******************************
“It can’t be open.”
“Turn the knob and see.”
“Gonna turn your knob if you don’t stop this bullshit.”
“Gonna turn your knob if you don’t stop this bullshit.”
“Cowards die many times, ma Cherie. The valiant taste of death but once.”
“Fuck you, Jack,” but she sighed and reached for the doorknob.
And it opened, at the merest glance from her knuckles. Beyond stood three floors of an opulent Louisiana chateau, empty as daybreak, proud with slats of ancient, honorable light. They peered over the threshold and a gage of keen curiosity tugged them inexorably inward.
Somewhere in the recesses of her imagination, she felt a Cheshire-like smile flickering out and in.
Somewhere in the recesses of her imagination, she felt a Cheshire-like smile flickering out and in.
********************
They met, her freshman year of high school; shrunken deep within a pea-green coat, all vestiges of baby fat packed beneath her jeans, belying the sharper angles her frame would soon grow into; bent over cigs in the yard, she was, she thought that fall, doing well at alienating the wash of humanity she was so horribly fated to contend with for the forseeable ever, until the day this one freakish dude had the audacity to sit uninvited on the limestone bench she staked out every lunch hour.
“If you must smoke cloves, hide the logo between your fingers and sit edgier. Not hunched like a cripple.” He demonstrated, leaning off the bench and smiling politely at her.
“I’m not smoking cloves.” A raised eyebrow: he popped a pack of Camels and waved it at her. She flinched and he quivered with contained laughter. The cloves were symbolic – a habit born when Kurt Cobain had shuffled off this mortal coil, two years previous.
“Jack.” He extended a hand: she stared at it. His fingers were wrapped in spiraling flesh-toned bandages, all torn at the first joint. He followed her gaze down. “Ah, they’re makeshift. Protection when digging.”
“What’re you, an archaeologist?”
“Something like that.”
“I’m Anndrea. My… some people… call me Andy.”
“So? Which?”
“Andy.”
************************
“Très gothic, Jack…” she rapped on a bannister, nodding as the sound reverberated through the space. The echoes were mellifluous, and she caught her breath before doing it again to be sure she’d heard right. “Oh, sweetness! The acoustics in here are…”
“Yes.” Below, in the spacious entryway, Jack prowled thoughtfully, skidding his boots on the hardwood floor for similar audial effect. “The walls are… oak? At least: maybe much richer than oak.”
“You think the owners…”
“Whoever owned this abode, Cherie, has clearly forsaken it for other pastures,” he said, plucking a cobweb from his coat to contemplate in the mid-morning light. She rolled her eyes. He’d been calling her “Cherie” for two months, while they set up shop in the French Quarter, telling their first clients that his name was Gambit. He didn’t have a word of French, but New Orleans was giving his extravagant leanings full rein. He spread his arms wide, now, intoning a few lines of magic:
“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree.
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea...”
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea...”
She shook her head and walked away before he could start in on the House of Usher.
She wandered the second floor hallway, tracing dust-lines as she went, wondering about the décor in here. Roaring Twenties, she guessed, only because something of the quaint elegance in the surroundings suggested a flapper party, everybody Gatsby-ied out to the nines, Fitzgerald in the corner muttering something drunkenly witty to Dorothy Parker as a swing band mowed through Miles Davis numbers… wait, Miles wasn’t around then… who was…?
Dad or Nana would’ve known…
(“Anndrea Torday, this will be new to you. Not quite what your father crafted, but what he knew of music: of pitch, of mood, of tempo, of true musicality, he learned from me.”
“He never said…”
“Which surprises me not in the least. Your father was a complicated man. But hush, now.” The girl sat motionless as Nana carefully removed her violin from an elegant, flowered case. Grandame’s sonatas rippled, slipping through her memory as she wound absently down the hallway…
“Daddy…?”
He turned, in the doorway, adjusting his cap. “Pops got a brand-new gig to-night, sweetness. You know? Told you once, fo’ sho’.”
She shuffled her feet. “Those men came again, didn't they? I heard.”
“Heard what, babe?” he drawled, all nonchalance.
Her tummy hurt, but she still looked up at him. “They said, ‘pay or you gonna pay.’”
He looked away, exhaled, then crouched to meet her face. “Andy, you listen up to me. You listenin’?”
She nodded silently: he only called her that when he was serious.
“I know these cowboys. They know what I got, know what I’m good for. This gig tonight? Gonna leave it square, and then we gon’ leave all that babble in the dust.” He smiled. “Get us a fancy big car, you and me, and we’ll go, you dig, Andy? We’ll roam the wide world and see what we can see. Be explorers.”
It was a good speech; she knew far too well how good it was. Nary a word had ever left her memory.
Seven year-old Anndrea looked at her father doubtfully, and her mouth quirked up. “For real?” she said.
“For real. Only new frontiers for us. Now gimme a hug.” He swept her up, ruffled her hair once and was gone forever.)
…the music left in a bright, gentle flash as her fingers slid along the wall, catching suddenly on a closet frame, jerking her out of reverie. The sweet wind of dad’s sax caught an upcurrent and evanesced; the music swept out and out, to the rafters, leaving her alone in the hall.
But something told her it was only awaiting its next cue to enter.
She looked at the closet door, and a rhythm nestled in her bones told her what she would find inside.
*************************
Jack was in the kitchen, inspecting pots which he'd wager good money were last cleaned during Nixon’s presidency when she stumbled in, crying, cradling something in her arms.
“Whoa – Andy? Something happen…?” but she shook her head; with the most radiant smile he’d ever seen, she held out the saxophone.
And after a moment, he understood.
“We’ll name it after your father…”
Finis.
***************
Hope you enjoyed it. And hey, BONUS if you read down to here: Last week I participated in the NYCMidnight Micro Fiction Challenge, in which everyone had 12 hours to write a 100 CHARACTER story -- that's 100 characters including spaces -- using a given word. My group's word was "crowd". Here's my entries.
1): In gleam slipt hatchlings, nibbling at moss. So drawn, sinking, soundless, ran a crowd of blue bass.
2): Ahem: Abandoned limbs, loin of Michaelangelo, mexically neck on the plain, nickeling the sour crowd.
(And in poetic lines, which I like better, but in prose this is still my favorite of the three):
Ahem:
Abandoned limbs, loins of Michaelangelo
Mexically neck on the plain
Nickeling at the sour crowd.
3): Time’s coded sweat slipt west of the Appalachians in a child’s still sleigh, fallowed for the crowd.
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