SIMON MARKED OFF EVERY day on a calendar at home until February was all Xed out. How could time be moving so slowly and at the same time so fast? Every time he had to cross out another date, he felt sick with fear.
He came to the hospital every day. Sometimes friends of Stella’s would show up. Martin brought two different kinds of perfumes to swish under Stella’s nose, Opium and something called Nasty Girl, but she didn’t react, and Martin deflated until he realized he could give them to his girlfriend, who had suggested them in the first place. Joyce came in with a bag of makeup.
“Joyce—” Simon said, moving to stop her, but she shook her head vigorously. “She’ll know she has it on. It will make her feel better,” Joyce insisted. “Plus, if she looks better, the doctors will pay more attention to her.” Simon had his doubts about that, but he watched Joyce carefully applying something tawny to Stella’s lids, lip gloss to her mouth. “At the very least, it will keep her lips from chapping,” Joyce said. Joyce took out a wide-toothed comb and carefully ran it through Stella’s hair. “My beautiful friend,” she said, then burst into tears. Simon held her for a moment until she stopped. Joyce stuffed everything into the end table drawer. “If they wash it off, you can always put it back on,” she said, and then she left.
Libby was nearly always there when Simon arrived. Sometimes she was taking Stella’s vitals, but a few tines he came in and Libby was sitting beside Stella, quietly stroking her arms, her legs, saying something he couldn’t hear, and when Libby saw Simon, she frowned. Well, too bad for her, he thought. Why was she acting like this was her private conversation with Stella?
“I’m her friend as well as her doctor,” Libby said, reading his mind. “Having someone who cares for you caring for you helps recovery.” She narrowed her eyes at him when she said it. Friend. He didn’t know that.
The other doctors were noncommittal. “It’s too soon,” they told him. Simon sat beside Stella and played her favorite songs over and over, degrading his fancy note work with strums, because who knew what her brain could process? It was so different from singing for an audience. She never reacted, never moved, but he told himself that maybe inside her mind she was dancing, and that made him continue.
He was tired when he left the hospital, but when he got home, he couldn’t sit still. Bette was already asleep, but she had left him a note telling him that she’d made him dinner. It was in the fridge and all he had to do was heat it up. Her kindness bolstered him and made him feel hopeful. Then he saw all the bills, most of them overdue, stacked on the kitchen table. Rent. Electric. Gas. Car payment. All things that Stella, with her methodical mind, used to take care of.
This couldn’t be his life. It just couldn’t be.
He put on his coat to go out for a walk. He headed downtown, into SoHo. The streets were still full of people. Was it Friday? Saturday? Date night? Everyone looked younger than he did, happy and laughing. Manhattan tightened like a cage and he had no idea how to wrestle open the bars. He couldn’t remember the grid of the city. He walked west when he meant to go east, and then he had to backtrack. Everyone seemed to be walking in the opposite direction from him, and he kept bumping into people, even though he tried his best not to. He couldn’t focus, and every time a red light or even a person blocked his forward progress, he felt enraged because he had to keep going. He just had to. He had to do something, but what? They needed money, but he didn’t know what to do about it. There was disability from Stella’s job. Maybe he could put a song online. Maybe he could sell a song and his band could pay him. Maybe he’d get lucky and a national commercial would want to feature one of his tunes.
And maybe pigs could fly.
He used to be able to write a song in a half hour, and sometimes that same night the band would play it. When he picked up his guitar now, his mind slammed shut. The words that used to fill his head, the riffs of melody that made him shut his eyes and breathe deeply, now came in drips, and his singing voice didn’t sound like his anymore. A happy song, a sad one—they all seemed the same, and that wasn’t good. His speaking voice was different, restrained and stiff; something caught in his throat.
He walked all the way to Wall Street and then all the way back to the apartment, and he still wasn’t tired. He sat at the table, putting his head in his hands. He used to write music every day. He used to practice with the band five nights a week, sometimes more, working out of a cramped little practice space in an old factory over in Hell’s Kitchen.
He jumped up from the couch, searching for his favorite guitar, an acoustic steel-stringed Martin, one of the first he had bought.
He swallowed. Panic rose in his throat. Well, he was stressed. Maybe he could write about that, just to get things going. Just to start himself up. He grabbed a notebook and a pen. He sat down, pushing his hair back. He wrote Mighty Chondria’s first hit in the back of a touring bus. The other band members were asleep, and Stella was there, reading by flashlight, quietly turning the pages. The words had come easily. Back then, he wrote songs in his head no matter where he was. Everywhere, anyplace, was a song.
He lifted the pen now. He felt like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, writing the same thing over and over: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. He couldn’t think of a thing. Concentrate. Dig deeper. Start with a line. That’s all he needed. One line that he could build on. Something cryptic. Something so real that you couldn’t deny it. He swallowed and something bitter rose up in his throat.
Stella lies in a white, white bed, he wrote, and then crumpled up the paper. Crap. It was crap. It made him feel sick to write it.
Maybe, baby, I killed you, he wrote, and a laugh spiraled up into his body. He put his hands over his face. Take this pill, he had said, and she did. Write what feels true. Write from the bone. Maybe, baby, you’ll die. Maybe, Simon, your father is right. He heaved with deep, cutting sobs. He pushed the paper off the table. He put the guitar on the floor.
If he couldn’t sing, if he couldn’t play, then who was he? Then what would he do with his life?
He put away his guitar and rested his head in his hands. He had a BA in music, but what kind of job would that get him that would pay? Really pay? He knew musicians who had other jobs. He knew a sax player who worked in the mailroom of a company. Another waited tables and wrote advertising copy, and Simon had worked with a drummer who was a personal trainer who went to clients’ houses and showed them how to flatten their stomachs, all the while pretending he cared about what he was doing. Even worse, this guy had to exercise like crazy himself, because who would hire a personal trainer who was flabby and couldn’t do a sit-up or six? Everyone had extra jobs.
And he had to get something that brought in money.
Well. You could do anything for a while if you had to. And in the meantime, he had to push aside his pride.
Bette was always offering money to him, but he knew she was on a fixed income now. He couldn’t take anything from her, and despite the bills, he didn’t want her knowing what dire straits he was in.
He glanced at the clock. How did it get to be six in the morning? How had that happened?
A FEW DAYS later, on a bright Thursday morning, Simon stood in front of his car, waiting for his Lyft mentor session so he could be a driver. “Oh, honey,” Bette had said when he told her he had to work. “You know I wish I could help.”
“You are helping,” he said. “More than you know.”
But now his stomach roiled. This was the last thing he wanted to do, but he wasn’t equipped to do anything else, and no one could say he hadn’t tried. He wasn’t even able to get wedding work, which everyone considered the absolute scum-of-the-earth job for musicians. He had asked all his friends for leads. He had begged, until a drummer friend recommended that he drive for Lyft, told him how you could drive whenever you wanted, make as much or as little as you felt like. Simon had the car, and though it wasn’t in the greatest shape, it could still get people where they needed to go. He had the license, even the background check, and now all he had to do was an hour session with an experienced driver. “Hey, it’s just temporary,” the drummer told him, something Simon kept telling himself like a mantra.
A guy wearing a baseball cap walked up to him. “You Simon?” he said, holding out his hand. “Ronnie.”
His eyes glided over Simon. “Listen, a word,” he said. “I know this is just you and me here, but when you start driving for real, you might want to spiff up your look.”
“What?” Simon said. He was dressed in a black T-shirt, his black jeans. What was spiffier than that?
“Collared shirt,” Ronnie said. “No bare feet, no bare chest, nothing political or objectionable, and take a shower every once in a while.”
Simon stared at him, astonished.
“Well, let’s go on our mandatory Welcome Drive,” Ronnie said, climbing into the car’s backseat. “Go to East Ninety-Sixth.”
The whole time Simon was driving, he felt Ronnie’s eyes boring into his back, watching what he was doing. “Make conversation,” Ronnie said. “Riders sometimes like that. If they like you, they’ll tip you more. We aren’t supposed to take tips, but take them anyway.”
Simon cleared his throat. “So, how about those Yankees?”
“You can do better than that.”
“You like music?” Simon said, clicking on the radio.
“Better,” Ronnie said. He stretched out his arms in the backseat, nodding his head to the music. He began to tell Simon all the secrets. Carry paper bags, or even better, plastic ones in case a rider vomits and you can’t pull over to the side of the road. “Tell Lyft and they can make the rider pay for the cleaning of your car.”
“Excuse me?” Simon said.
“And no cologne. Always clean socks. And watch your dental hygiene. We’ve had complaints about some of the drivers. Good to keep breath mints or those breath strips around. No smoking of anything. Don’t eat in the car either. I don’t care how much more money you could make driving while eating, don’t do it. Food smells irritate people. Take ten minutes and get yourself a sandwich, and eat it outside the car. And no cell phones for you either, except to take passenger calls. Passengers can yap on them all they want, but you concentrate on the driving.”
Simon was offended, but Ronnie kept running down the rules. You couldn’t turn someone down just because they were black or Hispanic or any group you personally didn’t like very much. You were rated and sometimes customers were just mean, but you could rate them, too.
Ronnie looked Simon up and down. “You got any aptitude for customer service?” he asked.
“I can be nice,” Simon said. I’ve pleased ten thousand fans with just two notes.
“You have to do better than just nice. Help people with their baggage if you go to the airport. If someone can’t see or hear or has a cane, you get out of the car and guide him.” Simon thought of all the tours he had been on where the roadies had carried his equipment and his luggage, where hotel staff couldn’t wait to take his bags. He thought of all the special orders the band made. Sparkling water in a cup, not a glass. M&Ms with the blue ones picked out. A single rose in a black vase. All this just because they could.
Ronnie squinted at Simon. “You allergic to dogs? Cats?”
Simon shook his head.
“Good. Because you’ll get plenty of them, especially in Manhattan. Not just seeing-eye dogs, but all kinds. People don’t like to take their pets on the subway, especially if they’re sick. Birds, reptiles, tarantulas, iguanas—they don’t care, they’ll bring them into your car and you have to deal with it, the poop, the noise. And, you know, you can make thirty-five dollars an hour, fifty-five after ten at night. Any questions?”
Simon had a million, like why was he being treated like an idiot? And how long before things went back to normal and Stella was fine again? His heart felt as if it were swimming in his chest. He swallowed. “No,” he said. “No questions.”
“Make a right here,” Ronnie said. “No sense going all the way up to the Upper East Side. You can drop me here.” He winked at Simon. “You’re good to go,” he said.
GOD, BUT IT was humbling being a driver. He was driving his car, but when he had passengers, somehow it transformed into being their car. They got to tell him what route to take, even when his GPS said otherwise. They got to tell him when to stop, when to go. Sometimes people didn’t say a word to him or even acknowledge his presence. No, he was their self-driving car. They left the same way. They got on their cells and spoke loudly about all their personal problems, not caring that Simon was right there, listening. Even though most of his riders ignored him, he still wanted to make sure everyone knew he was something other than a Lyft driver. But none of his passengers seemed to care or even want to talk with him.
He began to love the long stretches when it was just him in the car. He loved the routine. At home, he couldn’t seem to write a note, but somehow, here in this car, words struggled up, melodies sprang, so insistent that he sometimes pulled over to write them down. He wrote a song about Stella, about what she might be thinking. He wrote about how Manhattan didn’t seem like such a big friendly cat anymore but had become a dog, itching to bite. When he got home, he called Kevin. “Hey, I got songs,” he said. He was so excited that he didn’t notice that Kevin sounded different.
“Oh, cool, well, you can send them to us,” Kevin said.
Simon started to tell him that these were deeper, better songs, that he was getting that old spark again, when Kevin cleared his throat.
“Listen,” Kevin said. “I have to tell you something. We’ve got a new manager. Rick introduced us.”
“What?” Simon gripped the phone against his ear. Could this be happening? “Oh my God, I knew something good would come out of this. I knew it.”
He heard Kevin swallow. “Wait, wait, who is he?” Simon asked.
“Jon Merkowski.”
Simon grew still, his breath stopped. He knew that name, knew that Jon had broken out singers and bands, had changed lives with a single deal. Simon’s eyes pooled, and then he started to laugh out loud. He was so giddy that he couldn’t speak, couldn’t get anything out except Kevin’s name, like he was praying to some God.
“Kevin,” he said gratefully. “Kevin. Kevin.”
“He’s good,” Kevin said slowly. “And he hired us a new guy. Fresh blood. The bassist we hired to stand in for you didn’t work out, but God, this new guy? The girls got screamy.”
Simon heard Kevin swallow again. “Yeah, the guy writes songs, too. And he can play bass,” Kevin said.
“Good, good, so we’re covered for now—with a stand-in.”
“Simon,” Kevin said sharply. “You’re hearing me, but you’re not listening. He’s hired, man. He’s a part of the band now.”
Simon sat down. A leak had sprung in his body, deflating him. He tried to say something, but he couldn’t move.
“I stuck up for you,” Kevin said. “You have to believe that. We all did. But we were damned whatever we did. If we said no, we’d lose the deal. And if we said yes, we’d lose you.”
Simon pressed his fingers to his eyes. “Rick Mason know about this?”
“He knows,” Kevin says. “And now you know, too.”
“What’s his number? Rick’s number? I want to hear it from him.”
“I can’t give you that. You know I can’t. And we’re his opening act—it doesn’t mean we’re his band.”
“I want to talk to him.” Simon felt the desperation rising in his body. “He loved my songs. He said I was an influence. Maybe he has an idea for me, too. You give me his goddamn number.”
The noise behind Kevin seemed to grow louder. “Look,” Kevin said. “I can’t just give out Rick’s number. You know that. And this isn’t goodbye. You can still send the songs. We’ll—”
“Fuck you,” Simon said, and he hung up.
ALL THAT NIGHT, he drove around, fuming, ignoring calls coming in for rides. He went out of Manhattan and kept going all the way up to New Hampshire when a bit of reality struck him. He wasn’t glued to Mighty Chondria. If they didn’t want him, then maybe he didn’t want them either. Maybe it was time for him to really move on. Why couldn’t he make up a demo of his songs, send them to some labels? He had at least that clout, didn’t he, to get a listen? He had a makeshift studio at home. He could put up a website, put his own music up there. He knew labels didn’t expect perfection, that whatever he recorded certainly wouldn’t be release ready. He’d have to add on multitracks, other vocals, and even then, it would be raw. Just thinking about it made him feel better. He U-turned on the highway and started home.
It took Simon two weeks to make his demo. He worked on it early in the morning, before he drove the Lyft, before he went to the hospital with Bette. He was relieved that she didn’t ask him what he was doing, that the only thing she said to him was “Sounds terrific in there,” and for that, he was grateful.
As soon as he came home each night, he began to play. And then when he was finished, he couldn’t move. It wasn’t that he didn’t think it was good—it was—or that he didn’t think he could get someone to listen to it. It was that nagging fear, what if it wasn’t good enough?
“Hey, Bette,” he said. She was sitting on the couch, still knitting. He knew she had heard him playing through the bedroom door, but he wanted her to talk about it now, to tell him how the music made her feel. “Would you take a listen?” he asked.
She put the knitting down. “There’s not a thing I’d rather do,” she said.
He played his song for her. He watched her face because he knew people said things to make you feel better, but the body didn’t lie. She nodded her head in time. She tilted her head. “Stella was right,” she said when he finished. “You have such talent.”
He flushed, pleased. “You make me feel like I can do this.”
“You can,” she said. “I know you can.”
HE KEPT THE demo on his phone. Some nights, he played it for himself, just to gauge if it really was as good as he hoped it was. But hearing it, feeling that swell of pride didn’t always make him feel better. What if he’d had his shot and blown it? Everyone got one shot, and maybe he had wasted his. One night when his music was playing in the car, he picked up four young girls in party dresses in Times Square. They crammed into the backseat, all perfumed and giggling, four different shades of long blonde manes. They glanced at Simon and then quickly looked away, ignoring him, flipping their hair, which made him feel weird. It used to be that he couldn’t walk down the street without being recognized, women giving him inviting looks, those lowered glances, that toss of hair. He slipped a look at himself in the mirror. He looked like shit. He had dark circles like bruises under his eyes, and even though he wore his hair long, the shine was gone, and it was in bad need of a trim.
“Bill is fucking hot,” one girl said. “I’d tap him in a heartbeat.”
The girls talked about a party they were going to, one that Bill would be sure to attend, and then “Beautiful Baby” came on the demo. Jesus, it sounded good, didn’t it? He sounded good. He had written this song when he had first met Stella, when he had been so crazy in love with her, he couldn’t eat or sleep.
He glanced in his rearview mirror. The girls were listening. His whole body seemed flooded with joy, and he debated whether he should say something or not.
One of the girls rustled in her dress. “God, that song is so cheesy, it needs some kind of crackers,” she said, laughing.
Simon’s smile faded.
“Yeah, can you shut that off?” a higher, lighter voice said to Simon. “We just want to talk.”
He did, and no one said anything to him for the rest of the ride.
IT WAS ALMOST four in the morning when Simon stopped by the hospital. He sat by Stella’s bed, watching her chest rise and fall with her breath, and then he left to grab a few hours of sleep and then drive again. That would be his life now, watching her, sleeping, and driving.
He walked outside into the cold, clear light, and then he heard someone sigh and he turned. Libby was standing by the side of the hospital, anxiously checking her phone. Her eyes were swollen and red. He looked at her amazed.
“Hey,” he said as she swiped at her eyes. “Libby,” he said, and she startled, seeing him.
“You,” she said. She reached for a tissue in her purse and daubed at her nose.
“Are you okay? What’s wrong?” he said, but she shook her head. “Anything I can do?” He bet it was that boyfriend on the motorcycle, the guy who had made her laugh before and now he had probably made her cry. Still, how wonderful to be able to have that. A fight. A lover. A makeup session with brilliant sex. What he’d give for that. Hello, where have you been. I’ve missed you. Hello, hello. Hello.
“My cab didn’t show,” she said. He knew it was a lie. You mean your motorcycle, he thought.
“I’ll drive you home,” he said.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Come on. It’s no trouble.”
She nodded and followed him to the car, slinking down in the front seat. “Put on your seatbelt,” he said, and she sighed and buckled up, and then he saw her lower lip tremble.
“I live at 416 Gramercy Park North,” she said. She stared out the window, away from him. “I know it’s close enough, but I’m too exhausted to walk,” she said.
“Sure you don’t want to talk?”
“It won’t help,” she said. She stared down at her lap.
“So you’ve been at the hospital less,” she said finally.
“I still come every day,” he said. “But I’ve been working.”
She looked at him with new interest. “Doing what?”
He nodded at the car. “This is a Lyft car now.”
“Is this a joke?”
“I need to work. This lets me.”
“You like it?”
“It’s a job. It’s money. It relaxes me.”
“Good. That’s responsible.” She nodded at him. “Stella used to talk about you all the time, you know.”
Simon turned the wheel and headed down another street. “What? She did?”
“We were friends. Good friends. I told you that before. You didn’t really know that, did you? You don’t remember meeting me when Stella was well?”
He heard the doubt in her voice. Other than her having seemed vaguely familiar, he couldn’t recall anything about her. But why not? Why hadn’t he known more about Stella’s life? “Sure, I knew it,” he said.
“You didn’t know it, right?” Libby said. “I’m not accusing you. I’m just curious.”
“What did she say about me?” Simon said.
“She said you were like a kid, that you weren’t always responsible. She said you lacked balance, but it didn’t matter because she was balanced enough for the two of you.”
“Stella said that?” He looked at Libby. Her chin tilted up. “She said lots of things,” Libby said. “She loved you.”
“I love her.” He felt it, a pull.
“I’m so tired,” Libby said. “Today I forgot where my stethoscope was and it was around my neck.” She rubbed her shoulders. He glanced at her again. The skin under her eyes was faintly purple, like a stain. Her lips were chapped, and she was biting them. “Ever forget whether you ate or not?” she said.
“All the goddamn time,” he said. “But then again, I have no appetite anymore.”
“Sometimes I do,” she said. “Only sometimes. And sometimes I just want junk, which is even worse than not eating at all.”
“Are you in a hurry?”
“What? Why?” She glanced at her watch.
He turned onto a street. “Just a moment,” he said, pulling the car to the street side. “Be right back.”
“Please don’t take long.”
He parked the car and ran into a bodega. He knew what it was like, no sleep and all that worry clouded over you. He roamed the aisles full of crappy cookies and oversalted pretzels, and then he finally came out with a cup of tea and a package of whole-wheat cheese crackers for her, which seemed like the most nutritious thing the store had. This gesture had seemed like such a good idea, but as he approached the car, he began to wonder, because she had a funny look on her face. He handed her the cup of tea. “For you,” he said, and then she looked surprised.
“You seem like the Earl Grey type, so that’s what I got.” He gave her the crackers. “It’s not that bad for you,” he told her, and she laughed.
“I thought you were stopping for yourself,” she said.
“Doing this is for me,” he said.
“Well, this food is exactly what I want,” she said quietly. He watched her sip the tea. “Why did you really do this?” she asked. “The ride. The tea?”
“Sometimes you act like you don’t like me,” he said. “I wanted you to know that I’m not a monster.”
“I didn’t say you were,” she said.
“You think I don’t go over there day after day? You think I don’t wish I could undo everything?”
“I don’t know what to think. All I know is that in all the time I’ve known Stella, I’ve never seen her drunk. Some of the nurses, the doctors, boost pills, but never Stella. She wasn’t that kind.”
“You think I made her that kind?”
“She would have done anything for you,” Libby said quietly.
She nibbled the cracker, holding one hand underneath so she wouldn’t get crumbs in his car. She offered him one, and he shook his head. “No appetite,” he said.
“You have to eat,” she said. “Come on. You made me, now I’m making you.” She handed him a cracker and he bit into it, all salt and sweet against his tongue.
She drained her tea and they polished off the crackers. Her edges seemed to have softened. Her hands relaxed. She stretched. “Ready to go?” he said, and she nodded so he pulled out of the space.
When he dropped her off, he waited as she got out of the car and walked to the front of her apartment. She turned as she put the key in the lock, watching him for a moment as if trying to figure him out, and he didn’t leave until he knew she was safely inside.