The Musician and the Monster

by Jenya Keefe

  “No.”

  Lily smiled. “I think it suits her.”

  The newscast abruptly cut away from Oberon’s speech to a gigantic protest happening outside the Tiepolo Ballroom. The narrow Manhattan street was full of shouting, chanting people. They waved hand-lettered signs:

  GO BACK TO HELL DEMON

  EARTH FOR HUMANS

  GOD HATES THE ELF

  “Why do you think he’s here?” he asked Lily. “Do you think he really just wants to study our music?”

  “What else could he study, living all the way out here?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe living out here wasn’t the plan.”

  “It wasn’t,” she said. “But he wasn’t safe. They needed to hide him.”

  It certainly didn’t look safe in Manhattan right now. A row of police in riot gear, with plexiglass shields, were struggling to keep the surging, screaming crowd away from the building. An amber glass bottle, shining in the lights of the streetlamps, arced over the crowd; it smashed onto the façade of the building and burst into a huge chrysanthemum of red flame.

  “Jesus!” said Ángel.

  On the screen before them, the angry crowd overwhelmed the line of police. Individual cops were thrust aside, struggling, as the crowd surged toward the elegant doorway of the Tiepolo like a single organism. More Molotov cocktails flew; more blossoms of flame.

  “Jesus,” breathed Ángel again. “They’ll tear him to pieces.”

  Lily picked up her phone and called the gatehouse. “John,” she said, her voice taut with fear.

  After a moment she turned to Ángel. “They’re evacuating the building. They had a plan. It’s going to be all right.”

  “Holy shit.” Ángel’s eyes were glued to the screen. Lit by the flames and the whirling lights of police cars, chaos reigned in the street: fire crews, cops, shouting people, flying bottles. Searchlights played over a chaotic riot of hundreds of furious people, all struggling as one to kill Oberon.

  The talking heads on the television announced that the cultural envoy from the Otherworld was no longer in the building. Ángel watched as the people broke through the doors of the Tiepolo Ballroom and begin pouring inside. Apparently they were going room to room, trying to find Oberon. He shivered, chilled by the animal violence of the mob.

  John Va called later that night to report that seven people had been injured, over two hundred arrested, and Oberon was safe.

  Ángel slept poorly that night, his dreams haunted by visions of hatred and fire. The next day he did what he always did when he was unsettled—he turned to music. Specifically, he checked out the music room, which turned out to be home to dozens of instruments. Along with the obvious—piano, electric keyboards, guitar—others were packed into black boxes on the shelves. Banjo, violin, flute, clarinet, trumpet, xylophone, and several hand drums. You could rig out a high school band in here. He wondered if the envoy had bought these instruments, or if they’d come with the house. Most of it was acoustic. Did Oberon have a prejudice against electronic amplification? Maybe he would ask him.

  The guitar was a Yamaha dreadnought, newer and certainly more expensive than Ángel’s beloved Martin, no fancy inlay to obscure the gleaming, perfectly even grain of the pale-yellow spruce soundboard. It was plain and beautiful and Ángel would bet money that it had not come with the house. This was Oberon’s guitar.

  There was a mandolin, cute and round-bellied. He’d never played one. He took it out of its case and touched the pick to its twinned strings, liking the high plaintive sweetness of its tone. It didn’t sound right when he strummed it like a guitar, though: he didn’t know what he was doing. It was difficult to finger the strings while at the same time supporting the instrument’s neck with his left hand. Digging around the case to see if there was a strap, he glanced up to the open door that led to the foyer when Lily came in from her shopping trip to the mecca of civilization called Stahlberg, accompanied by Logan the goon, carrying shopping bags.

  “Take those up to Ángel’s room,” she said to Logan, shedding her coat, “and that one to Oberon’s office. Ooh, it’s cold out! Ángel, help me with the groceries?”

  Ángel hauled bags into the kitchen with her. “Are the stores all empty now? Was there anything there you decided not to buy?”

  “It’s getting late in the year,” she said. “When it starts to snow, it’s a lot harder to get into town. I like to stock up, just in case we get snowed in.”

  “Snowed in?” he asked incredulously, unpacking cans from the bags and stacking them on the counter. “Like Little House on the Prairie?”

  Lily rolled her eyes. “Most places have this thing called winter, Ángel. The county snowplows don’t come all this way. Unpack that bag next. We sometimes get trapped for a while. Have you ever seen snow?”

  “Of course I’ve seen snow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a snowplow, though.”

  He pulled a plastic jar of instant coffee powder out of the bag and dropped it on the counter as though it were hot. “¡Ñooo!” he cried theatrically, clutching his hair. “¿Ai, señora, qué has hecho?”

  “Now, Ángel,” she said sternly, “there’s nothing wrong with instant coffee—”

  “¡Mierda de perro!”

  “And it’s cheaper than these beans,” she said, plopping a fat bag of dark-roast espresso beans on the counter, “and you don’t need one of these to make it!” She tossed a moka pot into the air, and he caught it, laughing.

  “And if you were smart you’d stick with tea,” she went on, shaking her finger at him. “It’s full of antioxidants and flavonoids—”

  “You are going to love my coffee.” He grabbed her hands and began foxtrotting her around the kitchen. “You’ll never touch tea again.”

  She clearly didn’t know the dance, but she was tiny and pliable, and she laughed as he whirled her around. He dipped her extravagantly, and she squeaked.

  That’s when he spotted Oberon leaning in the kitchen doorway, watching them. Ángel jumped like a scalded cat, almost dropping Lily to the floor and staggering away from them both.

  Lily recovered her feet gracefully. “Oberon!” She went to him, gingerly touched his sleeve with her fingertips. “We saw the riot on TV. Are you all right?”

  “I am fine, Lily,” he said. “Chandler and the others got me out, and then stayed to evacuate the building. No one was seriously hurt.”

  “Did she know there were going to be protests?”

  “There usually are. She didn’t know they were going to turn violent, but she was prepared.”

  “Well, we’re glad you’re home safe,” she said. “Are you hungry? Would you like some tea?” Lily glanced over her shoulder at Ángel, who was hovering awkwardly in the shadow by the mudroom door. “Or Ángel could make you some coffee?”

  Oberon’s gaze touched Ángel and he swallowed. Would he ever get used to the electric sensation of being looked at by those luminous eyes?

  “I don’t really like coffee,” said Oberon.

  Ángel steeled himself. “That’s only because you haven’t tried mine,” he said, stepping forward to pick up the new moka pot. “Did you buy milk?”

  Ángel looked over the clothes Lily had brought him yesterday.

  It was the first of September, and apparently up here that meant that summer was over. The weather had turned gray and blustery, and the wind whined and cried at the windows. Ángel’s Florida wardrobe of shorts, jeans, and T-shirts was already obsolete.

  He now owned a forest-green heavy waterproof coat with a hood; lace-up boots with rubbery soles and insulated lining; three extra pairs of jeans and several long-sleeved waffle-knit henley shirts; some sweaters and sweatshirts; and one boho cotton smock shirt, like the ones she wore every day, in a soft sky blue.

  Everything fit, even the boots: she must have made notes of his sizes when she unpacked his bag. He suspected she had spent at least a thousand dollars on clothes for him.

  Oberon’s voice emerged from the security monitor
. “Ángel, will you please come down to my office?”

  “Okay,” Ángel said to the empty air. He padded barefoot down the stairs to Oberon’s office, nervous as a schoolboy called before the principal.

  Oberon was behind his desk, as usual. Behind him, the white roses almost glowed, stranger and more Otherworldly than ever now that the weather had turned wintery.

  “You’ve had an email from your friend Marissa Sommers,” Oberon said.

  “I do?” Finally! Delighted, Ángel bounced a little on his toes as he approached the desk.

  “You do,” said Oberon. “Please sit down. Chandler has some concerns.”

  Ángel looked around and saw, to his surprise, that Chandler was standing in the corner, her face grave. A page of letter-sized paper was in her hand.

  “This email seems to be in some sort of code.” She brandished the paper. Ángel reached for it, but she pulled it back.

  “What?” Angel blinked at her. “Give it to me.”

  Oberon said, “Ángel. Please sit.”

  He looked from Oberon to Chandler. The envoy was, as usual, beautiful and strange and entirely unreadable, watching Ángel with the patient impassivity of a cat. Chandler stood as straight as a Marine in her navy pantsuit, dark braid shining, shoulders back. Nothing about her military bearing suggested that she was a woman who liked Broadway melodies or Looney Tunes marsupials.

  Cold fright streaked down Ángel’s spine. Was he in trouble? What was wrong? He perched on the edge of one of the wingback chairs.

  “The email,” said Oberon, “contains deliberate gender subversion in the salutation. Chandler thinks that this might be a signal to the reader to look out for a hidden message in the body of the email, which is, even to my eye, written in a very stilted manner. It closes with a signature that is not the sender’s name. It is, all in all, a rather strange letter, and I’ve judged Chandler’s concerns to be valid.”

  Ángel listened to this with growing bewilderment. “I don’t understand this. Marissa is my best friend, closer than family. She would never write anything that would put me in danger, or you either. She’s not a . . . She’s a drummer. She tends bar. She’s not a secret agent. We don’t write to each other in code.”

  “I told you I don’t like lies, Ángel,” said Chandler, folding her arms over her chest.

  Ángel spread his hands incredulously.

  “Why would she address the letter to you as if you were a woman?” asked Chandler.

  “I don’t know. She doesn’t, usually.”

  “Why would she sign a name other than her own?”

  “I don’t know.” Ángel chewed his lip “Sometimes she calls me Angie or Angela. And I call her Mickey. Is that what she did? It’s just to be silly. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  Chandler was clearly more in the mood to ask questions than to answer them. “In your email to Marissa, you alerted her to the fact that security would be reading her reply. How did you expect her to respond to that?”

  “Chandler, I don’t know. We’ve never been in a situation like this before; we didn’t plan to . . .” She looked skeptical. Impatiently, he said, “Just let me read the letter. I can’t interpret it if you won’t let me read it.”

  “And if you do interpret it,” asked Chandler, “will you explain it? Or will you keep Marissa’s secrets?”

  Ángel stared at her. “I can’t answer that without knowing what the letter says.”

  Chandler looked him like a doctor examining a specimen, and then turned briskly to Oberon. “I’m not sure we can risk it. I’ll send a man to Miami to interview the girl and make sure that she’s not being coerced in any way, and in the meantime—”

  “No,” said Ángel loudly, standing up, his face hot. In an instant all his fear and anxiety had changed to anger. “Leave her alone.”

  “In the meantime,” pressed Chandler, “we should quarantine Ángel from any further communications.”

  Ángel’s temper snapped. “No you don’t. You give me that letter, or I’m walking out of here.” Her mouth tightened, but he overrode her. “No!” he said again, glaring between her and Oberon. “This is the fucking end of enough. You can take back the money and go ahead and prosecute my dad—he can face the consequences of his fuckup. You let me have my letters from Marissa, or I’m going over the wall.”

  Chandler’s face was like stone. “There could be legal consequences for you if you break your contract with the DOR.”

  “Then I’ll go to jail!” cried Ángel. “Where I’ll have no privacy, no right to come and go, and I’ll get my letters from Marissa!”

  “Enough,” said Oberon, quietly.

  Ángel glared at Chandler, nearly vibrating with fury.

  “That’s enough,” said Oberon again. “There is no need for threats or ultimatums. This quandary is easily resolved.” He was doing something with his voice, using some soothing tone, like warm maple syrup. “Chandler, please let Ángel read the letter. Ángel will explain to you the letter’s import, if it has one, and then we will all understand.”

  The muscle in Chandler’s jaw was working. “And if he doesn’t?”

  “I think he will. Please, Chandler.”

  She reluctantly handed Ángel the folded sheet of paper. He unfolded it, and read it.

  Oh my sweet Rebecca,

  How your sadness claims you, how your loneliness chains you.

  I haven’t heard you on the telephone, but I know you’re all alone. My heart has been broken since the day you said goodbye. My tears flow, but they don’t show in the Baltic rain. How can I go on without you?

  Feel the spirit of the sky, feel the birds flying by. The angels fly over your head, we’ll be friends until the end.

  You don’t have to face it alone. Look at the stars, remember how the world was all ours. Call my name. Someday I’ll see your smile again. My love is strong enough to last until the end of the world.

  I love you,

  Ricardo

  P.S. In a strange place, in a new land, remember he’s your brother under that different skin.

  He sat down and read it again.

  “Well?” said Chandler, impatiently.

  He looked up at her, his mouth trembling with the urge to either laugh or cry. “You read this and thought ‘secret code conspiracy’? You have got to be out of your fucking mind.” She drew an indignant breath. Ángel pointed at Oberon with the letter. “He is from Magical Fairy Land. You have no goddamn excuse.”

  “Why does she sign her name Ricardo?” demanded Chandler.

  Ángel met her eyes and sang, “‘I love you, Ricardo, Ricardo, I love you, Ricardo, do you love me still?’”

  Chandler’s eyes widened.

  “Do you want me to sing them all for you?” Ángel asked. “I can. ‘Oh my sweet Rebecca, how your sadness claims you,’” he sang, filling his voice with mocking tenderness, “‘my sweet Rebecca, how your loneliness chains you.’”

  She held out her hand for the letter. He gave it to her, and she studied it. Then she snarled, “Seriously,” dropped the letter on the floor, and stalked out of the room.

  “Apology accepted!” yelled Ángel at her disappearing back.

  Snorting, he bent and picked up the letter.

  “Ángel,” said Oberon, and the laugh died in Ángel’s throat. He warily eyed the envoy, still sitting impassively at his desk.

  “I am from Magical Fairy Land,” said the envoy drily. “Will you explain this to me?”

  Ángel returned to his perch on the edge of the uncomfortable leather chair, folding the paper nervously between his fingers. “It’s all lyrics,” he explained, “from MelodEye songs.”

  “MelodEye?”

  “Um, they were a band. From Denmark. The meaning of the letter is exactly what it says—that Marissa misses me and she loves me. And she even tells me to be nice to you, there at the end. There isn’t any hidden message; it reads weird because it’s just entirely MelodEye lyrics.”

  “Why is it entirely
MelodEye lyrics?”

  Ángel sighed, scratching his head. “It’s—it’s kind of a joke? She knew I would like it.”

  Oberon kept examining him with those faultless gold-green eyes, so Ángel tried again. “We met in college and we bonded over MelodEye songs. They were really popular in the seventies, so almost everyone knows their songs, but they are definitely not a cool band, and when we found out we both loved them, it was like . . . We went to their reunion concert together a few years ago, and we were the youngest people there, and it was incredibly great. She knew I would remember the times we went out and danced to these songs, or when we played them and sang them together. She knew it would make me happy to think of that.” He looked down at the paper. “She’s a very cool person. Honestly, you can’t blame Chandler for not getting it, because no one else would think to write a letter like this. It probably took Marissa hours to find lyrics that would make even this much sense.”

  “It is a gift of love that she made for you.”

  “Yeah,” said Ángel, tears pricking his eyes. “That’s what it is.”

  “Thank you for the explanation.” Oberon’s voice held that warm sweet timbre that it sometimes took on. “I’ll tell Chandler not to threaten to cut you off from Marissa again.”

  Ángel breathed deeply, and the constriction in his chest eased. “That means a lot to me.”

  “Would I like MelodEye songs?”

  Ángel laughed. “I don’t know. But you uploaded a bunch of them from my phone, so you can check them out. I should warn you, though,” he added, “it ain’t no Shostakovich. MelodEye can be kind of awesomely dumb.”

  Oberon emitted a low subsonic rumble. “I’m not sure what ‘awesomely dumb’ means.”

  Ángel smiled at him. “Well, listen to some MelodEye and you’ll see.”

  At dinner they perched, as usual, on stools at the island in the kitchen, and as they ate soup Oberon told Lily that Ángel had introduced him to MelodEye. “Oh my Lord,” said Lily, “that’s all they played at my sister Tammy’s wedding reception. Everyone danced. You should have seen all the old Vietnamese men dancing to ‘Waterloo.’”