He takes out his wallet and fumbles the handoff and the card falls behind the counter.
“I suppose you want me to find it,” says the owner.
“I can cancel it,” he says.
“Maybe you should do that. Call the bank right now, cuz I’m lookin’ hard and I don’t see it.”
He glares at the owner and feels the muscles in his right arm tighten. He wants to knock the man’s head off with a roundhouse punch. Instead, he sets the ice on top of the beer, tips the hand truck, and starts for the door.
“Where you goin’ with those suds?” says the owner.
“I lost your invoice,” he says. “Can’t deliver without the paperwork.”
The owner pulls a handgun from beneath the counter. “I’d stop right there if I was you.”
“You gonna shoot me?” he says. He points at the camera in the corner near the ceiling. “You gonna kill me on closed-circuit TV?”
The owner lowers the gun. “All right, plastic man. You win. Just leave the beer.”
“I’ll take a trade,” he says.
The owner bends down and picks up the card. He slides it through the slot on his register.
“You can cancel that transaction. I want the card and the ice.”
The owner hits a button and puts the card on the counter. He smiles – a front tooth missing and a gold cap.
A light in the ceiling flashes and pops.
He slides the hand truck out from under the load. “I’ll leave the beer right here,” he says. “I’m sure you can manage.”
“You can’t leave it in the door.”
“It’s not in the door.” He grabs his credit card and the bag of ice. “See. I can get out. No problem.”
He hustles back to the truck, buttons up the rear, and raises the lift. He keeps an eye on the side-view mirrors while he starts the engine. He rolls off using his right hand to shift and steer. His left hand is pleasantly numb, resting in the ice like a dead fish.
THE NEXT delivery takes more time. He gripes out loud about the market being run-down, about its thick stoop and heavy door, its narrow and cluttered aisles. Looking inside, he sees the wholesome young woman who works the counter two or three mornings a week. She looks over the shoulder of the customer counting his change and waves.
Pulling with one hand, he gets stuck at the stoop. His second attempt fails. A man wanting to get through the door plants a heavy boot on the bottom of the hand truck and gives him a boost.
“Thanks,” he says.
The man grunts and brushes past him toward the magazine stand.
He wheels the load to the rear of the store and leaves the beer stacked against the wall. He waits until the customers have gone.
“You okay?” says the young woman, her face filled with concern.
“Got a bum hand,” he says.
“Sorry,” she says. “You should’ve taken the day off.”
“Just happened,” he says. “Here’s the bad news for the beer. I need you to sign this one.”
She initials the paper. He breathes in her scent. “Is that shampoo or perfume, or what?”
She smiles. “I don’t know. I don’t wear perfume.”
“It’s nice.” He stares at her initials. “Where’s Frank?”
“He’s in back. You need to see him?”
He looks up. “No. Just tell him I said hello.” He wants very much to reach across the counter and touch her. He hates it that his hand is throbbing. “I’d rather see you than him,” he says, “but don’t tell Frank I said that. He’d only feel bad.”
She smiles again. “Are you flirting with me?”
“No,” he says, backing away from the counter, feeling a sudden pinch in his gut. “I hope not.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, the blood rising in her cheeks. “I didn’t mean anything.”
“I didn’t either,” he says. He stuffs the paper in his shirt. “You’re nice. It’s nice to see you.”
He heads for the door and pushes the hand truck over the stoop. He stops and turns. He lifts his arm and tries to wave but his swollen hand floats in the air like an inflated rubber glove. He feels silly and self-conscious. I’m a clown, he says to himself. A damn fool.
AT THE Black & White Club, he sips his drink and looks closely at the woman who appears to be sitting with him at the table. She wears a hat with a large white brim and a veil. Because of the hat, the dim light, and the cigarette smoke, he finds it impossible to see her face. He follows the outline of her cheeks and chin but all the other details elude him. In sharp contrast, her arms and shoulders, accentuated by a tight, thin, sleeveless dress, reveal a tempting symmetry, a curve and slope so enticing that he wants to brush his lips across her skin. It’s cooler than usual in the club. He notices the slight rising and falling of her chest.
“You okay?” he says.
The veil trembles with the give and take of her breathing.
He rubs his knuckles. “Something wrong?”
“What makes you ask?” says the woman.
“Since we got here,” he says, “you haven’t said a word.”
“When did we get here?”
“I’m not sure. Later than usual.”
“We missed Django,” she says.
“We did?”
“That’s right. Django was here. But we were late.”
He glances at the stage. “I didn’t know.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she says. She sits with her forearms on the table, her right hand resting on top of her left. “You’re a fool,” she says. “What did you see in me?”
“I’m not sure,” he says. “Nothing was clear – the lights, the smoke – ”
“That’s not how it seemed.”
“No,” he says. “I suppose not.”
“If you couldn’t see, why did you do it?”
“I was bored.”
“That’s not a pretty thing to say.”
“All right,” he says. “Some things I could see.”
“Yes,” she says. “I know.”
He spins his drink on a ring of condensation. “I wanted what I saw. It was that – and the boredom.”
“Whenever I heard you play,” she says, “I thought you were playing for me, just me.”
With a steady gaze, he tries to penetrate her veil.
“It was difficult for me to sit with another man and listen to you.”
He wonders if she’s telling the truth. “Music is like that,” he says.
“But you did it,” she says. “You made it that way.”
“Yes.”
“You used your guitar for me?”
“Yes. At the end.”
“You’re unlucky,” she says.
“I’ve heard that before. But I’m not so sure. I have a history.”
“That sounds mysterious,” she says. “Are you from another country? Did you kill a man?”
“No, not me.”
“Then you’re unlucky.”
“I believe in pattern and symmetry,” he says. “Like a song. Like the curve of your neck and the slope of your shoulders.”
“Yes,” she says. “But you’re still unlucky.”
He downs the rest of his drink. “Say a man commits murder and gets away with it. Will another man pay for the crime?”
“Why should he?” says the woman. “There’s no justice in that.”
“Justice is hardly the point,” he says. “Symmetry is the point.”
The woman laughs. “I see. God keeps a ledger, a sheet with long columns, and He keeps it balanced any way He can. Is that what you believe?”
“Why not?”
“You’re trying too hard,” she says. “You’re trying to explain things.”
“Maybe so. But when enough water builds up behind a dam – maybe it’s a natural disaster, or man-made, if you like – the dam breaks so the water can even out.” He stops. He wonders what would happen if he reached over and lifted the veil. “Innocent people get swept away.”
“I’m tired of this,” says the woman. She turns toward the couple at the next table.
He looks over and sees a young woman with red hair. She raises her drink and throws it in the face of the older man sitting across from her. A waiter appears with a fresh cocktail and a towel. The man wipes his face. “I hope that satisfies you,” he says. She leans back in her chair and smiles. “Oh, darling,” she says. “I’ll never be satisfied.” The waiter hovers over the man and dabs at his suit with the dry corner of a towel. “Bravo,” says a voice from somewhere in the room. “Well done,” says another.
Concerned about the tiff, the manager of the club comes over and says a few inaudible words to the couple. He offers an apology to those sitting nearby.
A girl carrying a tray and wearing a jacket and short skirt follows the manager. “Cigars, cigarettes, chocolate,” she says.
“Swiss chocolate?” says Coleman.
“No. Nothin’ fancy,” says the girl. “Unless you want an imported cigar.”
“No thanks,” he says.
“Nice hat,” says the girl. “It’s classy, with the veil and all.”
“Thank you,” says the woman. “Do you have chocolate mints?”
“Sorry,” says the girl. “Straight chocolate is all I got.”
“I’ll take a rose,” he says.
“Dark or light?” says the girl.
“Dark.”
The girl lays a long-stemmed rose on the table and then takes her tray elsewhere.
“That’s a sad but lovely rose,” says the woman.
“Then it’s perfect,” he says.
“What are you trying to do? Are you trying to make things pretty?”
“That hardly seems possible.”
“Do you still want me?”
He gazes at her arms and shoulders. He sees the shadow between her breasts. “Yes,” he says. “That never changes.”
“You can say that?” she says. “Even after what happened?”
“Of course. What happened had nothing to do with you.”
“You’re a fool. An unlucky fool.”
“You’ve said that.”
“I have guilt, you know. I should’ve said or done something.”
“There was nothing you could’ve done.”
“You’re kind to say it.” She reaches for his hand but draws back before touching his crooked fingers.
“There was nothing,” he says.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“And you want me?”
“Yes. It’s always the same.”
The woman stands. Her hand picks up the rose. She looks at the rose and then, with great care, lays it on the table. She walks off without saying good-bye. She goes to the bar, greets a steel-jawed man wearing a dark suit and tie. In the next moment, she lifts her veil and removes her hat. She dips and shakes her head and her hair falls around her shoulders.
He cranes his neck, trying to catch a glimpse of her face. But it’s no use. The room is too crowded. It’s filled with smoke and flickering light.
HE KNOCKS off early and pulls into his driveway before six. The wind is up out of the northwest. He sees the day’s overcast making way for black and purple clouds. He goes in through the garage, finds the house dark and stuffy. He opens the front and back doors and the windows that aren’t painted shut. Cool air rushes in with the scent of damp soil. His hand throbs. He takes a double dose of pills. He shuffles to the freezer, dumps three trays of ice into a bucket, and buries his hand in the cubes.
He walks into the living room and sees a station wagon pull up at the curb. With his hand deep in the ice, he watches as the landlord slides out of her car, lowers the tailgate, and pulls out a stack of red pails. She hurries up the walk, her breasts nearly visible beneath a thin cotton shirt, her cutoffs revealing the broad curve of her hips and the firmness of her thighs. She lets herself in.
“Big rain on the way,” she says. “Looks like I’m just in time.” She points a finger at the ceiling. “I’m worried about that old roof. If she starts to leak, you can set these pails in the attic – head off some of the damage.”
“Is there a problem?” he says. His eyes do a once-over of the ceiling and then settle on her. “Looks fine to me.”
“Can’t be careful enough,” says the landlord. “Once I went to Sacramento to visit a friend and got caught in a three-day blow. The windows rattled and the roof leaked like a sieve. The whole place looked to be made of cardboard. My friend kept apologizing. He said, ‘Everything in California is built like a shoe box.’ He thought the paper walls were on account of the weather. But I knew better. There’s no fear of God in California. If they had any respect, they’d put up stuff strong enough to take a beating. You gotta be prepared, I say. So I’ll leave you these, just in case.”
She puts the stack of pails on the floor. “If you need a few more, let me know.” She turns and looks up through the dirty screen. “Seems like God’s a little pissed off today.” Then the screen door slams and she’s gone.
He hears thunder groaning in the distance. The sound strikes him now like the murmur of troubled voices, a kind of warning, though this time the storm approaches, as opposed to an earlier time, a different night, when a woman in a sleeveless shirt with a low neckline stood in the parking lot, almost empty, puddles like small mirrors catching her in fragments, while the thunder moved away, the flashes of light over her bare shoulder growing dim. He can’t see her face. It’s as if she’d arrived wearing a gray veil and then never took it off.
He takes a handful of ice and drops it in a glass. He fills the glass with vodka. He picks up the drink and wraps his arm around the bucket and walks into the living room. Through the window he sees the trees in the front yard bending. He hears the sound of rushing water. He sits on the couch and rests his hand on the ice. He sips his drink. The room is darker now than when he came home. Better to leave it dark, he thinks. He likes the cool wind and the scent of damp soil.
He closes his eyes and hears the thunder as if it were a fading sound. He thinks of the woman without a name or face and the rain-washed parking lot glistening under the streetlights. He wonders if the pills will let him sleep. Should he take more? How many does he need? He feels uneasy, despite the distance and the years, knowing that the parking lot in question is still in Chicago behind the Green Mill. He’d been playing there for two weeks, sitting in as a guest or a substitute with different groups, trying to keep himself on the road, putting off his inevitable return to Michigan, Maureen, and his four-year-old daughter.
He sits on the couch drinking vodka. The living room flickers, a flash of lightning, and then thunder rolls from the west, growing louder as it comes, cracking and rumbling beyond the line of bowing trees. He wants to keep his mind occupied, pack his brain in the bucket of ice. But the sounds and smells of the storm, the vodka and the pills, and his hand, almost numb, make him unsteady and vulnerable, open like an upturned palm, unable to shut out his final days – his final minutes – at the Green Mill, that old and familiar club where, in the end, not a single friend or acquaintance came to hear him play.
IT IS 1992, the year that is perpetually with him, the year that will not let him rest.
An older woman with dark hair sits near the edge of the stage. He sees her for the first time over the tip of his shoe. Formal for the Mill, she wears a tight blue dress with spaghetti straps. He savors her arms and shoulders. He likes the look of her skin, the uneven shadings of experience. From where he stands, the lines and symmetry of her body achieve a stunning perfection.
Sitting with her is a serious man in a dark suit and a stylish red tie. This man goes unseen the first night and for several nights thereafter. The only thing visible is the woman: her blue dress or, later, her blouse with the plunging neckline; her green skirt, amazingly short; her boots and her leather pants.
He barely thinks of what he’s playing. He stays focused on the woman, holding her gaze through the rising and
falling of old ballads. A voice in his ear admonishes him, tells him to use his talent for its own sake. Don’t make it a job. Don’t use it for this. But it’s been twelve years since he performed with the trio, with Brian James, four or more since he played with anyone who mattered. He’s turned music into a reason, an excuse for staying away from home, from Maureen and his daughter. He plays with uninspired precision. The woman leans on the edge of the stage. Making a request, she extends her arm and hands him a paper napkin.
He remembers that she arrived early each night and chose the table that stood in his direct line of vision. He saw her willingness and her cool determination, her gutsy and provocative confidence – an exhibitionist at the top of her form. But all this drove him to distraction. She obscured everyone around her, including her companion, a well-built man, entirely ageless, wearing a midnight jacket, a vibrant but elegant tie, and a face of black steel – smooth, cold, unchanging.
He should’ve seen the man’s expression, the black skin drawn tight around the eyes and mouth. The threat should’ve been clear. But he gave himself to the excitement, the obsession, squandering songs and solos, spending everything he had, an offering to destiny that he might not remember the thing most worth remembering: the Mill with Jennifer in it, her head tilted to one side as she listened with unabashed joy.
Outside, the mounting storm offers its own excitement: a lightning flash, a clap of thunder, the wind buffeting the house. But now nothing will let him forget, not even the sound of white water or the black and purple sky. The back door slams. He jerks like a man touching a live wire, feels his hand throbbing as if he’d somehow smashed it again.
He cannot quiet his brain. He replays the moment when he opened the napkin. He sees the title of a song and a short list of directions, a summons. He plays the tune but pays no attention to the quality of his performance, and he packs up in a hurry after the last set, anxious for his meeting, for a room in a downtown hotel, a view of Lake Michigan – the dark water of her face.
He kisses the curve of her neck, traces the slope of her shoulder with his tongue. He loosens his grip. His fingers are keenly alive, sensing the nuances of her skin, the lean definition of her arms.
Of Song and Water Page 15