Emily St. John Mandel - The Lola Quartet

"Sausages," Morelli said. "What a nice surprise."

He was older than Liam, and Anna saw him register her age as they smiled at one another and said hello.

" Would you like some eggs?" she asked.

"I would love some eggs." Morelli sat at the kitchen table and crossed his legs. "So this is what you come home to," he said to Liam. " Lucky man."

"The luckiest," Liam said. He kissed Anna. "Is Chloe sleeping?"

Anna nodded.

"Your daughter?" Morelli asked.

" Eight months old," Liam said, and Anna understood how little he'd told Morelli about his life.

"What's this music we're listening to?" Morelli asked.

"They're called Baltica," Anna said. "I think they're from Canada." The CD played on the stereo on top of the fridge, quietly so it wouldn't wake Chloe. Baltica's sound made her think of snow. A high clear beat with electronic strings in the background sometimes and gentle static, repetitive echoing lyrics if there were any lyrics at all, I always come to you, come to you, come to you in the background while she beat eggs in a bowl with a fork.

"Anna, any chance of a hot-lemon-and-honey?" Liam asked.

"What exotic concoction is that?" Morelli's voice had a languor that

she liked, as if he had all the time in the world. She realized how rarely she spoke with anyone besides Liam.

"Hot water," she said. She was filling the kettle. "You boil water and then squeeze a lemon into it and then you add some honey."

"It's an addiction," Liam said. "We're thinking about playing together, Anna. A guitar duo."

"Morelli and Deval," Morelli said.

" Deval and Morelli."

"With a bass, maybe," Morelli said. "Drums."

"It sounds like a nice idea," Anna said. "I used to spend a lot of time with a jazz quartet in high school."

"Did you play?"

"No," she said. "My friends and my sister did." Were they her friends? She'd slept with two of them and managed to betray both, put the third in danger by showing up at his dorm room, left the state without telling her sister. The pan blurred before her eyes. She blinked hard and flipped the omelet.

"It's the best idea ever," Liam said, "but I need to study a little more."

"By next spring," Morelli said. Liam had poured him a glass of wine, and he raised it. "To music."

"To next spring," Liam said, and the glasses clinked behind her.

She set their plates on the table and sat with them. This is part of my disguise. Not just dyed-blond hair but plates of eggs too. A part of her wanted to put her fork down and tell Morelli who she really was— Listen, I ran away three times before the tenth grade. Family Services in Florida has a file on me that's probably two inches thick. I stood before a wall with a can of pink spray paint and slept for three nights in the park. I have a tattoo but I was so out of my mind that night that I barely remember the needle. I stole a hundred and twenty-one thousand dollars from a drug dealer in Utah. I am not someone who has always stood in front of stoves cooking eggs for her boyfriend— but of course she didn't.

Mo n t h s l a t e r at Puppets Jazz Bar in Brooklyn Anna closed her eyes while they were playing and abruptly found herself disoriented, lost in the sound and unsure of where she was. She opened her eyes in alarm and clutched the seat of her chair. The darkness of the club was like the darknesses of all the other clubs where she'd gone to listen to gypsy jazz since Liam and Morelli had started playing regular gigs together. Where was Gavin tonight? She thought she'd die of shame every time she thought of him. She knew he was somewhere in this sharp and endless city, she knew he could walk in at any moment— did he still love music? And then perhaps she'd tell Liam she had a headache and find a way to leave with her face turned away, perhaps Gavin wouldn't recognize her at once with the short blond hair and that would buy her a few minutes. She was afraid to look toward the door.

Liam found her smoking on the sidewalk after the set.

"I don't know what I'm doing here," she said. "Coming out here like this with Chloe at home. Paying a fortune for a babysitter when you play for me and Chloe almost every night."

"That's just practicing," he said. "It isn't a performance. There's no Morelli, no bass, no drums."

"I like it better," she said. "I like it better when it's just us."

"Well," he said, "you don't have to come to these places if you don't want to." He turned to go back inside and the motion reminded her of another day months earlier in a hospital in Utah, lying on her back in the maternity ward, the look in Daniel's eyes when he saw the baby for the first time and turned away from her. I am always disappointing the ones I love.

.

Li a m c a l l e d Anna from a van between Miami and Sebastian on the morning of Chloe's first birthday. He'd gone to Florida to visit his mother and play a few gigs with Morelli— the Lemon Club in Sebastian, two places in Miami, stops in Celebration and Sarasota. She'd almost gone with him but it still seemed too soon. The thought of traveling with Chloe again was exhausting and her nerves overcame her at the last moment. She imagined Paul lying in wait for her among the palm trees. In Liam's absence the city was vast and gray and empty, an unformed mass pressed up against the neighborhood. She stayed close to the sea.

"I wish you'd come with me," he said.

"It isn't safe."

"I think if Paul were still looking," Liam said, "he would have found us by now."

"You don't think he's looking anymore?"

"I don't," Liam said. "I don't think it's that much money for a guy like him. Anna, you'll never guess who I ran into down here. Jack came to my gig in Sebastian."

"Jack's back in Florida?"

"He dropped out of school," Liam said. "A few weeks after I picked you up in Virginia. He came to see me at the Lemon Club."

"How is he?"

"He seems a little shaky, actually. How's everything over there, love?"

"Fine, completely fine. We're heading out to the beach."

"Give her a happy-birthday kiss for me," he said. She did, while she was bundling Chloe into the stroller.

Anna took Chloe down to the boardwalk. They walked for a while alongside the sea. It was November but the day was unseasonably warm. Anna eased the stroller off the boards and pushed it with great difficulty toward the water, until they were halfway between the boardwalk and the waves. The sand rising over the wheels, impossible to go farther. She knelt to free Chloe from the buckles and straps.

"Want to walk on the sand?" she asked Chloe, who was staring mesmerized over her shoulder. Chloe pointed and cried out "Wucks!" which meant ducks, which was her go-to word for birds of any kind. There were seagulls on the beach today, congregating around a dropped sandwich. Anna pulled Chloe's hat down over her ears, maneuvered her chubby hands into her mittens. " Happy birthday," she said. "I am so glad you're here."

Chloe looked at her and for an instant Anna was certain she understood.

"I would do anything for you," Anna whispered, but the moment had passed and Chloe was squirming now, kicking to be let out of the stroller. Anna lifted her free. They walked on the sand together, Chloe shrieking and laughing at the movement of seagulls and Anna holding Chloe's hand.

Awoman called Gavin a vulture once. She'd signed a bad mortgage and she was coming undone. He sensed her derangement as he came into her house, a tension in the air as in the hour before an electrical storm. She was pinch-faced and furious, sweating in her kitchen in a dress with an enormous flower pattern that reminded him of the curtains in his first apartment. He'd been working for Eilo for some weeks now and had decided that the people who'd done this to themselves were the angriest. The ones who were losing their houses because they'd already lost their jobs were despairing. The ones who were losing their houses because they hadn't understood their mortgages wanted to kill him.