“Something jaunty,” Nick told her. “Quickly, before I get bored.”
She wasn’t going to warm up for him. She didn’t know if there was any value in trying. She considered playing something specifically for Andy—one of those awful bubblegum bands that she loved. Her daughter had spent hours watching old Jinx Queller videos on YouTube, listening to bootlegs. Laura didn’t have anything classical left in her fingers. Then she remembered that smoky bar in Oslo, her conversation with Laura Juneau, and it came to her that things should end up where they had started.
She took a deep breath.
She walked the bass line with her left hand, playing the notes that were so familiar in her head. She vamped on the E minor, then A, then back to E minor, then down to D, then the triplet punches on the C before hitting the refrain in the major key, G to D, then C, B7 and back to the vamp on E minor.
In her head, she heard the song coming together—Ray Manzerek mastering the schizophrenic bass and piano parts. Robby Krieger’s guitar. John Densmore coming in on the drums, finally, Jim Morrison singing—
Love me two times, baby...
“Fantastic,” Nick raised his voice to be heard over the music.
Love me two times, girl...
Laura let her eyes close again. She fell into the bouncy triplets. The tempo was too fast. She didn’t care. There was a swelling in her heart. This had been her first true love, not Nick. Just to play again was a gift. She didn’t care that her fingers were old and clumsy, that she lagged the fermate. She was back in Oslo. She was tapping out the beat on the bar. Laura Juneau had seen the chameleon inside of Jane Queller, had been the first person to really appreciate the part of her that was constantly adapting.
If you can’t play the music people appreciate, then you play the music that they love.
“My darling.”
Nick’s mouth was at Laura’s ear.
She tried not to shudder. She had known it would come to this. She had felt him hovering at her ear so often, first during their six years together, then in her dreams, then in her nightmares. She had prayed if she could only get him to the piano, he wouldn’t be able to resist.
“Jane.” His thumb stroked the side of her neck. He thought the piano was canceling out his voice. “Are you still afraid of being suffocated?”
Laura squeezed her eyes closed. She tapped her foot to keep the beat, heightened the pitch of her fingers. It was simple, really. That was the beauty of the song. It was almost like a ping-pong match, the same notes being volleyed back and forth.
“I remember you saying that about Andrew—that being suffocated felt like a bag was being tied around your head. For twenty seconds, was it?”
He was taking credit for sending Hoodie. Laura hummed with the song, hoping the vibrations in her jawbone would cancel out Mike’s recording.
Yeah, my knees got weak...
“Were you scared?” Nick asked.
She shook her head, hitting the damper pedal to bring out the vibration in the strings.
Last me all through the week...
Nick said, “This is all your fault, my love. Can’t you see that?”
Laura stopped humming. She knew the rhythm of Nick’s threats as well as the notes of the song.
“It’s your fault I had to send Penny to the farmhouse.”
The feel of his mouth on her ear was like sandpaper, but she did not pull away.
“If you had just given me what I wanted, Edwin would be alive, Clara wouldn’t have been hurt, Andrea would’ve been safe. It’s all on you, my love, because you wouldn’t listen to me.”
Conspiracy.
Laura kept playing even as she felt the air begin to seep from the balloon in her heart. He’d confessed to sending Paula. They had him on the recording back in the dark little room. Nick’s days at Club Fed were over.
But he wasn’t finished.
His lips brushed the tip of her ear. “I’m going to give you another choice, my darling. I need our daughter to speak on my behalf. To tell the parole board that she wants her daddy to come home. Can you make her do that?”