked at her boyfriend with resignation in her eyes. He was still eating away semi-happily, but his attention had refocused on the television instead of her. Jack's TV set was older than he was, the front of it paned in a flat sheet of glass and attached at the corners with plastic pins. There was a special remote to go with it that took a 9 volt and only a 9 volt battery. He fiddled with it, languidly pressing its buttons as channels were flipped in pursuit of something worthy to watch. She could feel her lip begin to curl. "What do you do all the time?" Audrey asked him, her eyes narrowing. "Study? Watch the television? Play poker?"
"Yeah, that and a whole lot more..." Jack mumbled distractedly back at her.
She would have attempted to challenge him with a request for an example of just what he had to do...if she didn't already know the answer. Audrey knew she was wrong. Jack worked hard bartending and interning at a paper in Midtown. Adding school on top of that was almost like adding insult to injury. He worked almost as much as she did, but with dedication and not a moment of time wasted, he managed to get it all down in a relatively small amount of time. No, she knew better than to try to bring it up against him. She knew she would lose if he so happened to cite her inclinations toward attention deficit approach when it came to her own work. Jack was efficient and no-nonsense about his work...she was only a lackadaisical daydreamer who took a lot of breaks and couldn't hold a steady thought in her head.
"Stop it, will you?" Jack said, now focused on her face and not the television.
"Stop what?" was Audrey's answer.
"Worrying. Worrying about how you're not good enough. How you don't work hard enough. How you're wasting your time by sitting here for a few minutes and doing something like feeding yourself so that you don't starve. Here, have some noodles. They'll make you feel better...or at least prevent you from dying of starvation." Jack transferred his weight from his back to his knees as he leaned over to feed Audrey another bite.
She chewed obediently. Chewed and scowled. "How do you do that?" she asked.
"Do what?"
"Know exactly what I'm thinking."
Jack grinned, obviously pleased with himself. "Well, you're easy." He noticed that her scowl of dissatisfaction had quickly turned to one of annoyance with the utterance of his comment. So, he swiftly changed gears. "And I'm just good at reading people, I guess it's a poker thing, you know? You learn to pick up on small details because even the smallest twitch of the mouth or slump of the shoulders can mean everything." He threw his chopsticks into his half full takeout box and discarded the box onto the floor, in search of something sweeter. Jack cracked open his own fortune cookie and read its pearls of wisdom. "'Always have faith, hoping for those things which seem hopeless and impossible..' Well, that was useless..." He tossed the scrap of paper into his box and stretched his arms up over his head. One came to rest on the armrest of the sofa, onto which he propped his chin in his hand and looked at her through half lidded eyes of obvious fatigue. "Would you like me to read you less?"
"Yes. I would most certainly like you to read me less."
"Why? Does that scare you?"
Did it scare her? It most certainly did. In oh so many terrifying little ways. "Yes," she answered. "Yes, because it feels like I have no mystery left. And well, honestly...I like to hide...everything."
"Well, maybe you shouldn't," came his quick solution.
She sighed, reminded of the night's work she had ahead of her by one brief comment about what she shouldn't do (like waste time). "Yeah...maybe I should or shouldn't do a lot of things." Audrey reached behind the sofa's arm and grabbed the book she'd thrown there when the awkward teenage Chinese delivery boy had come knocking on their door, carrying two takeout boxes and the smell of Red Flower with him. She returned to her previous sitting position, but this time, held the book up in front of her face so that Jack could see only her eyes up of her face.
"You're no fun," Jack told her, retrieving his half emptied box from the floor...a renewed interest in eating suddenly piqued by talk of work. "Relax. Have some more Lo Mein." With that, he twisted a mangled pile of noodles onto his chopsticks and leaned toward her, dangling the mess of them over her book. "Open your mouth or I'm going to drop them on the book," he commanded.
She groaned, but opened her mouth – into which he less than gracefully shoved his chopsticks' holdings. She chewed reluctantly, a disgruntled look upon her face. "There. Are you happy now?" she asked.
"Kinda" was the answer. He took another bite for himself and then surveyed her book. "What are you reading that's more interesting than Chinese takeout?"
"The History of 20th Century Design. And it's not more interesting – it's just more mandatory." She closed the book and stood up. "I'm going in the other room. I can't concentrate with your chewing and comments every minute and a half."
Jack curled his lip and reached for a balled up napkin. Rearing back his arm, he flung it at her face and said, "Oooooh, so studious. Look who's boring now!"
"Shut up, Jack Kelly. You're still not over that, are you?" Audrey asked, bending over to collect the napkin and the papers she had dropped whilst defending herself from his sudden attack. Straightening to her full posture, she continued, "And I'll have you know that I'm not doing this because I want to appear studious in your eyes. I'm doing this because I have to. And you study all the time too. So, don't you give me that."
"I don't fucking study all the time. I just do that because you're always busy and I have to have something to do while I'm sittin' in your room watchin' you paint. Also, I have to study so much because I have a scholarship that I'm trying to get, thank you."
"And I have one I'm trying to maintain," Audrey called out over her shoulder as she went into his bedroom and disappeared from sight.
Audrey presently wandered back into his bedroom once more. She flung herself down upon his low lying bed and rolled onto her back. Languidly, she stared up at the water stains' brown puddled remnants and began to properly detach herself from the world. Jack's apartment was like a time warp to Audrey. A time warp that sucked both time an energy from her. Lacking an easel or any other means to be productive, she found herself indulging in hours of mindless TV watching. She held the remote in one hand and a cigarette in another, blindly flipping channels. With no cable or added extras, the only thing tolerable Audrey found she could watch was the news programs. Even they were not so tolerable when she thought about it. Yet, she started at them blankly, half hearing and half seeing what they offered to her, but glad for the rest from work. The only things she saw and heard from the anchors, reporters, and like staff were countless stories highlighting the economic recession and the sluggish job market. Coupled with bits of the weather and the pseudo war's aftereffects thrown in, its message was a bleak one. What did it tell her that she had to look forward to? Nothing but less money, a stagnant job market, more innocent deaths, and no sign of rain. It was all very depressing and Audrey felt her spirits sink whenever she happened to land upon such a news program. How could she help herself? Already tired as hell, she found she didn't quite possess the resolve to ignore it all and carry on with an ignorantly blissful life. Nor did she have the energy to be that hopeful. In a world that didn't have room for teachers and doctors...those who make the world go round as it did, what room could be found for an art major who didn't paint so very well anyway. With each hour of it that she subjected herself to, she only became closer to getting accustomed to the thought that the only future she'd have...as an art major...was out on the streets.
When Audrey got sick enough of watching moving pictures of the world's demise, she tried studying. She flipped through her art history text book, but all she found there was more poor, oppressed natives rising up against tyrants only to end in a gruesome death.
Touché God, she thought to herself, and closed the book. Disgusted and a bit worn down, that day, Audrey left from Jack's a little earlier than usual. The walls seemed to be closing in on her and she had to get out and do something with her life...even if it meant just walking the streets for a little while longer than needed to get to her destination. She headed toward the restaurant, but when she arrived, found herself at least forty minutes ahead of schedule. As she stood outside the door, trying to force herself to go inside, Audrey had no desire to enter. She'd have to go in soon enough and once she was inside, she knew that she'd only long once more to be outside the door. Why subject herself to forty more minutes of wanting to escape?
The only problem with resolving not to go in for a while was her lack of anything to do for the time being. Slightly against her better judgment, Audrey turned on her heel and took a detour around the restaurant. A week previous, April had told her of a boy who lived in the neighborhood – a boy who could get things if one so happened to want them. There'd been no insinuation on the part of April that Audrey should go there or acquire such things from him. She'd merely mentioned him as an indirect part of a conversation they were having about a friend of a friend and her bad luck. The boy's name was supposedly Eddie. He was said to have the face of a young Montgomery Clift with a good heart to match, and aside from his talent and knack for product retrieval was quite a normal citizen. Audrey wasn't sure of how she'd feel when she got there, but with extra time to kill and a heavy heart and mind, she couldn't think of a reason why she shouldn't at least go and find out.
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
There was only so many playings of "London Calling" that one could take, Audrey had decided, before its riffs started to bounce off of the enclosing walls and reverberate one's brains to bits. Holed up in her room, under the guise of 'working' Audrey laid on her shag rug and blew smoke rings up to the ceiling. Yes, there was definitely a limit to the amount of times it could be played in one sitting. With a yawn and a groan, she rolled over and snuffed out her cigarette in the handmade ashtray to her side and then stretched back out, feeling her bones crack and pop with as they were elongated. She scratched her head and then rolled up herself upright. The world slightly spun with her newfound verticality as she stumbled over to the CD player and shut off The Clash on a downbeat. The clock read eight twenty six, so technically, she should be hungry. But was she hungry? The more she thought about it, the more she decided that she might be. So, to the kitchen it was, decidedly. As she pulled back her curtain to make an exit wide enough to fit through, her first glimpse of the world outside her room led to surprise. Purely by chance and coincidence, Audrey found Ray to be home.
There Raven stood, in the kitchen, bent over the counter. Her weight rested upon her arm and the palm that held her chin as she chewed on peanut butter topped crackers and perused the latest issue of Vogue with casual interest. She was so effortless even then. Even shortened with shoes off and hair in a pony tail, she carried herself with enough nonchalance to be graceful in rolled up sweat pants. Audrey couldn't help but feel her jaw set tightly when she spotted her. She was jealous of how one could be that inexplicably magnificent without even trying.
Audrey walked into the kitchen with socked feet. She opened the refrigerator, looking for what, she didn't know. But obviously not finding that unknown something she sought, she curled her lip in disgust and shut the door just as she had opened it. Maybe she wasn't really hungry anyway, but tricked into thinking so by the passage of time. As she passed by Ray on the way back to her bedroom, Ray offhandedly said the greatest four words Audrey had heard in a long time. "I paid the rent."
Audrey stopped in her tracks and turned to face Ray. It was too good to be true. Wasn't it? It was far, far too good to be true. She waited several seconds for Ray to break into a smile or inform her that she was only joking. But Raven only chewed silently and read. Therefore, with a cocked eyebrow, Audrey hesitantly asked, "All of it?"
"Yep," said Ray, shoving another cracker into her mouth and flipping the page of her magazine.
"Hmm," Audrey said lightly, nodding. She supposed that even Ray could surprise her sometimes. Feeling slightly less heavy with the burden of rent lifted off of her shoulders for another thirty days, Audrey set about returning to her own room. Yet, as she was walking away, Ray stopped her.
"Why aren't you with your boy?" she asked.
Audrey turned around. "Well, I could say the same thing for you. I mean, since you are with him...like every waking moment of the day. Inseparable is the term I'd use...if it wasn't so trendy these days." She flinched. Ray had just done her a much owed favour by taking care of the rent and here she was, flinging snarky comments at her in repayment. Damn her sharp tongue and dormant mind.
But Ray only smiled in return. "Well," she said, swallowing and dusting the crumbs off of her fingers. "There's only so much of a person you can take. Besides, I was starting to miss our old dump. Who wants a palace when you can have a third story walk up with exquisitely tacky paneling?" She patted the wall on said paneling and looked around fondly. "But really...where is your boy tonight?"
"I don't know. Maybe he's tired of me," was Audrey's answer.
"Oh, pshaw. Don't be so humble, Audrey. It really doesn't become you. S'just like you wearing your stripes and plaid. God awful." She rolled her eyes and closed her magazine with a snap of her wrist. "Anyway, are you stupid? Jack adores you. You should see how moony eyed he gets whenever he talks about you. I wouldn't be able to stand him if I didn't know that he was really just a normal, decent, smart boy with a serious case of in love-ness. He'd marry you in an instant if you wanted him to."
"But we don't always get what we want. Sometimes we have to do what's best for us instead," Audrey replied, matter of factly.
"What's with all of this cryptic bullshit? Why can't you just have what you want for once? Don't you think you've earned it? Oh, I forget. I'm talking to Audrey the martyr. We've got to toil on into eternity so we can meet some sort of holy ideal. And then, when we realize that it can never happen, we'll sacrifice ourselves on a cross for the faith."
"I'm not a fucking martyr."
"Oh yeah? What's your problem then?" Ray's tone and deliverance were a challenge that matched the wiser-than-thou look in her eyes. She had squared off her stance, and now stood with arms crossed over her chest, shorter than Audrey, but looking her dead in the eye. The very tilt of her head demanded a damn good answer...one that Audrey feared she did not have.
A heavy sigh was her first defense, followed by the nervous twisting of a stray lock of hair. "I don't know," she said, her voice more resigned breath than volume. "I just feel like maybe it's too good to be true sometimes. I mean, I'm pretty busy with school and work, and when I do finally find a shred of time after ignoring him for days sometimes, he's just so welcoming. So understanding. I feel like I'm starting to get used to that and maybe take it for granted. Jack's so easy. There's nothing wrong with him, and there's everything wrong with me. When I look at myself and realize how much time I waste, it makes me sick. It makes me sick to know that I'm not where I should be. There's so much I want to do that I just don't do. It's frustrating. I just want everything. Everything."
Raven had watched Audrey splay out the workings of her mind, as one with a serious case of artistic frustration only could. But when she came to the part about wanting everything, Ray felt the need to cut her off. "Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing." She watched as Audrey stopped speaking and simply looked at her with bewilderment. "Don't look at me like that. I'm not a genius. It's Sylvia Plath." And then, with a shrug, Raven went just as easily back into her magazine as she was before. "Look it up if you don't believe me," Ray said, turning to an article on the new spring line of handbags.
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
Audrey pulled back the curtain to her room a little more harshly than she intended to. As she drew it back, she heard a slight rip and pull and then a part of it fell to the floor, safety pin latches having come undone. She didn't make a move to fix it, only grunted and wrinkled her nose at the sad crumpled display on the floor it had become. She made a straight, or as straight as she could manage, course for her bed. Ambling through the dark and not really being able to see anything that was not two feet in front of her, she tripped over a wayward shoe and cursed out loud. It didn't matter, for there was no one home but her. There was never anyone home but her...for it seemed that Ray had taken up permanent residence at her boyfriend's house. This was all well and good for Audrey – one less distraction to come barging in and ruining the flow of a painting. (That is, if there ever was any flow to her paintings. There certainly had been none lately. It would have been a lie for Audrey to say that she didn't fear that it would never come back to her either.)
The smell of paint, usually invisible and undetectable to her used-to-it nose now was grossly apparent and particularly acrid to boot. It coursed through her nostrils and inflamed them. Audrey furrowed her brow and rolled her eyes. At that moment, stumbling though the dark with a nose full of paint and an unclear path, she couldn't help wanting to never paint again. Though, she realized that when morning came and everything was less tragic and more lucid, she'd probably change her mind.
She'd come back from open mic night at the coffeehouse Ryan was so proud of. She'd felt near awful for going, especially after telling Jack that she couldn't see a movie with him because she had to paint. She did have to paint...the coffeehouse was somehow just a slight buck in her plans when she felt she'd have to take a break or kill someone.
"Hey."
The voice was warm and familiar. Masculine too. Audrey took one sideways glance up from her painting to see Ryan Donmoor standing in front of her. It wasn't an uncommon thing, Ryan always set up two easels down from her. A double major in photography and painting, he was often one of those boys who was all too good at everything that he attempted. Audrey would have hated him, if she had not found him so charmingly cute when he smiled...as he was smiling that instant.
"Aloha, Ryan," Audrey said, exchanging the previously perplexed expression for one of a more welcoming nature. "What brings you all the way over here to our little paradise in the classroom?"
Ryan chuckled. Just as he always chuckled. "I came to see what marvel you had come up with this week," he replied simply. "I didn't come to class the other day. Wednesday, I think it was. And well...ha... I was worried that I'd missed something in the fabulous workings of Audrey Nellwyn."
"No," Audrey stated. "I'm afraid it's only the same dull thing as always."
"You're too hard on yourself," was his reply. "Here..." He scooted around her easel and came to stand behind her. Hand stroking the stubble upon his chin, he examined her half completed work as though he were analyzing some great masterpiece in the Louvre. "I think," he said after a long while, "That you just need to put a little blue in your light right there." He pointed to a particularly bright white section of the canvas. "So that the light's not so hard...so that it's integrated and harmonized with the rest. Otherwise, I'd say that you've got it covered. You're always so good at this. How do you do it?"
Audrey practically snorted at that comment. Good? No, she the biggest false start there ever was. The only way she produced anything semi-worth looking at was to amble around with her paintbrush and just paint everything to death until it looked like something. There was no grace about her clumsy strokes or corrected colours. Not at all. "I don't know," she responded, faking an air of indifferent confidence. "It just comes out. I just lift my hand and pow! There it all is in all of its glory. I just come to class to make others feel bad."
Ryan hung out at a little coffeehouse down the street that doubled as a music venue on Tuesday and Friday nights. He'd often invite Audrey to come down and have a cup of something with him, but she always refused him by saying that she was busy or otherwise engaged. He had two strikes against him already – he was a guitarist and an art boy. Two things she vowed she'd never touch again. His third strike, she often mused, was that for an art boy, he didn't have a good enough eye to see that her work was rubbish. There. One, two, three: Ryan had struck out. But why did she still always look forward to the little stroll he'd take over to her easel. Why did she nearly flirt with him every time she opened her mouth to speak to him? It'd gone on for a year. Ryan had been in two classes with her the previous semester. They'd talked yes. Flirted, perhaps. But Audrey's vow to keep everything single and unattached closed her off to him. So no coffeehouse for her – no matter how much he begged.
Yet, hours later, she found herself sitting at a table in the corner with Ryan by her side in the dark, dank, smoky atmosphere of the coffeehouse slash wine bar. She wasn't sure exactly how she had gotten there...exactly how she agreed. But he'd been persuasive and persistent, so Audrey agreed. Her reasons were mostly that if she relented and went once, he'd leave her alone about it. However, there was a tiny part of her that really did want to go, if only to find out what all the fuss was about and to sit to the left of the enigmatic and lethally witty Ryan. Audrey had felt mildly uncomfortable upon arrival – as anyone would, biding time amongst strangers and one boy who was too easy around her to be only interested in 'friend.' Ryan casually tossed smiles her way as they listened to the optimistically jaded lyrics of "Larissa Larissa' and bought her the Italian wines the artistic crowd was accustomed to drinking– those masterfully simple subtle tastes with cleverly complicated names that Audrey rose her glass to match his toasts in jest. Then you could be the remedy and I could be the enemy and we could go and live as nothing.
"It's odd living here," Audrey told him, after perhaps one too many glasses of wine.
Ryan downed his third and placing the glass onto the table, fingered down its stem and asked her, "And why's that?"
"I don't know." She sighed a deep sigh that allowed her to catch her breath, clear her head, and collect her thoughts into a cohesive, expressive sentence. "It's as though my life here has nothing to do with the life I used to live while I was still at home. Things are remarkably different. Everything back home so familiar and so comfortable and I was so well versed in it that I could almost do no wrong. And of course, as is the nature of things like that, I became bored in it and used to dream and dream and dream of leaving it. Now that I have and I live here...where everything is like some grand discovery or some statement of independence for me – where I have to constantly relearn the language of what I once took to be familiar, I don't know. It's like England and my life there was just some dream I had of a place and time apart from me. I don't know how I strayed so far away from it that I have to think about it like that now."
"Well, you do wax philosophical when you've had too much to drink," Ryan mused. "Maybe I should drag you out of those studios and get you drunk more often because you're so articulate and deep thinking when wine's controlling your mind."
Audrey laughed, though she didn't think that it was very funny.
"You're here because you want to be, obviously," Ryan told her and passed her a joint with ease, like he expected her to take it. Like he knew she would.
She was somewhere between still floating and coming off of her cloud. Her head ached slightly and everything was hazy and blurred around the edges. Audrey reached her still unmade bed, finally, and flopped down upon it, still clad in coat and shoes. Lazily, she unwrapped the scarf from around her neck and allowed it to still drape over her shoulders and onto her quilted bedcover. She brushed her bangs back off of her skin and rubbed at her itching, burning nose. Covering her eyes with the back of her hand, she was too tired and everything else was too blurry to touch, much less to get up and try to put right at such a late hour. She glanced over at the red numbers on her glowing alarm clock display. It was three oh five, precisely, and Audrey Nellwyn was thorough tired, delusional, and still very, very high. She closed her eyes and thought she saw colours streak against the dark of the back of her eyelids. Not sure where they came from, she kept her eyes shut tight for fear she would lose them. She kept them clenched shut and instead thought of her mother. Yes, it was her mother that flashed before her mind's eye. Audrey was glad she couldn't see her now...all doped up and over worked. But yet, maybe if her mother were still alive, she wouldn't be in such a – no. This had nothing to do with her mother or anyone else. It was no one else's fault. Audrey was weak, that was all.
Audrey had done nothing wrong, technically. A friend who just happened to be a boy was nothing to be ashamed of. If that was the case though, why did she feel so damned lousy? Or so damned lovely at the same time. Being around Ryan was different than being around Jack. Jack, she loved – yes. Loved and truly enjoyed being around. But Ryan made her feel as though she were special. Unique and enough. As though she were the brightest star in the sky and would someday amount to something bigger and brighter than a dump of an apartment and a dirt paying job. With Ryan, she was clever and witty – talented to boot. His admiration of her was evident and she couldn't shake the pure thrill she got whenever he introduced her to one of his artistic friends as, "Audrey, the girl I've been telling you about who paints like holy hell." Was it horrid of her to enjoy being in his company if he could make her feel like that?
As she laid there, against the calm, comfort of her quilted bed top, she let her mind wander to the past...to visions of her mother at a younger, radiant age. That old melody came back to her, complete with the sweet hushed voice of her mother singing it. Audrey knew now that it was nothing but a remake of a pop song, but at the time it was sang to her, she had no better knowledge than to think her mother a musical genius and linger on her every note. "Golden slumbers fill my eyes..." Diana Nellwyn's voice wafted into Audrey's poverty stricken apartment from the land of the dearly departed. Audrey, out of her mind and prone to imaginings, could have sworn she heard her mother in her ear, singing it to her as though two years old were just yesterday and not an entire lifetime away. However, the more she listened, the more her mother's message became jumbled in transmission. The old song slowed spliced itself with Ray's resounding Rent soundtrack (fondly played on repeat far too many times for Audrey's liking) until they were one. Different melodies merged into one brilliant misunderstanding. "Golden slumbers await you...will you light my candle?"
Once there was a way to get back home.
For a moment she thought she heard piano – piano like the kind she had heard Jack playing late at night when she had fallen asleep early but he had not shared such a fortunate fate. (She'd wake up, after being asleep for an hour..two..maybe three...to hear repeated strains of a melody being perfected in the middle of the night. It would go smoothly for a minute or two, but the flow would be interrupted by a dead halting pause. Then Jack would start again, from the top, but the original line of music would be tweaked slightly – one note changed...played higher in register or lower – and things would be added or taken away from it.) But there was no piano for her to faintly hear in the dead of night. The closest thing to it she had was the horrid taste of her Elton John loving neighbors who played their music a little too loud, but even they had probably long gone to bed. So, she took it as just another creation of a mind prone to wandering
Audrey couldn't stand the songs in her head and the near deafening silence surrounding her. She pulled her self up grudgingly and put one foot, and then the other onto the floor. Straightening her twisted, mangled clothing, she yawned and plodded over to her stereo. She flicked the knob and was greeted by the raucous sounds of The Libertines. Flinching, music too loud for her hazy, chemically muffled ears, she quickly twisted the volume downward and threw herself back onto her unmade bed.
The British neo-punk snarled and swirled through her room. The room that danced with shadows cast by the light from the window she'd forgotten to close. She watched them flicker and sway across her walls. They were night's metropolitan creations. All of those light posts, all of that neon. She thought back to a few moments previous. Ryan had walked her home. Audrey guessed that he was probably a little...concerned...about her condition and wanted to see that she got back in one piece. He'd walked blocks with her, keeping her slow steady pace and taking her elbow to guide her whenever a street had to be crossed. It was endearing, really, and Audrey, at that time, felt lucky that she had a friend that cared and was not too busy to see that she got home safely. When they'd reached her doorstep, she felt no need to jet up the stairs because she knew no one would be waiting up for her. Her window was dark – that was enough of a sign to tell that Ray had found better things to do.
"Shouldn't you be going up? It's late...someone might be worrying about you," Ryan broke in, seemingly reading her thoughts.
"Worrying? About me?" she asked and shook her head a little too emphatically. "No. There's no one up there to worry about me." She gestured up toward the window of 3F. "See? Dark. No one up there. I'm not surprised though." She sighed and stared at her shoes. They both stood at her step on silence, awkward as though on a first date. They finally got over themselves at the same time and realized that due to the lateness of the hour and the fact that school loomed in their not so distant future, a goodbye was in order. Ryan initiated, slowly leaning drawing closer to her. And Audrey, true to her offbeat, quirky self, panicked when she could not guess what kind of parting he intended. She opened her arms, showing signs of a possible hug, but retracted in a jerky, hesitant motion when she saw that perhaps a hug was not his goodbye of choice. Either he had not noticed the way stiffened and flinched or he simply did her a favour by ignoring it. But regardless of which he was, he chose to manifest his farewell by only giving her a brief, yet sweet, kiss on the cheek that probably meant nothing. Audrey laughed, relieved that it had not been more.
"Well, goodnight then," he said.
"Goodnight then," Audrey repeated and waved goodbye with a short wave of her hand. Then she turned and properly and gracelessly hightailed it up the stairs to her third story walk-up, humming to herself. As she climbed upward, feeling weightless and wonderful, she didn't care of even notice that her flirtatious second floor Indian neighbor winked at her in his trademark suggestive fashion on her way up. She only hopped, skipped, and floated back into her apartment and sashayed mindlessly into her chambers.
Which brought her back to the present: hazy and free, slightly groggy and horizontal across her bed with The Libertines soundtracking her present frame in the filmstrip of her life. She was immune to the late hour, immune to her the world around her, and immune to just how much catching up she had to do. Audrey simply was content to recline on her bed and let her eyes close, as she wavered on the edge of slumber.
Sleep pretty darlin', do not cry...and I will sing a lullaby.
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
The call had come for Jack. Grinning like a madman, he sat in his chair, excitement coming out of every pour yet stunned to stillness also. He clutched his phone and let the goofy smile linger upon his face a while longer. Things like this didn't come around often, so there was no sense in letting them pass without some sort of embarrassing celebration. It felt like finally everything he had worked so hard to maintain and progress was finally paying off. Finally, there was physical proof of his effort. The tree of his labour had borne fruit and offered Jack a bite of its gifts. He didn't know what to do. For the first time in his life, he honestly had no idea what his next move should be. He'd left a half eaten sandwich on his table and the basketball game he'd been waiting to watch all week still blared from his TV in the next room. But Jack neither noticed or cared. The world could have stopped spinning and Jack still would not have moved from the seat he seemed riveted to.
He was going to Santa Fe. At last, he was going to Santa Fe.
Nothing was bloody stopping him this time.
He'd had a chance before. It was an almost solid chance, although somewhat hindered by a severe lack of funds. However, he was willing to work his ass off and go into extreme debt if it meant that he could at last live in the place he felt he'd belonged in. He was all set. Intricate little plans did he make for being able to afford living there, transport his life there, and still maintain his ties with his friends and family in New York. The moving truck was rented, a severe cleaning out of his childhood possessions had begun, and a plane ticket was moments away from being bought when fate stepped in the form of a woman and got in the way. He was disheartened – of course he was – like anyone with a dream yet again gone unrealized. But he sucked it up as he always did and thought about how practical it would be for him to just remain in New York until a later date. In a short amount of time, Jack came to realize...by persuasion...that moving himself across the country was a selfish thing to do and not considerate to all of those he loved. Therefore, he compromised – instead of moving to Santa Fe, he moved to the East Side and into his own little private piece of heaven in the form of a four story walk up with bad plumbing and no central air.
But this time was different.
The scholarship had come through. He'd been a finalist for some time now, submitting all of the last bits of required writings and qualifications and praying and hoping somehow... Now, 'somehow' had finally come to pass. He wanted to call Audrey, but stopped himself immediately. She was probably busy. He knew she had a critique coming up and a double shift at the restaurant earlier. Jack didn't want to bother her. (Because if he became a bother or a nuisance, it'd be one reason she'd have to leave him. He wanted to be perfect for her – always. Though he understood that he couldn't be, he figured it was at least worth one damned good try.
So, instead he called his mother. The line was busy. Of course. So, Jack sat still and pondered all of these things in his heart. Where would he live? Would he have to buy a car? Would Santa Fe really be all of the things he expected it would be? Would it live up to his dreams? He didn't know the answers to any of the questions his mind fired off in rapid succession, but he knew, and was thrilled in knowing, that he would soon find out. He walked over to the calendar magnet-ed to his refrigerator and flipped through a few months. August 24 he circled and wrote with a Sharpie Marker, "Santa Fe. Be there or die."
Notes:
1. Golden Slumbers is by The Beatles.
2. The Libertines own themselves...or they used to.
Run: Well, you're right as always. I made a few corrections. Not as many as I hoped, but I fear I've got a profound case of the "I just wrote it and I'm bloody tired of looking at it so I don't care" disease. When I finish the story fully, I want to send it to the chopping block and edit it up nicely. Otherwise, I'm content to love this story along with you.
ellaeternity: More Libertines! Oh, I can't help it if I love the naughty Brits to bits and must put them in every chapter. It's a failing of mine, but a good one. More realism this time because I oh so love writing it.
LadyRach: Jack's really the cute one. Audrey just follows behind and some of his cuteness rubs off on her. (But don't tell her I said that. She'll have a fit and refuse to be written for six months...the bloody wench.)