Page 49 of Twice
“Go back?”
“I want to hear how you got her to marry you.”
“You mean when I proposed?”
“Yeah. Read that.”
“It wasn’t a big deal.”
“I’ll be the judge.”
“You sure?”
“Hurry up.”
Alfie raised an eyebrow but, complying with the detective’s request, flipped back a few pages, found a spot, and read from there.
The Composition Book
After graduating from college, Gianna and I decided to move in together. The only question was where. Gianna was hoping to go to South America and pursue her dreams of photographing wildlife. But my passion was music. I wanted to try to make it in that business, which meant one place: New York City.
“We’ll only stay a couple years,” I said. “We can earn some money, and if things go right and I make good connections, then we can live wherever we want.”
“Promise?” she said.
“Promise.”
We pooled our funds, rented a studio apartment on the Upper West Side in Manhattan, and began a life of circling our dreams without ever realizing them. We took odd jobs to pay the rent. Gianna worked in a camera store. I got hired by a music public relations firm to write press releases, a skill I didn’t even know I had. On weekends I gave piano lessons at a Brooklyn shop, and they let me rent an upright piano for cheap. Because our apartment was so small, we had to jam that piano between the kitchen door and our futon bed. We stacked record albums on top of it, and books on top of those. We kept our clothes in a trunk. We grew plants in the bathroom. The windows leaked in cold air during the winter, and because we lived in a single room, if one of us got sick, we both did.
There were times I was tempted to use my power for more money. Rent a bigger place. Buy a car. But my mother’s warning about doing that stayed with me. And how would I explain to Gianna that we could suddenly afford such things?
Besides, there was something in our frugal existence that seemed to magnify our affection.
“Aren’t you getting tired of me being this close?” Gianna once asked as she cuddled under the blankets while I dressed on the edge of the bed.
“Why would I get tired of someone I love?” I said.
She nudged me with her feet.
“That’s the right answer,” she said.
She pulled me down and pushed my shirt off my shoulders and we made love in the way we had blissfully gotten used to, tender, thrilling, satisfying. I could have stayed in those days forever.
?
Our building was pre–World War II, and we lived on the ninth floor, with an elevator that was often broken and a hallway that smelled of other people’s cooking. On Sundays, we heard gospel music through the walls. There was an alley behind us with a faded green trash dumpster, and one day Gianna discovered some stray cats living there in a Dunkin’ Donuts box. She brought them food every morning.
The months glided by. I wrote songs at night and tried to sell them to record companies or music publishers. For my twenty-fourth birthday, Gianna bought me a two-track taperecorder so I could make my own demos—she must have spent every dollar she had—and that night, we made instant hot chocolate and Gianna sat next to me on the piano stool. I pressed record on the new machine.
“What do you want to hear?” I said.
“Play that ‘Try Me’ song you always sang in college.”
I placed my hands on the keys.
“Wait,” she said, grabbing my fingers. “Can I ask you something?”
“OK.”
