Chapter 56
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Gabriel
Later that afternoon, I drove around to the local farm stands and stocked up on fresh vegetables and fruit—peaches, plums, berries, and melons.
A nod to our Fruit-of-the-Month Club when I fed Cleo fruit and kissed the juice off her lips.
The halcyon days of sitting on the fire escape with my lover, my best friend, my everything, and listening to Chopin.
When I got home, a damp beach towel hung on the deck railing and a dish I hadn’t used was in the drying rack next to the kitchen sink.
I’d just missed Cleo. Again .
I pressed play on the answering machine without bothering to listen. My new A&R exec slash two-bit producer was a pain in the ass. As soon as I deleted his messages, my phone rang.
And everyone wondered why I refused to get a cell phone.
Who wanted to be on call 24/7?
Against my better judgment, I answered.
“Hey, Gabriel, it’s Barry. Haven’t heard back from you.”
“So you thought you’d leave twenty messages a day.” I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and wandered out to the deck, hoping to catch a glimpse of Cleo, but, unlike me, she was probably working. “I still have until September 1st,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” In the background, I heard horns honking and a siren wailing.
He was probably picking up an overpriced Frappuccino from his favorite coffee chain.
“But listen, I’ll be out in The Hamptons next week, so I thought I’d swing by and check out your performance.
We haven’t heard any of your new music yet, so I wanted to get an idea of what direction you’re going in.
Not that we don’t have total faith in you, but we want to ensure that we’re all on the same page here. ”
Barry was one of those guys who walked around in Birkenstocks and concert tees with his hair in a ponytail, pretending to be a chilled-out hippie, but he drove an expensive sports car and lived in a McMansion funded by the pop stars and boy bands who’d made him a mint.
After a reshuffling at the record label, my A&R guy left, and I’d ended up with Barry. A creative match made in hell. We had never been on the same page.
“Same page, different book,” I said. “My contract specifically states that I have full creative control. So, let’s be real here. I’m not going to change or tailor my music to fit your mainstream vision. If that’s your intention, I’ll see you in court.”
He sighed in exasperation. “Come on, man. You wanna get real? Stop acting like a fucking diva. We’ve invested a lot of time and money in you.
You’ve been given a lot of leeway and we cut you a hell of a lot of slack.
So how about we work together on this? We don’t want a lawsuit on our hands, but I need a good album from you.
” I heard a bell ringing and then his voice was muffled as he put in his coffee order.
Called it. “We’ve already reserved the studio for September, which means you need to get in there and lay down tracks.
Not be dicking around trying to figure out which songs are going on the album?—"
I cut him off before he wasted any more of my time.
“First of all, I’m not a diva,” I said, insulted by the accusation.
“I’m a musician who is passionate about music and gives a shit about what I put out in the world.
As for a good album , that’s highly subjective.
But I can tell you right now that if the lyrics are just empty words and mean nothing to me…
if the music is generic, overproduced bubblegum pop bullshit … it’s not going on my album.”
If he thought I’d ever allow him to produce my album, he was out of his fucking mind.
“I know what I need to do so with all due respect, Barry, just leave me the fuck alone so I can get it done.”
“All right,” he said after a lengthy silence. “As long as we’re clear. I’ll see you next week.”
I retreated to the front porch with my guitar and a notebook and got to work. Not because I owed Barry or the record label or because I gave a shit about a lawsuit, but as a point of pride.
I owed it to myself to honor my commitments, and as far as I was concerned, there were only two that really mattered.
The commitment I’d made to Cleo and to music.
It was already dark when I looked up from my guitar and found Cleo leaning against the doorframe in short shorts, only the hem visible under a paint-splattered Jimi Hendrix T-shirt with a stretched-out collar.
“Hey. I didn’t want to bother you.” She twisted her hair up and secured it with a clip. “But I thought you might be hungry. I made pasta.”
Now that she mentioned it, I smelled the scent of garlic and my stomach growled loudly enough for her to hear it. She laughed and crouched in front of Otis, who was sniffing her bare feet, and scratched behind his ears.
I took a mental snapshot and committed it to memory. The light spilling from the open door behind her. The purple strap of her bikini where the T-shirt slid off her shoulder. The smile on her face, and the pure joy while she played with Otis.
What struck the deepest chord from her notebook entries was the way she’d captured the simple, everyday moments.
Eating Lo Mein on the sofa. Dancing to R&B music in the living room. She cut my hair. I trimmed her bangs. We chased the moon and kissed in the rain and (reading between the lines) never went a day without an orgasm.
What a fantastic life we must have had. So fucking fantastic I wanted to weep.
I couldn’t even remember what sex was like when it wasn’t my own hand doing all the work.
Now I was hyperaware of the swell of her breasts under the thin cotton. The light spilling over her bare shoulder. The curve of her hips that swayed when she walked.
Those lips. Those lips. Those lips.
Bee-stung and lush, naturally pink, the bottom one currently clamped between her straight white teeth.
I stared at the rapid rise and fall of her chest, her breaths coming out in short spurts, like maybe she was thinking about sex, too.
I wanted to tug her into my lap with her bare thighs straddling me on the wicker sofa, grip her hips and lift her up to my face. A flash of glistening pink. My tongue. My fingers.
Would she scream my name when I made her come?
Would I taste her on my tongue for days?
Show mercy on me, Cleo. I’m begging you.
She quickly turned and walked inside.
With a sigh, I set down my guitar and followed her.
The table on the deck was set for two with a big bowl of pasta in the middle. Two glasses of water with lemon slices. A Ball jar filled with wildflowers. A candle flickering in the breeze.
It was the little things. And it was her.
“I’m not much of a cook,” she apologized. “But I used some of the vegetables you bought so at least it’s healthy.” She propped her elbows on the table, rested her chin in her hands, and watched me take a bite.
No pressure.
Even if it tasted like sawdust, I’d tell her it was delicious. Thankfully, I didn’t have to lie. “Best pasta I ever ate.”
“Okay, now I don’t believe you,” she said, taking a tentative bite. “Oh! Actually, it’s not bad.” She smiled, pleased with herself, and that made me smile. “So how’s the songwriting going?”
“Much better now that my muse is here. Endless inspiration.” The corner of her mouth tugged into a half smile. She was so fucking adorable with a streak of blue paint on her cheek that I didn’t even tell her it was there. “How’s the art coming?”
She sighed. “We’ll see. Right now, it’s a mess. I’m still experimenting, trying to find my way into it.”
We talked about her inspiration. An ode to New York, the city that raised her.
More specifically, the Lower East Side she grew up in before gentrification and Wall Street traders started buying up luxury condos.
She told me she wanted to honor all the artists and musicians and creatives who had succumbed to AIDS-related illnesses during the height of an epidemic that had a huge impact on the community.
“It still feels personal because we lost so many neighbors and friends, but it’s more of a social commentary addressing stigma and prejudice and the fearmongering of that time,” she said.
“Even though so many years have passed, those artists are still such a vital part of the rich tapestry of the Lower East Side. Gone, but not forgotten. So I wanted to commemorate them in some way.”
I was envious of people who had a long, rich history to tap into. Memory plays such a vital role in our lives.
Remember. Commemorate. Memorialize.
Gone, but not forgotten .
That’s what Cleo had done for me with the notebook. She’d given me back a piece of my history.
She told me she borrowed one of the bikes from the front porch this morning and was a bit wobbly when she first set out. “I haven’t ridden a bike in years!” But with a little practice, she felt more confident and didn’t wreck once. A win.
“Did you remember how to ride a bike?” she asked.
I nodded. “And drive a car.”
“So weird.”
The brain was a mysterious place. They say it takes ten thousand hours of practice to become proficient at something.
I’d probably spent more hours practicing guitar than riding a bike or driving a car and yet they came right back to me, whereas the guitar took a lot of work and six, seven hours of practice a day just to get to the level I was at.
I told her about my conversation with Barry. She said he sounded like a “wanker.”
Cleo and I were on the same page, same book.
“I read the notebook,” I said casually, lighting a cigarette after ensuring that she’d finished eating.
“Oh.” She lowered her head and chased a lone piece of corkscrew pasta around her plate. Even in the candlelight, I could see the flush of pink on her cheeks. Embarrassment or self-consciousness, neither of which was warranted. “How much did you read?”
“All of it.”
Her head shot up and her eyes widened in shock. “All of it?”
“Every page, every line, every single beautiful word.” I waved my cigarette across the sky. “All of it.”
“And what did you think?” She bit her lip. “Did it…was it hard to read?”
What she was really asking was if I remembered any of it. Or at least that’s how I interpreted it. The answer was no.
As for hard to read, it gutted me, but I kept that to myself. Because again, it was difficult to explain how you could feel so detached from your former self yet still feel the loss and the longing deep in your very marrow.
What a strange phenomenon.
“What did I think?” I tipped back on the hind two legs of my chair and looked up at the sky.
A few wispy clouds skittered past a crescent moon, and the air was scented with honeyed dew from my wild garden and sea salt from the Atlantic Ocean on our doorstep.
From the living room, Morrisey was singing about how much strength it took to be kind and to be gentle, and I made a mental note to add that song to my set list.
I still had my music, and for now at least, I had Cleo.
Gratitude. Beauty. Grace. Joy. And…The Smiths.
What more could a man want?
I smiled. “I think I was the luckiest man in the world.”