Perfect Pitch

by Amy Lapwing

  She sat up. “This is your room,” she said. “I want it to be our room.”

  “Tell me what to do.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you'll think of something," he said, sitting up. "When?”

  “Soon. You better go check the pot.”

  “¡Ay!” He jumped up and scuttled out and down to the kitchen.

  She called her parents when she got home, ostensibly to chat, but in fact to wish her father well on the eve of his dreaded chemo treatment. At the end of the conversation, she told them that she and Michael were back together and she began to tremble. Her mother asked her if she was happy. Her father went to sleep gladdened, in spite of the morrow’s promised ordeal: his daughter was happy in love and he had lived to see it. I might not live to see any others, but it's OK. Has to be. The digital clock by his head showed “1:57” the last time he looked before falling asleep.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Exploding Bullet

  On Monday Justina and Pascale went to lunch at the usual time, with the usual suspects, minus James, who had not come the previous week either. Charles and Michael came in while they were still in line. Justina left her place next to Pascale and went to stand with Michael, who took her hand and drew her close to say hello to her, their heads almost touching. Pascale elbowed Richelieu and got him to look at them; he smiled, for them and for the witticism that popped into his head, and he muttered, “I guess that’s it for Gallic burgers and fries,” and ordered his sandwich. Michael and Justina sat side-by-side for the first time ever in the lunchroom, allowing him the delight of pressing his thigh against hers, and squeezing her knee under the table when she said something funny. After lunch they walked arm-in-arm out into the gray day with the others. When they came to the bright green common and the parting of their ways, Justina felt dread at the expectation of his goodbye kiss. The thought of it brought back her James shame. But Michael did not kiss her; he simply let go of her waist and squeezed her hand and whispered, “‘Bye,” his eyes sending the kiss. It suddenly occurred to her that he was embarrassed at how public their love affair had become, at least among their friends and colleagues. From this point on, it would be private, she realized.

  In her office that afternoon Justina was look through a mail-order catalog at the linens pages when Pascale stopped by. She came in and stood before her like a mother chastising her wayward teenage daughter, her hands on her round hips, and demanded a complete explanation.

  “We kissed and made up,” Justina said, turning the page.

  “How? How’d you get to the kissing?” insisted Pascale, sitting down.

  “I don’t know.” Pascale was not satisfied. “It just seemed too completely stupid to go on the way we were. Or weren’t.”

  Pascale wanted to know time and place. Justina told her they met by chance at church the previous day.

  “I didn’t know you went to church,” said Pascale.

  “I don’t. I just did. I wanted, you know, to try to say a prayer for my father.”

  “What was he doing there?”

  “The same thing.”

  “He went to pray for your father?”

  “Mm-hm.”

  Pascale flopped her palms onto her thighs, marveling at the coincidence. Suddenly she crossed herself. “You were blessed, Justina.”

  Justina wondered at this, wondering if that was what she had felt while in the church, a feeling of blessedness. She looked at the catalog on her lap; the periwinkle floral sheets were pretty; would they go with the bedspread? Purple and green could be pretty, sometimes. She felt Pascale looking at her.

  “And then, piff! You were back together?” She wanted to know every word that was said, but Justina did not seem very forthcoming today.

  “Pretty much. Once he tore himself away from her.”

  “Who?”

  “Her.”

  “Oh.” Pascale’s eyes opened wide with remembering the vivacious Helena. “Oh! She was there, too?”

  “She was the one who told him about the church.”

  Pascale pondered this item of information, the tips of her sculpted arrow eyebrows almost touching. “She led him to you. Do you see, Justina? Helena brought Michael back to you.”

  Justina kept a finger on the page and flipped to another in the same catalog. A yellow and white floral print, very cheerful. Same price. “She just told him about the church.”

  “And she took him there. And there you were. And she left you two together, right?”

  “I left them together. Then he left her.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Pascale breathlessly, certain of finding the hand of God in this. “Maybe she left him and then he came to you.”

  Justina remembered seeing Helena getting into her car just before Michael came up behind her. “Why shouldn’t he just leave her?” She was beginning to wonder whether there had in fact been anything with Helena for Michael to leave.

  “Because she was there to clear the way for him. She did it, she left, for his sake. And yours.”

  Justina could not understand why Helena would do anything for her. She put the catalog on her desk, open to the periwinkle page, and stuck a pen in the other page.

  “God was there, at that church, for you, Justina. And for Michael. It couldn’t be more clear.” She tsked at Justina’s doubt. “You skeptics are all alike. Don’t know a good thing when you see it. Have to have proof, like it’s a math or something. Lighten up! You’re in love, for Christ’s sake!”

  Justina giggled. She showed the catalog to Pascale. “What do you think, these—” she showed her the periwinkle sheets— “or these?” She flipped to the yellow ones. Pascale pointed to the first choice. “Yeah, me too,” said Justina.

  “They for you?” asked Pascale.

  “Partly.” She tried to hide her smile in her neck, but an embarrassed grin slid out.

  Pascale stood up and tugged at her dress to free it from between her buttocks. “I don’t know, Justina.” She shook her head with misgiving. “Today it’s sheets, next thing you know it’s crystal. And china. And silver.”

  “Ta gueule, Pascale,” she said, pulling her lips into an unconvincing smirk, and she flipped to the ordering information page.

  It was not possible to keep from seeing James around, in the halls of Modern Languages or on campus. He avoided looking at her when they spotted each other. Although she had already said goodbye to him, things did not feel resolved. She was not sure if it was because she wanted to know he forgave her, or whether there was something she owed him. After lunch on Wednesday she spotted James on his way into the library as she and Michael were coming out together. James did not acknowledge her, though he walked right by her and she shyly said, “Hi,” to him. Michael acted as though he had not noticed the quondam rival. Her relation with her old T.A. was the one awkward construction in the improved revision of her emotional life. She wanted advice; she thought of Pascale, but she dreaded serving up the details of her shameful act with James. Michael already knew the gist of her ignominy, but could she expect him to be charitable toward the other man? And it was charity she needed to show him, she figured, but without condescension.

  “What do I do about James?” she asked Michael apropos of nothing as they were walking out of the fac under her umbrella on Thursday.

  Nothing at all! his mind harumphed; but then he saw that she was serious and contrite. He breathed in deeply and out slowly. His grip on the umbrella tightened and slackened; his hand on her waist absent-mindedly kneaded her flesh.

  “I feel like there’s something I’m supposed to do, like I’ve neglected, something.” She looked at Michael to see if he was receptive to this subject. He appeared to be thinking, in spite of his tensing up. “He won’t speak to me. Not that he should, but he seems mad at me. Is there something I should be doing, so he’ll stop being mad at me?”

  Like, sleeping with him? All right, she’s serious. He did not want her going near the other man. She was
with him now, she was sweet to him, she had been so everyday since their reunion. But she was so unpredictable. He did not really believe an affair with James tempted her, but he simply did not want any of her attention on another man. He wanted all of it; he felt he deserved it, he felt like they were on their honeymoon, she should not be thinking of any other man, certainly not a former ersatz lover.

  “You don’t want to talk about this, do you?” she said, disappointed.

  They had arrived at the common, their usual parting point. They stood side-by-side, he looked out over the soaked grass; she looked at him, then followed his unfocused gaze. The wet day made him feel threatened; he was cold, he wanted to get in out of the rain. They went into the Student Union, past the mailboxes around which a swarm of students fretted, whipping open the little doors and slapping them shut, and went up the stairs to a sitting area before a great window overlooking the buildings of the original campus. They sat on one of the vinyl upholstered sofas the color of dirty knees and he put the dripping umbrella on the floor by his soggy feet. He did not know what to tell her, he did not want to empathize with James.

  “Justina, I will try to help you, because you ask me and always I want to try to help you,” he prefaced. “But I’m a human being, and I have many flaws, so really you should take it into account when you think about what I will say.”

  She was grateful for his honesty, and surprised by his seriousness.

  “You should know,” he began, trying to organize his thoughts to take the poison of jealousy out of them, “that I was jealous of James since the first time I see him and he is trying to hold your hand in the language lab, you remember? Last year? But then you were so good to me, the way you put him in his place, and so I tried to think well of him. But really I never did. I never liked him. And then I come back here and he is— he acts like your lover, and I hated him. Really, I hated him. And now I resent him because you worry about him.” He paused, uncertain if he should have been so frank with her.

  “I know,” she said. “It’s my fault, I’m sorry.”

  A Concert Chorus student walked by and said “Hi, Mister C!” He flicked his head toward the sound and frowned an acknowledgement before turning back to Justina.

  “No, it’s not your fault,” he responded, trying to remember what he was going to say. “I’m a jealous man. It’s my fault. I try not to behave badly because of it, but I cannot stop the feeling, I will always be jealous. It’s something all my life I must deal with in myself. Never blame yourself for my jealousy, Justina. You must work with men, I know that. I will deal with it.” He stopped and tried to smile at her, to let her know she must not worry, he had his fault under control.

  “It’s okay, Michael. I get jealous too.”

  A young woman with long almost white hair and a red face puffy from over-exposure in a tanning booth, sat in one of the matching chairs near them and read from a textbook. Michael lowered his voice. “You have no reason to be jealous of Helena. I was never in love with her and she was never in love with me. I’m sure of it. I think we like each other—” He looked for her reaction, she seemed disappointed. “But I like Pascale too and you’re not jealous of her, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Same thing, then. I just happen to kiss her once. Helena, I mean.”

  Justina frowned; she wished he had not told her that.

  “Isn’t there somebody,” he asked, “you know now, still, and before you had a little bit of romance with him?”

  “Robin.”

  “Who?” His eyes were wide with a new reason to control his jealousy.

  “Kim’s brother. It was a long time ago, I think I was sixteen. We tried being boyfriend and girlfriend that summer.” She glanced at him, he kept his eyes on her and waited for her to explain what that meant, exactly. “We kissed, was all. Then school started and we just sort of fizzled.”

  “And still you see him?”

  “Sure, when I go home.”

  “All right,” he said, shaking his head as though to toss his marbles back into their grid. “I’ll try not to be jealous of him, and you try not to be jealous of Helena. Okay?”

  “Okay. Let’s not talk about everybody our glands ever got worked up over. Just, I need to figure out what I should do about this guy who said he loved me when I didn’t care about him and I let him think I did and I saw him—” She was going to say ‘naked.’ “I saw him in a way I shouldn’t have, that embarrassed him, and now he’s mad at me. What do I owe him? Because I see him all the time and I might have to be his teacher sometime, which is unimaginable, totally, what a bizarre concept, but it’s possible.”

  Michael turned his hands out, ready to catch a ball, then flopped them on his thighs. “I don’t know.” They sat and thought, the arrested rain making a pattern against the glass like water in a car wash. “Naturally he’s disappointed,” continued Michael. “Maybe he thinks you can change your mind, then he sees us together and it hurts him still more.”

  “You think he thinks I used him to make us get back together?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Justina, you can’t simply fix it, for him. Maybe he will hate you for a long time. It’s too bad, but people mistreat each other. All you can do is you apologize and try not to mistreat them again.”

  “I have apologized. Should I apologize again?”

  He shook his head. “Just, be good to him, not in a personal way, just, in his work.” She did not know what he meant. “You know, if he does good work, tell people, tell people who can make a difference. That’s your true relationship to him, as a teacher. He’s your student, so you encourage his work whenever you can. That will help him to change how he sees you. He needs to stop thinking of you as a person he wanted to be with and return to seeing you as a teacher again.”

  She said she would try and they walked back down the stairs, his feet sloshing in his squeaking shoes.

  She put up her umbrella when they came out of the building. “That was good advice, Mister C. Can I call you Mister C?”

  They stood in the middle of the walk, looking off in different directions at the mist-dimmed façades and the figures moving by them. “No. I am not your teacher,” he said sternly. “I’m the man who loves you.”

  “You are very generous to me.”

  “I am very crazy for you.”

  “No, no, I’m the crazy one. You’re the patient one.”

  “Ah!” he laughed. “Now you’re the generous one.”

  They cooed more compliments to each other as the rain came playfully down, not threatening anymore, just being a pain in the ass for the fun of it. “Oh! Well, thank you,” he said. “‘Graceful!’ I’m flattered. Never has nobody called me that before.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “You know, I think you are looking very good, these days,” he murmured, inclining his head toward her, not touching her.

  “Thank you.”

  “Yes, I said to myself when first I saw you this semester, ‘She is looking so good.’”

  “That’s funny, I was thinking the same thing about you.”

  “Me? That’s an interesting coincidence, isn’t it?”

  “Extremely.” She wished they were somewhere else, in the library stacks, or in her office behind the closed door, anywhere but here in front of the Student Union in the rain.

  “You know,” he said with exaggerated earnestness, “I have always found you to be an interesting person to talk with.”

  “You have?”

  “Yes. I would like to meet with you somewhere that we could talk some more. For as long as we like, I am thinking. To explore certain subjects of our common interest. To explore in depth.”

  She was suddenly aware of her belly, or perhaps something beneath her belly. Oh yes, well beneath. “Somewhere?” she said with smile-tightened lips.

  “Somewhere less, you know—”

  “Mm-hm, somewhere more—?”

  “Right,” he said, bringing his head closer to hers. �
�How about my place?”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow night?”

  “Okay.”

  “Shall I come to get you?”

  “I’ll come over after school. Six thirty?”

  “Okay.” He drew back from his intimate posture and saw her shivering. “You’re cold, I’ll let you go.”

  They said ‘bye to each other and he trotted off to his building while she walked with her umbrella back to her office. She could not wait for tomorrow night. He was flawed, but not in a way that harmed her, she thought; and he was patient toward her in her troublesomeness, and now he was incredibly sexy, again. She did not know how she would make it through her afternoon classes and all of tomorrow’s classes without seeming like a nincompoop, trying to keep her mind on the work of the moment, powerless to keep it from reverting to images from the first time they had been to bed, but she would handle it, she hoped. Lighten up, she told herself, you’re in love!

  On Friday afternoon, Michael found a package addressed to him on the table in the Music Department mailroom. It was from a place he never heard of. It occurred to him he should not open it and just return it. But it was the wrong size and weight to be books, and “Interi-Yours, Inc.” did not sound like a publisher. He took the parcel back to his office and opened it. He ran a hand through his hair when he saw it was a set of sheets. He rested his hands on his hips and chuckled out loud.

  “Excuse me,” said a voice behind him.

  Michael turned, the smile still broad on his face. The music teacher from the junior high stood just outside his doorway. What’s his name? Nordstrom. First name?

  The man stepped forward. “Perry Nordstrom.” He extended his hand. “From the junior high?”

  Michael shook his hand. “Hi, Perry! How are you?”

  “I’m fine. Hey, I know you’re busy.”

  “No, I’m free. Sit down.” Michael indicated a chair. “What can I do for you?”

  Perry apologized for not calling first, and Michael assured him he was free until four-thirty. Perry told him about their upcoming fall concert and asked him if he could attend.