2

The Missing Piece

My body shook as my alarm clock blared like an old car horn. Some people can wake up with the sunrise or from the vibrations of smooth jazz, but I need the rooster at full volume or my day won’t start until the night; my alarm clocks are always programmed with the most obnoxious sounds imaginable. I impulsively rotated my arm and slapped the snooze button on top. Floating on the waterline between a dream and the real, my mind pieced together the fragments of reasoning behind why I had even set an alarm for a Saturday. Before coming to the realization, the snooze time ended and the alarm blared again. This time I reached for the phone and the bright light blurred my senses. My vision gained clarity to illuminate the reminder on my phone: RSD.

I shot out of bed like a bullet and dug into my plastic drawers under the bed for whatever clothes would come the fastest. There was no time to shower—I could wear a hat. I lept down the flight of stairs and sailed 14th Street across Union Square. Normally I would stop when I passed the deadly combination of my bank’s ATM sitting right next to a Best Buy, this morning I zoomed straight over to Fifth Avenue, swung right at the view of the Empire State Building, and jogged up to 18th Street. I ran quicker than and passed the exercise nuts that regularly crowd Fifth Avenue on Saturday mornings. They must have thought I was missing my child being born, and they wouldn’t have been too far off in my mind. Finally, the dark green awning came into sight with the key words: Academy Records and CDs.

Cultivating the Flatiron District since the 1970s (originally Academy Books before ownership changed from a conservative literature professor to a group of baby-boomer, socialist hippies), the store had become a second home to me. Laid out like a long swirling hallway you’d find in a carnival, the walls were laced like collages of cultural history: 78s, eight-tracks, textbooks, cookbooks, records, VHS tapes, laser discs—anything capable of storing information. You’d find a betamax tape of an Italian horror B-movie with some zany title like Werewolf in a Girl’s Dormitory next to a vinyl record of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra performing Copeland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. One direction, you’d see a dusty leather-bound book with nothing but the names of casualties in The Civil War and the next direction you’d see Judy Garland Sings Irving Berlin.

For the year I lived in the area, I used to sit among the stacks a few hours a week and soak it all in. It certainly wasn’t long enough to grasp it all, but I don’t think a lifetime would be enough. Like the record stores of old, it had a row of soundproof listening cubicles at the back of the store with any media player you could imagine and a few pairs of headphones. Usually the rooms were taken by hipster couples listening to indie-folk CDs or giggly friends getting high to old jazz records, but when I could I’d take inside what my arms could carry and camp out.

It’s thrilling and scary to explore those corners of the culture as if you’re rummaging through America’s dust bin. It makes you realize just how little of the human experience you carve out for yourself and how much you’ll miss out on no matter how attentive you are. One of my favorite finds was Poetry for the Beat Generation, where jazz pianist (and former host of The Tonight Show) improvises bebop over readings by Jack Karouac. I’d been a devotee of Kerouac's since reading his On the Road like a bohemian bible and his poems were an extension of that ethos and no less poignant. He seemed to speak a dialect that I had up to that point only heard in my thoughts and he seemed to come from the same forgotten land I did. He even walked the same streets I did: “Bowery Blues,” “McDougal Street Blues.” They were the same streets that Walt Whitman had walked before him in the same vision of the planet—what he called The Railroad Earth, but I think Allen Ginsburg described it best as the Hydrogen Jukebox World. I read once that the only reason On the Road reached a wide audience was because the regular literary critic at The Times was on vacation and the young replacement columnist gave it a glowing review. And that was all it took—Keruac’s life was christened and those around him made immortal.

Anything you picked up in that store seemed to tell a story. I once listened to a 78 of Paul Robeson singing the “Hymn of the Soviet Union” in 1944. Robeson had been a successful stage actor and starred in the first production of Show Boat, making “Ol’ Man River” the behemoth it is today. He made various hit records throughout the 30s and 40s (most famously, “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch”) until he was blacklisted by congressional McCarthyites for championing the USSR’s then-equitable treatment of Negroes. The political harassment made it impossible for Robeson to perform and he entered a deep depression and died, having left the world poorer than he entered it. If you looked close enough, the store was full of fossilized stories like that—rugged, unwieldy tales that up close seem to be unconnected but when collected in a singular room, it seems to form a grand narrative. The grand narrative. A few months earlier, under a box of cassettes, I found a strange record in a blank white sleeve with the word BOMB written in pencil. I took it into one of the listening rooms and dropped the needle on it. It was a recording from the early 60s to be played over the intercom at public schools in the event of an atomic bomb being dropped. A motherly voice calmly explained the situation and instructed students to kneel beneath their desks. It ended with the woman reciting a passage from Genesis. Spooky stuff.

Today, however, I wouldn’t be wading through the troves because, unlike usual, I ran to Academy Records with a clear-cut purpose. It was RSD (“Record Store Day”), an annual event held every April to celebrate the culture of the independently owned record store. And what a culture that was. A number of records are pressed specifically for Record Store Day and are only distributed to shops participating in the event. Labels and artists typically use these dates for niche releases tailored to die-hard music nerds and audiophiles who are willing to support their local record stores (which are increasingly less local as the industry is, unfortunately, in steep decline). This Record Store Day was due to be the seismic one, especially for Dylan fans.

As any fan knows, the songs that made up Dylan’s masterwork Blood on the Tracks were written in the twilight of his separation with his wife, Sara, and initially recorded at A & R Studios on 51st Street (formerly Columbia’s famous “Studio A,” where Dylan recorded each of his 60s masterpieces). These sessions were sparse and strikingly confessional, and an acetate was pressed assembling the best of these recordings to be mastered and released Christmas 1974. However, Dylan’s little brother, David, convinced him that this version of the record wasn’t commercial enough and to rerecord the bulk of the material at Sound 80 Studios in Minneapolis using an array of session musicians. This is the Blood on the Tracks that was eventually released Spring of 1975. The finished album is an undisputed masterpiece, but for years diehards have longed to see the original vision for the album restored. I had heard pieces here and there on various bootlegs of the fabled New York sessions and they had all cut straight to the bone, so I was among many others who ached to hear the rest.

Our wish was finally about to come true as Columbia Records announced they would be releasing an exact replica of the original test pressing for RSD 2019 to promote their ongoing Bootleg Series. Shocked and in awe, I visited Academy Records a week before the release and begged the owner to set aside a copy for me. No dice—I would have to get in line and hope for the best.

I felt my heart sink to my waist when I finally arrived to discover a crowd of about twenty people waiting for the doors to open. I thought arriving an hour before opening time would be enough, but apparently not. The owner organized them into a line, and I got to the back of it. Some hope came back twofold: First off, there was a highly anticipated Iron Maiden single being released that day, so some of the people ahead of me in line were (easily identifiable) metalheads with no interest in Dylan’s confessional love songs. Secondly, all of the exclusive RSD releases were being mixed together, so I would simply have to find it first.

I checked my watch. 8:45. I still had over an hour until the store would open, so I kneeled down and pulled my now worn blue notebook out of my backpack. At this time, I was submerged in the songs that would become Crucible, PA, which, at that point, were flooding out. This was after a yearlong creative drought that nearly took me out of the field, so I was invigorated and taking any spare time to jot down new thoughts, phrases, or melodies into my notebook. Now a few months into this rigorous writing process, I’d nailed my writing process down in unspoken terms, but the fruits of the process shifted dramatically over time.The early songs ranged from morally ambiguous (“This Town”) to outright depressing (“Midnight Drive”), depicting a town gasping its last breaths. However, the more time I spent with the characters, the more willing they were to share with me their secrets. Before I fully realized it, a new layer emerged that I wouldn’t have anticipated: faith, and hope. These were misty, abstract entities that were hard to solidify into a lyric. They aren’t rooted in the earth like anger or strife but seem to come from some ethereal place that only becomes clear when you’re not looking for it. And that’s what happened. The show was converting from black-and-white to full color before my eyes, and I was keen to follow it wherever it went and not question it. I didn’t catch on at the time, but I now recognize: the only thing in my life that changed in the interim was that I met Suze.

Fair-skinned and strawberry-haired, Suze (pronounced like Suzie) was everything the city wasn’t. She was full of pure, nonelectric light. Acoustic light. Faithful enough to convince an infidel like myself to believe in God, or at least his handiwork. This is not to say she and the city repelled each other. She was more like the missing piece. The one thing New York always wanted but could never hold on to. Her relationship to the city was the opposite of mine—I always needed the city more than it needed me. But it needed her, as if to redeem some part of itself lost to time. Either way, as long as they were together, there was no need for me to be anywhere else. I had a guitarist friend who supposedly fell in love with her after one conversation. I used to laugh at him, but I kind of knew what he meant. She had a way of tuning your heartstrings and playing a melody that you always knew existed but just couldn’t remember all the notes of until now.

We met from us both being heavily involved in NYU’s theater district. Rather than one school-sponsored show, NYU’s theater scene consisted of a dozen or so student-run theatre groups, each of which produced a show or two each semester. So, if you honed a niche skill—in my case, conducting orchestras, in her case, bringing masses to tears with her voice—then you could find yourself working on upwards of five shows per semester, a mammoth workload to add on top of schoolwork and maintaining any semblance of a social life. For about a year, we both made the rounds throughout the scene, making many mutual friends while all-the-while becoming vaguely familiar with each other’s reputation. Our paths finally crossed in the Fall of 2018 at the sitzprobe for NYU Lamplighters’ production of Thoroughly Modern Millie.

In musical theatre, the actors and musicians typically rehearse on parallel tracks, not intersecting until the sitzprobe (unsuitably German for “seated rehearsal”), the first time they meet and rehearse the score together. This is usually the only day in which the conductor—whose job depends on the syncing of these two groups—is fully in charge. The bulk of my success up to that point had come not only from having a knack at joining these groups in time musically, but by understanding that the true role of the conductor is to bridge two contrasting breeds of artist: actors and musicians.

In a very general sense, actors are vocal, volatile people. The world is always on the verge of collapse and drama clouds everything. Everyone knows who’s sleeping with whom and why. Musicians, on the other hand, are quiet, static characters. If the drummer is hooking up with the cellist, you would probably never know. So you can imagine what it’s like to bring these personalities together. Long story short, they eat their lunches at opposite ends of the room.

For the most part, I took on this role well, but had quickly found myself washed in an aura of stoicism. I learned early on that how you control theater types is to attract them, and how you attract them is to keep them at an arm’s length. Walk up to them and ask them about their day and they’ll talk your ear off, but they’ll never respect you. Turn your back to them and they’ll cling to you, dying to see what you’ve got in your hands. So this is the person I became. Want to get drinks after rehearsal? No. Want to join the actors’ retreat for team-building exercises? I’d rather die.

Enter here the sitzprobe for Millie. As always, I arrive early, setting up my music stand, and avoiding small talk with the director. The actors shuffle inside in their usual clicks and I purposefully don’t notice them. Once six o’clock hits, I bring everyone to attention and list my rules for the rehearsal: Everyone will stand the entire rehearsal. Phones will be off and away. If you have a solo, you stand in front close to me. We’re going to go through the score song by song. Our focus is syncing you with the band. I don’t care if you’re pitchy, I care if you’re in time. It’s a massive score and the only way we’re going to get through it all is to keep our eyes on the ball. Any questions? Good, let’s begin.

We chip our way into the score, song by song. Some are short and simple and require only one run-through. Some require some exercise, molding, and massaging. We get stumped on “Forget About the Boy,” a beast of a song that squeezes mountains of dialogue and crucial plot events in between its catchy choruses. It’s really a stellar compositional and dramaturgical achievement, but very difficult for college students to pull off. (In the end, we never did manage to perform it without veering on the edge of collapse.) Nevertheless, we try. And try. And try. Their patience wanes, but I need us to get it right, as I won’t have control like this for the rest of our rehearsal period. We try again. Wrong. Millie’s late. Again. Wrong. Jimmy’s early. Again. Wrong. Why aren’t you watching me? Even my patience begins to falter. Eventually, one of the ensemble girls raises her hand.

“Should we sing ‘Oo’ or ‘Oh’ for the background harmonies on the last eight bars?” I instinctively respond like I always do as if it had become my mantra.

“I don’t care.” Immediately, another voice from the center of the room responds.

“Yes you do.” My body comes to a hold as I’m stopped in my tracks. I’ve been called on my bluff like I’d never been before. This character of mine had always worked.

“Who said that?” I mutter, genuinely.

The crowd expands and heads turn towards the center, highlighting a red-headed woman in the middle of the room with her hand partially raised. She has an expression I’ve never seen before. There’s no aggression nor frustration, but also no sympathy nor regret. Just a sort of natural authenticity and confidence, as if she knew what I was thinking better than I knew myself and could assure me what I was feeling. Who is this girl? And, more importantly, how did she know? Breaking every rule I’d created for myself over the last two years, I can’t help but crack a smile.

“You’re right. I do care,” I let out. “‘Oo,’ please. We don’t want it to clash when the soloist sings ‘you’.” Everyone turns to her and she smiles. I count us in, and this time we nail it. That was Suze.

Days passed but now she stood out from the crowd. I continued with my stoic character, but he had an achilles’ heel in the shape of this redhead. I soon realized that not only does she have perfect pitch but she was keeping the entire cast in tune. If an actor fell flat, she would ease herself toward them and raise her volume so they could match pitch without even realizing it. Not only that, but she was keeping everyone in time. I didn’t know how I hadn’t noticed before, but she was watching my conducting more than any cast member and acting as a bridge between them and myself. Remove her link from the chain and it would all collapse. Because she watched me so attentively, it became impossible not to make eye contact with her.

One night after rehearsal I bumped into her on the way out of the building. I threw some empty pleasantries her way, and she returned them. Our rehearsals took place in an NYU building on the South side of Washington Square Park called the Kimmel Center, which sits ten or so blocks from where I was living at the time on 14th Street. Unsure of where she was headed, I pointed myself in the direction of Union Square and she followed me. On our walk up University Place, we debriefed on the rehearsal (she had the same notes I did) and asked some general questions about the other. She was from California, only three hours away from my hometown. She came to New York a year before me and had left Tisch—the most prestigious acting school in America—to study music education. She wanted to teach music at her old high school. That was Suze for you. She didn’t have ambition in the conventional sense, unlike mine which could be found in any psych textbook off the shelf. There was something disarming about talking to her. It was as if she was my director who just yelled “cut” so I could set down my character in the scene and be myself.

We stumbled upon my apartment like I’d forgotten it was coming, and I told her we should do this again. She agreed, said she’d see me tomorrow at rehearsal, and began walking the other direction. I never asked where she lived, so I lingered back to see where she was headed. She entered the station for the yellow line at Union Square. My stomach rolled inward as I knew the yellow line had a stop at Washington Square park. She walked ten extra blocks just to talk to me. That was Suze for you.

I checked my watch again. 9:45—only fifteen minutes before the record store opened. Suze was probably at rehearsal. She had rehearsals on Saturdays for a production of Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along in the role of Claire. I probably would have been the conductor of the show but at that point I was trying hard to get out of that game. I enjoyed conducting as an artform and was good at it, but I never saw it as anything more than a way to climb social ladders and I’d seen every rung. I was a writer first-and-foremost and the rigorous rehearsal schedules had cut into that. This didn’t bother me much the previous year when my writing wasn’t going anywhere, but now it seemed a major distraction because I knew I was on the brink of something important. I knew her phone was turned off, but I sent her a text anyway: “Hi. Really long line. Fingers crossed!” I put my phone back in my pocket, but immediately felt it vibrate with the text, “Ahh good luck!! <3” I wasn’t used to being supported in this way.

At 10:00 sharp, the owner of the store opened the door and motioned everyone in. I nodded as I passed him, and he responded with, “Good luck. There’s five of them in there.” My mind fast forwarded through the scene in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory where Veruca Salt’s dad hires his entire staff to do nothing but dig through thousands of chocolate bars in hopes of finding one of the five golden tickets. When I finally entered the store, the view wasn’t much different. Normally, I’d zip straight to the Dylan or showtunes section, but I squeezed into the mass of people digging through the New Arrivals section, scanning the rows people flipped for my golden ticket.

Based on what people were pulling out, the other big ticket items (that I recognized) seemed to be the deluxe package of Weezer’s ‘Blue Album,’ The Grateful Dead’s new ‘Live at The Warfield,’ and the soundtrack for the recent Bohemian Rhapsody film. This was baffling to me, as I figured anyone who loved Queen enough to wait an hour in line for one of their records would know how inaccurate and misleading the film was. However, I was just glad no one else had found the Dylan album yet. After a few minutes of scanning, the big man in front of me found his prized Iron Maiden album and left the stacks, leaving a large hole for me to fill and flip through records. And as I did so, everyone behind me watched.

Green Day ‘Live at Woodstock 1994?’ Nope.

Gorillaz ‘The Fall’? Nuh uh.

Janis Joplin ‘Live At Woodstock 1969’? I have the bootleg.

John Lennon‘Imagine (Raw Studio Mixes)’ Neat, but too expensive.

As I flipped and flipped, I began to think others had snagged every Dylan copy without me noticing. I wondered if anyone who was able to purchase the record would be kind enough to rip the content and put it on the internet for me to download. However, this wouldn’t be necessary, as about twenty minutes in, I reached a brown record sleeve with the text:

Columbia

Records Productions

TEST PRESSING

BOB DYLAN / BLOOD ON THE TRACKS

My heart leaped like it was the ball in a children’s karaoke video, bouncing on each word I read. I couldn’t believe it. Behind me, an older man asked if I was going to buy it, and if he could buy it instead. No way in hell. I slipped through the mob, paid the $20, and grinned at the owner on my way out.

At this point, it was pouring (rather appropriately) buckets of rain, so I removed the record from my backpack and zipped it under my jacket against my chest. (I had learned from too many wet textbooks that my backpack was not waterproof.) I huddled under the dome that covers the Union Square subway station and sent Suze a victory text. She immediately responded: “Amazing! I just got home. Come over?” I wouldn’t make her ask twice.

I hopped on the Q train at Union Square and headed up towards the 72nd Street station. Because I turned down the show, it was being conducted by an eager freshman I mentored the previous semester. He was passionate and eager to please, but Merrily was a difficult score and perhaps more than he could chew. I would get messages from Suze at rehearsals with something like “We’re falling apart” or “Wish you were here.” So, every night over the last few weeks, I would sit at the piano and help her learn the songs so she could shadow-run the rehearsals. (Though she didn’t need much help. She sight-read “On the Steps of the Palace” nearly perfectly, one of the most rhythmically challenging songs I can think of.) Then, afterwards, I would play for her what I’d written throughout the day.

I hurried to Suze’s building on Third Avenue where she waited for me behind the glassdoor entrance to the ground floor. Before she opened the door, I could silently see her laughing at my drenched clothes. I jokingly extended my arms for a wet hug and she extended hers with a dry towel. I ran the fabric through my hair as we walked up the stairs and she told me about the day’s rehearsal of late cues and false starts. By the time we reached the third floor, my hair stood up like a dog’s after shaking off pool water. She looked back at me and another laugh burst out—this time I could hear it too. She tousled my hair until it was somewhat presentable.

“There. All better,” she said. And it was. Cupid’s arrow had whizzed by my head a few times before, but this time it had struck me right in the heart and pulled me overboard. I was a goner.

We entered her apartment and I could smell the vanilla candle she always had lit in the center of the room. She lived in a studio with a folding, wooden divider that separated the living area with the “bedroom” she shared with another girl who was never home. In fact, I never met her. She apparently studied law and spent more time at the library than at home. I could relate to that.

We took off our shoes and left them at the door. Suze pointed to a mug of hot chocolate on the kitchen counter and said it was for me. I took a sip and felt the warmth coming from all directions.

“So,” she said, “where is it?”

I unzipped my jacket to reveal my pristine, untouched, and, amazingly, dry treasure. She smiled and eased behind me and slipped off my rain coat.

“This is soaked. I’m gonna go hang this in the bathroom, but be prepared to give me all the fun facts.”

I looked around the studio I’d seen a dozen or so times before and walked over to her record collection. I thought back to the first time I visited her apartment—the wrap party for Thoroughly Modern Millie. I’d spent nearly the entire evening sifting through her collection of musical cast albums until she found me and coerced me into socializing. She always had a talent for pulling me out of my head and easing me into the physical world. Before one of my performances a month earlier, she walked me through how to receive compliments and give my supporters what they want. Her feet were planted firmly on the ground, which helped because I was always in danger of floating.

“Are we going to listen to it?” she asked.

“Do you want to?” I asked back. “I don’t know if it’s your sort of thing.” I’d been saying stuff like that for years.

“Of course I want to. Open it up and I’ll get the player ready.”

She sat on the floor to work knobs on the player and I stared down at the record. The collector in me reminded myself how much more valuable items like these are if they’re unopened. But the purist in me reminded myself that music is made to listen to rather than look at, so I removed the shrink wrap and handed the record to Suze. She placed it on the turntable and handed me an earbud. I sat on the floor beside her and placed it in my left ear. She nudged herself close to me and placed the other in her right ear, our two heads settled between the two. Again, the audiophile in me reminded myself that these records were meant to be heard in stereo and not mono, but the romantic in me liked the closeness.

“Ready?” I asked. She smiled and nodded.

“Are you ready?” she responded.

I wasn’t sure. I’d been waiting years to hear this record. How could it possibly be what I wanted it to be? Afterall, this was the record that Dylan threw away. And he replaced it with one that is now a certified classic that had worn grooves into my brain. There was no replacing that. I lied and nodded that I was ready. She hit the ‘play’ button.

Old vinyl crackles and hums floated out. Then, a single guitar, undeniably Dylan’s. The opening chord changes seemed to suggest “Tangled Up in Blue,” but it sounded nothing like the original album. The rhythm was more bottom-heavy, making it feel more pensive and dreamy, and he seemed to be playing in an open tuning. Was it open D? I looked over to Suze and her eyes were closed.

“What key is this in?” I whispered. She smiled and listened carefully. After a few seconds, she responded.

“E” she whispered back.

It wasn’t open D, but open E. Or likely open D with a capo on the second fret, making it sound like open E. That was a full fourth below the original key of A. Then, a voice emerged.

Early one morning, the sun was shining. He was layin’ in bed

Wondering if she’d changed at all, if her hair was still red

I snuck a look at Suze’s red hair and smiled. Bobby was always peering into my soul and showing me the contents. As always, he sounded like he’d lived a thousand lifetimes. But in this lower key, his voice was less forceful and more melancholic. Also, the “I” pronouns from the original first verse were replaced here by “he.” He wasn’t inserting himself into the song. Instead, he kept himself at a distance, wistfully commenting on these star-crossed lovers.

He was standing on the side of the road, rain falling on his shoes

Heading up for the East Coast, Lord knows he’s paid some dues

Gettin’ through, tangled up in blue

He knew me so well. My brain proceeded to dissect all the differences between the two recordings until I suddenly remembered that, for the first time, I wasn’t alone listening to Dylan. I felt warmth, and then panic.

I peered back over at Suze. Her eyes were still closed. What was she thinking? Did she like it? Did she not like it? If she didn’t like it, she probably wouldn’t say so. She would say “That was lovely” or something empty like that. Was she put off by his voice? That had been a deal-breaker for almost everyone I had tried to convert. Maybe she wasn’t really listening to the words. She had always been more of a “music” person than a “lyrics” person.

“I’ve never heard anything like this in my whole life,” she suddenly whispered, and I wasn’t sure what to make of it.

“You like it?” My voice wavered. Then, she opened her eyes and turned to me.

“So much.”

She closed her eyes again and I saw her hand lift and place itself on top of mine. Her hands were always warm. I flipped over mine and interlocked my fingers with hers. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes too. Now, all the thoughts in my head were turned off and I could just listen to the song. Most of the lyrics were the same but some were different. The man still had a job in the great north woods, “working as a cook for a spell.” But rather than drifting down to New Orleans and working “on a fishing boat right outside Delacroix,” he instead drifted down to LA and worked “in an airplane plant, loading cargo onto a truck.” I held my breath and braced for my favorite lines in the song.

And every one of them words rang true and glowed like burning coal

Pouring off of every page like it was written in my soul

From me to you, tangled up in blue

“I feel lucky,” she said, a little louder than before.

“Me too,” I replied. “Waited so long and we’re finally listening to it.”

“Not lucky that I’m listening to it,” she said, “which I am. But more just lucky that I got to be here when you did.”

Time stood still. I looked over at her and her eyes were still closed, but now she had a big grin. I felt like I was at the nexus point of my past, present, and future. Just like in the song.

She always used to tell me that I was the one who was good with words—that I spoke as if I was writing my dialogue while she struggled to piece together her thoughts. I think she was being instinctively hard on herself, but it didn’t matter either way. She was always teaching me the beauty of the wordless. A subtle smile. A sudden burst of laughter. A warm hand sliding on top of mine. She was good at those things—the best I’d ever seen. One look from her could make all my little words look puny in comparison, and I should know. I’ve spent upwards of a million trying to compete with the feeling you get when she looks over at you and smiles.

The song ended and there was static until the next one began. Another intro of guitar strummed in the same key, and then:

They sat together in the park,

as the evening sky grew dark

She looked at him and he felt a spark

Tingle to his bones. ‘Twas then he felt alone

And wished that he’d gone straight, looking out for a simple twist of fate

I looked over again at Suze and then looked past her towards the window. The yellow glow from the streetlights and adjacent apartments spilled onto the floor of the studio and the headlights from passing cars strobed the ceiling. I felt the weight of my body like I never had before. I wondered to myself if this is what it feels like to live in the present. I watched as the crescent moon slowly slid out from behind the clouds. The rain had stopped the moment I arrived.

© 2022 by Alex Shelbourne