Gloria’s voice fills the room as Lia replays the song. Matt listens with his eyes closed now. Transported, moved by the music and how Gloria’s phrasing stirs him in ways he had not been sure his heart was still capable of, he lets himself go. When the song ends he looks again at his wife, considers all the possibilities, here and there, inside and out, then shakes through the shoulders as if to toss off all extramural thoughts. To his surprise, the opposite occurs as everything else falls away and he is left to stand within the chorus of his poem, tethered to the construct of his own wane mooring.
Cara waits until the song ends before getting up, pushing against the table, and heaving a sigh as she says, “Well there, now you’ve done it.”
And he in turn wonders, asks himself, What have I done?
•
We work the next six nights, record eleven tracks, and send them all to Glassnote including the five of Matt’s songs. I phone Daniel and let him know he should check his email. We are late into August now and classes at the university are about to resume. The nights are warm and this evening I sit out back in the garden. It’s the first night I haven’t been at Colossal in almost a week.
Cara calls me daily now. We meet in the afternoon before I go to the studio. Each time I am with her I tell myself it will be the last. When she says she loves me, I ask her to stop, though I do so softly, in a whisper which suggests I am overwhelmed by her words. We have sex at the Red Inn off exit ninety-three where Cara seems excited by our marginal surroundings and throws herself onto the bed with purpose and vigor. Each day I have to hurry out afterward to get to Colossal on time, the scent of Cara’s sex washed from me quickly with the coarse motel soap.
I sit sipping a beer on one of the garden benches near the Judas Tree, contemplating the advent of the moon, when Lidia appears in the yard. Fred greets her excitedly. I get up, happy to see her. We haven’t spoken since our conversation at Caber Hills, though I have meant to call her. Lidia kisses my cheek. I’m glad she’s accepted my invitation to check out the garden and I tell her so. We walk toward the fountain where a hidden twenty-gallon tank of water circulates through invisible tubing, releasing the water into a shell-like blue and beige pool. Lidia is wearing flip-flops, blue shorts, and a T-shirt with the face of Dave Archambault II embossed. She has brought me a beer and expresses how beautiful she finds everything, the fountain and the hill and path and flowers. “Who knew something like this could be made here?”
I let her take everything in before removing the cap from my beer and putting it in my pocket.
•
Daniel Glass calls me the next morning. Fred and I have gone for a walk out toward the river, where we see wrens and crows flying together beneath the rising sun, and back. I have only just settled in to write and am trying to complete my draft, which is up to date now but without an end, and hearing my phone ring, I look to see that it’s Glassnote.
Ten minutes later I am phoning Matt and Gloria. Daniel digs the songs we sent. He is definitely interested in signing Gloria and would like to discuss further. For now, he is thinking to remix three of the cuts and completely rerecord four more; he feels the remaining songs have come out great, including “In the Mooring” with which he’d like to test the waters and conduct a soft launch. “I want to shoot a video at Colossal,” Dan says, and can I get that done for him? “Nothing fancy,” he’s thinking an in-studio look, with the camera focusing on Gloria performing in her element. By this time next week, assuming the contract is signed, Daniel wants to have Gloria up on Tidal, SoundCloud, YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo, ZippCast, Pandora, Apple Music, and Google.
I’m happy as hell and tell Daniel, “Yes, of course, I can handle the video.” I call a filmmaker friend of mine, Veri Lane, and tell her what Glassnote has in mind. Veri’s a fantastic artist, she is sure she can get us what we want and looks forward to meeting the band. I spend the rest of my morning trying to write. My protagonists are at a crossroads, their relationship near collapse; I have no idea what will happen next. Cara calls and I break our date, I say only that I have an early meeting that afternoon. Matt arrives at Colossal as I do. Gloria and Veri and the rest of the band come in soon after and we set up. Veri films us getting ready, films the band with Gloria as they play their way through a simulated version of “In the Mooring.” We review the footage and do a few more isolated shots until Veri says she has what she needs. As the band is here, we decide to try recording one of the songs Daniel wants recut. I take Dan’s notes, take my own new ideas, and guide the band through another pass at the song.
We work until around eight, then break for the night and have a drink. Frankie brings out the booze left over from other nights. We have half-full bottles of whiskey and gin, some wine recorked and good enough to finish. Gloria and Matt sit together on the couch. All three members of the band take shots before heading to late-night gigs of their own. After a toast with Wild Turkey, Frankie leaves as well. I sit across from Matt and Gloria and try as I have all week not to give off guilty vibes regarding my sleeping with Cara; I am watching Matt for signs that he may suspect I have.
For her part, Gloria is cordial with me and is more attentive toward Matt. Shoulder to shoulder, they joke and tease, aim barbs at one another, then laugh and joke some more. Matt is drinking steadily, mixing whatever is closest to his glass. I study his mood, the way his excitement for the songs appears to be cast over a gloom, his engaging with Gloria delivered with a dead-catch hitch in his eyes. We toast our music again. Matt sits with his right arm stretched over the back of the couch. Gloria shifts closer to his reach. I don’t wish to make too much of their proximity; I tell myself artists are always interacting this way. We talk for a time about the Glassnote contract, making sure Matt’s rights to the poems are ironed out with his publisher. After this, we circle back to discussing our music and the first song we rerecorded tonight, the poem “Heart Crush Spirit Flight,” which is a work of intense exposure, a love story told from the perspective of a man attempting to rescue a wounded jay.
I love the music Gloria has written for the poem, the nimbleness of her guitar and voice as she conveys the damaged want of the defeated lover’s effort. I’ve no intention of bringing Cara into the conversation, though the prescience of the poem is telling, the piece written over a year ago. I wonder what Matt was thinking at the time, but I am careful not to ask as we confer about the tune, only here Matt says suddenly, “Cara doesn’t like the song. Any of them. She doesn’t think much of them in general.” He drinks his gin straight with melted ice, tips his head back, the stretch of his throat laid bare.
As the pretext of creating the songs was to impress Cara, I feel a need to say something, even though I don’t want to. “I’m sorry to hear that.” I say only this. We’ve not spoken of Cara in any real detail while recording, our concentration on the music, though I knew, of course, from what Cara told me, she was not pleased by my working with Matt.
“She thinks it’s all a gimmick,” Matt says. He has no idea why she’s so hostile toward the songs. He uses this word “hostile,” while Gloria rubs his shoulder, soothes him with whispers and pats his thigh. Her physical engagement seems entirely unnecessary, yet natural and not designed to make me jealous. I wish she would stop, I wish she were trying to get a rise out of me as this would mean she still cared, but her interaction with Matt comes across as instinctive and without me in mind. I reply to Matt and say that I’m confident Cara will come around.
“I don’t know.” He shakes his head too hard. “Things are different.”
“An episode is all,” I respond. “All relationships have their hiccups.” I describe Cara’s reaction to the tunes as just a blister burst, which will heal soon enough.
“Don’t know,” Matt says again. He drinks whiskey after the gin. I avoid making the same mistake and go for beer. Gloria offers her thoughts then, taking the conversation in a direction I don’t expect, tells Matt to be mindful of Cara’s mood. “A woman doesn’t create static without
a reason.” She plays this card, presents herself as expert. I shoot her a look, I try and cut her off, but Gloria is determined to fuck with me now, at least that’s what I think as she tells Matt, “If things in your relationship with Cara are changing, you need to accept that these are not arbitrary or indiscriminant alterations and should be treated as part of a natural progression. Change is organic,” she says, clearly mocking me now.
“Jesus,” I say and argue against the advice, insisting that rough passages are part of the process as well and that Matt is untested by this sort of matrimonial stress; his worry is mostly fear in the extreme. “Don’t overthink anything right now,” I say. “You and Cara will be fine.”
Matt looks at me a half-tic too long, and I feel the heat beneath my collar begin to rise. “The truth is,” he says, is that he’s given the situation a good deal of thought. “Things do change,” he tells us. “This is what I need to accept. I’m grateful for my marriage.” He states this in the most departed way.
Gloria squeezes Matt’s hand. Moved by his confiding, she takes his face in her own hands and kisses him on the top of his head. Matt blushes. I watch while he reaches back for Gloria, lets his fingers drift onto her shoulder where they remain. Annoyed now, I remind Matt that he was the one who spoke about the permanence of love and our need to hold tightly, but before I can get too far Matt drinks down the rest of his glass and excuses himself to use the bathroom. Alone with Gloria, I dive right in and bark, “What the fuck?”
Gloria laughs. I tell her I’m serious and she laughs again. I accuse her of purposely giving Matt bad advice, of flirting with him just to mess with me, that it’s all a ruse and what she thinks I have coming, but she denies the charge, tells me to get over myself and repeats what she said the other day, “I like him.”
“It’s okay to like him, but you’re messing with him now.”
“Seriously? You’re telling me this?”
“I’m just saying.”
“What are you saying, McCanus?”
“You’re the one who told me not to fuck with them.”
“Yeah, and did you listen?”
“All the same,” I say, “I don’t think you should lead him on.”
“Is that what I’m doing?”
“It looks to me.”
“Stop looking, then,” Gloria says. “No matter what we’re doing, it’s none of your business.”
“But this is so wrong,” I tell her. “For a hundred reasons it’s wrong.”
Gloria’s drinking wine and is staying away from the liquor. Her head is clearer than mine, she remains composed, doesn’t so much as change her tone as she says, “The only thing that’s wrong is you thinking you have any sort of say. Matt can do what he wants and so can I. It has nothing to do with you and me. This is what you can’t understand.”
I ignore all this and more desperately implore Gloria to, “Stop, please.”
She groans and answers, “There is nothing to stop. I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re not?”
“Nothing I wouldn’t do with anyone I liked.”
“Hell now. Hell,” I toss up my hands and say, “This is Matt, for fuck’s sake. You know where this started. You know where things are now. You know he loves his wife.”
“Do I?”
“Yes.”
“This from the man who’s fucking her.”
“Jesus,” I say again and look back through the studio for Matt.
Gloria pushes the sleeves of her T-shirt up over her shoulders. Her arms are pure sex; every inch of her skin affects me this way now. She tells me I’m being ridiculous. “Matt and I aren’t seeing one another, we’re just collaborating.”
“Very funny.”
“Matt is one of the most rational and sweetest and most creative people I know.” Gloria insists, “All Matt is doing is focusing on his needs.” She says the problem with Cara is my fault, that I alone made things worse by sleeping with her. “Remember?”
“I remember everything,” I reply and move to sit beside Gloria on the couch. I speak of how I remember her in my house, sitting in my chair, playing her guitar, sleeping with me, the warm smell of her, the way I miss her now and how this paper-thin construct we call love is harder for me to doubt these days, and how ironic is that? My knee is against Gloria’s. I mean for my comment to convey a romantic optimism, a sense that none of us know what is in the stars and that there’s always hope, only Gloria has tired of my persistence and says, “I’m not interested, Eric.”
She kisses me unexpectedly, then moves away and says what’s really sad is how I’ve learned nothing from my exploration of open relationships, and says, as Lidia before, that I am not open at all or I would understand things better now. She says my affair with Cara reveals a disturbance in my heart. “I sleep with who I like,” she tells me, “while you fucked Cara for no good reason.”
This invective is administered just as Matt is returning from the bathroom. Hearing his wife’s name, he stops yet catches none of the content. Wobbly on his feet, clearly drunk, he has trouble coming as far as the couch. I get up, take hold of his arm, and suggest calling it a night and ask Matt for his keys.
“Whoa, partner.” Gloria stands now, quickly and ready to challenge my claim, and grabs Matt’s other arm, a wishbone effect as she tugs and whispers into his cheek, “Come on, lover, give me what you got and let me drive you home.”
Chapter Sixteen
Inside the car, Matt slides down in the seat, touches the tip of his nose as if completing a test, and asks, “How much did I drink?” I verify his mixing whiskey and gin, the eschewing of caution, and say with only a hint of lampoon, “Some combinations are more lethal than others.”
Gloria is following behind in her car. I’m driving Matt’s Jeep. I will drop Matt off at his house and then Gloria will drive me back to Colossal for my car. I have Matt with me only because I managed to snatch the keys first. I’m glad Matt is not with Gloria, but find being alone with him is awkward as he starts thanking me for everything I’ve done and then blurts out in a burst of glee, “I’m in love.”
“Of course you are. With Cara.”
“No. I mean yes. I mean no, with Gloria.”
I dismiss the possibility and tell him, “You’re drunk.”
Matt rubs at his eyes and blinks. “Maybe,” he says. “Don’t tell Cara.”
“That you’re drunk? I think she’s going to know.”
“No, that I love Gloria.”
“Stop now.”
“You won’t tell her, will you?”
“Why would I tell her?”
“Because you’re friends.”
“You and I are friends, Matt.”
“Yeah, but you and Cara are friendsier.”
I turn my head from the road to look at Matt, who is trying to push himself more upright on the seat. If he is insinuating anything I can’t tell. I look back at the road just in time to catch a stop sign. Matt has his window down, his right arm stuck out for no apparent reason. I turn left, come up from the market, then east and into Matt’s neighborhood where I try and get Matt talking of things other than Gloria and Cara. My effort is unsuccessful, however, so I turn on the radio and catch the end of Marian Hill singing “Back To Me.” Matt listens for a minute then changes the station.
I find the house and pull into the drive. Gloria parks at the curb. I turn off the ignition and hand Matt the keys. “All right then, you good?” I’m looking to make a quick exit, get Matt moving toward his house so I can scoot to Gloria’s car and speed away. Matt isn’t quite done with me, though; he leans into the space between the two seats and asks plaintively, “What should I do, Eric?”
“Go inside,” I answer, “have a shower, and get in bed with your wife.”
“My wife doesn’t want me.”
“Bullshit. You’re being dramatic,” I say. “Quit feeling sorry for yourself. If you’re going to fix things with Cara you need to man up.”
Matt grunts a
s if my comment has inflicted an actual wound, and, realizing I may be coming at the situation all wrong, I attempt to correct myself, double back, decide perhaps being conciliatory will work better, and go ahead and let Matt know, “I get it. Gloria, right? She’s something, and here you are all vulnerable and depressed by what’s going on with you and Cara. It’s been sudden and will likely blow over in a day or two, but for now you’re missing your center and you feel you don’t deserve this. For twenty years you’ve been devoted, and why should Cara be upset with you? It’s unfair and here comes Gloria turning your poems into songs and she’s beautiful and open and friendly.”
“You make it sound cliché.”
“Life is cliché, Matt.”
“No.” As drunk as he is, Matt maintains a poet’s perspective and replies in turn, “Life may be a story retold a billion times, but that doesn’t make it cliché.” He says this just as the porch light comes on and Cara appears out front.
•
Gloria sees Cara and gets out of her car. Fuck. Before I can do anything, Matt is exiting the Jeep while Gloria begins walking up the drive. “Hello?” Cara calls down. “Matt? Eric, is that you?”
What choice? I step into the driveway and say, “It’s me.”
Gloria walks directly toward Cara, hand out as she says, “Hello, I’m Gloria.” Cara has her own hand above her eyes and is squinting through the dark and the glare of the porch light as Gloria approaches. Matt slides past the hood, following after Gloria, or going up to Cara, I can’t be sure. He’s not yet steady on his feet but better than before. When he gets to the steps, he grips the rail.
Cara says something to Matt, then turns and walks inside. Gloria and Matt follow. If I had a set of car keys I’d take off. As it is I’m tempted to hike home, the distance to my house only a few miles. The night is warm and I start down the drive, but here Cara comes outside again and calls my name.
Liars Page 14
