Jimmy Brand had Wendy come over twice a week for the half hour before the musicians arrived. With her, he always had twenty good, lucid minutes, more if she did the talking, before he felt the first erosion, his energy dimming, sliding away. The friction in his blood seemed to gather, and by the time Mason and the other guys arrived for a short practice session, his arms and legs ached. Speaking with her and then sitting with his old friends as they practiced was a test, but one he savored, and at the end of an hour he was blissed out and burning. The crowded garage became hallucinogenic, a rolling cartoon some days. He smiled at it, but the smile hurt. He’d wake, and Larry Ralston would be playing the guitar. How did he learn to play the guitar? When?
As the band dipped and plunged through rocky versions of “I Get Around” or “Tell Her No” by the Zombies, Jimmy Brand could see the percussion on the inside of his eyelids, and then the silence when his musician friends stopped was a roaring vacuum that made him gasp. It was all physical. The medicines helped, but he could feel the half-life of each ticking within. Some days he was certain he could feel the crumbs of calcium bleeding out of his bones. His arms were useless. Other days those forces abated, and he could sit and see clearly, and talking was the pleasure it had always been.
Wendy’s fifth story was a long one that crossed territories for her. There was dry anger in it: a girl being pressured for sex. When she handed the story to Jimmy, she had asked if she could request from him a favor. She sat on the edge of the easy chair at the corner of his bed and asked if he could be careful with the story when he fell asleep. She knew the musicians would be arriving. “If it’s no trouble and you can remember.”
“No one is going to read this story except me. And I am going to read it. You’re worried that I’ll pass out and somebody we know will come by and find this manuscript and read your work.”
She looked at him unable to speak because he had spoken her fear.
“I will guard your work with all of my armies, my dear. I promise.”
“I did what you said,” she whispered. “I went for it. I wrote into something that matters to me.”
“I’m alerted and on guard,” Jimmy said.
She’d tried hard with the story, she said, and then apologized for asking such a favor, and she said, “I know you’ll be careful—you’ve been so kind.” And then Wendy sat back in the chair, and without moving at all, not a shoulder, she began to cry. Her crying was a strange thing to watch, and Jimmy Brand knew he was seeing something primal. She might have been singing. Things were still happening on this far edge of his life. At such moments he felt his chest open up and fill with air, and it was as if he were young again, the beautiful hurt. Her story was heavy on his lap. Finally Wendy lifted her chin and pressed the back of her wrist against her eyes and came out blinking. She wiped her eyes again and reached for her story. Jimmy now had it in his hand too, and when she tugged, he felt the pleasure of holding on. He looked at her. “I’ll be utterly vigilant,” he said. “I give you my word.” They both still held the manuscript. “We’re in a project here, right? You’ve done a lot of work. We’re going onward. I want to read this.” He let it go. “But I won’t unless you want me to.”
“Oh, I do.” Wendy held the story in both hands before her and looked at him and said something he knew she believed, something he vaguely felt he’d heard long ago, some faded déjà vu: “It’s no good. I’m not sure it’s any good.”
“Well,” he said, “you look like a writer.” He gave her his smile and counted on two fingers: “You look like you were up late typing and that you have recently been crying.” Those were the two unmistakable tells.
Now she opened her face to him, and her eyes glistened with an intention he hadn’t seen anywhere in years. He knew they were in it now, no quitting, just the work, words and lives, as they talked of her stories. It’s a real thing, something to live for, he thought, but I’m not going to live for it.