Tom and Me.

“We were poor, I’ll start there,” I paused, as I took a long puff from my vape. I still hate this thing, but Tom gave it to me. 

He told me I smoke too much, that this device is the lesser of two evils, and that I must protect my lungs.

I am in the middle of an interview for Rolling Stone magazine. It is like a dream come true, sort of, but I am still getting used to this life.

This new life that music has afforded me, us.

Tom, my manager slash husband, was behind Rosalie Zapata, the young woman interviewing me tonight. Tom was talking silently on the phone, but he looked up at me, and gave me a small smile.

How long have we been together?

Forever?

I think ‘forever’ is the perfect answer.

“My recollection of my childhood, of my youth was…” I looked again at Tom. He knows I hate talking about my past, our past.

“All I can say is that my family struggled a lot, my father specially, always had trouble putting food on our plates, we probably did not have plates, more like, one plate.”

Tom was finished with his phone call and was just listening to me, his mouth pressed together, nodding to what I just said in agreement.

“And you said in one of your previous interviews, that you grew up in Wisconsin?” Ms. Zapata asked me curiously.

“Well, in a manner of speaking, yeah. I could say we moved around, my family did, but Wisconsin, yeah, I remember us stopping there at some point.”

Tom leaned forward and whispered something in Rosalie Zapata’s ear. She nodded.

“Mr. Sterling asked me to limit the questions to music, we’ll um, stick to that.” 

She spoke, with a little disappointed smile on her face, and a hint of hesitation in the way she looked at me.

The hesitation was probably due to the fact that no one knew of my history. My life, and my life with Tom.

I nodded to her, and puffed on my vape once again.

In the time of this so-called Internet, everyone seems to know everyone’s life stories. Mine is still shrouded in mystery.

“You seem to have sprouted out of nowhere, your music…you…you are amazing. Everyone, and literally, everyone and their dog loves your music,” Ms. Zapata paused, her thin lips creeping into a huge smile, “I know, my dog, he hates it when I have some music playing in my apartment!” She exclaimed enthusiastically, “god, he drove me insane! Literally howls each time I have music in the background, but your music….puts him to sleep!” Ms. Zapata laughed really heartily.

“Ah, yeah, my music does that a lot.” I smiled at her.

“Your voice, and the way you play the piano, guitars, everything really…unbelievable. Amazing…” her eyes were quite wide when she said that.

“I, um, I’m sorry, I am such a fan-girl, I cannot help it! You are bigger than Adele! And to compare your music to Tori Amos, I am sure I am not alone here, but your music and hers are worlds apart!” She exclaimed. 

“Who are your musical influences?”

Adele. Yes. Beautiful woman, amazing singer. Tori Amos, her flaming red hair, I enjoy her music too.

“Hmm,” I pondered, or at least, I tried looking as if I was thinking.

“Mozart.” 

“Mozart? Wow, yeah, that figures…any particular work that has influenced you? I mean, what has gotten you started with Mozart? Would you care to elaborate?” 

She looked at me with her bright brown eyes, and added, “Mozart…but your music, is jazz and R&B, how did that come to be? I hope you can enlighten me with your um, association with classical music, jazz & R&B, they all seem worlds apart!” she paused. 

“Sorry, I think I kept on saying ‘worlds apart’, I am beginning to sound like a lousy journalist.” she laughed.

I smiled at Tom, and he winked at me. I think I blushed. It always make me blush whenever he did that.

“I mean, my family was poor, and I…found myself at a very young age trying to fend for myself. When I was younger, alone, and struggling in the city, I did once a waitressing job in a jazz club, and one of the musicians there was…”

“It was Tom, my husband. He dabbled in modern music,” I bit my tongue, “I mean, he was a jazz player, piano. He was fond of Mozart and um, yeah…that’s…that’s pretty much it.”

I took a swig from the wine glass that was in front of me, looking up at Ms. Zapata as she furrowed her eyebrows. I think I was not making a lot of sense with my answer.

I had to correct that.

“I meant, when I met my husband there, at the Jazz club, I was fascinated with him and the music he played. I know my music is heavily influenced by jazz, and the songs he and I wrote are sometimes dark, melancholy, but his musical background, is classical music, that’s why I said ‘Mozart’.”

Rosalie Zapata started nodding her head. I think she bought it.

“So, your husband is a classically trained pianist then? And both of you worked on your music together, all original…he playing some of the music in your album as well, serving as your music producer too.” 

She turned around to face Tom, “Sir, maybe we can do a separate interview, as a side note with the one for Ms. Sterling. Is that fine?” She asked.

Tom shook his head, “No, only my star. Not me.”

Tom…and his star…which is me.

But he is my star. He is my love.

“Ms. Sterling?” Rosalie Zapata spoke, and it brought me out of my reverie. 

“Mr. Sterling said you’re his star. When did you start knowing you had a calling for music? And as he is your co-writer in your number one album, would you please share how you two got together? Just so our readers could paint a picture of this um,” she paused, and carefully mouthed her next phrase, “your love story, with your music, of course.”

Our love story, and our music.

How do I begin to tell her? How do I tell the world who we are, and who he is to me?

The child prodigy known all over the world. The musical genius that has influenced music as it is?

How long have we lived this life? I am twenty-three right now, and he is twenty-eight, but we have lived life far longer than that.

In fact, we have lived many lives, and always together, always creating music.

I have taken this time the name Amanda Sterling, and he, Tom. We took on jazz & R&B this time.

And like any love story told a million times before, ours was no different. 

I lied at the interview, and they have no way of tracing it anyway. I was an orphan, that I know. I was raised in a small orphanage run by nuns in Wisconsin. I was not aware of who I was, until I felt like I had to run away from that place.

I had to get out of that place, even though I have had an amazing time there. The nuns, and all the children and caretakers were good people. Thank god for that. I was very much aware I could have been brought into this earth and be part of those horror stories that I have experienced in the past, of maltreatment, of abuse.

But I got lucky this time. The nuns had a choir and they let me join in and I knew it was something I’d love to do, to sing, once I get out.

They had a piano too in the adjacent church, but they didn’t let me touch that.

I remember taking a bus to West Virginia, I got off and did some part-time work as a waitress in a small diner in the middle of nowhere. It could get rowdy but, the people who frequented the diner seems to be regulars, and love their jukebox and their Friday open mics.

I must have taken the stage only three times, at the encouragement of Bes, the manager. She heard me singing along to the jukebox sometimes as I served the guests, and in the kitchen. She told me I sounded like an angel.

An angel. I don’t know about that. But for sure an angel was waiting for me somewhere. I just need to meet and be with him.

The third time I sang at the open mic though, a man approached me, and told me he wanted me to come to New York as a singer, that with my voice, he can create a superstar out of me.

I believed him, I have done this before, but no…not with him. But New York, that city, the moment he mentioned that city I knew that’s where I must go.

With the little money I save from my job, I again boarded a bus and went straight to New York. I told Bes to write for me a reference, she was kind about it. I worked there for a year for minimum wage, did my job well, kept my head low, and Bes was almost like a mother to me. I am glad to have met her along the way.

The jazz club I went to, to which I have handed my only reference must have been desperate for a waitress, or must have phoned Bes to confirm of my existence, and told me to report there that night.

That was the first night I saw him. He was there.

I went in the club, did an early wiping of the tables, which they told me was routine, together with a girl called Angie, the other ones were busy at the counter. 

The guitar player and the bassist were doing some minor checks, the drummer came in, and a man sat on the piano, close to where the table I was wiping was at.

He played a very slow, jazzy version of the Voi Chi Sapete. His hands just lightly touching the keys, and the jazzy vibe he did was…

He stopped mid-song, because he probably noticed a girl was standing still near him, looking up at him. I have stopped wiping the table.

He got up from the seat, and walked up to me.

“You loved the song.” he said, and he was smiling down at me.

He said it, not as a question, but as a statement.

I nodded.

My soul recognised him, as his did mine.

That night, my first night at work, I did my job, and he did his. I was serenaded by his music all night. I loved jazz, and the band played wonderfully.

When the band finished, and the night went on, I got to serve him a glass of whiskey and some nuts, and told me he will stay til the end of my shift, that he will wait for me.

And he did. 

He knew I have just arrived and had nowhere to stay and he offered to let me stay with him. I need not fear anything, and his offer for me to stay with him was almost a non-question. 

It was close to one in the morning when the jazz club closed, he and I walked out in the cold, winter air, and turned a corner to his apartment.

I did not know what he did before I met him that night, but he had an big apartment on the second floor of a majestic, gothic styled building. It was open-spaced, and was beautiful.

We went in and he did not turn on the lights. The windows were massive, and the city lights was subtly brighting the apartment, which also had two floor lamps already lit, one in between two windows close to the kitchen, and one was standing close to a massive, shiny black grand piano.

He took my hand, leading me to the piano, and we both sat down on the piano bench.

“Wie heist du, in diesem Leben?” The words came flowing out of my mouth. I know I have never learnt German, but I knew how to speak it.

I asked him his name, in this lifetime we are living in.

“Tom, Thomas Sterling. Und du?” He asked me back, with a small smile on his face, and his gentle eyes looked at me as he has always done before.

“Amanda. Amanda Thompson.”

He leaned closer to me, and he kissed me lightly on the lips. I could say that this was the first time I have ever kissed a man, but in my lifetime, and the lifetimes I have had…I have kissed only one man.

Him.

“I have missed you, ich habe gedacht du kommst nicht mehr, aber…”

He spoke those words in between kisses, in German, in English, ending with a tight embrace. He thought I will never come back, come back to him…but I always do, and I always will.

“Now I am here.”

I cupped his face and looked deeply in his eyes. I missed looking at his eyes. In our first life together we made a pact, that he will always find me, and I will always find him. And it has been going on and on for centuries, for forever.

It was our love, and music that has always bonded us. And that bond, just like our pact, will never break.

“Here,” he grabbed a thick pile of papers from on top of the piano eagerly and looked through it, “I wrote this for you while I was waiting…” he placed four sheet music, and he started playing, “Come up with words, like you have always done, I love it when you did that.”

And as he played on, I grabbed a paper and pencil, and started humming some tunes, and then words that became lyrics to his music.

The night went on like that, just us being one. It was five in the morning when he said we must eat something and rest.

He prepared a small portion of clear broth knodle soup for the both of us, poured two glasses of red wine, and as he cooked, and then enjoyed the food he made, I get to learn how he came to be, who he has become.

He got born into a family of great fortune in Pennsylvania, his parents both doctors, and as an only child, they gave him everything. I joked that they got lucky with him, and not the other way around.

He was, as his previous lives before, a child prodigy, and his parents were extremely, extremely supportive of him and his music.

He knew of his calling, he knew who he was early on in his life, unlike me. He has learned to keep his head low, and not be too much out there. His parents died early during his life, when he was fifteen, in a car accident which he was also involved in but got out alive, in Tenerife, in one of their summer holidays.

It took a blow on him, but he knew his parents wanted him to be strong, like they have always nurtured and raised him, and he went on living his life alone, under the care of an aunt who lived in New York where he moved after the death of his parents, and he went on to study medicine, like his parents before him.

Internal medicine, that’s what he did as his day job. He did not bother pursue a career in music.

“With all the musical training I have had?” He laughed.

I missed the sound of his laughter, and his small pauses to caress my face. I missed all that.

We got to bed and we made love slowly. Always my first time, always my first and last times were with him.

In between the kisses, and before we fell finally asleep, we talked about this new life of ours, of this new opportunity to show the world the beauty, the glimpse of the music that the world needed to experience, with us.

“We’d do jazz?” I smiled at him.

“Yeah, let’s give jazz a newer vibe. Let’s reinvent it for them.”

In our previous life as so-called musical wonders, I was Agnes Bernard, and he Emile, we did popular music. That was in the late 80’s in France. Paris was great, but we moved to Berlin as well, the music scene was more fun, and chaotic. So much themes to pour our heart and souls to.

I liked that era, very fun, very new. He learned a lot of electronic instruments. He was so good at that. My genius partner.

In the mid-60s to early 70’s, he and I were Mr. and Mrs. Johnston. London was in full swing, but we couldn’t take credit, we liked watching in the sidelines. The Beatles were massive, and John loved the collab we did with him, but he was too high profile, and we weren’t used to the limelight back then so, as Jack Johnston, he, John and I made our secret meetings, sometimes with Paul.

Never credited.

That was before Yoko, and before The Beatles split. We moved to California after. We moved in a small bungalow in San Francisco, and Jack, as he was called by then was, with a Sitar and a me in an acoustic guitar, were enjoying the quiet life.

Sometimes George and Freddie, both our musician friends would come and hang out with us, they were chill, quiet, almost spiritual with music. They were enlightening. Sometimes Mick and Robert too, but they were into too many wild things that we were not interested in.

Many centuries we have come and go, but the music, the secret legacy of our music went on, to live on, for the future generations to come and appreciate.

Life was like that for us. We always find a way to be together, and we were, with our new lives, and new music to entertain us, were alive to live, and give away the music that we were both born to create.

Wolferl, or Tom, has promised me a lifetime of himself and his music to me, and the world. And I give him all of me, and the joy of us creating something beautiful for everyone, was enough for us to keep coming back to each other, over and over again, to this strange and enchanting world we live in.

Now I have to be present and answer Ms. Zapata’s questions for Rolling Stone.

“Like I said, we met at the jazz club.”