Emily St. John Mandel - The Lola Quartet

Gavin was too hot for his fedora, so he took it off. He leaned forward, let his forehead rest on the stucco between the window and the door. He was going to get sick from staying out in the sun like this but the least he could do was wait, wasn't it, with Anna and Chloe perhaps so close? The thought of being a father. It seemed possible that they might be in the motel room, mere feet from him on the other side of the wall. It seemed to him that he'd been waiting for a very long time. He wanted to look at his watch again, but it seemed like too much effort to raise his arm. His thoughts drifted. He could help them in some way, do the right thing. He had a job, he could contribute, maybe even go to Chloe's school plays. Maybe they'd all eat dinner together sometimes, a sort of provisional family. He'd wanted his own family for as long as he could remember. He was having some trouble staying upright. His fedora, he realized, had fallen from his hand.

"Please!" he called again, toward the window.

"You're going to have to wait," the voice said. A note of panic. "I can't reach anyone."

"Who are you calling? Daniel?"

"How do you know Daniel?"

"How do I know him? I don't know." Gavin was aware that he was mumbling. He couldn't think of how to explain how he knew Daniel; the whole mundane history of elementary school and high school, first grade field trips to museums and seventh grade parties in basements and the jazz quartet seemed like too much to explain all of a sudden. "It's been a long time." He was having trouble concentrating. "Listen," he said, louder now, "I'm not going to give up. I'll stay here all night. I'm going to keep chasing Anna and Chloe forever if I have to."

"Forever?" the man's voice was almost squeaky now. "Are there others with you?"

"What? No, I'm alone," Gavin said. "I'm alone." It wouldn't be so bad to take a short nap, would it, just to drift off for a moment or two? He felt too sick to open his eyes. How long had he been out here? He was seized by a sudden chill. What was strange was that the wall of the motel was softening. He was sinking into it.

There was a sound as if from a long way off, and he realized that the door had opened beside him. Gavin stood upright with tremendous difficulty. His legs were like water.

The man's voice was nervous. "Why did you come here?"

Gavin was so dizzy now that he could no longer see. A blinding wash of swimming dots over his vision, a haze.

"I'm here for Anna," he said. The open doorway was all cold air and black shadow, a sanctuary— he forced himself to move and lurched forward, trying to get inside before he blacked out.

"Hold it right there!" the man called out, from somewhere farther back in the room. "Don't come any closer! I don't know who you are!"

But Gavin knew only that he had to get inside, into the cool. He kept moving.

"Stop," the man cried, "oh God, please," but Gavin didn't. He heard a dull sound but didn't immediately understand what it had to do with the sudden pain singing out from his left arm, his rapidly numbing hand. He fell to his knees.

"I think I have heatstroke," he mumbled, to no one in particular. He fell forward then and closed his eyes, soft carpet. His shirt was wet and he was impossibly tired. It seemed like a good moment to sleep, and he drifted off into a confused dream about New York City, Sasha, the pleasant chaos of the Star newsroom, a trumpet.

The Lola Quartet's last concert: Anna threw the paper airplane and took a step backward, dry leaves breaking under her shoes. The quartet was playing on the back of Taylor's dad's pickup truck in the night heat with dancers all around them. Daniel was playing with his eyes closed. She watched the airplane rise through the air and descend, the way Gavin looked up a moment before it landed at his feet. The bass solo was ending. Gavin lifted his trumpet to his lips and he half-smiled at her around the mouthpiece before he blew the first note, but she couldn't bring herself to smile back. In a moment he would unfold the paper airplane and read the two-word message it carried, but at this instant he was playing "Bei Mir Bist Du Schön," the quartet's signature piece, the horns in perfect unison, and Taylor was singing again. Gavin let Jack's saxophone take over the brass line. He stooped to pick up the airplane, but Anna couldn't bear to watch him read it so she stepped behind a bush. A childish desire to hide, to disappear for a moment. When she was little she used to stay for hours under her bed.

She heard footsteps approaching. Gavin walked close by her where

she stood against the leaves, but he was coming from a haze of light into darkness and he was momentarily a little blind. She kept still, almost not breathing. Gavin called her name, but he didn't look back. He was moving quickly, his trumpet in his hand, and he receded into the trees and bushes until she couldn't see his white t-shirt anymore.

She waited a moment before she turned back toward the lights. The song was done, everyone tired and a little high, people dispersing and picking up water bottles and beer cans from the grass. Jack was standing by the truck, flirting with a twelfth grader whose name Anna didn't know. She saw Taylor looking at her, but Taylor's boyfriend whispered something in her ear just then and they both turned away from Anna. Sasha was packing up her drum kit and this was the hardest thing, not going to her at that moment, not telling her about her departure. Anna and Daniel had agreed that even Sasha couldn't know where they were going, not yet. She would call Sasha when they were settled in Utah. Daniel wrestled his bass into its enormous carrying case, lowered it down from the truck and jumped after it.

"I'm glad you're here," he said. Anna knew he hadn't seen the paper airplane— he played his solos with his eyes closed— but she still felt like a traitor. She wasn't sure in that moment what she'd hoped to accomplish with the airplane note. She couldn't tell Gavin she was leaving, she couldn't tell anyone, everything had all been decided in these past two weeks, long afternoons of cutting school and sitting in Daniel's basement talking about the plan, which was at first so wild that two weeks was how much time they'd needed to talk it into reality.

"Did you see where Gavin went?" he asked. "Did he see you?"

"No," she said. "He didn't see me." She looked back at the trees, where Gavin had disappeared. She wasn't sure how far back the woods went, if it might be possible to get lost in them.

Daniel glanced around. The others were drifting away in twos and threes, no one paying attention to them.

"Why don't you get your bag," he murmured.

Her duffel bag was waiting at the base of a tree. She felt piercingly lonely and in that moment she wanted nothing more than to see Gavin again. She stood for a second at the edge of the shadows, but Gavin didn't emerge and Daniel was waiting for her. They walked together away from the pickup truck where Jack and Sasha and Taylor and a half-dozen others still lingered, their voices fading into sounds of frogs and crickets. Anna and Daniel turned the corner around the side of the gym and she felt safer then, out of sight, fireflies rising silently from the grass all around her.

Daniel had parked his station wagon at the far end of the student parking lot. He struggled to fit the bass into the back while she sat in the passenger seat, staring out the side window at the pavement bright with moonlight, the lights of the school. A thought: I might never see this place again. This didn't make her as wistful as she'd thought it would. It stirred nothing in her except a vague unease. Daniel dropped into the driver's seat.