DECEMBER 19, 1999
It’s easy to find, now that they’re looking for it. Jane and Hen had walked past it earlier that day but hadn’t noticed it: a poster made to look like a concert handbill, glued to the metal of a Berliner Zeitung newspaper box in front of Berlin’s iconic TV tower, on the sidewalk in what is almost the exact spot, Jane is sure, where she and Elijah pulled up in a chauffeured car on a cloudy morning in 1994. They stepped out onto this same sidewalk and headed upstairs to be interviewed by the DJ at Alt Radio Berlin.
“He must be exhausted,” the DJ said to Jane after the interview, as the Lightning Bottles prepared to leave and go get ready for their concert at the converted water-pumping station. “All the touring, the fame—singing the way he does. He must be so tired.” Jane hadn’t known what to say to this. Yes, Elijah was tired. But he had also been high and practically nodding out from heroin during the interview. She knew there was a time when she had been too naïve to notice, but surely the DJ wasn’t. Out on the sidewalk, as she and Elijah had waited for their car, they had started to argue. She remembered his pinned pupils, his frail form. “Could you just… stop yelling, maybe?” he had said to her. And then, he had grabbed her face in his hands and kissed her, hard. For just one second, it felt the way it used to. But his lips were cold and his hands were, too. He wasn’t strong enough, or maybe he just wasn’t interested enough, to kiss her for long.
Jane keeps staring down at the poster on the newspaper box, lost in her memories. What would she have done differently if she had known it was the last time they would kiss?
Is she going to get a second chance?
The poster reads:
LIVE, TONIGHT!
AT THE MARKTHALLE:
LA DURE
WITH SPECIAL GUESTS… GREAT FREEDOM
Jane turns to Hen. “We played the Markthalle in Hamburg in 1991. It was our first show in Europe. We opened for a French punk band called La Dure.”
Hen nods, she knows. “Do you think the next clue might be at that concert hall, then?”
“Maybe.”
“But either way, it’s probably in Hamburg. Right?”
Jane doesn’t answer. She’s still trying to process that there is a next, that this is happening at all—that it’s possible to survive going back in time, experiencing the memories she held at bay for so long and living to tell the tale. There’s a bar across the street, a blinking neon martini glass on a sign, and Jane knows how easy it would be to go into that bar and find more answers at the bottom of a glass. But instead, she reaches into her handbag and feels the poker chips that swim across the bottom—months of freedom from addiction at her fingertips, almost a whole year of recovery. She wonders, if Elijah really is still alive, what state he’s in. If he has been able to find ways to resist the pull of his demons. What it would mean, what she would do, if he wasn’t.
“It’s the weekend,” Hen says. “I’ll call my mother and tell her I’m staying over at my friend Clara’s. Clara loves to bird-watch and does not really exist, by the way.” She rolls her eyes, then turns and marches across the street toward a graffiti-covered pay phone booth. Jane stays where she is, planted to the sidewalk, staring down at the poster again, a poster advertising a concert in Hamburg that happened in 1991—long before Jane learned she was so destructible. Dangerous hope tugs hard at her heart, and she reaches into her bag to touch the sobriety chips again.
Hen returns. “Okay, done,” she says, her tone blithe—and Jane realizes she has forgotten to insist that it’s time for her to go home. Her expression is expectant; there is happiness in her eyes. Hen seems so certain that everything will be okay—and it reminds Jane of the way she used to be once. She thinks of that word Hen used that morning in Jane’s kitchen. Shicksal. She doesn’t realize she has said it aloud, but Hen smiles and nods.
“Exactly. Fate. Destiny.”
But Jane also remembers that Hen used the word “doom.” This girl has no idea, really, what this journey might have in store.
“Come on, Jane, let’s go. Do you remember where you parked?”
And yet Jane still lets her follow along because releasing her would mean releasing any hope that she wasn’t just heading straight toward more heartache and loss.
As they drive away from Berlin, Jane asks Hen to get the map out of the glove box.
“I think it will take two hours to get to Hamburg,” Hen says. “Actually, the way you drive, probably three.” She turns on the radio—and they both fall silent as Lightning Bottles’ music fills the car. Hen’s hand hovers over the volume knob.
“Should I…”
“No, it’s okay. Turn it up. It’s a good song. I don’t hear this one on the radio all that often.”
“Yeah, it’s kind of a deep cut.”
The song is called “Your Old Self.” It’s a B-side from the Lightning Bottles’ second album, Your Heart, Your Soul, Your Spirit, Your Mind.
As Hen nods along to the music, Jane finds herself saying, “I wrote it about Elvis, you know.”
Hen glances at her. “You wrote it.”
“Yeah, I did.”
“But it’s from the perspective of a man, clearly. And I know I’m not the man I used to be, but you can’t even look at me…”
“A woman can’t write from the viewpoint of a man? And also, does every song have to be about the person writing it? Sometimes songs are just stories about other people.”
“So… it’s true, then, that you wrote most of the songs? He tried to say that, a few times—especially during your Barbara Walters interview. But everyone said—”
“That I put him up to it.”
“Right.”
“And you said in Berlin that you believed him.”
Hen was thoughtful. “And I guess I do. I don’t see why he would lie—why you would ask him to. But now that we’re talking about it… I don’t understand why you didn’t fight it more. Why do you just go along with the things everyone says about you? Why didn’t you stand up and insist that they were your songs?”
Jane switched lanes. “Do I go along with what people say about me? Why do you think that—because I don’t bother to argue with every stranger who thinks they know who I really am?”
Hen bites her lip. “Fair enough, I guess. But maybe it’s so hard for people, accepting that you wrote them… because it means also accepting that Elijah didn’t contribute as much. That it wasn’t really him we were listening to.”
“That’s not true,” Jane says, now vehement. “Imagine what it might be like to write a song for Elijah Hart to sing. The creative jolt that would give you. It was amazing. It changed my life.” This is more than Jane has said to anyone about how it felt to be creative partners with Elijah Hart. And the world didn’t end when she told her own story. It actually felt good. “Those songs were for him,” she says. “And I wrote them with him. They wouldn’t exist without him. It’s not one or the other, his songs or my songs. We were… a single organism. We only worked together.” She has been holding her breath, and she lets it out.
Several miles of highway unspool beneath the car’s wheels, like gray tape stuck to the hills, before Hen speaks again.
“What do you mean, it’s about Elvis? The song?” They’re passing a field dotted with sheep.
“There was a vote in 1992 about a stamp Elvis was going to be on,” Jane says. “An actual government-sanctioned vote. Did the American people want the old Elvis on the stamp, or the young one? They voted for the young one, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. What Elvis became, because of fame—and how no one wanted to remember him any way other than perfect. They wanted him frozen in time.”
Elijah’s voice is on the radio, singing the words: You don’t like the way my eyes looked back then, do you? But you should see them now, through you…
“It’s weird, to know this.”
“It’s weird to know what the song is really about?”
Hen shakes her head. “No.” She looks out the window, then back at Jane. “Certain songs, I felt like he was talking to me. I think everyone in the world who listened to them must have felt the same.”
Jane nods. And she knows now this is precisely why she has never come out and tried to insist on anything. Not even years later. I felt like he was talking to me. That’s what everyone wanted. No one wanted to think it was Jane Pyre’s voice in their head. And she certainly didn’t want to have to be the one to tell them.
The song is over; a commercial comes on.
Jane changes lanes again, and the subject. “What other bands do you like—other than the Lightning Bottles?”
Hen looks shy as she leans down and unzips the backpack at her feet. She pulls out a tape. “I’m really into PJ Harvey lately. Do you know her?”
Jane nods. “Of course. Which album did you bring?”
“I have two.” She fumbles in her bag again. “To Bring You My Love and Is This Desire?”
“The first one,” Jane says.
“Are you sure? I think her most recent album is seriously underrated.”
“Okay, put that one on, then.”
Hen inserts the tape.
“Good driving music, right?” Hen says. “Better than death metal.”
Jane laughs. “Agreed. I think Elijah would have liked it, too.”
“I bet we could listen to the radio for hours and never hear any PJ Harvey,” Hen says. “I get so sick of the radio sometimes. All these so-called alternative bands that get tons of airplay, most of them…” Hen trails off, searches for the right words. “Deeply unoriginal,” she finishes, as PJ Harvey whispers to them about the wind and the whales.
“Deeply unoriginal is exactly right,” Jane says. “Back when Elijah and I were first starting out, there was all this excitement about the burgeoning alternative scene. But I find it all—just so very disappointing now.”
“The Offspring. Sugar Ray. Disappointing.”
Jane nods and turns up the PJ Harvey. “Do not mention Sugar Ray or I’ll get that song in my head for the rest of the day. I hate music like that.”
Hen glances at her. “Okay, but,” she begins—and Jane knows what she’s about to refer to. “That album of remixes you put out? That was kind of the worst, too.”
“I had my reasons” is all Jane says.
“What were they?”
Jane enjoyed talking about music with Hen. It was refreshing. She even liked talking about writing songs for and with Elijah. But the years after Elijah disappeared, the choices she made when she was falling apart, are not moments she can talk about with anyone. So she just shakes her head, once, and they listen to the rest of the PJ Harvey album in silence.
After the last song plays, Hen asks, “Which song was your favorite?”
“The perfect day one. Something about Elise?”
Hen nods. “I could imagine Elijah singing it.”
“Me too,” Jane says. “I really could.” She accelerates on the highway, wanting to get to Hamburg faster, wanting to find out what’s next. To find out if he’s real—if she’ll ever hear him sing again. Meanwhile, Hen puts on the second PJ Harvey album and leans back in her seat. Eventually she falls asleep, and Jane has to wake her when they reach the city.
The sun is setting over Hamburg when they arrive. The sky above is indigo streaked with pink, and the same colors reflect back at them in the slow-flowing waters of the Elbe River. Hen is bleary-eyed and quiet; she seemed embarrassed when Jane woke her up, as she wiped a tiny smear of drool from her cheek. Jane’s knee is sore from all the walking in Berlin, then the hours in the car, but it doesn’t matter—she still presses on, knows she can’t get to her destination fast enough.
As they walk, Jane keeps an eye out for somewhere to stop and buy sunglasses and a hat to disguise herself, but she soon forgets this task as they walk deeper into the city and her memories begin to rise around her again. They cross a bridge and the staid nineteenth-century architecture of downtown Hamburg begins to morph into shops, restaurants, and clubs. They’re in the entertainment district, getting closer to the Markthalle.
“Why are there pictures and statues of the Beatles everywhere?” Hen asks.
“The original Beatles lineup used to play a lot of club shows here,” Jane says. “Brian Epstein discovered them here. It’s a legend now, I guess.” They pass a collection of Beatles statues in a parkette. “George Harrison got deported for being underage. He was only seventeen. Like you.”
They have arrived at the club where the Lightning Bottles played with La Dure in 1991. They walk around the building twice but don’t find anything, not even a single graffiti tag. There are no acts of street art vigilantism anywhere at all. The restaurants and cafés that crowd against it all have clean walls, too. “This neighborhood was so different before,” Jane says. “It was much seedier back when we were here. I bet any graffiti is immediately cleaned up.”
She feels worried—what if Elijah left something, but it was removed?
“Can you think of anywhere else? On the poster in Berlin, it said ‘special guests Great Freedom.’ What did that mean?”
Jane thinks, tries to remember more. “We went somewhere after the show, with the guys from La Dure.”
“Where exactly? Can you remember?”
She closes her eyes. She thinks. And after a moment, she can see the street signs. “An intersection,” she says. “Lauthanze and… Große Freiheit.”
“That’s it!” Hen says, excited now. “Große Freiheit means ‘great freedom’ in German. We need a map.” She pulls Jane into a corner store. When they’re certain of their destination, they rush off toward it. And soon they are there: the corner of Große Freiheit and Lauthanze.
But it’s different. The building that existed in 1991, when Jane and Elijah arrived in Hamburg to support La Dure on their tour, is gone. Jane turns in a circle, wonders if she has it wrong. But no. She’s at the right spot. This is the intersection, plucked from a memory that is still so vivid, even after eight years. The best moments of her life. Everything else is here, the hotel on one corner, a restaurant on the other. But the building she, Elijah, Maxime, and his bandmate ducked behind, has been torn down. There’s a little parkette there, a statue of John Lennon, a bench. Jane still scours every surface with her eyes—but there is nothing that looks even remotely like an Adam & the Rib painting or a clue of any kind.
“I can’t find it. There’s nothing.”
“You’re sure this is the right place?”
“I am. But…”
She and Hen walk up and down the street twice, go around the block, search building walls, newspaper boxes, garbage cans, benches, any surface they can find that could contain a painting. But there is no Adam artwork anywhere.
Jane feels deflated. And she can’t ignore the ache of her knee any longer. “It’s getting late,” she says. “We need to find a hotel.”
“Not yet,” Hen says, pleading. “Let’s not give up.”
“Hen, we have looked everywhere. We’re not giving up. We can try again tomorrow.”
But just as she says this, a flash of orange and purple paint on a building wall across the street catches her eye. A sudden beacon. She was looking for a poster, and this is not that at all. It’s just an arrow on a brick wall, outlined in magenta spray paint, filled in using a purple-white shade that seems to pulse and to glow. Jane knows these colors well, even if she has lived a lifetime since they stained her clothes and fingertips.
“We need to follow that arrow!” Jane says, invigorated now, the pain in her knee and her heart forgotten as she rushes toward it.
The first arrow leads to another. It’s in the same colors, glows just as bright as the other arrow in the ever-darkening evening. Then a third one, pointing them down an alleyway. The space they enter is so tight, Jane and Hen must both turn sideways rather than walk straight in.
“There!” Hen calls out, elated. “I see it!” Like the poster in Berlin, this one is also affixed to the wall using thick layers of clear glue. Jane feels her way along until she’s touching the glue, then presses herself back against the opposite brick wall so she can see the poster properly.
It is vivid with color, just like the arrows that led them here: “The Secret Adventures of Adam & the Rib” title is painted in the same neon yellow and electric purple.
“Wow,” Hen breathes. “This one is awesome.”
There are four drawings in comic-grid-style boxes, all done in neon. The first features Adam and Rib holding cans of spray paint up to a brick wall. Rib’s spray can is spewing out tiny letters: There is nothing to us that is less than love.
The other panel features a pink pill with a heart pressed into it. It’s broken in half, held out on a palm with a broken lifeline across the skin. Jane has to look away from this. She needs a minute to compose herself. This image brings guilt, deep shame—that sense of failure that chases her everywhere. Deep breaths, she tells herself. In through her nose, out through her mouth, and she is ready to look at the artwork again.
But just then, a jarring and familiar sound interrupts the silence in the alley.
Click, whir, click.
“Hen, come here—”
A man with a camera advances on them down the narrow passage. Jane whips off her jacket and throws it over Hen’s head as she hustles her in the opposite direction.
“We have to run, once we get out in the open,” she tells Hen. “Take as many turns as possible so we can lose him. Don’t look back.”
“Jane! Jane Pyre!”
“Get the hell away from us!” she shouts. But the camera continues to click and flash.
“Give us a smile, Jane Pyre,” the photographer shouts in a German accent.
She gives him the finger instead.