“Um…”
It wasn’t like Mack to hesitate. The simple, rough-and-tumble voice didn’t suit being lost for words.
Mack continued, cautiously, lurching and dragging like a trucker rounding a series of icy bends, “No, I got the files. But I’m kind of busy right now. I can’t commit to . . . to playing gigs or anything. I mean, we could jam, but. But yeah.”
Rev nodded, staring sideways at the black screen of his iun. He felt a slightly dazed grin raise itself as if in defense of his face. He stopped listening as the conversation quietly wound down to nothing.
Responses had grown predictable: “…no time . . . not now . . . different stage of life…”
The pain was in being slowly forced to realize each reason was really a kindness . . . an excuse offered to mask the elephant-in-the-room divide between what Rev had always proclaimed to everyone and what his real life had become.
None of his contacts had even commented on the rough collection of mixes he’d sent. He could no longer write off their silence as a mere aversion to the new, softer sound.
He wouldn’t bother reaching out to Crew or Angel this time.
Sighing and slouching down into faded wood, he peered out across a rugged, windswept sea. What a perfect day to strum the afternoon away, singing out into the salty air like an old dog happy to howl with distant friends.
But there were no friends. There was no guitar, no music, and no songs. Nothing.
So, he sat, listening only to the ocean, not quite wondering what to do. He didn’t feel his right wrist curve lazily outward as he reached absentmindedly to stroke the skin between his upper ear and hairline.
Having hardly eaten in weeks, the sight of his noodle-thin forearm likely would have alarmed him if he could care.
Just as thoughts of Jodie’s drawn-out disgust and sudden departure began again to unlock and trifle with delicate inward storms, he glimpsed a woman, alone, leaning against the white painted rail in the distance. She, too, was staring out to sea. He noticed the classy way her hands were folded, and how neatly the wind whipped her hair from side to side in perfect time.
As the woman turned to face him, Rev felt an odd sense of recognition, like seeing an old home unchanged after decades away. Soft features and doe eyes must have found a way to skip through time . . . circumventing Jodie’s brief blip . . . reaching all the way back to Thalia, the love of Rev’s young life and a best friend lost about as long as Dale (for just as silly reasons).
Then as the ageless woman slowly approached, Rev was surprised to hear himself say, “Hi, what’s your name?” He chalked his strange confidence up to the sense of familiarity, as if borrowing strength from one accord to use now in another.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m Caylee.” Caylee smiled at the gaunt, frail Rev the way a little kid might grin at a pony.
And Rev felt an old smile bridge his crusted features too . . . the sort one might gush with when faced with creatures tiny, cute, and indefensible. “I’m Rev,” he said, his voice goofy and uneven in his ears, quivering with excitement like a puppy panting for treats. He flinched, hoping to shake himself back under control.
“Hi,” she said again.
Another pause, another crest of smile, and off she went. The strangers parted like two tops taken from the same place on the floor where both had spun off and fallen to.
What now? What new tables might Rev have left to be lifted to and set spinning across?
How many Caylees had there been? How many Jodies? Which of the two did he miss more? And come to think of it, had such comparisons not once been fun? With the one, he’d remain ever dumb and carefree—a scattered poet and best friend on cold nights under blankets in special places after rock shows. The other had seemed to see him only ever from without, running ahead while pulling him behind to shiny worlds he knew he should want.
Rev chuckled, not quite hearing an eternity of the lyrics he had been searching for all his life scurry like moonlit critters behind darkened corners of his heart. He paid no heed to what the words said, nor how they sounded, so they stayed.
But there could be no more blankets on cold nights. No secret places. No push to fame. Certainly no rock shows.
He heard in his mind his newfound voice replaying in recent conversations. But he knew the soft sound arose from no more than a replica of the same affected innocence he had always used to win over every precious Caylee . . . all diamonds in their own jagged, happy, simple worlds.
The relentless pretend-ness immediately grew far too viscerally real to the idiot showman fighting to muster and grip that same carefree naiveté by which he had once kept at least a Caylee or two on tap without having to try . . . each claiming him as their forever other, staring back with matching farm-girl smiles in sepia portraits.
And had just such forced stupidity not been exactly what got lost on every Jodie—their love a shining star worth everything to earn the right to fall somewhere within or around (or beneath)?
What could keep any of either type now from all but yawning at what had become of this fast-fading, never-been shell of an almost man?
He laughed. He laughed and laughed. It wasn’t loud, or crazy. It wasn’t happy. The laughter was quiet, and uncomplicated. It had the feel of a final countdown.
Then he stopped.
The voice he heard in the silence that followed sounded high, alien, and female . . . but also trapped and lost in the heart and throat of a feral animal man . . . a perv with a plastic smile, waxing nice to narrow in. He knew whatever he might have almost ever been could never be again. And in the wake of Caylee’s gleaming eyes, he longed to mourn for Thalia. He wished only the best for every Jodie out in their harsh, grown-up worlds. Expressionless and still, he missed them all so much…
Dale, Thalia, Jodie, Mack…
A hollow pit fissured open in his chest. But Rev found no space there to grieve his missing music, nor unsung words, which he knew must hold or hint at joys of lives never lived.
I don't know anything 