Elliot M. Rauscher is a father, husband, and writer from St. Louis, MO. When he's not listening to music or writing, he and his wife Kathy are singing to their daughter Juliette. He is a member of the St. Louis Writers' Guild and a percussionist with the St. Louis Civic Orchestra.
She's Not There
by Elliot M. Rauscher
Something about that summer made me want to fall in love with a brunette with blue-green eyes and side-swept bangs and a love for the Riot Grrl movement. She'd sing Bikini Kill songs and play a faded red Telecaster and we'd argue over whether or not Sleater Kinney was officially part of the movement (yes). She'd say no, they're second wave, and we'd make our cases over ice cold craft brews and she'd order a Midori Sour and say that without Stevie Nicks, there wouldn't even be a movement we could talk about. We'd stumble back to my place singing Fleetwood Mac songs, and we'd argue about what movie to watch. We'd wake up in the morning holding hands on the couch in front of the DVD menu for Ladies and Gentlemen, The Ruttles! because it was a comfortable compromise between Gimme Shelter and The Royal Tenenbaums.
The cicadas sang that summer, louder than most, and I timed the rhythm of their ululations at roughly thirty-three and one-third times per minute, which I found more fascinating than my roommate Matt could fathom. "They're everywhere and they're stupid and there were two fucking on my windshield wiper all the way home from work on the damn interstate and the wind blew their wings off and they just kept right on going at it. That should tell you something about them. Single minded, single purposed, all about survival and procreation. And when they hit your windshield, they splat into this gross white jizz bomb. They're not mystical. It means nothing that they drone at the same rate as records."
I admired the bugs for their single-mindedness, though. They were simple and didn't care about finding the perfect girl or boy. Matt had more in common with them than I think he cared to admit. I envied him his low standards though he was as unlucky in love as I was. My disappointment was rooted in the inability to find her, while his was more a general inability to charm any one of a dozen or so women. He wasn't looking to fall in love, only for one night, maybe a week or a month or a lifetime but whatever, he didn't care. I had already pre-fallen in love with a girl, I just wasn't sure if she existed.
I listened to a lot of Beach Boys and other surfer rock that summer, songs about tanned bodies and falling in love with a woman from afar. I compiled a mix tape of songs about that very subject, and listened to it incessantly in my car. "Whole Wide World" by The Monkees, "Surfer Girl," Led Zeppelin's "Going to California" and just to help keep myself grounded in reality, "She's Not There" by The Zombies. I would see her, from time to time, the girl, throughout the summer. I'd be working at the deli and she would come in and order a sandwich while I pulled racks of fresh bread out of the oven, but she'd get it to go and I'd finish my task too late. I saw her at the RFT Music Showcase down in the Loop, across the stage. I saw her running in the park while I sat on Art Hill overlooking the Grand Basin. I saw her at Euclid Records in the Punk LP's on a crowded rainy Sunday.
The cicada swarm grew, reverberating through the air every afternoon, deafening and chaotic. The apartment complex we lived in shut down the pool because they couldn't clean the discarded carapaces and the suicidal bugs out of the water. The noise was worse the hottest part of the day, which lasted from eleven in the morning until just before sundown. I saw her twice in one day, once running in a pair of green shorts, white shoes and a pink sports bra, then seconds later driving an old Civic Hatchback, blasting The Smiths, travelling in the opposite direction and now wearing a white T-shirt and her bangs swept the other way.
She walked into the deli twice in three minutes, stood in line twice. Once she was almost six feet tall and had square red-rimmed glasses and her order was number 27, while simultaneously she was maybe five foot-four, no glasses, holding the hand of a five year old girl who called her "Cici" and her order was number 31. One night, Matt came home with her and introduced us.
"This is Stephanie," he said. "She's been working with me for two weeks but today I learned that she lives, like, two streets away."
I held out my hand and shook hers, said, "Nice to meet you, Stephanie," and she said, "Same here." I got the sense I was wrong, that it wasn't her.
"We were thinking about going bowling, you in?" Matt asked. Stephanie walked into our kitchen. Matt leaned in closer to me. "Dude, what do you think?"
I hadn't told Matt about her, because there really was nothing to tell. "Well, Matt, she kind of fits the physical description of my ideal woman, so let me find out some more about her before I give you my opinion. If she meets enough of my criteria, we're going to have issues," is just not something you say to a roommate.
"She seems like she's not really your type," I said.
"About going bowling, man. She's got a few friends who she's meeting, she says there's one or two single girls, maybe you could actually meet somebody. Come on. Crestwood Lanes."
Stephanie came around the corner from the kitchen with a glass of water. "Hope you don't mind," she said to Matt, "I helped myself. Is your roomie coming?" They both looked at me.
Her voice was not right. I noticed her eyes weren't really blue-green so much as they were green. "I don't think so," I said. They left without trying to convince me further.
She and I would play music together, I knew it. We'd make incredibly intimate records; just our two voices, her faded red Telecaster, my Fender Jazzmaster Bass, a little light percussion overdubbing. The kind of records that couples play with candles lit, on Valentine's Day or their anniversary, with songs about falling in love and emotional scar tissue and falling out of love and falling back in love though you know you shouldn't.
I stepped out onto our balcony and listened to the cicadas. It was an hour until sunset and I just stood and listened and gauged the rhythm. I left the sliding door open to the heat and the bugs and walked back into the living room. I put Pet Sounds on the turntable. I lifted the tone-arm and held it suspended over the record. I counted the revolutions against the drone of the cicadas and wondered when I would find her.
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