Part of me worried about that. Why should I feel so good? After (“Pardon me, ma’am”) what I’d just been through, at the very least I ought to ache all over. (“Excuse me, sir or madam.”) Instead I was feeling downright euphoric, which wasn’t natural. Something (“Toot-toot, toot-too… Oops! Sorry ’bout that.”) was wrong. (“Toot-toot.”)
Then my prancing fingers found the doorjamb. Aha. Anderson was right again, as usual. When would these fools ever learn not to doubt me?
“This way,” to Mike as I pulled myself erect. He joined me and we slipped quietly out of the loft and into the hall. It was much darker there, but the air was clearer and there was no crowd, so I could find my way around by ear nearly as well as I could’ve with my eyes if the lights had been on, but I stuck close to the wall to keep from worrying Michael.
We found the stairs with no trouble at all and started carefully down. I was feeling better by the second. To think, a few moments earlier I’d been worrying because I felt good. How absurd! Why should anyone worry about feeling good? What sort of old-maid-Protestant thinking was that? Probably thought didn’t deserve feel good, right? Bull. Felt great. Greater. Greatest. Yeah!
In fact, I felt so unprecedentedly good I could almost hear Handel’s Water Music playing behind me, my favorite happy music.
Halfway down I said, “Are you okay, Mike?”
“Of course.” Hmm. He sounded lots more vibrant and virile than usual. Echoes from the stairwell, doubtless. “Why shouldn’t we be okay?”
“Groovy.” We? Really? Poor old Michael. All that noise upstairs must’ve finally unhinged him. I’d seen it coming years ago, but what can you do?
I could still hear the Water Music. It was an amazingly lifelike illusion: the sound seemed to reverberate through the all but deserted old building, and the interpretation, which was brilliant, was completely unknown to me. I realized I’d have to have something done about that tomorrow, but for now it was a gas.
“Chester?” My God! Michael sounded ten feet tall.
“Yeah?”
“Must they play so loudly? We can hardly hear ourself think.”
“They?”
“That orchestra.”
I stopped. Mike bumped into me. He wasn’t ten feet tall.
“You,” I said, “you can hear them, too?”
“I could hardly fail to. They’re probably audible in Brooklyn. Do they have to play so loudly?”
“Hmm. I refuse to believe any of this.”
“Believe what you like, but please ask them to cool it. They’re hurting our head.”
And then the lights came on.
Mike says it was five minutes before I could move again, but he’s probably tinting the facts a bit. I distinctly remember that the gaudily liveried baroque orchestra that filled the stairs behind us played a little less than half a minuet before I screamed.
The music stopped. “Your pleasure, sire?” said the fiddler in the fore, bowing deeply, fiddle straight out at a 45-degree angle behind him and bow held horizontally across his chest in what was clearly a salute, though I’d never seen it done before.
“What,” maintaining my cool, “is all of this in aid of?”
“Doctor Handel’s Water Music, sire. I was given to understand that you were fond…”
“No. I mean you. The orchestra.”
“Ah. Your privy band, sire. Did you not, upon many a time yet fresh in memory, express a fond desire that such as we might…”
“Cancel.”
“Sire?”
“Tilt.”
“Your pardon, sire.”
“Forget it. Please play on, maestro, ma un poco mezzo forte, if you please.”
“Your most humble servant, sire.” He bowed again, then nodded his white-wigged head, and the minuet I’d screamed to pieces began anew, but softer now. We all continued down the stairs.
I was quiet for another flight — not thinking, just reacting — and then said, “Yes. It’s obvious enough, once the shock wears off, and even rather flattering, in a mildly introspective way. But, Michael, why have you taken to calling yourself we?”
“No room,” Michael gestured crossly. “None at all. Your walking jukebox takes up more room than a teenyboppers’ fan club on parade. Hmph. Inconsiderate, we calls it, but we’ll wait.”
“Oh. You’ve become a convention?”
“No, more like an invocation.”
“Invocation?”
“Possibly.”
We walked the final flight in silence, not counting my personal band. That, by the way, seemed to leave a little something to be desired. Every now and then a false note rang out through the otherwise exceptional ensemble. Not a wrong note, mind you, just a slightly out of tune one. Bassoon, from the sound of it. This bugged me mainly because, the orchestra being merely an external figment of my own imagination, the false notes were my fault. The implication was humiliating.
Meanwhile I took time out to admire how well I was taking it all. Very calm. Very cool. Very natural.
“Wow!” Mike said as we approached the door. “That’s a relief.”
“Oh? Are you alone now?”
“More or less. Wow. Now I know how a tenement building feels.”
A crowd of not-much-stranger-looking-than-usual people across the street beckoned, whistled, and waved to Mike. A rowdy bunch, not really our kind of people, but he sauntered over to see what they wanted.
I was more interested in the orchestra. Oh, it was a doozy! Authentic livery of purple watered silk and plum plush with lots of lace; authentic instruments like serpents, recorders, krumhorns, sackbutts, oboi d’amore, cornets, brasses without valves and woodwinds without keys, two almost Turkish kettledrums carried by two husky ’prentices each, all absolutely authentic and brand-new and being played by virtuosi — with the exception of that bassoon; authentic interpretations such as no man had heard since the early eighteenth century; authentic musicians, running roughly six inches shorter than modern average and ruddier complexioned than we’re used to: it was perfect — except for that bassoon.
While the leader arranged the orchestra in street formation — four abreast and God help anyone else using the same sidewalk — I searched for that bassoon. There were fourteen bassoons, but I found the culprit at first glance by instinct. Except for being shorter, he was Andrew Blake’s double, stiff red beard and all. My imagination has a better sense of humor than I do and I’m jealous.
“My good man,” I addressed him, falling into character, “you seem to be a little out of tune.”
“Aye, sire,” tugging his rusty forelock, “so I seem,” and he sounded exactly like Andy’s famous Irish impersonation, the one he uses to con free drinks on St. Patrick’s Day.
“I trust you will correct the defect.”
“An it please you, sire,” the forelock bit again, “I’m not allowed.”
“No?”
“ ‘Throw ’im a clinker now and again for authenticity,’ they tells me, beggin’ your pardon, sire.”
“Oh.” How was I supposed to handle this? I decided to try ignoring it. But, “Pardon me, do you have any relatives named Blake?”
“Relatives?” He laughed. “God love ye, sire, you know the likes o’ me ain’t got no relatives. We’re all too poor, beggin’ your pardon. You want relatives, sire, you go talk to the leader there. ’E’s got himself a Nephew, he does, playin’ second fiddle. Or them four drum boys, now. They’re all each other’s Brothers, so they say. But I ain’t got no relatives, sire. Not me.”
“This is turning into one hell of a night.” Michael was back, with company: those oddly-dressed rowdies from across the street. I wasn’t at all sure about those people. They looked like the kind of Saturday types I generally avoid, but Mike was my best friend so I held my peace.
“What are we going to do with all this?” I wondered, waving florid circles in the air.