“We’ll pick him up… — hmm,” she goes.
“I don’t think so.” “You what?” “He’s not crazy about missing school.”
“It won’t make a particle of difference,” lips, tongue, teeth audible, a darkness of pomposity he loves her for still a little, “He can get his assignments,” she said in a different voice, partner annihilating partner… — “and what are you offering for the weekend?”
“More than a weekend.”
“What did you” (the friend speaking with his mouth full) “do?” who, not having been there, wouldn’t know what followed. “She said I left him alone last night.” “She knew about the gig?” “I think from Flyte; remember Flyte?” Vic gives back a look, knowing less than he implies. “Said I would ask him.”
“She already had,” the friend guesses, high-fives a mute laugh side by side at the narrow counter positioned up against the wide window like city choices. The view right on top of sidewalk passers-by, two women screaming with laughter, two men importantly grim.
And something else for this New York friend not to hear, who asks, “What’re you leaving out?” when Vic eyes his wristwatch and mentions Parent-Teacher again.
“Oh,” (for Vic’s cell vibrated against his leg groaning now under the counter below the remaining half of his sandwich) “she said we need to see a lawyer.”
“She’s right,” returns the other, easing off his stool, Lou’s Corner calling. Vic’s cell proffered — encore Saturday, this time drums and bass fer sure.
Already! You see? Friend would try to come. And nobody’s business the music now under way at lunch-break in your head persuading you that Flyte visited the apartment because he was sent. A lunchtime pang. “What are you leaving out?” the friend eyes the half a sandwich left on the open wrapper.
Scrolling up son’s e-mail, as a matter of fact, the wreck of Lang’s room this morning monitored by multi-gigabyte computer screening an ecstatic brunette her mouth and cell-phone open, DOWNLOAD THE HOTTEST RINGTONES. One attachment the father would not access beyond, that is, the beginning “Confessions of a Strung-out…”—(Hustler, he supplies) fool that he is to let his son’s mother in this far — who is said lately to tell her own real-life story smartened up (one understands) not only in photos but through some applied buzz thinking. This person who zooms in on science she knows measurably zero probably about.
“You done?” the lunch friend indicates the half a sandwich, and asks if Anna had Parent-Teacher today? Didn’t ask her. Didn’t ask her when? his friend echoed and slipped the unwanted sandwich-half into a Ziploc produced from his raincoat pocket. Well, a second phone call coming in on your way out you’re freed from — an after-thought he figured for Annabella Lang to ram home, left for the machine to sustain, while the neighbor’s bacon confidently frying was inhaled on the early morning landing and the boon of coffee smoking through floor and wall, embedded grain of somebody’s toast, could be enough…“You think my life is out of control,” Vic said. “The opposite,” said his lunch friend. Keep talking, his parting words to Vic.
Shuttering his day, a dark light from the remembered album. Abandoned open on the floor last night at the onset of rain by the owner of, as Vic recalled, a vintage Chrysler Le Baron convertible. Open to a twilight shot Flyte evidently had turned to of father holding baby witnessed by a cactus in bloom facing a page of Flyte in swim trunks bellying, his big mouth open, a weathered Cape Cod railing. Page after page, all equal for Vic, who recalls Flyte on a band stand, slotting his trumpet vibrato at the head of the pianist, who recalls now an emotional Japanese banger, out of the picture, but a New York tennis court or men playing dominoes Saturday on Columbus and somewhere a hook-and-ladder shot cornering an avenue. Carole King at a Christmas keyboard, smiling just huge. A drenched child, unmistakable, playing with the active sprinkler head in the park, his bare buddy shoving, hey not taking turns, and, accompanying the crystals of water light, unseen little girls remembered singing nearby. Lang tottered down a hall half out of focus; or in a high chair at the breakfast table fed spoonfuls of sweet potato. Filaments of light from the day saved. Vic and Anna ensconced on the couch paging each loaded sleeve of an album backward — when he got home he would have to find that shot — the photographer their son clicking just before a fight — over Vic’s piano “daydreams” but really over money, before she got up and left the room.
At school parents in line let past the security desk stride for the stairs to sign up outside class rooms, Global, English, Math (Mrs. Mukta regrettably absent) — Biology time falling into a three-minute hour-glass: the teacher when it’s your turn respectful, spectacles on a cord, tapping a laptop keyboard, granting that Lang “gets it very quickly”—staff-eyes blinking, a whole-face blink. “Then he…”
“Coasts?” from a smiling father.
“…Mmm…Yeah, ‘coasts.’” Why did father not believe teacher? Earring? Laptop? The sound of his yeah? His human mmm?
The boy’s depth is why.
Did this Global guy know the substitute, T.P.? Everyone knew T.P. A stained Mets mug recalls a lunchtime pang, a hunger.
Yet returning home late in the day, at the touch of the phone machine button expecting Anna’s voice and on the way to the piano across the room liking the bare floor better than the rug they used to have in front of the bookcase, hearing his own chords before a finger meets the keyboard, he must hear from not Anna but Flyte that morning message of, for Lang curiously, these weird little thoughts: Hey make a day of it if you’re around (?)… — the pool and diving board in Flyte’s building, some stuff he could show Lang uptown, a lab at Einstein open on the weekend, this world-class acoustic guitar maker, a recording studio, later hear some music at Déjà Blue (“gotta coupla—”).
Saturday with someone else’s kid? Did Déjà Blue print tickets? Would the piano tell you Flyte hasn’t been with Anna for a while, or do you tell the piano, hand over hand, a flock of nestings peeling off one after another? Tracing the music, putting off kitchen hunger. Two hands engrossed, he’s alone here.
Until the pianist hears one soaring gong from the church down the street — five-fifteen? when an aroma of beef roasting says it’s six-fifteen, a warmth of apples baking somewhere.
One hand before it has stopped advancing answers the other in reverse. This standard tune about “the world” knows actually the real music against his mingled steps, Bach to Bartók, before they’re gone. All the things felt like math not known till they are. Voicing he will use Saturday no matter what, with company on the bandstand this time, he’s been promised. The question lurking between three felt hammers that can stick keeps clear of the keys.
Lang is late, and this will be the third evening of the question The worst that could happen. Yet the worst has changed.
In the darkening flat, why you’re not alone after all.
“Coo-wul,” a stranger’s changed boy-raw voice sounds from the corner of the player’s eye, flattering him—“John Lewis b’hind the beat—” “Dad—” but Vic’s hands are on their own, what are they playing? “—unheard of, just when you get it, it’s gone it’s—”