Indiscreet by Nicole French

28

Iwoke up the next morning with a song dancing in my head. It was a low, mournful melody that rocked me side to side like a boat. It had an oceanic quality, with a full orchestra of strings, timpani drums, even an odaiko, a big bass drum that stood at least ten feet above any man. It wasn’t anything like the music I’d written before, and I knew as soon as I woke that I needed to get it down.

Calliope had left early for a SoulCycle class, but by the time she returned, I was sitting on the floor next to the coffee table in front of the tiny hotel couch, scribbling madly on hotel stationery. When she walked in, I jumped, yanked out of the symphonic trance I’d been stuck in for over two hours.

“Well, hello there, Mozart,” she greeted me as she dropped her gym bag on her bed. “What do we have here?”

I looked back at the mess of papers, then immediately bent back to them, eager to finish the last few bars I had dancing in my head. It was terrible notation—I’d never been great at it to begin with—but it, combined with the cell phone recordings I’d made by humming the key harmonies, would serve until I could get to a keyboard.

“Denial,” I said as I scribbled.

“Maggie,” Calliope said again. “Hey, are you okay? Have you…” She glanced around the mess of papers. “Have you eaten anything yet?”

I finished the last two notes with a flourish and looked up triumphantly. But before I could reply, the fact that I’d been up for hours without eating anything caught up to me and my pregnant stomach.

Pregnant. The truth hit like a nausea bomb. Oh. God.

Without answering, I jumped up, sprinted to the bathroom, and proceeded to lose everything I’d ingested in the last twenty-four hours into the toilet. Which admittedly…wasn’t much. I’d forced down a few crackers and some coconut water last night before bed, but that was it.

Calliope found me lying on the tiles, my forehead braced over my wrist atop the basin. “The grapevine—and by that, I mean the all-knowing internet—tells me that the best way to ward off morning sickness is to eat when you first wake up.” She held out a paper bag that looked like it contained some kind of croissant. “When you’re ready.”

She left, and a few minutes later, after the nausea had subsided and I had brushed my teeth and washed the sweat off my face, I reentered the room, nibbling on the pastry.

“Thanks,” I said, taking a seat on the couch. “I guess I needed this.”

“Anytime. Have you heard from…you know?”

My stomach shrank, and I shook my head. “No, he hasn’t called.”

My voice was small. I’d been too busy working on the music to think about it that much—maybe that’s why I’d been so busy—but now the fact that it was close to ten in the morning and I hadn’t gotten so much as a text from Will hurt. Badly.

“So, what do we have here?” Calliope asked, standing over the table as she drank her coffee. “This looks like quite the magnum opus.”

I surveyed the papers. “I don’t really know yet. I just needed to write it down. I think I need some time with some keys and a soundboard to really make it work.”

“I could probably make that happen.”

I looked up. “What?”

Calliope shrugged. “Let me make some calls. But I’m tight with a few of the reps at Capitol. If they have some equipment open today, maybe they’d let you jump on while I’m working.”

I gaped. A free sound booth. Free production. At one of the most illustrious recording studios in the country. This never happened.

“Really?” I asked.

She shrugged again as she tossed her towel over her lithe shoulder. “It doesn’t hurt to ask, babe.”

And that right there was probably the biggest difference between Calliope and me. Whereas asking for what I needed—what I wanted—had always been my struggle, Callie was never one to deny herself. Or me.

“Well?” Calliope asked as she sauntered toward the bathroom.

I scrambled up from the couch. “Give me ten minutes.”

Calliope laughed. “Girl, please. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and I need to shower. We’ll call an Uber in an hour.”

* * *

“Thanks, Jeff,”Calliope said again to the head of A&R at Capitol Records. She turned to me. “We all good here?”

I checked with the sound technician, an apprentice named Van who was as excited to be getting some time in the sound booth as I was about doing some recording there. He gave me two very enthusiastic thumbs up. I grinned at Calliope and Jeff.

“I think we’re good,” I said. “Thank you again for letting me do this.”

Jeff shrugged. “He needs the practice. The equipment is sitting here until next week.” He leered at Calliope, and I had a feeling the gesture was rooted in a little more than simple altruism.

Calliope rolled her eyes. “You’ve got about two hours,” she said. “I’ll be back after the meeting.”

I nodded. “Sounds good.”

They left, and I turned to Van.

“You ready?” he asked.

I walked into the large room that was full of almost every instrument I could possibly want. Sleek. Top of the line. Calling to me.

“Oh, yeah,” I whispered as I sat down at the keys. “I’ve been ready for this my whole life.”

“Maggie?” Van’s voice was thin through the speakers. “Where do you want to start?”

I pulled out the sheaf of papers I’d brought with me, set them over the top of the piano, and sat down. “I’m, um, I’m going to play some things, okay? Let me get the melody going…and then maybe we can start with the keys, followed by a bass line.”

And that was all it took. For the next few hours, Van and I worked, setting down track after track of different instruments, building a sound that was unlike anything I’d ever written before. Using the synths, the guitars, the drums, and a whole host of effects, we were able to recreate the better part of a full orchestra. It wasn’t as good as it might have been with a real one, but it gave me a sense of what it would sound like.

It wasn’t until they end or the session when finally we came to a section where I wanted some vocals. I stepped up to the microphone, holding an earphone to my ear, and began to sing.

There were no lyrics—just a bunch of layered tones. Keening, they called it in Ireland, maybe in other places too. Sometimes a wail, sometimes a hum, sometimes rounded vowels or even a sigh. I let the sounds flow out of me as pure melody, avoiding the pitfalls of language. There was no logic in this song. Only emotion.

I waited until the final note had dropped, then pulled the earphones down and smiled toward the booth.

Van gave me the thumbs-up, then switched on his intercom. “Holy shit, Maggie. That was…that was incredible. We are going to have something seriously amazing here when we’re done.”

“Yeah, you are.”

The deep voice echoed over the mic, and after that, a face so many knew and loved stepped into the light from the back of the booth.

Van flushed. “Oh, hey. You, um, had a visitor come by to listen. I thought it would be okay.”

Will and I stared at each other through the glass.

“Um, yeah,” I mumbled. “It’s okay.”

“Lil, I’m coming in.”

Will entered the recording area while Van busied himself with the soundboard. He examined the host of instruments that littered the space and the scattered papers over the top of the keyboard.

“Holy shit,” he murmured. “That was…that was yours?”

I nodded. “Um, yeah.”

“When did you write that? It’s so…Jesus, Lil. It’s painfully good. And I mean that in every sense.”

My heart thumped, and my stomach flipped. I needed food. Soon. “I wrote it this morning.”

Will’s eyes darted back to me. “Where? I came home this morning, and you were gone.”

“Calliope and I went to a hotel last night. I needed some space.” Then I was pulled back to the circumstances at hand. “This morning, huh? So, where were you all night?”

“I––I stayed at Corbyn’s. It seemed like the smart thing to do, all things considered.”

“Smart because you were too trashed to come home? Or smart because you needed a private spot to get busy with Amelia and that other wench?” The words tasted so much bitterer than they sounded. They made my face twist like I’d sucked on a lemon.

Will blinked, confused. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m…gonna go.” Van’s thin voice sounded from the booth. “I’ll send the track to Calliope when I’m finished.”

“Okay. Thanks, Van!” I was cheerier than I felt considering I was busy glaring at the six feet, three inches of frustrated sex symbol in front of me. Emphasis on the word “sex.”

I dug out my phone, then swiped angrily to a tabloid site running the article about Will’s “wild night.”

“I imagine you had a very good time after I left,” I snarled, thrusting the phone at him.

“What the fuck…” Will scrolled over the photos and the article, then handed it back to me. “Lil, you can’t possibly believe this. I told you not to read this kind of shit.”

“Why, because the writing’s on the wall? You’re trashed, that one chick has her hand down your shirt, and Amelia’s two seconds from sucking you off.”

“Stop it.”

“No.”

“Lil!”

“Don’t call me that!” I shrieked, unable to deal with it anymore. I hurled my phone across the room, and it smacked against the thick, soundproofed walls and fell to the floor. It wasn’t quite the same effect as hurling it against a rock, but I didn’t care.

“Li—Maggie. Let’s calm down a second—”

“Don’t tell me to calm down!” I shoved my hands back through my hair, pacing around, unable to keep still. “You—you fucked up here, Will! You said—y-you said you weren’t going to fall back into this kind of shit. Not if I was around. Well, I was around. I’ve been around every day, trailing after you like a pathetic lap dog. Dealing with your ex’s petty bullshit, the fact that my ex has been harassing me! Dealing with the fact that you’re never around, that I’m basically alone in that stupid house, day in and day out. That we’re both being trailed by photographers and cell phones, and with the fact that your mother thinks I’m no better than a common prostitute. And in the end, none of it mattered. Because you pushed me away. You called me a whore. You still couldn’t deal with all of it, and as soon as the opportunity presented itself, you went straight for the bottle and let Amelia get her fucking claws into you all over again while Theo tried. To. Rape me!”

“Maggie, that is not what happened!” Will’s voice bounced around the room. “This is bullshit! Yeah, I was pretty fucked up last night, but I came here to apologize! Do you really think I would cheat on you just because we had a fight?”

“I don’t know!”

“You’re kidding, right? You’re really going to believe one of these fucked-up outlets over me?”

“I don’t know what to believe right now!” I shouted, unable to keep my hand from sliding around my stomach. “I saw her. With you. In those fucking pictures. And last night, you were blitzed out of your mind! Do you even remember everything that happened? Who the fuck are you? What the fuck happened to my Will?!”

“I’m only going to say this one more time. I did not sleep with anyone. Not with Amelia.” He held out the phone, and I shied away. I didn’t want to see that. “Look at this. Look at it, Maggie.”

“I don’t want to look at that! You don’t think I’ve seen enough of that skank’s hands all over you?”

“Fine, then I’ll tell you! See that sofa? That’s in the middle of Corbyn’s backyard. And what you don’t see in the photograph are the twenty other people surrounding us. Yeah, I was fucked up last night, Lil. I was, and I apologize for that. But I didn’t do anything with anybody. You have to believe me. What kind of person do you think I am, anyway?”

“I DON’T REALLY KNOW, DO I?” I screamed, falling backward onto the piano bench from the effort. My heart pounded furiously, and my whole body was shaking. Unconsciously, my hand drifted to my stomach. This couldn’t be good for the baby.

The baby.

Everything raced through me. Flowing drinks. Easy pills. Amelia touching him. I was splitting apart.

Will approached, squatting down onto his heels and caging me on the bench.

“Listen to me. There are a shit ton of manipulative people in this business, and Amelia is a pro. She probably fed the outlet this story to begin with in order to build buzz for the movie. That’s how it’s done, Lil. But one call from Benny, and this gets yanked, okay? That’s all we have to do.”

“You still don’t get it,” I said miserably. “It’s not the story that bothers me, Will. It’s that you were even there at all. It’s all the nasty things you said last night.” I swiped at the tears that wouldn’t stop falling. “It’s that in the end…you chose all of that…over me.”

“Lil, I said some shitty things, but I did not choose anyone over you.”

“You did.”

“I didn’t!”

“And how would you really know?”

The words fell like bombs between us, and Will took a step back, like he’d been hit. “What?”

I rocked forward. “Will, I have lived my entire life with someone with a substance abuse problem, who only has partial memory recognition half the time because she’s too blitzed the other half. You said yourself—you were fucked up last night. So really, how would you know? What did you have? Drinks, and what else? I see you in that photo. I saw you last night. Right there, you look like you couldn’t even remember your own name, much less everything that happened.”

Will pulled out his phone and swiped to the site again to look at the photo. He studied it again, looking through the rest of the reel. It was obvious on his face that what I said was true—that he didn’t actually remember everything that happened.

My heart deflated.

“I didn’t take anything,” he whispered, but he looked like he didn’t even believe it himself. “I didn’t…”

“You said you did,” I whispered. “Last night, when we—”

He looked up, full of regret. “Please tell me you believe me, Lil. Please. I would never do that to you.”

I opened my mouth. I didn’t know what to believe, but I couldn’t take it when he looked at me like that. I clasped a hand over my stomach. Now, a small voice said inside me. Tell him now.

“Will, it’s not only that,” I started. “I’m—”

The door to the studio swung open, and Calliope rushed in, phone in hand.

“Maggie?” Her frantic gaze pinballed around the room until she found me. “Oh my God. Maggie. You—you need to call home. You need to call Lucas. Right—right away.”

Will practically growled. “We’re kind of in the middle of—”

“No.” Calliope cut him off, handing me her phone, which was already dialing Lucas’s number. I didn’t even know she had it. “Here.”

Ducking the concerned glances from her and Will, I turned around as Lucas’s voice sounded through the speaker.

“Maggie? Mags? Is that you?”

“Y-yeah. Lucas, what is it?” Something in his voice, a peculiar frenzy, made my chest grow cold.

“I—I couldn’t reach you. I didn’t know who else to call, so I looked up Calliope’s number, and—”

“Lucas, what’s going on?”

There was a pause. A deep breath. Maybe even the sound of someone crying.

“Mags, you gotta come home,” he said with hitched breaths. “You—you need to come back right now.”

“What? Why?”

And then the message came, spiraling around me like loose streamers. Disconnected, because how can news like that ever be truly uniform, linear? Instead, the words landed in a cacophony of sharp, staccato notes, shearing through space and time like hand grenades, each one a deadly weapon that somehow cohered into a larger narrative that exploded through me.

Mom.

Sorry.

Ellie.

Driving.

Curly’s.

Late.

Drinking.

…

…

Dead.