Broken Records by Bree Bennett
Chapter 11
The wind snapped at their ears as they crossed Central Park West. The tissue paper in Lucy’s hand rippled with every gust, but the chill didn’t deter her enthusiasm. She bounced on the balls of her feet, excitement escaping in an ecstatic gasp as they arrived at their destination. She covered her mouth and staggered forward before kneeling in front of the black and white mosaic in the middle of Strawberry Fields, the tribute to John Lennon in Central Park.
Jack felt like he was witnessing something holy. Her hands trailed over the tiled word Imagine, brushing the letters in feather-like strokes. Others who had made the same pilgrimage that day left bouquets, candles, and notes. Lucy bent over the memorial and laid down a rose, perfectly aligned with the black line in the mosaic peace sign. Next to that, she placed a golden sunflower, bountiful petals smiling up at the gray sky. The breeze battered silky strands of hair loose from Lucy’s hat, and she shut her eyes, rocking back on heeled boots. Jack knelt down beside her, looping his arm through hers when she started shivering.
“I like the pattern,” she said after her vigil. “It’s soothing.”
Struggling to maintain their balance as they crouched on wobbly ankles, Jack craned his neck at the artwork. “I suppose it is.”
“It makes my brain quiet.” She sent a heavy gaze toward him. “It’s never quiet.”
“Take your time,” he said, wishing he could crawl inside her mind and investigate what exactly was so loud. Her eyes were unfocused as she immersed herself in the pattern. When she finally sat back, content with the tiles, her face was illuminated with serenity.
“Doesn’t it feel odd to mourn them?” he asked, helping Lucy to her feet. “You don’t even know them.”
She scrunched up her mouth. “So, there’s this theory I have. I call it the Bubble Theory.”
“The Bubble Theory,” he repeated with a wry smile. “Please explain.”
“So, songs—and paintings, and books, and any other kind of art, are like bubbles. And the artist is the person holding the bubble wand. Once that bubble is created, it floats off into the world, no longer tethered to that artist. It belongs to the world.”
She formed a circle with her hands, waving them around in the air. “And everyone sees the bubble differently. Some focus on its size, or the direction it’s blowing, or the colors they see inside. No matter what they are focused on, though, the bubble doesn’t belong to them or to the bubble blower.”
“What if the bubble blower—” he grimaced at the clumsy phrasing, “—doesn’t interpret the song the same as the listener?”
“Does it matter? Go back to ‘Space Oddity.’ Do you think Bowie really cared what people thought the song meant? Probably not. The magic is in experiencing it on your own like we did. Are you really worried about what John Doe from Nowheresville thinks ‘Applejohn Blues’ means?”
“I guess not.” Jack thought of other musicians, legends past and present who had abused their fame.
He thought of his mother.
“But sometimes the bubble blowers are really shitty people.”
“Sure. But that doesn’t make the bubble, the song, affect people even less. The bubble is now separate from them.” She gestured to The Dakota across the street, the building where John Lennon had lived and been murdered. “It applies to that too. I can be sad that a man was killed, but I have no claim to the grief or love or anger of his family and friends, nor to the struggles and rights and wrongs of the man himself. But I can mourn the experiences I have had myself concerning his art.”
“How so?”
She hesitated before continuing on in her linear, documentative fashion. “Well, as you know, my family is huge; private time with a parent didn’t happen often. But one night, my dad asked me to watch a show with him. Just me. He made nachos, and I was allowed to have a Coke at night, which is a big deal to a kid. We sat on the couch, just the two of us, and he put on Elvis’s NBC TV special, his big live comeback concert. I’d never seen anything like it. I was glued to that screen, every song, every sound, every word he spoke, like it was real-life magic. The next morning, Dad showed me where to find the concert soundtrack in his album collection and gave me a few others to try, and that was it for me. I went through every album he had—all the greats, even the not-so-greats—and then we’d go off to consignment stores or record shops to find more. I’d sit in our den, wearing these clunky headphones that were too big for me, listening to record after record, reading every book I could find on rock and roll. It was all fascinating, but more importantly, music was magic, and it was comforting and familiar. Like an old friend.”
Her bronze-brown eyes met Jack’s. “When someone like that dies, I don’t mourn the person. I think about a special time with my dad, or rediscovering those albums for the first time.” She tipped up her mouth in a smile. “And now when I hear ‘Space Oddity,’ I’m going to think of you and your inability to open my bedroom door.”
Jack scowled at her, but Lucy cleared her throat. “Speaking of how bubbles affect different people,” she said, jerking her head toward two figures barreling toward them, “you’ve been spotted.”
“The plight of the bubble blower,” he whispered just as two women stopped and squealed at him.
Handling fans was always tricky for Jack. There was a tenuous line between catering to the people responsible for your fame and losing yourself in the process. Many people marched right over that line as if it were a rough sketch drawn in sand.
Jack plastered on a synthetic smile as the first woman curled a strand of blonde hair around her index finger like ivy around a sapling. “Can we get your autograph?”
“Of course,” he said. “Always great to meet fans.”
“I’ve been a fan since I was sixteen,” squealed the second, a redhead wrapped in a stylish woolen peacoat. “I had all your posters. You were my first concert ever.” She rummaged around her tote and retrieved a pen and scrap piece of paper. She ripped it in half, giving one side to the blonde for her own. After he signed the two slips, Jack glanced at the other side, which read milk, eggs, deodorant.
I’m signing grocery lists in the middle of Central Park, he thought. This is what my life has become.
He looked over at Lucy, who had stepped back behind a tree, observing the exchange. The women thanked him for the autographs, but the blonde followed it by spider-walking her fingers up his jacket. “We’re on our way to a party at our friend’s place. You should totally come.”
“I appreciate the invite,” Jack said. Three months ago, he would have taken her up on the offer in a heartbeat. “But—”
“Come on,” said the blonde, though her redheaded friend was yanking her away, flashing Jack an apologetic look. “It’ll be a blast. We could really have some fun.” She shimmied a little closer and whispered a few details that curdled his ears—words that were arousing under the influence of booze and drugs, but felt oily and manufactured under the sober gray sky. Words that made him a product, not a person.
A choked gasp interrupted them. Jack turned his head and met Lucy’s wide, alarmed eyes. She clutched at her chest, releasing a keening sound before her eyes rolled back, and she fell forward, first to her knees and then into a crumpled heap on the sidewalk.
Shards of icy fear speared through his veins, his heart thundering with panic. He shoved past the women and sprinted to Lucy, sliding to his knees to bend over her limp form.
“Lucy?” he shook her arm. Her face was starlight pale and her eyes tightly shut, but her mouth opened and closed in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it motion. He lowered his ear to her lips, her breath tickling his cheek.
“I’m giving you an out,” she whispered from the corner of her mouth. “Milk it.”
He stared at her, unable to decide whether to hug her or scold her.
Foolish, clever girl.
“Okay, honey, up you go,” he said, cupping a hand under her elbow and supporting her to a sitting position. His fans watched him with a mix of horror and amusement on their faces. “My friend is having one of her spells,” he called out. “She has a bad…spleen.”
Lucy let out a noise like a baby elephant choking.
“She looks fine to me,” said the blonde, but her friend shushed her.
“Gotta take a raincheck on that party.” Jack pulled Lucy to her feet. She moaned and clutched at her forehead in proper damsel-in-distress style. “You know what the doctor says, dear.”
“At least one walk per day keeps the spleen feeling okay,” Lucy recited. He tipped his chin at the two confused women and led Lucy further into the park, his lips pressed together.
“My spleen?” she hissed once out of earshot.
“I wasn’t prepared!”
She glanced behind them with a shudder. “They were scary. And touchy-feely. Are fans always like that?”
“No, thank God. For every fan like that, there are a dozen good ones.”
“Still…” She looked at him warily.
“I’m not gonna lie; you might get some attention,” he said. “But it’s me they want. For my bubble wand.” He gave her a lascivious wink. “It’s part of the whole fame package. And the way they were with me, they may not be with anyone else. I’m not Jack Vincent to them. I’m Jack Hunter—just a product. I’m Coca-Cola. I’m an Oreo.”
“I guess so.” She kicked at the sidewalk, her nose wrinkled in irritation. She muttered something under her breath.
“What was that?”
“You’re not an Oreo,” she said.
Jack was strangely touched by those four simple words, so naturally, he fumbled out an inappropriate response. “I could be. You could crack me open and sample the creamy goodness inside.”
Lucy’s nose flared as wide as humanly possible, and she slowly turned her head to gawk at him. Her disgusted grimace deepened as she glanced over him, and she wiped her hands on her jacket.
“Sorry,” he ducked his head, “That metaphor died as it lived—a bit crumby and in need of a tall glass of milk.” He reached into his coat pocket for his phone to call for a ride, and found the box that a courier service had delivered to his house earlier that day.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “Lucy, c’mere.” He led her under a nearby maple tree, bare and skeletal, its colorless leaves scattered around the trunk like week-old confetti.
Lucy shivered, her hands thrust in her pockets, and peered at the box.
“This was dropped off today,” he said. “You should probably start wearing it.” He flipped it open to reveal a yellow sapphire flower surrounded by diamond petals. He scratched at the scruff on his jaw and glanced down at the cold, muddy patches of grass. “Do I have to get on one knee?”
“Oh, please don’t,” she said, spellbound by the glittering ring. “Anytime someone gets on one knee, spectators come popping up out of nowhere like groundhogs. And then Martin will lose his perfect engagement photo.”
“Well, we don’t want to make Martin mad,” he said, nudging her shoulder. She scanned the area to make sure no one was watching and held out a slender finger. Jack pulled the ring from the box—and his frigid fingers promptly dropped it into the mass of leaves below.
“Shit!” he said, dropping to his knees, a slurry of damp, cold mud from last night’s rain seeping into his jeans as his splayed hands searched through crunching leaves. “Just hold on a sec, I’ll find it.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lucy kneel as well, and he let out a choked noise. “No, you’ll get all muddy!”
She gave him an odd look. “It’s fine, let me help.”
“But you don’t like to get dirty,” he protested, reaching to help her stand but instead forcing his knees further into the dirt. “Stand up, quick, before it soaks into your pants.”
Her eyes widened for a moment, and she looked away, a slight tremor around her lower lip. When she turned back to him, her eyes were glistening, but she was smiling. “That’s only my hands that really bothers me.”
“Oh, well, good to know for future mud-wrestling events,” he said, plunging his hand into a particularly soggy leaf pile. “Aha!” He hoisted the ring into the air with Gollum-like glee—and then frowned, shaking it as muddy water sluiced off the sides. “Your hands, you said?”
She took a jagged breath. “I’ll be fine. Put it on before someone sees.”
Instead, he unzipped his jacket and wiped the ring as cleanly as possible on his no-longer white shirt, leaving behind a muddy Rorschach pattern on the fabric. Still teetering on their knees, he took her hand and slipped the ring on her shivering finger. “So, is it a yes? Because if not, Luciana, I’m sending you the dry cleaning bill.”
She shot him an insouciant glare, and then, without warning, she hugged him, knocking the breath from his lungs as her arms wrapped around his waist. It was a cumbersome tangle of crisscrossed legs and soggy knees and bits of crunched leaves sticking everywhere. Still, as the autumn wind tore through their hair and battered their ears, and the damp chill of the sidewalk seeped into his jeans, Jack felt as if he had just been granted something absolutely extraordinary.