The Ruby Notebook (10 page)

“Why?”

“He’s like a father to us,” Julien says. “Especially to Amandine, after what happened to our own father.”

After a pause, he heads upstairs after his sister, with Sabina trailing behind him, leaving me and Jean-Claude alone.

The music grows louder, and around us, the crowd is dancing, pushing us against each other. It’s too loud to talk. The only thing left to do is dance together, so I force myself to say, “I think I should go home now, Jean-Claude.”

“I’ll walk with you.”

“Oh, no—”

“I insist.” And he takes my elbow in a gentlemanly gesture from our grandparents’ era and escorts me outside.

The night air is clear and cool. From the distance floats music from bars and restaurants, blending with the hum of far-off motorcycle engines. The street is deserted except for Jean-Claude and me, and a few pigeons cooing in an alcove above.

I extract my elbow from his hand and try to set a fast pace, but Jean-Claude saunters. His profile is breathtaking in the silvery moonlight, as though it’s draped in a thin veil of silk.

I look away. A black cat creeps across a rooftop. The silence is dangerously romantic. I start talking in a too-loud voice. “I’ve always identified with cats,” I say. “Their nine lives.”

“
Ah bon?
”

“Only for me it would be sixteen lives. A new life every year. A new Zeeta.”

“The joys of being a wanderer.” Jean-Claude spreads his
arms, as if embracing the world, a gesture that would look silly for most people but that makes him look radiant.

I hug my arms tight across my chest, holding myself in. “The
woes
of being a wanderer.”

He tilts his head back, face to the sky. “But don’t you love it? Always creating a new you?”

“No!”

“Why?”

“A zillion reasons.”

“What’s one?”

“Well …” I think. We walk through a pool of yellow lamplight, past a small, gurgling fountain. A smooth stream of water pours from the mouth of a copper snake. I listen to the rhythm of my breathing, my sandals slapping the pavement. “For instance,” I say finally. “How can you be in love with someone if you’re always changing into a different person?”

He considers. “Perhaps
le grand amour
is for other people, settled people. Not us. We wanderers go where the breeze takes us, enjoy whatever lovely feathers and leaves are blown our way.”

“That’s terrible!”

As we walk, his arm brushes against mine. If I had pockets I’d stuff my hands in them now. I’m too aware that his hand might slip into mine and stay there. I take a sharp breath, but I don’t move away.

Pausing in the middle of the street, he whips out the tiny notebook from his back pocket. He scribbles something.

“What are you writing about?” As soon as I ask, I wish I could snatch back my question.

“Your eyelids.”

Feeling dizzy, I’m suddenly conscious of my eyelids.

He scrawls a little more. “They are the flicker of fireflies.” He reaches his hand to my face, and his fingers graze my eyelashes.

“
Attends.
” Wait. I step away and sputter, “I—I have a boyfriend.”

He lets out a long, slow breath between pouting lips. “Where?”

“In America. But he’ll be here soon.”

Jean-Claude looks at me for a moment with a thoughtful expression. A little sad, maybe. Then he raises a shoulder in a resigned shrug. “You should bring him over for dinner to our apartment.”

That’s the last thing I expected him to say. “Really?”

“
Bien sûr
. If friendship is what you have to offer, I’ll take it.”

A block later, we’ve reached my apartment, and he gives me a kiss on each cheek. “I’m glad we met, Zeeta.” Then he adds, “You’re one of us, you know.”

“One of you?”

“Someone who makes every day a song.”

I give him an odd look. “Layla says that all the time.” I study his face. “And it’s the phrase that was written on that CD.”

“It’s from a story about a troubadour.”

“I know the story well. The man uses his music to save himself.” I stare at him, bewildered. “Where did you hear it?”

“
Ouf
. Who knows? It’s just a story that we travelers pass around,
non?
” He smiles. “Like I said, you’re one of us.”

Streetlamp light pours onto my twisted, crumpled sheets. My open window lets in a faint night breeze, but the air still feels too hot, heavy, pressing down on me. My travel alarm clock glows 3:00 a.m. with fiery red numbers. Most of the time, I can handle anything that comes my way. There was the pickpocket I chased down at Carnaval in Brazil, the bus breaking down in the desert in Morocco, the angry hyena in Tanzania.

But at this time of night, when I’m most alone in the world, every fear emerges. They rush out of hiding in full force, especially when the apartment is new and doesn’t feel quite like home yet. The worst part is I can’t always put my finger on the worries. They’re looming monsters that shift shapes once I think I’ve seen their outlines. They make my insides twist and my heart race, but they’re shadowy, elusive.

I wish I could talk to Layla. She doesn’t mind being woken up in the middle of the night for a chat. But she’s still at her solstice party on the Celtic ruins, which she warned me would last all night. She and Sirona and the others are probably dancing naked around a bonfire about now.

Instead, I conjure up a good memory with Wendell—stretching out beside each other in a garden in Ecuador, hand in hand. Usually this relaxes me, lets me drift to sleep.
But not tonight. I climb out of bed, walk barefoot across the cold tile floor, and open the red CD case. I stick it in the mini stereo and press play. Closing my eyes, I let the music grab hold of me, spin me away.

Make every day a song
. I try to remember the original version of the story, the one Layla first told me years ago. My mind has always spun its own variations, depending on where we lived. The forest morphed into a desert or jungle or beach, and the guitar changed to congas or didgeridoo or whatever instrument we were into at the time. The story goes something like this.

There was a troubadour—a singer, poet, musician—who led the wandering life, like us. “Make every day a song” was his motto. Every day a new adventure. A new lifetime. A new poem. He would wander around, playing his music, singing his poems. This is how he made money for food to eat, a place to sleep. And if, one day, he had to eat only nuts and berries, that was fine. Or if he had to sleep on the ground one night, that was fine too. He had his music to nourish him. The songs in his soul. All he needed was his guitar and he was happy. (Layla loved telling me this story when, as a kid, I complained about our lack of well-rounded meals and our inconsistent bedtimes.)

One day in the forest, the troubadour encountered a band of criminals, men with hard hearts, tough pasts. When they found he carried nothing of value, they decided to kill him.

“May I have one wish before I die?” the troubadour asked.

The criminals laughed at his request. “Yes,” they said,
expecting him to ask for a cigarette or jug of wine. Instead, he said, “Let me play one song.”

They agreed.

The troubadour closed his eyes and held his guitar like a precious child and plucked out the first notes. They were the most beautiful notes: sparkles of sunshine on water, the perfumed hum of bees on the first days of summer, dewdrops, nectar, trails of comets.

One by one, the criminals sat down on the mossy forest floor.

And then the troubadour began to sing, the words from the deepest place in his soul, the farthest reaches of the ocean, the bluest space between stars. The song was a spring bubbling up through rocks. A cool glass of water in a desert. The sweetest fruit dripping from your lips. The troubadour sang and the earth seemed to quiver with his voice, to pulse with each note. On the last note, the troubadour stretched out his voice, and finally, it faded like dawn. He put his guitar on his lap, ready to die.

For a moment, there was silence except for the birds and insects. Then the criminals found their voices and said, “One more song.”

Again the troubadour conjured up the deepest, highest, brightest, darkest song from the most secret treasure-filled place inside him. He played with all his soul.

When it was done, the criminals cried, “Another one. Another one!”

All night he played. One by one, the criminals sank into
the soft earth and drifted off into the sweetest dreams. And by dawn, they were all asleep, with smiles on their faces.

The troubadour, too, had a smile on his face as he picked up his guitar and walked off into the rising sun, ready for a new day, a new poem.

Sometimes, instead of “See you later,” Layla says, “Make your day a song, love!” That’s what she takes from the story. I’ve always loved the story’s assurance that when we find ourselves lost in a dangerous slum or a thick jungle or a parched desert, if we reach deep enough into our souls, we can survive anything.

But tonight this story doesn’t comfort me.

N
ow, after Layla’s third espresso at Café Cerise, she’s finally waking up, jumping straight from lethargic to hyper. “Z, it was so amazing at my solstice
fête!
” She rambles on and on about the ceremony, which involved jars of olive oil, goblets of springwater, candles, chanting, dancing, singing, feasting, and general merriment under the moon. She didn’t come home from the Celtic ruins until dawn. Apparently, she and Sirona and her family and friends hopped the fence around the ruins and had their all-night party in secret. Typical Layla. I wonder if she’ll ever outgrow this stuff.

“
Hyper cool,
” I say without enthusiasm, rubbing my eyes. I put my hand back on my bag and scan the square, determined that the
fantômes
hand won’t sneak by me so easily again.

Layla ties her hair into a knot. Already the heat of the day has set in. “Look, there’s Sirona!” She waves, a flick of the wrist that jangles her dozens of copper bracelets.

Sirona and her family wave back at us as they set up not far from our table.

I open my notebook, looking at each member of Salluvii closely, remembering what Vincent said about some secret.
A secret older and deeper than you can imagine
. I list my observations:

I strain to hear them talking, listening to the rhythms and intonations. They’re not speaking French or any other language I’ve heard before—and I’ve heard dozens. The closest familiar language would be Gaelic, which an Irish colleague of Layla’s spoke.

In the sun, Sirona’s brass pendant flashes, the triple spiral. And then I notice they’re each wearing the same kind of necklace.

Sirona’s coming over, so I quickly turn to a blank page. After we greet one another, she sits down beside me, and I ask, “What do those spirals on your necklace mean?”