Joseph McElroy - Night Soul and Other Stories

A calendar on the fridge door counts the days, two and a half cokes inside and a still-dark-blue broccoli, a yellow apple, green mango, peanut butter; while French — it must be him — is tapping at the piano in the other room, Lang speaking low in retort.

But what happens Saturday?

The one fingering a tune turned to some thirds and more one-fingering. Until French occupying the kitchen doorway seems to block access into the living room, like claiming something for his own, but softly, charmingly, “Gotta bounce,” he confides, “deal with parent-teacher fallout,” his mom will call Vic.

“I don’t know about this sleepover,” said Vic.

“Kid really knows how to handle his mom on the phone,” French waves bye turning out of the kitchen doorway. “You really do it,” is for the father, probably, though Vic hears three chords and it is Lang who breaks off.

A music unheard of , the strange boy had said.

“Dad isn’t he cool?” “Does he smoke?” “He gets you.” “What’s he want?” “The piano.” Was it this eleventh-grader arresting the pianist with praise? Or the pianist has just found a music that will go on all weekend? “He lives with his mom, he’s in T.P.’s senior physics, they love it…”

And it loves them ? it comes to you at the keyboard, half-knowing what that means, like with the music you and Lang hear at dinner, musicians not just playing but hearing you .

“I don’t know about the sleepover.”

“Dad.”

“Friday and Saturday? We don’t know them.”

“What else is new?” Has the question changed? — third night, fourth night? “ You could play an instrument.” “Like piano?” “Tuba.” Kid laughs, eyes blind shut, head on the pillow, needing a haircut, hanging with Dad, who wound up with this blond son. “Drums,” he offers. Sax. Flugelhorn. Marimba. Sitar. The organ. Stand-up bass, though that’s a lot to carry, the father knows. French’s mom will call Vic. The man will play Saturday what has come to him on a piano hearing it under his hands, wondering if he should have kept Lang home Friday night, which Lang would not hear of. This French, maker of deals, older and God knows what. The difference between the boys.

Chords startling in their direction peeling out among the tables. Work he has found by chance, by accident, word of mouth, he didn’t ask who’d given the manager the old tracks of him backing up the singer from Chicago and would not ask, but he figured he knew. What this Vic’s been up to for how long, the girl on mad drums ruminating seemingly this question, Where’s he been? — and now the old guy bent tall around his gut vibe reminds the pianist how a standup bass can sound stunned — where’s he been, man, L.A., K.C., Atlanta? What this off-the-radar piano player been thinking all alone did he even know? Winging through a first set Saturday he felt drums protecting the groove snaring the in-betweens, the support lifting him by each elbow, and for all the differences, one that is so particular, so slender it seems far from ever being known, a thought at large that could drain you like the gift of staying home all this time not out of town at all, and then middle of the first set a hard thought like a problem not even music would solve, gut-hard thing, and there, and temporarily done for in the second of silence split by a second of knowledge an instant comes before the serious applause for your turn, just your work some passing of yourself out into work and greed so inside the chords if you would call them that, pieces of mind glancing out along the bar against which Bill Flyte leaning back on his elbows is not looking good, and past the dim tables.

Then right as you hit three chords to start the second set and, quick pedaling, looked up at the drummer and just then the forgotten cell phone on Vibrate strong against the leg when two underage kids are stopped by Bianca in her beret at the lectern who heard the short one out who points to the tall one with him just as the bass solos like a velvet horn, and Bianca, shaking her head, consults the bandstand and the pianist, who keeps his left hand going grabbing a drink, while Flyte signaled her and isn’t it also that the kid French’s vibe’s weirder than even he knows in his brain that she lets them in. Tall kid, squat kid, drinker unshaven whose space welcomes them, it’s Flyte, his treat, the music’s all that matters, out of Vic’s hands.

And what follows up and down the keyboard so fractured inward on itself overheard among the tables and bar stools almost like what the player absorbs — turns the tune to chord, the man will think, frees the question into little bits if you let it later that has changed from where it was last week from what’s the worst, to what’s the best. French and Bill on their stools going at it and French on his cell phone and Lang in shadows seeing all the time seeing, and just at the end standing forward off his stool though how Vic could have seen Vic didn’t know; for then, in the deepening crackle of happiness and surprise that was the hand they got at the end of the great second set, Vic found his hand soon clasped by the woman from Wednesday in both of hers, his hand nearly kissed by her telling him the name of his piece in case he didn’t have one was “ Coast line— Coast line,” wouldn’t that do? — and he was taken with her though felt it cost him when he looked up and the boys were gone and so was Flyte.

Ol’ bassplayer’s backing him up even during the little chat they’re having at the bar though Vic’s song keeps to himself against the stories from K.C., L.A., Baltimore, “You’re Cecil just round the edges but more ‘Speak Like a Child’ but it’s your own note, heah?” “Word,” Vic murmured. “Did I hear you in Paris?” the bassman looks at his glass.

And all he learned from Bianca, so discreet and kind of pretty shaking her head, before they eventually got up to play the third set was that Bill Flyte was taking the boys home and the short one had told her to tell Vic he would be in touch. (“Word.”) You almost wanted to confide in Bianca — a passing urge. Well, sometimes the piano player is here, and his hearers who may dislike him like the solitary Cecil Taylor or like him like the Converse-sneakered dwarf Michel Petrucciani are there; and what they know of you in your work need not include the absence of your son which makes you suddenly play for him, as if some limbo could equal with a power of three or three hundred the themes music imagines into us; still, there is the player and there are the listeners who even come and go during a set or, absorbed, forget to reach for their drinks,

And now words of a standard everyone knows sung without any warning suddenly by the hot young drummer but the sounds alone — so Bianca craned a mike to drummer’s bare shoulder who solos drums and voice like native of some neighboring world or sounds from before words so, the drum solo ending for Vic’s sparse accompanying chords and bassman’s drawing a bow you hadn’t noticed across the great strings backing the surprise singer up, the trio are all soloing at once and you had her still making those her-own-thing more-than-do-wops off mike now. And in the darkness of the house a clapping like rapids in a chasm of your fucked life, near at hand Vic’s fan the Wednesday woman is calling “Coastline, Coastline” for them to do next though already played in the last set.

So playing it again like something unheard-of this time until Vic could see it on the keys and hear it come and go, something to have accomplished completing the third set like a double encore. That’s it.

But where’s the still-nameless woman who’d asked for Coastline? Not where she was but at the bar. And Flyte’s just back, tipping back a fresh bottle of beer, his back against the bar, taking her aback, arguing her down almost.