Night Soul and Other Stories (29 page)

“I don’t know about this sleepover,” said Vic.

“Kid really knows how to handle his mom on the phone,” French waves bye turning out of the kitchen doorway. “You really do it,” is for the father, probably, though Vic hears three chords and it is Lang who breaks off.

A music unheard of
, the strange boy had said.

“Dad isn’t he cool?” “Does he smoke?” “He gets you.” “What’s he want?” “The piano.” Was it this eleventh-grader arresting the pianist with praise? Or the pianist has just found a music that will go on all weekend? “He lives with his mom, he’s in T.P.’s senior physics, they love it…”

And it loves them
? it comes to you at the keyboard, half-knowing what that means, like with the music you and Lang hear at dinner, musicians not just playing but hearing
you
.

“I don’t know about the sleepover.”

“Dad.”

“Friday
and
Saturday? We don’t know them.”

“What else is new?” Has the question changed?—third night, fourth night? “
You
could play an instrument.” “Like piano?” “Tuba.” Kid laughs, eyes blind shut, head on the pillow, needing a haircut, hanging with Dad, who wound up with this blond son. “Drums,” he offers. Sax. Flugelhorn. Marimba. Sitar. The organ. Stand-up bass, though that’s a lot to carry, the father knows. French’s mom will call Vic. The man will play Saturday what has come to him on a piano hearing it under his hands, wondering if he should have kept Lang home Friday night, which Lang would not hear of. This French, maker of deals, older and God knows what. The difference between the boys.

Chords startling in their direction peeling out among the tables. Work he has found by chance, by accident, word of mouth, he didn’t ask who’d given the manager the old tracks of him backing up the singer from Chicago and would not ask, but he figured he knew. What this Vic’s been up to for how long, the girl on mad drums ruminating seemingly this question,
Where’s he been?
—and now the old guy bent tall around his gut vibe reminds the pianist how a standup bass can sound stunned—where’s he been, man, L.A., K.C., Atlanta? What this off-the-radar piano player been thinking all alone did
he
even know? Winging through a first set Saturday he felt drums protecting the groove snaring the in-betweens, the support lifting him by each elbow, and for all the differences, one that is so particular, so slender it seems far from ever being known, a thought at large that could drain you like the gift of staying home all this time not out of town at all, and then middle of the first set a hard thought like a problem not even music would solve, gut-hard thing, and there, and temporarily done for in the second of silence split by a second of knowledge an instant comes before the serious applause for your turn, just your work some passing of yourself out into work and greed so inside the chords if you would call them that, pieces of mind glancing out along the bar against which Bill Flyte leaning back on his elbows is not looking good, and past the dim tables.

Then right as you hit three chords to start the second set and, quick pedaling, looked up at the drummer and just then the forgotten cell phone on Vibrate strong against the leg when two underage kids are stopped by Bianca in her beret at the lectern who heard the short one out who points to the tall one with him just as the bass solos like a velvet horn, and Bianca, shaking her head, consults the bandstand and the pianist, who keeps his left hand going grabbing a drink, while Flyte signaled her and isn’t it also that the kid French’s vibe’s weirder than even he knows in his brain that she lets them in. Tall kid, squat kid, drinker unshaven whose space welcomes them, it’s Flyte, his treat, the music’s all that matters, out of Vic’s hands.

And what follows up and down the keyboard so fractured inward on itself overheard among the tables and bar stools almost like what the player absorbs—turns the tune to chord, the man will think, frees the question into little bits if you let it later that has changed from where it was last week from what’s the worst, to what’s the best. French and Bill on their stools going at it and French on his cell phone and Lang in shadows seeing all the time seeing, and just at the end standing forward off his stool though how Vic could have seen Vic didn’t know; for then, in the deepening crackle of happiness and surprise that was the hand they got at the end of the great second set, Vic found his hand soon clasped by the woman from Wednesday in both of hers, his hand nearly kissed by her telling him the name of his piece in case he didn’t have one was “
Coast
line—
Coast
line,” wouldn’t that do?—and he was taken with her though felt it cost him when he looked up and the boys were gone and so was Flyte.

Ol’ bassplayer’s backing him up even during the little chat they’re having at the bar though Vic’s song keeps to himself against the stories from K.C., L.A., Baltimore, “You’re Cecil just round the edges but more ‘Speak Like a Child’ but it’s your own note, heah?” “Word,” Vic murmured. “Did I hear you in Paris?” the bassman looks at his glass.

And all he learned from Bianca, so discreet and kind of pretty shaking her head, before they eventually got up to play the third set was that Bill Flyte was taking the boys home and the short one had told her to tell Vic he would be in touch. (“Word.”) You almost wanted to confide in Bianca—a passing urge. Well, sometimes the piano player is here, and his hearers who may dislike him like the solitary Cecil Taylor or like him like the Converse-sneakered dwarf Michel Petrucciani are there; and what they know of you in your work need not include the absence of your son which makes you suddenly play for him, as if some limbo could equal with a power of three or three hundred the themes music imagines into us; still, there is the player and there are the listeners who even come and go during a set or, absorbed, forget to reach for their drinks,

And now words of a standard everyone knows sung without any warning suddenly by the hot young drummer but the sounds alone—so Bianca craned a mike to drummer’s bare shoulder who solos drums
and
voice like native of some neighboring world or sounds from before words so, the drum solo ending for Vic’s sparse accompanying chords and bassman’s drawing a bow you hadn’t noticed across the great strings backing the surprise singer up, the trio are all soloing at once and you had her still making those her-own-thing more-than-do-wops off mike now. And in the darkness of the house a clapping like rapids in a chasm of your fucked life, near at hand Vic’s fan the Wednesday woman is calling “Coastline, Coastline” for them to do next though already played in the last set.

So playing it again like something unheard-of this time until Vic could see it on the keys and hear it come and go, something to have accomplished completing the third set like a double encore. That’s it.

But where’s the still-nameless woman who’d asked for Coastline? Not where she was but at the bar. And Flyte’s just back, tipping back a fresh bottle of beer, his back against the bar, taking her aback, arguing her down almost.

Vic will lose the argument with his cool arriving to take the woman’s hand as Flyte took his beer with him and tossed back over his fat shoulder, “We
heard
that number—been there, done that. You don’t quit when you’re ahead. Your kid knows.” For others to hear still happy with the music, the trio, the evening. But personalities are always good to get into in this day and age no matter what the work was saying and Vic felt a strange audience and for just a second or two shares a blessed smile with the woman who has something to say to him but he has to go after Flyte, though then he heard his name called by Bianca as he’s out the street door and another voice.

Across the street the horn-player Flyte slid into his convertible. This itself seems to start the power roof, same old Chrysler. Pale canvas top risen reptilian against a wind-blown rain shower from the City. A cry of tires, headlamps swung right, then left but here sprung out of a tight space the car finds the narrow street when Vic steps off the curb slinging his arm like a send-off and slapping the rear fender to his surprise, safe by an inch, his onetime rival always present no more than what waits in the mostly potential trouble of the City. Yet the chassis wrenched into a skid braked backward to frame in the open window the driver’s face so you’ve forgotten the worst thought of all till the insulting words, “That’s a great kid. You don’t deserve him.”

Vic has already reached for Flyte for it was bound to be the wrong joke, and fists a handful of lapel and the door comes with him because Flyte, hand on handle, won’t be drug through the window. Let go, Flyte trying to stand up gets cuffed into the door frame. Then backhanded somehow back into the seat, cheek raked, banging his head on the door frame, he keeps talking, “You had a gig, look out it doesn’t get around.”

Convertible’s tail-lights gone down the street. Vic’s through with stories, not that there’s only music, though voices could help all alone. It is his son’s calling from the lighted double-doors of Lou’s Corner, which is not a corner and lacks any Lou anyone ever knew of. The boy was standing there and with him Bianca with all that make-up. Where can Lang have been? And now the Coastline woman.

“Who was that?” the boy said, looking back at the women on the sidewalk; “she knew you.” “She came the other night,” said the father, telling the cab driver where they’re going—“unknown to me,” Lang believes him. It’s not back to French’s tonight for Lang, but home, his call. He’d been in the Men’s Room, so Vic hadn’t seen him. “Bill Flyte hit it off with French, I guess,” said Lang. “So?” “One night was enough.” Tired, maybe gloomy, “He said he got you the gig,” said Lang to the window. “You hammered him.”

“’Fraid so. He was at a disadvantage. Especially him.”

“I know.”

Man makes a sound. “I was mad.”

What could the boy mean,
I know
?

“He try to run you down?” “You know he didn’t.” “He’s got a convertible.” “Anyway never open the door unless you know who it is.” “What was the number they asked you for once and didn’t know they just heard it?” “A Horace Silver oldie.” The boy knew it. Waking up a little describing the movie
Tommy
, watched Friday with French’s mom, who couldn’t stop talking. Did Lang take music lessons? Was Lang’s Mom at Parent-Teacher? Ever met Billy Joel’s daughter? Lang’s mom know Roger Daltrey? Her photographs were of movie people. French’s mom met Ray Manzarek once and he was surprisingly nice. Did Lang’s mother go to the West Coast a lot?

The cab has pulled over. “She phoned,” Vic adds. They know who they mean.

“I got back to her,” the father guards whatever he has won.

The man has scanned the bookcase. He’s fouled his nails on Flyte as Flyte would foul your family.

Lang’s still got his clothes on under the covers. Yet he almost won’t drop off. “Did I read what she sent, what did I think of—”

“
Confessions
I hear,” the man cuts in too quick.

“The science,” Lang continues methodically, battery low. “The story’s one thing, the…” the boy made that little funny thinking sound of his.

“The science?”

“There was a vibraphone player in it who used to get mad.” Lang made his little sound, funny.

“In her…?”

“That’s when I kinda quit. She’s away this weekend.” The man was waiting.

“I mean how’re you gonna prove it?”

“True?”

“No, T.P. said they’re so small they’re like light years…a string.”

—he’s been meaning to bring up their three nights years ago, twelve years ago, Lang so newly named, sounds he heard coming from the crib three nights running. “Dad? See…string vibration isn’t a tone or anything. It’s…Dad?”

“So what did you tell her?”

“It’s not a hum or music or—at least I don’t think it is.”

“What is it?”

“A particle, each vibration, a particle is all I know. Infinitesimal literally.”

“Infinitesimal literally,” Dad makes a contribution.

“Some open, some closed, but they’re so small they’re light-years away.”

“But here at the same time.” “In matter.
She
tells it like it’s…vibes or something.” “Well, it’s amazing.” “What?”

The man didn’t know.

It was not a good theory anyhow.

T.P. said.

“But it brings all the forces together.”

It’s way past even the idea of bedtime.

“What did you tell her?”

“…Good?…T.P.’s maybe going to teach architecture in a junior math class if they give him the job. He drew these arrows on the board. Vectors (?).”

“Vector, yes.” “A force between—”

“
Vector—”
the boy, sleepy, liked the syllables—“the root idea…”

“Of what?” A sympathy between them. Tuned, with one dropping off.

“…Night, Vic.”

It will hang like the friend’s lunchtime question and its branches how many sleepless nights, this first name: a first for father, yet for some secret Vic the pianist too.

The man can see he’s missed his chance to bring up those sounds from the crib one night out in the country far from here very late, when he got up and went and listened and the baby was asleep or awake or in between. By the third night the man had learned the sounds—
eh, ih…
which finds a
dee
, and then a
lah.
Sounds attaching themselves. A nursing baby in its crib.

You wanted to know what this creature knew.

Then the sounds maddeningly changed. To ones he didn’t know at all. Twelve years ago. Lang is asleep. The question
What would be the worst thing
asks itself, now free of the passion and truth of work, for every night gets late: will the boy have to go and live with his mother? Like a difference between two parties that
is
the agreement. Is it the worst? And was it she who dropped by yesterday to more than borrow the photo album? That was it.