Chapter Thirteen
I stop by the ladies’ room to splash cold water on my face. Yes, I’ve become this person. This crazily turned-on woman who hasn’t been touched in years. Now, give her a few choice words said in a swoonworthy voice, a hot kiss in an elevator, and she needs to be doused in cold water in order to function.
I stare at myself in the mirror for a moment, wondering if I can wipe the stupid lust from my eyes. Or if I even need to. Then I turn those words around in my head. Stupid lust. Stupid kiss. Stupid heart.
I grab my phone from my back pocket and send those words to myself in an e-mail. Who knows? Maybe they’ll spur a song. Because the more songs I write, the better off we all are. But for now, I excise the kiss from my head to focus on the story.
I leave the bathroom and join Matthew in the gourmet kitchen in his office building. It’s all white, with stainless-steel appliances, and unbearably tiny by the rest of the world standard, but it’s massive for Manhattan. Massive meaning a few square feet. “I would offer to help, but I’m a disaster in the kitchen. Can I wash something or set the table?”
Matthew shakes his head as he deftly wields a glinting steel knife, chopping the asparagus and the mushrooms. “So tell me about your deep-seated hatred of kitchens, food, cooking. Where does it stem from, Jane Black?”
“I’m sure it goes back to my childhood. I remember as a young girl, having a terrible fear of pots and pans,” I say, quickly going along with the playful banter. It helps keep my brain clean of naughty thoughts. Besides, he’s already moved on to this other side, so I might as well go with it.
“I’ve heard of that,” he says as he moves onto the carrots. “It can scar you for life, rendering you completely dependent on Chinese takeaway.”
“I’m afraid that’s what’s happened. I had a bat line to China Hunan set up in my apartment. My relationship with the delivery guy has been my closest with a man in the last year and I’m thinking of having an IV drip installed for Chinese food.”
He puts down the knife, takes a step closer, and lays his hand against my forehead, as if taking my temperature. He nods sagely. “Your condition is much more serious than I thought.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.” I hang my head low. Then shift gears. “Do you have any tea?”
“Do I have any tea? Is that like a joke or a test? Cupboard next to the fridge,” he says, gesturing.
I move a millimeter or two to the right and open the cabinet door. I’m greeted by a shelf full of tea—tins with black tea in all varieties. I grab the English Breakfast teabags and two mugs, then start filling the mugs from the tap.
“I am going to pretend you didn’t just do that.”
“Do what?”
He turns away from the frying pan where he’s just tossed the chopped vegetables. “I’m English. We don’t microwave our tea. We put the kettle on, make it properly.”
“Oh, excuse my American ways,” I tease, making a mental note that he refers to himself as English, though I prefer to use British most of the time. Sounds so classy and sophisticated. But whether I call him British or English, Matthew is always sexy to me. He steps away from the stove and moves a couple inches closer to me, reaching over my head into the cupboard. I don’t move at all. I stand there, his body suddenly near enough that if I were to step one or two inches closer, I could feel his chest, his belly, his belt buckle against me, like in the elevator. I could reach for his belt with one hand and pull him against me and reenact the prior scene. Take it further. Make it last longer. Hit the alarm on the elevator so it stops. This time, I’d turn the tables on him. I’d back him up against the wall, run my hands through his hair, make him moan, make him want me desperately. I could take his shirt off, run my fingers over his chest, trace the lines of his stomach.
We could finish what we started. Except we’re in his office, and Matthew has already turned that side off and seems to be back in this other zone, where we’re all chitchat and teasing, and I like it. Really, I do. I enjoy being with him so much, even though the ease with which he slips between Matthew the Reporter and Matthew the Hot-as-Sin, Kiss-Me-In-the-Elevator Man throws me off. I watch him silently as he fills the kettle with water, places it on a burner, and then plunks the tea bags into the mugs. “I can drink tea any time of day,” he muses.
I could touch you any time of day, I want to say.
A few minutes later, we’re sitting at a small but sturdy mahogany table in the kitchen. The food is delicious—crunchy, crispy vegetables in a white wine sauce and whole-wheat pasta. As I finish, I glance out the window. “Hey, it’s starting to snow!”
He rises from the table and joins me by the window of the office, looking out over nearby Gramercy Park. “Why is it that snow always seems so magical?” I ask him, not so much for an answer, but simply as an observation.
“I don’t know, but it’s certainly true. It seems you never stop being excited at the first sight of snow. You’ll wake your girlfriend or your boyfriend up at three in the morning to tell them it’s snowing. And then bring them to the window and show them.”
My heart races. I love that image. Far too much for my own good. So I am grateful for the break from my wandering imagination when he flips open his reporter’s notebook. “You already gave Cohain the story of your name. May I please have something just as good?”
“You’ll have to ask the right questions, then.”
“Have you always been musical?” he asks.
…
When Natalie trotted off to the soccer field in cleats and shin pads, Owen and I would goof off on our mom’s piano, kicking around our own variations when she wasn’t looking or listening. Owen and I took the obligatory piano lessons, and I’m sure, like all parents, my mom harbored secret desires that we’d want to be just like her, would want to become musical theater aficionados. She even cast me in some of the kid roles in her shows.
But when I had a break during rehearsals, I’d ride my bike from her theater to a nearby guitar shop in downtown Brunswick, the only one in town. It was called Play Without Ceasing, a name I later learned was a pun on a biblical directive from the Apostle Paul to “pray without ceasing.” The shop owner was Haley Mauvais, who wore tan cowboy boots, light blue jeans, and a jean jacket the same color. He taught me a few riffs—“Stairway to Heaven,” “Comfortably Numb,” “Brown Eyed Girl”—effectively becoming my first guitar teacher. But one day in his store, I absentmindedly started singing along with the songs, and he stopped me right there. He held up a big hand. “Whoa. You have some serious pipes on you.”
My mom had always told me I had a good voice, but something about hearing it from an outsider made it matter more.
“Let me tell you something,” Haley said. “When you have a voice like that, you don’t have a choice. You need to sing. The Gods of Music are commanding you to sing. They didn’t give you a voice like that to have you practice law or medicine.”
So while my mom set out to train my voice, Haley sought to train my style. He taught me respect for the Gods of Music. “Sometimes, you don’t know why they want what they want,” he’d tell me. “But you have to respect them. You have to let them guide you. They will always show you the way.”
I didn’t fully understand what he meant at the time, but I listened ferociously, memorizing his words so I could mull them over later when I would understand. “It’s like sometimes there’s just this muse and your job is to carry out what she wants,” he said. “You’re the instrument, the vessel. Let them use you, channel you, and you will make great music.”
I picked up the sheet music at Haley’s store for songs I liked, “Sweet Child O’ Mine” from Guns N’ Roses, “More Than This” from Roxy Music, and “Chain of Fools” from Aretha Franklin. When I was fourteen, Owen and I formed a band called Squeaky Dog and wrote our first song—“Sweet Summer Mine.”
We even scored a spot in the Fourth of July parade that summer and performed that song on the bed of a pickup truck that trundled along the parade route at two miles an hour. We were the hit of the parade and a deejay from the local radio station wanted to play our song on air. I can still remember our sheer unadulterated joy when we’d hop on our bikes and ride down the rolling hills of Brunswick, with a portable Walkman radio, riding out toward the water, tuned into the radio station the whole ride until our song came on.
Matthew shakes his head in amazement, his right hand still racing across the notebook to record the last bit. “You were a fearless little kid all right, getting yourself on the radio when you were just fourteen.”
“What about you? Did you always know you wanted to be a rock critic?”
“Ah, so now it’s my turn to be interviewed.”
“Well, isn’t that fair? We’re not at your place where I can check out whether you have posters of Bruce Springsteen or a whole collection of vinyl or even some of your columns framed.”
He laughs and stretches out his long legs, leaning back in the kitchen chair. “That would be a no. A no. And a no.”
“So what do you do at home, then? What are your hobbies, Matthew Harrigan?” I ask in a dark tone of voice, as if I’m a detective zeroing in on clues.
“I believe in the separation of church and state. I love what I do. I love my job. But home is home. I listen to music when I’m there, but if I can—and I try every night—I like to stop being the music critic and just be a person for a few hours. Read a book, not think about Geffen or Island or Atlantic Records or who’s going to be the next big star or whether I can convince any rising chickadees to come up to my bachelor pad when we’re done with the article,” he says with a wink.
I brandish my napkin, pretending I’m going to toss it at him. “And to think I was going to tell you a juicy little nugget I’ve never told any reporter.”
Matthew’s pen is in hand again, ready to take more notes. “I’ll let you throw a plate at me if you tell me.”
I hold up my hands, palms out, for emphasis, dramatic pause. “This will be the lead for your story.”
He looks at me expectantly, waiting.
“Me. Leotard. Leg warmers. I had a phase of extreme Olivia Newton-John worship.”
Matthew cracks up. “Oh, this is good.”
“‘Physical’ had already been a big hit in the early eighties, and when I discovered it a decade later, I blasted that song in my upstairs bedroom after school. I put on my leotard and my leg warmers and I danced around the room and jumped up and down on my bed and I sang that song as loud as I could. I didn’t have a clue what it meant, but I loved it. Every single afternoon for a year I played Olivia Newton-John.”
“I suppose now would be the good time to admit I really prefer Poison to Arcade Fire.”
I laugh and tease him back, “I guess I won’t sing it for you then if I’m too pedestrian in my tastes.”
He places his palms together as if he were praying, begging with his pretty blue eyes. “I would love to hear you sing ‘Physical’ right now.”
“I only remember the refrain.”
“Then sing the refrain,” he says, practically commanding me now. I oblige, cycling through the chorus of the song.
“Wow,” he says in a stunned voice.
“Wow?”
“You have to do that for your next album.”
I arch an eyebrow. “Honestly?”
He places his hand on his heart. “I am completely serious. You sound absolutely fantastic singing that song.”
“But it’s such a cheesy song.”
“That’s the point. Dress it up, slow it down, make it sizzle in a whole new way. That’s the point of a cover song. You make people hear the song in a new, fresh way, as if it were a new fresh song.”
I consider this for a minute. “That’s not a bad idea. And it would solve one little problem.”
“What would that little problem be?”
I feel immensely comfortable with Matthew. I don’t know if it’s the British accent, the fact that he’s an extremely good listener. Or if it’s a lot simpler, as in six foot two, blue eyes, dark hair, trim body that I’m dying to know better.
“I don’t have many songs for the new album,” I say casually, as if that little nugget is no big deal.
Matthew sits up straight. “Jane, you’re going into the studio in—” He flips back through his notebook and finds the page he’s hunting for. “In exactly twelve days. You don’t have any songs?”
“Well, I had three but they kind of suck…”
“Oh.” He sounds crestfallen.
“I guess I better do that ‘Physical’ cover tune then, huh?” I joke.
He wipes his forward in the mock “whew” gesture. “There, I feel so much better.” He flips back to where he left off in the notebook and writes in big bold letters so I can see, “Jane Black has one song for the new album. Everything is okay.” Then he looks at me. “But seriously. You’re going to write some music, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Yes. Yes. Of course.”
“Three yeses? And an of course?” He raises an eyebrow.
“Don’t worry,” I say sharply. “You’ll get your story.”
“Jane,” he says, his voice softening. He places his hand on mine again, like he did the first night at Café Cluny, and I feel goose bumps all over. I love the way his hand feels on my skin. I love that even a soft gesture from him turns me inside out.
“Are you ready to go back to the studio?”
“Of course,” I say with fake confidence.
“We can postpone the story if you need more time.”
Oh, God. Could he be any more considerate? Handsome, thoughtful, funny? Slay me now. “Maybe I should spend less time talking to a certain journalist.”
He gives me a crooked smile. “I can’t imagine any scenario where that would be the answer.” His hand is still on mine. Another small squeeze, and it’s so tender and caring and sends a warm rush through me. How can he kiss me senseless in the elevator and then hold my hand as if he’s my guy and he’s worried that I won’t make my deadline? But he manages both sides—the sexy one and the considerate one—and if he keeps this up, my mind just might turn to mush because I am dangerously close to this being more than a crazy kind of chemistry, more than a fun bit of flirting. I could see him as the man in my life.
My muscles lock up when it hits me what’s happening. That the physical has transformed. That when I said I want more, I wasn’t only referring to more contact. I want more of him. I want more moments. More time. More talking.
Which scares the hell out of me.
“Do you usually work this way? Are you the type of artist who thrives off that last-minute pressure?”
“Um…” I start but don’t answer because my mind is elsewhere.
Prickles of worry race over my body. I glance down at my watch. It’s nearly two o’clock. I must get out of here. I need to escape from him to sort through all the questions that are smashing into me at once. I don’t answer him, because I’m awash in a new sensation, but one that’s far more precarious. One that I don’t know how to account for.
“Are you going to be able to make your deadline?” he asks once more.
“Are you going to return to England and reclaim all your land?” I counter to shift the spotlight off me.
He raises an eyebrow, as if to say I’m onto something. But he is silent. He’s never admitted he’s a baron. I return to the question. “Don’t worry. It’ll all work out. Hey, I hate to cut out of here, but I need to pick up Ethan from school in a little bit.”
“Are you okay?’ he asks, furrowing his brow.
“Absolutely,” I lie.
I help him clean up, but we’re quiet now. The easy banter has been erased.
Soon, I catch an uptown train and try hard to focus on my new album, the songs I’ll need to write as I head for Ethan’s school to pick him up. I close my eyes and ponder notes, melodies, words.
But I draw a blank and open my eyes because my mind isn’t really on music. Instead, I’m staring out the scratched, grimy, dirty windows of the subway, watching the walls of the tunnels rumbling by, and I’m thinking about summer fruit, about honey-kissed peaches, sun-ripened apricots, sensuous warm cherries, bursting with their dark red, almost burgundy, hues.
And Matthew. I’m thinking about Matthew. The man I want in more ways than one.
…
I spend the rest of the day blotting out Matthew and music and the madness in my heart. Instead, I focus on my son, because he is the only constant in my life. We visit our favorite diner for French fries and chocolate milkshakes for an after-school snack, and I ignore my phone and all my messages and I silence the thoughts in my head for a while as Ethan shows me a drawing he made in art class of a dog wearing a wizard’s cape.
“Let’s go find a book about a dog wizard,” I propose.
His eyes light up, as if I just revealed I possess a map to buried treasure. “They have books about dog wizards?”
“I don’t know. But there’s a big, beautiful place called the library and I bet we can find out there.”
A helpful librarian tracks one down, and I read it to Ethan before he falls asleep that night, doing my darndest not to worry about my stupid deadline that I’m not even close to making unless I can knock out a song tonight about magical dogs.
Once he’s in The Land of Nod, I grab my acoustic and my notebook, and I try and I try and I try to fashion a song from that stupid kiss. But nothing works, and I feel more spent than after a long run with my sister. I am wrung dry, and all my muscles ache. But it’s a pointless sort of ache because I didn’t exercise them. I accomplished absolutely zilch in the music department and I’d really like to kick myself in the face right now. Knock some musical sense into me. Something. Anything.
Writing is my heart’s desire, and I can’t get my arms around it anymore. And this ache—it’s a constant reminder that I’ve misplaced something important.
Something vital for my very survival, like air, like breath. Because writing songs is my oxygen.
Maybe I need to borrow someone else’s oxygen mask for a bit. Maybe I need a song to get my muscles moving for this workout. I reach for my phone and call up one of my favorite playlists, popping in earbuds to listen to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing,” Queen’s “We Are the Champions,” and The Beatles’s “Here Comes the Sun” as I straighten up for the day. They remind me to believe in myself, that if I made it through the breakup of my marriage thanks to music, that surely I can celebrate what’s on the other side with a handful of songs too.
I’ll try again tomorrow. Today is fading away, and I need to let it go. I flop down on my couch as “Here Comes the Sun” ends, and finally check my e-mail. The first message I see arrived minutes after I left Matthew’s office this afternoon.
from: [email protected]
to: [email protected]
time: 2:14 PM
subject: Are you okay?
Dear Jane,
You left so quickly that I wanted to make sure you were okay. You seemed frustrated when I asked about your deadline. I hope you know I have to ask these questions. I want to do the story justice. I want to do you justice. Sometimes my questions might irritate you. As a journalist, I am completely fine with irritating someone I interview every now and then. It’s the nature of the beast. But taking off my reporter hat, and speaking only as a man now, I am sorry if I upset you. Perhaps you think it’s easy for me to turn it off for you. I assure you, it’s not. I’m still berating myself for kissing you in the elevator when I am desperately trying to focus solely on writing and reporting in the only way I know how—fairly. But I’m not going to pretend I want to erase that kiss in the elevator. Or the time I spent with you in the kitchen. Or hearing your stories about getting on the radio. Even if I weren’t reporting about you, I’d want to hear them. The more I know you, the more I want to get to know you. I am fascinated by everything about you, and you have to know it takes all my resistance to stop at kissing you.
Matthew
Suddenly, I don’t feel so sore. I don’t feel so hollow, either, and though the part of my heart that is owned by music is gasping for air, there’s this other part that is starting to fill. I lie back on the couch, my mind drifting to how I want to know him more, how I want to hear his stories too.
Then, to all the ways I want to break down his resistance.