The Bear Comes Home

by Rafi Zabor

  Bostic put out sleepwalker hands. "Yes, master," he said.

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  "And evetyone thinks Vm trouble," Hatwell said.

  The Bear looked across the table at Iris. She was enjoying this pretty much the way she seemed to enjoy the spectacle of life in general when she could find a niche.

  Tv,o things happened almost at once. The Bear finally clocked the bottles of wine on the table and Iris rose to say, "I think I should bring out more semoukr

  The Bear followed her into the kitchen and advanced upon her as she spooned mounds of couscous into the red clay serving bowl. "I just saw the wine on the table," he said.

  "Don't you like it?" Iris asked, all innocence.

  "Three bottles of Chateau La Lagune 1990? I love the bouquet, I was admiring the structure and drowning in the taste, but how much did you spend provisioning this little weekend?"

  "A couple of hundred," Iris said, smoothing the mound of semolina in the bowl. "Possibly three."

  "Gaah," the Bear remarked, thinking about how quickly his advance from BFD was going down the drain. A meal here and there, books for both of them, a used orange Volvo wagon plus maintenance, insurance, gas. The monthly phone bill to her kids in Santa Fe was a disaster on its own. The Tin Palace record was supposed to be selling well but he hadn't seen a check yet. How much was he supposed to clear on the tour? He forgot. "Three bottles of La Lagune in one night? WTiat's that, a hundred?" The Bear ran a paw across the far atop his head. "Can't you be a little reahstic?"

  "I see," Iris said. "You expect me to live with j'o?/ and be realistic. Interesting." She bore the bowl of couscous more or less ceremonially in both hands and walked past the Bear back to the dining room, where goblets of La Lagune 1990 were being refreshed and a couple of bottles of Chateauneuf-du-Pape held their spears and wondered if they'd be called into action as reinforcements. The Bear follow^ed his beloved into the dining room and sat down, feehng hke an overrun cit\ Linton Bostic, having completed a tour of the rest of the table, inclined the bottle and refilled the Bear's glass.

  "Nice wine," Bostic told him.

  "I know," said the Bear. It took him awhile to regain a grasp on the conversation; it was Iris who called him back to attention.

  "You know the painting in your bedroom?" she had asked him, in the middle of something or other she'd been saying to the band.

  "VVTiut?" he said, and gathered dimly that recent conversation had turned upon the pivot of Spanish art. "Whaddayou mean my bedroom? Our bedroom, vou mean."

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  "No," Iris said, "l^wr bedroom."

  The Bear didn't get it. ''Our bedroom. I don't have a bedroom. What are you talking about?"

  Iris got up from the table.

  "What?" asked the Bear. "A^at did I say?"

  "I have to go to the ladies'," Iris said mildly, but turned away in a nearly imperceptible huff that among the initiated would be understood as friry.

  Rahim Bobby Harwell thumped the base of his whiskey glass hard onto the oaken board when she had gone. "Fuck the bitches and make them cry," he announced.

  "Miat?" the Bear asked him.

  "I said, Fuck the bitches and make them cfjV^ The Bear saw that Hatwell was sweating and that his eyes were wide.

  Bostic got up from his chair, bent to Hatwell and took him gently by the elbow. "Occasionally you have to tell him. Hat, don't be a terrorist," explained the drummer. "Sometimes he gets a little funny when he's had too much of something."

  Hatu^ell rose from his seat and let himself be led onto the porch, then out into the night.

  The Bear surveyed the table. Well, everything's just about eaten up anyway.

  The Bear and Garrett were alone.

  The bassist lifted a chicken leg from his plate and polished it off, then poured himself some dregs of La Lagune. "This is wonderful food," he said, "and I wouldn't worry about Bobby if I were you."

  "If you were me. Interesting concept."

  The bassist thought about it for a moment.

  "Want to swap with me for a month or two?" the Bear asked him.

  "I don't think so."

  "Well anyway, I like the way you play."

  "Thanks," the bassist said. "It's a trip playing with a bear. It's not what I'd anticipated doing this time of my life. Could you pass me that dish of hot sauce, please? I think I'll have another helping of vegetables. This is one of the best meals I've ever had. The other guys'll be back after awhile. Would you mind opening up one of those other bottles over there?"

  Half an hour after dinner, to the extended coda of which Iris had only phan-tasmally returned, flitting here and there in the form of the perfect hostess but then retiring elsewhere, the Bear found himself sitting on the front steps with Bostic and Garrett in the welcome cool of the night.

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  "The Hat has his episodes of total bughouse but I've never seen him hurt anyone," Bostic said.

  "Does he make the gig?" asked the Bear.

  "He always shows. Though I'll tell you, get him on one of his total crazy upfacked nights, and he'll play you some surprising piano."

  Garrett, sitting two steps higher up, put his oar in: "Bobby Hatwell is the finest man I know."

  "I love the guy already, okay?" the Bear told them. "But I've got this band and I'm responsible for what happens on the tour. I'm only asking."

  The screen door cranged open and Hatwell, who was supposed to have fallen asleep upstairs, came out and stood unsteadily at the top of the steps. "I love the effect of talk behind my back," he said. "It makes a breeze between the shoulderblades where the wings used to be. Can a man get any pussy around here?"

  The Bear turned to look at Hatwell wavering up there behind him. "I believe some of the neighboring cottages have calicoes and tabbies," he said.

  "Anyone want to drive to town with me?" Hatwell asked.

  "Noo," bass and drums told him, and Bostic patted his pocket and whispered to the Bear that he had the keys to the Sled.

  "Are you fucking Iris?" Hatwell asked the Bear.

  "I don't believe that's any of your business. Bob," the Bear said evenly.

  "I told you he was fucking her," Hatwell informed his rhythm buddies lower down, and kicked Garrett lightly on the shoulder.

  "Watch it," said the Bear.

  "When?" Hatwell asked him. "Can I take pictures?"

  The Bear stood up, fur bristling all over his body and an involuntary growl starting in his belly.

  Bostic rose from his step and climbed up to Hatwell. He put his arm around the pianist's shoulders. "The Hat don't know the meaning of fear," he explained to the Bear. "In fact there's a lot of shit he don't know. Come on, Bobby, time for a cold bath and then a few hours in the rubber room. Come on," Bostic sang in a descending cadence, and led the brilliant pianist indoors.

  The Bear wondered where the catbird was by now. Sleeping in a tree, or wide awake on the implications of Monk's architecture. The Bear sat on the steps with Garrett Church awhile. It was a lovely evening.

  "I'm told that in the summer you get the northern lights up here," the Bear said.

  "I think it's interesting, your situation being a bear," Garrett Church replied. "You must have had an interesting Hfe."

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  "Still having it."

  "Bobby Hatwell is a genius," Garrett said. "On the musical level definitely. A major cat. If he doesn't fuck up."

  "Which he has a tendency to do."

  "Sometimes he goes to extremes. But at his level, who can tell what's fucking up and what's pushing the envelope?"

  "You think he's a pianist maudit} You go for that romantic shit?"

  "Not really. I guess a lot of his behavior's worn-out shit he drags around behind him, parts of himself that haven't caught up. He's still young enough to get away with it, but after thirty he may have to pay the bill."

  Garrett was showing his youth: thirty wasn't what he thought. "He's half nuts," the Bear sai
d.

  "The problem is he thinks that's the good half. He's got the picture wrong but he's a genius and I'm not." Garrett paused. "He's better than I am. Sometimes I think he's my other half."

  The Bear looked at Garrett appraisingly.

  "I'm impressed by perception," Garrett told him, "and Bobby Hatwell has more of it than anyone I've seen. Intelligence per se isn't as important."

  "You think it divides Hke that?"

  "WTien I was eighteen I joined Mensa for awhile, trying to get up in the world or maybe just show off. I was middle-class IQ over there, a soHd one seventy-something. I saw people who were a littie smarter than I was and there was nothing much doing there. There were a couple of real brainiacs with two hundred plus and that's what I wanted to have, but they weren't the kind of people I wanted to be. I'm not impressed by intelligence, but I need more of it than I have, another octave, to do the work I want to do. Either that, or the kind of genius Bobby has, which would be better, but it's not possible for me."

  "You write," said the Bear, getting it.

  The bassist cleared his throat. "I have some tunes with me. Is there any chance we can do a couple?"

  "If they work out why not? I planned to run through my originals tomorrow. We can try some of yours. But you have eyes to write longer things, don't you."

  "That's it," Garrett nodded. "But I'm not ready yet. One thing I'll say for myself, I know how young I am. I'm not in a rush to be what I can't be yet. Yes I have a decent brain but so what."

  "You like Wynton's recent long things?"

  "Some of it's very impressive," the bassist said, "though more in the details than in the expression. He's written some amazing moments, though."

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  "But you're thinking along the Hnes of Mingus."

  The bassist cocked his head sideways at the Bear. "You heard that, huh. You actually listen to the bass. That makes a nice change."

  "The most beautiful instrument in the group? You bet I listen to the bass."

  "You hke bass that much?"

  "Absolutely. No contest. I'd play it if I could. It was easy to hear Mingus in you. You ran some Paul Chambers on me too, flatting your notes against the walk on 'Straight No Chaser.'"

  "You have ears."

  The Bear wiggled them for show.

  "I don't think everything Mingus did is adaptable," Garrett said, "and of course it'd be pointless to copy him, but as a composer I'd like to take those tone colors and emotions on, try to get some big stuff down. You listen to Black Saint and the Sinner Lady lately?"

  "Yup."

  "Well, there you go. I listened to one of Wynton's long ones this week, one of those dance company things. It was beautifully worked out but after awhile it sounded like a set of variations on 'Toot Toot Tootsie Goodbye,' all those major chords and cycling fifths, but then he'd write you a slowed-down intermezzo—^voicings? implied polyphony? Fantastic things, take your breath away. He's very skilled and he keeps getting better."

  "You know," said the Bear, "your name includes the two traditional refuges of the artist. The garret and the church."

  "I noticed," Garrett said. "By the same logic you'd be called Forrest Zoo."

  "Life," the Bear told him, doing the voice, "is like a box of boxes. We're touring as the Ted Beastly Quartet."

  "That's not bad."

  "If we were a rock band I'd call it the Return of the Repressed tour."

  "That's even better."

  "It'd provide some cover. How'd I sound today? I wasn't giving it all I had, you know."

  "I heard a cassette of the record you made with Bobby and them. You don't have anything to worry about."

  The Bear snorted, then cleared his throat. "I feel like I need some more intellectual voltage too. The things I want to play now, conceptually, I'm kind of stuck. It makes me feel like a bear of little brain."

  "We're about the same intelligence, you and me. It's hard to tell. You're not like a guy. You're a bear."

  "Oh."

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  "You're hard to get a read on, but from where I sit, musically, you're okay. The things you want to do? You've got them. They're in you. They're in your hands. Um, paws. You have what you need to work them out."

  "That's quite a statement, coming from such a beardless youth."

  "I made it up," the bassist said.

  Later still, sitting solo on the steps after Garrett had retired, the Bear heard the swish of water indoors and, against the widespread scrim of night—spray of stars beyond the highest reach of pine—the homely chink of dinnerplates. The Bear went into the kitchen to see if Iris wanted any help with the dishes.

  "If you like," she said.

  He eased the plates and things she had rinsed into the dishwasher racks. "Everyone else in bed?" he asked.

  Iris handed him the salad bowl and didn't answer.

  The Bear found a place to settle it inside the machine. "Are you mad at me for some reason?" he wondered. "Because you're acting a trifle chilly."

  "You know why," Iris told him, and he couldn't remember her sounding this cold.

  "I don't."

  "You do."

  "Pretend I don't and tell me."

  Iris got ceremonial about it, put down her scrubbing brush, turned off the hot water, untied her apron, took it off and laid it on the countertop. "You can't be that stupid," she said.

  "Of course I can," said the Bear. "Even you underestimate me."

  "When I talked about your bedroom you said our bedroom. You insisted."

  "WTiy the fuck not?" he wondered.

  "Do you think I wanted them to know that I'm sleeping with you?"

  "They know already."

  "Why? I didn't tell them. Did you?"

  "Of course not. Don't be ridiculous. They just know."

  "They do not just know. How would they know? When you said our bedroom it was intentional and ugly. It was one of the ugliest things I've seen anyone do."

  "Absolutely not. I couldn't figure out what you were talking about. It didn't make any sense to me at all so I told the truth."

  "You're lying. I've never seen you lie before."

  "I'm not lying."

  "Of course you are."

  "Where's everybody sleeping, anyway?"

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  "Linton and Rahim are downstairs at Siege's. Garrett's in one of the upstairs bedrooms and Fm in the other."

  -Ok"

  "Ifou finish doing the dishes. Fm leaving. I mean Fm going to bed. You're incky Fm not going back to the dty."

  "^liat? And hey, Jones is coming up tomorrow. Where are he and Sybil supposed to sleep?"

  "They're eating here if they want to, and they have a room reservation at the Duchesse Anne in Mount Tremper. Good night."

  Wow.

  The Bear picked up the scrubbing brush and watched her go. Honestly, he'd had no idea. He scrubbed the remaining dishes reasonably dean, settled them in the dishwasher and set its timer to go off in an hour. He'd had no idea. Had he said something incredibh' dumb or was it her problem?

  He shut down the Hg^ts, listened for snores or signs of other peacefiil slumber, sniffed a remaining half-botde of Chateauneuf-du-Pape and recorked it, then stepped outside for what would have been a smoke, if he smoked. Nice night out. Tomorrow they'd work out some new compositions, not all of them his. "Reincarnation of a Lovebird" especiaUy, maybe something else by Mingus. "Ecdusiastics''? He'd always loved ''Ecclusiastics." They'd have to work out a head arrangement, plan the disposition of the tune's three rhythms, figure out what to do with them in the improv. Look at Garrett's tunes before we get started. The couscous had been terrific but Iris was a puzzle to him still. How could she be so uninhibited in bed, dien worry so much out of it? Was she two people? Three?

  He slouched oflF to bed, riffled through his bedside novels but selected a hardback history of the Paris Commune that Iris had picked up in town. He had begun to dislike something he found in fiction, that insistent, pe
rsonal tone, which felt like special pleading, a vain attempt to impose an unreal self upon a larger worid. Was that how music struck him too? He wasn't sure, but he was glad he'd only had to play at half strength today. Tomorrow he'd put a bit more effort in, see if it was as distastefiil as fiction then. In any case he was committed or condemned to the tour, so what he felt didn't ultimately matter. It was hard to befieve that after a life, especially this year, of more or less cosmic adventure, he was being dri^n by considerations of rent, car parts. Iris' recklessness at the i-ine shop and the market, and how much was left: of the record company cash. It was a more domesticated fife than he was used to. He and Iris even had siUy arguments, though not about money yeL Semt-bU Shoes i)ix)uldn't come out till high summer, when the quartet would hit the road. Would the moneys hold out till then? And if it didn't, what was he sup-

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  posed to do? How many records would they have to sell to earn back the advance and bring fresh cash in? The Tin Palace disc was supposed to be whizzing out of the shops like flying saucers and he would have to get some straight talk from Megaton about the royalties he wasn't seeing. He'd start by bracing Jones on the subject tomorrow.

  It made his head hurt. It made his ears itch. Was it a law that love always mired you in endless alien consequence? Was that the comedy here? The Bear had no idea.

  He read awhile—about the civilian militia of Paris going out to the city walls to keep the Germans away and getting drunk at lunchtime and wandering off with hookers into the byways; later they would murder their fellow Parisians by the thousand and break Rimbaud's heart into the full flood of its genius—in other words, history as usual—then laid the book aside and hoped to fall asleep, but a palpable absence had been carved out of his body with Iris' removal upstairs. He lay on his left side, and his chest and belly ached with hollowTiess where she would have lain against him. Time passed in this fashion until he heard the dishwasher start up in the kitchen, thrum of machinery, thrash of water, and what sounded like a loose piece of silverware banging against a glass. Iris would let him know about it in the morning if anything broke, he thought, then smiled broadly. The sound of the earnestly laboring kitchen appliance had only partly masked the tread of her small, high-arched foot on the stair. He listened more closely: yes, she was coming down.