Music and Merlot
bhifion agus cinniunt (fate and wine)
Nora:
Through most of this life, I have walked alone, even when surrounded by trusted allies and people who love me. Throughout, the elements have provided, but at a cost. It is not always a burden, nor does it come without a freedom, despite the balancing burden of responsibility. Ah, but I accept that the places I have been and the things I have done have brought me more satisfaction than I expected, despite the agonising losses. I have honed my gifts and my strength and found myself sure and firm in my own grounded feet. But Andrew O’Bannion was an unexpected gift, a boon that I had thought was lost long ago. I had expected a casual interlude. I received life’s ultimate gift: the return of my heart and soul.
I had stopped at The Voyager, a dive bar with excellent food and music, to allow myself to sink into the familiarity of knowing and being known without having to prove a point or offer a business card. The bartender poured my glass of Merlot before I was settled on the stool, “Music’s good tonight” he said.
I had barely sipped when a couple of familiar voices called my name to join them. The waitress who took our order knew my salad dressing preference and how I like my steak, definitely a familiar and soothing place to be. The pleasant surprise was when the shaggy haired guitarist returned from his break and picked up with a couple of covers and segued into some delicious work of his own.
“He is GOOD”, a buddy who plays a decent guitar himself, spoke into my ear.
“Better than that”, his singer girlfriend agreed.
As the evening wore on, more music regulars arrived and it became a late night jam.I am no professional, but I can sing. Eventually it came down to the performer--and me-- as the others headed for home. Our voices blended seamlessly on tunes so old they were rooted in the old country itself. Near closing, time was becoming fluid and the edges of remembrance were begging to be crossed. But that is a dangerous road to travel in public when following only the music. It was time to go and we walked out together--and into the next part of our lives. We headed for the car park, together. He looked over at the impressive Harley he had rode in on, opened my car door and then got in the other side, We rode out onto the street together and he gave me the name of his quiet, expensive, not well known hotel and we went there together. I could feel the tendrils of connection weaving as we continued to the room together. This was going to be interesting no matter how it turned out.
*********
Andrew:
They say that opportunity knocks and that fortune favors. That may be so, but in my life both opportunity and fortune tend to appear as ankle high stakes set to trip me and drop me flat on my face. Or, in the case of Nora McRoss, land me flat on my back. When I got up this time, I was facing an entirely different direction--I just didn’t know it then.
I had always had quiet success with my music, but the night I took a busman’s holiday to gig with some old friends at a neighborhood bar was just for fun. After the performance, we joined friends and admirers at the tables and the music continued impromptu. Near closing there were only a few die hards left and the music became softer and slower. I found myself singing an old romantic ballad accompanied by my guitar and a strong contralto harmony. I looked up to see its owner was a woman about my age with dark auburn hair and chocolate eyes. She was both closely following my musical lead and looking faintly amused--not a combination I was accustomed to.
I had a spent years on the road and met a lot of women who found me attractive. They tended to either be ambitious or desperate. This woman was neither. She appeared to simply enjoy singing with me. I started another song and she switched easily to follow my lead. Music is my heart, the voice of my soul. This woman, whose name I did not know, walked into my heart and matched my voice as if she had always been there. Maybe she had. Even in the best times with my long divorced exe, it had never been like this.
I looked up and realised that we were alone. The wine bottle was empty. The staff were cleaning up and looking at us, hoping we’d leave. I dropped some money on the table and stood looking down at her. She smiled and held out her hand. “Nora McRoss” she said. “Andrew O’Bannion”, I replied and took her hand. She stood and joined me in the walk out to her car and the drive to my hotel room. She raised her eyebrows at the address, but we did not speak until the door closed.
She sat on the couch and watched me as I opened a bottle of Merlot, glad we had similar tastes in wine. She accepted a glass, sipped it, and watched me over the rim, her eyes wide and unblinking as a cat. I sat down, sipped my own wine and watched back. I was tempted to reach out and stroke her hair, but didn’t. She set her glass down with a smile and said “You actually live in the music don’t you?” I froze like a mouse before I realised she was delighted to confirm this. Suddenly, I had the warm feeling that it was she somehow stroking me.
I smiled back and shrugged. “Always have”, I said “as long as I can remember.”
“Yes,” she agreed, “ I imagine so. And you really enjoy it. It must be wonderful to see and feel what I can only hear.”
“Usually.” I am not going to tell her about the trials and tribulations of being different.
She tilted her head and her eyes narrowed. “That cannot always be easy.”
“Are you reading my mind?” I smiled.
“Not yet,” she said. “I could walk the corridors of your mind if you allowed it--but not yet..”
I was skeptical. “Go right ahead--anytime.” It came with a kind of challenge.
“You should be careful with blanket permissions like that.” She was suddenly serious.
“Really.” I said, skeptical.
“Yes, really.:” her voice dropped to a warm, clear siren call. “You have a gift that not many have. You have the burden and the blessing of that amazing difference and it carves you in ways you have not yet imagined and leads you, pushes you, directs you. When you close your eyes, you enter an entirely different world. TIme ceases. Then is now. Yesterday still happens. Yesterday and today are one and time does not stand between them. What you see now is what you saw then. The moment when you were freed to belong to the music is now,even as it was then. See it. Feel it Tell an important story to me.
I am walking home with Davy when Jack and Rudy step out from behind a tree. This is not good. Not good at all. They have been after me since school started. “Run!” I shout to Davy, but Rudy is already tackling him. They go down in a heap with Rudy on top. I have to help, but Jack has grabbed me by the ears and his nails are biting in so deep I can feel the blood running down my neck. In desperation I rear back against Jack and kick out at Rudy with both feet. The toe of one steel toed boot hits his side and slides, the other catches him on the check and lays it open. Rudy lets go of Davy with a bubbling wail. Jack starts screaming for help as if someone had hurt him instead of Rudy. Brother Jon comes running, calling over his shoulder to the lay teacher running behind him to go call an ambulance.
By the time my mother arrives my ears have been wiped with antiseptic and are burning unbelievably. Rudy is being loaded into the ambulance and Davy is sitting snuffling and holding his sore stomach where Rudy landed on him.
My mother, devout, pretty and, I now realise, very pregnant, huddles with Brother Jon, her tone alternating between parental authority and penitent respect. No one speaks to me or Davy. No one asks us what happened or why we fought. Jack has disappeared with the lay teacher. We wait to hear what more will be done to us.
Brother Jon and my mother approach--I wonder where Davy’s mom is. My mother seems to have spoken for both of us. Brother Jon tells us we are in disgrace and our families will be ashamed-- as if that was news. Then he says that our punishment will be long term. We are to report after school every day for 2 hours of intensive music practice. We will be expected to perform at every opportunity including one Mass every Sunday. Then he tells us my Mother will take us home and he walks away.
“Thank you for your story.” The warm dark voice introjects. “ Time is running on. Days and hours return to divide. Then returns to then and now intrudes as now. You are here in the now. You are here with me. We are together-- now.’
I opened my eyes and looked at Nora.wondering for a moment where Davy got to, then remembered that I was in a hotel room.
“I did warn you.” she said. “How did a schoolyard fight wed you to the music?”
“What? Oh. Extra time after school was a gift, not a punishment and we got a lot of performance experience with the weekly Masses and other events. And I had a personal tutor. Brother Louis, in composition and music theory. It was amazing.”
“And Davy?”
“Davy was short on brains, but he sang like an angel, both before and after his voice changed. The extra training got him into music school and an early start in opera and sacred singing.”
“Why would the other boys be so interested in beating you up?”
I shrugged. “Davy was my friend and I was different?”
“Different from ‘gifted’? You were in a school for talented children, were you not? A school for the variously gifted?”
Again, I shrugged. “Not different gifted. Different in the way I do things, different in who I am--and it showed.”
And it is true. Music speaks to me, holds me, confides in me. A phrase, even a single note can evoke a feeling, a picture of a place I have never seen, a portent. It wraps me in the comforting arms children’s hymns sing of, and shelters and offers safety from the world that can be uncomfortable and unfriendly. When I play what I hear it draws people--and sometimes repels them.
It came to me that Nora was sitting quietly watching me again--and I was not talking. I smiled and drank my wine.
“It showed?
Oh well, sooner or later...I lifted my shaggy hair and turned my head so she could see my distinctly pointed ears.
“Ah.” was all she said, as if something had been confirmed.
An explanation seemed necessary. “My mother has them. She says it is just a family trait that shows up sometimes. She says it just shows that our family was in Ireland for a very long time,”
“Somewhere far back, you have the blood of the Olde Ones.” Nora says.
“So, my mother said.” I agree, And she keeps hers hidden behind stylish hairdos, I do not say. “None of my brothers or sisters have it.”
“Or your gifts” Nora said. “And you father didn’t buy them steel-toed boots.”
“No,”
She sat swirling the dark red merlot in her glass. I had to reach over and take the glass from her hand and set it aside. She turned as she would or had hundreds of times and once more time slipped away as I opened her tunic and slid it down into a pool across our laps. I traced kisses down her neck and across her cheek. When our mouths met I rose to my knees to push her against the couch arm. The table lamp spot lit her naked body, scarred by life. The incision scar across her abdomen that testified she had given birth by knife rather than contraction, the white lines across her breasts that evidenced that she had fed that life, the darkness of her nipples-- all spoke of fertility fulfilled.
I traced her scar. “There will be no more.” she said calmly. She reached for my belt. In seconds she was sliding an experienced hand over me. She cupped me with her other hand and purred a chest moving, throaty purr. Even at this moment I was impressed with her breath control. I placed my mouth on her breast and easily matched the vibrations. Everything about us easily matched as she wrapped a long leg around my waist and pulled me into her waiting body. The purring gave way to more primitive moans as we merged. Her internal muscles pulled and milked at me and I found myself urging her to open even wider. I begged her to accept my full length, hearing my own voice chanting an offering that she take all , take more, feel my heat and strength, take, take, take... and she did. Meeting my thrusts strongly and encouraging me with sharp nailed hands clutching my butt. When her body bowed off of the couch, I was lost and poured myself into her in what seemed an endless moment. Perhaps it was. We collapsed together, still connected, my face cradled against her solid breasts. I felt sheltered, enveloped-- amazingly familiar.
“You feel like music.” I muttered and realised it was true.
Nora was purring again.
In all the years since, she has never ceased to purr and I have never ceased to feel that she is music.
********
Nora looked down on the sleeping form of the man she had so casually discovered the night before and tested the strength of the connection between them. It did not surprise her that it held as fast and firm as shackles. It happened that way sometimes. Whatever the mix of the energies, sometimes the link between two people lasted life times and resurfaced in bodies unknown to each other, formed in relationships unexpected and sometimes unwanted.
“So this time we are lovers”, she mused.” Preferable to enemies, at least. And the heat is strong and physical between us--water to fire--a gift we will enjoy. So what has brought our paths to cross, I wonder, potentiation or simple pleasure and support? Either way, it is welcome and warm as true home-coming must be.”
She sipped the last of the Merlot from her glass and smiled.
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