Signal to Noise(92)

“And then you decided to return my shoes and tell me that factoid?”

“You are not going to make this easy on me, are you?” she said, crossing her arms.

Sebastian leaned against the door frame, all tall and smirking. He rubbed a finger against the wooden door frame, as though he were checking that the varnish was intact.

“No,” he said, staring at her. “Why should I?”

“I’d appreciate the favour.”

“I’d appreciate the speech, thank you.”

“I’m not giving you a speech,” she said. “It’s not one of your books.”

Besides, she was bad with words. They came out all crooked and deformed and sounded just plain wrong. Numbers and music: those she could work with.

“Mix-tapes are outdated so I decided to just make a playlist for you. Kind of like you did before when you gave me that soundtrack. You know, this is a sort of... I’m afraid it’s a...”

“Present?” he finished for her.

“Something like that,” she said, extending the iPod towards him.

“Love letter.”

Meche said nothing to that, rolling her eyes. But he waited and she recalled how he was extremely stubborn and patient. They could probably stand there, at the doorway, for an entire decade and he would not budge until she’d spelled it out.

“Take the iPod.”

“I don’t know. You’re missing three words.”

“You know I—”

Meche sputtered a word that was not a word. More like a string of consonants without a single vowel in between them.

“Just f*cking take it,” she said.

Meche waved the iPod and the earbuds before him. Sebastian put them on. He pushed the play button. He clicked it again, looked at the LCD display and shook his head.

“I don’t hear anything.”

“It’s empty.”

He looked at her in confusion.

“We need to make a new soundtrack. Together,” Meche said with a shrug.

“Together as in I—”

“Jeg elsker deg,” she said, feeling breathless when she spoke, like she’d been running for a long time.

“Meaning?”

“They’re words, alright? It counts. I’ll buy you a Norwegian dictionary.”

Sebastian smiled very slowly and pulled the earbuds away, stuffing them in his pockets.

“And what will be the first song?” he asked.

“I figure Absolute Beginners, though if you don’t like Bowie—”

She was going to suggest a whole swathe of songs. Somewhere Only We Know by Keane if he wanted to go recent and even Coldplay’s Swallowed in the Sea and the Goo Goo Dolls with Iris if he wanted to be cliché and had never watched Wings of Desire. Though if he mentioned I Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore she was going to just stomp away. There were some things she would not accept.

Not even for him.

“Bowie will do,” Sebastian said, interrupting her with a kiss.

She twined her fingers into his hair and smiled against his lips.

“Want to see the Northern Lights this weekend?” she asked.

“Sure. It’s about time.”





Mexico City, 1984





A GIRL SITS outside her apartment building, headphones on, listening to her music. She has a bag of potato chips, a bottle of soda and her idle thoughts. She’ll do her homework later. For now, as the sun rolls down, she simply taps her foot to the rhythm of the music and listens to one of her dad’s tapes. It’s Boston singing More Than a Feeling. She sips her soda.

A man walks a dog. The seller of camotes pushes his cart. Kids kick a soccer ball down the street.

The girl scratches her leg. She’s awkward and dressed in clothes a size too large. Her hair falls loose below her shoulders.

A boy walks on the other side of the street and glances at her. Something clicks in her brain and she thinks this is the new kid. The weirdo who lugs all those books around. She saw him with a book called Tales of Mystery & Imagination and she wants to ask him how it connects with Alan Parsons Project because she doesn’t understand that album.





A BOY DRAGS the market bag with him trying to remember the things he’s supposed to get. A kilo of tortillas. On the way back, two litres of milk and a box of detergent. He repeats them in his head as he walks—Tortillas. Milk. Detergent.

He shuffles his feet. He’s a tall kid. He’s skinny and dark, his long fingers curling around the plastic handle of the bag.

There’s a girl his age sitting on the bottom step of an apartment building, listening to music.

The boy keeps to himself and walks with his head down, but he raises his eyes to look at her because she looks kind of funny with those big headphones on her ears.

She stares right at him. The look is like having a pin inserted into his chest. He stumbles, shifts, switches the bag from one hand to the other.

“Hey, horse-face!” she yells.

He blinks.

She takes off her headphones and points at him.

“Yeah, you. Do you like music?”

“No, sorry,” he says, shrugging.

“That’s too bad.”

He should have said ‘yes’. Maybe she would have played with him if he did. He can’t make friends. He always botches it.