Page 68 of A Love Song for Ricki Wilde

“Because it was of you. I had to have it.” He paused, looking away. “I’d been dreaming of your face for an eternity.”

And then Ezra begged her to listen to the rest of the story.

Ricki relented. “You have two minutes, tops.”

So he started talking.

He told her that at first, he didn’t believe the curse was real. Who would’ve?

Racked with guilt over Felice’s death, he knew he had to get out of New York City. Fallon County was out of the question, and the only other place he’d lived was France. So he shipped offto Paris—and tried to die. He wanted to test his mortality. One blisteringly hot evening, he drank himself blind and flung himself into the Seine. But he came to hours later, fished out of the river. Alive and without a scratch. In the alley behind a Left Bank café, he tried to set himself on fire with a lighter. But the flames never caught. Finally, he hired a hit man to kill him when he didn’t expect it. When the hulking gunman showed up at his apartment with a pistol, the guy froze and then refused to shoot.

“I know why you’re doing this, but it won’t work,” said the gunman in French. “You’re a Perennial. So am I. Scary at first, but you’ll get used to it. C’est la vie!”

The friendly immortal gunman handed him a business card, shook his hand, and disappeared.

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And thus, he found Dr. Arroyo-Abril. Through the doctor—a longtime immortal, herself—Ezra discovered the vast international network of non-aging folks like him. His diagnosis was immortality, but the proper term for his kind was Perennial. Ezra was aPerennial. Now he was forever twenty-eight years old and carrying more memories and history than any human was meant to. A young man with an old heart, stumbling to catch up with the world, wondering which he should cling to: the past or the present.

Ezra was a clock ticking in an airless, windowless room. Hewandered around Paris, inescapably lonely and unable to shake his cosmic purposelessness, until February 1, 1932. It was four years later, the next leap year after his curse. A time when the veil between the physical world and spiritual world grew gossamer thin. His purpose became clear.

On February 1, her face appeared in his dreams. Her, the true love Felice had cursed him with. That day and all February long, he was haunted by her face, as well as disparate, discombobulating musical notes: pieces of a song that he couldn’t make work. He felt a tingling in his chest, a restless tugging, a yearning for memories he hadn’t made yet.

That was the first time Ezra was pulled back to Harlem involuntarily. Before he knew it, he was back in his brownstone. And all month, he roamed the streets, looking for this woman, driven by a grasping longing for his true love, who, if Felice’s curse was to be believed, would die soon after he found her. But on the first day of March, the longing subsided, the visions stalled, and Ezra felt free to leave. And he did, traveling wherever there was music. Saint Louis. Abeokuta. Chicago. London. Trenchtown.

Then, four years later, on February 1 of the next leap year, it all started again. He was visited by her face and the weird snippets of music in his dreams. And once again, he was pulled back to his Harlem brownstone for the month. And it went on and on like this, every February of every leap year, with Ezra spending the first to the twenty-ninth searching Harlem for his Big Love.

When will we meet?he used to wonder.1944? 1976? 2112? 3068?Not knowing was its own misery. Ezra couldn’t do anything but wait for the day their timelines collided. And then he would have to send her far away from him. He’d prevent another tragedy.

Ezra had pictured her face in his mind for damn near a centurybut had never seen her in real life. Until he spotted her in the community garden where Eden Lounge used to stand.

“I was terrified,” he admitted in his slow, deep drawl. “It felt like a beginning and an ending. After decades of preparing to meet you, I… wasn’t prepared. Because I knew I’d fall in love, and I knew I’d have to convince you to leave. And deep down, I knew you wouldn’t.” He cast his gaze downward. “I’ve had too much loss in my life. I can’t bear this.”

Ricki considered the way Ezra delivered these comments with absolute frankness. It made him sound even crazier. She backed away from him slowly, into the kitchen, until her ass hit the counter.

“You’re saying that you’re not twenty-eight. You’re actually an old man.”

“Well, I’m twenty-eight, but I’ve been twenty-eight since 1928. So technically, I’m a hundred twenty-four.” And then he attempted levity. “I’m not old; I’m chronologically premium.”

Ricki glared at him with blazing fury. Ezra gulped, realizing that this was no time for jokes.

“I’ve practiced explaining this to you in a thousand different ways,” he went on, his eyes pleading. “But every way sounds insane. I know.”

“I don’t think you do.” She tried to still the tremble in her voice. “Let’s recap, shall we? You were a famous jazz pianist during the Renaissance. You were living it up until you played at a rent party in my shop. At which point your girlfriend hexed you and jumped off the roof.”

“The roof ofthisbuilding,” he noted. “It bears repeating.”

“And, allegedly, this is your piano.” She stormed over to it and slammed her hand down on the top. An obliterating force leveled her, sending warm tingles through her body.

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