Jane's Harmony (Jane's Melody #2) (11 page)

“Why’d you have to die, baby? Why’d you have to die?”

“No,” she heard a voice say. “He’s not dead yet.”

Jane looked up through teary eyes and saw her neighbor looking down on her. She glanced around and realized that she had sat down on the beanbag. The book was in her lap and she had been crying.

“He’s going to be okay?” Jane asked, because she couldn’t think of anything else.

“They won’t say for sure, but they’re working on him. Vet says he got cut up maybe the worst he’s seen. They’re worried about rabies too. I came out to let you know it’s going to be a
long night and that you should go home. Thank you for driving me. And thank you for showing up when you did. For me and for Buttercup.”

Jane didn’t know what to say, so she just nodded that she understood. Then she started to rise from the beanbag but stopped when she noticed her neighbor’s feet.

“You’re missing a slipper,” Jane said.

The neighbor looked down as if just now realizing it. Her hair was wilder than ever and her pink robe was covered in blood. She looked as if she’d been through hell, and Jane guessed that she had.

“Why don’t I go and get you some shoes and something clean to wear?” Jane asked. “If you’re going to stay.”

“I wouldn’t want to trouble you,” she said.

“Oh, it’s no trouble. I’m a night owl anyway. Well, as you know. Since we’re neighbors.”

The neighbor glanced up from her feet, and Jane thought she looked momentarily ashamed. Whether it was because of her appearance or because of the silly little feud they had been having as neighbors, Jane couldn’t say.

“You wouldn’t mind?”

“Not at all. Really. It’s no trouble.”

The woman reached into her robe pocket and handed Jane her keys. “There’s a pair of Crocs with socks stuffed in them beside my bed. And if you wouldn’t mind grabbing me the thin coat out of the hall closet too, that would be great. I was just out letting Buttercup pee. I had no idea we’d be here. Well, you didn’t either, I guess.”

She looked at Jane’s clothes when she said it, and for the first time Jane realized how crazy the two of them must look, her in her damp work uniform and her neighbor in her bloody robe.

Jane laughed. “Aren’t we a pair? Okay, I’ll go get your things and be right back.”

Jane’s uniform had stretched quite a bit and was dry by the time she drove home, so she didn’t bother changing. She went upstairs and straight into her neighbor’s fusty apartment instead. It was dim, and it smelled of mothballs and of dog. The layout of the apartment was an exact mirror of her and Caleb’s unit, and she felt as though she had entered some alternate universe where left was right and right was left, some other possible future where she had grown old alone with nothing but the junk she had collected to keep her company.

When Jane entered the bedroom, she saw that the bed was up against the wall their apartments shared, and she could see in the lamplight the wear marks in the wall’s paint where the neighbor pounded on it when they were too loud. Jane saw the Crocs beside the bed and bent to pick them up. She paused when she noticed the picture frames crowded on the small nightstand—a dozen or more, and all of them of her neighbor when she was younger, smiling in the arms of a handsome man. Jane could only guess that it was her husband and that he had passed away. She left the bedroom carrying the Crocs and stopped at the hall closet to collect the coat.

On the way back to the animal hospital, Jane pulled through a Jack in the Box and picked up two Sourdough Jacks and two fries. The kid in the window looked at her uniform and the patch on her shoulder and scowled.

“Hey, you’re a parking copper. I got a parking ticket from one of you the other day and the meter was broken.”

“I’m sorry,” Jane said.

“Can I contest it?” he asked.

“You can do anything you want,” Jane said. “Just don’t spit on me, please.”

He looked at her as if she were crazy and handed out the bag of food.

The animal hospital lobby was empty again when Jane returned. She set the coat down on a chair and the Crocs down on the floor beneath it. Then she took a seat herself and ate a burger while she waited for her neighbor to appear. The wall clock said it was one thirty in the morning, but it felt much later to Jane. The food and the quiet of the lobby conspired to make her drowsy, and despite the glaring lights, she closed her eyes and went to sleep.

When she woke again, the clock said seven ten, which meant Jane had been sleeping in the chair for hours. And she felt it too. Her neighbor was sitting across from her wearing the thin coat and the Crocs, but no evidence of the food remained.

“Is he going to be okay?” Jane asked.

She smiled and nodded. “Thank you,” she said.

Jane wasn’t quite sure if she was thanking her for going back for the shoes and coat, or for saving the day with her pepper spray. She supposed it didn’t matter either way.

“You’re welcome,” she said, sitting up and rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Then she added, “Who knew raccoons could be so vicious?”

“The vet said he read in the paper just last month that one had moved into a woman’s attic, and fell through the ceiling onto her bed in the middle of the night and mauled her. He said the police had to shoot it.”

This sounded like a tall tale to Jane, but she didn’t say so. “Good thing we’re not on the top floor, I guess.”

The neighbor nodded agreement.

“Do you need a lift home?” Jane asked.

“No. I’m going to wait until they release him. You go on ahead. You’ve done too much already.”

Jane wasn’t about to argue with her. “I put your keys in the coat pocket there.”

The neighbor put her hand into the pocket to check and then nodded. Jane turned to go, but then stopped and turned back. It seemed odd to just walk out after everything they’d been through. She looked at the woman in her chair: her puffy red eyes, her wild hair, her bloodstained pink robe showing beneath the jacket.

“You know,” Jane said, “we’re neighbors, but I don’t even know your name. It just says 3B on your mailbox.”

“Marjorie Johnston.”

“Jane McKinney.”

They both nodded, as if simply saying their names was truce enough and everything that had happened in the past could now remain there.

“Stop by and let me know how he’s doing, won’t you?”

“Oh, yes. I’ll bring him by when he’s feeling better and we’ll give you a proper thank-you. I’m sure Buttercup will smother you with kisses.”

Oh, great, Jane thought. I can hardly wait.

Jane pulled out of the animal hospital in the gray light of dawn and drove the deserted streets toward home. She could see the traffic already moving on the highway in the distance, but the back roads of town were still quiet. The car clock said seven twenty-five, which meant it was almost five thirty in L.A. She wondered if Caleb was up.

Her purse lay on the seat next to her and she reached over as she drove to fish her phone out. She dialed him but it went to his voice mail. She hung up and tossed the phone back into her purse. A minute later it rang, and she reached into her purse again, excited to catch his call, but in her rush her hand closed on something else. She heard an aerosol spray and almost instantly her eyes began to water.

“Oh, shit, I didn’t just do that.”

She jerked the wheel and pulled the car over. By the time she was stopped, her eyes and lungs were burning, and she slammed the car into park and jumped out. She stood with the door open, taking deep gulps of cool morning air. When she looked back into the car, she could see a fine red mist still lingering above her open purse. She hit the buttons to roll the power windows down, and then went and sat on the curb to wait for it to air out. She was crying from the pepper spray and laughing at the insanity of it all when her phone rang again from inside the car. She got up and went to the passenger window, then held her breath and closed her eyes as she reached inside with her head turned away to carefully pluck her phone from her purse. She took it back to the curb and dialed Caleb on speaker to keep from touching the phone to her face.

“Hi, babe,” he answered. “We’re playing phone tag.”

“Oh, Caleb. It’s so good to hear your voice.”

“Is everything okay?” he asked.

“Everything’s fine now,” she said.

“Good,” he replied. “I’ve got a few minutes before I have to get ready to go. I want to hear all about your first official day on the job. Tell me everything.”

Jane glanced down at the curb she was sitting on and at her shrunken uniform, noticing a mayo stain from her Sourdough Jack. She laughed.

“Since you’ve only got a few minutes,” she said, “why don’t you tell me about your day instead.”

Chapter 10

C
aleb was in the hotel rehearsal room working on a new song when Jordyn finally came over to introduce herself. The ever-present camera crew followed her, but Caleb had learned to ignore them by now. She walked up and stood in front of him as if she expected him to stop midsong and acknowledge her, but he pretended she wasn’t there, just like he did the cameras. Only when he had finished singing and had strummed the final chord did he look up at her from his chair.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“Actually, I came over to help you,” she said.

Caleb laughed. “Oh, you did?”

“Yes. I couldn’t help but hear you playing and it’s good. But you need a key change.”

“A key change. Why?”

“It’s missing something. Your verses are in A minor, and that’s fine, but you should switch up the chorus to C major.”

“That won’t work.”

“It worked well enough for David Bowie.”

“David Bowie?”

“You know the song ‘Let’s Dance,’ I’m sure.”

“Of course I do.”

“Well, you’re no David Bowie, but that song has similar pacing to the one you were just playing, and it’s B minor in the verse and A major in the chorus.”

“But you said I should go A minor to C major.”

“You’re exactly right, you should. Don’t you think?”

“That’s not even a real key change. They’re relative.”

“Here,” she said, reaching and taking his guitar from his hands. “It’ll be easier if I just show you.”

Then she stood there in front of him and the cameras and played and sang his song, note for note, word for word, making the key change she had suggested on the chorus. He couldn’t believe it, but it was better. Much better. But even more unbelievable was that she could remember the chords and the lyrics after only having heard them once. She finished and handed him back his guitar. Then she stuck out her hand.

“I’m Jordyn,” she said. “Jordyn-with-a-
y
.”

He shook her hand. She had a firm grip. “Nice to meet you, Jordyn-with-a-
y
. I’m Caleb-with-an-
e
.”

“Are you going to play that song this week?” she asked.

“I was thinking about it.”

“You should. It’s really good.”

“Aren’t you worried that I’ll beat you with it? Now that you gave me the secret David Bowie key change and all that.”

“Not at all,” she said, shaking her head. “We’ll both go through this week.”

“Oh, you think so, do you?”

Caleb looked into her eyes and found the confidence he saw there both interesting and unsettling.

“I know so,” she said. “And then it will be down to just the two of us next week.”

“And since you know everything, what then?”

“Then I beat you out for the live show and there isn’t a key change on the planet that will save you.”

“Did she really say that?”

Caleb turned in his bed to look at Sean. “She did. Can you fucking believe it? Took the guitar right from my hands and
played the song like she’d written it too. I’ll tell you, that chick’s a trip.”

“Maybe she just wanted to help you,” Sean suggested.

“Oh, come on. She was trying to intimidate me.”

“You think so?”

“Either that or she was playing for the cameras. But you never know how they’re going to edit this crap together in the show anyway, so ‘why bother’ is my view.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Sean said, gazing up at the ceiling. Then he asked, “Did you say anything to her about me?”

“No, I didn’t say anything about you. What the hell would I say anyway? ‘Hey, my crazy roommate wants to compare eyeliner and earrings with you’?”

“That’s not all I’d like to do with her,” he said.

“Dude, that girl would eat you alive.”

“I know it,” he conceded, shaking his shaggy head on his pillow. “But I’ve always had a tough time telling the difference between fear and attraction. A buddy back home took me skydiving with him, and it was so fucking scary I fell in love with him on the trip down. I swore by the time we landed I was gay and wanted to marry him. Fortunately, it didn’t stick.”

Caleb laughed. “That’s funny. But they kind of frown on that in Iowa, don’t they?”

“You’d be surprised,” he said. “Iowa’s ninety percent white but they’re pretty diverse in their opinions of shit.”

“Well, where do they come in on men wearing eyeliner?”

“They mostly hate it. Why do you think I wear it?”

Caleb smiled and reached to turn off the lamp. After a few quiet minutes, he heard Sean roll over on his bed, and he knew he was looking at him even though it was dark.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” Caleb said. “As long as it isn’t about Jordyn.”

“No, not about her. It’s about your music. How do you write those songs?”

“What do you mean, how?”

“I mean, all my shit feels like pop rock stuff to me. Almost too formulaic. I know I get some raw emotion down, and I make it my own and everything, but I don’t ever feel like I’m telling a story. You tell stories. That one the other day knocked everyone flat. But you’re not that much older than I am, and I don’t see where you get them. The stories, I mean.”

Caleb thought for a minute about how to answer. “I guess people just give them to me.”

“They give you stories. Like in interviews or something?”

“No. I just watch them and they give them up. Or maybe I watch them and make them up. I don’t know. But it doesn’t amount to much difference, I guess.”

“What do you mean by ‘watch them’?”

“I just get quiet and watch people being themselves. It’s one of the reasons I love playing on the street. People think you’re homeless. Which I’ve been. Or they treat you like you’re a streetlamp or something. Like you’re not there. You know what else I used to do?”

“No, what else did you do?”

“I used to go to funerals.”

“Funerals?” Sean asked.

“Yeah,” Caleb said, “funerals.”

“Whose funerals?”

“Strangers’ funerals.”

“That’s creepy,” Sean blurted out.

“No, it’s not creepy. It’s part of life, man. And besides, they didn’t have anybody else to go.”

“Why not?” Sean asked him.

“Because they were transients and nobody cared.”

“You went to homeless people’s funerals?”

“Yeah. I started because I had made friends with this cat who used to collect cans all up and down Chinatown. Old Jumping Johnny, they called him. He was a proud man too. Wouldn’t take a handout for nothin’. I got him some boots at the Goodwill, and I had to wait until the bastard was passed out to put them on his feet because he wouldn’t accept them. Anyway, he died and I wanted to pay my respects. But I paid hell finding out where he’d gone. It turns out if you die and there isn’t anybody to claim the body, then they hold you for about six months in one of those refrigerators, and then the state gives you a simple burial.”

“They do?”

“Yeah. They put the date and name, if they even have the name, in the paper, but nobody reads them or cares. So I started looking for the announcements and whenever they’d have one, I’d show up and see them buried.”

“Did you pray over them or something?”

“No, it wasn’t really a religious thing. I just figured nobody should have to be alone when it comes to that. You know? I sure wouldn’t want to be.”

“But what’s this got to do with writing songs?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I didn’t know anything about them so I had to sit there while they were being put in the ground and make up a whole life story. What they loved. What they lost. How they ended up there all alone. And then sometimes those stories would turn into songs.”

“So you’d write songs for dead street people you didn’t even know?”

Caleb thought about this for a moment in the dark.

“No,” he finally said. “They write the songs for me.”

A minute or two of silence followed and Caleb rolled over and shut his eyes. He was nearly asleep when Sean spoke again.

“Can I ask you another question?”

“What’s on your mind now?”

“It’s about your lady. Jane. You two are engaged, right?”

Caleb smiled in the dark just at the mention of her name. “Yep. And I’m hoping to save up enough to give her a real wedding. And if I win this show and get the money, that’s the first thing I’ll do.”

“Well, how did you know?”

“How did I know?”

“That she was the one.”

“I knew it as soon as I saw her.”

“Yeah, but how?”

“Haven’t you ever looked at someone for the first time and instantly known them? Not known them by their looks. But really known them. The real them. The thing that makes them who they are.”

“You mean like love at first sight?”

“Yeah, but more than that. And your dick getting hard when you look at Jordyn doesn’t count. It’s more like meeting an old friend, but for the first time. Like you were made to understand this one person, and they were made to understand you. And when you finally do meet, you look at their face, you look into their eyes, and you just know.”

“Do you think it can happen for everyone?”

Caleb thought about this for a minute. “Yes,” he finally answered. “I do. As long as you’re not busy looking at the wrong things.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I don’t know. Just that I was playing my guitar in a doorway when Jane came looking for me. And I know if I’d had my eye on chasing tail, or chasing money, or chasing anything at all instead of just being right there and doing what I love to do, then I would have missed her.”

There was another moment of silence when Caleb knew that Sean was pondering what he’d just said, and Caleb began to question having said it since he was really just guessing himself.

“I like everything you said about love and all that,” Sean finally replied. “But then what are we doing here?”

“What do you mean?” Caleb asked.

“Aren’t we here chasing a prize? Chasing fame? Maybe I should be at home just doing what I love. Painting and making music. Maybe while I’m here I’ll miss my soul mate.”

“I didn’t know you painted.”

“Yeah, I do watercolors.”

“Nice. But I think you’re taking what I said a little too literally.”

“Well, hell,” Sean said. “You’re the one who said it.”

Caleb laughed. He was really beginning to like this kid.

“Remind me not to get into conversations with you before bed. Now go to sleep. Those damn cameras will be in the hall in a few hours, and if anyone needs their beauty rest, it’s you.”

Garth was more upset than usual, over something as silly as craft services arriving late.

“What are we paying you people for if you can’t even show up on time?” he shouted, pacing in front of the poor caterers setting up. “It’s not like the food’s worth the prices.”

He stopped in front of Caleb and Sean where they stood waiting to get their breakfast. “Are you onstage today?” he asked.

“No, I play tomorrow,” Caleb answered.

“Not you, chucklehead. This one here with the girly lashes and holes in his head.”

“They’re gauges,” Sean said.

“I don’t care what they are, take them out.”

“But the stylist said they were fine. She said they go well with my look.”

“Well, the stylist works for me and I say your look sucks. We’re filming a family-friendly show here. So take them out.”

“But if I take them out there’s just holes and loose skin.”

“Cute,” he said, looking disgusted. “So, what are you going to do when your parents stop wiping your ass for you someday and you have to get a job in the real world? March into the interview with a couple of vaginas hanging from your head?”

“Maybe cut him some slack,” Caleb suggested, stepping between them. “He’ll be fine how he is.”

“Yeah, what do you know about the real world, kid?”

“I know that you reap what you sow.”

“And what’s that, one of your cute lyrics or something?”

“No. It just means that in the real world someday you’ll be old and incontinent and having to have your ass wiped for you. And probably by a guy with earrings and tattoos too.”

He looked as if he wanted to punch Caleb in the face. “You better hope you sing as well as you mouth off, kid.”