by Denise Roig
But we were pretty on during that first set. And the audience was with us. At the start of our European tour — heady with the bigger crowds — I’d had to keep reminding myself that not one of these people had gone to the trouble of buying a ticket, taking the Métro, filing body-to-body into Place des Arts. No, these easy-to-please folks were listening to me because they just happened to be walking by. Especially in Florence in the summer where everything seemed like happy happenstance.
We closed the first set with our usual showstopper, Haydn’s “Toy Symphony”: my torment. Early on, I’d tried to get William to play it straight, but he’d said, “What’s the point? It’s a silly piece to start with.”
His point was to make it sillier. Among the amps and mikes and cables we carted everywhere was a cardboard suitcase filled with kazoos, tambourines and triangles. This was William’s finest moment: when he got to pick the fools from the audience to play the fool instruments. He had a certain pattern: young, buxom women for the tambourine, straight men to play the triangle, and little kids or little old people to play the kazoo.
I watched him that night, feeling afraid and hopeful. He picked a Stallone look-alike to play kazoo. Then a little brother and sister to play toy trumpets. He searched the crowd for a tambourine player, standing on his tiptoes, putting his hand over his eyes, walking out into the crowd, milking it. He walked past my polka-dot princess, then walked back.
“Signorina,” he said to her and put out his hand. The crowd applauded his good taste as he walked her up to join the line of performers. As she took her place, to the left and front of me, she turned and gave me a smile that made me clutch the neck of my guitar.
William gave his usual pre-performance instructions to the ensemble. “No, no, no!” he chided the big Italian when he came in on his kazoo notes prematurely. The crowd went nuts.
“This is slapstick, not music,” I’d told William the first time we performed this piece publicly. In rehearsal, William had always just said, “Oh, and here’s where the others come in.” In fact, I’d been so furious that first time I could barely play the second set. “Calme-toi,” William had said. “You’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.”
So far I hadn’t been to the bank. In fact, so far the whole question of money had resembled our vague playing of “Ave Maria.” I had no clear idea how much we were making.
“Are you going hungry?” William had asked one night in Venice, when I’d pushed for a total, or at least a figure or two. I had to admit I wasn’t.
“Are you having a good time?” he asked.
“Sometimes,” I said.
“Just like money,” he said. “Everything is a sometime thing.”
And he’d been right about the “Toy Symphony.” People ate it up. They clapped, they whistled, they threw coins: centimes, pesetas, liras.
That night in the piazza, as our musiciens gonged and clanged and kazooed their way through Haydn’s musical joke, I was too high to care about anything. A vision stood before me: a girl whose posterior parts formed a serious counterpoint to the beat of the tambourine as she slapped and shook it, whose tawny braid flicked her bare shoulders double time. At one point I heard her singing along with the familiar melody. I might still be on Earth. But probably not.
When it was all over and the ensemble had taken their bows, William bade the crowd adieu, arrivederci, Auf Wiedersehen, and delivered his usual multilingual plug to stick around for “more musical magic.” Then he tucked his arm into our tambourine player’s and walked back to me. She was smiling. He whispered something in her ear. She smiled more.
“Thomas, meet Sabrina,” said William.
“Sabrina?” I asked.
“You play wonderful,” Sabrina said to William.
“Sabrina, like in the movie?” I asked either of them.
“You play wonderful,” Sabrina said to me.
“Grazie,” I said. I couldn’t believe her name. “We were more in sync tonight,” I said, but already I could feel panic setting in next to the elation. There was a half-hour between sets. How to fill it? With conversation? With food?
“Would you like a gelati, Sabrina?” asked William. He’d taken his flute apart, was blowing into the end of it.
“Si,” giggled Sabrina.
William threw me a come-hither look, hooked his arm through Sabrina’s so that all I could do was hook my arm through her other arm. We walked through the piazza like this. It was hard to keep in step. I nearly tripped once. Sabrina giggled some more.
“He’s drunk,” said William to Sabrina.
“I am not,” I said, but I smiled so she wouldn’t think I was angry about anything, that I was, in fact, pleased about every little thing. When we got to the gelati stand at long limpingly last, William suddenly remembered the instruments.
“What was I thinking about?” he said.
Across the stones of the piazza, we could see my chair, my guitar case, the amps, plus the music stand advertising Les Musiciens Magiques de Montreal. “It’ll be fine,” I said. I wasn’t that eager for William to leave, I realized. He’d keep the chat afloat.
Sabrina was whispering something in William’s ear.
“She says you’re cute,” William said, making a face.
And then she was next to me, holding my arm, brushing my white shirtsleeve with her bare, brown youngness, leaning into my side, pressing her face into my neck, whispering into my ear.
“She says you’re cute, too,” I said.
And William did the most surprising thing he’d done all summer: He blushed.
We did the second set without incident. Despite all our encouragement to crowd number one to “stick around for more terrific tunes,” crowd number two was totally new. Even when we were exceptionally on as we’d been that night, people tended to drift away. When a crowd seemed especially fickle, William would croon into the mic, “Walk on by,” a big, white, male Dionne Warwick in the piazza.
William didn’t pick Sabrina for our audience-participation number for Part Two. Instead he picked a busty young Australian woman to open and close the legs of the giant nutcracker we used for our Tchaikovsky suite. I was relieved.
I didn’t know what to think. Was she interested in me? Was she just flirting? Did she even know she was flirting? Was she — the worst imaginable possibility — interested in William?
I wasn’t used to such simple questions. I was almost forty, used to dealing with women my age, used to dealing with more complication. My ex-wife left because she was trying to work out issues of gender power and I reminded her too much of her father, and besides, she didn’t find the sex both obliterating and merging enough and then on top of that there was the unresolved matter of my not ever having dealt with failure/success and my father.
Now I was back to the basics. Was I cute enough?
“Sabrina’s coming back with us,” William informed me after the last set.
“Us?” I said.
“Don’t worry,” said William. “She’s yours.”
We packed up quickly that night, inspired by the woman watching us. Sabrina sat, her legs crossed high on the thigh, her sandalled ankle caught in the curve of her other ankle. I could barely concentrate. At one point I threw William’s flute case in with the toys.
“Can’t lose it this early, man,” William said.
Sabrina didn’t offer to help us, even when we loaded up the dolly, both shoulders, both hands, and trudged out of there to the van, weighed down like hobos.
William talked all the way back to the campsite.
“We’ve had adventures, haven’t we, Thomas?” he said at one point in his monologue. “God, I love Europe. People are so free here.”
From the depths of the van, we heard Sabrina echo, “Free.”
He’d cleared a place for her in the back, pulled down the jump seat. He’d also asked her to hold his flute case on her lap for the ride. I shot him a look when he did this.
“You want her to hold your guitar, to
o?” he offered. It had been a sore point all summer, the love he lavished on his Yamaha and the indifference he paid my guitar, handling the case way too casually when he thought I wasn’t looking.
“You’d think it was your dick,” I said one night in Venice when he was rubbing the flute’s body between sets.
“Both instruments of pleasure,” William had said. “And not just for me.”
“Where are you from?” I asked.
“Otopeni,” said Sabrina and looked down at the flute case. I was totally stumped.
“And where might that be, Sabrina?” William asked.
“Bucaresti,” Sabrina said.
“Romania,” breathed William. “Hey, that Ceausescu guy of yours was real bad news, wasn’t he? Good thing he’s done for. Though that execution was gruesome business, I hear. Help me out,” he said, looking at me.
“We saw pictures of the palaces, the fancy cars, too,” I said, madly trying to remember the headlines. “So you’re Romanian?” I said.
Sabrina gave me a look that carried some boredom.
“America?” she asked.
“No, Canada,” I said, instantly regretting it. Goodbye, fantasy. Now we were just two Canucks selling tunes in a piazza.
“Of course, it’s all part of North America,” said William, talking faster than I’d ever heard him go before. Under other circumstances, with a group of Americans, for instance, he would never, ever have said such a thing. That’s why we hung the Canadian flag next to our Musiciens Magiques sign wherever we went. “We don’t want to confuse ourselves with our racist, piggy brethren to the south,” William said.
Now he was ready to denounce his citizenship.
“America,” Sabrina said again, not as a question.
“Yes,” breathed William and looked over at me. His eyebrows were shrugging up and down. I turned around to smile convincingly at Sabrina and to look at the lovely zigzag of her legs again.
We left the stuff in the van when we got to the campsite. We didn’t even lock it, something we never failed to do, William being convinced that every campground was filled with other street performers eager to rip off a beat-up flute, a mess of worn cable and rusty kazoos.
“Bienvenue chez nous!” bellowed William.
“Would you care for a glass of wine, Sabrina?” I asked.
“Yes please thank you,” said Sabrina and looked for a place to sit down. There was none, so she leaned against the trailer.
“We don’t have any wine.” William said.
“Well, that was brilliant,” I said. Sabrina waited to be served.
“I think there might be a couple of beers in the trailer.” William looked really sorry, but didn’t make a move.
I found one Heineken, one dusty Moreti under the sink, poured the Heineken into the one glass that wasn’t chipped, gave the rim a squeaky swipe with the dish towel, clean and white in another life.
“Heineken,” I said to Sabrina, handing her the glass.
“Yes,” she said, looking nearly as enthusiastic as when she’d said earlier, “You play wonderful.”
I didn’t know what to do with the other beer. Both William and I knew it was there in the trailer, but neither of us made a move for it. We sat on the ground, watching Sabrina as she drained her glass. She stayed leaning against the trailer, her feet crossed at the ankles. I tried to look as if I wasn’t staring at the Grand Canyon or the Pyramids.
She smiled when she was done, held out her glass.
“Another one, Sabrina?” asked William.
“Yes please thank you,” said our guest. William struggled to his feet — those pizzas were dragging him down — ducked into the trailer. I smiled at Sabrina. She smiled back, recrossed her feet.
I pointed to the moon. One edge was blurry with cloud. “Look,” I said. “By tomorrow night it will be full.”
“I love moon,” said Sabrina.
“You do? So do I,” I said.
I could love her. We could be happy. We would speak French when the English ran out, and we’d sit in our little backyard where I’d perform the classical repertoire — never playing better — and toss off some folk favourites for fun. She would lie on the grass crossing her legs as high as the eye could see.
William was back. He’d poured the beer into a coffee mug.
“Fine stemware, William,” I said.
Sabrina waved to us with one hand, held the mug with the other. Down the hatch. She could drink a beer faster than anyone I’d ever seen.
All gone. But now what? William and I looked at each other. I was waiting for him to offer to go back down the hill and get some wine. I didn’t know what he was waiting for.
Sabrina reached out her hands again. The mug was empty. I got up and went to get it, but tripped over an exposed root on the way and ended up travelling through the air for a moment before slamming against the side of the van. My shoulder and head hit first; I was in too much pain to know what hit after that.
Sabrina started laughing. A mad, husky laugh.
I was doubled over, holding my head, before I realized they were both next to me.
“Let me see if it’s bleeding,” said William.
I tried to hold still, felt fingers on my scalp.
“No blood,” said William. “How do you feel? Are you light-headed? Are you seeing double? How’s your balance?”
That’s when Sabrina reached out her hand and slipped it inside the waistband of my black musician pants. Reached down as far as she could.
I looked up at her. The world was spinning.
“Oh, boy,” said William. “Guess old Billy will take a walk.”
But Sabrina reached out her other hand and slipped it inside the waistband of William’s black musician pants. Tighter, much tighter, than mine, I noted. She really had to squirm her lovely fingers in.
What do three bodies do together, especially when two are hell-bent on one? The problem was that we were stone-cold sober and she had a pretty little buzz on. I wish we’d been even a little bit high so I could have missed some of the indignities of that night. Because while it had its glories — Sabrina licking my earlobes, Sabrina’s gladiator sandals chafing my thighs, Sabrina riding me like the American bronco she needed me to be — the night had its moments to forget.
I had to watch — where else was I to look as we bounced and bomb-dived and banked together in the trailer’s one double bed? — as Sabrina paid William’s body the same attention she paid mine. Did I ever want to see what rose and fell below the dome of that belly? Did I ever want to hear William squeal? Did I ever, ever want to see a man I could only barely tolerate slam deliriously against the perfect little buttocks of the woman I could have loved?
“America!” Sabrina cried as I sucked one breast and William the other. The score was about even. We’d all had our turns as aggressor and receiver. We’d all come a few times. I looked over at William from my breast.
“O Canada!” he sang.
She was gone the next morning. It was probably better this way, we told each other: no jealousy, no rivalry.
“After all,” said William. “The music comes first.”
We were low-key all that day. William thought I should go see a doctor about my head, but I didn’t bother. A not-unfriendly silence carried us back into the piazza that night. Sabrina didn’t reappear.
It was only when William opened the toy suitcase for our End of Part One Showstopper that we realized just how deeply she had touched us. The tambourine was missing.
“Oh, shit,” said William and handed me the toy drum. I whipped up a wicked little syncopation, while he twittered on the bird caller. The crowd cheered as he went out among them, instruments in hand.
Bridge of Sighs
“Having a Harold Brodkey kind of death,” he wrote from Venice. “Care to join me?”
My daughter was with her father in Boulder for the summer and my client load was light — some people actually do get healthier, moving right along, off my beige and
white loveseat and into life. “When, where and how?” I e-mailed back. “I’ve got six days.”
“‘Venice is a separate country,’” he answered later that day. “‘It floats at anchor inside its own will, among its domes and campanili, independent and exotic at its heart.’ That’s dear, departed Harold himself, and though I’ve been writing like a demon about this sinking marvel since arriving here six months ago, I still can’t say it any better. I’m glad you’re coming.”
He didn’t want me staying with him, which would work out better for me, too. “I’ll book you someplace properly Venetian; it is tourist season, though not high-high season, so we shall see. But let me be your guide in this separate country, my one and only Leticia. And don’t worry. Some days I am almost myself. French kisses, your Sebastian.”
Leticia wasn’t my real name and Sebastian wasn’t his. They were the names we’d given each other at nineteen simply because we loved the sound of them. But they were names of such impossible romantic promise that I’d ditched mine the year Bert and I divorced, the same year I finally — and, as Paul (or Sebastian) said, not coincidentally — became board certified as a marriage, family and child counselor. But the name held for him: Sebastian Siskel, award-winning poet often, favourably, compared to Brodkey, essayist, thorn in the side of his philosophy department colleagues at Bard College, and the oldest friend of my life.
How sick was he now? Paul wasn’t going to be a reliable source on this. Five years ago when the diagnosis came back HIV positive, he thought he had a year, tops. He made dramatic amends to friends and lovers, even his witch of a mother, even to me. He threw a huge New Year’s Eve party that year in his Upper Westside townhouse. I flew in from L.A. We all had to come dressed as if it were Carnival in Venice. We all had to have a really swell time.
As I packed for Italy — a bit dazed…it had been a quick decision based on ancient sentiment and the closeness of death — what came back were the cats. Cats, cats everywhere. They’d been in every photo of Venice we shot on my Instamatic that end-of-the-sixties summer, the summer of Chappaquiddick, Sharon and Roman, and the man on the moon. In a box of photos marked 1969, I turned up one of Paul feeding a mangy tabby, a bridge — of course — in the background. I studied it for a while, looking for signs of our misadventure on his face. We were only twenty. I let myself cry a little as I sat on the floor of the den.