Coda (Songs of Submission #9)(4)

“Don’t build us on top of what you did or didn’t do before. How’s that for a definition?”

Who were we, standing half a room apart with our limbs crossed? How did any of this matter? How had it become important? If he wanted to pass the next ten years in a big modern house overlooking Los Angeles, who was I to say otherwise? Wasn’t that a small price to pay to be with him?

“I want you to go to Paris,” he said. “You’ve never been.”

“Who’s going to watch you if I go? Who will make sure you don’t forget to do what you’re supposed to?”

“If you want children to take care of, that can be arranged.”

“I don’t.”

“Then you don’t need to baby me.”

And that had been that. We got a house by default. The style he wanted and the location I wanted, because on paper, it seemed like a compromise. It had been more of a treaty.

chapter 3.

MONICA

I ate a lunch of chicken fingers and half a radicchio salad in the engineering room. I shot the shit with Jerry and Deshawn. We talked about promoting the sampler, getting beer thrown at me in Caracas as a sign of respect, the roaches in the hotel, the excellent food. Half an hour later, we were back to work. Executives drifted in and out to listen to me. Eddie even showed up for fifteen minutes.

My phone was facedown on the baby grand piano; its sheen let me know when the glass lit up with a call or text. But I couldn’t take a text. We were trying to get the last two words of the song right. Forever f*ck. It had to sound like a powerful curse but be muddled, and on key, and gravelly and transcendent, all at the same time. My feet hurt, and my brain and eyes were so exhausted, the foam egg-carton pattern on the walls seemed inverted.

I couldn’t possibly take a text, even from my husband.

Only when I was done did I check it.

—I want to see you—

The text had come twenty minutes earlier, while I was in the middle of recording “Forever.” The song was based on a poem I’d written while Jonathan was in the hospital, and I had been so angry, I imagined myself in an eternal, raging battle with death.

—Where are you?—

Ten minutes later.

—You were supposed to be out two hours ago—

I scrolled through Jonathan’s texts. Jerry and the sound team packed up. I was going to have to deal with my husband. I had my career, and he knew what it entailed. He didn’t have the right to harass me while I was recording.

I took a deep breath and called him from outside. “Hi.” The parking lot behind the studio smelled like sweaty * and stale cigarettes.

“You’re out?” Jonathan asked.

“Just finished up.”

“I have a surprise for you when you get home.”

Home. A house on the beach that already had too many painful memories. Medications. Falls. Fights. He’d been sick and pissed. I loved him. I’d never leave him, but some days, I felt as though we were coming apart at the seams.

“The guys are going to dinner. I’m a little hungry,” I said. The silence seemed eternal, and though I imagined him staring into space with the phone at his ear, when I heard a car door slam, I knew he hadn’t been inactive. “Jonathan, it’s—”

“Stay there.”

“Not tonight, I—”

“This sounds to me like you’re telling me no.” The calm, arrogant dominance in his voice was like a slap on the ass, because I hadn’t heard it in six months. “For the sake of clarity, goddess, when it comes to me, that’s not in your vocabulary. I don’t hear it.”

I said, “Yes, sir,” with all the sarcasm of a spoiled adolescent and immediately regretted it. Luckily, my husband had already hung up.

chapter 4.

JONATHAN

This shit stopped tonight.

I parked in the back and went into the building. A couple of doors were ajar, and I could hear the laughter and mumblings of men. I heard her three doors down, her voice humming, piano strings getting hammered one by one, slowly.

I slipped into the engineering room and looked at her through the window.

She sat at the keyboard, scribbling in a notebook, then considering the keys again. Her back was straight, neck as long and white as a swan’s, her ebony hair braided and twisted onto the top of her head. A goddess. She’d waited. I didn’t know what would have happened with us if she hadn’t.

The engineering booth was empty and dark, and I watched her like a movie. I saw her bite a fingernail. Close her eyes. Tap a finger then burst out with a word in one long note. It was you. She hit three keys, then three different keys, sang the word again in a different register, and wrote it down.

I felt as if I hadn’t seen the length of her neck in months, nor the delicacy of her wrists. I knew every inch of her skin, every curve of her body, yet that day, when she’d said no to me, I anticipated the prospect of showing her why that wouldn’t wash any longer with no little delight.

I went back into the hall, closing the engineering room door.

chapter 5.

MONICA

His scent cut through the dank musk of the studio before the sound of the door closing reached my ears.

“Hi,” I said without looking up from my notes. “Can we go meet those guys? Jerry wants to lay out a plan for Wednesday.” His fingertips grazed the back of my neck, and I shuddered, closing my eyes halfway.