A Love Song for Ricki Wilde (68)
Ricki raised her head. “What’s worse than that?”
“The point is, if I had someone looking out for me in Hollywood, I might not have ended up in horrible situations with horrible men. You’re lucky you have me.”
“But Tuesday…”
“And just as I suspected, Ezra Walker is weird. And so is his house. He’s got a renter on the bottom, in this normal, if uninspired, apartment. He lives on the upstairs floors… but it’s all empty. Except, there’s this one creepy-as-fuck room crammed with all this old-timey furniture and technology.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Do you know what a liminal space is?”
“Yeah, it’s a space that serves as a conduit from one place to another. Tunnels, doorways, stairwells, bridges, airport terminals. Transitional spaces.”
“Exactly. Well, this room felt like a liminal space in time. The stuff in the room? It wasn’t artifacts from one particular era; it was a century’s worth. It felt like I’d stepped outside the time-space continuum. And that,” she announced grandly, “is where I found these.”
Tuesday pulled out her phone and showed Ricki photos of the sheet music.
“Music. Sheets and sheets of music, all with these crazy, impossible dates. So random.”
“Not random,” whispered Ricki, with growing horror. “They’re leap years.”
“Look at the oldest sheets. They’re fragile, like if you breathe on them, they’ll disintegrate. Where did he get this ancient paper? And read his commentary in the margins. He says that the notes don’t add up, that he can’t make a complete song out of them. Then, on February 1 of this year, the day you saw him in the garden—he says it started to come together.
“I’ve solved the mystery,” continued Tuesday, staring Ricki directly in the eye. “Ezra Walker is a psychopath antique collector and possible time traveler. Now, we just need to find out what he wants with you.”
Ricki lolled her head back against the wall.
“Oh, Tuesday,” she said softly, “I think I already know.”
CHAPTER 17
BW + FF
February 18, 2024
WIKIPEDIA
Breeze Walker (January 3, 1900–unknown) was an American stride jazz pianist and composer. Popular during his Harlem Renaissance heyday, he recorded several hit songs from 1924–1928, but the music hasn’t survived and Walker is largely forgotten today. In 1927, he was hired to lead the house band, The Friday Knights, at famed Harlem cabaret Eden Lounge. Sometime in early 1928, Breeze Walker vanished and was never seen again. His disappearance remains unsolved.
In 1929, an electrical fire burned Eden Lounge to the ground—and with it, the only known recordings of Walker’s songs, all of which had been stored in the basement, including “Happy Sad,” “Hotcha Gotcha,” and “Midnight Jasmine.” There were no fatalities, but historians cite Eden Lounge’s demise as the symbolic end of the Jazz Age.
Walker is believed to be from South Carolina, but no historical records exist.
Ricki hadn’t left her apartment—or opened Wilde Things—since coming home with Ezra the night before last. She was spiraling just a smidge. She’d started to think the piano was watching her, and so whenever she needed to cross the room, she walked in an exaggeratedly broad circle around it. She curled up with her laptop on the shag rug where she and Ezra had slept, and obsessively googled every piece of his tall tale, from his anecdotes with famous musicians to details about Eden Lounge. She watched interviews, read liner notes, and bought multiple ebooks by music historians (there was no time to wait for physical books to be snail-mailed). She’d devoted an entire wall to multicolored Post-its tracking key details, like a TV detective. And she refused to take off Ezra’s shirt.
Ricki was going nuts.
What was she supposed to do? Everything Ezra told her was completely unbelievable: a fever dream of a story. He was creative; she’d give him that. But utterly crazy.
At least, she kept telling herself that. The more she analyzed everything he’d said, the less insane it seemed. Ricki had to admit that if she’d been hearing this story as an uninvolved third party—like, if she’d been following it on a podcast or a documentary series—she might have believed it.
Ricki wasn’t not open to metaphysical stuff or the idea that there was more to the universe than what she could see. Her favorite books were Eva Mercy’s Cursed series, about a witch and a vampire in endless love (the author’s signing later that week was the only thing keeping her going at this point). She sort of believed in the power of crystals, specifically amethysts to bring luck in business and pyrite to combat imposter syndrome—the only part of the Ali experience that had any value. She crossed the street when she saw a black cat. She was in touch with her internal witchiness enough to at least consider the possibility that burning sage cleared negative energy. Did Ricki name her plants? Yes. Did she talk to them? Also yes. Did she think that maybe, somewhere deep inside their stamens, they could perceive her voice in some way? Absolutely. After all, she was convinced that peace lilies couldn’t grow without Stevie Wonder.
Her eyes fluttered closed. Ezra had supposedly worked on that Stevie Wonder album.