We’d become friends after I rented the empty studio behind her redwood house in Tiburon
As soon as she asked if I was good with my hands I understood she had a few things
That might need fixing around the place including her Jag convertible an old ’54 XK120
Aged to a dull bullet-silver by the salty Bay air the walnut dash framing those twin
Disks of its black gauges speedometer & tach & you know there’s nothing I love
Like an elegant restoration in loving progress—stop giving me that look—
Her ex-husband Edison had even left a few berets in the closet hung above his oil paints
& I loved that old studio its raw uneven redwood planks letting in the soft fog at night
As well as those delicate early Brahms sonatas she’d practice as her ritual before
Leaving on tour & then always away a month or more so I’d watch the place & bring in the mail
& guard her koi pond from skinny dog-sized raccoons cruising up the narrow lanes at night
One morning she called out of the blue on her layover in Reykjavik & just started screaming
How Esquire had a story in it about her—not one of those devoted profiles she knew well
But a piece of actual fiction—A story about her! by Edison & she hated him truly
After letting him get away with endless affairs & years of good drugs & bad rehab she’d paid for
—& finally he’d gone too far he’d made her into nothing but a story & worse claimed
She’d been older than she was when they first met & now she was screaming so loudly
I’m pretty sure most of Iceland could hear her say That fucking bastard even made me
Throw out the black panties Keith Richards signed for me & I said Ilaria! just focus!—
Everybody knows Edison’s a liar! & then a long silence exquisitely cold as Reykjavik
Before I heard I am going now to catch my plane more silence & then Don’t leave me