LILIA STANDS BACK and lets me open the door.
They are here—in the living room, all four of them, looking like they do in the videos I have watched and watched of them online. Brad, the lead singer and bassist, calling out the words as though he is pulling them up from the soles of his feet. Nelson, the drummer, making it look easy, wearing a smile as he beats away. Jake on guitar and Mae on keyboards, sneaking glances at each other. There’s nothing that divides where they’re playing from the rest of the living room. They’re here, in front of me, playing their hearts out.
Lilia joins me inside, stands next to me. It’s kind of like the time my dad gave me tickets to my first concert, and then I noticed there was one for him along with the tickets for me and Susana Romero. I had thought it was going to be weird, rocking out with Susana in general admission, in full view of him, wondering what he was thinking as he watched me have this notable Growing Up experience. But then the band came on, and my dad started nodding his head, and then his whole upper half. He was having an experience all his own.
I nudge Lilia in the side. “Have you heard them before?”
“No,” she says. “It’s their first time here.”
“Well. They’re my favorite.”
How ridiculous are the other people in the building tonight that there’s only a small crowd gathered here? There must be a cruel variety of soundproofing on this floor that’s not letting the songs carry to the floors above and below. I want to kick off my purple sandals and run up and down the stairs, knocking on doors and telling everyone to stop what they’re doing and come listen to the band in 723. But then I’d be missing their set, and who knows how long it’s going to go on? Maybe I’ve caught the second encore of their one-night-only engagement.
This is the eternal problem with concerts, I swear. I have to remind myself to be in the moment, but to do that, I have to slip out of the moment. Enjoy it, enjoy it, goes my usual refrain. Don’t start counting the songs. Don’t start guessing which is going to be the last. Don’t look at the time and realize they’ve played ten minutes longer than you thought they would. Just enjoy it. But trying to enjoy it is as bad as losing time reminding myself to enjoy it, because it comes with the same force of expectation. I’m standing here waiting for the amazing piano work in the middle of “The Getting Is Good,” but I’m not sure how to deal with it when it comes. If I stand still and let it wash over me, is that enough? What’s the next level of enjoying something, and how can I get there, and how will I know when I arrive?
Mae does the piano solo, and it hits me from all directions. I am a seashell in the gulf, alternately floating and sinking in sound. I am a hair in Picasso’s paintbrush . . . no, Botticelli’s. And I am whirled about, helping to birth Venus. I am losing myself and finding myself in note after note. Damn it, Angela would love this.
They play and play, and I am completely taken over, the beat of each song in my chest as though the music is keeping me alive. My knees and ankles ache from standing for so long, and Lilia stands next to me, seeming to enjoy the music on the proper level, but also staying aware enough of me that she’d know if I, say, texted Tall Jon and told him to get over here as fast as possible.
But hey, there’s Edie the bartender. I figured she’d have good taste. I keep my eyes on her for a second, three seconds, and yes—she realizes someone’s staring at her, and she turns, and she sees that it’s me, and she waves. I’m here. I’m really here.
It’s over.
Not in the way you’d usually know a concert was over, like with a long, improvised guitar line or a triumphant waving of hands at the crowd or a particularly electric but painful-looking dance move committed by the lead singer.
No.
“Head on a Train” finishes with the same bass notes as on the recording, and they don’t linger. The notes fall into us, the fifteen of us (unless we lost another guy from the back of the room), and as soon as we’ve caught them, the band lets out a collective breath. They’re done.
Usually when I cheer at a show, my voice folds in among the rest. Not this time. It’s me above everyone. Lilia, applauding the way Mr. and Mrs. Caballini probably applaud at the symphony, looks at me and smiles. So does Edie. So do the members of Firing Squad. My heart leaps not only for this moment, but for the moment that I will shriek about this to Tall Jon, and all the moments afterward that I will think about this. This one area of my life, the Concert Satisfaction Area, is ever so brilliantly complete.
“Do you think they’ll come back?”
I’m ahead of Lilia as we head to the second-floor studio. She’s wearing a plain, light blue dress. Without her usual bouquet of fabric flowers, I have no idea if she means business or not.
“They should, shouldn’t they?” Lilia says.
I wait for her and close the door behind us. The studio is looking like itself again, lit by a new floor lamp, free of dirty paintbrushes and piles of soap bottles. I lean against the wall dividing the living room from the kitchen, where a tower of soda cans points down at me from the ceiling.
“How’d they find their way here, Lilia? Did you invite them?”
Lilia yanks shut the black curtains over the door to the balcony. “People find their way here when they need something from us.”
“What,” I say, heaving my hands in front of my chest, a classic Abuela gesture, “does that mean?”
Lilia starts walking down the hallway, heading toward my studio, clearly having planned for this moment (planned, even, for the desperation steaming out of my hands and face and voice). I follow her, and in the studio I stand with my back against the Victoria picture, facing the wall where my Abuela portrait once had been.
“The Estate guides us to fulfill its needs,” Lilia says, “with art and music, structure and form, color and light. But it knows what you need, too.”
I stare at the white space on the wall instead of at Lilia. “I still don’t think I get it.”
“Follow me,” she says. “Let’s get out of this apartment for a while.”
She leads me past the ceiling art and into the hallway. As always, the red exit sign shines from one end of the hall, and I could turn and run and never come back. But the Abuela portrait, my Victoria picture, and even the lemurs—I created those here. That experience felt like nothing else. I can keep going for a little longer. I can keep going until I’ve created what I really need to create.
We pass scuffed doors leading to other rooms. “Are people working in there right now?” I ask Lilia.