by Jim Nisbet
“How about that first glass of wine instead?”
His smile faded.
“Red wine.”
His eyes shifted. “While we’re on the subject, there’s one other thing.”
Maybe I was tired. Usually I don’t trust the minor details of wage-earning to the hands of the people I do business with, whether they’re likable or not. “One other thing?”
The cashier was new but there was nothing new about that. Padraic beckoned, and she passed him a printout, which he turned over to me.
I had a look. “There seems to be a theme, here.”
“How perceptive. The question is, do you know them?”
“Know them? You can’t escape them.”
“Excellent!” Padraic said. He clapped me on the shoulder, eliciting a wince. He noticed. He gingerly removed his hand and said, “You’ll play them, then?”
“All of them?”
“If there’s time. If you know them all. If not, you could repeat a few from set to set.”
“But aren’t these tunes a little … patriotic? That’s the word.”
“Of course they’re patriotic. That’s the idea.” His cell phone began to chirp.
“Where the hell did you dig it up? The Library of Congress?”
“I took a poll.” He swept his arm at the room as he unclipped the phone from his belt. “It’s what they want. Hello.”
I stared at the list. Padraic might not have been the first merchant in San Francisco to display a large American flag in the front window of his business after September 11, 2001, but he came close. Padraic’s flag was up and showing no wrinkles before noon, Pacific Standard Time, and I can’t say that I blame him. Three nights a week, until he took it down some three months later, I sat on a chair in front of that flag and played standards.
“Padraic. What about jazz, America’s classical music?”
Padraic, listening to the cellphone clasped to his ear, raised a forefinger and wagged it right and left. I continued anyway. “Couldn’t we have more of a, I don’t know, not a musical debate exactly but some variety, a sort of a musical dialogue, let’s say?”
Agreeing with whomever he was talking to, Padraic wagged his finger back and forth and directed my attention to the front of the cafe. There the new cashier was helping a new waiter hang a new American flag in the alcove containing the mike stands. This flag was bigger than the earlier version. It would cover the entire window, like a curtain.
“How about,” I said, “Autumn in New York? Or Waltzing Matilda? Those are … they’re … relevant tunes…?”
Padraic put his hand over the mouthpiece of his phone and quietly mouthed, Too depressing, in English. He removed his hand and began to disagree with the guy on the phone, too, only louder and in Arabic.
At that moment my own phone rang. Twice in one week? It had to be a wrong number. Since Padraic had interrupted our conversation to answer his phone, I interrupted it to answer mine.
The voice beamed down from the satellite, inviolate. “Curly baby, I am calling to rock your world.”
“Oh, no. I only answered because I thought it was Carnegie Hall calling about my birthday tribute. Can’t we talk tomorrow, Ivy? I’d rather have my world rocked after I’ve had a good night’s sleep. It’s not so hard on my kinesthesia.”
“Sal ‘The King’ Kramer waits for no man nor no car sickness. Not only that but our quarry is scheduled to take the Midnight Flyer to L.A. tonight. You take possession of your new Lexus, yet?”
“How’d you know about the Lexus?”
“What, you think private hospital rooms come without telephones?”
“When did you talk to her?”
“Right before her mother pulled the plug. Is it gassed up?”
“Why?”
“The guy lives in Bolinas.”
“So? What’s that to me?”
“So come get me. Get a move on. Bolinas is a long way from Oakland.”
I stalled. “You’re nuts. What time is it?”
“It was my Daddy’s watch,” Ivy drawled. “I hated to pawn it.”
A clock hung over the grill in the back of the cafe. “It’s five minutes to seven.”
“So?”
“So I’m to hell and gone at 44th and Judah. It’ll take me at least an hour to get to you, fifteen minutes to gas up someplace along the way—”
Ivy laughed. “You know exactly where to gas up along the way.”
“Another hour and a half puts us at nine-forty-five probably ten o’clock just to get to Bolinas, let alone find your … quarry.”
“That’s why we’re taking the Lexus instead of your piece of shit Honda. It’ll be faster.”
Ivy knew I was stalling but I didn’t care, for, just then, I bumped my teeth with the edge of the cellphone. Earlier, restringing the guitar, I’d noticed that my hands weren’t as agile as they should have been. It was true I hadn’t played in a month. But I’d been warned about the aftereffects of my recent drug experiences, and now reality dawned. No matter what I thought about Padraic Mousaief’s patriotic playlist, it might be the only music I’d be capable of playing for a while. Maybe for a long while. Maybe—
“Curly? You there?”
“I’m here, Ivy.”
“You sound depressed.”
“Depressed? Why would I sound depressed?”
“If you’re at 44th and Judah, you’re about to kick off your first set in that shitbird cafe out there. Boring music for boring people in a boring place. Who wouldn’t be depressed?”
“Listen, Ivy,” I said sharply, “we can’t all live the exciting life of a full-time junky.”
“We can’t all be full-time shitty guitarists, either,” Ivy replied matter-of-factly.
“I can hardly believe I’m talking to the greatest jazz drummer ever to let me play with him,” I shot back, “let alone the best player I ever knew to just plain hang it the fuck up.”
“Listen to me carefully, Curly,” Ivy said evenly, “while I set you straight on the one fact you need to know about life.”
“Yeah? What fact is that?”
“The music business sucks.”
Padraic clapped shut his cellphone and tapped one of its corners against the crystal of his watch.
The front door of the cafe opened and four or five people trailed in, talking excitedly. The lights of a streetcar skimmed over the street behind them, borne along by the thunder of rolling stock.
“Thirty-two hundred bucks,” the phone said, the rumbling of the streetcar and the palaver of the crowd insufficient to drown the voice entirely. “Split two ways and I’ll cover expenses. Plus,” it added emphatically, “I’ll hit you with that hundred bucks you were so kind as to front me in my hour of need.”
I’d forgotten about that hundred bucks. But I said, “I’m losing you, Ivy.”
Padraic tapped my shoulder.
“All the expenses,” the phone continued. “Gasoline, bridge tolls, speedball, potato chips….”
Padraic placed a tumbler of red wine in my free hand. “You can eat after the first set.” He waved at a large slate that hung over the cash register, covered with menu items in colored chalk. “Anything you like.”
“Curly?” the phone said. “You there?”
I held the phone away from my face.
“Well?” Padraic said.
“Curly…?”
As before any gig, including yours, I powered down the phone and dropped it into my jacket pocket.
“Those two guys that just came in,” Padraic said in a stage whisper, “with the three girls? They build web sites.”
I swallowed half the tumbler of wine at a draught, took time to breathe, and downed the rest.
“They rent that storefront where the cabinetmaker used to be,” he added significantly. “Right up the street.”
“Try not to gloat.” I wiped my lips with the back of my sleeve. “Out of all the grapes pressed in California, how do you manage to find such lousy wine?” I o
ffered him the empty glass. “I’ll have another.”
“The neighborhood is changing,” Padraic said significantly.
“Caesar salad with roasted chicken,” I said, not glancing at the slate but watching Padraic. “And another glass of red.”
Padraic glanced at the empty glass, then looked at me.
“I’d like the wine now,” I said, “before I start.”
He took the glass but I could see the outburst welling up. Before he could speak, I told him, “Charge me, Padraic. Run a tab.” I held up my hands. “Look.” They were shaking. Padraic frowned at them. Then he looked at me.
“Bring it.”
Padraic handed the glass to the girl behind the counter. “Another cabernet.”
I walked to the alcove next to the front door and hung my jacket on the back of the chair. I kept on the watch cap. Somebody turned off the CD player, leaving the room to its chatter. Nobody looked my way.
I stripped the gig bag off the guitar and sat down in the little wooden chair in front of the American flag. Two twenty-somethings at a little round table not three feet beyond the microphones looked at me uncomfortably. Without consulting one another they began to gather their things. I placed Padraic’s list on the floor where I could see it and brought the guitar up to pitch in eight or ten strokes. By the time I’d improvised an introduction to the first tune on the list, the girls had moved to another table.
ALSO BY JIM NISBET
AVAILABLE FROM THE OVERLOOK PRESS
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“Sure, Nisbet breaks all the rules, but that’s really the whole point. His novels are the literary equivalent of road trips, and a good road trip follows no map.” —BOOKLIST
ALSO AVAILABLE AS E-BOOKS
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