The Museum of Modern Love(42)

‘Shakuhachi,’ said Levin.

‘Yes! Good!’

‘No. No shakuhachi.’ Levin laughed. ‘So far it’s mostly piano. Violins and a little percussion. I thought I really had it but then I look at the latest scenes and it’s awkward, clichéd. Like everyone has heard it before.’

‘This is not the time to lose confidence, Arky.’

‘Annie Lennox singing “Into the West”—you know, from Lord of the Rings? Perfect. In fact, almost anything from Lord of the Rings would do right now. Howard Shore just got it right. Ludovico Einaudi’s Nightbook? That too. How about Marianelli’s soundtrack to Atonement?’

‘Am I meant to be getting worried?’ Hal asked. ‘You know, Arky, you’re not going to like me saying it, but think about the music you’d write for Lydia right now, the way things are.’

‘Wow.’ Levin felt as if he had been winded.

‘Just think about it.’

‘Hal . . .’

‘We love you both. I don’t want you to wake up and realise you let the best thing in your life go, Arky.’

The car had become ridiculously small and Levin felt as if he was suffocating. But Hal went on. ‘I know you. You love one another. I know she’s the most independent person in the world, and she pretends she doesn’t need anything, but she needs you, Arky. I walk into hospital and you’re asleep with your head on her lap. She’s just sitting there looking like death warmed up stroking your head. It’s not meant to be that way.’

‘But hospitals always make me tired.’

‘But you’re not the one who needs looking after. No, that’s not true, you’re old enough to be the one doing some looking after.’

Levin had nothing to say.

‘It just breaks my heart to see you guys apart . . . And look at you—you’re looking terrible. I don’t mind saying it. You look like a wreck.’

‘I’m okay. Really. I’m . . . and she needs to be there.’

‘Yes, but not alone. Not without you ever visiting. And don’t talk about the legals. God, if there was ever a case for challenging a legal document . . . I know you’re going to say that she wanted you to do this; she wanted you to make music. But is that enough?’

Music. It sounded feeble suddenly in the face of the yawning gap between life before Christmas and life these past four months.

He’d always known music as an electrical circuit running through every pathway in his body. When music came to him, the world grew calm and clear and silent. It was why he loved New York. The pavement, the streetlights, the subway, it was all a kind of circuitry fuelled with energy. It wasn’t that anyone could be great here, but everyone could try, and so he had kept trying, and felt that the city, sometimes the city alone, believed in him. It would all have been worth it. How else was the Brooklyn Bridge built? The Empire State? The certainty of a vision.

Marina was doing it every day and hundreds and thousands of people were sweeping their lives in her direction to feel the dream she held inside her. He must look into her eyes. He felt a cold flush of electricity up his arms. It had to be done.

Hal paused. ‘So, what else have you been doing, apart from convincing yourself you’re a terrible composer?’

‘I’ve been going to MoMA. To the Abramovi? thing.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Hal said. ‘Have you sat?’

‘No.’

‘Craig and I went. It’s fascinating. The queue was huge so we went upstairs and wandered around for ages. I came home exhausted. What a life! I literally collapsed on the couch and didn’t move until Craig brought me a Bellini. I was so in awe. I mean, she is the canvas, isn’t she? And she’s a kind of muse or oracle. I want to take Abramovi? vitamins. I just love that intensity in everything she does.

‘By the way,’ he continued, ‘we had a night at the Standard bar. You know—the one with the hot tub. They sell bathing costumes from a vending machine! Of course, after midnight no one cares. I don’t think there was a single real New Yorker there. The place was full of twenty-year-olds speaking crazy German, girls in micro-skirts and boys with unbelievable form. It was great fun. I think we’ve become the new Silicon Valley. A geographically contained focus group for every new app developer. It’s really the end of the shabby. At breakfast this morning they asked me if I wanted my grapefruit br?léed. I mean, really?’

At the Tennis Center they played three sets on an outdoor court. Levin lost 4–6, 5–7, 3–6. He hated to lose. And he was disturbed by how out of shape he was.

‘I think we should get back on the squash court,’ he said to Hal as they made their way back to Manhattan for lunch.

‘You know more men our age die on the squash court from heart attacks than any other sport?’ asked Hal.

‘Maybe not, then . . . I have started back at Pilates.’

‘I don’t mind winning,’ said Hal. ‘Don’t get me wrong.’

He surveyed the skyline ahead. ‘I never get over that Lego-block sky, as Craig’s nephew calls it. He has this passion for the water towers and tells me they’re tin men all asleep and at night they get up and walk about. They’d make fabulous little studios if we drained them and did them up. We’d have to change the fire regulations, of course, but . . . perhaps that’s where the artists of New York could start again. In fact, keep the water towers and start dropping trailer homes on the rooftops. Make them rentsubsidised, just for creatives. Kind of like a grant. Where will New York be in twenty years if creative people, who have always been the lifeblood of this town, can’t afford to live here any more? It will all be about money and the Chinese. Who wants that?’ ‘You want to live somewhere else?’ ‘Are you kidding?’