The Museum of Modern Love(13)

He remembered that he had been convinced that it was Lydia’s electric toothbrush on the sink and he’d hunted high and low for his own and ended up using an airline one. Days later he realised it was actually his own toothbrush, but he only recognised it in relation to Lydia’s. He had worried that this was somehow symbolic. Who was he without Lydia? Without her thoughts and clothes and food and friends? Her idea of time and entertainment? Who might he be if he was left to his own patterns and rhythms? How long would it take to become something beyond her? Who would that person be? He hadn’t wanted to know. But he had no choice. If there was one thing he knew, it was that days kept coming at you, no matter if you were ready for them or not.

He started sleeping later. Not waking to Lydia’s usual 5 am start, he found his body inclining towards 7 am, then 8, until he was waking at 8.45 am to the latest snowfall on the deck. He had, until then, been a hot breakfast man. But he began to put on boots and coat and stroll across the square to Third Rail, where he’d order a long macchiato. Sometimes on the way home he’d pick up an onion bagel and toast it with a second coffee he’d make in the espresso machine around 11 am. Sometimes he bought blueberries. He tinkered in his studio, going over old material, considering his next album. He played all his vinyls at whatever hour he liked.

In March he moved Lydia’s things into a lower drawer and arranged his bathroom items on the most convenient shelf. He stacked the dishwasher the way he liked and stopped hearing Lydia correcting him. He let Rigby sleep on the bed beside him. He watched James Horner and Hans Zimmer both lose out for Best Soundtrack at the Oscars. None of this made him happier. Quite the opposite. He worried that the universe had become a little bit spongy. If he put his finger out and prodded it here or there, it might quiver. If life was unknowable, just a dance of unseen forces, then surely it didn’t matter what happened between him and Lydia. But it did. He knew it did. And if this was a dream, then he wanted to know when it would end.

Maybe it would end if he went to see Lydia. But it was the one thing he was not allowed to do. Could not do. And all this he thought of as he gazed at Healayas sitting opposite Marina Abramovi?.

After almost an hour, Healayas left the chair. Levin rubbed his face, then let his hand linger over his eyes, breathed in that personal moment of privacy. He wanted her to see him, and he did not want her to see him. When he lifted his hand and looked around, she was gone.





ON THE THIRD AFTERNOON THEY spent together watching Marina Abramovi?, Levin offered to buy Jane a drink when the museum closed. She suggested the bar at her hotel.

‘If that’s not too forward. I’m just keen to sit there and it seems strange to do it on my own. And I do want you to know that I’m married. In fact, I’m a widow but only recently. I felt the need to tell you that.’

‘Nice hotel,’ he said, surprised she was staying there. ‘You know Robert De Niro owns it?’

Jane did, although she hadn’t until she’d checked in. She didn’t remember how she’d come to book it. Small decisions had become a mystery to her since Karl’s death. It was as if there were parts of her brain going about life with no awareness on her part.

They took the subway to Canal and walked the few blocks towards the Hudson. Levin didn’t ask any more about her personal circumstances, but now he could see the word widow was pinned to her like a conference badge. It might have been easier, he thought, if he had a simple descriptor too. Turncoat. Coward. Bereaved. Abandoned. Abandoner. Any explanation for his situation seemed to require a paragraph. A debate. A fugue. Sometimes followed by silenzio. Or crescendo.

The barman welcomed them, delivered iced water, a dish of warm olives.

‘I hardly know what to order.’ Jane laughed.

The barman suggested a martini and she agreed. Levin ordered a Guinness. Away from the gallery, he felt as if they were devotees, two people drawn together by an obscure obsession. He realised they might have nothing else in common, and suddenly felt awkward being with her.

‘Do you get to meet the movie stars when you’re the composer?’ Jane asked.

He shook his head. ‘I work for the most part on my own. Then, when the director is happy with what he’s hearing, I put together a team of musicians. It’s very structured. I spend a lot of time consulting with the director, watching edits, but I’m a long way from the actors. When I was younger, I’d spend time on set. There’s not much magic to it. It’s all craft. Lighting. Acting. Editing. The music is just one of the elements to make the illusion seem real.’

‘What inspired you—you know, when you were younger?’

‘Have you seen The Good, the Bad and the Ugly?’

Jane shook her head.

‘It’s an early Clint Eastwood,’ Levin said. ‘Ennio Morricone did the soundtrack. He did The Mission too. It’s a remarkable score.’

‘We saw The Mission,’ Jane said. ‘It was terribly sad.’

‘Well, you’d know the soundtrack to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly too if you heard it.’

Jane said, ‘I have to confess, we’re not really filmgoers.’

‘You and your husband?’ Levin asked.

‘Yes,’ said Jane. ‘Karl only died in September last year, so it seems way too early to stop saying we. I’m not very good at this. Can we, you and I, just move on and pretend there’s not a death on my shoulder?’