Crazy in Love (8 page)

So lost was I in my own little world, in fact, that I was
actually surprised to hear Rachel’s voice when I answered the telephone that Tuesday night at exactly seven-twenty-
two.

“Hi, Sallie? It’s me, Rachel. How are you? I feel like I
haven’t talked to you in ages!”

“I know. I guess I’ve been busy the last couple of days.”

“Me, too. And now I’m drowning in
Don Quixote.
Spanish test tomorrow.
Already!
It’s only the third week of
classes, and already I’m swamped.”

“They don’t waste any time, that’s for sure.” I glanced at
my watch nervously. Seven-twenty-four.

“I wanted to ask you a favor, though. You know my
English notebook, the one I lent you last week? I need it
back right away. I found out today that I have to give a little
talk on
Moby Dick
tomorrow in class, and all my notes are
in it. Do you think maybe you could drop it off tonight? It’s
kind of an emergency...
.”

“Uh....
”
Seven-twenty-five. At any minute Saul
would be at my front door, guitar in hand. But then it
occurred to me that it might be kind of fun to surprise
Rachel. “Sure, I’ll bring it over. But is it okay if someone
else comes with me?”

“Who? Jenny?”

“No. It’s a surprise. Someone you’ve never met before.”

“It’s fine with me. I just washed my hair, but if this mystery person doesn’t mind getting dripped on, I certainly
don’t care.”

“Okay. We’ll be by in around fifteen minutes.”

I hung up, wondering what Rachel’s reaction to Saul
would be. I hoped they would like each other. There is
nothing worse than having the people you care most about
going at each other like cats and dogs.

Once again
I had
an ugly thought: Perhaps it would
bother Rachel that Saul was Puerto Rican. There was no
reason why it should, as far as I knew. But still, I was
suddenly keenly aware of the current status of New York’s social scene. Well, the solution to that was simple enough. I
just wouldn’t tell her. I’d let her get to know him first, let
her see what a terrific guy he was. There was nothing wrong
with that. I mean, I don’t exactly go around introducing my
friends to each other by saying, “This is Rachel. She’s
Jewish.” Or “This is Dan, he’s German.”

Promptly at seven-thirty the doorbell rang, and there was
Saul. Once again, I’d dressed in that special style that I
call “conscientious-casual.” I knew that the excitement of seeing him again was bringing a sparkle to my eyes and a
flush to my cheeks. I’d noticed that about myself lately; every time I looked into a mirror, I appeared to be glowing.
It was most becoming, I thought.

“Hi, Sallie! All set for a night of hard work?”

“You bet. But first I have to do a quick errand. Do you
mind if we run over to a friend’s house for a minute? I have to drop something off. It’s only a few blocks away, and we
won’t have to stay very long.”

“It’s fine with me.”

He deposited his guitar in my room, and after scrounging
around my desk for a few minutes, I carne up with Rachel’s notebook.

“All set?” he asked, and we set off for the Glasses’
apartment.

“The person you’re about to meet is my best friend in the whole world. Her name is Rachel Glass. People are always kidding us about our last names. Glass and Spooner. Get it?
Anyway, she’s been my best friend ever since I moved to
New York, just about.”

I proceeded to fill Saul in on my entire history as we
walked over to Rachel’s. It was a lovely evening, I remember, with that balmy feeling of late Indian summer. But the
promise of autumn was unmistakable. That’s my favorite
time of the year, I think. Early fall. And then early spring is nice, too. I think when the seasons are just about to change
from very hot to very cold, and vice versa, it makes the air
seem fresher and the world seem brand-new. It was exhilarating, and I was out of breath by the time we reached
East Seventy-seventh Street.

“This is it,” I announced, leading Saul past the doorman,
who considers me an honorary resident of his building. We
rode the elevator up to the twentieth floor.

As we stood outside the front door of the Glasses’
apartment waiting for it to be opened,
I had
a quick fit of
nervousness. What if Saul and Rachel hated each other on
sight? I thought once again. It was possible, after all. And it
would make my life difficult, as I tried to juggle two
adversaries who were both near and dear to me.

It was Rachel who answered the door. True to her word,
her hair was sopping wet, and it hung about her head like a
veil. You know the way Victor Mature looks in those old French Foreign Legion movies they always show on TV on
Sunday afternoons? The ones where he looks like he’s
wearing a dish towel on his head? That was what” im
mediately came to mind as I saw her standing there. Her wet
wavy locks were causing little dark spots to form on the
collar of her pink T-shirt. She was wearing her scrungiest jeans and had no shoes on. The look in her eyes was one of
distraction, and I could tell that she had been lost in the
magical world of
Don Quixote.
In Spanish, no less.

But a curious thing happened, The instant she laid eyes
on Saul, her expression changed. It softened—or rather, it
melted—
right before my eyes. I wasn’t sure what was
happening, so I glanced over at him. He, too, had suddenly developed that dreamy look. The two of them just stared at
each other for what seemed an eternity, with neither of them saying anything. The whole thing was a bit embarrassing, if
you ask me.

“Hi, Rachel,” I said, feeling obligated to break the
unusual silence that seemed to have gripped everyone all of
a sudden. “Uh, I’d like you to meet Saul, a friend of mine.
Saul, this is Rachel.”

Their eyes never left each other. “Hello, Rachel,” Saul
said. In his usual fashion, he shook her hand. But somehow, the crisp friendliness that generally accompanied that action was nowhere to be found. Instead, they sort of clung to each
other. I thought maybe I was imagining the whole thing,
however, so I went on in my brusque, cheerful manner.

“Saul and I are working on a song together. We’re going
to enter it in the WROX contest. I told you all about that, Rachel, didn’t I? He and I met at Sharon’s party Saturday
night, and we decided to try working together. Anyway,
here’s your notebook. Sorry about keeping it for such a long
time.”

We engaged in a few more minutes of small talk, still standing there in the hallway. Fortunately, Saul and Rachel
both chimed in eventually. It was nothing significant, just
your usual cocktail party conversation. Finally, I insisted
that Saul and I had to return to our songwriting. It was
getting late, and quite frankly, I was getting a bit worried
about the low level of productivity of our songwriting team.
After all, time was getting short.

As Saul and I walked back to my place, he seemed sort of
quiet. I already knew him well enough to realize that that
was an unusual state for him. But I filled in the silences by chattering away about Rachel and my long friendship with
her. Saul was proving to be a good listener.

“Well, shall we settle down and get some work done?” I
asked when we were back at home. “I’m afraid I haven’t come up with anything since Saturday. I’ve been kind of
busy with other things. Flow about you?”

We were back on the floor of my room, our guitars standing by, ready and waiting. Once I mentioned our still-unwritten song, in my serious-no-nonsense tone of voice,
Saul snapped back to the present from whichever planet he
had been on temporarily.

“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” he said, picking up his guitar and
turning his attention back to music. “I came up with the
beginnings of a melody that we might use.”

He picked out a few bars of a really catchy tune. There
was a nice chord accompaniment to go with it, too. It was
just what I’d imagined, exactly what I’d hoped for.

“That’s it!” I cried. “Saul, you’re a true genius!”

“But that’s just the beginning,” he insisted. “We need
much more than that.”

“Hmm. How about something like this?” I picked up my
guitar and played what he had just shown me, then added on
a bit more.

“Perfect! And then, it could go into something like
this...
.”

The melody just flowed out of our two guitars. We sounded like Dueling Banjos as we echoed each other, back and forth, each time adding on another measure, coming up with a different chord or some inspired harmony. Within an
hour, we had come up with a first-rate song.

“That was so simple!” I exclaimed once we were
satisfied with the music. “You were right. It
did come.
And so easily, too. It’s as if the song was floating around in this
room, and all we had to do was find it and tie it down. Like
helium balloons.”

“You’re kind of poetic, aren’t you?” Saul teased. “And
it’s a good thing. You may not have noticed, but our
wonderful little song has no lyrics yet.”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. Lyrics.” I studied the
floor. Whereas the musical inspiration had blossomed, wild
and free, the words just would not come. “It should be
easier to think of words, now that we’ve got the melody.
You know how these things just follow naturally.”

“I hope so,” Saul sighed. “At the moment, I can’t think
of a single thing.”

There was a timid knock at the door, one that I
recognized immediately as Jenny’s. She poked her head in
at my invitation.

“I don’t want to disturb you guys,” she apologized, “but
as I was coming out of the bathroom, I heard wonderful sounds coming from this room. Is it possible that a song—
or rather,
the
song—has been born?”

“Well, half of it,” I said.

“Which half?”

“The music half. The words have not yet found their way
into our creative little brains.”

Jenny’s eyes opened wide. “Oooh, do you think I can
hear what you’ve written? I promise to like it!” She came into my room cautiously, as if she really was afraid she was
bothering us.
I had
to admit that she looked cute in her
yellow terrycloth bathrobe and embroidered Deerfoam
slippers, with her cheeks all pink and dewy from her bath.
Her hair was in braids again. It seemed that ever since Saul
had tweaked them on Saturday afternoon, she had been
wearing braids every minute of the day.

“What do you say, partner?” Saul asked me. “I already
told you how I feel about audiences. It doesn’t take much to
get me started.”

“If you think we’re ready for our debut.”

We launched into an energetic rendition of our new song,
singing and harmonizing with the words, “Da da da.”
When we were done, we looked to Jenny for her reaction.

“It’s fantastic!” she squealed. “I love it! When can I buy
the record?”

“Now, wait a minute,” Saul said seriously. “You said
before that you promised to like this song, no matter what.
We want your
honest
reaction.”

“I swear! I love it!” Jenny insisted.

“Will you stick to that opinion, even under the tickle
torture?” he asked, still using that serious tone.

“Oh, no, not that!” she squealed, looking a bit nervous.

Saul glanced at me, a mischievous look in his eye. I
returned his grin, then the two of us descended upon Jenny,
tickling her mercilessly.

“I love it! I love it!” she yelped, over and over again.

“You love being tickled?” I cried.

“No, no! I love the song! I
hate
being tickled!”

When we, her two tormenters, were convinced that she
meant what she said, we finally relented.

“I guess she means it,” Saul said matter-of-factly as
Jenny tried to regain her composure and start breathing
normally again. “She even withstood the tickle torture.”

“Well, Mr. Rodriguez,” I said, “I’d say we have a hit on
our hands!”

“If they love it in New York,” Jenny said, “they’ll love it everywhere. And to show you how much I like it, I’ll
even give you guys some of the cookies I made on
Saturday.”

“Are these leftovers?” I asked as she dragged us both to
the kitchen.

“Not at all,” she assured us. “These are the special ones, the ones with the extra chocolate chips that I put aside. Just
in case you guys came up with a hit. See, I believe that
creativity deserves material rewards, as well as spiritual
ones.”