Melody Burning

by Whitley Strieber

  I turn on the shower and get in. It’s blue marble with gold fixtures, just like I wanted.

  I’m amazed all over again, and kind of shivering while I stand looking down at the water sluicing me and think, what would it be like if we took a shower together? I’m really torn. Do you do it or do you not? Calabasas was no help—the girls ran in packs, and to hear one pack talk, all the other packs were basically whores. Actually, most of them were like me, complete virgins.

  I finish the shower and slab on enough makeup to make Mom believe that I’ve decided to do it her way. But then I dress in a black, very severe Jil Sander dress that makes me feel good and bad, which is part of my love affair with Jil, I guess.

  I have a heartbreaking day to endure with this ancient composer and his equally ancient lyricist. Back to Reynolds to do some songs he’s probably had in a drawer since the days of Brandy. Brandy, the former star of Moesha, grew up into oblivion and that’s what I fear is my fate.

  “You look great,” Mom says as I come into the kitchen and eat a strawberry Pop-Tart.

  As so often before, I feel this intense love for my mother, despite the fact that I’m still angry about last night. I go over and kiss her on the cheek.

  At first, there is no reaction. Then I realize she has stopped moving. Her hands clutch the countertop, her head is down, and her hair hangs around her face. I hear her quietly crying.

  Suddenly we are in each other’s arms and I’m saying I’m sorry and she’s saying she’s sorry, and we’re bawling.

  You cannot hate your mother for very long, at least I can’t. In the limo, we sit hand in hand. This time, I don’t get sick. This time, she does not smoke. We have, thankfully, left Mr. Dr. Shrink behind to water the plants.

  We meet Jim Dexter at Reynolds, and his partner, Ray. Jim and Ray. They smile. I can see that they’re happy for this work. I have a vision of a tiny apartment somewhere cheap, and them counting their change for food.

  The first words out of my mouth stun me: “Could you do an arrangement of ‘Nature Boy’ for me?”

  This sounds insane, even to me, but I know why I am saying it, and when Mom gives me a funny look, I just turn away.

  Mom and I are not only mother and daughter, we are also business partners—and practically a married couple. But we’re business partners who don’t trust each other. At the core, it’s mom and kid, I guess, and that’s where we always end up.

  We go to work in a little acoustic studio with a piano. People like Elton John and Burt Bacharach have worked in this room, Jim tells me. At this very piano.

  Ray is thin and shabby. He has taped glasses. There are nicotine stains between his fingers. He has a scar up the side of his throat.

  He begins to play, and for the first couple of bars, I think maybe there’s something there. But then it all falls apart into these god-awful cascades of arpeggios, and I cringe. It’s agonizing.

  I can see Mom knows as well as I do that these guys are a disaster. But we keep working anyway. We’ve paid them for the day, so we might as well get what we can out of them.

  They will do the “Nature Boy” arrangement for me. Mom is suspicious, but she doesn’t say anything except, “Since when did you take an interest in Nat King Cole? He’s not your kind of sound at all.”

  All I can think of is those words from the song—“a very strange, enchanted boy.” They go round and round in my head. Will he love me—or does he already—and will I love him in return?

  I’ve thought about the fact that Nature Boy washes his hair and he’s clean and everything. So he must use apartments. My guess is that he totally owns the Beresford, and nobody knows he even exists.

  On the way home, we show up randomly at the Ivy, which is, I think, Mom testing my star power. We’re instantly seated. I get my usual scallops mini plate and Mom orders the lamb two ways. She says, “Bring me a Blue Label. Huge.” I go into my iPhone while she buzzes away, wildly enthusiastic about the songs and the arrangements. My Twitter profile is active. At least my professional tweeter is awake. My last tweet was twenty minutes ago: “I’m so into my new songs. On a roll today!”

  The meal passes, we come home, and Mr. Dr. Shrink is not waiting for us as I expected him to be. He appears to be like the others who show up around here, strictly gone tomorrow. Not even mentioned.

  I’ve been lying in my room in the dark for fifteen minutes, and there are no sounds of my boy. He is not in my wall, he is not in my ceiling. I miss him and I want him because frankly I was counting on going to sleep listening to him breathing in the wall, and waking up to find him beside me again.

  You know how this feels? Exactly like waiting for Santa Claus when you’re a little kid. Only my darling guy is no big fat Santa.

  I’ve never felt so beautiful as I felt in his eyes. I want that again. I want it right now, and I’m tossing and turning. I want him here.

  I go up against the wall and put my mouth to it. “Are you in there? Where are you? Because I want you to come back. Please, come back.”

  But ohmygod what if he’s a crazy person? He could be anybody. I could be in terrible danger.

  Mom knows he is here because I told her, and I know a major complaint was filed with the building, so this beautiful person is probably being hunted down because of me.

  I think he’s wonderful and strange and kind of like a poem. Could I love him? Maybe, but first I have to stop feeling sorry for him. Right now, that’s what I feel. It’s a good feeling but it’s not love.

  I look in the closet again. The walls behind my clothes, the ceiling, the floor under my shoe rack. No secret openings. My bathroom, same deal—no secret openings, and the vent is too narrow. Under the bed? Not there, and no trapdoor.

  So he doesn’t come in via my room. Could he possibly have a skeleton key? But how? We had our own locks installed, and most everybody else does, too. We have three doors that lead into the apartment through the den, the foyer, and the kitchen. All locked all the time.

  Is there another way in, like maybe in the pantry?

  I open my door, but carefully. If Mom is still in the living room, I’m not going out there.

  She is, but she’s asleep on the couch and looks kind of haggard now. I love the Wicked Witch of the West because she is often my mother.

  I creep very quietly into the kitchen. Open the cabinet under the sink. There’s a hole back in there, but it’s no bigger than your fist, plus it has a screen in it. Cabinet by cabinet, I open them all. No secret passages. Plus, the pantry is too full. He couldn’t come in through a door in the back of it because he would arrive covered with pasta and olive oil and Carr’s Whole Wheat Crackers.

  Mom’s bedroom? I look again at the heap on the couch and go in. Her room is totally chaotic. Much messier than mine. I’m not insane on the subject, but I like things to be where they’re supposed to be.

  There are a whole lot of clothes in Mom’s closet. Stuff I haven’t seen before. Crunchy silks and satins, and a big fur. When is she going to wear a fur? This is LA, so it’s never all that cold. It’s all white and stuffed into a plastic sheath. I didn’t even know she owned it. Anyway, who wears real fur?

  I leave because this is ridiculous—he didn’t come in through Mom’s room, and if she wakes up and finds me snooping around in her territory, then what?

  He has to be coming in through either the foyer closet or the den. Or the living room, but I can’t search there now. So I look in the closet, which contains my red parka and some umbrellas and no sign of any trapdoor, hatch, or anything like that.

  The den, then. The walls are fake paneling. Could he be coming in through the paneling under the bookcases—like, pulling a piece of paneling back, laying it aside, and crawling through?

  He sure could. But how do I find that out? Maybe I can’t, actually.

  Where is my phantom boy?

  This seems hopeless. I’ll check the closet just for the heck of it, because I can. Here’s all of Mom’s old stereo equipment. Here’s
the ridiculous basket collection. Why were we into that, collecting antique Easter baskets? And the Monopoly, Risk, Diplomacy, and Mexican Train boxes—all the old, ancient games of our life. Even Chutes and Ladders. Oh, wow. I remember Daddy always lost, and it was so funny because he wasn’t faking to let me win. He was just hilariously awful at it.

  Now, look at that! There is a hatch. It’s in the ceiling of the closet, above the shelf so you hardly notice it even if you look up to get a game. But it’s there. It looks official, like some kind of equipment access hatch or something, which is probably exactly what it is.

  I think that it’s also the only other way to get into this apartment apart from the locked doors.

  I’ve found it.

  I go into the kitchen and get the step stool out of the pantry. Oh, he’d better be in there, or I am going to go insane. Mom’s head is thrown back, and she’s snoring. She was wobbly drunk when we came in and does not hold her liquor well.

  I return to the den and set up the step stool.

  The hatch is so neatly framed, it’s obviously an access point that’s part of the building. There is no lock on it that I can see. It’s basically a painted board resting on a frame. I push on it—and it silently goes up. Of course, he probably uses it all the time, so he’d make certain it was smooth and silent.

  The smell of the dead air of the crawl space causes a shivery thrill through my body. And, wow, what a weird person I am that a crawl space gives me literal shudders. It’s dark up here. I am talking cave dark.

  I need a flashlight. The tool chest? No. The kitchen.

  I make yet another trip past comatose Mom and look in the junk drawer. Very good, the flashlight sort of works.

  So, back past Sleeping Beauty. I close the den door.

  I look up into the darkness and turn on the flashlight. First I see black pipes. It looks too crowded up there even to get in, but then I see how it could be done. And, in fact, if I just move my head a little, I see that behind the pipes there is a big clear area. Above it, the light shows some kind of junk that has been sprayed on the top of the space. Insulation, maybe. Hanging below it are three rows of electrical wires.

  I am fairly strong, I guess, but pulling myself up is going to be really hard. I’m going to do it, I have to do it. Why doesn’t he come back, darn it? I guess I sort of threw him out, didn’t I? I’m such a moron sometimes, but I was scared because it was all just so different and not what anyone would expect.

  “Hey, up there! Pssst! Are you there?”

  Not a sound, so I get up on top of the step stool and stick my head into the crawl space, which is not very roomy. How can he live like this?

  I pull myself up, struggling, trying to get my knee up to brace myself, kicking against the wall (crap, shh!), pulling myself a little more and then rolling a bit, and I’m up. I am in the crawl space. His space.

  I shine my flashlight around, looking for something resembling a human shape.

  Off to the right there is a darkness. I move over that way, keeping to the beams because I have no faith in the plaster ceiling I am crawling on. All I need is to fall through and land on Mom.

  With my flashlight and the light from the den, which is now behind me, I can see a bit. So I crawl farther, and where there are no pipes or wires, it’s actually possible to get around.

  Ahead, I hear rock music. That’s our next-door neighbor, the party girl. Then bzzzz, scree, bzzzt! Light comes up and there is a hissing sound, which I realize is one of the elevators. I hear voices, a woman telling a man good-bye. Then the elevator goes clicking and scraping off down its shaft.

  I go over and look down and the shaft is HUGE. You can see light glowing out of the rooftop vents of the four elevators, which are moving up and down, and a couple of them look really tiny because this building is T-A-L-L.

  How could I ever have stood so close to the roof’s edge? Was it really just the night before last? Time is losing all meaning.

  I shine my flashlight around—and, of course, my flashlight is so awful, it only shines about three feet. I move a bit, trying to see more. I have to let him know he can come back. He is in here somewhere—he has to be.

  Not around here, though. And suddenly I’m not sure where I am. Is the elevator shaft still over to the right?

  I back up. Careful, here. I find a narrow shaft. It’s not big around, maybe three feet on a side, and there are all kinds of pipes in it. I don’t know what they are—sewers, water lines, whatever.

  This is the shaft behind my room wall—must be. But how ever does he stay in here? This is his world, his home—that’s how. He is somewhere down in there, but there is no way I can climb down a floor. Not possible.

  I decide to call him. I will shout. Maybe it’ll be audible in my room and maybe in the party girl’s apartment, but not with all that music.

  “Hello!” I flick my flashlight on and off. “HELLO!” I do it again, on and off, on and off. “HELLOOOOO!”

  Nothing. So I have to give up on this because climbing around in here is dangerous, obviously, and I am no longer the girl who was on the roof. I am a different girl because I have a phantom boy somewhere off in that darkness.

  One more try: “HELLOOO . . . HELLOOO . . . HELLOOO!”

  Echoes. The rock music suddenly gets turned way down. Uh-oh.

  I am as still as death, barely breathing. And then I hear something—a slapping sound. Is it party girl coming out of her apartment to see what’s going on?

  I hear it again, louder, slap, slap, slap. Louder and louder and I think—is it—is it coming from below?

  I lean over the edge and shine my light and, oh, Jesus, there he is! And look at that, he is climbing the pipes, levering himself up from one side to the other. It’s just awesome and magical to see how he does this, moving up the shaft so fast he’s like the wind. Graceful and agile, look at that, just look at that!

  My stomach goes shivery as I watch him coming, his hair flying, his hands gripping the pipes, his muscles rippling in the dim light of my flashlight. He almost doesn’t look human, he is so good at this, a dancer of immense strength and power, a beautiful dancer. Then he rises over the edge, pulls himself up, and he’s beside me. I am looking into the most beautiful, innocent smile I think I have ever seen.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Hi,” he says back.

  We lie in the crawl space side by side, facing each other. He reaches over and lays his hand on my cheek. I close my eyes and feel its weight, feel it stroking my skin.

  Should I say it? Should I tell him I’m crazy for him? I want to but—Why do I hold back? This is a once-in-a-lifetime moment of magic, and I can’t ruin it with my analytical, practical brain.

  “I love you,” he says. His breath smells like a taco. So he was down there somewhere eating Mexican food.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  Our eyes link in the almost dark.

  I open my mouth a little. I’m waiting. I don’t want to wait, but I will wait because I want him to do it, to take me in his strength and his gentleness.

  He kisses me. Our lips are together, but it’s clumsy. We part, laugh a moment, and then he rolls his eyes and tries again. This time it works. I just love his strength, the feeling of him holding me to him so tight and him all trembly and excited, and me, too. I am so excited, I am almost wild—as wild as he is—except he is no brute, and I am no cave woman. He’s very gentle with me, looking at me now with wonder in his eyes, then kissing my face all over until I throw my head back and laugh.

  He says, “I thought you didn’t like me.”

  “I was scared,” I say.

  He looks at me with the kind of seriousness you see in the faces of little boys, and it’s so endearing. So I kiss him again, longer, more intimately. Afterward I draw back and he remains very still, his eyes closed, his lips slightly parted. He’s savoring me, and I know how he feels about me—it’s written in his shadow-filled face. I am so happy that I feel like laughing and kind of, I don’t
know, bubbling up inside in some way that I can’t quite put my finger on. He is ready for me, and I can sense that he is quietly hopeful, but this is not the time. We have to cherish this moment. I have to especially cherish him, because he is so innocent.

  I want him with me, because I think what’s happening between us matters, and I want to find out for sure.

  “You have to come and live in our apartment.”

  “Where would I stay?”

  “We have two more bedrooms.”

  He turns onto his back and puts his hands behind his head. He’s considering this. Finally he asks, “How?”

  “How? Just come in and use whichever one you’d like.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Let me ask you this. Have you ever been out of this building?”

  “No.”

  “Never? Never ever?”

  “Not since Dad got killed. Luther held me over the edge. Luther wants me dead, too.”

  “Who is Luther?”

  “Luther. That’s all I know.”

  The quiet sadness in his voice reveals his grief.

  Then I hear a noise. The sudden stillness that envelops him tells me he heard it, too.

  “What is it?”

  He doesn’t reply. He’s listening to something I cannot hear.

  All of a sudden and without the slightest warning, a light shines on me.

  From behind it, I hear Mom’s voice say, “You must be psychotic.”

  I just scream. I scream and I scream, and I cannot stop screaming. He tries to comfort me, holding me, fluttering his hands at me, his face a pale image of agony.

  Then more light—this time, shining directly at him—and his face is white as if glowing, his eyes bright with shock, his teeth bared, and I can hear him go, “Aah! Aaah! AAAH! ”

  The person shining the light on him is on top of an elevator that has risen up and stopped.

  “Okay, young fella, don’t try anything. I’ve got a gun.”

  My boy’s eyes meet mine, and it’s as if all of his heart is in those big eyes of his, now looking at me with terror. He grabs me for a second, lets me go, and then heads toward the equipment shaft.

  “Stop or you’re dead, kid.”