The Transformation Of Amy Lunaro: Chapter Three. {fiction}
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Amy stepped onto the creaky wooden porch of the general store to gather the night’s dinner of wine and cheese, which was every night’s dinner of late. She called it The Single Girl Special.
The store was exactly how she remembered, with dusty warped wooden floors, heavy beneath rows of colorful boutique food marked up to spectacular tourist rates, racks of magnets and postcards of sandy beaches and sharks having cocktails next to stacks of mainland and local island newspapers shelved over bundles of firewood; the store’s checkout counter sat somewhere beneath boxes of chocolate and toys.
It was still, as she remembered, a child’s paradise, a traveler’s haven, all very Willy-Wonka-meets-New-England nostalgia. But halfway to the wine rack, Amy couldn’t avoid, even on the island, the tabloids. She couldn’t avoid, even on the island, her self. Her mess.
The news was still fresh, the magazines were still gossiping about the divorce, about James leaving her for the girl from his opening band.
This, this was the exact story Amy had always worried about, which she had pestered him about with her dreadful insecurity, an unworthiness she had unconsciously expected everyone but herself to fix.
And now she wondered if she had willed this union of James and the girl; if, with her suspicion and dread, she had sent them into each other’s arms with her gnawing belief that it would actually happen. Is it possible, she thought, your belief that something would happen could actually make it happen?
What she saw took the wind out of her, then she sighed, loud. The tears started to sting. She looked around about the store, but no one was watching her holding vigil over the ashes of her life.
She heard within her the Paul Simon lines from Crazy Love, “Somebody could walk into this room and say your life is on fire. It’s all over the evening news, all about the fire in your life on the evening news.”
And that’s how she felt, exposed all over the news, but still it seemed that while her life was over, life just went on for everyone else.
There was an old man in black and red flannel thumbing through the newspapers. There was a middle-aged woman in tortoiseshell glasses and white cashmere, reaching for goat cheese. There was the hum from the speakers of a blues singer singing about drinking whiskey at dawn.
She turned back to the magazines, and tugged her sweatshirt around her body, then she pulled the hood further down over her face and adjusted her black sunglasses self-consciously, as if she was in the Witness Protection Program. She knew she shouldn’t keep looking, but she couldn’t help herself. She wasn’t any good at helping herself.
How had this happened to her? How had her heartbreak ended up on In Touch and People, at the general store she’d worked in as an innocent kid?
Amy remembered the moment they happened. Their moment.
She had always wanted to interview James Jackson. At the height of his career, her own was blowing up, and they had simply and inevitably, met and merged. Fused together.
He had made every music magazine cover with his Jim Morrison good looks and his torrential passion, he was full of such anger and pain and poetry that every hot-blooded woman in the world wanted him to take it out on her in bed, in sweaty shredded sheets.
Most men concealed their feelings. Not James. He screamed and cried them from the rafters, and you felt it — you felt them as your own, you felt it right where it mattered.
In your sex and your gut and your heart and your throat, as he released the things you’d always longed to say, he screamed your secrets and desires for you. Well, at least Amy felt that way. Here was her very own Eddie Vedder, the man she’d longed for as a teenager in her lonely blue bedroom.
James did to her what Eddie had done to her then, which is to say, undid her.
Amy could be walking in Times Square, rushing from a liquid lunch to an album-listening party, or from work to a dinner date with a publicist before a concert, and she would hear his music on her iPod in the middle of thousands of people and feel totally naked, like every piece of clothing and everything she’d ever kept hidden was ripped from her, everything that ever stood between her and ecstasy and freedom and her truth just dropped off of her, and she was naked in body and in soul.
It was terrifying and thrilling and she was ravenous for it.
That was the gift of artists, she thought, to be able to express their soul. She still had no idea how to express her own yet, or if she ever would, which was why being a music journalist, writing about others’ art, was as close as she got to her own.
It was a torturous feeling, not knowing how to express herself, feeling trapped in the wrong skin, on the outside looking in. But she was enormously attracted to those who could self-express, who knew how, in beautiful magnetic ways.
She was his the minute she first heard his soul spilled onto a record. People were always saying about love, this person feels like home to me. She finally got that with James. She finally got what all the poetry and songs in the world were about.
Before she met him in person, she would come back to her Lower East Side apartment from bad dates with men who made her feel nothing, who made her feel more alone and more dead by their company, whose jokes didn’t land, and certainly hers didn’t with them, who didn’t want to go there, conversationally, into the deep dark places Amy liked to go.
All too often they were musicians who were only dating her for publicity, for placement in one of the magazines she wrote for.
She was too dark and neurotic for most of them, not proper arm candy, and then she would come home, turn off the lights and turn James’ albums on and lie in bed with his darkly beautiful thoughts filling the room.
And then she would pretend her own hands were his, the ones she’d watched throttle and finger his shiny black Gibson, and she’d explore her body the way he touched that guitar, and when she came she’d cry out his name.
Long before drugs and alcohol, music had been her portal out and into another plane, since she was ten years old and first heard Springsteen sing.
She had been lying in the way back of her parent’s Volvo on the way to the island for vacation, looking up through the rear window at the stars shining in the black ink of night over the highway.
It was the song The River, the live version, where Springsteen tells a story about the tension with his father before the E Street Band launches into song, his deep voice moaning about Mary’s body tan and wet down at the reservoir, and a shotgun wedding out of integrity, but not love.
That was the night music became her magic, she could find herself in it, at least pieces of herself.
And then thirteen years later she had heard James’ magic soul, and that was the beginning, and that was the end. She had not only met her match, he was the match that lit her aflame.
His fire was so bright, like he could burn your whole life up in one second, if you weren’t careful, but maybe Amy didn’t feel like being careful. Maybe Amy wanted to be set on fire.
And her bosses knew that, and they were always sending her to interview the bad boys. It was an easy recipe, for Amy liked them and they liked Amy, so some sort of transgression always happened that made for a salacious story to print.
Still, she could never have predicted how fast the rocket ride of them, their story, would take off.
Why had she liked bad boys so much? How come she hadn’t outgrown them, like her friends from high school, who had all settled down? There were those words, settled and down. Neither was very appealing to her. For a moment a thought dawned on her like the sun behind a mountain, that maybe she attracted men who treated her terribly because that’s how she treated herself, but she pushed that sun back down behind the mountain and her thoughts moved on.
Seven years ago she had walked into that East Village bar to interview the James Jackson Band, in tight black jeans and a silver sequined jacket, red lips and big hair, and James’ eyes locked in on her like a jungle cat stalking its prey.
And while Amy had felt his gaze in every cell, and her flesh rippled beneath her clothes, and her heart leapt from its cage like a bird at dawn after an endless night, she pretended not to notice him. She was very good at pretending, dangerously good, and it was a great trick with lead singers.
They got noticed enough. Not being noticed, even as a game, was at least somewhat of a challenge for them, and when you were a famous lead singer who got everything you wanted, you began to miss the challenge. Their job is to be stared at, they were stared at all night long.
If you at least wanted a chance with them, you had to let them think you didn’t notice and you didn’t care.
How many times had she been front row or backstage and felt a singer’s eyes x-raying her, crawling all over her flesh like a sex spider, and she had just peered into her drink, or talked absently to a friend, meanwhile devouring the feeling of being devoured.
Pretending not to notice while being eye-fucked by a musician, that was some fine multitasking which she had mastered.
But that was then. God, but these days it seemed she could be run over by a truck and the driver wouldn’t even notice.
Amy still stood there, frozen in front of the tabloids, and while she was aware of the screen door of the general store creaking open and slamming closed, of people moving around her, she remained hovered in front of the stories of their decay, forgetting to breathe.
Her left hand clenched into a tight fist, her thumb felt for her wedding ring like a missing limb. But there was no ring on her finger anymore, just the ring in her ear of him screaming, “I would rather be with anyone but you. I never loved you,” in response to her question, “What does she have that I don’t?”
“Everything,” he had said. “For one thing, Amy, she’s alive. She’s actively creating a life for herself.”
She had said, “But I gave my life up for you…”
And he had said, “I never ever ever asked you to do that.”
And that was true. He never had. She had thrown herself, like a sacrifice, on love’s fire. But he had never asked her to do that.
“You know what it is about you, Amy? Do you know what happened?”
Amy had braced herself. “It’s that you didn’t happen. You just never came true. You were going to be something. You were going to be someone. You promised you were going to write that book. And you just, you never came true.”
She reached out to the People magazine in front of her. Her hands shook as she picked it up. They had found a particularly dashing picture of James, a particularly pathetic picture of Amy and a particularly sexy picture of Cassandra. Even that name was sexy. It was like Egyptian-Sex-Priestess sexy. Like her vagina unlocked ancient secrets. Like when you took her to bed a purple mist filled the air and hidden stone doors rumbled open and snakes rose from jewel-encrusted gold treasure chests.
Cassandra got to be new. Everything new was always shiny and exciting. Beginnings were thrilling. If only we could stay in the beginnings of things. Now she was the old movie he had seen a million times and he knew every scene and every line and couldn’t bare to sit there and watch anymore. But Cassandra was a new trailer. It was Cassandra who had the promise now. And Amy had maxed out her promise limit. Amy had never come true.
She felt terribly old. She felt how she imagined one felt at 99 years old. Ready to go. Ready to pack it in and call it a life.
At thirty-three, she felt like the Crypt Keeper. At the end of the line, of her very rope.
The tabloids cried, “Left For Lolita, Amy Lunaro gone into hiding. Drugs! Drinking! And… a Suicide Attempt?!”
Suicide. Her breath quivered. It wasn’t like she hadn’t thought of that. She still kept a bottle of Klonopin buried in her tote bag, despite promising her therapist that she had none left. She kept it there like a fire extinguisher — In Case of Emergency, Break Glass. It would just take swallowing them all and drifting off to an eternal sleep. She would Marilyn Monroe it.
She wished she had never met him. Or, at the very least, not married him. Not given everything up for him. But when life itself picked up the pen and wrote furiously, there had been no way to stop it. And of course, she hadn’t wanted to. They had been inevitable. Like death.
Sometimes she swore she could hear an invisible director’s voice calling Action, when a moment in her life felt divinely scripted, deja-vu familiar. When something big was beginning, she could feel it. And she had felt it that night in the bar.
She had sat down next to him, acting completely nonchalant while her heart sang and her mind kept playing scenes of their wedding. She she took off her jacket to reveal her tight black tank top and he had watched, as if in slow motion, his eyes sucking up every inch of her flesh.
And when her bare arm would brush his, they would pause there — skin to skin, just for for a second, but with enough electricity to light up the world. They were peas in a pod, they said everything at the same time. So much so they eventually had to stop saying Jinx.
They made the same jokes. They liked jokes that were so bad they were good, and then they liked to beat a dead horse with the joke until the crowd cried through weary laughter Okay, Stop. And then they would slip it in one more time with a wink, just for the groan of the crowd, and be done with it.
They were childlike and mischievous and magnetic, and they loved a crowd. And as their own resonance deepened, she could feel him watching her out of the corner of his eye, she could feel him adjusting to the reality that he was falling in love.
She gave him the time to catch up to that truth, time she didn’t need, for she felt as if she had been waiting for him since the moment she was born. His love, finally, made her feel real. This is what makes people real, she had thought — Love. For a moment there, it felt like together they had glimpsed heaven, like they had been given its very keys.
He had held her hand under the table after the first drink, and while she felt like she should be surprised, she wasn’t. She had slowly felt her hand release in his, then relax, held, weightless, and let go. Held. She felt every bone and muscle settle, completely at ease in his strong muscled palm.
Home. Home. Home. She had a vision of herself taking her bags off like a weary traveler, when you get home after a long journey, and you put your heavy suitcases down one by one. Home. Take your shoes off and rest. You’re finally home.
There could be no sweeter relief than finally, finally, coming home.
Then the band had wanted to head to a second bar to play pool, so they migrated, with Amy and James trailing behind the black-jeaned group of tussling boys, walking hand and hand on the sidewalk that glittered in the moonlight.
Amy was thinking to herself that not only was it the best night of her life, it felt like her first. Their chemistry pulled their bodies together like a star-drawn contract, and he had grabbed her by the waist and pulled her into a dark alley to kiss her against a brick wall so deep he mined her soul.
Amy could still feel the bricks scratching her back where her shirt had been pushed up, and she was hoping the scratches would stay forever, and she felt his fingers pressing into the skin of her hips, down to the bone. She could still hear him whisper in her ear, “I can’t believe this is happening.”
And she had kissed the sweaty slope of his neck and had said, “I can’t but I can,” and he had known exactly what she meant, like maybe he had felt her coming too, and she was one with that holy feeling of being gotten.
They were so similar then, both strange and dangerous, they were strangerous, they were wild and untamable with stars in their eyes. At least she had been, at first.
They were like lion cubs in love, reckless and roaring and rolling and playing, always pushing past the paradigms of what was possible, blind to life’s rules and deaf to the heeds of those who told them to slow down, to be careful.
But it was like when Harry runs to Sally on New Year’s Eve and says, “When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” They could find no reason to wait to drown in each other.
By midnight they were wrapped around each other in bed in his hotel room, planning their life together. They got down to the very marrow. They’d have two cats, a dog, three kids and a Subaru. She had always thought if she had a Subaru she would feel normal, like she belonged.
She would leave her job, her career, go on tour with him, be his wife. Oh and yes, she would write that book.
And then without blinking an eye, or giving a thought to everything she had worked for to start out as a kid from a broken home in a small southern town to become the music editor of the biggest arts magazine in New York City, she said Yes. Because she had a habit of throwing things, of throwing herself, away.
She had walked in to her Editor’s office on Broadway and she had given her two weeks. And she said No, she wasn’t going to another magazine, she was going to Love, specifically with James Jackson, and he had seemed so very unsurprised and he had sighed and said, “Good Luck Amy, you’re going to need it.”
She put down the People gingerly and walked to the wine rack. With her hoodie on tight and wearing her dark glasses, she looked very Unabomber Chic, she thought darkly. Armed with two bottles of Cabernet and a block of Jarlsberg she walked up to the counter.
She felt so fragile and cellophane see-through, but the check-out girl barely looked at her, just banged away at the register keys and slid a pen across the counter for Amy to sign her receipt. She had become the Invisible Woman. No one seemed to notice her. No one seemed to care.
The small part of her that once glittered like gold cried out in resistance for a second, but mostly Amy, who now just hoped to retire from life at 33 with the pity money her husband had thrown at her in divorce settlements, was relieved.
She could rest in peace, never have to try again, alone at the corner of the world.
Back in the Wrangler, she snaked down a road named South and turned right down three bumpy dirt roads until she came upon her little cabin on the cliff of the bright blue sea.
When she stepped out of the jeep and let the breeze whip her hair, she felt somewhere the voice of that unseen director calling Action again. She bristled.
Standing before the cabin, a new scene was starting, and she felt that someone, some other presence, was watching, and for the first time in forever, she felt it — the feeling of not being alone. She looked around to see if anyone was there, but there was no one around for miles.
There was just the breeze, blowing through the trees, and the silver chimes that hung from the porch, singing as they danced.
This is an ongoing series from a forthcoming fiction novel by Sarah Durham Wilson of DOITGIRL.
Tune in weekly for the next chapter in ‘The Transformation of Amy Lunaro’.
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