Cloudy with a chance of.., p.10
Cloudy with a Chance of Murder, page 10
“Antelope Island has been a spectacular setting for our festival,” Flox said.
Already jetlagged, Jacobus tried to refrain from nodding off as Flox rambled on. The comfort of the van’s air-conditioning and soundproofing didn’t make staying awake any easier. What the hell do I care about how mountainous the island is? Jacobus thought. How it’s dotted with herds of free-roaming bison? How it’s the migratory resting place of seventy-five zillion water birds, including the left-footed crapper and the ruby-nosed clamdipper?
“You’ll be interested to know, most of our audience is from the Salt Lake City area,” Flox continued. “That gives us an ideal core. Almost all the others are out-of-towners. At first, they came mainly for the outdoor experience, but now a lot of them come primarily for the music. Seems we’ve turned a corner.”
“ ‘Almost all the others’?” Jacobus asked, who had a predisposition to being alert to flaws in logic, regardless of how tired or distracted he might be. “What’s left after the Utahns and out-of-towners? Coyotes?”
“Stragglers. We always get a few from the other side of the island. The tent campers and the RV aficionados. Not really the music they go for. It’s the experience. Unique, really. After a while, the scenery can get to you. Bizarre, in a way. You can almost feel disembodied. Going to a concert is a break. A reconnection with humanity. I mean, sometimes the lake feels limitless, and gets calm as glass. Like a mirror. Snow-tipped peaks reflected in the water. Unworldly.”
Tourism brochure aside, Jacobus thought, doesn’t this guy, Flox, get it that snow-tipped peaks don’t matter to me? It’s all black to me. It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference to me whether I’m in the Garden of Eden or sitting on the can in my bathroom in the Berkshires. Which reminded him. He better get to a bathroom soon.
“Can you step on it, honey?” he said to D’Angelo.
Another of the many advantages of being blind was that while wearing his dark glasses no one knew whether he was paying attention or was fast asleep. As Flox droned on, he was inclined to the latter.
“Did you know Utah’s average summer temperature…” Jacobus didn’t hear the end of the sentence.
He awoke when the car stopped at the tollbooth on the mainland side of the Antelope Island causeway.
Maybe Flox’s voice got hoarse from yacking, but D’Angelo took over as they left the tollbooth and crossed the five-mile ribbon of a causeway that connected the mainland to their destination. The two of them, Flox and D’Angelo, were like a tag team. “The Great Salt Lake is a jewel in the desert,” she intoned. “The largest body of saltwater in the western hemisphere. So salty, fish can’t live in it. So shallow and flat-bedded that with the past year of record rainfall the lake’s overall surface area had expanded almost fifty percent.”
Salty, huh? he thought. Well, maybe I can’t see it, he decided, but what the hell? Tired of being in one hermetically sealed cocoon after another since leaving the Berkshires, he rolled down the car window to get a feel for the area with his other senses. Hearing and smell, taste and touch. Senses he could depend on.
Blasting in on a current of searingly hot air, the pungent stink of saltwater and of decaying algae, brine shrimp, and brine flies assaulted Jacobus’s olfactory lobes. He immediately rolled the window back up. So much for the great outdoors. Back in air-conditioned comfort, he surrendered himself to D’Angelo’s tape-loop travelogue. A strategically reasonable concession, given the alternative.
“We’re in the midst of a record heatwave,” Flox said, taking the reins again.
“Really? How can you tell?” Jacobus replied.
“They say we might get a thunderstorm, though. One of these days. That should cool things off. You know, back in the eighties, the lake level was so high the causeway was covered. Totally submerged. Can you imagine that? For five years, you couldn’t get onto the island.”
I missed my chance, Jacobus thought.
The rhythmic bumps of the tires over the sectioned road surface matched Flox’s verbal monotony. Their speed had accelerated gradually after they had passed through the tollbooth. Now they were cruising, and taking into account the quickened pace of the bumps, Jacobus guessed they were going about fifty miles per hour. Estimating they had been on the causeway for about five minutes, he figured they should be on the island any minute now. Not a moment too soon. After half-listening to all that talking, hearing some music would be music to his ears.
It was another fifteen minutes until Joy D’Angelo parked the car in the lot. Just up the hill from the Big Top, she said. Music emanated from below. As it was still a few hours before the concert, Jacobus gathered he was hearing a rehearsal in progress. Flox, needing to make some last-minute phone calls before the weekend, begged off. He instructed D’Angelo to accompany Jacobus. Walking gingerly on the descending, rocky trail toward the tent, poking his way forward with Hocus, Jacobus followed the strains of the first movement of the Octet in E-flat Major by Felix Mendelssohn, which he recalled would be on Sunday’s program. Mendelssohn, a sixteen-year-old genius, damn him, when he composed it! Music bursting with the unrestrained exuberance of youth but with the hand of a mature master’s craftsmanship. A perfect piece of music. But I hope these guys have more rehearsals, Jacobus thought, because the music was indeed bursting, but not with exuberance. Or perfection. Instead, there was an evident musical tug of war going on. One musician thinks it’s too slow, another too fast, another too loud, another too soft. A meeting of the minds was as yet a distant goal. Passive aggression at its finest. Bad enough with one quartet, but with two of them combined? Oy vey.
D’Angelo, seeking out a shady spot behind the tent, told Jacobus there would soon be a hiatus in the rehearsal. She attempted to engage him in small talk to bide the time, but Jacobus had heard more than enough about the natural wonders of Antelope Island. Furthermore, he was constitutionally unable to concentrate on anything else when music was being played. Nor did he ever listen to music while doing something else. That would be ridiculous and an insult to the music. Can you imagine anything as absurd as listening to a Mozart string quartet while reading a book? Or while making dinner? If you had Starry Night on your wall would you watch “Antiques Roadshow” on the television?
The music stopped. Harsh words were exchanged inside the tent. Exactly what the words were Jacobus couldn’t make out. But they were clearly adversarial. Had he said passive aggression? Take away the passive. Jacobus was vaguely aware that Joy D’Angelo had come to the end of some paragraph about audiences arriving.
“You probably have something more important to do than humor me, honey,” he said. “I’ll wait for Yumi here.”
“Okay. It sounds like their break is just around the corner,” she said.
“Yeah.” Their break. Until the bell for their next round. Unless someone gets knocked out first.
Jacobus didn’t have long to wait. Fortunately. D’Angelo had told him they were in the shade. But if this was shade, thank God they weren’t out in the sun. At least a mild breeze had picked up. The music stopped. He waited.
“Jake! Hi!”
“Yumi.” Jacobus received a hug and a peck on his unshaven cheek. Yumi told him he was looking much healthier now that his hives had disappeared, and other such niceties. He told her she smelled the same as always.
“Where’s Nathaniel?” Yumi asked.
Jacobus explained about the delay with his luggage at the airport and said he expected Nathaniel to arrive soon.
“But I see you’ve brought Hocus with you.”
“Never know when they’ll need me to conduct, y’know?” he replied, swinging the stick perilously close to her head.
“I think we could have used you just now,” she said. “Too many chiefs, not enough Indians.”
“It’s not politically correct to say stuff like that, you know,” Jacobus said. “It’s like with the Washington Redskins. By the way, did you hear that after all the bad press, they finally changed their name?”
“No! That’s amazing!”
“Yeah, now they’re the D.C. Redskins.”
“You’re incorrigible. Do you know that?”
“Would you have it any other way?”
“I guess not,” Yumi said. “But I’m sure Anita would.”
“Anita?”
“Our CEO. She’d probably fire me for saying something like that.”
“Why? Is she a Redskins fan?”
“Between you and me, sometimes I wish she’d go to D.C., and stay. Sometimes she doesn’t see the forest for the trees.”
“Yumi, you’ve certainly become Americanized over the years. You’re a veritable cliché factory. But what trees are you talking about?”
“She may be good at raising money, but I don’t think she has much of an ear for music and she doesn’t seem to like musicians very much. She’s always harping on deportment, especially the superficial. She doesn’t understand that when musicians argue with each other, that’s part of the process. If you don’t argue, something’s missing.”
“That rehearsal sounds like something more than a friendly difference of opinion.”
“I suppose. It did get pretty heated.”
“But it’s a dry heat, right?” Jacobus said, never reluctant to rub it in.
Yumi swatted him on his behind.
“Harassment!” Jacobus shouted. “Where’s Anita when I need her?”
“Very funny. But seriously, she sends us these memos telling us how we’re supposed to ‘comport’ ourselves. Like we’re children. And she doesn’t have a sense of humor, either, like you do, anyway.”
“Well, as I always say about management: Can’t live with ’em. Can certainly live without ’em.”
“Anita would send you a memo for saying that.”
“No doubt.”
Yumi and Jacobus whiled away the time a bit longer, but then Yumi said she had to run back to her cabin for some other music before intermission ended. Did Jacobus want to go with her and rest for a while?
“No, just point me in the direction of the nearest bathroom. My gastric distress came with me. Got a free companion ticket.”
“They only have these Porta Potties here. Why don’t you come and use my bathroom?”
“Nah. At the moment, the closer, the better.”
As Yumi escorted Jacobus to the portable toilet, they discussed where they would meet Nathaniel when he arrived, and if time permitted, have a bite before the concert. If not, they would get together afterwards, before the two men returned to Salt Lake City. As soon as she departed for her cabin, Jacobus very cautiously felt his way up a step to the Porta Potty. Opening the door, the odor was immediately offensive, even to him. It made the lake’s smelly brine seem like Chanel No. 5. It was so bad that he probed with Hocus to make sure he didn’t step in anything he’d have to scrape off. Only the flies seemed to have found the commode a commodious sanctuary. He cringed as he sat down on the toilet, but then decided, what the hell, how much worse could it be than mine back home?
With little ventilation, it was sweltering inside the latrine and Jacobus regretted he hadn’t accepted Yumi’s offer. Regretted, but understood why. It was his inability to distinguish kindness from charity. Since his childhood, after he had been abused, after his parents were killed, and especially after he had gone blind, there had been so many times when he knew that the offer to help, however well-intentioned, was based on pity. And if there was one thing he detested even more than hip-hop and poetry slams, it was being pitied. People might think he was just a proud, stubborn old man, but the fact was… Well, I guess I’m a proud, stubborn old man. Declining any assistance whatsoever had become his instinctive, default response.
Another thing he couldn’t do, as much as he was trying, was to force nature’s pace. So as he sat there, waiting for his gastric distress to activate, he redirected his thoughts to the miracle of Mendelssohn. How this mere toddler—What was that? Someone banging on the outside of his latrine? Jacobus was about to shout out “Wait your goddamn turn” but silenced himself when he heard: “You spit in my face again, Waldstein, so help me, I’ll kill you!”
A Danish accent. Christian Bjørlund.
Grunting, pulling, pushing, cursing. A real physical brawl. One didn’t need to be fluent in German and Danish to understand that insults and obscenities were being hurled, and their tone was far from frivolous. As the scuffling intensified, as one or the other of them was slammed against it, the latrine rocked. Jacobus feared it could topple at any moment. He extended his arms outward, pressing against the side walls to brace himself as it teetered. With his pants lowered to his ankles, the next jolt against the latrine tilted it backwards. As his feet left the floor, his ass descended dangerously into the toilet bowl. He found himself stuck, even after the latrine stabilized. He did not envy his precarious situation, especially if the door were to swing open.
“Hey, assholes!” he shouted.
Startled, the two combatants fell silent. Jacobus, emboldened, determined to solidify the momentary uneasy truce.
“You hear the one about the old blind man stuck in a latrine?” he continued, as he attempted to extricate himself from the toilet bowl, like a cork out of a champagne bottle.
“No,” Waldstein said. “I have not heard that.”
“Things don’t look good.”
Another blind man joke, and a pretty stupid one, Jacobus thought. Though on second thought maybe not so bad, considering he’d made it up on the spur of the moment. At least he seemed to have diffused the situation, maybe by merely confusing them. He didn’t hear any laughter, but there was no more audible rancor from the two combatants. He heard them walk off. Intermission over? Back to lovey-dovey music-making? It was a moral lesson for him, too. The next time someone offered him a favor, he would not look a gift horse in the mouth. Now, there was another addition to Yumi’s growing collection of American clichés. With peace restored, Jacobus completed the task at hand.
Chapter Seven
It was a little before six-thirty, a half hour before the concert. Jacobus was listening with a critical ear to Yumi warming up backstage when Nathaniel phoned her.
Apologies, apologies. Jacobus’s suitcase had not arrived and it was inevitable Nathaniel would miss at least the seven o’clock curtain time, if not the whole performance. Ironic, Jacobus thought, since between Nathaniel and me, Nathaniel’s the one who actually wanted to be here.
“That’s so upsetting,” Yumi said. “I wanted to introduce him to all my colleagues. And thank him again for his gift.”
“What gift?”
“A first edition of Roughing It, by Mark Twain.”
“Probably got it gratis from one of those insurance claims he handled.”
“Jake, you’re such a cynic! It’s a lovely gift. Did you know Mark Twain’s real name was Samuel Clemens?”
“Samuel Langford Clemens to be exact.”
“A lot of musicians used to have stage names, but I didn’t realize Mark Twain—I mean Samuel Clemens—did.”
“There are two theories why,” Jacobus said. “The more well-known one is that ‘Mark, twain’ was the call Mississippi boatmen used in order to let the navigator know the depth of the river. Twain meant two, and referred to the depth of two fathoms, or twelve feet, which suggested dangerously shallow shoals for larger boats. Clemens might have thought it was an appropriate metaphor for his style of provocative satire. Maybe. Maybe not.
“The other theory is that when Clemens entered his favorite saloon in San Francisco he would shout to the bartender, ‘Mark twain,’ meaning that the bartender should chalk up two drinks on Clemens’s personal account. I like that theory, even if the first one is probably the true one.”
“How do you know so much about Mark Twain?” Yumi asked.
“There are two theories. One is that I’ve been studying Mark Twain all my life.”
“And the other?”
“I heard it on NPR last week.”
Yumi whacked him on the butt.
“You hear that thunder?” Jacobus asked Yumi.
“You mean from me slapping you? Or is this a deaf people joke?”
“No, it’s thunder. You don’t hear it?”
“No.”
“Well, I do. And I don’t like the sound of it.”
“It’s probably a plane. The airport’s not that far away. And I’ve got to go get ready for the concert,” she said. “Behave yourself.”
Jacobus left her to take his seat in the audience. Yumi, wearing the new concert dress she had bought at Chic, returned to warming up amongst her colleagues, practicing a last few G Minor scales to ready herself for Summer. There was a compartment in her violin case in which she kept her rosin, extra strings, a pencil, and a pair of good luck earrings made of pennies that one of her students made for her. She also stashed her phone there when she was in her concert dress. As she put on the earrings, the phone rang, reminding her she should turn it off before the concert started. It didn’t bother her too much when people in the audience forgot to do that. Yes, it was annoying, but some of her colleagues would become apoplectic. Her phone’s ring tone, the famous first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, had amused her and her friends—“Isn’t it adorable?”—when she downloaded it six months earlier, but now, with only moments before the concert, she found it irritating. She didn’t have time for a conversation so she picked up the phone with the intent of turning it off, but when she looked at the screen and saw that it was from Unknown Caller, she decided to answer it.
The same voice as before. Uninflected. Matter-of-fact. This time, two words before disconnecting. “Leave. Now.”
Yumi stared at the phone. She quickly looked around her. No one else was holding a phone. But there could have been time for someone to have put it down in the few moments she had been frozen in place. Could have been.
