We sat back. Passed the bong around. Sounds of the bowed guitar solo from “Dazed and Confused,” transcribed for trombone, wafted in from the dock. Water splashed in the tub. Steve apologized, got up to shut the door on the music, the view: golden slide on a middle-finger tilt to the clouds’ bulging black gut. Definitely rain.
“Have to talk about him.” Vincent. Thumb cocked to the doorway. The dock.
The trombonist.
We all agreed that we did — opportunity not having arisen for two days now: from the time Steve pulled the van into the mall parking lot and we all waited as Dave found a spot in the trailer for the trombone case… from then to the beer and grocery run on arrival, the jam. Not a moment. So first order of business, now the fish was safe away and the trombone stand empty, was to put it to Steve:
“Where’d you meet him?”
“Back at the Rook?”
Steve shook his head. The Rook was a club downtown we played at, from time to time, back in the day. Steve sometimes still hung there. The Rook wasn’t it. “Met him the same time you all did. When we pulled into the lot.”
“How’d you know to go there, then?”
“You seemed pretty sure of where you were going. You know he was going to be there?”
That one left Steve short. Steve guessed he did know he was going to be there, standing under the floodlit entrance at the south end of mall, the hockey bag with his stuff propped next to the long black trombone case, which stood upright on the bell. Question suggested Steve had got a phone call or a note to set time and place, and Steve couldn’t say that he had.
Finally: “Neither of you seemed surprised when the time came. Dave, you helped him load up. Looked like you two were catching up on old times.”
“Point, there. What’d you talk about, Dave?”
“It’s a mystery.”
“Quit fucking around. We don’t have a lot of time here.”
Dave hadn’t been fucking around. Mystery is what it was. “Talked about a lot of things. Can’t say exactly.” Wasn’t good enough, and Dave knew it. He frowned and thought a moment. “Asked him if he was still using the valve trombone, or’d gone slide.” Which we all knew was a strange thing to ask, given Dave had met him the same time we did and had no idea what type horn he used to play. “Slide, he said. Same as always. He asked me…” Bong went to Dave. “Mmm. Asked me if I wanted it.”
“The trombone?”
“No. Something else. Didn’t say what. But something else.”
Bong went to Vincent, then Steve. Thunder came and went. Dave got up, came back with beer. Took the bong. We thought about that question: Did Dave want it? From that: Did we want it? Was it worth having? Rain started up.
“So who is he?” Vincent. “We never had a trombone back in the day. I remember that much.”
“Our music doesn’t lend itself to trombone.”
“You wouldn’t think.”
“And yet.”
We grew thoughtful. On the one hand, we remembered how it was: band class and bands didn’t mix. Dave had made that clear from Day One, as we hunched in the dull October light, greying our grey cafeteria lunches further. Dave wouldn’t even tolerate a lead singer — and if one of us pointed out Robert Plant by way of argument, well we could just fuck off. Steve and his axe, Steve and the microphone. Same thing. And for band class?
“Point of this is not formal training. Point is, you got to feel the music — that’s how Jimmy does it. That’s how we do it.” Plenty of trombonists in band class. And who needed them?
On the other hand…
“I helped him load his trombone into the trailer.” Dave, perplexed. “I know.”
“What do you want?”
“What?”
“Far as what the trombonist asked if you wanted it. What, exactly?”
Vincent.
Always got the Friday fish and chips. Wispy moustache over baby-smooth chin. That and the belly fat and the greasy black hair not quite straight inoculated him against the attention of the big-haired girls — Sue, Maryann, Sue’s friend… who?… the big-haired girls who followed us set to set, tried to keep up, talk about the way the music moved, finally reduced to regurgitating tag-lines from Creem critiques and just nodding, kneeling on the floor while Dave told them how truly full of shit they were, showed them what he meant on air guitar.
“I don’t know what I want.”
Dave, who’d stopped being such an asshole long back.
Steve cracked a beer. “Sure you do. You want the music. Always have.”
Dave thought he should tell the rest of us how full of shit we were on that count. But we looked at him that way we did. He nodded.
Rain like applause on the roof. Water splashed in the washroom. We all sat quiet, not wanting to upset the fish any more than it was. Figuring the storm would send him back inside soon anyhow, rainwater dribbling a line from spit valve back to the kitchen chair he’d occupied all day, before the door chimed.
“Speaking of the fish.”
“Trout.”
“Trout. You’re sure he thinks we’re too loud?”
“Asked us to keep it down.”
“Asked you to keep it down. Not like we heard anything.”
“You saying I made it up, Vince?”
“Not saying that at all. But I got to wonder: that fish tell you to keep it down the same way you knew to stop at the mall before we left town?”
“You see what he’s saying?”
“What we’re getting at?”
What we were getting at was this: perhaps Steve had heard directions from Vincent’s house to the south entrance of the mall as a faint whisper in his ear, in a language that he had not heard since the womb, or even prior that.
“I see.” Steve stepped into the washroom. Shut the door. Set his beer down on the sink. Looked down at the trout, which hung near the drain, still as death.
Steve, alone in the washroom. Sucked a deep breath. Looked at his hands, thicker now than then, white little lines along the creases… Thought about how they once held one of the big-hair girls — Sue’s friend, the one with the red hair and the freckles on her shoulders. Her name wouldn’t come to him. But her face — wide mouth, cheekbones sharp… eyes that looked at him, seemed to see him…
Not the one he’d married.
That one now: she never saw us — playing, we mean. Steve could barely summon her face; when he did, it was obliterated by hot lights, the smell of old beer and cigarettes. Steve took a long breath. Blinked. Thought:
I used to be…
Steve regarded the trout, lowered his finger to touch the surface of the water. Trout twitched its tail, swung suddenly around to back of tub. And she came to him.
Her.
A day ago, standing in the driveway, left foot jittering in its flip-flop, arms crossed, as Steve hitched the trailer to the back of the van. Hot summer wind blew piss-yellow air from the highway, coloured by the afternoon rush. Her brow creased; not angry, not exactly.
“We have to get on the road.”
Might have said more; but too much had been said already. And he knew it. She thought he smoked too much; thought this was a bad time to go off.
Night before: she boiled it down for him as they lay together.
“You’re disappearing.”
“Stare into the abyss,” he said softly, staring that night at the square of silver the street lamp made on the ceiling. Staring.
Listening.
Humming along.
“Don’t go,” she said. Fingers fluttered at his chest.
That day: She shook her head, threw up her hands. Went back inside.
This day: Trout splashed. Agitated, in clean bathwater.