Apex Magazine Issue 122 by Apex Magazine

Author:Apex Magazine [Magazine, Apex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: apex magazine, Magazine
Publisher: Apex Publications
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Nyssa. Backup singer.

“I shouldn’t have come,” she said, heading for the door. “It was stupid. You have your life, you have your troubles,” and she looked around the room, saw the mess, the piled-up bills, the pictures of my kids and grandkids on the fridge, and she winced, because she’d never once asked me how I was doing, what was happening in my life, and now it was too late, “and you damn sure don’t need me coming here asking for help with mine.”

“Something happened that night,” I said. “The concert. For the soldiers? In San Jose?”

Ti stopped. Whispered: “San Diego.”

“You saw something. During the saxophone solo. I felt it—I felt you feel it. I can still feel it, even now. Shut my eyes and there it is, humming under my skin like it happened seconds ago. Am I right?”

“You felt that?” Her voice was tiny, terrified. Excited.

I nodded.

“You hid it well. Never let it show in your face. But I could see it anyway, same as if I’d watched you burst into flames.”

Her eyes were so wide.

Every part of me was screaming to stop. But I knew I had to do this.

Because I’d been hiding, too. Trying not to look the truth in the eyes. Not to let myself remember what it felt like, that night, every night, every time we sang together on stage, how my voice connected with hers and something happened. Something flowed through me. Something linking me and Ti and all those people. Something that let me see the inside of every one of them, the pure goodness inside of bodies and minds wracked by horror and disease and fear. It was a thousand times stronger than heroin, that feeling—and yes, I do have a basis for comparison—but with no crash or consequences or side effects, just bliss, like being welcomed into the warm light of the womb of the universe. So of course I had to push it down, pretend it never happened. Because how could you live your real life after you’ve had something like that and then lost it? Better to tell yourself it was all in your head.

“You saw something, Ti. Looking out into that crowd. You saw something that hurt you worse than anything ever hurt before. I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach, and I knew that’s how you felt. Should I keep going?”

She nodded.

“It was like I could hear your thoughts. Or we were watching the same movie. The movie was you. All your life you’d been looking for a certain kind of love, the real kind, the one that God and your mom and your heart would all be proud of. Always believing it was just around the corner. Maybe the next man would be the one, or if you gave the current man a little longer, in spite of all the warning signs. But whatever you saw in that crowd—as soon as you saw it, you knew. The love you were looking for? You’d had it already.

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