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“But Axel! We don’t…”
“We don’t what?”
“That’s not how we work.”
“Actually, we don’t work period. Or better said, you don’t work, but we’re going to change that. I’m tired of walking into the room and seeing you walk out, and if you’re wondering, yes, this is a temporary dictatorship. I’ll see you on the porch in five minutes.”
I dug through the records gathering dust next to the wooden trunk where the record player stood. Finally I found it, the Beatles on vinyl. I wiped off the cover with the sleeve of the sweatshirt I had put on because the nights were getting cooler, and I played it.
“I’m So Tired” started to play softly while I was walking onto the porch. I sat down on the cushions, and Leah settled down beside me, as though drawn out by the music. My elbow rubbed her arm, she trembled, and then our bodies pulled further apart.
When the first chords of “I Will” sounded, she gave a long sigh, as if releasing a held breath. I asked myself what the music must be making her feel, so close to me there. Her lips were open slightly and her eyes lost in the sea where night was falling.
“I like this one,” I said.
“I will,” she whispered the lyrics in reply.
“One day in the studio, your father made me listen to it from beginning to end with my eyes closed.”
She started to get up, but I quickly grabbed her arm and held her beside me.
“He told me they said Paul McCartney had to find inspiration in the person next to him to write. He had a couple of muses, among them his dog when there were no women around. Then Linda appeared. And this was one of the songs he played for her. You know what Douglas told me? That the first day he saw your mother, he heard the notes of this song in his head. That’s why he always put it on whenever he painted anything related to love.”
Leah batted her eyes and I felt my heart sink when I saw the tears in her eyelashes, and I asked myself how I would draw them if someone asked me to that exact moment when they were moving like a pair of wings trying to ward off sorrow.
“Why are you doing this to me, Axel?”
The pleading tone in her voice… Fuck. I wiped away one of her tears with my thumb.
“Because it’s good for you. Crying.”
“But it hurts.”
“Pain is the collateral damage of living.”
She closed her eyes, I felt her shiver, and I hugged her.
“Then I don’t want to live…”
“Don’t say that. Don’t ever fucking say that.”
I pulled away from her, afraid that she would fall to pieces, but what I saw was the opposite. She seemed stronger, more whole, as if some piece inside her had slipped into place. I wanted to understand her. I wanted…I needed to know what was happening inside her. To enter, to dig around, to open her heart and see everything. And impatience was overwhelming me, curiosity consuming me. I tried to give her space, but I wound up taking it away.
“I knew that about my father,” Leah said so softly that the night breeze swallowed her words and I had to bend down to hear them. “He told me that if you hear a song in your head when you find your soul mate, that’s a gift. Something special.”
I nodded, quiet, leaning back against the wood.
“Did that ever happen to you?”
I was trying to be light, to lift the mood a little, but Leah looked at me very sternly, lips clenched tight and eyes shining after crying.
“Yes.”
24
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Leah
