Black Horizon

by Robert Masello

  At moments when the stagelights were on full, Jack strained to get a clear view of her, but no sooner had he seemed to get her in focus than the lighting would change and she would appear to vanish. Nor could he understand why or how an extra seat had been added to that row. Wouldn't the fire regulations prohibit such things?

  He missed another cue, while staring off over Veronica's shoulder.

  He caught up two bars later.

  When the next lull came, he looked again, this time at the bottom of the pit curtain. Unless he was mistaken, and it wasn't easy to tell for sure, there were the tips of two feet poking through—but feet, not shoes. Or boots. Bare feet. In December weather.

  The toes of one foot wriggled.

  His eyes jumped up, to try to catch a glimpse of her face. But she must have been sitting back in her seat; all he could see was the top of her head—dark, straight hair, parted in the middle.

  Still, it was enough to make him shiver.

  Van Nostrand, who played bass right behind him, kicked the bottom of his chair, and Jack jumped. The next tune had started; Jack fingered the first chord wrong.

  Consuela just shook her head, without even looking over at him.

  Jesus, Jack thought. He played the rest of the number with his hands shaking, his eyes resolutely on the music stand in front of him. When it ended, to a round of applause—this was the show-stopper number, and if it didn't get a hand, nothing would—he still didn't look up. He didn't dare. He played the rest of the show that way, like a drone, staring at the score, watching for his cues, listening to the stage action. He was never so grateful to swing into the grand finale, when Templeton True belted out a reprise of the “Steamroller” theme, than he was this time. The curtain came down, the applause came up, the curtain call followed, with the orchestra repeating the signature theme from the overture, and Jack allowed himself, finally, to look up, and out of the pit again.

  The face, with the houselights on now, was visible to him, leaning forward over the pit curtain.

  And it was a face he had seen, a thousand times, in his dreams.

  Her skin was pale, her cheekbones high, framed on either side by a straight fall of long, dark, shining hair. Her lips were parted, in an open smile, and her eyes . . . her eyes were as large and deeply green as they had appeared in the photos Mam kept in the parlor. As wide and large and deeply green as his own.

  They studied him now with yearning, and recognition, and a measure of joy . . . claiming him, as it were.

  Declaring him her son.

  Jack's heart felt as if it had stopped beating. The applause died down. The other musicians were already packing up. But she alone kept clapping, rapping the rolled-up program against one hand. He looked wildly around, to see if anyone else was even aware of her. But no one seemed to be. Vinnie was avoiding his gaze, Catalano was already gone. Veronica—and God, the woman was sitting right behind her—was folding up her score with complete aplomb. Just one more performance, over and done.

  The rapping of the program echoed around the walls of the theater, a steady, brisk, unending beat. But no one else seemed aware of that, either. The face was still smiling, and nodding now, as if to say “Yes, yes, you're not imagining this.” But he had to be, he had to be; no one else was even paying any attention. It had to be all going on in his head, inside his head, and only there. The rapping went on and on and on, over the usual sounds of the audience leaving—seats springing up, chatter, coughing, bags rustling, the distant noise of the street outside wafting in through the open front doors. Nearly everyone was out of the pit now. Still, the hollow clapping went on. A blue and silver bracelet danced around her wrist.

  Jack, transfixed, stared at the bracelet.

  “Hey, man—”

  Jack convulsed at Haywood's touch, as if he'd been jolted with a cattle prod.

  “What the fuck!” Haywood jumped back. “What is wrong with you?”

  Jack shivered again.

  “What is wrong with you?”

  Jack glanced at Haywood, then back toward the clapping specter.

  She was gone.

  The extra seat was gone.

  The pit, except for the two of them now, was empty.

  117

  “You going mental on me or what? First you play like shit, now you want to hang out here till it's time for the next show? What's your problem?”

  Jack swallowed, hard. There was nothing to see anymore; what could he show Haywood? “Did you see a woman, right about there"—he pointed where the extra seat had been —"looking into the pit just now, clapping?”

  “What? If she was clapping, that's good news. But no, that row's cleared out.” He took a gentler tone, replacing his hand on Jack's shoulder. “Time you cleared out, too. You're not lookin’ very good.”

  Jack took a deep breath. “Yeah, you're right—I've got to get some sleep before the next show.”

  “Yeah—you do that. Come on.” Haywood moved a music stand out of the way, as if for an invalid, and led Jack back toward the locker room.

  In the hall outside, Consuela, already wearing her overcoat, was conferring, animatedly, with Burt; they both looked over as Jack approached. Consuela said one thing more, then stalked off. Burt said, “Jack, I gotta talk to you.”

  Jack didn't have to guess what it would be about.

  But Burt started out talking about the newspaper clipping on the bulletin board instead, asking Jack a little about that institute it mentioned, and saying how tiring it must be to undergo tests and all. Still, Jack knew where he was headed, and soon enough he got there. “I think you're wearing yourself out,” he said, not unkindly, “and today it showed. I know you're good; I knew that when I hired you. But Consuela's ticked off, and even I think you need to take a break. I'm gonna use a sub for the next few days. Get some rest, and give me a call next week.”

  The ax had fallen. Haywood and Vinnie were waiting for him in the locker room. He told them.

  “Hell, take a vacation,” Vinnie said. “Leave it to us—we'll make sure the sub sounds like he can't read music. You'll be back on Monday.”

  “I were you,” said Haywood, “I'd stay gone for two weeks. I'd head for one of those Club Meds and get me a real good tan.”

  “You've got a tan,” Vinnie said.

  “I didn't mean mine,” Haywood replied.

  Jack smiled wanly; he appreciated their staying, but just now he really wanted to be alone, to think through what had just happened. They offered to go to the Olympia Coffee Shop with him, but he said no, he was just going to go home and veg out.

  “See you in a few days then,” Vinnie insisted on adding.

  “Yeah—next week,” Haywood said.

  Yeah, Jack thought, in a few days. I'll be seeing you guys again in a few days.

  Purposely, he left his second-string guitar and some other stuff—extra picks, an old strap, a dog-eared copy of a book by Ned Rorem—in his locker. No use making any more of this than it was. Just a short, and temporary, leave of absence.

  That's what he told himself, over and over, on the subway home, reciting it like a mantra. A short, and temporary, leave of absence. Much as he hated to dwell on it, it was still easier to deal with than what had happened earlier—his mother's face smiling at him in the pit. What the hell would he say to Sprague about that?

  At his apartment, he turned on the TV and flopped onto the bed with a bottle of Heineken. Maybe I'd better cut back to Old Milwaukee, he thought. “The People's Court,” Judge Wapner presiding, came on after the commercials.

  Sometime during the show, which seemed to involve some carpeting that had been installed upside down, he drifted off to sleep. He awoke with the phone ringing, and the apartment dark. His machine picked up before he could find the phone.

  “Hi, it's Nancy. Dr. Sprague wants to know what time you can come in tomorrow. He also wants you to bring—”

  “I'm here,” Jack said, cutting in. The machine clicked off and rewound.

  “�
�your birth certificate,” she said, completing her thought. “I didn't think you'd be home. Why aren't you at the show?”

  He looked at the fluorescent face of the alarm clock. It was ten after eight.

  “You don't want to know.”

  “I do.” Then, “It didn't close, did it?”

  “No, but it's gonna run for a few days without me . . . I missed half my cues and the contractor told me to take off for a few days.”

  Nancy paused, as if trying to assess the importance of what he'd just said. “So it's just a temporary thing—”

  “A leave of absence,” Jack put in.

  “—until you're back on track.” She could hear how depressed he was. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “I don't suppose you could get me some amphetamines,” he said, only half joking.

  “Gee, I'm afraid I just ran out.” She was thinking something over. “But I was just about to leave the institute, and if you wanted me to"—here goes—"I could come over for a while.” She held her breath, wondering what she'd just done.

  Jack wondered too. But his heart had lifted the moment she'd suggested it. He sat up in the bed now, rubbing his face; he'd have to shave again. And straighten up the joint.

  “Sure,” he said, “I'd like that. What time?”

  “Depends on the crosstown bus. But I'll be leaving here in a couple of minutes; otherwise, Sprague'll find something else for me to do.”

  The moment they hung up, he stumbled into the bathroom, tossed his shirt on the towel rack, and lathered up his face. He noticed himself putting a fresh blade in the razor, and humming a few bars of vintage Springsteen.

  He was happy about this; he was looking forward to it. And only a few hours earner he was at absolute ground zero. Funny. It made him think he liked this Nancy even more than he knew.

  He made sure not to cut himself shaving, put on a fresh shirt, and spent the rest of the time smoothing out the comforter on the bed, drawing the heavy curtains that he used to keep out the daylight when he slept late, stacking some Joe Pass records on the stereo; he had a CD player, but almost all the music he liked he'd accumulated over the years on albums. And most of it wasn't likely to be reissued on CD; his favorites were an acquired taste, which few people had ever acquired. Next to his Strato-caster guitar, his records were his most prized possessions.

  Nancy arrived just as he was scanning the barren shelves of his refrigerator for something to serve. “Before you take off your coat,” he said, “I should warn you that the only thing I can offer you is a bag of stale Chips Ahoy and a beer.”

  She looked unenthused; she also looked great, a bright red scarf tied loosely around her throat, her purse—more of a canvas knapsack, really—tossed over one shoulder.

  “Are you hungry? I know a place not far from here where we can get some great octopus heads.”

  She smiled.

  “Come on.”

  He knew it was officially a date when he didn't take her to the Olympia. This made it their second, though it didn't really feel that way. He'd seen so much of her at the institute, ever since the Garcia episode, that he felt, already . . . well, something more for her than he would have expected. They went to a relatively upscale place, and drank Amstel Lights while waiting for a table.

  Dinner itself was overpriced and not especially good, but the way Jack looked at it, you went to these loud and crowded restaurants not to eat but to see and be seen. Being seen with Nancy was very pleasant; the guy at the next table, there on what was apparently a blind date that wasn't going so well, kept looking over at her, and Jack couldn't blame him. She was dressed casually, in fitted trousers and a soft-mushroom-colored sweater, nothing particularly showy or glamorous. But she was so damned pretty—her skin so pale and smooth, her black hair so thick and glossy, her features so delicate—that she was arresting nonetheless. Jack wondered just how beautiful she'd be if she pulled out all the stops. And hoped he'd have a chance to see one day.

  Afterward, they went back to his apartment, Nancy hesitating for a second outside the building. “It is a school night,” she said, and Jack said, “I'll write you a note.” When she still hesitated, he added, “Besides, I just got fired.”

  "Furloughed” she corrected.

  “That's a good word.”

  Upstairs, he gave her another beer, since it was all he had, and then gestured toward the bed.

  Nancy looked stunned.

  “Sorry, but we either have to sit at that card table by the window, or on the bed.”

  “Strategic planning,” she said.

  “Men are all alike.” He turned on the Joe Pass records, men joined her on the bed; they pushed the pillows against the wall and used them as backrests.

  At first they talked the same way they had at the restaurant—in high, bright tones, about movies and music and their least favorite TV commercials. But as they relaxed, and the gentle strains of the acoustic guitar played on around them, they found themselves getting quieter, and more introspective, and sliding by degrees lower and lower against the pillows. And Jack found himself, now that he was away from the noise and commotion, remembering all that had happened earlier in the day—the bad news from Burt, and the terrible shock he'd gotten in the pit. That was the one thing—the sight of his mother—that he hadn't confessed to Nancy. Even after everything she already knew about him, he was afraid that if he told her about what he thought he'd seen that afternoon, he'd sound totally off the wall. Bad enough that he was temporarily out of work; he didn't want her thinking she was in bed—or more precisely, on the bed—with a complete basket case.

  “You're getting gloomy again, aren't you?”

  “Huh?”

  “Getting gloomy. Thinking bad thoughts.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” He rolled over onto his stomach, bunching a pillow under his chin and folding his arms around it. “I just realized it's after eleven. I'd be leaving the theater around now.”

  “And then what?” She rolled over on one side, to face him.

  “Then I'd probably be going to the Olympia. With Vinnie, or Haywood.” He put his head down, into the pillow. His hair curled in black tendrils over the back of his collar. He didn't say anything else, and Nancy wasn't sure what to say, either. She put out one hand and gently rubbed his shoulder.

  “That feels good,” he mumbled into the pillow.

  “Ancient Oriental art.”

  He dropped his shoulders more, and Nancy let her hand graze across his upper back. Under his thin flannel shirt, his body felt hard and muscular. And massive; only once had she dated anyone as tall and broad as Jack. A football player who'd spent every second trying to get her into bed. Without success. “You don't know what you're missing,” he'd said, after throwing in the towel. “I'll live with it,” Nancy'd replied.

  The record ended, and Nancy heard another one drop.

  “Hope you like Joe Pass,” Jack said, softly.

  “If that's who this is, I do.”

  She leaned up on one elbow, and massaged his shoulders more firmly. He exhaled, contentedly. Should she go on, she wondered? It was clear she'd get no argument from Jack. She glanced across him, at the clock on the bedside table. It was eleven-thirty now. If she kept this up much longer, it would lead to a foregone conclusion. Was that what she wanted? Damn. Why were these things always so complicated?

  He fidgeted on the bed, pulling his shirttails loose from his pants. No trouble reading that message. She snaked one hand under the shirt, and brushed slowly up and down his back. He sighed.

  Damn. Damn. Damn.

  “Nails,” he whispered.

  And she turned her hand so that her fingernails lightly scored his back.

  With one arm, he reached out and flicked off the bedside lamp. The room was plunged into total darkness.

  For Jack, it felt like an actual fall, a sudden immersion into soothing blackness. With the killing of the light that had been falling on the head of the bed, there came an end to the images and thoughts th
at had continued to plague his conscious mind. He let himself drift now to a deeper, darker, more sensual level, let himself revel in the feel of Nancy's hand—and then both of her hands, as she straddled him—lifting his shirt up and over his shoulders, kneading his flesh between her fingers, lightly raking her nails along his spine. He felt her sitting—perching, really—on the back of his thighs, leaning forward to press his shoulder blades, leaning back to trail her fingers down his rib cage. He could feel her knees clamped to the outside of his legs, and when she ran one fingertip in a horizontal line across his lower back, he longed to feel her reach around and under him and with those fine white fingers, with the sharp, attentive nails, unfasten his belt: He longed to roll over, lift that tawny sweater up and over her head, and take her naked body between his hands.

  But even as he dreamed of taking her in his arms, of rolling over and making love to her, he felt himself falling ever closer to sleep, felt his energy ebbing into the mattress. The nap he'd taken after the matinee was the first deep sleep he'd had in days; it had whetted his appetite, refreshed his taste for that necessary oblivion. Now he was torn between desire and exhaustion, Nancy's ministrations at once exciting his ardor and driving him deeper into that torpor his body craved. He willed himself to awaken and make love to her, but willing and doing were not the same. Or were they? He was no longer sure what he was actually doing and what he was only imagining, what was real and what was fantasy. His body and mind felt so numbed with pleasure, with simple sensation. Had he in fact rolled over? Was he holding Nancy's breasts, unseen in the dark but small and soft, in the palms of his hands? He didn't recall taking her clothes off her, but now she was naked; he didn't recall undressing himself, but he was naked too. Time seemed to have stood still. The room, with the heavy curtains drawn, was pitch black. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion, sometimes even replaying itself. He saw himself lifting the sweater over her head, as if it hadn't already been done; he felt her hands fumbling at his belt buckle, as if his pants weren't already off. He felt as if several hours had passed, and he had started and stopped many times. He wondered why she wasn't speaking to him, and when he asked, he was surprised to see she was kneeling in the middle of a yellow spiral, surrounded by little white houses with roofs like mushroom caps. “Ask the wizard,” she was saying, and all around him he heard a confused babble of voices, laughing, mocking him, urging him on. He wanted her desperately, but whose voices were these? How could he take her with these invisible witnesses watching his every move? “Don't worry about them,” Nancy was saying, “they're all dead anyway.”