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.“He’s very driven.I’ll give him that.”Reflex was shuffled somewhere inside his iPod, an album Julian had been forced to buy three different times as the music industry shoved him from format to format, and only now did he recall the band’s lead singer’s name as being the same as the painter’s.The sickening truth: Cait could very well have been with Alec Stamford, the musician.Julian had been quite taken by Reflex in film school, had studied sleeve photos and lyrics, when he spent his free hours doing that and little else, had detected a profundity in Reflex songs, references obscure but reminiscent of some shared experience, and he recalled a feeling of mutual understanding, lying on a bunk, looking up at the back of an LP: “Lyrics—Stamford, Music—Vincent.” He looked back over his shoulder; the artist was there, but Cait O’Dwyer was gone.“Julian, I feel like I conjured you tonight,” said the former employee.“I was just thinking about you.Hello? All right, come on, let’s introduce you.You’re gawking.” She waved the artist over.He kissed her cheeks and held her hands and helpfully reminded Julian of her name.“Alec Stamford,” Heather said, “this is Julian Donahue, one of your myriad admirers, and the renowned artist behind several of your favorite shampoo commercials.”“I am actually a fan of Reflex,” Julian said, pointing to the air, which carried a song he’d once truly loved, “Last One In, First One Out.” “Are you possibly the same Alec Stamford?”“I think I am.Some days more, some days less.” The larger man shook Julian’s hand and kneaded his shoulder, tipped his head back to consider him down his nose.“This song was a favorite of Springsteen’s actually,” Stamford said.The bass and drums dropped out, and the vocals floated, whispered, over sustained keyboard chords, “Walk to your car, I’m going back to the bar / Just say good night, ‘cause we both know this don’t feel right.” The former employee laughed, rubbed Julian’s neck, excused herself for just a minute.Stamford pulled two passing drinks out of the air, but Julian, turning toward the gallery’s huge front window, saw Cait O’Dwyer on the sidewalk, buttoning her coat.Knowing he no longer had the stamina to court another man’s girlfriend, he decided she was leaving too early to be involved with the artist.He declined the drink with apologies, said congratul—“You really have to run?”“I do.I’m sorry.”Stamford looked at the girl in the picture window.“You know Cait?”“Kate? No.”“Oh, ah, okay, but so, ah, commercial direction, Heather said? I may have a need for someone in your line of work.Flip me your card before you split.I’ll have the gallery hook us up.”Julian left as casually as he could, Heather Zivkovic still in the bathroom, but by the time he reached the street, there was no sign of Cait, just crowds from bars and galleries, and his teeth chattered in the April air as he swallowed his hopes.At home, he found Aidan asleep on the couch, and he reread Cait’s Times profile online, blue light on his face, remarkable fellow, remarkable fellow.He sorted through Google’s sightings of her in the cybermurk, now more than a thousand, though some of them were mere rumors, her name struggling to break out of Japanese text or the thrice-daily essays of the housebound furious and the cubicled despairing.He printed out a glamour photo of her laughing through blue backlit smoke, the granddaughter of some 1950s Claxton-photographed jazz-club beauty, the great-granddaughter of a daring fast girl with her bare knees tucked up to her chin on the hot sand of the Cote d’Azur.He discovered the newly launched www.caitodwyer.com, scoured it for clues.The site included the usual propaganda to sell Cait and her music to the universe, with its short attention span and surfeit of stimuli: email lists, tour dates, About the Band, Cait’s blog.The Guest Book hosted fans far from New York, in Los Angeles, fair enough, but also mythological hamlets like Wichita and Albuquerque.“Cait! I saw your show at the Mad Dog last October and I never forgot it.!Keep rockin’! Stu.” “I think your a poet.And I loVe you.Beth P.” “Tell Ian he ROXXX!!! Mags and Michelle.Tell him those were our favorite shirts.He’ll get it! Ian! Call us next time you’re in the Triangle!” “1st Ave gig was awesome, and you won a fan for life in me, Cait.T-bone.” However necessary such marketing may have been, this outpouring of adoration from children must have embarrassed her, if she was the woman he hoped she was.“I bought your demo at the Vingt-Deux, and I listen to it all day, all the time.I want you to know how great I think you are.I wish there was a better way to tell you.I wish I knew how I could know that you knew it.I want you to feel it.Unless you can’t be it and feel it at the same time??? GG
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