The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Sixth Annual Collection

A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC Lucius Shepard

Dead men can’t play jazz.

That’s the truth I learned last night at the world premiere performance of the quartet known as Afterlife at Manhattan’s Village Vanguard.

Whether or not they can play, period, that’s another matter, but it wasn’t jazz I heard at the Vanguard, it was something bluer and colder, something with notes made from centuries-old Arctic ice and stones that never saw the light of day, something uncoiling after a long black sleep and tasting dirt in its mouth, something that wasn’t the product of creative impulse but of need.

But the bottom line is, it was worth hearing.

As to the morality involved, well, I’ll leave that up to you, because that’s the real bottom line, isn’t it, music lovers? Do you like it enough and will you pay enough to keep the question of morality a hot topic on the Donahue show and out of the courts? Those of you who listened to the simulcast over WBAI have probably already formulated an opinion. The rest of you will have to wait for the CD.

I won’t waste your time by talking about the technology. If you don’t understand it by now, after all the television specials and the (ohmygod-pleasenotanother) in-depth discussions between your local blow-dried news creep and their pet science fiction hack, you must not want to understand it. Nor am I going to wax profound and speculate on just how much of a man is left after reanimation. The only ones who know that aren’t able to tell us, because it seems the speech center just doesn’t thrive on narcosis. Nor does any fraction of sensibility that cares to communicate itself. In fact, very little seems to thrive on narcosis aside from the desire . . . no, like I said, the need to play music.

And for reasons that God or someone only knows, the ability to play music where none existed before.

That may be hard to swallow, I realize, but I’m here to tell you, no matter how weird it sounds, it appears to be true.

For the first time in memory, there was a curtain across the Vanguard’s stage. I suppose there’s some awkwardness involved in bringing the musicians out. Before the curtain was opened, William Dexter, the genius behind this whole deal, a little bald man with a hearing aid in each ear and the affable, simple face of someone who kids call by his first name, came out and said a few words about the need for drastic solutions to the problems of war and pollution, for a redefinition of our goals and values. Things could not go on as they had been. The words seemed somewhat out of context, though they’re always nice to hear. Finally he introduced the quartet. As introductions go, this was a telegram.

“The music you’re about to hear,” William Dexter said flatly, without the least hint of hype or hyperventilation, “is going to change your lives.”

And there they were.

Right on the same stage where Coltrane turned a love supreme into a song, where Miles singed us with the hateful beauty of needles and knives and Watts on fire, where Mingus went crazy in 7/4 time, where Ornette made Kansas City R&B into the art of noise, and a thousand lesser geniuses dreamed and almost died and were changed before our eyes from men into moments so powerful that guys like me can make a living writing about them for people like you who just want to hear that what they felt when they were listening was real.

Two white men, one black, one Hispanic, the racial quota of an allAmerican TV show, marooned on a radiant island painted by a blue-white spot. All wearing sunglasses.

Ray-Bans, I think.

Wonder if they’ll get a commercial.

The piano player was young and skinny, just a kid, with the long brown hair of a rock star and sunglasses that held gleams as shiny and cold as the black surface of his Baldwin. The Hispanic guy on bass couldn’t have been more than eighteen, and the horn player, the black man, he was about twenty-five, the oldest. The drummer, a shadow with a crew cut and a pale brow, I couldn’t see him clearly but I could tell he was young, too.

Too young, you’d think, to have much to say.

But then maybe time goes by more slowly and wisdom accretes with every measure ... in the afterlife.

No apparent signal passed between them, yet as one they began to play.

Goodrick reached for his tape recorder, thinking he should listen to the set again before getting into the music, but then he realized that another listen was unnecessary—he could still hear every blessed note. The ocean of dark chords on the piano opening over a snaky, slithering hiss of cymbals and a cluttered rumble plucked from the double bass, and then that sinuous alto line, like snake-charmer music rising out of a storm of thunderheads and scuttling claws, all fusing into a signature as plaintive and familiar and elusive as a muezzin’s call. Christ, it stuck with you like a jingle for Burger King . . . though nothing about it was simple. It seemed to have the freedom of jazz, yet at the same time it had the feel of heavy, ritual music.

Weird shit.

And it sure as hell stuck with you.

He got up from the desk, grabbed his drink and walked over to the window. The nearby buildings ordered the black sky, ranks of tombstones inscribed with a writing of rectangular stars, geometric constellations, and linear rivers of light below, flowing along consecutive chasms through the high country of Manhattan. Usually the view soothed him and turned his thoughts to pleasurable agendas, as if height itself were a form of assurance, an emblematic potency that freed you from anxiety. But tonight he remained unaffected. The sky and the city seemed to have lost their scope and grandeur, to have become merely an adjunct to his living room.

He cast about the apartment, looking for the clock. Couldn’t locate it for a second among a chaos of sticks of gleaming chrome, shining black floors, framed prints, and the black plush coffins of the sofas. He’d never put it together before, but the place looked like a cross between a Nautilus gym and a goddamn mortuary. Rachel’s taste could use a little modification.

Two-thirty a.m. . . . Damn!

Where the hell was she?

She usually gave him time alone after a show to write his column. Went and had a drink with friends.

Three hours, though.

Maybe she’d found a special friend. Maybe that was the reason she had missed the show tonight. If that was the case, she’d been with the bastard for . . . what? Almost seven hours now. Screwing her brains out in some midtown hotel.

Bitch! He’d settle her hash when she got home.

Whoa, big fella, he said to himself. Get real. Rachel would be much cooler than that . . . make that, had been much cooler. Her affairs were state of the art, so quietly and elegantly handled that he had been able to perfect denial. This wasn’t her style. And even if she were to throw it in his face, he wouldn’t do a thing to her. Oh, he’d want to, he’d want to bash her goddamned head in. But he would just sit there and smile and buy her bullshit explanation.

Love, he guessed you’d call it, the kind of love that will accept any insult, any injury . . . though it might be more accurate to call it pussywhipped. There were times he didn’t think he could take it anymore. Times like now when his head felt full of lightning, on the verge of exploding and setting everything around him on fire. But he always managed to contain his anger and swallow his pride, to grin and bear it, to settle for the specious currency of her lovemaking, the price she paid to live high and do what she wanted.

Jesus, he felt strange. Too many pops at the Vanguard, that was likely the problem. But maybe he was coming down with something.

He laughed.

Like maybe middle age? Like the married-to-a-chick-fifteen-years-younger-paranoid flu?

Still, he had felt better in his time. No real symptoms, just out of sorts, sluggish, dulled, some trouble concentrating.

Finish the column, he said to himself, just finish the damn thing, take two aspirin and fall out. Deal with Rachel in the morning.

Right.

Deal with her.

Bring her breakfast in bed, ask how she was feeling, and what was she doing later?

God, he loved her!

Loves her not. Loves. Loves her not.

He tore off a last mental petal and tossed the stem away. Then he returned to the desk and typed a few lines about the music onto the computer and sat considering the screen. After a moment he began to type again.

Plenty of blind men have played the Vanguard, and plenty of men have played there who’ve had other reasons to hide their eyes, working behind some miracle of modern chemistry that made them sensitive to light. I’ve never wanted to see their eyes—the fact that they were hidden told me all I need to know about them. But tonight I wanted to see. I wanted to know what the quartet was seeing, what lay behind those sunglasses starred from the white spot. Shadows, it’s said. But what sort of shadows? Shades of gray, like dogs see? Are we shadows to them, or do they see shadows where we see none? I thought if I could look into their eyes, I’d understand what caused the alto to sound like a reedy alarm being given against a crawl of background radiation, why one moment it conjured images of static red flashes amid black mountains moving, and the next brought to mind a livid blue streak pulsing in a serene darkness, a mineral moon in a granite sky.

Despite the compelling quality of the music, I couldn’t set aside my curiosity and simply listen. What was I listening to, after all? A clever parlor trick? Sleight of hand on a metaphysical level? Were these guys really playing Death’s Top Forty, or had Mr. William Dexter managed to chump the whole world and program four stiffs to make certain muscular reactions to subliminal stimuli?

The funny thing was, Goodrick thought, now he couldn’t stop listening to the damn music. In fact, certain phrases were becoming so insistent, circling round and round inside his head, he was having difficulty thinking rationally. He switched the radio on, wanting to hear something else, to get a perspective on the column.

No chance.

Afterlife was playing on the radio, too.

He was stunned, imagining some bizarre Twilight Zone circumstance, but then realized that the radio was tuned to WBAI. They must be replaying the simulcast. Pretty unusual for them to devote so much air to one story. Still, it wasn’t everyday the dead came back to life and played song stylings for your listening pleasure.

He recognized the passage.

They must have just have started the replay. Shit, the boys hadn’t even gotten warmed up yet.

Heh, heh.

He followed the serpentine track of the alto cutting across the rumble and clutter of the chords and fills behind it, a bright ribbon of sound etched through thunder and power and darkness.

A moment later he looked at the clock and was startled to discover that the moment had lasted twenty minutes.

Well, so he was a little spaced, so what? He was entitled. He’d had a hard wife . . . life. Wife. The knifing word he’d wed, the dull flesh, the syrupy blood, the pouty breasts, the painted face he’d thought was pretty. The dead music woman, the woman whose voice caused cancer, whose kisses left damp mildewed stains, whose . . .

His heart beat flabbily, his hands were cramped, his fingertips were numb, and his thoughts were a whining, glowing crack opening in a smoky sky like slow lightning. Feeling a dark red emotion too contemplative to be anger, he typed a single paragraph and then stopped to read what he had written.

The thing about this music is, it just feels right. It’s not art, it’s not beauty, it’s a meter reading on the state of the soul, of the world. It’s the bottom line of all time. A registering of creepy fundamentals, the rendering into music of the crummiest truth, the statement of some meager final tolerance, a universal alpha wave, God’s EKG, the least possible music, the absolute minimum of sound, all that’s left to say, to be, for them, for us . . . maybe that’s why it feels so damn right. It creates an option to suicide, a place where there is no great trouble, only a trickle of blood through stony flesh and the crackle of a base electric message across the brain.

Well, he thought, now there’s a waste of a paragraph. Put that into the column, and he’d be looking for work with a weekly shopping guide. Hey, who knows, it might not be so bad, writing about fabric bargains and turkey raffles and swap meets. Might put him back in touch with his roots.

He essayed a laugh and produced a gulping noise.

Damn, he felt lousy.

Not lousy, really, just . . . just sort of nothing. Like there was nothing in his head except the music. Music and black dead air. Dead life.

Dead love.

He typed a few more lines.

Maybe Dexter was right, maybe this music will change your life. It sure as hell seems to have changed mine. I feel like shit, my lady’s out with some dirtball lowlife and all I can muster by way of a reaction is mild pique. That’s a goddamn change, sure enough. I mean, maybe the effect of Afterlife’s music is to reduce the emotional volatility of our kind, to diminish us to the level of the stiffs who play it. That might explain Dexter’s peace-and-love rap, put it into a cautionary context. People who feel like I do wouldn’t have the energy for war, for polluting, for much of anything. They’d probably sit around most of the time, trying to think something, hoping for food to walk in the door . . .

Jesus, what if the music actually did buzz you like that? Tripped some chemical switch and slowly shut you down, brain cell by brain cell, until you were about three degrees below normal and as lively as a hibernating bear. What if that were true, and right this second it was being broadcast all over hell on WBAI?

This is crazy, man, he told himself, this is truly whacko.

But what if Dexter’s hearing aids had been ear plugs, what if the son of a bitch hadn’t listened to the music himself? Maybe that speech of his had been more than cautionary. What if he knew how the music would affect the audience, what if he was after turning half of everybody into zombies all in the name of a better world?

And what would be so wrong with that?

Not a thing.

Cleaner air, less war, more food to go around . . . just stack the dim bulbs in warehouses and let them vegetate, while everyone else cleaned up the mess.

Not a thing wrong with it... as long as you weren’t in the half that had listened to the music.

The light was beginning to hurt his eyes. He switched off the lamp and sat in the darkness, staring at the glowing screen. He glanced out the window. Since last he’d looked, it appeared that about three-quarters of the lights in the adjoining buildings had been darkened, making it appear that the remaining lights were some sort of weird code, spelling out a message of golden squares against a black page. He had a crawly feeling along his spine, imagining thousands of other Manhattan nighthawks growing slow and cold and sensitive to light, sitting in their dark rooms, while a whining alto serpent stung them in the brain.

The idea was ludicrous—Dexter had just been shooting off his mouth, firing off more white liberal bullshit. He was no mad scientist, no deviant little monster with a master plan.

Still, Goodrick didn’t feel much like laughing.

Maybe, he thought, he should call the police . . . call someone.

But then he’d have to get up, dial the phone, talk, and it was so much more pleasant just to sit here and listen to the background static of the universe, to the sad song of a next-to-nothing life.

He remembered how peaceful Afterlife had been, the piano man’s pale hands flowing over the keys, like white animals gliding, making a rippling track, and the horn man’s eyes rolled up, showing all white under the sunglasses, turned inward toward some pacific vision, and the bass man, fingers blurring on the strings, but his head fallen back, gaping, his eyes on the ceiling, as if keeping track of the stars.

This was really happening, he thought, he believed it was happening, he knew it, and yet he couldn’t rouse himself to panic. His hands flexed on the arms of the chair, and he swallowed, and he listened. More lights were switched off in the adjoining towers. This was really fucking happening . . . and he wasn’t afraid. As a matter of fact, he was beginning to enjoy the feeling. Like a little vacation. Just turn down the volume and response, sit back and let the ol’ brain start to mellow like aging cheese.

Wonder what Rachel would have to say?

Why, she’d be delighted! She hadn’t heard the music, after all, and she’d be happy as a goddamn clam to be one of the quick, to have him sit there and fester while she brought over strangers and let them pork her on the living room carpet.

I mean, he wouldn’t have any objection, right? Maybe dead guys liked to watch. Maybe . . . His hands started itching, smudged with city dirt. He decided that he had to wash them. It would be a chore, but he figured he’d have to move sometime. Couldn’t just sit there and shit himself.

With a mighty effort, feeling like he weighed five hundred pounds, he heaved up to his feet and shuffled toward the bathroom. It took him what seemed a couple of minutes to reach it, to fumble for the wall switch and flick it on. The light almost blinded him, and he reeled back against the wall, shading his eyes. Glints and gleams shattering off porcelain, chrome fixtures, and tiles, a shrapnel of light blowing toward his retinas. “Aw, Jesus, ” he said. “Jesus!” Then he caught sight of himself in the mirror. Pasty skin, liverish, too-red lips, bruised-looking circles around his eyes. Mr. Zombie, he said to himself, is attired in a charcoal gray suit with Mediterranean lapels by Calvin Swine, his silk rep tie is by Necktie Party, his coral shirt is made of silk and pigeon blood, his shoes are actually layers of filthy dead skin wrinkled into an alligator pattern, and his accessories are by Mr. Mort U. Ary.

At last he managed to look away.

He turned on the faucet. Music ran out along with the bright water, and when he stuck his hands under the flow, he couldn’t feel the cold water, just the gloomy notation spidering across his skin.

He jerked his hands back and stared at them, watched them dripping glittering bits of alto and drum, bass and piano. After a moment he switched off the light and stood in the cool, blessed dark, listening to the alto playing in the distance, luring his thoughts down and down into a golden crooked tunnel leading nowhere.

One thing he had to admit, having your vitality turned down to the bottom notch gave you perspective on the whole vital world. Take Rachel, now. She’d come in any minute, all bright and smiling, switching her ass, she’d toss her purse and coat somewhere, give him a perky kiss, ask how the column was going . . . and all the while her sexual engine would be cooling, ticking away the last degrees of heat like how a car engine ticks in the silence of a garage, some vile juice leaking from her. He could see it clearly, the entire spectrum of her deceit, see it without feeling either helpless rage or frustration, but rather registering it as an untenable state of affairs. Something would have to be done. That was obvious. It was surprising he’d never come to that conclusion before ... or maybe not so surprising. He’d been too agitated, too emotional. Now . . . now change was possible. He would have to talk to Rachel, to work things out differently.

Actually, he thought, a talk wouldn’t be necessary.

Just a little listening experience, and she’d get with the program.

He hated to leave the soothing darkness of the bathroom, but he felt he should finish the column . . . just to tie up loose ends. He went back into the living room and sat in front of the computer. WBAI had finished replaying the simulcast. He must have been in the john a long time. He switched off the radio so he could hear the music in his head.

I’m sitting here listening to a little night music, a reedy little whisper of melody leaking out a crack in death’s door, and you know, even though I can’t hear or think of much of anything except that shivery sliver of sound, it’s become more a virtue than a hindrance, it’s beginning to order the world in an entirely new way. I don’t have to explain it to those of you who are hearing it with me, but for the rest of you, let me shed some light on the experience. One sees . . . clearly, I suppose, is the word, yet that doesn’t cover it. One is freed from the tangles of inhibition, volatile emotion, and thus can perceive how easy it is to change one’s life, and finally, one understands that with a very few changes one can achieve a state of calm perfection. A snip here, a tuck taken there, another snip-snip, and suddenly it becomes apparent that there is nothing left to do, absolutely nothing, and one has achieved utter harmony with one’s environment.

The screen was glowing too brightly to look at. Goodrick dimmed it. Even the darkness, he realized, had its own peculiar radiance. B-zarre. He drew a deep breath ... or rather tried to, but his chest didn’t move. Cool, he thought, very cool. No moving parts. Just solid calm, white, white calm in a black, black shell, and a little bit of fixing up remaining to do. He was almost there.

Wherever there was.

A cool alto trickle of pleasure through the rumble of nights.

I cannot recommend the experience too highly. After all, there’s almost no overhead, no troublesome desires, no ugly moods, no loathesome habits .. .

A click—the front door opening, a sound that seemed to increase the brightness in the room. Footsteps, and then Rachel’s voice.

“Wade?”

He could feel her. Hot, sticky, soft. He could feel the suety weights of her breasts, the torsion of her hips, the flexing of live sinews, like music of a kind, a lewd concerto of vitality and deceit.

“There you are!” she said brightly, a streak of hot sound, and came up behind him. She leaned down, hands on his shoulders, and kissed his cheek, a serpent of brown hair coiling across his neck and onto his chest. He could hardly smell her perfume, just a hint of it. Perfect. She drenched herself in the stuff, and usually he had big trouble breathing around her, choking on the flowery reek.

“How’s the column going?” she asked, moving away.

He cut his eyes toward her. That teardrop ass sheathed in silk, that mind like a sewer running with black bile, that heart like a pound of red raw poisoned hamburger. Those cute little puppies bounding along in front.

He remembered how she’d used to wear her hair up, wear aprons, just like ol’ Wilma Flintstone, how he’d come home and pretend to be an adulterous Barney Rubble.

How they’d laughed.

Yabba dabba doo.

And now the fevered temperature of her soiled flesh brightened everything. Even the air was shining. The shadows were black glares.

“Fine,” he said. “Almost finished.”

. . . only infinite slow minutes, slow thoughts like curls of smoke, only time, only a flicker of presence, only perfect music that does not exist like smoke . . .

“So how was the Vanguard?”

He chuckled. “Didn’t you catch it on the radio?”

A pause. “No, I was busy. ”

Busy, uh-huh.

Hips thrusting up from a rumpled sheet, sleek with sweat, mouth full of tongue, breasts rolling fatly, big ass flattening.

“It was good for me,” he said.

A nervous giggle.

“Very good,” he said. “The best ever.”

He examined his feelings. All in order, all under control . . . what there was of them. A few splinters of despair, a fragment of anger, some shards of love. Not enough to matter, not enough to impair judgment.

“Are you okay? You sound funny.”

“I’m fine,” he said, feeling a creepy, secretive tingle of delight. “Want to hear the Vanguard set? I taped it.”

“Sure . . . but aren’t you sleepy? I can hear it tomorrow.”

“I’m fine.”

He switched on the recorder. The computer screen was blazing like a white sun.

. . . the crackling of a black storm, the red thread of a fire on a distant ridge, the whole world irradiated by a mystic vibration, the quickened inches of the flesh becoming cool and easy, the White Nile of the calmed mind flowing everywhere . . .

“Like it?” he asked.

She had walked over to the window and was standing facing it, gazing out at the city.

“It’s . . . curious,” she said. “I don’t know if I like it, but it’s effective.”

Was that a hint of entranced dullness in her voice? Or was it merely distraction? Open those ears wide, baby, and let that ol’ black magic take over.

. . . just listen, just let it flow in, let it fill the empty spaces in your brain with muttering, cluttering bassy blunders and a crooked wire of brassy red snake fluid, let it cozy around and coil up inside your skull, because it’s all you know, America, and all you fucking need to know, Keatsian beauty and truth wrapped up in a freaky little melody . . .

The column just couldn’t hold his interest. Who the hell was going to read it, anyway? His place was with Rachel, helping her through the rough spots of the transition, the confusion, the unsettled feelings. With difficulty, he got to his feet and walked over to Rachel. Put his hands on her hips. She tensed, then relaxed against him. Then she tensed again. He looked out over the top of her head at Manhattan. Only a few lights showing. The message growing simpler and simpler. Dot, dot, dot. Stop. Dot, dot. Stop.

Stop.

“Can we talk, Wade?”

“Listen to the music, baby.”

“No . . . really. We have to talk!”

She tried to pull away from him, but he held her, his fingers hooked on her hipbones.

“It’ll keep ’til morning,” he said.

“I don’t think so.” She turned to face him, fixed him with her intricate green eyes. “I’ve been putting this off too long already.” Her mouth opened, as if she were going to speak, but then she looked away. “I’m so sorry,” she said after a considerable pause.

He knew what was coming, and he didn’t want to hear it. Couldn’t she just wait? In a few minutes she’d begin to understand, to know what he knew. Christ, couldn’t she wait?

“Listen,” he said. “Okay? Listen to the music and then we’ll talk.”

“God, Wade! What is it with you and this dumb music?”

She started to flounce off, but he caught her by the arm.

“If you give it a chance, you’ll see what I mean,” he said. “But it takes a while. You have to give it time.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The music . . . it’s really something. It does something. ”

“Oh, God, Wade! This is important!”

She fought against his grip.

“I know,” he said, “I know it is. But just do this first. Do it for me.”

“All right, all right! If it’ll make you happy.” She heaved a sigh, made a visible effort at focusing on the music, her head tipped to the side . . . but only for a couple of seconds.

“I can’t listen,” she said. “There’s too much on my mind.”

“You’re not trying.”

“Oh, Wade,” she said, her chin quivering, a catch in her voice. “I’ve been trying, I really have. You don’t know. Please! Let’s just sit down and ...” She let out another sigh. “Please. I need to talk with you.”

He had to calm her, to let his calm generate and flow inside her. He put a hand on the back of her neck, forced her head down onto his shoulder. She struggled, but he kept up a firm pressure.

“Let me go, damn it!” she said, her voice muffled. “Let me go!” Then, after a moment: “You’re smothering me.”

He let her lift her head.

“What’s wrong with you, Wade?”

There was confusion and fright in her face, and he wanted to soothe her, to take away all her anxieties.

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said with the sedated piety of a priest. “I just want you to listen. Tomorrow morning we . . .”

“I don’t want to listen. Can’t you understand that? I don’t. Want. To listen. Now let me go. ”

“I’m doing this for you, baby. ”

“For me? Are you nuts? Let me go!”

“I can’t, baby. I just can’t.”

She tried to twist free again, but he refused to release her.

“All right, all right! I was trying to avoid a scene, but if that’s how you want it!” She tossed back her hair, glared at him defiantly. “I’m leaving ...”

He couldn’t let her say it and spoil the evening, he couldn’t let her disrupt the healing process. Without anger, without bitterness, but rather with the precision and control of someone trimming a hedge, he backhanded her, nailed her flush on the jaw with all his strength, snapping her head about. She went hard against the thick window glass, the back of her skull impacting with a sharp crack, and then she slumped to the floor, her head twisted at an improbable angle.

Snip, snip.

He stood waiting for grief and fear to flood in, but he felt only a wave of serenity as palpable as a stream of cool water, as a cool golden passage on a distant horn.

Snip.

The shape of his life was perfected.

Rachel’s, too.

Lying there, pale, lips parted, face rapt and slack, drained of lust and emotions, she was beautiful. A trickle of blood eeled from her hairline, and Goodrick realized that the pattern it made echoed the alto line exactly, that the music was leaking from her, signalling the minimal continuance of her life. She wasn’t dead, she had merely suffered a necessary reduction. He sensed the edgy crackle of her thoughts, like the intermittent popping of a fire gone to embers.

“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay.” He put an arm under her back and lifted her, supporting her about the waist. Then he hauled her over to the sofa. He helped her to sit, and sat beside her, an arm about her shoulders. Her head lolled heavily against his, the softness of her breast pressed into his arm. He could hear the music coming from her, along with the electric wrack and tumble of her thoughts. They had never been closer than they were right now, he thought. Like a couple of high school kids on a couch date. Leaning together, hearing the same music, hearts still, minds tuned to the same wavelength.

He wanted to say something, to tell her how much he loved her, but found that he could no longer speak, his throat muscles slack and useless.

Well, that was okay.

Rachel knew how he felt, anyway.

But if he could speak, he’d tell her that he’d always known they could work things out, that though they’d had their problems, they were made for each other . . .

Hey, Wilma, he’d say, yabba dabba doo.

And then they would begin to explore this new and calmer life, this purity of music and brightness.

A little too much brightness, if you asked him.

The light was growing incandescent, as if having your life ultimately simplified admitted you to a dimension of blazing whiteness. It was streaming up from everything, from the radio, the television, from Rachel’s parted lips, from every surface, whitening the air, the night, whiting out hope, truth, beauty, sadness, joy, leaving room for nothing except the music, which was swelling in volume, stifling thought, becoming a kind of thirsting presence inside him. It was sort of too bad, he said to himself, that things had to be like this, that they couldn’t have made it in the usual way, but then he guessed it was all for the best, that this way at least there was no chance of screwing anything up.

Jesus, the goddamn light was killing his eyes!

Might have known, he thought, there’d be some fly in the ointment, that perfection didn’t measure up to its rep.

He held onto Rachel tightly, whispering endearments, saying, “Baby, it’ll be okay in a minute, just lie back, just take it easy,” trying to reassure her, to help her through this part of things. He could tell the light was bothering her as well by the way she buried her face in the crook of his neck.

If this shit kept up, he thought, he was going to have to buy them both some sunglasses.