SIMON KEPT PLAYING MUSIC and she kept drawing. People now. That was what interested her. At first, she had to actually see them, but now she could work from memory. She drew the guy at the bodega down the block, the young nanny with the twins who was always strolling with them past London Terrace. Every person she drew was so alive. It was like they were breathing on the page.
“What are you drawing?” Simon asked. She blinked at him. If she told him, he’d have all sorts of questions. She knew she could ask him to sit for her, that she could draw him, but was there anything about him that she didn’t know already?
She put her drawing away. “Oh, nothing much,” she said. “What do you say we go out for dinner? We haven’t done that for a while. Would that be okay?”
They went to a new Italian place in SoHo, but the dinner Stella had imagined didn’t happen. They weren’t loose on a glass of red wine. They weren’t laughing over their pastas. Instead, they each seemed lost in their own heads. Stella reached for Simon’s hand and flinched at his fingers, chilled from the air-conditioning. “I’ll warm them up,” she said, but he was rubbing them himself and then he fanned his hands out. “Done,” he said.
ONE FRIDAY, THEY went to Central Park together. They found a bench and Stella began drawing. People came over to watch her. Stella acted as if she wasn’t even aware of them, but Simon could feel the sharp edge of their interest, the way people leaned in, their gaze focusing on the movement of her hands. “It’s always like this,” she told him.
“What? It is?” He couldn’t believe the people coming to her, as if she were a magnet. How had this happened so fast, so easily for her? He wanted to ask her how come it was okay for strangers to see what she was drawing but not for him when they were alone. He wanted to put his hand on her hand as she worked, because maybe then electricity might transfer to him, too. “Oh my God,” people said. “So amazing. Is this for sale?” Stella looked up, dazed. “What would you want to pay?” Stella asked, and Simon bumped her elbow, amazed.
People seemed to know about her. “My friend had her drawing framed,” a woman told Stella. Simon, stunned, watched the money come in.
“Draw me,” a young woman with dreads said. “I’ll pay you.” Stella looked up at her. “Ten bucks,” the woman said. “I know it’s worth much more, but that’s what I’ve got.”
“Okay,” Stella said. “Sit over there.” She focused on the woman and her hands began to move, and after a half hour there was the woman on the page. “I love it!” she said, and dug in her purse for money, but Stella raised her hands. “I changed my mind. I can’t take your money,” she said.
“Oh my God, thank you, thank you,” the woman said, taking the drawing holding it as gently as a fine piece of china.
“Why didn’t you let her pay you?” Simon asked after the woman had left, the drawing tucked under her arm. Stella shrugged. “I think she needed the money.”
“What? How do you know that?”
“I don’t know how. But I did. It just all seemed to make sense as I was drawing.”
By the time they left the park, she had twelve commissions. People would come back tomorrow, and someone asked if Stella could come to his place or meet somewhere neutral. Stella glowed.
SIMON CAME HOME the next night from driving and Stella, who usually carefully counted out all their money and put it away, had bills and coins splashed across the table and she was staring at all of it in wonder. “I had a good day,” she said.
“What?”
“I went to the park.”
He blinked at her. “By yourself?”
“I love it up there.”
“There are closer parks, you know.”
“I know,” she said. “But you should have seen it. All these people gathered around me.” She looked up at him, her eyes shining. “I’m getting better at it. It comes without even thinking.”
“What comes?”
“I can tell what a person is like. I can draw them, like their deepest selves. Somehow . . . everything comes alive on the page for me.”
She suddenly frightened him. How could she do that? And why would she want to? She didn’t seem interested in drawing him, which relieved him a little. At least he could have some control over his own self.
“It isn’t woo woo or anything like that,” Stella insisted. “Libby told me the brain can change. After coma, you can pick up things you couldn’t before. Including talents.”
She took up her pencil again and began drawing a face with a pointed chin, wild hair, and then he realized she was drawing herself, and Simon moved in closer, curious. “Is that you?” he said. He didn’t want to tell her that it didn’t really look anything like her, but she must have known that because she let the pencil roll from her fingers.
“This was a stupid idea,” she said. “I don’t know what I’m even looking at here. It’s just lines and shapes.” She sighed. “I’m better with other people. That’s what it’s all about.”
“You’ll get it,” he said, trying to be reassuring, but she seemed to be looking beyond him.
WHO WAS HE kidding? That force, that creativity. He was jealous of it. He went into the bedroom and onto the internet and read about a guy who became a famous artist after a coma, whose paintings now hung in galleries. “It’s all I want to do,” the guy said, and that scared Simon even more. There was another famous case of a guy who had awakened to believe that he was Matthew McConaughey. The mirrors were wrong, he insisted. He kept waiting for film roles and it took them months to convince him that he wasn’t the actor. “How disappointing,” he said.
That night, Stella went to bed early, but Simon couldn’t sleep. He went to the dining room where her drawings were stacked and he looked through them, marveling at her gift but unsettled by it as well. She was right. She had gotten better. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see these drawings in a gallery. Again, he felt a tightening in his stomach. When was the last time anyone had clamored for his talent?
Simon left her a note, Be back soon, in case she woke up, and got in his car and drove down Bleecker Street, to Le Poison Rouge, a live music club. They booked indie bands there and were willing to take a chance on unproven talents. Hell, the club had once booked Mighty Chondria, and the band had been good enough to get asked back twice. He remembered the sound of the crowd, the sweat, the crowd heaving like wild animals. Everyone in the band had been soaking wet by the time the set was over. They slapped their hands together, laughing and shouting. Simon had gone back to the dressing room to find two girls there in various states of undress, one in a glittering tube top cut off at the midriff, the other in a skirt that barely covered her upper thighs, but the only person he saw, shining like moonlight, was Stella seated in the corner. She got up when she saw him. She moved through the other girls, gliding, and then he shut her eyes with his mouth and kissed her, and there was nothing else. Not then.
He slowed the car. Maybe he’d stop in. The club might remember him. They’d surely remember Mighty Chondria.
The place was jammed and dark and filled with the sour smell of beer. He had been on that stage only a few years ago, but now he felt out of place. He pushed his way to the back. Everyone else seemed so young, and it startled him. When had this change happened? Why hadn’t he noticed? The people here just moved faster, even reaching for a drink. They talked rapid-fire and their skin had a kind of sheen to it, a smoothness as if it had been ironed and polished. He bumped against a young woman with a white crew cut and a nose ring, and she looked through him. He felt as if he were trapped behind a wall so dense no one could even see him.
Stop, he told himself. Don’t do this. Don’t be ridiculous. Mick Jagger was in his seventies now and he was still a show pony. Maybe Simon could try out his songs here. He didn’t have a manager, an agent, a presence online, but this club knew his old band. Maybe he’d catch a break.
He wove his way to the bar and asked the bartender who did the booking now. The guy shrugged and leaned across Simon to take the drink orders of two young girls. Then a roar went up and he saw people congregating by the stage area, pumping their fists into the air and whooping. There were no seats, not that he had ever minded before, but now his knees were aching. His back hurt. He pushed through the crowd to the wall, so he could lean against it. Maybe it was just stress doing this to him.
Maybe it was because he was getting old.
Beside him a girl tilted her face up to kiss a guy, who ran his hands up under her shirt. They looked sixteen, so young, so fresh, that they might as well have been airbrushed. When he and Stella were young, they’d go to clubs. They’d find a dark corner, and he wanted her so much, he’d kiss her neck, move his hands under whatever little dress she was wearing. She’d whisper to him, pressing herself closer and closer, and they both felt mad with love. She was so happy then. And so was he. When was the last time Stella had wanted him? Or he had wanted her? When was the last time any woman had even looked at him? A knot lodged in his belly, and Simon felt sorrow gathering in his throat, but he forced himself to swallow it down because he couldn’t cry in this club.
A man strode onstage. “Give it up for Backyard Anarchy!” he screamed, and people began to hoot and wave their hands. Four guys slouched out to the stage, growling. “Fuck you!” one of them screamed to the audience. “Fuck you!” they yelled back. And the band began to play.
There it was, the shock of the music. It used to work as a key, turning him on. But now it was too loud. Had music always been this loud? He couldn’t hear the notes or the words or even the melody, which was mush. He put his fingers to his ears and then saw two people laughing at him, mocking him, and he thought of Stella, the way he had chided her because she had embarrassed him by wearing earplugs when they played, how he had told her it was an insult to the musicians. His ears rang, a tone tightening into another octave. Even with the wall support, his back throbbed with pain. He peeled himself away, pushing through the crowd until he found the door, walked past the long line of people desperate to get inside. He stood on the street, hunched over, his hands on his knees, gulping in the cold air.
He couldn’t play here. Not on his own. Not with a band. Not with his songs. He had let Libby send out his demo to the record CEO she knew, but she never spoke of it to him again, and he certainly wasn’t going to ask. Anyway, he knew why she hadn’t told him. She was being kind, not telling him. No, thank you. That must have been what they had said. Who was he fooling? The knot in his stomach tightened, and then he started crying. It was gone. That whole golden moment in time for him had faded away.
He got back in the car and drove, his hands shaking. He didn’t know where he was going, only that it wasn’t home and it wasn’t to pick up any passengers. He drove from downtown all the way up to West Eighty-Sixth and then back to the Gramercy Park area. It was so late, and this was so crazy, but he was so lonely. His eyes felt heavy. He swore that every tear he had ever felt like crying was dammed up inside of him.
He stopped in front of a redbrick apartment building where a parking space waited, like a fateful sign. He got out of the car and walked to the front door to buzz, but then he heard a window open. He stepped back, looked up. There, in her nightgown, was Libby. She didn’t say a word but stepped back, and then he heard the buzz of the door letting him in. He climbed up the two flights, and when he got to the top, she was standing there, waiting. As soon as he saw her, he was crying again, standing there in the doorway, and she took him into her arms and drew him inside the apartment.
He cried on her shoulder. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” he sobbed. He saw the curve of her throat, felt the heat of her body. He looked into her eyes and he felt as if she knew what he was thinking, knew how he felt, and she felt it, too. He knew this was crazy, that it was wrong.
“Come on, sit down,” she said gently, guiding him to her couch. She sat so close to him that he could feel her breath on his face.
“Libby,” he said, and then she leaned forward and kissed him, and the two of them sprawled along the couch, their legs entwining, his mouth on hers.
AFTERWARD, HE FELT dark with shame. How could he have slept with her? He couldn’t look at her, and when he finally dared to, she was looking anywhere but at him. She dressed quickly, feeling that any moment something terrible would happen, and she had to be ready for it.
He pulled on his clothes. For so many years, Stella had worried that he was cheating on her, but he never had. There were so many women around the band, sliding up against him, showing up in his room. He had always ignored them or sent them away. It didn’t matter to him what the rest of the band did—that was their business. He had so many chances, but he never betrayed Stella. Not until now.
He looked at Libby. She was sitting on the couch, fully dressed, and he hated the yearning he felt toward her, the way he wanted to stroke her hair, to touch the curve of her hip. “I’m so sorry,” he said.
She chewed on her lower lip, studying him.
“It can never happen again,” he said.
“It won’t.” He couldn’t tell if she was hurt or angry, or if maybe she, too, felt she had betrayed her best friend. She went to the front door and opened it. “We’ll just be friends. Not lovers. That’s the best thing to be,” she said.
When she closed the door and he stood in the hall, he felt his stomach tighten. He put both his hands on the outside of the door as if he could feel her energy burning through the wood.
On the way home, he told himself all sorts of things. He hadn’t exactly cheated on Stella because she wasn’t fully Stella yet. It wasn’t cheating because it was just a release of tension, something he needed in order to function in his life. He put one hand over his eyes for a moment. Liar. Cheat.
He went home and Stella was sleeping. He took her hands out from the covers and folded them together so she looked like she was praying.