Chapter 54
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Cleo
“You smoke too much,” I said when Gabriel lit a cigarette after dinner on the deck.
“Want one?” He offered me the pack and smirked when I took one.
“You’re so bad for me,” I said, leaning across the table for a light.
“Like a bad habit you can’t break.” His smile was smug.
If only it weren’t true.
“We’ll quit at the end of the month,” he said confidently as we smoked our cigarettes and drank our red wine from jam jars, like the classy couple we were.
The wind chimes danced in the breeze and a string of globe lights illuminated the deck…and his face. I wanted to crawl across the table and climb into his lap and press my face against the side of his neck. Breathe him in. Lick his throat. Brush my lips over his two days’ stubble.
But I scooted my chair back and tucked my legs underneath me.
“I’m still waiting for you to serenade me.”
“I was too busy trying to impress you with my cooking skills.”
Dinner was another revelation. Gabriel grilled fish that he got right from the boat this morning and corn on the cob that he bought at a local farm stand. The Gabriel I knew had never cooked a single meal in his life, let alone grill anything over charcoal.
We’d lived on takeout food. Or when one of us was feeling fancy, spaghetti with jarred sauce or tacos from a kit. Domestic gods and goddesses we were not.
I took a drag of my cigarette and blew smoke rings into the midnight blue sky. “You’ve really mastered your grilling technique. My fish was only charred on one side.” I was joking. The fish was perfect. “So how’s the songwriting coming along?” Yet another invitation to serenade me.
He shook his head and sighed. “I still only have three songs and less than two weeks to come up with more material.”
“What’s happening in two weeks?”
“I’m playing at a dive bar in Amagansett. The guys are coming out next week to rehearse and I still have no idea what to play for an entire set.”
By guys, I assumed he meant Eddie, Devin, and Tyler. I hadn’t spoken to them since I left for Bali, but they used to be my friends, too, so I shoved aside my apprehension.
It would be good to see them again.
“If you don’t have enough of your own music, just do covers,” I said. “You always make them your own anyway. If you want, you can practice now and I’ll be your audience,” I offered graciously, trying to hide how desperately I wanted to hear him sing again.
“You want to hear what I’m working on?” He sounded uncertain.
“Of course, I do. I’m still your number one fan.” Okay, maybe that was a bit much but when it came to his music, it was true.
He chewed on his lip, debating, then crushed his cigarette in the shell ashtray and went inside. I put out my own cigarette and took a sip of wine, trying to calm my nerves.
What if he didn’t sound the same? What if I hated his new music?
I had no idea what to expect, but he was back with his acoustic guitar, so I settled back in my cushioned seat, ready to enjoy the show.
He sat opposite me and strummed his guitar then cleared his throat. “Let’s start with some covers. I’m really into Neil Young right now. He makes me feel like it’s okay to sing in a high voice, you know?”
“It’s always been okay, Gabriel,” I said softly.
“Fuck. I’m nervous.” He let out a laugh that sounded like a sigh and rolled out his shoulders, trying to loosen up.
“It’s okay. Just play. I won’t even look at you.” I angled my chair, so my side was to him and slunk low in my seat, legs kicked out, with my eyes on the night sky. It got so much darker out here without all the city lights and pollution.
The stars reeled above as he sang “Tell Me Why” and then launched straight into “After the Gold Rush,” making them his own, his voice dipping into a warm vibrato and effortlessly soaring to a falsetto fraught with emotional intensity and fragility.
Thirty seconds in, all my worries disappeared.
His voice was still ethereal and haunting, and it still sent shivers down my spine. I closed my eyes and let the music wash over me and seep into the cracks of my heart and my soul.
I could listen to his voice forever.
He held the notes for so long that his jaw quivered, and his eyes were closed when I snuck looks from the corner of my eye.
His music transported me to another stratosphere. A concert for one with his voice soaring into the night sky as he serenaded me with everything from Muddy Waters and Ray Charles to U2’s “One” and Edith Piaf’s “La vie en rose.”
An eclectic taste in music. An old soul with the voice of a fallen angel. And from what I could tell, his guitar skills were just as good as ever.
Gabriel was back.
After lulling me into a false sense of security with cover songs, he stopped playing and said, “I wrote this song two weeks ago.”
Then, without a proper trigger warning for the emotional damage he was about to inflict, he launched right into a song about the dark summer’s day when his lover dragged him off the ledge and saved him from himself…
while the funeral procession marched up memory lane…
and the mourners gathered around the grave…
every precious moment dead and forgotten…
I wasn’t a musician but even to my untrained ear, that sounded a lot like a ballad in E Minor.
A scene from our life set to notes and lyrics, from his perspective.
When he finished, our eyes met briefly before he averted his head like he couldn’t bear to look me in the eye. He bent his head over his guitar and plucked a few strings. “It still needs work.”
It didn’t need work. It was very nearly perfect just as it was.
Soul-shattering, yes, but perfect all the same.
When would he ever believe that he was good enough? Better than good enough. “You don’t have to change a thing. It’s really beautiful,” I said, my voice hushed.
“Yeah?”
I smiled. “Yeah.”
It was beautiful in the way that good art was. Not because it was pretty but because it made you feel something deep down in your soul.
And wasn’t that what all art and music should do?
“I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about it,” he said. “Since it’s so personal.”
I almost laughed. “Your music has always been personal,” I said. “You’re a confessional lyricist. You write from your life experiences and your dreams and you write about the causes that matter to you.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Makes sense. I wanted to write a song about Chuck. Or not Chuck, specifically, but the lost and forgotten population. The homeless, the war vets struggling with mental health issues, and the way people are so quick to turn a blind eye and walk right past them like they don’t exist.” His jaw clenched. “Like they’re not human.”
Oh, Gabriel .
“You, um…” I wasn’t sure how to tell him this, so I came right out with it. “You already wrote that song. It’s called ‘On Your Knees.’ It’s the last song on your second album. It was partly inspired by the ’88 riots in Tompkins Square Park and by Chuck…”
I could see it on his face that he had no idea he’d written that song. When I used to play his music for him, he must have blocked it all out.
“The title came from the people in church who kneel and pray and preach the word of Jesus but don’t live by it.”
It’s a really beautiful song. You should listen to it.
“Well, fuck,” he said, scrubbing his hand down his face a few times. “Been there, done that. Good to know.” He looked embarrassed, which was not my intention.
But before I could say anything, he played a few more covers and the other new song he’d written. This one was about a man lost in the desert trying to find his way home while facing his own mortality and feeling alienated.
Thankfully, he packed up his guitar after that and we called it a night.
I’d had enough emotional whiplash for one day.
By the time I crawled into bed, I was so tired that I felt like I could sleep for a year. So, of course, I spent the night tossing and turning and only slept a few hours.
At six thirty in the morning, when peach-colored light illuminated the fog, I dug the notebook out of my bag and added a few paragraphs to the last page then capped my pen and ran my hand over the marbled cover.
This was Gabriel’s story as much as mine, and maybe that’s partly what compelled me to write it.
Didn’t we all deserve to know our own story?