Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Later that night, I scanned my bookshelves and found a package wrapped in newspaper.
I sat cross-legged on my bed and unwrapped a cassette and a tattered paperback copy of The Dharma Bums. I plucked a note from between the pages. Lined paper, folded into a square.
I knew his handwriting. Blue ink. Deep grooves in the paper whenever he wanted to emphasize a point.
I had the feeling that once I read this letter, I wouldn’t be able to pretend that we meant nothing to each other.
After I took a few deep breaths, I started reading.
Dear Jane,
This was the book I was reading the first time I saw you from a window seat in a diner. It was two and a half years ago, but I still remember the moment so vividly.
You reminded me of a young Jane Birkin (on the album cover of Je T’Aime…Moi Non Plus). I wanted to chase after you, grab your hand and usher you to a seat at my table. I had the feeling, even then, that we could have talked all night and never gotten bored.
But you were with some other asshole, so I didn’t chase you. A big part of me thought I didn’t have to. I had some crazy notion that I’d see you again soon. That somehow you would appear in my life at exactly the right time.
Joke’s on me.
Shortly after that, I was forced to return to Detroit. Penniless and broken down with nothing to show for the months I’d spent in New York.
On the Greyhound to Michigan, I wrote a song for a girl I’d never met. I wrote another song in my drafty attic bedroom, and yet another while my father lay dying.
I now refer to that time as the season I spent in hell, cycling through Dante’s Inferno. Death, Taxes, and Working for the Man.
But you kept me going. Or, rather, that one fleeting, perfect moment when I saw your face and it gave me hope.
When I finally saw you again...well, you know the rest. I didn’t react well, and for that I apologize.
I guess timing isn’t our strong suit.
And who was that fucking asshole you were with that night? He was wearing a turtleneck, Jane. That right there should have been a red flag. No guy in a turtleneck will ever make you happy.
You are a ballad in E minor. You speak to my restless spirit. Introspective, dramatic, intense. A ballad of tension and unresolved emotions.
You were the most beautiful dream, Jane.
Thank you for the music.
On that note, Happy Birthday.
Stop being a big chicken. You heard Simone. Fashion is art so get over yourself. You’re not selling out. You’re using your talent to create something unique that only Cleo Babington could design.
Be brave. Be bold. Fly high.
Howl if you need me. Anytime. Anywhere. The Kiev at midnight or a church pew on Good Friday, call me. I’ll drop everything to be by your side just for the privilege of holding your hand and never letting go.
In the meantime, I’ll see you in my dreams.
Gabriel
After reading it a dozen times and slashing a black Sharpie through his phone number to avoid temptation, I folded up the note, tucked it back in the book and laughed until I cried.
Then I slid the cassette tape into my Walkman, put my headphones on and listened to Gabriel’s voice. There were only two songs, both original.
Annika must have gotten mixed up and blended the lyrics from two different songs. One of them, I suspected, was inspired by Song of Songs .
The sweet wine fragrance of your perfume / kiss me, lover, with your honey lips and dirty mouth / milky pearls and longest sighs…
The other song was about seeing the moonlit goddess through the window with rain shimmering on the neon streets.
Why are you haunting my caffeine dreams / and not here with me speaking French / while I read your sad poetry / and the night will never end until we grow old and you see into my soul / and I will never forget your smile / that showed me all the secrets of the universe…
I listened to the songs on repeat until I knew every lyric and note by heart.
Proof that I’m a masochist.
If it hurt this much to listen to his music without ever knowing him intimately, without knowing the feel of his caress or endless nights of passion, skin against skin, sheets tangled, his musky scent and hard body, the full weight of him pinning me to the mattress…
How much worse would it feel if he had been mine and I’d lost him?
You were the most beautiful dream too, Gabriel.
But was he, really? I wrenched the headphones off my ears.
His birthday gift only confirmed what I already knew. None of this was innocent. Not the note or the cassette tape or the phone call on Friday. Not the shirt I made for him or our conversations.
You don’t have to fuck someone else’s boyfriend to be a cheater.
Fuck you, Gabriel Francis, for wielding your voice and your words like weapons of mass destruction .
I ripped the cassette out of the Walkman and crushed it under the heel of my boot then unspooled the tape until I was tangled up in long black ribbons.
Kindly go fuck yourself, thank you very much.
It was only after I’d completely destroyed the cassette tape that remorse set in.
I crawled into bed and pulled the covers over my head. It was for the best.
I needed to forget him.