A Visit From the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan [22]
Told you what? she goes, but I don’t even know. Then she goes, There’s too much, and I feel like something is ending, right at that minute.
After a while, Jocelyn turns on a lamp by the bed. Look, she goes. She’s holding a framed picture of Lou in a swimming pool surrounded by kids, the two littlest ones almost babies. I count six. Jocelyn goes, They’re his children. That blond girl, everyone calls her Charlie, she’s twenty. Rolph, that one, he’s our age. They went to Africa with him.
I lean close to the picture. Lou looks so happy, surrounded by his kids like any normal dad, that I can’t believe this Lou with us is the very same Lou. Then I notice his son Rolph. He has blue eyes and black hair and a bright, sweet smile. I get a crawling feeling in my stomach. I go, Rolph is decent, and Jocelyn laughs and goes, Really. Then she goes, Don’t tell Lou I said that.
He comes into the bedroom a minute later, rock-crunching another apple. I realize the apples are completely for Lou, he eats them nonstop. I slide off the bed without looking at him, and he shuts the door behind me.
It takes me a second to get what’s going on in the living room. Scotty is sitting cross-legged, picking at a gold guitar in the shape of a flame. Alice is behind him with her arms around his neck, her face next to his, her hair falling into his lap. Her eyes are closed with joy. I forget who I actually am for a second—all I can think is how Bennie will feel when he sees this. I look around for him, but there’s just Marty peering at the albums on the wall, trying to be inconspicuous. And then I notice the music flooding out of every part of the apartment at once—the couch, the walls, even the floor—and I know Bennie’s alone in Lou’s studio, pouring music around us. A minute ago it was “Don’t Let Me Down.” Then it was Blondie’s “Heart of Glass.” Now it’s Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger”:
I am the passenger
And I ride and I ride
I ride through the city’s backside
I see the stars come out of the sky
Listening, I think, You will never know how much I understand you.
I notice Marty looking over at me kind of hesitant, and I see how this is supposed to work: I’m the dog, so I get Marty. I slide open a glass door and go onto Lou’s balcony. I’ve never seen San Francisco from so high up: it’s a soft blue-black, with colored lights and fog like gray smoke. Long piers reach out into the flat dark bay. There’s a mean wind, so I run in for my jacket and then come back out and curl up tightly on a white plastic chair. I stare at that view until I start to get calm. I think, The world is actually huge. That’s the part no one can really explain.
After a while the door slides open. I don’t look up, thinking it’s Marty, but it turns out to be Lou. He’s barefoot, wearing shorts. His legs are tan even in the dark. I go, Where’s Jocelyn?
Asleep, Lou goes. He’s standing at the railing, looking out. It’s the first time I’ve seen him be still.
I go, Do you even remember being our age?
Lou grins at me in my chair, but it’s a copy of the grin he had at dinner. I am your age, he goes.
Ahem, I go. You have six kids.
So I do, he goes. He turns his back, waiting for me to disappear. I think, I didn’t have sex with this man. I don’t even know him. Then he goes, I’ll never get old.
You’re already old, I tell him.
He swivels around and peers at me huddled in my chair. You’re scary, he goes. You know that?
It’s the freckles, I go.
It’s not the freckles, it’s you. He keeps looking at me, and then something shifts in his face and he goes, I like it.
Do not.
I do. You’re gonna keep me honest, Rhea.
I’m surprised he remembers my name. I go, It’s too late for that, Lou.
Now he laughs, really laughs, and I understand that we’re friends, Lou and I. Even if I