Purple Hearts(37)

I imagined I had returned home to Texas, running at the high school track in Buda. I listed jobs in my head that I could do, as unrealistic as I wanted. Firefighter. Gym teacher. Radio DJ. I composed letters to my brother and his wife and my nephew, which I tried to remember as I wrote them later in my Moleskine and mailed them off. I wrote letters to Cassie in my mind and then got nervous when I went to write them down. But I’d send one soon.

When I’d return to our room, Frankie would be Skyping with Elena, or in the community room playing video games with Rooster, or we’d have a briefing before a mission, and he’d have brought me some toast and a warm, dusty bottle of water if I didn’t have time to eat before we had to go.

Sometimes we annoyed the shit out of one another. Sometimes Rooster snored and we had to throw pillows at him. Sometimes Frankie had to yell at me to get my laundry done because there wasn’t enough ventilation to handle the smell of sweaty clothes.

But we did everything together. We got the same food poisoning, we hit the floor at the same time if there was an explosion close by, we went to the Hindu barber together in Lashkar Gah, watching the muted Bollywood videos while we got a shave.

It was like having brothers. Friends. It was like having a life.





Cassie


Behind me, Toby was wailing on 7/8. Nora and I got closer to our mics, poised, bouncing, looking at each other, waiting to come in. He paused, dipped into 6/8, and we stepped into the forest, breaking down a G-minor chord, hocketing like birds, until I opened my eyes and we hit the full F so hard I almost lost my breath. We’d been working on this technique for a month, and it came and passed as easy as water. It was October, four weeks since our last show, and we were back at the Skylark, sharing the bill with Popover.

Every day had crystallized. Every day I would: Wake up, prick myself to check blood sugar.

Make something that wouldn’t kill me. Crack an egg and whisk it with one tablespoon of milk. Sprinkle in some garlic powder and ground pepper.

A slice of whole grain toast topped with fat-free margarine and a plum.

A small bowl of bran cereal with a half cup of low-fat milk (or sometimes I’d use unsweetened almond milk or unsweetened soy milk, which had fewer carbs and calories per serving than regular milk).

Top the cereal with fresh berries if I hadn’t spent too much on records at End of an Ear.

Walk at least two miles down to South Congress or to the university, sometimes with Toby, most of the time alone, listening to various playlists.

Midmorning, check my blood sugar.

Play and write.

Lunchtime, check blood sugar.

Mix together some cooked quinoa, white beans, chopped bell pepper, carrots, and broccoli to make a grain salad. Toss with some olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

Or canned tuna, light mayo, diced celery, lemon juice, and freshly ground pepper.

Or a whole wheat tortilla wrap with rotisserie chicken, hummus, sun-dried tomatoes, feta cheese, and greens.

Or a hard-boiled egg, with a peach if the blood sugar allowed, maybe some string cheese and five, count ’em, five whole wheat crackers.

Play and write.

Midafternoon, check blood sugar.

Before work, check blood sugar. Drive to work. Sling cocktails. Notice how I wasn’t as tired by midnight. Notice how I wasn’t as fazed by customers. How my car was cleaner. How I was beginning to form another layer of calluses on my fingertips from the needle.

Toby always helped me remember before I went to bed. Sometimes he brought almonds or a nectarine to rehearsal, just in case I forgot. He was so tender.

Tonight, The Loyal’s set was so tight we had barely talked to the audience between songs, launching into new styles and tangents without explaining this was “something new that we were trying,” not trying to make them like us but just releasing the sound that had lived in our heads like a hungry animal. Now people were crowding the stage, almost on top of the amps. We were a different band altogether.

“Dance!” Nora yelled on a downbeat, and we swung in again on the 6/8. Like a miracle, they did. The shadows jerked and twisted and bobbed their heads, spraying sweat and spilling their drinks. I looked back at Toby and he was in ecstasy, lifting shoulders up and down with the snare, eyes everywhere like a revivalist speaking in tongues. I signaled for him to loop around the last part of the chorus again. He read me, instinctively slowing so that I could extend the notes and growl the final verse again. Yes. Exactly what I wanted.

The bodies fell into a sway, and we thanked them. They screamed their approval.

Backstage, we descended into a damp, smelly hug.

“What the hell, dudes?” Nora said, out of breath. “What the hell did we just do to the masses?”

“We slayed them,” Toby said, his arm sliding around my waist as we pressed our foreheads together.

“We did,” I said, and kissed his cheek. “And with what’s probably going to be our album.”

“Yes,” Toby said, pulling me closer. “Yes, yes, yes.”

“And Cass survived this one!” Nora joked.

We laughed. Nora went to grab a celebratory beer. Toby jogged over to peek his head out to the front, to see if the crowd had cleared enough so we could take down our instruments.

I flopped down on one of the greenroom’s ratty couches and took it in. I had survived. There wasn’t a second when I felt too tired or too fried. I’d begun to think of my diabetes like one of my more demanding plants. One of those expensive, rare flowers you had to talk to and water and move in and out of the shade, except now I had no choice, because it lived inside me.