Three Part Harmony

by Holley Trent

  “And by lurch, you mean what?”

  “I walked out of the strategizing session for the next album. We’d completed the agreed-upon number of records for the label and fulfilled all our touring obligations. I was prepared to go forward with them, but...” He shrugged and carried his plate to the sofa.

  Everley, leaning against the dresser and staring down at seemingly nothing in particular, looked pensive.

  He didn’t really expect her to understand. Most of the time, he didn’t even understand. He didn’t generally tell people so much, though. Information was too powerful a thing. He’d just had to tell someone—anyone—come what may, and she’d been nice.

  “Lots of musicians move on after their big bands split,” Everley said. “Why was yours an exception?”

  “Honestly, we weren’t really a band. They were freelancers brought in to support me because the label wouldn’t sign me on my own. They thought I was too erratic.”

  “Erratic?” Her brow creased.

  He wasn’t surprised. People always did that when he used words like erratic and unpredictable or impulsive. They brushed aside their concerns at first, because rock stars were supposed to be those ways.

  But not like Bruce was, they quickly decided. Everley probably would, too.

  He hoped she didn’t, though. She’d rescued him, after all. If he couldn’t rely on his savior, who could he trust?

  “Unpredictable. They thought I needed a buffer so they gathered up some studio musicians and turned us into a band.”

  Bruce wasn’t hostile about that part. The part he was hostile about was how they Columbused his music—his sound. They’d packaged it as a group effort, but it wasn’t.

  “Other thing is that I own the catalog because I wrote the music and lyrics. The label just...chopped my stuff down into digestible bits, is all. My nan fought for that. Said she didn’t want me to be strung up high and dry like other artists had been. Said I needed to hold on to what belonged to me from the very start.”

  After a few more seconds of that pensive staring, Everley’s brow smoothed and she nodded. “I think I like your nan.”

  “Yeah?”

  She looked up at him and performed another of those earnest nods. “Really. Sounds like she was trying to set you up for success, even if no one else expected you to have it.”

  “That, she did.”

  “It’s different for me. No one really cares if I succeed or fail. It doesn’t make a difference.”

  “Of course it makes a difference.”

  She tilted her head toward the door. “Not to them, it doesn’t.”

  He didn’t want to believe her, but she’d said it, which meant she’d probably felt it.

  He was angry for her, if she couldn’t be. She didn’t seem to be, anyway. She seemed resigned. He hadn’t known her for long, but he thought a woman as kind as she’d been deserved better than resignation.

  Make her laugh again, maybe?

  He wasn’t sure how to do that, but she’d found his storytelling amusing before. He could try that again.

  “Hey. My nan did a lot of my thinking for me when I was busy thinking of stupid shit, like whether or not adding an ocarina to a score would give an earthier sound than a flute. I still have that ocarina, by the way. It’s on my nightstand.”

  Everley smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

  “Bothers you, doesn’t it? Why don’t you just say so?”

  “I’m fine. It’s not them.” She gestured toward the door and scoffed. “Not exactly. I was just thinking that I wish I could have had someone advocating for me like your nan did for you. I wouldn’t be in this place right now.”

  Which meant that they might never have met, and Bruce didn’t like that idea, either. Now that he’d met her, he wanted to see how long she stayed in his orbit. He didn’t feel so clumsy with her.

  “She didn’t see where she had a choice,” he said. “She was a very proud grandmother. She wanted me to be happy.”

  “Sometimes, I don’t think anyone on this planet wants me to be happy.”

  “Oh, that’s bullshit. I want you to be happy.”

  She looked up then with an adorably crinkled nose and upturned lips. “You don’t even know me. You might change your mind once you do.”

  “I doubt it. Also, I was just thinking the same thing.” He patted the seat on the sofa beside him. “Come tell me all about you. I’m comfortable around you. I promise not to go hunting for useless trivia while you speak.”

  “Hard to do while eating.”

  “You have me there.”

  She watched him watch her for a few moments, and he wondered what she was thinking when she looked at him like that. Usually, he assumed people were pondering some flaw in him, but she’d been kind. There was always a risk that she was very good at pretending, but Bruce was so weary of cruelness that even if she were pretending, he’d accept it. After the comedy of errors that had been Raleigh’s parting from him, Bruce was going to play it straight. No obfuscation. No lies. He was what he was, and she could take it or leave it.

  He wondered if Raleigh had been in that confab downstairs. Bruce hadn’t wanted to look for him in the crowd, even if reflexes were pushing him to do so. He hadn’t wanted to look at him and know that he’d thought Bruce was despicable.

  After Raleigh had left, Bruce had wondered if he was, and if what he’d done had really been so wrong.

  Everley sat beside him, curled her legs beneath her, and set the plate on her lap.

  “You’re going to stain all that pristine white.”

  “I know. I should change, but I’ll be careful.”

  “I don’t worry so much about stains. People expect me to be disheveled.”

  “Do you always do what people expect?”

  “No. Sometimes I actually do what they want.”

  Judging by the slow dawning of understanding on her face, she’d needed a few seconds to process that. “I see.” She played with her food, mixing together bits of this and that without actually eating it. “You want to know about me, but I don’t know what to tell you. Nothing seems interesting enough.”

  “Beginnings are always interesting. Start there.”

  “Okay.” She nodded slowly and finally shoveled some rice into her mouth. “But you have to do the same.”

  He snorted. “I have few secrets. Most of my life is laid bare for me on the Internet.”

  She grinned. “Humor me. That way I won’t feel like I’m monopolizing the conversation.”

  “We have a deal.”

  “I was born on Long Island.”

  “London.”

  “My father went into his father and father’s father’s business.”

  “Same.”

  “My mother is a career socialite.”

  “Mine works in commerce. That’s how she met my father.”

  “Are they still together?” Everley asked, breaking the call-and-response rhythm.

  Darn.

  He’d just gotten comfortable with it. Every so often, predictable things made him happy.

  He crossed his legs in the opposite direction and turned to face her more. He liked having her so tidily in his field of vision, because she was a vision. Her staff photo hadn’t done her much justice, either. Unlike in Raleigh’s, she was actually aware of the camera, but she hadn’t really smiled. She’d done one of those corporate glares Bruce saw so often on people who had respectable jobs.

  Maybe they were all miserable.

  “Yes, they’re still together,” he said. “They share a massive house with my siblings. They get on like wildfire, the four of them.”

  At six, when Bruce had learned that his mother would be having another child, he’d asked his nan if they were going to live in Scotland, too. All Nan had said was, “We’ll see.”
/>   In the end, his parents had been perfectly content to raise Frances, and later Arnold, themselves.

  Nan hadn’t explained, but Bruce had figured it out eventually. He wasn’t like them, and they didn’t know how to make him be that way.

  Everley did that stare at him again, lips parted as though she had words to share, but didn’t let them slip.

  Maybe he’d said too much or not enough.

  Typical.

  He speared a tender wedge of zucchini with his fork. “You’ll have to tell me what you want to hear,” he told her. “I alternately say too little or too much, and rarely settle into the in-between. I was rather poorly socialized as a child. Just me and Nan and all the other widows in rural Scotland, but she did the best she could.”

  “I’m sorry. If I’m slow to respond, it’s because I can’t tell if you want my pity or even if you think you deserve any.”

  “Deserve is a funny word, isn’t it? Who gets to decide that? Who sets the bars?”

  “I don’t know, Bruce,” she said softly.

  He shrugged. “You can pity me if you’d like. I don’t know if pity makes a difference in anything, but at least it’s honest, hmm?”

  “Who made the choice?”

  “Which?”

  “You with your grandmother. I think I have a very vague recollection of someone asking you about growing up in Scotland in an interview, but you didn’t manage to say much.”

  “Yes. I have a tendency to go off track when I’m being questioned. I get nervous and I ramble and I lose my grasp on what the fucking question was in the first place, and so I figure at that point, I may as well keep prattling on until I get back around and hit the right notes. The band had an agreement, I suppose. Kept me from saying too much so I didn’t embarrass us all.” He gave her a sidelong look. “Poor working memory, is what it’s called. I like to think I’ve figured out strategies for that, but old habits die hard when I’m with those guys.”

  “I’m sorry they’re assholes.”

  He shrugged again. “And the choice was my parents’. By the time I turned two, they’d decided I wasn’t the sort of child they could get away from long enough.”

  Her brows shot up and her body went rigid in the way of people who suddenly realized they left home without taking the kettle off the burner.

  “Ah.” He brushed off her concern. “You know how it goes. Drop off at nursery in the morning and pick up later in the day. They couldn’t manage me well enough in the hours I was awake. I was everywhere at once. Prone to histrionics, they said. Etcetera, etcetera.”

  “You were two.”

  “I suppose even then, my personality had asserted itself thoroughly. Sending me to my nan spared them the stigma of actually having to get me diagnosed for things.”

  She made that appalled face again. She couldn’t possibly jerk herself any more upright, however.

  “I try not to judge. They were concerned about how people would perceive them for their failure to produce a proper little poppet, and I suppose they simply didn’t have time to be bothered. Their careers were, and are, very demanding. They do love me, I imagine. You’re giving me a strange look. Why?”

  Everley gave her head one of those clearing shakes and muttered something under her breath.

  “Say it aloud. I don’t mind.” Whatever she had in her mind to say, he’d bet that he’d heard worse things before.

  “Unfortunately, I’m too polite, and I’ve always been told I’m not allowed to judge people’s parenting decisions until I become a parent myself,” she said.

  “Do you judge your parents?”

  “Absolutely.”

  He grinned. “So, that’s an exception?”

  “Seeing as how I’m the one they parented, I think special dispensation is called for.”

  “I give you special dispensation to judge mine. Go on. I’m curious.”

  “No. If I say what’s really on my mind, you’ll get upset with me, and I think we’re too early in our friendship for hard truths.”

  “Is that what this is? A friendship?”

  He didn’t have friends. Not really, except for the old ladies in Scotland, what few of them were left. He didn’t like to think about what he’d do when they were all gone.

  “I—” She closed her mouth on the retort, but he wasn’t going to let her get away with that.

  “Say it.” He needed someone to be honest with him, and he’d thought she would give him that. “Please.”

  “I’ll...be your friend, Bruce, if you want.” She groaned and tipped her head back on the sofa. “That sounds so pitiful. What is this, fifth grade?”

  “I don’t recall fifth grade being so interesting, and there was definitely a shortage of pretty girls about me then.” He furrowed his brow. “Hold on. Is that something that’s done? Am I allowed to tell friends they’re pretty, or does that cross a line?”

  “There are different kinds of friendships.”

  “Fascinating. What kind shall we have?”

  She snickered and set her attention back on her food.

  He was happy that she was loosening up again and that her features had relaxed to their normal state of prettiness.

  “We’ll figure things out as we go along, hmm?”

  “Fine with me.”

  Bruce enjoyed being in someone’s company, for a change, without having any expectations of performance. He didn’t feel obligated to interact or entertain.

  Or to impress, like he had with Raleigh. He didn’t know what the difference was, but when Raleigh had sat down beside him at that concert, Bruce’s brain had immediately churned into overdrive. It was as though a loud siren had gone off in his head calling him up for a battle and he hadn’t been able to sit still or keep his mouth shut.

  It was different with Everley. She didn’t unintentionally stoke his excitement and leave him reeling. With her, he could turn it on at will and control the intensity.

  Maybe her energy was just quieter. Easier to digest.

  She took his plate from him when he’d finished and put everything away. Food cartons were tucked into the tiny refrigerator. Trash set outside the room door so as not to befoul the air.

  Everley stood in front of the wide window, hands clasped at her back, and watched the night.

  He remained quiet, and stared. He had no way of knowing for how long. Sometimes he lost track of time, but usually when he was in the process of creating. Right then, he wasn’t creating anything but simply admiring what had already been made.

  “Can I tell you something?” she asked softly. “Something honest?”

  “About my parents? You refused me that.”

  She shook her head. “Still not going there. I meant about your writing.”

  “Oh, well, fuck.” Shame was barking at the back of his head, but he wasn’t going to throw it any scraps. He breathed. “Why don’t you...tell me about my writing, goddess.”

  “You’re not going to want to call me that for long,” she said with a solemn smile, “but...listen. I think you should stick to songs.”

  He waited for those shame-dogs to jump the fence in his brain and attack his calm, but they were confused. He hadn’t been expecting her to say that. His thoughts refused to congeal on the matter, but his stomach weighed in. As though it’d been twisted into a ropy knot, it ached.

  That meant that he’d cared. He’d known that, of course. No one spent so much time on a piece of art and then decided not to care once people had seen it.

  “Would it make a difference if I changed my name on it?” he asked wretchedly.

  She didn’t respond, but she didn’t have to. Silence said a lot, sometimes.

  “No one cares about the songs,” he said. “I say the same thing in some of them but no one notices. I thought if I wrote a story, people would get it.”

&
nbsp; “I noticed,” she said. “If you were to print out every song and put a cover on them, no one would be able to guess they weren’t poetry. But the moment you put a full drum kit and a bass guitar beneath them, the lyrics lose their significance for so many. They don’t matter as much as the sound.”

  “I’ve got bigger things to say. How am I supposed to say them?”

  “If it were only up to me, I’d have you go back to your music. Just you. No band. Just one voice. Or write musicals.” She turned to him, brows lifted in interest. “You could turn that book you wrote into something else. Go back to the music. You understand it. You have instincts for it.”

  “Because no one tried to teach it to me. I figured out what I needed to. I can’t get back out there, though, on my own. Remember, when I tried, they wouldn’t let me do it without a group.”

  “So you do it without a label if you have to. You have enough money that you could set it on fire, if you wanted to. Create your own spheres.”

  “I don’t know how to do that.” In fact, the idea seemed too wide and bottomless for him. He didn’t know how to even begin to illuminate it.

  “I’ll help you figure it out, if you want, but it might take some time. Is there a rush?”

  He’d opened his mouth to say yes, because there was always a rush to get art out, but he realized that it wasn’t art if it was rushed. It was just a product—something he’d packaged to satisfy other people. At some point, he’d stopped satisfying himself and hadn’t even realized it. “There isn’t, but I might need reminding.”

  “I’ll remind you.”

  “Why are you so nice to me?” he asked, genuinely perplexed.

  “Doesn’t cost me anything.”

  Raleigh hadn’t been so kind in the end, but that was completely Bruce’s fault. Raleigh had thought there was a cost for Bruce being in his company, but they’d gotten wires crossed. He’d mangled things. If he’d had it all to do over, he would have said from the start that he recognized Raleigh from the publisher. Maybe he would have still gone home with him. Maybe not.