Track [23] “I Hear a Symphony”/The Supremes
Zabel Kasabian’s driveway sloped upward into dense trees that opened up to a cleared piece of land with several buildings. A log-cabin style house sat to the left. A big red barn stood in the distance, farther up a grassy hill. And closest to the driveway was a long dog kennel.
A chain-link fence wrapped around the property as far as I could see, and there were extra divisions between it in some places. Fences within fences—dog runs. I didn’t see any dogs in them at the moment. Then again, it was almost completely dark, and the only reason I could see anything at all was thanks to several large utility lights posted on tall power-company poles around the yard that cast large pools of bright light.
One of which shone down on Fen’s Jeep. He was still parked in front of the dog kennel, so I pulled up next to him and claimed a spot.
But I remembered his mentioning a barn in a text. Hmm… “Kennel, barn, or house?” I asked Frida. Anything posed as a question was good to her; she was already scrabbling to get out. Or maybe it was the sound of a lone barker who had now noticed we’d driven up. She answered the call with her own yip. “Keep it down,” I told her. “Sheesh.”
I was feeling weird about the late hour and not knowing his aunt—would she pull out a shotgun on someone ringing the doorbell after dark? But a flash of movement caught my eye up the hill, where a door opened at the barn.
There, in the doorway, a dark silhouette stood in front of a golden rectangle of light.
My pulse pounded. “Okay, then,” I told Frida, pulling her away from the mystery dogs inside the kennel. We found a gate to get into the barn and then walked a long path up the dark hill, where Fen stood in his chino shorts in the open door of the red barn.
Barefooted.
Shirtless.
It was a shockingly nice view. The torso matched the arms I’d already seen. And I’d felt it plenty, but it was another thing to see it all gloriously out in the open. I tried not to stare as I slowed my pace toward the barn, but why do boys get to walk around half naked? I’ll never understand it, and yet I was not complaining. Well. Maybe a wee complaint about that dead-girl Ophelia tattoo that was so blatant on his shoulder right now.
I just had to keep my eyes other places.
He looked exhausted. His dark curls were a windblown jumble, and his face was a gaunt collection of intersecting planes and shadows, a cubist portrait come to life. But there was a sweet relief behind his eyes when our gazes met, and any worry I had that I was doing the wrong thing was completely erased from my mind.
I pretended as if today hadn’t been completely horrible for him and looked around at things that weren’t his naked torso. The two-story building had a covered concrete porch and a tin roof, and was less a rural cow barn than a simple utility barn. Next to Fen’s open door was what could only be described as a porch couch: like something that you’d see on the side of the road that was put out for trash collection until drunk fraternity pledges hauled it off for their frat house.
“What is this?” I asked, gesturing to the couch, which may or may not have been attacked by a band of wild racoons and was leaning ominously to one side. “Are you taking decorating advice from Moonbeam? Dammit, Frida!” The leash pulled out of my hand as she happily lunged for Fen, tongue lolling.
“Whoa! Hey, goofball,” he said, bending down to scoop her up against his chest and let her lick his face. “It’s my thinking couch. My aunt was going to toss it.”
“You don’t say.”
“Don’t be a snob. What’s happening here? Is this a visit? You’re visiting me?”
“I believe so, yes.”
He brightened a little. “Oh, good. Would you like to come inside?”
“Sure…” I glanced down the hill at the house. “Where is your aunt?”
“At her boyfriend’s house. I don’t see her at night unless I walk down there. We stay out of each other’s way. I pay rent and sometimes take care of the dogs, and she lets me live here. Cut and dry. Come on in,” he encouraged, unhooking Frida’s leash from her harness to hang it up on a hook by the door while letting her loose inside the barn.
I followed them inside, and a pang of worry tightened my stomach when he shut the door behind us. I still had Eddie on my mind, as well as my run-in with Mad Dog. I wasn’t entirely sure I should be here.
Then again, it was a barn. That felt wholesome, in some weird way.
To be fair, it was less a barn and more like a big workshop or garage, with tables and metal storage units on the walls, a few pieces of lawn equipment in one corner, and a refrigerator in another.
And a massive piano in the middle.
Baby grand. Black.
Near the piano, utility lights hung from beams where some recording equipment was set up around a threadbare rug. Keyboards. A desk. Sheets of music with penciled-in notes. Boxes of preprinted sheet music. Books. Stereo equipment.
Oh my God.
The awards in his room.
An enamel piano pin on his shirt at work, the day I first came into town.
His Mozart shirt.
“You play piano?” I said dumbly as Frida sniffed around the room.
He nodded slowly, hands stuffed in his pockets.
“Piano hands!” I said, pointing.
His laugh was low. “Yeah. Kids used to make fun of me because they stretch in weird ways. Alien fingers. They’re good on the keys.”
Then it hit me like a blow to my chest.
Jasmine, standing in the empty apartment.
Wouldn’t a piano look nice right here?
“You okay?” he asked, bending his head down to catch my gaze. “I should’ve told you, huh? I wanted to. It’s a definite sore spot for me, because it’s been such a big part of my life, and my”—he cleared his throat—“father thinks it’s a waste of time. Because it’s classical, and why can’t I just be like Eddie and be interested in cramming more suckers through the festival gates?”
“Your father is a shit,” I said.
“Gasp. How dare you talk about Serj Sarafian,” he joked wearily. “He’s important.”
“I’m sorry,” I told him. “For what you have to deal with, you know, father-wise.”
He shrugged. “It’s fine. I can manage.” Dark eyes hesitantly peered at mine under a fan of lashes. “How are you? I’m guessing that hearing the news about Eddie can’t have been easy.”
Tough question. I wasn’t sure how to answer.
“You don’t have to lie to me,” he said softly. “I’d rather hear the truth from you. Even now. If you came here to tell me that hearing about Eddie made you change your feelings about us, then I’m ready to hear that.”
This took me aback. “I didn’t come here to say that.”
“No?”
I shook my head. “My feelings haven’t changed. I just… everything is confusing.”
“I get that.” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. A tense moment stretched between us.
I exhaled a long breath and admitted, “I mean, I am worried about Eddie. It’s not that I didn’t believe you when you said that Eddie had problems, but I guess seeing it…?”
“It’s different when you know,” he said.
“It’s real now,” I agreed.
He scratched the back of his neck. “Well, don’t worry too much. My father is going to spend every dime he has personally flying all the way around the globe to save his son.”
“Mad Dog said the same when I got back to the lodge.”
Fen didn’t seem surprised that Mad Dog knew about this. “My guess is that they’re going to pay off some high-level people to get him out, and it’s going to be expensive.” Fen shook his head slowly. “At some point, it’s so dumb that you just give up. What’s the point of caring anymore? My all-powerful father is willing to go to such great lengths to rescue my fuckup of a brother—no offense.”
“A little taken,” I mumbled.
“Yet that same father can’t be bothered to drive a mile and a half down the street to come work things out with me. He’d rather dump me at my aunt’s and move on.”
My father would never.
I couldn’t count on much in this world, but I could count on Leo Marlow. I’d kept a lot of secrets from him. It was the Marlow way. We needed a new way.
“I’m sorry,” Fen said. “I shouldn’t unload on you about Eddie. That’s not fair. This is all new to me, you know.”
“Oh, really? You don’t regularly slink around with your brother’s girlfriend?”
“You’re my first slink.”
“You’re mine too,” I told Fen. “And I’m not very good at slinking. I drove all the way around the lake in a car that I failed to check out properly on the lodge’s automobile checkout sheet.”
“Hot wheels? See, I disagree. If you didn’t sign it out, then you didn’t take it. Smart. Very slinky.”
“So basically, I’m the better deviant right now?”
“And to think, you once called me the Ruiner.”
I snorted a laugh. “Did I really say that?”
“You shouted that.”
“Pot to kettle,” I said, shoving him lightly.
He laughed a little. “You give good shouting. I was just riffing off your energy.”
“No, I was raised not to shout. Domestics are quiet. After spending the day with your family, I can tell that you all had to shout over each other to get attention. Ari’s got lungs on him.”
“Ani’s got lungs too, but she chooses to play her cards close to her chest.”
“I like the twins. I had fun today. Until… you know.”
“Tell me more about how you enjoyed today, because that’s making me feel better,” he said as we walked to the piano.
“Okay, let’s see… I liked that you don’t have a team of domestics, because it makes a house too sterile and you walk around paranoid that you’re going to leave fingerprints on the glass and have to wipe them up before someone sees. People should leave a mark, you know?”
“Never thought about it like that.”
“And I liked eating new food.”
“Zankou Chicken,” he muttered, shaking his head with a smile. “I was dying.”
“Hey!” I said, embarrassed all over again.
“It was funny, I’m just teasing. And speaking of food, I’m sorry we missed out on the cake. Ms. Makruhi is very proud of her desserts. They take hours. You would have liked it.” He sounded genuinely sad. Maybe it was more for Ms. Makruhi than the sugar.
We stopped in front of the piano. It was a beast, black lacquered, mirror-shiny, with all of its copper strings inside the propped-up lid. “You write your own music?” I asked.
He shrugged with one shoulder. “Mostly fragments. It’s hard to concentrate on anything longer than that these days.”
“But it’s classical?”
“I play other things too. I love all music. But on piano… when I play? It’s always been classical.” He took his hand out of his pocket and touched the keys, tapping out a few staccato low notes.
“Play for me,” I asked.
“Mm…”
“Please?”
He hesitated, squinting one eye, and then hooked his bare foot around the piano bench leg and pulled it out. When he sat, he patted the tufted black leather cushion next to him. “Watch out for my elbow,” he said, but when I made myself small and moved away, he pulled me back closer. Until our thighs touched. “Stay,” he commanded.
“Okay. Staying,” I said softly, looking at his face.
He was excited. There were those hawk eyes again, peering out from the weariness. “This is a couple of movements from a sonata called ‘The Tempest.’ It’s always been one of my favorites to play. Mostly because it always scared Mrs. Calloway, my music teacher in third grade.”
“Oh?”
“I like to improv on it. All right…”
It was so strange to sit here with him. Almost as intimidating as the giant sequoia tree: the piano made me feel small. Maybe it was because only the toes of my flats touched the rug beneath us.
Frida brushed by my foot, sniffing out new territory as Fen stretched out his hands over the keys.
He began to play a slow, haunting melody.
One that quickly exploded into rolling, complex, unrelenting passages that caught me off guard. Frida, too. She jumped back from the piano and barked, but Fen ignored it. His body and arms both arched as he moved up and down over the keyboard, locks of curls hanging in his eyes. It sounded like a storm. It felt like one too. Angry and full of grief. Anguish.
Goose bumps rose over my arms.
My legs.
I was afraid to move for several moments.
But I watched. I listened.
His playing was physical, full-bodied. He lurched over the piano like a dark vulture, and I felt every sinewy muscle flexing in his graceful movements, even in his thigh as he pushed the pedal below with his bare foot. And I felt the anguish in the notes he was playing as if I were a sponge, soaking each one up as rapidly as he rolled them out. I carried them inside me, riding out all the feelings they were whipping up until they changed—
The storm subsided into a softer movement. His playing slowed and sobered into something just as dark, but utterly beautiful.
How did he do this? No music in front of him. He’d memorized it. And I didn’t know much about classical music, but I knew talent when I heard it.
A sharp jealousy bit. I pushed it away, but it left its teeth marks in me. I was envious of his talent. Overwhelmingly happy for him too. And then a little scared.
Because a light turned on in the back of my head, and I was suddenly aware of how outmatched I was. Maybe we weren’t Bonnie and Clyde after all, both screwing up at life.
Fen was so much further above Eddie than I could have dreamed.
Shit, shit, shit!
I couldn’t stop the tears in time. Squeezing my eyes shut didn’t help; they still streaked down my cheeks. Please don’t notice. I tried to make myself very still, turned my head to the side to swipe under my eyes. But the piano sonata abruptly ended.
“Oh God, I’m sorry,” I told him.
He turned his body toward mine and cupped my cheek with his hand. I tried to turn my face into it and hide, but he wouldn’t let me. “Whoa, talk to me. You’re killing my ego. I thought you’d like it. I know I said it scared my teacher, but I wasn’t trying to scare you.”
“It’s fucking brilliant,” I said, growling in frustration as another tear slid free. “You are a… thing. That thing. Your sister said you were. A genius. Dammit!”
He didn’t offer word help. “I’ve been playing since I was six, so it’s not like I just picked it up overnight or anything. I’m not a genius.”
“You’re amazing, and that was… Please keep playing.”
“Um, no.”
“I ruined it, I’m sorry. Who’s the Ruiner now, huh?”
He gave me a soft smile and wiped under my eye with his thumb. “Nah, it’s a ruinous piece. Super emo.”
“You’re so good. Way too good for me.”
His eyes narrowed. “Fuck that. No… are you serious? Jane, come on. Is that what this is about?”
“I’m a minimum-wage domestic. So is my dad. So was my mom. I’m the Help.”
“Who cares?”
“I do. Because I realized tonight that Mad Dog did sleep with my mom, okay?”
He blinked at me.
I exhaled a hard breath. “I’m not even that upset about it. In the end, it doesn’t change anything. My dad is my dad. He raised me and loves me. Mad Dog is…” I searched for the right word.
“A chiller version of my dad?”
“They’re the same,” I agreed. “Your dad didn’t just kick you out, did he? You wanted to leave.”
“I couldn’t stay in that house a minute longer with him,” he said, running his fingertips around my hairline as he studied my face. “If I didn’t have my aunts, I don’t know where I’d be.”
But he did. And that was the difference between us. He had a support system. People who cared about him. A car. A roof over his head. A job. A mother who would do anything for him. And he also had an incredible talent.
“You aren’t the bad seed,” I told him. “That’s what Eddie told me about you, but it was just another lie. You are actually the golden boy.”
His fingers stilled at my temple. “Um…?”
“I’m not at your level. You should be dating… someone from Juilliard or something.”
“You’ve really lost it. I can’t even respond to that.”
“Fen—”
A strange look came over him. “Holy shit.”
“What?”
He scrunched up eyes, then his shoulders relaxed as he gazed down at me, smiling softly. “You just implied that we’re dating.”
I sagged. “Oh God.”
“Are we?” he asked. “Because if we are…”
Well. Were we? For the first time since I’d been back at the lake, I finally knew why Eddie wasn’t responding to my texts. In Eddie’s head, maybe he’d just had a terrible June, but he could still count on coming home to his faithful girlfriend when this nightmare was all over.
But I’d been waiting on Eddie for a long time. Before all of this. For weeks. Months. Years. Before the fall into the dam, really. The only thing that had changed was that I now realized there were other things to do with my life. I didn’t have to wait. I could walk away.
I could be happy.
I found my gaze trailing down Fen’s chest. I forced it back up to his face, but that was just as dangerous. Maybe more.
Fen bent his head to mine and kissed my tearstained cheek. Kissed my jaw. My ear. He slung an arm around my back and tugged me closer, until I was straddling his lap on the bench. And the same hands that had played those stormy, cascading notes on the piano were all over me. His skin felt damp and feverish under my hands, and his hair faintly smelled of eucalyptus and mint.
I wanted him. And where our bodies connected, I could feel that he wanted me too.
“Come upstairs with me,” he said in a raspy voice. His eyes all lazy and full of sex.
“What’s upstairs?”
“My apartment.”
I looked up. A loft.
“And condoms,” he added. “I think. God, I hope.”
My cheeks puffed out a breath. I was rattled. Not thinking straight.
“Frida?” I asked, looking for her pointy ears.
“She can hang upstairs,” Fen said, “but I’m not sharing my bed with a dog.”
I laughed nervously. My hands were shaky when I slung my arm around Fen’s neck. He lifted me off the bench and, upon standing, kicked the seat backward, knocking it over with a thump.
“Upstairs?” he asked, depositing me on the floor.
I took his hand.
Up the stairs, above the rafters to an open door. Frida ran up with us, and when I stepped inside, he shut the door behind us. It was a tiny apartment, barely bigger than my staff room. Kitchenette and living space crammed together. Most of it was covered in books and record shelves. A purple couch was buried in clothes. Fen pushed them to one side, picked up Frida, and deposited her there. Then he led me into the bedroom and shut the door. “One second…”
“Ow,” I said, tripping over something in the dark.
He flipped on a switch in an adjoining bathroom that cast a slant of light into the room. And as he rummaged frantically inside a medicine cabinet, I perched on the edge of his unmade bed. A laptop sat on his bedside table playing music I didn’t recognize.
“Success,” he said, chest heaving and hair all disheveled.
He stopped in the slant of light and stared at me. Dark curls hung over one eye. A fine sheen of sweat glistened on his neck and shoulders. From playing the sonata, the kissing after, or the frantic condom search, maybe all of it.
“Seeing you here…,” he said in a low voice. “I feel like I’m dreaming. You’re not another ghost, are you?”
“I think I’m real.” I gave him a soft smile.
His weight made the mattress sink next to me, and for a moment, I lost my nerve. Then he picked up my hand and kissed my palm. “Is this okay?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to be here? If you change your mind, it’s okay. I’ve waited a long time for you. I don’t mind waiting longer.”
I felt that connection between us click into place, the same one I’d felt the first day I walked into the record shop. He called to something instinctual inside me, and it just felt right.
He kissed my throat as I wrapped my arms around him. My body caught on fire, and I couldn’t get close enough to him. By the time my flats were slipping off my feet and falling to the floor with two soft thunks, I wasn’t nervous at all. I was aching for him to touch me.
“Remember what I told you back at the tree?” he whispered, sliding his hand beneath my clothes. “Nothing has changed. You have all the power. I am yours to destroy.”
I couldn’t say a word.
All I could do was feel. And touch. And be touched.
All of me. All of him.
And as he whispered my name in the dark, our limbs tangled in the sheets, clinging to each other, it was the sweetest relief not to have to struggle to communicate.
I’d never trusted anyone more.
Maybe he was rescuing me all over again.
I just hoped I was worth the effort.