But I do get to sneak away and watch from the back. As I slip in, I wonder whether, in ten years, I’ll hear a riff or an opening chord to one of the songs and be transported back immediately to this time in my life. It makes the shadow thought follow—what will I feel when I think of these times? Will I think, Wow, those were the hardest days, trying to figure out who I was? Or will I think, Those days were so easy and free, with so little responsibility?
I’ve had the thought almost without realizing it—the encroaching awareness that I feel settled but in truth can’t see my future at all. I have a temporary job, a temporary marriage. Will anything ever be permanent? What the hell am I going to do with my life? I only get one shot at this, and right now, I’m finding my value only in being valuable to others. How do I find value for me?
Calvin told me to do something with my brain, but how? Threads of ideas appear on the edge and are gone as soon as my fingers settle on the keys. There’s no connective tissue to string them together, no skeleton to hold them up. I want to live my life with the intensity I see on the stage up there, want to feel passionate about something in that same way. But what if it never happens for me?
My train of thought is derailed when the skyscraper set is shifted into place, the lights dim, and Ramón steps into a spotlight, center stage. He’s already a giant in person, but on the stage he is towering. His dark hair is combed back from his face. His eyes are nearly black, but luminous all the way to the far reaches of the theater. I can tell his chest is rising and falling in excitement, and from nearly every body in my immediate vicinity I sense the vibration of static, the urgency of anticipation.
I suck in a deep breath; my heart is in my throat.
I can’t see Calvin, but I hear the second he strums the opening chord of “Lost to Me”—one of the biggest hits from the soundtrack. Without having to see him, I know he’s taken my advice and closed his eyes. The warm, honeyed melody rolls up the aisle like a wave of light.
It is sublime.
The crowd shifts in unison; a spontaneous smattering of applause breaks out and then it grows: For a few moments, the audience is thunderous with surprise and approval. For Calvin, for Ramón, for the risk and beauty of the guitar and the salty richness of Ramón’s baritone lifting the weight of the music up over his shoulders and launching it to the depths of the theater. My vision wavers, spotted with vibrating dots of light. I don’t know what it is about Calvin’s playing; listening to this feels so different from listening to Seth. And not just because of the instrument. Calvin’s music gives an aching sense of time passing, the pain of finding love twice in a lifetime, of losing it in intervening years. It’s exactly the way the story needs to unfold through music. It feels nostalgic . . . I’m already regretting the end.
When the final curtain falls, there isn’t just a standing ovation, there’s a stomping one. I have the sense of light fixtures shaking, dust trickling from cracks in the walls. I have to rush back out to the lobby—we sell out of T-shirts tonight for the first time—but before I do I swear I catch Calvin’s eye as he stands to take his bow.
Backstage there is champagne overflowing, and a hundred bodies trying to get to our stars. After the merch booth has closed, I join the melee, but am nudged to the middle of the mob, and then the back, where I stand on my toes to watch person after person embrace my husband. Jeff’s words from our pseudo-poker game rise to the surface of my consciousness and bob there, refusing to be silenced. This is the very definition of being a supporting character. But I don’t really mind that I’m this far away—I can still see the smile on his face as bright as a spotlight, and his joy seems to vibrate across the distance. Surely everyone knows what a big deal this must be to him, but I still look at him and remember the subway musician hunched over his guitar, sitting on a narrow stool, guitar case open at his feet. And now here he is, wearing a suit, standing beside Ramón Martín, and getting the praise and adoration of an entire cast and crew. I’m still on the sidelines, but I helped make that happen.
After each person approaches, Calvin looks up, searching. I think he’s trying to find Robert; he gives his hunt a tiny flicker of attention before he looks back down to the person in front of him, thanking them, embracing them, listening to their praise. And then he looks up again.
Robert finds him, finally, and the two men embrace, clapping each other on the back. But again, when Robert pulls away, Calvin looks up and only then
only when Robert points
only when Calvin grins so wide
do I realize he’s been searching for me.
Calvin’s expression clears, and he pushes through, making his way over. The crowd parts to let him by, and I barely have time to appreciate his Officer and a Gentleman marching approach before his arms are around my waist and I’m lifted off the ground.
“We did it!”
I laugh, wrapping my arms around his shoulders. He is warm, his back is damp with sweat, and his hair tickles the side of my face. “You did it.”
Calvin murmurs, “No, no,” over and over, and then starts laughing. He smells like aftershave and sweat, and I can feel his smile against my neck.
“How was it?” he asks, voice muffled.
“Holy shit. It was . . .”
He pulls back to look at my face. “Yeah? Did you get to see me? I thought I saw you at the very end. I tried to find you.”
I am so proud, I burst into tears.
This makes him laugh even harder. “All right, all right, mo stóirín. Let’s go have some champagne.”
eighteen
Rolling over, I straighten my legs and push my hair out of my face. A hammer inside my cranium bangs against my skull in protest.
Do not move, it says.
The sunlight beaming across the bed feels like it’s coming from a star just outside my window. Calvin’s groggy moan reaches me from the other side of the bed.
The other side of the bed?
I sit up, jerking the sheet across my bare chest, and my world tilts in a heaving, nauseating lurch.
Oh.
I’m naked.
I’m naked? I pull the sheet away from Calvin’s facedown form . . . and . . . he is also naked.
The visual reminder is quickly chased by the more physical one: I am sore. Oh my God sore. What the hell did we do sore.
He presses his face into the pillow. “Mmmmph. I feel like I marinated in beer,” he says, words muffled. And then he twists, looking over his shoulder, staring down at his body: “Where are my clothes?”
“I don’t know.”
He looks at me, and seems to surmise that I am equally naked under the sheet. “Where are yours . . . ?”
I keep my gaze carefully diverted from his muscular backside. “I don’t know that, either.”
“I think . . . I think I’m still wearing a condom.” He rolls over and I get an eyeful of impressive morning wood before my gaze shoots skyward again, fixed on the ceiling.
He is, indeed, still wearing a condom.
With a whimper, he slowly peels it away and bends, dropping it in the trash bin near my bed. He rolls back, and the resulting silence pulls my attention over to his face.
He’s grinning. “Hi.”
I think my cheeks are going to melt under the heat of this blush. “Hi.”
Saturday morning, late February, in my bed with Calvin McLoughlin. My bed. I have located myself in time and space but I still have no recollection of how we ended up here.
He scratches just below his eye. “Don’t be surprised, okay? But I think . . .” He looks around at the mess of my bed. “I think we finally consummated the marriage last night.”
“This theory is supported by the obnoxious hickey on your shoulder.”
He turns his head to check for himself, and looks back at me, impressed. “Do you remember . . . anything?” he asks, squinting at me through one eye.
Inhaling deeply, I think back.
Champagne at the theater.
He crossed the room, and everything inside me turned into tiny golden bubbles.
Dinner with about fifteen others.
Wine. Lots and lots of wine.
“Dancing?” I ask.
He hesitates. “Yeah.”
More drinks and the deep pulsing of music.
Being tugged onto the dance floor. Calvin pulling me right up against him, his hands bracketing my hips, his thigh sliding between my legs. His mouth just below my ear, saying, I can feel the heat of you. Is it the drink, or is it me?
And then: watching him trip toward the bar and calling after him, No more shots!
The smile on his face when he returned, handing me a shot anyway. His gleeful Just one more! This is called a Cowboy Cocksucker!
More dancing. More of his hands on my hips, and my ass, and snaking up my waist, flirting with the sides of my breasts.
I remember sliding my hand up beneath his shirt, feeling the heat of his stomach on my palm. And I remember how our eyes met.
He said, I want to take you to bed.
A stumbling walk home at three in the morning.
I glance toward the doorway to my bedroom, finding my discarded dress there. It’s muddy, and that triggers another image. “I fell.”
“Right.” He reaches for my comforter, which has slipped onto the floor, and pulls it over his lower half, sparing me the effort it’s taking to keep not looking. “Apparently I failed to save you.”
I remember this. Oh God. I drunk-yelled at him for not having faster reflexes. He picked me up, threw me over his shoulder, and carried me back to the apartment. And then—oh.
Then it was a frenzy. I think we both remember it at the same time, but I can’t look at him to confirm. I remember him walking in the door, the way he slid me down his body, his hands all over my ass, and then how we just stood there, weaving, staring at each other.
“I like you,” he said.
“You keep saying that.”
“Well, I do.”
He bent in the only remaining tentative moment of the night, and pressed his mouth to mine.
It was like pushing my maniac button.