life with more cowbell

It’s been a while since I posted a story, so here’s one I dusted off and revised. This one has a rom-com vibe.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t see you there.”

I hear this a lot. This time, it’s a man on the subway who’s just bumped into me. Rush-hour commuters jammed into the subway car, we’re a bunch of sardines in a can, on our way to work, school, wherever. He’s a tall guy—not unusual, as most people are taller than me—and I suppose it’s a whole different world way up there, eye level being considerably higher than the top of my head and all.

I get off at the St. George subway station. It’s way less crowded than Bloor/Yonge, and I don’t mind the extra walk. Crowds seem to annoy me more now. It’s been over three decades since I attended a concert in a large venue. The last time was U2 at the old Coliseum at the Ex. And it wasn’t the crowd in the venue that got to me so much, but the trip home. As we left the Coliseum, we were all singing “How long to sing this song?” over and over. And that was such a good feeling, voices joined in unison, strangers singing together. It was a warm feeling of camaraderie, hopefulness. Then there was the GO Train platform. My sister and I were almost separated in the crowd, all of us clamouring for the last train to Oakville, and I was nearly choked because some asshole beside me decided to reach across the doorway to grab the support bar just inside the train’s entrance as the crowd behind us pushed me neck first into his arm. When I raised my voice to point out the situation, he responded by snarling “Whore!” at me. Apparently, he hadn’t seen me either—or hadn’t cared—and I was only a whore anyway. Was I a whore because I’d spoken up for myself or because I was a woman who got in his way? Perception is a funny thing. And, since I wasn’t likely to see this guy again, it didn’t really matter what he thought of me or what I thought of him. Anyway, since then, I’ve mostly opted for more intimate venues like Massey Hall, a quaint old church or a bar. Maybe it’s an age thing. Not that I’m that old—a youthful fifty-two. Maybe it’s just that I’ve come to value my personal space more over the years.

Arriving at my office building, I cram myself into the only elevator that’s working this morning. This also happens quite a lot. Too much, anyway, for a building that’s barely ten years old. Wary of a fellow passenger’s elbow that’s a bit too close to my face, I turn my head. This way, if that elbow happens to go astray, I won’t end up with an injury. Arriving at the eighth floor, I manage to extract myself from this particular tin can and make my way to the office. The production department, where I work as a copy editor/proofreader, was moved to this floor a few weeks ago and I still turn the wrong way as I exit the elevator at least half of the time. This is a great source of amusement for co-workers who’ve been in the space longer than I. Apparently, they don’t have much of a sense of humour. In any event, I’ll learn eventually. The office space itself is a cubicle farm, with twelve cubicles in the centre of the room, flanked on either side by enclosed offices, three on either side. Real offices. The kind with doors. And privacy. The space also boasts a small board room, kitchenette, a practical room for the printer/copier and office supplies, and a coat closet. Only about half of the cubicles are occupied, one office is vacant and a few of my office mates work from home a few days a week, making it a mostly quiet, nearly deserted place.

I drop my lunch bag on the vacant desk near the closet and struggle out of my multiple winter layers: Gor-tex jacket with a fleece jacket and scarf underneath, and mammoth Sorel boots. The boots are the kind I used to borrow from my aunt, my mother’s sister, when we visited her family when they lived in Callander, a small town near North Bay, and we were going snowmobiling. When I put them on, I feel like an astronaut in those big, weighted space boots, preparing to walk on the moon. Or Godzilla, stomping menacingly—BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!—toward some unsuspecting skyline or, in my case, the cat. I pad to the kitchen in my stocking feet to deposit my lunch into the fridge. There’s no coffee in the industrial-sized coffee urn. There are so few of us here, there’s no point using it, so we all mostly go to the nineth floor, where my cubicle used to be. The inside of the fridge is pretty empty too, unlike the jam-packed one I used to use upstairs. Here, I don’t have to worry about negotiating the space inside the fridge—folks who are good at Tetras would be enjoy this—or about the contents avalanching onto my feet and the floor.

My cubicle is located at the back of the farm—by a window, thankfully—and the pre-fab partitions are just high enough to conceal me when I’m seated at my desk. I fire up my computer, fish my black Brogues out from under the desk and check my work e-mail as I put them on. No messages. This is disappointing, since I’d been told there’s a deadline pending at noon and that this very important copy editing job would be waiting in my Inbox when I arrived this morning. No other work awaiting my attention, I go online and pull up tabs for my Gmail account and various news sites. No messages on Gmail either. Back in the day, I used to see a Gmail status condition under my name, in the left margin, that said: “You are invisible,” with the option to “Go visible.” Back then, in that virtual space, it was an option—and a choice.

Coffee seems the best thing to do, so I wander up the stairwell and into the break room on my old floor, where the fancy coffee machine is. There are two twenty-somethings ahead of me, having an animated conversation about the upcoming wedding of one of their co-workers. These are the kids from the PR section of the company. I’m in the research section. They’re nice folks—but one can’t help but feel like they’re the beautiful, cool people and the rest of us are the homely nerds. High school with pay cheques. They pause their chat briefly, executing a half turn toward, flashing smiles and giving me a chipper “Hey there!” In unison. Good Lord. I give them a comparatively feeble “Hey” in return and turn my attention to the coffee machine as they make their exit.

The coffee machine is a marvel of beverage engineering. It not only produces caffeinated or decaff coffee, you can choose the strength. It also provides espresso, hot chocolate, hot water and something called a “café mocha,” which is basically hot chocolate with an espresso shot. I choose the strongest strength of black coffee, squirting some caramel syrup and pouring in some 2% milk as the machine fills the cup. The aromatic brown swirl is almost hypnotic.

This momentary bliss is interrupted by a cheerful “Hey!” This time, it’s Maggie—also from PR, about my age and possessing such an air of gravitas that I doubt very much that, even at their age, she had the cheerleader-like energy of her two younger colleagues. We also have else something in common: we both sing. And, lately, every time I see her, she tries to coax me into getting up to sing at this monthly jazz open mic night she hosts at The Supermarket, a bar and music venue in Kensington Market.

“So…?” she says.

“So… what?” I play dumb.

She points to the flyer on the bulletin board advertising said open mic night. “Are you going up tonight?”

Here, I should point out that I’ve seen her perform. She’s amazing. And I’ve had a crush on her—personal and professional—since the first time I heard her sing. The song was “You Go to My Head”. The moment she stepped on stage, she was mesmerizing. She was wearing a blue gown, royal blue but darker, the bodice held up by thin straps, revealing lovely shoulders and arms. Her long, auburn hair was pinned up, a stray strand trailing along each sculpted cheekbone. Very Ann-Margaret. And then that voice. It was just her sultry mezzo voice, accompanied by piano. “You go to my head. And you linger like a haunting refrain…” And she drew out those notes with such tenderness and yearning, it made me cry. She made me cry.

“Uh. Nope. Not this time.”

“That’s what you always say,” she frowns, her head tilted disapprovingly before adding, “Bock, bock, bock!”

“You can mock me all you want, but I’m not getting up there tonight.”

“Come on. Participate! No one’s going to laugh at you.”

“I do participate. I show up. I listen attentively. I show my appreciation. I tip my server generously. And who says I’m afraid that people will laugh?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, tough guy. Give me one good reason.”

We’ve had this conversation before. “I can give you several. I’m not a jazz singer, for one.”

“You are—,” she starts to protest.

“—And, B, I’m not nearly the calibre of talent that turns up for this event.”

“You are a strong, well-rounded singer who happens to be good at jazz standards. And it’s an open mic night, for fuck’s sake! Nobody’s expecting Ella Fitzgerald.”

She had heard me sing at a karaoke birthday party thing for our mutual friend Lizzie, which is how we first met a couple of years ago—both recognizing that, coincidentally, we worked at the same office, having seen each other around. Okay, so maybe I’ve had a personal crush on her since then. Anyway, I sang “How Deep is the Ocean?” and “Mustang Sally”. I’ll admit that I was happy with my performance, and the assembled crowd of mostly drunken theatre folks and writers was very positive in their reception, but I hadn’t sung in public much since then and was intimidated at the thought of performing in front of such a genre-specific audience.

“Look. I’m not saying ‘never’. I’m just saying ‘not right now’, okay?”

“Okay, okay. I’ll stop bugging you. Have a good day.”

“You too.” Before she disappears, I almost ask about lunch, then I remember that impending deadline.

And that, for the moment, is that. Why don’t I ask this woman out? I have my reasons, not the least of which is I don’t know if she’s into women—or into me in particular. We talk about so much: music, movies, theatre, politics—but the subject of relationships hasn’t really come up, though it has come up in conversation that I’m queer. I’m reasonably certain that she’s single right now—but, then, I can’t really assume that either. She’s very mysterious that way. And, of course, this makes her all the more attractive. At the same time, I’d feel like I was intruding on her privacy if I asked—even in an offhand, casual sort of way. Also, it could make things weird between us. Yeah, I know. Bock, bock, bock.

Back at my desk, I work on some low-priority requests that have just arrived in my Inbox while keeping an eye out for this super urgent deadline. I end up eating lunch at my desk, working throughout. At 2:00, I still haven’t had a break and there’s still been no word on the urgent document, so I call the project director. I get his voice mail and leave a message. A short time later, he enters the office. I try to catch his eye, but he doesn’t see me and goes to chat with another project director in one of the side offices. After about twenty minutes, he finally comes out, and I pop up from my desk, like a Jack-in-the-box, to catch his attention.

“Oh! I didn’t see you over there,” he says.

“I’ll be here all week. Try the veal,” I say with a smile. “Am I still seeing that report that’s due today?”

“Oh, yeah. We sent it out at noon. Turns out, we didn’t have time for you to look at it.”

Okay. So, basically, I’ve been sitting here waiting for nothing. “Okay. Guess I’ll go for a break now.”

“Thanks for checking.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah—and thanks for nothing.

Out for a walk, which I usually do during my lunch break, I’m almost forced off the sidewalk by a pack of corporate folks walking in the opposite direction—presumably, returning from lunch. Apparently, they didn’t see me either. I should rob a bank today. It would be the perfect crime. Baffled bank teller and customer witnesses wouldn’t know what to say: “I don’t know what to tell you, Constable. I didn’t see anyone. The money was there, and then it just disappeared.”

The last couple of hours at the office pass very much like the first. When I get home, I feed the cat and heat up some leftover pasta for myself. I flop onto the sofa with my dinner and turn on the TV for the 6:00 news, and find my mind wandering and my gaze continually shifting toward the round vintage design red clock that lives on the wall above one of my bookshelves. Open mic night starts at 8:00. Then, I make a choice.

I decide to go for a classic look: black suit and white shirt, no tie. The shirt has French cuffs requiring cufflinks. I select the silver ones with “To thine own self be true” engraved on them. I shine up the Brogues—which I’d brought home from the office, the sidewalks finally clear enough for shoes—bid the cat farewell and head for the Dundas streetcar.

What am I thinking? I can’t get this thought out of my head as I get to the bar, hang up my coat and scan the space, looking for Maggie. I don’t see her. I need a drink.

“Hey. What can I get you?” Steve, the bartender, asks. I’ve somehow managed to wander over to the bar.

“Uh…” I look toward the beer taps.

“Hi!” It’s Maggie. Then, registering my wardrobe, she grabs my arm, gleefully gasping, “You’re going to sing!”

Equal parts relieved and anxious to see her, I blurt, “I don’t know—maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”

“You’ll be fine. What are you drinking?”

“I’m not sure.” Still scanning the taps—nothing stands out.

“Have a vodka and cranberry with me,” she says. “Two, please,” she tells Steve. Then, back to me, “What are you going to sing?”

I can’t even pick a beverage. “I hadn’t actually gotten that far in the decision-making process yet.”

This makes her laugh. “You need to stop thinking so much.” Our drinks arrive. “Thanks, Steve.” She pays him and hands me a glass, “This one’s on me.”

“Thanks.” We clink glasses. “I’ll get the next round. How soon do you have to know about the song?”

“You’ve got plenty of time. Did you bring music?”

Shit! “No! Sorry, I didn’t even think…”

“No worries. Mark knows pretty much every standard out there. Just tell him to play in the key of alto for you,” she grins. Then, she touches my arm again, this time on the bicep, as she glances toward the stage. “I should get going.” She gives my arm a squeeze. “See you soon.” She glides toward the stage where Mark, the pianist, is warming up the keys.

Did I mention she’s wearing the blue dress?

Maggie and Mark start off up tempo with “Straighten Up and Fly Right”, then move on to slow and easy with “But Not For Me”. Then she introduces the first open mic singer of the evening.

I’m so distracted with trying to pick the right song, that I barely register the other open mic performers. Okay. “The Way You Look Tonight”. I write the song title, along with my name on a slip of paper and hand it to Maggie at intermission.

Oh God. Why did I pick that song? I’m feeling a bit light-headed and queasy now—and not from the booze, since I’ve only had one and have switched to ginger ale—so I can barely register what Maggie’s saying, but I think it’s something like she’ll let Mark know what I’ll be singing and that I’m an alto. Was she smiling? I down the rest of my drink and try to remember to breathe as more open mic performers take the stage after intermission. Everyone is so good. What am I even doing here?

Next thing I know, Maggie’s introducing me: “And now folks, last but not least, I’d like to introduce a friend of mine, a regular attendee who’s getting up on stage for the first time this evening. Please welcome to the stage: Robin O’Brien!”

Like my earlier experience of finding myself suddenly at the bar, I find myself standing at the vintage microphone, looking at a sea of anticipatory—but not unfriendly—faces. I’m here now, so I have to do this. I look over at Mark and nod. He starts to play. And then I hear a voice, soft at first, then gaining in strength. “Someday, when I’m awfully low. When the world is cold, I will feel a glow just thinking of you. And the way you look tonight…” And it’s my voice.

And it’s fine. It’s okay. I don’t suck. The audience is rapt, the expressions on the faces I can make out in the dimly-lit space are attentive and appreciative. And it feels good. And I relax. As I continue the song, I look for Maggie. I find her, standing off to the side—and I’m so happy to see that she’s enjoying it too, looking right into my eyes. “With each word, your tenderness grows, tearing my fears apart…” And then I realize I’m holding her gaze. And that feels good too. Mutually good, even? I turn my attention back toward the audience as I finish the song, with such a full, warm feeling in my chest, that I think I might burst from the sheer joy of it all.

It always reminds me of an abrupt rainstorm—the applause, when it erupts and crescendos. Hands are joined by whoops and cheers. Usually, when I hear this, it’s for someone else. This is one of those moments when what’s happening outside of me matches what’s happening on the inside.

I smile and say “Thank you”—and before I can exit the stage, Maggie is beside me, grabbing me in a tight side hug. Her hand rests on my lower back, warm and comforting, as she turns to the audience and says: “Thank you all for coming. See you next time. And maybe we can get this one to come back up here.” She gives me a squeeze, smiling as the applause washes over the both of us, then leans toward me and says, her lips brushing my ear lightly, “Wait for me. I’ll drive you home.”

I collect our coats while she and Mark pack up. We say goodbye to Mark, Steve and the last few patrons—many of whom are regulars and familiar faces—and head out into the cold to her car, a silver SAAB convertible. Even her wheels are lovely. As we pull away from the curb, I notice that my cheeks are starting to ache from smiling so much.

“So—how did it feel? You were amazing!” Her voice has a breathless quality I’ve never heard before.

“It felt amazing. Thank you. And so were you.”

“Thanks. But I do this every week—and you were so…”

“…Bock, bock, bock!”

“I wasn’t going to say it. But… yeah!”

“And you aren’t going to say ‘I told you so’?”

“Never.” She grins. “I might think it, but I’d never say it.”

Then, suddenly, we’re parked outside my place and I’m feeling—disappointed. We’re here so soon.

I put on a happy face and turn toward her. “Thanks for the drive. And for pushing me to get up there.”

“My pleasure.” Then her face and voice soften, as she says, “You really were lovely tonight.”

“Thank you. So were you.”

I hug her and she hugs back. Warmly, tightly.

“You’re welcome,” she says softly.

And, still in the hug, we kiss each other on the cheek and then pull away slightly, still in the embrace as we lock eyes. That’s when she gently brushes a stray strand of gelled hair off of my forehead and rests her palm on my cheek.

“Maggie…”

“Yeah…?”

And there’s not really anything else either one of us can say.