by Russ Colson
¤
Suzanne, my taller sister, showed up at the front door. Eric and Beth had left three weeks ago, and I had been ignoring phone calls. I had been ignoring pretty much everything except Mr. Flat Five. But I couldn’t ignore her ringing the bell of my apartment. I probably needed a shower. Certainly a clean t-shirt.
“I’m worried about you,” she said. “Mom is worried too.”
“I’m fine,” I lied, trying to truncate the conversation so I could resume being frustrated with Mr. Flat Five. “I’m just busy.”
“No. You’re obsessed. Look at this place.” She gestured at the stacks of printed compositions scattered on the table, chairs, and other flat surfaces. “You’re hoarding. You’re not taking out the trash. You’re not eating right. This isn’t healthy.”
She was right. I had abandoned everything in pursuit of something I couldn’t have. I had to change something. I helped her clean the apartment.
I picked up Mr. Flat Five.
“What is that?” she asked.
“Something I wish I didn’t care about,” I answered.
“Why not throw it out?”
Her comment was off-hand and terrifying. Mr. Flat Five had been my sole interest for the last eight months. I would have willingly cut off a finger on the kitchen breadboard if it meant resuming our musical dialog, but I watched myself drop it in the trash. It was heart-breaking, but I also knew I would have to move the trash bag to the dumpster and even then, the dumpster wouldn’t get emptied for three days. Plenty of time to change my mind. Still, my hands felt weak. I sat at the small kitchen table.
Suzanne made me dinner, something I had forgotten I enjoyed. Spaghetti. Hand-made meatballs. The smell of simmering tomato sauce brought tears and I cried while she held me. I mourned for Josh and thought about Matthew Vante. I pulled myself together before the spaghetti burned and savored my first formal meal since I had met Mr. Flat Five.
“Now what?” she asked.
“Um—the crossword puzzle?” I ventured a guess. Nourishment made it easier to be funny.
“Not good enough. What’s the big picture? I’m not leaving here so you can get pulled back into writing scribbles on paper and neglecting your life. What are you going to be doing next week? Next month?”
I honestly hadn’t thought about anything other than Mr. Flat Five. I had no answer.
“Come on. You can’t just rot in this apartment.”
I thought. “Do you like jazz?” I asked.
“Hate it. When do we go?”
“How about tonight? There’s a jam session I’ve been wondering about.”
“Sounds dreadful. I’ll bring a book,” she smirked. “If it gets you out of this apartment, it can’t be as bad as I might think. Take a shower first, you’re getting ripe.”
¤
We drove her car to the Blue Monk and walked into the last chords of Miles Davis’s “All Blues.” Jazz was in the basement—too dark for the glitterati and loud enough to drown out the inconsiderate boobs who only come to talk about their social networks. The local jazz talent drank just enough beer to keep loose, but not enough to get looped. While the players swapped out, I briefly scanned the room for familiar faces.
“Let’s go.” I stopped Suzanne from paying the cover charge and turned for the door. “This was a bad idea.”
“What?” Suzanne put on her angry face. “This was not a bad idea. This is all you talk about and when we get out of that apartment, all you want is to turn around? I don’t think so.”
That’s when Grace saw me. She had been sitting towards the back of the room, and when she saw I was back, she slithered to my side, put her arm around me, and considered Suzanne with cold, possessive intent.
“This is Suzanne. My sister,” I said. “She dropped in for a visit.”
When Grace realized Suzanne wasn’t a girlfriend, she warmed up. “I’m Grace. We have common interests.” She made a point of squeezing me to her side. She did that woman thing where they put their nose next to the side of your face and pretend to whisper. “I didn’t know you were back in town, Honey. You left so suddenly.”
Grace was only interested in Mr. Flat Five. I knew that, Grace knew that, but my sister saw the perfect woman for her little brother. Grace was not going to be a positive influence in my rehabilitation.
“Let’s grab a table.” My sister took Grace by the arm and sent me to get drinks. When I returned with two beers and a glass of mediocre house red, they were laughing and getting acquainted. Until I explained Mr. Flat Five to Suzanne, I was trapped in a show of courtesy to Grace.
“...been waiting for him to show up, but guessed he had left town for good,” Grace eyed me over her beer and Suzanne gave her an approving look. “But he’s back and we can write music together again. I’ve missed our sessions and our inspiration. I’m guessing you haven’t told Suzanne about Mr. Flat Five?”
“Who is Mr. Flat Five?” Suzanne asked me, but the next group launched into “Anthropology” and casual conversation was conveniently overpowered. “I’ll tell you later,” I shouted in her ear.
Grace leaned over the table and quietly said something to Suzanne, who smiled and nodded. Suzanne turned to watch the band and Grace grabbed my sleeve and dragged me outside.
“Where the hell did you go?” Grace asked. “I woke up and you were gone. Mr. Flat Five was gone. I tried to find you.”
“I went to see a friend,” I said.
“You don’t have any friends,” she replied. “You’ve got me and it. Unless you’re done with both of us, in which case, I’ll take it and leave you to your sister.” Grace did not display the same charm she had shown my sister.
“We need to stop messing around with Mr. Flat Five,” I told her. “It’s not healthy.”
“Not so,” she replied. “It’s the most important thing in the world. It’s going to change music—our civilization. We’re going to change how people think. Seriously, if you don’t want it, give it to me.”
“I’m not giving it to anyone. I’m going to get rid of it.”
“You can’t. It’s mine. Josh took it from me. I want it back.”
Grace leaned forwards, invading my sense of space. She gripped my jacket and shook her head, emphasizing her words. Grace was losing control.
“What happened to Matt?” I asked Grace.
She let go and stepped back. Her breathing was rapid and her face flushed. Her adrenaline had initiated fight or flight. I saw her thinking through the panic when her expression changed.
“You went to Chicago, didn’t you? And you found Clayton. And he told you about Matt and me.” She paused, manipulating events. “Matt was a fling. A band romance. That’s done and now I’m all about you.” Grace reached for a diversion, trying to misdirect my attention. I knew how this trick worked, what she was doing.
“Matt’s dead,” I said. “Matt was the last one to own Mr. Flat Five before Josh left Chicago. Josh shows up here with Mr. Flat Five and then you appear. It’s not about me, it’s about Mr. Flat Five. Always has been. Nothing else.”
That stopped her. But Grace wasn’t willing to cede control of the situation. I might be slipping out of her influence, but I was only an obstacle to her possession of Mr. Flat Five. She took a step back, looked evil and guilty, then turned and ran. I went back inside.
My sister watched me from the table, watching for Grace to come down the stairs with me. I sat and tried to ignore her, but she grabbed my arm and yelled at the side of my head. “Where’s Grace?”
“Gone,” I said. “I wasn’t what she wanted.”
“You let her go?”
“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you back at home.”
“Then let’s go,” she said. “I’ve pretended to be a jazz fan long enough.”
“Do you mind if we stay for one more?” I asked. I had just thrown away Mr. Flat Five and faced-down Grace. For a rare moment, the music coming from the stage was enrapturing. It was the first music in months that hadn’t
been tainted by the addiction to Mr. Flat Five.
Suzanne watched me settling in and ordered another glass of house red. I even managed to have friendly conversations with some of the regulars and promised to return next week with my fingers warmed up for a turn at the piano.
“You look relaxed,” Suzanne told me on the way home. I sat back in the seat. I had been on edge for months. I felt at ease. I should have told her about Josh, Clayton, Matt, Grace, and Mr. Flat Five. But the street lights were hypnotizing and I enjoyed the ride.
Suzanne found a parking space in front of my building and we walked up to my room. I heard the fire door slam. My front door swung wide. I forgot Grace had a key to the room and she must have returned here after leaving me at the Blue Monk.
She had been in a frenzy, looking for Mr. Flat Five and all of our work cleaning the apartment had been put to waste. The only place she hadn’t checked was in the garbage—it probably never occurred to her that anyone would be able to throw it away. Mr. Flat Five was still resting where I had put him a few hours earlier.
“Grace did this?” Suzanne asked. She replaced books on the shelves. “She wanted it badly enough to trash your apartment? Is she crazy?”
“She’s obsessed. It does that to people. You believe it’s the most important thing and that nothing else matters. Once it does that to you, everything is justified.”
I flipped the deadbolt and stacked garbage in front of the door. If Grace returned, we’d hear her crash into the apartment. Maybe I could use my non-existent ninja skills. Maybe I could offer her a cup of decaf and pie, she’d take a nap, and everything would be fine. Maybe she would return after buying an assault rifle and we’d be in the early morning news.
“I need to explain about Mr. Flat Five,” I said. I collapsed on the couch. “Grace thinks it’s going to save the world. She’s convinced it was sent to us. Sent to her. She’s religious about it and she wants it back.”
“Is it? Religious?”
“I only know what it does,” I said. “Not why. There’s no operating manual, nothing on the Internet, I can only guess.”
I played Josh’s recordings of my encounter with Mr. Flat Five and tried to explain how it felt. I tried to explain how it becomes an obsession and why my life had become a neglected waste. I explained about Josh, Matt, Eric, Beth, and Clayton.
“It’s an addiction,” she concluded. “You should just get rid of it and get some counseling.”
“I suppose I behave like I’m addicted,” I agreed. “But that’s not exactly right. It’s a puzzle. The more you unlock it, the more mysteries you find. But for everything it gave me, it took something away. It’s like learning a new language; as you learn more, everything becomes clearer, but to someone who doesn’t speak the language, you become less understandable.”
“So Grace only sees things from her perspective?” my sister asked.
“Yep. She believes if you don’t know Mr. Flat Five, you don’t understand what’s real. And in her version of reality, she owns it and anyone who won’t give it to her is wrong. Possibly wrong enough to kill.”
“That’s a comforting thought,” Suzanne said. “She has a key to this apartment? Pack your toothbrush, little brother. We’re staying at my place tonight. The toy stays here in the garbage.”
¤
I woke up to the smell of coffee and roasting potatoes. Heaven was easy to find when Hell was so close.
Suzanne was in the kitchen, reading the newspaper and stirring bacon. Her Border Collie was within striking distance of anything that might pop out of the frypan. The dog’s motto was “Eat first, analyze later.”
I sat at the table, surrounding the warmth of a coffee cup with my fingers. Suzanne’s house was brighter than my apartment and I felt less anxious about the separation between Mr. Flat Five and myself.
“Eat,” Suzanne told me. She pushed a plate of food in front of my coffee cup. The dog repositioned to a direct line-of-sight with the bacon on my plate. Life must be so much simpler with a one-track mind.
“I’ve thought about calling the police or getting a restraining order,” I said. “But they’re going to want a reason. I can’t prove Grace killed Josh or Matt and they aren’t going to be interested if she is behaving like a jilted girlfriend. Grace is crazy, but not crazy enough to be outside the norm.”
“Why not just give it to her?” she asked. “Be done with it. She’ll leave you alone.”
“Grace plus that thing equals more crazy,” I said. “She’s going to start taking students with hopes of finding the next candidate for Mr. Flat Five. That student will get obsessed, like me, and if they don’t have a sister to show up and clean up the mess, then we have two crazies. Two crazies seem to end in one dead crazy. This needs to end somehow.”
“Then donate it to a museum.”
“Where it waits until someone performs a piano improvisation at an evening fund-raiser, it mimics the improvisation, which initiates a research project and makes a crazy PhD.”
I thought for a minute.
“I know what to do,” I said. “Can you drive me to the Post Office?”
¤
The waitress at the Blue Monk was wiping last night’s beer off the tables when I came in. The drummer unpacked his kit and Clint scarfed up a dinner of spaghetti and garlic-bread with excess butter. That would kill him some day. Or maybe not, since he was on a diet enforced by the poverty shared by all professional musicians.
I sat next to him.
“You going to play tonight?” he asked. He watched me, but concentrated on the spaghetti. “We’ve been worried about you.”
“I’m here to play,” I said. “Seen Grace lately?”
“Every night. She sits and listens. Occasionally gets on stage, but gets off after one or two songs. Irritable cuss. Nothing makes her happy. She plays like she’s too good for us. She’ll do these weird riffs and look at us like we’re morons because we don’t follow along.” He left greasy lip marks on the wine glass. “You two still a couple? You going to be irritable too?”
“That’s not the plan,” I told him. “We’ll see how it plays out.”
I sat at the piano for the first three numbers, trying to play straight. I ignored the voice of Mr. Flat Five in my head, the chords and progressions it wanted me to play. It was painful, but I was ecstatic. I was a standard jazz musician, just trying to be part of the norm. Nobody else on stage noticed anything unusual—it was beautiful.
And then Grace walked in.
She glared at me the entire time she unpacked her guitar. Breaking all decorum and unspoken rules, she dragged a chair on stage during the middle of the fourth song and hijacked the solo. Good jazz happens when musicians are having a conversation. Grace behaved badly, an awkward guest with bad habits. She shut out the other musicians and played chords inspired by our experience with Mr. Flat Five.
“Dammit. Stop!” I crashed the piano. Clint tried a few notes to keep things going, but the drummer had quit. The entire room stared at the musical wreck on stage.
“It’s not what you think it is,” I yelled. Grace flared her nostrils. I imagined her strangling me with a steel-wound guitar string. “You think you know it. You think it’s perfect. That it’s worth dying for. That all you have to do is learn everything it has to teach and you’ll be complete. But you’ve already lost yourself and it wants more. You’ll never be done and you’ll work anyone who helps you until they drop.”
I stopped. Grace climbed down from the stage, the uncomfortable silence swirling around her. She opened her guitar case.
“I don’t have it anymore,” I said, quietly. The silence in the room was cleansing. I knew I had done the right thing and that I would be happier tomorrow. “I sent it to Clayton.”
Grace dropped her guitar into the case, but further than what was good for it. The discordant clang of six unchorded guitar strings was the perfect sound effect behind her look of horror.
I couldn’t force myself to destroy it, but shipp
ing it to Clayton was an acceptable compromise. I knew he hated Mr. Flat Five more than he loved his Fender Precision Bass, and I wouldn’t have to watch the mayhem when he unwrapped that package. Grace ran from the room—I can only assume she was going to try to catch an evening flight to Chicago.
I don’t expect to hear from Clayton again. I did an awful thing to him. I don’t expect to hear from Grace again either, although I was much kinder to her. She’ll never lose the delusion of Mr. Flat Five, but she’ll never die from it, either.
As for me, I’m incomplete, and happy. I know the world is imperfect, and will always wonder if Mr. Flat Five would have made it better.
But I’ve also learned that demons have no coda.
Mark Niemann-Ross plays bass in Portland, Oregon, but does not appear in this story. His work has previously appeared in Analog Magazine and he is pleased to join the Society of Authors of Stupefying Stories. His anthology and kids book is available at strangewolf.us.
THE LAST UNIT
By Judith Field
“Jane, THAT MAD WOMAN’S HERE AGAIN,” says Ben, my summer student pharmacist, looking out of the dispensary into the shop.
“Keep your voice down!” I hiss, following his gaze. A woman in her mid-thirties stands by the counter. I think she must be an albino. She has white hair and skin with a pearly, translucent quality, as though if I look at her for long enough I’ll be able to see right through it to the muscles, the blood vessels, even the bones. Oval mirror-glasses cover most of the upper half of her heart-shaped face, obscuring the pink eyes I imagine lie underneath. When she speaks, it’s with a hard-to-place foreign accent. More of an intonation, really, just a clue that English isn’t her first language. She wears her usual white blouse, red skirt, and matching jacket. On the lapel is a badge: Priyanka Wong, Bewley Homes.
Bewley Homes built a new housing estate on the wasteland at the other end of the High Street from the pharmacy. All the roads on the estate are named after birds, mainly water fowl—Avocet Mews, Goosander Way, Widgeon Path—affordable homes, if you don’t mind living on a former industrial site where a permanent gale blasts off the river. They started building the estate around the same time that Alan and I managed to force our ageing fledglings out of the nest and decided to downsize. We went to look at a house configured like a cereal packet—tiny rooms with high ceilings, in Whinchat Lane, just off Merganser Gardens.