She doesn’t look like she believes in miracles. “It don’t make sense.” She runs a hand through Oliver’s hair. “It’s not burned. You’re fine. You’re both... fine.”
I try to end her suspicions with a joke. “The power of Lily’s antiaging creams.”
Oliver leaps up. “Let’s go home.”
“Not until you tell me why you’re not hurt.” Maud helps me up. Looks at me with desperate eyes. “I know there’s something different about you. I’ve always felt it. Tell me.”
“Tell you what?” I brush her off. “We got lucky.”
“Lucky?” Maud touches my skin. Then Oliver’s. “You’re not even slightly burned.”
Oliver takes Maud’s hand. Looks into her eyes. I’m afraid he’s going to tell her everything. A part of me hopes he does. “Maud, listen.” A deep breath. “You have to trust us.”
Maud’s lips quiver. She has questions. She’s afraid of the answers.
Oliver continues. “Don’t tell Lily. If you do, she’ll know you snuck out.”
“But that’s— Well, it’s nothing compared to... what you did... what you are.” She breathes out forcefully. “What are you?”
I put a hand on Maud’s shoulder. “He saved your life, Maud. If Oliver hadn’t been here, it would’ve been you who burned.”
“I know, but—”
“Maud, please. He saved your life. This is how he wants you to thank him.”
She stares at us for an interminable minute. Another petrol bomb. The sound of violence. We have no choice but to go home. Nobody says another word. We climb in through Maud’s open window. Maud agrees not to say anything. Her suspicions will be all her own. A horrible distrust that I can already feel driving a wedge between us.
Oliver. London. New Year’s Eve. 1981.
How do you describe the decline of life? Of Love? Of happiness? I can only explain through music, which allows a means of communication beyond words. Music is our only tool for capturing the intangible, the unseen, the true mysteries of life. In my darkest moods, I stopped playing entirely. Now I’ve started up again with the help of my gay therapist. I’ve even tried medicines but always stopped because of the side effects. It’s a process. I’m changing. So are my tastes. I’ve lost my interest in the romantic melodies I used to favor. Gone are Schubert and Chopin. Gone are the optimistic synth sounds that welcomed me to London.
Bram walks into our bedroom on the last day of this wretched year. A year of loss and fear. I sit in bed, synth on my lap, Changeling curled up by my side. My hair is longer than it’s ever been, due to laziness, not stylistic choice. I’ve grown a beard. Bram hates it. Says it itches when we kiss. But we don’t kiss like we used to, so it makes no never mind. Perhaps I grew the beard as a wall between us. We all build walls, don’t we? As individuals. As groups. As countries. Walls to keep the enemy out.
“Vertigo?” Bram asks, recognizing the melody I’m playing on my synth from the Hitchcock film we both love.
I nod. I play the evocative melody that accompanies Kim Novak as she sits in a museum, staring at a portrait of a woman named Carlotta who we think is possessing Kim. The story of the film is a web of deceit and mirrors. Jimmy Stewart plays a detective with a debilitating fear of heights, who is investigating Kim’s strange behavior. When her character jumps from a bell tower and dies, his fear of heights stops him from saving her. He blames himself. Wanders the world sadly. His friend plays him Bach and Mozart to soothe him, but it doesn’t work. There’s only so much even the most beautiful music can do to soothe a plagued psyche. Eventually, Jimmy sees a woman who looks just like Kim. Different hair. Different voice. Same face. Same soul. He transforms her into the Kim that preoccupies him. Dyes her hair the same shade of icy blond. Dresses her in identical clothes to the ones the dead version of her once wore. Tries desperately to re-create the past as he knew it. He hasn’t lived long enough to know you can never recapture the magic of the past. That’s what gives nostalgia its strange power over us.
“It’s New Year’s Eve. Play something brighter.” Bram leaps into bed. Kisses my neck. “?‘Don’t You Want Me’?”
I raise my shoulder to gently push him away. “Not right now. Maybe next year.”
He smiles. “I meant the song. Play it for me?” He leaps onto our bed and dances. Tries to make me smile by making a fool of himself. Sings off-key. “Don’t you want me, baby? Don’t you want me, oh-oh-oh-oh?”
I could pull out the most hurtful lyrics of that song and fling them at Bram like an arrow to his heart. The lyrics about moving on from someone you’ve loved after the good times. But I don’t want to hurt him. I only want him to hear the song that’s playing in my head.
“It’s incredible, isn’t it?” he asks. “All the superstars that have already come from the Blitz. ‘Don’t You Want Me’ is the bestselling song of the year.”
“The Blitz used to belong to us,” I say. “Now it belongs to the world.” I look at his eyes, fascinated by their unshakable optimism. His seemingly unkillable defiance. “Do you remember what you told me when I arrived in London?”
“What part of it?” he asks. “The part where I told you how I love you, and will never stop loving you?”
I manage a small smile. “No, that was the only true part. The rest, though, was a lie.” He doesn’t say a word. Waits for me to go on. “You said... there are spaces for us.” I keep playing theVertigotheme as I speak. Scoring the movie of my dizzying life. “You said we didn’t need a whole city. Just a block here, a bar there.”
He sits next to me. Runs a hand through my unwashed locks of hair. “Oliver...”
“The Blitz is gone.”
Closed three months ago. It went out with a bash. A few hours of hedonism and connection. And then blackness.
