The Game of Love and Death (13 page)

T
HREE
days later, the band gathered after Grady’s memorial service for a backyard picnic at Flora’s. Several of the players, still wearing their funeral suits, were distracting themselves with a game of croquet using an entirely unorthodox set of rules. The core of the band — Harlan Payne, the drummer, and Palmer Ross, their pianist — sat around the table, arguing with Sherman about whether Jack Johnson would’ve beat the stuffing out of Joe Louis if they’d been the same age.

Despite the weight of the occasion, it was a fine day to be outside — warm and sunny, the air filled with the sweetness of cut grass and wisteria blossoms. If anything, though, it made the guilt worse. The last time Flora had seen Grady was after she’d been with Henry. Grady had dropped her at home without a word, which at the time had felt like a relief. Now it sharpened the feeling inside her that his death had been her fault. She wanted to get in Captain Girard’s plane and leave town, start over somewhere else as someone else. She’d never do it, not with Nana depending on her. But the urge was there.

Flora, who knew better than to stick up for Joe Louis in front of Sherman, changed the topic before an amateur backyard boxing match could break out. “A month off won’t hurt the club,” she said. “That gives us time to find a new bass player and do it right — work on our sets, learn some new numbers. Don’t you boys want to take a vacation?”

“Music
is
my vacation,” Harlan said. “I get bored without something to do.” He drummed the table with a spare pair of sticks.

“So we practice,” she said. “We just don’t perform.”

“You know who’s good?” Palmer said, rubbing his whiskery chin. “That new fellow they have at the Majestic. What’s his name? You know, Peaches Hopson. I say we try to recruit him.”

Sherman clinked ice tea glasses with Palmer. “Now you’re talkin’.”

Something brushed against Flora’s ankles. The cat, looking for a handout. She dropped a scrap of chicken. The cat’s teeth made a wet grinding noise against the meat.

“That animal is playing you for a sucker,” Sherman said.

In no mood to be conciliatory, Flora reached for an entire leg. She dangled it between her thumb and forefinger.

“Don’t!” Sherman said. “That’s my favorite part.”

Flora tossed it beneath the table. “I can’t believe you’re talking about stealing Peaches from the Majestic. They’re our friends,” she said. “How’d you feel —”

“They’re the competition,” Sherman said. “It’s business. Doc’ll understand. And I thought we’d agreed after that tax situation that you’d focus on the music, and I’d focus on everything else.”

Flora was in no mood to be reminded of what had happened with Mr. Potts. “The union might have something to say about the scheme you’re cooking up.” They were all members of the Local 493. “We’d do better to take out an ad. We could put one in papers from here to Los Angeles. Bound to find someone who wants a new gig. And then we could use that as a reason to draw people in. Besides, the bass player is the music.”

“Girl has a point,” Harlan said. “I wouldn’t like it much if Doc tried to pirate Palmer or one of the Barker twins.”

Palmer laughed. “No one but us would take Chet and Rhett.” Chet and the trombonist, Sid Works, had pinned Rhett to the lawn with croquet wickets around his ankles, wrists, and neck. “Not Sid either.”

On the street, someone killed a car engine. A door slammed. The cat scrambled away.

“Rotten thing didn’t even eat the whole leg,” Sherman said. “What a waste of tasty.”

Flora smiled despite herself and took a sip of ice tea. “So we take out an ad, then. Do a search in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New Orleans. We could look in Chicago and New York too.”

Sherman rubbed his face with his palm. “Sounds as much fun as clipping my toenails with an ice pick. I still think we ought to just liberate someone from another club. Be done and open again by next week.”

The screen door leading to the backyard slapped open, and Nana poked her head out.

“Sherman,” she said. “Can you step inside?”

Behind her stood a figure silhouetted in the afternoon light. Sherman let the screen door bang behind him. Flora cocked an ear — it sounded like he was giving the heave-ho to a traveling salesman. They were always trying to get Nana to buy their encyclopedias, knives, brushes. Nana hated saying no, and she made Sherman do it whenever he was around.

There was a bit of chatter and then Sherman’s voice. “More likely to find an Eskimo Pie in hell.”

“Oh, Sherman.” It was Nana’s voice. “Are you certain? What would it harm?”

“You know what he’s probably really after, don’t you?”

“Don’t be silly, Sherman.”

Flora wondered what the salesman was offering.

More murmuring, and then, “Talk to her?” Sherman’s voice carried. “How’d you say you knew her? Say, aren’t you that boy who’s been sniffin’ around the club? I didn’t recognize you in the daylight. Now you get going before I take out my foul mood on you.”

“Sherman!” Flora realized who was standing in her house. She didn’t want to face Henry just then, but she didn’t want her uncle being rude to him either. She raced up the steps. Henry didn’t seem like the sort who’d sell things door-to-door. He might have come calling for a different reason entirely, a reason that made everything worse.

Red-faced, she pulled open the screen door. He wore a clean shirt and had just shaved — there was a tiny cut on his chin still red with blood. He’d combed his hair until it shined. And by his side, in its case, was a bass.

“Henry,” she said.

“This slice of white bread here says he wants to be our new bass player,” Sherman said.

Since when did he play music? And since when could someone like him play her kind of music?

“I — I just heard you were looking,” Henry said. “You are, aren’t you?”

“As it happens,” she said, “we are. But —”

“I’m interested in the job,” Henry said. “Baseball’s nearly over. I could rehearse after school. And then I graduate next month and will be looking for work.” He turned to unlatch his case.

The black cat slipped through the open screen door and brushed Flora’s ankles. She put a hand on her chest, feeling dizzy. Probably from too much chicken and sunshine and not enough ice tea. She shooed the cat away, and it entangled itself in Nana’s ankles.

“There’s that creature again,” Nana said. “I swear it will be the death of me.”

Flora shook her head. The idea of Henry in her band was madness. And yet she was surprised to find she wanted it. Without knowing why, and with the certainty of knowing she’d never want anything else nearly as much. This was why she had to say no, and firmly. It would only hurt them both when he played and was terrible. She’d never be able to face him after that.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just —”

“Just what?” Henry said. “Do you think I can’t play or something?” His eyes challenged her. Flora wanted to take a half step back.

“It’s not that.”

“What she’s saying,” Sherman said, “is that is the
least
of your problems. There’s also the matter of your age. If you’re over eighteen, I’m a juggling nun. I’m gonna have to talk to Bathtub about who he’s lettin’ in the place.”

“Flora isn’t eighteen,” Henry said.

“Flora owns the club. The rules don’t apply to her. Go on home, boy.”

“Flora.” Henry loosened the knot on his tie. “May I at least audition?”

The way he said her name sank into her core. Terrified people would guess her feelings, she stepped backward and smashed the cat’s tail beneath her shoe. The creature hissed and zipped outside.

Then she said the last words she wanted to say. “I don’t — you’re not the one for us. I’m sorry.” She turned away. As she walked down the steps and outside again, she heard Nana’s voice.

“Can we at least offer you a bit of chicken? I fried it up myself.”

Henry declined politely, and his silhouette disappeared from the screen door.

He hurried out, trying not to hit his bass on the edges of the doorway. She wouldn’t even listen, a possibility he hadn’t imagined, couldn’t believe. It had been audacious to want to audition. But he had talent, and he’d been playing her songs almost since the moment he’d first seen her onstage. He’d practiced so much his fingertips were raw. She’d dismissed him without so much as an explanation.

He thought there had been something between them. The way they’d met as children. The way their paths crossed again at the airstrip and the park, as though fate were guiding them toward each other. How they both understood the language of music. The way she felt in his arms as they waltzed on the rooftop under a sky that had no moon and no stars but still felt full of light.

The difference between that and how he felt at the Thorne family dinner table with Helen was enormous. Helen was the right choice in many ways, but wrong in all the ones that mattered. And then a space had opened up for him onstage with Flora — in a terrible way, yes. But he was ready to step into it. He’d offered himself up. And she’d said no. How could he have been so stupid?

If that was the way she wanted it, he’d respect it. He’d let her go. Give Helen another chance. Maybe he’d been mistaken about love. Maybe Helen could teach him another way.

He set his bass next to Ethan’s car. He popped open the back door and was just about to slide in the bass when a sparrow sang a lick exactly like the one Henry had been working to master. Coincidence, maybe. Or maybe just a trick of his reeling mind. Either way, a twitch started in his fingertips. It rose through his arms and across his chest, and there was only one way he could still it.

He closed the car door, removed his bass from its case, tightened the hair on his bow, and found a divot in the sidewalk that would hold the endpin steady. He would walk away from her, but not without giving her something to remember him by. He faced the fence surrounding Flora’s backyard, tilted the bass against his heart, and checked to see that the strings were in tune.

He began the first movement of a Bach suite that had been written for the cello, but could be played on the bass by someone with enough skill. It was a good warm-up piece, sweet and smooth. He eased into his own rendition of “Summertime,” constructing a bridge of notes that joined the two songs. He took his time traveling over it, like he was a man unweighted. And then, nearly there, he dropped his bow and bent himself entirely toward the pizzicato jazz style.

His playing took on urgency. His impulse had been to make Flora hear him and realize her mistake. But the music swallowed him. He didn’t want to hurt her. He just wanted to play.

Time slowed down enough that he could turn what he was feeling into notes. A lock of hair slipped onto his forehead and his skin grew hot, but his hands stayed light and fast. He played as if he could not go wrong, as if he were meant to be right there, doing the thing he’d been born to do. The ground and his body and the sky were no longer separate, but as related as three notes could be in an infinite variety of chords.

Henry didn’t notice when faces appeared over the fence. Flora’s band. As they listened, the men removed their hats. Eventually, they ventured glances at one another. No one spoke.

Henry played until he’d said his piece. His shirt stuck to his back and a drop of sweat from his forehead fell to the sidewalk. He looked up and acknowledged his audience. Flora stood atop the porch steps. She held one hand on her chest, clutching her dress.

“Henry, wait,” she said, her voice roughed up.

She started down the steps. Henry wouldn’t wait. He put his bass and bow back in its case, snapping it shut. Then he turned, opened the back door of the Cadillac, eased his instrument inside, and closed the door. He did not look back as he stepped into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and headed home.

H
ENRY
’s bass sat untouched in the carport for three weeks. Having called a temporary cease-fire with calculus, he was lying on his mattress with his hands beneath his head, studying a hairline crack in the ceiling, when Ethan knocked. Henry didn’t bother replying; Ethan would walk in anyway.

“What do you think?” Henry asked. “Old man or bear’s ass?”

Ethan looked puzzled, so Henry pointed up.

“Bear’s ass, definitely.” Ethan closed Henry’s textbook and moved it aside so he could sit on the desk. “You’re going to have to get up someday.”

Henry grunted.
Someday.
That word had grown tainted. There was no such thing.

In the weeks since Flora had refused him, Helen had been kind. She’d taken to making him plates of food and keeping him company while he ate, and he found her interest in him and his life and his thoughts on important topics to be flattering. He had no complaints about her sandwiches. He didn’t feel like kissing her yet, but maybe that would come eventually.

He’d forced himself to go through the motions at school and baseball. He’d be lucky to pass his upcoming finals, and he’d already been moved off the starting lineup and onto the bench with the underclassmen. When he walked down the halls, rumpled and unfocused, students steered clear, as though heartbreak were catching.

The headmaster had pulled him aside the day before, just as he was leaving the chapel. “I’m hearing troubling things,” Dr. Sloane said, scratching at a few stray hairs on his chin with nicotine-tinged fingertips. “We’ve come to expect more out of you than we’re seeing in the classroom and on the field.”

Henry’s stomach twisted. “I’m sorry, sir. I’ll do better.”

“ ‘How high a pitch his resolution soars.’ ” Dr. Sloane had a Shakespeare quotation for every situation. He coughed into his hand and clapped Henry on the arm. “You’ll let me know if something is amiss? If you need any assistance? A new razor, perhaps?”

“Of course.” Henry resolved to mow down his meager crop of whiskers.

“Not too much time left in this institution, Mr. Bishop. I know uncertainty can be hard to face, but let’s not lose focus before crossing the finish line.” D r. Sloane squared his shoulders and offered his hand.

Henry shook it. “I won’t, sir. Thank you, sir.” He couldn’t imagine asking Dr. Sloane for help with heartache.
Well, you see … there’s this girl who sings in a jazz band and I wanted to be her bass player, but we are the wrong color for each other, and she said no, and it gave me a burned-out hole in the center of my chest that the rest of me is slowly being sucked into.

Dr. Sloane’s expertise was literature, not life. In any case, it was impossible to imagine an old person with a broken heart.

“Good to hear, Henry. Good to hear. Because the last thing we want is for you to lose your scholarship this close to graduation.”

The warning made Henry feel bad all over again. He was behind in school, perhaps hopelessly so. He’d managed to help Ethan with his written work, but his own was unfinished, doodled on, scattered in stacks and tucked into books.

Ethan crumpled an expensive sheet of onionskin paper and pitched it to Henry.

“See?” Ethan said when Henry grabbed it. “You’re fine. You might as well get up now. Besides … I heard of a new club. Jazz, even.”

Henry pulled his pillow over his face.

“Don’t tell me you’re giving up on music,” Ethan said. “Just because the raggedy old Domino is closed doesn’t mean you can’t hear jazz. James says this one’s just as good.” There was always a pause in Ethan’s voice when he mentioned his source in Hooverville.

Henry moved the pillow away from his face and pushed himself up on his elbow.

“So James says it?”

Ethan’s features shifted. Henry couldn’t make out what emotion his friend was hiding.

“The article has turned out to be more complicated than I thought. Father doesn’t want to give me any more extensions, but I want to get this one right. So I’ve interviewed him a few times, and we’ve gotten to know each other a bit. As people.” Ethan walked to the window and looked out. Henry could swear the edges of his friend’s ears were red.

Henry hadn’t much considered Ethan’s absences at night these past few weeks. He figured he’d gone to Guthrie’s, or some late-night diner like the Golden Coin. Ethan was clearly slaving away, and Henry felt even guiltier for the labor he’d shirked.

“I can’t go,” he said. “I’m so far behind.”

“Look.” Ethan faced Henry. “You haven’t told me what’s eating you, so I can’t help with that. But you haven’t played music or listened to it in weeks, and that’s like a plant going without water.”

“Fine,” Henry said. “I miss it. But what makes you interested in music now? I’ve had to drag you out to listen.”

Ethan looked at his feet and scratched the back of his head, as if he wanted to buy time before answering. “You know I’ve always enjoyed music. Maybe I don’t play it like you, but I listen to the wireless constantly.” He smoothed his hair. “And I have been talking about it with James a bit, you know, as part of working on that article. He said he’d like to hear some, so I invited him along. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course I don’t.” Henry paused. He couldn’t fathom why Ethan seemed to be so embarrassed about bringing a friend. Maybe because James Booth lived in Hooverville. A thought struck. “Do we have a suit to lend?”

“Oh, that.” Ethan looked out the window again. “James said he had proper clothes. But let’s don’t tell Helen, all right?”

The floorboards outside Henry’s room creaked.

“Let’s don’t tell me what?” Helen leaned against the doorframe, working an emery board around her index fingernail. “I thought I heard you two plotting something. You’ve both been as dull as a cemetery for weeks. If I have to polish another candlestick with your mother, Ethan, I’m going to kill someone.” She held out her finger as if to appraise her work.

Ethan shot Henry a look. “We want to make sure it’s the kind of place you’d enjoy before dragging you along.”

If Henry didn’t know better, he’d have believed Ethan. There was something happening, something that exposed a vulnerability. Henry picked up the ball of paper. He opened it and started to smooth the wrinkles. It would have been gallant for him to extend an invitation, but he chose friendship and the illusion of chivalry over the thing itself. He continued to work on the paper, even as he knew it was a lost cause.

Helen rolled her eyes. “I’m not afraid of anything. You should know that about me by now.” She turned her attention to another nail, and for a moment, there was no sound other than the slow rasp of the file.

Ethan brushed his hands together, as if to wipe them clean. “Then it’s settled. We’ll go together. Sound about right, Henry?”

Henry nodded. It surprised him that Ethan had flinched, but Ethan always was a gentleman.

“Oh, goody.” Helen turned to leave, looking at the boys over her shoulder. “This will be fun.”

When he was alone, Henry laid the wrinkled paper back on his desk, understanding it was beyond saving, but unable to throw it away. He placed it between the pages of his book, knowing it wouldn’t help. But at least he wouldn’t have to look at it anymore.