So I let the staff know I’ll be gone for a couple of hours and walk from Playthings to the conservatory. On my way, I wonder, as always, what it is about this woman that removes my free will. She’s had my number since the first time I met her (both figuratively and literally), and I’ve never known how to keep her from using either. “Because you like it,” Jeff would say. “She pushes you. And it feels crappy at first, like the first round of golf after winter, but by the back nine, you’re loving it.” He was right, of course. Somewhere along the way, I’d lost the ability to push myself, to get outside myself, inside myself. Music was the way I’d always done that in the past, and Connie pushed me hard enough to realize that it still worked after all these years. It was still something I needed in my life to feel whole, happy, connected. It was a fundamental part of me and always had been. And as I walk down the quiet side streets, empty and abandoned by the parents at work, the children at school, I realize that this too has been missing since all this happened.
