Roger looked over at me and smiled. “Then we should get you there, I think.”
I turned to him, about to apologize for how out of the way it was, how we were backtracking, but I stopped myself. Maybe I was on a quest of my own.
“So?” I asked, after we’d been driving through Kentucky for two hours and I couldn’t stand the suspense anymore. Even on the interstate, there were green rolling hills on either side of the car, for as far as the eye could see. It looked like pictures I’d seen of Ireland, but I had no idea that parts of my own country looked like this. It hit me once again just how big America was, and until now, how little of it I’d seen.
“I like it,” Roger said, his fingers keeping time to the first song of Avenue Q. “I didn’t know musicals could be funny.” He glanced over at me, his sunglasses already on. But for once hadn’t commented on the fact that mine were AWOL.
“No,” I said, though I was relieved that he actually seemed to like my music and wasn’t just pretending. “I mean, what happened with Hadley?” I asked.
Roger didn’t say anything for a moment, just switched on the cruise control, causing the car to lurch forward a little before it settled into its steady speed. I glanced over at the speedometer and saw it was exactly at seventy. “It wasn’t what I was expecting,” he finally said.
“What had you been expecting?” I asked, dreading the answer but needing to hear it.
“I guess … in the beginning,” Roger said, choosing his words carefully, “I’d been hoping that we could get back together.” As soon as he said it, I realized that was exactly the answer I hadn’t wanted to hear. Which, coupled with what Lucien said, made me realize that at some point, without my knowing it, the way I’d been thinking about Roger had changed.
“Oh,” I said, trying to sound as neutral as possible.
Amy Playlist #1
“Going to Graceland” or “Roger Gets an
Introduction to Musical Theater”
SONG TITLE
ARTIST
“Avenue Q”
Avenue Q
“One Short Day”
Wicked
“All That’s Known”
Spring Awakening
“Someone Like You”
Jekyll & Hyde
“When I Look at You”
The Scarlet Pimpernel
“All the Wasted Time”
Parade
“I’d Give it All for You”
Songs for a New World
“I Believe”
Spring Awakening
“I Can Do Better Than That”
The Last Five Years
“The Best of All Possible Worlds”
Candide
“Bill”
Show Boat
“Consider Yourself”
Oliver!
“This Night”
Movin’ Out
“Where Did We Go Right?”
The Producers
“Wheels of a Dream”
Ragtime
“Still Hurting”
The Last Five Years
“You Can’t Stop the Beat”
Hairspray
“For Now”
Avenue Q
“Nothing in Common”
Wearing Someone Else’s Clothes
“Remember?”
A Little Night Music
“But then—I don’t know,” he said, changing lanes again, even though there wasn’t any reason to. “I’d stopped thinking about that in the last few days. And then when I saw her, it was like she didn’t even look the same to me.”
I had seen Hadley; I found this hard to believe. “Really.”
“I know it sounds weird,” he said, with a little smile. “But it was like I was seeing someone I used to know, a long time ago. And while she was talking, I kept thinking about things I’d forgotten—like how she hated my music and how she used to keep me waiting for hours to call me back, and how she never got along with my friends. And … I don’t know. I kept thinking back to the way she ended things. And just like that, I didn’t need to know why it had ended. I just knew it was done. That it had been done for a while.”
“Wow.” I remembered how she had looked after the conversation. “I take it she wasn’t too happy with that?”
“No,” Roger said. “I think you could safely say that.”
“So now what?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said, looking at me. “Now what?”
I looked over at him, and my heart began to beat a little more quickly. I was pretty sure that he meant the trip. We were both talking about the trip. Weren’t we? I looked out the window. He was single now in a way he hadn’t been before. I was suddenly very aware of the fact I had just thrown my hair up into a ponytail that morning without brushing it. “I don’t know,” I said, turning back to him. Our eyes met for a long moment before he moved his back to the road.
“Graceland, right?” he asked, looking straight ahead.
“Graceland,” I confirmed.
Roger glanced over at me quickly and smiled, then stepped on the gas, taking the car out of cruise control and up to seventy-five.
It would have been impossible to miss Graceland once in Memphis—it had its own exit off the highway. And once we got off the interstate, we had clearly entered Elvis country. A Days Inn promised a guitar-shaped pool and Elvis movies on demand, twenty-four hours a day. Ahead of us on the road, bizarrely, were two pink Cadillacs driving side by side. And next to the turn for the Graceland parking lot was the Heartbreak Hotel, advertising reduced rates. We paid ten dollars and drove into the lot, but we weren’t at Graceland yet. The mansion, as it was referred to on my ticket, was across the street from the parking lot, Elvis’s airplanes, three gift shops, and restaurant.
We went with the mansion tour. The VIP package included access to the “jumpsuit room,” which I didn’t think I needed. After we’d gotten our tickets, we stood on line for the bus behind a German couple and in front of what looked like three generations of a family—grandfather, father, and son. As the line curved around, every group was directed to stand in front of a Graceland backdrop to get their pictures taken. It seemed that this was compulsory—the woman taking the pictures kept explaining, her voice tired, that if you didn’t want the pictures, you didn’t have to buy them. When Roger and I reached the wall, we stood side by side, a little awkwardly. “Closer,” the picture-taking woman said with a weary sigh, hoisting her camera. Roger took a step closer to me and then slowly—as though making sure I’d be okay with it—put his arm around my shoulders.