by Ellen Datlow
The warm moistness of her cunt closed about his penis squeezing, demanding, and with a white-hot rush he came even as Mary laid one final, triumphant, and very hard blow across his bare, red ass.
Luanda’s throaty sounds of pleasure were punctuated by screams, and bellowed French commands, and the sound of popping champagne corks.
Barnaby grimaced—So overdone—and rolled onto his back. And gave a yelp as his tender bottom hit the satin sheets. Lucinda propped herself on an elbow, raked back her long black hair with one hand, and grinned down at him. Her nipples formed rich coffee-colored circles against the tawny skin of her breasts.
“Performance tonight?”
“No, just a rehearsal.”
“You must be tense. You don’t usually call for the full treatment except for a performance.”
He grabbed one swinging breast, and rubbed his thumb across the nipple. “Decided to treat myself.”
She rolled away, consulted an ornate white-and-gold clock. “Hour’s almost up.”
“Do you have to be so cold-blooded? Can’t you convince me that it’s romance at work here?”
“You don’t want romance, Barnaby, you want sluts. For romance you go home to that pretty wife of yours.”
“She’s frigid.”
“Goodbye, Barnaby.”
“She doesn’t understand me.”
“Leave the money on my desk, Barnaby.”
“You don’t love me.”
“That’s right, Barnaby.”
A few minutes later, and he was out in the chill Santa Fe night. There were a few cars about jouncing and grinding through the monumental potholes that littered the streets like bomb craters. He stuck to the sidewalk, the tough buffalo grass brushing at his pants leg where it thrust through the cracks in the concrete. It wasn’t far to the performance hall, and with a star-littered sky overhead, and a brisk wind carrying the scent of burning piñon to his nostrils, he was just as happy to walk.
It also allowed time for the blood to retreat from his inflamed buttocks. The touch of his undershorts against the swollen skin was agony, but it also managed to keep an erection shoving at his zipper. And if he took his time he would be able to sit and rehearse for three hours, serene and relaxed from Lucinda’s and Mary’s ministrations.
Another car lurched past, and its headlight swept across the mouth of an alley. It was like looking down a black throat with a trashed-out dumpster and several battered garbage cans thrust up like broken teeth. And in the midst of it two shadowy figures were locked in a desperate struggle. Harsh pants and faint whimpers drifted from the alley. Barnaby dug his hands into his coat pockets, hunched until his collar rode up around his ears, and hurried past. It was none of his affair. Had no part in his game. But there was a sick taste on the back of his tongue that lingered for several blocks, and had nothing to do with the cheap wine he had consumed with dinner.
Patricia and Peter were waiting. He muttered an apology for again being late, and seated himself at the baby grand. Peter, his violin tucked beneath his sharp chin, and his brown curls forming a halo about his head, had the look of a mad monk. Patricia was a different sort altogether. Her blue eyes seemed to focus on nothing, and with her long, straight blond hair hanging to her waist she looked like a lost flower child. But there was nothing innocent about the way she gripped her cello between her thin legs. Barnaby’s erection bumped urgently against his zipper, and he wished she would stop wearing such short skirts to rehearsal.
Peter made a new mistake this night. So breathtaking in its audacity and creativity that Barnaby almost lost his count. The violinist muttered an apology, but he was staring at the notes with the adoration of an ascetic witnessing the kingdom of God. Patricia had formed a curtain with her hair. Barnaby couldn’t read her reaction.
The final trembling chord hung in the air, and Barnaby dropped his hands into his lap. After twenty minutes of playing, and Peter’s remarkable addition, he found that his ass had stopped hurting, and the flash of Patricia’s pale thigh brought no answering response from his crotch.
“Shall we try it again?” he heard himself ask.
“Sure, and I’ll try not to foul up this time.”
“No problem.”
Patricia shook back her hair, and eyed him, reading more from the innocent two-word remark than he had intended. Sensing perhaps his exultation. Behind her blue eyes lurked the somna, glaring, hostile, very suspicious.
The keys were slick beneath his fingers as they began again. This time it was perfect. Perfect as it was always perfect. As it would have been perfect the time before barring Peter’s fascinating gaff. Perfect, soulless, and heartless. And the fault, Barnaby sadly concluded in time with the final chords, was not in the music.
Patricia didn’t wait for any quiet banter. She packed her cello in short jerky motions that betrayed her agitation, ducked her head, and hurried from the studio.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” Peter said contritely.
“No, that’s not true. It was magnificent.” Barnaby hesitated, then dug out a handwritten score. “Would you mind?”
“Oh, Barnaby, you never give up.”
“No.”
An “A” hung in the air, then tuned and ready Peter sight-read swiftly and perfectly through the first page. He stopped, bow poised, double chins forming because of his pressure on the instrument.
“Well?”
“It’s terrible. Just like the others.”
“You see no improvement?”
He considered, replayed a phrase, frowned, caught his lower lip between his teeth. “Some.” He dropped the violin to his knee. “Barnaby, why is it so important to you?”
“I don’t know, but it is. Vitally important.” He swung off the bench and paced the sterile room, shoes squeaking on the linoleum floor. “Sometimes when I’m playing I feel as if I’m on the verge of some great insight, some total understanding that will—”
“What I’m on is the verge of trouble."The snap of the locks on the case echoed off the dingy white walls. “You’re a dangerous man to know, Barnaby. You incite a person to risk, and I’ve taken enough risks for one night.”
But they didn’t, and that was the problem. Life was a series of endlessly repeating patterns. The thoughts roiled like sullenly boiling poison; but buried deep on the shunt level, safe from any eavesdropping. He slid onto the bench, and ripped out a Mozart piano sonata. Wondering as he played why when using the same seven notes he produced soulless dreck, while Mozart had produced genius, magic. The magic went to work, drawing from deep within him a sensation that was odd and unpleasant and exhilarating all at once. A vise closing somewhere deep within himself.
With a sigh he dropped the lid, a sullen bang in the silent room, and left the recital hall.
He has several choices. A late post-rehearsal supper. Home—his mind shied violently from that. He knew what was waiting for him at home. Or Sal’s.
Sal’s filled with noise, and smoke, and male presence. The waitresses were male wet dreams incarnate. Cute, and buxom, and dumb as rocks. They made appropriate squealing noises when pinched or propositioned, and the rest of the time kept their mouths shut, and served drinks.
Sal, a tall, skinny Italian whose spade beard made him look like a rather befuddled Lucifer, was polishing glasses behind the bar. On the large TV, hung precariously on the wall, the Bears were slaughtering the Patriots at the Super Bowl. Groans, curses, shouted advice, rose from the knot of construction workers, cowboys, and truckers huddled at one corner of the bar.
“The usual?”
“Yeah.”
Sal slopped whiskey into a shot glass, and Barnaby tipped it down. “Neat whiskey will play hell with your liver.”
“Well, now that would be a new experience. The descent into the gutter with redemption to follow.”
“Hush.” Dr. Antonio Garcia’s thin, blue-veined hand closed about his upper arm, and forced him away from the bar. “Barnaby, my friend, you are very fey tonight."
They settled into a red leather booth. “What troubles you, my friend?”
The score fluttered onto the table between them. The doctor prodded the pages with a cautious forefinger. “Music.”
“Yeah, mine.”
“Is it good?”
“No, it stinks. Like the piece before it, and the piece before that, and—”
“Why are you surprised?"The Spaniard sighed, and ran a hand across his beautiful white hair. It fell in long waves back from a high white forehead. Which made the darkness of his deepset brown eyes all the more compelling. “Barnaby, my young friend. There are a million things in this world that we can do—”
“Perfectly,” he interrupted bitterly.
“As you say, but art is not one of them. The blood of the somnas has thinned and our kind doesn’t make music.”
“Oh, we make music. Like we make ball games, and make wars, and make marriages, but we create nothing.” Uneasy interest flared like a point of light from his passive watcher.
“That is not our function—”
“Our function is boredom.”
“Not so. We are the vital link between our somnas, and reality. We provide experience, sensation, growth, challenge, but with the dangers filtered by our loyal bodies.”
Antonio had assumed his erect tutorial position, finger upraised, his soft, deep voice exploring each word for the maximum effect. Intellectual smugness glowed on his face. For Barnaby this was merely one in an endless repeat of the good doctor’s pet philosophy.
“Antonio, you remind me of the Jewish apologists of old time, 1930s. They continued to excuse, and explain Adolf Hitler even as they were led into the gas chamber.”
“That is a disgusting analogy! We are not a despised minority being persecuted by our overlords. We are partners in a most unique and special relationship, and we should be grateful for our chance to serve. Without the development of the somna/piggyback relationship there would be no humans on Earth. That great history would have been snuffed out by the actions of a random, malignant virus. As it is we have preserved—”
“Which is my point! We ‘preserve,’ we experience, but we don’t create. And I’m not even sure we’re preserving all that well. Look at the fucking streets, the garbage collecting on the sidewalks. And who can blame them. It’s a hell of a boring game to be a garbage collector or a member of a street crew. So we get to be doctors and lawyers, and conductors and composers and Indian chiefs. And for what? For What!”
“Barnaby, go home. These distempered freaks do you no good.” Hostility and compassion flickered in the dark eyes as Antonio and the somna watched him.
As for himself a band of incandescent pain seemed to be tightening about his temples. With a gasp he crammed the pages into his pocket, and lurched from the booth.
“You’ll feel better in the morning.”
“Yeah … yeah, you’re right. I’ve been working too hard. This opening concert… ha ha, burning the candle at both ends… ha ha.” How easily the words of his role slipped from his tongue. How comforting to have the role to return to. If he didn’t he would have to make one. For himself. All by himself.
Laura was waiting. The green shades on the brass student lamp threw a dim light across the darkened living room, and drew highlights from her short cap of light brown hair. Head bowed she sat curled in the corner of the sofa. The line of her neck was a curving song. But it seemed vulnerable, too. Pale and slender, bent like an autumn flower beneath a weight of winter ice. He experienced the same squeezing sensation he had felt during the Mozart. Slipped forward, and kissed her. The short hairs at the nape of her neck tickled his lips.
She flinched, jerked away. “Don’t touch me.”
He too recoiled from the acid that laced the words. “Laura, love.”
“You slime! You son of a bitch!” She spat the words at him from behind the protection of the coffee table. Her voice held only hatred, but her body spoke of unendurable pain as she huddled in upon herself, arms wrapped protectively about her chest.
“What, what have I done? The first night I’ve been able to get home early, and you start screaming at me.”
“You don’t like it? Then go back to your bimbos!” She snatched a package of cigarettes from the mantel. It took her five tries to get it lit, and a part of Barnaby admired her ability to suppress her dexterity. It was perfect from the trembling fingers to the cords of her neck etched harshly beneath the fair skin as she sucked in the smoke. “For months I’ve suspected, but now I have the proof.”
A manila envelope slapped onto the brick floor at his feet spilling its contents. Photos. Black and white, grainy, unfocused, but clearly recognizable. His face, looking bloated with the weight that had been laid on him, sheen of sweat, hair matted, eyes screwed tightly shut in ecstasy as Lucinda beat him. Shame lay like a bad taste on the back of his tongue.
“God damn it!” he roared. “I’m under a lot of pressure. And since you’re so fucking frigid—”
“Bad choice of words there,” she smirked. “Just because I’m not willing to behave like an animal.”
“Don’t finish. I know it by heart. I hear it every night in bed. I’m an artist. The physical blunts the soul,” he mimicked in cruel parody. “Well, if that’s the case you ought to be a fucking angel by now.”
She dealt him a ringing slap, and he caught her by the wrists, forced her in close. Her head thrashed trying to avoid the kiss that had little to do with love, and a great deal to do with violence.
They staggered about the room locked in this travesty of an embrace. There was a crash, and his soul cringed as a priceless Santa Clara Indian seed pot shattered on the bricks. Dismay loosened his grip, and Laura kneed him neatly in the balls. Pain like a red-hot poker shot from his groin through the top of his head. He collapsed with a keening cry, and held himself.
Laura began booting down the hall toward the bedroom, then froze, turned back, weariness and release etched on her delicate face. Barnaby still hurt. A lot. But the somnas were gone. Exhausted perhaps by the violence of their backs’ emotions.
Slowly he rose, came into her arms, laid his head against her soft bosom, felt despair.
They had only a little time. A few seconds becoming minutes becoming (if they were lucky) hours. To spend any way they pleased. His mind stuttered and stopped; a long walk in moonlight, conversation, playing a duet, making love. They were like children in a toy store. A multiplicity of delights, joy at having the choice, pain at having to choose. As usual Laura settled the matter.
She slipped from his arms, entered the bedroom. He watched hungrily as her mincing, duck-footed dancer’s walk carried her away from him. She would wait, and if there was enough time he would join her there. But now he had to work.
The score was tucked between the pages of a Mozart symphony. Camouflage, or was he hoping that genius somehow rubbed off? He spread the pages, stared wearily at the tiny ink strokes each representing so many hours of anguish. He was sick to death of notes. They haunted his every waking moment.
Why was he so driven? What did he hope to accomplish by this herculean task? To prove that Antonio, and the other philosophers of their age, were wrong? That creativity could exist? And what were the consequences if he were correct?
Worse, what were the consequences for him if he failed? Reality was rendered marginally bearable because of this dream. And if he tried and failed—what then? There was no way out. No way to simply say, “I’m tired, I’ve had enough. I won’t go on.” Of course he would go on—and on. He had no choice. But it would be an eternity of living with neither hope nor meaning.
He twirled the pen between his fingers. Measure 156. Miserere. Mercy. It was a prayer. Pen clenched between his teeth he played the preceding five measures. The notes hung trembling in the shadowy room. They formed a presence in the darkened room rich with the scent of pipe tobacco, Laura’s perfume, and old wood lovingly polished with beeswax and lemon oil. Were they any good? No, that question could only freeze him
. He repeated the phrase. Rediscovering its soul. Or was it his own?
He bent to the paper. Treble clef—g, e, c—dotted quarter, sixteenth f, back to a. The scratchings of a pen, the crackle of paper, the occasional fragmentary musical phrase. Forming a miraculous harmonious whole.
The lone time continued. Barnaby stretched feeling the vertebrae in his spine snapping one by one as he straightened. Carefully he returned the sheets to their hiding place, and buried the memory of his work in shunt level.
He realized, with a start, that while he was sitting and gaping mindlessly at the dull ivory keys of the piano Laura was waiting, and precious private moments were flitting past. He hurried from the study, down the long hall, hesitated before a closed, sealed door. Its twin lay across the hall. Duty warred with resentment. Duty won out. He opened the door into the blue-lit aquatic dimness. Gazed at the figure curled protectively about itself, floating, sleeping, dreaming. Elaborate machinery clicked and sighed measuring out life in tiny doses. The warmth, wash and ebb of a primal ocean, an eternal womb.
Resentment died to a dull ember, and he felt a wash of pity. He had long ago worn out love. He wondered what the somna would think of that admission? Perhaps be grateful that pity still remained. No, such an analysis was beyond it. That was reality, and the somna fed on dreams.
As did he.
He softly closed the door.
Under the goading of his very real personal demon his behavior went from bad to worse. Evenings after rehearsals and performances were spent in screaming battles with Laura. Little progress was made on the requiem for even when lone time occurred he was too exhausted and devastated to work.
