The Last Flight of Poxl West by Daniel Torday Page B

giving up on it for a moment and cradling the guitar between her crossed legs. “I can make that chord easily if I don’t think about it. But thinking about it now, trying to think where to fret it, I can’t make my fingers do it. It’s just muscle memory, making these chords. You wouldn’t be able to think about it fast enough when playing in time if you tried. So you make your hand make the chord over and over until you don’t have to think it, exactly. You just go to make the chord, and there it is.”
    She looked up at me, and in her face I could see she felt she’d expressed herself perfectly. But I didn’t have that muscle memory, and I didn’t fully comprehend. I told her I didn’t know quite what she was talking about. Now the skin on her lips bunched together, and I watched the skin around her eyes tighten.
    â€œPerhaps you need to listen better,” Françoise said. She was no longer looking me in the eyes.
    â€œI mean, you know the chords, right?” I said. “Of course you’re thinking about it.”
    â€œWell, I know them, yes,” she said. Her eyes were still narrowed and diverted from mine. “But I don’t think, C, and then a C chord arrives. I just know I’m about to play a C chord and my hand is gripping the neck. I don’t think it. I just do it. Maybe if you learned how to give yourself over to it, you’d learn how to play quicker yourself.”
    I looked down at my hands. I wished so much then that I understood what she meant—how to give myself over to it, to develop the muscle memory. But I could make chords well enough, I thought.
    â€œYou really don’t see what I mean, do you?” Françoise said.
    â€œNot really.”
    To my surprise, after I admitted again that I didn’t understand, something eased in the tension that had gripped Françoise’s face. It pleased her I’d confessed, at least, what it was that confused me.
    â€œTo act,” Françoise said. “I just act with you now, Poxl, too.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œFor so many years I’ve learned how to perform for men. I read what they need from me, and I give it to them. That’s the transaction: for me to fulfill their needs. And that’s the right word: performance. But with you, Poxl…”
    She stopped speaking. I do not know if a conversation like this is what it is to be in love—to disagree but to stay around and find out why, so it is no longer a disagreement. To do something so simple as to talk honestly, and then to listen. But I do know it’s what it means to begin to know someone: confession, revelation, reconciliation.
    â€œWhat is it?” I said. “I want you to tell me. Honestly.”
    â€œIt’s like undoing the notes of a chord and then making a whole new chord. Then practicing long enough to make a new muscle memory. For years being with men was like the same basic chord. But since we’ve been together it’s like I’ve begun to unlearn how I’ve voiced things in the past. And it grows more complicated. I tried something like this once before—”
    â€œBefore?”
    â€œIt’s where I got these instruments. There was an American, I’ve mentioned him before. He gave me all these records, gave me my first mandolin, my first guitar. He seemed not only to want things from me but to want to give. He told me he would take me back with him to the American city of Nashville. I believed him. Then I never saw him again.”
    We were both silent. If love shows itself at times by giving us a sense of propriety, I suppose I came close to understanding it in that moment: I didn’t want to hear about her American. I’d kept tucked away any jealousy that might accompany our relationship, her work, but for the first time now I felt it. Blood came to my cheeks. Off in the distance the wind swayed the flowers, a huge patch of