All the Time in the World (4 page)

“Hi,” Everett had said, kicking the sheets down around our feet and stretching out. I sat up and grabbed a T-shirt from the floor, not sure if it was mine or his, and pulled it over my head.

“Hi,” I said. “I know it's early. The younger boy I babysit doesn't have preschool today, and his mom has a bunch of stuff to do, so I told her I'd come over early.”

“How old is the younger one?”

“He's three,” I said, walking over to the crappy, impossible-to-tune-or-part-with upright piano that sits in front of my window.

“New York City,” he said. “Their preschools are like my third grade.”

I sat down at the piano like I was staking out territory at a Vietnam protest. “Everett, you're so full of shit. I know you went to prep school.”

“But I didn't go to preschool for three years before kindergarten,” he said, getting up to join me at the piano. He didn't bother with clothes. He lit a cigarette, and I took it from him and inhaled, something I never do unless he's around. “And I didn't have a nanny,” he went on. “My mother made it work, and I have three sisters.” He sat down next to me, not touching me, even though it felt like he was.

“That must be where you learned how to sweet-talk the ladies,” I said, handing back his cigarette.

Everett put his hands on the keys and traveled up and down between two octaves, wandering for a minute, like a lady jazz singer. Then he really started to play, not bothering to ask me to move but playing around me.

“Play something from your piece,” I said, and he merged into something new, something that churned with angst. Classic Everett.

“This is the solo viola,” he said. “And here's where she's joined by a bassoon—”

“Viola and bassoon?” I listened for a minute. “But that harmony is wide. Those two instruments are so
middle
. It should be, like, violin and French horn or something.”

He took his hands off the keyboard and got up. “Good idea. I'm going to write that down.”

“Aren't you going to play any more of it?”

“No,” he said, getting back in bed. “I'm not giving you a way to rationalize not showing up for the actual concert. It's here in the city and everything. You probably won't have to miss work at all.”

“Sometimes I work late,” I said, which sounded even stupider out loud than I had feared it would.

“You can take one night off. Colleen and Roger are driving down from Boston.” Colleen and Roger, our old grad school buddies, had moved to Boston independently of each other, gotten themselves prestigious positions, he with the opera and she with a large cathedral, and then married each other, with very little warning.

“That's nice of them.”

“And Snyder is coming too.”

“Snyder lives in New York. He has no excuse.” I tried to cover the tops of my bare legs with the T-shirt I was wearing, but I couldn't pull it down far enough, which still didn't give me a clue as to whether it was mine or his.

“Aha. You admit you have no excuse.”

“Well, I guess if he has a job with weird hours, I'll give him a pass.”

“He doesn't have a job at all. He's living off the money he made on that Japanese commercial he scored for Peter Jackson. He's not in New York anymore, because—I'm quoting—‘you have to be in L.A. to write for the pictures.'”

“The
pictures
,” I said. “Ew.”

“I knew you'd like that one.” Everett leaned back against the headboard.

“He's flying in from L.A.?”

“My point is that everyone will be here. I even heard from Jess,” said Everett. “She's in London, but she said she would try to come.”

The moment he said “Jess,” I reached for the keyboard, automatically, but I couldn't think of anything to play from memory. My hands rested there, idle. “Out of all those people, I have the least important work to do, so I should drop everything to be there?”

“Charlotte, of course not. I didn't mean it like that.”

“I have a job, Everett. I help raise kids. I think of it as kind of important. Maybe that's just my opinion?” I struck a chord on the piano, so low you could barely tell the difference between the pitches. “Not everyone has family money to fall back on while they figure things out.” I found another chord, lower and more dissonant than the first.

“Stop,” he said and came back to the piano. Piano benches are never meant for two people, but Everett thinks all space belongs to him. He sat down and put his right hand over my left hand, lifting it off the piano. He put it between his two hands, working his thumbs into my tendons. “I want you to come. Call me nostalgic. Most of our old friends will be here in one place, and since you live here, it would be a nice opportunity for us all to be together. That's all. End of begging.” There it is, I thought. There is our relationship. Neither one of us is willing to be responsible for the other's feelings, so we will never take it down to true intimacy, and that is fine with me.

I took my hand away, got up, and retrieved my pants from the floor.

“When did you hear from Jess?” Turned out upon closer inspection that it was Everett's shirt I was wearing, so I took it off and exchanged it for one of my own.

“We're not really in touch,” Everett said. “But I keep track of her. Don't you?”

“Sometimes, I guess.”

“I e-mailed her to let her know. She was so excited, so effusive about it. Just like always. Her feelings are so huge,” he said. “She told me she would try to make it.”

I didn't trust myself to say anything in reply. Jess Fairchild is a composer, famous to the extent that composers can be famous, and she had been our teacher in grad school for one life-changing semester in our final year. Jess and her field of collaborative composition seduced us; she was only a few years older than we were, but to me, to Everett, to the eight other students lucky enough to be accepted into the seminar, the way she taught about making music with a team was enough to convert us into disciples. That semester had culminated in an individual session with her as our final project; a morning or afternoon of one-on-one time to see what you could make together, and it was there that I did the best work of my life thus far. We had looked at each other, Jess and I, and we both knew it. We were flushed and giddy and clapping like excited kindergartners, understanding without having to articulate it that what we had come up with was special. I had gotten an A in the course, but that was nothing new. My whole life had been As.

After that semester ended, no one in the seminar heard from her, which in all honesty was okay with us at the time. It added to her brand of charisma; she had come in and out like an apparition, leaving nothing but a feeling in the guts of ten students, a feeling that we were on our way. Eventually, we heard
of
her. We heard of her in Vienna directing a festival, in L.A. scoring an action movie, in Tel Aviv conducting a symphony. And a few months later, one of us—I can't remember who, although at times it has seemed almost painfully important that I do so—had heard she had written the opening title theme to a new dramatic television series. I had gathered with the classmates from my seminar to watch the premiere, so proud of her, proud that I had known her, proud that I had worked with her and that she had chosen me as her student.

Forty-five seconds later, the euphoria had fled. I felt suspended, as though something had passed through and emptied me of
me.

The word
maybe
is a great debate between possibility and reality. As I sat on the arm of a recliner, passing a bag of Chex Mix back and forth with my classmate Colleen, listening to my best recollection of what Jess and I had written during my final exam fifteen weeks earlier, I thought
maybe
. Maybe I'm remembering it wrong. Maybe she only used the precise pieces that she was responsible for. Maybe she wants to surprise me; she could be dialing my number right now, dropping a check in the mail, waiting until I see my name on the closing credits in tiny white letters to get in touch.

A few hours later, though, there was no more possibility. There was only reality. The best work of my life was out in the world. And my name wasn't on it.

What could I say? There had been no witness, no recording. No one wants to say the word
plagiarism
out loud, because it's ugly, and because it's nearly impossible to prove in music. Twelve notes on a scale are not very many. Similarity is inevitable. No one wants to be Salieri or Kit Marlowe, a less celebrated talent, whining, “I did that first!”

As far as I knew, none of us had seen Jess after our sessions or in the years since that semester had ended, though apparently, there had been some communication, with some of us. At least one of us.

“You're getting dressed now?” Everett walked naked over to the kitchen cupboard to find a mug to use as an ashtray.

“I have to get to work.” I was buttoning up my pants. “I don't think I can handle another round.”

He lit another cigarette. “Ooh baby.”

“Don't get a big head about it.”

“Dirty.”

“Everett, ew. Go home.”

“You're mad at me? You sound mad. I can try to make you feel better, if you can wait seven or eight minutes—”

“I'm not mad,” I said. “I'm late. I have to work, like I said.”

“Maybe I'll stay another day.”

“Sure,” I said. “Spare keys are hanging by the door.”

“I really want you to try and come to the concert,” he said. “Will you? Try, at least?”

“Yes, of course. I was always going to try.”

“You know, tomorrow is Valentine's Day,” he said.

“I have to get going,” I said, doing my best to zip up my overstuffed backpack with one hand while I unlocked the front door. Everett watched me go. He made no move to get up and send me off.

“Tahr-lette, you bring your oo-lay-lee?” George is leaning against the back of the bench. He has been done playing for twenty minutes, and he'd really like to go home, but I would like to stretch our playground time a little longer, to keep Little L and Matt outdoors until it's time for her to get picked up.

“My
ukulele
.” I'm impressed that he has graduated from calling it “that widdle guitar.” “No, babe. I left it at your house when we went to pick up Matt. I'm sorry. But we can still sing, if you want to.” G/D/Bridget smiles at me over some kind of sewing project. It looks like a cross-stitch. Is that what adults do for entertainment in Germany?

“What we sing?”

“I don't know. The Thomas the Train theme song?”

“Nooooo.”

“I thought that was your favorite!”

“That NOT my favorite.”

“Oh, okay. Peter Rabbit?”

“No.” He proceeds to veto “Winnie-the-Pooh,” “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” and every Bob Dylan song I can think of.

“Bug, I'm at the end of my list, here. Do you want to make something up?” He nods and looks at me expectantly. He wants
me
to make something up.

I pick a generic melody and sing about the kids on the playground, letting him fill in the rhymes where he can. Rhyming is definitely on this kid's list of favorite activities. G/D/Bridget even joins in once or twice, and after a while, Sahina has come over to join us, completing our makeshift campfire circle. Just as I'm about to announce my ingenious rhyme for twisty slide (misty-eyed), I notice Matt, standing on his own at the edge of the playground. At first, I think he might be trying to take a covert leak between the bars of the fence, but I can see his pants are fully buttoned, and he's looking down at something. I tell George I'm going to get Matt so we can head home, and I saunter over to where he is standing, like I just needed to stretch my legs.

“Oh, hey, pal,” I say. “Is there a squirrel over there or something?”

“A rat,” he says and points. Actually, that's a kind description of the thing that lies before us. It's more carcass than rat. I can see most of its ribs, where the flesh has been picked away, and I don't think either of us would have been able to recognize what type of rodent it was if it weren't for the tail, which is pretty much the only part of the creature that's fully intact.

“That's really disgusting, Matty. Sorry you saw that.”

“But what do you think happened to him?” he asks, not moving away from it, which is unfortunate, as flies are starting to collect in the vicinity.

“Well, I guess it died, love.”

“But how did it get died?”

“I'm not sure,” I say, and I steer him away from the pile formerly known as rat. “Maybe it was really old.”

“It looked small to me.”

“Maybe a hawk got it.”

Matt stops in his tracks. “What hawk? A hawk made the rat die?”

“Maybe,” I say, cursing myself for introducing murder into the conversation. “Hawks eat smaller animals, honey. That's what they do for food.”

“Do you think Pale Male ate him?”

“I hope not,” I say.

“But what's going to happen to him now?”

“I guess he'll just … stay put.” I don't want to tell him what the flies are going to do to the rat's unfortunate body.

“When you die, you just stay put?”

“Maybe it will go to rat heaven.”

“Where's that?”

“Somewhere where there aren't any hawks.”

“But where
is
that? Is it in the American States?”

“Hey, we were just about to sing another song. Want to sing with us? You know this one.”

“What is it?”

“‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow.'”

He looks solemn for a minute, and I'm worried that I'll be bringing a psychologically damaged child home to Gretchen. “Can we change the words?” he asks, and I'm relieved when I see a smile poking at the corners of his mouth, however smirk-like it may be.