But then the barista was talking again, and Frankie swallowed the thought.
“No, Waverly’s isn’t really a ‘pool hall’ now—just a bar, but with a... back room. Lemonhead is just good for the dance floor. Maybe it wasn’t that way when you went here?” Joni looked at Frankie with an almost pitying look, and Frankie wanted to scream that she was only thirty-two and hadn’t even entered the prime of her life, but she found that she just didn’t have the energy.
“Ok,” Frankie said. “Sohewas at Waverly’s. My whereabouts are still unknown.”
“I don’t want to get anyone in trouble,” Joni said, as if Frankie were about to rap Ezra on the knuckles, like a chiding wife, a possessive partner. “I was just coming over to say that you were the best player I’ve ever gone up against. And, like, I’m easily the best in our senior class.”
“Wait, did he take your money?” Frankie asked.
“Oh... well,” Joni said stoically, then stared at the floor.
Frankie leveled Ezra with a look she knew he’d understand. He reached into his pocket, first removing the keys, then pulling out his wallet. He fingered through the billfold, and sure enough, Frankie noted that there must have been at least seven hundred dollars, probably more, in there. Ezra’s swollen eyes managed to pop just enough that Frankie knew Joni was telling the truth.
“How much?” Frankie asked.
“No, no, really, that’s not why—” Joni started.
“Do you know what this man does for a living?” Frankie said.
“Stop,” Ezra cut her off.
“He’s a high-powered Manhattan attorney at one of the top law firms in the city. Have you seenAlly McBeal? Like that. But... less singing.” Frankie realized she wasn’t making her point, but she forged ahead. “And you’re here, slinging coffee, which is great for your work ethic but not for your tuition payments. Let him pay you back.”
“Seventy-five. He took about seventy-five.” Joni shrugged. “But it’s ok. I got out a little too far over my skis. I can be a cocky bastard.”
“Coincidentally, so can he.” Frankie reached over, took Ezra’s wallet and handed Joni five twenties. “That’s your tip for today. Thank you.”
Ezra sighed and then picked up the keys.
“I don’t suppose these belong to you?”
Joni shook her head.
“And I don’t suppose you know the people I was with last night? It’s all... kind of fuzzy,” Ezra said. “Neither of us remember much.”
Joni scrunched up her face with no judgment. In the corner of the shop, the stereo speakers quieted, then a new song started. Frankie immediately recognized the opening clang: “We Are the World.” She wondered if the song stirred up the same memory for Ezra—that first winter break she’d gone home with him to the Philadelphia suburbs. Ezra’s mom was in remission but due for scans after the holiday, and he was understandably jittery. Ezra was often jittery, but this was a lot even for him. Frankie wanted to soothe him, but she wasn’t used to caretaking, didn’t really know how to, since she didn’t exactly have exemplary role models, and she was barely used to taking care of herself. She hadn’t yet told him about her child prodigy years, about the mess of her youth, which is how she’d come to think of it; about the fact that she could hear the notes in any piece of music and just somehow see them. But this song came on the radio as they were driving in his beat-up Jeep, and she’d started singing, because if Ezra could be vulnerable, maybe she could be too.
And she had looked at him and said: “You trade off with me.”
Ezra scoffed like she was crazy. “I can’t sing. Do you not know that about me? I really can’t sing.”
“Anyone can sing,” she said. Then, as if to demonstrate, she proceeded to belt Paul Simon’s line pitch-perfectly.
“No, really, I’m tone-deaf,” he said, and she made a face as if to signal she didn’t think Ezra was less than wonderful at anything, and so he’d tried Tina Turner’s lyric—We’re all a part of God’s great big family—and he was right. He was truly awful. Frankie didn’t mean to laugh, but honestly, he wasn’t even in the right octave much less the right key, and Ezra cried, “I told you!” and because he was making her smile, hesang the next line too:And the truth, you know, love is all we need. But soon she was laughing so hard she thought she was going to pee in her pants, and when she told him as much through her hiccups, he started laughing too.
Finally, she got a hold of herself and said, “Well, I think if you’re really that terrible at something, the only thing to do is lean into it.” So she unlatched her seat belt and opened up the Jeep’s sunroof, her torso craning out, her cheeks chapped from the cold air, and shouted,“We are the world!”Then she heard Ezra from the driver’s side: “We are the children!” Then together:“We are the ones who make a brighter day, so let’s start giving.”Ezra let Frankie take the high notes as they finished up the chorus. And then Frankie shouted, “This time with feeling, Ezra!” And they did that over and over again, louder each time, until the song ended. And she eased back into the seat and then he pulled over, and they made out on the side of the quiet street peppered with homes flashing green and red Christmas lights until the windows fogged up.
If the song meant anything to Ezra now, he betrayed nothing.
“Really, was I with anyone you can remember?” he said to Joni. “It would be really helpful.”
“I think... well... there were a few of us regulars at the table. I’m not even sure how you ended up there.”
Frankie heard Cyndi Lauper wail her solo now, and she tried again not to think of that night in Ezra’s Jeep. By then, he had already told her he loved her; he’d done that early on, shortly after he decorated that B and B where they first slept together, because that’s what Ezra did. But when he’d pulled back from kissing her, the heat blasting from his Jeep’s vents, her shirt off, her skin exposed, she surprised herself by laying the rest of herself bare too.
“I love you, Ezra Jones,” she’d said, because it was true and also because she thought it might help soothe him, calm the pulse of anxiety that raced through him because of his sick mom but also because he’d probably been born that way.
“I already know that,” he said, his voice husky and low. Then he kissed her again and took off the rest of her clothes.
