Aubrey saw them perform lots of times. He was in a consort that made chamber music out of video-game soundtracks and they played the Slithy Toves too.
One night his group (they were called Burgher Time, a joke absolutely no one got) was scheduled to go on right after Harriet and June’s duo, Junicorn (a joke absolutely everyone got—Harriet’s last name was Cornell). He was in the dark, at the edge of the stage, already had his cello out so he could rosin the bow. Junicorn was finishing their worst set ever. Harriet fucked up the opening of “Oxford Comma,” and the thing turned into an incoherent mess. It didn’t finish so much as stagger to a halt. Then they had a little whispered fight after it became clear that Harriet had forgotten her banjo, which they needed for their cute showstopper (they played a Monty Python number, “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life,” coaxing the audience into a sing-along). There was a good crowd, but no one was listening. Harriet had angry red blotches on her cheeks and was trying not to brush her eyes, didn’t want anyone to see how hard she was fighting not to cry. When June had finished chewing her out in a whisper that was probably audible out in the street, she sat down behind the piano, unable to look at Harriet or the crowd. They argued about what to play without making eye contact, Harriet hissing over her shoulder. A drunk in the crowd began to howl suggestions.
“Play some Kiss!” he shouted. “‘Lick It Up’! Hey, girls! Girls! ‘Let’s Put the X in Sex’! C’mon!”
Finally Harriet and June agreed on “Wonderwall.” The noise of the crowd dipped into a brief lull, and in that moment of near silence everyone close to the stage could hear June say, “F-sharp! F, F, as in ‘Don’t fuck it up.’” The people closest to the stage tittered.
Harriet began to strike the chords of an acoustic guitar while June found the melody on the keys. They sang, both of them sounding fragile and heartsick, but the crowd didn’t really start to listen until Aubrey began to play offstage, drawing bow across string, deepening the melody with an almost tidal sound of yearning. The girls themselves didn’t notice at first, didn’t realize they’d just become a trio. But they knew when they were winning the crowd back, and they straightened, their voices strengthening and twining together. The chatter fell away, and the song filled the room. The drunk wailed, “I want some fuckin’ Kiss! ‘Lick It Uuuuuuuuup’!” and then was silenced when someone else said, “You’re gonna be lickin’ up whatever’s on the floor, you don’t shut your fuckin’ mouth.”
When they sang the final chorus, their voices were brave and happy and they knew they’d been saved, and that was when Harriet heard the cello. She turned her head and saw Aubrey in the wings. Her eyes widened, and her eyebrows flew up, and she looked like she wanted to laugh. When the song was over and people began to hoot, she didn’t linger to enjoy the applause but bounced off the stage, took off her bowler, and put it on his head. She kissed him fiercely on the cheek.
“Whoever you are, I want you to know I will love you forever. Maybe longer,” she said to him.
June played three bars of “Lick It Up,” then jumped to her feet, slid across the top of the piano like a cop in an eighties action show sliding across the hood of his Ferrari, and shouted, “Hey, who’s in the mood for a threesome?” And then she was planting a kiss on Aubrey’s other cheek.
She was joking, but the funny thing was, by the summer they were one. That May, Aubrey declined a seat with the Cleveland Orchestra so he’d be free to play East Coast gigs with Junicorn.
8
HE WOKE TO A RAGGED, cold wind and his belly cramping with hunger. A sharp stab of pain lanced him in the throat every time he swallowed.
Aubrey huddled, dazed and weak, beneath the sheep fluff of his cloud blankets. They were feathery soft to the touch and held a capsule of lovely, cozy warmth. His head, though, was exposed to the elements, and his ears were full of sick pain from the chill.
He found his granola bar, pulled back the wrapper, and allowed himself a bite: sticky coconut, salted almonds, a sweet caulk of chocolate. He was half frantic to gobble the rest, but he folded it back into the wrapper, returned it to his pocket, and zipped up his jumpsuit to put an extra barrier between the bar and himself. Maybe he did after all have a single survival skill: his restraint, which he had honed over the course of a hundred nights spent in the backseat of June’s car with Harriet. Sometimes Harriet dozed off with her head on his thigh, murmuring, “G’night, love muppet,” her mouth almost against his stomach. His self-control was second to none. As badly as he wanted to eat, he had wanted Harriet far more, but he never kissed her, never stroked her face, took her hand only when it was offered. Except for that one time at Sugarloaf, of course, and then she had initiated the touching and the kissing, not him.
He sucked on a Starburst to get some liquid into his throat. He made it last a long time, while he woke up and his wits returned to him. The sky above was clouded over, a rumpled argent landscape of lead-colored hills and pewter valleys.
When he cast aside his blankets and stood, the wind took a swipe at him and his weak legs almost buckled. The gusts threw his hair every which way. He staggered to the trailing aft end of the cloud.
Masses of hill lay below, thickly forested. He spied the pale brown thread of a little stream. Patches of green, squared-off farmland. Some roads scrawled here and there. Who the fuck knew what he was looking at? Maryland? Pennsylvania? Canada? No. Probably not Canada. He didn’t believe he could’ve crossed the vast expanse of Lake Erie while he slept. It was hard to say how fast they were moving, but slower than the cars he saw gliding along the roads below.
“Where are you taking us?” he asked, shivering, feeling feverish.
He half expected the glassy blackness—the pearl—to stamp itself into his mind again, but nothing of the sort happened.
What had that been? he wondered. But he already knew. It had been an answer, an emphatic no. It was refusal in the cloud’s own psychic language.
The castaway cast his woozy gaze around his island. He soon found himself staring again at the central mound, as big as St. Paul’s dome and shaped much the same.
He drew a soft, downy robe of fog out of the smoke at his feet, and a scarf, too, a ten-foot streamer of haze. He swooped a hand through the cloud and came up with a hat. When he was all bundled up, he set out for the center of the cloud, looking like a snowman brought to life.