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go. Jules attempts to join in with a harmony, although she’s not really a singer. The song gets sillier and sillier until we’re just laughing. Alan is yipping and barking like a dog.
    â€œWe should record that!” he says.

Fifteen
    I n the original 1982, my songs start to fill me with ambition. I want to hear them on the radio. I want to sing them with a band behind me. Drums and bass, piano, cello, accordion, trumpet. Alan and I get together all the time and practice. I’m less than confident about my guitar playing, so I teach him my songs, and he transforms them from folk songs into R&B ballads, rock songs, and bossa novas.
    There’s a big songwriter scene at the time on Bleecker Street. We go down there one Monday night and sign up for the open mic at Folk City. After we play our two songs, Stevie, the owner of the club, approaches us. “That was really good, you guys,” he says. “You want to play a night here? I’ve got a Sunday open middle of the month.”
    Yeah, we do. We talk about what we should wear for days. We assemble the rest of a band and book a rehearsal space to practice. I make flyers to leave all over town and mail to everyone I know.
    I have photographs from that first gig. I ’ m wearing a headband like Madonna circa 1981. Alan looks handsome, his long hair is falling over one eye. Fish is playing keyboards. He played with a lot of up-and-coming singer-songwriters at the time. That ’ s Mildred, from Gabriel ’ s band, on backing vocals. Look how young she was. Her round, brown eyes are on me as she matches my phrasing, word for word.
    We begin to play pretty regularly at Folk City and the other small clubs on or around Bleecker Street. I have terrible stage fright. Sometimes I shake so hard, I can barely hold my fingers on the strings. Alan covers for me and usually by the third song in I’m okay. We add a drummer and bass player, once in a while a guy on sax.
    Gabriel comes down to the club and sits at the bar. It feels good to have my own thing, to have him come to hear me play for a change, although when I look over at him from the stage, he’s usually talking to some stranger and doesn’t seem to be paying attention. Still, he gives me notes about one thing or another. He thinks my songs are too slow, and I should add some up-tempo material to the set. He thinks I should cover Michael Jackson, maybe, or the Police. But I only play my own songs. Every one is about him. One is called “Part of the World.” It’s about the fact that Gabriel’s concerns are worldwide, while mine are only for the world we make between us. The refrain goes like this:
    I, too, want to save the world
    The part that’s yours and mine
    Thankfully, it’s been lost to posterity.
    I didn’t really become a good songwriter until many years later. It takes a long time and a lot of practice to do something well.
    But enough of the old stories, Little Fish.

Sixteen
    Y ou kick him so hard, it knocks his hand right off my belly. Gabriel looks truly shocked, eyes wide, mouth agape. “¡Coño!” he says, laughing. “She’s gonna be a boxer. Is that normal?”
    I laugh, too. I’m so happy to have him share in the amazement. “She’s pretty energetic,” I say. “I think she’s swimming laps in there.”
    â€œYou’re gonna have to name her after Manny,” he says. Manuel “Manny” Luís is a famous fighter from Gabriel’s country. “Easy there, champ,” he says to you as you give him another little kick.
    After that, it’s what he calls you. “How’s the Champ?” he asks when he calls or stops by on his way downtown. His accent makes the ch sound sort of like a sh .
    He makes my apartment feel small when he’s there, makes me feel messy and a little ashamed. Within five minutes of his arrival my clothes are off and we’re on the wicker daybed,