I doubt we'll ever know for sure. In this case, the historical version's lost, while the stories everybody else has to tell contradict one another— as so often they do. But I'll pick from between the lines and say it was old Will.
Because the dream also reminds me of the Tree of Tales, and I think maybe that's what Shakespeare was: a kind of human Tree of Tales. He got told all these stories and then he reshaped them into his plays so that they wouldn't be forgotten.
It doesn't matter where he got those stories. What matters is that he was able to put them into the forms they have now so that they could and can live on: small sparks of wisdom and joy, drama and buffoonery, that touch the stranger inside us so that she'll remind us what we're all here for. Not just to plod through life, but to celebrate it.
But knowing all of that, believing in it as I do, the mystery of authorship still remains for most people, I suppose. The scholars and historians. But that's their problem; I've solved it to my own satisfaction. There's only one thing I'd ask old Will if I ever ran into him. I'd love to know who told him about Puck.
I'll bet she had a tempest in her eyes.
Saxophone Joe And The Woman in Black
A cat has nine lives. For three he
plays, for three he strays, and for
the last three he stays.
I love this city.
Even now, with things getting worse the way they do: Too many people hungry, or cold, or got nowhere to sleep, and here's winter creeping up on us, earlier each year, and staying later. The warm grate doesn't do much when the sleet's coming down, giving everything the picture-perfect prettiness of a fairy tale— just saying you've got the wherewithal to admire a thing like that, instead of always worrying how the ends are going to meet.
But you've got to take the time, once in a while, or what've you got? Don't be waiting for the lotto to come in when you can't even afford the price of a ticket.
It's like all those stories that quilt the streets, untidy little threads of yarn that get pulled together into gossiping skeins, one from here, one from there, until what you've got in your hand isn't a book, maybe, doesn't have a real beginning or end, but it tells you something. You can read the big splashes that make their way onto the front page, headlines standing out one inch tall, just screaming for your attention. Sure, they're interesting, but what interests me more-is the little stories. Nothing so exciting, maybe, about losing a job, or looking for one. Falling in or out of love. New baby coming. Old grandad passed away. Unless the story belongs to you. Then it fills your world, and you don't have time even to glance at those headlines.
What gets me is how everybody's looking to make sense of things. Sometimes you don't want sense. Sometimes, the last thing in the world you need is sense. Work a thing through till it makes sense and you lose all the possibilities.
That's what runs this city. All those possibilities. It's like the heart of the city is this old coal furnace, just smoking away under the streets, stoked with all those might-yet-bes and who'd-a-thoughts. The rich man waking up broke and he never saw it coming. The girl who figures she's so ugly she won't look in a mirror, and she finds she's got two boys fighting over her. The father who surprises himself when he finds he likes his son better, now that he knows the boy's gay.
And the thing is, the account doesn't end there. One possibility just leads straight up to the next, with handfuls of story lying in between. Stoking the furnace. Keeping the city interesting.
You just got to know where to look. You just got to know how to look.
Got no time?
Maybe the measurement's different from me to you to that girl who gives you your ticket at the bus depot, but the one thing we've all got is time. You can use it or lose it, your choice. That's how come we've got that old saying about how it's not having a thing that's important, but how we went about getting it. Our time's the most precious thing we've got to offer folks, and the worst thing a body can do is to take it away from us.
So don't you go wasting it.
But I was talking about possibilities and little stories, things, that maybe don't even make it into the paper. Like what happened to Saxophone Joe.
I guess everybody knows how a cat's got nine lives, and I'm thinking a few more of you know how those lives are divided up: three to play, three to stray, and the last three to stay. Maybe that's a likeness for our own lives, a what-do-you-call-it, metaphor. I don't know.
But grannies used to tell their children's children how if a cat came to live with you of its own accord during one of its straying lives, why you couldn't ask for better luck in that household. And that cat'd stay, too, unless you called it by name. Not the name you gave it, or maybe the one it gave you— it comes wandering in off the fire escape with its little white paws, so you call it Boots, or maybe it's that deep orange like you'd spread on your toast, so you call it Marmalade.
I'm talking about its secret name, the one only it knows.
Anyway, Joe's playing six nights a week with a combo in the Rhatigan, a little jazz club over on Palm Street; him on sax, Tommy Morrison on skins, Rex Small bellied up to that big double bass, and Johnny Fingers tickling the ivories. The Rhatigan doesn't look like much, but it's the kind of place you never know who's going to be sitting in with the band, playing that long cool music.
Used to be people said jazz was the soul of the city, the rhythm that made it tick. A music made up of slick streets and neon lights, smoky clubs and lips that taste like whiskey. Now we've got hip hop and rap and thrash, and I hear people saying it's not music at all, but they're plain wrong. All these sounds are still true to the soul of the city; it's just changed to suit the times is all.
One night Joe's up there on the Rhatigan's stage, half-sitting on his stool, one long leg bent up, foot supported on a rung, the other, pointing straight out across the stage to where Johnny's hunched over his piano, fingers dancing on the keyboard as they trade off riffs. There's something in the air that night, and they're seriously connected to it.
Joe takes a breath, head cocked as he listens to what Johnny's playing. Then, just as he tightens his lips around the reeds, he sees the woman sitting there off in a dark corner, alone at her table, black hair, black dress, skin the same midnight tone as Joe's own so hat she's almost invisible, except for the whites of her eyes and her teeth, because she's looking right at him and she's smiling.
Dark eye, she's got, like there's no pupils, watching him and not blinking, and Joe watches her back. He's got one eye that's blue and one eye that's brown; and the gaze of the two of them just about swallows her whole.
But Joe doesn't lose the music, doesn't hesitate a moment; his sax wails, coming in right when it should, only he's watching the woman now, Johnny's forgotten, and the music changes, turns slinky, like an old tomcat on the prowl. The woman smiles and lifts her glass to him.
She comes home with him that night, just moves in like she's always been there. She doesn't talk, she doesn't ever say a word, but things must be working out between them because she's there, isn't she, sharing that troy room Joe's had in the Walker Hotel for sixteen years. Live together in a small space like that, and you soon find out if you can get along or not.
After a while, Joe starts calling her Mona because that's the name of the tune they were playing when he first saw her in the Rhatigan and, musicians being the way they are, nobody thinks it strange that she doesn't talk, that she's got no ID, that she answers to that name. It's like she's always been there, always been called Mona, always lived with Saxophone Joe and been his woman.