Leaves

by Michael Baron

  “You do have a great kitchen,” Deborah said, kissing him. “But that is definitely not what I’m lusting after right now.”

  **^^^**

  Tyler was walking to the park to take some more shots when he saw Ryan coming toward him from the other direction. The kid was walking with his eyes toward the pavement and didn’t seem to notice Tyler, even as they got within twenty feet of one another.

  “I’m sure the ants appreciate that you’re trying not to step on them,” Tyler said.

  Ryan looked up, immediately registering discomfort when he realized who was talking to him. “Oh, hey.”

  “Did Corrina mention that I came by looking for you the other day?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  Ryan looked down at the ground again, and then off to the distance. “I try not to listen too much to what Corrina says.”

  “Fair enough. That strategy never worked for me. How’s it going for you?”

  Ryan shrugged in response.

  The park was maybe a hundred yards in the distance. Tyler gestured in that direction. “Come on, let’s go sit for a few minutes.”

  “I really have to be somewhere.”

  “Pretend that you don’t.”

  Making his reluctance apparent, Ryan followed Tyler to a bench and sat on the end opposite.

  “We need to talk about last Sunday,” Tyler said, turning to face his nephew.

  Ryan’s expression tightened. “Not if you don’t want to.”

  “Yeah, we do. First of all, how did you get in?”

  “The window in your office wasn’t locked.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “I tried a few other windows first.”

  Tyler made a note to himself to latch all the windows shut when he got home. “What made you think this was a good idea?”

  Ryan studiously avoided eye contact. “I thought you’d be cool with it.”

  The response seemed ludicrous to Tyler on so many levels. “You did? I didn’t think you thought I was cool with anything anymore. And what part did you think I’d be cool with? The breaking into my house part? The screwing around with a girl in my bedroom part? The running out without a word when I came in part?”

  “Look, I was wrong. About all of it. I’m sorry – is that what you want me to say?”

  The response was standard-issue teenaged bluster. However, Tyler saw something behind it that he hadn’t seen from his nephew in months: genuine emotion. There was just a hint of it, but it was noticeable.

  “Ryan, what the hell is going on?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I’m guessing it’s not nothing.”

  Ryan glared at him as though he was going to snap, but then he pulled back. A long silence ensued, but Tyler refused to stop looking at him.

  “Everything is weird, okay?” Ryan said. When Tyler didn’t respond, he continued. “The only conversations I have with my father are about ‘staying focused’ and ‘staying on track’ and crap like that. Meanwhile, I think I was nine the last time he asked me how my day was. Corrina’s trying to give me this ‘I’m your friend’ garbage, but then she sells me out to my dad. Nobody in this whole family gets me. I just have a feeling my mother would have gotten me if she were still around.”

  Tyler inched a bit closer. “She probably would have. But, you know, I thought I got you, too. How come you stopped checking in with me?”

  “Because you started to sound like them.”

  “Because I disagreed with you?”

  “Because you started going into a ‘teenagers suck’ rant.”

  Tyler tried to remember enough of the conversation to call up a quote from it and then realized that this wasn’t the point. “You thought that was a ‘teenagers suck’ rant? It was definitely a ‘some teenagers suck’ rant, but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t talking about everyone.”

  “Certainly sounded like it.”

  “I think you might have missed the point of that exchange, Rye. I was trying to have an adult-level debate with you about something that mattered to both of us.”

  Ryan locked eyes with him for a second and then looked off again. “Maybe I don’t know what those are like.”

  “Then we should talk more often.”

  “Yeah. Maybe we should.”

  Neither of them said anything for a short while. Tyler watched a little girl and boy playing soccer together, the girl stopping play regularly to tell the boy what he was doing wrong.

  “So, who’s the girl you were with?” Tyler finally said.

  “Her name is Amy.”

  “You into her?”

  “Yeah, I think I am.”

  Tyler turned away from the soccer siblings and looked back at his nephew. “She’s kind of a babe.”

  Ryan’s eyes widened and he guffawed. It was easily the most unguarded gesture Tyler had seen from him in months. “You were checking out my girlfriend.”

  “She was in panties in my bedroom and I have a heartbeat.”

  “Solid point. Yeah, she’s a babe. She’s also funny and smart.”

  “Seems like you might not want to screw this up.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. So now that you and I are friends again, you wanna give me a key to your house so I can use it when you’re not around?”

  Tyler smirked and stood up from the bench. “I think you mentioned something about needing to be somewhere.”

  **^^^**

  Maria checked the radio on her way back from McGarrigle’s to confirm that the Patriots had won their game this afternoon. That meant that Doug would be in a great mood when she got home. It always baffled her how her normally even-tempered and rational husband could have his moods completely influenced by a sporting event every fall Sunday. Fortunately, the Pats had been very good for a long time, which meant that bubbly Sundays far outnumbered the glum ones.

  Doug wouldn’t be the only household member in high spirits. Maria had been at McGarrigle’s running through her set for Thursday night’s show for both Martha and Colin, including the original song she’d written. She even threw in the new song she’d written for the party as well. Their response was appreciative, encouraging, and genuine, as indicated by Martha’s dabbing at her eyes during the last tune.

  Their feedback was invigorating. Yes, Colin was completely right that her fingerpicking wasn’t as fluid as it needed to be on one of the new songs, and Martha nailed her tendency to over-sing during emotional passages, but those were easy fixes. The point was that she didn’t trip over herself. She was beginning to regard Thursday’s show with something other than trepidation.

  Doug was watching the post-game show when she entered the living room with her guitar.

  “45-17,” he said when he saw her. “Brady was merciless today.”

  “I heard. Four touchdown passes?”

  “Would have been six if he didn’t stick to the ground game for the entire fourth quarter.”

  Maria put the guitar in the living room closet and walked over to kiss her husband. He gave her a post-victory squeeze.

  “How was your music lesson?”

  “Fantastic. Really fantastic. It wasn’t a lesson, though. It was more of a run-through.”

  The show went to commercial and Doug switched to another game. “Run-through for what?”

  “Thursday night at Mumford’s.”

  “Oh, that showcase thing? You feeling good about that?”

  “Better after today. I’m a little nervous since I haven’t been on stage in such a long time, but this run-through really has me feeling confident.”

  “It’s nice. It’ll be a fun little event.”

  The television caught Doug’s attention and Maria looked over at it. Seattle versus Phoenix, not something he would have any special interest in.

  Maria sat back on the couch. “Martha McGarrigle was very encouraging. She told me there’s a who
le series of venues between here and Rhode Island that feature live acoustic artists. I had no idea – tells you how out of it I’ve been. She said if things go as well on Thursday as she thinks they’re going to go, that she can help me book some more dates.”

  Doug had seemed to be listening with one ear, but now he turned away from the TV. “You’re not considering doing that, are you?”

  “I know. It’s a little weird to think about, isn’t it? And I’m completely getting ahead of myself. But I’ve been really enjoying playing again.”

  Doug seemed mystified by her words. “You mean you actually want to pursue this?”

  The chilliness in his tone set Maria’s nerves prickling. “Maybe. As I said, I’ve been loving it.”

  Doug stared at the TV for a moment and then looked in her general direction. “I thought you were just screwing around.”

  “I might have been at the beginning, but I’d forgotten how much making music means to me.”

  “But these performances would all be at night, right? So just when I’m getting home from work, you’d be taking off. That’s not exactly how I pictured things.”

  “You pictured me just sitting home waiting for you every day?”

  “That’s not exactly fair, Maria. I’ve been encouraging you to find something that mattered to you. It would have been nice, though, if the hours coincided with mine.”

  So much for being in great moods. “We don’t need to discuss this now,” she said, getting up from the couch and heading toward the kitchen. It was premature to make an issue of her getting deeper into her music, but it was something she hadn’t expected to contend with.

  **^^^**

  Tuesday, October 26

  Five days before the party

  The flight from Providence to Charlotte yesterday afternoon had been uneventful, Tyler’s favorite kind of flight, and the drive to Columbia had been scenic. There were so many trees and flowers here that he couldn’t see in Connecticut. The very fact that he could see flowers at all was something of a treat in late October. Based on what he’d read about the area online, the temperatures stayed in the seventies or above all but three months of the year and rarely dipped below freezing, even at night. That led to a different type of growth and a different kind of color. There weren’t rusts and umbers here. The shades were much more vital.

  Tyler had spent some time walking around the University of South Carolina campus in the late afternoon and then grabbed some barbecue from a food truck for dinner. Afterward, he walked around the downtown area, peering into the window of Aperture Photo Gallery, though it had closed at six. It definitely looked like a legit place.

  Tyler’s hotel was less than a ten-minute walk from the gallery, so the next morning he left his car in the parking lot, grabbed his portfolio, and trekked over, stopping for coffee along the way. Tyler liked the activity of this downtown area. It was hardly a major metropolis, but it was so much more of one than a town like Oldham.

  Joe Elliot was a tall, thick man with longish hair, maybe in his early fifties. His voice was more resonant in person than it had seemed on the phone, which was a little surprising to Tyler since he found the opposite to be true in most cases.

  “Great to meet you,” Joe said. “Good trip?”

  “Very good. The flight and the drive were a breeze.”

  “Yeah, it’s a pretty straight shot from Charleston. What brought you down here, anyway?”

  Tyler had forgotten he’d told Joe that he was already going to be in South Carolina. He was so glad the man mentioned it before he blundered. “Just a little away time.”

  “Well, I consider it serendipity. Hey, can I get you a cup of coffee.”

  “Thanks, I just had one.”

  “Have another. I roast my own beans.”

  “That sounds like a very good reason to have more coffee.”

  Joe went to the back office and Tyler looked around the gallery a bit. There was an interesting blend of styles here, very different from the galleries near Oldham. There were plenty of formal images, but also a number of edgier ones. That told Tyler something about the market here. Because Aperture was in a college town, it could make room for more cerebral work. Tyler had no trouble imagining his shots hanging in this environment.

  Joe came back with the coffee and the two of them sat at a table near the back of the gallery. The only other person present was a young woman, presumably a college student, who worked there. Tyler would have been surprised to find customers here on a Tuesday morning.

  He opened his portfolio and pulled out a few pieces that he’d printed and matted. Joe reached out for them as though Tyler were offering up a tray of delicacies from an exotic land. He flipped through the work slowly, smiling and nodding at each new piece.

  “I’m addicted to the leaves,” Joe said when he got to the end of the collection. “That piece with the single upturned leaf you just put up on your site is stunning.”

  Tyler had added that shot to his slideshow after his phone conversation with Joe, which meant the man had been back to the site since then.

  “Thanks.”

  Joe handed the photos back to him. “I’m thinking we’ll start with a dozen pieces. I have the perfect spot for you.”

  Tyler hadn’t expected Joe to have made a decision about carrying his work before Tyler got there. “You really think people want this kind of thing down here?”

  “No question in my mind.”

  Tyler couldn’t help but laugh. “I don’t suppose you have five or six more galleries nearby.”

  Joe raised a finger. “That’s something I want to talk to you about, actually. I’m something of a networking freak. I’m in constant touch with photo galleries all over the country – gotta stick together, you know? How would you feel about my brokering your work outside of your home region? I’ve been doing that with –” Joe pointed over Tyler’s left shoulder, causing Tyler to turn in that direction “– that guy, and he’s now in twenty-four galleries. I even got him into a place in Calgary.”

  Tyler had never had any kind of representation. People who worked on his scale rarely did. The idea was exciting.

  “Yeah, I’d be open to discussing that.”

  “That’s great. I think we’ll be able to do some really good stuff with your work. Let’s get you rolling here, though. I’d like to have some kind of launch event. Maybe right before Thanksgiving. Do you think you could come down again for that?”

  Tyler gave the briefest consideration to whether there might be anything on his calendar for the last week of November. “Yeah, I can definitely come down again for that.”

  He spent another hour in the gallery. Joe introduced him to Lily Campbell who was in fact a student at South Carolina, but also the daughter of one of the gallery owners in Joe’s network. Together, the three of them walked through the shop discussing the various photographers. Joe talked about each as though he’d had close personal relationships with them for decades.

  By the time Tyler got ready to leave, the gallery was getting busy. Joe promised to send a contract within the week and then went to attend to a potential customer.

  Walking back to the hotel to check out, Tyler considered the possibility that this meeting might have marked the beginning of the next phase of his career. It was possible, of course, that Joe’s confidence in his ability to sell and market Tyler’s work was unfounded, but there was the very real chance that Tyler would remember this morning as the point when his footprint genuinely started to grow.

  Twenty minutes later, he was back in his car. As he was about to turn the key in the ignition, though, he realized he wasn’t ready to leave. Maybe he’d walk around a bit more before going; the vibe here felt so good. As long as he was on the road by three o’clock, he’d get to the airport in time.

  On the other hand, he didn’t absolutely need to fly back tonight. Before he left yesterday, he handled the last details on the party decorations. Everything
was under control on that end. He didn’t have any pressing business in Oldham. And he certainly didn’t have anyone waiting for him.

  Maybe he’d hang around South Carolina for another couple of days.

  Eighteen

  Thursday, October 28

  Three days before the party

  Martha signaled Maria to come backstage ten minutes before she was scheduled to go on. She got a quick peck from Doug and then a huge hug from Olivia.

  “Crush this, Mom,” her daughter said.

  Maria smiled nervously, “I’m just hoping not to be crushed.”

  “Backstage” at Mumford’s was little more than an office down the hall. The guy who’d been on just before the current performer was sitting in one of the three chairs in the room, smoking a cigarette. Maria told him she liked his set, even though she found it a little passionless. He nodded as though he anticipated her compliment and fully deserved it. The guy couldn’t have been out of college more than a year or so. Maria could imagine him thinking he’d be receiving much bigger accolades in much bigger venues by next spring, having no idea that for most aspiring musicians this was as big as it ever got.

  Maria took out her guitar to check the tuning as Martha entered the room.

  “Are you ready to go on?” the woman said, touching Maria on the shoulder.

  “I guess we’ll find out in a few minutes.”

  “About five. Damien is finishing his last song and then I’ll go out to introduce you.”

  Maria simply shook her head in acknowledgment.

  “You’re gonna be great,” Martha said. “You know that, right?”

  Maria smiled, but she had been growing increasingly nervous since she entered this room, and Martha’s encouragement was only elevating that.

  “Thanks.”

  Martha patted her shoulder. “Gotta get back out there.”

  A couple of minutes later, Maria heard enthusiastic applause, the singer thanking the audience, and then Martha thanking the singer. As Maria listened for her introduction, the singer passed her to come into the office and their eyes met appreciatively for a second. He was probably only a few years younger than Maria and she could tell by the way he carried himself that the response he’d gotten meant something to him. If he was still here when she finished, maybe they’d compare notes.