Romantic Comedy(71)
“Did you really not have sex for almost a year?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not judging you, I’m just surprised.”
“Because I’m a guy?”
“Partly.”
“Do you buy into the idea of all men as constantly horny? I thought the younger TNO staffers were teaching you that gender stereotypes are nonsense.”
“I don’t know if you know this, but you’re also a celebrity. A good-looking celebrity. Don’t women throw their bras at you onstage?”
“I don’t think that happens in real life.”
“Never? Not even once or twice?”
He smiled sheepishly. “Maybe once or twice.” Then he burrowed into me. “I am constantly horny for you, in case that’s not clear.”
* * *
—
Margit and Glenn came back in the afternoon, and even though I knew they weren’t Noah’s parents, I felt a little like they were, and I wanted their approval. They appeared to be in their sixties—Margit was petite and dark-haired, and Glenn was tall—and I further realized that I’d half expected them to have on uniforms like the servants in a British period drama. Instead, they were wearing shorts and T-shirts, and when Noah introduced me in the kitchen, they greeted me in a friendly but brief way, and then Noah told Margit that we hadn’t eaten the salmon the night before so it would probably be good to have it for dinner. Equally casually, Noah said to me, “Do you want Glenn to vacuum your car?”
“Oh,” I said. “No, that’s okay.”
“If you change your mind, just give him the keys.”
Then we went out to the pool and splashed around and treaded water for a while and stood in the shallow end pressed against each other, making out—did Margit, whom I had the vague impression was still in the kitchen, care? Had she seen a version of this many times?—and Noah said, “I think it’s very important for you to be kissed a lot while you’re in a swimming pool because I hear that Martin Biersch was negligent on that front.”
“I appreciate that,” I said.
Then we lay on the inflatables, and I almost fell asleep, with the sunny blue Topanga sky above us and the green hills around us and a sort of natural ambient buzzing in the air. I wasn’t, of course, totally un-self-conscious about how I looked in a bathing suit, but I was only about 17 percent as self-conscious as I’d have anticipated. First because of all the sex we’d had and second because, as per Viv’s pep talk, I was staying for just three more days, until Thursday at noon, so really, wouldn’t it have been a waste of time to fret about my thighs or belly?
After that, he showed me his studio: the live room, which held another grand piano and a drum set in addition to a dozen guitars of various shapes and sizes stored on stands; the control room, with a vast mixing console like the one in the control room at TNO; and the isolation booth, with its foam-covered walls and standing mic. Back in the live room, he picked up an acoustic guitar and tuned it and then, while looking at me, began playing a song I soon recognized as “Revolution” by the Beatles. He kept playing as we talked about something else, and I felt a tidal wave in my stomach, this reminder of the thing he could do exceptionally well and easily and the strange preciousness of his doing it when no one was around except me.
He stopped playing and said, “It’s weird we’ve never discussed this, but do you play any instruments?”
I shook my head. “I wish.”
He began to play another song and said, “You know this one?”
It took me a moment, then I said, “？‘Sultans of Swing’？”
He nodded, closed his eyes, and sang. I thought about the embarrassment I had experienced watching him rehearse his songs at TNO, and it seemed in retrospect to have been a kind of foreknowledge but also a kind of misunderstanding. I didn’t feel embarrassed in his studio; I felt admiration. And my embarrassment from before now seemed like a protectiveness.
“Last one,” he said, and he segued into “Ain’t No Sunshine”—the title was revealed in the first line—and his eyes were closed again and he was belting it out unabashedly, and I wondered then if there was always a loneliness to loving a very talented person because their talent was only of them, not of both of you, and then I thought, Jesus Christ, do I love Noah? I only got here yesterday! And then I thought, was there anyone who would ever feel lonely because of my talent? Was I as talented as Noah? I was competent, but nobody would want to stand still and just watch me. If you were a writer, you could be impressive in a cerebral sort of way, but if you were a musician, you got to be viscerally magical.
As casually as he’d reached for the guitar, he put it back, and grabbed my hand.
We returned to the main house and ate the dinner Margit had made, though we didn’t see Margit until we were halfway through eating, when she came to check if we needed anything and then came back to clear the plates. （Was it reprehensible that a couple in their sixties worked for Noah in this way? Was it fine? Was it my responsibility to decide?）
Then, in Noah’s bedroom, we watched a futuristic movie about astronauts, but halfway through we began messing around and the movie was still playing on the wall-mounted screen as he peeled off my jeans and underwear and kissed the insides of my thighs, so my consciousness was split between the surreal ecstasy of his mouth on me while my eyes were closed and the characters saying things like “But the commander has no idea that the electromagnetic currents from the storm damaged the satellite!”