Chapter Text
I come home from Massachusetts and for weeks I am in another world entirely. I have become obsessed with decoding the secrets inside the music of Marcus Kane. I stop listening to anything else. I will play a song halfway through and then pause it to deliver a lecture to Kyle about the hidden messages - here a subtle reference to Jake Griffin, there a description of a bedroom that matches hers. Finally Kyle takes his iPod back and threatens to put me on a strict diet of Taylor Swift until I can function like a human being again. But I am a woman obsessed. I cannot stop thinking about Marcus and Abigail.
Weeks go by, and I am surprised (and irritated, I have to admit) that Marcus Kane has still given no response - either publicly, or to me. I still can't get anyone from his team on the phone. It becomes a joke around the office - Raven Reyes sitting by the phone, waiting for Marcus Kane to call. He has not made a statement, which I find totally bizarre. He knows I know who Abigail is. I have spent three days with her. Why will he still not say her name out loud? It begins to drive me crazy. I email his press rep and explain that we are on deadline and this article is going to print with or without a quote from Marcus Kane. She tells me that his response remains "No comment."
I try to put my finger on why exactly this bothers me so much. Am I upset on her behalf that it feels as though he is choosing not to acknowledge her? Is it a journalistic itch, the feeling that without Marcus Kane I only have one half of the story and the piece feels off-kilter? Or is it something else entirely - something much less professional and much more personal? Aren't I really only pushing so hard for the chance to ask him about Abigail Griffin because I'm dying to hear what he'll say?
Kyle thinks it's a lost cause. He points out that in Kane's very first interview after The Woman That Fell From the Sky, when he was first asked about the identity of "The Woman," he told the reporter that he would never answer that question. "He said everything the listener needs to know about her is inside the songs and that he would never publicly say her name unless she told him to," says Kyle.
"But we know her name," I reply in frustration.
"But you didn't hear it from him," says Kyle. "That's the whole point. He's a mensch. He made a promise and he's keeping it."
This is a valid point. My editor makes another one.
"Has it occurred to you," she points out reasonably, "that you've spent so much time squeezing every last drop of symbolism out of the lyrics to his music that any direct answer he could possibly give you would be totally anticlimactic? Don't you kind of already know everything about his feelings for her that you need to know?"
She's right. I know she's right.
And yet.
I can't help it. I'm a sucker for a romantic ending. I want to hear him say it.
I want to hear Marcus Kane tell me about Abigail Griffin. Not obliquely - not dropping little breadcrumbs here and there - not with symbolism and metaphor and euphemism. I want to hear him say her name. It has suddenly become bizarrely, inexplicably important to me to hear him say her name.
I try to talk myself out of it. I ask myself what, really, it would change. I know exactly what Abigail means to him. So do you. So do all of us. We always did. Kane only ever kept the one secret from us - her identity - and isn't that the least important one? Didn't he already tell us everything powerful and real and meaningful already, over and over? I know Kyle is right. I know my editor is right. Why am I pestering Kane and his team for what would probably end up being some expertly-messaged, press-friendly quote from his PR manager which I would then be forced to print, no matter how banal? What if I just let the story end where it ends? What if the only thing to say about Abigail Griffin and Marcus Kane was told to us fifteen years ago in a sweet, simple melody? There was a boy who grew up trapped inside a metal cage. There was a woman who fell to earth from somewhere beyond the stars. He had a lock. She had a key.
"And one day the boy and his heart were set free/By the woman that fell from the sky."
What more do I need to know than that?
***
POSTSCRIPT: Two days before we go to print, a padded envelope appears on my desk. This is what I find inside.
Marcus Kane declined to be interviewed for this article.
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Raven Reyes is a rock critic, journalist, pop culture commentator, recreational mechanic, dog lover and certified obsessive expert on the music of Marcus Kane. She lives in Brooklyn with her partner Kyle Wick, their cat Anya, and a completely insane record collection.
Special thanks to Jasper Jordan for his generous assistance.