by Alfredo Vea
“You heard Mingus,” said Jesse, his voice filling with fatigue, “the African bass player who would have been born in Tunis. He would have brought Arabic jazz to Sicily. Did you hear him, grunting like a platoon sergeant and feeding lines to his boys, commanding them to be free, to go where the trumpet and drum kit have never gone?”
“There was a second song,” sang Carolina, “melodic and ethereal.”
“ ‘Reincarnation of a Lovebird,’ ” mumbled Jesse, now barely awake. “Sicily- would be the cultural center of the world.”
“People will dance to that new music of their own free will,” Carolina said while kissing his face and neck. “Ecoutez-moi, mon amour,” she said without realizing that she was speaking in an unfamiliar tongue. “The dead can sit out eight bars while the living love. Let them rest,” she said softly. “Let them rest.”
Jesse, beneath her, smiled as the weight of the world slipped from his shoulders. He tried to say something but forgot what it was. Just moments later he could barely remember his own name, but he knew that for the first time in decades he would sleep a dreamless sleep.
Up on Potrero Hill, at the homeless encampment, a dozen dusty veterans would gather to greet Vô Dahn, who was covered in bandages and still high from the medication and the botched anesthetic. Despite orders from Dr. Beckelman, the padre had put on his filthy clothing, then slipped out of the hospital through a service entrance.
Once at the homeless encampment, he hugged each soldier and bade him farewell. He then began the long walk down the hill. The homeless vets followed him as he walked down Twentieth Street and crossed Third Street, and they formed a platoon and moved closer to him as he walked toward the bay. One soldier even had enough courage to go with him as he crossed the boatyard and walked out to the end of a small, rotting pier.
“Where are you going, padre,” the soldier had asked. “Where are you going?”
All the vets would watch as Vô Dahn slipped quietly into the dark waters and, face up, began to float away. The waters would surely heal his wound. Years ago he had found Cassandra… Mai… in just this way Now he would find her again. As they had before, the waters would take him to her. They would dance together as they had in that bedroom in Hong Kong, the room on a hill where Cassandra had loved no one so very much. Cloaked in forgetful remembrance, they would love again. Thirty yards from the pier, the padre raised an arm and pointed to the dark sky overhead. A family of spider monkeys turned to listen.
“Look up,” he cried. “All of the electronics—all of the mechanics and hydraulics aboard that Mexican starship way up there… tournent surle jazz!” he cried out.
Homeless veterans on both sides of the bay heard him as he floated away. Some looked to the sea and saw him disappear in the swells of an outbound current. Some looked to the sky to see the lonely, rhythm-hungry spacecraft spinning by.
“Everything turns on jazz.”
Table of Contents
Praise
Praise
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
1 - the amazon luncheonette
2 - the house of toast
3 - the male recumbent
4 - french lessons
5 - the infamous blue ballet
6 - mexicans in space
7 - on tourette’s hill
8 - the ballet rose
9 - the spider’s banquet
10 - gods go begging
11 - the women’s chorus
12 - the biscuit libretto
13 - the soloist
14 - a night in tunisia