Melody

Xavier could control the world with music. He knew this as a fact.

The day he’d met Angela he’d been listening to Lou Reed’s Perfect Day. The cassette had been on repeat in his Ford Torino as he’d driven the I-85 through South Carolina. He’d heard it on the radio the previous day, then listened out for it to be played again all that night. He finally caught it on a tape like he’d trapped a ghost; held the cassette up like a holy relic.

It was as trapped by him as he was by it.

Angela had been on the side of the road, thumb wavering half-up as if she hadn’t decided if she was in a good mood or bad. Probably bad, he thought, seeing as the rain was splashing down hard on her.

Xavier pulled over. Opened the window, turned Lou down until he could hear his wipers squeak their way across the screen. “Need a ride?”

Angela was about his age. The prettiest smile he’d ever seen. How’d she manage to produce that when she looked half drowned, he never did know.

”Where you heading?” he asked.

”Where you going?”

They were both heading to Virgina, it turned out. Him to start a new job. Her cause wanted to go anywhere that wasn’t home. Her rain-damp clothes glued over the bruises on her arms, hid them flat. If this ride was going to Virginia, so was she. Besides, there seemed something right about it, about Virginia. It sounded like starting over.

He didn’t ask her about much, not on the first day. But they listened to Lou a lot. She laughed as it repeated. Laughed harder as it did a third time.

Eventually she asked, “This what we stuck with for the next however-many-hours? Not got any other cassettes?”

He didn’t.

She shrugged and they both sang along until the rain stopped and the sky blued up.

When Xavier listened to music, it changed the world. Here was the proof.

After she left him, after they’d arrived in Richmond, about a week passed before Xavier found the note.

Angela must have written it when he’d been in a service stop. She’d tucked it behind the passenger seat sun visor.

He’d been cleaning and it had fluttered down onto the seat.

Find me, it said.

He must have called fifty motels with a name and description before he got lucky. Said he was searching for his missing sister.

“I knew you would,” she said, when they met for the second time. “I knew you’d find me.”

*****

Long after they were married, on the days when he headed to the hospital to visit her, he’d listen to Don’t Stop Believin. The Ford had long gone. So had the family vehicle — the little chicks had flown the nest. But this car had a CD player and it was easier to put a song on repeat. He liked that about CDs.

In the hospital he’d talk about the future with Angela. He’d plan out trips for when she got better. She liked Americana, haunted houses, places with a bit of mystery. He got out a map and put in on her bed. Drew a line down Route 66, told her of all the places they’d stop.

He read her stories.

She smiled that same smile she had when they’d first met, when she’d been soaked and hiding bruises.

On the way back to his lonely home he didn’t listen to any music.

Later, after she was gone, he thought that might be why it happened. That he should have fucking listened to something with miracle in the title.

*****

Music died when she died. He listened to the news on the radio and that was about it. The house became scabbed with dust, with cobwebs, with bottles he’d drained to numb him to sleep.

His kids called sometimes but they didn’t visit much. They lived the other side of the country, families of their own to take care of.

”Are you sure you’re okay, Dad? I just— Oh crap, I got to go. I love you, Dad. Bye.”

Every day seemed to rain.

Didn’t matter what song came on the radio, nothing changed. Only when you’re young does music change the world. And only then does it change your world, he realized.

When you’re old, nothing changes it.

He drank a lot. He ate little. He went out even less. Started smoking again.

He could feel himself slowly rotting away. An old chair that had once been part of a set. Now the partner chair was gone and his own wood was bad and too risky to put weight on. Now it was only good for looking at, for remembering how even things that had once been useful and solid all eventually deteriorate.

​*****

It was a mechanic that found the note.

Xavier’s car had broken down, and although he visited few places anymore, the graveyard was somewhere he still went once every week. The damn car — can’t trust modern cars as far as you can chuck them — broke down in the church car park, of all places.

A song thrummed out of the mechanic’s van. Here Comes The Sun by the Beatles.

The mechanic said, handing over the note, “It fell out from behind the visor. Here.“

The note read, simply, “You found me once. You’ll never lose me.”

Long after the mechanic had gone, Xavier remained seated in his car in front of the church.

He’d been crying for a long time. Crying until his vision was blurred enough to almost see her sitting there next to him.

”I love you,” he said.

There was no answer.

For the first time since she’d left, he didn’t need one.

The sun etched yellow streaks through the clouds.

It wasn’t a perfect day. It would never be again. But he’d had those perfect days with her. Plenty of them, if he thought hard and honest about it. And those perfect memories, they’d always be with him, tucked away inside his heart.

He could hear the music humming inside him now, emanating from deep in his chest. But it wasn’t Lou singing anymore — it was Angela.

*****

THE END