A Love Song for Ricki Wilde (66)
Ricki went still, her breath catching in her throat. If they were, in fact, fated lovers (she knew it couldn’t possibly be, but if), then the rest of Felice’s curse would be true, too. A grave realization settled over her, and it felt far heavier than every other detail in Ezra’s story.
“If we’re soulmates,” she breathed, “then I’m also destined to die on February 29.”
Ezra’s whole body seemed to wilt. “I tried to save you, Ricki. I told you to leave Harlem. I tried to avoid you, before we got in too deep. But here we are. And it’s too late.”
“Because we’re twelve days out from February 29.”
He nodded, miserable. “And it’s all my fault. I did this to you. And I can’t bear the thought of losing you.”
Ricki shook her head back and forth, trying to clear her mind. “Sorry, no. No. None of this makes sense. Ezra, you’re clearly having some sort of mental break or… or… a hallucination or something.” She delivered this gently, the way you’d speak to a hysterical child. “I don’t believe in magic, dark or otherwise.”
“You got eucalyptus hanging in your shower to enhance emotional clarity.”
“It’s an aesthetic,” she declared. “And don’t look at me like that!”
She made an impatient sound and buried her face in her hands. Ricki felt destroyed, toyed with. She felt like a cosmic joke. That she was able to fall so hard, to feel so protected and sacred in his arms, was beyond cruel. Ricki felt more like herself with Ezra than without him. He put this wild ache in her. He made her crave him; he made her fucking fall so hard—but he hadn’t given her a place to land. And now she was suspended in midair, a terrible purgatory. Until, of course, her death sentence.
Feeling what she felt for him and having it snatched away was worse than never feeling that connection at all.
Why do I seek out these outrageous, ridiculous situations? I moved six states away to start fresh, but I can’t escape my calamitous personality. I’d be me even on the moon.
“Let’s say that, by some insane possibility, you’re telling the truth,” she started evenly. “What have you been doing since 1928? Just wandering the earth aimlessly?”
“More or less.”
Ricki threw up her hands. “Specifics!”
“All right,” he mumbled. “The first February I came back, four years after the curse, I realized Harlem wasn’t the same place. It was 1932. Prohibition ended but so had the Renaissance; the Depression decimated Harlem. And no one remembered me. Not Lo, not my band. It was like my old world had pushed me out the door, turning the lock behind me. So I stayed in my house every fourth February, but the rest of the time, I rented it out and traveled the world. Went where the music was.
“I was too blocked to play my own stuff, so I became a… well, an influencer. But not how y’all think of it nowadays. I influenced the artists that mattered. Because I don’t leave a strong imprint, I can easily move in and out of studios, jam sessions, gigs. There’s always a few questions at first. Who booked him? What’d he say his name was? So on and so forth. But after folks heard me play, the questions were forgotten.
“When you’ve lived as long as I have, you start to see patterns in the culture. I especially notice patterns in music. A popular sound stays fresh for about eight, ten years, and then it evolves into another sound. I can feel what’s next. I can pinpoint the bridge between eras.
“I’ve been a silent collaborator on too many hits to remember. I was the whisper in someone’s ear, the suggestion in a smoky bar. The applause was never mine, but it was enough.
“After a session at Chess Records in Chicago, I ran into this kid, Chuck Berry, plucking his guitar out back. Sounded plumb crazy, like nothing I’d ever heard. He said the label wanted him to choose between blues and pop. No surprise—corporate kills creative. Tale as old as time. So I told him to marry blues and pop and spike it with country licks on a backbeat piano. I showed him what I meant on the studio piano, and he fucking lost it. Oh. Sorry, I…”
“Ezra Walker, don’t you dare pull that chivalry shit right now. Keep talking.”
“Right. Anyway, the blues, pop, country equation felt like him. It felt like the future. In his memoir, Chuck said I put the roll in rock. But he couldn’t remember my name.
“Look in the liner notes of The Great Ray Charles, his 1957 album. He dedicates two songs to ‘some Harlem cat’ who showed him how to ‘use his left hand like a drum.’ Quincy Jones heard me play a few chords in the late ’60s; I wanna say it was at the Lighthouse in LA? Later, he reimagined the melody when he produced Michael Jackson’s ‘Human Nature.’ He says so in his documentary. Didn’t include my name, of course. He couldn’t remember it.
“At a Motown studio session in 1970-something, I whispered a few ideas in Stevie Wonder’s head. Some chords, a few melodies. They ended up on what music theorists think is his most experimental album.” He rubbed the back of his neck, seeming to hesitate.
As blatantly improbable as this story was, Ezra was such a convincing storyteller that Ricki was sucked in. She couldn’t help herself. “Wh-what’s the album called?”
“Stevie Wonder’s Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants.” He looked down at his hands, speaking quietly. “I know, it’s got you written all over it.”