Opening Act (2 page)

So it seemed like an obvious move to say yes to Byron and become his TA. The problem was that he'd accepted a post as head of the Poetry Department at St. Nazarius University, so taking the gig meant moving with him to the West Coast. Something about the idea frightened Loni. She liked Byron, of course, and she trusted him. But to be uprooted from everything and everyone she knew for a new life where she was entirely dependent on him made her balk.

She could, of course, stay right where she was and become a graduate student at Mission State, but she'd be an orphan. Byron had so completely taken the role of her advocate on the faculty, that there was no one else she really even knew. It was like she'd burned those bridges without even realizing they were there.

And then there was the big problem.

The one that kept her awake at night.

There was something she really wanted—
deeply
wanted, in the most private recesses of her innermost whatever (“soul” being a word she stringently avoided, it having been debased by excessive and trivial usage)—and that was to write. She wanted to be a poet herself. Not to teach the skills to others. Not to forever live in academic awe of those who actually did it. She wanted it for herself. Just thinking about it made her flush. She could
feel
her face go red, and she fell back on the bed and buried her head in her pillow.

It was so embarrassing. It seemed like every girl went through a phase around fourteen or so when she wrote poetry. Usually in a special journal that she also decorated with drawings of daisies, broken hearts, or unicorns. The poems had titles like “My Tears Like Wine” and “Wind-tossed Is My
Love.” Most girls outgrew it. But not Loni. She'd just kept on writing. That's why she'd pursued an academic career. A young woman writing poetry is a cliché. A young woman
studying
poetry, however—no one laughs at that. No one actually
respects
it very much, either, but at least they don't laugh.

Even now, Loni had a briefcase under her bed that was filled with notebooks of her verses. (She never composed on her laptop. She thought it was an affront to the Muse.) Every once in a while, when she was certain no one else was around, she'd take it out, flip through the pages, and engage in some strenuous self-criticism. And, occasionally, some self-congratulation. Some of her poems were actually pretty good. She even considered trying to sell them to magazines.

But that seemed like a big risk—opening herself up to blatant rejection, and for what? A little shard of glory and a paycheck of, what, twenty-five bucks? If she was lucky enough to get paid at all? And the big publications, like
The New Yorker
, didn't really go in for the kind of poetry she liked—the old kind, filled with roiling lines and vivid imagery.

She gasped and pulled her head out of the pillow. It had been getting hard to breathe in there.

She rolled over on her back and stared at the ceiling. There was a crack running along its entire length, from one side to the other. Sometimes she would lie on her back, stare at that crack, and challenge herself to write a poem about it. She'd worked out a decent first two lines, but inevitably by the time she got to the third, she fell asleep.

Well, it was morning now, so why not have at it? There was no one around, and if what she really wanted was to write, why wasn't she writing? She had a flashback to her dream. It had already faded away to almost nothing, but she did remember William Blake telling her something about the value of silence. Okay then, it was plenty silent right now.

She pushed her torso over the side of the bed, reached down, and pulled the tattered briefcase from its hiding place. She opened it, withdrew the topmost notebook, and settled back on her pillow, holding the notebook against her knees. She opened it to the last scribbled-on page, grabbed a pen from her nightstand, and had a good look at the two lines she'd written so far:

       
A hairsbreadth divide that does not divine—meaning

       
gutters when division uncouples a nullity—

The dashes were a device she'd picked up from Emily Dickinson and had never been able to give up.

Looking at the lines now, she realized how unhappy she was with the word “uncouples” and remembered that this was why she hadn't gotten any further. There was certainly something better—something more appropriate to both the meaning and the meter…

Suddenly a tremendous battering noise shook the room. She jumped up in a flourish of alarm, then recognized the sound as a jackhammer. She went to the window, parted the curtains a few inches, and peered out. A pair of helmeted workers were just outside, methodically busting up the street in front of the building.

Her attention was pulled away by a knock on the door. So much for silence. It was no use trying to escape noise anywhere in this insane asylum of a world. She opened the door and found the landlady, Mrs. Milliken, on the stoop.

Loni was always a little taken aback by Mrs. Milliken's appearance. Apparently she'd spent nearly thirty years driving eighteen-wheelers across the country, and the left side of her face—the one
exposed to the sun from the interior of the truck's cabin—was leathery, lined, and mottled by brown spots. The right side of her face, by contrast, was creamy pink and comparatively smooth. In the right light, Loni was sure she could frighten small children.

Mrs. Milliken looked over Loni's shoulder into the apartment. “I thought Zee would be home,” she said.

“No,” said Loni, raising her voice to carry over the sound of the jackhammer.

Mrs. Milliken frowned. “I was going to tell her about the work being done in the street. I just found out. They told me there's a burst water main or something.”

“Is it going to interfere with our water pressure?” asked Loni, who hadn't showered yet.

“I was going to tell Zee,” said Mrs. Milliken, not meeting her eyes, “that there may not be any water pressure for a couple of hours. I guess I'll have to call and leave a message on her voicemail.”

“I can tell her,” said Loni.

Mrs. Milliken turned away. “Or maybe by the time she gets back, it will all be fixed. It depends how long she'll be gone.”

“She should be back around lunchtime.”

“If she's gone for a few hours, she may never even know.” And with that, Mrs. Milliken drifted away.

Loni sighed. She'd never met anyone quite so passive-aggressive as this creepy-faced landlady. Mrs. Milliken had never once spoken directly to her or even so much as said her name. Apparently she wasn't too keen on Zee having someone live with her—even as a visiting friend, not a subletting tenant—and had decided to respond by pretending Loni didn't exist at all.

Someday,
Loni thought,
I am going to make that woman look at me and call me by name.

But not today, obviously. The noise from outside was just too much to allow her any thought processes at all, much less crafty ones.

She went to the bathroom and tried the faucet. A trickle. There was no hope of hiding from the din in a nice, hot shower.

She went back and sat on her bed. She felt a little swirl of hopelessness. It was no good trying to insert her earbuds and drown out the noise with her iPod; nothing in her music library—filled as it was with piano concertos, string quartets, and art-song recitals—had the power to block out a jackhammer at close range.

Then she thought of Zee's iPod. Maybe she hadn't taken it with her.

This was unlikely, of course. Zee didn't go anywhere without music blaring. But Loni didn't remember Zee having her earbuds in when she left for the interview.

She went down the hall and entered Zee's cottony mess of a room. It was as though her laundry pile had exploded, strewing shirts, bras, and panties all over the floor and fixtures. Across the mountain range of clothes, Loni saw that the iPod was not in its cradle. Zee must have had it in her purse. But, in turning to go, her eyes fell on Zee's CD player, atop which were a few discs. Zee still bought CDs, when she liked an album enough to want to possess it physically—to value it as much as artifact as art. Loni picked up the topmost disc.

Grief Bacon
, by Overlords of Loneliness.

There were five faces on the cover, in a kind of modernist design—tilted at odd angles, with unnatural lighting. The one at the forefront must be the lead singer Zee was always going on about.
Loni cocked her head appreciatively. Not bad…if you liked the square-jawed, alpha-male type. She herself preferred the bespectacled, intensely intellectual sort.

But he had brooding eyes, this Shay Dayton. Nothing wrong with brooding eyes.

Of course, that was probably just Photoshop.

She turned the CD case over.

The back cover was the same as the front, only with all five members' faces now bloated out of proportion.
Definitely
Photoshop.

And in the place where the title had been on the front cover, was the word “Kummerspeck.”

She took out her smartphone and Googled it.

       
Kummerspeck—A German word meaning “excess weight gained from emotional overeating.”

       
English translation: “Grief bacon.”

She let out an involuntary bark of laughter. She had to admit, that
was
pretty witty. Maybe she was being hasty in dismissing Overlords of Loneliness so quickly. She put the disc into Zee's stereo and began playing it—turning up the music loud enough so that it cloaked the worst of the jackhammer. She sat on Zee's bed, listening and holding the CD case in her hands. She stared into Shay Dayton's eyes, almost daring him to win her over.

And…he didn't.

She'd expected a whole cycle of songs about loss and longing and appetite, as promised by the title. But there was only one tune, “Feed Me,” that even came close, and it seemed to be mainly about sex in a way Loni didn't really want to think too hard about.

The other tunes all seemed to be standard-issue rock songs, some a little more driven, others more like ballads, but the lyrics were completely unremarkable. There was a song titled “Never Till Next Time,” but the title was the cleverest thing about it. The bridge was utterly pedestrian:

       
No use making promises I can't keep

       
No use going to bed when I can't sleep

       
No use pretending I'm not in too deep

       
I say never, but if ever

       
You crooked your finger I wouldn't linger

       
I'd be back in your thrall

       
Back at your beck and call.

It wasn't horrible, but there was nothing behind it. The song felt as though it was written merely because the singer had to sing something. She felt no actual longing behind the words, no real desperation, nothing approaching the fever of romantic obsession. It was typical pop-music posturing.

She felt a series of vibrations from the pocket of her terrycloth robe and realized her phone was buzzing. She jumped up and turned down the stereo, then pulled her phone out and answered it.

It was Byron. “Didn't wake you, did I?”

“No. It's after ten. Please.”

“Sorry. I never know. I never see you anymore.”

“Well, not because I'm
sleeping
.” She walked to the kitchen. “Plus, there's this jackhammer thing going on here that would wake the dead.”

“Is that what that is? I just thought we had a bad connection.”

She fetched a cup from the cabinet, then a bag of green tea. “It's driving me crazy. I can't think straight.”

“Well, good. 'Cause I'm giving you a reason to get away from it. Come to lunch with me.”

“Today?” She dropped the tea bag in the cup.

“Today,” he confirmed. “We've got something to discuss.”

“Can't we do it over the phone?”

“I'd prefer not to. Especially with that racket going on. What's the matter, you're suddenly too busy for your sad old professor?”

“No, no,” she said, going to the sink to fill the teapot before remembering there was no water. “It's just, I haven't taken a shower.”

“So take a shower.”

“Can't,” she said, putting the pot back on the stove. “The jackhammer is for the plumbing. Everything's off for God knows how long.”

“Well, how dirty can you be? Seriously.”

She sniffed the sleeve of her T-shirt. She was a little sour, but not really offensive. “My hair,” she said, running her hand through it.

“You're welcome to come over and use my shower,” Byron said, then quickly added, “or wear a scarf. Or a hat. Aren't girls supposed to have these tricks?”

Loni decided to ignore his offer. “It's just…I
feel
gross. Whether I am or not.”