The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [106]
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Ce Livre pourrait s’appeler Les enfants de Marx et de Coca-Cola
NEW YORK CITY, 1981. As Maria approached the end of her third year at Juilliard, she thought of her old life in Pittsburgh with a sense of accomplishment at having put it so far behind her. When she went back to visit—usually for a few days at Christmas and at the beginning of each summer—she could not believe she had spent so many years in a place to which she now felt so little connection. In contrast to New York City, Castle Shannon seemed depopulated and uninviting; it made her think that, even if she didn’t become a singer, she would never leave New York, any more than she might cut off one of her arms or legs. Just as she was now part of the city, it was now part of her; this was apparent even to her grandmother and Kathy Warren—the two people she cared about most in Pittsburgh—who noted that she was a different person now, more confident, mature, and well-spoken. She still missed her parents on these trips, but even here their absence seemed less an open wound than a dull ache. At night, before she fell asleep, if she occasionally felt a tremor of uncertainty about the future, she was consoled by the idea that she no longer felt so detached, and was able to think concretely about the steps she would need to take to become a professional singer. This, too, was an improvement over her first two years at Juilliard, when the nuances of technique had threatened to drown her, so that she would wake up in the middle of the night, panic-stricken and gasping for air. If her past had once weakened her, she now believed the opposite to be true; in comparison to her peers, she felt she could get by with less, in both material and emotional terms. She loved Linda like a sister but did not go out of her way to find other friends; if she relied on Richie, she felt that she gave as much as she took, and that they provided each other with an equilibrium that would be important as they approached life after graduation and the looming prospect of launching their careers.
This sense of direction and well-being lasted precisely until one day at the end of her third year when Richie came over to the apartment with startling news: he had been offered a job with a jazz band in Paris. Maria wasn’t exactly sure why she was so shocked, given that Richie was finishing up his fourth year and—as she knew but had not really acknowledged, at least to herself—had been auditioning with many bands outside the city. But it made her angry, so that when he sat down and began to discuss how they would visit each other as much as possible, and that his plan was to be back in the city within two years at most, she snapped: “Don’t even start—because you don’t know. You could end up in Turkey or Sweden or Japan.”
“So we’ll deal.” He tapped his fingers against her arm. “We’ll be long-distance for a while, that’s all.”
“Long-distance,” Maria scoffed. “My only regret is that I didn’t see from the beginning that we were doomed, not for some stupid reason like the fact that you’re black and I’m white, or that I’m taller than you, but because you’re a trumpet player, and I’m a fucking soprano, which—”
“Why are you so upset?” Richie laughed, and seemed truly perplexed as he squinted at her. “Isn’t this exactly what we said we wanted for each other? Would you really want me to pass this up?”
Maria felt a line of dominoes topple over in her stomach. “No, I’m just worried about how I’m going to handle next year without you,” she admitted. “Is that selfish enough?”
“Next year will be fine,” he said and placed a hand on her thigh. “Just because we’re musicians doesn’t mean we don’t love each other or that we can’t make it work.”
As much as Maria wanted to believe this—and even went through the motions of believing it, to the extent that they made love during the weeks before he left and made all the necessary plans to write and talk and see each other as much as possible given the practical constraints—she still felt jarred and unsettled, so that when she sat in bed and looked