4. such a long, long time to be gone

"I really need the money," John mutters over the phone, and enough time has passed since it happened that she only hesitates for about ten days before she says, "Okay."

So they give it a try, but there's an unspoken rule: they can't play any of the songs he wrote.

That narrows it down.

They sit on the floor in John's apartment at 3am, and he's finishing his 400th cigarette of the evening when she begins to strum "I Want To See the Bright Lights Tonight."

"Richard and Linda," John muses. "I don't know if we could pull it off."

"That's what you said about 'The Chain,'" she points out. "You come up with a song, then. I'm doing all the work."

"They're my records," he says mildly, gesturing to the albums spread out across the floor. "We have to pick the right songs, or they're all going to demand their money back."

She sighs. "I don't even know if I can do this, John. Sing, get up on stage, play this stupid thing. Without him."

"You did before."

"That was before," she says. "This is after."

They sit in silence for a while.

"Anyway, the reason we can't do Richard and Linda, or whatever else," he says, "is that we lack the requisite chemistry, you and I. He was... you know?"

"Yeah," she says. "I know."

"Honestly, I kind of blame you for it, a little. Your advance warning, and all. I heard that song you wrote." He looks down at the guitar in his lap. "Who else would have believed you, if not him?"

Her throat is constricting painfully, but she manages to say, "After the first time, my 'feelings' didn't count for much anymore." If he'd gone to get his answers that night, he had pointed out, nothing would have happened. If she had never told him, no one would have gotten hurt. It was the first time they had discussed "that night" in two and a half years. How could she argue? For once, he was earthbound, and her head was in the clouds.

"You could have talked him to death until he stayed," John persists. "Could have told me, I could have done it."

She sighs, closes her eyes, tries this out: "You have no idea what it was like." Inside the house, she means, or inside the marriage. Maybe she's trying to hurt him, a little. But there's no satisfaction in it. There's nothing left to win, and anyway, she already won, again and again, and what good did that do?

He doesn't challenge her, although he could. Instead, he just says, "You could have called. I could have intervened somehow."

She shrugs, stares at her hands. "It was a family matter."

He looks momentarily stung, confirming her suspicion that salting his wounds is an empty pursuit. But after a moment, he concedes, "I loved him. But it wouldn't have done any good. That wasn't enough."

"No," she agrees, and then a peace offering: "Nothing ever was."

She closes her eyes, and begins to play.

they listened to his voice grow pale
no stamps were on the morning mail
they all listened to the white truck ring
words just didn't mean a thing

see me fly, see me cry, see me walk away
every time the sun shines, to me it's a rainy day

She looks up, and his eyes are wet.

He says, "I want a drink," and sets his guitar on the floor. "Join me?"

A peace offering, she thinks.

"Okay," she says.

She takes his hand, and he helps her to her feet.

("Decameron," Fairport Convention, 1968)

--

Notes:

such a long, long time to be gone is a line from "Box of Rain," by the Grateful Dead. In a spooky coincidence, this was the last song Jerry Garcia performed with the band before he died exactly one month later. The entire song is about death, and the final lines are: such a long, long time to be gone, and a short time to be there.