Oz did not like the time she spent talking to other phreaks. At first he was proud of her, but then he became jealous. He wouldn’t admit it, though. Eventually Oz started leaving the house when she got into a conversation and not returning until long after she had finished. He said that he didn’t mind, but hearing the talking gave him a headache.
In the years after he had left her, Jelly would trace the way they unraveled in her mind. She thought if she could figure out the place they came apart, she could fix it and he would return to her. Being left was bottomless. Not only in the moment, but the way it gave the lie to all the moments that preceded it. Is that true? Is love real and true only if it continues? Was it revealed to be “not love” when it unraveled?
JELLY AND JACK
This was another crucial moment, and she knew that she could not initiate anything more. She had to wait for him to open it further. She could not get anxious. Jelly held the receiver with her left hand and leaned back on the pillows. She crossed her legs at the ankles, pulled her kimono robe over her knees. She was a little cold. She wanted to be in that room with the beach smell and the sun on the windows. She waited, closed her eyes. She listened to the quiet line. She heard him cough.
“So how do you know Mark?” he said. He sounded friendly and a bit amused now.
Jelly made an “em” sound in her throat, with a little push through her nose. It sounded thoughtful, vaguely affirmative. She knew that even if she had to say “no” at some point, she would say it low and round and long so it sounded as if it had a yes in it somehow. Or an up-pitched down-pitched mmm-mmm, like a hill. The hums take you for a ride, just under the nose with the mouth closed.
“We talk a lot. Sunday-morning talks, late-Monday talks. Middle of the night talks. Sometimes we talk for hours.”
“Yeah? What about? Are you a girlfriend?”
Jelly laughed. These men all had “a” girlfriend, meaning several at any time. She never wanted to be one of a number. What Jelly wanted was to be singular. Not even “a friend.” She wanted a category of her own construction. Something they never knew existed.
“No,” she said. “Actually he talks to me about his writing. He reads me what he has written that day. I listen and tell him what I think. He says it gives him motivation, knowing I will call and he has to have something good to read to me.”
“Really?”
“He never told you about me?” she said.
“No, but I don’t listen to everything Mark says. He tends to fill the air with static. It is ambient noise at a certain point. You know, busy but easily ignored.”
She laughed. He laughed. Jelly sat up, stretching her back straight, feeling her spine arrange itself in a line above her hips. She switched the phone to the other side and relaxed the tension in her neck. She took a breath. So much of this involved waiting, silence, timing.
“So I have to go, Jack. I am so sorry I disturbed you.”
“No. I mean, no problem. I had to get up. I usually don’t sleep this late. But I was working all night. On this piece.”
“You probably want to make some coffee and get back to work.”
“Yeah, but not really.”
“Is it for a film score?”
“You know, it isn’t. It is just a thing I had in my head and now I’m playing with it. Using the keyboard. It will end up in a film score at some point, I’m guessing.”
“Really? You don’t watch the film and then compose to it?” she said.
“Yeah, I do. But I also import melodies and musical ideas I have. On file, so to speak.”
“Fascinating.”
“So, would you like to hear some of it?”
“Really?”
“Sure.”
“Oh wow, I would really love that. Yes, please.”
“Okay, good.” He laughed. “Hold on,” he said.
Jelly closed her eyes again and leaned back. She called this body listening. It was when you surrendered to a piece of music or a story. By reclining and closing your eyes, you could respond without tracking your response. You listened. The opposite were the people who started to speak the second someone finished talking or playing or singing. They practically overlapped the person because they were so excited to render their thoughts into speech. They couldn’t wait to get their words into it and make it theirs. They couldn’t stand the idea of not having a part in it. They spent the whole experience formulating their response, because their response is the only thing they value. It was a way of consuming the experience or the work. Jelly had a different purpose in listening to anything or anyone. It had something to do with submission, and it had something to do with sympathy. She would lie back and cut off all distraction. The phone was built for this. It had no visual component, no tactile component, no person with hopeful or embarrassed face to read, no scent wafting, no acid collection in the mouth. Just vibrations, long and short waves, and to clutch at them with your own thoughts was just wrong. A distinct resistance to potential. A lack of love, really. Because what is love, if not listening, as uninflected — as uncontained — as possible.
But while Jack played his music for her she did not think about listening. She took a deep breath, relaxed, and let the music find her body. Jelly thought about things only after she got off the phone. When she went over what was said so she could remember it. She took notes on details, but the best way to imprint something in memory was to listen in the first place.
“So that’s it,” he said, and he let out a tight, nervous laugh.
Jelly opened her eyes, expelled a small sigh into the receiver. “It’s wonderful,” she said.
“Yeah?” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Good,” he said.
“There were these little leaps with each reprise.”
“That’s right,” he said.
Only after she was done listening did she form her response. And it worked like this: find the words — out of the millions of words — that would describe the experience. That part, the search for the right language, was fun and almost like a puzzle. You thought of the word but then you felt it in your mouth, pushed breath into it and said it out loud. The sound of it contained the real meaning — she had to hear the words to know if she had it right. Then as it hung there she revised it, re-attacked it, applied more words to it.
“And it gave me a remarkable feeling of lifting. Not being picked up or climbing. Not even like rising in an elevator,” she said. “Or an escalator. Not quite. More float in it. Maybe like… levitating.”
Jack laughed. “You levitated listening to my little piece. Right on.”