Chapter 35
Keith needed shaving cream, and he needed a walk.
He would have asked his brother for the shaving cream, but he didn’t want to see his brother until he had to.
The longer he went without having to talk to Shawn, the more likely it was for Keith to be able to make it to the end of the cruise without saying something he couldn’t take back, without saying I quit, I quit, I quit, I quit in the same angry voice he’d used as a little boy when Shawn had ridden him too hard about playing baseball or throwing rocks through an already broken window.
Keith put on a hat, sunglasses, and a face mask, a disguise that would slow Talkers down for a maximum of three seconds.
The shared areas of the Sanctuary were empty, and the guard sitting at the door just nodded at Keith when he popped his head out.
One of the things Keith most wished he could have was the ability to exist unobserved.
Privacy and fame were opposite sides of a single transaction.
The scary part was that Keith knew he was getting closer to having privacy again.
Most days, he was already there. Not on the ship but in his real life, when all the Talkers dispersed.
He wanted it almost as much as he feared it, in equal measure.
“Need a body guy?” the guard asked, hand already on his walkie-talkie.
“No thanks,” Keith said. “I’ll just be a minute. Thank you, though.”
The man nodded, and Keith felt like he was getting away with something, being on his own.
—
The elevator was the swiftest route, but he didn’t want to risk being caught in a small, enclosed place, and so Keith headed for the aft staircase.
It was two flights down to the fifth floor, where the shops were.
The stairway was empty, and Keith’s heart was beating fast. He wasn’t doing anything wrong, but he would be caught by someone all the same, and sometimes that went badly.
From the hall around the atrium, Keith could see that there were a decent number of Talkers at the bar on the third floor.
Someone had taken the vinyl banner of Corey, so it was just the four of them standing there, stone-faced, staring down.
He paused for a minute in between his own giant face and Shawn’s and rested his elbows on the railing.
Opposite the bar on the floor below, on a stage the size of a manhole cover, a young woman was playing the guitar.
She was pretty, with long wavy hair and blue jeans, and her fingers worked quickly on the strings.
None of the Talkers were paying attention to her, but there were a few young men standing nearby—clearly crew from one part of the ship or another, their arms crossed. They were listening.
When the woman began to sing—a song he couldn’t quite identify—Keith realized that though the woman was singing in English, it was clearly not her first language.
It was like the song had been put through Google Translate, leaving all the American cadences on the cutting room floor.
Her voice was deeper than he expected, and richer.
She tapped one foot on the small platform, and Keith found that he was tapping his too.
The Talkers kept talking, their back to this singer, and Keith wanted to shout down, Hey, pay attention, but if he had, they would have taken out their phones and started filming him.
They would have run up the staircase. They would have drowned her out completely.
No one ever talked about the music.
There had been a time when music magazines (when there were music magazines, period) felt obligated to say something about Boy Talk, but they hadn’t said anything kind.
It was always some snarky dude with a goatee and a closet full of black T-shirts talking about the saccharine lyrics and the bubblegum melodies.
If anyone understood fans, it should be guys like that.
They were the same as Talkers, devoted to their gods, whether it was Morrissey or Robert Plant or Kurt Cobain or whoever.
They knew every note just like the Talkers did, but somehow the things they loved were worthy of their deep consideration and Boy Talk wasn’t.
You could practically hear them sharpening their knives.
And that’s if Boy Talk was lucky enough to be included.
Talk show hosts would ask for funny anecdotes (“And then your dog!!! Was barking!!! But Barbra Streisand was at the next table!!”) and might give an easy compliment, but that wasn’t the same as respect.
The studio audience always lost their minds anyway because the Talkers showed up every time.
Here was what Keith wanted, even now, after so many years: He wanted people to listen to the music.
No matter what Corey thought, Keith did care about his voice.
It was deeper now, with more of a texture than it had had when he was young.
Keith liked the way older voices sounded.
Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Johnny Cash!
There was more there—more understanding, more life.
He was proud of those early records, but those were only snapshots of a moment in time.
They were his baby pictures, and what he was now—what he could be now—was different.
Keith didn’t know if it was better or worse, but he came by it honestly.
Steffani didn’t even like it when he sang anymore.
She didn’t like it when he touched her, when he was just trying to be playful, when they were both reaching for something in the fridge.
Steffani loved him, he thought, in the way that she loved one of her cousins or the brother she liked the least. Someone who’d always been around.
Someone she could count on in an emergency.
That wasn’t nothing—a number to call, an SOS.
But it wasn’t the same as a marriage. Not a good one, at least.
The woman had made it to the chorus. It was an Adele song; Keith recognized it now.
She threw her head back when she got to the big notes, and the sound escaped into the air, diffusing her powerful voice into the space above her, where it floated, floated, floated up to Keith.
He was crying again. Her voice was so big.
The song was so good. God, it was nice to remember that songs could do that.
The woman finished, and he clapped. No one on the ship had come to see this woman sing.
Keith didn’t know her name or where she was from or what she did on board when she wasn’t playing the guitar to a row of people’s backs.
She was singing because it moved her. Anyone could see that.
Because she had something inside that needed to come out.
This was what songs could do. It was the same as a poem, a painting, a dance.
The sound wasn’t just a sound; it was an expression of the parts of yourself that words couldn’t describe.
The young guys watching her clapped too.
One of them put two fingers in his mouth and did a wolf whistle.
Keith almost never saw live music anymore.
He wondered what she was going to play next.
If no one else had been on the ship, Keith would have walked down the stairs, gotten closer.
She looked like someone who knew a lot of songs.
He did too. There had to be some overlap.
“Um,” a voice said, close to Keith’s ear.
He straightened up and turned around, and there were three Talkers standing in a tiny clump right behind him.
The leader was jittery and beaming. “Hi,” the woman said.
She was small and round with a pink, shining face.
“I thought that was you.” The women behind her giggled.
“It’s me,” Keith said. He pulled down his mask, caught.
She held up her phone and raised an eyebrow. “Can we?”
He nodded and ducked his head down next to theirs while she snapped a photo with an outstretched arm.
“Okay, guys, see you later,” Keith said, and as he hurried toward the sundry shop, he heard the women begin to trill.
“Can I borrow your phone?” Keith asked the woman behind the counter at the shop. The ship’s operator clicked a few buttons and then connected his call. The Talkers weren’t coming in, but they were accumulating outside. Sarah picked up on the first ring.
“Help,” Keith said.