She is speaking eagerly, like a child. Julia unclips her saxophone case and says, “I was just thinking about the music.”
“Yes, but
Julia slips her reed out of its gated plastic sheath and holds it for a second. “I imagined what was going to happen,” she said, “when I dropped Isolde home.”
The lights change. The overhead lights and the bright overcast light from the window are doused; a template falls into place in front of a solitary floodlight and the attachment begins to rotate, so that the yellow light is thinly striped and ever changing, playing over the pair of them like passing streetlights striping the dashboard of a moving car. Julia sits down. The streetlights come and go, streaking over her knees and curving away over her shoulder to disappear, and she is dark for a moment before another streak of light rises up to replace the first, and then another, and another, all yellow and forward bending.
“I imagined,” Julia says, “that on the way home we would talk about the concert a bit, and what we thought of it, and the teachers that we had in common at school, and we’d keep coming back to
The saxophone teacher is unmoving. She looks Julia up and down with her eyes only. Her face is like a mask.
“And then I imagined,” Julia says, “that after I killed the engine we would sit there for a moment, not looking at each other, just looking up through the darkness at Isolde’s unlit house. My key ring would still be swinging from the ignition, and we would listen to the sound of the wind whipping the leaves. My mouth would be dry.”
The rotating template has stilled and Julia’s knees are in a square of light which falls through the car window and across her lap. Her face is in shadow. She is sitting stiffly, one leg forward-stretched and cocked at an angle, as if on the brake pedal. Her saxophone is lying on the couch beside her, and she is holding it casually with her left hand, lifting the upper end slightly off the couch, so it looks like her hand is curled casually around the handbrake, her knuckles in the plastic shallow beneath the handle and her wrist loosely arched. With her other hand she plucks at her sternum, testing the tension of an invisible seat belt strap, lifting it carelessly and letting it slap back against her chest.
“And I’d go, You know what everybody says about me. At school and everything. It isn’t true.”
Julia wets her lips with her tongue. She isn’t looking at Isolde: she’s looking out the window, peering into the dark silver of the wing-mirror, one hand still plucking at her strap.
“Isolde goes, I know. She says it really quickly and then she says it again. I know. She’s not looking at me, she’s looking forward, up at the house, and her finger is at her throat, twisting her necklace around and around, cutting all the blood from her fingertip. The end of it has gone gray.” Julia looks back at Isolde again, quickly, and tightens her grip around the handbrake. “And then I go, I was just worried that you might think I was going to come on to you, or jump you when you least expected it or something. I was worried you might think that.”
She reverts to gazing into the wing-mirror, turning her face away.
“Isolde goes, I don’t think that. And I go, Good. And then we sit for a moment, looking up at Isolde’s unlit house and listen for each other’s breath, and then I go, That’s all. That’s all I wanted to say.”
The lights come up a little, just enough to include the saxophone teacher and bring her into the scene. She shifts and crosses her legs. She looks uncomfortable.
“What is it that everyone says about you at school?” she asks reluctantly. Sometimes Julia makes her feel cornered, and she is feeling cornered now.
“Everyone thinks I like girls,” Julia says.
“I see,” the saxophone teacher says. The lights dip back down again, receding back to the single streetlamp casting its square pool of light across Julia’s lap. The saxophone teacher disappears again into the dark.
“We parked the car,” Julia says, “and sat there for a while, and whatever we were talking about sort of trickled away like water until there was nothing left and we just sat and waited for something to happen. My mouth was dry. And then Isolde goes, Do you mind waiting here in the car for a while? My mum thinks Victoria came to the concert with me, and we have to walk in at the same time in case she’s still up.
“And even while she was saying it a car pulled up and stopped a few houses in front of where we were, so both of us were lit red for a moment in the glare of the taillights, and then the lights went off but nobody got out. We watched but the car just sat there. And Isolde goes, She doesn’t know we’re here. She hasn’t seen us. Isolde’s watching the car with a hard tight sort of expression and I don’t want to say anything in case it’s the wrong thing, and then she says, We had it all arranged. Mum dropped both of us off at the concert, and I went in to meet you guys and Victoria went off to meet him. It’s the only way she can still see him. She’s grounded most nights, and none of her friends will cover for her now. I don’t mind.”
The saxophone teacher leans forward in the dark. She is frowning.
“And then Isolde goes, I’d better go. If we sit here for much longer it’ll be weird. I have to go.”
Julia smoothes her knees and tugs again at her seat belt, nodding.
“But she doesn’t go. She stays in the car for a moment longer, and through the back window of the car in front we see Victoria lean over and put her head on Mr. Saladin’s shoulder. It looks awkward, stretched across the gearshift with all this space in between them, and he reaches his arm up and strokes her head. He’s saying something but we can only see their silhouettes. It’s like a shadow-play, and all of a sudden my heart is hammering and I look at Isolde and she looks at me really quickly, but then again, and she says, Please don’t tell anyone, and I say I won’t.”
Julia’s voice has become dry and choked, and her tongue keeps darting out to wet her lips. Spots of crimson have appeared high on either cheek.
“And then she gets out,” Julia says, “and the silhouettes turn around and see her, and then Victoria kisses Mr. Saladin goodbye, not on the mouth. He turns his face to the side so she can kiss his cheek, and then they both smile and maybe even laugh, like it’s a joke. And then the red taillights come on again and Mr. Saladin’s car is gone, and Victoria and Isolde go into the house together. Isolde is the one who unlocks the gate, and while she reaches for the latch Victoria steps into the light and looks at me, really gets a long look at me, and then she says something under her breath to Isolde like she’s unhappy. And then they disappear.”
Julia comes abruptly to an end and looks at the saxophone teacher for the first time. Her mouth is twisted and her expression is sour, as if the performance has made her remember an unpleasant feeling that she would rather have forgotten.
“Was that really what happened?” the saxophone teacher says, as the lights return to normal and Julia reaches for her sax. “Was it Mr. Saladin in the car, Julia? Could you be sure?”
“I was just telling you what I imagined,” Julia says, all of a sudden grouchy and withdrawn and peering suspiciously at the saxophone teacher like she is an enemy. And then she adds, “It was dark.” She picks at one of the keys on her sax, just to hear it clack.
“This could be very important,” the saxophone teacher says.
“It’s what I imagined,” Julia says again, retreating further. She turns away and plays an arpeggio to warm up.
“Julia,” says the saxophone teacher. Her eyes are gleaming. “Tell me what you saw.”
“Nothing,” Julia says, and although she is sullen and inward the saxophone teacher senses in her something like triumph, as if Julia has led her somewhere remote and treacherous only to abandon her. “I dropped her home. She said goodbye. She got out. She shut the door. Nothing happened.”
“Can you remember losing your innocence, Patsy?” the saxophone teacher says.
They are in the afterward bar, Patsy sitting sideways in the booth with her legs up and her brown boots crossed at the ankle. There is a bottle between them, and two glasses, each stained with the pale gray kiss of a woman’s lower lip, like a fingerprint just below the rim.
“Do you mean a specific event?” Patsy says. “The actual loss of it, do you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Losing my virginity?”
