A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall (34 page)

—I don't like the way she's looking at us. These'll work. Let's go.

—Put some thought into this. You choose three. I'll choose three. I haven't even finished with the rules. Every morning we choose the record for the day. After that day you promise to never listen to any song on that album again. Ever. If one of these songs comes on in a restaurant or a bar, you have to head directly for the exit. So you obviously don't want to choose
Abbey Road
or the White Album or Dylan, because after this trip you'd never hear it again.

—After the day we designate for the album, we can never listen to it again. Got it.

—It's not like, “Oh, we played
Blood on the Tracks
on a Tuesday, so I can only hear those songs on Tuesdays.” Or, “There's nobody here. I can listen to it just once.” You can never listen to those songs again.

—The albums we chose are dead to me. Got it.

—One more rule: No compilations, sound tracks, or greatest hits. And neither one of the Portishead records.

He turned to the headiest section he knew: jazz. His father's jazz collection had been a dusty
Britannica
looming over the household with iron-clad authority. The very word
jazz
made Owen feel a little stupid, so he adopted the music of the older players on the junior national team. That music was of little help now. Bad Religion, Minor Threat, Social Distortion, NOFX, Das EFX—these are not the bands that win a heart. He needed the very best of his own taste, even if it meant he would never hear his favorite songs again, and a healthy dose of other people's music, even if it meant that Stevie would be getting a skewed portrait—but what's the future for, if not to make people okay with who we really are?

He turned back to rock.

He drifted into the M's and paged through plastic cards, wondering if there was any chance he could pull off a Modest Mouse record. He'd only heard it twice, but liked the songs. Stevie spoke without facing him:

—If you even think about Bob Marley, the trip's off.

Stevie had a CD behind her back and leaned her shoulder into Owen's side to inspect. He tilted a CD forward with his finger.

—Ooh. Modern Lovers. Very good call.

A new band to Owen.

—But, see, this one is live. They only wrote one album—which says something. I was going to go for early Roxy Music, but the store only has the greatest hits. You're not following, are you?

Owen snapped to.

—What do you have?

—This one is really going to hurt. Poor Lou.

The shop owner muted the phone's mouthpiece as if she were about to yell. Instead she listened. Stevie, focused on her own offering, ignored his protest.

—No. I can do it.

Stevie bit her knuckles and shook her head. She bowed and extended a hand.

—For you.

Owen looked down at a white-faced and heavily eye-shadowed man holding a guitar. Stevie squeezed his arm, looking down at the album as if it were totally apart from them:

—Fucking
Transformer
. The rest aren't going to hurt that much. It's easily top-ten ever. And I'm giving it up for an American.

Owen laughed.

—All right. One in the bag. What do you have?

Owen looked for Van Morrison. His mother had all the records in her collection. The nineteen records on the bottom shelf of a cabinet were the only traces of her in the Burrs' music library. Her records were real vinyl records. There were only nineteen of them, but they had an immense gravity that drew him to the corner of the den whenever he woke up in the middle of the night. His dad said
Astral Weeks
was her favorite. A wealth of fine scratches supported the claim. Owen played the records all the time, but he never heard the music in the same way that Stevie probably heard music. He watched the stylus trace the grooves and thought he could see his mom doing the same thing over candlelight, barefoot in a caftan.

—How is there no Van Morrison?

—They must have misfiled him. Check in the Vs.

Owen found an entire rack of Van Morrison albums, but also saw the
TOM WAITS
tab. He returned in two steps.

—
Closing Time
.

—No commentary? Why did you ditch Van Morrison?

—This is my favorite album. We have a week for commentary. Let's go. We can make do with just these two.

—Not the rules!

A new customer took an interest in Stevie's shout. Owen spun around to the jazz section. He grabbed something he had seen in his father's study.

—And this one.

—Charles Mingus,
Cumbia & Jazz Fusion
?

—It's really good. Mingus is Mingus. And this is Mingus at his finest.

Those were his father's words.

—Okay. That's fine. I just didn't peg you for a jazz guy. More hip-hop. Or Green Day. The best I was hoping for was Pixies, and you go and drop an obscure Mingus record. Bizarre.

—You'll like it.

—As long as it hurts. This game only works if you're giving something up. Okay. Two for you.
Transformer
for me . . . and . . .
Tago Mago
.

—I haven't even heard of most of the bands you're talking about.

—Can's German. That record is hugely important. I think you'll like it.

—No. It's fine. Choose the last two. We've got to run.

—No. Can wasn't right. Do you know Sigur Rós?

Owen shrugged.

Stevie walked to the S section, grabbed a white album with closed parentheses on the cover ( ), then quickly added something else to the bottom of the stack.

—I made my last pick. Unfortunately it's another one that hurts to give up. You?

Owen was inspired by a song he'd heard belted out on acoustic guitar a few times in college when nights rubbed up against sunrise.

—We're going to Amsterdam? I've got to go with Jacques Brel. Do any of these albums have the song “Amsterdam”?

—It kicks off
Olympia '64
. Are you sure? Fine. I'll meet you outside. I've got to get speakers and batteries.

Owen handed her a crumpled red note.

A patron was looking at Owen inquisitively, but it was more of a vague stare than an I-can't-quite-place-you stare. The shop owner still looked suspicious. Stevie said something about a funeral in French, which made the woman laugh. The shop owner began to wrap their albums. Owen slunk away to the crinkling applause of tissue paper.

He nodded to the lone smoker in the courtyard. The guy turned to the street as if Owen were asking for money. Owen looked up to the sun, glare cut by the bright green leaves. He watched a caterpillar on the trunk lean back and scribble the air until Stevie returned.

—What was your last choice?

Stevie caped away the bag and hid it behind her back.

—At the checkout counter I realized I should have gone with a Plastic Bertrand record.
“Ca Plan Pour Moi”
has kind of become my calling card as a deejay. I'm so sick of hearing that song that drowning it would have been a pleasure.

He thought she was testing him with idle chatter, or maybe training him to relax. It wasn't working.

—You were wrong about one thing, though. There is no chance that I just return to my normal life after we get to Amsterdam. I heard a siren while you were inside. We've got to get back to the boat. I can't believe we stopped for this.

She cemented her heels until he apologized and acknowledged that they needed their own stakes, not someone else's. He apologized.

—Just keep talking to me and don't look forward. You should have realized by now that you'd be fine.

—Why's that?

—Are you kidding? I'm in a sundress. Nobody's going to be looking at you.

On the banks of the Rhine, thousands of tourists sat on the steps or rocked in and out of shadows with arms behind their backs. With Stevie on his right and no peripheral vision to see what was coming behind him, any one of the young men in sneakers could signal friends, spring up, and seize him. Owen spoke out of the side of his mouth.

—What should we talk about?

—Music.

—I can't talk about music. I don't know anything about music. Who's Lou Reed?

—Now that may be a deal breaker. How could you not know Lou Reed? Velvet Underground?

—Crickets.

Stevie laughed and pulled him down a bit.

—So I guess there's no point in me keeping my third choice a secret. But I'm going to anyway. By the way, I edited one of your selections.

—You did what?

—
Olympia '64
is a live album, so I replaced it. I hope you don't mind.

Owen shrugged.

—And Jacques Brel. I mean, the only reason you chose him was because of the name of that song. I thought of another great album with a song about Amsterdam.

—What is it?

—
Aeroplane Over the Sea
. You'll like it. I'm not sure if you knew it, but Jacques Brel is Belgian, not French, and I'm kind of on a Belgian purge right now.

—If you were on a purge, shouldn't we listen to nothing but Jacques Brel? Why Belgium anyway? That's so random.

—My ex is a Belgian cyclist. Nice guy, but he loved his calf muscles a little too much.

Owen smiled.

—Seriously. He wears cargo shorts in winter.

Stevie found an accent:

—
You must respect the sacred calves
.

Owen laughed.

—That's good. You look less conspicuous when you smile.

—What's your favorite song?

—I thought we were past that. Actually, no. It's not that banal of a question because I had no real answer to it until just now. When we were in the store my first instinct was: go for Björk. To educate you, to lead you out of the dark non-Björk world. I'm judging from your silence that you don't know Björk? Sugarcubes?

—I know. Awesome Icelandic singer. Childlike wonder. Wore a swan.

—But you don't know her actual music. And I thought, He should know Björk if he is really going to know me. Then I thought, that's the wrong impulse for a gift. You don't give a gift to shape someone into the person you want him to be. You give a gift because it's something you couldn't bear to be without, but it's even more unthinkable for the other person to be without it.

—Now I'm thinking I didn't put enough thought into my choices.

—There were only two.
Closing Time
is your favorite record, right? You weren't making that up . . .

—No. So why didn't you choose Björk?

—Even if I could have gotten over never hearing those songs again, I would
never
listen to them for the last time on these chintzy portable speakers.

She opened the bag and held up the plastic package. It was the sort of package that was going to be hell to open without a knife. He started to peek at the mystery sixth album. Stevie reached in and handed him a pair of knock-off Wayfarers. She couldn't have known, but imitation Ray-Bans were the only ones that stretched wide enough to fit his head. He slid off his eye patch and wore the glasses.

They clacked the slats of the aluminum plank. They had returned before any of the other cruisers and snuck back into cabin 154 without attracting attention from anyone but the concierge, who had been arched back over the metal handrail, tanning.

S
he leaned across Owen and rifled through the bag for the speaker pack and rechargeable batteries. After she handed him the package, he crimped his fingers in the hanger hooks and tore it open. The speakers jumped from the plastic and hit the bedside dresser.

—
Ooph
. That's one way to save music. None of those guys wants to become a ghost. I'm sorry Lou, I'm sorry Tom, but Owen and I are going to do this.

Stevie connected the speakers to their three-pronged adapter and plugged the unit into the power strip above the narrow desk. The speakers lit green. She connected the output cable to her Discman. She popped open the top and then snapped it shut.

—Iron and Wine.

They listened to the disc accelerate, talk to the player in some sort of digital garbling, and then stop. The Discman screen read:

Stevie hit the play button, and the CD skidded to life. With the first finger picks she kissed him again. She climbed up him, mated their breath, then covered him in a tent of her soap-scented hair. He pulled her hips into his and traced an axis down her body with the pools of her hollows.

They opened a bottle of wine and listened to the album again.

—This is beautiful. I don't want to give it up.

—Sorry. That's life.

—You're fucking killing me with this game.

—Everything fades. You're going to have to stop listening to this album one day. Why not today? Why pretend like you can hear it forever? It seems comforting at first, but is painful in the end. Really
hear
it now. You can always think about this record and think about tonight. You can think about me. About trying to wear a mustache. These are beautiful things, fragile and flawed.