Crossroads
- Автор: Франзен Джонатан
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- Жанр: Современная русская и зарубежная проза
Электронная книга - «Crossroads». Краткое содержание книги:
Universally recognized as the leading novelist of his generation, Jonathan Franzen is often described as a teller of family stories. Only now, though, in *Crossroads* , has he given us a novel in which a family, in all the intricacy of its...
Instead of embracing her, he helped her—not to say hustled her—into the bus and ran around to the driver’s side. Wet snow on the windows had made an ice cave of the interior, private but dreary. The rear of the bus was piled with amps and instrument cases that seemed impatient to be unloaded. After Tanner had started the engine and turned up the heater, Becky waited for him to lean over. She’d made the first move the night before, so now it was his turn. Her entire self was poised to open itself up to him as soon as he kissed her. But he was nodding to himself, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.
“I just got some news,” he said. “It’s pretty far-out.”
She turned to him and presented her face, to suggest that his news could wait.
“Do you remember that time we were talking in the sanctuary?”
“Do I remember it?”
“Well, it got me thinking,” he said. “You got me thinking. I realized it was time for me to take the next step.”
In Becky’s mind, his next step was to make a definitive break with Laura Dobrinsky. If the news was that he’d done it without her having insisted on it, she was happy to hear it.
“So, you know Quincy, right?”
Quincy Travers was one of Tanner’s black friends, the drummer for the Bleu Notes.
“So Quincy’s been playing with this guy from Cicero whose cousin is an agent. A really good agent—he gets his acts into clubs all over Chicago. And you know what? He’s going to be there tonight. I just got a call back from him.”
Becky shivered in the long coat her aunt had given her. The seat of the bus was much colder than it had been the night before. “That’s great,” she said.
“I know. This is our biggest crowd of the year by far. It’s the perfect showcase.”
The VW’s little vents were blowing nothing but freezing air.
“Congratulations,” Becky said.
“I only made the call because of you.” Tanner took her gloved hands in his bare hands and squeezed them, as if to infuse her with enthusiasm. “Just knowing you understood what I’m trying to do—that made a huge difference.”
Only abstractly did she appreciate being thanked. She didn’t like sitting in an ice cave, talking about his music career and not about the night before. She didn’t like imagining him and Laura and the Bleu Notes playing more gigs around Chicago.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
“Nothing. That’s great news.”
He tenderly put two fingers on her cheek, but she averted her face. The lumpy, shadowy snow coating her window was like the cellulite pictured in her mother’s Redbooks. Tanner rested his chin on her shoulder, his mouth near her ear. “When I see you, I feel like I can do anything.”
She tried to speak, shivered, tried again. “And Laura?”
“What do you mean?”
“I thought she was your girlfriend.”
He sat up straight. Outside the bus, teenaged boys were bellowing in the snow.
“I’m just wondering where I stand,” Becky said. “I mean, after last night.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean, shouldn’t we talk about it? Or is that too Crossroads?”
“It’s pretty Crossroads.”
“I only joined because of you. I thought you loved it.”
“Yeah. I know. I have to have a conversation with her. It’s just—here’s the thing.”
A snowball hit the frosted windshield. It stuck there, a darker blurry mass, and now a red-fingered hand was swiping snow off Becky’s window. Through the cleared glass, she saw a junior-high kid packing a snowball. He fired it across the street, and another one slammed into the side of the bus. Tanner popped open his door, shouted at the kids, and shut the door again. “Stupid juvies.”
Becky waited.
“So, it’s hard,” he said. “Everybody sees Laura as this intense, scary person, but there’s a side of her that’s really insecure. Really vulnerable. And—well, here’s the thing.”
“Who you want to be with,” Becky said firmly.
“I know. I know what I need to do. It’s just—tonight is not the night to have that conversation. Laura doesn’t even care if we get an agent, but the rest of us do, and she’s so radical, I can see her just walking out. Which—there go our keyboards, there go my harmonies. Even if she plays, and she’s up there pissed off with me, it’s going to be a mess.”
Realistically, Becky knew there wasn’t any rush. The fact of their having kissed, the fact of her sitting in his bus with him now, the fact of their having this conversation, was evidence of the inroads she’d made on his heart. If only she hadn’t set her own heart on going to the concert with him! It was too late to undo how fervidly she’d imagined walking into the church on his arm, showing the world that he was hers, and telling Jeannie Cross about it in the morning.
“Aren’t there other agents?”
“There are tons of agents,” Tanner said. “But this guy, Benedetti, he’s supposed to be really good, and this isn’t like playing the Grove. Darryl Bruce is home from college, he’s sitting in on lead guitar, and Biff Allard is bringing his congas. We’ve got a really full sound tonight, and the perfect audience.”
“I thought the main thing was your record. Your demo, with your songs.”
“Yeah. It still is. But you were right—I need to think bigger. I need to be playing four times as many gigs, building up an audience, making contacts.”
Becky hoped he couldn’t see, in the dreary cave light, that she was clenching her face muscles to keep from crying. “But so … if Laura’s in the band … and you’re playing gigs … how does that work?”
“I can find someone to replace her. I just can’t do it in the next three hours.”
An embarrassing squeak escaped from Becky’s throat. She cleared it loudly. “So,” she said. “You’re breaking up with her?”
When Tanner didn’t answer, she looked and saw that his eyes were closed, his hands pressed together between his knees.
“It’s kind of important for me to know,” she said. “After what happened last night.”
“I know. I know. It’s just hard. When you’ve been with a person for so long, and she’s still so into you. It’s hard.”
“Or maybe you just don’t really want to.”
“That’s not it. I swear to God, Becky. This is just a bad night to do it.”
The need to cry could be as urgent as the need to pee. She picked up her shoulder bag. “I should probably go.”
“You just got here.”
“It’s all right. There’s a reception I told my mom I couldn’t go to because I was going to the concert. I can at least make her happy.”
“I’m not saying you can’t go to the concert.”
“You want me to go there and act like nothing happened? Or, what, I’m supposed to put a blanket over my head again?”
He filled his fists with his hair and pulled on it.
“It’s almost like you’re ashamed of me,” she said.
“No, no, no. This is just—”
“I know, a bad night. I was really looking forward to it, but now— I’m not.”
Before he could stop her, she jumped out of the bus. Leaving the door hanging open, she narrowed her eyes against the stinging snow and ran up the alley behind the bookstore, where the bus couldn’t follow her. She could only hope that she was disappointing him as much as he’d disappointed her. She’d felt so certain of how their date was going to go: a delicious resumption of their kissing, followed by testimonials of amazement that they’d found their way to each other, followed by lengthier kissing, followed by her triumphal entry into the church with him. Now even the snow was unromantic, a painful hindrance. Everything had gone to shit.