You Don't Love Me Yet Read Free

appear, seem, I hate those words.”
    “Why are we discussing this now?”
    “Nothing, it’s just someday I want to be in love without supposing or appearing or seeming.”
    “You want to be in love? Or you want somebody to be in love with you? It can’t be both, that’s like mingling self-pity and sarcasm. What’s the latest development with Matthew?”
    Sunset gloom had overtaken the boulevard. Falmouth looked tired. He was anxious about the complaint piece. And older. They were all getting older.
    “We’ve broken up,” Lucinda said. “I’ll see him tonight, at practice.”
    “So you’re friends.”
    “Matthew’s too mild to be anybody’s enemy. And we refuse to wreck the band. So instead we’re miserable.”
    “Voilà. It’s love.”
    “I want real true clear passion, not murk and misery.”
    “You underestimate the value of your inertia and dismay.” Falmouth had been slumbering, coasting through the talk. Now his attention gelled. “Misery’s much better than happiness. It’s auspicious that you’re in a band together.”
    “Just because we’re as unhappy as a great rock band doesn’t mean we don’t suck.”
    “You’re being too hard on yourselves. Most great rock bands are not only unhappy, they also suck, if you listen closely enough.”
    “You never knew anything about music, Falmouth.”
    “No, I never did. Don’t you want a cigarette?”
     
    t he band barely fit into its rehearsal space, formerly the living room of drummer Denise Urban, now with its floor triply carpeted and bay windows draped with a bedspread to insulate the band’s sounds from irritated neighbors. Denise, muscular and nearly breastless in a scant white T-shirt, blue eyes half covered by her high hennaed bangs, balanced on a stool crammed between her kit and the French doors to her bedroom. On a couch of threadbare gingham, beneath bookshelves drooping on their brackets, sat Bedwin Greenish, the band’s lead guitarist, lyricist, and arranger. Bedwin wore plaid shirts buttoned to his throat, and cut his hair himself, with children’s scissors. He sat coiled around his black electric guitar, corduroyed legs tangled in themselves, one sneakered foot bobbing, head dipped so that his glasses neared his fingers, which spidered on the guitar’s fret-work noiselessly.
    Matthew stood at the room’s center, leaning on his microphone stand with his back to the drums, acoustic guitar strapped across his shoulder but dangling untouched. Matthew knew only rudimentary chords, his strumming inessential to the band’s sound. He turned and stared unhelpfully while Lucinda, arriving last, wrestled her enormous hard case through the kitchen doorway. The room was silent enough to hear Bedwin throat-humming the notes of an imaginary solo.
    “Hey,” said Lucinda.
    “Hey,” said Denise.
    “Um?” said Bedwin.
    Matthew nodded as Lucinda fitted herself into her accustomed spot at his left elbow. A bass player’s stance, pivot between drummer and singer, the only player to absorb everyone’s reactions. She’d face Bedwin too, if he ever looked up. But it was Matthew’s presence to which she attuned now, his delicate eyes so firmly unglanced in her direction. She felt a kind of heat impression of his contour glow along the side of her body that was turned toward his.
    The sensation, pleasant or unpleasant, was familiar enough to ignore. She plugged in and tuned her strings. “Somebody give me a G.”
    Bedwin plucked a note, unamplified, then turned himself up and plucked it again. Denise rattled her snare warningly. Matthew coughed.
    Lucinda boinged her ill-tuned string, but her ear failed her. “Sorry, another G?” Matthew and Bedwin each replied with their guitars. This time she nailed it.
    “So, Bedwin’s got something new he wants to try,” said Matthew, still not looking at anyone in particular.
    “Great,” said Lucinda. Bedwin himself didn’t seem to register the discussion, his glasses still magnetized to the