It was the middle of the day, and Robert was sitting on his couch, waiting for the world to end. His apartment was silent, interrupted only by the occasional hiss of the central radiator. Even a yawn would have echoed there. The city was quiet on winter Sundays.
The phone call was not what startled Robert—its ringtone was. To anyone else, this ringtone was a generic tune, one of those benign jingles that everyone recognized, yet no one could name. But to Robert, this ringtone played for just one caller. It could only mean Charlotte.
When Robert assigned her this ringtone years before, it was his alarm, his Pavlovian cry to answer the phone immediately. To hear even a second ring was to panic. Robert would have stopped time to answer her call. But the last times this ringtone had played, it was received with a sigh. Excitement had become frustration, opportunity had become obligation, panic had become idle hope that Charlotte would change her mind and end the call.
And there was Robert, twenty pounds heavier than the last time the phone rang this way, still balding, listening to that melody for what felt like hours. Finally, he answered.
“Hello?”
“Hi, it’s me. I need my coat back.”
“Hi, Charlotte.”
“Hello, Robert. It’s becoming cold here, and I need my coat back. I will be in the Upper West Side all of tomorrow, so please leave it at my office and I will pick it up when I return in the evening.”
“Charlotte—”
“Oh, my office is on 51st and Lexington, across from the—”
“I remember where your office is,” said Robert.
“Oh?”
“I’m actually going to be in the Upper West Side as well tomorrow. I can bring the coat there.”
“I am busy all day,” said Charlotte. She paused. “But I can meet you at the Starbucks on 63rd at 8 a.m.”
“What about that place we used to go to on seventy-fir—”
“It’s closed,” said Charlotte. “I will be at Starbucks anyway because I have a meeting there at 8:30. If you cannot make it at 8, just leave the coat at my office and I will pick it up when I return in the evening. I’m getting another call. Bye now.”
When he was sure she had ended the call, Robert placed the phone on the couch cushion next to him. He closed his eyes.
To Robert, Charlotte was a jukebox—every memory with her a song, every emotion its own genre. It played on shuffle. Some songs in its catalog were the most beautiful Robert had ever heard. These were not melodies, they were harmonies—ensembles of instruments playing together as one, the way five fingers strike as a single fist. The music felt raw, as though it had existed in nature forever. No one had written this music, they had only transcribed it.
But other songs were less euphonic—sour, even. These songs were pandemonium, chaos, tumult—innumerable individuals playing to their own rhythms, each discordant note more shattering any hope of melody’s return. This was humanity at its most primal: selfish, gluttonous, vain.
That jukebox had been unplugged long ago. There was no music now, only silence. But every so often, one of the hits would replay and interrupt the stillness in Robert’s head—sometimes only the chorus, sometimes just a note. But for a moment, Robert would return to that room with the jukebox, and he would remember.
And as he sat there, his eyes closed tight as though his television were the sun, Robert deepened his breath. Each inhale could chill a room. Every exhale could kill a fire.
He could hear the music.
Robert woke at 6 the next morning. He showered. He brushed his teeth. He combed his hair carefully, attempting to dampen the receding hairline and halo bald spot that plagued his head. He brewed a pot of coffee, and placed a cup of it on the cardboard IKEA box he had been using as a table. The pieces of the coffee table it once contained lay deconstructed in the corner. Before he left, he brushed his teeth again.
As he paced to the coffee shop, careful of the time, Robert wondered what he hoped to see there. The last time he had seen Charlotte, he had wished her happiness. It was an honest wish. She was a mess then. He was, too. Months of fighting, bullets of incompatibilities were not evidence that Charlotte did not deserve joy, only that Robert could not be her source of it—and she, Robert.
He hoped she had regained the weight she had lost. He hoped she had stopped pulling out her hair. He hoped she had found contentment in his absence, and felt comfortable now. He hoped their apartment was tidy, that it had become a home again—their couch no longer a bed, their bedroom no longer a courtroom, their flat no longer a prison cell. It was becoming cold in Manhattan. He hoped she was using the fireplace the way they used to, her body wrapped in a warm, thick blanket, sipping on a hot cup of tea with both hands, its steam disappearing into the dry Manhattan air.
But as he approached the coffee shop, close enough to see a crowd, his compassion turned malevolent—he hoped he was wrong. He hoped she had put on too much weight, that she was still pulling out her hair, loose strands of it littering her bathroom floor. He hoped her apartment had remained a mess, her couch left untouched, her bedroom festooned with unfolded laundry. He hoped she needed her coat back because the fireplace reminded her of him, that she would rather freeze than be warmed by one memento of their time together. He hoped her round, rosy cheeks were stained permanently with mascara tears.
As he approached the front door, Robert looked at his feet. He wanted his first sight of the girl to be full and clear like a still photograph. He wanted all of her before his first blink. When he entered, he saw her standing at the cash register. She was cloaked in warm black clothing, one hand tipping too much for coffee, the other resting gently on her hip.
The music played louder than ever. It became deafening, every note further drowning the sounds of the coffee shop. Loud conversations became whispers. Small talk turned to hushed secrets.
But the jukebox was broken now. Instead of sequential tunes, its entire catalog was playing at once. This was not symphony, it was cacophony—infinitely many disagreeing songs, Charlotte impossibly at the heart of each of them. She was the bass drum in a string orchestra. She was the grand piano in a marching band. She was the electric guitar in a barbershop quartet. For a moment, she was the center of the universe. She smiled when she saw him. He could feel it in his shoulders.
“Hello, Robert.”
She did not speak. She sang.
She was dynamite.
Samuel Frank is a writer, screenwriter, and standup comedian based in New York City. His fiction has been accepted for publication in After Dinner Conversation, his essays have been published in the American Institute for Economic Research, and his standup comedy has been mentioned in the New York Times. He was named “Best Screenwriter” at the 2021 Austin Lift-Off Film Festival for his short screenplay “Cezanne’s Cupid.”