Commuters (21 page)

“Try the granola stuff,” Rachel said, twisting open a water bottle. “The line at the other place was insane.”

It was close to midnight on Saturday, January 7; Avery was walking the ice-speckled streets of the Lower East Side, clutching Nona tightly to his side. His ears were still ringing.
Concatenation
, the program had been called; it was a memorial of sorts, for an avant-garde composer who had recently died of AIDS. Many, many people had performed, and after four hours of sitting in the decrepit storefront church, Avery had had his fill of the mostly unbeautiful discordant sound. There had been an instrumental group who played toy whistles and PVC pipes as well as trumpet, trombones, and the rest. There had been a vocal group who spoke-sang a vehement diatribe against the police (which didn’t seem to be relevant, in Avery’s opinion, but whatever). And one older man had simply stood in front of the group and cried, continuously, for many minutes. No speech, no song—just crying. People were riveted, their eyes glued to this sad little man as if to the most energetic of performers. At first, Avery had been moved by the man’s emotion. Then he felt creeped out by all the voyeuristic pleasure going around the room; next, he felt annoyed by the
man’s public display of grief. Weren’t you supposed to do that on your own time? How was he crying this much, for that long—was it all an act, after all? Finally, he’d become bored. (It was jarring when people clapped heartily as the man returned to his seat.)

The highlight, of course, was Nona’s singing. Avery had seen enough of this kind of thing by now—he was a bit of a fucking expert, at this point—to know how truly special, and different, her gifts were. In contrast to the more elaborate shows of the night, Nona simply stood up at the lectern and sang, a wordless aria that rose and fell with her breath, an icy clarity in her tone that caused the crowd to be still, hushed, and appreciative. Avery was bursting inside.
That’s right, you fuckers!
He wanted to shout to all these weirdly dressed people, the sedate audience, when he saw them exchanging snooty glances that read, clearly,
Wow
. During the applause after she finished he had to restrain himself, mindful that this was, after all, a memorial service.

Now they skidded across Delancey, and he fumbled for the right words to tell her how incredible she had been.

“It’s like there was
air
in the room again, you know?” He steered her away from some sketchy guy leaning against a crosswalk sign. “You did that thing, what’s it called—when you are singing a really high note, and then you swoop down to a low note, but there’s hardly any space between the two?”

Nona bent her head close to his upper arm. She didn’t answer, but he could sense her smiling. “Whatever that’s called,” Avery said. “It’s awesome. You should do that one more. And everyone around was totally hooked, you could tell. Nobody was talking at all…Or eating—God, that guy and the sandwich? Did you see
that, earlier? Dude, don’t bring your fucking Big Mac into a
performance
. Or a memorial,” he added, after thinking about it.

They leaped in unison over a slushy pool gathering at the curbside, but still Nona said nothing. Something was bothering her, or was she just quiet after her performance? She could get like that, Avery had noticed. Maybe he should just shut up already and let her be. Avery struggled with this for the few minutes they were on Orchard. It went against his nature, being comfortable with silence, and anyway he was so happy, now that she was back from Pittsburgh, now that they were through with the stupid fights and being apart. He bubbled inside and couldn’t help it—he wanted to talk for hours and hours. He wanted to hear everything she had to say.

But something occurred to him, a possible reason for Nona’s quiet. Avery narrowed his eyes as he remembered it. In the drafty foyer, amid the commotion after the service, Avery had held Nona’s coat and waited patiently as she said good-bye to about a hundred different people. He could tell she was hurrying to get over to him, but again and again she was stopped by a well-wisher or acquaintance. At one point, getting somewhat closer, she shot Avery a mock-harassed look and mouthed, “
The fans!
”—the back of one hand pressed to her forehead. But then a tall, thick woman approached—it
was
a woman, though he’d had to do a double take to make sure—who made Nona instantly still. He had never seen Nona at all daunted, as she seemed then, while the woman, in a blond buzz cut and an Oriental-type robe, spoke a few words to her and then rapidly left.

In the cold of Orchard Street now, Avery worked out just how
he was going to put the question. He was totally fine with the concept—the
theoretical
concept—that Nona had had other lovers before he met her. Avery believed this was generous of him. And he was prepared to accept the idea that some of those past lovers had maybe been women. You never knew. Plus, Nona ran with such an artsy crowd…Anyway. The concept, though, and confronting its possible physical reality (even, or especially, if it did come in the form of a giantess wearing a kimono) were two totally different things. And not that he was an expert in decoding the emotional language of lesbian musical ex-girlfriends or anything, but there was something about the charged moment when that short-haired woman spoke quietly to Nona—something that set off an alarm bell in Avery.

“So, um—who was that, in the lobby?” Totally casual. Just asking, no big deal. “That huge woman with the weird robe?”

“Why?” Nona asked, eyeing him from under her big fur hat, the kind with ear flaps. The fact that she said only this gave credence to Avery’s fears.

He had to tread carefully here. “Was she—like—an ex?”

Nona stopped entirely in the frozen street. She studied Avery’s face as if to determine that this was, in fact, what he really meant to say, that he wasn’t joking. And then she pulled him along so they could keep walking.

“That was Lynda Carroll,” Nona said.

“Uh-huh,” Avery said. It was clear he was supposed to know who that was, but as far as he was concerned, Nona hadn’t answered the question. “She’s a pretty big deal, or something?”

“Yes,” Nona said. “She is a pretty big deal. To me. She’s…”

“Is she a singer? Musician?”

“She makes food,” Nona said, “for your ears.” Avery was silent. He could see the lit windows of Kohlmarkt up ahead. “She’s very famous,” Nona went on, grudgingly admitting this, as if it were beside the point. “Her work is the inspiration for almost everything I do. She did a piece in the mid-seventies called ‘It Begins,’ where her vocals essentially narrate a car accident without words and—”

Avery, heartened by all signs that pointed to the fact that the giantess was not, in fact, a rival, helpfully made a few screech and bang sound effects, as if to demonstrate. Nona reached up to clap a hand over his mouth. She shuddered. Avery put his tongue out to the warm leather on the palm of her glove. He was so happy he could have done a backflip.

When they got to the front of the restaurant, he said, a little absently, scanning inside for the perfect table, “So, that’s excellent—that she came up to you afterward. Yeah? She was blown away, like the rest of them.”

“Well, I’ve met her twice before,” Nona said, quietly again, as if talking to herself. Avery didn’t notice. “In fact, she was the one who—”

But now the owner, his friend Carl, had spotted them from the bar, and Avery ushered Nona into the warmth and noise of the restaurant’s entrance. They stamped the snow off and shrugged out of coats, and his friend came over to welcome them. Avery wasn’t really hungry, but Carl had insisted that Kohlmarkt was doing things that no other restaurant in the city could match, so of course they were here. And in the bustle of their arrival—the place was jammed, even this late—Avery dropped the thread of the conversation. He’d already forgotten
her name, this woman from the church who had made Nona motionless and reverent.

Three series of small plates later, Avery was duly impressed. Unless this was one of those places that knocked appetizers out of the ballpark and then sent out blah main dishes—there were many such places—he was willing to grant Carl a lot of credit. They’d had toasted circles of dark bread with a piping hot Liptauer spread, an omelet served in small, quivering eggy squares, and schnitzel, of course. This first schnitzel had been the traditional breaded veal; Avery was sure there would be more schnitzel coming up, so he was pacing himself.

Nona, however, wasn’t eating much at all. Nor was she wearing a bra, he could tell, a happy discovery made after she had unwrapped the top of her dress (which wound around her like a mummy’s shroud, over shoulders and under arms and around her torso) in the heat off the kitchen nearby—Carl had set them up at a prime table just outside its swinging doors, a windowed corner fogged with steam—and let it hang around her in loose folds, revealing a cut-up blue undershirt, and the contours of those heavy, beautiful breasts. He wanted to reach over and hold one, just for a second, just to weigh its complete perfection, as he had so many times before.
Later,
Avery told himself, selflessly.

“When are you going out to Hartfield again?” Nona asked.

He snorted. “That would be…never?”

She met this with silence, so that his words hung in the air, childishly.

“I don’t know,” Avery said. “Why?”

“Just that it’s been a while, since you’ve seen him.”

The fact that she said
him
, not “your grandfather,” not “Jerry,”
irritated him, as if there was some great friendship there. Well, what irritated him was knowing that he, Avery, had set up this expectation. He used to talk to Nona all the time about Grandad. He used to recount all the funny things the old man had said. Like the time Grandad went off about the idiocy of book-smart business-school types with no real-world sense. “Yeah, well, I once thought I’d go to Harvard too,” he’d drawled. “Harvard didn’t see it the same way.” Or the time that Avery had mentioned off-hand how stumped he was when the application for the Blue Apple’s liquor license had called for a copy of his “business plan.” What the fuck was a business plan? A week later, a FedEx envelope from Chicago had arrived at Pita Pie just as he was starting his shift: a ten-page document, with a budget and charts and data, all putting forth the fiscal viability of Blue Apple as owned and operated by Avery Trevis. Grandad had had some office flunky back at TrevisCorp put it all together. All right, so there had been good times, sweet moments,
bonding
…whatever you wanted to call it. But that wasn’t his real life! That wasn’t this, the schnitzel and his girlfriend’s breasts and how maybe he could talk Carl into teaching him how to make schnitzel and the way Nona had sung tonight and what he planned to do for her in bed later and was it even feasible to put some schnitzel on the menu at Blue Apple? This was his life. Hartfield, trekking out there all those weeks, had just been a passing kindness he did for a relative. He shouldn’t have given Grandad—or Winnie—the idea that it had been anything more. Then there wouldn’t have been any of that deluded stuff about the will.

“Try this,” Avery said, scraping the last piece of omelet onto Nona’s plate. “We gotta make room for what’s coming.”

“He might not ever mention it again,” Nona said. “He’ll know he shouldn’t have told you like that, in front of everyone. He’s probably sorry for how it all came out.”

Avery chugged the rest of his water. The Riesling he’d ordered for Nona sat untouched in her glass, a honey yellow. “Yeah, well, he’s not the only one.” Then he batted away the topic like a buzzing insect at their table. “It’s a big ball of crazy over there, and I’m steering clear. I should never have brought you out there, anyway.”

Nona looked as if she disagreed, but instead of arguing with him, she said softly, “I have to talk to you about something.” Right then, their entrées arrived. The runner put the plates down with ceremony while Carl hovered, explaining something, giving a preview, pointing out the homemade noodles…Avery heard none of it. His heart was fluttering—now it all made sense: her preoccupied quiet, the wine left in her glass. Nona was pregnant. He’d made her pregnant! Oh, God. A million thoughts swarmed his head.
Stay cool,
he told himself.
Don’t look so excited.
She was probably scared and conflicted, not to mention feeling really pukey (
see, he was already on top of this!
)—so Avery marshaled his most concerned, supportive,
I’m-here-for-you
expression, but it was hard, since he wanted nothing more than to jump up and kiss her.

“—since Lynda’s been involved with it, they usually have two composers and two vocalists, and—”

Wait. What? Was she talking about the woman at the church again?

“—no idea I was in the running, even after I applied. Workshops, some performances, but more of a lab to develop new—”

The food cooled on their plates. Avery hadn’t even looked at it. A humming sense of dread was rising inside him.

“—funding for a year’s fellowship. Didn’t really believe it until tonight, until she said congratu—”

“What?” he cried. He’d heard her say
Italy
. Please let him have this wrong.

Nona was startled by how he’d cut her off. She looked miserable, but he caught one sharp gleam of thrill that broke through. “It’s a year’s grant for a residency in Rome.”

They stared at each other. Avery forced himself to ask questions. “A year, like…the whole year? In Rome?”

She nodded.

“You have to go to Rome.”

She nodded again.

“When?”

“The end of March,” Nona said, and she put her hand on the table, sliding it toward him.

Avery pushed a huge piece of tafelspitz in his mouth, and then another. His stomach closed up against the gamy beef, but he crammed it in. “No shit,” he said, mouth full. “That’s so great. Really fantastic.”

“Don’t.”

The potatoes were a congealed, gluey mess, but if he loaded on enough of the thick gravy, he could choke them down. “Italian guys are suckers for that extended-technique stuff you do, I hear. Seriously. They dig that electronic crap, the microtones, everything. You won’t have any problems. They’re going to line up to shag you.” He swigged water to bury the urge to vomit, and then shoveled in a mouthful of limp, bitter greens. “Huge cocks,” he said, stifling a burp. “Uncut, too. You’re a lucky girl.”