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Quit your whining. You’re here, so go listen to her.
Well, why the hell not, I thought with a sneer. I had nothing better to do.
I paid the fare and made my laborious way to the venue. Ushers guided me to my seat—always last row, corner—and I listened to some damn concerto or sonata or whatever the hell it was, waiting for the music to soothe me as it so often had other nights. Not this night. This night I was as impervious as a brick wall; the musical notes bounced off me like pebbles.
One piece ended, and the audience returned respectable applause while I thought about slouching down and having a nap. With my sunglasses on, who the fuck would know? And did I care anyway? Nope, I surely did not.
And then it happened.
A lone violin began to sing a soft, melancholy melody while the orchestra played behind—gently, as if not to disturb the soloist’s simple song. A delicate web of silver hung in the black of my imagination, whorls and garlands of sound, emerging from that single violin, until the entire Teatro was glistening in my mind’s eye.
I listened, hardly breathing, and when it ended, the audience was hushed. One heartbeat, one breath, and then an eruption of applause ten times louder than for any piece before.
I turned to the person on my left, found the delicate wrist of a woman. “Who was that?” I asked and motioned to the stage. I hoped this lady spoke enough English to reply, though my heart already knew the answer.
“The program says her name is Charlotte Conroy,” said the woman with a Middle Eastern accent. “I have never heard of her, but she was quite extraordinary, wasn’t she?”
“Extraordinary.” I sat back in my seat, and the next piece began—some rambunctious Italian rondo I barely heard.
Okay, baby,I answered, because Charlotte had been speaking to me, even if she hadn’t known I was there to hear it. She hadn’t met someone else—the idea was ludicrous to me now. She was waiting for me, and her heart ached for me as much as mine ached for her. I heard it in her music, as plain as if she were speaking words.
My anger melted away like wax in the hot sun.
I won’t give up, I promised her.I won’t. No matter how hard it gets, I swear to you, Charlotte, I’ll keep going. For you, baby. For you…
I climbed out of my chair the moment the last note of the last piece dissipated in the air and headed back to my hotel, determined to make a fresh start in the morning. No more whining, no more tantrums. Charlotte was still waiting for me, and I’d be damned if I didn’t do everything in my power to make her heartache mean something.
I lay in bed feeling better than I had in days and dove into what I hoped would be a deep, restorative sleep…
…that lasted maybe all of an hour. I woke up with pain raging at the back of my head. I barely made it to the toilet before vomiting up my $23 plate of spaghetti and flailed around—in profound agony—to find my bottle of Azapram. One pill left. I took it with trembling hands and swallowed it down.
And now I had none.
chapter forty-five
The Monster was faster than the mail.
My first night in Barcelona was spent riding out a migraine. I had no pills to take. I’d called the front desk for some aspirin, but that was like putting a band-aid on a gushing artery.
I lay curled in the bathroom of my five-star Barcelona hotel, banging down the seconds until the migraine’s iron-tight grip on my head began to loosen. At first, I thought I was merely delirious with the pain, but no, I sensed a gradual lessening from molten agony, to plain agony (a huge step up), to a really fucking bad headache, to finally none at all.
A sound like a sob burst from my chest and throat, and I threw my arm over my eyes, sucking in deep breaths.I can’t do this anymore,I thought.Enough. I’m done.But I couldn’t be done.
I hit the button on my phone.“The time is now 8:10 a.m.”
I thought of all I needed to do today before Charlotte’s eight p.m. show. Dry cleaning and laundry, lunch and dinner, finding the concert hall…too much.
So quit,came a thought.
“No,” I told it and the empty room.
That’s the third migraine in five days,came another.
“Fuck you. I’m stressed.”
But the little sliver of fear that had wedged itself into my gut when I’d lost my balance in Rome dug deeper. The idea that something was wrong with me was like a weed in my mind that kept trying to take root, and no matter how many times I yanked it out, it grew back.
“No,” I said again, into the black. I was just tired—more than tired. Exhausted from this ordeal, constantly stressed out and fearful of being robbed, lost, or ruined, and missing Charlotte so badly I could hardly breathe.
