I Have Lost My Way(57)

“I don’t know who that is.”

Hayden tapped himself on the chest. “I know who that is,” he said. “I’ve always known. It’s why I chose you. So give me what I want.”

“I just said I don’t know what you want. More intensity? More growl? More volume? Tell me.”

From inside the booth, I saw Nick, the engineer, return. He pressed the intercom. “We’ve got some pretty good takes, Hayden. She can maybe punch out a few lines and we’ll get it in the mix.”

“When I want your opinion I’ll ask for it,” Hayden told Nick. He turned back to me. “This song can’t be done piecemeal, Freya. This song only works if we can hear your guts on a platter, hear your chest splayed open. So dig down deep and figure it out and sing me that fucking song the way you sang it in my office.”

Hayden went back to the board, sitting beside a now-frowning Nick. I put my headphones back on and I sang. I sang that song to the bone. I sandpapered my voice, going back in time, year by year, through all the layers of varnish, through all the broken promises, trying to dig back to the girl who was born singing. I sang my voice raw, sang my heart to shreds looking for that girl. Did I find her? Had she ever even existed?

It was dark out when I finished the final, bloodiest take. Hayden came out of the booth, clapping his hands slowly. He was smiling proudly, almost, you might say, paternally.

“That,” he said, “is the song that will make you famous.”





8





THE SABRINA WAY



Freya has always known where to find Sabrina.

When her sister moved away to that college upstate, Freya looked up the school online. She spent hours on the school’s website, picturing her sister living in one of the dorms, or taking notes in the lecture halls, or playing piano—if she still played—in the music studios.

When Sabrina graduated, Freya knew that she’d moved to the city, although the opposite side of it from her.

Freya has charted the route from her place in Williamsburg to Sabrina’s Harlem apartment many times. L train to the A train to 145th Street. An hour, door to door, according to Google Maps. So even though she’s never been there, she knows how to get there.

Outside the building, Freya’s heart pounds in her head, a steady percussive beat. She looks for her sister’s name on the buzzer, and there it is, Kebede/Takashida.

(She said yes!)

Someone is leaving the building, so Freya slips into the vestibule without buzzing first. The apartment is on the sixth floor. The elevator clanks all the way up, ba-boom, ba-boom, echoing Freya’s heaving heart. Her hand trembles as she knocks.

A man answers, tall, thin, delicate-featured, with a professorial air. Alex Takashida in the flesh.

“Can I help you?” he asks.

Freya is suddenly tongue-tied, unable not only to sing but to speak. Why is she here? Did she think stealing a song from Hayden, a song Sabrina always hated, would undo anything? Did she think a hug with Harun’s sister would deliver back her own? “I’m looking for my mother,” Freya finally manages to stutter.

Alex squints through his glasses at her. It occurs to Freya that he might not even know who she is. When Freya first met with a media trainer to practice how she’d talk about various parts of her life, she’d asked, “What do I say about my sister?” and the trainer had replied, “What sister?”

Does this man who is marrying her sister not even know Freya exists? Has Sabrina struck Freya from the record?

Has Freya not done the exact same thing?

“Of course,” Alex says. “Come in.”

Freya steps into an airy apartment, all hardwood floors, leaded-glass windows, views of treetops. A piano sits in the corner, sheet music and pencils on the desk. Unlike the apartment that she’s been living in for the past year, which came furnished, towels already in the linen closet, plates already in the kitchen cabinets, a piano that has seen no fresh composition on it during Freya’s tenure, this apartment looks like people actually live in it.

“Let me get Sabrina,” Alex says.

In a different context, Freya might not recognize her sister. Her face has narrowed, her hair, always worn long, is cut into a pixie. It sharpens her angles. Shows off her eyes. She looks, Freya sees, more like their father.

“You’re here for Mom?” Sabrina asks after only the slightest pause. She shakes her head. “How fitting. She’s looking for you.”

“Why?”

Alex and Sabrina exchange one of those looks, wordless but telling. Freya feels an ache, that age-old desire to have someone to understand her like that.

“She was worried,” Alex says.

“But why?”

Sabrina frowns. “You didn’t answer any calls or texts, and she tracked your phone and it showed you in Central Park, not moving, and then there was an Amex charge from an urgent care. So she thought maybe you’d been hurt. Or hurt yourself. She went to the police.”

What? That doesn’t make any sense. Freya’s mother hasn’t called all day. No one has.

Freya fishes out her phone for the first time, she now realizes, since she was back in the diner, several hours ago. Usually if she is away from her phone for more than a few minutes, her home screen has blown up with texts and alerts, but it’s blank. She presses the home button and nothing happens.