It was like having a bilingual conversation - shifting in and out of singing and talking until there stopped being a difference. After a while Brent started doing other people's music - "Silver Wings" and
"Faded Love" and "Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground." Stuff that reminded me of my dad's record collection. God forbid maybe I even mumbled along with Brent as he sang.
Things got blurry after that, but I remember during one of the silent places saying, "Les hasn't played straight with anybody this whole time. He wouldn't be worth protecting."
I wanted to look at him, see his reaction, but my eyes were closed and I was enjoying them that way.
"I gave up on protection a long time ago," Brent said.
His voice was a sad sound, the chords bright and airy behind it.
The last thing I remember, he was singing something about a train.
I woke up with the feeling that somebody had hooked me to a reverse IV. All the fluid had ^r drained out of my mouth and my eyes and my brain. When I moved my head everything turned white. I realized, belatedly, that I was feeling pain.
I sat up on the metal cot and rubbed my face where it had pressed itself into the texture of the rayon. One of the yellow curtains was open and light was pouring directly onto my chest.
Other things came into focus - a folding card table with a bucket of silverware on it. A wooden bunk bed, the bottom bunk stripped to the springs. A Playboy wall calendar that was still stuck on Miss August. The walls were the same inside the little tractorshed apartment as they were outside - rough wood, painted red. What few pictures there were hung from bare nails. Brent's carving knife was stuck directly into the wall above the tiny sink. There was no oven - no kitchen to speak of. Just a hot pad and a coffeemaker and a minirefrigerator.
It was possible that a woman might've lived here once, but you couldn't've proved it.
I tried to get up.
I tried again.
When I finally succeeded I realized where all the fluid in my body had drained to. I looked around for the rest room.
It was a tiny closet behind a shower curtain. Everything was close together. The sink overlapped the toilet tank and the shower drained directly into the tile floor so you could, conceivably, use the toilet and take a shower and brush your teeth all at the same time.
I only tried option number one.
It wasn't until I rummaged in the medicine cabinet, hoping for aspirin, that I found some reminder of the woman who had once lived here - orange prescription bottles, at least ten of them, all typed faintly with the name Maria Daniels. Insulin A. Prenatal vitamin supplements. Glucophage. Several other names I hadn't ever heard of. Some were open, as if she'd just taken her prescription this morning. As if nothing had been touched in the cabinet in two years. In the corner, behind the container of white Glucophage tablets, was a baby teether still in its plastic wrapper.
I picked it up. Little glittery shapes - diamonds, squares, stars - floated through the liquid inside the plastic ring, sluggish and sterile.
Behind me Brent Daniels said, "You're up."
I closed the cabinet.
When I turned Brent was trying his best not to notice what I'd been doing. He fingered the edge of the shower curtain.
His hair had dried, and his face was cleanshaven. Except for the eyes, he didn't look like a man who'd been drinking as heavily as I had.
"Miranda called," he told me. "Said Milo was going to be mixing for the rest of the afternoon and did I want to pick her up early. I could, or - ? "
"I'll drive up."
Brent nodded, like it was bad news he'd been expecting. He gestured behind him with his chin. I followed him out into the apartment, which was just big enough for the two of us.
Brent opened a cabinet above the little refrigerator and retrieved a bag of flour tortillas and a can of refried beans.
"Hungry?"
My stomach did a slow roll. I shook my head no.
Brent shrugged and cranked up the hot pad. I stared at the picture that was taped inside the pantry door - a black and white of a woman with short brunette hair, a slightly moonish face, an almost uncontainable smile, like she was being tickled.
"That Maria?"
Brent tensed, looked around to see what I was talking about.