by W E DeVore
“Aaron,” she said in a low voice. “That’s Tori Gerard. Stanley’s wife. They’ve been married for five, maybe six years.”
His face fell. “No, that’s not possible.”
He sat back down on the bench and covered his face. Q squeezed his shoulder and left to refill their glasses, returning as quickly as she could. She sat next to him and handed him a drink.
“Jesus. What have I done?”
“You didn’t know?” she asked.
“Of course, I didn’t. I went for a run in City Park last month and I saw her. We went to lunch. I took her home. We…” He closed his eyes. “We lost track of each other right before I moved here. She was part of the reason I took the job in the first place.”
“Your dad never mentioned she got married?”
He stared at Tori for several minutes. “I haven’t spoken to my father for years, but I would have thought somebody back home would have mentioned her getting married.”
“I’m going to go out on a limb and say that an Orthodox cantor’s daughter, modern or otherwise, marrying a black Baptist from New Orleans, who is also almost twice her age, probably didn’t sit so well back on that Tennessee shtetl of yours.” She nudged him with her knee and he smiled.
“Don’t exaggerate, Clementine. Stanley doesn’t look much older than Ben,” he said, pointing to the man himself as he stood with his arm around his lovely young wife. “Oh god. Why didn’t she tell me?”
“Don’t get me wrong, Aaron. Stanley’s a fine-looking man and charming as hell, but he is seventy-three years old if he’s a day. I dated his son back in college. Maybe things aren’t working the way they should. Maybe she’s just lonely.”
“This wasn’t the first time, Clementine,” he said. “Last time I saw her was in Dallas about four years ago. She sent me a text, telling me she was in town and we spent the next three days together. I told her that I loved her. That I wanted her to stay with me. And the next morning she left while I was still asleep and that was it, until now.”
Sanger looked at the ground. “She never said she was married.” He exhaled loudly before saying, “Dallas wasn’t the only time, either. We’d been hooking up about every year or so for the last ten before that. Sometimes a couple of times a year. She’d send me a text telling me she was in town and…”
“And you never knew?” she asked.
“No.” He drained his glass. “I tried getting in touch with her a few times after I moved to New Orleans, but she never responded. I figured that she’d moved away or moved on. Either way, she didn’t want to see me. How long did she and Stanley date before they got married?”
“I don’t know. Two years. Maybe three? They met at a fundraiser for the Musician’s Village right after wife number four caught him fucking her sister in his studio,” she said. “Look, maybe they have an open marriage. She’s Stanley’s fifth wife. He’s not well-known for his monogamy skills. Maybe he’s finally learned his lesson.”
“You’re grasping, Clementine.”
“Yeah, I know. But I promised you the most excellent birthday you ever had, and so far, I’ve delivered drunk women talking over your favorite musician, rain during your birthday set, soggy pot cookies, and let’s not forget: Surprise! You’re an adulterer.” She stood up to get another shot and he followed her. “Come on, let’s get you a drink. I’m sorry, cowboy. Really I am.”
“So, how well do you know Stanley?” he asked. “I need to know how big of an asshole I am.”
They refilled their glasses and returned to the bench. “I don’t think you’re the asshole in this equation, Aaron. But, like I said, I dated his son in college…”
“Wait,” Sanger interrupted. “You went to college?”
“Yes, detective, I went to college. I dropped out. After… you know.”
He did know. Sanger also knew enough to let it go at that. “Gotcha.”
“That’s how I got to be friends with Stanley, actually. I broke up with Savion, dropped out of college and then started playing jazz. Stanley was my first teacher,” she said, smiling at the memory of the long afternoons in Stanley’s music room.
“He know?” Sanger asked. “What happened to you?”
She nodded. “One of the few. Before Sheila Jordan told the world.”
Q wasn’t yet comfortable with so many people knowing about the attack that had changed her life at twenty-two, having hidden it so well and so successfully for so many years. She’d briefly considered suing the national crime profiteer who’d released her sealed court case to the world, but had decided to let it be. Too many people already knew about the worst night of her life. She didn’t see any reason to increase that number.
Sanger changed the subject. “So, what did you want to be, back then? You know, when you grew up.”
“A criminologist,” she said. “I was going to join the family business.”
“The family business?” he asked.
“Justice is the Toledano family business,” she said, impersonating her father’s rich baritone voice and making Sanger smile. “I wanted to work for the F.B.I., if you can believe that.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Agent Toledano does have a nice ring to it.”
He winked at her and sipped his tequila.
Q ignored him and finished her thought. “Anyway, after what happened in Arabi, I figured being a musician would be safer.”
Sanger laughed out loud.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“Boy, did you have that figured wrong,” he said, snorting.
Q started to laugh, a big belly laugh, and soon couldn’t stop. When Ben returned, he took one look at the two of them laughing so hard they were holding onto each other to keep from falling off the bench and put his hands on his hips. “I thought Tom and JJ were the stoners in our little circle. Boy, did I have that figured wrong.”
Sanger and Q looked at Ben and then at each other, dissolving into another fit of laughter. Ben shook his head and walked away, returning with two shots of his own. Sanger moved over so that he could sit next to his wife. Q sighed and wiped her eyes, her laughter finally subsiding.
Ben drained his first glass and said, “I’m trying to decide if I should catch up or be the responsible one.”
“Your wife dropped out of college because she thought being a musician would be safer than a life in law enforcement,” Sanger said, still giggling, wiping away the tears that ran down his face with his thumb.
“It would be, if she wasn’t so damned nosey,” Ben replied, putting his arm around Q and kissing her temple.
“Keep talking, boys, y’all know how much I love to be discussed like I’m not here.” She stood up and pulled Sanger and Ben to their feet. “Just for that, we’re going on a mission, gentlemen.”
She headed purposefully towards the huddle of people around Stanley and Tori. Sanger pulled her back and stopped her.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Clementine?”
“Solving the ‘Case of the Missing Cantor’s Daughter,’ Aaron. Nobody tricks my best friend into committing adultery. How bad do you want me to make her squirm?”
“What are you talking about, darlin’?” Ben asked. Sanger quickly filled him in on their recent discovery and he let out a low whistle. “Oh, I think we should make her squirm.”
Sanger got a mischievous grin on his face. “This is strictly a sting operation, y’all. I don’t want to make a scene.”
Q saluted him.
“Aye-aye, captain. No scene, unless she pees her pants.” She called out to Stanley, “Hey, old man! Come meet somebody!”
Stanley walked over to the three of them, smiling broadly. His gold jewelry sparkled in the low light against his dark skin.
“There’s my little girl!” he said, as he pulled her into an embrace. “How you been doing, QT?” He held her at arm’s length. “Or is it QB, now?”
“Still QT, don’t remind him,” she replied, gesturing to Ben. Being the last of t
he Toledanos, Q hadn’t taken Ben’s family name and it didn’t sit well with her husband. “Thanks, again, for the song.”
He kissed her on her cheek. “It was my pleasure, baby.”
Soon after Q and Ben had put a marriage announcement in the paper, three dozen purple hydrangeas had arrived at their door, accompanied by the score to a song Stanley had written for them.
Ben shoved Sanger forward. “Hey, Stanley, this our good friend, Aaron Sanger.”
Stanley took his hand and shook it. “Detective Aaron Sanger? The same detective who caught that serial killer last fall and saved my little girl’s life?”
Sanger blushed and nodded.
Stanley clapped his large hand on Sanger’s shoulder. “Son, you are a genuine hero. It is a real pleasure to finally meet you.”
Draping his arm across Sanger’s back, he turned them towards the group of people he’d left and pointed to Tori. “My wife says she knew you growing up. Recognized you right away when you were all over the news.”
Q grinned at Sanger and he said, “Yes, sir. Our fathers worked together, I’d heard she’d moved here.”
Stanley called for his wife to join them. Tori walked over, smiling, until she saw her husband’s arm around Sanger.
“Aaron. Oh, my god. What are you doing here?” she asked, visibly stunned.
“I came with some friends,” he said, staring her down.
Tori’s eyes flickered around at her audience: her husband’s expectant expression, Q and Ben’s wry smiles. She took Sanger’s face in both of her hands.
“It’s been, what? Seven, eight years? Damn it, Aaron, you’re supposed to age like the rest of us,” she said congenially, recovering from her shock.
He smirked. “I don’t know, Tori. Seems like we just saw each other this morning, to me. And you look exactly the same.”
“Well, I bathe in the blood of weak men, so…” She smiled and winked at him, backing away.
“Is that what you’ve been doing? Do they know that?” He nodded to the three-carat diamond ring on her finger. “See you put on a little weight since I saw you last.”
She held it up self-consciously and it glimmered in the light. “Yeah, well, you always did say I was the marrying kind.”
Stanley walked over to his wife and kissed her on the cheek. “Y’all catch up. I have a little business I need to talk to Q about.”
Q glanced at Sanger for permission to abandon him and he smiled affably. “Y’all go on. Tori and I have years to catch up on, I think.”
She struggled not to laugh at Tori’s visible discomfort and walked away with Stanley and Ben towards the house, peeking back over her shoulder. If Sanger was confronting Tori, he was doing a damned good job of not making a scene.
“You hear that I’m recording a new record?” Stanley asked, calling her attention away from her friend.
“No, I didn’t. But that’s great. When’s it going to drop?”
“I don’t know yet,” he said.
They followed the pathway behind the staircase and he pulled out a set of keys from his pocket to unlock the double glass doors to the lower floor of his house containing his private recording studio. He flipped on a light and held the door open, beckoning them to come inside. The lounge in his studio was like Stanley himself: elegant in a way that didn’t have to try. Stanley walked to the wet bar in the corner and pulled down a glass bottle that had been intricately fashioned with metallic agave leaves. He poured some dark amber liquid into three crystal rocks glasses and returned to Q and Ben, handing them each a glass. He sat down on a nearby taupe armchair and gestured to the couch across from him for them to do the same.
Stanley took a sip of his drink and sighed. “Don Julio Anejo. Best tequila in the world, if you ask me.”
Q took a sip of her own and was inclined to agree.
Stanley crossed his legs. “I went to check out that burlesque of yours last weekend. It’s something else.”
After years of laps around the wedding and corporate event circuit, Q and Charlie had finally had enough and began writing original music, using minimally dressed dancers to entice a new audience to listen to it. The Bourdello Burlesque was the result. But she was surprised. Stanley was hard to miss in a crowd and he always came by to say hello.
“You go undercover, old man?” she asked.
He smiled broadly. “Nah. I don’t take up as much light as I used to, these days.” He reclined back and looked at her intently. “I want you and the other Beasts to play this record for me. Want you to do some singing, too. You and Charlie help with the arrangements.”
Q was accustomed to flattery, but this was on a new level. “Stanley, what are you saying? I mean, you could get anyone…”
“I’m old, Q. I don’t want this record to be old. What you and your boys are doing excites me and, these days, an old man like me needs to get excited. I have the songs, just need some help with the arrangements and the execution. There’s a couple of duets on there, too. You’ve always been my favorite young hot shot to play with, I think you know that.”
She blushed. “I’m thirty-four, about to be thirty-five, that’s hardly young, Stanley.”
“Age ain’t nothing but a number, baby. Come on and play this record with me. It’ll be good for you and yours. I promise.” His smile faded and he said, “I need you, Q. I need you to do this for me.”
Playing on an album with Stanley Gerard was an honor. He could have asked any number of Top 40 alternative artists to join him, and they would have jumped at the opportunity. That he was giving the impression that QT and the Beasts recording with him would be doing him a favor, not the other way around, caught Q off guard.
“When do you want to start?” she asked.
“Tuesday morning,” he said. “Ten sharp. I’ll need you four maybe five days a week until seven or so. I don’t do late nights in the studio anymore. Your weekends are yours. I already figured you’re booked up for the next six months at least. But any contract you could get out of to spend more time here, I’d appreciate.”
Ben looked at Q, concern washing over his face. She looked back at Stanley. “What’s the rush, Stanley?”
He took another sip of his anejo. “I ever tell you about the time I played with David Bowie?”
“No,” she said. “I mean, I’ve heard the stories, of course, and saw the documentary, but…”
“He was a kind man. Funny. Loved his people. I was real sad to hear that he’d passed, wasn’t much younger than me.” He took another sip of his drink. “Ironic thing is that he and I are going to die from the same damn thing. He once said we were twin souls. Didn’t really know what he was talking about until a couple months ago.”
The quietness that followed his statement pushed down on Q like a physical weight, making the sound of laughter and music outside seem alien and strange.
“I’m dying, Q,” he said. “Stage 4. Nothing they can do but make me sick and weak all the time. I don’t want to go out like that. They got the pain managed. Tori’s got me eating all kinds of those superfoods everyone’s talking about, but any way you look at it, my time is measured in months.”
Ben squeezed Q’s hand and she blinked back tears. Stanley’s face remained unchanged. “I want to spend the time I have left, recording the last few songs I have in me with my favorite Jewish soul sister, who I should have signed to my record label years ago, and I apologize for that. I need to finish up this album before I go down much further. I want it to be released on whatever day God decides to find me and call me back home. A little thank you to my fans and to this city. But I need people I can trust, and I trust you. Both of you.”
“Who else knows?” Ben finally asked.
“My doctors. Walter. Tori. And now you.” He leaned forward on his knees. “And I’m going to have to ask you two to keep this to yourselves.”
“What about Savion?” Q asked.
She couldn’t imagine Stanley not sharing this news with his only son. But her own
father had hidden a mild heart attack from her, so she was well-versed in the pride of old men.
Stanley shook his head. “We don’t talk much these days. Had a big falling out last summer.”
“A falling out about what?” Q asked, shocked.
“Him needing to be his own man. It doesn’t matter now. I’ll tell him, in time, but now is not that time.” He stood and refilled his drink. “So, you gonna play this record with me or what?”
Q stood up and hugged him without saying a word. Stanley finally patted her on the head and said, “No tears. Not one. Or the deal is off.”
She pulled back and held out her hand for a handshake. Stanley took it and she said, “Deal. You’ve got yourself a studio band for however long you need it.”
◆◆◆
After they left Stanley and returned to the courtyard, Q and Ben looked for a familiar face in the thinning crowd. They easily located Camilla in her brilliant white dress and found Tom and JJ nearby. When they told them the news, Tom and JJ celebrated by singing ‘Champagne Nights’ - one of Stanley’s biggest hits from the seventies. The memory of Stanley teaching her how to play the solo from that song was too much for Q; she ran up the stairs and into the house before the sob that was trapped in her throat broke through. She locked herself in the guest bathroom and covered her mouth with both hands to muffle her grief.
Once she’d left college and Savion behind, Q had isolated herself in her studio apartment on Esplanade, playing piano from the time she woke up to the time she fell asleep. One Monday afternoon when she’d tried and failed for hours to master the solo in ‘Champagne Nights,’ she’d showed up on Stanley’s doorstep, begging him to teach her how to play it. Stanley had only met her twice before. He could have told her to leave. He could have called the police. But he didn’t. He’d opened his door and made her eat some food. He’d asked her why she’d broken up with Savion. Why she’d dropped out of college. When she’d told him what had happened, he’d told her that there were two ways of dealing with ugly things: let them twist you into something ugly, too, or twist them into something beautiful instead. For the next six months, she’d spent her afternoons with Stanley, sitting next to him on his piano bench, as he’d patiently prodded her confidence, teaching her when to lay back and when to show off. He was the life and breath of everything she thought she could always count on. The world may change, but to her, Stanley Gerard was eternal.