Hot Ticket

by Janice Weber

  “I don’t like crowds after the encores.” Bendix returned his gaze to me. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”

  “Get in line,” Duncan called. “Take a number.”

  Bendix touched my arm. “You won’t be running away afterward, I hope.”

  Let him guess. “What is with these people?” Duncan asked after he had left. “Do they think they can just come back here and carry you away?”

  “Probably.”

  “Animals. It’s those dresses you wear.”

  Dresses? Radar. Most men picked it up but only a few had the guts to follow the signal into terra incognita. I had a soft spot for that sort of bravery. “Ready to roll, Duncan?”

  Cursing, he staggered up from the couch. The second half went better than it should have, all things considered. Three encores later we were backstage for good. “I wish you’d stop rushing that ending,” Duncan complained, gargling with mouth-wash. “You’re always going for the burn.”

  His aggravation vanished the moment Justine walked in. “That was so hot,” she swooned, pronouncing the word as Mick Jagger would.

  Duncan extended his arm. “Ready to tango?”

  Unfortunately, the lovers’ getaway was impeded by a dozen well-wishers, most of them relatives of the dead composer. They had brought champagne. I let Duncan deal with that bomb squad while I did a little time with Mr. Godo, president of Kakadu Records, and four of his major distributors. They adored me: I was one of the company’s primary cash cows. Sushi, anyone? Duncan was obviously engaged but Bendix Kaar, hovering conveniently at my elbow, stepped into the breach. We exited to Fifty-sixth Street.

  Justine tucked herself into the first limousine at the curb while Duncan, addled with champagne, bade us adieu. Making his final turn, he tripped. We all watched his head hit the sidewalk with a fruity thud.

  “Duncan!” I bent over him as Godo & co. fretted in Japanese.

  Under normal circumstances, Duncan would have demanded an ambulance and the city’s finest neurosurgeon. However, not wishing to appear fatuous to his beloved, he raised himself to a sitting position. “It’s nothing,” he said, rubbing a welt over his eyebrow.

  I helped him up. “Bag the dancing. Go to bed.”

  “They go to hospital?” Godo asked as the limo pulled away.

  “They go dancing.” What the hell, it was Duncan’s skull, not mine.

  Bendix followed me into the second limousine as Godo directed him to a sushi palace on Madison Avenue. “Your accompanist is bewitched,” he said, amused at the violin I had placed between us.

  I scowled. “Is the feeling mutual?”

  “Hard to say what makes Justine tick.”

  “Do you know her well?”

  “We met at Fausto’s a few months ago.”

  Liar. You met on a boat thirty years ago. I watched a hooker sashay down Fifth Avenue. Why did she get truthful answers so much more often than I did? “You and Fausto go way back, though.”

  “We went to the Royal College of Music together.”

  Wow, a straight answer. “What did you study?”

  “I wrote operas.”

  “I’d love to take a look.”

  His voice hardened. “That’s not possible. I’ve burned them.”

  Didn’t matter. Bendix had just revealed the story of his life. Nothing he ever did, no mountain of money, prestige, or power, would ever compensate for the death of those operas. This was a dangerous man. I took his hand. “Pity.”

  “I have no regrets.” Lie number two. “How do you know Fausto?”

  “He introduced himself at Ford’s Theatre a few nights ago.”

  Bendix didn’t ask how I had gotten my ticket. “He’s a fascinating man. Clever as the devil.”

  “Why’d he stop performing? He must have been pretty good.”

  “He was more than pretty good. His mother’s death devastated him. He just stopped when he was twenty-one.”

  About the year of my birth. Maybe I was his musical reincarnation. “Fausto was that attached to his mother?”

  “Everyone was.”

  We pulled in front of an Upper East Side restaurant. Our party chewed fish as Godo raved about my concert at the White House and passed around toothy thrill-of-a-lifetime photographs of himself shaking hands with President Marvel. He was ecstatic that Kakadu Records now had a friend in the White House.

  Bendix wrote a number on the back of a business card. “The secretary of commerce would be a better friend,” he said.

  Godo nearly swallowed his gold tooth. “May I ask what is your business, Mr. Kaar?”

  “I’m a political consultant.”

  Godo gasped. “You were at White House! Dancing with Vice President Perle!”

  A millisecond pause. “Mrs. Perle is still a senator,” Bendix corrected, a hair tight and high.

  “Very handsome couple,” Godo beamed.

  Bendix refilled everyone’s glass and ordered another bottle as sly old Godo began plying him with questions about Washington, well aware that had I not been at the table, this conversation would have cost him thirty bucks a minute. In exchange, Godo handed Bendix the priceless opportunity to impress me with the story of his life: lower-middle-class childhood, service in Vietnam, socially responsible lumber business in Third World, gravitation toward Washington … give me a break. The only missing item here was the envelope containing Bendix’s lecture fee. Not a word about classical music: the orator would not want us associating him with dead, white European males. Or with catastrophic personal failure. Godo listened raptly although he was one of those corporate villains Bendix had spent the last half hour skewering. Maybe Godo knew that beneath all this bluster, Bendix was just another millionaire trying to pass himself off as an altruist. “You good friend with Mrs. Senator,” Godo pronounced, awed by Bendix’s crowning achievement.

  As flattery oozed like acid from a battery, I passed the time imagining which of them would be worse in bed. Finally, when all four of Godo’s yes-men looked ready to pass out, I stood up. “Thanks, Godo.”

  He sprang to his feet. “You go to Berlin?”

  “I go to sleep.”

  Bendix shook hands all around and accompanied me to the limo. “Thanks,” he said. “I couldn’t have kept that up much longer.”

  True: no one outdrank Godo. I lobbed Bendix a few more softballs about his apostolic life. Soon I had him where I wanted him, tipsy, torn between lust and propriety, dependent on my signals, which might yet go either way. Outside my hotel I took his hand. “How long have you been giving Aurilla’s daughter violin lessons?”

  I felt him recoil. Maybe he had been expecting an invitation upstairs. “Four years.”

  “I thought you were a composer.”

  “I also studied violin. She’s very talented, isn’t she.”

  “Yes. What does her mother expect me to do?”

  Bendix’s pulse elevated: lie en route. “Maybe you could get Gretchen into Juilliard. You have connections, don’t you?”

  Gretchen didn’t need me to get into Juilliard. “Why’d you stop teaching her?”

  “She became too difficult.”

  I needed to ask Bendix about that little diving party on the Thames, ask why he had left Aurilla to attend my concert tonight; ask if he kept in touch with Louis Bailey as closely as he did with Fausto … but to procure any answers, all that asking would have to occur in bed: information, as yet, not worth the price. “Thanks for coming to the concert,” I said, dropping his hand. “Let’s play Scrabble sometime.”

  Bendix pecked both my cheeks. “The Brahms was beautiful. Brought back many memories.”

  Anguished ones, I hoped. Smiled and went inside.

  My accompanist was not in his room and I belatedly realized that Bendix Kaar had not posed one personal question the entire evening. Respect or arrogance? The phone eventually interrupted that weak riddle.

  “My wrist is broken,” Duncan announced. “Swelled like a grapefruit as soon as we left you. Justine t
ook me to the hospital. My arm’s in a sling for three weeks.”

  “That’s awful!” Actually, too good to be true: now I didn’t have to tell Duncan about our canceled concerts. “How’s your head?”

  “Hurts.” He moaned a bit, leading up to the critical question. “Are you going to get another pianist?”

  “I don’t think so. We’ll just bag the tour. What’s a hundred thousand bucks between friends.”

  “My God! You’d do that for me?”

  “I might. Curtis might not. I’ll give him a call.” Dialed my house in Berlin. “Curtis.”

  Short silence as my manager computed New York time, presumed the worst. “How’d it go?”

  “Better than last week.”

  “How about Duncan.”

  “OD’d on beta-blockers then broke his wrist.” Now for the bad news. “He plans to recuperate in Washington. Assisted by a new sweetheart.”

  “A woman?”

  “Occasionally. I need this like a hole in the head.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” Curtis would arrange master classes in Baltimore, Charleston, put Duncan on a few arts panels … remove him from the line of fire. “When are you coming back? Dresden’s threatening to replace you with Bing Bing Chin.”

  Another eight-year-old who played like a CD. Audiences loved it when the kid was only a few inches longer than her violin. “When?”

  “October twentieth.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  We talked shop for a while. My manager was accepting engagements for five years hence, as if I’d still be alive to play them. He wanted to send me the score of a new concerto I’d be performing in Vienna that summer. The composer, who had made a fortune writing musicals, wanted to prove that he still had artistic integrity. “What’s the piece like?” I asked.

  “A long commercial. But good exposure. Great fee.” Curtis wisely changed the subject. “Someone named Aurilla Perle called this morning. Is that the senator?”

  Damn! “Siccing her kid on me again?”

  “What kid? She wanted to arrange a private concert this Friday night. A program like the one you did at the White House. No question about your fee.”

  Ergo no question about Curtis having accepted it. “What’s the occasion?” I sighed.

  “None of your business. She didn’t request ‘Happy Birthday.’”

  “What am I going to do about a pianist?”

  “How about Fausto Kiss? He was good once.”

  “For Christ’s sake! Get serious!”

  “Should I start asking around?”

  “Haven’t you done enough damage for one evening?” I slammed down the phone, unwilling to become Aurilla’s circus dog, even if she had paid the going rate. Her little party would be a rehash of Bobby Marvel’s in the East Room: same guests but better alcohol, same postprandial farce as a passel of Little Caesars feigned appreciation of sounds beyond their comprehension. Why me? Aurilla could have hired a string quartet for the same price.

  Do your job, Smith. I made one final call. “Fausto. Am I catching you at a bad time?”

  “Never.” I heard a match flare, a languid inhalation. “What are you doing up at this hour?”

  “I have trouble getting to sleep after a concert.”

  “Good old Carnegie Hall! I played there once. It was the only time in my life I nailed all the leaps in the Schumann Fantasy.” Fausto pulled on his cigarette. “How was Duncan?”

  “Fine. But he broke his wrist afterward.”

  “How? Servicing Justine with a dildo?”

  “Tripped. He’s out of action for a while, which is why I’m calling. I have a concert Friday night. Private. Short program. Interested in playing with me?”

  Words were replaced by an intense dialogue between Fausto’s cigarette and his lungs. “I don’t think I’m up to it, darling,” he replied after an aeon. “Thanks anyway. I’m profoundly flattered. But I don’t think so.”

  He spoke with regret: a soft no, malleable as clay. “Aurilla Perle’s buying,” I persisted. “Dinner included. Come on, Fausto.” Silence. “You pick the program. I can start rehearsing Wednesday. We’ll go all day and night if you want. Nice change of pace from that indolent life you lead.”

  “But you’ve never heard me play.”

  No, but I had read his reviews. “So surprise me. I’ll pay you five thousand bucks. God knows you need the money.”

  “What if I say no?”

  “It’s you or nobody.” I hung up as his cigarette hissed like an angry cat.

  Hooked my laptop to the airline schedules. Next flight for Belize left JFK in two hours. Layover in Miami: perfect. I dozed, listening, but Duncan never returned to his room. Down in the lobby, a maid stood polishing fake marble columns as the night clerk admired her gelatinous hips. The place reeked of chemical lemon and musty carpet. I stashed the Strad in the hotel vault. Outside, nothing moved but stray cats and clouds in a gray pink sky: in a few hours Manhattan would fry. I cut through Central Park, checking that no one followed me, then caught a cab to Flushing. The driver, in horn-rims and a fifties crew cut, looked like a pederast about to become a serial killer. “You that model?” he asked, staring at the mole above my lip.

  “No.” Irritating, this mole. But it was now part of my act, like the Harleys and leather pants. Until last spring, it had been a good hiding place for the poison Maxine required all her girls to keep handy in case of insurmountable difficulties. Great concept; too bad it hadn’t worked in practice. After my boo-boo last spring, Maxine had supplied me with another poison, this one guaranteed to work. Trade-off was it wouldn’t be painless. But I wouldn’t hurt for long.

  Traffic to JFK was light and passive. All-night drunks stuck to the right lane, as did beach-bound families of ten, aware that today an overheated radiator could cost them their lives. The cabbie weaved expertly between potholes, mufflers, and huge rinds of rubber on the expressway as he listened to a radio talk show. Callers were uniformly incensed that Bobby Marvel had appointed yet another New Age judge to the federal bench. “Pussy-whipped draft dodger,” my driver fumed as a mattress commercial blasted over the air. “Country’s goin’ down the tubes.” He quieted down as the next caller accused the oil companies of murdering Vice President Jordan Bailey. Someone else opined that the environmentalists had eliminated Bailey for brownnosing commercial loggers. “Somethin’ odd there,” the cabbie agreed, nonchalantly cutting off a motorcycle. “You don’t die of mosquito bites. Not even big mosquitoes.”

  The next caller trashed the medical profession for allowing one of the century’s finest public servants to turn to farina. Someone else countered that the vice president had been brain dead since the inauguration. Debate raged concerning his replacement: the country was ready for a woman; a black; a homosexual; a Jew; a general. Bobby Marvel had to be very careful with this one, as he was running for reelection in November and could not afford to offend more than six voting blocs. Aurilla Perle seemed to be the heavy favorite. Then one listener suggested that Marvel demote himself to vice president and give the man’s job to his wife Paula, who had been running the show for almost four years anyhow. I left the cab as enraged female callers flocked to the First Lady’s defense.

  Checked in for my flight as Cosima Wagner, my favorite alias. Plenty of seats: unless you were a hurricane, equatorial zones were not popular destinations in September. I looked ghoulishly pale compared with my fellow passengers, handsome Cubans and Germans, all strung with gold. Throughout the trip the Berliner across the aisle stared at me with that look of vague recognition I both craved and abhorred. Had I been carrying a violin, he would have pegged me. Witnesses everywhere, the down side of fame: thank God classical musicians were third-rank celebrities.

  Landed early in Miami. I took a stroll around the terminal, fighting for right of way with the elderly in golf carts and pregnant teenagers in microshorts. Finally located the locker matching the key Maxine had given me long ago at the zoo. Inside was a beat-up carry
-on. I went to a phone. “Out of Armani totes, dear?”

  Maxine didn’t laugh. “What’s your time frame?”

  “Two days.”

  “I thought you were off for a month.”

  “Something came up with Fausto.”

  “Great.” Maybe she said Shit. “Take your medicine. Follow the map. Call when you get back.”

  She knew better than to wish me luck. I brought my bag to a ladies’ room. Bolted myself into the handicapped cubicle, inventoried my very light load. Binoculars but no heat scopes, no computers, phones, global positioning equipment. Instead the Queen had packed a variety of drugs in disposable douche packets. Sewing kit was nothing but hypodermic needles. Zero weapons: I didn’t know how to interpret that. Jabbed my ass with a megadose of immunoglobulin and amphetamines, the high-octane formula for those jobs involving infectious diseases, many square miles, no time. I wouldn’t be needing food or sleep for the next two days. Nevertheless, Maxine had provided me with two thousand bucks and a manicure set designed for locks rather than fingernails. I changed into hiking gear, all Salvation Army reissue. Cosima Wagner would blend into the scenery all right.

  Chapter Five

  FROM MIAMI I took my seat in another nearly empty airplane. With the amphetamine high came paranoia. A chubby brown baby peered through the crack between the seats ahead of me: maybe a little young to be credible, but a witness nevertheless. Across the aisle, an islander wearing large gold rings and a straw hat kept checking out my legs. Behind me, a businessman tapped his laptop. Had either of them followed me on this flight? You never knew until it was too late. I stared out the window at huge Michelangelo clouds and tiny boats flecking a turquoise sea.

  Maxine had left a map of Belize in my shirt pocket. An X about forty miles inland, deep in the Maya Mountains: Louis Bailey’s campgrounds. Barnard had abandoned her equipment at a nearby X: San Ignacio, a hick outpost on the Macal River. The third X marked Belize City, the former capital, on the Caribbean coast. Louis’s doctor friend Yvette Tatal worked at the hospital there. On paper the trip looked simple, but I was thinking in terms of paved roads, potable water. While I was studying a topographical map, the plane shuddered. Sabotage? I glanced outside. Murky jungle had displaced the sea. The clouds had turned gray and fretful, as if evil genies writhed therein. The plane flew between bolts of lightning, over rainbows and sidling olive rivers. Disneyland, I thought … until the first beads of sweat trickled down my jaw. The cabin was getting hotter. Baby began to cry as the plane nosed toward the swollen treetops. My pulse jumped: that green was too thick, too alive.