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It started the morning after her argument with Cliff.
She'd gone back to her own apartment, where she hadn't
slept in weeks. It was nice not to have to hear Cliff's
snoring, or to fight him for the blankets.
She woke up and felt rested, like her bones were
humming with energy. But it wasn't her bones that were
humming.
That's all it was at first, just humming. She thought
it was the stereo in the apartment upstairs, muffled as it
was. But it got louder when she stood, and it was louder
still in the shower.
"Do you hear music?" she asked an older woman on the
bus to work. The older woman shook her head and moved to a
different seat.
On her lunch break she called her mother.
"What sort of music?" her mother asked.
"It varies. Right now it's kind of an Afro-Brazilian
pop."
"Let me hear it."
"Over the phone?"
"Don't be shy, I'm your mother. Put the phone up your
skirt."
"Mom! I'm wearing pants."
"Maybe you're pregnant. Did you think of that?"
She hadn't. The thought kept her awake that night,
while Count Basie-style woodwinds played between her legs.
Her gynecologist said she wasn't pregnant.
"What about the music, then?"
"I dig it," said the doctor. "Reminds me of early Led
Zeppelin. Does it hurt?"
"No."
"I wouldn't worry about it."
She made up with Cliff so she could ask him what he
thought. Cliff didn't like it.
"It's derivative," he said, after listening to a two-
minute, three-chord movement. "Nobody's done punk right
since the Ramones. Can't you turn it down or something?"
She let that slide, but ten minutes later he asked if
he could write lyrics for her. She left.
She tried recording it, but all the microphone picked
up was her breathing.
She went for drinks with Janis. "Probably you're just
stressed," Janis said. "This Cliff thing has got you
down."
She wasn't down about Cliff. Cliff was an asshole.
"Can you dance to it?" Janis asked.
She could. Sometimes, when she was in the apartment,
knee-melting bass carried a horn section over landscapes of
epic funk. Everything was like dancing now — paying bills,
cooking, walking to the laundromat.
She quit her job. It was frightening but liberating.
She marched out to a triumphant blast of bugles and timpani
that drowned out the Muzak in the elevator.
"What were you thinking?" her mother asked. "If you
go back there tomorrow, maybe they'll give you your job
back."
"I don't want it back, Mom."
"What are you going to do, then? Stand on a stage and
put a microphone between your legs?"
She did nothing for the first couple of weeks. She
went to museums and sat reading in restaurants. Janis left
her worried voice mails, and she left cheery ones in
return. When she realized she was down to her last two
hundred dollars she sent out résumés to every job in the
classifieds that she wanted but wasn't qualified for.
She got an interview for a job at one of the weekly
newspapers in town, doing layouts and some graphics work.
She didn't have the experience she'd claimed to have on her
résumé, but she faked it and flirted a little bit with the
editor, buoyed by Cuban pop and a growing sense that the
worst would come whenever it pleased, and there was nothing
she could do about it.
"I knew you could do it, honey," said her mother when she
got the job.
When she got her first paycheck she bought a nice
bottle of white wine and blackened some salmon to go with
it, singing with the soft jazz that tingled through her
along with the wine. After dinner she put on sweats and
piled all the laundry she'd been waiting to do into a
basket.
She met Keith at the laundromat. He was sitting in a
plastic chair, singing to himself. She borrowed his fabric
softener and told him about the music.
"All the time?" he asked.
"I think so," she said. "I don't control it, so I
suppose it plays on while I sleep."
"What's playing right now?"
"Solo piano. A little bit Chopin, a little bit Jerry
Lee Lewis."
"I'm jealous. I used to pretend I had my own
soundtrack. You've got one for real."
She liked him. A few days later he confirmed that the
music played on while she slept.
"You must have some wild dreams," he said. "It
sounded like Captain Beefheart and Tom Waits wrestling
Sonic Youth in a dark alley."
"Did it keep you awake?" she asked.
"No," he said. "I liked it."
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