A Little Night Music (10 page)

He busted out a weak scale that sounded more like a bull crashing through an instrument shop before he tripped and honked his way into something more
Hot Crossed Buns
than Louis Armstrong. When he finished and wiped the spittle off his mouth, she told him to keep playing.

       She felt nothing.

But she had to be sure.

Cedric played a few more bars and stopped. They had drawn stares. Certainly not what the tourists walking by with Café Du Monde bags came to New Orleans to hear.

“Did you notice anything…strange?” Elli asked.

“Aside from the look from that guy over there? No.”

Cedric said it with such bewildered honesty Elli thought she might spring off the bench. The anchor that had pinned her heart to that Royal Street address lifted. It wasn’t the instrument at all, but Jon
with
the instrument that held the magic. No rougarou here. Just one of life’s little surprises. A man with an extraordinary gift who came into her life for a season so she could hear that one last song from her father.

She hugged Cedric, out of a sense of peace and closure she hadn’t felt in years. He hugged back, the ever-lingering plea for more present. He was part of her rich past—one note of many, a childhood friendship, days spent telling him his hair had a better buzz than his playing, a first kiss beneath a live oak, yellow paper lanterns bobbing on the night breeze. A past she was now ready to let go.

“You’re a good sport Cedric. And a good man.”

Brow stern, his eyes stormed her face for something more.

There was something she needed to say. Gently.

“And I have it on good authority that my assistant Macy is crazy about you. Green lantern costume and all.”

A rigid smile eased the harsh lines of his forehead. “So there’s no chance…”

“Sorry. But I’d still like to treat you to the best lunch in New Orleans.”

“No tomatoes?”

Elli laughed, heartily, freely. “Not unless you want to
wear
them again.”

They stood. Cedric held out the crook of his arm to take hers, ever the gentleman her father trained him to be before catching him under the live oak with his tongue on his daughter’s tonsils.

“Green lantern, huh?”

“And glasses.”

“And frogs?”

Elli bit her lip and giggled. “Yep.”

To which Cedric let out a “Naaahhh!” that rivaled his worst trumpet note. “You told her the frog story?”

                                                            ****

Jon drummed his fingertips on the boardroom table to the second and fourth beat in his head. The Chicago skyline lay beyond the massive panoramic window before him like an arpeggio—Sears, Chase, Hancock. Hancock, Chase, Sears. Sears, Chase…

       
              He vaguely heard his name, but he was reluctant to lose the progression.                                      

Someone dropped a merger binder that rivaled the Bible on the table top. Jon’s attention snapped back to James who stood, not with jazz hands, but what the fuck? pay attention hands. Jon grinned, sheepish, and tried to focus. Pretend that acquisitions legalese was important.  It had been to this Jon, the Jon of the corporate world. Elli was right. He couldn’t go on indefinitely being all of them. He had to choose one.

Jon glanced at the letterhead before him and tried to ride out the nausea that always came on when he thought of the way he left it with Elli. Thirty seven days had passed since he walked out on her, each more polarizing than the last. He tried to fit into his old life—he even went as far as doing the interview the Board wanted and purchasing a new place on Michigan Avenue—with only a slight pause and chuckle imagining what Mongo would have to say about it.
Alls the same to us here
.

But when Jon came home to furnishings that weren’t his, in a place that was nothing like the apartment on Royal Street for which he found himself increasingly nostalgic with each passing day, he would slip into his
Sacred Music Festival
shirt, turn the jazz station up to obnoxious new tenant volume and find the space to breathe in his old life. He missed Elli every second of every day, but he had done what he had to do. She was with the man her father wanted her to be with, a man who had a role in all those family stories. And Jon wouldn’t always wonder if Elli loved him or the instrument.

The letterhead bled back into his awareness. It was the logo of an elephant, styled in a way that with a different stroke it might have been something else, but the
J
end of its trunk formed the opening letter to the law firm’s second partner—Jenkins. Jon thought of the little girl with the multicolored hair clips that clicked when she danced, how he never introduced her to Elli, how he would feel if he never saw her dance again, and the ache in his muscles spread.

He never said goodbye.

“Jon?”

“Hmm?” Jon lifted his pen from tracing the elephant’s trunk.

James had that pissed off tremor in his jaw again. “May I speak to you out in the hall?”

Jon glanced at the faces assembled around the table. He knew their wives, their secrets, what the inside of their Bentleys looked like, but at that moment he couldn’t summon their names. He didn’t make a move to follow James or even stand. The inertia of their stares—some of pity, some far less sympathetic—pressed his head like a vice. Coffee and leather and stale breath choked his air and Jon knew. If he stayed here in this room, in this life for a moment longer, Jon knew he would
be
them—with their wives and secrets and Bentleys. No surprises. No happiness.

The arpeggio danced through Jon’s thoughts again. This time it was notes. C-E-G-G-E-C. Each with their own power, each a roadmap to the next. The progression twisted and writhed into a melody that shot through his fingers. He followed the beat’s roadmap, to his hands, assembling the loose pages before him, to his feet, supporting the weight of a decision he should have made weeks ago, to his stomach, where the dull ache of remorse lifted, and to his lips. Lips that would gladly trade corporate speak for the heady buzz of Dixieland jazz.

“I resign.”

“What? Jon, what are you doing?” James’s tone coated his words with anger.

Jon smiled. “Making the smartest fool-move of my life.”

Eight

Mama Dee’s Consignment Shop stood awash in a raging downpour that had persisted in the twelve hours Jon had been back in New Orleans. Warm lights within overpowered the dark gray skies, accounting for the robust business on a Monday afternoon. Jon suspected more than a few tourists ducked in to escape the rain and ended up taking home some small nugget of New Orleans’s history.

Jon dashed across the street, the driving rain like a massive spit valve emptied against his face. He held the door open as an elderly woman shuffled out and opened her umbrella. Inside, Issa’s laughter filled the shop with an incandescence brighter than the lights. The moment Issa’s gaze landed on Jon, the spirited conversation he had been having with a customer trailed away.

Elli surely would have told Issa how Jon left, how he gave back the sacred instrument Issa had carefully matched to him. Jon had been prepared for a show of fatherly protection, a show of distaste that Jon should again darken his door and ask something of him—Jon was prepared for the unwelcome greeting he deserved.

What he wasn’t prepared for was Issa’s shout. One boisterous note that ended with a “Hoo” and, quite possibly, a grin to rival Mongos—but not quite.

Jon wanted to bust out dance moves that would have made Elephant proud. The warmth from the room, from Issa and the history Jon hoped to make his, the same tingling warmth he felt in this spot the first time he played the trumpet seeped through every pore. Every muscle required to smile charged into action—and then some.

“Lawd, I knews you was comin’ back. Ain’t get N’awlins outta dat blood now. Hoo.”

Jon helped Issa out of his recliner and fetched his cane.

The old man leaned on Jon’s arm and added, “Dats de magic. Dats what I’m talkin’ ‘bout.”

“Where’s Elli?”

The ample folds in Issa’s face took a downward slide. “Aww, she gone. Outta da country, school you know.”

“When will she be back?”

“She didn’t say. Nothing much here ‘cept memories.”

Jon began to sweat from the humidity, from the stifling plastic of a raincoat that wouldn’t allow him room to move or breathe.

“And the trumpet?”

“Gave to me to put in dat window. She says first person dat want it, sell it.”

The room tilted on an axis. Sheet music blurred into yellowed clouds. Jon’s footing faltered. Had it been about the instrument, Elli never would have parted with it. But she had. She let it go and took that next step in life, much as he had. They had both left the past behind. His blinding relief, like a cloud break in a monsoon subsided. He knew before he asked his next question what Issa’s answer would be.

“Where is it now?”

“Gone. Sold dat afternoon.”

“I have to get it back,” said Jon.

“Thought you might say dat,” said Issa, a robust damp laugh fattening his words. “First person dat wanted it? None other than Cedric Martin. Boy ain’t played a day, if dat.”

Jon was out the door and down the block before Issa’s tuba like voice blasted through the still open door to Mama Dee’s Consignment Shop.

“
Hoo
, dat boy gotsta go!”

                                                       ****

Jon could have taken a cab. He might have considered public transport or the motorcycle he bought last week—nothing like the red sportbike as before, but a restored classic from 1955. His feet were killing him from walking. Exactly how Jon wanted it.

He came bearing only a trumpet—
his
trumpet. As it turned out, Cedric did have a price. An
obscene
price, as Macy had described it. Macy’s price for keeping Jon’s secret of being back in New Orleans turned out to be a pauper’s request, Jon’s presence at a Christmas fundraiser to benefit the foundation -  a small price to pay.

When he reached the modest house in Old Jefferson Jon smiled. At the entrance to the garden was a white-latticed archway laden with orange blooms where he paused and gathered himself, Billie Holiday’s gravelly-sweet voice spilled from an open window—“
P.S. I Love You
”—while a feisty trumpet teased the end of each line.

Jon passed through the arch. His eyes feasted on a garden oasis that would put the French Quarter to shame, lush, green planters, live oaks that stretched to the flagstone walk, dark moist soil piled high and rich beneath flowers of every color. And in the middle of it all, a statue of unparalleled beauty in a hair scarf, plain dress and painted toenails.

His heart charged into an upbeat swing number. He wondered what other surprises Elli Leroux had in store.

Elli wiggled her fine backside, her imitation of Billie’s voice nothing if not unbridled. She attended to a hanging basket of white-clustered flowers. Jon recognized them as the same ones that filled his shirt pocket every day for three weeks. He waited for the song’s cue then pressed the trumpet to his lips and joined in the soulful riffs.

She turned, her palms filled with clusters of brown leaves and clods of dirt. Billie continued where Elli’s singing left off. So too did Jon. He carved a path toward Elli, never once missing a note, his chest buzzing more than his lips at the possibility she would turn her back, unable to forgive, and he would watch the house swallow her.

Billie declared her final, “Love you, love yooooooou,” and Jon’s final note gave way to the crackle of needle against vinyl.

Elli’s eyes were wide, wet pools he couldn’t read.

He lowered the trumpet and pressed his lips together, more out of a sudden haze that replaced the words he had rehearsed than an attempt to circulate blood through his tired chops. He had played all night at The Lotus and walked all morning, but never had a moment’s play been more critical than the one he just performed.

She waited with the patience of a Southern woman, at home in herself, the earth in her hands.

“Elli…” His voice betrayed him, failing to move past the lump forming in his throat. He tried again. “Elli, it took me losing this—all of this—losing you, to figure out who I was. Leaving here was the worst mistake I’ve ever made. I’m sorry…I’m so sorry for walking out on you. Even if you never forgive me, I’ll stay and be the Jon who helps kids find music and plays this trumpet and hopes to God someday you show up at my door with a suitcase and a crumbled bus ticket.”

He was out of breath. His lungs tried to expand but the gravity of what she might say prevented it.

She might have been a statue in City Park, so tranquil, so beautiful.