Encore Without Her

All his life, David Larson had known he was going to be Great. Great with a capital G. Ambition seized his heart, throttled his mind, and sent sparks of electricity through his fingers. He worked a respectable job. He made a good living. However, in the back of his mind there was always that all-consuming idea: do things that make the whole world applaud for you. He envisioned it every night as he stayed at his parents’ house. David saw himself on stage, he saw the microphone in his hand. More than that, he saw careless beauty on his face, the kind that only stars had. Every time he looked at his current face, pockmarked by acne, a patchy beard sprouting on what was otherwise rough skin that yielded to no cosmetic product, he shuddered with revulsion. He saw Kurt Cobain with his long blond hair, so like David’s, being helplessly beautiful in every interview and every magazine cover and every performance.

So, when David wasn’t working his finance job, he was sitting in his parents’ Westchester house writing music. He played the guitar and sang well. He posted his songs on Spotify; he uploaded them to every platform he could find, in fact. A few views, a hundred plays, that was about all his best songs could muster. At first, he wasn’t discouraged. Then he started to grow bitter. Then he felt that it was all he could do to keep from ripping his own hair out from frustration. When his parents weren’t home, David would take pillows from the couch and scream into them.

There came a day when David quit his job. He just went to his boss, handed in his badge and laptop, and headed out the door, burning every bridge he might have had. His parents were shocked, but their unfailing tenet to support their son no matter what held their admonitions at bay. Besides, they believed in their son’s ability to create music, even if they really didn’t understand it.

David’s girlfriend was also a staunch ally of his. Claire and David had met about eighteen months prior to the day he quit his job. She had told herself she’d never date a finance guy, but David’s quiet romanticism, his passion, and his genuine intrigue in progressing a pure relationship had won her heart over completely. No, he was not interested in her for a few hookups. David seemed totally bent on acquiring just one thing for Claire: her happiness. They travelled to Europe together. It was a memory David could recount with bliss of such a clarity that he could not compare with anything else.

David loved Claire for her kindness, her thoughtfulness. He loved that she learned that he had an issue with acid reflux and did hours of research to look up remedies and potential causes. They both lived with their parents, so their time together was limited, but he loved that they lingered on every goodbye, sometimes standing out in the freezing New York winter just embracing one another repeatedly as his brown eyes met her brown eyes and they melted into each other’s arms.

When the relationship was beginning, it was as though the universe had opened up a new facet of joy for him. Sure, he had a little less time for his music and one of his very few fans was asking about him, but that didn’t matter. He had Claire.

He recounted one night in which they had driven a bit out of Westchester. His car had a panoramic glass roof, and under it he held Claire in his arms, playing with her wavy blonde hair as she gently scratched his arm. A bright full moon bathed the ground in milky light, and the couple was observed by a blanket of stars.

“Claire,” said David slowly, his heart thudding in his chest, “I have something to tell you. You don’t have to say anything back if you don’t want to, but I want to express how I feel.”

Claire sat up a little straighter, her eyes glittering as though the stars of the galaxy had found a new home within them. “Okay…”

“I–I’ve just been feeling this way for a while, and I was worried that if I didn’t–oh hell, what am I doing? I… I love you, Claire.”

Without skipping a beat, without even perhaps registering what he had said fully, she said, “I love you too, David.”

Then she smiled. Claire had a radiant smile, so bright that even the moon and all its astral companions should have bowed in observance of her beauty. They kissed, and David felt, quite literally, warm and fuzzy. They held each other for a long time that night, Claire even falling asleep in David’s arms. He loved her little breaths, how soft and innocent her face looked when she was asleep, and how peaceful it was to be there with her. He swore he saw a shooting star. His wish faltered in his throat, for at every other moment in his life he would have wished for his dream to come true, for his guitar and his voice to be heard by millions, to be up on stage singing until his face went red in front of a wild crowd. Now… Now he found his heart wishing for this moment never to end.

Alas, at some point in the night he felt himself slowly falling asleep, so he woke Claire up and they drove home, smiling drowsily and holding hands.

David had lived that night over in his head a hundred times. He’d written a song about how he’d lived that night over in his head a hundred times.

When David had quit his job, he knew Claire was getting a little restless. Eighteen months of dating and a solid financial background for both individuals in an otherwise loving relationship usually indicates that some progression must occur imminently. For David and Claire, this meant moving in together. However, now David had lost his income. Worse still, as the relationship had begun to consume more of his time, David had grown scared that the dream he’d held onto for so long, the one for which he’d sacrificed everything–well, almost everything, was slipping away.

He spent his nights and every waking moment he wasn’t with Claire writing, recording, editing, publishing… There were nights he did small shows at bars and didn’t get home til two in the morning, only to get up early the next day to start working on his craft again. He was able to do this because he took full advantage of his time at home; his mom made his meals. His father did most of the chores. He felt anxiety percolating within his already stretched heart when he thought about what would happen if he took such advantage of his parents and then did not achieve his dream. Could they live with him after such a disappointment? Could he live with himself? Claire, being more nervous than ever now that David had quit his job, felt that the relationship must progress, and David agreed with her. She was from a small town further away from the city. By the standards of her family, the two should already have been married. By the standard of the love they had shared earlier in his relationship, they should already have been married.

So David felt it was in his best interests to agree with what Claire said. However, there was one day that he realized the two were at a crossroads. It turned out that in one of the bars in which David had performed, there had been a friend of a major folk singer in attendance. He’d recorded some of the performance and sent it over to the folk singer. Apparently, the folk singer really liked David, because a representative from his team reached out and asked if David wanted to open for him for a West Coast tour he was doing over the course of two months.

David remembered nearly dropping his phone when he saw the email. He didn’t believe it was true. He wouldn’t have believed it had he not received a direct message on Instagram from the singer himself, who said, “Hey man, I like your stuff. Hope you can come out.”

It was tragic fate, then, that he should so soon afterwards have a “surprise” from Claire: she had rented an apartment for the two of them, all with her own money. It had not been an insubstantial amount, and she needed him to pay for some of the rent. In her mind, betrothal was the logical next step in the relationship, but moving in together was a precondition. When he told her about the tour, her eyes grew dark and sad. Was there a promise of fame, of fortune? No, of course not. It was a gamble. He’d have to pay for the airfare, transportation, hotel, and food while he was out there; it would be a significant amount of the cash he had saved. She could not accompany him, as her nursing job did not allow for two months of vacation, particularly at such short notice.

David couldn’t envision not going on the tour. Claire couldn’t envision a future in their relationship if they took a two month break, moreso if David came back empty-handed, without a record deal and without a future in music. The more Claire reflected on their relationship, the more somber she became at the realization that she had always been put behind David’s music. As the relationship had matured, David had grown more bitter and secluded.

It all came to a head the weekend before David was supposed to leave for the tour. He had already agreed, but he was scared to tell Claire. Claire had thought that he wanted to meet to plan out the process of their move-in. How broken were their hearts at this incompatible difference in the reason for their rendezvous! David plunged into a long speech about his dreams.

“Baby, I want to do this for us! I want us to have a life where we don’t have to worry about rent, where we don’t even have to worry about spending time cleaning the house, or making food, or shopping, or anything like that! I want us to walk on the red carpet, I want to hold you in my arms in pictures that end up on the covers of magazines!”

Claire, on the verge of tears, replied, “But I like cleaning together, cooking together. I like those parts of our relationship, those times that we’ve been shopping together and you always try to annoy me by getting distracted at all the new flavors of Oreos.

“And I don’t want or need a red carpet, David! I just want you. I don’t care if we’re living in a mansion with maids and cooks like goddamn Downton Abbey! I want us to be together; I want us to raise kids together! That’s my dream, just us with our kids…”

David felt tears in his eyes as well. “Babe, can’t you see how important this is to me?”

Claire was crying in earnest now. “I know… I know, and I hate to see you sad. I hate that I’m making you sad. But we’re not getting any younger, and even if everything goes the way you want it, isn’t it true that… that you’ll be on tour, travelling, doing… well, not being at home?”

“But you can be with me!” he cried. “Don’t you–”

“I don’t want that, David! I don’t want to travel all the time and be away from my family! I don’t want to worry about you when you’re out late after a show! I don’t want to raise our kids alone! I just–” her voice broke, “–I miss the man I started dating a year and a half ago. Y-you made me feel like the world turned for me, like you’d move mountains just to make me happy. Every morning I woke up as your girlfriend back then, I felt like the sun rose just for me.”

David felt hot tears splashing down his face and landing heavily on his sweater. “A-are you saying you don’t feel that way anymore?”

Her red eyes looked at him candidly, her lips trembling. “I h-haven’t felt that way in a long time…”

In the dark recesses of his mind, David had pictured this moment more than a few times. He’d always imagined himself exiting the relationship with grace, smiling as he embraced Claire and thanked her for being the first girl to ever make him feel loved and valued and beautiful. He did not picture himself as he was now: blubbering and squeaking, “B-but I like calling you ‘baby…’”

Then they were crying in each other’s arms. A large wet spot grew on David’s sweater where Claire’s tears fell rapidly. Somehow or another–David blocked out the details from his mind, they separated that evening with the understanding that they were not going to continue to date. David wept on his drive home, scream-singing songs in the car. The last text they promised to send one another was an assurance that they made it home safely, as inebriated with grief as they were.

David sent his, “Hello my dearest Claire. I made it home safely. I hope you did too.”

A few minutes later, he got Claire’s reply: “Hey baby, hey David. I made it home safely too. Just got back a couple minutes ago.”

While he could not speak for Claire, David knew his message was overflowing with passion, with tenderness. All night he spent time clearing his parents’ house of any pictures they had of himself and Claire. Sleep eluded him. Insomnia would become a relentless specter that howled in the face of his exhaustion.

He was on a plane to LA, his parents having blessed him for his long journey. His heart was pounding; there was no room in there for Claire, not while his entire future hinged on a performance just two nights from now. This was his dream, wasn’t it? How often had he felt furious at other artists who’d had this same opportunity before him? Well, if this was his dream, why did he feel so sick?

David was on stage. The breathless, nauseating anxiety leading up to his entrance had melted when he started playing his guitar, when the natural motions of endless practice resulted in a performance that brought an otherwise bored and disinterested crowd to their feet as they clapped and tried to sing along with him. There were tears in his eyes as he ended his final song, sweat glistening on his pale face. He thought the tears were out of relief at the thunderous cheering he received, or perhaps out of joy that his dream actually seemed to be in grasp. If that was true, why did he nearly collapse backstage with something akin to great anguish?

The tour progressed. David began to feel numb. Other artists got a chance to open with him. He even made and performed a song with a rock band just a couple hours after meeting them, and he had his first experience of a fan trying to sneak backstage to kiss him. He found that behavior repulsive, but he engaged in it anyway; perhaps intimate physical contact would alleviate that pervasive nausea, that sense of dread that stemmed from a heart which had been pulled apart, the heartstrings stretched like taffy, every cruel emotion ripping them. It did not work, and furthermore, David was beginning to understand a sad fundamental truth: sometimes it’s better to feel nothing at all.

Before David knew it, it was over. On one drunken night, he’d gotten a tattoo on his forearm to commemorate the tour. On another night, less drunken, he’d signed a deal with the same label that represented the main folk artist on tour. When he returned to New York, he had enough money from the advance alone to begin renting an apartment in the city. Not only did he find his parents’ love, admiration, and doting to be insulting, he wanted to create some distance between that apartment in which so many terrible memories lingered. Late at night, he found himself retracing the route to it, zooming in his map until he could see the little building wherein lay Claire. Was she as sleepless as he was? His new apartment overlooked Central Park. It had a doorman. Claire’s apartment looked upon the cracked pavement of a parking lot. It smelled like marijuana. Still, he felt in his heart that he’d rather be there with her than in this apartment alone.

Why was life so hollow? His first single came out. Gold, then Platinum. He performed, he toured, yet all the while he felt nothing stir his heart. The interviews about which he once fantasized felt like chores. The dream he had of moving people to tears with his songs, of changing the world with his words… it was before him, resplendent in its aureate beauty. He’d accomplished everything he had ever wanted, but he still could not sleep out of the fear that Claire’s face would appear in his dreams, happy and laughing along with him. There was one night he broke down in a paroxysm of agony after waking up from just such a dream.

Had Claire moved on already? It had been six months. Winter reigned in the north, but was her heart as aflame with broken love as his was, unbothered by the cold? The night before David was supposed to perform in Times Square, he decided to call her, and his heart flooded with joy even at hearing a precarious, tremelous, “Hello?”

His voice shuddered with barely constrained passion as he said, “Hey Claire… my love. Can we talk?”