Something about The Music

Author: Allison Bradley

Allison lives, works and writes in Sacramento, CA, and she is pursuing an MA in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins University. She delights in finding herself in foreign cities and finds delight in her two sons and one dog.

Daniel refills the wine glass he just knocked over. Unable to sit still, he slides open the glass door for a sniff at the spring bloom outside his balcony, wanders back inside to confirm a reservation for tomorrow’s dinner with a friend he hasn’t seen since high school. He sets his phone on the built-in shelves and begins to travel around the artifacts buried amongst the books. He hasn’t even looked at most of them in forever.

There’s a photo of him and a former U.S. President, a framed thank you note from an artist in Sudan whose work he once promoted on a State Department press trip to Africa, the expensive but useless fountain pen he received on his fifth anniversary at the current job. Mementos of a life spent remaking himself into someone others can believe in.

Missing from the shelves: two sets of divorce papers, the Scotch he divorced himself from years ago, photos of the children he never managed to have.

“Well, your work has been your contribution. Not everyone has to place more humans on the earth,” his first best friend Suzanne had said in one of their text sessions. They haven’t seen each other for 25 years but recently reopened their friendship over the distance of two coasts.

The cat meows, hungry, the only other inhabitant of his airy Washington, DC flat —spacious, with vaulted ceilings and light streaming through from all angles. Ultra-modern in its design, utterly stifling in its expectedness.

Wiping a swath of dust off the shelves with the cuff of his shirt sleeve, he recalls the first time Suzanne saved him. They were in the eighth grade. His orthodontist had repossessed his braces because his mother couldn’t keep up with the payments. The day they were confiscated, it
took everything he had just to lug himself back to the apartment under the weight of that humiliation. Suzanne was waiting by his front door with a caramel apple.

“This isn’t a congratulatory caramel apple,” she said, pointing the sticky treat at him. “This is a ‘fuck them’ caramel apple.”

Theirs was the best kind of friendship, less fleeting than anything romantic and unfailing in its realness. She was the kind of person you want in your corner, but who you may also need to push out of the ring so you can steel yourself to go another round with life.

And now, tomorrow, she’ll be here, in person — a reminder of everything he’s tried so hard to erase. He’s beginning to wish he’d found a way out of her invitation.

#

"Hey! Are you out there? I know it’s been forever, but I’d love to reconnect if you’re up for it. And if not, feel free to ignore me. LOL,” was the first direct message he’d received from her.

There he was, sitting in bed at 10:30 on a Wednesday night, texting a colleague and listening to the cat snore, when “Suzanne P. sent you a message” flashed across his phone screen. It lifted him into zero gravity, his body weightless in a surprisingly pleasant mental free fall.

“Hey! Hello. Wow. Of course, want to set up a call?,” he replied. And then, “Also, how are you doing? How is life?”

Half a dozen messages later, they established a baseline — good health, his latest professional aspiration, her contentment in work and marriage. Quickly, it was as if they’d never pressed the pause button on their friendship. And she called him Danny, the old name. No one had done that since his first year at Princeton.

It had taken him only about two weeks in the university dorms to understand that he wouldn’t be taken seriously at Princeton or anywhere else in the universe he aspired to if he didn’t shake off Dan and Danny. Daniel was a name that could hold its own in the crush of Williams and Cynthias, and even the ones that were parted on the left — M. Jeffrey, H. Lyle, G. Thomas.

In that first text exchange, Suzanne tiptoed into the revelation that she’d soon be in town for a work conference. “I mean, if you want and you’re not too busy, I’d love to grab a cup of coffee or something if you can fit it in,” she wrote.

At the time, he never even considered declining; it was like watching the mist levitate off the Potomac.

#

He loosens his tie, sips at the picture window, watches the sun preparing to set, and cues up some Coltrane. He wonders what Suzanne is listening to these days.
The Potomac River commands the landscape. Work meanders into view. Does it even matter? For so long, in one form or another, he’s been "identifying global threats” to “prevent human loss in its many insidious shapes” (as his NGO’s website posits). The promise of saving the world has become not just tiring but tired, like a cracker that’s lost its snap.

He knows he has to keep at it. He’s come so far, propelled into the elite stratosphere by a dazzling trip through the Ivy League and a chip on his shoulder the size of the Washington Monument. He cringes now at the thought of how obvious it must have been to everyone else. Whatever, he thinks. Twenty-five years and one metamorphosis later, the shoulders are square, the self almost completely re-chiseled.

Almost leaves some wiggle room, though, he knows. It allows for fissures where the early self can seep and trickle and bubble through like warm lava, a reminder of some inner roil. Every time he thinks about Suzanne reaching out to him after all this time, he’s tugged by a ghostly tether to the shabby life that formed them during those tender years.

“Good thing we were so smart back in those days, right?” he reminisced the one time they’d spoken by phone. “Couple of scrawny misfits, but we got through it.”

“We did better than just get through it,” she answered. “I think of us as being so vulnerable back then. Broke all the time. We prevailed, Danny.”

“Good thing I glommed onto you. You were like the older sister I never had,” he joked, even though they are the same age.

He remembers that he could always make her laugh, even though she was world weary, old for 13. He admired her for that. Pooling their Coke bottle money to buy potato chips, drifting around their government-subsidized apartment complex — studying the cement pathways as if they held the answers to life’s mysteries — they built the bond that on this particular day looms larger than anything he’s accomplished so far in his life.

But their paths through the struggle had diverged too broadly once they got to high school, and gradually they peeled away from one another. She was a childhood friend long gone, or so he thought. At one point he’d heard from the social media grapevine that she was working in some sort of finance thing (or was it accounting?) somewhere in the southwest, maybe Scottsdale or Denver? Anyway, now he knows: she’s a CPA in Portland. The way she grew up, they grew up, making it into middle management in some middle America city is pretty impressive. If he’s being honest with himself, though, that’s a long way from the life he has built, where everything is more lovely, more self-congratulatory, more confining.

He glimpses his reflection through the sliding glass door and wonders what Suzanne will see. Polished wingtips? Bottled ship?

#

He steps back onto the balcony, captivated by the sweetness of the blooming cherry trees. Their scent takes him back, all the way back to the climbing jasmine that grew along the cracked retaining wall around their apartments.

Will Suzanne be disappointed in who he’s become? Of course not. More to the point, will he be disappointed in what she hasn’t become?

Not long after her 15th birthday, she began to drift. Out, in, out again. For the next few years, he put his head down and pushed through the headwinds of the world’s low expectations. Suzanne traveled another route – and who could blame her? She veered around at the whim of the winds. Spending more time on friends’ couches than her own meant less time for them together, and he stopped knowing when he could count on her, so he stopped counting on her.

“You were so cool,” he told her when they spoke by phone. “You got all those cool friends and I was completely intimidated.”

“I don’t know about cool. I was in survival mode, just doing whatever I could to make it out to the other side,” she said. “You were smart to spend those late nights learning calculus instead of being out discovering beer and sex. Look how it’s paid off.”

“Honestly, I don’t know about that. Anyway, it’s nice how lasting a friendship can be in spite of all the differences.”

“In a lot of ways different, but also the same, deep down, don’t you think?” she asked.

The same. Deep down.

He realizes she never responded to the check-in message he sent yesterday. His heartbeat spikes, wondering if he can count on her now. He fires off another message.

“Hey Suze. Confirming we’re still on for 7 tomorrow. Still good for you?”

He stares at his phone screen for too long. No response.

#

He flips on the television news, mutes it so he can hear the music, tries to shift his mindset by reading the ticker at the bottom of the screen, turns it off.

“But are you happy?” Suzanne asked in one of their text exchanges. “I’ll be honest, I can’t tell for sure.”

Another time, “I didn’t realize how much I missed our talks, Dan. Will be such fun to meet up.”

And then, “You’re kind of bad at this rebuilding an old friendship thing. Haha. J/K.”

This last comment sticks with him. He knows it was because he sometimes doesn’t respond to her openness; he can’t remember how. He’s been cultivating cool for so long that warmth overwhelms him.

He thinks about his old friend Rowen, whose birthright to aloofness hails from old banking money.

“You must stop smiling like you mean it, mate,” Rowen once coached him, early on in their careers. Rowen isn’t British but he likes to take on the affect.

“What?” Daniel asked.

“The trick is to either not smile much at all, or to smile in a way that is clearly disingenuous. That way no one really knows what makes you tick. Information is power, old boy.”

It was Rowen who first taught Daniel to be embarrassed of his mall-issue loafers and his sense of humor, especially his Three Stooges DVDs.

#

He slides the door open to invite the prickly cool of the spring evening. It occurs to him that maybe Rowen is just what he needs. Rowen understands the now him in a way that Suzanne never could. What he needs to do is bring a bit of his present to his past, not the other way around.

He sends Rowen a text. “Hey, here’s a thought. Let’s go bowling. What do you say? This weekend?”

“Bowling? You mean, around all those masses of people drinking light beers and wearing each other’s shoes? Right, mate. Good one.”

#

His phone dings with a direct message coming through. He hopes it’s Suzanne.
It isn’t. It’s a photo from Lucas, the research assistant he’s mentoring at work. Lucas, formerly Luke, is a 26-year-old fresh from Top Tier Ph.D. Land. His brilliant mind and frayed edges remind Daniel of his younger self.

“I took your advice and splurged on this Brooks Brothers tie,” Lucas texts in reference to the photo he just sent. “You know what? You’re right. I can already feel it elevating me.”

Christ, had he really used the word elevated when he gave the kid wardrobe advice?

#

He wanders over to the stereo and turns up the volume. Something about this music always brings his mind to its knees. So confident in its freedom and so hopeful in its self-expression.

Four days ago, the last time they exchanged messages, Suzanne reminded him of the moment that was the beginning of the end of their closeness.

“Remember my 15th birthday?” she asked.

“Ice cream and disco funk?”

“Exactly. You saved me that day. I’ll never forget it,” she replied.

He had been emptying the trash into one of the big metal communal dumpsters after dinner. He found her sitting on the retaining wall that overlooked the Little League field, camouflaged by towering weeds that dominated her blonde slightness.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked.

“Waiting for my birthday to end.”

“I didn’t know,” he explained.

“No one else does either.” She was talking about her family.

“Hang on.”

He disappeared and returned a few minutes later with a half-gallon of rocky road, two spoons, and his cassette player. For the next hour they ate ice cream and she taught him to dance to a new Kool & The Gang song — a couple of beginners, at dancing and at life, clunking around, falling on and off the wall, revealing themselves, hopeful and free for a moment. And laughing.

#

He switches on the lights now that dusk has fallen. He doesn’t fall into his overstuffed leather chair, but rather places himself just on the front edge of the seat cushion, Goldilocks testing it out. There’s his reflection again, trapped in the neat space of the blank television screen. In the distance he hears a DJ on one of those happy hour river cruises, enticing guests to a limbo contest.

He leans forward into the latest version of a recurring daydream he’s been trying not to have for decades – a psychic sliver where he comes to life. He fends it off because it seems a senseless indulgence, but it can be hard to resist.

Suzanne is at the end of a lacquered wooden bar in one of the watering holes where the after-hours version of work often happens. He’s got one eye on her from across the room, through the mirrored wall behind rows of twinkling booze bottles. She looks bored. He sees her reach across the flat bar top, over the brass railing and around its edge, with one hand and a sideways smile at the bartender, who shakes his head and pretends not to see. Without warning, the volume of the music overtakes the room.

“Whooaaa – oh-oh-oh-oh-ohooaaa,” it interrupts. It is haunting in a way, and to Daniel, unmistakable. A fast, Funkadelic classic, the likes of which this serious crowd has probably never heard. He grins before he can stop himself, in an inside joke kind of way; the music rescues him briefly from a discussion with a professional counterpart about how to handle the political issues percolating in some faraway land.

Unable to hold his colleague’s gaze, his eyes shift toward Suzanne, who straightens up from the bar, tosses a co-conspirator's smile in his direction, and points at him.

He attempts to reapply himself to the work conversation, but a glance into the wall mirror reveals Suzanne beginning her advance toward him. He knows exactly what the crowd in this bar is thinking. They’re already beginning to stare, confused. Probably disapproving. He is terrified to disappoint them, terrified to disappoint her.

He chuckles at the song’s chorus: “Something about the music, she always makes me dance.”
And it’s done. Finally. Finally they are seeing him, in spite of all his best efforts.

Suzanne is on her way toward him with a shot of tequila in each hand.

“Do you remember?” She asks loudly over the music, handing him his shot glass with one hand and pointing upward with the other, as if that’s where the music lived.

“How could I forget?” They throw back their tequila.

“Don’t worry about them,” she yells, with a head-tilt toward the rest of the room. “Let’s dance!”

Oh God. He tries, awkwardly, very awkwardly. How long has it been since he has even attempted anything other than a polite waltz at a gala?

Suzanne, though, she isn’t counting years, isn’t keeping score, isn’t judging his moves. She’s feeling the music, mouthing the song lyrics. Infected, he loosens up, recalls the words and exclamations of their junior high school anthem. The bass leads them in the familiar steps, knees bouncing into hips that swing momentum toward swaying shoulders, heads keeping time. He sings aloud with mock expressions of their favorite funk lords.

She flings her head back and laughs, mouth open as if to gulp down as much of the moment as she can.

It is pure abandon, the kind that might rescue him from himself — the kind he would like to feel again at some point in his life.

He knows he shouldn’t, but he can’t resist the urge to text her again. “You there?”

#

He leans back into the leather chair, flings off his shoes, wonders what to do with the seep of disappointment pooling in his gut.
And Lucas. He’s just beginning the re-chisel. Maybe there's still a chance for him. Daniel sends him a message.

“Love the tie, good choice. Also, tie or no tie, you’re a great addition to the team, if I haven’t mentioned.”

“Thanks!” Lucas responds.

“Just a thought — do you like to bowl?”

#

An hour later, his phone dings.

“Of course we’re on, Danny. Sorry it took me so long to get back to you, been one of those weeks! But I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

In an unusually uncalculated response, he sends her a funny selfie. “In case you forgot what I look like, here’s me now,” he adds to the photo.

“The younger brother I never had, haha. I’d recognize you anywhere!” she writes back.

“Ha! Hope so,” he answers.

He stares for a moment at the photo he just sent. An inward smile grows to a chuckle, barely audible, but it reverberates through his bones and into the room. He can almost see the vibrations in the door to the balcony as he walks over to close up for the night.

Daniel pauses with one set of fingertips resting on the smooth, cool glass. The Potomac is turning from grey-green to dark and sparkling with the moonrise. He imagines barges and river boats and dinghies — anything that might drift a person toward the freedom of a new dance with an old self.
#