Powers, Richard - Orfeo

She said, He calls sometimes.

He’s calling you?

Only at night. When he’s terrified. Mostly around two a.m. Charlie wants to kill him.

Does he. . is he. .?

Much the same, Maddy said. For now. A little flakier. Early-stage. That’s why he’s in the trial. He’s pinning everything on this drug. He calls me up to prove that it’s working. He talks like the two of you are as thick as ever.

Els didn’t even see the stop sign until he was through it. He pressed on, his field of vision narrowing to a brown tube.

You’re in touch. I thought you hated him.

Richard? I loved Richard. And I loved you. I just hated the two of you together.

After two more capricious right turns, he asked, Where exactly am I going?

I was just going to ask. Peter? Her chin rose and fell; her eyes shot down the road. What are you going to do? You don’t think I can shelter you, do you?

Of course not , he said.

I can help you , she told the glove compartment . Get you a lawyer. Run interference. Character witness. Whatever you need. There’s still the law, isn’t there? You are innocent, right ?

He caught her eye. Too late for foolish optimism. She closed her eyes and held up one hand.

Let’s not go there yet.

He’d gotten them onto a quiet residential street full of modest ranch houses. He nosed the car to the curb along a maple-lined parkway. The rain had turned real and the sky was indigo.

I. . he began. I don’t need anything. Just your forgiveness.

Maddy grinned, a grim Minnesota girl’s grin. You’re an idiot. How am I supposed to forgive that?

He couldn’t hold her look. He said, Mad. Meeting you like this. .? Ten minutes ago, I was ready to surrender.

Yes, she said. She placed a palm on his shoulder and turned away. But now you need to get to Arizona.

SHE GUIDED HIM to another chain motel, not far from westbound 44. This one looked like a Swiss chalet. An early start the next day, and he’d be in Amarillo by nightfall. She went in to rent the room. He waited in the parking lot, underneath a streetlamp that buzzed like something Ming the Merciless might use to torture freedom fighters on Mongo.

She came back to the car with the room key, laughing. Why do I feel like I’m cheating on my second husband with my first?

She gave him Richard’s address. Then she guided him to her bank. She made him park on the street while she walked up to the machine and drew out enough money to get him to Arizona.

Thank you, he said. I’ll pay you back as soon as I can.

If you don’t, I’ll get the law on you.

You know. . they might pay you a visit.

You think?

Fearless, she was now. Or very tired of fear. Tired of giving it everything she was afraid it might take.

He, too, was exhausted. You need to get back home. Charlie must be starting to worry.

Peter! Are you trying to save my marriage?

Small twists in her pitch and rhythm told him: she was autonomous. And she had been for a long time. Her melody insisted that everyone ended up autonomous in the end. Had they known as much when they were young, they might have grown apart together.

On the way back to her house, he remembered he had something urgent to ask her, but couldn’t remember what. Instead, he said, When was the last time you sang?

Three hours ago. While showering. You?

He pulled up to the curb where he’d phoned her a lifetime before. Night had fallen. The past that he needed to atone for had vanished. He killed the engine and they sat a moment in the dark. Maddy patted the dashboard of the Fiat.

Can I go with you tomorrow?

She grinned at his confusion, until he found her.

You always do, he said.

She undid her seat belt and shook her head. It was a good piece, Peter. The two of us. I’d sing it again .

She leaned over and kissed him. We’re good, she said. Really. Then she opened the passenger door and flooded the little remade past with light.

I depart as air.

He wanted to destroy the opera and start again, now that he knew what it meant to be burnt alive.

He couldn’t stop a single performance. The three-hour exercise in transcendence got dragged into the shit-storm of human events. He fled back to New Hampshire, but the noise about The Fowler’s Snare followed him. Bonner gave interviews on his behalf. Art, Richard proclaimed, didn’t take moral stands. All opera did was sing.

The production made the cover of Opera News. The Times reviewer called Fowler “visionary” and labeled Els “the mad Prophet’s prophet.” An article in New Music Review by one Matthew Mattison concluded, “One stroke of luck has turned a nostalgic exercise into something electric.”

Reporters couldn’t get enough of the eerie coincidence. They praised Els for an artistic bravery he never possessed. They faulted him for failing to exploit the full political significance of an event he couldn’t have predicted.

City Opera extended the run. Dallas and San Francisco wanted to mount productions while the freakish story was still hot. Els refused all requests, and for a few weeks his refusal itself became industry news.

Bonner drove up in mid-June, to bully Els into compliance. Even the next day, Els couldn’t remember the details. Richard got no farther than the driveway. The altercation happened there, on the obliging gravel. The talk started out civil enough. Richard spoke of creative duty, of all the people Els owed, of the moral cowardice of abandoning one’s work.

There were words, rich, inventive, and pitched. Someone shoved the other, and shoving became punches. All Els could remember in any detail was Bonner dusting himself off and getting back in his car. He promised to sue Els for everything he was worth. Worth nothing, Els only laughed.

All further contact between them went through a lawyer. Els stood his ground. He made sure The Fowler’s Snare would never be performed again. The fight merited a moment of gossip in musical circles. Then those circles moved on to morbid Eurotrash productions of Mozart with underwater nudity and thrilling new hybrids of rock and rave, Broadway and Bayreuth.

Els didn’t follow those developments. He was done with musical progress. He was done with Richard Bonner. This time the break was permanent. That much was obvious, the minute the dancer stood up bloodied from the gravel drive.

Two years after The Fowler’s Snare closed forever, the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City went down. Els heard the news on public radio while making dinner. There was talk of Arabs and hidden terror cells. But anniversaries are no accident, and Els knew at once just what slow war this attack continued. For the first time in two years, snatches of robust music formed in his mind. Lush instrumental passages, pushing outward in a mad rush: Act Four, he guessed, or Act One of an unwelcome sequel. The story was dark and resonant — worth splendid music. But by then Els believed that music’s job was to cure listeners of drama forever.

A letter arrived one day, forwarded from City Opera. It was from the pianist who’d premiered Els’s Borges Songs in graduate school. Once a weed-loving closet jazzer, the man now signed himself the dean of fine arts of Verrata College, a small liberal arts school in eastern Pennsylvania. Fowler had blown him away. “If you’re ever looking for a way to make ends meet,” the dean said, “you can always do some teaching for us.”