The Silver Metal Lover(83)

But if it’s true, how extra hard it will be to live this silly life all the way through.

Yet I have to, don’t I? His life in mine.

I already went back to the slum. I went into a few places we’d been, and people asked me where he was, and I didn’t know what to say anymore, and from my face, many of them guessed. And they pressed my arm, or their eyes grew big with tears for me, for him. He wasn’t a robot, after all, so I don’t have to tell them that. Let them mourn him properly. Until the book comes out and they learn the truth in a flash of paper lightning. And then they’ll laugh at me, or hate me, or perhaps something else. And there may be riots in the streets. Or someone may assassinate me. But I’m not doing it to earn my death.

I met one of the street musicians Silver had played with, guitar and piano, in a loft. When he had my version of the news—I say, truthfully, Someone killed him—the young man took both my hands and said: “Do you need money?” And I said: “I’d rather earn it than take it.” And he said he remembered I sang, and come and sing with them at their pitches, and if we got any coins, they’d share. So I did, and we did, and they did.

Odd to sing with others, and not with him. Odd to try out my new songs with them, and not with him. Odd to come home to these grey rooms on Pine, and lie alone and unsleeping. Grey rooms, one day soon I may paint your ceilings blue and crimson, and carpet your floors with rainbows. And I may buy a cat, and train it to walk with me on a lead like a little fur dog. But not quite yet. Not till my heart settles like the broken girders, the tremor-shifted bricks, into the new slots of my days and nights.

Clovis argued one whole night with me, trying to stop me from doing this. When the day broke, we had cut each other to bits with our tongues, our eyes were red and mad, our faces white, and we laughed feebly. In all the argument and the personal remarks, we managed not to mention Silver, or our reactions to him. So I suppose we are still friends. A few days ago a hundred mauve roses were delivered here with a note: “I realized only something useless would be acceptable. Clovis.”

His thoughts on Silver remain obscured. Silver. I wonder what name, what names I knew you by before.

Oh, my love.

When I finally called my mother, she accepted my voice regally, and she invited me to lunch with her at Chez Stratos up in the clouds. She guesses I want to use her. I might even eventually interest her by attempting to do that. She might even agree. She has no basic respect for the law or the poor, being above them both in all the silliest and most obvious ways.

I feel curious about seeing the house again, about being there. And very nervous. I’ll wear my most astonishing clothes. Tight-fitting slender greens and violets, bell’s, embroidery, beads. And my boots with the four-inch heels.

I wonder if the lift in the support will still say: “Hallo, Jane.”

I wonder if my mother will embrace me, or remain very cool, or if she’ll help me, or refuse to help. Maybe I shall find out at last if she does like me in any way.

It’s more an exercise than anything else. My abstract course is set. Possibly for all of one hundred and thirty-odd years, I have to go on. To learn, to grow, to gain experiences and sights and sounds and truths and friendships, all to take with me like presents when I catch the flyer to meet him again. If I still feel like that when I’m old. If I still feel like that in another year.

And yet, I do believe what happened. There’s a logic to it, after all. To lose him, that was the impossible, unbelievable thing. It really is so much easier to say, quietly aloud in the grey soft-roaring of the city night: My love, my love. I will see you again.