The Lola Quartet

by Emily St. John Mandel

  When Liam came home at night he was tired and exhilarated. After his shift in the restaurant he would board a bus to the projects, where he rode an elevator to the seventh floor of a brick tower and spent two hours with Stanislaus. Later Anna sat on the floor of the living room and listened to him practice. She'd liked listening to the jazz quartet back in high school but this was different, this was something she didn't have words for. Chloe loved it too. When she was big enough to sit up, she sat on the carpet and stared at Liam while he played. There were moments of unbearable beauty when Anna closed her eyes in the living room while Liam played his guitar and everything rushed away from her until it was just the music, just Liam, just her daughter and the softness of the carpet where she lay on her back to listen to him, scents of cleaning products lingering in the air. The perfection of their lives together.

  "I love your music," Anna said. He put down his guitar and kissed her. There were moments when everything was easy and bright.

  Anna knew that Liam worried about her, the way she stayed indoors almost all the time. He pressed her sometimes to think about the future. "What are you going to do with your life?" he asked, near the beginning, when they'd just arrived in Detroit.

  "I'm going to look after Chloe."

  "What were you going to do before Chloe?"

  "I wanted to be Brian Eno," she said.

  "What?"

  "I was going to be in the music industry in some way. I used to think I'd maybe be a producer or a DJ or something."

  "You still can."

  "I know," she said, "maybe I'll still do it." But the future was abstract and none of it mattered as much as Chloe did. The idea of leaving Chloe with a stranger was unthinkable. She was going to be a better parent than her parents had been. She was going to save Chloe from everything bad.

  In t h e spring Liam asked if she'd mind moving to New York. He'd learned all he could from Stanislaus, he said. There was someone else, an old man in Queens who Stanislaus said was among the very best.

  "My name is Liam Deval," he said quietly to himself in the mirror when he didn't know she could hear him, "and I am going to be famous." He said it sardonically now, as if he were only kidding, but his ambition was a winged and burning thing.

  In early April they packed up the car, strapped the baby in the car seat, and drove southeast with cups of coffee in the cup holders and a map to New York City on the dashboard.

  Br i g h t o n B e a c h was on the far edge of Brooklyn, close against the sea. Blue sky and white sand, the edge of the city, a boardwalk running along the beach. The advertisements and signs on the street were in Russian. The grocery store was filled with inscrutable labels. The trains rattled and cast fleeting shadows from the elevated tracks. She was aware at all times that Gavin was somewhere in this city. She felt such guilt when she thought of him. If it's spring, she thought, he's just finished his first year of college. There were moments when she imagined getting on the subway with Chloe, taking her on the endless train from Brighton Beach to Columbia University, waiting for Gavin by the university gates. But then what? The conversation was impossible to imagine— I gave birth to your child but I never told you I was pregnant because I decided instead to run away with someone else— and she didn't need child support. Could he possibly take Chloe away from her? She wasn't sure. It seemed possible. His family had more money than hers did. Did Chloe actually need a father? Anna certainly hadn't needed hers, and anyway Chloe had Deval.

  They had a small apartment a few blocks from the ocean. Liam took a job as a waiter in Manhattan and came home demoralized. He had been told that the first week would be training, which meant he wouldn't be paid.

  "Isn't that illegal?" Anna asked.

  "Of course," he said. He had worked for thirteen hours. He was sitting at the table with his guitar, picking out chords while she made pancakes. An exhausted sheen to his face. "Now ask me if there's anything I can do about it."

  "You could quit," she said. They'd had this conversation before.

  "I need the job."

  "You don't. We have money."

  "Anna," he said. "I don't want to use the . . ." The cautious voice he used when they skirted around the edges of the theft. The money was divided between several plastic bags here and there in the apartment— behind the towels, under the bed, at the back of a closet— and she was aware of it constantly.

  "You could be playing music all day," she said. "You could rent studio space."

  "I'm not—"

  "Let me do this for you, Liam. It's not like we can return it."

  He laid his hand flat over the strings of his guitar, watching her.

  "Did you like working today?"

  "No," he said.

  "Then don't go back tomorrow," she said.

  The money went so quickly after that, but in an odd way it was a relief to watch it trickling away. It was like destroying the evidence of a crime.

  Li a m s p e n t his days in a rented studio near their apartment. In the evenings he took a train to Queens to work with the man who Stanislaus had said might be the world's greatest living gypsy-guitar teacher, a secret legend. Liam paid him in money and cigars and in return the man showed him everything he could, subtleties of rhythm and technique. He had only one other student, a man named Arthur Morelli who made a decent living as a session musician and played gypsy jazz whenever he could.

  Liam brought Arthur Morelli back to Brighton Beach one night a few months after their arrival in the city. The baby was sleeping and Anna was cooking when they came in. She always tried to have something ready for Liam when he arrived home around eleven.

  "Sausages," Morelli said. "What a nice surprise."

  He was older than Liam, and Anna saw him register her age as they smiled at one another and said hello.

  " Would you like some eggs?" she asked.

  "I would love some eggs." Morelli sat at the kitchen table and crossed his legs. "So this is what you come home to," he said to Liam. " Lucky man."

  "The luckiest," Liam said. He kissed Anna. "Is Chloe sleeping?"

  Anna nodded.

  "Your daughter?" Morelli asked.

  " Eight months old," Liam said, and Anna understood how little he'd told Morelli about his life.

  "What's this music we're listening to?" Morelli asked.

  "They're called Baltica," Anna said. "I think they're from Canada." The CD played on the stereo on top of the fridge, quietly so it wouldn't wake Chloe. Baltica's sound made her think of snow. A high clear beat with electronic strings in the background sometimes and gentle static, repetitive echoing lyrics if there were any lyrics at all, I always come to you, come to you, come to you in the background while she beat eggs in a bowl with a fork.

  "Anna, any chance of a hot-lemon-and-honey?" Liam asked.

  "What exotic concoction is that?" Morelli's voice had a languor that

  she liked, as if he had all the time in the world. She realized how rarely she spoke with anyone besides Liam.

  "Hot water," she said. She was filling the kettle. "You boil water and then squeeze a lemon into it and then you add some honey."

  "It's an addiction," Liam said. "We're thinking about playing together, Anna. A guitar duo."

  "Morelli and Deval," Morelli said.

  " Deval and Morelli."

  "With a bass, maybe," Morelli said. "Drums."

  "It sounds like a nice idea," Anna said. "I used to spend a lot of time with a jazz quartet in high school."

  "Did you play?"

  "No," she said. "My friends and my sister did." Were they her friends? She'd slept with two of them and managed to betray both, put the third in danger by showing up at his dorm room, left the state without telling her sister. The pan blurred before her eyes. She blinked hard and flipped the omelet.

  "It's the best idea ever," Liam said, "but I need to study a little more."

  "By next spring," Morelli said. Liam had poured him a glass of wine, and he raised it. "To music."

&nb
sp; "To next spring," Liam said, and the glasses clinked behind her.

  She set their plates on the table and sat with them. This is part of my disguise. Not just dyed-blond hair but plates of eggs too. A part of her wanted to put her fork down and tell Morelli who she really was— Listen, I ran away three times before the tenth grade. Family Services in Florida has a file on me that's probably two inches thick. I stood before a wall with a can of pink spray paint and slept for three nights in the park. I have a tattoo but I was so out of my mind that night that I barely remember the needle. I stole a hundred and twenty-one thousand dollars from a drug dealer in Utah. I am not someone who has always stood in front of stoves cooking eggs for her boyfriend— but of course she didn't.

  Mo n t h s l a t e r at Puppets Jazz Bar in Brooklyn Anna closed her eyes while they were playing and abruptly found herself disoriented, lost in the sound and unsure of where she was. She opened her eyes in alarm and clutched the seat of her chair. The darkness of the club was like the darknesses of all the other clubs where she'd gone to listen to gypsy jazz since Liam and Morelli had started playing regular gigs together. Where was Gavin tonight? She thought she'd die of shame every time she thought of him. She knew he was somewhere in this sharp and endless city, she knew he could walk in at any moment— did he still love music? And then perhaps she'd tell Liam she had a headache and find a way to leave with her face turned away, perhaps Gavin wouldn't recognize her at once with the short blond hair and that would buy her a few minutes. She was afraid to look toward the door.

  Liam found her smoking on the sidewalk after the set.

  "I don't know what I'm doing here," she said. "Coming out here like this with Chloe at home. Paying a fortune for a babysitter when you play for me and Chloe almost every night."

  "That's just practicing," he said. "It isn't a performance. There's no Morelli, no bass, no drums."

  "I like it better," she said. "I like it better when it's just us."

  "Well," he said, "you don't have to come to these places if you don't want to." He turned to go back inside and the motion reminded her of another day months earlier in a hospital in Utah, lying on her back in the maternity ward, the look in Daniel's eyes when he saw the baby for the first time and turned away from her. I am always disappointing the ones I love.

  . . .

  Li a m c a l l e d Anna from a van between Miami and Sebastian on the morning of Chloe's first birthday. He'd gone to Florida to visit his mother and play a few gigs with Morelli— the Lemon Club in Sebastian, two places in Miami, stops in Celebration and Sarasota. She'd almost gone with him but it still seemed too soon. The thought of traveling with Chloe again was exhausting and her nerves overcame her at the last moment. She imagined Paul lying in wait for her among the palm trees. In Liam's absence the city was vast and gray and empty, an unformed mass pressed up against the neighborhood. She stayed close to the sea.

  "I wish you'd come with me," he said.

  "It isn't safe."

  "I think if Paul were still looking," Liam said, "he would have found us by now."

  "You don't think he's looking anymore?"

  "I don't," Liam said. "I don't think it's that much money for a guy like him. Anna, you'll never guess who I ran into down here. Jack came to my gig in Sebastian."

  "Jack's back in Florida?"

  "He dropped out of school," Liam said. "A few weeks after I picked you up in Virginia. He came to see me at the Lemon Club."

  "How is he?"

  "He seems a little shaky, actually. How's everything over there, love?"

  "Fine, completely fine. We're heading out to the beach."

  "Give her a happy-birthday kiss for me," he said. She did, while she was bundling Chloe into the stroller.

  Anna took Chloe down to the boardwalk. They walked for a while alongside the sea. It was November but the day was unseasonably warm. Anna eased the stroller off the boards and pushed it with great difficulty toward the water, until they were halfway between the boardwalk and the waves. The sand rising over the wheels, impossible to go farther. She knelt to free Chloe from the buckles and straps.

  "Want to walk on the sand?" she asked Chloe, who was staring mesmerized over her shoulder. Chloe pointed and cried out "Wucks!" which meant ducks, which was her go-to word for birds of any kind. There were seagulls on the beach today, congregating around a dropped sandwich. Anna pulled Chloe's hat down over her ears, maneuvered her chubby hands into her mittens. " Happy birthday," she said. "I am so glad you're here."

  Chloe looked at her and for an instant Anna was certain she understood.

  "I would do anything for you," Anna whispered, but the moment had passed and Chloe was squirming now, kicking to be let out of the stroller. Anna lifted her free. They walked on the sand together, Chloe shrieking and laughing at the movement of seagulls and Anna holding Chloe's hand.

  Eighteen

  Awoman called Gavin a vulture once. She'd signed a bad mortgage and she was coming undone. He sensed her derangement as he came into her house, a tension in the air as in the hour before an electrical storm. She was pinch-faced and furious, sweating in her kitchen in a dress with an enormous flower pattern that reminded him of the curtains in his first apartment. He'd been working for Eilo for some weeks now and had decided that the people who'd done this to themselves were the angriest. The ones who were losing their houses because they'd already lost their jobs were despairing. The ones who were losing their houses because they hadn't understood their mortgages wanted to kill him.

  ". . . Just a bloodsucking leech," the woman said, at the end of an extended tirade.

  "A leech." Gavin was trying to keep his voice mild. "A moment ago you said I was a vulture."

  "I'm going to be homeless," she said, "and you're making money off me."

  He couldn't argue with this. The arguments Eilo had given him— You're performing a necessary service for a legitimate financial institution, if we don't do this someone else will, it was their responsibility to pay their mortgages and they didn't, etc.—seemed weak as he stood in this peach-and-blue kitchen on a cul-de-sac near his old high school. He looked down at the papers in his hands.

  "Perhaps," he said, "you were given bad advice when you signed the loan."

  "Perhaps," she said, "you should get the fuck out of my kitchen."

  "The next person after me will be a sheriff's deputy," he said. "I'm authorized to offer you—"

  "I don't want your cash-for-keys deal. I want the people who are doing this to me to go to prison for the rest of their unnatural lives." Her voice had risen. He saw movement in the doorway. A small child was staring at him. The child's eyes were very large and there seemed to be applesauce on his face.

  "I see," he said.

  "Including you," she said, although she was losing steam now. There were tears in her eyes. "People like you should probably just die in prison."

  "No one did this to you," Gavin said. "You did this to yourself." She was sputtering at him when he left. He drove four blocks, pulled over on a side street and spent some time staring at nothing, at pale stucco houses and close-cut lawns, each house its own kingdom with souls passing through. There were moments when he thought there might be something hidden in his job, some as-yet-ungrasped larger meaning amid all these people, their fear and their sadness and their disappearing homes, but mostly his work just made him dislike houses. These enormous anchors that people tied to their lives.

  . . .

  A f e w weeks after his arrival Gavin moved to Sebastian's empty downtown core. It was unclear to him how these streets had become so vacant, why everyone had decided that their fortunes lay on the perimeter, in an ever-expanding sprawl of split-level houses with screened-in back decks and kidney-shaped swimming pools and azaleas and snakes.

  "Snakes?" Eilo repeated, in the car on the way to his new apartment with all his worldly belongings in the backseat. She wanted to see his new place. She didn't understand why he was moving.

  "Pythons," Gavin sai
d. "They just really bother me, ever since I did that story for the Star."