American Music - Jane Mendelsohn [8]
I thought you weren’t coming, she said. Like last week.
Sorry about that.
The nurse helped him onto the table. His upper body was very strong now, and Honor noticed for the first time the way he pulled himself up with his big arms.
He thinks he can get away with anything, the nurse said. Then she left the room.
Honor turned down the lights. I thought we’d try something different, she said. I brought some music.
She had set up an iPod with speakers. She turned it on.
The music started. He heard a plinking piano and a woman’s voice, raspy and clear at the same time.
Who is this?
It’s Billie Holiday, she said.
I don’t know who she is.
She’s a singer. Was. A jazz singer.
She pulled down the sheet and touched his back. He listened closely to the music. He heard the scrape of the recording and the piano like rain and the voice lifted above the music like a kite jerking and soaring above the trees. Then the voice sang something about having a man and the sound of it changed and all of a sudden it was lively but desperate at the same time. He listened to the voice and the feeling behind the voice, the drops of piano rain falling, falling, and then what went on next in his brain and his body was a kind of revolution. The light in the dim room went dark with a few sparks of fire punctuating the black and the darkness swallowed him in a rapid monstrous grip and he felt a shot of pain dissecting him from his ribs up between his eyes and all of a sudden he could see his sleeve against the sequined fabric of a woman’s dress and he heard the piano music speed up and swing and then the sound of trombones blew in and with the band came a car driving under streetlights along the park and the smell of coffee wafting from a pastry shop and he heard the plinking of the piano again it made him want to cry and there was the sound of the saxophone case clicking shut.
Is this okay? Do you want me to turn the music off?
He had twitched, or cried out, or said something.
Maybe I’ve heard this before. I didn’t think so, but … He couldn’t finish.
The streets were lit up at night and as he drove through them he saw the watercolor reds and greens wash over his hands through the windshield and he heard noises and felt feelings as if they were his memories, his feelings, but they were not and yet he knew this place, this night, and occasional sparks flew by in the black air which made no sense but which had to be accepted, as all of this had to be, the streetlights spilling a yellow-gold light, the line of cars shiny and bulked along the sidewalk, the excitement of the crowd outside, a woman’s neck turning as he stepped out of the car. The memory was like an explosion and he was inside it, living through it and it surrounded him and slowly he breathed into it and found that it made him feel safe. This was where he was headed. He was entering someplace. It seemed to be his life.
A woman’s hand slipped into his. The chips of mineral in the pavement glittered and seemed to float above the ground. The whole world glittered. It was cold out, a winter’s night. He felt the air in his lungs. The woman’s hand in his was warm. They joined the crowd on the sidewalk. They entered the throng. They stepped inside.
Milo reached for a hand and it was not there. He felt the wall and it was cold with a slight pattern of microscopic bumps. He was back in his room.
He did not remember coming back to his room or how he had gotten into bed. The nurse must have brought him. Honor usually said good-bye but maybe he had been too lost to the world to hear her. Or maybe his madness had shut her up. He was embarrassed by his crazy self. He knew he shouldn’t be, least of all around her, she seemed so understanding. But the more she understood him the more he wanted to hide. What was he hiding?