“I think it might have made a difference. At least we would have given it a go,” she says, dejected now.
“Yes, possibly. Let’s talk again. I have to run. I hope we’re going to stay in touch. You’ll text me in a day or two, okay? Best not to phone.”
“Don’t worry, Comrade Leonard, Mr. Activist, Mr. Perkiss Number Two, I won’t embarrass you.” But now she has embarrassed him. Leonard flushes, head to toe. She adds, “I guess I should have known it was never going to happen when you wouldn’t cut yourself yesterday, when you wouldn’t shake on it with blood.”
“Now, that’s ridiculous—”
“What’s her name?”
“Whose name?”
“The missing girl.”
“Her name is Celandine Sickert.”
“You’re kidding me. I’d run away.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means deed poll to me.” She’s being petulant, just for the hell of it.
“You’d change your name?” he asks, mostly glad that she has changed the subject.
“Thelandine Thickert? That is terrible. Boy, yes, I’d dump that name. Anything with ‘Sick’ in it. And Celandine is pretty bad. It sounds like medicine. But Cel’s okay. Yes, Cel is absolutely radiant.”
“Sorry, Lucy,” he says again. “Out of my hands.”
“Hey, it’s cool.” A sigh of resignation now.
“So that’s it, then? Hey, it’s cool, and on our way?” Job done, thinks Leonard. Time to finish this conversation, before she wounds him any more.
“I guess it is.”
“How do you feel?”
“Not happy. My little bag was packed. My father’s still out there. I’m all fired up. Now what?”
And he can see her all fired up, tough and innocent, her great expanse of hair, her taming red beret, her little bag, waiting with a cigarette among the noonday vehicles parked outside the Zone superstores, the airline traffic deafening, a tough and stocky angel coming to the rescue of her dad.
“It’s for the best,” he says. But he’s already talking to himself. She’s gone. She really is a child.
IT IS ONLY 9:25 A.M. and Leonard has secured the rest of Friday for himself. He sits back on the futon, not certain whether he is feeling less burdened or more. His phone conversation with Lucy, or at least the outcome of it, has not been a mistake. He feels that in his bones. It certainly has simplified his day. He can breathe easy, knowing that there’s nothing ill-advised ahead. This episode is finished with. He’s got away unscathed again. He’s made it back to shore. This is the day, he reminds himself, when he can take charge of his life. He will not fail again today. He will not disappoint himself again today. He lifts his one good fist and clenches it.
The Selmer has not been touched for several weeks. Its case has not even been opened. Leonard lifts the instrument out of its baize-lined mold. Taped inside the case lid is a timeworn gallery of memorabilia: a copy of his Mercury citation; a CD cover (Less Plays Lester) with a pleasing and convincing digital mock-up of Leonard sitting in a 1950s diner with Lester Young at his side; some small family photographs, his sister with his mother, happy days; shots of Francine and Celandine draped around each other at some music festival, more lost and happy days; and, on the flap of a torn cigarette packet, the fading, scribbled telephone number of Francine’s old Brighton flat. She’d put it there herself, that windy and rewarding night of nursery rhymes. “But that was then,” she said.
The saxophone feels heavy in his weakened arm. He has lost muscle tone. His frozen shoulder refers its pain across his back and down as far as the upper finger joints of his right hand. He clamps his jazz-soft Vandoren reed in place, ducks into the neck sling, checks that the spatulas and tone holes are still snugly sealed, and exercises the keys and rods with the usual practice set of unvoiced scales and melodic patterns before licking his lips and gums, lifting the horn to his mouth, and closing on that familiar, comforting rubber mouthpiece. But still he will not make a note. He takes deep breaths and pillows his diaphragm with enough air to support the sound, if and when it comes. He seals a tight, single-lip embouchure around the reed as carefully as a beginner might, judging how best to allow but still constrict a note, readying his tongue, his jaw, his pharynx, larynx, glottis, and his vocal cords, until these two vibrating tubes — the flesh, the brass — are ready to collaborate.
What to play? Not nursery rhymes. That day has passed and dimmed. He tests the sound. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Four hurried notes. He voices them again. Do it, do it, Davey Davey, do it now. But then he settles for something less agitated, something further from the bone: Simmy Sullivan’s “Midnight at the Lavender.” It’s his graduation piece; it’s his lollipop; he’s played it round the houses, tired it out — on radio, at festivals, solo and in combos. Once — and this is not a happy memory — in Austin, Texas, even. Feel-good music. Schmooze. It ought to be unchallenging. But Leonard wants to test and exercise himself. It is a worry, always was a worry, that his musical daring might, like hearing, eyesight, concentration, sexual potency, continence, be a faculty that degenerates with age. Therefore he shifts up half a tone, toys with the opening four bars, and then returns to flatten it. An awkward sound. He starts again, jettisoning the basic chord progression and introducing vagrant notes. So he drifts away from key and stays away, lick after lick, until — almost out of the blue, though not exactly out of the blues — he finds a route from Sullivan’s favorite Brooklyn bar to Davey Davey, do it now and finishes up with a piece he has arranged before, Shakespeare’s greasy Joan. This is something—Love’s Labour’s Lost and agitated schmooze — that the world or at least the walls of this living room have never heard before—ba-dum ba-dum, doo-wah doo-wah, tu-whit tu-whoo, a merry note—and will never hear again, not quite like that, not quite so desperate and fine, not quite so raw. The tapered lights and shadows of the house seem, at moments such as this, architect-designed for jazz, chambers sloped and angled for the nuances of sound.
Leonard puts his horn down on the futon and stands at the window looking out across the Friday rooftops to a line of shedding trees. It’s windy and the sky is pocked by autumn leaves, black against the gray. Loose notes on plain paper. He has settled something, something he has feared. Jazz has not deserted him. It’s there. He hasn’t lost a trick that practice won’t bring back. His hearing’s good — the top end’s as crisp and clear as ever. He even smiles. No matter what the virgins and the innocents might say — our cat could make a better sound; why won’t he leave the blessed tune alone; devil music; entertainment for the deaf and dead; God’s revenge on single men — he knows there’s more to being a jazzman than sporting yellow socks and wearing shades. There’s more to being a jazzman than just having a good-enough instrument and not too much supper. Good hands, good pipes, good chops are called for, yes, but a jazzman must be valiant too. A jazzman has to hold his nerve.
Enough. He boxes up and puts his saxophone away. Come Monday, when he’s older, he’ll reintroduce his old routines and practice every day. This brief workout hasn’t done his shoulder any harm. In fact, while playing, he has forgotten all the pain. He has forgotten almost everything: the hostage house and Maxim Lermontov, Lucy and her genius idea, that morning’s shaming conversation on the phone, Francine, Celandine. Even his fiftieth birthday, looming now (only fourteen hours left — of what? Being young?), promises advantage rather than loss. Unexpectedly, he’s feeling bright. The weight has tumbled off him. That foolish escapade of yesterday, that skylarking, has left him virtually unmarked. A sore throat, possibly. An ego bruised. He wishes he had never taken the trip, of course, never promised anything to anyone, never thought that he could be the comrade of an almost-orphan teenager, never smoked her hand-rolled cigarettes, not told lies. But still, he’s feeling happier than he has for weeks.