Chapter 47 #2
Sarah liked games like this. It reminded her of summer camp and kissing girls in dark, squeaky bunk beds when everyone else was asleep.
Yes, she was a lesbian. What of it, Tiffany?
Sarah had always hated Tiffany. What did she want?
What was her vision of the future? Sarah wanted to live on land all the time, except if a friend of hers wanted to go fishing or watch whales or whatever.
She wanted to be close to music, which was, she still believed, as close as humans could get to the divine, whatever that meant.
Not god. Not heaven. Just actual transcendence, connection, the web that slung around everyone’s shoulders when they were all standing in a room together, listening to live music they loved.
Sarah wanted to make that room and to fill it night after night.
Sure, she’d still have to worry about drunks, but she wouldn’t have to worry about anyone falling off and dying or whether a guitar player was going to barf because the ship was pitching.
She could live in Los Angeles and learn how to hike.
She could live in Ridgewood and be a queer elder.
She could move near her parents in Virginia and save money on rent and hang out at the 9:30 Club and the Black Cat.
Sarah was done with pastels. She was done with the past!
Thirty used to seem old, but it didn’t anymore.
Maybe she’d start taking drum lessons again.
There was still time for her to do everything she wanted to do, even things she hadn’t imagined yet.
No one had asked Pancake for his fantasy, but they hadn’t had to. It was happening at that exact moment. There was no future other than the song that he would play next. It was his ship, his dance floor, his people, from now until forever, or until the sun came up, whichever happened first.
What did Keith want? No one ever asked him.
Keith’s fantasy was the anti-Keith life.
This was what he knew deep down—it was the opposite of what his brother wanted.
It was like the story about the comb and the haircut, about how one person’s sacrifice never worked.
Was that how it went? Or like when people broke up because only one of them wanted children.
Mutually exclusive fantasies. Shawn’s fantasy was this.
They all knew that. Keith had tried for so long to make it his fantasy too, or at least his reality, which for a long time had felt like the same thing.
No one ever asked him what he actually desired himself.
Desire, that was a good start. He wanted to be loved.
He wanted to be inspired. Keith didn’t know how to picture any of that, it was too big, so he started by seeing himself wearing a robe and walking around a garden, his hairy toes visible in a pair of sandals like Jonathan’s.
Keith had never worn a pair of sandals, not even at the beach.
Steffani wasn’t there to complain, though.
She wasn’t there at all. It was just Keith and wildflowers and a soft breeze against his skin.
Quiet concentration, focus. Could quiet be a fantasy? He didn’t know what the rules were.
Then he was still in his robe but walking down a city street.
The city was alive—with people, with images, with words.
A place of possibility. Paul Simon’s city, Bob Dylan’s city, Billy Joel’s city, Neil Diamond’s city, Lou Reed’s city, Ella Fitzgerald’s city, Carly Simon’s city, Madonna’s city, John Lennon’s city.
Maybe it could be his, too. The pavement sparkled, and the words all rhymed.
No one did a double take. No one tried to sneak a photo.
If people smiled, they smiled because they were in a good mood, for their own reasons.
He felt himself smile back, his eyes still closed, his back against the pool.
It wasn’t too late for his own fantasy; that was the fantasy.
There would be loss, and he would survive it.
There was still time for firsts and bests.
There was always more time. That was the truth.
He was never getting on this ship ever again.
Annie was already in a fantasy, so she opened her eyes and looked over at Keith, whose eyes were still closed.
It hadn’t been her fantasy, this trip, or this night, but she could recognize it for what it was.
Any of the thousands of women on the ship would kill to be sitting where she was sitting, seeing what she was seeing.
This was more than one could pay for—this was actual intimacy.
The fact that she had paid to be here should have disqualified the moment from ever happening, but somehow it had happened anyway.
A glitch in the system. Annie didn’t know what was going to come next, and neither did the Talkers, for all their theories and message boards.
There were no guarantees in life. Annie knew that now.
She hadn’t when she was younger. Keith was sitting with his back straight against the wall of the pool, with his knees tucked up against his chest, and his arms wrapped around his legs.
Crash position. When Annie had told her friends about her divorce, one of them, a divorcée herself, had given her a bottle of expensive champagne with a note that read You were married for twenty years.
That’s a success. Just because it’s over doesn’t mean that it failed!
Annie had kept that note, and now she wanted to give it to Keith.
She didn’t know what his house looked like or what his daughter thought of him or what went on inside his marriage, but she knew this feeling.
The wheels of change were in motion, and he wasn’t going to stop them the way he’d stopped them before.
There was happiness in the release if you made room for it.
Annie wanted to tell him so many things.
Send in the clowns. Don’t bother; they’re here. There was still time.