Page 15 of Breakaway
The apartment is dark when I get back. I lock the door. I brush my teeth. The bedroom is quiet and the novel is on the nightstand at page 318. I read three pages and turn off the light.
Tomorrow is a travel day. I'll finish packing in the morning. On the plane a younger player will sit next to me and ask about my career, how I've lasted this long, whether I think about what comes next. I will answer the question he asks and not the one underneath it. The one underneath it is the same question Kevin almost asked tonight, which is the same question I have been asking myself since the day Luca got on the plane to Atlanta.
?
Chapter 6: Luca
The plane levels out somewhere over the Carolinas. Thompson has the window seat three rows up and is asleep already, head against the glass, mouth open. Jensen is across the aisle reading a paperback with the cover folded back. Mueller is two rows behind me working through a bag of trail mix with the focus of a man who has a system for the order he eats the components.
Marchetti is in the seat next to mine. He has one earbud in and one out, his phone balanced on his thigh, scrolling through something.
"What are you listening to?" I ask.
"New album. Came out this morning." He pulls the earbud out and holds it toward me. "You want to hear?"
"What genre?"
"I don't know how to answer that. It's like jazz but not jazz. There's a trumpet and a drum machine and somehow it works."
"That is not a genre. That is a description of an accident."
"It's a good accident. Try it."
I take the earbud. He presses play. The trumpet comes in first, clean and bright, and then the drum machine underneath. He's right. It shouldn't work. The two sounds have no business being in the same song. But the trumpet finds a line through the beat and follows it, and the thing that should be a mess becomes a conversation between two instruments that don't speak the same language.
"Okay," I say. I hand the earbud back. "That's not terrible."
"Not terrible. That's the Berger review. I'll put it on the poster."
The captain comes on about turbulence. Seatbelt signs. Marchetti puts the earbud back in and then takes it out again.
"Can I ask you something?" he says.
"You just did."
"What was Miami like? I mean actually. Not the humidity bit."
I stretch my legs under the seat in front of me. Through the window on his side, the clouds are flat and gray and going nowhere.
"Hot," I say. "But you already know that."
"I know the weather report. I'm asking about the city."
"The food was good. There's a street, Calle Ocho, and the Cuban places there will ruin you for Cuban food anywhere else. The beach is right there. You wake up and the water is outside your window."
"You miss it?"
"I miss the ceviche."
He looks at me. His head tilts slightly. "That's not what I asked."
"Some of it," I say. "Yeah. Some of it."
He nods. He doesn't push. He puts his earbud back in and turns toward the window, and for a while neither of us talks. The plane moves through the gray. I listen to the engine noiseand the occasional laugh from the back rows where Davis and Kowalski are playing cards.
"What about you?" I say. "Where are you from?"
"Jersey."
