JOEY WANTED TO GO HOME. He wanted to go home so bad it made his teeth ache, but home was back with Sally, balanced on a tightrope wire he didn’t have the shoes for, and the thing that frightened Joey most was large and very hairy and had just taken up residence on the opposite bench. It leered, drooling. Joey tried his best to ignore it, warming his hands around his coffee cup.
Joey did not notice Rickie when she walked in. He didn’t look up when she ran off a long complicated order at the take-out counter, inverting syllables like a dyslexic push-me-pull-you. Then Rickie did a Python 007 routine and slithered over to his table. She snuck in beside the drooling hairy thing, scaring it half to death. It was none the wiser for it. Those types never are.
She cleared her throat and lowered her voice as far as it would go, which was a fair distance. “I believe the Sourpuss Parade just turned left on Main Street,” she said, staring him right in the eye. “It was no more than five minutes and change ago. You can still make it if you’re quick.”
“It isn’t funny.”
“It isn’t? Tell me what isn’t?” She did look like the sort of person who laughed a lot; a big round face nestled in large quantities of cheerful black curls.
“Me. Right now.” He felt too tired and beaten for the old game: extract female sympathy for your miserable condition and go on from there. So what were his motives in telling her the truth?
“You catch on quick,” she replied, “for a turtle on reds that is,” and went to wait for her order.
And why was she bothering? She’d been up all night; he knew that already. The mix of beer and bennies that had propelled her this far not yet worn off; the mile a minute chatter she’d entertained her friends with all night had just enough gas left in it to spill over onto him. She didn’t really care, and he didn’t hold it against her. But she was cute, very cute. “All you got to do is ask,” she said, coming back with an enormous paper bag. Mind reading powers as well, it looked like.
Joey spoke up, pride notwithstanding. “Okay, okay, I’m asking.”
Rickie gave him a Camel filter. “When you’re finished you can have one of these.” She reached into the bag and brought out a cheeseburger.
“That’s a pretty good hat trick,” he admitted, lighting the cigarette greedily, “considering when I ate last.”
“It is,” she boasted, “although I know a few others.”
“It shows,” he said. Joey wastefully put out his Camel only half smoked and carefully unwrapped his burger, took an enormous bite. It tasted almost as good as a brand new reed would have, for his exiled saxophone. Almost.
Half the burger gone, the drooling hairy thing shrank a little, its ugly grimace distending into an almost smile, appeased by Rickie’s gifts. Joey managed to ask, “Where’re you having so much fun, anyway?”
She gave him the card to a private club, and he asked, because she seemed more than just a club kid, what she played, and she said, “I just sing, but I’m learning the guitar, although I haven’t taken it on stage yet. But it’s a cool place; Mojo comes every Thursday, and you should come.”
“What makes you think I’m a player?”
“I’ve seen your picture in the trade papers, Joey.”
“You mean you read?”
She rolled her eyes, pulling the card away, but Joey took it back and put it in his pocket.
Mojo. Mojo’s first derivative world beat recording had sustained a moderate success, and Joey felt bitter. If he went to this place, Joey guessed, he’d be surrounded by musicians ten to fifteen years younger, and a few of them, like Mojo, who was white, would have better club dates and recording contracts under their belts than he’d ever had, even with his twenty years of dues. He thought he wouldn’t show. “I’d love to come,” he said, surprising himself, “but my best lady’s in hock, and I wouldn’t want to show with a lesser companion.”
“How much?” she asked.
“Seventy-five bones,” he replied wearily, wiping cheeseburger grease off his chin.
She did something miraculous then. Reached into her jeans pocket, and pulled four crumpled twenties off a roll. “Here,” she said, “don’t spend it at the bar. Show by eleven. By sun-up you’ll have enough to pay me back.”
He took the card out again. The Rainbow Bridge. Prop: Carlos Cienfuego. “You mean you actually get paid at this place?” He was revealing everything now, and to a girl who couldn’t be more than twenty-eight. So much for sounding older, wise, cooler than hell. But she seemed the one with all the wisdom this morning. Maybe they’re like that now, he marvelled.
“Ten dollar cover at the door, and people come, because the music’s real good and doesn’t stop till morning. At least some nights it’s real good.”
He stared at her. “How come you got so wise?”
“I want to get to heaven,” she said. “You have to save one life. That’s the entry fee, I heard.”
“I knew there was a catch.”
“Don’t screw up,” she said, as if only now, the first daylight streaming in the front windows, could she see how broken he really was. She left in a hurry, crashing into the door on her way out, sounding like a platoon of armadillos wearing rings on their fingers and doorbells on their toes.
He hated her for just a second: a girl, afraid he might embarrass her. Didn’t she know who he was? But she did. It was why she’d invited him. And why she was afraid.
And he walked across town in the snow to save the bus fare, brought his beauty home, bought a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter at the Latino convenience store on the ground floor of his Avenue C walk-up with the leftover five dollars. He practised for four hours before he ate and went to sleep, and when he played that night at Carlos’s he didn’t embarrass Rickie at all. He’d completely forgotten the rush of applause; he’d done only session work for so long. Jingles. But this was real.
sss
After they’d made music four nights a week for a fortnight his landlord turfed him out for non-payment, and Rickie, reading his mind again, invited him to share her First Avenue one bedroom, use the fold-out. How foolishly idealistic the young are, he thought. How does she know I won’t screw up my share of the rent, won’t come on to her, won’t deal heroin out of her crib? Rickie stared into his eyes, still too knowing, said, “Because I believe in music. Because you’re not as good as you used to be.“
“No, I’m not,” he answered, ready to call his old supplier, have her come to the apartment while Rickie was out at work, make indiscreet phone calls, leave the bathroom full of needles and bent blackened spoons.
“No,” she said. “You’re not as good as before. The last two nights you were better. Whatever happened to you, and I know it wasn’t good, you’ve finally turned it into something good. I’m just a girl who believes, but you’re a real musician.”
It was true, he thought. “I believe too,” he said.
And she said, “Of course you do. Why else would you have stayed in the game so long? Not gone into real estate, software, whatever?”
Could be I wasn’t good for anything else, he thought, but agreed instead. “Whatever. But you know too much.”
“Only when I’ve been singing,” she replied.
And they went to Orchard Street and shopped for sheets for the pull-out, and he thought perhaps she’d teach him to love New York all over again. “Get an extra set,” she said, “for your beastie.” She leaned down to pet it but it snarled, snapping at her fingers. He winced, full of remorse. Why did it have to follow him everywhere, looking like that?
But Rickie only said, “I’ve never met anyone who has one before. I’ve heard of them of course, seen them on TV, but I’ve never met a real person who’s got one. Even Mojo.”
No kidding, he thought, you can’t be a copy-cat and expect an animal to come to you, but said instead, “I know you don’t have one, I would’ve seen it by now. But don’t you ever feel one waiting for you, wanting to come?”
“I dream of a bird sometimes. It’s golden and very beautiful.”
“Dream more,” he said, and looked at his creature in shame, dragging her peeling yellowed talons along the cement. She hadn’t always looked like this.
He remembered the beginning, when he’d first moved here, when it had meant so much to live in the East Village. Meant everything; that he’d honed his craft so lovingly he had a creature to prove it, a beautiful gryphon with yellow eyes who sat behind him when he played. That had been worth more than gold. He looked at Rickie. That must be what she felt like still, waiting patiently for her animal, calling it with her passion, her attention, her discipline. Life’s biggest dream was about to happen to her. That anyone could still feel like that. His monster drooled and shuddered beside him, shedding feathers and fur. He wished he could kill it, start all over. But of course it didn’t work that way.
sss
Three months into their arrangement a girl came to the door when Rickie was at her four night a week waitressing gig. Pale pale face, short dark hair, a hollow wooden look. Rickie was such a survivor, so efficient and competent, he’d forgotten there was another kind of girl, this kind. Stick figure, bird bones, puppet. Marionette, he thought, who’s pulling the strings? And then wondered at the thought, its flash of unasked-for intuition. He checked to see if she had an animal. She didn’t, unless it was very small, hiding in a pocket. She stared right back, looking past him at his monster who’d come skulking down the stairs after him. A bag of feathers and fur, matted, shedding.
The girl asked for Rickie, but Rickie was at work, and Joey too had to leave to record his tracks for a jingle, so he couldn’t invite her in for coffee, not that he wanted to.
“What should I tell her?” he asked.
“Just say Phoebe dropped by,” the girl said. “We’re real good friends,” but Joey had never heard Rickie mention any Phoebe.
“You come back some other time,” he said, hoping she wouldn’t. Phoebe sighed heavily, as though he was such a drag not to invite her up, stared past him, slyly, at his creature, smirked.
He shut the door in her face, hating himself again for being so old, for knowing too much in a different way than Rickie did, Rickie whom he owed rent. He hated himself for his cynicism, but knew without a doubt that friends like this didn’t come to the door unless they wanted something: food, a share of the stash, a place to stay, money. He knew he was being unfair, but he’d been around too long not to peg the type when he saw it. He’d had that look himself, for over a decade, frightening people, or arousing their contempt. Probably still had it. Only Rickie had seen through to something else, a brightness buried deep within, almost winked out. Maybe he was an alley cat, protecting his turf, jealously guarding Rickie’s generosity for himself. What if Rickie kicked him out, invited Phoebe to share the flat instead? Those cat eyes, he could feel them staring through the door even as he climbed the stairs. Telling him he wasn’t an alley cat at all; no, he was a monster. Had to be: he had one, didn’t he?
A street door that locked. Windows that didn’t look at an air shaft. That’s what First Avenue did for you, even if it was a cheap rent control she’d paid key money for, borrowed from her parents. Sally was still in the one Joey had had. Heat that worked. Three months and he still couldn’t get used to it. It had been years. He thought he wouldn’t mention the girl.
He didn’t tell, but Phoebe showed up when he was out, and Rickie home. And when he got in, Phoebe was asleep on what he’d come to think of as “his” sofa bed, blue shadows in the white sheets, under her eyes. He sighed and slept on the floor. In the morning, when Phoebe was still asleep, and Rickie had just gotten in from Carlos’s, she said, “You take the bedroom tonight, it’s only got a twin. I’ll share the pull-out with her.”
And he wanted to say, it’s because she was here I didn’t show up at the club. I was afraid she’d rob you, friend or no. I know her type too well. I was one, but at least I got an animal first. But Rickie stared at him with a look that said, it’s my apartment and that’s the end of it, and so Phoebe stayed.
sss
Phoebe would come to Carlos’s too. She always sat alone, a shadow in shadowy corners, drumming her hands impatiently on the table, scowling at anyone who tried to join her. Sometimes he thought she’d melt, disappear, and sometimes she did: disappear for an hour, come back darker, more shadowy still. He’d pay for her beer without knowing why. She’d make cat eyes at him. He’d wonder what she was thinking. With Rickie always reading his thoughts he’d come to think of communication that way: fluid, easy. But Phoebe was the other kind of girl. You didn’t know, and she didn’t tell. It made you want to know. It was her game. He’d be angry, and then he’d remember. All his games, and bring her a second beer so she wouldn’t have to ask. Rickie always spent her breaks sitting with her, happy she’d come. He couldn’t figure it.
She worked in a St. Mark’s Place vintage clothing store, making minimum wage. This wreaked havoc with her newly acquired Rainbow Bridge hours, and, she confessed she sometimes took naps on the old blue velvet couch that was part of the store’s decor, on slow afternoons. He wondered she wasn’t fired when she told him that, but Rickie said her window displays were the best, and he had to admit they were darkly hip.
Every so often, if it was promising to be a lame night at Carlos’s, and neither Rickie nor Joey had work they stayed home instead, talking into the early hours.
Somehow long detailed conversations required the presence of all three: they never happened otherwise. Once when Phoebe went out, visiting friends she said, Joey finally asked.
“You never mentioned her before she showed up.”
Rickie swigged her Coors, sorted seeds, stared at him. “Mention me one good friend you told me about.”
“Of mine?” He was flabbergasted. “I don’t have any. I pissed them all away.”
“So make one out of her.”
“She’s not like you. She’s not together. She has no drive, no passion.”
“She cooks and cleans,” Rickie said. “She’s an amazing cook.” He shrugged, wondering why Rickie suddenly thought these were important; she lived on take-out and dry-cleaning.
“We never used to stay in and talk till she came. I didn’t even know you. You just lived here, and we played music together.”
“We’re not friends?” he asked, astonished. He thought they’d been so close.
“Of course we are.” She gave him her signature comradely hug, said, “but people have different qualities. Why shouldn’t I have a friend who isn’t brilliant, talented? She starts the conversations about life, feelings. Something you and I never bother to do.”
“We don’t have to,” he said. “We have music.”
“Don’t ever let her know you think she’s nothing. Talking is communication too. We’re just not very good at it.”
“No,” he said, “we’re musicians, naturally telepathic.”
“Right,” Rickie said. “Remember you telling me once why Sally said she left you. Something about no talking? Maybe we should learn. Maybe Phoebe will teach us.”
“She doesn’t talk to me. It’s only when we’re all three together.”
“Nobody’s perfect.”
“S’pose not,” he said, relenting. But he thought, you don’t know what she’s really like. And then: but you took me in, and you weren’t wrong. At least not yet.
sss
It was all right when Rickie was there, making a bridge between them. But when he was alone with Phoebe they prowled around one another; those were the times the one bedroom felt too small. Phoebe would do her nails yet again, a new shade of green, and answer in monosyllables when Joey tried to make conversation, draw her out. She’d laugh, as if it was pointless, the effort at talking. He asked her once what she wanted from life and she said, “I like it, I like my job, I know it doesn’t pay well but I like old clothes.”
“What else?” he asked.
“I used to really like math.”
“What else d’you like?”
“I like music.”
“You don’t want to play, though?”
“Not everyone plays. I don’t have talent.” She glared at him, sneered at his monster. Who’d want talent, she was thinking. He could tell.
“The years’ll go by, you have to have something you care about, some way to get ahead, make progress.”
“I like my life,” she said. “What’s wrong with just living?” She stared at him as if she thought he was very very old to have forgotten this. She looked at her watch. “Time to go to the club. You’ll be late. The others are expecting you.” She scooped his creature off the floor, handed it to him. It looked like a winged rat, but he was grateful it was small tonight. She looked spiteful. “Forgetting something?” And it was true, he’d rather leave it home, if it were only possible. It was embarrassing having it sit next to him on stage, so ugly.
sss
She shrugged too much. He should’ve known. You only shrug that much if there’s a payoff: the secret comfort, the thing that matters, makes the other things not matter. Shruggable.
Carlos’s, being private, got away with a unisex john and that was the night Joey saw the needle imperfectly hidden under damp paper towels in the waste basket under the sink. He confronted her. And she stared at him, her eyes huge, purple shadowed. “Big deal,” she said. “It wasn’t mine.” And he left it at that, having no proof.
sss
He wasn’t sleeping with either of the women. Sally was years over by now, and while there’d been women since, none of them had been real. If he got involved with Rickie, it would have to be real, she’d stand for nothing less. And if he got involved with Phoebe, it wouldn’t be real, and he’d chance blowing his friendship with Rickie.
He smiled at himself: the things you knew at forty you hadn’t at thirty. If only he’d been so circumspect with Sally. And now he was living with two women, and not doing either of them. Hard to figure. In time he’d even stopped being hopelessly aroused by their long sexy if unshaven legs propped on the coffee table, balancing coffee cups. He wondered if they’d known.
He wasn’t in love with either of them. It was more as if he was in love with their life, and it was something about being three: just one and he knew the inevitable outcome. Two were safer. When they weren’t working or at Carlos’s, they spent their time watching old black and white movies on television at two am, eating Phoebe’s incredible sandwiches, doing crossword puzzles or reading in the big perpetually messy bed. He’d never had female roommates before, not without being romantically involved. It was like a revelation to him, what girls were like when they lived together. He got to listen to them talk about clothes and make-up; Rickie’d never revealed that side to him.
Sometimes he woke in the morning with a strange, sickly, unfamiliar sensation. At first blink he’d figure it for a hangover and then he’d realize it was hope. Joey felt he’d been given a reprieve. He was forty-two, and the girls were in their late twenties, even Carlos only thirty-one. One day, he suspected, it would be over and he’d have to reassume his real age. Plodding towards middle-aged failure.
He wanted to warn Rickie, protect her. So few made it, in spite of talent or hard work, or even an animal, and she hadn’t one yet, not one that he’d seen. Why not?
Why was it taking her so long to grow a creature? They were the only true solace; they made everything possible. His, for instance, was busy pulling the stuffing out of their only armchair, spreading it over the carpet in an even unvacuumable static coating.
“Have a back-up,” he said. “Not cocktailing, even if you’re in a good place, the tips are good. Go to school for something more practical than music, more worthwhile than waitressing. Have continuity, friendships or partners that last for years and years.”
All the things I didn’t do, he wanted to add, but Rickie, as always, already knew the unspoken things. She walked over to his creature, picked it up, put it in his arms.
“Be kind to her,” she said, but the gryphon bit his ear. Maybe he’d give it to Phoebe. If only he could. Where was she?
But he knew.
Out.
sss
He lived with them with great pleasure, feeling each day a little more healed, knowing still it wasn’t really his life, but theirs. Or Rickie’s. Phoebe he knew had already given herself up to the shadows, just making a good secret of it. And who was he to judge?
One day when she was leaving he asked, “Where are you going?”
“To the racetrack.”
“Isn’t that a euphemism for your dealer?”
She smiled, seemingly not taking offense. He’d never seen her smile. “Actually not.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Come see for yourself then, if you’re so sure.”
He had nothing else to do, so he put on his coat and accompanied her on the subway, all the way to Queens. They drank ice cold beer and chatted. Phoebe read the racing forms with a determined focus that startled Joey, and moreover won sixty dollars, which wasn’t bad considering. Perennially broke, her original stake had only been ten.
“I’m impressed,” he said, meaning it.
“You can’t go to off track,” she explained earnestly. “It’s not the same thing. You have to see the horses, the jockeys; if you look at them carefully you can see whether it’s a good day for them or not. But mostly you have to be very analytical: judging, weighing, measuring everything.”
“Analytical,” he said on the ride home. “What a concept.”
He was careful not to sound snide, but she only said, “Thanks for coming with me, Joey. It’s more fun when you’re not alone.”
“Isn’t everything?”
It seemed she liked it that he was impressed. She went more often, dragging him along when he wasn’t busy. She took to bringing the racing form home and studying it for hours, pointedly, in front of him. So much for thinking she didn’t care whether he lived or died. She stopped cleaning up after them, stopped doing their laundry. At least her incredible Italian sandwiches didn’t stop.
There were fewer needles in the bathroom suddenly, the needles that he always hid before Rickie came home, the ones Phoebe had been too gone to hide.
“One junkie always knows another,” she said. “You stopped; I’ll stop. Just let me do it my way; please don’t tell Rickie. Remember when no one could tell you anything?”
She didn’t say, “not even Sally.” Rickie would have said that, but Joey was grateful Phoebe didn’t, thought it showed a remarkable discernment, a finely discriminating tact. He even forgot to think it was more game. And so he conspired in her secret with her, and prayed no harm would come to any of them because of it. It went against his better instincts, but it was all he could do. Her big shadowy eyes: give me this one chance. And Rickie had given him that chance, and so he couldn’t say no.
He remembered what Rickie had said, that first morning, when he’d asked why she was bothering with him. To get to heaven, you have to save one life. It’s the entry fee. He’d thought she was being facetious, but now it gave him pause. Phoebe’s sandwiches were delicious, but food for thought is the best kind. He took the trash out often, and went so far as buying Phoebe needles so she’d use new, and clean. He didn’t think that was what it would take, to save her life, but it was all he could come up with. Buying time.
But now there were horses in Phoebe’s life, and fewer syringes in the trash. She emerged a little from the shadows. He thought it was the winning, which she did often, in small amounts, but she laughed when he called her a gambling junkie. “I like winning,” she said. “It’s a reward, but it’s the figuring I really like.”
He remembered again when she’d shyly admitted that in high school she’d loved math, as though, in their musicians’ crowd, it was something to be ashamed of. And it was true; it was so foreign to him it was as if he hadn’t heard her. And now, some nights when she got that slippery look again, as though she was going to disappear, make phone calls in alleyways, he’d get off stage, apologize to Carlos, take her by the arm and say, “Let’s go. We’re going to the races.”
sss
Mojo asked him to lay sax tracks for his new CD, said it would be an honour.
Joey was astounded, and Rickie laughed at him. “You really haven’t a clue, have you?”
“A clue?”
“We all think it’s an honour. You’re one of the best.”
“People my age don’t think that,” he said, grateful for her all over again.
“Fuck ’em,” she said. “We need you.”
“Maybe you just haven’t seen me screw up real bad.”
“Oh,” she said charmingly, “but you’re reborn now. You’re over all that, whatever it was.”
He’d never told her. She didn’t know. He was amazed at her faith in him. She didn’t know how tempted he was. Phoebe. A door that swung two ways. What if he only threw out Phoebe’s needles so he could handle them again, a tiny illicit thrill? It would be so easy to fall, such a comfort.
Then he realized if he fell, he might fall alone, for Phoebe was changing, or just showing him more of her hidden good side. They all went to the recording studio together, and Mojo, who loved to play but had only learned MIDI because you had to, was struggling with the code, grinding his teeth in frustration. And Phoebe leaned over his shoulder, took the pencil from his hand and scribbled down a new version.
Mojo stared from under his dreadlocks, blinked.
“That’s it, Phoebe. How’d you do that?”
“I don’t know, really. I went out with a guy who understood MIDI, and I paid attention, a bit.”
Mojo looked at Joey, dumbstruck. “So much for Phoebe as the junkie groupie,” he said later, when the girls were out getting food.
“So much for. Not that she ever slept with me; isn’t that part of that particular package?”
“Me either,” Mojo said a little wistfully, and Joey had to suppress a laugh. He’d cut off his own dreads around the same time white kids like Mojo started growing them, but he liked him in spite of himself.
“She should go to school, stop wasting her brains.”
“And her veins.”
“That too.”
So Mojo knew. But he was pretty sure Rickie still didn’t.
sss
Sometimes, coming home from an ecstasy-stained midnight tour of Carlos’s club, they’d fall asleep, all three, fully clothed on the pull-out. As had just happened. But Rickie woke again, got up alone. The peace of it. She looked at Phoebe and Joey, curled around one another, her hand sheltering his cheek. Joey’s rough years vanished when he slept. And Phoebe wasn’t old enough for hers to show, not that Rickie knew much about them, had always loved her friend too much to see the shadows that were drawn to her, collecting at her feet like black puddles. She rearranged the duvet, pulling them down where Joey’s long feet emerged like curious platypi. Spring had come, and with it the heat prematurely turned down as always. The dawn chill had set in.
She re-boxed the coloured felt pens that Phoebe used, with a complicated system of colour coding that neither she nor Joey understood, to annotate her racing sheet. She replaced Joey’s sax into its case. She liked that Joey played with her, thought she was good enough now, on her guitar. And the few older musicians in the city’s club circuit who occasionally dropped in at The Bridge no longer treated her like a flighty wannabe. She knew, too, that the session guys gave her points for trying to pull Joey together, when they’d turned away, frightened or angry, contemptuous or apathetic. So many lose everything in this town.
It had all seemed easy that morning: being funny, giving him Carlos’s card.
She’d just wanted to play with him. Was honoured by the thought. Didn’t know his peers stayed away from him as if he had the plague. She hadn’t even thought he’d show up, especially in light of that risky eighty-dollar loan. After all, she was just a girl who couldn’t play, and he was a small legend, a firefly.
Did she want him, she wondered? Did Phoebe? They’d discussed it and both agreed that while he grew more attractive with each day that he cheered up, he was too good a friend to risk losing as a lover. And really, his heart was still Sally’s. One day she’d have to ask about Sally. Some people just never got over a person.
She pulled on her boots and her coat, closed the door softly behind her, heard the lock click into place, walked towards her river.
In the street everything was dawn grey, the pigeons and the newspapers, even the sky, now. When she reached the water it was grey also. She knew it was dangerous, walking alone to the East River at dawn, past burned out tenements, but she never felt threatened. She loved it. It was her most church-like moment.
sss
When she got back they were already gone. Rickie set up the mike stand in the middle of the floor. She plugged it in and turned on the tape deck, playing back her previous attempt from what was, after all, only three days before. She listened carefully, and could name the place where her voice lost its resonance, where her gut drew back and hesitated. When the song was finished she fast-forwarded to Joey’s new instrumental track, the cries of his saxophone, Carlos’s punctuating drums. She switched over to the voice track and touched the record button; the familiar little red light went on. She listened to the music, feeling for an opening, hoping for her bird to flutter from her throat—a strange bird she’d seen, alone, three times. She’d been afraid to tell, even Joey. What if it didn’t stay? Its moods were still too unpredictable. Perhaps if she made her bird feel welcome it would visit more often. Her voice grew and filled the confines of the small room, as her song rose and fell, then something larger grew from behind, pressing her voice outward, expanding it even more. It was that something she could never explain nor define, that fleeting spirit of her music. Her voice would always, she knew, be her first and best instrument. The guitar was just so the guys wouldn’t make fun of her, call her just a singer.
The bird sang into the room, and with its appearance Rickie suddenly knew what the other two were thinking, food shopping at Phoebe’s favourite Little Italy stores, far across town. Joey was trying to shrink his monster as usual, and his shame made her feel a brief sudden hatred, a flare of it. What was the point of trying to make his creature small if it was still so ugly?
Gryphons were supposed to be large, proud, beautiful. She knew then that his monster was her bird transformed. He’d drowned his gryphon so long it had died, been reborn earthbound, ugly. His muse transformed, darkened, grown teeth and hair and misshapen.
That was when he’d become a drunk, when he’d given up the needle. It hit her like a truck. How could she not have seen it? It wasn’t like he hadn’t hinted enough times. She hung around with musicians half her waking hours and thought they spent their time eating pie. So focused on the music she never even noticed all the attendant lifestyle pitfalls. Carlos could murder his mother under her nose and she’d say, “Good solo, dude.” A fresh faced kid from Ithaca, that’s what she was. Unspeakably naive.
Her bird, she knew, was so shy because it was terrified of his monster, terrified it would be drowned by proximity: stained, destroyed. “But what if you can heal?” she asked. “What if?”
And the bird said, “I’m not strong enough.”
And Rickie said, “Oh, but birdie, you might have to be.”
It was about Sally. Six years they’d been married, Joey promising he’d quit. And finally when he gave it up she’d left anyway, too tired. And he’d reached for the bottle, replacing one comfort with another. It only happened when Rickie sang, that she could know like this, so richly and full of detail, and she was as always both afraid and full of wonder.
And birdie said, “Sing more.”
sss
Rickie, in homage to the first summer heat was wearing a white strapless dress. She removed the huge white flower from the tiny cut glass vase on the club table to tuck behind her ear.
“Very Billie,” Joey said admiringly, wishing he remembered what kind of flower she’d worn.
“Who’s Billie?” Rickie asked, and Joey groaned. What was the world coming to? Rickie was mixed race but she was a small town girl whose parents probably listened to Belafonte. Or Zep. But what had it been? A camellia? A gardenia? One of the facts he’d once known, dissolved by heroin, by alcohol. Or just aging, if he was kinder to himself. Or even, if he was kinder still, simply for lack of use. Use it or lose it. Our lady of the flowers, he thought, our lady of sorrows. Suddenly he knew what this girl needed, what to offer her next, in his unofficial role as her musical educator.
Yet how long was it since he himself had thought much about the blues, his first love, the one that had compelled him, at seventeen, to pick up a saxophone unlike his white friends who, listening to Zep, had saved up their pennies for Strats? And Rickie had more range then she knew. Range she’d yearn for if she listened to the greats.
A midtown west side bar. It was an open mike night they’d gone to, promising friends. The bar was still almost empty so Joey got up on stage and did Strange Fruit, just on his sax.
“What is that?” Rickie asked when he came back. The usual wannabes were shuffling in, complete with their built in audience of girlfriends, boyfriends, roadies, and partners in crime. But Joey went up first, before the manager had even had time to write down a lineup. Joey could do that; he knew the guy forever. Sometimes having been around the block a few times was still an advantage.
And Rickie came up this time too. He began the haunting song again, she reached for words that didn’t come; she didn’t know them. But the music called for song and so she let her voice out; a vocal improvisation made not of words but of sound. Her voice was a bird let loose in the room, and they could all see it then, a bird golden and black.
“What’s with this eagle?” Phoebe asked herself, softly so it wasn’t heard above the music, all alone at their table under the stage. There were no other creatures in the room, except Joey’s, snivelling and drooling. Phoebe winced, couldn’t help but compare. Rickie’s eagle was golden, shining so bright it hurt their eyes, swinging under the lighting before it headed out to the darkness of the barn-like room. Wanting room to soar. As though it could, here. And Phoebe knew at that moment what Rickie would become, felt exquisitely pained by it.
His monster’s gotten smaller the last few months, she thought, and he drinks a little less; somehow we’ve been a good influence on him. It curled at his feet, seemingly warming him, almost kindly. Phoebe knew from having shared the sofa bed that Joey’s feet could use a little warming, were ice cold even in summer. And clearly Joey was good for Rickie too. If his gift to Rickie had been her voice, could he extract a like miracle from her? As if there might be a genius worth a creature hidden within; it was too good and too hopeless a dream to consider. She looked at Joey’s monster again to remind herself what little use talent was, but at that moment it was beautiful, its yellow eyes blinking. It was being fed, was already a little larger. She’d have sworn it was purring, as if she could hear it above their music.
But supposing she could have a creature, what would it be? Not everyone needs to hack an arty muse; some people were more inclined to be logicians. I wouldn’t have a bird, Phoebe thought, I’d have scissors. Scissors. What kind of creature is that? Something toothy, can make nice clean cuts, discriminate. Perhaps a lizard of some sort, or a big cat. But that’s always been for other people. The bright lights, the smart ones, the ones who know who they are. Not for people like me.
Her friends were still on stage, jamming Strange Fruit. The bird circled the room, its wingspan three feet now. Phoebe thought, how will she ever fit it back in her mouth, and laughed at herself. She stared from Rickie to her golden bird, a mixture of pride and envy. I think I’m happy in this scene but heroin eats more musicians than it lets go. Phoebe snagged the waiter walking past; he set down eight drafts. She wanted the refreshments there for Rickie and Joey when they got back down. Her train of thought was making her lonely.
Rickie and Joey were finished now, and the room filled with applause. More than Rickie had ever had. She turned to Joey and hugged him, tears in her eyes. The applause was for both of them, and she couldn’t have done it without him. How she loved this man, who could make such a thing with her. A golden bird. A healed gryphon. A room full of hands clapping. Music.
“Billie paid for your sins so you wouldn’t have to repeat them,” Joey said pointedly when he sat back down. “I’ve seen it too often. You’re too smart to waste. Not that I expect you to listen to an old man,” and Phoebe noticed a glimmer of understanding in Rickie’s eyes. But she didn’t want Rickie to know, not yet.
“How d’you like her Billie then?” Phoebe asked to change the uncomfortable subject.
“Unconventionally brilliant,” Joey remarked. “But then what could one expect from a woman like that?”
“But Mr. Joey, you’ve got big ears,” Rickie said, “always have had.”
“It’s Rickie who’s got the big ears,” Joey said. “She can hear people think, especially, she says, when she’s singing.”
“Now there’s an unusual talent,” Phoebe said mildly.
“The street eats hangers-on even faster than musicians,” Joey said, back on track and Phoebe winced again.
“Perhaps,” she said, mostly just to placate him, “I should study computers, make a new kind of instrument, never been done.”
But Joey looked more than interested, said, “Logician, magician. I want to see this instrument of yours; my fingers are getting arthritic. You know Rickie, even if you’re a rocker born and bred, you’ll only get better by having learned them. Billie, Sarah, Aretha, the rest, the best.”
“But you already told me all that on stage,” Rickie laughed, “with your saxophone and much more eloquently. Why bother with English?”
Phoebe stared at his fingers. “You never said.”
“No.”
“Did you really used to be a junkie, Joey?” Rickie asked and Phoebe thought with huge relief, it’s not me she’s guessed about at last, but him. Still she wanted to run away, to hide, to hit up in the bathroom. Anything to make the shame go away.
But Joey winked at her, comforting, promising silence all over again, said blithely, “Mojo told you that? Now you won’t like me anymore.”
Rickie asked, “What’s it like?” and Phoebe was so grateful for his foot beneath the table brushing hers.
“Better than Billie,” he whispered. “The only thing.”
“Why did you stop then?”
“Why d’you think? For just that reason. Better than Billie. At first I thought it fed my music but in not too long it was bigger; it ate my marriage, ate my music, shamed my animal, yet still seemed like the only thing. One day you wake up and realize maybe your woman, your proud creature, and your work were more important after all, that you chose the lesser thing. Seems obvious I know.”
Phoebe remembered that comfort went both ways, reaching out to pat his hand with its swollen joints. How could she not have noticed? She was so selfish; he’d noticed her secret, as careful as she thought she’d been, and kept it for her. This was a different kind of shame, these distended knuckles. Why not share a thing like that? It was the shame of growing old.
Joey reached for the last beer, and Rickie thought again how he’d replaced one comfort with another. We all drink but there’s a difference in the way he does it. Desperately. “Here’s your friend, miss,” he said, and there it was. Rickie’s voice, shrunken to pigeon size, settled on her shoulder. It cooed and billed her cheek, glittering.
“And yours, sir,” Phoebe picked up the winged mouse, proffered it in her outstretched hand. He nuzzled it briefly and tucked it in his jacket.
“I’ve never seen it so friendly,” Phoebe said. “But it should be bigger.”
“Will be,” Joey said. “If Rickie lets me go with her where she’s going. Only small now so it can ride home in my pocket.”
“Of course you’re coming,” Rickie said, still brimming with elation. “I won’t get there unless you come too. I’ll remember this night for the rest of my life.”
Management locked the door on the last club kid and came over to chat, but Joey wasn’t up to it, not tonight. “Okay ladies, let’s hit the road.”
On the street, walking towards Seventh Avenue to catch a Checker downtown, Joey linked one elbow through Rickie’s and one through Phoebe’s. And Phoebe, meaning it this time, said, “I’d give almost anything for an animal of my own. As original as Phoebe’s bird, as persevering as your gryphon mouse. It’s hard to tell what shape it’s going to settle into, Joey, now that it’s not a monster anymore.”
“I think a gryphon mouse is a monster,” he said. “There’s benevolent monsters too, you know. Benign demons. For some people nothing less than a monster will do. Something with teeth.”
“Or scissors. Perhaps a dragon,” Phoebe said, wondering.
“There’s only one way for you to find out what your creature might be, and you know what it is.”
“What?” Rickie asked and Phoebe kicked Joey in the shin and he laughed, but still she wondered what her choice would be and knew for the first time it would never be any easier, that she would always be standing on exactly this fulcrum, this moment. She might never grow a creature, be able to call its strength and beauty to her, but she had to try. What else was there? Even Rickie, who seemed so enviable, stood always at this same crossroads, choosing, choosing, again and again and again. There was no other place, ever, not in Manhattan, or on all of Earth. Only this one locus, this one choice. Whether to desecrate one’s light or shine it.