No names, p.20
No Names, page 20
As Daniel echoes her (minus the trill), I’m already cutting into the meat. The first bloody hunk I shove into my mouth tastes better than anything I’ve ever known, even better than the surf ‘n’ turf with Pete in Niagara Falls. Only after devouring half the plate do I look up and catch Daniel observing me, like he’s somehow pleased. By what? My hunger? The two of them talk and laugh, picking at their food, while I keep going at mine, definitely not like a human being.
When we’re done with dinner, Gwen invites us up to her suite. But the guys. I want to give them the news. And I want to make things right with Pete. Maybe he’s wondering why I’m not doing that right now? Maybe he’s even worried about where I might be? Gwen and Daniel stand up to leave. I hesitate. I’m about to say I’ve got to get going when Gwen touches me on the cheek and says in a sweet voice, “Come on, we’ll celebrate!” I offer half a smile, get up, and we head out.
I’m all nerves on the elevator, though a second bottle of wine has taken a bit of the edge off.
We enter the suite. It reminds me of someplace you see on the news when the President travels overseas and meets another president or a king or a dictator. Crystal chandeliers turned low make everything golden. She motions for Daniel and me to sit on a sofa covered in satin or silk—something like that—while she puts a reel-to-reel on a tape player I guess she must have brought from London. It’s piano music, classical. The sound’s almost as good as live, bouncing off all the marble and plasterwork but softened by oriental carpets and tapestries. The piece is beautiful, but beautiful is way too weak a word for what it is. Gwen sits down across the dark, glowing coffee table from us, on a kind of mini throne.
“So, what do you think?” she asks Daniel.
He answers blandly, “It’s fine.”
As it turns out, it’s him playing. She’s brought the tracks he recorded last month in London, sonatas by Haydn. This time hearing him play I don’t get agitated like I did at his house. I’m kind of what? Elated? Daniel is telling Gwen he would like another go at this passage or that passage, and she’s giving him super technical advice, but I’m not really listening to them. I’m lost, totally lost, in the intricate patterns of sound filling the rooms. At some point I don’t know if I’m asleep or awake or in some other state that’s neither.
It feels days later when I open my eyes. I freak out a little to find Daniel asleep beside me on the sofa, or more like half under me, my head resting on his hip, and I freak out even more to find Gwen asleep with her head resting on my hip. The suite is no longer golden but bathed in the same diffuse silver light as the room above the bar was after making porn. It’s like being in a black-and-white photo.
In the next moment Gwen wakes up, like she’s sensed my eyes moving or a change in my breathing. I look down at her. Her eyelids flutter slowly as she reaches a hand up to rest on my belly, bare because my T-shirt hiked up while I slept. I take hold of her hand kind of romantic-like, but more so she doesn’t brush the morning wood poking above the waist of my jeans. Next thing I know, she’s rising from the sofa with this incredible grace, still holding my hand, pulling me along with her. We move through the room kind of like this Roman statue that Pete loves. It’s of a girl leading a guy somewhere, or maybe—I forget—they’re fleeing from something or someone or someplace. We whirl and tumble onto a canopied bed in the adjoining room. To an onlooker, we’d appear tiny and lost in this cave within the canyon of the suite. She’s kissing me, though not desperate like some girls I’ve been with, or mushy and weak like others. She kisses in a definite way, like maybe it’s part of a performance she’s choreographing. She then does what seems impossible: she strips both of us at the same time, like it’s something she’s rehearsed. It all does feel a little staged, but that doesn’t matter, I’m into it. I have grown to like her, though I am still a little afraid of her, of how perceptive she is, of how she just seems to know.
My jeans are down around my ankles, and I rise above her pale body. She looks less skinny naked than with clothes on. More voluptuous. I like that. We kiss and touch each other all over for a long time. And then, with her slim hand, she guides my dick down between her legs. Everything’s about to go outer space when suddenly everything crashes. My eye catches the ridiculously ornate clock on the nightstand. It’s got two silver statuettes posing on either side of a blue enamel face. One figure is asleep, seated, chin resting on her fist, the moon on her lap, and the other one’s standing, raising the sun above his head. Greek or Roman gods, I guess. It’s almost seven! I totally forgot I was supposed to go with Pete at six for his lunatic Byron swim across the sound to Sweden. I push up into the kneeling position, cock bobbing. I scramble out of bed, pulling my underwear and jeans up, ready to tear on out of here. Gwen’s staring up at me, confused, maybe even scared. This isn’t in the script. She starts to pull the sheet up around her, under her delicate chin. She looks beautiful, red hair veiling her face, one hip uncovered, looking so milky, so soft. Suddenly I find myself thinking about Wordsworth—of all absurd things—the passage in The Prelude where he’s been hiking up and across the Alps for days, anticipating the Continental Divide from where he’ll be able to see all of Europe spread below him. He’s pumped, can hardly wait for that moment he expects will hold the Sublime he’s wanted so bad. But he never gets that moment. Dark clouds, heavy rainstorms, followed by nightfall and even more storms, cause him to miss the Continental Divide and the Sublime altogether. Thing is, he doesn’t even know he’s missing it until it’s too late. Only when the sky eventually clears does the morning light reveal that he’s already trudged far past the Divide and is well along the descent. It’s understandable that he gets depressed when he discovers what’s happened. If I leave Gwen now, I’ll be like Wordsworth crossing the Alps. All the girls I did not have sex with leading up to the sublime Gwen, and then—just like that—I miss out on my moment with her. Having sex with a female will be for me like the Sublime was for Wordsworth. The moment lost. Maybe forever. Ridiculous, I know, but that’s how I’m feeling.
I tug my jeans and underwear back down, kicking them aside. Pete will understand. It’s because of having had sex with him that I can even do this. Besides, he’s had lots of girls. He can swim some other sound or bay, river or lake—even the whole ocean if he wants to—some other time, and I’ll be there for him, I will. I most definitely want to finish what I’ve started with Gwen, or, rather, what she started with me. As I slip back in between her legs, she smiles. For a second, I think I should have a rubber but then forget about it. For once, I’m not afraid. She’s definitely not the kind of girl who would let herself get pregnant. She’s got places to go even higher than she’s already gone. I get my rhythm and she synchronizes her body with mine. It’s weird and surprising that none of it seems awkward. She makes it seem like I know what I’m doing. It’s amazing—she’s amazing—but there’s one thing, just one thing: as hard as I try not to, I can’t help hearing Pete saying how I’ve got him, how I’ve got him soul-wise and body-wise.
When I wake for the second time, the Roman numerals between Night and Day show that it’s almost eleven! Damn. Now I’ve really got to run. The guys and I need to hit the road. Pete might be sore at me for a while, for missing his swim, but only until he hears the unimaginable news: a record deal with a major label!
Gwen’s still asleep. As quiet as possible, I get dressed. She looks so beautiful lying there, the shiny sheets twisted around her. I’d love to kiss her cheek but don’t want to disturb her. I tiptoe from the room, then run, soft as I can, through the other rooms. No sign of Daniel, though only now do I get the feeling that maybe he was watching the whole thing from under the threshold between the rooms, like it really was a performance, maybe even one created for him.
I slow to a fast walk through the lobby so as not to look as much like an intruder as I feel. Once outside, I start running again. I’m running because I’m late but also because I feel so unbelievable having been with Gwen, and because the guys and me are going to be rock stars, and because this is my life! The narrow streets are crowded with people not in any hurry at all. Women with baskets on their arms, students with satchels and collared shirts, hippies who stepped right out of The Hobbit. Everyone and everything so damn picturesque. To make time, I run behind the stalls piled high with flowers and fruit and vegetables. The ferry that crosses the harbor is loading up. I manage to jump on right as the gang-plank’s being lifted, like I’m in some Hollywood caper. Above the ferry, gulls bob in the breeze. All the spires and domes of this, my Visible City, glitter better than in any postcard because the sky is a real blue and the sun is shining for real and everything is real. I’m here. I’m here, I keep saying to myself, which almost makes me feel that I am real.
JUNE–JULY 1994, ISAAC
I felt like I was turning into that girl (was it Victor Hugo’s daughter?) in a movie our French teacher made us watch. She literally goes insane obsessing over some military guy who doesn’t love her anymore. Except the pathetic fact is I’ve never even met my version of the military guy—that is, the No Names—except on vinyl. I still haven’t found a single picture of them. In any case, after leaving the salt cave with Daniel and dropping him off at his hotel to catch the airport shuttle, I didn’t hear from him. And I wrote five times. A bit much, I know. When I left him at the airport, he hadn’t acted like we’d never see each other again, let alone not be in touch. I guess he hadn’t acted like we would, either. I thought our talks had been pretty deep, though, almost philosophical. About music, math, the universe. Maybe to a guy like him they were ordinary, and maybe my going on and on about the band in my letters got to be too much. I gave what probably seemed like obsessively detailed interpretations of every song on Invisible City. Couldn’t help it. Without Daniel, my obsession with the No Names hit a brick wall. I had no luck finding Pete Lac, the only other possibility. No one’s ever at his parents’ house when I’ve stopped by, and no one picks up the phone and there’s no answering machine.
Despite all this, I continued listening to Invisible City pretty much constantly. Each time, I would focus on a different musician’s playing. All of them blow me away, but for me Pete’s guitar probably reigns supreme. I don’t know how he got such creaminess out of an electric guitar while still getting it to slice through walls. Other than that, I spent my time playing guitar and getting high. I also finished planning my South American adventure, hoping the epic journey itself would help me forget about the No Names.
More than six weeks after Daniel left, a short letter from him finally arrived. He hadn’t, he apologized, answered my letters because he had been on tour in Asia and only received them upon his recent return. In his calm, collected manner, he suggested I consider coming for a visit to Copenhagen. He would send an airline ticket. He put this out there like it was no big deal, so in my cooler-than-antifreeze response I pretended it wasn’t. Of course, it was. As crazy as my plotting and planning had been up to this point, by comparison his invitation made it all seem sane. After all, Daniel Beck is, well, Daniel Beck, and I am me. Suddenly it seemed like one of those stories that doesn’t end well. Like, for example, me chained to a dungeon wall and found only years later, naked, starving, babbling like a madman or, worse, me found dismembered in a trash bag with certain organs missing. At the very least, his offer made me feel like a gigolo. In any case, I told him that sounded great, I’d come.
Daniel’s letter arrived exactly one week before I was going to take off on my motorcycle odyssey. I’d even gotten my passport, no thanks to Vashti. Went to city hall and paid for a copy of the birth certificate she supposedly couldn’t find. In any case, I nixed my dream—the Che thing—just like that. Funny how nothing is ever what you think it’s going to be. The big adventure evaporates and a different one, maybe not so big, appears. First, I told him not to worry about the plane ticket, I’d get it. That way I wouldn’t owe him. Besides, I could use it to my advantage with Vashti. I told her she’d been right. The more I thought about it, South America seemed dangerous and how about me taking a trip to Europe instead? She was so thrilled she didn’t suspect anything was up and paid for the airline ticket, just like that. It was as if her finely tuned, always activated suspicion monitor had gotten disconnected. Though I’m nineteen and an adult, still, I didn’t see the point of being disowned by telling the truth. Explaining the whole Daniel and No Names situation to her would’ve been not only impossible but a serious risk to my finances and to her health. Not difficult to imagine the veins at her temples bursting.
What could be better than arriving at Daniel’s door drunk, right? Free booze on my first overseas flight was so cool, thanks to the first-class upgrade Vashti purchased with frequent flyer miles. That said, sober or drunk, what am I doing here? Plane fare paid for by him, or not, I am kind of like a common hustler. Such are the thoughts floating through my head as I stand in front of a house older than probably anything in the whole US, located in a maze of streets as complicated as history. The black paint on the door shines so bright I can’t avoid my guilty reflection in it. I’m hustling this perfectly decent guy and am about to lose my nerve. From the get-go, this quest for the No Names has been unrealistic at best and now feels like it’s about to become what Vashti would call a fiasco. At this moment I could be experiencing the first true freedom of my life, buzzing along some awesome camino towards Patagonia, my very own La Poderosa full throttle. Instead, I’m wasting my life in pursuit of what? A long-defunct band. Okay, I mutter to myself, buck the fuck up, you’re here. I lift the hefty door knocker, let it go, and stand there wowed by the clear thump! announcing me, the young writer. Yeah, right.
A woman, who looks like she could be Daniel’s twin, answers the door, not smiling. When I ask for Mr. Beck, she asks, in slightly accented English, if he is expecting me? “Yes,” I say, trying to sound upbeat, “he’s expecting me.”
“He is in a recording session upstairs,” she informs me. “He should be finished in not more than half an hour. If you would like, please take a seat.”
I thank her, give my name, and sit down on the weird modern couch she directs me to. I flip through Danish lifestyle magazines on the end table, looking at pictures and wondering about the imported English—Super! Sexy! Must-Have! Posters and photographs of Daniel Beck and other classical musicians, either performing or holding their instruments, plaster the walls.
Down the steep, narrow staircase precisely twenty-six minutes later comes Daniel Beck, looking like an ad for a luxury watch. And when he gets closer, I swear, clamped to his wrist, is the Audemars Piguet Vashti swore she was going to buy me if I got into Princeton or Harvard. He even smiles elegantly. He’s casual and classic, as they say, in a blue, probably cashmere, V-neck, navy cords, loafers with no socks. Until like a minute ago I would have thought this style of his—the kind Vashti drools over—both lame and pretentious, but somehow, here in his natural habitat, it works. Or else, maybe jet lag’s warping my judgment.
“Good to see you, Isaac!” he calls out, shaking my hand like an enthusiastic politician.
His voice kind of makes me think of a robot—a warm and friendly robot but a robot nonetheless. He tells me to come on up to the studio, he’s just finishing. I follow him upstairs. He says something to the engineers—three guys about his age, as unkempt as he is kempt—who are leaving.
In this ancient house, they’ve built a high-tech recording studio, in the middle of which stands the high tech of the last century, an outrageously shiny grand piano. Daniel pulls the padded bench away from the keyboard and sits, motioning me to take the nearby rolling desk chair.
“Your studio’s cool.” I sound totally idiotic and totally unlike a robot. I’m jittery because now that I’m here it’s actually sinking in that I’m not just sort of like a hustler, I am a hustler, hustling the world-famous Daniel Beck in order to find one forgotten Mike Abramczyk.
“Why, thank you. Though it’s not mine, I am lucky enough to be able to use it.”
I can’t stop my mouth from running: “It would be cool to hit the music scene here. You’ll show me where the No Names played, right?”
He laughs, “Perhaps! But let me take you to your hotel now, so you can freshen up and have a rest. I’ll come by for you this evening at seven. We’ll dine together.”
Oh. I’d assumed I’d be staying with him. Maybe he has a partner or family that he’s never mentioned and puts his extra-curriculars up at hotels? Though we talked the whole night through at the salt mine, and it seemed to me there was some sort of intimacy between us, I now realize I know exactly nothing about his personal life.
The cab pulls up to an überfancy hotel on a big circular plaza. Daniel’s been nice the whole ride but nothing more. When we get out of the car, he waves away the doorman, takes my suitcase inside, and checks me in. The place is definitely five-star, if not more, if there are more. He will not be escorting me to the room, he tells me, and hands the key to the bellboy.
The digs are totally luxe. Once the bellboy has settled me in, I feel more than a little uneasy. I stare out the window onto the plaza. Pigeons circle an enormous green equestrian statue, then land all along it, from the exaggerated waves of the forelock to the tail blowing dramatically in an imaginary wind sweeping across an imaginary battlefield. The birds rise, circling the plaza before landing along horse and rider again. Circle and land, circle and land. I decide to take a bath. The tub is huge and marble, fit for a Roman emperor. Calms my nerves a little, the hot water. After drying off, I’m too lazy to go to my suitcase and fall asleep completely naked in a bed fit for a princess, waiting to be summoned by the prince.
