The Blue Guitar

by Ireland Ann

  Jasper and Toby live at the end of a lane downtown in the lee of a factory that once produced soap and is now waiting for a loft conversion. Half a dozen Victorian-era houses press cheek to jowl opposite a squat cinder-block building that contains a walk-in clinic. This clinic is an eyesore but buffers traffic noise and makes the lane invisible to passersby on King Street West.

  Toby digs out his key, but it isn’t necessary; Jasper has left the door open. A thoughtful touch, but faintly irksome: are Toby’s habits so predictable? It didn’t used to be like this. Once upon a time he was about as dependable as a puppy. He kicks off his sneakers and moves through the front room of the flat with its off-white walls and Ikea furniture, past the jumbo-sized chair that until recently belonged to Klaus. Klaus is Toby’s father, now a resident for unknown reasons at Lakeview Terrace. It’s not as if he wasn’t fending well at home. Toby sniffs the air: leek and potato soup, one of Jasper’s specialties.

  “You look different,” Jasper says, glancing up as Toby enters the kitchen area. He carefully places the spoon across the rim of the pot.

  Toby slides his guitar case into the corner and drops his jacket on a chair. “I feel different.”

  The two men approach each other, for this is their ritual, to pause before the welcoming kiss, no silly bear hug, just lips and tongue, bodies held a whisper apart. Jasper, being shorter, has to tilt his head.

  When they pull back, Jasper says, “Cough up. Tell Jazz what’s new.”

  Toby peels off his shirt, which doesn’t smell exactly floral, and shoots it in the general direction of the laundry hamper. Jasper frowns as he watches the garment flop to the floor.

  “I had a sort of attack at Guitar Choir,” Toby says.

  “Attack?” Jasper jumps on the word. “How so?”

  “Like what used to happen. Only less severe.”

  “Did you pass out?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  Jasper visibly relaxes, pressing his lower back into the counter, then reaches to turn down the burner under the soup. A fresh baguette sits on a cutting board, the heel torn off and demolished.

  Toby goes over to the sink and pours a glass of water, aware, as always, of Jasper’s gaze. He moves his hips a bit more than needed and peers out the window onto the concrete patch where buses idle before heading north toward the subway station. Since they live on the ground floor of the townhouse, views aren’t exactly optimal.

  “I don’t like the sound of it,” Jasper says. Neatly dressed in chinos and trim cotton shirt, he has a small head, his features tidy and undramatic. He hates the swell of his stomach, a recent development.

  “I ate a crap lunch,” Toby says. “It was probably a blood-sugar dive.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I recovered quickly.” Toby rinses out his glass and dumps it in the sink. He’s bored with the topic, even though he brought it up. He knows it’s mean to seek concern, then slough it off. Leaking a cautious smile, he says, “Big competition coming up in Montreal.”

  “What kind of competition?”

  “One of those guitar things.”

  Jasper isn’t fooled by his breezy tone. “And?”

  “I may toss my hat in the ring.”

  “Really?” Jasper knows better than to make a fuss.

  Toby prowls the flat, past Klaus’s hulking chair, past the Matisse numbered print — Jasper’s pride and joy — and the shelf of Toby’s house league hockey trophies. He’s never been the sort of musician to baby his hands.

  “Chances are I wouldn’t make it to the semifinal,” Toby says, returning to the kitchen. “Hell, I may not make it past the first cull.”

  “When did this idea occur to you?” Jasper asks, his voice a little sharp.

  “Not long ago. I forget.”

  Jasper nods, pretending to believe this. “I would never hold you back from attempting —”

  “You can’t,” Toby points out.

  “Quite so. But let me remind you that all did not turn out well last time.”

  “Eleven years ago.”

  “The consequences were fairly dire.”

  “Eleven years ago.”

  Jasper clears his throat, a picture of calm, as if dealing with one of his clients at work. “Do you really want to subject yourself to that kind of pressure?”

  A reasonable question. Toby looks at his partner, feeling his cockiness bleed away.

  Two

  The last client of the day has left, and Jasper is busy tidying his desk at the institute, hiding files from his nosy colleagues and renaming computer documents in the event a certain party decides to sneak in after hours and meddle. In other words — Luke, chairman of the board of the institute and currently at war with Jasper. For this reason Jasper likes to be the last one in the office, the person who turns off lights and printers and copy machines, then lowers the blinds in anticipation of morning sun. It’s the most peaceful time of day, agenda swept clear and the smell of burned coffee hanging heavy in the air. There was a time when he loved his job, and that time was not so long ago. Luke was elected chair at the last AGM, and it seemed like a grand thing. Jasper dared to believe the two men shared a vision.

  Toby will be getting peckish back home, he decides. Sometimes he feels Toby’s hunger before the boy feels it himself; they’ve been together that long. His lover — a term Jasper favours over the sexually neutral “partner” — makes forays to the fridge, tears off lettuce leaves for a salad, and stirs a bay leaf into the stew pot.

  Or doesn’t.

  Since Toby got this daft idea of entering the Montreal International Classical Guitar Competition, he doesn’t always get around to cooking dinner on weekdays. Jasper can’t help feeling peeved by this; after all, he’s the one with a complex full-time job while all Toby needs to do is teach Guitar Choir once a week. Just for a moment he wonders what it would be like if Toby didn’t exist, how much simpler his life would become — and how empty.

  There are days when Jasper craves such emptiness.

  The screensaver floats into view: beads of dew gleaming off iguana hide, so unlike this dry, frightened city in summer where the virus has chased citizens into their homes. The institute’s walls are painted sea-green, a hue chosen by a former chairman after she read that green invoked tranquility, a mood much prized in these parts. That bare patch next to the window used to contain a Frida Kahlo print, a creepy self-portrait with mini-Diego peering out of her forehead. Jasper tore it down, for his clients crave the ordinary, not an artist’s mad leap of imagination.

  The elevator slides down to bustling University Avenue, crisp dusk of early autumn. As always, Jasper pauses before exiting the building to wave to the security guard, nice kid, inching his way through college a credit at a time.

  Mail is trapped in the slot, though it must have arrived hours ago. Jasper pushes open the door to the flat and frowns. He can hear the stomping of feet inside. They always remove their shoes before entering — why track city filth inside? Clues rain down. Yet he’s not exactly worried. It is a too-quiet room with no response that he dreads. Feeling the old jet of excitement, intact after all these years, he calls out Toby’s name.

  The pacing stops.

  Jasper takes his time loosening his laces, kicking off his shoes, then sets his cap on the hook. He spots Toby in the middle room, dressed only in a pair of plaid boxers.

  “Everything okay?” Jasper asks in a voice carefully shorn of concern.

  Toby slams a bookcase with his open hand, and Jasper’s collection of European history texts rattles.

  “Don’t touch me,” Toby whispers as his lover reaches for his arm.

  The kid was his merry self this morning, but evidently this morning was a different universe. He loses contact with his own skin, gets so he can’t stand the lightest caress. His guitar is propped against the chair, but the metal stand has capsized and lies skeletal on the rug.

  “What’s happening, baby?” Jasper asks.

  “I don’t know
,” Toby says. His face is flushed. “You tell me.”

  “Is the practising not going well?”

  “Blame music,” snaps Toby. “Blame the guitar competition.”

  “I’m not blaming anything. I just want to find out what’s wrong.”

  “You can’t help.”

  “Then I won’t try.” This is something Jasper has learned — not to get pulled in where he’s not welcome. Besides, he has things to do, especially since it’s clear nothing has been done about supper, and he should call his sister out in Victoria who is turning forty today.

  Toby tags along as Jasper moves into the kitchen, and then the story emerges, as Jasper knew it would.

  “Who the hell do I think I am, going back to competition after all this time? Someone will be there who saw me nosedive in Paris. I couldn’t stand that, Jazz.”

  Jasper peers in the fridge, finds the pot of soup nearly a week old, and sets it on the stove to heat up. He feels the boy press in and reaches back to clasp one of his hands, those pebbly, callused fingertips. Touch never fails; it’s what Toby needs to be reminded of.

  “Are you afraid?” Jasper asks.

  “Of course.”

  “Because you don’t have to do it.”

  “I sent in my application.”

  “Un-send it. No shame in a change of mind.” Jasper hears the encouragement in his voice.

  “Put my engine in reverse? Is that what you’re suggesting?”

  The men face each other, and pretty soon Toby’s hands are sliding all over him, popping open Jasper’s shirt, burrowing between his legs, and they collapse to the ground in a slow-motion dance. The carpet that tattoos their knees is a fake kilim, courtesy of Klaus. If the old man could see them now.

  They untangle to the sound of a kettle whistling in the apartment above. Jill calls, “All set,” and Miranda’s feet clatter across the floor. There is a long sigh of water pouring into a teapot. That rhythmic thump is the dog’s tail hitting the wall.

  Jasper eyes his lover, who now lies on his back, naked and breathing evenly. Though he is nearly thirty, Toby has a face as unlined as a child’s and shaves no more than twice a week. Jasper rubs his own bristly chin: night and day.

  Toby’s eyes flicker open, and he asks lazily, “Don’t you get tired of looking at me?”

  “Never.”

  Toby smiles and lifts himself to his feet all in one move, no creaking joints. Fourteen years younger; it makes a difference. Then he tosses his head, a gesture going back to a time when he wore dreadlocks. Upstairs, cutlery clinks against china and someone turns on the stereo: Edith Piaf, the little sparrow.

  “Your soup is burning,” Toby says, stretching his arms so his fingertips tickle the low ceiling.

  “Shit!” Jasper rises carefully, mindful of his lower back, and heads for the stove.

  “I haven’t decided on my free choice,” Toby says, watching the soup rescue.

  “What free choice?”

  “After playing the required program, we get to choose a piece from our repertoire,” Toby says. “The kids go for flashy. I might be different.”

  Jasper stirs thoughtfully. He understands that sex has changed nothing. “Tell me why you want to do this.”

  Toby plucks a T-shirt and a pair of jeans from the dresser. “It’s an experiment, dropping baking powder into a glass of vinegar to see what happens.”

  “I can tell you what happens, Toby.”

  “But I need to see for myself.” Tugging his shirt over his lean torso, Toby says, “You understand that, Jazz.” There is a plea in his voice.

  In those early days Toby played a Karl Honderich instrument, such a jewel, he’ll claim, but left somewhere on the Paris Metro during that explosive week. The luthier’s dead now, Toby likes to remind him, and many of the old boys are gone for good; Segovia’s ancient history and Bream’s too old to play in public.

  Toby still can’t believe it might be over for him, too.

  Jasper tastes the soup, a trifle charred. He grabs his own clothes off the floor and dresses, minus underwear. Upstairs the women croon along to “La Vie en rose” as if they were in some Left Bank dive — picture the bearded poet in the corner, cranked on absinthe.

  “We haven’t had this conversation in years,” Jasper says. “I thought we were out of the woods.”

  Toby bristles. “I’m getting old.”

  Now Jasper laughs. “You’re twenty-nine.” And I’m forty-three, he might add, but doesn’t. “I saw this coming.”

  Toby blinks. “Saw what coming?”

  “Your need to prove yourself.”

  “Really?” Toby likes to discuss his motivations.

  “Remember how you felt after cleaning out Klaus’s house?” Toby’s face freezes, and Jasper understands that he’s onto something. “His carefully contained life scared hell out of you.”

  Klaus recently moved himself to Lakeview Terrace. He may be a senior citizen with a touch of Parkinson’s plus the diabetes, but he’s managing well. The move is a great mystery to his son and Jasper.

  “It sure as hell depressed me,” Toby says.

  “Perhaps by entering the competition you’re proving you aren’t Klaus, or anything like him.”

  “That’s a theory.”

  Encouraged, Jasper continues. “You’d be up against some of the best musicians in the world.”

  Toby offers a smile. “Perhaps I’m one of the best in the world.”

  It is so tempting to offer the damning word were. You were among the best, Toby, as we all were something else.

  After supper Toby flees outside for a smoke, though last week he claimed he’d quit for good. Jasper lifts the blind and sees the boy perching on the top step at the same time as one of the medics pops open the clinic’s rear door, heading for her own break. Pushing down her mask, she searches in her pocket for a light, cigarette already dangling from her lips. Where Jasper works, all guests and clients who enter the building must don masks and latex gloves, but once upstairs and cleared of obvious symptoms, they remove the paraphernalia — the risk of infection is still low. Tourists are keeping a wide berth of the city, and who can blame them, given media hysterics? The latest Andrew Lloyd Webber musical is packing up, and Wagner’s Ring Cycle played to half-empty houses. Yet the casualty list is still under thirty.

  Jasper catches a glimpse of Toby’s jaw grinding molars to dental dust. The medic is speaking with animated gestures and sucks at her cigarette, then holds out her pack to Toby. Can he use another?

  You bet.

  Her scrubs, Jasper is sure, reek of high-power disinfectant.

  Yesterday Toby said it wouldn’t be a bad idea to put all the quarantined people together, maybe in the old TB hospital in the west end of the city. He got all worked up about it, a man of vision. They would be well fed and given interesting things to do during the two-week period, learning crafts like pottery and carving canoe paddles — a sort of camp. Doctors could try new antivirals and other experimental treatments. Then he stopped speaking, for in that second he’d felt the virus hover, waiting opportunistically for an opening.

  Evening fog draws off the lake, and Toby shivers. Inside, Jasper shivers, too.

  Three

  Toby knocked on the door of his father’s house in the Beach and waited for the slow clump of footsteps. It was always the same: Klaus would swing open the door, gaze at his son for a moment, then say, “I’d just about given up on you,” because Toby was a measly ten minutes late. Six o’clock was six o’clock in Klaus’s books.

  He knocked again; maybe his dad was in the bathroom. Old guys can have trouble in there. And so he waited, spinning on the concrete step and looking across the street toward the rickety clapboard bungalow belonging to their neighbours. Not many original cottages left in the Beach.

  Another knock and still no answer. This was weird, for Klaus was a man of habit, an apostle of routine, and it was Wednesday evening, Toby’s designated visiting hour. The car was parked in the driv
eway and the hall light was on. Fending off a spritz of alarm, Toby let himself in with his key. He stood in the foyer and waited to hear something, that characteristic clearing of throat, footsteps, anything.

  “Papa?” he called out. His voice echoed in the hallway, bouncing off the shiny floor and walls.

  “Papa!”

  Zilch. No sound of toilet flushing, no clicking of shoes on tile. Now Toby was getting officially alarmed. His father never walked anywhere, didn’t see the point when he owned a car and paid insurance on it. The place emitted an overwhelming pong of furniture polish and floor wax.

  It might happen like this, Toby thought. A day like any other except his father will have collapsed somewhere in the neat two-storey house and it will be his task to find him.

  He sucked in a breath and marched down the hallway, switching on lights and calling out, “Papa? Wo bist du?”

  The only response was a thrum from the ancient refrigerator. Everything looked to be in order, spic and span. Toby entered the kitchen with its spongy vinyl chairs and freshly mopped floor — and that was when he spotted the note propped against the toaster: “Gone to live in Lakeview. Please dispose of household contents. K.H.”

  Man of few words.

  Why on earth would Klaus move himself to that cheerless institution?

  Holding the note, fountain pen written on the back of a recipe card — waste not, want not — Toby felt only dismay. Klaus had no need to set foot in Lakeview again, not after his wife died. You’d think he’d be grateful to be clear of the place and its antiseptic smells.

  Toby began the job right away. The overhanging roof made the rooms darker than they needed to be, and he turned on lights as he prowled from room to room. When his mother was up and running, she’d fling open the windows in the spring, but she’d had no say in years. Karen had been resident in Lakeview Terrace longer than anyone, starting at age forty-seven when, the story goes, her moments of peculiarity turned into lapses of judgment and an urge to set fires. She died in neurological chaos, a slight woman with frizzy hair whom Toby didn’t visit often enough. In the early days he used to take his guitar to Lakeview to play for some of the old ladies; they made a fuss over him, child among the ancients. But Klaus never missed a day during those long years, striding into C Wing to feed his wife supper because without his loving hand she refused to swallow. Not a word of complaint ever passed his lips. Say what you might of Klaus as a father, he was one hell of a husband.