The Lost Boys Symphony (18 page)

Nobody asked questions when Henry showed up at the door to the bus and walked straight to his bunk.  He lay down and wondered briefly why he wasn’t hungry and tried to remember when he’d last eaten. He surprised himself by falling asleep, and when he awoke he felt emptied, like the fever had broken and the pus had been drained. He opened the curtain on his bunk and saw Jack across the narrow hallway. He was reading, a book propped up on his bare chest. The oversized chain he always wore had pooled itself into his armpit and then cascaded over his biceps to partially frame the wildly colorful cherry blossoms embedded in his skin.

“Where are we?” Henry asked.

“Pretty close,” said Jack. He dog-eared the page he was reading and closed the book. “You cool, man?”

“Pretty close to where?”

“New Orleans.”

“I’m not sure,” said Henry.

“Not sure of what?”

“If I’m cool.”

“Oh,” said Jack. “Listen. Marco told us you had some kind of history.”

Henry wasn’t surprised, but it stung a little. He nodded, almost imperceptibly.

“He didn’t have a right to do that,” said Jack. “It’s none of our business.”

“Thanks for saying so,” said Henry. He lay back and faced the ceiling. “It’s true.”

“That you have a history or that it’s none of our business?”

“Both, I guess. But I don’t really mind you knowing.”

“Well,” said Jack. And then he said nothing.

“You don’t have to be afraid.”

“I’m not,” said Jack. “But, honestly, Molly is. She’s too young to know the difference between uncertainty and fear.”

Henry smiled at that. He thought of Val and how she was when they were younger. It had been
his
uncertainty back then that was scary, never hers. She was the one always telling him that he could conquer this. She liked to use words like that.
Fight. Conquer. Beat. Overcome.
They would have been empty coming from anyone else. Even Gabe. Even his mom. They empowered him only when they came from her lips.

“It’s not youth,” said Henry. “It’s scary for most people. Doesn’t matter how smart or stupid, young or old. Most people just get freaked out. The problem with
Minerva
”— and at that Jack and Henry both laughed—“isn’t her youth. She’s just self-centered. She thinks that’s a professional necessity. So she thinks the way I’m acting is about her, I guess.”

“She doesn’t have the authority to get you off this bus,” said Jack. “You’re an incredible musician. Phil and I have your back. So does Marco, by the way, even if he does have a big mouth. As long as you want to hold on, we’ll put Molly in her fucking place.”

“Thanks,” said Henry.

“It’s not worth it, though. This tour. You gotta take care of yourself, man. I know it’s tough to quit and all, but seriously? You think Phil or I would put the fucking
Grits
over our health? Molly would quit over a fucking hangnail. Ferreal. If we had three shows in a row where nobody showed up she’d probably claim exhaustion and make some poor suit from the label fly down here to convince her of how important she is before she agreed to continue.”

Henry nodded, his face relaxing into tight-lipped laughter.

“Just do what you gotta do, that’s all. I’m not saying I know what that is. I’m just saying.”

Henry was watching the water of Lake Pontchartrain skim by at sixty-five miles per hour when he felt his phone vibrate. He didn’t have to look. Nobody else ever called him anymore. He really wanted to speak to Val, but he was afraid he’d have to lie to her again. He decided the only thing worse than lying to her was avoiding her so that he wouldn’t have to lie to her, and he answered.

“Hey,” she said.

“I’ve been thinking about you,” he said. He walked back to his compartment and closed the curtain.

“Oh yeah?” she said.

“Yeah.”

Val waited in expectant silence. When she spoke Henry could hear laughter in her best mock sexy voice as she said, “So…what are you thinking about?”

“I’m sick.” Henry said it fast before he could stop himself. “Fuck—I’m just—it’s happening again, kind of.”

“No,” said Val. “What? Why didn’t you tell me? Jesus, Henry, I don’t even care, just—just come home, okay?”

“It’s not that bad, really. Just some—interludes I guess I’d call them, but I think it’s under control. I just didn’t want to lie to you again. I thought you should know.” He wanted to soften the blow, but the blow was the blow. If he’d really punched her, would it have mattered how hard?

“Come home, Henry. You need to be here.”

“I will, I’ll be home soon, but really, it’s not that bad. It’s under control—I just need a little more time.”

“Listen to yourself, Henry. There’s no more time. It only ever goes in one direction if you don’t take care of yourself. Just get off that fucking bus and get a cab to the nearest airport and come home. Right now.”

Henry had ensconced himself in his bunk again. He felt the bus slowing down, heard gravel beneath the wheels. Jack pulled back the curtain and mouthed
We’re here.
Henry nodded.

“Are you listening, Henry? Please.”

“Val, I love you, but we just got to the club.”

Silence came from the other end of the line.

“I’m sorry, I know this is shitty, but we’ll talk as soon as the show is over. Just a couple of hours. I’ll come home.”

“This is unfair,” she said. “You’re going to spend the night playing some fucking club and I’m going to be sitting here freaking out.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I know how this makes you feel—”

“You couldn’t possibly.”

“Okay, but it doesn’t change the fact that we’re here, at
some fucking club
in New Orleans. They’re unloading without me, I can hear it.” The scraping of amps and cases on corrugated metal reverberated through the body of the bus. “It’s one more night. I’ll make it, I’ll be okay,” he said.

“Go.”

“Are you sure?”

“That’s not a real question, Henry—you know I can’t stop you. So just go and call me as soon as you can. I’m going to go find a flight for you, tonight or tomorrow.”

“You don’t have to do that,” said Henry. “Don’t do that, I can take care of it. I shouldn’t have said anything just now, I should have just told you later. It’s not that urgent.”

“But you’re coming home.”

Henry sucked his teeth. It was what he wanted. He couldn’t even tell why he was resisting, but the resistance was strong, something innate and prideful that was unwilling to relent.

“You’re coming home, right?” said Val.

“I’m fine,” said Henry. “I can get help down here, maybe. I can call the doctor, get a prescription.”

“Come home,” she said.

“We’ll talk about this later, okay? I promise.”

“I love you,” said Val. “Call me as soon as you finish. Please.”

“I love you too.”

Two hours later, Henry was in the middle of the set. He was playing well, but it seemed as though his body was doing all the work while his mind and ears were elsewhere. The sound of talking from the bar was amplified by some unseen trick of acoustics, and though he tried to ignore it, it was soon joined by the babble of the crowd and the hum of the ceiling fan and the static in the distortion of Jack’s guitar and the effervescent patter of drinks being poured. He continued to play the beat that he knew he was meant to, but he couldn’t hear it any longer. There was only this
other
rhythm, the one being synthesized from the ambient sound of the room.

It grew louder and Henry’s fear grew with it. He opened his eyes wide and looked out into the crowd, hoping to find something that might center him, something
real
to focus on: smiling and laughing faces, bad dancing, the soft green glow of the stage lights. His body slackened, his breath grew steadier. But then he noticed the man at the bar. He was older, maybe mid-forties, unkempt. He stared right back at Henry, his eyes locked open in a horrified leer. The rest of the room receded into blurry darkness as the man’s face got brighter and bigger and the deeper beat grew louder. Henry’s hands and feet moved expertly, and he was dimly aware that he was still playing along with Jack and Phil, but that was incidental. The man’s face and the deeper beat were everything.

Then, suddenly, as if it were the most natural thing, he knew.

It felt more like remembrance than realization. It had happened before, after all, and he recognized the feeling of manic wholeness. Just as in the practice room, he was communicating with this man. Not words. Not even images. The messages were pre-verbal and unseeable. Vibrations, patterns of thought, data shaped by rhythm and sound pounding in waves against the shore of Henry’s mind—and for some timeless moment Henry
was
the man at the bar. He saw the stage from below and felt a strong desire for Minerva coupled with a dizzying déjà vu. He heard the music through the stranger’s ears as well as his own. Then, most disorienting of all, he felt that he was remembering being onstage. He was someone else, remembering his own moment as if from far in the future, his selves kaleidoscoping inward and outward forever.

The man scooted away from the bar and knocked his beer over as he stumbled over the rungs of his stool. He pushed his way through the crowd to the back of the room and disappeared.

Henry winced, squeezed his eyelids shut. The other rhythm faded and dissipated and he was slammed back into his body so abruptly that he nearly lost the beat. Luckily it was an opportune moment—he stopped playing for a measure and Jack filled the space with a guitar lick as if the whole thing had been planned. The crowd went crazy for it. Minerva turned to Henry and smiled lasciviously.

The final note of the set was still ringing in his ears as he stepped down from the stage and into the hallway outside the greenroom.

“Great fucking set,” said Marco. “Unbelievable.”

“Who was the man at the bar?”

“The man at the bar. Uh…which one?”

Henry shook his head fast and sweat flew in droplets from the ends of his hair.

“What the fuck, man?” said Marco, laughing as he took a cocktail napkin from beneath the glass in his hand and wiped his foreheard. “There were lots of people at the bar. The house was packed! It’s a good night.”

“There was a man at the bar,” said Henry. The next act was already bringing their gear onstage, and the spot where Marco and Henry were standing was a bad place for a conversation.

“You have to get your kit offstage,” said Marco.

“Who was he? You need to find out.”

“You need to get your shit together, pack it up, and get it on the bus.” Marco looked scared, but he managed to push out an authoritative “Right fucking now” before turning around to step out the back door of the club.

Henry went back to the stage and focused all of his attention on the crowd as he worked. He scanned the face of every person there but saw no sign of the man. Molly was working the room. Men stared and waited for a chance to talk to her, to touch her, to try to make her laugh. She wasn’t well known but she exuded fame, and it was funny to see people who’d previously never even heard of the Grits become starstruck in forty-five short minutes.

Jack and Phil were on their way back into the club as Henry approached the bus with the last of his things. He slid his stick and cymbal bags into the storage compartment, then stood outside the door at the front of the bus. Marco would be inside changing his shirt, combing his hair.

Henry had made a decision, and though he knew it was right, he was afraid of turning back. Standing in the parking lot and waiting felt easier than marching up the steps.

Marco emerged.

“I’m done,” said Henry.

Marco looked at him with a haggard mixture of pity and frustration. He tensed reflexively as Henry approached him.

“I’m sorry, Marco.”

Marco nodded. “What happened? After the show—you looked terrified.”

“It doesn’t matter. Find the nearest hospital. Please. Now, before I lose my nerve. I can’t go back on the bus. Please get my bag, leave whatever isn’t packed, except my phone, which should be in the compartment by the head of my bed.”

Marco went back on the bus and Henry waited outside. He hoped he was early enough to put an end to it before the roots took hold. It was strange how little time seemed to have passed since the last time he’d given in to his sickness. It made him sad to think that all those years, all his time with Val, it hadn’t really healed him.

But he was relieved, too. He was keeping his promise to Val. He was going to get help.

V
al left the
next morning. Gabe wanted to beg her to stay, but he settled for walking her to the train station. They stopped at an upscale diner called Old Man Rafferty’s that served mediocre food and bottomless coffee. Gabe’s omelet was oily and he envied Val’s Reuben from across the table until she gave him a bite.

They didn’t talk about what had happened. Gabe sank a little deeper into his pit of anxious longing with every tooth she bared through her perfect grinning lips. She told stories about her friends. Gabe wasn’t really listening. He was instead imagining her train ride back to New York. He hoped she’d fall asleep. If she stayed awake, he feared what an hour’s worth of quiet introspection might do to her, what it might take from him. There had to be some gesture, he thought, something he could do to lock in place whatever they’d started the night before.

A dollop of Russian dressing sat fat on the corner of her mouth. Her hair was a messy knot. He had never wanted anything as much as he wanted her.

The diner was just up the hill from the train station. They walked down and froze when they reached it. It seemed that neither of them could think of the appropriate goodbye, but after a moment Val made the decision for both of them and kissed Gabe lightly on the cheek.

“I’ll call you later,” she said. She disappeared up the dark stairwell that led to the platform.

Gabe still felt her as he turned up the hill to get back home. The dried sweat on his skin wasn’t all his, and his lips were raw, his muscles sore in strange places. It was comforting proof of what had happened between them hours before. While waiting at the intersection of Easton and Hamilton, he lifted his arms, clasped his hands behind his head, and stretched from side to side. Perhaps that was when the music started again, or maybe it had been there all along and he just hadn’t noticed it. As he moved his head the timbre of the ambient noise modulated. It grew and shrank as his steps took him past restaurants with open doors, cars blasting dance music, the muttered mantras of panhandlers. And this time, instead of resisting, he let go. He was too tired. Too happy. It was as disorienting and scary as always, but Gabe felt free. He floated along the sidewalk as if in a dream, and he thought of nothing but Val while the song swirled around him. By the time he got home he felt wonderfully weak, ready to sleep for as long as his body would let him.

“Hey.”

The voice echoed its way into the music. A second after hearing it, Gabe recognized it as a word. A second after that, he looked up to where it had come from and found Henry—that
other
Henry—sitting on the porch in a camping chair, his feet resting on the railing.

“Are you okay?” said Henry.

Gabe trudged up the steps and sat down at the top. He didn’t know how to answer, wasn’t even sure he was capable of speaking.

“You look like shit,” said Henry. He laughed.

Gabe fought to focus, pushed the music further away with each breath. He listened for the sound of air passing through his clenched teeth and let it drown out all the rest. When his mind was clear enough he stood up, brushed past Henry’s knees, and sat in the other chair on the porch.

“What did you do to me?” he said. He’d meant it as an accusation, but the words left his mouth with a calm curiosity.

“The music?”

Gabe squinted and took a deep breath. “Mm,” he said.

“You get used to it.”

“I don’t think so.”

“That wasn’t the proverbial ‘you.’ I mean you, Gabe. You will get used to it.”

“That’s not fair.”

“It’s the truth. A few years from now I’ll be sick again. Years
ago
for me. I’ll be spouting nonsense about conspiracies and the song of the world, how it’s going to break everything apart, how it will steal me away. You’ll be trying to console me and you’ll tell me—as if it could help—that you’ve heard the music too.”

“I don’t want to know,” said Gabe.

“I think you do,” said Henry. “You’ll try to tell me to fight it. You’ll say it’ll get better. You’ll even try to teach me how not to get lost in it.
We don’t need to understand it
,
you said.
Just don’t let it take over and it’ll go away
. Like it did for you.”

Gabe could picture that.

“You’ll think you’re doing me a favor, I guess. Sympathizing like no one else can. But it won’t be a favor. It will only make me think that you’ve somehow broken into me, that you’re just another voice in my head. That in turn will just feed my paranoia, and instead of centering me your compassion will send me back over the edge. At least you had the wisdom not to tell me about
me.
The park and the bridge. God knows how much worse it would have made things. Doesn’t matter. I’ll go back to some hospital. Which one I don’t even remember—there’ve been so many. Lost track.”

“You’re not even here, are you?” said Gabe. “Somehow you gave me something. Before you disappeared. I’m sick.”

“I didn’t mean to. Maybe the bridge did it. Just proximity. Or maybe there is some huge mystical force at work, the universe itself fighting against me to make things right. I don’t claim to know. But I don’t think you’re sick. That’s what you’re teaching me now. For a long time I’ve thought that my illness was the source of the music, that the two were intertwined. Now I’m not so sure. There’s the one thing—the thing we share—and then there’s the other. You don’t have what I have. You never will.”

Gabe kicked off his shoes and curled his toes around the railing in front of him. He thought of Jan, how she’d sat where Henry sat now. It seemed like an impossibly long time had passed since then. “You’re not here,” he said. “You don’t want me to mention you to Val or your mom—really,
I
don’t want me to mention you—because you’re not really here.”

“Hmm.” Henry tilted his head back, rested it against the filthy aluminum siding of the house. “Where does that line of thinking end, I wonder? The music isn’t really
there,
I’ll give you that. Or at least it’s not vibrating the air in quite the way you’re hearing it. But let’s say Cal comes home. You introduce me to him. He sees me too, so I’m really here, no doubt about it. Then I leave again. You get in bed at night and wonder whether Cal was really there, whether he really saw me. Maybe Cal’s not real either. He’s a pretty unlikely guy all around.”

Gabe didn’t see the point in responding.

“So where does it end?” said Henry. “What about this house? Or this town? What about your memories of me from when we were kids?”

“I had those before you showed up. I’ve had them forever,” said Gabe. But he knew that in relation to Henry’s line of questioning it was an indefensible supposition. All he had was his memory of remembering. And memory could betray him.

“And last night, with Val—was that real?”

Gabe stood up and walked to the front door, checked three pockets before he finally found his keys and stepped inside, closing Henry out on the porch. He sped through the house and collapsed on the bed. On the pillow, inches from his eye, sat a single strand of Val’s hair. He picked it up and twirled it around the smallest joint on his pinkie. She’d been there. He knew that. But then the music had started again. He was touching her. She was touching him. Eventually they were all mixed up together. He felt parts of her that he’d been dreaming about, she pressed her naked body against his. The music played throughout, synchronizing itself with their shared breathing. It dripped off her and into Gabe’s ears. It sang a song in the shape of her.

His memory of the night before was perfectly aligned with the fantasies he’d fostered before Val came over. Perhaps too perfectly aligned. Gabe shifted on his side and closed his eyes. He concentrated on the images. He wanted to relive them and inspect them while they were fresh in his mind.

She woke up in the same clothes she’d gone to bed in.

So had he.

Had they put them on afterward, or had they never taken them off?

He hadn’t used a condom, she said it was okay, she was on birth control. So there was no wrapper, no sad wad of latex. No proof.

Gabe jumped at the sound of rapping on the thin glass window that separated his room from the porch. If this Henry was a hallucination, he was a persistent one.

“Come on.” The voice was muffled but easy to make out.

The window again rattled in its frame, and Gabe sat up. He lifted his bare foot from the ground, then drove it down onto the floor. A shock of pain ran up through his shin and into his knee and he did it once more, then again.
This isn’t real,
he thought.
Not real not real not real.
He heard footsteps on the porch, then the small creak of the hinges of the front door followed by the sound of it closing. The turn of the lock.
All imagined,
he thought.
Not real.
The footsteps advanced along the wall next to Gabe’s bed until they stopped in the living room, just outside his door.

“Jesus.” Henry laughed. “This is…unbelievably weird.”

Gabe levered himself upright. When he reached the doorway of his bedroom he found Henry standing in front of the coffee table, turning slowly to take in the room.

“Get out,” said Gabe.

Henry was still smiling. “No.” He stepped around the coffee table, inspected the room from this other angle. “My God, this place. It’s even worse than I remember.”

“You’re not real,” he said.

“Maybe,” said Henry. He sat down on the couch facing Gabe’s bedroom. “She was here last night. You guys were right here, huh?” He patted the cushion next to him. “I’m probably just imagining things, but it’s like I can feel it.”

“We talked about you. That’s what she came here for,” said Gabe.

“I’m sure that’s true, but that’s not what she got, is it?”

“We talked about how we couldn’t do anything because of you, how you might come back, how fucked up it made both of us feel. But then…I don’t know.”

“You did it anyway.”

“Yeah, we did it anyway. I think.”

“You think.”

“I think. It was as real to me as you are. So I guess I don’t really know.”

“To not believe in things that actually exist is sometimes worse than being convinced by a good hallucination. Trust me. I’m an authority.”

“So it happened.”

Henry fixed Gabe with a stare. “You two will be together. It wasn’t a mistake, understand? Don’t fuck it up, because it’s the only thing I have left to feel good about.”

“I
don’t
understand,” said Gabe.

“Me neither.”

Somewhere down Hamilton a stoplight must have changed from red to green, because a procession of cars wailed past the house and brought the music back. Gabe shuddered.

“Why does it have to be her?” Henry’s voice was so soft that Gabe almost didn’t hear it. The words betrayed no anger or fear, only sad resignation. “That’s the question I keep asking myself. It was always going to be her. You were always going to have her. It’s the only constant. I came back here, found you—God knows what that’s done to you—I don’t regret it, because it was necessary. But still. Why her?”

Gabe didn’t know where to begin, but he felt obligated to at least attempt an answer. “At first,” he said, “before you came to me on the train, I didn’t think it was going to happen. It wasn’t planned. We slept in the same bed. That was it, and for your sake I guess I wish it had ended there.”

“But then,” said Henry.

“Val and I know each other really well. You disappeared. Your mom—I mean, she just cut me out—and I can’t talk to Cal without feeling like he’s trying to dissect me.” Frustrated, he sighed. He’d started in the wrong place. He stepped farther into the living room and sat on the floor, leaned against the wall. “Everything was all fucked up. You went nuts and disappeared and then I’m having weird experiences that I can’t explain. It was like everything I ever cared about was just gone. But then Val and I get in the same room together, and it’s like nothing’s changed. I’m just—I’m
myself.
Something good is happening for the first time in months.”

“It was always that way,” said Henry. He was busying himself with a cellophane wrapper he’d found on the table. “So simple. I kind of figured. But thank you. For telling me that.”

“It should have been enough that she was my friend,” said Gabe.

“It was never going to be enough.”

“It was the music, too.”

Henry looked up from his hands. “What about the music?”

“It stops,” said Gabe. “When I talk to her, it just goes away. It’s the only thing that’s kept me from losing it this week. I mean, I’m getting to be okay at ignoring it or whatever, but with her it’s like everything just goes silent.” Gabe didn’t want to discuss the exception to that, the way the music had become a part of Val’s body, how it had driven him forward, coaxed him inside of her.

Henry eyes were alight with curiosity. It made him look younger, more like the friend Gabe knew.

“I thought you knew all this stuff.”

“We only had one conversation about it. Years from now.” Henry dropped the cellophane on the table. “But you didn’t—wait. When you see her it’s just
gone?
”

“Pretty much,” said Gabe.

“What do you mean,
pretty much
?
”

“Calm down—”

“What do you mean,
it stops
?
” Henry was a stranger again, his eyes laying Gabe bare with spiteful acuity.

“It just goes away,” said Gabe. “Like it was never there.”

Henry stood. He pulled the hair up off his face with both hands and laughed, the same joyless sound that had months before rearranged his person into some unrecognizable specter.

“Jesus,” said Henry. His eyes were wet, he was breathing hard, and a thin stream of spittle flew into his beard. “It’s so obvious. I’ve wasted—you should have just told me.”

“I just did.”

Henry pointed a shaking finger. “No, you fucking didn’t. Not when it mattered.” He relaxed, then, and seemed to collect himself. That made it all the more surprising when he bent over, grabbed the lip of the coffee table, and heaved it up with an animal scream. Glass hit the wall and the floors followed by ash and dust, and Henry continued his yell as he drove his toe into the now exposed underside of the table, over and over. “You didn’t fucking tell me!”