Another Virginie Despentes Vernon Subutex I Coincidence

But this one was a lot more discomfiting.

It starts with my friend, S. She's the parent of a special needs daughter who's about the same age as my two special needs kids, and all three of "the kids" attend the same day center. My son and her daughter also both played on the center's Special Olympics basketball team, so we spent many an hour sitting on the bleachers for practice and games, and S. was so friendly and outgoing that I was able to overcome my extreme shyness and fear of women to talk to her. Pretty soon we were having two hour conversations just about every time we met. It didn't take long for me to start envying her husband. S. was exactly the kind of woman I should have been looking for from the get-go. She was full of life and happy and dependable. I would bet all of my worldly wealth that she will still be married to her husband when one of them dies, and that she has never, would never, and will never cheat on him. She is a woman you can trust. Of course I had a crush on her, but I never said anything even vaguely flirty out of respect for her, her husband, her family, her faith. And for myself. It was beginning to feel like a really good friendship...and one I sorely needed.

And then the pandemic came.

We kept in contact via Facebook and an occasional text. I am extremely averse to calling people on the telephone, feeling that I might interrupt someone doing something better than talking to me, so I didn't go there. But S. and I kept in touch.

And then I saw her Facebook post. It said that her son, Nicholas, had died.

I immediately sent her a private message to tell her how sorry I was and asked if there was anything that I could do. She said something about getting together with the kids for a walk in a few weeks. I told her that she should feel free to call me anytime...and assured her that I meant that literally. I don't sleep well.

And a few weeks later she called me. I didn't ask, fearing that I would hurt her, but she told me about it. She said that one night Nicholas had gotten into his car and driven to a church which was only having services every other week. In the parking lot, he took an overdose of a prescription medication. I don't know how much later they found his body, but it wasn't right away.

S. told me that she needed to talk about Nicholas. That she needed to say his name. That she needed to hear his name. She told me that she felt that if she heard his name enough times in a day, she could keep going.

We talked for over an hour, and after we hung up her words haunted me. I kept thinking about how I had at first avoided saying Nicholas' name, avoided asking about what had happened, thinking that I would hurt her by doing that. I had told her that my daughter and I prayed for her and her husband and daughter and Nicholas every night, but what I really wanted to do was call her on a regular basis just to say Nicholas' name. That thought boiled around in my head for a few days, then I got into Garage Band and opened up a piano track and looked at the keys. Playing N, I, and C did not produce any sounds, but H, O, L, A, and S did. I started to write a song based on those notes. After a few hours I'd finished, but I wanted to find a way to get the other letters of Nicholas' name into the music. So I looked for different loops with the letters I was looking for. I ended up with Neon Desert guitar, Ice Cold Beat 01, and Cali Vibes Piano. I brought each one on in that order, then the piano notes corresponding with H, O, L, A, and S. The sound of both of these pieces was pretty mournful, though, and while on the one hand that was obviously appropriate for the situation, I didn't want S. to think that I thought that that summed Nicholas up. He was more than his tragic death. I had only met him briefly a few times at basketball games, but he seemed bright and happy, full of love for his family. So I went back to work. Eventually I had seven different pieces, and I started to arrange them in an order which I thought made sense. I cut one of the pieces out, then wrote a long email to S. with a link to the music I had written.

I was worried that doing this would cause her pain, but I wanted to say Nicholas' name. A hundred times. 

She wrote back and thanked me. I thought she was being polite, and started telling myself I was a fool to think that something like this would help.

Then she wrote back to me again and told me that she was listening to the music over and over. She also told me that when she was playing the first song, her daughter had come downstairs and said, "I thought I heard Nicholas' voice." That gave both of us the chills.

I wrote to her again and asked her if she would like a CD of the music. She said she would love it, and asked if she could come over to pick it up sometime. I told her that it would only take me a few minutes to burn a CD, and she could come over anytime she wanted. A few hours later she and her daughter were in my driveway... masked and distanced. When I gave her the CD, S. told me that it was the best present she had ever been given. 

I tried not to cry, but I couldn't stop it.

Breath.

Last night I was reading Vernon Subutex I, getting close to the end of it, when I read this: