Unstrung

by Laura Spinella

  Memorizing musical notes is what I do; I have the same ability when it comes to numbers. The sixth floor and room 644 are stuck to my brain like a G clef on a stave. I don’t think; I don’t waver as the elevator floors click by. Then I don’t even knock. I pound. On the second round of fist beating, a woman at the end of the hall pops her head out. I had no idea women still actually wore curlers to bed. There’s a full-on flash of memory of my mother in curlers. “Olivia,” she said from the edge of my bedroom, her hair in torturous rubber knots. “Time must move faster in your room. That’s hardly two hours of practice . . .”

  I blink at the woman staring me down now; surely she has stumbled upon a nasty husband-and-wife rift. She has, just not the correct husband and wife. I narrow my eyes. She retreats, though I suspect she will call the front desk if the disruption continues. The police may arrive. I could be arrested—again. Fuck. In addition to everything else, I suppose I’ve lost my legal counsel.

  Sam opens the door. I’m safe.

  His sleepy face jolts to wide awake. “Liv . . .” The door opens wider and I spill inside, my heels snagging on the carpet, my dress whooshing past him. “I’m guessing Cinderella had a shitty time at the ball.”

  Anger bubbles. I consider taking off one shoe—decidedly not glass—and beating the shit out of him with it. If assigning blame to the taut threads of this moment, a number of strands can be traced back to Sam Nash. I glance from a mirror to him. On the other hand, while Sam is accountable, he’s not the one hanging onto one hell of a secret. I banish all thoughts of Theo. In doing so, I lower the mental shoe. In the meantime, Sam grabs at a bleeding arm. “What the hell happened to you?”

  I bend my arm to look at a nasty scrape. My eyes meet his, and Sam’s fingers come forward. “I tripped coming into the hotel.”

  “You’re sure?” he asks. I nod, assuming the liquor on my breath helps confirm this. He hustles into the bathroom and returns with a hand towel, shoveling in ice cubes from a bucket. I jerk away at first, but my cheek is throbbing. Ice is more rational than any other idea I dove into during in the past two hours. “How drunk are you?”

  “Not enough to forget the past few hours.” I stare. Sam stares back. Unsteady emotion pumps through me. When Sam manned up to old regrets, he brought new what ifs into my already fragile marriage. I stand down. While Sam has fueled the Cinderella bitch moment, he did not cause it.

  “Liv, are you going to tell me why you’ve been drinking like it’s a Friday night at the Pour House? What the hell is going on?”

  “I, um . . .” I look right at him and hiccup. “Can I . . . Could I spend the night here?”

  The smell of coffee wafts into my dry nose. It triggers other signs of life—some more pounding than others. I open an eye, which proves to be a feat. Individual false lashes are tangled with real ones, crusty tears making for a better bond than the glue applied last night.

  Fuck.

  Last night.

  If it weren’t for a steamroller effect, I’d spring up in bed. It’s the appropriate response to my current circumstance. I don’t do it. I need more specific information. Like maybe what, besides sleep, happened here. A cotton T-shirt rubs between me and the hotel sheets. I’m not sure if I’m wearing underwear. A crease of light blinds my periscope view. Cutting through the blackout curtains, Sam’s silhouette glows in a sliver of brightness. He peers into intense sunlight. In his hand is a coffee cup. He’s dressed—jeans and an undershirt. Had I woken to a naked Sam looming over me, I’d have a clearer picture of last night. I roll into the pillow and imagine how I will feel upon confirmation—the cheated on or the cheated with? It could go either way. I remember a thunderous release of words about Rob, then falling into Sam’s waiting arms. Less romantic, I used the bathroom—but whether it was to pee, vomit, or tend to bloody scrapes, who knows? I was always a lousy drunk.

  One thing I do know, I said nothing about Theo. Neither vulnerability nor booze could pry that from my daft mind. Theo is a secret I will take to my grave. It’s the only constant, given the unraveling of recent hours. Sam’s relaxed stature affirms this. Even the world’s most casual man would register flustered if he suddenly learned he had a son. I clear my throat. I don’t possess enough saliva to get my tongue off the roof of my mouth. Sam turns from the window.

  “I was trying to remember how long I used to let you sleep it off.” Sam is the proverbial early riser. It’s as if energy has accumulated in his body overnight and he needs to expend it, starting at the crack of dawn. He used to expend a lot of it on me. Grumbling noises of agreement make their way out—I haven’t been this hung over since New Year’s 2015. I woke up with no memory of that evening either, but I do recall the morning visual: Sasha and Rob in the kitchen, chatting over coffee.

  “Wait,” he says. My cloudy mind drifts to Sam, who’s said something about coffee. “I do remember what comes before talking or coffee.” I sit up and confirm that I am wearing his T-shirt and my underwear. “Or anything else for that matter,” he adds.

  He smiles a Sam smile. Then he disappears into the bathroom. We both know what “anything else” refers to. As spontaneous as sex was . . . is . . . ? My stomach rolls. Either way, I am a stickler for brushing my teeth first. Years ago, it caused more than one playful argument, which always ended with unbelievable, fresh-breath sex. On occasion Sam would compromise. He would follow me into the bathroom, and since I was already bent over the sink, he took full advantage of my position. I’d spit toothpaste, and he . . . Well, the steamy memory seems hotter than the visual at a banged-up forty-six.

  In an adjacent mirror, I get a glimpse of my cheek and lightly float my fingertips over a tender spot. Sam returns holding out a complimentary hotel toothbrush. I throw back the covers. Sam hands off the toothbrush as I pass by. He does not follow.

  Inside the bathroom, I peer into the mirror. A definite bruise and slight black eye, my forearm looks worse. I pee, brush my teeth, and think. On the sink is a bottle of pain reliever. I take three—then a fourth. I consider rummaging through Sam’s medicine bag for something stronger. I recall what I found last time I combed through a man’s travel bag. I stay in the bathroom and seated on the closed toilet lid. I review last night’s balcony confirmation and stumbling into Sam’s room. And after that? What was my response to Rob and Sasha’s affair?

  With my palms planted firmly on my thighs, I let reality sink in. Did I take refuge in my all-too-convenient past and retaliate by having sex with Sam? It seems like a count on it Liv move. Perhaps Rob and Sasha are having coffee right now, debating the odds or just what hotel Sam and I woke up in. I wonder if in a knee-jerk reaction I took pictures last night. Hell, I took a baseball bat to a Porsche. I look up, staring at the bathroom ceiling. It could be that I went as far as to text photos to Rob. Caption: Suggest a collage holiday card . . . Panic erupts. My gaze darts to the mirror. It’s not inconceivable. I can’t remember if I had sex. I could have easily forgotten selfies.

  I fling open the bathroom door and start scouring the room. “My purse . . . My phone. Where are they?” Sam’s returned to the window; light streams in like a beam looking to skewer me. He points to a chair, where the dress lies in a heap. The purse is underneath. I fumble for the phone. Sam watches. My heart slows a bit. Multiple texts and calls from Rob, a few from Sasha, scroll past my line of vision. There are no replies from me.

  “You didn’t make any calls. You didn’t even take your phone out.” I calm and shove the phone back into the purse, retrieving a hair elastic—like maybe this was the purpose of my purse siege. Sam mumbles under his breath. “Not that he doesn’t deserve a few choice words . . .” I grapple for organization, gathering my bedhead into a ponytail. “Liv, I just need to ask you again . . .” He points his coffee cup in my direction. “Swear to me the bruises are the result of you, booze, and clumsiness.”

  I close my eyes. This is the third time Rob has been accused of the one behavior I could never imagine. He is so many things, but never, n
ot in a million years, that. “No . . . It’s exactly what I said. Ungraceful and humiliating as it is, I tripped getting out of the cab.”

  He gives me a long once over. “Not bad. But not near as humiliating as waking up in a brothel in New Orleans, stripped of everything but Mardi Gras beads.”

  I arch my eyebrows. “Oh. That would be . . . rough.”

  “My date ran up five grand on my credit card before I managed to put a stop on it. So if you need to feel better . . .” I nod. “Do you want to talk about last night?”

  “Which part?”

  “You told me a pretty grim tale. Your husband . . . Somebody named Sasha. That’s when you started crying. She’s your friend. You said . . .”

  “That they’re having an affair.” The jackhammer at my temple adds a nice note of assurance—this is all for real. “My very best friend.” My bottom hits the mattress and a rumple of sheets. I try to sort out how what I’ve done compares. “Sam . . .”

  He sits next to me and curls his arm around my shoulder. It’s reminiscent of yesteryear and last night. My gaze catches on a bruise on Sam’s left arm—likely from his workout at Brandeis. Closing my eyes, the tears seep through. Sam’s presses his mouth into my pounding head. I consider asking him to close the room-darkening curtains and climbing back into bed. Sam has always equaled escape—pressure, my parents. He possesses the ability to spirit me away from everything that’s wrong in my life. Now seems like a good time for that superpower to reemerge.

  “What do you want to do, Livy?” I am at a loss for a clear thought. I offer a massive shrug. “How about if I made a crazy, perfectly timed, Sam suggestion?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like one that made us . . . us.” My head dips onto his shoulder, luring comfort closer. “Pack up your things and come back to California with me. I don’t need to take any coaching job here. You’d like Newport Beach. It’s sunny . . . warm. They might even have an orchestra somewhere.”

  I laugh. “A little group. California Symphony Orchestra—world class.”

  “So do that. Grab your fiddle and the parts of your life you want to keep. Do what we should have done all those years ago.”

  I pull away and blink at him. There’s a world of difference between what Sam believes he walked away from and reality. I can’t forget that. Yet I also can’t help toying with the notion. “You make it sound so simple. Pick up where we left off?”

  “I’m not that naïve. All I’m saying is let’s see where it takes us.”

  The thrill of distraction and escape. No promises. No real plan. How very Sam. But his words are tempting, as is the sound of his voice. His superpower lives on. My expression is blank. My mind isn’t. “What? Find out if I’m still the number-one fan of the man from Tennessee?”

  He laughs. “If you don’t like California, we could always try Denver.”

  They are old song lyrics. It’s an even older life. Maybe it was just the please come to Boston part that never stood a chance. “We were always good at running, weren’t we?”

  “We were,” he says.

  I keep playing along. “And by sheer luck, in California or Denver, there’ll be an open symphony chair?”

  “Why not? I’m supposed to be dead, remember? Crazier things have happened.” He looks me over, looking so very much like the past. And then he kisses me. It’s so present and sweet. I meld into it, my fingers gathering knots of soft cotton T-shirt. Sam is on a faster track, his hand slipping beneath the T-shirt I am wearing, his fingers sliding from my breasts to my back, hooking around the edge of my underwear. Does it get any easier than this? Hell, we’re in a hotel room, sitting on a bed. There is no first-time sexual hesitation. It’s more like old-home week. The difference between now and last night is that this time I will remember having sex with Sam. It’s enough to stop me. I push the hand that is between me and my underwear away. Yet I don’t let go. In fact, I hold on tight.

  He whispers in my ear. “Okay, I get it. Sober retaliation is a deep line in the sand. But, Jesus, Liv . . . don’t tell me you don’t want to do it.”

  I ease back from a moment I want badly—the comfort, the idea of nothing mattering but Sam and me. To my surprise, I can’t do it. I stare at a carpet stain. It looks terribly permanent. A lot of things are permanent. Sam has no idea how big those things are. “Want has nothing to do with it. I can’t. Not for a million reasons.”

  “Didn’t sound that way to me last night. It sounded like your husband’s a serious shit and your best friend isn’t much better. Maybe worse. Isn’t there some sort of girl code that says ‘do not touch,’ even if she did date him first?”

  “Was I that specific? And it was one date,” I qualify. “Hardly a blip on the radar.”

  “I suppose. But you did hit more recent Rob highlights.” The way Sam says Rob’s name, it’s as if he’s the intruder in my life. “What’s he into the Wellesley house for?”

  “I told you about the Wellesley house?”

  He sighs. “Damn, you always were a scary, aftermath drunk. Yes. You said he used it as collateral in a business deal. You thought the reason he’s so desperate to save it was because it would make for the easiest settlement.”

  “Oh.” I flutter eyelids at my candidness and detail. “Weren’t you incredibly sober last night, not to mention a good notetaker?”

  “I told you, I’ve tried to put bad habits behind me. Going to bed sober is an improvement. No notes necessary. I always listened to you, Liv.”

  “You did,” I admit. “But why do you want to know the specifics about Rob using the Wellesley house as collateral?”

  “Because you told me what the money is for. While it wouldn’t hurt my feelings to see your mother’s address downgraded, I thought the part . . . What you’ve done for those kids is pretty amazing. It shouldn’t be jeopardized by your husband’s bad business move.”

  I am caught off guard. Aside from the forced acknowledgment to Principal Giroux, I’ve never told anyone—except Rob, of course—about the orchestra funding. “I guess it’s hard to get your mind around. Seriously out of sync with who I am.”

  “I don’t think so.” I paste a squirrelly-eyed glance on him. “You never could see it. You could never look at yourself in any other way than what your parents saw. Do you really think that’s the girl I fell in love with?” I inch back. He tucks a runaway piece of ponytail behind my ear. “The woman who would give away her family home for a greater good. That’s the girl I fell for.”

  “Sam,” I say softly, capturing his hand in mine. “Even so, it’s just as much Rob’s endow—”

  “It’s your house, Liv. Your money.” Our hands part and he rubs his over denim covered thighs. My eye catches on the bruise again, or is it a different one? Before I can ask about it, he presses the subject. “So tell me, what’s old Rob into the house for?

  I laugh. “All of it. He owes close to three million. He can probably scrape the balance together, but the house is major collateral. It’s worth . . . I don’t know, about two and a quarter million.”

  A frown overtakes Sam’s bearded face. I still can’t get used to it. I’m not sure I recall kissing it last night. Kissing him in the parking garage is far more vivid. “Okay,” he says, nodding. “So we’ll fix that part first.” He gets up from the bed and reaches into what looks like a gym bag, producing a checkbook.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Cleaning up after your husband—saving your house. I’ll just make the check out to you, and you can give it to him. In return, his name comes off the Wellesley house deed.” He glances at me. “Get someone other than the lawyer girlfriend to handle the legalities.”

  “Wait. What?” I stand and shuffle toward Sam. I see that he has written out a check to Olivia Klein for 2.5 million dollars. “Sam, you can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  Old sarcasm slips out. “Even if I was the world’s best hooker, that’s a ridiculous price tag.”

  “Don’t say thi
ngs like that, Liv. That’s not why I wrote it.”

  “Then why?”

  His face is awash with serenity, born out of age, maybe a life-threatening experience. It wasn’t there twenty-six years ago. “Because it feels like the right thing to do.”

  “Sam. You can’t.” I glance at a check that looks a lot like a pot of gold. “You can’t write a check for over two million dollars like it’s a fifty-dollar donation.”

  “Trust me. Without being what your mother might call vulgar, I can afford it.”

  “Yes, but you can’t go around handing out that kind of money to old girlfriends . . . ex-wives,” I correct. In truth, ex-girlfriend is my memory. The marriage shattered so easily. Being Rob’s ex-wife will surely be a more vibrant image.

  “You forget. I excel at doing whatever the hell I want. Take it.” He holds out the check. Our eyes meet in some way that both negates and embraces nostalgia. Here is where I should offer something tremendous in exchange: “In gratitude for your generosity, Sam, I have something stunning to share . . .” But telling him about Theo this way seems stilted, badly timed at best. “Sam.” He holds the check steady. “I can’t take your money. I can’t go to California with you.”

  “Why not?” And for all his personal growth, innocence invades. We lived fine on Why not? . . . until we didn’t.

  “Because my life doesn’t fit in a backpack anymore. I can’t up and run away from this—not like I did from my parents.”

  He narrows his eyes. “You ran from your parents because you didn’t want to be with them or near them. I know a shitty family life when I see one, Liv. It doesn’t matter if the scars aren’t physically visible or what the address implies.”