“I’m telling you there’s nothing in there. Hold the flashlight over here. We’ll try this other one.” I carefully took the lid off the second turkey.
“You know, Steve, I think it’s a mistake. You shouldn’t be embarrassed to talk about it.”
“Talk about what?”
“About you and your wife being separated.”
“Did I say we were separated? Did I say that?”
“I thought…”
“I said we weren’t exactly together. That’s not the same thing.”
“It sounds the same thing…”
“Well, it isn’t. It’s just a temporary thing, something we’re trying out. Hey, I’ve got something. There’s something in here. This is it.”
“Then why don’t you pull it out, sweetie?”
“What do you think I’m trying to do?! Jesus! Did you have to push it in so far?”
“Sssh! There’s someone out there!”
At first it was hard to say how many of them there were. Then the voice came closer and I realised it was just the one guy, talking continuously into a cellphone. I also realised exactly where we were. I’d been thinking we’d wandered into some vague backstage area, but in fact we were up on the stage itself, and the curtain facing me was the only thing now dividing us from the ballroom. The man on the cellphone, then, was walking across the floor of the ballroom towards the stage.
I whispered to Lindy to turn off the flashlight and it went dark. She said into my ear: “Let’s get out of here,” and I could hear her creeping away. I tried again to pull the statuette out of the turkey, but now I was afraid of making noise, and besides, my fingers just couldn’t get any purchase.
The voice kept coming closer until it felt like the guy was right there in front of me.
“… It’s not my problem, Larry. We need the logos to be on these menu cards. I don’t care how you do it. Okay, then you do it yourself. That’s right, you do it yourself, bring them over yourself, I don’t care how you do it. Just get them here this morning, seven-thirty latest. We need those things here. The tables look fine. There are plenty of tables, trust me. Okay. I’ll check that out. Okay, okay. Yeah. I’m gonna check that out right now.”
For the last part of this, his voice had been moving over to one side of the room. He must now have flicked a switch on some wall panel, because a strong beam came on directly above me, and also a whirring noise like the air-conditioning had come on. Only I realised the noise wasn’t the air-conditioning, but the curtains opening in front of me.
Twice in my career I’ve had it happen when I’ve been on stage, I’ve had a solo to play, and suddenly it hits me I don’t know how to start, which key I’m in, how the chords change. On both occasions this happened, I just froze up, like I was in a still from a movie, until one of the other boys stepped in to the rescue. It’s only happened twice in over twenty years of playing professionally. Anyway, this is how I reacted to the spotlight coming on above me and the curtains starting to move. I just froze. And I felt oddly detached. I felt a kind of mild curiosity concerning what I’d see once the curtain was gone.
What I saw was the ballroom, and from the vantage point of the stage, I could appreciate better the way the tables were laid out in two parallel lines all the way to the back. The spot above me was putting the room in shade a little, but I could make out the chandelier and the fancy ceiling.
The cellphone man was an overweight bald guy in a pale suit and open-neck shirt. He must have walked away from the wall as soon as he’d flicked the switch, because now he was more or less level with me. He had his phone pressed to his ear, and from his expression you’d guess he was listening with extra attention to what was being said at the other end. But I supposed he wasn’t, because his eyes were fixed on me. He kept looking at me and I kept looking at him, and the situation might have gone on indefinitely if he hadn’t said into the phone, maybe in response to a query about why he’d gone silent:
“It’s all right. It’s all right. It’s a man.” There was a pause, then he said: “I thought for a moment it was something else. But it’s a man. With a bandaged head, wearing a night-gown. That’s all it is, I see it now. It’s just that he’s got a chicken or something on the end of his arm.”
Straightening up, I instinctively started to stretch out my arms in a shrugging motion. My right hand still being inside the turkey beyond the wrist, the sheer weight brought the whole arrangement back down with a crash. But at least I’d no more worries about concealment, so I went right at it, no holds barred, in an effort to extricate both my hand and the statuette. Meanwhile the man went on talking into his phone.
“No, it’s exactly what I say. And now he’s taking his chicken off. Oh, and he’s producing something out of it. Hey, fella, what is that? An alligator?”
These last words he’d addressed to me with admirable nonchalance. But now I had the statuette in my hands and the turkey fell to the floor with a thud. As I hurried towards the darkness behind me, I heard the man say to his friend:
“How the hell do I know? Some kind of magic show maybe.”
I DON’T REMEMBER how we got back to our floor. I was lost again in a mess of curtains coming off the stage, then she was there pulling me by the hand. Next thing, we were hurrying through the hotel, no longer caring how much noise we made or who saw us. Somewhere along the way I left the statuette on a room-service tray outside a bedroom, beside the remains of someone’s supper.
Back in her room, we flopped down into a sofa and laughed. We laughed till we were collapsing into each other, then she got up, went to the window and raised the blinds. It was now light outside, though the morning was overcast. She went to her cabinet to mix drinks-“the world’s sexiest alcohol-free cocktail”-and brought me over a glass. I thought she’d sit down beside me, but she drifted back towards the window, sipping from her own glass.
“You looking forward to it, Steve?” she asked after a while. “To the bandages coming off?”
“Yeah. I suppose so.”
“Even last week, I didn’t think about it so much. It seemed such a long way off. But now it’s not so long.”
“That’s right,” I said. “It’s not long for me either.” Then I said quietly: “Jesus.”
She sipped her drink and looked out of the window. Then I heard her say: “Hey, sweetie, what’s the matter with you?”
“I’m fine. I just need to get some sleep, that’s all.”
She kept looking at me for a while. “I tell you, Steve,” she said eventually. “It’s gonna be fine. Boris is the best. You’ll see.”
“Yeah.”
“Hey, what’s wrong with you? Listen, this is my third time. Second time with Boris. It’s gonna be just fine. You’re gonna look great, just great. And your career. From here it’s gonna rocket.”
“Maybe.”
“No maybe about it! It’ll make such a difference, believe me. You’ll be in magazines, you’ll be on TV.”
I said nothing to this.
“Hey, come on!” She took a few steps towards me. “Cheer up there. You’re not still mad at me, are you? We were a great team down there, weren’t we? And I’ll tell you something else. From now on I’m gonna stay part of your team. You’re a goddamn genius, and I’m gonna make sure things go well for you.”
“It won’t work, Lindy.” I shook my head. “It won’t work.”
“Like hell it won’t work. I’ll talk to people. People who can do you a lot of good.”
I kept shaking my head. “I appreciate it. But it’s no use. It won’t work. It was never going to work. I should never have listened to Bradley.”
“Hey, come on. I may not be married to Tony anymore, but I still have a lot of good friends in this town.”
“Sure, Lindy, I know that. But it’s no use. You see, Bradley, that’s my manager, he talked me into this whole thing. I was an idiot to listen to him, but I couldn’t help it. I was at my wit’s end, and then he came out with this theory. He said my
wife, Helen, she had this scheme. She hadn’t really left me. No, it was all part of this scheme she had. She was doing it all for me, to make it possible for me to get this surgery. And when the bandages came off, and I had a new face, she’d come back and it’d be all right again. That’s what Bradley said. Even when he was saying it, I knew it was bullshit, but what could I do? It was some kind of hope at least. Bradley used it, he used it, he’s like that, you know? He’s lowlife. All he thinks about is business. And about the big league. What does he care if she comes back or not?”
I stopped and she didn’t say anything for a long time. Then she said:
“Look, sweetie, listen. I hope your wife comes back. I really do. But if she doesn’t, well, you’ve just got to start getting some perspective. She might be a great person, but life’s so much bigger than just loving someone. You got to get out there, Steve. Someone like you, you don’t belong with the public. Look at me. When these bandages come off, am I really going to look the way I did twenty years ago? I don’t know. And it’s a long time since I was last between husbands. But I’m going to go out there anyway and give it a go.” She came over to me and shoved me on the shoulder. “Hey. You’re just tired. You’ll feel a lot better after some sleep. Listen. Boris is the best. He’ll have fixed it, for the both of us. You just see.”
I put my glass down on the table and stood up. “I guess you’re right. Like you say, Boris is the best. And we were a good team down there.”
“We were a great team down there.”
I reached forward, put my hands on her shoulders, then kissed each of her bandaged cheeks. “You have yourself a good sleep,” I said. “I’ll come over soon and we’ll play more chess.”
BUT AFTER THAT MORNING, we didn’t see much more of each other. When I thought about it later, it occurred to me there’d been some things said during the course of that night, things I should maybe have apologised about, or at least tried to explain. At the time, though, once we’d made it back to her room, and we’d been laughing together on the sofa, it hadn’t seemed necessary, or even right, to bring all of that up again. When we parted that morning, I thought the two of us were well beyond that stage. Even so, I’d seen how Lindy could switch. Maybe later on, she thought back and got mad at me all over again. Who knows? Anyway, though I’d expected a call from her later that day, it never came, and neither did one come the day after. Instead, I heard Tony Gardner records through the wall, playing at top volume, one after the next.
When I did eventually go round there, maybe four days later, she was welcoming, but distant. Like that first time, she talked a lot about her famous friends-though none of it about getting them to help with my career. Still, I didn’t mind that. We gave chess a try, but her phone kept ringing and she’d go into the bedroom to talk.
Then two evenings ago she knocked on my door and said she was about to check out. Boris was pleased with her and had agreed to take the bandages off in her own house. We said our goodbyes in a friendly way, but it was like our real goodbyes had been said already, that morning right after our escapade, when I’d reached forward and kissed her on both cheeks.
So that’s the story of my time as Lindy Gardner’s neighbor. I wish her well. As for me, it’s six more days till my own unveiling, and a lot longer still before I’m allowed to blow a horn. But I’m used to this life now, and I pass the hours quite contentedly. Yesterday I got a call from Helen asking how I was doing, and when I told her I’d gotten to know Lindy Gardner, she was mightily impressed.
“Hasn’t she married again?” she asked. And when I put her straight on that, she said: “Oh, right. I must have been thinking about that other one. You know. What’s-her-name.”
We talked a lot of unimportant stuff-what she’d watched on TV, how her friend had stopped by with her baby. Then she said Prendergast was asking for me, and when she said that, there was a noticeable tightening in her voice. And I almost said: “Hello? Do I detect a note of irritation associated with lover boy’s name?” But I didn’t. I just said to say hi to him, and she didn’t bring him up again. I’d probably imagined it anyway. For all I know, she was just angling for me to say how grateful I was to him.
When she was about to go, I said: “I love you,” in that fast, routine way you say it at the end of a call with a spouse. There was a silence of a few seconds, then she said it back, in the same routine way. Then she was gone. God knows what that meant. There’s nothing to do now, I guess, but wait for these bandages to come off. And then what? Maybe Lindy’s right. Maybe, like she says, I need some perspective, and life really is much bigger than loving a person. Maybe this really is a turning point for me, and the big league’s waiting. Maybe she’s right.
CELLISTS
IT WAS OUR THIRD TIME playing the Godfather theme since lunch, so I was looking around at the tourists seated across the piazza to see how many of them might have been there the last time we’d played it. People don’t mind hearing a favourite more than once, but you can’t have it happen too often or they start suspecting you don’t have a decent repertoire. At this time of year, it’s usually okay to repeat numbers. The first hint of an autumn wind and the ridiculous price of a coffee ensure a pretty steady turnover of customers. Anyway, that’s why I was studying the faces in the piazza and that’s how I spotted Tibor.
He was waving his arm and I thought at first he was waving to us, but then I realised he was trying to attract a waiter. He looked older, and he’d put on some weight, but he wasn’t hard to recognise. I gave Fabian, on accordion right next to me, a little nudge and nodded towards the young man, though I couldn’t take either hand off my saxophone just then to point him out properly. That was when it came home to me, looking around the band, that apart from me and Fabian, there was no one left in our line-up from that summer we’d met Tibor.
Okay, that was all of seven years ago, but it was still a shock. Playing together every day like this, you come to think of the band as a kind of family, the other members as your brothers. And if every now and then someone moves on, you want to think he’ll always stay in touch, sending back postcards from Venice or London or wherever he’s got to, maybe a Polaroid of the band he’s in now-just like he’s writing home to his old village. So a moment like that comes as an unwelcome reminder of how quickly things change. How the bosom pals of today become lost strangers tomorrow, scattered across Europe, playing the Godfather theme or “Autumn Leaves” in squares and cafes you’ll never visit.
When we finished our number, Fabian gave me a dirty look, annoyed I’d nudged him during his “special passage”-not a solo exactly, but one of those rare moments when the violin and clarinet have stopped, I’m blowing just quiet notes in the background, and he’s holding the tune together on his accordion. When I tried to explain, pointing out Tibor, now stirring his coffee beneath a parasol, Fabian seemed to have trouble remembering him. In the end, he said:
“Ah yes, the boy with the cello. I wonder if he’s still with that American woman.”
“Of course not,” I said. “Don’t you remember? That all came to an end at the time.”
Fabian shrugged, his attention now on his sheet music, and then we were starting our next number.
I was disappointed Fabian hadn’t shown more interest, but I suppose he’d never been one of those particularly concerned about the young cellist. Fabian, you see, he’s only ever played in bars and cafes. Not like Giancarlo, our violin player at that time, or Ernesto, who was our bass player. They’d had formal training, so to them someone like Tibor was always fascinating. Maybe there was a tiny bit of jealousy there-of Tibor’s top-drawer musical education, of the fact that his future was still in front of him. But to be fair, I think it was just that they liked to take the Tibors of this world under their wing, look after them a little, maybe prepare them for what lay ahead, so when the disappointments came they wouldn’t be quite so hard to take.
That summer seven years ago had been an unusually warm one, and even in this city of ours,
there were times you could believe we were down on the Adriatic. We played outdoors for over four months-under the cafe awning, facing out to the piazza and all the tables-and I can tell you that’s hot work, even with two or three electric fans whirring around you. But it made for a good season, plenty of tourists passing through, a lot from Germany and Austria, as well as natives fleeing the heat down on the beaches. And that was the summer we first started noticing Russians. Today you don’t think twice about Russian tourists, they look like everyone else. But back then, they were still rare enough to make you stop and stare. Their clothes were odd and they moved around like new kids at school. The first time we saw Tibor, we were between sets, refreshing ourselves at the big table the cafe always kept aside for us. He was sitting nearby, continually getting up and repositioning his cello case to keep it in the shade.
“Look at him,” Giancarlo said. “A Russian music student with nothing to live on. So what does he do? Decides to waste his money on coffees in the main square.”
“No doubt a fool,” Ernesto said. “But a romantic fool. Happy to starve, so long as he can sit in our square all afternoon.”
He was thin, sandy-haired and wore unfashionable spectacles-huge frames that made him look like a panda. He turned up day after day, and I don’t remember how exactly it happened, but after a while we began to sit and talk with him in between sets. And sometimes if he came to the cafe during our evening session, we’d call him over afterwards, maybe treat him to some wine and crostini.
We soon discovered Tibor was Hungarian, not Russian; that he was probably older than he looked, because he’d already studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, then spent two years in Vienna under Oleg Petrovic. After a rocky start with the old maestro, he’d learnt to handle those legendary temper tantrums and had left Vienna full of confidence-and with a series of engagements in prestigious, if small, venues around Europe. But then concerts began to get cancelled due to low demand; he’d been forced to perform music he hated; accommodation had proved expensive or sordid.